Briefing - Part 1

"General Cordelia…"

Cordelia glanced at the soldier who had called her. He was one of her subordinates in JTF-10, a Colonel, still young and a very promising figure.

"The Consul has arrived, along with several high-ranking officers and rankers from the Association. All of them are in the conference building now." The man reported.

Cordelia nodded, "Led me to them, then."

"Understood, Ma'am."

Then, the man led Cordelia to outside the command post before proceeding into the conference building, located on the other side of the base.

Inside the building, there were already quite amount of people waiting for her. Most of them were important figures from Arguna's military and government while the rest were basically experts from the Association, who mostly just stood still with arrogant faces and blatantly showing off their fierce auras as if they were afraid that people won't be able to recognize their identities as rankers if they did otherwise.

Without wasting time, Cordelia quickly approached the Consul of Arguna, Reyvhan, a tall but plump old man who had a kind and generous look on his face.

"Lieutenant General Cordelia Cassar reporting for duty, Sir." She saluted to the Consul.

"At ease, General." Said Reyvhan the Consul with a smile.

After Cordelia put down her arm, he continued, "It's been a while, right lass? I hope this mission didn't tire you out."

"It is, Sir. Can't be helped though. It's my duty after all." Cordelia replied while shrugging.

Both she and the Consul were old acquaintances, their relationship goes way back. She first met him during her military academy years. At that time, Reyvhan already became a Consul and leading the country on his first tenure in office.

More than ten years have passed since then. Time has taken a toll on both of them. The young, heroic, and energetic girl from back then has transformed into a battle-hardened and stern general with many meritorious achievements, while the charismatic and selfless politician has grown old and a hint of immense exhaustion could be seen haunting his face.

Normally, as the Consul of Arguna, there was no need for him to personally came to the front line. But the case was different as this time the country was facing a formidable ordeal that occurred within their border. Reyvhan wanted to witness the whole thing unfold directly with his eyes.

In response, he lets out another warm smile, "Anyway, let me introduce you to my friends, but I'm sure you already knew some of the old soldiers on our side here, so we can ignore them… I want you to get acquainted with these gentlemen and ladies from the Association instead, they're the ones that will provide you great support during the operation later."

He introduced Cordelia to the people from the Association.

Among them was a middle-aged man with short golden hair. He was the only one who did not share the arrogance air that his colleagues had. In fact, he looked rather amiable, but his imposing figure really stood out and cannot be ignored at all.

"Greetings General Cordelia, it is a pleasure to finally able to meet the famous Phoenix General of Arguna. You don't have to worry, our team here will fully cooperate with your forces later. You have my words." The middle-aged man greeted her with a friendly voice.

Cordelia recognized this man, and she couldn't help but turn more respectful. He was precisely one of Gaia's five Diamond-class rankers and one of the leaders of the Association — The White Sage, Damian Brown!

A powerful expert who was rumored to have already attained the cultivation base of late stage Diamond-class. He was an old monster that had lived for almost 120 years, but even that, his body still carries a great deal of vitality and ferocious power.

"Greetings to you too, Sage Damian. It's my greatest honor to have a chance to fight on the battlefield alongside with you. Please take care of me." Cordelia returned the greets and gave Damian a ranker salute, a mandatory gesture to show one's respect toward the more higher-level rankers.

Within Heavenly Tower and Planet Gaia, strength was worshiped, and respected, respectful behavior in front of stronger rankers was a must and the norm.

After that, The White Sage introduced the rest of his colleagues to Cordelia, 14 people in total. Most of them merely greeted her with a slight nod while keeping silent.

This aloof behavior makes Cordelia extremely displeased.

To her, it's fine if it was The White Sage who actually does that, but she was greatly offended when those 14 rankers, who all of them were basically weaker than her, didn't give her a face.

Even other people presented inside the room, including The White Sage, were speechless because of their conduct. This was a blatant show of disrespect towards a dignified ranker. After all, Cordelia was still a peak stage Titanium-class expert.

In the end, Cordelia only revealed a slightly dissatisfied expression but did not make any complaints. She didn't want to jeopardize the cooperation between the two sides. Besides, she knows how prideful the Association's rankers were.

They always felt that they were superior over rankers in the service of nations or rogue rankers who only care about themselves. The Association's rankers envisioned themselves as the true protectors of Gaia because they have spent most of their time fighting and competing against foreign worlds' experts inside Heavenly Tower, which bloated their ego to the max.

Cordelia can't do anything about that, letting go of the matter was the only thing she could do. Anyway, the mission was more important to her currently. She was someone who prefers to look at the big picture, thus tolerance and being flexible both were her forte.

"Shall we start the briefing?" Cordelia asked while looking at the White Sage.

The White Sage did not reply, he merely nodded and smiled apologetically.

Next, Cordelia's subordinate took out a large tactical map of the local area around the target island and several aerial photographs of the island itself, which came from many sources such as satellites and UAV's reconnaissances, before scrambling them on top of a large table in the middle of the room.

All the people inside the room begin to gather around the table and scrutinize those photos.

"You can begin, General. Be as detailed as possible." Said Consul Reyvhan with a serious face.

"Yes, Sir." Cordelia nodded before tapping her finger upon the map. "As all of you can see, this island is our primary objective. It is called Eerie Island, 7 km long and 9 km wide and located 8 miles from the mainland. Before the whole fiasco occurred, it was originally uninhabited and seldom being visited by people, although local fishermen do sometimes fishing on the sea near it, they never bother the island itself. Its vegetation is really unstable with lush forest blanket the entirety of the island. The highest point is a steppe cliff with around 120 meters of height situated on the northern coast."

She taps one of the imagery before continuing, "This is a satellite image that captured the island's situation three days ago. Right in the middle section, a large fortification is under a construction, and from the looks of it, it is some kind of an ancient fort with stone walls that separated into two sections, circling it completely. Dozens of watchtowers were scattered throughout the island as well, for a defensive measure according to our guess. We have also detected a powerful formation array protecting the island. Furthermore, there are many other objects and buildings lies within the fort, but we're clueless of their functions…"

"Especially this one." Said Cordelia solemnly as she pointed her finger to another imagery that shows a rectangular object shone with immense light.

Everyone then focused their gazes on that photograph.

"This object would "glow" periodically just like in the image once every few days. And because of the blinding light, we cannot see what the object actually does. Even with thermal imaging, we're still unable to see through the light. This is the thing that we're mostly concern about. It's simply disturbing." Cordelia's tone grew graver.

Most people examining the image with a frown look, some even creased their forehead, finding themselves difficult to understand it, except the White Sage and his second-in-command.

Both of them exchanged look with each other and nodded as if they had realized something. And their reaction was caught by Cordelia's discerning eyes.

'It seems they knew what that object is all about.' She thought.

"Sage Damian, do you or your people knew what exactly that is?" She asked immediately.

Hearing that, the people's attention was gathered at the White Sage.

He nods his head slowly, "Indeed, we know. We have the information about that thing from our own source, but even that is only in the form of rumor, which was quite hard to discern as a fact. But after seeing the image, I'm now 100% sure that the information is authentic. I believed that object is none other than the infamous teleportation device belongs to Dark Nether World."

The gasping sound resounds as soon as the people heard the Sage's last sentences. There was no single person in Gaia nor in Heavenly Tower who doesn't know about the Dark Nether World and its native race, the Devils!

Dark Nether World was a completely different world compared to Gaia, its atmosphere and landscape were hazardous and full of toxic substances, resulting in the planet being totally inhospitable for humans and many other races to live in. It was said that the planet was located within a binary star system, and orbiting a giant gas planet.

Meanwhile, the Devils were a very aggressive and physically-gifted race. They were blessed with having strong raw power and large physiques.

Due to the hostile condition of their home-world and their fanatic tendency of worshiping the strong above all, Devils has an absolute form of strength-based society: cruel and unforgiving. The race's arrogant and ruthless nature was also notorious and well-known throughout the Heavenly Tower.

As currently, they have at least six Star-class rankers dub as the "Six Great Devil Emperors", making the Devils undisputed the most powerful race among thousands of races residing in the worlds connected to Heavenly Tower's 1st layer.

And what makes them so infamous was their capability to launch a massive invasion against foreign worlds.

Normally, it was almost impossible to carry out such endeavors since the means to transport a large group of people or soldiers to another world was simply non-existent. Technically, one can travel to another world by using portals that were available throughout Heavenly Tower's 1st layer, and each world had this portal that acts as a two-way "gate", Gaia's Heaven's Gate was one of the examples.

However, every portal possessed a protective mechanism that can prevent a non-native from accessing the portal that leads to a world where that person doesn't belong to, unless if he/she had a referral or personally being invited by the world's native.

In theory, by using that method, one power could send an army to another world covertly, but such means was simply inefficient, slow, and too much hassle. Not to mention, there were still many factors that could potentially jeopardize the project. Thus, in all of the history of Heavenly Tower, such effort has never been done so far.

But of course, that doesn't stop people from using the same method to accomplish less grander goals such as intelligence gathering, smuggling, or kidnapping, etc.

The Devils has become a terrifying menace to many worlds because of the teleportation device in their possession. By utilizing the device, they can send troops to another world easily and efficiently. Until now, there have been dozens of worlds that managed to fall into their claws, a few of those were on the verge of being totally conquered and could only delay their impending fate by offering futile resistances before the Devils' might.

And it was obvious that Gaia was their next target.

"Based on General Cordelia's words, we can discern that the device still possessed a limitation as it appears that those Devils can only activate it once every few days, but that doesn't mean we can relax. I suggest we should quickly launch an airstrike to specifically target that device and destroy it, before sending our forces to the island." An Arguna's politician suddenly spoke up his opinion, his face was full of panic.

"I agree! Barraging the island with artillery and rocket launchers could also work. As long as the device still standing, the Devils could send more and more troops to Gaia. We cannot let that happen!" Another politician barged into the discussion.

Hearing them, Cordelia and her fellow officers shook their heads.

Arguna's air force Marshal sighed, "It can't be done… Do you think we never try those actions before? We did… several times in fact. But no matter what we do or how many fighters or bombers we send there, they were always forced to retreat due to the heavy concentration of the Devils' anti-air defense, homing spell missiles, and everything. Those aircraft were unable to get near the island. We even lost tens of UAVs already just to acquire these photographs. That damn island is simply impregnable from the air."

"Our warships have also tried to barrage the island with artilleries and surface-to-surface missiles, but were stopped by the formation array, they couldn't even make a dent on it. It's truly frustrating." Said a navy Admiral dishearteningly.

The politicians were dumbfounded. How strong those Devils if our missiles could not penetrate their formation array and our formidable jet fighters couldn't even get close to the island and forced to retreat in the face of their anti-air defense? They all thought.

"If airstrikes and ground artillery or land missiles didn't even work? How could you even execute the operation? Those elements are crucial! Not to mention, we still need to transport troops through the air." The Consul asked while frowning.

"Amphibious assault!" Cordelia answered confidently. "Pure amphibious assault with two marine battalions and one infantry battalion as the spearhead, alongside other elements such as JTF-10, the Association's rankers and security contractors from Violet Global. The navy will support the operation by protecting the amphibious convoy until they reach the island, while the air force will be on standby duty just in case of urgency."

As she finished, the generals and officers from Arguna's military three branches nodded their heads. They all think that her strategy was the best plan they have. Even rankers from the Association were quite impressed as well.

The Consul nods slowly while keeping his serious expression. Although on the surface, Cordelia's plan looks flawless, there were still many variables that could turn the whole situation into a disaster, and he was worried about this.

"Alright… I approved your plan, but make sure to remember one thing, Cordelia. You must treat the operation with extreme caution." He said sternly as he staring at Cordelia straightly.

Cordelia did not budge for a bit, her expression remains calm and her bearing exudes great confidence, "I will, Sir. Trust me, I will."

"Very well." The Consul replied shortly.

Cordelia turned her attention on everyone again, "Anyway, we will now discuss the enemy's composition. Accordi…"

"General!"

Just as Cordelia was about to continue the briefing, her subordinates suddenly called her.

"Violet Global Security's aircraft has crossed our border and now they're asking for permission to land on our FOB. They have informed us that the Amethyst Queen is on-board as well. What's your order?"

Aside from being the overall commander of the operation, Cordelia was also in-charge of the FOB, thus everything concerning it needs her approval and acknowledgment.

"Let them land, then" Cordelia replied, her tone was mixed with a small hint of excitement.

Just like many other women across the world who idolized strong female rankers, the domineering and elusive Amethyst Queen was one of her biggest idols. And she couldn't wait to meet her face to face.