I Aggressively Stack Steel of the Heart in the Knight Order

Although Seventy-Six had a reputation for humor, when his voice came through the encrypted Spiritual Energy comms, Koller—a former member of the First Legion’s Think Tank—frowned.

Such a foul attitude of underestimating the enemy would have been absolutely intolerable in his former Battle Group, the Dusk.

Even if the mission went off without a hitch, he would have made sure to use the Battle Group’s disciplinary code to strictly punish Seventy-Six for his irresponsible behavior.

Unfortunately, this was the Vengeful Angels.

He glanced at Reinhardt and could only let it go.

However, Koller wasn’t the only one displeased by Seventy-Six’s attitude. Another Imperial Knight, a man with the power of a Four-star Earth Military Rank who also served as a Commander of Vengeful, said coldly, ”The command bridge doesn’t need you wasting precious Spiritual Energy comms to send back this useless nonsense. If you can’t handle the mission objective, then stay put. I will activate the backup plan.”

This was the Imperial Knight Urus Brutus, a man who favored a large, gray cloak over his Power Armor, whose voice was bone-chillingly cold, and who spoke with a complete lack of tact.

He was the current Battle Group Commander of the Silencer, an offshoot of the former Night Demon Imperial Main Battle Legion, a Battle Group with a long and glorious history.

However.

All of that ended during the Great Rebellion.

The Battle Group Leader of the Silencer was killed by the hand of a traitorous Lord of the Legion. More than half of the six thousand Silencer Battle Brothers joined the rebellion, and the remaining loyalists were purged until fewer than a hundred were left.

Long before Sedon and Reinhardt arrived, these few remaining loyalist Silencers, under Urus’s leadership, had already gone underground, hiding throughout the Ash Soil Star Zone.

If Reinhardt hadn’t received the personnel files from Sedon, he might never have known such a mysterious Battle Group existed within the Imperial Administrative Region.

Unlike Knight Battle Groups such as the Emperor’s Shield or the Death Battle Group, which excelled at large-scale warfare.

The Night Demon, and by extension its offshoot the Silencer, specialized in a range of ruthless tactics: infiltration, assassination, subversion, decapitation strikes... they would stop at nothing.

Moreover, every Silencer was a Master of Intelligence and a master of disguise.

The Silencer Battle Group had been instrumental in allowing Sedon to maintain control amidst the chaos of the Imperial Administrative Region.

The Silencers were also the ones who had provided Sedon with the intelligence for Reinhardt’s successful rescue mission on the Rebino World, silently clearing obstacles from his path from the shadows.

Of course.

If a sharp rebuke was all it took, a certain resentful assassin wouldn’t be making jokes about the Emperor every now and then.

The other end of the Spiritual Energy comms went silent for a moment before Seventy-Six offered his assessment of the situation inside the Savenxis Great Fortress.

”Killing him is easy, but my gut tells me this isn’t that simple. Kles’s people already know we’re making a move on Lima.

You all... be careful.”

Intelligence warfare was different from the bloody, head-on clashes of the battlefield.

As the operation’s planner and intelligence lead, Urus knew that besides Sedon and Seventy-Six, everyone with access to the secret Savenxis mission plan was currently aboard this Avenger Flagship.

Of course, he had considered that the deployment of the Child of the Red Flame might have tipped off the Infiltrator Council members hiding within the Imperial Administrative Region.

But the probability of that was minuscule.

Seventy-Six obviously knew everyone on the ship could hear the Spiritual Energy comms, so he had been deliberately cryptic about the possibility of a mole among them.

He’d even used some nonsense to throw them off before giving his actual report.

Urus glanced at the Technician Soldier, who was always busy at the ship’s control console. According to the files provided by the Fire Dragon Battle Group, Master of Casting Hook had been in service for over six hundred years, and his movements for the last decade were all accounted for.

As the Battle Group Commander of the Silencer, he had clashed with Grand Lord Kles’s Infiltrator Council in the shadows of the intelligence world for years. He knew exactly how terrifying these enemies were.

Mutant parasites were one of the Infiltrator Council’s most common methods for infiltrating the Imperial Administrative Region.

These vile creations, born from a Void Divine Artifact belonging to the Ten Thousand Changes Demon Monarch, would not only gradually consume the host’s brain but also perfectly assimilate all their memories. Ultimately, it would transform into a new brain structure, seizing complete control of the host’s body.

By these means, before the year 1453 of the Radiant Calendar, the Infiltrator Council had gained control of over five-tenths of a percent of the mid-to-high-ranking officials in the Imperial Administrative Region.

The highest-ranking individual they had compromised was an Administrative District Governor.

The report on that Governor—the one who had clashed with Reinhardt outside the Government Hall—stated that his body had been cremated after his execution by the Judgment Court.

But Urus had investigated the matter himself.

The truth was, after Governor Sextus died, his body was secretly moved.

Urus had later reviewed the case files on the words Governor Sextus had spoken when he faced the power of the Radiant Holy Artifact. He suspected it wasn’t insanity or foolishness, but that Sextus had very likely already been controlled by the power of a Void Divine Artifact.

His fear of the Radiant Holy Artifact was real.

Because no pure-blooded human, not even a Wizard, would feel a baseless fear of a Radiant Holy Artifact.

Regardless of whether these after-the-fact conspiracy theories were true, Urus knew full well that the Silencers were not fighting some ordinary intelligence agency. Their foe was an organization personally manipulated from behind the scenes by a Great Demon under the Formless Divine Monarch, the Prophet of the Bator World, the God of Conspiracy himself.

The Infiltrator Council.

Its minions were everywhere.

Its eyes were all over the entire Star Zone!

Urus’s right hand, hidden beneath his cloak, gently gripped his Knight’s Broadsword. His gaze swept subtly over Koller and Reinhardt.

Aboard the Avenger Ship at that moment, there was only one person who was truly suspect.

Reinhardt.

The Silencers only trusted what they saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears.

Both Koller and Technician Soldier Hook had been selected during the preparatory phase, long before the Vengeful Angels project began. The Silencers had kept both of them under strict surveillance; all of their movements were accounted for.

As for Reinhardt...

He found it hard to believe this young Imperial Knight could have survived an encounter with Flayer Du Ma.

Moreover, Reinhardt was the only one who had been outside the purview of the Imperial Administrative Region for an extended period.

At this thought, adrenaline surged through him. His palms grew slick, and a cold sweat broke out on his back. If all his deductions were correct—and setting aside the question of whether this entire operation was a trap aimed at them...

...the terrifying power of Reinhardt, who had already advanced to a Five-star Earth Military Rank, was far beyond what any of them could handle!

’Damn it...’

The thought that all of his meticulous plans had been laid out right under the nose of the Infiltrator Council ignited a burning rage in Urus’s heart.

But he kept these emotions perfectly under control.

After receiving authorization from Reinhardt, his right hand clenched his Knight’s Broadsword, adrenaline spiking wildly!

At the very same moment he gave Seventy-Six the order to strike.

Acting on the principle of striking first to create an opportunity, he erupted into motion. His Knight’s Broadsword howled through the air, carried on a gale of raw force as it swung down on Reinhardt!