Chapter 863: Ch 862: How the Heavenly Army Handles Things

Upper Layers, Outer Gate 500, Heavenly Army Headquarters—

Mata weakly dropped a document onto Indra's desk, then collapsed face-first on top of it. "I'm dead."

Indra, who had been carrying a birdcage and teasing his parrot, jumped in fright. "Whoa, what's wrong with you? If you're going to die, don't die on my desk. Can you go collapse somewhere else?"

Mata's expression immediately darkened. She glared at Indra with murderous eyes.

Indra's face changed at once. He hurriedly stood up with a smile. "Here, here, please, have a seat."

He moved aside and let Mata flop down across his chair. Only then did he pick up the document from the desk and glance at it.

Meanwhile, on the sofa nearby, Uesugi Kenshin was tending to her equipment. She glanced at Shiva, who was asleep on the sofa opposite them, then turned toward Mata. "What happened?"

"Ask him..." Mata said gloomily, pointing at Indra.

Kenshin looked over and immediately saw the miserable expression on Indra's face.

The Valkyrie tilted her head.

Indra sighed. Then he flicked the document across the room.

The pages shot toward Kenshin like throwing knives. She caught them neatly between two fingers.

After taking a look, the corner of her mouth twitched. "Ryo again. Can't this kid ever give people a break?"

"I already regret meeting that brat. And I regret even more putting Kurousagi in that community." Indra scratched his hair until it was a complete mess.

"No wonder I just got some nasty feedback from the central core. I thought another one of my enemies was slinging mud at me. Turns out it was one of our own!"

"That guy... He's practically inhuman. That report alone, packed with information and written entirely in complicated divine script... whoever wrote it is a professional."

Mata looked utterly drained, like she'd just spent seventy-two hours straight watching the evening news. She lay sprawled across the desk, gnashing her teeth. "The sheer amount of information is practically a torture session. It's downright sadistic."

"Probably Athena's doing. Algol got caught by her, so I imagine she's trying to make things a little easier for herself by using Ryo." As Indra spoke, he clicked his tongue enviously. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. Two of the three great virgin goddesses of Greece are sleeping at his place. The kid may not be as shameless as Zeus, but he's certainly got some serious luck with the ladies."

"Why are you still obsessed with that sort of thing?" Kenshin shrugged and gave him an exasperated smile. "But putting that aside, this document is a real headache. If we submit a report to the Pantheon Hall, at the very least, we're going to have another argument on our hands."

Indra rolled his eyes. "Who'd be stupid enough to submit a report to them?"

"Would you?" Indra asked, looking at Kenshin.

She immediately shook her head.

Then Indra looked at Mata. "What about you?"

"I'm not sure about myself." Mata remained sprawled across the desk, her expression strangely serious. "It'd be like handing a nuclear warhead's launch button to a lunatic. But if it meant having a headline to write tomorrow... well, I'll probably still do it."

"Journalists really are terrifying." Indra's mouth twitched as he shrugged.

"..."

Kenshin looked at Mata, fell silent for a moment, then waved the document in her hand. "So what do we do with this and the original? Destroy them?"

"Destroy them?" Indra's voice rose several octaves.

"How could you possibly think that's a good idea? If we destroy this thing, aren't we basically announcing to everyone that whatever we destroyed must have been extremely important?"

"Ah?" Kenshin froze, looking completely lost. "Then what are we supposed to do with it?"

"Put it in the waste disposal center. Uh, no, I mean the Heavenly Army's historical archives. And make sure the physical documents go in," Indra said with complete confidence.

Mata rested her chin on the desk, her eyes gleaming with amusement. "Kenshin, you used to be in charge of suppressing things by force. It's perfectly normal that you don't understand this sort of procedure. Trust me. Even a God King wouldn't be able to find this thing in that 'garbage dump' without at least two hundred years."

Indra snapped his fingers and grinned. "Hide important information you don't want people to find by burying it in a pile of junk nobody will ever bother looking through. That's the highest level of concealment."

'What exactly do you people think the sacred place where the Heavenly Army records Little Garden's history is...?'

Kenshin complained inwardly, then asked, "What if someone from the Pantheon Hall demands that the Heavenly Army prioritize this matter?"

"Then we'll give them something even more important to prioritize." Indra sat down on his desk, crossed his legs, and smiled.

"If they ask, this is what you tell them."

He cleared his throat and adopted the refined tone of a gentleman. "This matter may indeed be extremely important, but the Heavenly Army has other, even more important matters that require our attention."

"Such as?" Mata prompted with an amused smile.

"For example, Ouroboros is currently lurking in the lower layers"

Indra delivered the line with solemn dignity, then turned toward Kenshin to explain. "If those people from the Pantheon Hall ask about it again after we've dealt with Ouroboros, we'll use a different excuse."

"Ahem." Indra cleared his throat again and spoke with grave solemnity. "This matter does indeed require priority handling. Unfortunately, we have already missed the optimal window for intervention. Acting rashly now could uncover something we would rather not encounter, yet which carries an extremely high level of risk."

"What extremely dangerous thing would we uncover?" Kenshin asked with a strange expression.

Indra's face became completely serious. "There are two-digit beings involved."

Kenshin: "..."

At that point, Indra picked up the whiskey on his desk and took a sip. "The people in the Pantheon Hall usually stop asking questions after that."

Kenshin muttered, "Isn't this just shirking your responsibilities?"

"What else are we supposed to do?" Indra rolled his eyes. "Spend every day working ourselves to death implementing decisions those members of the Pantheon Hall came up with using their intestines?"

"Give me a break. You could put a dog in their seats, and it'd probably do a better job than they do."

"Besides." Indra set down his glass and calmly crossed his legs. "We still need that kid Ryo to keep causing trouble for Ouroboros. Instead of going out of our way to make trouble for him, wouldn't it be more interesting to sit back and watch him slowly pull that snake apart piece by piece?"

"Compared to helping those bored idiots find trouble for Ryo, we'd be better off dealing with that snake. After all, they're the ones who made us lose face so badly!"

As he spoke, a scroll appeared in Indra's hand. He narrowed his eyes and looked at Mata, Kenshin, and Shiva in the meeting room, then gave a cold smile. "Speaking of which, are you all ready?"

Shiva, who had been accumulating power, opened her eyes.

Kenshin sighed and slid her freshly maintained weapon into its sheath.

Mata, meanwhile, rested her cheeks in her hands, smiling brightly with undisguised malice in her eyes.

Seeing this, Indra smiled kindly. "Then it's time to go show those Ouroboros guys some love."

_ _ _

Arcadia Headquarters—

Ryo had just finished spending five thousand points to set up the interworld gate. After catching his breath, he turned toward the girl who had just appeared.

"Welcome to Little Garden!"

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