Tensei winced as he got out of the car as the light was shining brightly on his scales he used his hands to block the sun before adapting to the ocean of yellowish light. Natsuki and Haruki got out of the car as well and they stretched before looking around to see their surroundings.
After a long journey where they crossed mountains and rivers on their car and train rides they finally reached Calcio Village. Now all they needed was to find the Port where the Anti-Sorcery Key might be.
After checking a map of Calcio Village which detailedly showed the different seafood restaurants, high and low class accommodation, multiple monuments or sights to see in the village such as the Fountain of Saint Aqua or the Water Skiing Park, the different streets and roads, and finally the massive Calcio Port which was to the far edge of the city bordering the Endless Sea.
Their guess was correct and the village and the port did have roughly a distance of ten kilometers between them. That and the amount of tourists flocking to the village for sight-seeing made the job of stealing an Anti-Sorcery Key easy.
The village was more rural than the massive cities in Lukia. It was a normal settlement with multiple fisherman selling fish and seafood along with markets placed irregularly in the village and small houses that were also placed in blocks and neighbourhoods. The streets names were clearly labeled using blue and black boards on arches that indicated a person's entry to a new street or area.
Haruki held Emily's hand and walked past the crowds and hordes of people buying, selling, or talking and eventually reached an arch which indicated to them that they were about to leave the village to the outskirts. The arch was blue and supported with two white pillars with water swirls at the corners.
"What now?" asked Tensei as he tapped the ground with his shoes waiting for a new destination.
"We walk from here!" said Emily in an optimistic yet sarcastic voice.
Haruki groaned and drank some water as he started to follow Tensei and Emily's trail. Haruki was wearing a black t-shirt with shorts as he wiped his sweat with a blue napkin. Tensei wore a casual outfit with trackpants and a shirt and Emily wore basically the same, the only thing that was different was the shirt was more suited for a lady and it had a more pinkish tint to the white.
Meanwhile on the banks of the Twin River of Ninjaro.
Nicole and Ozamu had travelled to the Twin River of Ninjaro by a car using the river of Lukia as a map and found the divergence where the water body splits into Ninjaro. They got past the government border control pretty easily by sneaking past them. Ozamu turned into a soul beast while Nicole shapeshifted into a knife using her new abilities and they crossed the border.
Emily had given them the exact coordinates of where the cage was and they knew that retrieving the cage would not be easy. The cage did contain the strongest human being to grace the Fourth Dimension after all. According to the detailed map Emily had forged for them, there were multiple armed forces surrounding the river banks and multiple armed forces submerged in submarines patrolling the area where the cage was.
As they came closer Nicole accidentally activated a foreign metal detector and the bright red lights started to shine in the morning sky and whine like a crying child.
Multiple men in military grade guns, ninja armor, and potions specially imported from the Starry Kingdom rushed to the site that was shown in their detector maps. A bright red light was beeping on and off indicating the intruder's position.
A soldier then found Ozamu who was disguised as a four-legged dog looking soul beast carrying a knife using his mouth which was Nicole. The soldier laughed before loading his gun and getting ready to shoot the innocent dog.
Ozamu ran away dragging multiple soldiers towards him and threw the knife far away therefore there would be space and time for Nicole to steal the cage. Ozamu led them to a plain and away from the sight of the other soldiers and then transformed into a human.
He turned his hands into a phoenix's wings and his feet into a dragons as he soared above becoming one with the sun majestically. Then he charged up a fire blast and unleashed it upon the horde of the soldiers burning them all. Then he threw the bodies into the banks of the Twin River of Ninjaro but away from the submarine's detection system.
Nicole could not move since she was currently an inanimate object but she waited for the guards to stop seeing the place where she could transform and then she turned back into a human. Then she sneaked into the back door of a small hut where the resting space for soldiers whose turn to patrol ended and she knocked them all down turning a pebble into a hammer. She did not brutally injure them, instead she made them faint and knocked out and for enough time for Ozamu and herself to steal the cage.
With the sirens still running, Nicole tried to find a wire or an electronic system she could disable to stop the noise and prevent more soldiers from entering the area. She looked around and quickly found a box on a table which connected multiple wires and after peaking out the hut she saw that these wires were connected to the multiple gadgets in the area so the box must be the electric source or grid.
Nicole smashed the box with a giant hammer she created from a pebble on the floor and she could hear the siren stopping. At this moment all the radars and sonars of the submarines also stopped working and Ozamu entered the hut that Nicole was in.
"We can enter the river safely now," said Nicole pointing to the sparks of electricity popping out from the disfigured metallic box.
"That's good but we need some equipment to wear right?" asked Ozamu as he pointed towards their outfits.
"Yes…I have an idea," said Nicole.
Nicole went to the empty banks of the river. Ozamu had dealt with all the fainted bodies and he tied them all up and threw them somewhere in the forest. Then she threw a rock into the river to test how deep it is and what would happen in case they went inside.
To their shock the rock instantly got shot at and Nicole got an estimate at how deep the river was. The idea was that due to a rock being thrown inside the river which never happens the soldiers would be lured outside and then check what is going on and when they do surface to the banks Ozamu and Nicole would knock them out, steal their equipment and jump into the river.
"A decent plan it is," said Nicole.
After a few minutes of waiting her plan did work as two soldiers, one male and one female surfaced to the banks and got ambushed by Nicole and Ozamu. After they both carefully looked through the soldier's ID cards they managed to adapt new personalities. This was easy for Ozamu since his Sorcery Ability of his Soul was a Shapeshifter and that implies he is good at acting and switching sides. For Nicole it was a tad bit more difficult but she went to acting classes as a child since she loved plays and movies as a kid.
They submerged into the water and slowly took a deep breath to make sure their heartbeats did not seem stressed or shocked or new. The soldiers will and can notice every small detail about another person and that is why Ninjaro has one of the best military personnel in Laxasis.
They slowly went into their designated submarine and acted as if it was all normal. Ozamu knew the West Lukian that the soldiers spoke while Nicole would stay silent and try to grasp a few sentences. After gaining the trust of their fellow submarine mates, Nicole and Ozamu made their way through the steely tunnel of the submarine knocking out all the soldiers that wandered around in the submarine to the cockpit and knocked out the heavily armed protector of the driver of the submarine and the driver relatively easily with one punch to the guts or nerve bundles.
Then all the submarines quickly noticed that the submarine that Nicole and Ozamu were in was infiltrated and they all started to fire at them. Nicole quickly steered away from the fire as the sound of bullets and spells clattering against the silvery metal walls of the submarine echoed inside. Ozamu shapeshifted into a Stone Seafish which is a Soul Beast who is half human and half fish and if a person stares into their eyes the person who stared into the eyes would turn into stone.
Using his new scales and fish that made up the lower part of his body and the fins on his tricep he made himself outside the submarine and swam into the nearby submarines tearing them apart. Ozamu reinforced his bluish fists with soul energy and smashed the side of another submarine and tore apart the walls and used it as a shield to protect himself from the chaos in the river. Then while everyone focused on Ozamu, Nicole used the opportunity to launch missiles onto the submarines and cleared a path for herself to reach the coordinates of the cage.
She went deeper and deeper into the depth of the river feeling the water pressure pile up on her submarine. She calmed herself down and then she found the cage.
A crater surrounded the cage as sparks were dancing around it. As Nicole was going to retrieve the cage with the steely claws of the submarine a missile hit the submarine creating a gaping hole in which water started to flood in and oxygen started to leave. Ozamu, viewing this, quickly rushed to the depth as he saw Nicole being submerged and shot at. Nicole used her quick reflexes to turn the rocks in her pocket into dynamite and threw them onto the opposing submarines, causing them to explode. Fatalities were inevitable.
Then Ozamu grabbed the cage and his hands burned at the touch of them. Nicole knew there was a chance this might have happened since Chiro was an extremely overpowered human and the effects of the soul cage burdening such a powerful human would show on the outside to not affect the inside of the cage.
Nicole was quickly losing oxygen as she could not hold her breath any longer. Ozamu without thinking grabbed the cage either way and groaned in pain and tried to hold in the screams that never left his throat. The sparks felt like he was holding the blue sun in his hands. He quickly burst up as he held Nicole with his left hand and eventually as he reached the banks threw the cage away onto the floor as Nicole gasped for air.
He gazed at his burnt hand with skin peeling off and muscle and blood very clear as his remaining skin turned charcoal in color.
"We did it," said Nicole as she sat down on the banks of the river and removed her suit.
"Now we have to hope the others also completed their task," said Ozamu.
Suddenly a pink hand appeared from the sky and grabbed the cage as Nicole's phone started to ring. It was from Emily.
In the Calcio Port.
Emily, Haruki, and Tensei all gazed at the piles of bodies stacked on top of each other and tied up as they sighed. All the surrounding containers were opened as they searched everywhere and found the key. They thought it would be much harder but it was pretty easy now since Tensei was a Bishop and Emily had Third Stage Sorcery of Playbox. Haruki was jealous he did not awaken to the Third Stage yet but Tensei assured him saying 'You're only 14 wait,'
"Maybe we went a bit overboard didn't we?" asked Emily.
Haruki played with the Anti-Sorcery Key. It was a medium-sized blade and did not resemble a key at all. Haruki thought this was because the people who named the artifact were idiots.
"Anyway, since our work is done, call Ozamu and Nicole," asked Tensei.
In the Banks of the Twin River of Ninjaro.
"That's what happened!" explained Haruki over the phone.
"I'll take the cage with myself," said Emily as Nicole listened.
"Oh…Let's go pick up Danso in the Everglades," asked Tensei.