After determining the course of action, the Halloween Queen turned to look at Saber Alter.
In her Altered state, Artoria's personality had changed. Faced with the Queen's gaze, her attitude was extremely indifferent. Apart from Su Mo, she didn't care about the identities of the other two women, nor did she mind showing a cold attitude.
However, the Queen looked at her as if she were seeing her own rebellious child, without any sense of estrangement.
"Since we're having this child carry out the mission, we must pay extra attention to her safety. Although her spiritual rank can already be considered a leader among the Four-Digits, and even the leader of Arcadia may not be her opponent, we must also consider the possibility of the Heavenly Army making a move."
After being Altered, even the power of the Paths Saber possessed had been reversed. Originally on the Path of Preservation, she had directly switched to the Path of Destruction. With her current combat power, although it couldn't compare to a Three-Digit Full Authority Domain, it wasn't far off.
However, for the Heavenly Army, a Three-Digit level of strength was still nothing. If they encountered an extreme situation, with her strength alone, she might not be able to solve the trouble.
"You mean?" Su Mo looked at the Halloween Queen. Although with the contract between him and Artoria, he could protect her at any time, and even temporarily lend her his own power, it seemed that was not what the Halloween Queen wanted to say.
"Didn't I say just now that I had a meeting gift for this child?" the Halloween Queen smiled slightly. "Although for her, it can only be considered as icing on the cake, it should at least be of some use."
"After all, this was originally her power."
Hearing this, Su Mo was slightly taken aback, but quickly understood.
"The meeting gift you're talking about is the spiritual rank legacy of the King Arthur of Little Garden?"
"Mm," the Halloween Queen nodded slightly. "Since this child has already appeared, it's time for it to be returned to its original owner!"
As she spoke, specks of starlight emerged from between her fingers. The spiritual rank of King Arthur that she had recovered was immediately attracted to Artoria's true body and was gradually absorbed by her.
As time passed, the power of the spiritual rank within Artoria gradually increased, and in the end, it had almost doubled.
Originally, the King Arthur of Little Garden had a top-tier Four-Digit spiritual rank. When superimposed with Artoria's original top-tier Four-Digit spiritual rank, she was now almost at the limit of a Three-Digit.
It could be said that at this moment, Artoria had truly replaced the position of this world's King Arthur and had been recognized by the human history of Little Garden.
That afternoon, according to the report of a Thousand Eyes shopkeeper, after Shiroyasha went to the audience chamber and argued with the Halloween Queen, the two parted on bad terms.
For these two rivals, this was a common occurrence and not worth mentioning.
What was worth mentioning was that on the same night, Perseus, a subordinate ally of the commercial community Thousand Eyes and an important logistical community in the Arcadia Grand Alliance, was attacked by a Devil King.
This incident caused surprise from all sides. For the sake of convenient communication, all parties couldn't help but go to the shop of the Thousand Eyes community at the same time for a routine discussion and to explore a solution.
The next morning.
"Unforgivable! This is a provocation against our Arcadia Grand Alliance! This is a naked humiliation!"
In the tea room of Thousand Eyes, Shiroyasha covered her ears and listened helplessly to the impassioned speech of Lucius Perseus, the leader of the Four-Digit commercial community, Perseus.
This man, who had always received guests with a gentlemanly demeanor and was despised by Shiroyasha for being too fond of putting on a front, had now completely torn off his elegant disguise. His eyes were red, like a bull about to go into battle.
"This Devil King is extremely arrogant and clearly a great evil! He knew that our Arcadia Grand Alliance is the most capable organization to resist Devil Kings now, and he also knew that our Perseus is Arcadia's most loyal ally and the most outstanding weapon supplier!"
"But he still attacked us! He ruthlessly took away the important Gift of our community! This is not just cutting our Perseus's flesh, this is clearly slapping Arcadia and you, Lady Shiroyasha, in the face!"
After his hoarse roar, Lucius stared intently at the two people in front of him, as if hoping they would seek justice for him.
"Is it that exaggerated?" Looking at Lucius's overly agitated performance, Shiroyasha, who knew the truth, guiltily lowered her eyes, but her tone was as firm as ever.
"According to the information you just submitted, weren't there no casualties in your Perseus community? Let alone the forging Gift, not even the mass-produced weapons were plundered. There's no loss!"
Hearing Shiroyasha say this, the golden-haired young woman sitting beside her, with a carefree, fox-like smile on her face, was slightly taken aback and cast a slightly surprised look at Shiroyasha.
Lucius, who was opposite them, was even more unable to accept such words that glossed over the issue.
"No loss? How can you say there's no loss! The Gift we lost was the Gorgon that Lady Athena entrusted to us to guard."
"Although this Gift is not particularly precious, it was, after all, a task assigned by Lady Athena. How can we, the descendants of Perseus, sit by and watch this Gift be stolen?!"
As the descendants of the mythological hero Perseus, the community named after their ancestor, Perseus, had been responsible for preserving the spoils of war of their ancestor, Perseus—the severed head of the Gorgon—for generations.
Perseus was originally a human hero, who later obtained his divinity from the god of forging, Hephaestus, so he was extremely talented in forging. This characteristic was passed down along with his bloodline and divinity, causing the community of Perseus to become a commercial community mainly focused on forging weapons.
Because they had to make a living by forging weapons, coupled with a lack of combat for many years, and the fact that the leaders of Perseus became less and less capable with each generation due to their bloodline inheritance, by Lucius's generation, although he had raised this community to the Four-Digit level by clinging to the thigh of Arcadia, his talent as a warrior and summoner was extremely low.
To the extent that in his hands, Algol, a Gift that could be said to be a rule-breaker, could at most exert the combat power of an ordinary Asura, god, or buddha, and there was also the risk of being accidentally injured.
Being relatively vague about the stories of his ancestors, he didn't even know the true identity of the so-called Gorgon, thinking that she was just an existence of around Four or Five-Digits. Therefore, although he acted very indignant, he was actually unclear about the value of the Gift he had lost.
"Huh? You take your task from Athena so seriously? I didn't realize you were such a person of principle... Do you want me to say hello to Athena for you?" Hearing Lucius's sonorous words, Shiroyasha was a little surprised.
According to her understanding, after Athena had made Algol into a stone statue and handed her over to Perseus to humiliate her, she had ignored this community. The two sides had had no contact, otherwise Perseus would not have been reduced to working for Arcadia. She didn't expect Lucius to be so faithful, to have remembered the promise of his ancestor until now?
"...Ahem! That won't be necessary."
Lucius had originally wanted to put on a good show, but after hearing Shiroyasha say she would say hello to Athena, he immediately chickened out.
According to the records, although Athena was generous, she also had a strict side. If she knew that their community had been managed like this and that a Gift had been taken away by a Devil King, they might not have a good end.
"Actually, it's just a Gift, it's not a big deal apart from its commemorative meaning."
"What's really infuriating is that on the day the Devil King descended, we were in a hurry to forge, and we had made hundreds of weapons!"
As he spoke, Lucius gradually became angry again.
Seeing him like this, Shiroyasha was a little puzzled.
"What, did that Devil King not only take away the Gorgon, but also your produced weapons?"
The weapons sold by the Perseus community were all divine artifacts used by the hero Perseus in mythology. Of course, with their ability, it was naturally impossible to forge genuine divine artifacts. The performance of the mass-produced versions was basically nerfed.
But even so, the weapons they produced were quite popular in Little Garden. If another Devil King saw them and felt an itch to snatch one, Shiroyasha would think it was normal. But if it was Saber Alter, Shiroyasha felt it was unlikely.
And sure enough—
"No!" Lucius said in an indignant tone.
"Then what are you so angry about?"
"The problem is that she didn't touch the weapons!" Lucius gritted his teeth. "Yesterday, I was bringing a client over to talk business. It was bad enough that this Devil King descended out of nowhere, but she happened to see the weapons I had just forged. It was one thing for her to just see them, but she didn't even snatch them!"
"And if she didn't snatch them, that's one thing, but she actually said in front of the client that these weapons were trash!"
"Only contempt is the greatest humiliation!"
"If it weren't for the client holding me back at the time, with my temper, I would have fought this Devil King to the death on the spot!"
His voice trembling, he said so resentfully.
"That tasteless woman! What right does she have to look down on our goods!"