My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World-Chapter 388: The Imp’s Disappearance

While we kept preparing our army to advance to the Iron Capital, I spoke with Jackson and Nessa after they said they wanted to propose an idea.

Jackson said he had found a way to remove the curse from the brainwashed soldiers without the need for our potions. However, his solution had a big downside.

He had seen the soldiers in the capital, and he thought that he could disperse the demonic energy inside people’s bodies, which would make the imp possessing them forcefully leave.

Jackson told me he tested it once, but that was as far as his experiment went. Still, it wasn’t as simple as he explained it since attuning his powers to Baelzor’s energy could take him a few minutes.

He discussed his idea with Nessa, and she told me that she "could probably do it too," but that didn’t make me feel any more reassured.

"If we could gather a lot of them and make them stop for a moment, I could disperse the curse on them simultaneously..." Jackson said, placing a hand on his chin.

Right when he said that the lightbulb on top of my head lit up with an idea, but we would need a lot of stealthy preparation for it to work.

"What if we place some traps on the battlefield?" I asked my devil friends, who perked up with interest.

The plains leading to the city were wholly covered in snow, which would make our warriors’ battle a lot more complicated since their movements would be slowed.

However, the enemy soldiers were in the same boat, so we could use the layer of snow to our advantage and hide a few magic traps under it.

"If we could get close to the gates without getting spotted..." I muttered, pulling out an invisibility potion from my void pocket.

The potion’s effect would only last thirty minutes, which was enough time for me to place a few traps closer to their gates, but it wouldn’t be enough to cover all of the battlefield.

I asked Melina to help me develop the spell for the traps quickly, and it only took us an hour to make a simple spell that would cave the ground beneath it whenever someone stepped on it.

Vespera and Arashi also learned how to cast the trap spell, so the four of us drank an invisibility potion and advanced to the gates of the capital as fast as possible without getting spotted.

Then, we separated to different sides of the battlefield, and we began casting the spells under the snow layer covering the ground.

By the time we were done, we managed to cover a lot more ground than I expected. Still, our preparations weren’t done.

The dwarves that had come from Durinhold to help us had been making weapons for all the warriors, but one of them was working on defensive structures.

One was a catapult, and the other was a large ballista, similar to the ones the beastkins from Kalusia used to defend their city.

At first, I was against using these siege machines since they were just going to kill the brainwashed soldiers, and while it was inevitable to prevent everyone from dying or getting hurt, I still tried doing my best to keep the body count as low as possible.

Nevertheless, the dwarf adapted to my concerns and said that he would create a projectile that wouldn’t kill the people when it landed, and even asked Frost for his help, catching the dragon teenager off-guard.

A few hours later, the dwarf showed me his creation, a massive boulder that produced an icy mist from the inside.

The boulder seemed pretty brittle, with cracks all over it, where the freezing cold energy it had inside seeped out.

The dwarf explained that the boulder would create an ice magic explosion that would freeze everyone around the landing spot, and the material was made of brittle stone so that even if the boulder hit someone directly, it would shatter.

He did the same enchantment for the giant ballista on its projectiles, except he wrapped the arrows with pieces of cloth that would release a frost nova and freeze everything around it as soon as it landed.

Honestly, I was pretty happy with the dwarf’s work since it would allow us to take care of the soldiers who avoided our traps.

That night, our army was resting when we got an emergency call from Reinar and Jen in End Forest, saying that Grul, the imp, had disappeared.

Melina was listening to the voice message with me, and the alchemists explained that the imp and the kid were in front of them, working on some potions. Suddenly, Grul tried telling them something, and he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"He just teleported away...?" I wondered aloud.

"Do you think he lied to us?" Melina asked, referring to the imp.

"Hmm, it didn’t feel like he was lying... That imp was definitely scared of the devils," I replied.

When we sent a message asking for more information, Dan, the kid, told us that Baelzor had the ability to call the imps to him at any time.

["Grul told me that all imps that were not inhabiting a human’s body had to report to Baelzor..."] Dan said in the voice message.

"I see... So if an imp survives after getting them out of a person’s body, Baalzor can bring them back to him and gather information from them," I commented, realizing that it could be a big problem for us.

The imp didn’t know everything about our strategy, but if he truly told Baelzor everything he knew about us, it could have repercussions in the final fight.

"We move tomorrow..." I muttered, knowing we had no more time to prepare.

____________________

In the capital city of the Nothern Empire, known as the Iron Capital, Baelzor and Drakzen discussed their last encounter with Ichiro.

They were in the throne room, where the emperor sat with his head posed against his palm with boredom.

"Three thousand imps, all gone!" Baelzor shouted with rage, throwing a cup against the wall of the room.

"My brother escaped, too..." the emperor said, his voice devoid of emotions.

"Arrrgh!" Baelzor continued, waving his arms, not having anything else to throw.

Drakzen, on the other hand, stood indifferently watching the devil’s tantrum. Suddenly, a mischievous smirk appeared on his face.

"Are you sure it was all of them?" Drakzen asked, catching Baelzor’s attention.

"You are the Imp Lord, aren’t you?" Drakzen continued, inciting the devil.

At that moment, Baelzor let out a maniacal laugh, shouting that no sage could get in his way, not even Phelena’s chosen. Then, he pointed his palm at the floor, producing a large magic circle with the shape of a pentagram.

A second later, three imps were standing before Baelzor, and one of them was Grul, who was shivering in fear.

"My lord!" the imps exclaimed nervously, kneeling with their heads down.

"Silence, minions!" Baelzor replied to their courtesy, making the creatures shut up.

With a menacing aura, the devil approached the kneeling imps, allowing them to look up one by one.

"You. Why are you here?" Baelzor asked the first imp.

"Milord, a redhead man was able to dispel the curse on one of the guards outside the city. I managed to escape-" the imp explained but was cut off as the devil gripped his neck.

"And you didn’t even try to fight back? Pathetic," Baelzor said, decapitating the imp.

When he approached the second, the imp was shivering uncontrollably from fear but still carried on and raised his head.

"Milord, the warriors of the north have been learning a technique to avoid getting possessed-" he commented but was cut off again by the devil.

"I already know that. Don’t you have anything new?" the devil asked threateningly.

However, the imp’s fears got the best of him, and he couldn’t come up with a reply quickly enough before Baelzor decapitated him.

Finally, the devil stood before Grul, who had tears from the fear he felt at that moment. Still, the imp couldn’t forget the sight of his friend and the moments they had in End Forest helping the alchemists.

The imp knew that it wasn’t a long time that he spent with Dan, but he was happy that he got to live freely for a little bit.

"Your turn..." Baelzor said, making Grul raise his head.

’I don’t regret the time I spent here...’ the imp thought.

"I don’t know anything, my lord..." Grul said, lowering his gaze.

"What?" the devil asked with a bit of shock.

Even if the imp was telling the truth, Baelzor knew that the creatures would try to come up with something to avoid getting executed.

However, it was the first time that an imp had defied him, and he was curious to know what it was that made the imp go against him.

"So, how did you get out of the person’s body?" the devil asked, his voice more menacing than before.

"I don’t know, my lord..." the imp replied, making an angry vein pop out of Baelzor’s temple.

The devil raised his arm, ready to decapitate Grul, but was stopped by Drakzen’s chuckle.

"Calm down, Baelzor. Your subordinate seems to have some good information—it’d be a waste to kill him right now..." Drakzen said calmly with a smirk.

*Tch* "Fine. We’ll make him talk, then..." said Baelzor with a more calming tone, but Grul’s fear only kept growing, understanding that he was about to go through a painful experience.