My Wife and I Became Sages in Another World-Chapter 424: Scouting the Devils’ City

As I kept advancing through the Coral Reef Forest with an army of one thousand men behind me, we stopped at a small hill and raised another camp closer to the devil’s castle.

Now that we had a minimum of two days to reach it, I decided we should scout the areas nearby. We didn’t know how the devil’s castle and its surroundings looked, and it was important to get familiar with the layout so we could plan ahead.

Thankfully, Vespera had been producing numerous demon spiders and was sending them way ahead of us to take a peek at the castle from up close.

Melina advanced with another thousand soldiers, but her group was located more to the east since we wanted to surround the devil’s castle, so all of our army was moving forward from different directions.

While I sent Vespera to scout ahead, Melina asked Arashi to take a look from above, and the Storm Dragon had no problem changing into her true form and flying away.

As we set up the camp and waited for our companions to return with information, Jackson and Karla approached me on the side.

"Ichiro... I was thinking..." Jackson muttered, looking down with apprehension.

I stayed silent to let him gather his thoughts since I knew that Jackson must have had lots of things on his mind. At the end of the day, he was also a devil who was helping us go to war against his own kind.

Even if he was a good person, guaranteed by the True Colors Eyes, it must have been a conflicting feeling to fight against them. Or so I thought.

"Ichiro. If I sneak inside first, I think I can kill the Demon King... That way, none of these soldiers will have to perish," Jackson said.

"Huh?" I hummed, dropping my head laterally in confusion.

"Are you trying to sacrifice yourself?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

Jackson bit his lips without answering, and when I turned to look at Karla, she seemed to be holding back her anger.

"Jackson..." I muttered, stepping forward and flicking the man in the forehead with my finger.

It was the first time I had ever "hurt" Jackson. I mean, it was only a flick of the finger, but to be fair to him, my flicks were pretty strong.

"Wh-what was that for...?" Jackson asked, rubbing his forehead with one hand.

"No sacrifices!" I exclaimed.

"Every single one of these soldiers is here because they want to. Everyone here is willing to die to make this world a better place... Don’t underestimate human determination!" I continued, my shouting catching the attention of other soldiers around.

I knew that Jackson wasn’t trying to be malicious. If anything, he was trying too hard to be a hero. However, it truly bothered me that he would throw away his life so easily after coming this far.

"I still have things I want to show you, so try your best not to die..." I said, lowering the volume of my voice.

*Ahem* "Sorry..." Jackson replied.

He explained that he simply couldn’t stand watching other people die at the hands of the devils. Still, he apologized for not taking into account the desires of the soldiers who were present.

Later at night, when most of the soldiers were asleep, Vespera returned to me with her scout report.

Her demon spiders reached the castle in the distance. At first, we thought that the castle was the only structure standing since it was the only one we could see from afar. However, Vespera explained that it was a small city.

"You mean, the castle is a city?" I asked, making Vespera nod affirmatively.

When her spiders reached the castle walls, she noticed that they were incredibly tough and had magic-resistant properties. Still, she managed to sneak in by burrowing underground and appearing inside.

"The castle seems to be split by floors. The ground floor was filled with low-ranked devils, and they got stronger the higher you went..." Vespera elaborated.

Jackson, who heard the report, told us that before the devils appeared in the world and took over the continent of G’Henna, most of the people who lived there were part of the "castle city."

The point of the castle was to divide people by their social standing, with the poorest families living on the bottom floors while the most influential had their homes above.

Still, living on the ground floor wasn’t as bad as it sounded, as the city was somewhat comfortable for the people living in it.

When the devils took over and exterminated all of the humans living in the castle, they used the same type of system as the old ruler, placing the lower-ranked devils on the ground floor.

Even when they explained it to me, it was still a little difficult to imagine how a single castle could be a massive city for thousands of people. Still, considering that we could see it from a very long distance away, its sheer size made more sense.

"I’m assuming the king is at the top..." I muttered, prompting Jackson to nod.

Vespera told me that she couldn’t go above the third floor as the devils were intelligent enough to detect her spiders, and she didn’t want to give our position away, so she retreated.

"Mhmm, smart move. Although, they probably already know what we are here after the titan and the Primal Demon made that whole mess..." I commented.

"Right, but they don’t know how close we are to them yet. If we do get found out, then I’ll send hundreds of spiders to search the whole castle," Vespera replied.

With a better idea of the layout of the battlefield, I sent messages using my voice crystal to all the different soldier groups that were advancing to the devil’s castle, and surprisingly, I received a message from Sage Astra in return.

Sage Astra had been waiting on the ships that were locked outside the wall of G’Henna, and after they sent thousands of soldiers through the magic quartz, she used a spell she had created to coat the ships in a very durable bubble.

Thanks to that bubble, all of the ships were able to go underwater and move through the tunnels under the wall, reaching the inside of the continent without alerting anyone.

Moreover, since they entered from the north, they were actually closer to the castle than we were, so I told them to stay alert so that all of our groups could attack simultaneously.