So he didn't expect that the next day, Todd would immediately leave the underground base with a guard and Amu, who had come to visit and learn, and head directly to the slums on the surface.
What are guerrillas doing in the slums? Of course, they're there to fight, but not in the real sense, but in the sense of intelligence warfare.
Because right now, the island of Azlant is actually teeming with agents from various companies and gods!
With Smoke Mirror and Micket about to engage in a divine duel, spies from all over the world naturally flocked to gather intelligence. Due to complex factions and office politics, the number of these agents even exceeded the total number of all the gods combined.
They all wanted to find out the details of the God-King Duel in advance, how the match would be conducted, what tricks the Smoke Mirror was plotting, and how this duel would affect the already fragile balance of world political power.
(Although we haven't talked about this in a long time, the global economic crisis is still ongoing.)
Thus, both inside and outside Azlant Island, whether in the island's cities or the illegal slums by the lake outside the island, are now hiding corporate agents from all over the world. Some are gods, some are enhanced humans, and each one is a top-notch intelligence expert; the so-called 007 level is only second-rate to them.
However, they never expected that a group of things that were neither companies, nor gods, and were not even really enhanced humans, would actually get involved in this intelligence race.
While all the big companies were unaware, while all the capitalists were oblivious, and while those corporate agents were busy secretly vying for power and creating obstacles, a steady stream of rumors began to circulate from the streets and alleys. Through word of mouth, these rumors eventually flowed down the drain and into the ears of those at the very bottom.
When the spies sent by the Mars Group left the slum hotel, the clerk at the door secretly passed on the message.
The moment the Bodhisattva's agent entered the shantytown, a passerby gave him a meaningful look.
A regular at the bar found a folded note under a plate.
While employees from two different companies were exchanging information and benefits in private, a streetwalker whispered something to someone.
No one knows the source of the message, or who first started spreading it. No one knows how it started, or who initiated it. If the company were to investigate afterward, tracing back word by word, they might find it was a massive vortex, like a ball of yarn with no end in sight. Many of the people who relayed the message didn't even have names, only nicknames or aliases. There were no online records, no written records; everything was simply passed down orally in the slums.
Finally, all these stories would reach Todd's ears, flowing like rivers to the sea, allowing the underground guerrillas to know what was happening in the slums above ground.
When the 007 agents sent by the big corporation walked through the streets of the slums, they would never have imagined that the burly man sitting at a roadside stall eating noodles was actually the leader of an underground guerrilla force. And in this most chaotic slum of Azlant, these poor people who didn't even have pants, were actually all his informants!
Besides, the corporate gods have always looked down on poor people. In any case, the gods would never imagine that there is a group of peasants secretly eavesdropping and gathering intelligence underground.
So within a few days, Todd had gathered a lot of information in the slums, almost all of which came from secret intelligence leaked from corporate agents.
Of course, the slums didn't just hand over this intelligence to the guerrillas for nothing. In return, Todd led several guerrilla fighters to help the slums fend off an attack by a group of mutated monsters, deal with a criminal gang in the slums, and repair a broken water tower. Some people in the slums were also sick and had no medicine. Todd helped them find medicine and the guerrillas' medic.
There are at least several hundred corporate spies and agents like 007 infiltrating both inside and outside Azlant Island. They are either gods or enhanced humans, and they are all killers and cold-blooded professionals.
Then, with a few hundred dollars' worth of medicine and community services, the guerrillas can get poor people to eavesdrop on intelligence from the mouths of the world's best agents.
Sometimes the world is just too strange.
Isamu has been visiting and learning from the guerrillas these past few days, and she is extremely impressed by their achievements.
She had always been curious about how the poor guerrillas could outsmart large corporations in intelligence. The Neo-Yatou [Bo Xun] organization used to have a once-in-a-century mortal genius like Alastor, but the South American guerrillas didn't. Therefore, generally speaking, a corporation's intelligence magic is definitely stronger than that of an ordinary person.
However, during his years of operation in South America, Todd figured out a principle: the company's intelligence magic was indeed stronger, but ordinary people could still evade it, and it was even easier for them to evade it.
Because God will prioritize God, then the divine race, and lastly mortals.
Because while giant corporations know almost everything, they don't fully know what they know.
Therefore, the way the guerrillas and the company countered each other's intelligence magic was quite simple. First, they absolutely could not confront the company's magic head-on; second, they used their own magic to protect themselves, increasing the company's detection costs, while having poor people who had no direct causal connection with the guerrillas gather information and then exchange it from the slums.
As a result, Todd's guerrillas actually managed to gather invaluable intelligence with just a few hundred dollars and some meager resources, using the cheapest and most worthless poor people!
This kind of business is incredibly profitable; it's practically cheating!
Out of curiosity, Amu also asked Todd, "Why would the slums do this kind of poor business with you? They could have sold all the intelligence to the company and made much more money that way."
Todd replied humorously, "Because people who end up here basically know that companies and rulers can't be trusted."
Many people in South America end up in slums because of job failures or bad luck.
However, at the same time, 99% of South Americans are also products of corporations. They genuinely worship corporations as gods, and corporations determine what they know and what they learn. In such an environment, most poor people without knowledge or education, even if they fall into slums and harbor resentment, may not necessarily have a strong will to resist corporations, nor do they possess effective resistance measures.
In reality, who are the people in the slums who hate the Smoke Mirror Company the most, and who even support the guerrillas?
The answer is those who have fallen from the top of the company pyramid and been betrayed within the company's system.
They were generally quite capable, at least more capable than the average poor person, because the company had at least strengthened and trained them, giving them both knowledge and strength. Even if they ended up in the slums, these fallen individuals often managed to become leaders in their own backyard, but almost none of them didn't hate Smokeglass. Moreover, those betrayed by the company and forced to leave, as long as they weren't dead, would almost always learn the lesson that "companies cannot be trusted."
If they haven't learned it yet, they're basically dead by now.
A completely ignorant person might be so afraid of the company that they dare not resist at all. Or they might fantasize that betraying their guerrilla unit will give them a chance to advance in the company.
However, those former employees knew exactly what the company was like. They used to sit in air-conditioned offices, and now they could only rummage through the trash cans of the wealthy. They hated Smokeglass to the core and knew very well how bad the company was, knowing that even if they betrayed a few guerrillas, the company wouldn't give them riches and glory.
So sometimes they'd be willing to cooperate with the guerrillas. Even just helping the guerrillas, getting revenge on the company in the process, would feel great to them—it felt really good!
The guerrillas liked these people because they were not only local strongmen in the slums, but also adept at drawing the company's attention for them. Mountains don't hide people, but people hide themselves. Hiding trees in the forest—even if a large company has countless detection techniques, the slums have just as many opponents. Where would the company find the resources to thoroughly investigate them all?
Hiding underground is good, but guerrillas can't rely on just one underground base. What makes this place a base is always the power of the masses.
...This is the power of both love and hate.
Todd didn't intend to explain in detail to Amm, but Amm could understand it herself anyway.
So now we need to get back to the specific intelligence.
Todd personally compiled the intelligence he obtained from the company's agents in the slums. In truth, most of this intelligence was useless, and its accuracy was questionable. However, Todd inherited Alastor's information magic techniques, so selecting the useful parts was his natural specialty.
However, these useful parts don't look very promising.
First, according to information obtained by the company's spies, Smoke Mirror seems to be frantically signing futures contracts these past few days, using various means and extremely low exchange rates. His momentum in futures trading is practically insane, showing absolutely no concern about future payouts.
Meanwhile, many people know that at the previous emergency meeting, Smoke Mirror announced that He would donate all of His life magic research resources to the board of directors for operation and supervision. Although everyone suspected that Smoke Mirror was just trying to transfer these resources between his own hands, what's the reality? He hasn't even shown any sign of moving these things—not even a hint of transferring them between his own hands!
Then there's borrowing money. While large corporations and financial giants take borrowing for granted all the time, Smoke Mirror has recently been borrowing massive amounts of money through various overt and covert channels. Although this is clearly abnormal, it is, after all, a supreme deity, and there is collateral, so people are willing to lend to it.
Each of these three pieces of information seems plausible on its own, but when Todd considers all three together, he feels that something is clearly very wrong.
What exactly is Smoke Mirror trying to do? It can't possibly be trying to renege on the world's debts, right? He's not Mithra! He doesn't have that kind of backing!
The more carefully Todd examined the intelligence, the more something seemed off.
Once upon a time, he was just a student rebelling against a large corporation, almost completely ignorant of the workings of the world. Now, Todd is the leader of an underground guerrilla force, a far cry from the naive boy he once was. Even if he couldn't see the signs, he had the intuition that comes with experience—"that" feeling.
So Todd pondered for a long time, noted down these three pieces of information, and prepared to go back and tell Hayden.
Then he looked at the next intelligence report, which at first glance seemed to be something incomprehensible: a spy sent by the Wotan Corporation, while secretly investigating the accounts of the Smoke Mirror Company, discovered that although Smoke Mirror had been accumulating wealth in various ways recently, there was still a hidden sum of money and military supplies that had been specially transported to a designated location in the past few days.
The location resembled a hidden small military base, or perhaps a secret research institute. But whether it was a base or a research institute, the amount of money and supplies was actually quite small—very little for a supreme god. It wasn't surprising that the God of Capital had enormous sums of dirty money and secret departments for his own private affairs. Therefore, the Wotan Corporation spy didn't pay much attention to this intelligence. He was trading with an agent from another company in the slums, using this intelligence as leverage, unaware that walls have ears and that the poor—the very people their gods despised most—had overheard him.
Normally, it wouldn't have mattered if the poor people were eavesdropping; the Protoss wouldn't care about such trivial matters. However, they never imagined that the poor people in the slums would turn around and inform the underground guerrillas—but then again, even if these Protoss agents knew there were mortal guerrillas under the slums, they probably wouldn't have cared, right?
Mortal guerrillas are unlikely to cause any real trouble; all the gods probably think the same way.
Now, Todd is looking at this intelligence report, pondering its potential use for the guerrillas. It's normal for Smoke Mirror to have secret accounts; perhaps there's nothing worth investigating…is that it?
Todd had a feeling it wasn't true. This "not-so-large" sum of money and military supplies might be related to Smoke Glider's current plans. Was this speculation correct? Or was it a fatal mistake? No one could tell him the answer, and in fact, there was no way to confirm it.
But the guerrilla fighters' own life-or-death instincts answered "yes".
Those who fight guerrilla warfare in the tunnels don't have time to worry about such things. They'll regret it after they're dead!
Todd assessed the situation and decided to take a team to scout the area. He also planned to bring Amu along, so that if anything went wrong, at least the Protoss and Hayden could be used as insurance—Hayden wanted to use the guerrillas to do some things for him, and the guerrillas wanted the same thing.
Anyway, Hayden is so strong, Todd doesn't intend to lose his own men. Even if everyone has the same enemy, a leader should take care of his own soldiers first!
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Two flowers bloom, one branch each.
Even if everyone has the same enemy, they still have their own purposes; this is indeed true.
For example, Hayden's true form is currently in Bogotá, helping Micket strengthen the warrior she intends to use in the Gods' duel. However, Micket has no idea that this warrior, "Voldemort," is actually an incarnation of Hayden.
Now Hayden could only stare at his clone in Mickett's bio-lab, afraid to reveal the slightest flaw lest Mickett notice anything amiss... Fortunately, Mickett hadn't even considered that possibility. After all, it was too much of a coincidence; it wasn't Hayden who recommended Voodoo, but rather she herself had chosen it!
So Mickett doesn't know yet, at least not now. Hayden sincerely hopes she never finds out. He still has to play dumb with Mickett: "Mickt Tikashiva, you said you wanted me to help you strengthen this undead, but I think he's already very strong."
"There's no limit to strength! This battle against the main gods is the most important thing; we can never have enough of strengthening ourselves." Mickett was quite dismissive. "Don't hold back either. Take all my resources and technology as you like. They're going to be used to strengthen my subordinates anyway. Show off your talents!"
The problem is that this is using your resources and technology to strengthen my own clone, which makes me feel very uneasy—Hayden couldn't help but complain to himself.
However, Hayden's self-regulation ability was quite strong. After mentally venting his frustrations, he had basically adjusted his mindset and could continue to play dumb: "You said it yourself. Then I'll accept it without hesitation."
Normally, if Hayden were asked to enhance someone he'd never met before within ten days, conduct real-world testing, and even go so far as to enhance them to an excessive degree, that would be incredibly difficult. It's like adding something new to someone else's existing program while maintaining overall system efficiency—a task anyone would find tedious.
However, Voodoo was originally an avatar created by Hayden. He was simply making improvements on what he had created, so he was naturally very relaxed and at ease.
How could Mickett know this secret? She already had very high expectations for Hayden, and now, watching him easily transform Voodoo, she felt that Hayden was simply too awesome: "Very good, I knew I hadn't chosen the wrong person. Mr. Hayden, we will definitely win the duel between the main gods in twelve days, and you will be the biggest contributor."
Now that things have come to this, the vampire goddess is showering Hayden with praise.
Hayden deserved it: not to mention helping to modify the Voodoo Demon, he would actually have to control the Voodoo Demon to fight in the arena. As long as he won, he would be the biggest contributor, right?
If he really wins.
Soon, the day of the duel arrived.
337: NEW Warrior FOR SALE
The day of the duel between the gods has arrived.
This event has, unsurprisingly, shocked the entire world.
So early this morning, many gods and divine beings began international teleportation, arriving at the headquarters city of the Smoke Mirror Company and the island of Aztland from all over the world.
Almost all the gods, wrathful deities, and bodhisattvas in the world have been sent here today.
Of course, they are mostly avatars, since it would be too wasteful for them to come in person, and even avatars might not all come. But the magnitude of this matter is such that they would at least send important messengers. Three of the eight great bodhisattvas of the Mithra Group came: Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri, and Samantabhadra all arrived, and although they were only avatars, they were practically there. The other five great bodhisattvas also sent celestial maidens as their full representatives.
The attendance rates of the other companies' main gods and powerful deities were roughly the same today. However, Peacock King didn't come; instead, his wife, Goddess Hela, showed up—which actually relieved many gods, since watching the game with Peacock King was quite terrifying.
On the other hand, even if the Peacock King didn't come, these gods were still incredibly terrifying beings to mortals and even to each other. Power overflowed from them, either emanating an imposing aura without anger, inspiring fear, or causing mortals to go blank upon seeing them.
This is the overwhelming presence that only gods can exude. Because they are beings at the top of the food chain in this world.
...And now so many powerful individuals from all over the world have gathered on this island of Aztland, each one incredibly formidable, and the god of capital is capable of anything for profit. Not only that, the Mitra Corporation, the Mars Corporation, and the Wotan Company have undoubtedly all sent spies, both overtly and covertly, to this most important city in South America.
No wonder the minor gods and warriors in charge of maintaining order are all suffering from stomach aches. They are the most skilled and valiant eagle warriors and jaguar warriors under the command of the Smoke Mirror God; they have fought for the Smoke Mirror in countless battles throughout history. However, at this moment, looking at these gods and bodhisattvas teleported from all over the world, most of the warriors are numb.
Today is the day that Smoke Mirror and Miktti Kashiva will have their divine duel.
The duel took place on the island of Aztland.
The elite Protoss warriors under Smoke Mirror's command must do everything in their power to ensure stability during the duel between the main gods. The army is ready, and the company's intelligence department has mobilized almost all of its intelligence and counterintelligence personnel. Because so many powerful figures are gathered together this time, no one can predict what will happen.
One of the battle prodigies, who was highly regarded by Smoke Mirror, came to complain to the boss (of course, he was actually using a more polite way of saying it) and asked Smoke Mirror why he made the duel between the main gods so "grand" and why he made the situation so "dangerous" - wouldn't it be better if we just finished the duel internally under the supervision of the board of directors and then announced the results to the world?
Anyway, Smoke Mirror is obviously assuming he will win; he's not actually going to change the throne of the supreme god. There's no need to call all the gods in the world to join in the fun, is there? If something really goes wrong this time and he can't control the situation, he'll only become a laughing stock in the divine society, thus weakening Smoke Mirror's influence and prestige.
In short, that's what this little war god thought, and his idea wasn't entirely unreasonable.
As a result, he was severely ridiculed and criticized by Smoke Mirror: "Silly child, the fact that you would say such a thing means that you are still far from the level of a master."
“Is Miktikahiva my real opponent? No, my real opponent is Mithra. This duel between the chief gods is arranged in the capital to show the world that even if all the gods in the world come to our Aztlan, we can absolutely control the situation.”
"If this duel is just about me defeating Miktikashiva and retaining my throne, what's so interesting about that? Will it allow me to influence the gods who will oppose Mithra in the future?"
His words did indeed seem to make a lot of sense. Smoke Mirror was the reigning champion, and Mickett was the challenger, and everyone should have generally assumed that Smoke Mirror was stronger. If Mickett defeated Smoke Mirror and ascended to the throne of the South American god, the whole world would be amazed and would acknowledge her abilities.
If today's duel between the main gods was just Smoke Mirror defeating Mikket, who challenged Him, and then announcing it to the whole world... who would care? Maybe some gods would even laugh at Smoke Mirror for losing face by being challenged by his subordinate!
So the Smoke Mirror said to His loyal little war god, "We must make this duel between the chief gods a grand spectacle, and hold it right here in Aztland. We must let all the gods of the world see that we have the strength to suppress any gathering of the world's strongest beings!"
Wow, that sounds really reasonable!
But the little war god was somewhat skeptical.
It turns out that this little war god had served by Smoke Mirror's side for many years and knew that Smoke Mirror had a very troublesome problem.
The great Tescatlipoca is the ruler of the present, a mocker of fate, cunning and exceptionally intelligent. Whenever a problem arises, the Smoke Mirror almost always comes up with a brilliant idea. Whether it's a problem He Himself faces, or a problem faced by the entire South American pantheon, He often devises clever solutions to resolve the issues for Himself or others.
"Don't worry, I have a good idea" is His catchphrase in the South American pantheon.
So even the god who hates Smoke Mirror the most in the South American pantheon still has to secretly admire Smoke Mirror and acknowledge His intelligence and problem-solving abilities.
...But then again, if the Smoke Mirror's intelligence is truly invincible, why is it still the floor god, the weakest of the four corporate gods, commonly known as the "standard one-unit god"?
The Little God of War also believed in the Boss of the Smoke Mirror's intelligence. That being said, seeing one world-class god-level expert after another gather here, the Little God still felt an indescribable sense of powerlessness.
For the sake of this young war god's reputation, it's necessary to emphasize that he is neither too cowardly nor too weak. In fact, his aptitude as a war god is quite good; this sense of powerlessness is actually a manifestation of his superior insight. Because of his excellent aptitude, he can clearly sense the combat power of stronger opponents.
If these great gods and chief deities really started causing trouble in Aztland, it would be a miracle if they could control them.
Smoke Mirror, of course, assumed he would win. The Little God of War also believed he would win. But if he lost… well, Smoke Mirror himself wouldn't care what happened. But what about his subordinates?
But since the boss had already given a solution, Little War God could only do his best to do the job at hand.
That's just how gods are. The struggles between the main gods can even shake the fate of the lesser gods. It's impossible not to feel immense pressure.
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