Path to Becoming the Greatest Space Mercenary

Chapter 562 - 562 A Web Being Spun

"He agreed. That's good. You're dismissed now Gaspar. I'll call for you again if I need you. Otherwise, do not disturb me until Ferdinand arrives."Delilah waved away the man that acted as a liaison for many of the Odium Syndicate's best smugglers.

He was a competent man, but Delilah could tell that his fear kept him shackled down.

Whenever someone at the bottom tried to rise up, those already at the top would do everything that they could to kick any challengers back down.

Gaspar was someone who had realized this and curbed his ambitions and stayed as someone else's pawn to avoid losing everything.

"Such a pitiful man. Had he tried, he might have actually made it to the top. But he decided that he would rather stay safe as a pawn. So that's exactly what I'll use him as." Delilah said, smiling as she weaved more plans together.

When Layton had cashed in another of the favors she owed him to help him obtain Avery Asteria, she had been quite upset.

The target would not be an easy one to capture.

He had a powerful mercenary force at his beck and call, and he was no weakling himself.

She had tried to get rid of him before by using Clarien and Rook, but that had not worked out. Which was perfectly fine, because she wanted her two "peers" gone as well. That had been a perfect win-win situation for her.

However, now she needed to not just eliminate him, but deliver him alive. Something that was quite the undertaking.

At first, she thought she would need to manipulate an untold number of people and use every connection that she had.

While her information network was impressive, Delilah did not possess much in the way of a fighting force she could mobilize as she wished.

Luckily, circumstances seemed to have been working in her favor.

At no small cost, she had managed to get one of her agents to bribe members of the Mercenary Association and Alliance Police to learn exactly what Avery Asteria was currently up to.

Officially, so far as the Mercenary Association was making public, he and his company were on vacation for the foreseeable future.

That meant they were not currently accepting any job requests. Which was one way that Delilah had been considering luring him into a trap.

With a bit more digging though, she had learned that he was on a secret assignment for the ever-annoying Cerise Gunvald.

She had not been able to find out anything other than that through the Mercenary Association, but now that she knew who Avery was working for, it was easy enough to investigate through other avenues.

She already had plenty of informants scattered throughout the Alliance Police.

Some were just people that were occasionally compensated with money or rare goods, but a few were loyal agents that Delilah had trained from birth.

Regrettably none of her connections had been close enough to Cerise Gunvald to know what that woman was planning, so she had needed to get one of her agents to bribe several members of the Alliance Police's accounting department to learn what was going on.

It had taken nearly two hundred million Krenin and the necessary expenses to relocate the woman outside of the Dramid Alliance, but the head of the Accounting Department had eventually spilled everything.

After all of that, Delilah had learned exactly what Cerise Gunvald's plan against the Odium Syndicate was, and how she was using Avery Asteria to advance her goals.

Had she found out how one of her assets was being destroyed just a year ago, she would have frantically made moves to stop any more damage from occurring.

Now though, she had gained plenty of new investments and territory to work with after Clarien's and Rook's fall.

Honestly, she was about done with the Odium Syndicate already.

The money she was able to bringing in was great, but she despised the people she had to work with.

Since he former body's death, she had not had any public appearances with anyone from the Odium Syndicate. But just dealing with their calls and messages was a pain.

So, she figured that this would be the perfect chance for her to accomplish several objectives at once.

If Avery Asteria was working towards the downfall of the Odium Syndicate, then she figured that she could lend a hand.

Once all of her rivals were dealt with, she planned to gather the substantial assets that the criminal organization had amassed and disappear with it all.

At the same time, she would be able to manipulate Avery until she had no more use for him.

After that, she would manufacture some bait and subdue him before handing him over to Doctor Sarelett.

The plan was not foolproof, and she was still working on some of the details, but she still had plenty of time to prepare.

Of course, there was one major wildcard she was concerned about.

Cerise Gunvald had sharp instincts and a penchant for sticking her nose into business she had no reason getting involved with.

A few decades ago, a CEO from a large company in the Zatis Consortium who had a grudge against the woman had hired Delilah to catch the woman in a trap so that she would be killed

Everything had seemed to go well at first. Delilah had arranged the pieces and baited Cerise into an ambush that her forces should not have been able to

Yet, the future hero of the Dramid Alliance had somehow sensed out the threat and managed to break out of it.

Thankfully, the person that had hired Delilah ended up being killed by Cerise, so news of the failure did not spread, but it had still irked her at the time.

Over the years, Cerise had unknowingly gotten in the way of some of her other schemes.

There were a few times that Delilah had wanted to get rid of Cerise.

Still, some people were more trouble to deal with than they were worth.

Delilah knew when to leave well enough alone. There was no point in making any big moves that might draw attention to her if she failed.

Sometimes, she had to put herself in a little danger to achieve her aims, however. And this was one of those times.

But for instances when things truly got out of hand, she was always prepared to sacrifice her current life and pick back up again with a new body.

"Hm, the Zatis Consortium and Dramid Alliance are already teetering on the edge of another war. If I influence a few people here and there, and let loose some evidence of dirty deeds on both sides, it should be easy enough to tip the scales. That should serve as enough of a distraction to keep Cerise's attention off of me."

Delilah spent the next couple of days enjoying herself as she prepared to enact a series of plots that would allow her to accomplish everything she wanted.

She made sure to prepare some contingencies as well, since she knew well that things did not always go as expected.

Sometimes people played to her tune perfectly, but other times she had seen them take wildly illogical actions.

"The only thing worrying me now is whatever Layton meant when he called Avery Asteria a 'True Awakened'." Delilah mused.

She had tried asking him about it, but that man had told her that she would need to offer him three more favors for him to tell her.

Naturally, she had refused.

Owing other people was something she tried to avoid at all costs.

The only reason she had offered to assist Doctor Sarelett a total of five times was because the benefits far outweighed the costs.

Being able to die without much in the way of consequences had allowed her to take far bolder moves than she otherwise would have been able to.

Most of the time this worked out, but there had been occasions where she had bitten off more than she could chew and ended up being killed.

Every time that happened though, she had just come back in a new body and taken revenge on whoever had caused her previous downfall.

Delilah could not lie to herself that destroying those that had killed a previous version of her gave her a truly intoxicating feeling.

'I'd also figured I could figure out what a 'True Awakened' is on my own. Sadly, it seems to be a piece of closely guarded knowledge.'

Obviously, Delilah had found the term used in relation to many things, but none of them fit in the context that Layton had been referring to.

Considering his sudden and obsessive interest in Avery Asteria, it was no doubt a label to given to those that were special in some sort of way.

Delilah just needed to figure out what exactly it meant.

"Miss Delia, Ferdinand Karas has just arrived."

While she was busy sending out messages to her associates, Gaspar contacted her and told her about Avery's arrival.

She found it a bit comical that they were both using aliases, but she would strip his away soon enough.

That would be the most dangerous part of her opening move, but she was confident that a man like Avery would see the worth in working together.

After all, she was going to offer him a goateed path to bringing down the entire Odium Syndicate with almost no risk.

He would be a fool to refuse, and she knew that he was no idiot because of how quickly he had established himself as a powerful and competent mercenary.