As an operation destined to be remembered as "the day that went down in history," whether it succeeded or failed—a major operation involving two high-difficulty stages, traversing planes through a storm-prone environment and controlling the God of Pain—its beginning was actually rather ordinary.
It was carried out "on the sly" inside the Association's Space Maintenance Department.
Other than the personnel directly involved, the calculation team providing technical support, and the team opening the passage gate, no one else was present.
Even those from the Space Maintenance Department who had always gathered around to watch during previous drills had not been kept. They had all been given leave and sent off to do whatever they pleased. Though they theoretically would not have caused any interference, the principle was to reduce every uncertainty, so these "uncertain factors" had temporarily been removed from the department.
The participants had been kept extremely lean: eight navigators including Jia Xiu, Master Larven and Justina, who would directly take part in combat, and Minister Odysseus, whom they had ultimately decided to bring along as well.
In battle, quality mattered more than quantity. Adding more people served little purpose when dealing with an evil god.
Even Minister Odysseus was not coming to fight on the front lines. The secondary reason for his joining was simply to fulfill a wish.
As the dignified head of the Space Maintenance Department, missing this planar traversal operation would have been too regrettable. If he could not be a navigator, he could at least be a passenger.
The main reason, however, was that in the particular field of spatial magic, Minister Odysseus was more skilled than Master Larven.
Every profession had its specialty.
Larven was not unparalleled across every type of magic on the Mainland Plane.
Jia Xiu was even confident that, when