"How are they faring so far?" approaching from the side, Ourlst crossed his arms whilst looking up at some sort of glass that was being used to show an image of another place, the room was full of devices that could do the same thing, but few actually used the same means to accomplish it, different methods in an attempt to gather all possible information that some manners might not be capable of perceiving.
"Splendidly, they are failing all of their attempts at infiltration and are being cut down at a stable rate, the intel caste have calculated that at the current rate, we should be capable of sending some of our golems bearing alignment with sub-forms of death" meanwhile, Horhir was looking down instead, at the many undeads moving about and working intently on all sorts of machinery.
They were probably the weakest caste of the vanguard combat-wise but their usefulness was incredibly high, the Cognitio had really been showing its prowesses with the invasion attempts upon the Emerald Realm, as it had become known, they could master tools and new technologies in a matter of hours and seamlessly integrate it to their processes, allowing them to gather greater amounts of intel in a more accurate manner.
Although there were plenty of energy-based methods, the way that was working best was one devised by Gharl and Tiloh, which worked through the bizarre means of sending some sort of lightning through silver wires of some kind, the two black knights didn't really understand how this advanced magic, hexxing or ritual functioned, but it was working good, and that was all that mattered.
These wires and contraptions could be ran through the portal and still function by being powered up here, since materials were unlimited, the awfully long wires and cables were no problem, the living soldiers on the other side didn't even have to tire themselves out carrying them everywhere as most regular golems and other automatons had already been sent to the other side, many of them directly linked to devices meant to control them here at the Cognitio.
Thanks to all that, the simple hiding spot the soldiers in white had discovered had seen an upgrade to truly ensure that they weren't randomly found out as all it would have taken before was for a living of the realm to stumble upon it and look through the gap to figure that something was off.
The empire did not rely on luck and sloppily-done jobs to achieve their goals, that would just be wrong.
Even giant sapient ants could not match their work ethic.
"That's good to hear, they don't suspect anything?"
"Not at all, the living soldiers are mortified at their constant failings, they have no idea that their purpose is to die"
"I was talking about our enemy" precised the left hand.
"Oh, harder to say with certainty, on the surface of our information, they appear oblivious, but we do not have a lick of information beyond the borders of the barrier they erected, so much less of what their leaders might have in mind… But the new long-distance surveillance items have at least allowed us to get an idea of what these leaders might look like- Take a look"
"These are some impressively realistic drawings"
"Right? Gharl berated me that they were called 'pictures' and that they were actual impressions of reality or something, witchcraft has really come a long way huh?"
Utterly oblivious to the inner workings of the countless machines being invented and perfected every day, just chalking everything up to some bizarre way of power was simpler and perhaps not even that inaccurate in the grand scheme of things.
"Mmh… They do look pretty singular, I have no knowledge of any species like that here, they probably didn't migrate to this realm and instead were born and evolved within its confines since their beginning…" Ourlst skimmed through the many images.
"As General Loimos had guessed, there seems to be two unique, distinct way of powers within that realm, despite there being only one intelligent species excluding from the runaways, there are clearly two different types of them, those with attributes of beasts and those clad in emerald green" Horhir mentioned, pointing to a black board bearing theoretical, anatomical representations of those people, as none had been caught or killed, the living soldiers too weak to accomplish such a feat.
"Emeraldfolks? That's not very inspired… Was it your idea?" wondered Ourlst as he looked up at the word written at the top.
"Very funny, Ourlst, it was Ilyad who proposed the name"
"Ilyad? Colour me surprised, I would have thought her naming sense would be better than this"
"Me too, but she's often around, she intends amongst the first to enter the realms once undead existence will no longer be torn apart within- She's a sorceress after all, her abilities will work the same in there" shrugging, Horhir and Ourlst turned their attention to these diagrams.
They were made based on the assumptions that the emeraldfolks bore much similarities to human in the way that their bodies were designed, even though they clearly had different qualities to them as they spontaneously produced smoke that hung close to their bodies amongst other oddities, but according to what they had seen thanks to the image-taking devices, refugees and locals were mingling together, and it was resulting in offsprings, all of which always bore the traits of the natives but still, clearly, the similarities were great enough to allow for crossbreeding.
"Though, I remember being told that humans tended to be capable of mating with anything… So this might just be because of them and not due to anything tangibly similar between their species"
"True, true… The fact that the children all end up like the local parent instead of the runaway parent might just indicate that the former have strong blood…"
The two of them thought intently, it was important that they do their due diligence as the Loimoisian knights and rank and file were naturally going to be the first undeads of the vanguard to invade the realm once the time was right.
Currently, there were many different castes and quite a fair bit of lieutenants who had risen above the rest, everyone was itching to fight and spread glorious death across this heretical realm, especially since General Loimos was currently absent, conquering a realm of his own, they didn't to appear as thought they had been sitting on their hands the entire time when he came back.
The feeling was understandable, but the right and left hand knew to be careful and make use of their advantages in every possible instance.
"Ah, by the way, what about the three other gates?"
Ourlst shook his head, he had been away to check on them and had spent quite a lot of time doing just that, Horhir knew that they had been swiftly blocked off by now, but the exact process or what was on the inside were not known to him at all.
"Unless a powerful undead come through them personally, no one will be able of using them, from what I gathered, the other side is ripe with what I would call enchantments and arrays, on top of that, the inside where we would appear is filled with water that serves as conduit for said enchantments and arrays, anything that goes inside will be destroyed rapidly, even our warheads can't do anything about it"
"Huh… Considering that even when we earn ourselves the right to walk in this realm, we will most likely be subject to restrictions… Sending anyone through is meaningless" concluded Horhir.
Both of the knights looked at one another when a lithe shadow seemed to fall from the ceiling next to them.
"Lieutenant Oulrst, Lieutenant Horhir, I bear a report from Lord Herlbe"