Tales Of The Mighty Dragonair

Arthur glanced all over the place but he couldn't spot anything matching her description. There were no holes or even piles of dirt from the ground.

To him… the ground looked perfectly fine.

"Strange," he muttered, "this must be something related to their preparation for my move. Did they get a wind of what I was doing?"

He didn't delay to ask for more intel about this and Amelia wrote a long letter to him.

"The holes they dug had an array formation of nine headed stars. According to Deem, these follow the Ley Lines in the area. They dug all over the place, any spot they stood upon could have one of these holes.

What they buried wasn't clear to us but it looked like a short version of pillars you usually summon. They used other fluid and ores with these, but no one here could recognize what they were using or doing."

"Interesting," Arthur muttered while rereading the letter again before letting it burn in his hand. "So they are using a pillar formation from god knows where," he thought before turning to the werewolf and asked:

"Do you know of a nine star formation that follows the Ley Lines arrangement and used buried pillars under the ground with some ores and blood?"

He knew the liquid was some monster's blood, but he couldn't tell what it was.

"I… dunno anything about it," the werewolf said after long moments of deep thinking.

'I think I might know a couple of such arrays,' the golden dragon suddenly spoke, 'but these are such high arrays that can't be used by those weak mages here.'

'You do?' Arthur was surprised as he hurriedly asked, 'Tell me more about these arrays.'

'They are summoning arrays,' the golden dragon said, 'and I think they are used to summon those ancient bastards of old times.'

Arthur didn't get his meaning as he asked, 'what bastards?'

'Just ask your chick if anyone saw them drawing something on the ground,' the golden dragon didn't hurry to answer.

'Draw? Using what… blood?'

'Exactly,' the golden dragon said.

'But I can't see any drawing here.'

'These drawings will vanish the moment they were done. They would be done also in places with no holes, preferably in spaces between holes.'

'I'll ask her then,' Arthur muttered as he took out a bird's wing, 'such a thing should be noticed by them for sure.'

"They did that, how did you know?" she sent this bird's wing first before sending another one, "they didn't draw anything clear, it was like strange lines and Deem thought this might be some kind of a letter from an alien language we know nothing about. I'm letting Deem now drawing this shape to you, hopefully it will help."

'It isn't a drawing, it's a writing,' Arthur said to the golden dragon.

'It's a letter of course,' the golden dragon muttered, 'they are really using this… are they crazy or what?'

'Why?'

'This array requires a lot of energy no one here can handle. Are they going to commit suicide here or what?'

Arthur paused for a moment here before saying: 'They might have some hidden forces from the upper realms. We fought some of them here in the first fight.'

'And most perished, and the remaining can't sustain such an array,' the golden dragon argued, 'they might have a hidden force or another trick we know nothing about. Ask her if there was any other suspicious act from their side as well… I'm pretty confident they had another trick we know nothing about.'

Arthur didn't speak as he took another bird's wing and asked for more intel. He waited for ten minutes before two bird's wings arrived at the same time.

One with a strange writing over it, looking like intersecting curved lines with no recognizable pattern for Arthur, and the other was a simple answer.

"Some saw them sending off small teams away from here, but we dunno where they went or what they were doing. The remarkable thing here is these teams didn't come back up till now."

Arthur put the drawing aside for now as he asked: "How many members were there in each team?"

"A thousand," Amelia replied, "and from what I saw, they had at least a couple of giant mages in each team."

"Interesting," Arthur turned around as he found no sign of life away from here, "I didn't meet anyone from the direction we came from. Did we miss them or they didn't send anyone in this direction?"

He was feeling more doubt the more he thought about all this. "what can a bunch of teams do all alone?" he couldn't help but decide to have a look around. "Come with me, we might have a nice warm up."

The werewolf nodded and moved behind him. Arthur didn't have any instructions about these teams' locations or the direction they went through, but he flew high up in the air while glancing all around.

'Make those three teams ready, I might need their help,' he said to Gege who delivered his message instantly.

As for him, he kept his eyes vigilantly over the ground down below. 'Scan the area and tell me if you find anything suspicious.'

'Ding! I'm already on it.'

'Good,' Arthur then started to fly for a few minutes in one direction. "Should I keep on?" he muttered.

'I believe you should take a circle first,' the golden dragon said, 'if they wanted to form a secondary supporting array to the first one they couldn't do it so far, right?'

'Good point,' Gege said, 'and if we didn't find them in this area then we have to assume they took a long road and we might not be able to catch up,' she added and her words were logic for Arthur.

"Alright, let's go in a big circle then," Arthur said to his werewolf while he changed his direction to circle around the city and the hostile army stationed around.

'Ding! I spotted a group not too far to the east,' the system suddenly said, 'Ding! But they aren't a thousand.'

'More than a thousand?'

'Ding! No, they are only ten, and they didn't have anyone from higher realms at all.'

'Suspicious,' the golden dragon said.

'They might not be our team,' Gege thought.

'Or they moved and left those here as a bait for us,' Arthur didn't know what to do except to head down there with the intention of interrogating them.

After all, amidst everyone here these pathetic groups of ten mages had the information he required.

"If you don't speak up, I'll just kill you and know the answer from your corpses," he threatened while the ten mages stood with defying looks over their faces.