This time the entire place changed. It didn't look as empty as before. There was the Wrather, lots of masters working to finalise the catapults and make them ready to use, and then there were the dark masters.
William totally forgot about them during all this. Actually, all of the masters forgot about them.
William's method to wake up everyone affected those dark masters as well. They got awakened like other masters, and then they started to regroup and meet up around the academy.
They didn't try to attack the grand master army, didn't try to do anything else but retreat towards the academy and get stationed there. William thought they'd have access to the inside of the academy, but they didn't.
They just gathered there and started arranging their lines. They were expecting a grand battle, and that was what William intended to give them.
"But they have lots of masters on their side, assumingly they have lots of dark gold masters as well… I have to ask for a few of the dark gold masters to join me…"
William then shifted his eyes around, trying to see anything unusual or unique.
As he knew what his enemy built this place upon, he had a better time looking for clues. And he indeed found a few scattered and hidden carefully all over the area.
Aside from the weird thing he noticed before, there were many engravings on the ground, things that were hard to notice at first. But as he got a clue about what the general plan of that monster was, he could easily find lots of marks.
He saw lots of spiral shaped faint grooves on the ground. From the first look, anyone would mistake these to be part of the general terrain in the area. But that wasn't true.
The terrain around it was flat without any sign of having any grooves or valleys around. At the same time, he could see the slight difference in colour between these shapes and the area around.
It looked as if these shapes were darker in colour. When William looked closer, he could see the blackness mixed with the brown of the ground, which gave the dark impression of this area.
"Spiral loops of death… It's a nasty technique indeed…" William wouldn't link these spiral shapes easily like that if not for knowing what that monster did to the entire region.
This technique was quite deadly and hard to counter against if no one got what it was. Aside from these shapes, William also found other shapes that were hidden under piles of dirt.
It didn't look like hills, but like heaps of dirt. When William searched for anything weird, he found this place standing out among others.
These little hills didn't look weird at first, but when he noticed how they had sharp and clear edges, lining up and forming diamond shapes, he knew these weren't normal.
"The Diamond Spark of Death… Another nasty technique…" William started to notice fine details that he missed easily before and recognised the techniques behind these.
With each technique noted, a way to counter it appeared in his mind. A long list of things he needed to do started to pile up, and soon enough he finished scanning the entire area more than ten times.
He took around eight hours while doing this. And once done, he got out from the formation and then stood alone for another few hours.
He knew dealing with these techniques and traps wasn't hard if he was in the outer world, but he wasn't. The lack of many materials made him unable to execute many of the easy countermeasures. But that didn't stop him.
He started to think about suitable substitutes of materials in this world for the ones he lacked. The main way to counter these traps was by using arrays and formations. And that made things quite easier for him.
To make an array or a formation only the needed material and the general design was the only things that would stop any master. When the two things were fulfilled, then it'd be easy to make any array and let it run.
"As for those who are going to remain behind… I need versatile masters with different techniques and elements to counter different situations…"
The first names that popped in his mind were Thomas, Moore, Berry, Sara, and Ibra. Then his thoughts drifted towards Sith and his landmine team. He also thought about Lara and would ask her to bring a team of capable guards with her.
He lacked high end masters, and Lara got tons of these. Instead of just asking anyone from other forces, it was better for him to ask Lara instead.
As he started to finalise the list of his team taking part in the assault against this academy, he started to think about this entire situation as a whole.
It all started with the rumour spreading about a false fox master. Yet he now realised this wasn't totally wrong information. That Nightmare monster had part of the nine tailed fox spirit. And that meant it must have a fox spirit.
Yet William didn't know if this spirit got tails or not. When he thought about the lots of preparations this monster did in the area, William couldn't help but feel lucky.
If things went normally per what this monster devised, then William would have been entrapped here with the little team of his. If that happened, then things would have grown ugly for him.
If not for all the weird and unexpected things to happen back at the city, meeting Lara and getting into that internal conflict, finding the interworld portal and placing more attention upon that place, he'd have been in a spot he couldn't extricate himself out from.
"Have you prepared everything?" William gave them half a day to finish making any catapult and arrange themselves.
[We tested things and it worked!] Lara said with a laugh, [Right now we can send up to five thousand every time we use the catapults]
This chapter is updat𝓮d by fre(e)webnov(l).com