'Alright, let's do it this way then,' he didn't find any harm in doing so. Until things got cleared out for him, he wouldn't risk anything to happen to his garden.
His garden world was one of the earliest treasures he acquired in this world. It stood by his side till this moment and it was Gege's body and the container of her soul.
If any damage happened to it, he would lose a valuable asset plus losing a treasured friend and ally.
"Stay here," Arthur didn't explain anything to the two shocked friends on his side, "I'll go and check things inside."
"Wait…" Amera tried to stop him before he vanished inside a portal before she could continue her words, "isn't it a bit dangerous now?" she slowly muttered and said what Arthur didn't hear.
"Don't worry, he is going to be safe," the crow tried to reassure her before he took in the cold air of breath. "Do you have any clue about what happened here?"
Amera shook her head as she silently gazed around. Her eyes stuck over those Arthur managed to save. "I don't know anything, but I bet on my life these people do."
The crow looked at the thousands of people Arthur managed to save in these few stressful seconds before he nodded.
And without saying anything else, the two led their people around and started a wide range of interrogation.
"They are all… charcoaled!'' The moment Arthur appeared here, he saw severely dehydrated and intensely burnt corpses all around. This scene reminded him of the few corpses he gathered so far.
"It's brutal…" he couldn't help but sigh before landing on the ground and touching it. "It's… cold!" Contrary to what he thought, the ground didn't look hot at all.
In fact it was freezingly cold. It seemed like a blizzard hit this place, not a storm of fire.
'These two are growing restless,' Gege suddenly said, 'they are interrogating those you saved to know the truth.'
"Let them know," Arthur wasn't a bit interested in keeping the truth for himself. He only didn't say anything so he wouldn't cause panic.
But if they were so dedicated to knowing it, he wouldn't mind then.
"Is there anyone living here?" he rose high in the air before watching the devastated settlement.
It looked like a grand graveyard, like a massacre erupted here on the hands of a war criminal.
'No,' Gege returned to him after a few minutes, 'they are all… dead. Do you want me to take them in?'
Arthur hesitated. "No, leave them here," he decided, "they weren't strong to begin with. I won't get good dragons from their corpses."
He started to fly towards the biggest building here. This building was now, just like others, painted all in black.
Everything told him the fire managed to break through all the buildings, but not the walls.
'I'll start taking the walls then,' Gege didn't delay and started to summon portals all over the place. Taking the walls seemed a hard task that she did so easily now.
She divided the walls into segments, each segment had one portal to take in that part of the wall from upside down.
However when the portals reached the ground, she discovered something else.
Arthur raided many settlements before. All had walls surrounding them. So he didn't think these walls were special in their own traits.
Something must have been added to these walls to make them sturdy and immune to the energy of that dark object.
The more he thought about it, the more puzzled he became.
"Did that mage know how to trigger and control it or not?" he kept asking himself, "and why didn't he trigger it the first time then?"
When he thought about this devastation, he couldn't help but think about the reason that prevented the dark angel mage from using it against his army from before.
They crushed the grandmaster's army and killed all the elites. They escaped the trap set by the dark angel mage.
For him it would be a golden opportunity to attack all these forces and make sure they would all die.
However this didn't happen.
"And why now?" Arthur kept wondering more about this incident in his head. He took a long time to circulate the settlements. It wouldn't seem wise to wait all this time to take him.
If that dark angel mage was able to trigger the dark objects, then he should have done that to each settlement they visited. This way Arthur's losses would have been great and even he would have died or came out empty handed.
Amidst all these thoughts, Gege suddenly shouted:
'I found something underneath the walls!'
"Show me!"
Arthur was so impatient now to hear any clue to help him understand what happened. Despite him knowing the cause behind this disaster, his eyes were still dark about many secrets.
'Yeah, it's best if you go and see by yourself,' Gege summoned a portal and the next thing that happened was for Arthur to appear on top of the walls.
Or what remained of them.
In front of Arthur the walls were taken out and vanished until the ground. The walls were now replaced with a connected circle of portals, and they all seemed to be stopped by something.
"What… is that?" Arthur noticed a purple thing buried underneath the ground. It looked like some sort on an ore, and that ore seemed to be able to interfere with the portal function.
'My babies can't get any near them,' Gege said before adding, 'they are facing a hidden force that propels them away.'
"Oh," Arthur couldn't help but descend on the edge of one of these ores before examining it.
"Is it part of the ground itself?" he couldn't help but ask, "or is it something already planted underneath the walls?"
'I… have no answer for that,' Gege paused a moment before adding, 'is it the thing that stopped that gale of wind?'
"It was an energy outburst," Arthur's face was dignified, "take Agnus out, with few men who can work to mine this ore."
'Do you plan on taking it out?!' Gege was shocked before the golden dragon laughed.
'I can't believe how shameless you are! I bet this ore came all the way from the higher worlds to here. And you are simply going to take them simply like that! I like it!'
"I doubt they are part of the higher realms," however Arthur wasn't feeling any excitement or amusement like the golden dragon.
'Ding! Do you believe those prophecies?' the system seemed to get what Arthur was thinking about.
After all, he was the longest person here to deal with Arthur among the three of them.
"Yeah," Arthur slowly nodded, "I now understand why that dark angel mage selected certain settlements rather than others to be the base of his forces."
Updat𝓮d fr𝙤m fre𝒆webnov(e)l.com