I could tell these parts had to play a role in defending this zone. But as long as I couldn’t tell what they would do exactly, and how dangerous they might be, I couldn’t understand anything about this place at all.

“Tell me then,” I was jolted awake from inspecting the other world’s useless fight and turned to her in anticipation.

She cleared her throat for a second before saying:

“Whoever did this is really nuts! I believe it’s not just a single person, but a group of crazy folks who may be considered as grandmasters in defence.”

pan,d a-n0vel “Did you break it down?” I knew she was impressed by who built this complicated defence. But that wasn’t the time to waste time complaining about them. It was time to show them we also had monsters on our side.

“Of course,” she puffed her chest and acted in a rare moment of arrogance. I nodded at her without saying anything. She deserved to enjoy this moment.

“This layout is a mix of over one hundred ancient designs of defence. Using any of these alone may be useless,” she started to point at several points at the drawing without me getting any of what she was saying.

She seemed to sense my confusion so she added in much simpler words, “to learn this kind of craft, I had to read through tons of ancient techniques and ways to make defences. You can consider them classics, the old textbooks that would give anyone reading and studying them an overall view about how building defences work.”

“Are you saying that these old defences are used here?” I pointed at the complicated defensive drawing and frowned.

“That’s true,” she nodded, “if we are talking about using one or two in the middle of modern designs then things wouldn’t be this hard. But the ones who designed this made use of over one hundred classic designs and turned them into something I never saw or even imagined before.”

“But you broke it down, understood everything about it, right?” from what she said I could tell that whoever did this layout made sure to mix commonly known designs into a brand new one.

Thinking that by using the old and well known designs might make understanding this grand layout easier was a mistake.

Whoever did this was indeed a real genius. He used what was known and turned it into something brand new, unknown to anyone else.

And that was why even with prior knowledge, Isac took all this time to decipher the meaning and real concept behind this grand layout.

“I told you I did,” she gave me a soft chuckle before adding, “the main trick isn’t by combining all these layouts together. The trick lies deeper than that.”

My eyes shone as I got what she meant. “They used all these layouts to mask the main concept behind this? Does this mean there is another defensive layout underneath all of these?”

It was a crazy idea, but seeing her nod made me realise my wild guess was correct.

The ones who devised this layout aimed to make use of the ancient designs to not create something brand new, but to mask the real threatening defensive layout underneath.

I thought about it a little and got to realise how scary the minds of those who planned all this. They knew that any mastermind trying to read through their layout would be preoccupied by the grand design in front of their eyes.

So it seemed safe to mask the presence of the real defensive layout underneath all this. And to be able to think about something like that and successfully use it was a sign of how scary these folks were.

“They did that indeed, and the good news is that layout is the one controlling all these defences,” she leant over the deck of my chariot, and started to draw something using a brush of her own.

When I looked at what she was drawing, I figured that she was drawing the same general design of that dense fortified zone beyond the walls.

But when I looked closer, I saw that her drawings weren’t that concentrated or complex like mine were.

Hers were simple, formed mostly by flat lines and few dots. There was nothing special about this, but weirdly enough it extended to cover the entire region.

“This… It looks like a spider web…” I muttered while seeing a repeated pattern over and over again.

“These dots are the towers responsible for controlling other defences in the region,” Isac pointed at one of the dots she drew and scattered all over her drawing, “each one of these are considered as a main control room. Using the lines of walls around, they can control everything within their range.”

I looked closer and could see now what she meant by this. The entire structure was like a massive spider web. But taking into account the dots scattered all over the place and the thin lines coming out from these, I could now see a picture of many small spiders weaving their lairs all over the place.

The lines extended to connect with all the defensive structures in the region. When I compared the two drawings together, I could clearly see how these lines controlled and connected everything with the main control towers.

At the same time, there were few lines connecting the towers together. And that meant these control rooms were all connected and working in tacit understanding.

“They are connected,” I pointed to a few lines as I added, “will taking down a few towers affect the entire defensive abilities of this damn place?”

“You got it right,” she sighed, “the ones who designed this made sure that even by taking down part of the main defensive towers, the entire defensive functions of the area wouldn’t get affected.”

“This…” I felt a cold shiver down my spine. This was something insane to think about, and that meant my forces had to take down the entire place if they wanted to demolish the defensive functions of this grand layout.