“Damn! I counted twenty so far! How many more do they have?” the spearhead couldn’t control himself anymore, “with such an army, what are they waiting for?”

We tried to observe a few armies training here, and all I could see was hundreds of thousands of forces training in the same way as Lily used.

The basins weren’t all flat lands. They had large surfaces of water with many aquatic monsters there for the troops to train upon.

I saw many big pools where lots of monsters gathered to fight against groups of Hectors. It was the second phase training that Lily used before.

And seeing such a grand number of forces training in such an advanced way of training that not many of my forces reached before made me feel envious.

“Can’t you work over them?” the jumper asked, and I had to refuse.

“My threads are eye-catching. They can be spotted and linked to the chariot.”

“Then we can use another treasure to hide these threads from their sights, right?” Sara looked at the jumper who rolled his eyes.

“What girl? Do you think treasures like these grow over trees perhaps? There is no such a treasure in my possession. If you got one, then bring it out.”.

“And you just bragged about how big your own collection of treasures was,” she whispered in such a way, to make all of us hear her voice including the jumper.

“Do you want to die?”

“Stop fooling around,” I had to intervene, glaring fiercely at the jumper, “this isn’t the time to have such useless chat.”

“She started it!” The jumper pointed in Sara’s direction.

“Speaking like a little kid, are you a kid?”

“Do you want to die?”

“Don’t you have another line but this antique one?”

“Screw you!”

“That’s a lot better,” I chuckled, and he just snorted back.

“Sigh, big boys act always like kids when together,” the jumper shook his head helplessly, attracting me and the jumper’s glaring eyes.

“Shut up!” and we both said in the same breath, making the spearhead look at Sara and both shook their heads in such helpless ways.

I turned my eyes away, looking at the horizon. “Let’s try to circle around these mountains. If possible, we can infiltrate from any place with thick mountains,” I decided to go and explore this place even further.

It was much better anyway than just staying in this place and listening to useless theories.

The others went on in their silence, staying on alert as if we were going to fight anytime soon. I led my chariot to move towards a thick interval between two basins, and then rose high up.

“What the hell is… That?!!!” Just when we arrived higher than the mountain tops, luckily not stopped by any bolts of lightning, we were met with a scene that I never expected to see.

A colossal monster was lying so damn far away, tens of miles far from my current spot. It looked like a python, with smooth scales covering all of his body, giving me the feeling of similarity with the scales of the Hectors.

“Is that… A snake?!!” Sara mumbled in deep fear, one that I was truly feeling.

“They are… Fighting it?” The jumper was the first to pick up such an important note, as I also realised the same thing.

Using my Hawk Eye skill, and from this far away spot, I couldn’t see everything clearly. All I could see were a large number of armies moving all out towards that snake, while that dude was acting a little slow and weird.

“Is he… Poisoned?” Sara asked, and I couldn’t help but slowly nod.

“It seems this way,” I said, “but they are trying to kill it, or what?”

“Isn’t it like the two holes we spotted before?” The spearhead linked the two together, solving the mystery with the answer he proposed before.

“So all these forces here are for that big dude?” The jumper proposed his own theory, “but how come they bring such a behemoth here and try to kill it before fighting with us?”

“Something isn’t right,” I got the feeling that I was missing something.

I thought about contacting Fang again, but just before I could do anything, the jumper hit me on the back.

“We got company!”

He motioned his head towards a direction. There I spotted flying forts, ones that I desperately wanted to obtain and use.

There was a group of ten flying forts, all built over an area that spanned for half a mile radius. They got walls, many war machines, and densely packed towers.

“Their versions of these forts are different from ours,” this was the first impression I got.

My forts weren’t just bigger, they got a castle in the middle. These ones here had towers instead. That might be thanks to the limited space they got.

“But they got theirs, and we got none,” the jumper used this chance to pick up at me. And I decided to ignore him.

“They are surveilling the space in between the basins,” the spearhead noticed this, “if they are trying to kill this monster, why are they acting like they were guarding it then?”

“Perhaps they are afraid of us getting here and helping this monster break free,” Sara proposed, but I got the feeling that she didn’t even buy what she said herself.

This didn’t add up. Something was amiss. What was it? I lacked information.

Have you ever heard of a big snake-like monster, covered with scales like the ones covering up the bodies of the Hectors?

No!

Damn this jerk! This wasn’t the time to act like an envious lover!

“He didn’t respond?” The jumper gave me such a look as if he knew whom I was speaking to.

“As if you know who!”

“Fang, who else,” he raised both hands in the air as if this was something obvious, “you don’t have anyone else to ask. I didn’t see the other warmonger dude around lately, is he out of service or dead?”