The violent storm seemed to have no intention of stopping. The surroundings sank into a deep darkness with occasional lightning bolts exploding to light up the area clearly. Right now, Marybelle apparently couldn’t keep her cool any longer. She knitted her brows and flew ahead. Shortly after, through the curtain of rain, Rhode spotted a huge stone door erected on a plain.
That was the Door of Akasha.
Judging from the scattered objects around the door, it was obvious that the door was heavily-guarded. But the strange thing was that there was no one at all, not even corpses or blood. Apart from the overturned tents and supplies, no living person was in sight. Five tall and huge stone columns surrounded the Door of Akasha. The dazzling magic crystals on them emanated a bright radiance that formed a circular barrier. It could be seen that ample preparations were made for this. Although there weren’t any visible threats, Marybelle and the others activated the defensive enchanted field to protect this important facility. Besides, Rhode found out from the earlier images that Marybelle and the other four agreed to send elites to defend this place, which should have been absolutely foolproof.
But what happened?
Marybelle strode ahead while Rhode followed beside her closely, scanning everything in detail. He wasn’t a fool. This place was heavily guarded with an enchanted field, sentries, and a high number of elites under the five Creator Dragons. He would never believe that the dinosaur-like monsters that couldn’t defeat Mini Bubble Gum and Canary would be able to destroy them. The patrols were under attack when Marybelle received the report and this meant that the guards by the door were eliminated before they could even shriek. Then, the enemies started expanding outward and met the patrols on the periphery. Rhode had to admit that Marybelle was indeed meticulous. The layers of defense she designed were highly effective. But this made Rhode increasingly dubious as he didn’t think that the monsters that attacked the patrols were the same group that slaughtered the core guards. This was because if that happened, the patrols couldn’t possibly hang on long enough for Marybelle’s arrival.
Rhode felt nervous right now. He yearned for a clear answer! Those monsters had an overwhelming victory over the guards standing by the Door of Akasha, where the guards didn’t even have time to send out emergency signals? No. Rhode suspected whether the guards were even aware that they were attacked.
While Rhode pondered, he saw Marybelle striding toward the enchanted field, extended her hand, and held gently on its surface. Shortly after, circular runes appeared one by one from within, arranging themselves in an intertwined formation. Marybelle twitched her brow slightly and laid down her arm. Even though she didn’t say a word, Rhode knew that the enchanted field was working fine and nothing seemed to be an issue.
Rhode continued to follow Marybelle as she spent a few hours examining the entire camp inside-out. In the end, there were no signs of battle just like before. The campsite was operating normally. The only ones missing were the hundreds of people stationed here. Apart from them, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary.
During Marybelle’s investigations, no one ambushed her. The entire campsite was silent as though no one were present. Her investigations weren’t disrupted at all. But even so, she didn’t look great. After her investigations ended and she left the place, her expression had already darkened.
Rhode knew why she put on such a grim expression. Frankly, he was just like her; he would rather face ambushes during his investigations. Perhaps the situation would turn out critical, enemies would be more powerful than he expected, or he would face life-threatening dangers, but at least he would be able to meet them face-to-face. At least he knew who he was facing even if he were to get hurt and face life-threatening dangers. As long as he was able to escape, there would be a chance for him to start afresh.
However, Marybelle wasn’t ambushed at all, which proved that the ‘enemies’ had high intelligence. They knew how powerful Marybelle was. They weren’t willing to reveal themselves which proved that they apparently knew that exposing themselves to her wasn’t a smart decision.
This type of enemy was the hardest to face. They were powerful, knew when to act appropriately, and weren’t naive. More importantly, be it Marybelle or Rhode, none of them knew from which crack on the wall they emerged from. Even until now, they didn’t even know whether the enemies were native creatures hidden in the deep underground or something else. At that moment, Rhode couldn’t grasp the situation accurately anymore. He recalled reading tabloids about visitors from outer space or information about super ancient civilizations. Right now, he wasn’t even sure if this Earth was still the same one in his impression. Could it be it was just like what was written on the tabloids were fact, and Earth had an advanced ancient underground civilization and they decided to show their presence after Marybelle and the rest appeared? Or perhaps back then, certain visitors from outer space like Martians decided to migrate to Earth and both sides got into a clash over territories? An ancient civilization versus UFO? That would be so cool and interesting…
Even though Rhode racked his brains to filter all possibilities, he eventually didn’t find any evidence to prove his guesses. It didn’t feel good to find himself at a loss. Rhode had never faced such a situation before in the Dragon Soul Continent. After all, he was familiar with whatever that was hidden, disappeared, or didn’t exist. But now, in this intricate environment, he found it hard to figure out what the source of the problem was and who were the manipulators behind the scenes. That was why he puckered his brows tightly like Marybelle and remained perplexed despite much thought.
Shortly after, the scenery changed again. Marybelle returned to the sacred palace and dispatched men to investigate thoroughly. Fortunately, apart from the elites who went missing from the central area, the rest were still present. Of course, several other patrols were also ambushed, but the monsters eventually escaped.
As the Door of Akasha was built as the core of the fifth region, it meant that the five representatives sent out a team of their own to guard the area. Due to this reason, the other four areas responded quickly. There weren’t many issues with the Light Dragon and twin dragons. Similar to Marybelle, even though they were encircled and attacked by those monsters, they weren’t hurt too much. Besides, after the reinforcements arrived, the monsters either scattered or fled and didn’t pose too much threat.
However, the Dark Dragon’s representative’s situation was entirely different as three of its patrol teams had gone missing. If it weren’t for the next patrol team on rotation realizing and reporting the situation, perhaps the representative wouldn’t be notified even until daybreak!
The seriousness of this matter garnered a lot of attention from everyone. Marybelle gathered the five Creator Dragon’s representatives and their subordinates by the Door of Akasha immediately. After conducting an investigation on the door, they reported issues respectively. Most of their subordinates were elites of elites who were meticulous in their work. That was why they consolidated a few clues shortly after.
First, all the troops stationed at the Door of Akasha went missing without any signs or warnings. That was really unusual because the five Creator Dragons’ subordinates had unique methods to contact them. For instance, the Dark Dragon’s subordinates possessed the soul cores of all the undead creatures. If the undead creatures were under attack, the subordinates would surely be the first to receive news. It was the same for the twin dragons. They had a pair of twin elves as their subordinates. The elder sister among the twins was stationed by the Door of Akasha and the twins had telepathy. If the elder sister faced any threats, the younger sister would be aware of it immediately. But in this incident, there were no signals received from the undead creatures. On the other hand, if the younger sister didn’t hear the terrible news and realized she couldn’t contact her elder sister using spiritual communication, she would never believe that her elder sister disappeared just like that!
Second, the undead creatures weren’t the ones who were hurt the most. Logically speaking, the undead creatures shouldn’t be the ones suffering losses because they weren’t living creatures and ordinary people couldn’t possibly eliminate them. Even in an ambush, it wasn’t possible for them to not send out even one emergency signal. But the truth was that the number of undead creatures that had disappeared was the most, which almost equaled the total number of the other four parties! Fortunately, most of them were reincarnated from undead soldiers so the damage wasn’t too traumatic. However, the situation had become critical for the Dark Dragon’s representative.
How nice would it be if Alice were around. A ‘Historical Tracing’ from this History Deity Warden would make things so much easier. But it was a pity that she wasn’t around this time, which was why no one had a conclusion after half a day of discussions. However, they decided to increase the level of security from today onward. The five representatives of the Creator Dragons including Marybelle would take turns to guard the Door of Akasha and see how the situation went.
Therefore this time, Marybelle prohibited everyone from leaving the core of the sacred palace and heading to unknown areas. This was the story hidden behind the murals… and nothing more.
The scenes fast-forwarded again. Nothing seemed to have changed. Everything was going well for Marybelle, at least from Rhode’s perspective. But shortly after, he detected a new problem: the conflicts between Marybelle and the other four representatives.
As the main person-in-charge of this operation, Marybelle suggested to postpone the time to activate the Door of Akasha, just in case. She suggested investigating the earlier missing cases first before making a decision. Even though they had to wait for the Door of Akasha’s weakest period, there were cycles, after all—once every 300 years.
300 years were almost nothing to deity wardens, angels, elves, and undead creatures.
But not everyone agreed with her.
The Country of Light agreed with her. It was apparent that the angels were concerned that the strange incidents weren’t just accidents and were some kind of a bad omen. If they were to open up the passageway from the Door of Akasha in this risky situation, no one knew what would happen. Moreover, the other side was still being threatened by Chaos. If Chaos were to slip into their world through the passageway, it definitely wouldn’t be an optimistic scene.
On the other hand, the Dark Dragon’s representative rejected firmly and provided ample reasons. It was due to the current unclear situation that they should open the passageway all the more. As soon as the five Creator Dragons got here, the problems wouldn’t be relevant anymore.
The twin dragons’ representatives didn’t provide any opinion. Just like their master, they would support the party that was more convincing.
But this time, the meeting fizzled out as Marybelle and the Dark Dragon’s representative both made sense. Besides, there were also flaws in both their suggestions. Even though Marybelle’s idea was reliable, the best solution was to hand the situation over to the Creator Dragons before it ended up beyond what she could handle. On the other hand, there were also some issues with Dark Dragon’s representative’s suggestion because no one could confirm what would happen after activating the Door of Akasha. If some unknown enemies were to enter through the door and cause great suffering to the Dragon Soul Continent, the so-called retreat would basically be a worthless piece of paper.
But Rhode could see that Marybelle apparently predicted this response. She would rather not open the Door of Akasha. Even if her troops were sacrificed entirely, she wasn’t willing to witness unknown threats wreaking havoc in the Dragon Soul Continent, unless she was able to determine who they were. Up until this point in time, Rhode didn’t know if Marybelle’s choice was right or wrong. After all, if she had opened the Door of Akasha back then, perhaps Earth wouldn’t have an indigenous civilization now…
Days passed and the scenes flashed by before Rhode. He couldn’t find any useful clues. Even though Marybelle conducted investigations several times herself, there was no development to what happened around the Door of Akasha that night. Same went for the elite troops who disappeared as though they had vanished entirely from this world.
But not only was Marybelle not feeling assured, but she also became increasingly worried. She felt like this peacefulness was a sign of danger that was arriving. She raised her guard and stopped patrols from leaving faraway from the sacred palace.
And the danger erupted without any signs.
At the time of the countdown of 50 days for the Door of Akasha opening, Marybelle received news that contact was lost with the Dark Dragon’s representative’s campsite!
This news shook everyone.
This time, even the twin dragons’ representative joined in the discussion as to whether they should activate the Door of Akasha. This was because the other four representatives were similar in strength and Marybelle was the strongest. And now, they had lost contact with the Dark Dragon’s representative all of a sudden and this raised their guard.
This time. Marybelle quickly gave an order for everyone to move into the Void Palace, at the same time requesting the remaining three representatives to head to the Dark Dragon’s camp to conduct investigations. This, time the three representatives had no hesitation at all. They executed Marybelle’s orders and transferred everyone into the Void Palace. Fortunately, as only elites were here, the palace was able to contain all of them.
The situation became critical.
Shortly after, Rhode witnessed a bright flash. Then, he realized he was standing in a spacious meeting hall. In the middle, Marybelle and the three representatives were having an urgent discussion. Two of them were white elves clad in robes who were apparently the subordinates of the twin dragons. On the other side, a battle angel donned in armor listened to their words sternly.
“I think we need to change our plan since we have lost the support of the Dark Dragon. I think we may be facing an enemy we have not seen before. No matter what, we need to be more careful in our actions.”
“But Your Highness Marybelle, the timing to activate the Door of Akasha is approaching. I think we should seize the opportunity to open it and let the majesties resolve this critical issue. We didn’t manage to come up with any conclusion after long investigations, but the enemies are apparently closing in. I think the situation may be out of our grasp.”
One of the white elves knitted her brows and said in uncertainty. Facing her rebuttal, Marybelle pondered in silence and shook her head.
“We can’t risk it. What if the enemies attack us after we activate the Door of Akasha? Since they were capable of assassinating our companions, I think in this predicament, our situation may not be anywhere better than theirs. If we forcefully activate the Door of Akasha, we can’t be sure of when the enemies will strike. Perhaps this will bring forth more unprecedented threats!”
“But I think…”
Before the white elf completed her sentence, ear-deafening explosions boomed all of a sudden.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The palace shook and loud explosions disrupted their meeting. They exchanged stern looks with one another, spotting the uncertainties in their eyes. At the same time, the locked doors burst open and a flustered soldier rushed into the meeting hall.
“Reporting, Your Highness Marybelle. We’re under attack!”
