Chapter 201 - The Quilled Dragons

The Bearing Edge had mostly dwelled in Neamh for centuries without any clear information about their existence and motivation. Their members and leader were still in the mysterious veil of the unknown, as if they were an entire malicious civilization themselves.

Referring the Bearing Edge as bandits was an understatement. Not only that they were contributing a lot to the world bussiness of slavery, they were also shown to research and study inhumane and forbidden activity regarding mana assimilation for the past couple of years.

Even though their Rogue Citadels had been hunted and demolished again and again, there was no sign of their extinction. Because of their vast grasp of the Tavaroth Continent, they had constantly been the primary enemies of many Citadels within the Association.

Faranor Citadel's army was lucky that they met a wild outpost before meeting with their main forces. Everything was still within Zappur's layers of planning. She had already instructed the special scout team to bore an extra high rank mana crystal with them. Aside from that, she had also instructed them to let at least one or two people escape and rally the message about the severe attack on the outpost.

Meanwhile the main force was utilizing the obelisk formation to cast a large-scale concealment.

"This is V278 reporting, I've been following the run-away messenger and there seems to be a huge amount of armored caravan along the line of Area 101, one kilometers, twenty two meters from twelve o' clock of the main force's position."

"How capable are you of large scale illusion spells?" asked Zappur on the long-range communication spell channel.

Because of the illusion spell cast by the first assault personnel and the reinforcement of 50 Valkyries in that area, it had made a mental illusion within the Bearing Edge's rank that they had full forces of Valkyries coming from that side.

"I'm capable of 10 clones! Madam!"

"Proceed with the ambush, and immediately retreat and join the battle on the outpost once again. Always keep reporting your position, because the main force is on their way."

"Understood!"

With shady cloaks and van, the caravan was immediately met with the sight of their ally rushing to their side, tumbling over and over again on the hot wasteland.

"They have found us!" shouted the messenger. "The Rolan Outpost has been raided by hundreds of Faranor's Valkyries!"

As soon as he stopped his speech to take a breath, a spear was thrown into his throat, gorily decapitating the messenger as his head fell to the ground.

As the travelling forces looked to the sky, they were met with ten Valkyries, fully protected by thick steel from head to toe.

"The Valkyries are here!"

From two of the numerous caravan carriages, the roof fell and unveiled a manned magic ballista. The person that was assigned to jumped into the seat and aimed their projectile at the flying warriors.

The caravan was so long and concealed at the same time. The moment that they broke their illusion formation, a train of carriages spanning kilometers across Area 101 could finally be perceived by the naked eye.

"Right! This is as far as I can aggro."

The single Valkyrie and his clones were retreating to the outpost.

One of the cloaked men rushed to the menacing figure on the middle row of the caravan. He stepped out from his carriage, barely fitting the frame of the door. With a bulky stature, he donned an expensive aristocratic clothing that made him look even more intimidating to any man.

The smoking pipe slipped onto his dragon-like maw before the fire on the was absorbed, unleashing a colorful sparks and smoke that was rising into the heated wasteland. As he was fully excited by the carriage, his back revealed a thick and long reptile tail with yellowish white scales covering every inch of this man.

Unlike any humanoid races, the only thing that made him look humanoid was only his bipedal legs. With dark sclera and golden pupils, the dragonoid looked down on the cloaked man that stopped in front of him. The cloaked man looked tiny when compared to the giant lizard.

"Lord Yayoga," said the cloaked men. "It seems like those prideful Valkyries have been sniffing out our location from the outpost they found."

Colorful smoke was slipping out from the nonchalant lizard's teeth. "Have you punished the unqualified messenger?"

"H-he is already dead."

"Good. We still have defensive Artifacts strapped onto this giant snake's back. How about the slaves? Have all of you injected them all with the serum?"

"It can be activated any time! Do you want the slave masters to send some batches to the attacked outpost?"

"Just send forty of them. Those numbers are enough to deal with a hundred Valkyries from the famous Faranor Citadel."

"As you wish! My Lord!"

Numerous shackled slaves were deployed as they were controlled by the slave master of each regiment. Equipped with nothing but a ragged dress and bare hands, they were immediately sent to follow the retreating sky soldier.

The slaves gnashed their teeth and harmed themselves through blunt impact of their fist onto their teeth as they walked, just to satiate the perpetual pain that was building up through every crevice of their flesh. Women or men, children and crippled, all of them weren't discriminated against when it came to a fight for their new master.

Soon enough, the Bearing Edges within the outpost was obliterated. The Valkyries sent their comrade in arms a war cry of victory and salutations. Of course, they also need to keep their enemies busy by rallying all of their units to the main force of their target.

As soon as the slaves appeared within the sky soldiers' visions, lighting immediately struck those suffering servants. Fog was unleashed to cover the area.

It wasn't the decrease in vision that startled the Valkyries, but it was none other than the monstrosity that they perceived.

Numerous High Rank Calamities in many form began to emerge from the slaves' corpses. Varying from the ferocious bipedal beast with long claws and destructive breath named Ganeshi, to the menacing and gargantuan sky fortress of elongated wyrm in the sky.

"This is V101," the female Valkyrie gulped her saliva as she tapped onto her cranium. "Scenario 14 has occurred within the battlefield."

"I see," Zappur replied. "So we're facing one of the Quilled Dragons of the Bearing Edge." She gritted her teeth. "For him to appear in the vicinity of Area 101, this is definitely not a normal occurrence.

"The Main Force will soon clash with the Endless Snake in just half an hour. I shall send you another hundred Valkyries to keep the Quilled Dragon's toys at bay. It might be our last chance to capture or murder that wretched demon once and for all."

With the Valkyries giving their all battling numerous A-rank Calamities simultaneously, they have clashed their spear and steel onto the impregnable scales and toxin.

The ground was bombarded by the flying fortress wyrm, but it didn't matter as much to the Valkyries. With every spear and magic projectile that were getting closer to the flying fortress, the gargantuan wyrm unleashed numerous bio-drones from its crevice.

Certainly, none of the recorded Calamities acted like this. Such a mutation could only be forced by a forbidden experiment that was pursued by the infamous criminal within the Bearing Edge.

The Quilled Dragons. They came in many shapes and sizes. Many reports throughout the history had shown that there were more than one Quilled Dragons, but all of them bore the same fixation on mortal experimentation of imbuing the power from the Void.

Zappur didn't expect that she would be dealing with one of the Quilled Dragons this soon. However, she was thankful that she had already taken an extra step upon her raid's resources.

The goblin butler voiced his thoughts.

"Madam Zappur, we can immediately send Dante's Leads to pursue the Quilled Dragons. That way, we might be able to reduce our casualties."

"Those glorified mercenaries wouldn't dare to sacrifice themselves to fight off one of the most notorious demons in this continent even if they are able to do it." Zappur maintained her stern gaze. "The risk is too high.

"Though, this means that the ambassador from the Dorian Citadel is truthful to his word. If what he told was right, then that means we won't be able to keep this witch hunt for ourselves."

"The Kratos Citadel will be involved."

"Exactly. As much as I don't want to burden the Kratos Citadel in this matter, the Association will need to eventually put more resources on keeping the Tavaroth out of impurity and filth."

"How come the Association didn't put more resources on the Rogue Citadels Hunt in the first place?"

"Because Tavaroth is not the main issue in worldwide scales." Zappur swiped the screen, conjuring a holographic keyboard as a metaphysical message was immediately printed with the content that she typed. "Ozaekh, Urus, Tadorea, Kalayskiva, all of them were under a huge pressure from both the Void because something had been puppeteering the Calamities, showing an unnatural height of Intelligence, even for a mere low-rank Yelpers."

The printed message was transformed into a bird, it immediately soared through the sky at the speed of a bullet to the northeast, the heart of Tavaroth, the place where Kratos Citadel firmly stood across the rich land and powerful fortification.

Zappur didn't hope for any reinforcement because she knew how long the processing of a request would take place within that particular Citadel. There was a chance that she would fail, anytime and anywhere.. She didn't want to postpone any kind of crucial information, even though winning first and bringing better news would surely give her more credit by the Association.