[Boss, you need to come down here. There is a ward that doesn't feel like Dragons, and I can't get through it.] Su mentally linked Cain early the next morning.
[I'm on my way. Tell me about where you found it.] Cain requested as he flew through the tunnels in his smaller Ancient form, following the same path that Su and Kone had taken to search the lower levels.
It led him to a large lava lake, where Cain noticed that there were some injured Lava Cats. That didn't seem right, they didn't fight among themselves that seriously, and there weren't any predators in the tunnels that would try to kill them.
Su would have mentioned it if they had attacked her, so something abnormal had happened here.
Cain slowed his approach and took a deep breath, trying to sense anything out of the normal.
Human blood. He could smell humans in the room, and not all of the blood belonged to the cats.
[Follow the ridge behind the lava waterfall, then squeeze through the tunnel. It was tight for Su, but she's bigger than you are.] Kone instructed as Cain searched the room for more signs.
Off along one wall, Cain sensed magic. An Earth Spell had hit the wall here, and the residual energy was lingering on the stones. There was definitely a battle between the Lava Cats and the humans here.
Cain followed the path behind the rock, transforming into Luna's Lamia form again after he singed his wing on the waterfall. It didn't do much damage to him, but it was incredibly painful.
"I'm here. What did you find?" He asked when he found Kone standing in front of a blank wall.
"This wall is a ward, and it's stronger than Immortal Rank, or I could have broken through it. Neither of us can tell what's on the other side, but nothing has come out, and there are no fluctuations of Magic in use." Kone informed him.
Cain explored the area with his Magic Sense and found that the ward was a bubble buried in the rock, and there was no tunnel on the other side. It seemed that whoever set the ward had retreated here to hide and recover after a nasty battle. The question was, who was it? If they really were at the Demigod Rank or higher, the Lava Cats wouldn't be a threat, even if they had their powers sealed. Or perhaps they had been weakened or crippled by an attack, leaving them vulnerable.
"Keep searching the area. I found traces of Earth magic on one wall as well, and human blood. Search everything in this region twice and tell me what you come up with." Cain instructed, then began focusing on the ward, trying to use Spell Crafting to try to unravel it the same way that he did with the Vortexes on the Southern Continent.
In theory, he could unravel the ward enough to break it, but it was very powerful, and finding a starting point was difficult since it was cast from inside.
Finally, he found a weak point and tore the weave enough to begin unraveling it near the middle of the opening in front of him. It took two hours of hard work to open it enough that he could sneak through with Luna's slender body, but he didn't sense anything inside.
Did the caster recover enough to portal out? That thought worried Cain quite a bit. If a Divine Realm human had escaped with the Black Dragon's egg, this world was in for a very bad time.
[I have the answers you needed. There was a large battle here in the chamber outside, but it was so spread out that it was hard to determine what happened. I found some Lava Cats that were here, though. The humans fought each other, and the lone survivor hid behind the waterfall where they couldn't find him.]
[If there was a huge battle, where are the rest of the traces?] Cain asked.
[Apparently, humans are tasty, and they licked up most of the blood after they ate the bodies, bones, and all.] Kone informed him.
That explained why there was so little to find except scattered traces of magic.
Cain cautiously slid through the chambers inside the ward until he found what he was looking for. A Divine Realm Human, on the verge of death, held in stasis with some sort of talisman and his power fluctuating.
The solution was both simple and obvious. Cain removed a Scimitar from his inventory and removed the man's head from his shoulders, then created a puppet body and trapped his soul inside, resurrecting him under Cain's control.
"Now, let's see what you had on your body," Cain mumbled while he let the new puppet recover from the shock of being awakened by way of murder.
Cain dug through the man's clothes, pulling out multiple storage rings and a few hidden potions, as well as a lot of empty vials. Then he came across an amulet hidden inside the man's stomach. That was sure to be less than pleasant coming back out, but it explained the intense battle outside. The man's companions couldn't snatch it from inside his stomach while he was alive, but they weren't strong enough to take it from him.
A precise cut freed the amulet, dropping it into Cain's hand with a wet plop.
[Quest Complete: Egg Recovered]
"Well, isn't this wonderful news? I have a good friend that really wants to talk to you, waiting right upstairs. Don't bother attacking me, you can't injure me, and I forbid you from harming yourself." Cain informed the reincarnated Cultivator.
The man was still focusing on something else though and getting more frustrated by the moment. Cain moved the amulet under his clothes, in case the man was thinking of doing something to harm it, and then pulled him back out into the open before transforming back into his full twenty-meter-tall Ancient Form.
"An Ancient? You don't belong in this world. If my masters find you, they will tear your soul to shreds." The puppet informed Cain with a sneer.
"I am your master now, and you should worry about your own soul since I am taking you to the Divine Black Dragon, who really wants to know all about your idea to steal her egg," Cain informed him, then picked him up and began flying back up through the mountain.
[Finish your investigation and bring your report to the Black Dragon Matriarch when you finish. I am sure she will want a second opinion since this one seems like a lot of trouble.] Cain told Kone as he left.
The man struggled the entire way, even managing to overcome Cain's order to stay still. The willpower of a Divine Realm Soul was impressive, and if he had another half hour, Cain was sure that he would manage to break free of the bond and become a free person in the puppet body.
Normally, it would have been much faster, mere seconds or a few minutes at most, but he was heavily injured by the battle in both body and soul and hadn't had time to recover yet.
"Matriarch Black. I have this pathetic thief for you, as well as your missing egg." Cain informed her as soon as he entered the main floor, knowing that every adult dragon on the level could hear him.
"That was much faster than expected. How did you find him?" She asked, using magic to pull the man from Cain's grasp and into her enormous claw.
"His allies turned on him once they had the prize, and he hid in the lower levels of the mountain to recover. Fortunately, the pair I sent into the lower levels are very sensitive to magic, and they detected the traces of a battle and then the Divine Ward he placed over his hiding spot." Cain explained while the man glared at him.
pAn,Da-n0v e1,c
Cain saw the Matriarch's expression change. Though he was no expert on Dragon form body language, he was certain that this one was a sadistic pleasure.
"So you freely admit to stealing from me and even attempting to hide within my territory once you were exposed. That is good. It means that what I'm about to do won't violate the agreement that I have with the Human Gods."
The man looked confused for half a second, then Cain felt the loss of a Puppet before the man began shrieking in agony while she dragged him halfway into the realm of the dead and shredded and healed his soul over and over in a seemingly infinite loop, compressed down to a single minute in the land of the living.
"Remind me not to make her mad," Cain whispered to the closest of her bodyguards, who gave him an amused smile before turning her gaze back to the crowd.
"Are you sure that you will ever need a reminder after that?" She asked.
"I am a slow learner."
The shrieking brought every dragon in the vicinity, including the Golden Dragon, which wasn't actually a dragon who was teaching Tena, out to see what had happened.
"The Ancient has found our intruder. Now, we only need to account for the thieves of every other egg in the Mountain and Valley. Get to work. I want to see more humans in front of me by the end of the day, dead or alive." The Matriarch demanded.
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