“Is the Golden Dragon Nation going to get in the middle of this?” The Overlord Rank Giant asked.
“That’s really up to you, now isn’t it? You came to me, not the other way around.” Karl replied easily as the Naga Warriors moved to flank the Lamia Bodyguards.
[There are soldiers coming from every direction. Angry Remi and Beef warriors and a few that look like Dana but aren’t.] Hawk warned.
[One day we will teach you all the words for other species.] Remi laughed.
[Meh, they’ll get names if they need them.]
The Overlord Rank Giant was staring at Karl, trying to determine what he was planning, and what the best course of action was.
Karl didn’t actually know what drew them here yet, though. If they came to abduct the Oracle, that could be a huge diplomatic disaster. But Karl couldn’t see what else they came for, now that they said they weren’t here for him or his team.
Morrisa stepped forward to face her Overlord Rank counterpart, who stood head and shoulders taller than the Minotaur did.
“What are you doing here? You know that your soldiers are not welcome here. Speak your piece and go away.”
The Giant snorted at her in derision. “Our Earth Shaman sensed the appearance of an unfamiliar Totem Rank creature here. If Newbon Empire thinks that they can hire foreign Totems for the war, you are greatly mistaken.”
Karl hid his amusement as well as he could, but obviously not well enough, as the soldiers from the Mountain Giant side were shifting to defensive foot positions in his direction. It was subtle, but his smile must have been the threatening one again.
“There is no foreign Totem here in Newbon. Tell your Idiot Shamans that they don’t need to send an emergency response unit every time the Emperor comes out to greet visitors from The Golden Dragon Nation.” Morrisa informed him in a bored tone.
The Giant turned to Karl. “The Emperor himself came to see you? Why?”
“I brought a rare species with me, and he was intrigued about its origin.” The Overlord looked up toward where Hawk was lazily floating in the sky and frowned.
A Ghostfire Thunderbird was indeed a rare species. Rare enough that the Mountain Giant didn’t even know what species Hawk was. Like many others, his first thought was that he was a Frost Phoenix, but the body shape and tail plumage were wrong.
One of the Monarchs was casting a spell, but Morrisa showed no sign of trying to stop them. Maybe it was to avoid a fight between Overlords so close to an inhabited farm, or perhaps the spell wasn’t a dangerous one. If they were just looking for Leafa, they could take a number and wait their turn. The Emperor was already chasing after her.
The spell finished, and the group of Giants waited anxiously as the shaman looked more and more confused.
He was about to whisper to the Overlord, but the larger Giant stopped him and handed him a notepad to write it down.
That was a good call, as Karl would hear even a whisper from this distance, but Hawk was directly overhead, and he could read the note as the Giant wrote it.
[It says he only found a Totem Rank skill that was used by Overlord Leafa. He calls her by name, so he knows the council members.]
Well, that could make things more interesting.
Once the Overlord had read the message, he crumpled it and made the shaman eat the paper.
“Well, that’s one way to prevent messages falling into the wrong hands.” Karl mock whispered in the Oracle’s direction.
The Giant Overlord looked like he was going to respond, then he paused and took a glowing stone out of his pocket. Karl could only assume it was a communication device of some sort, but neither he nor Hawk could see any sort of writing on it.
The Overlord’s smile slowly grew as the glow faded from the stone. Then a fresh portal opened behind him.
“Forget this waste of time, we’re leaving.” He announced.
“That’s not suspicious at all.” Karl chuckled, which caused the Mountain Giant Overlord to give him an evil smirk.
Morrisa frowned as the Giant left, thinking the same thing that Karl was saying, and then alarms began to blare from her pockets.
She took out a whole handful of glowing stones, all of which were giving off an alert tone.
She turned to Karl. “You, I will deal with your insolence later. But I now have proof that the incidents aren’t following you around. These are all regional alarms for anomalies that spawned at dawn today.”
“All related to the Dungeon? That shouldn’t be right.” Karl mumbled.
Morrisa looked between Karl and the Oracle, then sighed and shook her head.
“They aren’t. They can’t be. The pattern doesn’t match. We suspect that the Giants have found something that is letting them trigger them. We started to suspect it when we first heard of the Advancement Trial the Hill Giants triggered. Now, anomalies are appearing all over the continent. But I have to go. Consider yourself warned to behave, I don’t have time to come back and deal with your people. Do what you want, as long as you don’t cause trouble on your way out of the country.”
A stone in her hand lit up red, and she stepped through a portal that closed immediately behind her.
“They left me behind again.” The Oracle sighed.
“I am not normally the one to play Devil’s Advocate, but I suspect that wherever she was going, you probably didn’t want to be anyhow. If nothing else, we will keep you safe for the day. Then we can arrange a team to get you home after tomorrow morning’s spawn.”
The Oracle gave him a faint smile. “This will be the last one in this sequence. This spot won’t be hit tomorrow morning, according to my visions. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll be safe for long. I don’t understand what is happening. I can see it, but I can’t decipher a pattern.”