"Then didn't you send someone to take a look at it, what did they find?" Moore asked, what Ronald said made him feel kind of weird so he wanted to know about that as much as he can.

"Yeah they just left a few minutes ago. another base which is close to it sent a few drones to take a look at what was happening there, they will reach the base soon enough." Ronald nodded.

"Why so late, the Gray Fog appeared around an hour ago?" Tom asked in confusion.

"that's because we didn't notice it till a few minutes ago, I mean there was nothing weird happening, the military base didn't got attacked or anything like that, we only noticed that something was wrong when we did a checkup after we got afraid about our safety with the appearance of the Gray Fog, it was only then that we found that our connection with that base has been cut, and that we didn't have any connection with them since the fog appeared." Ronald explained.

As Ronald finished his words a red light started shining in the table in front of him.

"Here! we finally get some information from them." Ronald said as he released a sigh.

After that he waved his hand above the location of the red light in the table, and as he did the holograph of the gray new earth disappeared and instead a middle aged man appeared in its place:

"Sirs!" the middle aged man saluted them when he saw that all the four heads of the Alliance were there.

"What happened to the base, what did you find?" Ronald asked, he was quite concerned about that.

The man was the one in control at the base which was close to the base 42 which they lost contact with.

"Sir we... We didn't find anything." the man said hesitatingly.

"What do you mean with that?" Moore asked while frowning.

"Just as I said, we didn't find anything, not the soldiers not the tanks and even some warships were gone, and there was no trace of anything weird happening at all." the man explained what they found.

"What? Everything disappeared, just like that, then was there any signs of a conflict or a fight there?" Moore asked again, he was quite concerned about what happened to Base 42.

"No, sir as I said we didn't find anything like that, nothing at all." the man said.

"Ok, go and take a look at the security footage of the base, while you are doing that send us the footage that you took, let us see how it is right now." Ronald said.

"I will sir." the man said that saluted them before his holograph disappeared and instead in its place there appeared a video that started playing.

The video showed the base that they lost contact with, and just as that man said there was no trace of any of the soldiers in it or the tanks, warships, even most of the weapons were gone, it seemed like a haunted base with no one inside, it gave a terrifying feeling.

Also there was no signs of anything like a surprise attacked happening or a battle, everything was quite orderly, as if the people inside the base and the machines disappeared just like that, even in the kitchen they found that there was still some food being cooked, everything was just weird.

Seeing that video the four heads of the Alliance didn't find any clues about what might have happened, in the first place there was not that much clues to began with.

They didn't say anything to each other as they understood that whatever happened will be shown in the security cameras footage and they only had to wait a little bit for the drone to gain access the footage for them to understand all what happened to everyone inside the base.

Fortunately they didn't have to wait for long before the man contacted them again, this time as he appeared there was a hint of fear in his face.

"Did you find anything new from the footage?" Tom asked, he, as everyone else in that room was quite eager to know what happened and he couldn't wait for the man to salute them before he urged him to speak:

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Sir, from what we saw in the footage, I... I think that it was because of the...Gray Fog." the man said, his voice had a hint of fear and uncertainty as he said that:

"The fog, why? What did you see?" Moore asked with frown brows, he and the others did consider the Gray Fog as the reason of what happened in the base, but as nothing unusual happened in other places they didn't concentrate on that point, so hearing the man say that was quite a surprise.

"I think that it will be better if you see it so you can understand for yourselves." the man said.

"Ok, send them to us then." Ronald nodded.

Soon after the footage were sent to them and they started watching what happened there with full attention.

What appeared first was the base before anything happened, it was a normal day, and even though it was night that time because of the new longer days.

Anyway the soldiers were just doing there things normally when suddenly they started looking at the same place in the far horizon and pointing, at first it was just one person but then it changed as more and more people started appearing and pointing at the sky looking at whatever was happening.

From the time shown in the video the four heads if the Alliance understood that they were probably pointing at the Gray Fog which was heading toward them, and just as they expected soon enough the Gray Fog appeared and engulfed everyone in its way.

Till then it was normal, what happened to the base was like anything that happened in any place in Area 01 and the whole New Earth, but after that thing stared getting weirder....

It all started after a minute or so of the Gray Fog covering everything, the first thing that happened was a man falling down losing consciousness, there was nothing around him that could have made him fall down unconscious he just fall while walking.

His friends tried to help him by trying to lift him and take him to another place, yet while they were moving him they too started falling.

And soon after that, one by one, everyone inside the base started falling unconscious, till finally around five minutes or so after the Gray Fog covered everything, there was no one left standing in that base, everyone was in the ground, and it was at that moment that something even weirder happened.

The security footage started getting worst and worst, till finally nothing was seen, except white noise, it stayed like that for around a minute or so before finally it disappeared and the video returned to normal.

The four heads of the alliance had a bad promotion when they saw the white nose appearing on the video, and just as expected after the white noise disappeared what they saw was that all the soldiers disappeared and there was no trace of them at all, and not just them but all the tanks warships and the other military machines had disappeared, leaving no clue about what happened to them.

"What just happened, how could all of those soldiers and machines disappear just like that, and in just one minute?" Tom said in astonishment.

"It was probably because of the Gray Fog?" it was Travis who said the idea that everyone else had in mind.

"That seems to be the case but we can't be sure about it as it seems that it only happened there and even with all our tests and experiments we weren't able to find anything weird with Gray Fog." Ronald said.

"Wait a second... what if all those notices about missing people were actually because the same thing happened to them, and they disappeared in the same weird way, like just what happened to the soldiers in base 42." Moore said as he remembered about how Ronald mentioned that the number of calls about missing people were becoming more and more.

"That can be true." the other all nodded their heads, but then Ronald frowned and said:

"But if this is true then... Were are all those missing people and where are all the soldiers and their machines just what happened to them?"

No one on the room was able to answer him and once again the room fall into silence.

***

Area 12: Australia:

In a battlefield between people from Area 12 and the soldiers from Area 05:

In those days a lot of things happened.

After general Schmidt get the information that they had to go on with the plan and that they had to take control of that Area he started prepare for the battles that were coming.

First he asked his soldiers to do their best to got more information from the villagers and the wizards that they caught, the thing that he asked them to pay more attention to was their enemy, The Royal Academy, its location how much power they had, how strong the people that were still there when compared to the people that they just fought, and more.

And after that he got the information that he wanted, first he knew the location of the academy and unfortunately for him and them, it was just a few hundred km away from them, he knew that they had to change the location of their base after hearing that piece of information.

The second thing that he knew made him feel a little bit better, it was how the academy in Australia is only a branch of the real academy and that if they wanted reinforcement they would have to wait for a long time, it wouldn't be as long as the time that they the soldiers from Area 05 had to wait but it's still long, and that made him relaxes a little as at least for a little amount of time they were both in the same side, with no reinforcement or anything like that.

Another thing that he knew about was how the academy had many strong wizards and warriors, especially the Headmaster of the academy who was close to being one of the strongest people in that world and was worshiped by many all over Australia.

When he asked them about wizards and warriors he did got some valuable information from the wizards they were able to catch, first they understood that only specific people could become wizards or warriors, in other words only people with talent, they also knew that finding a person with talent to become a wizard was rarer then finding a person with talent to be a warrior, this alongside how people thought that wizards were generally stronger then warriors gave the wizards a high state in Area 12.

Anyway after he got those information and so much more he decided that they had to change their location, so everyone returned to the ships and the fleet set to the ocean again, going till they reached a place around a hundred km to the east where some drones and scout teams said they found a good natural piece of land where their base could be.

They made it there around four hours later as they were moving slowly and their destination wasn't far away.

After they landed their Schmidt asked for the soldiers to start making their camp their and to make an operating base there, of course the commander center was inside one of the destroyers so they didn't have to worry about that instead they only had to secure the base.

They even sent a few drones to look at the Area around them, and after doing that they were able to see that there was nothing in a reduce of a 30 km around them, which made them relax quite a bit.