The next few months just flew by. He researched everything he could about planar travel, while building eleven hideouts. Of these ten would become towers in the future. He choose the following cities based on his swallow understanding of geopolitics and a random list of the biggest cities:
New York City, Vancouver, San Paolo, Lagos (Nigeria), Cairo, London, Moscow, New Delhi, Hong Kong and Tokyo. The last hideout was to be in the Antarctic and meant to be his fallback line.
He proceeded the same way he did in Tokyo. Travelling per smoke and plane. Then he searched for a nice big lake or better reservoir and built his underwater base. All of them were now connected via the Teleportation Circle spell. Now he and his constructs could travel to each base instantly and without risk. Only a limited number of times per day and caster of course. He intended for the bases to be self sufficient, for that he had taken special care to befriend all the awoken plants and the creatures he created with True Polymorph. They were mostly lawful and good creatures, as he dared not unleash others onto this non-magic world.
Someday he would create his own Wizard Tower on top of them. The thought of having ten, one mile high, world spyres across earth seemed very cool to him. But as there would be next to no way of hiding them forever and he needed massive resources to build them, he choose to focus on travaling to magical worlds next.
And the most important part of that undertaking was to secure a way back home.
If he got lost and had his 9th level spell slot ready, he could always return with gate, but he'd rather not change into a drow matron every time. He had only two 9th level spells in his book, yet with True Polymorph he could turn into creatures which were able to cast other 9th level ones.
Such as the queen of dark elves. He had no intention of cross-dressing every time he wanted to go home, so he made preparations to craft tuning forks.
These items were attuned to the frequency of the world the originated from, whatever that meant.
Even after days of research he could only find vague instructions on how to craft them. Just taking a fork made of metal and calling it a day seemed to easy.
The next day he sneaked into the Hubei Provincial Museum and stood before the Sword of Goujian.
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How did Argentarius get in? Well a short teleportation to Hong Kong, comfortable flight via plane and then he just walked inside. He used vapour to fog the cameras up, switched the Sword with his own fake, the one made with the Transmuter's Stone and teleported into the Antarctic circle.
Deep inside one of the last glaciers on earth was his safest and most important hideout.
Hundreds of feet of ice would keep anything short of a large meteor away from him. He had already prepared everything else beforehand and stored the needed items inside his Demiplane.
After he turned into an Invisible Stalker, a wind elemental, he departed and flew across nearly one thousand miles across the arctic dessert. His goal was the magnetic south pole. It just seemed like a fitting place to craft the tuning fork. Nearly three days later he arrived at his destination, on the shoreline near Dumbont D'Urville Station just a few more hundred miles off the australian coast.
He cast Mirage Arcane, made a large cave and went inside. There he opened a door to one of his Demiplanes. Out came a number of his constructs who carried smithing tools and a mold.
"Ichi use True Polymorph and turn me into an adult red dragon." Every goon of his took a few steps back. A huge dragon appeared, which just about fit into the cave. Argentarius folded his wings and ducked his head a bit. His deep voice resonated inside the improvised workshop: "Take the Sword of Goujian and put it in the crucible." The blade had already been separated from any non-metal part and cleaned thoroughly. Sadly it had already started to tear and crumble. 2500 years took their toll. The crucible was placed on top of the furnace and everyone positioned themself behind Argentarius. Many people believe dragon breath comes, as the name implies, from the lungs. Yet as a matter of fact they are vomiting the liquid out of their mouth. After a good minute he decided that melting half the room should be enough. Licking his long fangs and dry-heaving did not help so he swore to never use the breath weapon again unless absolutely necessary. No wonder dragons always seemed so angry when you fought them. He carefully extended a single claw, slipped it in the handle of the crucible, turned around slowly and cast the molten bronze into the sand mold. Soon after he asked Ichi to dispel True Polymorph. Next was going to be the most experimental part about the hole thing. Argentarius had red that any wizard could make a magic item if he knew the appropriate spell and cast it often enough. How that was supposed to work, he had no idea. His constructs and him just stood in a circle around the cooling tuning forks and continued to cast the Plane Shift spell into the metal.
A few hours later San drew the short stick and was soon looked inside a Demiplane.
Four days later he petted an eager couatl which told him about the news story that a Japanese man had apparently been arrested inside the Hubei Provincial Museum but had managed to escape by unknown means. A few Sending spells later he new his plan had been a success. He now owned nine, if San found his way back ten, forks attuned to his own plane of existence.
Now all he needed was to come up with some way to get out of this plane.