Over the next week Shaun did little more than travel, claim positions and continue to finish building out the changes he wanted to make to his skill. By this point he had mapped out what he was told was a majority of their side of the event.

They had found 12 fortress on their side, claiming 4 of them himself and leaving the rest for others to claim. The lay out was simple in terms of how the positions were structured. The compound lay at the very back, then the river separated the compound from the fortresses. The fortresses were set in a pyramid shape, 5 of the inner fortress circled around closest to the river, the first one he found was the only one he claimed. Further out there was 4 more central fortress of which he had claimed another one before moving on. Lastly there were the 3 outer fortress, he had claimed two of these so far, the third he had left for Eric and his own team to claim as he was happy with taking a third of these fortress and leaving the rest.

This is where he was now, sitting in the now completed outer fortress, the most central of the three and preparing to move on as soon as others arrived to take over its protection. After finding the first few inner fortress things moved very quickly. The compound had been practically emptied of people, all but those who had volunteered to stay behind and act as a central control unit.

Everyone who wanted to take a more active role in the fighting though all moved out towards the inner fortress, most of those were now actively moving towards the central fortress. Once the central fortress were locked down they would then move on to the outer fortress and begin preparing to move further again.

It was agreed that no one would move further out then the outer fortress until they knew where they needed to go and what was beyond, he had taken it upon himself to map out the area ahead and see what exactly they were up against.

This was the easy part of the planning though. Over the last week he had been forced into planning meetings around what to do with the compound points, as these could be spent to upgrade fortress defences. Those who were in any kind of leadership position were at odds with what to do. Some wanted to focus a majority of the points on making their compound impenetrable, the others wanted to focus on the outer fortresses in the hopes that the Pantheon wouldn’t be able to push through to even get to the compound if it ever came to it.

In these meetings he contributed very little, when he was first asked he made his opinion known, defend the compound. The worst case scenario was that they were fully pushed back, that meant that the Pantheon would be bunched up around the compound and he would let loose everything he had to kill as many as he could. The more time they had before the compound was taken the better.

If they invested everything they had in the outer fortress they would need to split it by across three places, he would only be able to defend one of them and then they would have a clear shot at claiming everything else with little stopping them.

Even at his speed there was no way he could easily move between the fortresses in time to save them and until they accumulated enough points to actually spread it around he was of the opinion of defending against a worst possible scenario. When the meeting ended with no clear decision he was over the conversation and now attended for the least amount of time possible.

There was still time to make any upgrades to the fortresses that they wanted and now that every strategic position was claimed they had a good idea of how many points they had to spend, until the fighting truly started and points were being gained from killing the opposing side and claiming their fortresses, what they had was all they could spend.

Over the past week he had also gotten to a point where there was nothing more he could do with changing the stone skin skill, he had tested and retested it and it now worked exactly how he wanted it to. He had fixed the issue with being turned to a statue by completely changing the threads that wound through his body, a task that took many hours even in the domain. Doing this in person would similarly take a lot of time and patience where no one could disturb him.

After he had finished the skill changes he stored it for when he was ready and moved on to training with the Dragon Core again, although as he wasn’t fully alone like he had been in the dungeon he had to be careful to also keep his senses out to ensure he would pick up on anyone that got close to him.

After meditating on the Dragon Core for several hours he felt a large group of people enter the outer edge of the fortress he had been sitting in. He put away the dragon core immediately, and went to meet them so he could hand off his own responsibility of the place and move on. The group was made up of about 400 people, half were human and half were elf. He didn’t bother with any real greeting and just announced he was off and that it was there problem now.

He flew out of the fortress quickly, moving further out and away from his own side at a decent speed, keeping his eyes and skill open and assessing everything around him. Much sooner than he thought, he saw the terrain change from the cleared brown ground to a dark black that spread out in a line across the event.

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The black ground wasn’t wide, by his estimates it was only a few hundred metres, but to anyone that saw it, it was clear that this was the line in the sand that split the two opposing sides. He had reached this point quickly after leaving the fortress, no more than 30 minutes of flying. At a quick walk it would take maybe 2 hours tops.

He didn’t immediately cross the line, instead he pushed his senses out across it to see if there was anything that would trigger if he did decide to cross. After spending an extra 30 minutes testing the area with everything he could think of, he found nothing but a change in colour. It was as simple as it looked, just simply a physical line showing the halfway point between the two compounds.

What made him continue to hesitate was that just because he couldn’t see or feel anything that didn’t mean a notification wouldn’t be sent to everyone that he had crossed into enemy territory. The Pantheon may be notified if he did move across it, or maybe only his side would. Nothing may happen at all, but if it did he needed to make sure that everyone was ready.

Using his bracelet he went through the communication option and went into the group chat that contained all the leaders of his side so that he could pop in a message informing everyone what he was about to do.

Shaun Clermont: Have found the point that separates our side from theirs. About to cross, may send notifications. Be ready.

The moment he sent the message he got a flood of replies which he just didn’t bother checking, he got a few call attempts which he also ignored. He wasn’t asking for permission, just giving them a heads up.

Now that he had done the right thing and given them the update he slowly started to walk along the ground, wanting to emulate what others would as they couldn’t fly. He stopped for a moment when he had taken his first step into the black ground but when nothing happened he continued on at a casual pace. It took all of a minute for him to cross the distance, and when the only thing left to do was take his first steps into enemy territory he gave him self a second to prepare himself and then took the step forward.

For entering enemy territory 200 Event points awarded.

For being the first person to cross into enemy territory 2,000 Event points awarded.

For entering into enemy territory alone 1,000 Event points awarded.

The points were pretty decent, so far he had earnt 1,000 from the bridge, 2,000 form the inner fortress, then 3,000 from the central and two lots of 4,000 from the outer. Just being the first person to cross into enemy lines alone gained him the equivalent of claiming a position.

Wanting to make sure that no one else got a notification he messaged back in the group chat and when everyone confirmed that there was no notification he closed it down and made his way back up into the air. He went high enough that he could still use his echo skill to scope out the surrounding area but didn’t stay too low as he didn’t want anyone to catch him here.

Now that he had crossed the border with no issues he wanted to test a theory. He suspected, but couldn’t be sure, that the Pantheon’s side was identical to their own. It made sense that it was as it would put them on equal footing, outside of the people that chose each side. The only way to confirm this was to go around and check if the fortresses on this side were the same as the ones on his side.

Moving towards where he suspected the closest fortress would be was easy enough, it didn’t take long for him to find the tell tale sign of the distortion that signified that there was a position that could be claimed.

He was tempted to claim it, as no one from the Pantheon had yet to do so, but if he did it wasn’t like he would be able to keep it and that would just hand them the opportunity to be the first to take over an already claimed position. His best bet was to scout out and see how much they had claimed, find where ethe closest fortress was that they had claimed and then take it out from underneath if possible.

Considering that this fortress was unclaimed, his best bet was to move in closer to one of their central fortress and see what was happening there. If he was lucky he would find some people to fight along the way, if not he had no issues with causing as much destruction as he could when he found a fortress to attack.

He was only about halfway to the closest central fortress when he came to a stop, in the distance he found a group of people moving off in the distance. The group had to have been made up of around over 2,000 people, all moving somewhat quickly and in a decently tight group. From what he could see they were all human, but until he got in closer he wouldn’t be able to see how strong they were.

Rather than move directly towards them he decided to swing around form the back. He now moved much higher in the air, having completely shifted so as not to be seen, and didn’t solidify again until he was directly behind the group. No one noticed him appear although he suspected that some of them felt something off when he appeared, they looked back but failed to spot him as an intruder in their midst.

Now that he was here he could get a good feel for everyone’s strength. For the most part they were all in the low range of E grade with only a handful reaching the middle. Even with over 2,000 of them vs only him he felt pretty good about his odds. He just wasn’t sure how he wanted to approach it yet, part of him wanted to just start killing, but they had information that could prove useful. For that though he didn’t need all of them, a handful at most.

With a smile he started summoning, 13 of his creatures at once. He used a combination of fire, and lightning, wanting to focus on attack rather than defence. He held back the final step of his skill until he had every single one of his summons at the point where it would take only a thought and they would appear.

He pulled out both of his blades and when he was ready to attack he finished his summons and all around him his team appeared.

“Who would like to live?” He didn’t need to yell to make sure everyone heard him, he used the air to magnify his voice. His one line had the desired effect and every single one of the people he had been following turned to him with weapons drawn. He was finally going to be able to fight. This would be the first battle of many and it was going to be a slaughter.