Author's Note: Super sorry for the late update. It's been a hectic past few couple of days and I just haven't had much time to write and I had like the worst writer's block when I tried. Thank you all for being patient and I hope you enjoy this chapter. I'll post the next one within the next two days. I'm gonna try and make up for the lost time. Thanks for reading!

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“Everyone wake up! Kualin heard something!”

I woke up to the noise of what sounded like Kyra in distress. My eyes shot open and I instantly attempted to get up from the ground and grab my machete which was only a foot away from me.

I pushed off the ground to get to my feet, but fell back down in a heap.

‘Something’s got my legs!’ I started to freak out while my legs thrashed around. I looked down to see what had gotten a hold of me and—

‘Damn sleeping bag. I was about ready to chop at my own legs to free myself…’

I looked around and saw everyone else had already gotten up off the ground, but they were all curiously looking at something from the direction we’d come in.

I disentangled myself from my sleeping bag, grabbed my machete, and moved over towards everyone else to look down the direction we’d come from.

After about ten seconds of silence, Izzy ask in a slightly disgruntled tone, “Whatever it is, I’m not seeing it. Forget about even trying to hear it.”

Kualin’s face looked unnaturally calm as he pointed off down the river and said, “Can’t you guys hear that? It’s like noise central. Something’s coming this way. I know it.” He looked pretty certain about his claim.

“So we should probably leave…no telling what that is.” Jessica suggested to the group and we all stood there for a second more to listen…heard nothing and moved to gather our things.

By the time we all had our packs on, Kualin said, “I can’t hear it anymore, but I’m sure it’s coming this way…”

“We should probably head to the hills then. More cover.” Akito suggested to the group. Everyone looked around and only saw river, forest and hills nearby. In the distance, a large mountain range could be seen in the direction we’d been moving in, but there was no way we were going to get there before whatever was behind us would reach us if they were as close as Kualin claimed.

Everyone came to the same conclusion and began to move towards the nearest hill that looked large enough to hide us all. As we moved over to the hill, I just started to hear a faint rumble. It started out as something I could hardly make out, but soon enough it was so loud that I mistook the noise for thunder and looked upwards only to find that the sky was clear.

‘This must be what Kualin heard earlier unless this floor can have thunder without lightning…which I wouldn’t be too surprised about to be honest, but how could he have heard it so clearly when none of us could?’ There was no time to answer my own question as we scrambled up and over the hill not wanting to be seen by whatever was coming.

Once we reached the top, we all pressed down flat against the ground to get low enough to hide at a moment’s notice. Once we were situated, we all peeked over the top of the hill to get a good view of the land separating us from the river. It was flatter land compared to the hills behind us and the ground below us began to slightly quiver as the thunderous cacophony of sound came closer.

We waited there for a minute before a shape came into view on the horizon from where we’d walked from—actually, a great number of shapes. I couldn’t quite make it out perfectly, but it looked like a large group of animals or maybe even monsters and they seemed to shine in the early morning glow of the purple sun. As they got closer, I could see that the beasts appeared to be reptilian in nature and were all at least my height. They moved on all fours and their tough claws carved out the rubbery grass beneath them as they covered ground with incredible speed. The beasts were finally close enough to fully analyze and I found that they looked like horses…if horses had brown scales covering their entire bodies. They looked powerfully built and even though I’d never seen anything like these beasts before, my attention quickly turned to what was riding atop the beasts.

They looked humanoid in shape, but even from this distance I could tell that they weren’t anything like us. Their bodies were covered in scales like their mounts, but ranged a variety of colors and they were all huge. An average height for them must have been seven or eight feet, but none of them were hulking big like Akito; these beast riders were all lean and although I couldn’t see any muscles under their scales, I was sure that they were there and immensely powerful. I could see from the hill that there was a certain order to their riding pattern and that it was decided by scale color.

I saw hundreds upon hundreds of these riders come closer to where we’d slept, but three white-scaled figures rode in front and appeared to be the leaders of the group. I looked down at the length of the column of riders traversing the riverside and was astonished that they had not yet stopped appearing from the horizon.

‘That’s a lot of scaled things,’ I silently thought.

The white-scaled figures were followed closely by at least a thousand red-scaled figures and behind even those red-scaled figures were yellow-scaled people that numbered at least five times the amount of the red-scaled figures.

“Aye, shouldn’t we start running through the hills?” Kualin asked in a low whisper.

As soon as the words left his mouth, the middle white-scaled figure lifted a fist and stopped his mount from moving. As soon as he raised his hands, everyone in the group came to a halt and the thundering noise had disappeared leaving only silence in its wake.

‘There’s no way in hell those things heard Kualin…’ I wished and hoped that that wasn’t the case, but my muscles were tensed, ready to start running away, but how much distance could I really cover until I was caught? There was only an expanse of grassy hills behind us. There was nowhere to go.

So instead of doing anything rash, I stayed prone on the ground and hoped that we hadn’t drawn this white-scaled thing’s attention.

Unfortunately, the white-scaled figure’s hand twitched in our direction and a group of five red-scaled riders instantly began to ride in our direction. I saw the entire army of scaled figures turn their heads in our direction and while their body was scaled and horns could be seen sticking out of places like their foreheads, kneecaps, and elbows their faces were covered by a glossy oval-shaped visor and I couldn’t see anything behind them.

I was shocked as the five riders came closer to our position as if they’d known exactly where we were the entire time. My mind went in to hyper drive to figure out what to do in this situation. There was no way we could run. No way to fight this army of unknown scaled people. We could only—

“Everyone, weapons down. Get up slowly with your hands up and for the love of God show that we’re not a threat.” I said as I got up to my feet and left my machete on the ground.

As I got my hands up over my head, everyone else was slowly getting up with puzzled and scared looks on their faces. Just as unsure as I was as to how they’d found us.

‘It must’ve been Kualin talking.’ I thought to myself. I held no anger over the matter. I would have spoken too if I’d had anything to say about the army of scaled figures in front of us and I’d have never thought they could hear us from this distance.

“How could we ever be a threat to that?” Milik asked under his breath.

In less than a couple seconds, we were all standing with our hands over our heads. The machete and compact axe lay on the ground at our feet and I assumed Akito kept his brass knuckles in his pocket since it was small enough to conceal without an issue.

The riders at this point were only a couple tens of yards away from us and I prayed that whatever these things were that they’d be the type to ask questions rather than shoot first. Then again, there may be a language barrier problem, so we’d probably end up getting screwed over anyways. This was really not a good situation. I only even hoped for them to speak first because normally when a species travels in armies, they are intellectual enough to have a language, gather information, build things, have rules, etc.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The red-scaled riders were about ten yards away from us at this point and I could barely catch their movements as they knocked on their mounts and a rectangular shaped object broke out of the scales of the beasts. The riders caught the objects and with a flick of their wrists, they unfolded from their original shape to form a spear as long and red as their bodies. The spears looked to be a mixture of high technology and natural metals. As for what metal, I’d no idea. It almost looked as if it was made out of the same material as their scales.

The riders encircled the group with spears heavily aimed at us and forced us into a tighter group. I ended up in front of everyone as the rest of the guys tried to place themselves in front of the girls in our group. The riders stopped moving and they formed a pentagon around us with a rider not five yards away in front of me and he held his spear at the ready. Then it spoke.

“Which one of you are the leader? Is it you?” The voice came out more like a male human than I’d have preferred since the thing in front of me was a scaled humanoid thing, but on the bright side there was no language barrier, but on the bad side he now had his spear pointed right in front of my face.

I nervously laughed to try and defuse the tension. “Uh, leader? No. I’m just the guy who walks in front…” I trailed off and tried to look past the oval-shaped visor on his face with no luck.

The man…? Seemed puzzled and then spoke again in no less of a threatening tone. “Then you, the guy who walks in front, did you and your people see the cause of the bright light from the south?” He looked imposing enough that I feared he’d spear me through the face if I gave the wrong answer, so I decided to ask a question instead of answering wrongly.

“Okay, wait. That’s not my name and how come you didn’t find the cause of the light where it happened…?” I warily asked. Depending on if he answered me in a good or bad way would define my answers because I’d lie my ass off without a care in the world to keep myself and my group alive.

“We are hunting those who came from the light. They are a catalyst to the destruction of our world and we must destroy them before they become too strong.” He answered me with an irritated tone and I figured he was just trying to nicely gather information on anything we’d seen, but how could we not have been who he was looking for since we looked so different?

I thought back to the blinding light I’d experienced from walking up the stairs and arriving in the second floor’s world and came to the conclusion that the cause of the light must have been us. That and the fact that the army came from the direction we’d walked from no sooner than a day since we’d been here. Then I decided that I needed to ask more questions to understand the situation.

“How is whoever came from the light a catalyst to the destruction of our world?” I was honestly curious now as to why he hadn’t tried to kill us all just based off of how different we looked.

Once I asked this question I felt the tension in the scaled warriors rise and the one in front of me hefted his spear as if he would throw it through my face if I made any odd movements.

He spoke once more in a clearly hostile voice. “There are no kingdoms which do not know what danger the people of the light bring. Where are you from?” The edge in his voice cut like a blade and I started to panic a little.

Before I could answer, I heard the sound of another mount approaching us and feared a little more for our lives once I realized it was one of the white-scaled people that had been leading the army. This one rode up right next to the one that was interrogating me and put a scaled hand on the point of his spear and lightly pushed it down. A female voice broke the silence.

“If you threaten them with such things, then they are more likely to just say anything they think you want to hear. And we must teach it better in our schools that the light does not only bring enemies. It has only happened once before.” The white-scaled woman, although I couldn’t see any distinguishing features besides her voice, turned her head to look at each warrior and with a flick of the wrist and a flash of red light, the spears were gone as quickly as they’d come out.

“Yes, Elder Frey.” The riders clapped their right fists over their chests.

“Now…” Her attention turned towards our group once more and I looked straight at her oval-shaped visor at where I assumed her eyes would be. “Where are you from and do you know anything about the light?” She sounded a lot gentler than the red-scaled warrior and I felt like telling the truth a lot more than I had earlier.

“We came from the light,” I announced without a hint of hesitation and continued to speak. “But we are not a threat to you or your people.” I gestured to my group of friends. “We are on…a mission of sorts to save our people.” I paused for a moment and asked, “He said something about the light happening before us. Can you tell us more about that?”

The white-scaled figure, Elder Frey, didn’t respond for a moment and then the white scales around her body seemed to sink into pale white skin and the oval-shaped visor turned into a liquid-like substance and gathered into a mark on the middle of a human forehead. The woman in front of us looked to be middle age, but was still extremely fit and nice on the eyes. She had short jet black hair that reached her shoulders and only a couple gray hairs could be seen. Her face looked a little weathered, but other than that she was quite the sight to behold. The only real distinguishing mark from regular people was that peculiar circular white mark on her forehead and white-colored eyes that didn’t shine with blindness as I’d expect from outside the tower. Rather her eyes shone with strength, intelligence, and an age beyond her years.

‘I guess that explains why it wasn’t so odd that we looked completely different from the red-scaled riders.’ I wasn’t as frightened anymore now that I knew these scaled figure were actually people…if a different species of people and the tension in my group died down as they all came to the same conclusion.

Elder Frey spoke once more, “If you are the source of light, then we have found what we were looking for. And if you are no threat to my people then come with us to our capital so that the situation may be better explained to you. Maybe my people would be able to help in your mission to help your people.” Elder Frey did not show any uncertainty and so I looked at everyone else in the group.

I’m sure they all had the same thoughts as me. A capital of an intelligent race of people that looked to be hostile towards the first bright light which was clearly the appearance of our opponents who must have gotten here before us and they’d pissed these people off. I can live with the whole the enemy of my enemy is my friend thing.

After I got a nod of acceptance from everyone in the group, I turned back to Elder Frey and said, “We don’t have any problem with accompanying you to your capital. We all want answers and any assistance you could provide us with would be greatly appreciated. I’m Alex and these are my friends: Akito, Izzy, Jessica, Kualin, Kyra, Milik, and Pixie.”

Elder Frey nodded upon the introductions and said, “I am Diane Frey, the four hundred and thirty-fourth elder of Kaiser Kingdom. Let us head back towards the capital. We should be there by nightfall.”

When she finished speaking, the white scales and oval-shaped visor covered her body and face and she turned her mount around to head back to the army of scaled people. Milik and I looked at each other, picked up our weapons and put them in our packs. Once we were ready, we set off to walk back towards the army of scaled people with the five red-scaled riders escorting us.