Outside Atlantis, the Machina were at a complete loss for what to do! They had been searching across the waters of Riyad for the past few hours, and they hadn’t found anything other than monsters in the depths! The General in charge of the search had a frown on his face as he read through the report that his lieutenant had just given him, and he wondered if they could be missing something. The divers that they sent to the bottom of the ocean had dived for more than two hours, but they were still not able to reach the ocean floor, and they had to return to the surface after a while since they had run out of air to breathe.
’But how did Jason Marc reach the ocean floor? Did he use a skill that he picked up recently? This could be troublesome.’
The General’s eyes narrowed as he thought about this. He had already sent out a large group of soldiers to search through the entire kingdom of Aquinas, and he was certain that Jason Marc was not hiding anywhere here, and from what he heard about this world, there were no other islands or floating cities anywhere in this world where Jason could hide! This was literally the only place where the Aquina had lived, and if Jason wasn’t here, then that could only mean that he was either within the ocean or he had left this world. But the General had ruled out the possibility that Jason left this world because coming to this world was the entire reason why Jason had rebelled against the Machina and escaped a long time ago. Jason literally fought against armies to reach this world, so what were the chances that he would leave without finding what he was looking for?
The General frowned, and he leaned back in his seat and stared up at the sky. The yellow sun had risen over Riyad, and the world was now cast in a bright blue light that reflected off the ocean beautifully! The world of Riyad was undeniably beautiful, and the General couldn’t help the irritation that filled his heart as he remembered how the greedy rulers of the world parallel to Riyad had attacked them just to try and claim the Aqualith Stones for themselves!
’But if this was still the Period of Lawlessness, I’m sure that Radagan would have ended up the same because of their dragonstones, and I would’ve been on the frontline to kill anyone that stood in our way. Let’s hope we don’t end up having to fight any more wars for a long time.’
The General let out a small sigh, and he was about to sit back up and focus on trying to find Jason, but he frowned when something in the sky suddenly caught his attention.
The Kaleidoscope Rune in the sky that protected the city of Atlantis from outsiders wasn’t something that any mage could just sense since it was protected against all forms of physical and magical sensors, so the General hadn’t noticed the city at all. Instead, what the General was seeing was a small black dot that seemed to be floating in front of an empty region in the sky. The General’s right eye suddenly zoomed in mechanically so he could get a better look at what was up there, and the General was shocked when he saw a Machina with black mechanical parts floating in the sky! The Machina had his hands pressed against an invisible wall in front of him, and the General felt all his warning bells going off as he wondered what the hell was going on here!
"Lieutenant!"
The General shouted out authoritatively, and his Lieutenant quickly ran over from what she had been doing and saluted him respectfully! But the Lieutenant was surprised when she noticed that the General wasn’t looking at her, and the Lieutenant felt shock pass through her body as she looked up at where the General was staring, and she also saw the black dot in the sky! What in the world is that!? The black dot was more than a hundred miles away, so the Lieutenant knew that it had to be a real person! But what was it doing up there!?
"Get a small team ready to follow behind me. I’m going up to see what’s going on."
"What..? Sir, but what about the mission? The divers are preparing for another deep search in a different location. Should we stop them?"
The Lieutenant was surprised that the General was leaving the mission behind like this, and the General grunted before he told the Lieutenant to tell the other soldiers to get a rest! The General was only going up there to see what was going on, so he would be back very soon, and he didn’t want to risk any failures in this mission, so it would be best if they only went diving when he was around! The Lieutenant watched as the General activated his boosters and rocketed up into the sky, and the Lieutenant let out a small sigh before she turned and began passing on the General’s orders.
Up in the sky, the Shadow Machina was floating in front of the large shield of the Kaleidoscope rune! The Shadow Machina’s right eye was spinning at a rapid pace as it used its [Analysis] feature to try and find out if there were any imperfections with this rune. Even though there were no master runecrafters in the Machina army, the Machina had managed to install a certain feature that allowed them to analyse and replicate simple runes just from a glance! The feature was so good that they could predict the possible outcome of a rune without needing to study it! But the only downside to this feature was the fact that it only worked on very simple runes, and the only runes they could fully analyse were third-grade runes and lower! But even though the Shadow Machina couldn’t fully analyse the rune, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t pick out anything unnatural. Rune sequences all had the same basic formation, no matter how powerful or weak they were. Each rune was made of a Key and a Foundation that was held together using a connective pathway from Rune glyphs! And the history of the rune can be detected by seeing how long the foundation and key have been connected together! For a rune like this that should have existed for a very long time, there should be a very old connection between the key and the foundation and the glyphs should not have been activated anytime recently, but as the Shadow Machina analysed the rune, it could see that there was a very recent pulse in mana somewhere around the North Eastern area of the rune!
This singular fact told it that someone had manipulated this rune recently, and even though the rune looked stable right now, there had been a break in the rune’s structure that forced the rune to fix itself using a great amount of mana!
’The Grand General’s assumption was correct. I have to report this back to him.’
The Shadow Machina had this thought as it finished the Rune Analysis, and the Shadow Machina pulled away from the rune and was about to take off for the Dimensional Circle that would lead it back to the world of the Machina, but before it could leave, a voice suddenly echoed from behind it!
"Don’t move! I am General Baltro of the Fifth Infantry Force, and I have a few questions for you. Turn around slowly and deactivate your blasters!"
The Shadow Machina felt a pressure pressing down on it from behind, and it immediately stopped moving as it realised that the General behind it was getting ready to attack if it moved! General Baltro had his cannon blaster pointed at the Machina already, and he was frowning in irritation as he waited for the Machina to turn around and face him.