This discussion did not take long for them to conclude… Aiden chose to go into the cave. Since they were still unsure about what the noble team scouts had seen, it would be best to have a relatively capable person take on the job.There also wasn't much to talk about, and Princess Eleanor seemed to have taken heed to Aiden's advice and was no longer disturbing them. She was watching everything they did, however, with Eloise right there with her.After picking out representatives from each group of people to act as scouts, they walked into the cave together. Aiden was part of this group of people, and he chose to trail slightly behind the group. As he walked into the cave, he moved to one side of the cave and let his hand brush along the walls as he walked.No one seemed to care much about what he did, as each of them had their eyes opened wide to try and pick out anything that was out of place in the cave. Anything that they could report to their groups.You could imagine the looks on
Aiden and the rest of the group watched the large crowd of arcanas in front of them turn into specks in the distance after a few minutes. As they watched, Princess Eleanor came up beside Aiden and asked in her normal voice, not that there was no need to disguise much."Now what?"Aiden was not the one who answered this question, rather it was Deirdre, and she did so by speaking to Eloise who stood quietly in her little space."Hi, Eloise", she greeted in her normal voice.She had not spoken since they were brought onto the island, and her voice made Princess Eleanor pause in her tracks while it made Eloise raise an eyebrow in surprise. Deirdre did not take off her disguise or do something that would prove her identity, she simply continued speaking."The plan is the cave", she started. "Hopefully we are right and make it through safely", she added. As a footnote to her explanation, she turned to Princess Eleanor and said the following, "Your Highness, if you would be patient, and help
Diane followed them and stepped through the mountain. It was at this point that they saw a sight that raised thoughts. For Aiden and Connor, this was a very familiar sight, one that they had seen and walked through before, however, it was wrong in the order that it appeared.For the rest of the group, their thoughts ran back to memories of Aiden and Connor explaining their experiences. They also figured that the order was not as it should be, despite fitting the description that was given.As for Princess Eleanor and Eloise, their thoughts were a lot different. Their only memories of anything similar to the sight were through Aiden's explanation of 'the plan'. They were very surprised by this sight, and the order meant nothing to them as they glanced at Aiden simultaneously.At the same time, Aiden and his group crossed the threshold, stepping out of the mountain into the grasslands with an overwhelming resemblance to the one that they knew in one way or the other. The crowd of arcana
At the gates of the third community that they came across on their way, Fraser and his men looked out of the window of the carriage. They had gone through two other communities, and now that they got to the third community, they found a trend.The farther they went, the smaller and less developed the communities were. This was also very understandable, given that the farther they went, the closer they came to the boundary.They had been traveling at a relatively slow speed. Fraser did not explain his reasoning for doing this and his men did not question this decision after he told them that They should leave this particular one to him… As they entered the community, they found that people came out of their houses or looked at them from the windows, curious as to who was passing by.With this kind of reaction to their passage in the last two communities, the men had formed a rough understanding of why they were doing this.Looking past every person that came out to see them, Fraser see
"We need to do something to avoid getting destroyed by any beast that shows up", Tristan of the house Grist, started the conversation with a massive conundrum.In his relatively husky voice, as well as his oversized frame, he looked and sounded like someone who shouldn't be taking part in this test. This made it so that his voice drew enough attention, such that they listened to him.They all agreed with what he said and responded with nods of agreement, shown to varying degrees. There were more than fifty party leaders there, including the nobles. So, Eugene pitched in a much more reasonable tone, "if you have any ideas, it would be very helpful to share them with us", he said.You could almost see the gears turn in their minds as they all considered ways that they could fix this issue. They knew the horror of the attacks well enough, having gone through one already.For a moment, every person there fell into a ruminative mode, and the silence persisted. But this was until a hand sho
"Move", Hadrian and Tristan shouted at the same time, speeding up the process of choosing sides… And as you would expect, only a few people were indecisive, bouncing back and forth between the choices laid out for them before ultimately choosing to sign away their freedom.No one had chosen to be an outlier, standing against everyone else to hold onto the idea of freedom. They had all decided that the rules were okay with them and that they would follow them even though, they did not know if the rules were reasonable or not.Oscar looked over the crowd and nodded, "since that is the case, the second rule is this: order is paramount, which means that, if any of the party leaders, as well as we nobles, give an instruction, you are to follow them immediately, and without question… Of course, if a party leader uses this power unjustly, or orders anything immoral of you, you can report to any of the nobles and we will see that the party leader is stripped of his authority.In addition to t
"The next test will be a test of your strength. No one cares what your bound artifacts or any others like that are, all we need to see is your base strength... So, what do you say to arm wrestling?", Eugene said to them.They were taken aback for a moment, but it was a relatively quick way to determine their base strength. The good part there was that activating their fighting techniques gave a boost to the body, even if they did not actively use the moves."You will be ranked based on the number of wins you get; this means that you wrestle with everyone. So, pick someone and begin", he gave the order.It was that simple and they got to it immediately. The atmosphere grew heavy as the force of fighting techniques came pouring out of more than half of the Arcanas who were there.This was understandable, because, fighting techniques were a commodity that could be bought with points in this test world.Same as advancement elemental potions, they cost a lot of points, but many managed to
"Three days?!", Raven started."Oh, don't get worked up, it was more like two and a half days", Princess Eleanor chipped in.Unfortunately, this did not change the reaction Raven had; in fact, her reaction got worse at that moment as she got frantic and almost lost her mind as she looked around."Calm down, Raven. Things are not as bad as you think. We are out of the grassland maze; of course, we had to wait for everyone to de-petrify before we continued…", Deirdre explained."So, what trial do we have now?", Raven asked and immediately got a response."Oh, the long rope bridge, strung across the chasm that has a tentacled beast living in it", Deirdre responded like that piece of information was of no consequence.Raven was silent as she stared off into space for a moment. When she got her mind back, she asked almost immediately… "Are we crossing now that I am awake?"A question to which Princess Eleanor answered in a snarky and sarcastic tone… "Hopefully". Her comment got a few gazes