Chapter 2361: Drik"s Frustration

Drik still kept on eye on Sam"s side.

All he learned was that Rashma and Hari are leading the skeletal creatures. However, the concealment formation made by Sam made them invisible. The Drik team members always lost the track and they didn"t dare to be aggressive in their pursuits.

They knew better than to out themselves directly. However, Drik kept on pushing them to get more details. But even when his team tried to be a bit more aggressive, they are unable to locate Sam and his team.

The only information that he managed to get was the creatures that Sam and his team lured out. He noticed that every turn, they lured a different creature. Even if a skeletal creature is close, they didn"t lure it out if they had already done it before.

He also noticed that they are luring the creatures out at approximately forty minute intervals. That came as a surprise.

He called his formation team and asked them to see if they can investigate any of Sam"s concealment formations and locate them. He also wanted to know or at least guess what Sam and his team are doing.

After all, there are only more than ten members on Sam"s team, but they are doing a lot more from the looks of it, compared to his much larger team.

Of course, that was also fruitless.

As if that is not enough, Drik faced the next challenge which made his situation a hundred times worse.

"Drik, the scouting team has come back. You need to take a look."

Drik who was busy suppressing one of the newly captured skeletons was called by one of his team members.

He went to meet the scout team. Since he saw Sam"s team lure out certain creatures, he wanted to take a look at them. So, he told them the scout team to locate them. He wanted to understand them.

However, from the state of the current scout team, he knew he made a bad judgement call here.

The scout team has ten people who are all skilled in shadow element or wind element. They are fast and has excellent stealth skills. However, right now, most of them lost their limbs, badly battered, faces and chests caved in with dozens of bones broken.

Only the leader of the scout team had fewer injuries, maybe because of his added prowess compared to the rest.

"What the h.e.l.l happened to you guys?" He asked

"We are about to get surrounded. All types of skeletal creatures are coming towards our hide out from all the different directions. I don"t know why, or how they are doing it. But slowly and steadily they are moving in this direction.

We tried to see if there is any anomaly, but we cannot identify anything.

In the process, we got mauled by more than a dozen black skeletons. We need to figure out a way out or change our location. Or we should make sure that our formation is completely air tight without any breaks in between.

If there is even a small gap and they are attracted by even one of us, we won"t have a chance to break out. All the routes will be sealed and we will be facing certain death."

Drik started dripping with sweat. He shivered in the spot and asked in a shaky voice.

"How long do you reckon it will take for then to surround us completely?"

"A few hours."

Drik heaved a sigh.

"That means we still have some time. The a.n.a.lysis is showing some promise, if we try to move the skeletons now, we will lose all the progress." Drik thought out loud.

"Still, don"t you think staying alive takes precedence?" The scout team leader disagreed directly.

The discussion went on and on.

"Maybe we can create another hideout outside of the range. We can maybe use a s.p.a.ce gate to that location and escape if the emergency arises?"

That was the final idea the scout team leader could think of.

"But we need to delegate some of our formation team to that. However, they are needed in capture of black skeletons."

"Drik, you need to understand. If we don"t have a way out and we don"t have results by the time we are surrounded, then we are f.u.c.king done for. We will be buried in this wasteland. Do you understand?"

Drik pursed his lips and nodded his head.

"I will do as you said. Just scout for a location then. Of course, focus on your recovery first."

The scout team leader did as he was told. The healers a.s.sisted them to accelerate the recovery speed. After an hour or so, a much smaller scouting party was a.s.sembled with the task of finding a new hide out spot.

The only obstacle for this task was the stream of skeletons approaching in their direction. That also made the task a tad bit easier in a different aspect.

When spent an hour sneaking past these skeletons, they were greeted by a relatively free s.p.a.ce of land that they could use for a hide out. It didn"t take long to find a spot that has some natural advantage within a valley surrounded by cliffs on either side.

They left behind a marker just like the formation team has told and activated it.

The formation master back at the hideout was alerted by the activation of the marker and used it to transfer himself out of the hide out and to the new spot.

He then scouted the place for the formation positioning. After making sure that it is fine, he created a smaller s.p.a.ce gate to bring out some of the formation team members. The formation team members together, worked on two things. A bigger s.p.a.ce gate that could transfer all of their team members and a new hide out.

Both will take a relatively longer time.

Drik kept an eye on the skeleton"s activities while he tried to accelerate their research results.

He wanted to find why Sam is trying to lure different kinds of skeletons and also what he wanted to do with them.

Even when his own team tried to destroy one of the skeletons, he didn"t manage to gain any insight. Because no matter how much he tried, the skeleton kept on regenerating again. It did stop becoming stronger at one point, but it become more intelligent with every break.

It stopped going after the person with most kills and focused on whoever is nearest, that only made it a much worse opponent.

After repeated failures over three to four hours, he sighed and just captured that skeleton.

He became frustration beyond his imagination and didn"t even know what to do going

further.

He then thought of how confident Sam has been and how stealthy he has been all this while. This made him have second thoughts. But the price Sam asked for... it is indeed way too high.

"That greedy b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

He muttered under his breath.

...

More time has pa.s.sed and Sam is almost done with the checklist. Once he is done, he can move

to the next phase of the plan. The next step is not related to getting out of this place. It

deviates from that a little bit.

Before that he has to be done with the checklist though.

He only has the tree-man left.

He kept it for the last because of the unique nature and also the restrictive and calculated

movements of the creature.

The rest of creatures are also mostly dedicated to certain areas, maintaining invisible territories. But if they are forcefully transported and lured out, they did move aroud. However, the tree-men are different. With the growth of the tree-men, the dead forest expanded bit by bit and no matter what tactics they used, they didn"t manage to lure a tree- man out of it. If they go ahead and take a risk with it in the dead forest, then they would have to face the wrath of all the creatures.

So, they need to lay down a trap within the region and that needs them to take their sweet

time to achieve.

He had to shift the team there.

In this process, the scouts of Drik"s team saw them move and set up near the dead forest. At

the same time, someone from Drik"s team used more than two brain cells to figure out

something.

"Drik, I think Sam might have identified the crux of the whole pocket dimension. After collecting all the information from our scouts, I managed to list out every possible creature that existed in the pocket dimension and matched them with the creatures that Sam"s team

lured out.

They managed to lure out everything. The only thing left is the tree-man and from what I heard, they moved to the dead forest now. This pattern might not seem like much, but I am sure there is something here.

Do you think, capturing all these creatures is the key to moving out of here?"