Tales of The Mighty Dragonair

The shield took the form of a tortoise shell, with faint blue lightning dancing all over its surface. If someone looked closer, faint sparks of whiteness could be seen flickering from time to time as well.

This was the final form of such mighty defensive technique. As Arthur summoned it, he felt his body being frozen and only his eyes could move with some difficulty.

He was raising his head to see the incoming attack, as if he was defying heaven. A single dragon standing midaid, surrounded by a semi-transparent shield and looking up towards a gigantic green fire tornado that was swirling towards him.

The tornado changed from a mere arc of green fire into a massive cone shaped mighty arm that was coming from above and pressing hard over Arthur's head. The closer it got to Arthur, the narrower its end became.

Yet when it reached Arthur, it was still as big to cover up a distance of a hundred meters without a problem. Arthur stood there while watching the incoming attack while his mind kept delivering orders with Gege.

'Is Doaf finally in the outside world?'

This was the first thing he asked Gege about. After all, if the enemies did something unpredictable and intervened with his garden world and Gege's portal's ability to link the two worlds together, then things would really turn ugly.

'He is there, but he looks a bit weakened,' Gege paused before adding, 'it feels like he went through a hard battle to reach there. What's going on?'

Arthur understood that the green fire lurking around the sphere wasn't for show. Even if his top forces were exhausted, at least they ended up getting back to the real world.

'Listen, spread a dense network of eyes all around the world,' he ignored explaining everything to her while adding, 'anything abnormal appearing, they must instantly report it.'

'Like enemies?' Gege said in a light tone as if this was a joke.

'Yes, they'll come,' yet Arthur wasn't joking around, 'they are planning to attack the real world while we are trapped here. If they missed this chance then they don't deserve to be my sworn enemies.'

'Ok,' Gege felt Arthur wasn't in the mood to joke around. And how come he is? He was trapped inside, facing such calamity approaching, and his enemies were preparing to move their daggers at his precious empire.

Just thinking about the devastation they could do out there made him enraged. He would end up in a far worse state than if he fought grand armies one after another.

Losing his empire, or part of it would hinder his progress. It wasn't enough to stop him, but saying he would need another two years to rebuild everything wasn't an exaggeration.

He knew the real target of this attack wasn't at the cities, not his elites, but at his people. Any empire's real strength, any clan or even an academy's real strength didn't come from their top fighters and elites.

It came from the masses they ruled, the people who were following them. For example if his enemies managed to cause enough devastation and kill almost half of his citizens, if not more, then he would face a great setback at this moment.

His empire's greatest advantage, Arthur's greatest gain from this expedition in this world, was simply the large number of people following him.

His empire didn't start as an empty shell with no people to support it, a talent pool that would constantly pour talents and elites into all the fields and not only the army.

Losing that talent pool was detrimental to Arthur's progress, even considering it the most painful hit to him since coming to this world wouldn't be an exaggeration.

He wanted to shield his weak spot and not give his enemies the chance to prevail and succeed. Even if he lost many of his forces, he would still keep the backbone of his empire.

Or the other way around would be having a large empire with few people to support it. So he would have to go through all the trouble again and conquer a fresh world and amass new people from it.

It seemed easy, considering his past experience in this world, but who said his enemies would give him such a golden chance again?

Saying they would perform brutal massacres all over the worlds his forces would reach wouldn't be an overstatement.

If he was in their shoes, this would be the best way to hinder Arthur's progress with the maximum results. Without enough people, what was the use and value of an empire? Or a clan? Of any force in the universe?

People seemed useless, but when looking at things from this way, they were the hardest currency he had to fight desperately to obtain.

So even if he would suffer major losses in this fight, even if he had to struggle and even gain injuries sustaining that tornado, he was completely willing to do so in return for defending against his enemy's treacherous scheme.

'Make him recuperate fast, also anyone getting out from here will have to do the same,' Arthur said before hastily adding, 'as for the two necromancers, Tina, Sara, and the scorpion queen, scatter them all around the world to be ready to move at once and interrupt any incoming enemies.'

'Are you going to send more outside of this prison world?' Gege was surprised to hear his arrangement.

'Not only them, but also the armies stationed inside the garden world, also those originals sitting idle inside their world,' Arthur said before adding, 'every single strong one must be ready and prepared for a fight. I also want you to concentrate on that world, making sure you don't miss anything there. Also scatter around ready portals to use, make sure the movement of the armies is smooth and fast to react to anything.'

'So I shall start moving them,' Gege knew doing all that required some time and put a lot of pressure on her. Yet for her usual self, she didn't feel anything amiss and felt only excited.

'Not yet,' Arthur declined, 'if they wanted to play dirty with me, we shouldn't give them the impression that we are prepared for them. Let them come, I swear to turn that world into their graveyard!'

Arthur's tone was ruthless and cold that even gave the three souls inside his mind shivers down their spines. Arthur intended to not only passively defend, but also to retaliate.

That was the true nature of Arthur, not accepting to just defend against his enemy but aspiring at causing great losses to his foes in return.

That was also what created Arthur's legend and helped to sculpt his later on mythical fame.