Chapter 54: The Mysterious Mr Azu

Chapter 54: Chapter 54: The Mysterious Mr Azu

The Extraordinary Division had entered the secret realm on the very first day, and four days and five nights had passed since then, yet they had barely established a foothold.

More than six hundred Foundation Establishment warriors had been sent into the Hunting Ground in successive groups, and nearly a third had either been killed or seriously injured. The price had been enormous.

Their only real accomplishment so far was securing a relatively safe region where subsequent teams could temporarily operate, and that was nowhere near enough.

Clearing a secret realm was never as simple as killing whatever monsters happened to be encountered. There were two major phases.

The first was exploration. Warriors had to map the environment, identify the various monsters and hostile creatures within the realm, determine their strengths, record available resources, and gradually uncover the structure of the entire secret realm.

Most importantly, they needed to locate the final monster responsible for maintaining the realm. Only after that could the second phase begin.

The clearing operation. Once the target had been identified, powerful warriors would gather for a concentrated assault.

Sometimes, rather than engaging the entire population of monsters, a specialized team would be sent directly to eliminate the final creature, because destroying the core creature would cause the entrance to the secret realm to disappear twelve hours later.

But before reaching that stage, there was an enormous amount of work to complete.

The exploration itself could be divided into several steps.

First came identifying the nearby monsters. Then came determining the actual boundaries of the secret realm.

After that, the expedition teams had to document every major danger and unusual phenomenon they encountered.

Finally, they needed to locate the ultimate creature, understand its habits, determine its strength, and establish where it could be found.

Valemont had not even finished the first step. They were still gathering basic information about the creatures roaming the area, and they had not even mapped the full territory.

Grant knew exactly how dangerous that was. The Hunting Ground would not remain sealed forever.

Once a secret realm appeared, there was usually only a limited window before the creatures within it could begin crossing into the human world.

The commonly accepted estimate was around one month, but that was only an approximation.

Some secret realms opened their gates to their inhabitants after barely ten days, while others could take more than a month, and in the worst cases the window could stretch close to two months.

Because nobody knew exactly how long a particular secret realm would remain contained, the authorities always planned around the shortest possible timeframe.

That was why the current progress was so worrying.

Even so, Grant was not completely pessimistic.

"The reporter isn’t entirely wrong," he muttered. "We’ll deal with the Hunting Ground eventually."

He knew something the public did not. The strongest warriors had not entered yet.

There were Foundation Establishment geniuses whose combat abilities far exceeded their cultivation realms, some who could even fight Spirit Platform warriors several minor realms above them.

A number of those people were still traveling toward Valemont, and others had already arrived but were waiting for the expedition teams to finish gathering enough intelligence.

Once the location of the final creature was discovered, those people would be the ones sent in for the killing operation.

"Captain," a voice suddenly interrupted his thoughts.

"Miss Mira Sinclair and Miss Evelyn Hart have arrived."

Grant immediately turned around, his eyes brightening.

The Extraordinary Division had not forgotten its previous failure. Mira possessed the Frost Phoenix bloodline, and after discovering what she was capable of, the organization had naturally wanted to recruit her.

Unfortunately, circumstances had prevented that from happening.

They had not given up. If anything, the Hunting Ground provided another opportunity.

Grant had been assigned as the expedition leader partly because the organization wanted him to establish a closer relationship with Mira.

If she could be persuaded to join the Extraordinary Division after graduation, it would be an enormous gain for them.

More importantly, however, he had been instructed to make sure nothing happened to her inside the secret realm.

Grant quickly walked over.

"Miss Mira, Miss Evelyn," he greeted them warmly.

"Once we enter, stay close to me. The Hunting Ground is much more dangerous than the information circulating outside suggests. Even a moment of carelessness could cost you your lives."

He continued without giving them much opportunity to respond.

"You’ve both studied the Monster Handbook, right? Good. There was some new information collected yesterday that you need to know before we go in."

Evelyn listened politely. Mira, however, looked somewhat distracted. Her thoughts kept returning to what Lydia had revealed the previous night.

Yes, Lydia had come out in the middle of the night. She had been exhausted. That was why she had slipped off like that which was weird.

But they hadn’t bothered to probe her why.

According to Lydia’s fragmented memories, the Hunting Ground had once belonged to her. It had been one of the hunting grounds she controlled back when she was an Empress.

There were exactly 108 known varieties of monsters inside, and Lydia had remembered the appearances and characteristics of ten particularly powerful monster species.

And above all of them stood the Monster King.

According to what little Lydia could recall, the Monster King was actually a cat, a tiny creature capable of manipulating wind and rain.

Its true strength was impossible to determine from Lydia’s incomplete memories, since she only remembered that the little beast had once been her pet.

Apparently she had often held it in her arms and casually played with it.

There was something even more important.

Somewhere inside the Hunting Ground was a hidden palace, and within that palace was a Soul Bell.

That bell supposedly controlled the souls of the ten great demons and the Monster King, and if Lydia could locate it, she would be able to control all of them simply by ringing it.

If her memories were accurate, then clearing the Hunting Ground might be far easier than anyone imagined.

They would not need to search blindly for the strongest creatures, and they would not even need to fight them one by one.

They simply needed to find the bell. It was practically like being given the answers before taking an examination.

Of course, neither Xavier nor Mira could completely verify Lydia’s memories, but there was no reason to dismiss them either.

They had decided to trust her this time. As for Lydia’s earlier claim that one of her souls had been hidden somewhere inside the Hunting Ground, she still could not remember exactly where, so that problem would have to wait.

They would search as they went.

Since Xavier was entering the secret realm today, he had deliberately withheld his chaotic energy from Lydia the previous night.

If they encountered something they could not handle, he could simply wake her and ask.

"Captain," another member of the Extraordinary Division said, approaching.

"We’re almost ready. Of the 120 Foundation Establishment warriors who registered yesterday, everyone has arrived except one. We’ve waited long enough, so I don’t think he’ll be coming."

The bald young man glanced toward the portal.

"Should we proceed?" he asked.

Grant looked over the assembled warriors before nodding.

"Let’s move," he said, then turned toward Mira and Evelyn once more. "Stay close."

With that reminder, he led the group toward the enormous spatial gateway.

One after another, the Foundation Establishment warriors entered the shimmering portal, and within a few minutes the entire expedition team had disappeared.

The entrance fell quiet again.

Several minutes later, a young man casually approached from a distance.

He looked completely ordinary, with nothing particularly striking about his appearance, and certainly nothing about him suggested that he was a powerful martial artist.

As he reached the entrance, one of the guards immediately stepped forward.

"Stop," the guard barked, raising an arm.

"This area is restricted. Only registered expedition members are permitted to enter."

The entrance was heavily guarded for good reason. Nobody wanted an unregistered person wandering into the Hunting Ground and disappearing without a trace, nor could the authorities allow reckless individuals to sneak inside and create additional problems.

Every person entering the secret realm had to provide their basic information and be recorded.

The guard looked at the newcomer.

"Name?" he demanded.

The young man smiled.

"My name is Azu," he said, pausing briefly before adding casually, "You can just call me that."

The guard frowned.

"Were you registered for today’s expedition?"

"Yes," the young man nodded. "I registered yesterday. Something delayed me this morning, so I’m a little late."

He spoke calmly, as though arriving late to a dangerous secret realm was nothing unusual. The guard checked the registration records, and a moment later he stepped aside.

The young man walked toward the shimmering portal. No one noticed the faint smile beneath his mask.

The expedition had already begun, and now Azu was finally entering the Hunting Ground.