The Insider System

Chapter 286: Ideas

"Get on my back, we were faster when I was carrying you." They had been running for almost an hour so the flaws of him trying to keep up with the Temple Head while looking at the arrow were obvious. He kept falling behind making the Temple Head have to slow down to let him catch back up.

As they stopped to let him get onto her back Lake said. "We're definitely heading towards the same place as last time right?" The Temple Head nodded and Lake asked. "Have you ever been to the Coliseum before?" Lake knew he was asking her if she had ever gone to watch two slaves fight to the death but he wanted to know if she knew where they were going.

"I've been but it was a long time ago and I wasn't there to watch a show, I was looking for someone I was told liked to watch the fights."

"So could you take us there if we somehow lost the lead on Dawn?" Lake was worried that as soon as they got Dawn to where the Coliseum was he would be unable to track her anymore and while there were other settings he could probably set Detector to to find them as long as the Coliseum wasn't hidden in some way it would be a lot easier if the Temple Head already knew how to get there.

"The Coliseum isn't all in one place; they have multiple buildings like any other organization. I could only bring us to one of the better known arenas they have near the Fire Domain."

"In that Case we should catch up to Dawn before they have a chance to hide her." This had already been their goal but it was still worth saying so the Temple Head knew he was fine with her going as fast as she could the whole time without slowing down for his sake.

Speeding in the direction the arrow had pointed, Lake could tell they had a good amount of time before whoever had taken Dawn got to where they were going by where they were heading at the moment. They were slowly having to turn to the left as they ran which would cause them to eventually go the same way they had when rescuing Tiff.

"Do you think we should try to predict where they are heading and just run that way instead of constantly turning slightly?" Going in a straight line was always faster than a curved path so if they predicted where they would be correctly they would catch them faster so he felt it was worth a try.

"It's impossible to guess an interception when you don't know the distance between you and your target." This was true but he felt like they could guess within reason but with him being the one telling the Temple Head where to go he didn't need her to be on board with his plan for it to be what they did.

He didn't feel like he needed to lie though so he said. "I'm just going to tell you to turn slightly more than necessary from now on. It should make us slightly faster without needing us to know how far we're going." When the Temple Head didn't say anything Lake took it as she was leaving it up to him so the next time the arrow pointed where they needed to go Lake pointed in a slightly different direction.

If he was right this would be where they would be heading after a few more turns if they were to keep turning whenever the arrow lit up. Sadly there was no way to know if this would actually help them or not without knowing how long it would have taken originally.

There was also a chance the person who had Dawn would have some type of skill that would cause them to move differently as they got closer and that would completely destroy this method and they would have to go back to the old method of going wherever the arrow pointed.

...

"Rigbis has called a meeting about the thing that trapped our guys. It looks like we finally get to know more about it." Hearing Keel say he had to go to a meeting with the commander Donny turned towards the group of people he had been making run drills and said. "We're done. Good work."

Grabbing a piece of cloth Donny quickly cleaned his hands and followed Keel out of the room their team had been given to train. "Did he say anything about it yet or were you told about the meeting by someone else." Donny knew it was kind of ridiculous to try and get information now when the meeting was going to be starting almost as soon as they got there but he really wanted to know what that thing was doing to the five people who had been trapped.

"He told me nothing as of yet but it's probably going to be bad or at least odd if he's calling a meeting with all the people in command." Trying to think what Rigbis might say that would make him want to keep this meeting private Donny had more than one idea of what the thing could have been doing that wouldn't be good to tell everyone about.

He knew that in the past there had been times people panicked so bad that they ended up turning on each other when they hadn't been in any actual danger and it usually happened in places like a fortress that was completely cut off from anyone else on their side like they were now.

As they walked into the command room Donny looked at all the faces of the people that were always next to Rigbis to see if he could tell how bad the news was going to be. Most of them had the hardened faces that were normal for people like them but Donny saw a few of them had various negative looks on their faces.

None of them looked scared though, just unhappy, so he was hopeful that the news wasn't going to be that they wouldn't be alive when the barrier finally came down. "Thank you all for gathering so quickly. As you all know team two found something none of us had ever seen before on their first outing that resulted in the loss of five of our people."

Hearing Rigbis start to Talk as soon as they walked in Donny guessed they were the last people to get there. He was happy that he wouldn't have to wait but he felt weird that he and Keel were still moving towards an open spot. "We sent three of our scouts out a few hours ago and I just wanted to let you all know that the thing had disappeared."

Donny wanted to ask about the five people that had been trapped but Rigbis would most likely say everything that they needed to know so he didn't raise his hand. "Not wanting to come back empty handed, the scouts moved on to look into a few other buildings that were nearby and they found a similar thing in another building. This means whatever they are there's a lot of them spread out around the city. This means we won't be able to clear any buildings the way we planned with small teams."

They had already decided to stay inside the fort until the barrier came down so Donny wasn't upset they couldn't clear out buildings in the next few days to kill time but this was really going to cause problems for them when it came time to clean the city up. "Hopefully whoever they're sending to destroy the barrier will have a way for us to solve this problem but for now I wanted to know if any of you had any suggestions for a way to deal with these traps."

Donny had questions so he went ahead and raised his hand and since he was the only one who did Rigbis pointed at him and said. "What do you think we should do Donny?"

Donny didn't really have a great answer and had really just wanted to ask if the people that had been in the trap were gone as well but hearing Rigbis wanted an idea he said. "We should destroy the buildings instead of going in to clear them. We can rebuild a house in a matter of days."

"That's a good idea. With just a few mages we could flatten all the buildings around us with Earth magic once the Earth mana is back. Hopefully that will happen soon after the barrier is down and we will be able to crush all the infested buildings." Hearing his hastily made idea was taken well Donny decided to ask about the five people that had been trapped.

"Were the five people in the barrier gone or were their bodies found where we left them in the basement?" It was a change of subject but he was sure he wasn't the only person who wanted to know. "There was no sign of them, no blood, no bodies so we really don't know what happened to them but it probably isn't good and it's why we don't want to risk any more people getting taken by these traps."

Donny completely understood being extra wary of something they didn't understand when there was a good chance it was doing something very similar to the gargoyles that had been grabbing people to turn into undead. "Go ahead." Seeing that Rigbis had just called on another person, Donny went back to stand next to Keel while listening to the next person's idea.