Dragon's Wrath: The Cursed Returnee

  Alvin studied Ethan for a moment. It was only natural that someone would doubt the tactical analysis of someone who didn\'t even have to shave yet. Still, he could tell by looking at Ethan\'s eyes that he knew his shit…

"We can\'t retreat without accomplishing a single thing, so maybe we should split our numbers into two groups and protect our retreat path," Alvin rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"That might work, but the enemy might be expecting something that simple," Ethan said. "The cloud dust is also trying to return to this area… probably because of the distortion. It should be attracted by everything dense with mana, and I don\'t know if this was something that happened by chance. Still, the enemies should know that we can\'t stay here for long and are expecting us to move soon… we shouldn\'t do that and instead send someone that can scout ahead without being seen."

  Alvin nodded. That wasn\'t a half-bad plan, but the problem was the fact that his soldiers might get sick thanks to the dust, and because he didn\'t have someone skilled at that kind of thing… he only brought mages and melee warriors for offense and defensive purposes. Alvin didn\'t want to reveal that, but one didn\'t have to be a tactical genius to see that, considering that their advance before had been that quick and precise.

"I can help you with that, but taking someone with me is impossible, so you will have to trust my word in what I report," Ian suddenly said.

"All of a sudden, a total retreat doesn\'t sound too bad…" Ethan rolled his eyes.

"Hey, I am not going to joke around in a situation like this…" Ian furrowed his eyebrows.

  Alvin studied Ian for a moment, he seemed the kind of person who was hard to read, and he also wanted to make his people get the most out of the results from that mission, so he hesitated. Still, all of a sudden, Ian disappeared and then appeared behind Alvin after he took out his claws.

"You won\'t find someone with these skills anywhere…" Ian said and then returned the claws.

  Alvin now looked completely shocked since he didn\'t notice how he lost his weapons… he could tell now that Ian was the best or perhaps the most scary hero that had assassin-like skills. In any case, leaving such an important job to Ian alone seemed like a bad idea… Ethan probably could do the same if he were to move at night with Dark Stealth.

"Machines don\'t work on me while I use my skills, so asking me to bring a camera won\'t work either," Ian added.

"... All right, I will trust you," Alvin said after a long sigh. "That being said, I can\'t reveal to others about what you did since that would cause some discomfort among my soldiers."

"That is fine by me. I don\'t want people knowing of my actions either," Ian shrugged. "Anyway, I am off."

  Ian suddenly disappeared, and everyone stayed on guard since no one could feel his presence, and that was really annoying… Regardless, considering his words, Ian\'s actions sure were weird since he revealed a bit of his actions, modus operandi, and skills.

"Let\'s hope that we won\'t regret this…" Emily said and then sighed.

  Alvin stayed with the group in silence, and the atmosphere stayed weird for the whole time since Isaac didn\'t want to talk either… Ethan wondered who the oldest among them was. It seemed like it was Alvin, so Ethan assumed that their father had cheated on Isaac\'s mother. Even if he didn\'t dump her afterward, his son and his wife should have felt pretty pissed, even until now…

  In any case, Ethan didn\'t want to be a mediator in their problems, so he decided to ignore them and check the area. He asked Emily to help him with earth magic, and he flew high in the sky on a massively long earth spear, and once he reached three kilometers of height, he gave up… even though it wasn\'t that dense, the dust was in all directions, and he couldn\'t see anything more than three hundred meters away from him. 

  Ethan wondered if using Explosive Impact would help… it probably would cause more problems since particles of dust cause even more problems when they enter in contact with fire.

"... I feel like this is metallic dust…" Emily said while she was checking the dust in her hands. "It isn\'t that sharp enough to cut my sky, but it is pretty durable, like the armor of the monsters."

"If that is the case, they probably had some large amounts of factories that created those pieces of armor," Ethan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "They produce enough to armor thousands of ghosts, dozens of thousands or perhaps even more. Still, I didn\'t think that it would be easy to make ghosts equip and manage to use that kind of equipment with ease."

"It is probably impossible without help," Emily declared, and then Alvin approached to check the dust on the ground.

  After studying the dust for a while, it looked like Alvin reached the same conclusion and then stopped to think about that.

"Do you think that this was made using magic or technology?" Alvin asked.

"Perhaps a mix of both. That would be explained why the dust is so small and is concentrated in areas like this one," Emily replied. "If the people of this world didn\'t know enough magic to pull that off… even if they knew enough magic for that, it is hard to imagine that a large number would be able to mine and transform ores into the gear that easily or fast… it might be possible if they had decades for that."

  Time was something that few people had enough to spare, and no one could think of a reason why someone would spend so much time and resources just to get on Earth\'s People\'s path… Besides, no heard of planets where their time dilation was ten times faster than Earth, so some things weren\'t adding up.