'Ok, time's up.' Arnold thought, 'We should probably head back now, prepare for battle and strike the nagas down.'

He turned around to call the others. But he didn't need to. They had already finished dealing with a small group of lizardmen that was being led by a couple of elite lizardmen. He looked around himself. The marshy ground had turned a shade of blue from the blood of the lizards. The others didn't just kill the lizardmen, they annihilated them. Even their hands were bloodied and resembled a surgeon's hands. But instead of red blood, they were covered in blue blood. 

Arnold felt like he was being overcautious. The Elite lizardmen were strong but Nicole easy one-shot them all using her ability of disintegration. Well, she could do that until the lizardmen piled on her. Once the elites were down, the remaining lizards were more like flies for the group as they were easily killed by the humans without much trouble. 

The amount of bloodshed caused by them was a bit too much. Even Arnold thought that the bloodshed was as barbaric as it was stupid, but he didn't care about the former part and focused on the latter. 

Why was he suddenly thinking that allowing Nina and others to kill the monsters, was stupid? 

He had two reasons for this. First, the lizardmen had a sharp nose. They could pick up scents from over a kilometre and by the looks of it, the lizardmen they just killed were probably a part of some patrolling group. They didn't have many weapons on them which further solidified Arnold's thinking. 

Secondly, he had to keep their arrival a secret. Arnold assumed that the Lizardmen would know their enemies quite well and hence a thorough 'autopsy' of the corpse of the lizards they killed could potentially throw them off as they wounds they left were a lot different from the wounds given to them by the nagas. 

If the lizardmen got to know about them, so would Devon. How did Arnold know about it? It was all thanks to the overused mouth of the Nagas. While Arnold was discussing terms of cooperation with them, the Queen, Alleiah informed Arnold that the lizardmen had advanced technology with them. Technology which only one person could provide to them: Devon. 

All the facts pointed towards Devon. After all, who else would be mad enough to not only set up a base in an area teeming with monsters but also help them by providing modern tech and weapons. But then he realised something that made Arnold feel a bit uncomfortable. Also, when Arnold said that the lizardmen could perform an autopsy on their fellow fallen lizardmen, he meant that Devon would perform that. 

'Wasn't I doing the same thing? Trying to establish a base in the swamp and wage a war against monsters using monsters?'

But he quickly shrugged it off. He would gladly sacrifice the monsters rather than getting humans killed for his greed. He wouldn't mind it too much but then again, he would quite enjoy the scene of monsters fighting it out on their own. So... He could save human lives while all while entertaining himself. 

"Hey Einstein, where are you lost?" Nina smirked as she wiped the blue blood off her beautiful face, "I thought I'd be praised for taking care of half a dozen lizardmen by myself, but no. My boyfriend is busy dreaming about that half-naked slithering b*tch."

Everyone started laughing. 

"Damn, I got caught." Arnold lifted his hands and smiled back at them, "Alice, could you heal them up quick? While she's doing that, Talos and Bad-Breath, gather the corpses. Don't leave anything behind."

"Yes, master!" Saying so, all three of them went off to do what was requested of them. 

Alice was done first because none of them was injured badly. Mostly, they had a few scratches. Otherwise, they were all good. Within the next minute, Talos and Bad-Breath were done collecting the corpses too. Once they were done, Arnold opened a portal leading to his domain. The corpses were thrown inside it along with the summons. 

Once that was handled, Arnold opened a travel portal back to Azyriah's base inside zone 1 and the next second, they were gone. 

'Looks like everything went as planned.' Arnold smiled as he reappeared on the other side of the portal, 'Those nagas could never find the hounds I left inside their city.'

The lava hounds could shrink or grow their size, or speaking in layman terms, they had the ability to alter their bodies. So Arnold thought of utilising this ability of theirs and made them alter their size to the minimum before setting 6 of the hounds to hide inside the city while walking out of there. He used more than one hound because he was worried that it might get caught and destroyed, soiling his plans. Thus he left 6 hounds inside just in case if a few of them got caught. Their task was simple. They had to survive for six hours without getting destroyed.

Why six hours? Because that was the time needed by Arnold to mark the naga city as a place which he could reach there along with the human forces at his toes, using the travel portal. Now, a little over six hours had passed and none of the hounds had been destroyed. Perfect. 

He had also left behind a useless automaton. The automaton was barely the size of an infant and could only do two thing- count time and self destruct. It was the responsibility of this automaton to notify the hounds of the time. You can say it was more like a time bomb than an automaton. 

'Looks like they didn't recover from the shock of seeing our full strength soon enough...' Arnold recalled the moment both he and Nicole simultaneously released their concealed aura at the nagas, 'Maybe they are weaker than I initially thought... I wonder if they would be useful at all in the coming war. Guess, time would reveal that. For now, I should focus on conquering their city and converting it into my base of operations.'

Once back in zone 1, everyone was ordered to mobilise in two hours. As the travel portal skill was in cooldown. While this was going on, on the human side, another sh*tshow was unfolding on the naga city. 

You see, Arnold gave the hounds a secondary command as well. It was a pretty simple command though. Once they had survived for six hours, the automaton he had left with them would explode signalling the activation of the second phase of the plan... A phase named 'Yeet!'

It was exactly what it sounded like. Once the six hours were up, the hounds were to set themselves loose on the city and cause as much destruction and chaos as they could till they were destroyed or Arnold arrived there with the warriors. 

Arnold wasn't going to let the nagas think straight even for a moment. But he did plan to give them an option. An option to surrender or die.