A couple of days later, at the Alpha base...

"There's not much to do here," Yu Zhung yawned, "Master said there would be a lot of monsters here to keep me preoccupied. But I haven't seen any strong monsters around here. The only monsters I've seen so far are goblins who keep dancing around the base and they aren't even hobgoblins... just simple goblins. *Sigh*, I don't know why do I even have to be here? Talos and others are already here to protect the base. Also, Ogur is way stronger than I am! If only I could've stayed back home with my lovely fiancee..."

"In case you didn't know. We organise weekly hunts to track and kill the monsters and destroy their nests before they get a chance to spread around or grow big. Plus, if we don't do this, they could come back to bite our a*ses and cause us even more trouble than we already have to deal with," Amanda couldn't take it any more and blurted out as she rolled her eyes,

"It might seem that the people here, enjoy living surrounded by the monsters. But in reality, it's a nightmare. There have been days where none of us were able to get more than an hours worth of sleep because the monsters kept trying to break through our defences and enter the base. Moreover, even if we somehow manage to get our hands on some rare resources to upgrade our weapons and stuff. Most of the times the Syndicate takes it away even before-"

"Okay, Okay tigress. I got it. Calm down... Sheesh." Yu Zhung did not expect her to blow up at him, but he knew he shouldn't have raised such a sensitive issue. Especially when Arnold had already told him not to, "I won't ask about it again."

Amanda's reaction was more or less to be expected. After all, ever since Arnold and his summons left the zone, she had her hands full. Not only did she along with her team work their butts off to maintain the safe environment around the base, but she also had to maintain the other two bases of Zone 4 as well.

Which was not an easy task to do, even though her master had left a few automatons to aid her in doing so. However, it was a pain to maintain the robots as they were quite fragile. Thus she treated those as precious resources and with the decrement in resources provided to them by the syndicate, she didn't want the automatons to get destroyed unnecessarily and add even more burden on her.

That's why all of the Automatons were strictly kept on guard duty within the base and were only allowed to step outside in case of emergency. Such as when the base was under attack by a massive horde. But thanks to the hunts they organised regularly, there weren't many monsters around. This was the reason why Yu Zhung's remarks hurt her as she couldn't just put everyone else in danger and risk getting the base destroyed, just because some royal brat wanted to hunt some monsters to pass his free time. 

No one could even imagine how relieved she was to see Arnold when he visit the base a couple of days ago. It wasn't only because she was his 'pet', thanks to his ability, but also because whenever Arnold came for a visit, he brought a copious amount of resources with him. And her master did not disappoint her this time either. With more than half of China at his disposal and considering the risk the Alpha base would've been in, Arnold did not take any chances this time and went all out.

The defences all around the base were being upgraded. While the number of available soldiers the base had to offer previously had quadrupled in an instant. And in case that wasn't enough, Arnold also left quite a few of his elite summons to help her out. No matter how Amanda thought about the situation, it looked like overkill to her. Arnold on the other hand was worried he was doing too little to protect his Zone.

The only problem she had was Yu Zhung. He seemingly had made a point to comment about every little thing he didn't like. Some of his usual complaints included things like: The food they served wasn't good enough for him, How the weather was always so grim there, Why wasn't he allowed to fire the turrets for fun in the middle of the night, and the latest complaint was regarding the absence of monsters in the zone.

"I never thought someone of his calibre could be so annoying," Amanda mumbled while she and Talos were working hard to find any clues regarding the disappearances, "Why can't he understand a simple thing? This place is not a summer holiday resort, but an army base!"

"As far as I can remember, master once said the same thing about you as well," Talos replied, without taking his eyes off of the screen, "Enough of that. Mr Zhung, I think it'll be better if you go and spar against Asterios if you're so bored. No one has chained you to be here. Also, then we would be able to focus on what we are doing here."

"That... is a great idea, Talos!" Yu Zhung jumped off his chair and grabbed his sword, "Sparring against that minotaur always energizes me. I'll see you at lunch!"

Talos ignore whatever Yu Zhung said and kept doing what he could to resolve the mystery behind these disappearances. He might've been emotionless, but deep down he was worried. It had been two days since they started looking for clues, and yet they couldn't find anything.

They couldn't recover anything even after using drones. The only thing they saw was endless wastelands. It felt like the bases in the first three zones never existed. Both Talos and Amanda wanted to go and investigate the zones themselves, however, Arnold strictly prohibited them from doing so.

"If only the master was here..."

Talos got a call from Arnold the moment he thought about him, "Yes, master?"

"You guys found anything yet?" Arnold's crackled voice reverberated in Talos' head.

"Not yet, master."

"Then you guys might want to hurry because that dungeon... just opened up." 

***

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