About 6 hours after the kidnap; the sun is about a couple of hours away from setting.
Three middle-aged men came out of a cavern somewhere on the mountain.
One of them ordered the other two as they entered the jungle, "Search every nook and corner of the jungle. Kill every beast that you encounter. I need them."
"But, haven't we sealed their soul energy? How will we trace them?" A subordinate who is in rank 6 voiced his opinion.
The leader gave a tight slap at his cheek in response and snarled at both of them, "Who are the idiots that let them slip away? You are a 6-star Arcana Master for god's sake. How did he manage to escape even without the aid of soul energy?"
"He could use lightning attribute power," answered the other subordinate.
Their angry leader gave a knee to this guy, "Do you think I wasn't aware of that? Why do you think I left them out of the prison card and imprisoned them in the cave? It's because I couldn't take my chances against Arcana Possession and attribute power when I'm leaving them with you. I specifically warned you to pay attention before I left. Both of you trash can't even keep an eye on them for two mere hours."
As the subordinates apologized right away, the leader took a deep breath, "Okay, I will search from above. One of you takes the east and north; the other takes the west and south. Let your Dragons free in the sky. That guy must not get far away with injuries.
If we don't find them soon and they get back the Moon Clan, we will be damned."
The two of them are none other than the mysterious customers who easily knocked out Gideon after Estella fell unconscious. They were the elites of the Dragon Clan.
Their leader, who looks middle-aged, was actually the same young owner of the 'Origin' store, although it is just a disguise. He's a rank-6 expert and one of the heirs to the Dragon Clan who is an expert with disguises.
With the disappearance of elders and the vacant position of the Patriarch, the Dragon Clan was divided into three factions.
The families of Blue Dragon, Green Dragon, and Yellow Dragon are in one faction.
The Red Dragon allied with Black Dragon and the Unorthodox family.
The White Dragon family is neutral as always and Outcasts have no right to involve in the clan matters.
That leaves the alliance of Brown Dragon and Metal Dragon. And Cedar Ravillon is the young master of the Metal Dragon family. His Arcana is a Steel Dragon.
To secure the position of the clan head, Cedar Ravillon chose to use the ancient heirloom of the family that was passed down to him as bait because it is cursed and ownerless.
No one in the Dragon Clan had any idea who placed the seal on the pendant but whenever someone touches the pendant with bare hands, a sealing technique will be unleashed upon them. Not only their soul orb will be sealed but even their whole body will be paralyzed.
Luckily for him, the pendant is linked to the Moon Goddess. So, he baited the Moon Clan's heiress.
He planned to use it as a bargaining chip for the support of the Moon Clan. He knew that a daughter of heaven like her is very important to the clan. He even planned to put forth a proposition where the Moon Clan will have a say in the decisions of the Dragon Clan once he becomes the Patriarch.
As for Gideon, he's just an unexpected bonus. Instead of killing him, he decided to use him for secret experiments usually conducted in the clan. Cedar wanted to extract his soul energy and let the researchers study his body to find out how one unlocks the attribute power without using the soul energy.
Why does he know Gideon's ability? It's because of Twilight's matches against the Dragon Riders in the world league.
After Cedar successfully captured Gideon and Estella, he placed them in a cavern and left the elite experts with them before returning to the city to meet informants. When he returned, he learned that the boy got consciousness and escaped with the girl after having a battle with the two of them.
What's more, it happened only ten minutes before his arrival.
And at the moment, they were searching for Gideon and Estella who somehow managed to escape from them.
Meanwhile, at the foot of the mountain only about five kilometers away, an injured Gideon was carrying a motionless Estella as he sat against the tree. Estella wasn't exactly in the state of unconscious.
She regained consciousness but her whole body is paralyzed. She can only blink her eyes and couldn't even speak.
"Don't worry. we will get out of here. I promise," Gideon continued to carry her in his arms. She blinked twice.
As his soul energy was also sealed, he cannot use any healing skill card to heal his injuries and neither could send a message to Azzy or his master for help. He was also physically tired. Escaping from Upper realm experts (rank-6) is by means not an easy task and that too, when carrying a burden. Adding on top of this, the jungle is full of rank-5 and rank-6 monsters. Naturally, he had to fight and escape from them too.
*Roar*
Upon hearing the roar of a dragon, Gideon rose to his feet and resumed moving. Their soul energies might be sealed but the Dragons are different from the monsters in the wild. They could still smell the humans even if Gideon smeared his body and Estella's body with the blood of monsters to escape their attention.
He ran from here to there and from there to somewhere without caring a bit about the direction.
Meanwhile, at the Moon City, Azzy reached the black market along with the Vajra and is visiting all the stores they have previously visited.
Originally, Azzy wanted to rewind the time and save his friend but the Reaper was against the plan and told him to not do that because it might make him miss the good thing that was waiting for him.
The Reaper refused to divulge the secrets of the future and Azzy could only turn to Vajra as it is a Celestial grade black lightning wolf. Its senses are at the top of the world.
Being familiar with Gideon, Vajra started to search for his smell like a hunting dog. After running all over the city for three hours, they finally came to the black market. Surprisingly, at one of the stores, Vajra also identified the smell of Estella left by her hours ago, almost coinciding with Gideon.
When the store owner said that Estella never came back to take her items or handed over the remaining money, the investigation slowly became clear to Azzy and he followed both of their traces.
Because the market is packed with tourists and Gideon was missing for hours, it took a lot of time for Vajra to trace it to the final location. From there, it appeared to be missing.
The Reaper informed him that they were still alive. So, Azzy was sure that they were abducted. Now, how to proceed from here onwards?
It was then the Reaper suggested him of using one technique, "Aura tracing."
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