Reincarnation Of The Strongest Spirit Master-Chapter 1417: The Fortress’ Unexpected Weakness

The moment the Bipolar Petal Formation shattered into prismatic fragments of spirit energy, William didn’t hesitate. He dashed toward the dark breach in the stone, his fifty monsters surging alongside him like a tide of shadow and bone.

He didn’t leave any monsters behind to guard the exterior. The perimeter was now a graveyard, and his presence was required entirely within the belly of the beast.

Before his signal could be jammed by the internal interference of the fortress, he sent a final, urgent message to Becky and Lara.

He informed the two about exactly what was going to happen in the next few hours; his tone brooked no room for argument.

William knew the moment he stepped inside that fortress, he wouldn’t be available to help the girls if they ever needed him. He would be essentially swallowed by the stone.

That was why he stressed his orders: no matter what, they were never to leave the side of the portal. They were never to let any enemy interfere with the portal foundations or attempt to cancel it from their end!

William didn’t know his enemies’ real plan in its entirety, so he made sure to mitigate the most dangerous risk—the risk of the portal being destroyed, which would entrap the girls within endless waves of enemies without a path for retreat. For William, the portal was more than a doorway; it was their only lifeline.

"The first layer is formed of one formation, then there are lots of traps..."

William found himself standing in a wide, paved street that felt more like a canyon. Towering walls loomed on both sides, their surfaces slick with moisture and ancient enchantments.

He knew one side was the lowermost level of the fortress, the very base of the mountain-structure, while the other led to the higher levels. Yet, the geography of the place wasn’t the immediate problem.

The problem was the presence of a staggering number of traps that triggered the millisecond he arrived!

His monsters instinctively fanned out, spanning the width of the street to surround him in a protective circle.

As they moved, the floor, walls, and even the ceiling seemed to come alive. Pressure plates hissed, tripwires of invisible spirit thread snapped, and hidden apertures in the masonry slid open.

Hidden traps were activated in a cascading chain reaction. Lots of different types of attacks landed over his head—poisoned needles, pressurised jets of caustic acid, and bolts of concentrated kinetic energy.

Without William even feeling the pressure, his monsters moved as a singular unit to shield him. They acted as a physical canopy, absorbing every blow.

The monsters were severely bombarded by tons of attacks, the air filled with the sounds of clashing metal and sizzling chemicals, yet they suffered nothing. Their hide was forged of a resilience that the lower realm’s mechanical traps couldn’t hope to pierce.

"I’m lucky we are fighting on the lower realm turf," he muttered, his eyes darting across the mechanisms.

He reached out a hand, examining the weird types of attacks his monsters had just suffered. "So the fortress has traps I can’t recognise... does it mean the protective formations are an extra to the original layout?"

He realised with a start that he couldn’t recognise the specific lineage of the traps he and his monsters had triggered.

Unlike the formations outside, which were modern and familiar to anyone from the upper realm, these mechanical and spiritual traps were alien. They were lost knowledge from that ancient, forgotten era. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

"That doesn’t add up," he whispered. But after giving it some thought, he realised his initial confusion was based on a false premise. "The fortress is famed for shielding the formations’ weak spots in its core..."

He was puzzled. He felt like there was a missing piece of information, a single pivot point of logic that could explain why modern formations were being used to guard ancient, unrecognisable traps.

It was as if someone had taken an ancient, legendary sword and fitted it with a modern, mass-produced hilt.

Yet he wasn’t in a hurry to solve the riddle. Even if he didn’t have the answer yet, his lack of knowledge wouldn’t negatively affect his ascent; he had the brute strength of his monsters to compensate for the mystery.

To be safe, William launched a couple of spirit-infused arrows down the corridor, aiming for specific shadows. He wanted to make sure he triggered every single trap in the surrounding area before moving another inch.

Once the hallway fell silent, he started to closely examine the next defensive layer protecting the walls of the second level.

Like before, he found a handful of formations. And like before, he recognised every single one of them.

He picked the most suitable counter, channelled his energy, and cracked it open using the same precise method he’d used on the exterior. Without pausing to admire the work, he and his summons began climbing up to the next level.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The moment he and his monsters stepped onto the higher level, they triggered a fresh wave of traps.

The intensity increased; tons of attacks landed over his head, including falling slabs of enchanted granite and bursts of freezing mist. Like before, all were negated cleanly by the massive bodies of his monsters.

"A grand fortress, made out of fortified stones, surrounded by layers of defensive formations, and involving tons of deadly traps within... It’s the perfect killing ground for any enemy," William observed, looking up at the spiralling heights of the Lookman’s stronghold. "Except its only weakness is the quality of the ones controlling it this time."

William knew the sole weakness in this grand fortress was the nature of the Dark Serpents who had constructed it.

They had utilised the well-known defensive formations of this current era instead of using the lost, legendary formations of the original Lookman’s empire.

As he ascended, William became increasingly certain that the architects had bypassed the ancient defensive designs entirely in favour of modern, mass-produced spiritual structures.