Reincarnation Of The Strongest Spirit Master-Chapter 1418: Known Formations and Unknown Traps

What made him so sure of that fact was the mechanical and spiritual traps he kept facing at every single level he climbed. All the traps were different, unique, and ancient; he couldn’t recognise a single one of them!

"Any trap is a miniature form of a formation, slightly bigger than an array, yet much fiercer than any standard formation..." William muttered to himself, his eyes tracking the rhythmic clicks and whirs of the masonry.

He watched as a new wave of traps was triggered, targeting him with a flurry of crystalline darts and gravity-manipulating fields.

"These traps are all unknown and alien to me, and the basic layout of these is the same as any medium-sized formation. I’m sure the original scroll of this fortress included lost defensive formations that matched these traps, yet I don’t know why those retards didn’t build it as it was designed!"

William was right in his guess, yet he didn’t know that there was a scary cost to pay to build this kind of fortress in its true, complete form.

The ancient formations and high-level traps of the Lookman era were all lost knowledge to this era, and even the fundamental idea of fortifying every single stone block used in building the fortress wasn’t known anymore.

However, everything had been diagrammed for easy setup and construction within the blueprint the Dark Serpents had stolen.

If the enemies had wanted to, they could have built it in a perfect and complete manner, exactly as the ancients intended. But that would have meant they’d have to pay a huge price in return—a price they deemed unnecessary for a backwater lower realm.

The original formations required a scary amount of materials, most of which were quite rare and incredibly valuable. Any force, no matter how big, ancient, or wealthy they were in the upper realm, would think thrice before paying such a staggering cost to build a single fortress.

So, instead of wasting all those precious resources over a single structure built in a lower realm for a mission that paid them way less than the initial cost of materials, the Dark Serpents decided to take a shortcut.

They changed the design, replacing the lost formations from the Lookman era with the most famous and well-known formations of this current era.

This small change cut the cost of construction by eighty percent! Yet, the trade-off was catastrophic for its longevity: it reduced the total effectiveness and defensive prowess of the fortress by ninety-five percent!

In the eyes of the Dark Serpents, it wasn’t a big loss. After all, they believed they were fighting against much weaker masters—people from a lower and rudimentary realm who wouldn’t know the difference between a modern formation and an ancient one.

Yet, least to their expectations, there was a fierce dragon hidden in this realm: William! And to their worst luck, they had waged a war against him. And now, they were paying the price for their frugality.

William had been cautious at first, moving with measured steps and carefully analyzing every shadow.

Yet, after climbing the first five levels and seeing the pattern, he knew there wasn’t a single trap in the entire lower half of the structure that could truly harm his fifty monsters.

And when he had previously thought the higher levels would be protected by unknown formations to guard the sensitive areas, he realised he was wrong.

All the formations were known, famous, and even kept repeating at some point, making it incredibly easy for him to crack them in rapid succession.

His climbing speed started to rise the higher he went. He was no longer walking; he was dashing, his monsters moving in a blur of motion that triggered traps and crushed them before the mechanisms could even fully reset.

He didn’t know why the ones who built the fortress repeated the formations they used—perhaps out of laziness or a lack of variety in the scrolls they brought—but he wouldn’t complain.

"So far, I didn’t meet a single enemy... does it mean they are waiting for me up there?" William wondered, looking at the spiralling staircase ahead.

He couldn’t see how many levels were left, as the fortress’s higher areas were covered by a thick layer of weird mist.

He wasn’t worried about the mist, as he knew this was a common side effect of using an excessive number of formations in a single structure; the overlapping spiritual leaks often condensed the humidity into a thick, artificial fog.

He knew the enemies wouldn’t risk putting their masters in any level to stop him prematurely, or else they would be caught in the crossfire of their own defence systems and even killed by the traps.

"I don’t think there are traps up there," William mused as he ascended the eighth level. "Most probably, it’s just offensive and defensive formations layered atop one another to create a kill zone."

He was prepared to fight against a large number of higher realm masters at the very top of the fortress.

"They won’t hurt me," he whispered, his confidence rooted in the terrifying power of his fifty monsters. "But I need to capture a few of them alive. I need to interrogate them and find the identity of the one who hired them."

This was the most important goal he aimed for. Beyond the immediate victory, he needed the name of the orchestrator.

Then, it came down to finding the original blueprints of this fortress and uncovering the puzzling methodology used in its construction. To William, the fortress was both a threat and a treasure trove of lost architectural secrets.

During all this, the situation at the portal and back at Lara’s city was growing in intensity, spiralling toward a chaotic climax that William could only hope his allies were ready for.

It first started when a second portal opened up without a warning in the zone surrounding Lara’s city. The first portal—the one William had utilised—had stopped gushing out masters the moment he passed through it and disabled the relay on the other side.