With a crack, a large tree by the side suddenly fell. The Phantom Knights and I nimbly dodged the falling tree. A gigantic Spider appeared from behind the tree, its size was actually comparable to an elephant!

Scott rushed forward with the Phantom Knights, the spider's level was not high despite its massive size, and was cut down in two to three strikes. I suddenly recalled that Clarke's list of materials for me to gather seemed to have the poison sack of a Spider. I went to the Spider and cast [Gather] N number of times. In the end, I never obtained any Poison Sack, but at least I obtained two Poison Fangs! What a miser, if only it had given me Poison Sacks!

After the giant spider, we encountered even more monsters, all of them larger than a black bear. Furthermore, they were all insect type monsters, it seemed as though the forest was specialized in demonifying insects.

After walking for a distance, a faint barrier appeared in front of us. This light barrier was transparent, thus although it extended into the sky, we never noticed it! If it was not for us being close to it and accidentally witnessed the barrier flickering, we would have never known that such a thing had existed!

Through the barrier, we could see that it was the same forest. Although I could see deep into the forest, I did not find any creatures or monsters, basically, it was confirmed that it was safe beyond the barrier. But as we were unclear whether or not the barrier had offensive traits to it, we did not dare to test it out hastily. Using the same old method, I got Scott to summon another Skeleton to test it out.

The Skeleton walked towards the barrier without hesitation. When it interacted with the barrier, the surrounding areas flickered for a moment, causing the surrounding barrier to reveal a warped appearance. But the strange thing was what happened after. The Skeleton that had entered the barrier had completely disappeared, it managed to pass through the barrier, but we could not see it at all! We could still see the forest beyond the barrier, but we could not see the Skeleton!

"Scott? Did your Skeleton pass through it?"

"I can feel that it is already on the other side!"

"Then why can't we see it!" I scratched my chin and thought for a moment. "Do you still have a connection with it?"

"Of course! The connection is still strong!"

"Let it come back out!"

The Skeleton suddenly walked out of the barrier, as though it had walked through a spatial door! We repeated this experiment many times, and the outcome was the same! I found a tree trunk by the side and broke a branch off, then threw it towards the barrier. The branch entered the barrier and disappeared from our vision, and never appeared in the forest behind the barrier!

I already had a few possibilities in mind. The first possibility was the barrier was a Teleport System, and anything that goes through the barrier would be teleported to another location, but not the forest behind it; The second possibility was that the barrier was, in fact, an illusion barrier, the forest that we could see behind the forest was in truth nonexistent, while the branch and Skeleton had actually arrived at the true location behind the barrier, but as the illusion had blocked our line of sight, we were unable to see them! But, since the Skeleton was able to come and go as it pleased, it meant that the barrier did not possess any harmful traits, thus, I finally decided to have a go at it myself!

I stood in front of the barrier and carefully extended my hand through the barrier. When I touched the barrier, I did not feel anything, it seemed as though the barrier did not possess any physical form! I continued to extend my hand outwards and miraculously, the part of my hand that went through the barrier disappeared. I could not see my own hand, but I could clearly feel it. I took a deep breath and walked through it.

I was shocked! After passing through the barrier, I was completely dumbstruck! The scene beyond the barrier was completely different from the forest that we saw, the black forest before my eyes had transformed back to the gigantic trees that shot to the skies. All of these gigantic trees over 100 meters tall were all over the place with many shorter and smaller trees mixed between them, the forest floor was covered with all sorts of bushes and shrubs but was not concentrated and did not obstruct the path. I retreated back in shock and arrived back behind the barrier. The barrier appeared once again in front of me, and I saw the forest of the short and bare trees! But when I passed through the barrier again, the dense forest appeared. I was right, the barrier could block any line of sight in!

The Phantom Knights followed me through the barrier, and the scene stunned them for a moment, but the shock they received was not as severe as mine!

Scoot suddenly exclaimed out loud. "Oh my Dark Lord! Could it possibly be, isn't this Modu's Iron Fortress*!"

"Modu's Iron Fortress? What's that?"

Scott calmed himself down before explaining: "China originally had 4 Ultimate Evil Zones, separated into Lost City, Agony City, Demon Fiend Stronghold, and Modu's Iron Fortress, with Modu's Iron Fortress being the strongest. But after that, the 3 Great Cities assembled an army of 30 million and called it the Sacred Allied Forces and worked together to attack Modu's Iron Fortress. This Great Battle lasted for over a month, and the Iron Fortress was ultimately sieged. At that time, the Great Cities was forced to detonate Modu's [Sinister Eyes], causing the 30 million Sacred Allied Forces and 10 million Iron Fortress Great Army to transform into ghosts. From that day on, this place became an evil Cursed Land, the evil aura of the 40 million ghosts turned this place into the Light's forbidden region, all members of the Light Faction will suffer from enormous weakening in here."

"That sounds really moving and tragic, but where's the city? Why can't I see it? Other than trees, there's practically nothing here!"

"All of these are no ordinary trees, they are all pieces of the [Sinister Eyes] that had transformed into trees, they will absorb all types of power aside from Darkness, thus whoever casts any Spells aside from Darkness Spells have to use 2 times the usual MP required. Furthermore, all light type Mages are incapable of recovering their MP, once they consume all of their MP, it will no longer recover, unless they leave this forest to the outside of the barrier."

"Right, so what's the deal with this barrier?"

"About that, I don't know either!" Scott shook his head. "The Phantom Knights have always been defending the Dark Lord Shrine, while the 4 Dark Cities are considered subordinated Cities. But I think that the barrier is most probably a defensive measure, just like how Lost City has the Black Lake, every Dark City has their own unique defensive measures. As for the illusion and dark forest, every Dark City has it!"

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"You haven't replied my question, where exactly is the City?"

"In reality, I believe that the City shouldn't be far from us, it is because of the dense forest that we can't see it, once we leave the forest, we should be able to find it!"

"Then let us go and take a look!" I summoned Night Shade and jumped up on him. Night Shade could equip the saddle, and I no longer had to squeeze onto the same mount as Scott!

We did not walk far and stumbled upon a large mass of shiny white things swaying in the forest. We rushed forward for a better look, good god, it was a large mass of Skeletons! I got Dart to size up a Skeleton that had strayed further from the main bulk of the Skeletons and obtained their stats.

Holy shit, Magic Skeletons, Level 600! There was no need to question their extremely exaggerated DEF, even their ATK was extremely high, but luckily they had low HP! But unexpectedly, Dart that went to probe the enhanced Skeleton was instantly smacked and flew back. Although Dart was extremely low level, with his speed, Dart should have been able to avoid the Skeleton, could it be that the Skeletons' AGI** are equally perverse?

The Skeletons that we encountered previously did not exceed Level 200, but the mass of Skeletons were actually all Level 600! NO wonder all of them were able to wield shiny weapons and were equipped with capes! They were all high-quality stuff!

"Scott, are there any paths that we can take to detour around them?" I'm not any Superman, at my current level, I was already helpless against monsters above Level 300, furthermore, there were too many Skeletons and they were all close together, even the Phantom Knights might be killed by them!

Scott did not reply, he was focused on the Skeleton that Dart had disturbed as it had been aggro-ed towards us. Scott wielded his spear and was prepared for the attack, but unexpectedly, the Skeleton did not rush at us, but simply stopped in front of us. We watched its sword gleam and form a black magic missile at the tip of the sword before releasing it to us. These Magic Skeletons were actually Spellswords, they could use ranged attacks on us!

Seeing that the Skeleton was using a ranged attack, Scott immediately spun the spear in his hand and changed into a throwing posture. The spear sliced through the air and accurately struck the Skeleton's skull which cracked and shattered into fine white powder. But what surprised us was that the Headless Skeleton was actually still waving his sword and rushing towards us!

I quickly retreated, the Skeleton was too high leveled and fighting it was extremely dangerous for me! The Phantom Knights rushed up together, and quickly destroyed the entire Skeleton into fine powder! The Skeletons were terrifying, they utilized spells and could engage in melee combat. Additionally, they had no weak points and even after their heads were destroyed, they could continue fighting!

While looking at the mass of Skeletons from a distance, I suddenly recalled that I could fly! Who said that it was a must to climb through the Skeletons! I unsummoned the Phantom Knights and Companions and took to the skies alone. But the moment I took flight, I sensed something was off, my stamina was dropping at a quicker rate, and at the rate it was going, I could only maintain 30 seconds of flight time!

Without wasting any second, I pushed myself to fly upwards. As long as I could surpass the height of the trees and leave the narrow forest, I could summon Lucky and the rest to carry me and continue flying! I increased my speed and finally, right before my stamina was depleted, I rose to the sky above the forest. I quickly summoned Lucky and landed on his back.

After stabilizing myself, I looked at the scenery, and I was overwhelmed with shock! I was completely overwhelmed! After rising above the treetops, I saw a huge mountain that had an extremely neat and orderly exterior, as though it was artificially carved out by men! From how I saw it, the form of the mountain was a few hundred meters tall, its shape similar to a square two tier cake!

There was no time to admire the form of the mountain, Lucky's stamina was depleting quickly as well, fortunately, Dragons had good flight capabilities and high stamina, thus he had no problem flying for another three to five minutes while maintaining the same speed, and when Lucky could no longer fly, I could swap for Epidemic or Crystal, I did not lack in flying Companions, I could continuously swap them out until I reached the edge of the forest!

It was as I had anticipated, Lucky flew for another four minutes and could no longer fly. I swapped Lucky for Epidemic, then after that Crystal. Crystal and Epidemic had a total flight time of less than 8 minutes before I swapped for Phiona. Although Phiona only lasted for 2 minutes, she was extremely fast, and by the time she could no longer fly, we were already on the edge of the forest. I swapped to Loong'er who flew for a minute before we finally reached the edge of the forest and landed safely. Behind us, the endless skeletons continued to stir but they never walked out of the forest, it seemed as though they were limited in movements as well!

Finally, I had the time to take a look at the mountain. In the air, I was focused on my Companion's stamina bars in fear of accidentally depleting all of their stamina and becoming dinner for the skeletons! Back on the ground, I quickly summoned the Phantom Knights again. With them around, I could at least handle any sudden situations that might occur!

The distance between the edge of the forest to the foot of the mountain was only around 2 kilometers. With the flat and gray soil, we quickly reached the foot of the mountain in a few minutes by riding our mounts. I got down from Night Shade and gazed up at the mountain. I kept on looking upwards and stretching my neck backward until I became unstable to the point of falling on my butt. The mountain was truly majestic, from the foot of the mountain, it looked as though the mountain had shot through the clouds! The tall and gray mountain emitted an oppressive feeling that made me unconsciously want to retreat!

Rather than calling it a mountain, it would be better to term it a stronghold, there was not a single vegetation on the mountain, the entire surface was covered with grey stones. The exterior of the mountain was obviously cut artificially, it was not only the mountain being square, the sleek outer walls had many skulls embedded in them and the angle between the mountain and the floor was definitely more than 80 degrees, making it more appropriate to call the mountain face a wall! I could not believe that a mountain could ever be so squared, or even have skulls inside the walls. It had to be a great mountain created artificially to form the square faces, even the skulls were all human skulls! This "wall" face was roughly 29 kilometers wide with a height of 450 meters! The Phantom Knights found a huge gap in the mountain that was about 30 meters wide in the wall with a pile of debris and rocks inside. It seemed as though it used to be the entrance to the City, but it had already collapsed and thus looked like that!

The pathway that was riddled with debris made it impossible for mounts to pass through, even climbing in already looked relatively difficult! I kept my Companions and tried my Wings, they were able to function normally, the extreme consumption of stamina seemed to only exist in the forest! After making sure that I could fly, I kept the Phantom Knights, I flew through the passageway. The walls on both sides were perfectly straight, further proving that the entire place was constructed artificially. The debris all over the place spanned the first 100 meters of the entrance, probably from the huge city doors that had collapsed!

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The entire passageway length actually spanned about 1.9 kilometers, which meant that the "wall" was close to 2 kilometers thick! How terrifying was that! No wonder the Iron Fortress was able to repel an army three times their size for a month!

After flying through the passage, I finally arrived inside the mountain.

So this IS the Iron Fortress!

The being called Modu actually hollowed out the entire mountain and built his land inside! But at this point, all I saw was a land of ruin filled with debris and broken pieces of things unknown, the entire city looked as though it had been nuked, the whole place was in a mess! In the air, I was able to make out the rough city arrangement, the streets were arranged in a '井' pattern which was vaguely distinguishable, just that the buildings on the sides no longer existed!

In the center of the city was something that still remained standing, from the color and texture of it, it looked as though it originated from the mountain, which meant that this was a part of the mountain and was left alone during the construction. I did not know whether to call it a pillar or a tower, its bottom had a diameter of 1.2 kilometers, and it had a height of about 7.5 kilometers***! The bottom part of this thing was in fact already elevated differently from the rest of the city, it was erected on a base that was about 200 meters tall with each side spanning around 500 meters with a total of 2 kilometers of square walls that had man-made steps on all sides. As for the thing that resembled a tower, it had entrances on all four sides, but the interior looked empty.

With no sightings of monsters, I summoned Scott alone and brought him to the base of the tower.

"Scott, do you know where are we?"

Scot looked around and replied: "If I'm not wrong, this is the Spirit Gathering Tower of the legends! What we are standing on should be what used to be their Dark Sanctum. The Tower is empty inside, but there is a flight of stairs that should lead to the top of the tower."

"It's too slow walking by the path, let's just fly up there directly!"

"You can't!" Scott held me in place. "The Spirit Gathering Tower has some sort of suppressive spell in place above. You can maintain low altitude flight, but it is impossible for you to fly above the height of the walls, the magic barrier will ensure that nothing can enter the top of the tower except the entrances."

"So they have a barrier in place here! Then I guess I'll have to climb!"

I followed Scott into the legendary Spirit Gathering Tower when a burst of cold wind swept past, causing me to shiver. "Why is it so cold here?"

"That isn't any wind, it's the evil aura, the evil aura mixed in the wind makes it like so!"

"F*ck! Is it haunted here!" I warmed myself up and allowed my body to adapt to the evil aura, luckily I was also in the Darkness Faction, even though the evil aura made me feel uncomfortable, it did not pose a threat to me.

After entering the door and walking through a corridor, a flight of stairs appeared before us. We ran up the stairs all the way and ended up in a 10-meter square room with stairs at all four sides. In the room by the walls was a flight of whirling stairs that headed upwards, but I could not see the sky when I looked up, it seemed as though this stairs did not connect to the tower!

After 30 minutes of climbing, I finally understood the brilliance in elevators, a 7.5-kilometer tall tower is approximately equivalent to a 2000 story tall building. Solely climbing up all the way was extremely tiring! In the end, I simply summoned out Night Shade out. The stairs were wider and the elevation was not too steep, allowing Night Shade to run. With Night Shade, our speed increased greatly, but it had a side effect, I started to become nauseous after a while, turning in the same direction had made me experience vertigo!

No! Simply climbing would not work, after climbing for so long, we were barely reaching half the tower, I would never make it to the top like that! I extended my head out from the stairs and looked at the roof, judged the distance, then aimed my right hand at the top of the tower. I had attached the Dragon Tendon Wire to the Revenger and with a shot, the Wire flew towards the top.

PING! The arrow tip struck the ceiling of the tower but did not managed to embed itself in, and was recoiled away to the side. But as it fell, it got stuck onto the stairs, and due to the twirling fashion of the stairs, it wrapped around the stairs a few times before stopping. I pulled on the wire a few times as a test, it was sturdy. I unsummoned Scott and jumped out of the stairs. I activated the Dragon Tendon Wire's self-retract ability and was naturally pulled towards the top level of the tower. Although this self-made elevator was not comfortable, it was much faster than climbing the stairs, and most importantly, it was much faster!

I arrived at the top level and removed the Wire and ascended up the stairs. The stairs ended abruptly and a wooden door appeared at the end. But this wooden door was already sliced into half and even looked as though it was about to fall! The broken wooden boards blocked half of the entrance. I tried to shift the wooden board away but upon touching it, the entire door fell down, causing a puff of dust to disperse. It had been long since a person had used it!

Behind the door was another flight of stairs. This flight of stairs was extremely narrow with a maximum width allowing two persons to climb it at the same time, but fortunately, it was not very steep. I ran up the stairs and reached the end where signs of light were present.

Upon rushing out of the corridor, I was stunned. The exit led to the side of the tower, and from where I stood, I could see the state of more than half of the city. The City was actually not a perfect square, but in a '凹' shape, the entrance where we had entered the Iron Fortress from was coincidentally at the straight wall opposite the indented side. But what shocked me the most was that the other side of the Iron Fortress was actually a huge water body! Iron Fortress was actually a Port City! The gap inside the square of the city was obviously the port entrance!

As there were no railings on the top of the Spirit Gathering Tower, I did not dare to move to the other side! I turned back and saw the appearance of the top of the tower. It was actually an extremely flat level and looked to be circular in shape, but it was not as large as the base. The top of the tower had a diameter of about 800 meters, which was smaller than the base. In the middle was a pile of debris, and looked like it was originally an altar or something similar.

I summoned Scott. "Do you know what this altar was for??"

"This is the altar where the [Sinister Eye] used to be, but it was destroyed during the explosion!"

"Then does that port behind lead to the ocean? Or to a big lake?"

"Yes! It leads to the open sea, this place used to be a Deep-water Port. I remember vaguely that in the past, Modu's Iron Fortress was claimed to be the number 1 port in the world!"

I looked down at the port, according to the length of the city wall that was 29 kilometers long, the port was estimated to be at least 9 kilometers. Compared to this, the port at Torrent Point City was actually 7 times smaller, no wonder it was number 1!

I suddenly realized that the "Walls" surrounding the City had many circular black patches, but because of the distance, I could not see what they were. "Scott, what're those black dots?"

"The ones on the walls?"

"Yeah!"

"Those are foundations for forts. It was said that in the past, Modu had 280 Large scale Magic Crystal Cannons!"

"280 of them? Isn't that worth 28 billion Crystal Pieces? Holy sh*t! As expected of Modu, he was extremely wealthy, wasn't he!"

Building a City here with Modu's ruins seems like a good idea! The walls are already built, we just have to clean the place up and rebuild the doors and this will be our city!

It was perfect since we needed a Guild Base and I hated trouble. By building in the Iron Fortress, it would save on plenty of things, especially money!

"Scott, are there any illusion barriers at the sea?"

"Yes! The illusion barrier is a spherical shape, not only is it at the surroundings, it exists in the sky and underground as well!"

"That's awesome!" I had already decided to build our city here!

Since I had already planned to use the place, I had to look through the place, the most important being the City Walls. Scott and I arrived below the wall and realized that the walls were actually not solid, there were passageways artificially made within the walls with many unique and usable rooms! The explosion of the [Sinister Eye] seemed to have only affected all the manmade structures, the walls carved out were protected relatively well and had no signs of damage.

I concluded my checks after the day, the entire city was fundamentally intact, aside from the structures that were destroyed, it could be said that the Iron Fortress was a perfect Stronghold City.

After dinner, I decided to go online and continue to inspect the City's facilities, but the moment I got online, I got the shock of my life! I actually came online in the middle of many ghosts! I immediately ran to the taller platforms, only to find that the entire City was filled with them! The translucent ghosts moved throughout the city like live people, furthermore, their bodies emitted faint green lights. Just as when I was calming myself down from the fright, a ghost suddenly walked through my body from behind, he did not notice me and continued on his way.

I quickly realized that all the ghosts were illusions, they were unable to see me, or should I say, they had no reactions to me! Every single ghost were all doing their own things, as though they had been in a time-lock back to when the Iron Fortress was in its most flourishing days. It was a horrifying sight, a city filled with ghosts!

Lost City had many ghosts and spirits as well, but they could be touched and had their own thoughts, and even interact with Players, but not like these things, they were all like Zombies! I started to reconsider my plan of building a City here, we had many females and children in the Guild, if they were to see the Zombies, they would most probably be scared to death!

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(*) - I swear, Thunderstorm wrote 魔都艾辛格, which literally translates to Mordor Isengard, but I will change it to Modu's Iron Fortress, as terming it as the same name from J.R.R. Tolkien's books will definitely attract endless rage. I believe the Sinister Eye that I translated is literally the Eye of Sauron.

By the way for those who are interested, there are drawn maps of Modu's Iron Fortress at this link. But it's in Chinese.

https://gss0.google.com/70cFfyinKgQFm2e88IuM_a/forum/pic/item/232f6b09255704c33bc763ec.jpg

https://gss0.google.com/70cFfyinKgQFm2e88IuM_a/forum/pic/item/ce49dd0967b4e88ed1581bec.jpg

(**) - Just a reminder, the main 6 stats are STR, DEX, INT, CHARM, SPI, CON. Agility isn't one

STR determines Physical attack (P.ATK), (P.DEF), carry weight, endurance/stamina

Dex SHOULD determine Agility (AGI)

(***) The eye of Sauron is actually only 1.5 km tall, thus this tower is 5x of it.