Chapter 100: The Stronghold
"Why’d it have to be underground? I hate places like this..." Tiamat sighed from her spot next to me, complaining for the 4th time in the past five minutes.
"This is... a bit more grand than I imagined," I chuckled, walking through a long hallway as I didn’t respond to the Dragon King’s words. Around me, there were tall stone walls, with a rocky roof hanging more than a dozen feet above my head.
Currently, I was walking through a massive tunnel, with Raya and Vargan walking ahead of me. I wasn’t actually in an unfamiliar area, as I was thousands of feet underneath a very familiar setting - that being my palace.
"When ya do something, ya should do it vigor, no?" Vargan just chuckled at my words, gesturing to the massive tunnel around us, "If somethin’ comes through here, there’s no chance they escape!"
The large tunnel actually looked pretty ominous, as despite having access to modern-day lighting technology, there were hanging lanterns overhead with chains holding them up, rattling from time to time. As a result, the tunnel was pretty dim by normal standards, though with my supernatural eyes I didn’t have much trouble seeing.
As for why we were walking through a tunnel in the middle of the giant mountain my palace sat on: it was actually so that my other-world portals would have a much more secure area around them. I hadn’t had trouble with the E-Rank World, as the only thing that ever could’ve come through was an occasional zombie who wandered into the portal that sat in the stronghold that was once Fujimi Academy, but every other world wouldn’t be so simple.
I didn’t know what the other worlds had in store for me, and stacking up portals randomly around my territory definitely wasn’t a good idea. The other higher-ranking worlds would have stronger threats, which meant stronger threats to walk right into my territory and potentially cause havoc.
So, to counteract that and ensure neither the women who lived in my palace nor any of my subordinates were in danger of a random attack, a rather locked-down stronghold was being built within the mountain. At the entrance to this long tunnel, there had been dwarven guards, and as I walked down the dark hallway, occasional direwolves were roaming.
"There are soldiers stationed at a minimum of every one hundred feet," Raya explained as we walked, gesturing to two direwolves standing to the side as we passed. "Overall, there are over a thousand guards between the portal room and the exit. It might be a bit overboard, but we’re not lacking in manpower, and the guards can always be recalled into the main army if a more urgent situation occurs."
"Good work," I nodded at her words, grinning lightly as she preened under my approval.
It was definitely a bit overkill, but as I prepared to head into the D-Rank World and then try to pretty quickly expand my reach into various other worlds, I’d be at an increasingly higher risk of someone coming through from the other side.