Dominic stared at the ritual altar for a few more minutes, wondering if anything was still active inside the barrier.

It didn’t look like it, but the blood was still so fresh that it was hard to tell.

Then, he began to notice something strange.

The blood was still flowing from the altar, running into the ritual circles on the ground to keep them refreshed with life essence, but there was no activity within the barrier.

"There has to be a portal or something, a link to keep the ritual running remotely." He muttered.

Amie frowned as she scanned her knowledge of blood magic.

"I think that it might actually be all the other summoning circles. There are still more active at all the siege sites, so they’re still feeding the central ritual with their offerings. It’s only the ones here that we have deactivated, and who knows what percentage of the total that was.

Until someone takes out the rest of the rituals, this one will continue to operate.

What I am more concerned about is the fact that we can’t get through this barrier. To be able to create a barrier this large, and keep it up against attack, requires immense power.

If we keep attacking it, whoever created it is likely to come and see what is going on, which will tell us who is behind the whole scheme. But then we’re left with a mage that we can’t defeat, in a bad mood." She noted.

She made an excellent point. If shooting the barrier with both bullets and their best spells didn’t even put a ripple in it, what were they supposed to do with the person who cast it?

"Now that’s a dilemma. We could try to work together to break it, but then we risk attracting a problem we can’t solve. But if we don’t do anything, then this blood ritual in our territory continues to operate, and will most likely continue to summon more monsters here.

If it summons more monsters here, then the problem never really ends, and we have to continually clear them out to keep the area safe." Dominic replied with a sigh.

Amie winked at him. "You know, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If this summoning ritual is self-sustaining, it means that we are never going to run out of monsters to hunt, never going to run out of loot and raw materials either.

So, while the mages using them to besiege cities is a bad thing, this ritual itself isn’t really an issue.

We could just keep the population under control here and see how long it takes for someone to come check on the ritual.

Once they do, the ones guarding it can report to us, and we will know for sure who is controlling it.

That information can go to someone with more power than us, and they can take care of the source of the problem, while our adventurers and mercenaries reap all the benefits."

Dominic laughed at her logic. "I can’t say that you’re wrong. If we keep hunting the area and keep the monster population under control, they won’t be able to fill a siege with what they can find here.

That’s the major problem, right? The abundance of monsters?

They can keep summoning them wherever they are, with a portion of their magic going to this ritual to summon more. And we can use it as free loot."

Alexis and the leadership group, including the Princes and the Generals leading the forces here, all stood silently behind the pair, who had apparently forgotten that they were even present.

"Why does this conversation give me the feeling that national security has taken a back seat to the chance of gaining obscene wealth?" Prince George asked.

"Because it has. At least in their minds. They didn’t forget about it entirely, though. Which is better than I expected out of them. I had thought that they would go completely feral if it was just them fighting out here." Claudius laughed.

"More likely, we underestimated their recovery speed, and they were just back to normal by the time that we noticed. I doubt that the two of them could have resisted the urge to just run wild with a pistol in each hand. But that’s neither here nor there.

They’re not wrong about the opportunity that this provides.

If the Adventurer’s Guild gets wind of the ritual and the potential for randomly appearing monsters in the area, they’re going to designate this as a sacred site for their members.

The amount of money that can be made, especially as the monsters are summoned and will have a chance at dropping magical weapons, thanks to the world’s Monster Blessing, means that anyone who farms this area could set themselves up for life." Prince Fahad joked.

He wouldn’t mind sending some of his own people from Axbridge to remain here as well. If they could be spoon-fed monsters by this ritual, it would be nothing short of handing them a licence to print money.

They would have to be careful about selling the monster cores, or they would collapse the market price.

But other than that, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Even the groups that were here today would have to be careful how they spent their newfound wealth, or the monster cores would quickly become all but worthless. If they used most of them to boost their levels in the spell gems that they possessed, it would be the best-case scenario.

That would get rid of them completely, and a small group of elite soldiers, who could later be spread among the nation’s armies, was a far smaller deal than thousands of extra monster cores floating around a region.

Fortunately, Wistover also had a magitech factory, and they were going to start needing them as well. That would burn through all the excess soon enough.

Dominic, for his part, didn’t even care about the cores, other than the fact that he could use them to pay wages. They were nice to have, and he would put some in his spellbook to increase the level some more.

But the real benefit of this trip was the items that had been dropped.