Dominic could see at least three blueprint scrolls in his storage cube, and there might be others buried under the pile of monster cores.

They just fell wherever they landed if you weren’t paying attention to a specific spot for them. So, with the cube now nearly full of monster cores and drop items, organization was long forgotten.

It would have been nearly impossible, anyhow, as there was no space for neat stacks, and Dominic would have to move things to his other storage ring just to make space to sort it.

And, they hadn’t even received their shares from the big bag of looting.

Either bag of loot, Dominic noted.

The adventurers still had a large storage bag of monster cores as well, that would be split among the members of the team, and the new group had another. Dominic just hadn’t had time to contribute the latest of his gains to that one, as they had been somewhat busy at the time.

He really should get one of those for himself.

The Storage Cube that he had inherited from his parents was a marvel of magitech engineering, but its storage area was not huge.

The ring he had received from the King with his reward in it was larger inside, and the bags that the Duskblade Sect carried could store half an Ogre Tribe’s bodies if they needed to.

He was working with enough space for a few weeks’ rations, and they were carrying the equivalent of a small warehouse.

Alexis turned to the other Royals. "So, what do we do here? Should we station Cygnia troops here to watch the area? Nobody would question that."

Claudius nodded. "I will transfer some of my men and an airship to the area. With the airship, they can relay messages instantly, and there are a few techno wizards on board, to load the cannons.

The weather might have kept us from properly deploying them this time, but the magitech cannons should keep most of the monsters suppressed until the ground forces can get in position."

Alexis nodded. "That should work. And they can keep an eye on the place from a distance. This ritual area has me concerned that it might be more than just summoning, but nobody we know has enough knowledge of blood magic to tell us for sure.

When the airships arrive, have them take pictures from above, and we can have the prisoners, or someone in the Capital, tell us more about the formation."

Prince Fahad shrugged. "It will have to be one of yours, or a prisoner. The Axbridge mages aren’t too knowledgeable on blood magic. If they were, then we could have just had the Duskblade Sect identify this. But I can see them examining it, and it’s clear that they’re just making an educated guess at best.

None of them know how to replicate this sort of magic."

Alexis shook her head at the mages huddled together, passionately debating the possible uses of each of the ritual circles within the protected area.

But while they were doing that, Dominic and Amie had another mission. They were circling the barrier, running their hands over the surface and looking for a flaw, imperfection, or hidden way inside.

If they could find that, they might be able to shut it all down.

However, when they made it back to their starting point, there was still no sign of a flaw in the barrier, or even any trace of living creatures having been there before them.

There might have been some inside recently, that was impossible to tell with the barrier sealed. But nothing had stood within ten metres of the barrier since the rains had ended.

That meant that if it was a summoning ritual, the monsters weren’t appearing within the barrier, but somewhere else in the vicinity. That answered the most basic question of where they were going to find the monsters. But it left one very important question unanswered.

Just how many more summoning and sacrifice rituals were happening to keep this one fed?

It couldn’t be just one or two. There was far too much blood flowing from the altar for it to be a single sacrifice, and they hadn’t seen any signs that most of the rituals had a supply of captives.

Of course, Alexis didn’t know that Dominic had freed a whole group of hostages who were held for that purpose, but even if she did, there had to be more rituals hidden somewhere to account for this amount of flowing blood.

Unless the blood was not actually from sacrifices, and the altar itself was a magical item that produced the blood for the rituals.

Unfortunately, there was no way to verify that unless they could get inside.

There was so much that they didn’t know, and it was driving her insane as she waited for everyone to finish their assessment so that they could assign a scouting team to watch the area while everyone else went home.

"You look vaguely disappointed." Prince Fahad joked as Dominic made his way back over to the group.

"Today was going so well. The rain stopped, there were monsters, and loot, and I got a new crafting recipe. It’s just a shame that it has to come to an end like this, you know?

Not only are we out of monsters, we’re stuck with an anticlimactic half answer, and no Dagos Princes to kill." Dominic replied with a wink and a dramatic sigh.

"Well, you can’t win them all. But I think that the testimony of the mages we have captured should go a long way to solving the mystery of who exactly has been behind all of this. None of them know all the details. But they all know different details, and I have heard that the Duskblade Sect is already starting to piece them all together." Fahad replied.

"Well, that is good news. But who won the competition to the centre? I kind of lost count as we were fighting."

Alexis laughed and took out a level twenty-seven Monster Core. "We found an Ogre Lord on the way in. Looks like you’ve lost this round."