Chapter 693: A Good Place

"HAHAHA, I knew Elves were the weakest!" A human shouted triumphantly.

"Fuck off!" A shout came from deep within the elves' audience.

"There are always exceptions! That 1st ranker of Aurelius Beast Academy is simply a unique case!"

"Ehehehe! Isn't that you accepting that you are weaker? I mean, both Lunareth and Aurelius were 3rd-ranked academies in their respective Empires."

"And, and! Weren't the elves the ones who attacked first? They dug their own grave!"

Another human chimed in with crackling laughter.

The hot-headed elves could only seethe in anger as they listened to all the taunts.

"Just wait for our flower from Elarion Academy to meet them; she will bring you back to your place," an elf said through gritted teeth.

"Hahaha, keep celebrating things that haven't happened and won't happen! For the truth is right in front of your face!"

After that, the Host's voice boomed when the huge display in the centre showed the live stream of Leo incinerating the forest with his [Solarflare Torrent], followed by the students of Lunareth Academy appearing on the stadium field to get healed.

"The 3rd Human Academy—Aurelius Beast Academy—has defeated the 3rd Elven Academy—Lunareth Academy! With this, Lunareth Academy is out of the competition's 1st phase!"

A series of cheers and boos came from the crowd, while the defeated academy students could only curse their choices and luck.

But suddenly, the scene showing Leo changed and shifted to some dragon academy students. More specifically, the few individuals who were in dragon form and flying with a couple more on their backs who couldn't transform.

They were currently descending rapidly towards some humans in a defensive stance. The humans belonged to Ardent Sovereign Hall—the 6th-ranked human academy—with crossed swords as their symbol.

It seemed that the 2nd academy to be eliminated would belong to the humans.

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Back in the secret realm...

Heeding Fruder's advice, the group was on the lookout for a particular type of terrain.

And one of the major geographical features they were looking for was high, rising, steep cliffs all around.

Even better would be a crater-like formation with a central elevated area, surrounded by high cliffs in a circular pattern.

This was a preemptive measure against their most dangerous opponents—Dragons. Having high, rising walls all around the stronghold would deter any surprise aerial attacks.

Leo liked the idea so much that he was ready to use earth manipulation to form the same terrain himself, but of course, that would consume a lot of mana and even be time-consuming, so they opted to look for something similar.

Another major reason for looking for natural geography rather than Leo simply terraforming the whole thing was its sturdiness.

No matter how strong Leo was, he was still not at a level to create something that nature might have created on its own over the course of time.

Wait... isn't it like an artificial pocket dimension? Leo wondered.

It might be that the Emperor had somehow managed to take control of a natural secret realm or had formed the whole realm himself. In both cases, it was something that Leo could only be in awe of for now.

They were still flying at a low altitude and scrounging for resources for the alchemists, as well as some natural treasures that increased mana in the surroundings. After the 500-kilometre mark, such natural treasures were becoming a normal sight.

When evening arrived, they didn't stop to set up camp or cook food; apparently, the elves had some bought meals in their spatial rings that they ate while riding the Skyreaver.

Suddenly, Agnivar, who was flying alone alongside the Skyreaver, snapped his head towards a certain direction.

"Lord! I can feel the presence of some dragons at a great distance in that direction," he said to Leo, causing the other students to look at Agni in surprise.

"He can also speak...?"

Leo simply informed them about Agni being an intelligent beast and immediately told Kaelion to instruct the Skyreaver to gain a bit of altitude, turn towards the opposite direction, and speed up.

Right now, they were in no position to engage in a full-blown battle with any dragon academy, especially when they didn't know which academy it was.

They finally stopped their search for other resources and diverted their attention towards finding a place to build their stronghold.

And to their surprise, they actually found a great spot even before reaching the 1000-kilometre destination mark, just before the sun was about to go down below the horizon.

It was about 150 kilometres behind their mark.

Though it wasn't exactly a high-rising cliff covering the whole perimeter in a circle, it was surrounded by cliffs on two sides.

A wide, dried canyon. Though it seemed that water flowed through it during rains, it was currently completely dry.

Kaelion instructed the Skyreaver to fly along the length of the canyon to check its structure.

The canyon's base was nearly 5 kilometres at its deepest point yet found, an astonishingly deep fall from the surface level. And with the sun almost down, they couldn't even see the end of that depth.

Who knows, some unknown beast might be lurking around down there?

As for the width of the canyon, it varied from 50 kilometres to as short as 100 metres at the narrowest point. Though the group noticed that whenever such narrow points occurred, many other similar channels were around, as if a single 100-metre path couldn't hold all the water that once flowed through it.

"We should probably wait until morning to look for an appropriate place, or else we might be ambushed by some beast," Fruder said, and the others nodded.

With that, the night passed while they spent almost all the time on the Skyreaver's back as it flew across the canyon.

Apparently, Leo, Lily, and Kaelion chose to remain awake to mark prospective locations that they found ideal.

When morning arrived, Leo showed the others a location that he found the best.

The canyon at that point seemed to be almost 2 kilometres deep and had a uniform width of 1 kilometre. But the interesting part was the formation of the canyon.

It cut into a horseshoe bend, with the two ends almost meeting at the other.

Meaning there was a central 2-kilometre-tall platform almost 500 metres wide at the top point, with chasms 1 kilometre wide on all sides, except for the thin neck connecting it to the land that Leo had already planned to destroy to make the platform an isolated island.

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*Horse-shoe bend Canyon Formation*