That was he thought until someone appeared in front of him, and that someone was someone he called as a party pooper, Arion. If Arion became a spirit, he wished his title would be Arion the Party Pooper. That was what he did when he appeared in front of him.
"I know what you are trying to do, but I have to inform you that I will not allow you to do it," Arion immediately said as soon as his figure materialized from the shadow.
Tang Shaoyang furrowed his brow, not liking what he heard. He had not told anyone what he wanted to do, but it seemed like Arion could predict what he would do in this situation.
"What do you mean? What am I going to do?"
Arion rolled his eyes, leaning his back against the tree, "You will use your summon to run through this world and leave the crumbs for the others. Don’t do that, or Clementine and I will cancel the mission."
Arion almost clapped his own forehead for what he said. That just came out of his mouth without a second thought. He knew Tang Shaoyang well enough to know that Tang Shaoyang did not take threats well. In fact, Tang Shaoyang was the type of person who would challenge the threat and would do everything to get rid of the threat instead of backing down.
"I know you have your own agenda for choosing this place, but I want you to consider the other administrators as your own people. They need this kind of place for their training, getting more credits, and getting stronger. The Void Cult might back down for now, but we know they will come back stronger. We need to get them stronger before the inevitable."
Arion tried to explain his thoughts, but he was not confident that it would clear the misunderstanding.
Tang Shaoyang was already annoyed with everything, and now Arion came to him with a threat. That just annoyed him further, and again, he did not like it when someone was controlling his actions. This reminded him of his past before the Game and everything.
He wanted the God of Martial class, but he was not desperate for the class. This class would not determine his future or anything. Not getting the class didn’t mean he would lose his fight or war in the future. The fact that he was being coerced to do something he did not like again and again made him angry.
The annoyance turned into anger; it was as if Arion and Clementine tried to suppress him, not getting the class and the Calamity bodies for his Spirit Summoning. Absolute Sense picked nothing from Arion. He could not tell what Arion’s feelings were right now; he could not tell whether this was a ploy or they just cared for the other administrators.
Tang Shaoyang closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Ava and the others reminded him in his head not to escalate the problem over something like that. However, he had a trust issue after everything he experienced, and he doubted Arion despite receiving Arion’s assistance in the past.
Arion gave him a good class, became a mediator for him and the Nirvana Alliance that stopped an all-out war, took his side when Executive Administrator Palmas tried to get him killed, and he helped him when a certain group from the Hurakan Kingdom tried to create a problem with him. He gave Arion the benefit of the doubt to trust Arion and relented to his plan, but he was not backing down without getting anything.
"Alright, but you should give me directions, and maybe you can tell me the place I am looking for."
Arion furrowed his brow. He and Clementine knew what Tang Shaoyang was looking for in this place. The previous Executive Administrators came to this place for the same reason.
"I don’t know the exact location, but I can give you directions to the place you are looking for. It’s in the north of our fortress, but I don’t know how far it is. However, based on our main base location, I would say it’s very far."
Tang Shaoyang activated his Chaos Eyes, but then his expression turned into confusion. Not because of Arion’s information, but because he could not tell where the north was. He paused and turned toward Arion, "So... which direction is north?"
Arion’s nervousness vanished, knowing Tang Shaoyang could crack a joke like that. He let out a chuckle at the joke. That meant Tang Shaoyang was not offended by his threat. But that quickly turned into a realization because Tang Shaoyang kept looking at him, expecting an answer.
Arion let out another chuckle. He thought Tang Shaoyang had done his own research based on the previous Executive Administrator’s reports.
"We are north of our main base."
Tang Shaoyang went with "ah", then he turned toward Arion.
"I will pick up the pace once I get my main objective because I am not going to stay in this place for months, let alone years."
Arion let out another sigh, "You should take your time and be cautious. The Emperor of the Void Cult might be strong, but there are a lot of individuals who are stronger than they are. The reason we can’t kill those emperors is that they could always run away to the Void Realm."
He was afraid that killing the Emperor would make Tang Shaoyang conceited. He needed to remind Tang Shaoyang that there were a lot of stronger people than Thomas Lysvand. The King of the Ancient Kingdom and their Generals were one example. There were more in the Dragon Realm that could beat Thomas Lysvand, and there might be some calamities in this abandoned world that were stronger than Thomas Lysvand.
The strong calamities were the reason why the God Order wanted to take Tang Shaoyang’s Calamity Dragons. Finding a way to tame the calamities would turn the God Order to be an even more fearful faction.
"I know there are many stronger people than Thomas Lysvand. I fought the man myself, so you don’t have to remind me about it. You don’t need to worry about me. No matter how weak my opponent is, I never hold back, especially if they are my enemies."
Arion nodded and left, his body fading into the shadows and disappearing.
Once Tang Shaoyang could not feel Arion’s presence anymore, he opened his connection with his spirit once more. He expected his spirits would argue with each other, especially for Jet and Zephyr. However, he was surprised by the silence.
[Tch, that friend of yours doesn’t know that there are four of us who could beat Thomas Lysvand the same.] Vandir commented. The four in his words were Avyn, Karan, Zara, and himself. The four were the pinnacle Archaic Spirits.
[Even I could crush that weakling!] Doombringer did not want to lose out.
Tang Shaoyang knew Vandir too well to know what the skeleton wanted to do after hearing Doombringer’s comment. The skeleton would try to rage bait the calamity, so he spoke first before Vandir could rage bait Doombringer.
"Stop it, Vandir. Or I will never summon you again until we fight the Nirvana Alliance!"
The threat worked wonderfully because Vandir did not say anything afterward, "There’s a change of plan..."
Tang Shaoyang told them the plan because he was not going to summon them all to sweep the calamity. The plan was simple: he would summon twenty spirits and let them spread out to scout the area for him while he headed toward his main objective, Thousand Vows Pavilion.
He summoned twenty spirits that were fit for the job before activating the Bloodline Transformation. As soon as the twenty spirits spread out, he also disappeared, heading toward the north. He did not know his destination, but he wanted to reach his destination as quickly as possible; hence, he activated the transformation.