Emma, Mila, Gloria and Alexei together with all the troops gather at the main hideout, the largest of all, it is an underground space on the slope of one of the mountains, only the entrance allows entry while mounted on some mount reaching 4 meters in height and 7 meters in width, inside it is so spacious that it is capable of easily housing around a thousand people.
Of course this was not built in 3 days by Annie, Irina and the exploration team, nor, even if Annie were in the earthly regent kingdom or astral king could she do it so precisely, but rather it is originally a system of natural caves, the only thing they did was modify the entrance with the walls raised by Annie, the doors and placing some fragmented illusory formations, in addition to modifying the surroundings of the entrance.
This allowed them to obtain a perfect refuge to act as a central shelter, in fact, they even sealed the deepest entrance of the caves to ensure that nothing external enters, but, even so, only the main cave chamber measures about 1000 m2 (10764 ft2) and the others, although smaller, range from 100 m2 to 500 m2 (1076 ft2 to 5382 ft2).
This is perfect for everything that is here, Gloria and Alexei observe the cave and see that it is full of weapons, boxes, barrels, baskets, equipment, they are even surprised to see 15 imprisoned lizard men, even 3 of them being alphas, in addition to some few wounded or tied beasts.
Gloria speaks saying: "Wow, Miss Emma, how many troops did you eliminate to do all this?, when my team and I unloaded what we found in the caches here, there were not so many things nor much less prisoners or even beasts."
Emma without modesty says happily: "It is simply because since an incident we had we focused purely on carrying out shock attacks, that way while they were still confused we eliminated almost everyone and if we could we captured them."
Mila at her side nods and says: "The truth is that incident was a matter of life and death, leaving that aside, come on let us take these 50 beasts to the beast chamber, you can go unloading everything and getting comfortable."
Mila quickly together with Lily, Clara, Haru and the members of the dragon ambassadors team guided the beasts to the beast chamber, an improvised cave where the few beasts that could be captured alive were located.
For their part Alexei and Gloria's team began to unload the captured resources and move them to the spatial storage boxes or to the spatial sacks or bags that, although they have less space, better support energetic materials.
Feicui Long if he were here would be happy, after all the amount of resources that he is gathering, at least in energy stones, hides, artifacts, beast cores, monster cores and other energetic materials is incredible, although of course they are not of great quality, but the quantity by itself can help him even more in his finances and the general development of the village and that is only taking into account this particular hideout and not the other 14 hideouts.
Alexei then approaches curiously and looks at the prisoners saying: "It is incredible, how did you capture so many?, I remember that we only captured this alpha here, but you got another 2 and 12 common lizards."
Emma shrugs and says: "It was just luck, the two alphas were both captured in the incident and the others just survived by chance, we were not planning to capture them, but the opportunity arose and well there they are."
Emma then adds and says: "Even so, the information we obtained is really interesting, although we have not managed to extract all the information we wanted from them, it has helped us a lot."
Alexei curiously stands up and asks Emma while pointing and touching the chest of the white alpha lizard woman, the same one he captured before: "Oh?, what kind of information, this one here has not wanted to tell us anything, she is a very stubborn subject."
Emma looks at him a bit confused and lowering her eyebrow first tells him: "Do you know that that is a female right?, it is not strange why she would not tell you anything, in any case, they gave us information about their organization, structure, also the castes within their society and the nation they come from."
Alexei stays a bit in shock and says: "Wait, a female?, is it a woman?"
Emma nods and Alexei then asks another question a bit more calmly: "And why would that affect whether she reveals something to me or not?"
Emma responds to him a bit calmly: "One of the things we learned is that they are a matriarchal society with a severe caste system, alpha women at the top, then women and finally men, so not only in her eyes are you despising her by referring to her as a man, but also you are a man, obviously she would not reveal anything to you."
Alexei then finally understands the look full of rage that he saw from the alpha lizard woman, every time he tried to interrogate her.
Gloria who had made sure that everything was in order while they were storing everything suddenly interrupts them saying: "Sorry to interrupt your chat, but do you not think that we should inform Feicui Long about the things we have seen?"
Emma looks at her and although she does not like very much that Gloria refers to her lord by his direct name, she simply responds saying: "I think that would be ideal, after all the situation warrants it, in fact I had planned to propose the same, after all I believe I am not the only one who noticed that the real numbers turned out to be much higher than the theorized ones."
Alexei nods in response to Emma saying: "Exactly, I also noticed the same, they are too many and they are too well prepared to be a common exploration team."
Gloria then without hesitation sends a voice message to Mariane's team and to Feicui Long's, requesting that they return to the central hideout urgently.
…
Feicui Long was a bit annoyed, although he killed some exploration teams and several beasts that he encountered, there is a feeling that truly bothers him, why have the other teams not finished?, he was prepared for the frontal battle for a while now a few hundred meters from the main camp of the lizard men, but nothing was happening.
It was when a message from Gloria arrived to the sound transmission stone that he quickly listened to it: "Feicui Long I think the situation is a bit more serious than we thought, you have to return to the central hideout, we have to discuss everything again."
Feicui Long frowned and although he doubted, finally sighed and gave the order: "We are all going back to the central hideout, the situation took an unexpected turn!"
Isabella and Irina looked at him a bit confused and asked at the same time: "Did something important happen?"
Feicui Long without knowing what to answer them tells them: "Most likely yes, as for what happened, I really do not know, we have to go and check it ourselves."
Feicui Long with his heart uneasy and his team reorganized and marched toward the central hideout without delay.
…
Meanwhile in Mariane's team that had just eliminated an entire team of lizard men, Mariane covered in blood on her fists listened to the message and smiling says: "Good, at least we will be able to rest under a safer roof."
Mariane then looks at her team and says: "Ada give the regrouping order, we are retreating to where my master is and let us bring our captured loot!, I think the master will reward us well."
Ada nods and gives the orders, Mariane who meets with the twins and Annie is smiling, on this trip she obtained quite a lot, just she herself captured 30 mounts!, considering that Boronia only has common horses, it is a great improvement even if they were somewhat bad energetic beasts, but taking into account what the captured ones are, they are even better.
…
Feicui Long whose team is the closest was the first to arrive, thinking of the worst he pushes the door expecting to find himself with a situation in which there are dead or seriously injured troops…
But what he finds leaves him surprised, not only is there no one injured, but they are preparing dinner and organizing everything to make space so that everyone sleeps comfortably.
Feicui Long perplexed then finds Gloria and asks very confused: "What is so urgent that you made me come here?"
Gloria who was sitting cleaning her precious sword then stands up and answers him: "Well it is something simple, I think it is better that we explain it to you alone, Emma, Alexei and I."
Feicui Long together with Isabella and Irina follow them to one of the empty chambers…
…
About 30 minutes later Feicui Long is sitting, with a very serious face, from what Gloria saw to what Alexei described to him, but what worried him the most was what Emma and her team experienced, in addition to Emma's estimation of 2 thousand enemies…
Feicui Long then seriously looks at them and says: "I understand, that is something much more worrying… even so retreating is something difficult to do, is there any extra information that you have been able to obtain?, did you not tell me that you have prisoners?"
Emma nods and a bit embarrassed tells him: "Yes, but we could only learn their internal structure, we did not manage to extract anything of vital importance or about why they are here…"
Feicui Long then sighing heavily says: "Fine, bring me those who are in the most important rank, I will try to extract the information from them."
Emma obediently and without hesitating even a bit makes a bow and leaves at great speed, leaving Gloria and Alexei surprised.
After about two or three minutes she returns carrying the three alphas and places them on the ground saying: "Venerable lord, these are the leaders, the alphas."
Feicui Long then looks at Alexei and tells him: "Alexei, you can rest for the moment, also I need someone to have command of the troops while the rest of us will be busy here."
Alexei understands the orders and nodding leaves the room, Feicui Long then taking out a fragmented formation deploys it in the chamber quickly using his psionic powers and then stands up, to walk in a very slow and imposing manner while looking at the three alpha lizard women, who at first look at him each in a different way...
One going from indifference, another contempt and another calmly, but all of their expressions change the closer he gets…