The intelligence Melita had conveyed made Amber break out in a fine cold sweat. Gawain, however, remained calm. Looking into Melita's eyes, he asked, "Had you never considered the problem with that tower before?"
"Some of our kin had considered it, but we were powerless before," Melita said with a sigh. Tarlonnd's current situation was enough to make dragons sigh; there were too many hardships that could not be spoken of to outsiders. But Gawain could, at least, be considered one of the dragon race's few old friends among the mortal nations, so she no longer avoided certain topics here. "The Tower of Reverse Tide lies in the continent's northwest, while the Safe Zones we have recovered are mainly concentrated along Tarlonnd's southeastern Shattered Coast and the nearby coastal lands. A vast wasteland lies between them. Conditions deep within it are extremely harsh, and even now we cannot venture too far in. To confirm the tower's condition, we can only go around by sea—make a huge detour around the main Contaminated Zones and spatial rifts. For us until recently, the cost was simply too great."
"So you finally have the capacity to pay attention to that tower now?" Amber could not help asking from the side. "Is someone... a dragon, watching it over there now?"
"After barely resolving the short-term food supply problem and the backlash from the enhancers used by some of our kin, Agondor sent a team to the northwestern coast. They found a relatively safe foothold there and established a Forward Camp," Melita said, nodding. "They contact Agondor once every two days. The monitoring is terribly inadequate, but it is better than nothing."
"Once every two days?" Gawain immediately frowned. "Isn't that too large a gap? Two days would be enough for an out-of-control dragon to fly