"One of my men managed to tag the dragon with a magical beacon before they took off," Salicia explained. "I'm able to track him with this."
She held up a magical device. It had some layout sort of like a radar. I was helpless to understand it.
"Can I see?" I asked.
I was surprised that she just handed it to me. For a Bandit King, she was shockingly easy going. Her men had put down their weapons. Only Balrack looked angry and was glaring at me while stroking his ax. I might have to deal with him later, it seemed. My girls had relaxed a bit too, but only so much. They remained close together and looked like they could pull their sword and use it at a moment's notice.
As soon as I got the device, I opened up my map and was delighted to see that the dragon's location was pinged on it as a blinking icon. The point had settled at a location somewhere in the mountains. Unfortunately, it was in a completely unexplored area of my map. Furthermore, I didn't have enough experience reading distances with the map that it was clear to me how far away the dragon was. If I had to guess using how far we traveled in a day as a guideline, the trip would be about eight hours by foot, maybe?
I handed the item back to Salicia. The icon on my map stopped blinking and greyed out. As long as they didn't move, the spot would be accurate, but it was no longer being actively updated on my map, it seemed. It'd be nice if we could Portal straight there, but I hadn't visited this spot before, and that was one limitation of the portal. On the other hand, since the mark was created, would it be possible to lock the portal on to the mark? If we chose to do that, we'd be popping up right next to the dragon.
Unfortunately, I could only make one portal a day. I could only test it one time, and if it worked, I'd be cutting off one of my ways to escape. Actually, I could still Return with all of the girls. It'd only be the bandits who were left there. I know they are bandits, but abandoning them like that seemed a bit wrong too.
Of course, I could rearrange my dungeon points a bit, but I didn't want to make a habit of that. If I grew too comfortable swapping out points, it'd be really easy to accidentally not set up reset, and if I forgot reset, I was SOL. There was a dragon slayer sword, but it took 5 points. I'd have to give up my experience bonus to free up more points, and even then there was nothing on my list that seemed particularly useful for the situation. There were powerful spells, but I didn't know the conditions they worked unless I tested them. A one-time-use spell that does slightly more damage than the spells Miki can already cast is hardly going to make a difference in a prolonged battle requiring the might of 10-20 people…
Furthermore, did a mechanical dragon even count as a dragon? If I gave it to Lydia to use, would it have the same power? I wasn't stupid enough to risk all of my girl's lives on a guess, so I decided it'd be best to stick with what I knew. The last time I had thought I knew what a skill meant, I had ended up dying. I wasn't going to do that again, especially unnecessarily risking the lives of these four girls in the process. After a bit of thinking, I finally made my decision.
"Salicia…" I finally spoke out, "I believe I can create a portal and send us right there. Pick who you want in your attack group. I recommend three teams of five along with us. That's twenty in all."
Salicia nodded and agreed to it. With her group down to fifteen and us being able to teleport there immediately, I felt a bit less stressed. I really didn't need another betrayal. I hoped that by not giving her the time to think of anything, and by separating her from the majority of her bandit horde, the situation would be in my favor.