"Thank you, Your Majesty Ye Luo..." Alice knelt on one knee, speaking with a complicated expression.
Ye Luo remained seated astride his tall horse, making no move to dismount. Looking at Alice, whose bowed head was hidden behind a curtain of golden hair, he said leisurely, "Go back and tell Caroline that she is my woman. Though I haven't given her any formal title, that doesn't change her standing in my Zerg territory. If anything like this happens again, she can come straight to me. Also, if you still want to keep the Crimson Rose going, you should go to Hiller City..."
Having said this, Ye Luo glanced at the sun setting behind the mountains and didn't linger. With a shout of "Hyah!" he galloped out through the city gates...
Adolph watched Ye Luo leave respectfully. When Ye Luo, Ye Meng, and the others disappeared beyond the city gates, Adolph let out a long sigh. Then, looking at Alina with admiration, he said, "Miss Alina, it seems I owe you an apology for my foolishness and shortsightedness. Among the merchant guilds of Morton, your Crimson Rose is the true winner!
"To win the title of top merchant guild, I, Adolph, was willing to become a servant and offer the power I'd worked so hard to build to His Majesty. But your Crimson Rose only had to offer up one girl to gain support we could never hope to obtain..."
A flash of cold light passed through Alice's eyes. "President Adolph, are you mocking the Crimson Rose behind our backs?"
Adolph was taken aback, then shook his head with a wry smile. "Women, in the end, are women. You need to understand that in a world governed by the law of the jungle, the winner takes all. No matter the means, only the result matters. If offering my daughter could win His Majesty's support, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment. Miss Alice, this isn't shameful; it's an opportunity. If you handle it well, the Crimson Rose will rise above every other merchant guild..."
Adolph's eyes held genuine sincerity. He'd gone from sneering mockery to earnest advice, and the onlookers couldn't help but admire how deftly he adapted to the situation...
No matter what rumors Ye Luo's public declaration of his relationship with Caroline stirred up in the city, the saying that when one person rose to power, even their hangers-on prospered would soon prove true.
Thanks to Ye Luo's words, the Crimson Rose Chamber of Commerce suddenly rose to an astonishing position throughout Morton Territory. During the guild's activities afterward, Alice was amazed to find that it was as if the goddess of fortune had spread her beautiful wings around her. Everything they did went smoothly... Of course, Alice wasn't a fool. She knew the reason behind it all...
For the first time, this strong woman who had never relied on a man felt a slight sense of security in having such powerful backing...
As the feeble sun sank below the mountains, the sky began to darken, as if painted with thick strokes of ink...
Two in the morning. First Legion camp.
The well-trained patrolmen made their rounds, alert and energetic. On the ten watchtowers, the twenty sentries kept their eyes wide open, missing not the slightest movement around them.
This was the most exhausting time of day, when patrolmen were most likely to doze off. Yet not a trace of fatigue showed on them. Their outstanding performance embodied the meaning of elite troops, of a trump card!
"Rustle..." Suddenly, the grass on the southern edge of the camp quivered softly.
A light breeze stirred the night, and the rustling grass didn't seem unusual... But even this faint movement immediately put one sentry on alert.
However, his professional training kept him from crying out or panicking. He acted as though he hadn't noticed anything and continued looking elsewhere... If an Overlord had been flying overhead, though, it would have seen everything the sentry did!
The sentry appeared oblivious, but as he turned his head away, he kept the suspicious spot firmly in the corner of his eye...
"Rustle..." The grass stirred again, and this time, the movement had clearly crept closer.
The sentry happened to be looking elsewhere, but when he noticed the change out of the corner of his eye, his heart tightened. He suddenly yawned, patted the comrade beside him, and said something. Then he ambled off toward the other side of the camp, as if he were going to relieve himself...
But as soon as he left the outpost, he immediately ran toward the central command tent...
"Rustle... rustle..." Beneath the cover of night, three thousand Zergling vanguard troops crawled slowly along the ground. The camp was pitched beside a provincial highway, surrounded by waist-high weeds. In the dark, even looking down from ten meters above, it would be difficult to spot the Zerglings without a careful search!
One hundred meters, ninety meters, eighty meters... The Zergling army drew closer and closer to the camp...
Sixty meters! At that distance, every Zergling stopped moving, as if their commander had realized that their infiltration was going too smoothly and ordered them to halt...
In the largest tent at the center of the First Legion's camp, Yarman sat alertly in a chair, though he should have been resting. The presidents of the mage associations from the six great kingdoms sat on either side of him. On the ground among them lay a crystal, projecting an image above it. In the image, a red Zergling opened and closed its mouth as though giving instructions...
"What a cautious beast. I thought they'd rush straight in all at once, thinking we hadn't spotted them!" said Gilbert, president of the Goriu Mage Association, with a sneer.
Yarman wore a faint smile. His calm confidence made him seem a cut above the rest. "President Taren, I don't think 'turning the rotten into something marvelous' is enough to describe the power of magic anymore. While we've all been studying more powerful, wider-reaching battle magic, your Mirror Reflection spell has expanded the uses of battle magic in an entirely different way..."
Having received Yarman's praise in front of everyone, Taren's lips curled slightly upward. The six great associations had gathered here to compete for a higher ranking, after all. The battle hadn't even begun, yet the competition was already everywhere.
Taren was a water mage. Compared with the outstanding offensive power of fire and lightning magic, and the strong defenses of wood and earth magic, water magic seemed to have little to offer. Today, however, he had demonstrated that even on a battlefield steeped in slaughter, water magic remained irreplaceable!
Taren himself had inscribed ten Mirror Reflection magic arrays on the ten observation pillars. These arrays could detect unusual reactions in the water molecules in the air, then project and transmit the images to him, allowing him to monitor the surrounding area without being detected.
With these magic arrays, they didn't need to send hundreds or thousands of scouts to spread out around the camp. An enemy's disguise might fool the sentries or hide the enemy from their sight, but it couldn't evade the water molecules everywhere!
Before you continue