Yes, Madam Prime Minister

Page 218

Overall, the Empire's lineup is luxurious, with no weaknesses, including tanks, damage dealers, controllers, scouts, and healers.

Next, we have the three people on Willand's side who initiated this operation.

"Puppet Nun" Fies is an old acquaintance of Ronan and Dinia, and is at the fifth rank.

"Heretical" Hyman, an old man with a hunched prosthetic leg, wields the Heavenly Oath Divine Art, his abilities are unknown, and he is at the sixth rank.

Finally, there is Duke Gene of Kirk, a seventh-ranked being, seventy-one years old, the youngest seventh-ranked being of his time. His summoning magic is "Silver Hand," and its abilities are extremely simple and brutal: destruction, sealing, reflection, and copying of the opponent's magic.

According to Stefan, if it weren't for his lack of mana and relatively average physical condition, and the fact that "Silver Hand" was extremely mana-intensive, this Duke might be the strongest person in the world. There's no way around it; sometimes, the simpler and more brutal the ability, the more invincible it is.

It's no wonder he didn't give the emperor face; he had the right to.

Then there's Villa, the "Scholar", the "Knight" and the "Birdman", all of whom are fifth-tier, all of whom are elemental mages, with no flaws, but also no strengths.

Villa didn't seem to be very interested in the ruins, but he was already involved in the war, and the king was the emperor's brother, so he couldn't very well not bring a few people over.

On Vena's side, there's Giovanni, whom Ronan recently met. He doesn't have a nickname, but Ronan decides to call him "Sea King." Then there's "Doll Witch," one of the few female sixth-tier beings on the entire continent. After that, there's Luke, the "Salt" guardian, who is very close to them and came at the invitation of the Holy See. He's a sixth-tier being, and his fate is changing.

"However, if we're talking about the strongest fighting force, it's still on our side, you two."

"Stephen said."

Although he hadn't experienced it firsthand, he knew that Rondinia could combine.

Dinya didn't react much; she was considering which suit to play in the next trick.

"Combat strength and such are meaningless."

Ronan stated.

Jianghu is not about fighting and killing, but about human relationships.

Everyone here is a civilized person; what's the point of fighting?

After playing cards for a while, they each crawled into their simple sleeping bags and went to sleep.

Of course, they were asleep, but the arrangements were absolutely saturated. Any unusual phenomenon would trigger an alarm, and the people who received the warning would naturally get up instantly to respond.

Nothing unusual happened that night.

The undead, lined up neatly in circles, still kneeling on the ground, were still there.

However, when I saw this scene before, it was nighttime, and the people were blurry, only their outlines were visible. But now it's daytime, and I can see them clearly. Seeing the greenish-blue skin of the living dead and their tattered, blood-stained clothes only makes me feel nauseous.

The distance of several hundred meters was a matter of a moment for everyone present. In the blink of an eye, the group had already passed the crowd of the living dead and entered the interior of the pyramid.

The two men who had come with Suleiman did not go inside with the group, but stayed on the perimeter.

This pyramid was built entirely by ordinary people, and I didn't feel anything unusual after entering it.

The interior of the pyramid is almost solid, and the passageways are quite narrow. Come to think of it, it's just an oversized tombstone.

The real ruins are still below.

Soon, Willand and his two companions, or more precisely, Fies and the hunchbacked prosthetic man Hyman, led a group of people to the middle area.

"There should be a lot of burial objects around here."

“Some places clearly used to be inlaid with gemstones.”

"A pirate is a pirate. Even if he becomes a magician or a nobleman, he can't change his nature of stealing and robbing."

Behind them, people started whispering among themselves.

Duke Gene scoffed at this.

It's as if you people don't steal or rob.

In the past, magicians openly robbed nobles and their vassals; to put it bluntly, they were official bandit leaders and old bandits who had been recruited.

They're just making excuses before they start grabbing things.

What right do those key Villa people have to say that?

“We still can’t say that. After all, some things from before are buried underground. Why not bring them out to support the development of civilization, right?” Hyman, with his hunched prosthetic leg, replied with a smile.

The people who had been discussing it stopped talking.

It wasn't because they were persuaded, but because they had reached their first target location. After all, they were magicians, superior people. A few words were enough; the important business couldn't be delayed.

The pyramids are over 100 meters tall, but the innermost part, from the ground to the ceiling, is only about ten meters high.

However, it was quite spacious, and in this wide place, there was a giant golden coffin.

The golden coffin was about two meters wide and five meters long. The lid of the coffin was a relief of a human figure, but obviously such a giant could not exist in reality.

Hyman, with his hunched prosthetic leg, stopped and turned to look at the crowd. "The lid is heavy. Can someone open it?"

Everyone here is a magician or a scholar. Who are you trying to fool, you old geezer? You Weylanders know this place so well, how could you not know how to open the lid?

The Weylanders sent these three men; there's no way they couldn't have passed this first hurdle.

“Just treat it as a little game for fun, everyone.” Duke Gene spoke up, glancing at the others with a hostile look. “By the way, we can’t drag this out too long, after all, the magicians from Suleiman’s side should already be on their way.”

"How about the three gentlemen, Mr. Villa, who were speaking very energetically just now, give it a try?"

Gene knew very well that the lid wasn't heavy, but rather that it would suppress magical power.

The atmosphere suddenly became somewhat awkward again.

Chapter 497 The Staircase, the River Styx, and the Ship of Time

The three of them, including Villa, did not react. To be honest, Ronan couldn't understand what was wrong with them. They were all old and fifth-level mages, yet they kept talking like they had no self-control, blurting out whatever came to mind.

However, Stefan was not surprised. He had been the principal of a proper magic academy and had seen many people like this before. Outstanding graduates stayed at the school and became excellent teachers and scholars. They spent decades in the semi-closed little society of the school, not interacting much with outsiders. They just gave orders to the students and criticized outsiders at will, living like important figures.

It's not that there's anything wrong with this kind of person, it's just that he's only suited to staying in school.

After a while, the three of them still didn't react. The old man with the hunched prosthetic leg, Hyman, was about to open the coffin lid himself when "Black Dragon" Bricht came over. Mr. Hand gently pushed the coffin lid a little, but it didn't budge. A look of surprise appeared in his eyes. He tried a couple more times and roughly understood what was going on.

The golden coffin lid with the human figure relief is indeed very heavy, probably several tons, but for the magicians present, pushing it open is not a problem. The real trouble is that it will interfere with the flow of magic and the casting of spells.

However, this was simple for Bricht, who was "magic immune," meaning his own magic system was isolated from the outside world and undisturbed.

Emperor Antolo breathed a sigh of relief. In any case, the three people on Villa's side were practically his men.

After the coffin lid was pushed open, the coffin was empty, except for the entrance to a tunnel.

“Let’s go, everyone,” Duke Gene said, then gracefully stepped over the side of the coffin and into the coffin with a single-handed hurdle-like motion.

Fies followed up, saying, "The coffin lid will automatically reset itself after a while."

After Willand and the other two went down into the tunnel, the others followed one after another.

Soon, everyone entered the tunnel.

They hadn't gone far when they heard the sound of stones scraping against metal, followed by a loud rumble. The sound stopped, and when they looked back, the place they had come from was completely dark.

Just as Fies had said, the coffin lid would be closed again after a period of time.

The group continued down and came to a winding, spiral staircase. This staircase was quite out of place with the architectural style they had seen along the way.

Previously, the dark, narrow, and unknown passageways either created a sense of oppression, or the spacious areas were filled with murals and reliefs, giving people an ancient and eerie sense of beauty, completely in the style of an exotic ancient tomb. However, the spiral staircase here has the feeling of the underground space of an ancient castle in the Western Continent.

Without thinking too much, I continued on my way.

After an unknown amount of time, the group finally arrived at an open space.

It is over 20 meters high and over 30 meters wide, with an eerily calm underground river in the middle in front.

But what's truly bizarre is that the river itself isn't deep, only three to five meters, but the water on both sides seems to have no end, and even using magic to probe it doesn't reveal its end; it appears to extend infinitely.

Not far in front of us is a stone tablet about five meters tall, with some hieroglyphs and patterns carved on it.

"What does it say here?" Emperor Antolo asked.

“I don’t know,” replied the hunched-over prosthetic man, Hyman. “That’s not important. What’s important is that next, we can summon two ships through this tombstone. These two ships will take the people on board to a maze. By passing through the maze, we can reach the entrance to the real ruins.”

After saying that, the old man looked up, then raised his prosthetic arm and pressed down on an inscription on the stone tablet that depicted a ship.

Soon, two narrow Egyptian sun boats with sharp, hooked bows and sterns appeared on the water.

The hunchbacked old man Hyman and Duke Gene of Kirk boarded the ship on the right, while Fies boarded the ship on the left alone.

Immediately afterwards, Emperor Antoro and his party of eight went to the ship on the left. Together with the original two, the ship on the left was basically full.

“Then we’ll stay here. The three ladies can go ahead. Is that alright?” Ronan stepped forward and said.

No one raised any objections.

Soon, Ronan and his group boarded the ship on the right.

Fez was at the front, followed by Martina, the "Doll Witch," then Dinia, with Ronan behind Dinia, followed by Giovanni, then Stefan, then the Guardian "Salt" Luke, and behind Luke were the three of them, including Villa.

"You're not going to have to row yourself, are you?" Ronan asked.

“Wait, it will drive away by itself,” Fies replied.

Before long, the boat began to rock slightly, and the eerily calm river surface finally came to life, rippling gently.

But then the situation changed. From the moment they arrived, the group had been silently facing the right side of the stone tablet, which read "forward." But at this moment, the ship Ronan and his group were on was moving to the left, which meant moving backward.

Now the bow of the ship becomes the stern, and the three people, who were originally sitting at the very back, become the ones at the very front.

"Hey, what's going on here?" the very feminine-looking "knight" demanded loudly.

"Oh, I forgot to mention, whatever you do, don't fall into the water, or it will be a lot of trouble," Fiss said.

"I'm asking you why this boat is sailing backwards!" the other person raised their voice and asked again.

“I didn’t say the ship had to sail upright.” Fies’s head tilted stiffly like a puppet. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, I’m on the ship too. If we die, we die together.”

The two ships were not moving very fast, but they were visibly separating and getting further and further apart.

On the other side, Emperor Antolo also raised questions.

Duke Gene turned to look at the Emperor. "Haha, Duke, you're so surprised? Don't you know a lot?"

He did not address Antolo as Emperor, but as Duke.

“Oh, Chieftain, you misunderstand. I do know a little bit about it, but it’s about very important things. As for the less important things, you’ll have to explain them to me.” Antoro retorted, addressing Gene as Chieftain.

In terms of actual territory, Antolo was indeed just a duke, but what was a duke on your wretched island of Weyland? He was just a village chief, and a mountain village at that.

Hyman, with his hunched prosthetic leg, had to step in again to smooth things over, saying, "It's alright, the two ships may be heading in different directions, but they will eventually reach the same place."

The two ships fell silent for a moment.

Soon, the other side could no longer be seen from either side.

In complete darkness, without any change in light, the boat remained on the river. There were no murals or stone carvings on either bank, just indistinguishable stone walls. As the boat sailed on the river, not even a sound could be heard. Gradually, the boat began to lose its sense of movement and began to lose track of time.

A group of people started chatting, and only by listening to each other's words could they feel that time had not stopped, but was constantly flowing.

"How much longer?" asked the tall, robust "scholar" sitting at the very front, with no one in front of him and only able to stare into the endless darkness.

“I don’t know,” Fies replied.

"Damn it," the tall and muscular "scholar" couldn't help but curse.

Chapter 498 Abnormalities, the Clock, and the Labyrinth in My Heart

Fies sat at the stern, her hands clasped behind her head against the upturned part of the stern, her eyes closed, as still as a lifeless doll, even though she herself was a doll.

He appears calm, but his heart is not at peace.

Fies knew that when Lionel, Ambrina's second uncle and the leader of the Purple Robe organization, came here for the second time, he took some things from the depths of the ruins and damaged the core mechanism that made the place work.

However, Lionel was not someone who could force his way through; he relied on Freygoga's special spatial summoning magic to cleverly pass through. Simply put, he didn't unlock the doors and just went through them. Even if he disrupted some mechanisms, some things should have just become ineffective, rather than completely disappeared.

It's like you broke a mechanical clock. Even if the clock can't move anymore, the hands can't just fly off, right?

In the first level, at the coffin with the golden human relief, there should be a sphinx monster who will invite you to play a gambling game. If you win, he will let you pass, but it is very difficult for you to win because this sphinx monster can read minds.

One minute is allotted; the second hand is ticking away.

This is the second stage.

This river is called the River Styx. Everyone sitting on the boat has a "dead self" in them. Every so often, a dead person appears, and the corresponding living person needs to deal with the dead person so that the boat can continue to travel.

Everyone has one hour to work together; the minute hand is right there.

But now, the Sphinx is gone, and the "dead" has not appeared.

Combined with this strange phenomenon, it's hard not to speculate that someone has entered the alternate dimension ruins, taken control of the place, and completely controlled the "clock." They can dismantle whatever they want and make the clock turn however they want.

Fies opened his eyes and looked at Dinia, who was talking to Ronan, separated by a person in front of him.