Yes, Madam Prime Minister

Page 284

Such a place is perfect for meeting secretly and avoiding being seen, but if something goes wrong, it's hard to find anyone to come to your aid.

Just as Ronan and Falek arrived and before they even got close to the mosque, an elemental barrier suddenly rose up, isolating them from the outside world.

"You think you're the only one who can arrange inside agents? Woman, you seriously underestimate me." Sultan Selim's voice rang out.

Immediately, a group of people surrounded Ronan and Falek. These people were dressed as farmers, but they were clearly not farmers, but magicians.

Sultan Selim stood in the crowd, with two people beside him. One was the scholar Ahmed, and the other was not Hayat, a Laghman slave girl who was Falek's friend and an inside man, but rather the bearded Qasim who had been by Ronan's side all along.

“Surprised? Unexpected?” Sultan Selim’s tone became even more arrogant. “That woman Hayat is quite the actress. When you died, she cried so hard that she wouldn’t let me touch you, which made me believe her. Unfortunately, I’m cautious and shrewd enough that I don’t believe you’re dead at all.”

"Now, you've lost, woman."

Although Sultan Selim was arrogant, he remained cautious, staying in the crowd, talking but not showing his face, giving no chance to turn the tables.

"I will watch you end up like this." The words were arrogant, but the Sultan retreated with a group of people and Qasim's escort.

Ronan, however, showed no sign of nervousness. If Qasim were truly the Sultan's mole, wouldn't he tell Ronan and his group about their existence?

If the Sultan had known of Ronan's existence, he probably would never have dared to set an ambush.

Qasim was actually Falek's inside man, but his main role was to lure out this cowardly Sultan.

“He’s still young after all, full of youthful vigor. Even though he’s cautious, he still can’t hold back,” Falek said calmly, glancing at Ronan as he spoke.

The next moment, a mushroom sprouted from Ronan's shoulder, and in the blink of an eye, Dinya grew out of the mushroom.

Pale gold hair, ruby-like eyes, and an extremely oppressive magical aura.

The person standing before everyone could only be the most famous woman in the magical world of the Western Continent, "Crimson Sea" Dinya Egis.

“This…” Sultan Selim was dumbfounded, but he reacted quickly. “Quick, cover! Quick, activate the teleportation!” He had to run. If he ran, he would be safe. As long as he wasn’t in this remote and deserted place, as long as he could get back to the city and back to the palace, he would be safe. Falek couldn’t openly kill him.

However, in that instant, countless magical threads, like a spider web catching an insect, pulled, glued, and locked Sultan Selim in place, and the one who did it was the bearded Qasim.

With one hand manipulating the silk threads, she peeled off the mask with the other, revealing a head of long hair. "Long time no see, you two."

It was Faith.

It seems that La Ronan and his group's joining was quite unexpected; Queen Falek, the Queen Mother, had long been in league with the Weylanders.

Chapter 648 Explosion, I'll acknowledge you as the strongest, the dead have no value.

Wearing a headscarf, a long robe, baggy trousers, and upturned shoes, Ronan brandished two swords. "Your Majesty the Sultan, please don't look so grim. Right now, two great powers are serving you alone."

Falek stepped behind Ronan. "Ms. Faith, protect him. Don't let him get caught in the crossfire."

Dinia tore off her earring, gently squeezed it, and the long-handled warhammer given to her by Antoro appeared in her hand. Her gaze locked onto the opponent's strongest point, the scholar Ahmed.

Ahmed had no other thoughts; his only thought now was to escape. He had witnessed Queen Mother Falek colluding with foreign powers, and not just one. She was bound to be silenced. Coincidentally, in order to facilitate the ambush of Falek, some of the residents living here had been dispersed and relocated, while others had been replaced by his men. There was no one around.

This, in turn, created an excellent environment for Falek to be silenced.

However, as long as he can enter the city, Falek will no longer be able to instruct a few foreigners to harm him, a scholar.

Sultan Sedanlim may not escape, but that doesn't mean his scholar Ahmed may not.

"Everyone retreat! Split up and retreat! I'll cover you!" Ahmed shouted.

Instantly, the people surrounding Ronan and his companions scattered and fled, and the people maintaining the outer barrier also dispersed immediately.

"I'll handle the small fry here, and Lily and the other two will take care of the outer perimeter." Ronan said, stepping onto his floating shield, preparing to clear out the other small fry. Although they were called small fry, they were still of a certain rank, and Suleiman's combination magic was characterized by its variety. If a group of them were to unite, they would definitely cause Ronan some trouble. After all, Ronan was a warrior among mages, but they were scattering and running away, so it was only a matter of time before they were dealt with one by one.

Ronan went to deal with the smaller fish, Faith looked at Sultan, and Falek was simply focused on self-preservation.

Diniya went directly to Ahmed.

This is the situation Ahmed wanted. Too many people would only hold him back, and if the others didn't run away, Ronan and the others would definitely concentrate their firepower on him first. Being surrounded would prevent him from escaping. Now, he only has Dinia facing him. Although he can't defeat her, he has a chance to escape.

Ahmed unleashed an Arabic-style sword draw, and in an instant too short for the naked eye to react, a fiery serpent slash struck Dinia from a distance in mid-air. Less than a fraction of a second later, Dinia's hammer had already smashed into Ahmed's head.

Bang! Ahmed exploded, but not as a person; it was a ball of water that exploded, splashing in all directions.

A strange look flashed across Dinia's face. She couldn't determine which of the split waters was the real body. Without hesitation, she slammed her hammer into the ground. An earthquake shook the ground, and cracks spread outwards. Within a radius of hundreds of meters, it was as if magma was erupting from the earth. From the cracks in the land, scorching red light shot upwards, blocking and attacking every drop and every splash of water.

However, hundreds of scattered water clones were suddenly exposed by the electric sparks, turning into streaks of lightning that shot out in all directions, accelerating their escape. Although some water droplets were still blasted apart, many escaped the range of Dinia's attack.

This is Ahmed, a hybrid of the four elements and alienation. He can become completely elemental, and different parts of his body can simultaneously and passively activate elemental magic. He can also split into elements, and after splitting, there is no original body. Each individual can continue to cast magic. This is what happened when the water droplet suddenly turned into lightning. Moreover, the loss of the split body only results in a loss of magic power, without causing damage to the original body. Therefore, the previous water droplet clones did not affect his actions at all.

And these are just the basic skills.

Ahmed is a typical example of Suleimanian-style combined magic; although his magic is less powerful, he has a great variety of techniques.

Dinia leaped into the air, his warhammer swirling wildly, unleashing countless elliptical crimson laser beams that swept across the surrounding area, delivering a blanket attack on the rapidly scattering lightning clones.

In an instant, Ahmed had several more clones blasted away, and the remaining clones immediately used earth elemental magic to burrow into the ground.

However, Dinia was already waiting for him there. The initial blow of the warhammer to the ground, plus the strafing from the sky, had plowed up the land within a kilometer radius, causing the ground to crack everywhere, and countless net-like bacteria were rapidly multiplying and spreading on the ground.

In an instant, many more clones were locked in and eroded by the mycelium.

Ahmed reacted quickly, activating his fire elemental magic to instantly burn away the net-like fungi in the ground. The clones, like slender earthworms, burrowed and crawled underground, continuing to scatter.

At this distance, Dinia could no longer lock onto the target. If she wanted to chase, she could only do so in one direction, but that was pointless.

"When it comes to the ability to escape, I would call you the strongest."

Dinia, holding his warhammer, couldn't help but sigh.

She had seen elementalization before, and she had seen clones before. Elementalization plus clones were nothing special, but she had never seen an elemental clone that was not afraid of being bombarded and could continue to cast spells.

On the other side, Ronan had already dealt with the smaller fry, but he was the one who finished off 70% of them, and only 30% of them were dealt with by himself. Dinia's massive area-of-effect attack was only aimed at Ahmed, but many people simply couldn't dodge this kind of map-wide attack.

As the red light faded and the dust settled, the Sudanese Selims were stunned, staring at the land that looked as if it had been through several earthquakes and dozens of artillery barrages. Was this the continent's number one female magician?

Faced with this scene that resembled an apocalyptic catastrophe, Falek was stunned.

Most people, including many mages, have never even witnessed a battle between mages of the fifth rank or higher. Why did the nations sign the Oak Treaty, prohibiting mages of the fifth rank or higher from the battlefield? Because some sixth and seventh rank mages were too destructive, and war uses every means to eliminate the enemy's manpower. Finding an open space to bombard each other? Don't dream about it. It's all about quickly approaching the enemy's food production areas, slaughtering farmers, destroying fields, or destroying your dams and towns, directly crippling your production capacity.

Coming to his senses, Falek stepped forward and walked up to Sultan Selim. "You have lost."

“Ha.” Sultan Selim’s legs trembled, but he forced a smile. “Ahmed has escaped. He has something on you now, so you don’t dare to kill me.”

Falek smiled with anger, and was angry with laughter. "Fool, what value is a dead man? The first thing he'll do when you die is to seek cooperation with me. Once he's with me, he'll be on my side. At that point, he'll only do his best to cover for me."

Upon hearing this, Sultan Selim felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave, his face turning deathly pale. Indeed, the dead have no value.

In an instant, Selim began to cry and beg for mercy, "Spare me, Mother, spare my life, I will obey you from now on, I swear to Allah..."

"Shut up," Falek interrupted Selim. "Kneel down!"

Selim knelt down without hesitation, even crawling over to lick Falek's shoes. He didn't want to die, he really didn't want to die. He was willing to do anything to stay alive. He was still young, and as long as he didn't die, he would be able to turn the tables sooner or later.

Falek kicked Selim away, "Get up, you piece of trash."

Selim was stunned, unable to believe it for a moment.

Bess, standing to the side, wore a playful smile.

Chapter 649 Letting Go, the Pledge of Allegiance, Good Boy

Dinia put away her warhammer, paying no attention to Falek's situation, and instead asked Ronan, "Should we pursue them?"

Scholar Ahmed was completely scattered, and she really couldn't chase after him, but he must have lost a lot of magic and couldn't keep going like this forever. With Ashley's help, catching up with him on the outer walls of Constantinople shouldn't be a problem.

“No need.” Ronan waved his hand and pointed at Falek. “You see, even the person in question doesn’t seem to want to pursue it.”

"Boring." Dinia was somewhat disappointed. She had been prepared for a long-awaited fierce battle, but her opponent was ready to run away from the very first second, making it seem like she had only had a warm-up.

On the other side, Falek raised his leg and delivered a sweeping kick, sending Sultan Selim flying and rolling four or five times on the ground before stopping.

Standing still, Falek took a deep breath. "Go back to your palace, let Hayat leave, and I will teach you that magic that combines totem enhancement. Be a good Sultan."

This was not her original plan. Her original plan was to kill Selim, then cooperate with the scholars, unite with Aziz Pasha, who was the most convenient to support the king, and announce that she, the Queen Mother, had returned. Next, she would get rid of two legion commanders in the Royal Guard who had long been on her blacklist and who, unsurprisingly, had come out to cause trouble this time. Then, she would choose one of the old Sultan's nephews to inherit the throne, establish a new army of female slaves, and then begin reforms.

But she changed her plans. Just as Ambrina and the others had said before, what could a foreign woman like her, without children, gain by staying in this country and doing so much? She would gain nothing, and after the reforms ended, she would become the one who was framed.

Actually, she had thought of this from the beginning; she had considered leaving from the very beginning.

If she didn't want to leave, why would she fake her death when she knew Selim wanted to kill her? But even after faking her death, she was still unwilling to leave, unwilling to let the past twenty years go to waste.

But just now, at the moment when she could have killed the young man who wanted to kill her, she had a change of heart. The Haihe River will not flow backward, and the past will eventually pass.

At this moment, Falek looked at Ronan and said, "Do me another favor. There's another troublesome person I need to deal with, otherwise, this good-for-nothing won't be able to handle things later."

Ronan didn't answer, but looked at Dinia.

“Okay,” Dinia said. “Below the seventh rank, it’s not a big problem. Also, you can’t be as good at escaping as the one before.”

Beside him, the young Sultan Selim lay there, unable to believe his eyes or his ears. He almost thought he was hallucinating, because Falek seemed not only not to kill him, but to help him. Was this God descending upon him?

Falek ignored Selim, his gaze lingering on Fies for a moment before he said, "Sorry, your deal is off." He then looked at Ronan and Dinia, but remained silent.

She hadn't expected that Ronan and his group knew Faith, this Weylander, and that their relationship seemed to go beyond a simple acquaintance.

That's precisely why things have become somewhat difficult.

She had colluded with the Weylanders early on, promising them that if they helped her accomplish certain things, she would provide assistance to the Weylanders in their affairs in the East Asian seas.

After all, when Arabs were doing business at sea, people from the Western Continent were still playing knightly games. Although it's no longer viable at sea, there are still some small countries in East Asia that have ties with them.

But at this moment, she no longer wanted to be a queen mother. Without being a queen mother, she could not fulfill her promises, and the people of Weyland were not ones to accept being taken advantage of.

Normally, Faith should be killed here.

Just then, Faith shot out a large number of silk threads from her hands, pulling two people out of the ground. The sharp and tough silk threads tightened continuously, and the two dared not move an inch. If they moved even slightly, the mesh-like silk threads that tightly bound them would cut their flesh.

Faith pulled out a pistol and fired two shots, knocking down the two men. She then put the gun away, raised her hands, and said, "I surrender. I betray them. They're still alive; they can report me when they get back."

Ronan and Dinia most likely wouldn't harm her, Faith knew that well, but what if they did? She wouldn't dare risk her life.

What's more, she'd wanted to rebel for a long time. She'd risked her life for the organization and the country so many times over the past twenty years, and she hadn't even been promoted. It was completely undemocratic. If it were democratic, she should have become a bishop long ago. What's wrong with a woman being a bishop? Women can be emperors, so why can't she be a bishop? And she was sent on this kind of mission. Did they think she was some rotten fish in the Thames?

“You haven’t changed at all.” Ronan remarked with a wry smile, Faith still so “realistic.”

"Your Holiness, what do you mean?" Fia asked with a playful smile. She knew that Dinia now fully understood why she was the "Holy Maiden"—the part of the Holy Son that represented life and belonged to women was within her.

Dinia said something that stunned Faith: "I remember you are very knowledgeable about human anatomy."

After a few seconds of stunned silence, a wild smile appeared on Faith's beautiful, serene yet strangely eerie face, like that of a puppet. "Hahaha, of course, I've seen more people clearly than many people have ever seen." Her "seeing clearly" was certainly extraordinary.

“Let’s go, let’s move on to the next one,” Ronan said. The game was getting increasingly boring, and he wanted it to end quickly.

“Okay, I’ll take you there,” Falek said.

“No, you can just point the way.” Ronan summoned a levitation shield, grabbed Falek, stepped onto the shield and took off. At the same time, Dinia grabbed Fies with one hand, the red mycelium binding her, and jumped onto another levitation shield. The four of them flew towards the Royal Guard’s base.

On the other side, Astrid looked at Ashley and said, "Aunt Ashley, let's go."

"Lily, are you alright?" Ashley asked with concern.

She could tell that Astrid looked at the corpses around her with some discomfort. Although she had been in fights every few days since she was a child, most of them were just conflicts between children or duels between mages. There was no deep hatred, and she would never fight to the death. On the rare occasions when the other party was a villain or a criminal, she did not kill him.

It can be said that Astrid was always a good child, growing up under the care of her parents and having everything she wanted. She was different from someone who grew up on the streets, who might wake up one morning to find a corpse in a stinking ditch, and who would sometimes kill someone for a piece of bread.

In Ashley's eyes, the feeling of being killed was not much different from that of a baby bird falling from its nest and dying on a rainy day.

But Astrid will be bewildered and find it difficult to adapt when faced with these corpses created by her father.

“I’m fine,” Astrid replied.

“Alright then.” Ashley didn’t offer any further persuasion.

The next moment, Ashley and Astrid sank into the shadows, transforming into a shadowy mass that began to move rapidly across the ground.

Chapter 650: No traditional programs, too extravagant, unopenable relics.

A week later, Suleiman's bizarrely quiet chaos came to an end in an eerie silence.

The traditional scenes familiar to the citizens, such as the Royal Guard gathering in the mosque's main square, shouting "The enemy is inside the palace!" and storming the Sultan's palace, ending with a few eunuchs rolling on the ground with their heads rolling, or scholars coming out to "mediate" after the Royal Guard had caused trouble and looted, with the Royal Guard routinely handing over a few "traitors who have stirred up trouble," and governors congratulating the Sultan and wishing him "eternal health," were all absent.

It was as if the people of Seres had bought steamed buns and waited at the execution ground, only to find that not only was their lives spared, but they didn't even see a prison cart.

In fact, Suleiman's entire upper echelons underwent significant changes. The positions of banner chiefs in various regions changed more than a dozen times, two legion commanders of the Royal Guard were replaced, and the internal power structure of the scholars also changed. The impact of these personnel changes was that the Sultan began to regain influence over the regions, reclaiming some of his financial, military, and administrative power, as well as a portion of the legislative power that is most important to a ruler.

If a ruler does not have legislative power, he cannot be called a ruler; at best, he is merely a representative of a group, or a "common leader" created through compromise among several groups.

There were sultans in the beginning, of course; no founding monarch was not a strongman. After nearly two hundred years, they gradually disappeared. Now they exist again, but not completely.

These are things that the average citizen is completely unaware of.

That's how it is in feudal countries. Ordinary citizens don't even know the name of the district head in their own district, let alone the upper echelons of the country. They only know some so-called "national affairs." The lesser ones talk about them at the pancake and barbecue stalls, while the more advanced ones discuss them in coffee shops. The biggest news they can hear or see is that some important person is going to be slaughtered.

At this time, Ronan and his party were staying in a manor covering tens of thousands of square meters.

In the capital of the Kingdom of Fas, there was no such large residence because the housing prices were too high; no one could afford such a large piece of land. In fact, the housing prices in Suleiman's capital, Constantine, were also high, and normally, no one could afford it either. However, Suleiman was a feudal state, and the real lords in this country could buy land and build houses without spending money.

It must be admitted that there are still too many unruly people in the Kingdom of Phos. What's more troublesome is that there are idle mages who like to manipulate public opinion and lead people to cause trouble. As a result, these lowly people who can't even afford pants are unwilling to work for the masters for free, while the citizens with some wealth also resolutely resist the masters from directly seizing their land.