Chapter 637 - 635: Internal Conflict

"Demon siege?"

Hilia sucked in a sharp breath of cold air.

She immediately thought of those strangely hard Demons she had dealt with before.

For Mages above Tier Four, they were already a huge headache; if the ones facing them were below Tier Three...

Could anyone even break their defense?

"They’re being way too aggressive." Hilia felt a bit on edge. She looked at Ashugar at the very front, her eyes flickering with a spark of anger.

Feeling Hilia’s thoughts, Rose smiled faintly. "You want to stop them?"

"I..."

"You can’t. You’re a bit too weak right now."

Hilia fell silent.

A moment later, with hope in her eyes, she looked at Rose. "Lord Rose..."

Rose chuckled and reached out to rub her head.

"No need to stop them. This is a good thing. It’s much better than waiting until the number of Demons passes a certain threshold, mutates, directly rots the Array, and breaks out onto the surface on its own.

"What they’re doing won’t make the underground Demons spew out all at once like a breached reservoir, because the passage range at the pollution source isn’t large. It’s like thousands of troops crossing a single?log bridge—no matter how many Demons there are, only so many can come out at the same time. It’s nothing to worry about. As long as the Elf Race establishes a proper defensive line, they can hold back the Demons coming out from inside."

"The Elf Race..."

Hilia couldn’t help but shake her head.

Though the Elf Race’s response wasn’t actually slow—far better than the Northern Alliance—the reason the pollution became like this was mainly their lack of experience. They were helpless against pollution protected by life?element barriers, and they didn’t have any powerful purification methods for pollution themselves, so the wave of pollution turned into a catastrophe.

Even the Holy Court, when facing this kind of special pollution, could at most reduce casualties—and that was only after they had access to the special Purification Skill Hilia had publicly released.

If it were before, the casualties wouldn’t have dropped by much, and they would still have no way to halt the sweeping pollution wave at the first moment.

That said, Hilia’s impression of the Elf Race still wasn’t good. They were too arrogant.

They were at the bottom in terms of strength, yet because they sat on two God?given treasures—the Elf Forest and the Holy Tree—the whole race had this baffling confidence, and their actions showed it: they trusted no one, trusted only their own operations, then went all out with a "godlike" series of moves, only to look at the record and see 0–5.

Can they really withstand the Beast Tide?

Even though the Elf Race had long since discovered the Beast Tide and had made preparations and studies for the possibility of it reaching the surface, Hilia still felt it was a close call.

"If only we could send a message out. At least we could inform Elina, let her get ready... But Elina has already severed ties with the Elf Race. I don’t know if she would still help them."

Hilia sighed inwardly.

She glanced at Rose beside her and asked in a low voice, "Lord Rose, since we can’t do anything, do we still have to stay here? I think it’d be better to leave, tell everyone about the Beast Tide, let them prepare..."

"Wait a bit longer. We’ll leave when they leave. If you leave now, you’ll be discovered," Rose said.

"Alright."

Hilia nodded.

Although she had followed You Jelieya and the other inside and could only watch without doing anything, through the two’s recollection?style conversation she had learned a lot of secrets unknown to the world.

Not just their birth, but also the origin of the Recovery Temple and Dusk Sect, what they had done, as well as the hidden dangers behind the outbreak of pollution and information like the impending Beast Tide—all of it was extremely valuable.

Just as Rose had said, having these three activate the Beast Tide in advance was far better than letting it erupt on its own later, but Hilia was still somewhat lost.

"Does what they’re doing count as a good deed or not?"

To avoid an apocalyptic disaster, they were slowly triggering local outbreaks of pollution, causing the deaths of millions, yet in doing so they might prevent the future tragedy of tens of millions, hundreds of millions dying...

And to prevent the Beast Tide from suddenly bursting out in the future, they were driving the Demons out ahead of time, letting them "line up" to come out, which could avert a horrifying, world?devouring Beast Tide later.

These two things left Hilia unable to tell if what they did was good or bad.

Rose said calmly, "No need to figure it out. Put another way, this is the growing pain of an era. For the future, this is a good thing. For the present, it naturally is not. For those who die, for those who lose loved ones, it’s a sky?falling catastrophe. A grain of sand from an era is a mountain to an individual. You could agonize over it forever.

"In the future, as you resolve one disaster hazard after another, those hazards will still cause this kind of tragedy. Don’t burn yourself out over it. That kind of inner friction only hurts you."

As he spoke, Rose shook his head and continued, "Alright, they’re almost done. Get ready to leave."

"Oh, okay."

Hilia nodded, took a deep breath, and tried her best to conceal herself—in fact, as long as she didn’t touch anyone, under the concealment of Rose’s Spiritual Power, it was impossible for her to be discovered.

After a short wait, Ashugar’s actions drew to a close.

The lines under his feet slowly dimmed, and along with them, his figure faded as well.

"The Magic Power of this body is almost spent. I’ve finished what I promised you. As for the payment we agreed on, you’re not going to go back on your word, are you?"

"Of course not. You’re a Tier Seven Mage, while the two of us are Tier Six. How would we dare?" You Jelieya said coolly.

With that, he took out from his Space Ring a Divine Format fragment radiating a deathly aura.

Hilia looked at that fragment, thinking to herself, "The energy intensity of this Heart of the Magic Puppet seems weaker than the one I got, doesn’t it?"

"Mm, only about half of yours." Rose nodded.

Roughly one?fortieth of a complete Divine Format, also one?twentieth of a separated death?attribute fragment.

The one Hilia had obtained was one?tenth of a death?attribute fragment, one?twentieth of a complete Divine Format.

Hilia carefully examined that Divine Format fragment and couldn’t help saying, "I feel like that Heart of the Magic Puppet could be used for an actual Magic Puppet."

"Of course. If you judge more closely, you’ll find that death?attribute... Heart of the Magic Puppet has about the same energy intensity as the life?attribute Heart of the Magic Puppet you’re using now. If you can fuse that death?attribute Heart of the Magic Puppet with the one you’re using, you’ll have a Heart of the Magic Puppet with two elements." Rose smiled faintly.

Steal a Heart of the Magic Puppet from a Tier Seven Mage?

Hilia shook her head.

"I’m still young. I don’t want to die that early!"

Rose chuckled softly.

"It’s fine. As long as you want it, you can definitely get it."

Hilia still shook her head.

"No, no. Lord Rose, I just want to leave right now... Oh, right, Lord Rose, your arrangements are complete—when will you start the plan?"

"When they summon the Gods, then we’ll act."

Rose’s eyes narrowed.

Hilia immediately sensed something bad.

Uh?oh, the God of Life and Death is done for!