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The Shadow Thief leader continued, "Also, I suggest you call on the smuggling tycoon Rhett Butler. No matter what you want to do, he should be able to help."
Bernal: "You should have called him, right? Let him come along."
The Shadow Thief leader bowed slightly.
Wang: "I can't think of anything else for now. Let's go to the secret room first and we'll make a long-term plan."
Bernard gestured like a butler, "This way please." There were many passers-by watching this scene, including those loyal messengers.
At this point, one can already imagine how the story will be exaggerated afterwards.
**
When everyone arrived at the palace, the "smuggling tycoon" Rhett Butler had already arrived, and brought several of his men with him. He hurriedly introduced them: "These are my trusted followers who have been with me for more than 20 years. I am a smuggler. If they leak the secret, I will be dead."
Rhett Butler said this and scratched his neck.
Bernal looked at him. "Are you the one who stole a lot of tax money from me?"
"Yes, I am the one who stole a lot of taxes from you, but not as much as the taxes on your territory that your nobles concealed. In fact, it is not even a fraction of that. Of course, it is not as much as the military pay that your generals withheld, and it is also not even a fraction of that."
Rhett Butler said this and bowed slightly to the Emperor.
Bernal snorted, waved his hand and said, "Come on!"
When he arrived at the door of the secret room, the emperor snatched the voice stone directly from his follower.
"You don't have to go in." He said to the messenger, "Let my butler hold the voice stone at all times."
After the messenger left, the emperor opened the mechanism in front of everyone. A wall shrank inward, revealing a secret passage, and then the magic light sources in the passage lit up one after another.
"Please, everyone."
The secret room in the emperor's study was indeed quite large, so large that even the three magic light sources could not illuminate some places.
But what the king lacks the least is magical light.
He took out his dragon head staff, and as soon as he let go of it, the staff floated beside him, becoming a moving light source that followed him.
The entire secret room was immediately illuminated as bright as day.
Wang swept everything on the largest table in the secret room to the ground. "Maps! Maps of the city and its surroundings!"
Rhett Butler took out two maps directly from his dimensional bag and spread them out on the table.
Wang was delighted when he saw the map: "It also marks all the orc camps, great."
Rhett Butler: "Not only was it marked, but it was just updated at 5 a.m. this morning."
Wang: "Is there a position for a necromancer?"
The Shadow Thief leader replied, "Skull marks. Each skull mark represents a necromancer team, which may have a sixth-ring and several first- to third-ring ones. By the way, because we caught the tongue, this team is now in a state of panic."
He pointed to the skull symbol inside the orc camp in the south of the city.
King: "How do the orcs communicate with each other on both sides of the river? Has the Long Bridge Fortress been breached?"
Bernal: "No. There are only soldiers in the fortress, so the food reserves can last for more than a year. There is no need to worry about it being breached in the short term."
King: "What about the orcs using wyverns to land from the air?"
"The fortress towers are densely packed, making it difficult for wyverns to land. Their wings will hit the towers, which may cause injuries to the dragons," Bernal continued.
Wang nodded, then studied the map in silence.
Xiaobai lay on the edge of the table, stretching her neck to see what was drawn on the map - the table was quite high, and the map from her perspective was completely flat, so it was normal that she couldn't see clearly.
The dwarf simply gave up on looking at the map, found a chair to sit down on, and began to refill his pipe.
Both elves stood beside the king, also looking at the map.
Elizabeth was placed on the only sofa in the room by Marika, and Gotrick stood beside her, holding an axe and staring at the group of people led by Rhett Butler.
The barbarian was clearly ready for a fight.
Rosalie looked at the team members and hesitated to speak.
Marika: "What do you want to say, Your Highness?"
Rosalie: "Eh? Oh, I was just wondering... you guys seem to have been through this a lot."
Nini: "Not often, just once."
Xiaobai: "Twice... er, three times?"
Dwarf: "I've been through it all, me and the barbarian."
Gotrek: "Go!"
Marika didn't say anything. In fact, she and Elizabeth were the original members of the team, but the drow elves obviously didn't care about that.
The mage didn't care. He was concentrating on observing the map.
Finally, the king spoke: "Okay, I have a general idea. The key is the necromancer. Without the necromancer to drive the ritual, even if the orcs have set up the node, it will be completely useless! We have to hunt the necromancer.
"Before that, let me ask you one thing. Has the Shadow Thief discovered the second lich?"
"No." The Shadow Thief leader said firmly, "Even the one you killed earlier had just arrived riding a corpse dragon. We had just received intelligence about it when you were attacked, and then you killed him."
Wang: "So those necromancers are humans? Or are they skeleton necromancers? The latter are much more troublesome to deal with, their physical resistance alone is incredible."
Shadow Thief Leader: "It's a human."
Wang nodded: "If we launch a surprise attack, how many can you kill in the chaos?"
The leader immediately replied: "If someone attracts attention, I mean, attention at the level of a night raid, we are confident that we can deal with the necromancers in these places."
He pointed at a few skulls on the map.
Wang: "I see. Then we need to arrange..."
Suddenly, the sound transmission stone that the emperor brought with him vibrated.
"It's me," he said.
"Your Majesty, the voice stone you requested has been delivered from the communications headquarters." The butler's voice came from the voice stone.
"Okay, I'll open the door and let them in."
After that, the emperor came to the secret room and pressed the switch: "This secret room of mine cannot be opened from the outside when there is someone inside. So we are absolutely safe here. If the city is breached, I will hide my youngest son and daughter here. It just so happens that there is a magic prop here that is filled with porridge every day."
The king frowned. "Is it the artifact I was thinking of? That artifact will generate thick porridge every day, but only the soft monsters will think that this porridge is delicious."
Emperor: "No, not that. It's a magical artifact called the Famine Giver."
King: "A famine donor was placed in the royal secret room just to save the emperor's youngest son and daughter from being exterminated? Your behavior is not at all that of a benevolent monarch."
Bernal: "I am a tyrant, as you will soon see. But I can protect my people."
At this time, the gate opened completely and a group of soldiers came in holding the voice stone.
Many people entered the emperor's secret room for the first time and looked around with wide eyes.
They were even more surprised when they saw Nini's elf ears - of course, what surprised everyone the most was the dragon-headed scepter floating beside the king himself.
After the group of people left, Bernal made a gesture of wiping his neck to the butler.
The butler nodded.
Wang: "Wait a minute, are you going to kill them all?"
"Yes, I will make sure that everyone involved in moving the sound stone cannot tell the secret to anyone else. This way, no one will know which general we will use."
Everyone was silent.
The king suddenly said, "That makes sense. But it's not necessary, because we won't notify the generals until right before the raid. This operation will test the organization of your army."
Bernal: "Master, do you want to launch a surprise attack?"
"Yes, only by keeping secrets from ourselves can we keep secrets from the enemy. When we launch an attack, even if there are spies, the orcs will not have time to react. Of course, we will also take actions to deceive the enemy. For example, in the current battle, we will not deploy griffon knights."
Bernard: "Is this deceiving the enemy? Have you thought about it since then?"
Wang: "It's a pity that I don't know if it will work, but it's always a good idea to try. Your Griffin Knights have already suffered serious losses. I don't think it will have much effect even if we put them in."
Bernal: “It’s true that I can’t.”
"So their mission is to take off and surprise attack the enemy after we launch the attack tonight, using Molotov cocktails and horizontal bombing." Wang gestured, "This is a way of using deception in war. When the enemy thinks there will be no attack from the Griffin Knights and puts their air defense forces into the ground battle, the Griffin Knights come again."
Rhett Butler: "Time difference? If you don't use the air, how are you going to launch a ground attack?"
The king looked at him. "I was planning to launch an aerial assault, so I asked the Griffin Knights to conserve their strength and to confirm with the dwarves that the dragon saddle had been built. But you were here, so I thought, maybe we don't have to go through all that trouble."
Rhett Butler was stunned for a moment, then burst into laughter: "Hahahaha! Is someone like me, who we meet for the first time, also included in the plan? Yes, we have a smuggling route through the old dwarven mine underground. How did you know?"
King: "Because in Landon Territory, we were attacked through the dwarven underground passage. Then in River Valley Territory, we found dwarven ruins underground, very large ones.
"It is a reasonable guess that this area has dwarven tunnels from the old days. There was a powerful dwarven kingdom here in the Second Age or even earlier."
Rhett Butler: "No, you will be disappointed. We have searched the underground thoroughly and found no large dwarven ruins, only passages. I think this may be the edge of the dwarven-controlled area. After all, you see, such a majestic White City wall stands here. Before Melvold's ancestors cleared this place, this was a monster's lair."
As he spoke, Rhett Butler took out a new map and spread it on the table: "This is the underground topographic map that our smugglers found. Your Majesty, can this map offset the taxes we evaded?"
Bernard crossed his arms and said, "Of course. If you win this time, I'll make you a count."
"Hahaha, I can't go public with this. In fact, even the Duke of the Empire admires me very much. They want to rely on me to get some contraband."
Bernal shook his head.
Wang pointed to the underground map and asked: "Where do these exits correspond to on the ground?"
"I'll mark it for you." Rhett Butler turned around and took out a glass from the wine cabinet behind him and placed several glasses on the map. "This is the exit. You should be able to see the corresponding relationship, right?"
King: "Yes. I found that we can directly attack the orcs' base camp. Will they be alerted?"
Shadow Thief Leader: "Of course I'll be alert. In fact, there are orcs guarding the door. But..."
Wang: "Alchemical explosives. We can blow up the ground to create chaos and have an exit for surprise attacks. Just make sure when setting up the explosives that the impact of the explosion is sprayed in one direction."
Shadow Thief Leader: "We have a skilled alchemist who..."
"I am a skilled alchemist," the king interrupted the leader, "if you just mix the potion without infusing it with magic, I can do it."
Shadow Thief Leader: "But we already have a warehouse of alchemical explosives. Our experts are also good at 'directional blasting'. They used this method to steal the vault of the mint."
King: "Okay, let's leave it to the professionals. The remaining problem is to try to create an illusion for the orcs that we will not attack tonight and paralyze them. It is definitely not enough to just not send out the Griffin Knights."
Wang stroked his chin and thought.