Chapter 3032: Chamber of Commerce Also Suspicious, Related Information

Such a philosophy is actually quite consistent with the combat of a Mage.

Those Mages who start off with fireballs and Ice Storms are often considered bottom-tier; true Mages usually leave themselves an escape route and make various preparations before a battle.

The process of combat is also not a bombardment of overflowing energy spells, but a struggle for various types of control, including but not limited to teleportation, flight, destruction, and so on.

During this process, one must try even harder to dispel the opponent's Protection, while maintaining one's own as much as possible; as for the final decisive moment, it might just be a casual strike after the situation is completely controlled.

On Earth, military development has reached a point where "offense is greater than defense"; as long as the protection is removed, a single missile can resolve any target.

But it is precisely the process of removing protection (which also includes breaking through protection) that most tests a nation's military strength.

Mages in this magical world are the same; a Mage without any protection is just an ordinary person, and the vital points that ordinary people have are also vital points for them—stabbing a vital point with any random Dagger can kill them.

Yet, in reality, there are rarely any High Mages killed by ordinary people; the few cases basically occur during intimate contact in bed. Except for a few special moments, it is almost impossible for an ordinary person to kill a High Mage.

Because of Magic—this thing that looks like an external object—Magic is fair to everyone; the only requirement is Wisdom.

As long as the Wisdom is sufficient, an ordinary person can completely reach the pinnacle of magical achievement in a short time, a duration that might be so short that most people cannot imagine it.

Although actual combat ability is also related to Spellcasting experience, that is nothing more than a matter of more practice.

But if the Wisdom is insufficient, one might wander below the Advanced Rank for their entire life. Such people should be relatively rare; in Xia Duo's view, most normal humans have the potential of a High Mage, analogous to a High School graduate on Earth.

The reason they cannot reach it is not a problem of talent, but a limitation of educational resources.

And this is also the fundamental reason why the Tower of Time can continuously cultivate new Mages. As long as educational resources keep up, Mages are truly mass-produced; they are Primary Mages now, and in the future, they will be mid-to-high-rank Mages, or even Arcanists.

……

After parting with Niya, Xia Duo returned to the Study to check the data sent back by Aoruipusi. In addition to basic client information, Aoruipusi would also consciously collect various local information while outside, perform simple analysis, and summarize it before sending it back to the Tower of Time for Xia Duo's reference.

In fact, it is doing business as a primary job and intelligence as a side job.

Everything collected is local public information, which does not violate any laws or regulations. It can be said that personnel stationed abroad by various countries currently almost all hold this task; this is an open secret.

Carefully searching through the news sent back by Aoruipusi, Xia Duo found intelligence regarding the Rus Chamber of Commerce, and there was only one item, which was—

The Rus Chamber of Commerce is a local Evereska chamber of commerce that was established not long ago, currently engaged in transnational intermediary business.

If they hadn't purchased the Void Warehouse service from the Tower of Time, this newly established chamber of commerce might not have caught Aoruipusi's eye at all.

And regarding this chamber of commerce, Aoruipusi also gave his own evaluation—suspected of having a special background, but he is not optimistic about the development prospects of this chamber of commerce, because hiding one's background is not conducive to development in the current Northland environment.

And the most important point is that with the deepening exchanges between the countries of the Northland, there is less need for such brokers and intermediaries with unknown backgrounds; there are plenty of transnational cooperation opportunities, and a clean background is what is most needed in such circumstances.

Only after seeing Aoruipusi's evaluation of the Rus Chamber of Commerce as "suspected of having a special background," Xia Duo's suspicion of this chamber of commerce actually decreased a little.

If it were the Illuminati, would it be so obvious? Or is it deliberately using this way to hide the true background of the Illuminati?

Of course, a decrease in suspicion does not mean that the suspicion has been completely ruled out. In the matter of the Illuminati, as long as there is a trace of suspicion, Xia Duo will not turn a blind eye; once the suspicion reaches a certain level, he will definitely pursue it to the end.

Obviously, the degree of suspicion of this Rus Chamber of Commerce on Xia Duo's side has reached the level where it must be pursued to the end.

……

Besides the Rus Chamber of Commerce, Xia Duo also carefully checked the intelligence collected by Aoruipusi regarding newly established chambers of commerce; there might be a Rus Chamber of Commerce, and there might be a second one.

But unfortunately, the intelligence collected by Aoruipusi was very limited. Xia Duo carefully went through everything from the first piece of intelligence Aoruipusi sent back to the most recent ones, and apart from the Rus Chamber of Commerce, there were no special discoveries.

In fact, even for the Rus Chamber of Commerce, it was because they stored an Excited State Magic Artifact of unknown purpose in the Stasis Space Warehouse that it attracted Xia Duo's attention.

If not for this, looking only at the intelligence sent back by Aoruipusi, Xia Duo would not have suspected this new chamber of commerce that might be controlled by the Illuminati behind the scenes.

And next, he did not remind or urge Aoruipusi to send back new intelligence, or specifically investigate this Rus Chamber of Commerce, but as he said to Niya before, he acted as if nothing had happened, and everything was normal.

If there are no accidents, the breakthrough point should be with Poson, who is far away in Terminos.

……

Just as Xia Duo discovered traces of the suspected Illuminati and prepared to wait for the rabbit, Poson in Terminos already felt that he could no longer stay there.

Since the destruction of the Dawn Codex, the second time he met Yisiluoda, he was forced into a state of near-coercion to agree to a bizarre mission. These days, he has been thinking about what this mission is all about.

But no matter how he thought about it, he couldn't understand it; the only thing he could be sure of was that this mission was definitely not as simple as Yisiluoda said.

During this period, he also tried to contact Yisiluoda to ask for details, but after their last meeting, Yisiluoda seemed to have evaporated from this world, and he could not be contacted at all.

As for inquiring, Poson did not dare to directly inquire about the name Yisiluoda, but after all, he was an Elite Mage with an official position in Terminos, so he very cautiously asked a colleague responsible for the Mythallar alarm.

He asked the other party whether the Mythallar had any alarms during the time he met with Yisiluoda.

The result was that everything was normal.

This means—Yisiluoda has a legal and public identity in Terminos, or the Illuminati has already controlled the Terminos Mythallar to a certain extent and opened Permission Level to Yisiluoda.

If it is the former, it means that the high-level officials of Terminos have a problem. Yisiluoda was once a colleague of Poson, but he "died" at the Morning Light Temple, while Poson returned to Terminos safely.

Under such circumstances, Yisiluoda was naturally treated as a missing person, but Yisiluoda's public identity was still an Elite Mage with an official position in Terminos. Such an identity disappearing inexplicably was actually treated privately as a defection of a Demon Descendant.

Even if he came back later, it would be very troublesome to explain, and the most critical point is that Yisiluoda is truly a Demon Descendant, so there is no such thing as coming back to explain later.

Now that Yisiluoda can still appear in Terminos, either high-level officials that Poson cannot reach have given him special care, or the Illuminati has secretly controlled the Terminos Mythallar through some means.

For the current Siluwende, neither situation is a good thing.

According to Poson's understanding of the city where he has lived and worked for a long time, he is more inclined to the latter possibility, and thus a contradiction appeared.

Although he temporarily agreed to help the Illuminati, his love and loyalty to Siluwende were not fake, especially after the former resistance organization representing the bottom-level people came to power.

If helping the Illuminati would lead to turmoil in Siluwende again, then Poson could not agree.

So after he tried to contact Yisiluoda many times without success, he decided to go to the capital, Taier'annuo, to report this matter to his superiors; at the very least, he had to let them re-examine the Terminos Mythallar to avoid it being used by the Illuminati.