Chapter 870: Shift in Offense and Defense, the Netheril Mythallar

When Xia Duo and the others were accepting the mission, Archmage Fusitemu explicitly mentioned that after destroying the target trees—that is, the Mythallar Nodes—they would need to bury Guidance beacons and stand guard for a period of time.

During this interval, how could the Elves possibly do nothing!

Therefore, whether from a strategic perspective—eliminating the war potential of Keman, forcing everyone to take a deeper stance on the Elf issue—or simply in terms of completing this mission.

Xia Duo preferred to eliminate more Elf Mages early on, rather than giving them the opportunity to gather and cause greater trouble.

In fact, after each team buried their Guidance beacon, they realized where the problem lay and began to worry about the subsequent Elf attacks.

——The teams quickly moved into position, constructing defensive positions.

Although the Elf attacks were worrying, the human side was not without advantages; the most obvious point was that a passive defense could not be instantly crushed, which gave the mobile teams time to provide support.

A total of over fifty teams were defending more than twenty Guidance beacons, roughly two teams per beacon, and because of the presence of an Intermediate Mage, a team could actually be regarded as an Archmage.

Although this "Archmage" was relatively rigid and stiff, when it came to defense, being rigid and stiff was not necessarily a disadvantage.

Previously, the Elves guarding the Mythallar Nodes had only two Elite Mages, equivalent to High Mages on the human side, and they were only able to entangle the various teams because they held the geographical advantage of the Mythallar Node altering the Magic Net environment.

Now that the Mythallar Node had been destroyed, even if some residual influence of the Mythallar Node remained in the surrounding Magic Net environment, it was of no consequence to the overall situation.

The momentum was on their side; as long as they could stall, time was the best helper.

This was just like the Elves before; they were also stalling for time, but they had not expected the human side to assemble so quickly and coordinate so tacitly, which was why they lost the opportunity.

Xia Duo only needed to learn from the Elves' lesson now.

What he worried about now was just where the upper limit of the Elves' Joint Casting number was; after all, theoretically, the more people there were, the stronger the overall performance would be.

Additionally, nearly fifty Elf Mages had escaped; if they came to attack in groups, that would also be a big problem.

Of course, in the short term, it was just a problem and not yet a fatal crisis; now it all depended on which side time was on.

……

As time ticked away, the Elves did not attack, but the pressure this brought to Xia Duo's side did not diminish in the slightest; after all, the unknown was the most terrifying.

Some people had already interrupted their Mind Link because of this, but Xia Duo currently could not spare the mental capacity to reconnect them, so he simply had those who had interrupted the link gather together to increase their chances of survival.

As for those still in the link, under Xia Duo's Guidance, they tried their best to acquire and share various information from the surroundings, with a focus on the Perception information from Scrying spells.

As for Xia Duo himself, besides constantly analyzing the various information shared by everyone, he speculated on the possible hidden locations of the Elves and even their targets for launching attacks.

At the same time, he was also using the different Perception perspectives of the others to constantly observe those twenty-plus Guidance beacons and trying to analyze something.

If one could know the time required to stand guard, it would be far more reassuring than waiting aimlessly like this.

……

However, what Xia Duo and the others did not know was that just as they buried the first Guidance beacon, inside the camp, more than twenty Battle Mages had already begun true Joint Casting under the orders of Archmage Fusitemu.

Or rather, this was a rather complex Ritual Magic that required the coordination of many Guidance beacons.

If there were Elves here, they would be able to hear that many Elvish terms were mixed into the many incantations assisting the spellcasting; this was not deliberate showing off, but rather that this was inherently a composite Magic that spanned two different Magic systems.

As each Guidance beacon was taken out of the Dimensional Bags by the people at the front, the ritual also progressed to a deeper level.

If Xia Duo could perceive the situation at the camp at this moment, he would discover that at this time, countless Magic Net Strings at the center of the ritual were densely gathered into bundles, shooting straight into the sky, and then diving down to link with those twenty-plus Guidance beacons.

It was equivalent to artificially creating a dense, web-like area in a relatively uniform and flat Magic Net environment.

At the same time, as the ritual progressed, this dense area was also gradually undergoing some unknown changes.

This change quickly caught Xia Duo's attention; the movement was simply too large, and it was impossible not to notice it, but he had not discovered the source of the mutation.

He only discovered that the Magic Net of the Green Field Plane had become active and was exhibiting a certain highly ordered fluctuation, as well as certain specific trends of the Magic Net Strings.

This hardly required thought; he immediately associated it with the Mythallar, but these changes were clearly related to the Guidance beacons they had buried.

Although it was not the source, it was at least a very important component.

"Could it be that the Seven Towers has already mastered the mysteries of the Mythallar?"

Xia Duo could not help but make such a guess; this was entirely possible in theory, and the probability was high.

After all, there were no shortage of Mythallar Ruins within Netheril, and if they could get some data from the Elves, who knew if the Seven Towers had already figured out the Mythallar long ago!

The current situation further confirmed his guess.

……

Just as Xia Duo was guessing whether the Seven Towers had mastered the mysteries of the Mythallar and whether there had been any changes on the Elf side, on a small hill where four Great Arcanists were temporarily staying, an illusory image of a Gold Elf appeared abruptly.

The Great Arcanists did not stop it, but instead smiled as they watched the other party's expression of shock and anger, and Badijiaer even said with a hint of mockery:

"What? Has Lord Jielinisi figured it out? Prepared to give up?"

But Jielinisi did not care about Badijiaer's insolent tone; instead, he stared straight at him and asked, almost like an interrogation:

"Is it those descendants of Commoners? They actually dared to privately teach you the mysteries of the Mythallar?"

"Don't look at me with that gaze; I am not the descendant of Commoners you speak of, nor are our Illefarn allies. If Keman still holds onto the old concepts left over from Ancient Aruivanda, then you will surely be ostracized by the entire Northland Alliance!"

Badijiaer rebuked angrily.

The so-called descendants of Commoners actually referred to ordinary Gold Elves, and sometimes specifically referred to the Gold Elves of Illefarn.

As for Moon Elves, Wood Elves, and other Elves, in the concepts of Ancient Aruivanda, they were all inferior races, not even as good as Commoners.

This was the Great Elf Imperialism of Aryvandaar.

Netheril and Illefarn had officially established diplomatic relations for some time, and the Great Arcanists had indeed obtained quite a lot of dirt from Illefarn regarding Aryvandaar and the "remnants of Aryvandaar," Keman.

Speaking it out now carried an even more righteous momentum.

Only, this was not very pleasant for Jielinisi; his expression twitched slightly, even affecting the stability of the Magic Image, and he said coldly:

"Don't be smug. How much can a bunch of descendants of Commoners know about the supreme mysteries? Even if they teach you, how much use can it be? What awaits you ahead may not be flowers and sweet springs; just wait and see, this is not over yet!"

After saying this, the image disappeared.