Chapter 689 Coercion

Rose had discovered the “backdoor” the Divine King had left in the Array a long time ago, but hadn’t been sure. It wasn’t until he watched Phil read Haroldias’s memories that he confirmed it, took it over, and taught it to Hilia.

For now, the results looked pretty good.

Rose nodded in satisfaction.

“Knew it was Zeus. He wants to use these demons, but he’s also scared they’ll break their shackles. Tsk tsk, guess I get to profit off this.”

Rose narrowed his eyes, watching Hilia at work, and all the stunned elves around her.

Hilia’s lips curled into a faint smile.

Clearly, she really enjoyed seeing people make that kind of face.

Rose didn’t comment, just watched her performance.

“But this level still isn’t enough.”

Hilia looked toward the area where the Array’s core was located.

“We’ve got to push a bit harder.”

After using the underground Array to perform a one-click delete, Hilia and Elina returned to the city wall. Facing everyone’s dumbfounded expressions, Elina smiled.

“So, how was that?”

In truth, she was pretty shocked herself.

Before this, she’d been teaming up with Hilia to kill enemies, and their efficiency was crazy slow.

Since when did Hilia suddenly flip on some cheat and instantly nuke all the demons?

How’s anyone supposed to keep playing after that?

That was getting a bit monstrous, honestly.

Gulp.

The sound of someone swallowing came, not from the Elf King and elders, but from those High-tier Mages who’d joined the battle.

To low-tier Mages and ordinary Warriors, demons just felt “strong.” As for how strong, they had no real concept—only Tier Six and above Mages truly knew how troublesome these demons were.

And now that these demons had apparently been “one-click deleted” by Hilia and Elina, those Mages were the ones most shaken.

The sound snapped the Elf King and the many Elf Elders back to their senses.

The Elf King flashed forward, appearing right before the two. “How did you do that? Quickly, tell me.”

Elina stepped back a pace, narrowed her eyes, and said, “You have power from the Gods. You can do it too.”

No matter what happened, she just lumped it all under “power of the Gods.”

As far as Elina was concerned, blaming any unknown on the Gods neatly shut everyone up.

The Elf King was no exception. He choked for a moment, fell silent, then turned to Hilia, noticing her face was a shade pale, like she’d burned through a lot of Magic Power. He couldn’t help mulling that over.

“Miss Xi, are you all right? Candia, hurry and take Miss Xi and Elina back to the Royal Court to rest.”

Hilia raised a hand, shook her head, and said, “I only cleared the demons within a certain range; I didn’t wipe them all out. This power from the Gods can force the demons to temporarily avoid us so they won’t come here. King, if you still want to save the Elf Race, then let me and Elina go to the other besieged cities and cleanse those Beast Tides.”

Elina added, “Of course, if the King doesn’t care at all whether the elves outside the Royal City live or die, he can keep us locked up inside the Holy Tree.”

Hilia glanced at Elina and said irritably, “Stop talking nonsense, Elina. How could the King ignore the life and death of the Elf Race, right? If the King insists on sending us back to the Holy Tree and ignoring the safety of the other cities, I’m sure he has his own reasons, right?”

Elf King: “…”

There were a lot of people here.

The Elf King didn’t dare say anything too rash.

If he really sent Hilia and Elina back to the Holy Tree and never let them out again, the other Elf Cities would probably rebel on the spot, immediately request aid from other empires, and invite foreign troops in.

If they genuinely had no way to handle the Beast Tide, everyone could still grit their teeth and hold the line, staunchly refusing help from other empires. But now that their own side had a way to deal with the Beast Tide—even if only temporarily—yet the Elf King refused to let them “use” it, you didn’t need to ask how the other elves would feel.

The Elf King said, “What are you thinking? No one cares more about the survival of the Elf Race than I do. The fact that Elina and Miss Xi can deal with the demons—of course that delights me as King of the Elf Race. If the two of you are willing, I’ll immediately arrange for you to go to other cities to resolve the Beast Tide crisis.”

He paused, then added, “However, Elina and Miss Xi are extremely important to the Elf Race. To ensure your safety and prevent people from other empires from coveting you, the Royal Court will dispatch elite Mages as escorts to protect you. You don’t have any objections, do you?”

Hilia said, “I have no objections.”

She was actually curious to see what other ways the Elf Royal Court planned to “protect” them.

What, were they going to throw a whole pile of Tier Six Mages at them as watchers?

Still, no matter how many Tier Six Mages they sent, once they left the Elf Royal City’s territory, wouldn’t she be free to run whenever and however she wanted?

If they went to cities she’d visited before, Hilia was confident she could ditch them and bolt in no time.

Because in every city she’d set foot in, she had quietly tried cracking the city’s defensive Array.

Aside from a handful of massive super-cities she couldn’t crack, the others had gone very smoothly.

With the help of Arrays and Disguise Skill, Hilia felt that shaking off a few Tier Six Mages wouldn’t be much of a challenge.

In any case, the first step was to get out of the Elf Royal City.

“Oh right, with Elina and Miss Xi handling the Beast Tide, that’s enough. Miss Luo Fei may as well stay in the Holy Tree, where it’s safe.”

“No, she needs to act together with me,” Hilia said immediately.

The Elf King narrowed his eyes. “Oh? So she played a role as well?”

“Of course. I sought her out specifically to go underground with us and search for a way to resolve the Beast Tide. Without her, we couldn’t have dealt with the demons this efficiently.”

“Oh? Really? But she doesn’t seem to have done anything.”

“Heh. And how do you know she did nothing? You an expert now?”

“It’s not that I’m claiming to be an expert; I’m just puzzled. I’d like Miss Xi to clear that up for me.”

“There’s nothing to clear up. Even if I told you, you wouldn’t be able to truly hear it. If Luo Fei can’t come with us, then we may as well stay in the Holy Tree. Otherwise we’d just be going for nothing.”

The Elf King’s eyes flickered between light and shadow.

Once Hilia and Elina actually one-click deleted the demons outside, he’d already begun losing his grip on them.

But he still couldn’t just confine them in the Holy Tree because of that. News from here was never going to stay secret.

At a time like this, if he plunged the other cities into misery just for his own selfish desires, what awaited him would be universal betrayal and abandonment.

So in the end, the Elf King had no choice but to nod and agree to Hilia and Elina’s conditions, allowing Phil to leave with them.

The only move left to him was to pull every High-tier Mage from his own faction, earnestly asking them to serve as Hilia’s escorts, to shadow them closely and prevent any unusual behavior.

After a series of tit-for-tat exchanges, both sides made some compromises.

At this point, thanks to Hilia’s one-click delete, the Elf Royal City slowly began to function again. As stories of her and Elina spread via Minstrels and ordinary elves word of mouth, their exploits gradually turned into a legend.