The group of people went down the mountain and walked along the mountain road towards Ximu Town. Before they could get close to the wooden city wall, the guards on the wall shouted: "Stop!"
The king patted Elizabeth on the shoulder.
Elizabeth urged her horse to take a step forward and said loudly: "I am the sister of Duke Langdon, and I was ordered by the Duke to solve the crisis of world destruction. When I was about to pass through the River Valley Territory, I was stopped by Stoker, who claimed to be the Duke, and came here specifically to Earl Ximu asks for help."
The guards on the wooden city wall glanced at each other, and the captain with the feather on his helmet shouted: "I sent someone to report to the count. We did not receive a notice that the princess was coming."
Elizabeth: "We set off in a hurry yesterday. Stoker wanted to arrest us, so we didn't have time to send an envoy to inform us."
Besides, the princess team doesn't have the manpower to do the reporting. Xiaobai can do it, but she can't read the map, so she may not be able to find where Ximu Town is.
The captain of the guard continued: "Then please wait a moment, the count should come out soon."
"I'll wait here." Elizabeth said as she gently fanned herself with a folding fan. Today's temperature seemed to be higher than yesterday. Although Elizabeth came here on horseback, she was also sweating. When she was fanning, the sleeves of her skirt slid down, revealing her arms wearing wristbands. You could see the sweat on both sides of the wristbands.
In fact, the worst thing was the drow. When Elizabeth was talking, the drow, as a guard, put down the cloth they had been holding as the sun for the sake of dignity and dignity. As a result, they were sweating profusely in just such a short time.
After all, the pure black skin of the drow is simply a natural sun absorber.
The situation is similar for others.
Wang is the kind of person whose skin is particularly prone to sunburn. After yesterday afternoon and this morning, his exposed skin has completely turned a wheat color, and it should be peeling off soon - the surface skin has been sunburned to death.
Xiaobai was dressed in white, and after transforming into a wolf, he had fluffy fur as a thermal insulation layer, but he was still so hot that he stuck out his tongue, and there was sweat on his tongue. I have fed Xiaobai water several times along the way.
Gotrick seems to be resisting the heat, maybe because he is wearing cool clothes?
The dwarf is in the frame, and everyone except Gotrick can't see him.
The group of people waited under the sun for a long time before they saw an old man with a white beard appearing on the tower.
"Hello, Princess Langdon." The old man said, "I am Count Ximu."
Elizabeth: "Hello. We are..."
"You don't think that because of the conflict with Stoker, I will forget what you did to our lord?" The Earl interrupted Elizabeth, "If you came to me to overthrow Stoker, then Just please come back.”
Elizabeth was stunned for a moment, glanced at the king, and suddenly thought: "We came here because we heard that you want to clear out the cavemen entrenched in the mine. As you can see, our team has drows and dwarves, and they are experts in underground fighting!
"And you may not know that, underground in Langdon City, we have already eliminated the troops behind this annihilation crisis. This troop is composed of goblins and kobolds, and has a certain similarity with cavemen!"
After speaking, Elizabeth looked at Wang again. The mage gave a thumbs up.
Earl Ximu looked at the team outside the city again and said, "I saw the evil drow. Where are the dwarves?"
Flint cursed and stretched out his hand from the frame: "Here it is! Here it is!"
Earl Ximu thought for a few seconds while stroking his beard, and then said: "I guess the price of helping us regain the mine is to let me send troops to overthrow Stoker, and let the agent sent by your damn treacherous kid be here." The leader of the river valley is domineering!"
Elizabeth: "But when you retake the mine, it will return to its past glory. You can even dismantle the water gate, because the ships will be anchored in Lakeside City again, and the long-abandoned pilot station will be visited by people again."
Count Ximu: "It's indeed tempting, but it's not enough to make me betray my lord!"
"He is not your lord! Your lord is Duchess Ruth! She is preparing for her wedding in Langdon City in half a year! Sir Stoker is the usurper! Legally speaking, he is the one who should be condemned. "
Earl Ximu sneered: "The sister of the person who did such a treacherous thing as assassinating the guests actually accused Stoker! Humph, I really live long enough to meet any shameless person."
Elizabeth corrected her righteously: "No! The Duke of Old Valley was convicted by the Imperial Parliament because he collaborated with the former Duke of Steyr to launch an attack on our Langdon Territory, causing huge casualties! He died because he resisted arrest with arms. !”
Wang raised his eyebrows and looked at Elizabeth, who was lying without changing his expression, with a surprised look on his face.
Count Ximu on the city wall was stunned by Elizabeth's words.
He probably didn't expect that the most beautiful woman in Kuosania would be so shameless.
But in this matter, it depends on a tacit understanding. The rest is all about profit considerations, which is in line with one's own interests, that is, the Duke of the Old River Valley should be punished for his crimes.
Earl Ximu was not a white lotus. After thinking for a while, he said, "What if I send troops and you regret it?"
Elizabeth looked at the king again.
The mage nodded.
So Elizabeth said: "We will solve the caveman problem first and help you take back the mine."
Earl Ximu snorted: "It's easy to talk nonsense. Don't stop outside the door. Isn't the door open? You should come in and find me directly in the castle, so as not to be exposed to the sun outside."
Elizabeth: "We are an official diplomatic mission, so we must follow diplomatic etiquette and ask the host before entering the city."
The earl nodded: "I won't meet you in a private place like the reception room. Come to my study. I want to see what the 'professional underground combat expert' has to say."
After saying that, the count's figure disappeared from the city wall.
Elizabeth immediately turned around and asked the king excitedly: "How did I perform?"
Wang: "It's much better than the time in Watergate Town. At that time, you still wanted me to remind you of the next sentence."
Elizabeth: "I learned blues in the first half, and you learned it later!"
Marika: "We can talk about this later, let's go in first."
**
Count Ximu's study is different from his castle. It is actually a stone building. In fact, after entering this wooden castle, I realized that the core part of the castle is a masonry structure, and the outer expansion part is made of wood.
In short, the entire castle is just a make-do.
In the Earl's study, you can see the all-stone fortress on the other side through the window, and clearly see the flag of the Earl of Ximu family hanging on the fortress.
As soon as the king entered the room, he asked directly: "My lord, I heard that the stone fortress facing the window is no longer inhabited. Why is the flag still hanging?"
The earl looked at the king and asked the princess doubtfully: "Who is this?"
It seems that the earl does not know about the king's deeds, which is normal. It is not like a bard will visit Ximu Town. After all, this place is in decay that can be seen with the naked eye.
Without the bard's visit, and the earl didn't look like he could afford a spy in the duchy next door, it would be understandable that he only knew the superficial information about what happened in the dukedom of Langdon and didn't understand the details.
Earl: "My son is stationed there. Recently, the cave dwellers don't know whether they have run out of food or what happened, and they have begun to come out of the mines to attack humans on the ground."
Wang frowned: "Cavemen starting to attack the ground? This is unheard of."
Earl: "But this happened. Look at this, this is the list of attacks this month. They will appear late at night and attack households scattered in the fields. Sometimes they will also go to villages with dozens of households to kill."
Wang: "Cavemen rarely leave their caves and come to the surface. They are integrated with the underground ecology. They mainly feed on lichens such as moss and fungi such as mushrooms. Unlike kobolds, cavemen almost do not eat meat. , their visual organs also degenerated.
"Dwarves and drow have dark vision. They can gain an advantage when fighting underground, but their vision on the ground will not be affected. The cavemen are different. They rely on their well-developed hearing to locate underground. They will suffer on the ground. "
The Earl shook his head, took something out of the drawer, put it on the desk, and pushed it forward gently.
"Look at this. This is what was formed after melted wax was poured into the strange footprints discovered by the hunters and solidified. Do you recognize it?"
Wang looked at it carefully, shook his head, and handed it to Marika beside him.
Marika looked at it and said with certainty: "They are cavemen. In my hometown, these weak evil creatures were driven to the corners of the underground tunnel network to survive."
Saying that, the drow handed the things to the dwarf. The dwarf also immediately made a judgment: "They are indeed cavemen. When I was a child, the kingdom's security forces always patrolled the mine tunnels and drove these guys back deeper underground. They were almost not afraid of strong light. Because it can't be seen at all.
"They use a strange spirit spell, which seems to be a type of shamanic spell. Who knows where they found the spirit underground."
The spirit is the representative of the will of nature. Shamans believe that the druids' magical skills are also given by the spirit, but the druids sneer at this statement.
When Xiaobai heard the word spirit, he showed his disdain very openly.
Wang touched his chin: "The cavemen began to attack the ground. Tsk, let me ask a seemingly irrelevant question. Your Excellency, have the number of cats and dogs in your territory decreased?"
The earl looked at the king with a puzzled expression: "What are you talking about? Does this have anything to do with it?"
Wang turned to Xiaobai and said, "Ask me."
Xiaobai immediately turned into a sparrow and flew out of the window.
Earl: "What's going on? What's the difference between this and cats and dogs? I have a lot of hounds for hunting, and I'd know if they were missing."
"It's not the dogs you keep, it's the wild cats and dogs out there," Elizabeth said.
"Wild cats and dogs? What does this have to do with taking back our minerals?"
Wang: "If the number of wild cats and dogs decreases, it means that the same thing as Langdon Territory has happened in your territory. Someone is performing an evil ritual to prepare for the positive energy in your territory to change. Once he succeeds, your territory will Positive energy therapy may kill some frail old people directly.”
The count frowned: "What's this mess? Isn't positive energy a gift from Lancelot?"
The dwarf priest immediately shouted loudly: "Who said that? Kailin can also let me guide positive energy!"
What else does the earl want to say? Xiaobai is back.
As soon as the werewolf girl changed back, she said loudly: "Cats, dogs and sparrows said there was no such sign. But they said something interesting. They saw strange monsters moving at night, and blind creatures underground were with them. "
Wang: "Could this blind creature be talking about a caveman?"
Xiaobai: "I don't know. The animals said that, and they don't speak common language. I'm just translating their words."
The king scratched his head and asked the earl again: "Since the earl has sent his sons to guard the exit of the mine, have they resisted the cavemen's attack?"
"I blocked it several times," the Count replied. "They all happened at night."
Wang: "Then please let us act together with Mr. Ling tonight."
Earl: "No problem."
(End of chapter)
