In the end, with the Red Scorpion taking the lead in retreating, although the atmosphere in the hall of the association quickly returned to normal in the following time, Dambert's annoying and somewhat reasonable remarks really affected the attitude of many adventurers to participate in this urgent mission.

After the hall assembly, which lasted for about half an morning, the Adventurers' Association temporarily closed the hall on the pretext of agreeing on the mission rewards for this urgent mission.

On the third floor of the guild, Irina, accompanied by Ted and Draco, opened the door to the box and entered the dimly lit room. The box room on the third floor of the Adventurer's Guild was subjected to a constant state of misleading illusion that would cause creatures unrecognized by the spellcaster to subconsciously avoid the area, as if they had never discovered that there was such a place on the third floor of the Guild.

The dragon mage Victor's tin pumpkin helmet still adds a touch of comical color to his otherwise unangry figure.

A few minutes ago, the powerful mage city lord had already cast a teleportation spell to come here, and at this time he sat quietly at one end of the long table, his eyes looking at his half-elf adoptive daughter through the slit of his helmet: "How is it, Irina?" Dambert's red monkey isn't strong enough to force you to confess me, is it? ”

"Your presence is still not revealed, father." Irina held a stack of booklets in her hand, "It's just ......"

"Just what?" Victor saw a hint of avoidance in the eyes of his adopted daughter.

Draco, the elven swordsman, looked at her pursed lips and lowered her head slightly, and smiled wryly, intending to tell her adoptive father the truth on behalf of the young lady in charge who had tried her best to mediate with Dambert not long ago.

However, Victor seemed to have seen through the intentions of his elven friend at once, and immediately raised his hand at him: "My daughter is not a vase, let her say it herself." ”

As the words fell, he continued to look at Irina through the slit of his helmet with some kind of invisible coercion in his eyes.

Irina lowered her head and gritted her teeth, then raised her emerald green eyes to meet the gaze of her adoptive father of the city lord and replied, "I'm very sorry, father. Although I had managed to break up the Scorpion Adventure Group to the Coppercrown Mine, Dambert then tempted me to shift the focus to the reason why you couldn't show up, and I made a mistake by making up a lie that couldn't be justified, resulting in a much smaller number of adventurers signing up for this urgent mission than we expected. ”

With that, she handed the list booklet to Victor.

The Dragon Vein Mage took the list of participants in this urgent mission, and soon found that in addition to some scattered and lone speculative adventurers, only the three more famous adventure groups of Orichal, Shaved Blade, and Hummingbird, as well as the five names of the five Urs team were arranged in a vertical column on the list.

Looking down at the booklet in her hand, Victor tilted her head and held the tin helmet around her neck in deep thought.

"Dambert's last words are intended to mislead adventurers into losing trust in you and trying to take the opportunity to force you out." After a while, Draco walked up to him and added, "And if you get involved in the Lumberwood Village with your own hands, all these years of perseverance will be in vain. ”

"Yes, our plan must not fall short at this juncture." The five fingers of Victedo's right hand slowly crumpled the list book in his hand, "In that case, hmm...... Draco, if the situation shows signs of spiraling out of control, I give you the power to devise an undetected trap to eradicate the Red Scorpion Adventure Pack. ”

"But to do that would be to indirectly expose your whereabouts to those behind the red scorpion, Lord of the City."

"So this is an extreme measure that can only be taken as a last resort."

Victor explained slowly, helmet's eyes turning to the side of his neck, and he looked at the blue-robed man of the three, who had not spoken up until then - it was Ted Hearst, a psionic mage who had borrowed human appearance to disguise his true race.

"Ted, put aside those alchemical experiments you like for the time being." After thinking for a moment, the Dragon Vein Mage City Lord instructed him, "If the chess pieces we selected this time return triumphantly from the Spotted Axe Forest in a few days, you will find them and give them a trial task on behalf of the Association to test whether their final strength is qualified." ”

"But what if the young man and his companion die in the Spotted Axe Forest?" Ted asked rhetorically in a human voice, "Just like the Thorn Adventure Group you picked last time, it still folded in Russ Canyon at the last minute. ”

Then it will turn out that they are nothing more than that...... And we have to be patient and wait for the next opportunity to come. ”

The iron-helmeted mage lord shrugged his shoulders and looked sideways at the window of the box with the curtains closed, and although the street scene outside was obscured by the curtain that was an obstacle in his eyes, he knew it was the direction of the ghetto—

Abandoned empty house, renovated cottage study

Urs's armor had now been replaced with a silver-gray long-sleeved chain mail, and he was sitting behind his desk against the windowsill, jotting down a few important points from this urgent mission into his adventure journal, while across from him stood Gloriden, who had just entered the living room.

The brown-haired old thief was not in a hurry to sort out the luggage and belongings he needed to bring with Thea, Crow, and Stonefist on the next trip, but was a little worried, half-bent over and supported the desk with his hands, and his gray eyes stared at Urs seriously, burying half of his gaze on the table and asking, "So, you still decided to participate in this urgent mission, right, Your Excellency the team leader?" ”

"Yes." Writing the last lingua franca onto the pages of the adventure journal, Urs closed the small journal in front of him, put down the ink-dipped quill, looked at him and looked up, "The villagers and guards of the Logging Village are under attack by demonic beasts, shouldn't we, as adventurers, go over and support them?" ”

"But this time the incident is definitely not as simple as it seems, and it can even be said that the amount of information on the surface is complex enough." "For example, I ask you—what do you think of Victor, our lord who never showed up?" ”

"I have the feeling that Dambert wants to make him officially appear in the public eye, but for some reason, Lord Victor is unwilling or unable to do so." Urs moved his elbows to the desk, and crossed his hands behind his chin to prop up his chin, "As for the key reason, you and I don't know, and I'm afraid few people in the whole city know." ”

"So our decision this time is really 'risky', the water is so muddy that we can't find the depths." Gloriden's brows furrowed slightly, "What's more, the Red Scorpion Adventure Group is the only one after the destruction of the Thorn Adventure Group that I stayed in before. I've actually had doubts since eight years ago......"

"What did you suspect at the time?"

"The Red Scorpion Adventure Group is not simple."

"After all, it's the largest group in the city."

"Tsk, that's not what I meant."

The old thief pouted his head at the corners of his mouth.

However, looking at the old man in front of him, Urs could understand what Glorydon was worried about, after all, the Red Scorpion Adventure Group managed to get rid of their rivals back then, and it took them a few years to climb to the throne of the first group in Twilight City, and then they went crazy day after day for the next few years.

If Dambert is not really a brain-dead, he guesses that there is very likely that there is a covert backing from a third party behind the Red Scorpion Adventure Group, and if this reasoning hypothesis is true, it may be able to explain why Dambert has a huge financial resources to provide the core members of the Red Scorpion with high-quality equipment and supplies.

Considering the information about the Labyrinth of Oil Painting and Draco's mediation attitude towards him last time, he now calmed down and thought about it, and vaguely felt that the reason why Victedo was reluctant to intervene in person was probably to deal with the third party hidden behind the Red Scorpion Adventure Group.

In order to achieve some kind of goal, the unknown forces try to use the Red Scorpion Adventure Group as a bait to lure Victedo, so Victedo also needs a good and easy to control chess piece to fight against Dambert's Red Scorpion Adventure Group.

And it now seems likely that the candidate for this chess piece is himself.

But why did that powerful dragon vein mage city lord deliberately choose himself as a pawn in his hands to fight against the Red Scorpion Adventure Clan? Is it because in this life I have succeeded in lifting the curse of the abandoned empty house in this already real world?

Speaking of which, the boss of the oil painting maze dungeon is the Babu Demon Warrior named Orokanshut.

Babu ...... A demon from the lower realms of the Bottomless Abyssal Plane.

Why is the boss monster in the copy of the painting officially arranged by Castano Game a demon? There is also the cultist with the ability to cast spells in the transcendent realm who killed the female ranger Merella fifteen years ago, and Merella's soul once said that the oil painting that inhabited Orokanshut was given to her by the other party back then......

Are there any hidden implications or hints in this? Or are these background plots about the maze of oil paintings just the whim of a game designer?

Pushing back the clues in time, Merella's Ranger Hut was cursed fifteen years ago, and Victedo followed Okazawa half a year later to establish Twilight City, followed by the fall of the Thorn Adventure Group and the rise of the Red Scorpion Adventure Group eight years ago, and then to the present......

Mobilizing the intelligence information in his mind and analyzing it carefully, Urs thought for less than a moment, and then felt as if his mind had become a mess like a mess.

There are still too few clues at hand.

Warnes was on top, and to be honest, he now suddenly regretted that he wasn't a plot party before.

As a ubiquitous combat player in the game world, in his previous life, he spent too much effort on the assembly line operation of "fighting monsters and leveling up to become stronger and then go to the battlefield PVP", so that in this life, he did not have a thorough understanding of the plot of the entire game.

This is undoubtedly a nerve-wracking regret. He thought to himself.

But even if it is nerve-wracking, the road ahead must be carried out well.

"Alright, Gloridon, I know what you're trying to say." Putting the chaotic thoughts out of his mind for a moment, Urs turned his attention back to his conversation with Grolayden, "Just take it easy. Perhaps, as your instincts suggested, the Scorpion Adventures have something to do with your past, and that's why we need to investigate this matter, right? It may have to do with your revenge plan. ”

"Hey, okay." The old thief knew that most of the young people would not change their minds, and then sighed softly, "Have you ever thought about the significance of our team's participation in this urgent mission?" As a leader, you should take these into account. ”

"Challenge and glory, bounty and justice." The young man replied, "Of course, in addition to that, Dambert actually dragged us into the water before we decided to take part in this urgent mission. ”

"You mean he was in the halls of the Guild at the time hinting to the others that you were an Imperial Secret Envoy?"

"Yes. Although, in fact, I'm really just a slave knight, and my current identity doesn't have much to do with what I used to be. ”

"It's a pity that other people don't necessarily think that way."

"Yes, other people don't necessarily think that way."

"In addition, the city lord of Victor was reluctant to show up...... If we refuse to participate in this mission because of Dambert's unwarranted slander, it will seem that we are weak-minded, as if we secretly have some inexplicable deal with the lord of the castle. ”

"So Dambert took advantage of this logical trap and forced us into a dilemma where we had to participate in this urgent mission, whether we had the intention of doing so in the first place, or we had to make this choice." Urs followed his words and finished the theory, "Otherwise, in the days to come, we will not be less suspicious, and we may even be isolated by other adventure groups." ”

"When you think about it, that cunning red-haired monkey really has a set." Gloriden raised his hand and pinched his chin.

"But we're not going to sit still."

Finally, Urs put an end to the topic with succinct words, getting up from behind his desk and walking to one of the walls of the study, removing his +3 two-handed greatsword called the Cursed Blade, and glancing sideways at Thea, the wolf-eared priest girl who had now packed up from the living room and had come over to inform him and the old thief.

It's almost time to go.

After that, the well-prepared team came to the gate area of Twilight City to meet up with the other adventurers participating in this urgent mission according to the meeting place designated by the adventurer association in advance, and took several flatbed carriages rented by the association to drive out of the city gate in the direction of Logging Village north of the city, and began their new adventure......