I can see experience bars after being transported to another world.

After Klaus finished reading, he folded the note, put it back in the box, and closed the lid.

No wonder the Holy Armor Army couldn't get more troops after several rounds of deployments, and the Iron Guard Battalion was in the same boat. This vial of potion was the Empire's last bargaining chip.

Klaus recognized this stuff; it was a potion specifically created for fifth-tier transcendents.

If given to a peak fourth-tier transcendent being, it can directly advance to the fifth tier, but the price is that it locks off their future path. If given to a fifth-tier being, it can greatly extend their lifespan and stabilize their condition.

Klaus had originally intended to exchange it for something similar.

But the Bronze City branch was really too poor.

Compared to the Empire's wealthy territories, the Night's Watch division earns a pitifully small amount of points each year, and after all these years, they haven't accumulated much.

The bottle in front of him wasn't the one he originally wanted.

If the guardians were to take it in their current state, the pressure on Bronze City would indeed decrease significantly. But what if they were to drink it themselves...?

Klaus suddenly understood.

He didn't give the potion directly to the guard; instead, he put it in his pocket. The guard's body could still hold on for now.

He nodded to the person looking for directions, then turned and strode towards the branch office.

Behind me, the main tower of the Tower of Learning stood silently in the night, the few remaining rings of inscriptions on its body glowing faintly, clearly not lasting much longer.

When Klaus rushed back to the branch, Lu Yuan was already writing and drawing in the main hall, looking like he had been waiting for a long time.

Seeing Klaus's expression, he said nothing, but took out a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to him.

Klaus took the book, glanced at it, and continued walking into the main hall without stopping.

There weren't many words on the paper, and Lu Yuan's handwriting was somewhat messy; he only wrote down two things.

First, the seed's growing environment needs to be maintained more rigorously. He didn't know how Klaus had cared for that seed before, but it was changing rapidly now, so he would give it as much as he could.

Secondly, that seed is extremely important and must be preserved; it carries something he can't quite explain, but it is indeed useful.

Under the second point, Lu Yuan added a sentence: Hope can indeed bring hope.

Lu Yuan wrote this much.

Klaus had already arrived at the conference room door. He tucked the note into his pocket and glanced at Lu Yuan.

Are you sure?

"OK," Lu Yuan answered readily.

Klaus asked no more questions and pushed open the door to the main hall. It was already packed with people.

Count Helmut sat at one end of the long table, his face dark with anger.

The man accompanying him was not the servant, but another man. He arrived even faster than Klaus had anticipated; news of the events on the other side of the city walls had clearly reached his ears.

The long table was filled with nobles of all ranks, as well as leaders of the merchant guild.

Viscounts and barons filled almost the entire meeting hall. Several of them had clearly been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night; their clothes were disheveled, and their faces showed a panic that was not usually seen.

Clearly, these noble lords understood that if something truly happened to Bronze City, none of them would escape. Running away earlier might have offered some hope, but now it was too late.

Klaus remembered the edict and went straight to the table to sit down.

Glock briefly reviewed the latest battle situation.

The ghouls on the ground are still spreading, and all the fourth-tier ghouls have been deployed. New collapses are still constantly appearing.

The dark red flesh and blood on the inner city wall continued to spread, and the Great Ascended Ones' countermeasures could only barely hold it off.

The remaining residents of the outer city have been forcibly gathered near the branch office, and with the supplies prepared in advance, they can barely manage for a while.

Klaus listened without saying a word. But the group of minor nobles below couldn't sit still any longer.

"The city walls are already polluted, what's the point of guarding them now?" A baron's face flushed red, his voice booming, all traces of his usual aristocratic composure gone. "I have three estates outside the city, all invested there. If this city falls..."

"How much is your estate worth?" a viscount interrupted him, his voice even shriller. "The inscriptions on the city walls are almost worn out. Once the defenses are gone, those ghouls underground will really come out, and you'll die here, let alone three estates."

The baron, even more restless, turned to the Night's Watch. "And what are you Night's Watchmen good for? If I remember correctly, didn't the Earl of the City Hall hand it over to you a long time ago? How do you maintain such a huge place as the Underground Abyss?"

Several viscounts joined in, and the meeting hall erupted into chaos. Some of them were red-faced and furious, almost ready to fight.

"Enough," Klaus suddenly said. His voice wasn't loud, but the main hall fell silent, and the mouths of the minor nobles all shut.

Klaus ignored their earlier commotion. He took the rolled-up sheepskin from his pocket, unfolded it, and placed it on the long table.

"The imperial edict arrived tonight. See for yourselves."

The nobles slowly shifted their gaze from the table, craning their necks to stare at the small but not large characters on the parchment scroll.

The central command decided that evacuation was not permitted and that the city of Bronze must be defended to the death.

After everyone finished reading, the main hall fell into a deathly silence. The baron and viscount, who had been shouting just moments before, opened their mouths for a long time but couldn't utter a single word.

Count Helmut stared at the edict for a long time. His expression didn't change much, but his already gloomy face darkened even more.

"I've seen what happened at the Bronze City walls with my own eyes," the Earl said in a low voice. "What do you need me to do, Klaus? Just tell me. After the meeting, I'll follow your instructions."

Klaus nodded. The Earl stood up, didn't linger, and turned to leave. The minor nobles exchanged glances, some wanting to follow and ask for clarification, but were stopped in their tracks by a single sentence from the man behind the Earl.

People dispersed quickly, and soon only Klaus, Lu Yuan, and Glock remained in the main hall.

Klaus sat behind the table, his fingers tapping lightly on the surface. Clearly, he too was caught in a dilemma, or rather, hesitating.

Just then, a muffled boom came from outside the window, coming from the south, towards the city wall.

Immediately afterward, another muffled thud came from the south. Before anyone could speak, the conference hall doors were flung open.

A night watchman rushed in, covered in sweat.

"The copper wall! The seal behind the copper wall in the pipeline layer has been preliminarily determined to be completely ineffective! The brothers can't hold on any longer! Deputy Chief of Staff Klaus, we're at your command!"

Klaus's fingers, which were tapping on the table, suddenly stopped. Glock, who was about to leave, hadn't even reached the door when he turned around and rushed back.

A moment of silence fell over the hall. Klaus's brow furrowed, and the first thought that popped into his mind was the person on the wall.

But the guards are still there, and they're already able to take action, at least enough to keep the people on the wall occupied. So what's the situation right now?

"Let's go!" Klaus stood up and strode out.

Let's go back twenty minutes.

Thanks to Selena's efforts, the Night Watch has significantly increased its manpower on the pipeline level, from the original four to seven, barely forming a small team led by a Tier 3 captain.

Their temporary base has been moved back another five meters.

The captain stared at the ever-spreading, twisted runes before him, waved his hand, and signaled for the battle line to move back a little further.

A watchman turned to look at him. "Captain, we've already reported the situation. But retreating like this isn't a solution. Further down, it connects to another passageway, and if something happens then, we won't be able to stop it."

The captain looked at the inscription in front of him without saying a word.

His supernatural abilities were constantly issuing warnings. His five senses were screaming, telling him that something was awakening deep within the dark passage, urging him to leave immediately. But he was the captain of the Night's Watch; he couldn't leave.

"Is the spread rate, as just recorded, faster than before?" His voice was gentle, completely at odds with his fierce appearance.

A watchman responsible for recording immediately stepped forward. "Yes, Captain. According to my calculations, its spread is accelerating abnormally. At this rate, my preliminary estimate is that it will spread approximately one hundred meters in about a day."

Is there any way to stop them?

"It seems we only have mithril. But we don't have much in stock."

"Keep throwing them," the captain ordered. "No matter what, we can't let these inscriptions spread. At the same time, try to destroy this passage, chisel open the surrounding walls as much as possible, and see how quickly they spread to other materials."

"Yes."

The watchman immediately obeyed and began chiseling at the wall. At the same time, vials of mithril were tossed one after another into the passageway covered with strange inscriptions.

The effect was not ideal. The mithril, which could burn with spiritual energy, lit up suddenly upon touching the inscription, as if it had found fuel. But the next moment, the light went out at a visible speed, as if it had been forcibly extinguished.

Looking at the scene before him, the captain roughly understood that the problem was most likely with the seal inside.

"Notify the branch office to have Klaus come over. Hurry, hurry!"

Just as the Night's Watchman left, in the depths of darkness, the massive bronze wall had been completely transformed.

The originally precisely arranged inscriptions were completely messed up, with a large number of bizarre, rotating, and twisted inscriptions embedded in the middle, forcibly disrupting the transmission of the inscriptions. Circles of these bizarre, wildly spinning inscriptions were expanding outwards along the wall.

On the pristine copper surface, one raised contour after another emerged, surging outwards. In the gaps between the rising and falling of the protrusions, fine cracks appeared on the copper surface, from which faint golden light seeped out.

As the protrusion rose higher and higher, the copper surface finally couldn't support it, and large areas of cracks appeared, with the cracks spreading from the bottom all the way to the top.

From the deepest part of the crack, a golden light with a dark undertone shone through.

A colossal crown slowly emerged from the crack. The golden crown was about the height of a person and as wide as seven or eight people standing side-by-side. Seven pointed corners formed a circle, each corner inlaid with a glass eye.

The patterns on the bronze wall suddenly stopped. The spinning inscriptions, as if they had seen something, spun even more wildly.

Then, one by one, the eyes on the crown lit up, opening or blinking in all directions.

The first six opened in turn, but the one in the very center remained closed.