Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

“Rest? You can rest once you cross that river. But now, you need to know your place! Prisoners!” Among the strangers, a man carrying a long, thin sword glared at him menacingly—this man, whom the strangers called ‘Sir Samurai,’ appeared to be the leader of the group.

The 'knight' was fierce, and his sword was sharp. Frodo had witnessed this man, wielding that strange sword, and his companions slaughter an innocent elven migrating caravan for inedible gems and something invisible to the hobbits, yet of utmost importance to them. These wretched strangers seemed to gain some unspeakable reward from killing the innocent, and upon realizing this, young Frodo's hard-won courage vanished.

Hobbits are not good at fighting… though not incapable of it, they are simply not good at it. While Frodo endured this humiliation, his good friends comforted him with their actions—Pippin helped Sam up, and Merry patted him encouragingly on the shoulder. The four hobbits' eyes met, and they could all see each other's encouragement beneath their gazes.

The 'Samurai-sama' may have noticed these details, but he merely scoffed and dismissed them. With the arrival at the riverbank ferry, the entire procession finally came to a halt.

“There’s only one boat here; we can’t get everyone across at once.” A middle-aged man in a priest’s robe surveyed the ferry crossing, his face showing annoyance as he looked at the small raft. “My prayer spells can only carry two people at most, but we have nineteen here!”

"To be precise, there are twenty-one. Those dwarves together barely count as two." The 'knight' glanced at the four hobbits who had stopped and were panting with their hands on their knees, then his gaze swept over the other newcomers who had either sat down or lay down. He randomly pointed at two people and shouted, "Hey! You two newcomers, go and untie the ropes on the raft. We'll be crossing the river in batches!"

“Why don’t you do this yourselves? You’re so powerful, why are you exploiting us ordinary people? You should take responsibility.” One of the two new recruits he pointed at didn’t move at all, while the other started complaining loudly. And as soon as the complaining started, many others chimed in. The other new recruits also shouted complaints like, “Yeah, yeah,” “We’re all so tired,” and “You’re so inhumane.”

"Damn it! Don't you guys have any manly spirit?! No team spirit at all?!" The 'Samurai Master' defiantly drew the sword from his back, looking ready to unleash a massacre. "Believe it or not, I'll show you just how powerful this sword is!"

The man being glared at first turned pale, then immediately realized what he was doing and shouted loudly with a stiff face, "You bluffing bastard, you wouldn't dare hurt us! I heard that voice very clearly, and if we are injured, you will immediately lose your prize—" His words suddenly stopped, he glared angrily at the hobbits, and shut his mouth.

Clearly, he paid a price for his loose tongue. And by taking advantage of this opportunity and this topic, the 'Samurai-sama' also found a way to maintain his authority.

"Hey! You bunch of dwarves, go untie the ropes and get the oars ready. You're responsible for ferrying everyone across this river in batches!" He glanced at the hobbits, a hint of irritation in his eyes. "Don't try anything funny, or I won't hesitate to chop off a hand from your bodies!"

The hobbits exchanged glances, and an unspoken understanding formed between them. They remained silent, adopting a submissive demeanor, and then quietly trotted to the ferry to complete the tasks the strangers had forced upon them.

Frodo, with the most nimble fingers, untied the rope; Sam, the strongest, and Merry, the second strongest, pushed the raft that was stranded on the shore; while Pippin, with the sharpest ears, pricked up his ears to listen to the hushed conversations between strangers and... the sounds in the distance.

He heard a suppressed rhythm emanating from the familiar ground beneath his feet. The uninvited, menacing strangers, however, remained completely oblivious.

"If it weren't for special circumstances, I would have given these worthless bastards a good beating, to teach these ignorant fools what the order of arrival and the hierarchy of superiors and inferiors really mean!" The 'Samurai' gave the newcomer who had embarrassed him a subtle sidelong glance, a deep resentment flashing in his eyes. His five fingers clenched slightly, but the fist he formed quickly relaxed.

“It’s just not the right time yet,” he told himself.

“We’d better hurry.” The speaker was a shrine maiden of about thirty years old. Besides the samurai and the priest, there were two other experienced individuals in the group: a shrine maiden and an onmyoji. The shrine maiden was holding a talisman that was trembling slightly.

“I have a bad feeling that the Ringwraiths may be very close to us.”

"Don't be afraid. The Ring and the Hobbits are in our hands. At worst, we can hand the Ring over to the Ringwraiths. Anyway, there's no penalty for failure this time." A cold smile appeared on the warrior's lips, his words brimming with unusual confidence. "Although we're the weakest team in this battle, we have the upper hand. As long as the Ring is in our hands, no one else will dare to do anything to us."

"But the other reincarnation teams might take direct action." The Onmyoji glanced at the Hobbit, seemingly trying to discern some possible tricks the Hobbit might pull... though he ultimately gained nothing. But gaining nothing naturally means good news, doesn't it?

"Perhaps we should be kinder to these hobbits."

"Damn it!" the samurai growled, his ferocious expression making no attempt to conceal his displeasure at having his authority challenged. Although his authority had already been trampled upon once by a newcomer, he clearly presented a different face to his trusted comrades. "Are you implying I did something wrong? Don't forget who saved your life in Dawn of the Dead! These lowly dwarves are already honored to breathe the same air as me! How dare they ask for more!"

He suddenly lowered his voice even further, shouting quickly and softly, "Do you think I don't know that helping them will make our journey to the Ring go smoothly? But we won't gain anything that way... How can we handle A-level side quests? I'm going to force them to escape from us after crossing the river."

He made a swift gesture, and a glint of golden light could be faintly seen from his dancing fingertips.

"...I've prepared a counterfeit One Ring, enchanted with invisibility and ghostly vision. Judging by how those characters in the movies portray it, they definitely won't be able to tell the difference. Once we've crossed the river, I'll secretly switch it out. And after we're across, I'll have those hobbits escape with the fake to draw our attention... We're different from the others; the other reincarnation teams don't dare to go against the main characters like we do. So they won't risk offending Aragorn and Gandalf to check the Ring's authenticity. By the time they've drawn our attention and reached Rivendell, we'll already be far, far away!"

He clenched his fist tightly.

"And when that time comes, we, who will hold the One Ring and remain in the shadows—"

Before he could finish speaking, a hazy gray sword light slashed through the air, severing half of his head!

Chapter 18 - The Lurker

"Hurry! We only have this one chance!" The hobbits possessed superhuman senses; they detected the Ringwraiths' arrival a step ahead and prepared to escape. When the hazy sword light pierced the air and severed the life of the leader among the strangers, they almost impatiently leaped onto the small raft and began to paddle!

"Ringwraiths!" the witch screamed, stumbling backward. Faced with this sudden attack, her first reaction was to run, not to fight back. However, her companions were faster; as she retreated, the priest had already run several steps toward the ferry, and he had also come into view of the hobbits' subtle movements.

"Stop, raft!" the priest commanded loudly, his words carrying a certain forceful authority. The small raft, which had already drifted four or five meters past the shore, suddenly stopped in the river, and no matter how hard the hobbits rowed, they couldn't move it forward an inch.

Alice, as an observer, could easily see through this simple application of some kind of psychic power. However, the hobbits trapped in the river were gripped by uncontrollable panic. They screamed, picking up pebbles, pieces of wood, and even odds and ends from their raft and hurling them at the priest—their efforts were futile; all their projectiles were easily deflected by the several ghostly figures hovering around the priest. Then—

With a soft 'plop,' the priest's head was severed from his neck. Warm, crimson blood splattered through the air along with the rolling head, some landing on the surrounding grass, others in the river, startling many poor fish. A few drops of blood even traveled a considerable distance, soaking the poor hobbit's clothes.

Turning one's back to the Ringwraiths is a dangerous act, and the priest has now proven the truth of this theory with his life.

He died, in the same manner as the 'samurai,' on the riverbank less than three meters from the ferry crossing. His death triggered the vigilance... or rather, despair of his companions. In the horrified eyes of the priestess and the onmyoji, who, unlike their companions, hadn't exposed the back of their necks to the Ringwraiths, they watched helplessly as four riders on ghostly horses emerged from the darkness, approaching them with seemingly slow but actually swift steps.

They didn't have much time left, maybe three seconds, maybe two. But for reincarnators at this stage, that was enough time for them to make a final attempt—the Onmyoji shouted, and a huge, weaponized form, modified from the souls of the unjustly killed, appeared behind him. He hesitated for half a second before severing one of his arms, and the blood that gushed out became the form's sustenance.

"Shikigami, hold them off!" he commanded, and then the huge figure behind him swung out claws that looked like real objects at the Ringwraiths—the tips of the claws were wrapped in ominous curses, and when it touched the Ringwraith in front, it even briefly stopped it in its tracks!

However, it was only one, and only for a moment. Another Ringwraith bypassed its obstructed comrade and, as the Onmyoji attempted a second attempt, cleaved his shikigami and its body in two diagonally—the remaining survivors screamed in terror, and the shrine maiden, fleeing backward to the ferry, used her last resort.

"I know the secrets of this world! I can help your master—" she screamed, raising her hands, but before she could finish her sentence, the undead horse at the feet of the leading Ringwraith covered a distance of more than ten meters and came to her, crushing her chest and pelvis into a piece that was pieced together with its burning hooves.

The four veterans perished here, and the remaining newcomers' lives amounted to only about two seconds in total for the Ringwraiths. Meanwhile, the Ringwraith who had trampled the witch had reached the riverbank and raised its Cavern Sword, poised to throw it at the hobbits on the riverbank!

Just then, another Ringwraith let out a joyful shriek—it used the Cavern Sword to pick up the ring that the East Sea Team's reincarnators had disguised as the One Ring, and then showed it to its comrade.

Clearly, the replicas created by the Reincarnators possessed a degree of deception. This ability even fooled the Ringwraiths for a brief period. By the time they realized they had been deceived and angrily crushed the ring into pieces, the Hobbit raft had already vanished into a thick fog rising silently under the night sky, making it impossible to pinpoint their location.

The Ringwraiths failed, while the Hobbits escaped unscathed. Witnessing the Ringwraiths' resentful roars and the Hobbits' barely discernible forms in the thick fog, Alice stopped recording this part of the story.

“Something’s not right.” She approached the remains of the deceased reincarnators, scrutinizing the traces they had left behind. She carefully analyzed every detail she had just gathered, then diligently tried to deduce the conclusion she needed.

Based solely on the intelligence gathered so far, the East Sea Team's Reincarnation Squad is undeniably a weak team. Not a single member is at the fourth rank, or even the third. Their leader is a complete incompetent, and the remaining veterans and newcomers are a bunch of useless bastards.

"Using a fake ring as bait, attempting to complete their main quest before the group battle between the Reincarnators begins—for a team with mediocre planning skills, this level of cunning is indeed befitting of their status. But it's still too crude. Given their awareness of their own weakness, they should have chosen a more cautious strategy." She reached out, carefully examining the information conveyed by the counterfeit ring. Besides the invisibility and ghostly vision enchantments the warriors spoke of, she sensed a subtle and profound dark power. This was probably what allowed the ring to deceive the Ringwraiths for that brief moment.

But that's not enough. Even if they could secretly switch the rings, it would be impossible for mortals to take away such a treasure with the power to corrupt the human heart. Unless... the East Sea team has some unique way to ensure they won't be corrupted by this ring.

"It might be a sealed container or a spell... but I haven't found any information about it here."

"There are some problems."

Alice closed her eyes, attempting to grasp the samurai's thoughts at that time through a third-order mental simulation. However, the limited information she gleaned led her to a conclusion she wasn't entirely comfortable with—the captain of the East Blue Squad hadn't even considered how to take the Ring with him. He seemed to believe himself to be special, capable of resisting its temptations for days, even if he possessed it.

It's arrogant, but the logic behind this behavior isn't entirely illogical.

"It's hard to understand. Perhaps this is the 'betting the nation' spirit ingrained in the blood of the Japanese." Alice gently rubbed her forehead, finally deciding to take this as her final conclusion for now... That's impossible.

“We need to observe even earlier. I’d better go to the place where the East Blue Team first landed; perhaps there are still some clues hidden there that I don’t know about.” The girl gently stroked her chin, nodded slightly, and then reached out to touch the replica ring—to accurately trace back to the correct record tape, a beacon was needed, and this ring would likely be the most suitable object.

Alice stopped halfway through extending her hand.

"I remember I stopped the recording tape. Information from an inanimate object shouldn't come back to life on its own," the girl said softly to herself, her gaze shifting slightly upwards.

She tilted her ear and once again heard the sound of the wind blowing and the sound of flowing water. She heard the receding hoofbeats turn and rapidly approach her location; the grass beneath her feet, which should have been still, began to sway slightly, and the stagnant world suddenly came alive again. And when her gaze shifted to something level with her own, she saw the returning dark riders.

This is abnormal and unreasonable. Because this isn't the real world; it's merely a recording of information, like a video playing on a computer. Since the viewer outside the screen has already pressed the stop button, it shouldn't have started playing on its own. And since it has begun to act, it means there must be a force behind it all.

Alice didn't know what it was, but she knew perfectly well that someone had set up an obstacle there. And since the obstacle existed, its purpose could only be to hide a secret.

“The East Sea team has a hidden secret.” She made her judgment with such certainty. “And the way they’re hiding this secret… is quite interesting.”

She turned her head slightly, watching the group of security devices disguised as Ringwraiths charge towards her—and then, they were all destroyed.

She was no match for those weak, mortal East Sea Reincarnators. Leaving aside the fact that these monsters were merely imposters with the appearance of Ringwraiths, even if they were the real thing, they would be as fragile as ants in her eyes. She simply stretched out her hand, and the surging sea of ​​information transformed into a cage imprisoning the riders. Their charges and demonic swords were useless; their desperate resistance and struggles were futile. And when she withdrew her hand, the information that constituted the riders returned to its silent form, falling back into her palm.

The battle is over... no, it wasn't really a battle. It was just a witch simply taming an out-of-control experiment.

So, what's next...?

........................

Patchouli reached out and pulled a jumbled mass of chaotic messages from the object that resembled the Witch King of Angmar. The poor vessel had now become an irregular crystalline mass, utterly destroyed by the thousands of crystal pillars that had grown from its body. Beneath it, the entire Wind and Cloud Peak Watchtower had been reduced to ruins covered in clear crystals, and both the righteous characters and the reincarnators from Southern Flame Continent were reduced to mere corpses.

A fierce battle ensued. When the protective device was triggered, all living beings present transformed from illusion into reality and launched an attack on her. They fought with unwavering courage and coordination, they—

—In the end, they are nothing more than simulated imitations.

While killing them would be troublesome, it wasn't impossible. In this Sea of ​​Information, essentially the home ground of information mages, even a fake Esdeath capable of simulating extraordinary life power was merely a matter of time and effort for Patchouli to deal with. Somewhat surprisingly, the imposter Angmar Witch King was stronger than the captain of the Southern Flame Continent team.

This is a topic worth considering, but now is not the time to deal with it.

She stared at the jumbled mess of information she had extracted, trying her best to analyze and decipher it. Meanwhile, another part of her brain was working at high speed, thinking about the causes and consequences of this change.

There's no doubt that this tape contains secrets unknown to the public. However, the exact area of ​​that secret is a question worth considering. The method of its arrangement doesn't seem to be Sauron's style, and to say it's the work of the Reincarnation Squad... well, the current evidence is insufficient.

[It couldn't be the Southern Flame Continent team; they're incapable of such a setup, nor would they need to. But this method is typical of information mages… directly activating specific floating messages into guards protecting secrets—this is a tactic Alice and I excel at. Therefore, whoever set up this must know us… no.]

[The security measures aren't strong enough; this level of secrecy won't stop us. Instead, it will draw our attention this way. If they knew us, they wouldn't have set such a flawed trap. Unless the trap's purpose was to attract our attention. Or… the person who set this up doesn't understand us or information magic at all, and the secrecy is only like this because it's Alice and me who came here!]

[So that's how it is. Words of power, prayers—or rather, a kind of grand prophecy—a technique that directly makes demands on the world. It seems there's someone skilled in causality lurking in the shadows. It couldn't be Nan Yan, nor could it be Dongmei, where Zhao Zhuikong is. Is it Adam from the Celestial Team? Or something else...?]

Her eyes suddenly lit up, and a conclusion appeared in her mind. Just as she reached that conclusion, Alice suddenly appeared beside her.

“It’s the East Sea team. We were almost tricked by someone lurking in the shadows.” Alice came to her side. She glanced at the jumbled messages Patchouli was analyzing in her hand. “Give up on that. You’ve been misled. These moving message puppets are just bait. Their real purpose was already accomplished when we took action against them.”

"……what?"

“They aren’t ‘landmines,’ but ‘trippers.’ While we wasted our time and attention on these puppets, the information records hidden deeper within were completely destroyed in some brutal and effective way. We can no longer see things too early or too late… It’s time to leave, Patsy.” Alice said softly, “It’s time to go back, find Chu Xuan, and tell him everything we’ve obtained. Then…”

"We need to start a total war."

Chapter Nineteen: Surprise Attack

Soon after, within the Tower of Babel world.

"So that's how it is—I roughly understand the situation now." Chu Xuan summarized all the information the witches had gathered and then put it into his own thought process. He adjusted his glasses and glanced over the Central Continent team members who had regrouped and sat around the circular table.

Alice and Patchouli weren't the only ones who left the Tower of Babel world for reconnaissance. Besides Chelsea, who was constantly on the outside world, patrolling the surrounding areas as the vessel for the Tower of Babel world, Zhao Yingkong went to Lake-town, Zhan Lan and Xiao Honglu arranged several prophecy rituals, and even Zero, with his incredibly low presence, made a brief appearance in Gondor.

Some people reaped rich rewards, while others achieved little, but regardless of the amount, the final piece of information, when pieced together, ultimately yielded a sufficiently complete puzzle.

"First, we can be fairly certain that Valinor—or rather, the realm of the gods—exists in this world. And the gods known as the Valar reside within that realm. They are not particularly interested in what is happening on this continent. The likelihood of them directly intervening in the battlefield is no more than one percent."

"The wizards—or rather, the five Maiar recorded in the Lord of the Rings—are servants of the gods and possess powerful spirits. In terms of the system of obsessive souls, their strength is generally around the high to peak of the True Demon level. But they do not actually possess extraordinary essence—their power comes from the gifts of the gods. When the gods are watching over them, they can reach a maximum strength equivalent to a fourth-tier early-stage powerhouse with A-level enhancement. Once the gods abandon them, they will become extremely weak."

Chu Xuan stretched out his finger and tapped on the circular table.

"The Fellowship of the Ring has left Isengard. Unlike in the movies, Saruman the White, though stripped of his power, was not killed by Grimar Wicked Words. Instead, he was imprisoned in his mage tower, just like in the novel. And if the reincarnators of the Southern Flame Team don't intervene, he will soon escape Isengard and head to the Shire like a stray dog."

“The South Yan Continent team and the East America team shouldn’t give up on such a side storyline. Unless they think it’s not worth the effort or that keeping Isengard there will be more effective,” Xiao Honglu interjected. “Perhaps they’ve set some traps for Isengard, just waiting for us to step into them.”

"It's possible, but not very meaningful." Chu Xuan didn't look at him or respond to his words. "From the intelligence Alice and Patchouli obtained, I can roughly deduce a few things. First, there's an infiltrator in the East Sea Team. The evidence is that their combat strength doesn't match their team's positioning, and the 'secrecy measures' Alice and the others encountered there. The triggers for those arrangements were set up very discreetly. They could only be triggered if someone wanted to know about the East Sea Team's arrival and what happened between Windfall Peak and Rivendell. And when we observed this information, it meant that the infiltrator had also noticed our spying."

“The reason secrets need to be protected is because once a secret is discovered, it can trigger unpredictable factors affecting the holder of that secret. It itself has already proven the existence of the infiltrator in the East China Sea team, and although we haven’t obtained the contents of that secret, I can roughly guess what it contains.” Chu Xuan lightly flicked his fingers.

"If I'm not mistaken, the Ring that the Fellowship of the Ring is currently in their possession is probably fake."

"No way!" Zheng Zha almost slammed his fist on the table and jumped up. "If that's really the case, putting aside how it managed to fool the elves in Rivendell, the person who set up the security measures shouldn't have let the information that 'the reincarnators of the East Sea team once attempted to forge the One Ring' be exposed to us! Isn't this a deliberate attempt to remind us that the One Ring might be a forgery, thus revealing their own scheme?"

“But they did it on purpose,” Alice replied. “This message was deliberately provided to us—or rather, to all the Reincarnation Teams capable of gathering this much information. Whether they are on the side of good or evil, once they know this message, they will inevitably try to verify the authenticity of the Ring. And if they intend to do so, they will inevitably clash with the protagonist's team. The fact that the records after Wind and Cloud Peak were blocked means that at least the South Flame Continent Team was deemed by the other side to be incapable of uncovering clues of this level. As for the East America Team, I think everyone knows about them—two mindless fourth-tier martial arts fighters who will only become pawns used by the mastermind behind the scenes.”

"This is bait that the infiltrator prepared for the Celestial Team and us. It's forcing our four Reincarnation Squads to fight each other so that he can reap the benefits... or some benefits that can only be obtained in chaos. If none of us take action, we can only watch the other side win in the end."

"Then we can directly release this intelligence to the Southern Flame Continent and the East American team..." Zheng Zha shouted, but his voice quickly faded as he spoke. Clearly, he realized just how foolish his argument was.

“Giving the initiative to the other side is a foolish move. We didn’t come here to run a charity. We’re here to help other reincarnation teams clear the level.” Alice glared at him, but since she had long since given up on carving this piece of rotten wood, she wasn’t particularly angry. “Besides, since you thought it would be difficult for the other side to hide from the elves of Rivendell, why didn’t you think that it didn’t need to hide it at all?”