Yes, Madam Prime Minister

In the instant of complete liberation, she couldn't help but twist her ankles, clenching and unclenching her toes to relieve the pressure. The heels and toes of her pantyhose changed light and shadow with her movements, especially when she was near the firelight, which gave the black pantyhose a dark gold tint, creating a flowing, translucent effect from her calves to her toes.

After stretching, Dinia stood up, quickly took off her pantyhose, revealing her smooth, white legs. Then she took off her bra and pantyhose as well, leaving them stretched out rather than crumpled up.

At this moment, Dinia was completely naked, squatting barefoot on the mushroom blanket. She first picked up her bodysuit and underwear, preparing to dry them quickly and put them on.

In this squatting position, Dinya's white flesh blends into one, her slender waist and obvious waist dimples make her already pert buttocks appear even more voluptuous.

Facing the direction of the firelight, the neat and dense inverted triangular patch of white hair in the triangular area gleamed with a silvery sheen under the flickering firelight.

After a while, her bra and underwear were finally dried. Seeing that Ronan hadn't glanced at her the whole time, Dinya's opinion of Ronan improved slightly.

The next day at noon, Ronan was awakened by Dinia removing the mushroom bed he was lying on.

When Ronan opened his eyes, he saw Dinia hand him a bowl containing a porridge made mainly of flour and water, along with dried salted fish, pickled vegetables, and mushrooms.

The food and cooking utensils belonged to the Haidi people. They weren't brought down by diving, but were transported to the underground cave via a teleportation array in the real world, and then the people were transported here as well.

In addition to these, the Haidi people also carried other tools, clothing, and most importantly, the resonating stone.

Ronan took the bowl of porridge and swallowed it in a few gulps, almost like drinking Chinese medicine. "This tastes terrible. Only the mushrooms are alright."

Even though he complained about how bad the food was, he still tried to flatter her. Dinia immediately lost interest in discussing food with him and went straight to the point: "The reconnaissance team is back."

"How is it?" Ronan asked.

"We lost one Phantom Melody, and the pilot is probably dead as well. There was one more dead and three injured. However, they have found a place and will probably gather their forces to go there after some rest. The other eight Phantom Melodies have also returned. There is one more thing. High Priest Treka is preparing to send someone out to deliver a message in case something happens outside. He wants you to give him a token, such as a piece of clothing or something."

"Oh," Ronan replied.

It's only right to send someone out to let them know they're safe. Otherwise, if Ronan and Dinia don't get any news, Ronan's men and two of Dinia's men might do something to the Haidi people.

Ronan went to Treca's place.

There's no need for a token; tearing a piece of cloth from his clothes might cause a misunderstanding, making people think that the Heidi people tore it off Ronan.

Ronan sent a priest from Wright City to deliver a message. Then, Ronan pulled the priest aside and whispered to him to go directly to Alice and say, "Black stockings, white stockings, the ones you can touch are the best stockings." Alice would understand. This sentence could only be said by Ronan himself, and only when he was conscious.

“Understood, Lord Ronan.” The Seapiper priest of Wright City nodded repeatedly.

"Also, tell people not to make things difficult for the Haidi people, and while you're at it, go and collect the bodies of Donska and the others. Just say it was my—oh no, it was Lady Dinia's—instruction," Ronan added.

With the matter of letting everyone know we're safe taken care of, it's time to get down to business.

Ronan got straight to the point, "When are we leaving?"

“First thing tomorrow morning,” the old man Treka replied, then asked, “Are you planning to go together?”

“Of course,” Ronan said. “Tell me the specifics over there first.”

"The target area is shrouded in an extremely large, hemispherical, transparent, invisible shield, filled with various green plants and containing very tall and magnificent buildings. It contrasts sharply with the surrounding environment and is easily recognizable." The old man said, coughing twice while clutching his chest before continuing, "Outside that area, a large number of monsters lurk. They are neither human nor non-human, and will attack if you get too close. Our goal is to break through a gap, then use the key to open the shield and enter."

Ronan smiled slightly. "At most, you can only retrieve the basic teaching materials if you go inside. If you want to take away those high-yield crops, you'll probably have to eliminate those monsters, which is beyond your capabilities."

Old man Treca was surprised for a moment, then gave an awkward laugh, "Ha, as expected of Mr. Ronan, you guessed it after all."

“Who knows if you’re trying to make me think that way on purpose.” Ronan smiled, then his gaze sharpened. “Answer me, why did those priests from a thousand years ago take the basic teaching materials here?”

“I don’t know, I really don’t know,” Treka said sincerely. “To be honest, even though I know a lot as a high priest, I still can’t understand why so many priests insisted on staying in this coastal area and why it turned into such a brutal civil war, to the point where they had to kill each other. It was as if both sides were being controlled by their minds.”

Ronan frowned. "If you don't know the truth, why did you dare come here? Aren't you afraid that even if you go in, you won't come back?"

Old man Treka let out a long sigh, "It's all for the future."

“Living is the future,” Ronan said.

The old man did not refute, but instead asked a question, "Mr. Ronan, do you know what the most painful thing about becoming a priest of the Haidi people is?"

Ronan remained silent.

The old man looked up at the gray sky, even at midday, and said, "The most painful thing is knowing how glorious and prosperous we once were."

“If Ares hadn’t appeared with the Resonance Stone and the Key, perhaps a hundred years from now we would have completely forgotten the past. But he brought us this opportunity, and we must go, even if it means our deaths.”

As he reflected on the past, the old man's gaze grew even more resolute.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Meeting, Departure, Arrival

The next morning, the sky was still overcast.

The Seapipers who had just returned from leaving the cave and being teleported outside all looked exhausted from their journey. Their once youthful, firm, wheat-colored skin now appeared loose and sagging. In particular, the Seapiper priest from Wright City, whom Ronan had specifically instructed to attend to, had bloodshot eyes, his hair was a tangled mess, and his mouth resembled a dried-up, cracked riverbed. He looked as if he had aged more than ten years overnight.

Accompanying them were some Haidi people who brought supplies.

Then came reinforcements: seven elite guards from the Wright City Police Department. They were all mages, but they had only learned meditation and the first three of the seven basic magic skills. They couldn't even release the simplest magic arrow.

Their preferred weapons are not magic, but a large-caliber, high-powered, but not very accurate musket and a broad-bladed longsword, both of which are weapons that ordinary people cannot wield.

The core military force of the kingdom consists of tens of thousands of magical musketeers like these. Their strength, speed, and endurance far surpass those of ordinary people. Moreover, they have received basic education and are able to receive more complex commands. They can march quickly for long periods of time and complete tactical infiltrations. In open field battles, they can rush to the enemy's line of defense in the blink of an eye, destroy the enemy's line of defense with a volley of fire, and break into the enemy ranks to begin the fight.

Unfortunately, the Wright City Police Department only had seven such mage musketeers in total.

The kingdom's hundreds of mage musketeers stationed in the southern seas are concentrated in the naval port of Pro City. Neither Ronan nor Dinia has the authority to mobilize them, nor will they mobilize them.

Neither Ronan nor Dinia wanted more people to know about the Seapiper people for the time being, so as to avoid any unnecessary trouble.

Accompanying them were a dozen or so guards from the Wright City Fisheries Conservation Office, armed with ordinary muskets and daggers.

The real reinforcements were actually Dinia's bodyguard, the sorceress Agustina. She not only came in person, but also brought clothes, shoes, socks, some food, and Dinia's wand.

It's called a magic wand, but it's actually more like an oversized, long-handled, double-edged axe in the black of a piano, the kind that looks like it could chop a cow in half with one swing.

After receiving the wand, Dinia went to the side to change her clothes.

Meanwhile, Ronan was actually talking to the people from Wright City.

Halfway through the conversation, a little boy and a little girl came over.

“Enka, what brings you here?” Ronan recognized the little boy at a glance; he was Donska’s son.

The little boy Enka came over carrying a box. "This is a gift your father prepared for you."

No sooner had he finished speaking than the little girl snatched the box and threw it straight at Ronan.

Ronan didn't dodge, and the box hit him on the head with a thud. Instantly, several guards from the Fisheries Conservation Department were about to rush forward, but Ronan reached out to stop them.

"Please forgive her, she's still young and doesn't understand." Enka quickly bowed his head and apologized to Ronan.

Ronan picked up the box from the ground. "It's nothing. Thank you for your father's gift. You should go back now."

The little boy Enka hurriedly left with his sister.

Ronan opened the box. Inside was a conch shell and a letter. The envelope contained only a short sentence: "Mr. Ronan, I'm leaving now. Thank you for taking care of me these past few years. Although you don't like music, I still want to give you this conch shell and this sheet music. I wish you a brighter future."

Ronan put the sheet music in his pocket and hung the conch shell with a string around his neck.

On the other side, Dinia had also changed her clothes. She hadn't had time to wash her white hair, so she simply tied it into a low ponytail. She wore a dark red tight-fitting women's jacket modified from a cavalry officer's uniform, with a wide leather belt around her waist. Her lower body was covered with three-quarter length black tight-fitting boot pants, and underneath she wore flesh-colored pantyhose imported from Vena, as well as golden brown long lace-up cavalry boots.

Ronan, Dinia, Agustina, and the twenty-odd reinforcements from Wright City reunited.

On the Heidi people's side, there were eight magical mechs called "Illusory Melody" piloted by priests, including the old man Treka and the man and woman, seventeen priests who held resonance stones and musical instruments and could use ensemble resonance magic, plus about twenty Heidi people carrying ordinary firearms.

That constitutes the entire force for the upcoming assault.

After a few simple words, without any tactical planning, they set off immediately.

Leaving the area that resembled an abandoned factory district, the group entered the city.

For Dinia and her friends, and even for the Seapiper people, stepping into the city felt like entering another world.

Every so often here, there's an incredibly tall building.

Although these buildings vary in height and have slightly different overall styles, when viewed from below, the side facing the street is filled with countless neat and symmetrical windows.

It immediately gave people an inexplicable sense of oppression.

The spaces between these high-rise buildings are filled with all sorts of low-rise buildings, including haphazardly built shacks, houses that simply extend outwards from the edges of the buildings, and some two- or three-story buildings that look unique. These buildings are interspersed together, creating a chaotic and crowded scene.

Besides that, there were many other things on the street that they couldn't understand at all.

Dinia and the other people, along with the Haidi people, couldn't understand it, but Ronan felt a sense of familiarity with the place.

This is just an abandoned urban village that has been abandoned for decades or even centuries. No, calling it an urban village isn't quite accurate. Although the facilities and buildings here look like they've been abandoned for a long time, the degree of damage isn't high if you look closely. Especially the high-rise buildings, there's no obvious peeling paint. Some of the facilities are incomprehensible even to Ronan, and the vehicles on the street, in particular, give Ronan a strong sense of futuristic technology.

If I had to describe it, it's more like a completely dilapidated cyberpunk-style city.

After passing through this area, the road suddenly widened, and there were no more tall buildings and dense low-rise houses, only a few scattered buildings.

Along the way, the group didn't see a single living creature; the entire city was a dead city.

Continuing forward, the road became wider and wider. After a while, we were completely out of the city. There were no buildings or facilities around us, only a flat road ten meters wide under our feet, with desolate grasslands overgrown with weeds on both sides.

By this time, it was nearly noon.

The old High Priest Treka of White Star City stopped in his tracks. "We're not far from where those monsters dwell. Let's stop and eat something and rest for a while."

As the "last meal," this lunch was still relatively simple, but it was much better than breakfast: breaded and fried cheese fish fillets, a seafood stew of fish, shrimp and clams, soft white bread, and citrus fruits.

After eating and resting for half an hour, the group set off again.

Soon, Ronan spotted his destination in the distance: a place shrouded in a huge transparent dome. He couldn't see inside clearly, only vaguely making out a lot of greenery and a tower-shaped building in the center. But the sky above it wasn't gray; instead, it was bathed in sunlight.

Not far away were those monsters.

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Monster, Berserker Armor, You Can't Hold On!

From a distance, the monsters appeared as a vast, dark mass, layer upon layer surrounding the enormous shield, resembling countless giant black crows alighting on the ground, a sight that sent chills down one's spine.

As Ronan drew closer, he gradually made out the monster's appearance.

It is humanoid, with hair on its head like a hedgehog, no eyes, round ears like the Heidi Man, a pointed nose, no lips, and its stark white teeth are exposed, which is chilling.

They are very slender, mostly over two meters tall, but their torsos are extremely thin. Their hands are exceptionally long, with five fingers that look more like claws than fingers. Their bodies are blackish-red, covered with stiff black hair, and covered with a skeleton-like white bone exoskeleton. No gender characteristics can be seen on their bodies.

"Be careful, they'll pounce on you like crazy if you get close."

"These monsters have no reason and no fear."

The only way to deal with them is to kill them.

A member of the reconnaissance team who had faced monsters before said that although he had warned them many times before coming, he still couldn't help but tremble as he issued another warning in the face of these monsters.

Dinia simply raised her hand silently, and a mushroom sprouted from the neck of the nearest monster, but the mushroom was extremely withered and quickly died.

"It's that kind of strong magic resistance again," Dinia muttered, though she didn't find it troublesome.

These past two days have been filled with encounters of this type: male butlers, magical mecha symphonies, and now these monsters in front of us—all of them.

Ronan remained silent. Although he had a battle plan in mind, he didn't want to embarrass himself in front of an expert like Dinia.

Dinia asked the old man Trecca, "Where is the door?"

Even after hearing the news and preparing for death, the old man Treka, looking at the seemingly endless monsters ahead, still felt a sense of suffocation.

After pressing his chest for a while to catch his breath, old Treca slowly answered the question, "Probably, right in front of us."

“Understood.” Dinia took a deep breath. “Tina, prepare to receive my magic. Everyone, get ready to charge.”

Argustina removed the eyepatch from her single eye, and the obvious prosthetic eye emitted a ball of pale golden flame. Then, starting from her lower eyelid, pale golden runes began to spread throughout her body.

Even though she was already at full strength, Agustina still had that nonchalant smile on her lips. "Understood, Captain."

As her former subordinate and comrade-in-arms, she understood Dinia's meaning without needing any further words.

Dinia wields her "battle axe" to unleash magic.

In the blink of an eye, the ground turned into a red liquid, and countless mushrooms surged out. Then, like a flood, the mushrooms rushed towards the monster horde, as if using a high-pressure water gun to wash away ants. Wherever the violent mushroom flood passed, all the monsters were blown away and swept away. Dinia used this extreme and brutal method to open a passage.

Agustina then made her move, pressing her hands to the ground and creating two long fire paths, each five meters apart, before the monsters could regroup and close the passage. Immediately afterward, a wall of fire, one meter thick and three meters high, rose from the fire paths.

Two walls of fire, stretching for hundreds of meters, pierced through the cluster of black monsters along the path opened by Dinia, dividing it into two parts.

This wall of fire was created by drawing upon a large amount of magic power. If no power is used to deplete it, the wall of fire can last for ten days without dissipating.

Diniya took the lead in the sprint.

The others followed closely behind, rushing into the passage between the two walls of fire.

Agustina then raised her hand to block the entrance they were coming in through.

As everyone charged forward, the monsters also began to attack the wall of fire. Dinia's mushrooms did not cause them much damage; they merely pushed them away.

These monsters instantly rose, huddled together, and rushed into the fire. Although they possessed a thick layer of flesh with strong magic resistance, the flames still scorched and tore their flesh apart. The moment their vital organs began to withstand the magical flames, their entire bodies rapidly twisted and deformed in the fire, then burst into flames, shrinking into a curled-up, charred corpse.

However, these monsters seemed to have no concept of death, throwing themselves into the fire one after another without hesitation. The magical flames were constantly consumed by these monsters with high magic resistance, and the fire wall began to shrink and thin rapidly. The following monsters continued to advance, stepping over the charred corpses of their own kind.

In just twelve seconds, even ordinary humans unleashed astonishing potential under such extreme pressure, sprinting 100 meters.

When the group reached the entrance of the transparent shield, a large number of monsters exhausted the power of the fire wall with their lives, and like a black tide bursting through the dam from both sides, they surged towards the group with even greater ferocity.