Chapter 16 Simple and Crude

Hao Ren usually seemed listless, but at critical moments, what he admired in his bones was simplicity and brute force – miracles through strength. The average person, upon seeing something locked in a safe, would think of cracking the code or picking the lock. Hao Ren's first thought was to smash the entire safe off the wall and carry it away...

However, just as the silver spear in his hand was about to cut into the metal box with a sizzling sound, Lanina suddenly stopped him, "Wait!"

"What's up?" Hao Ren asked, holding the alloy spear, puzzled.

Lanina quickly pointed at the runes flickering with faint light behind the metal box: "It's an alarm system. As long as the connection between the box and the wall is compromised, or the box leaves this building, it will trigger an alarm. Then, I'm afraid the entire camp's guards will be attracted."

Only then did Hao Ren notice that the metal box was not only connected to the surrounding walls and ground with "metal tentacles" that seemed to grow out, but also that some wandering streams of light could be faintly seen beneath the metal tentacles. This was a security system even more advanced than high-tech vaults on Earth!

As Izhaks' former military advisor, Lanina was well-versed in various magical and alchemical knowledge from the human world. She quickly examined the various settings on the metal box, her tail instinctively twisting into a small ball behind her: "The box cannot be shaken violently, the lock cannot be forced open, and the integrity of the outer shell cannot be damaged. Even bumping off a corner will trigger an alarm. The box is grown together with the building, so it cannot be removed or moved... There is also a complete set of sensors here. If the box leaves this room, it will also trigger an alarm. In addition, if I'm not mistaken, this building itself also has a magic array for detecting the state of the box. Once the magic flow on the box stops, the entire house will also trigger an alarm."

Hao Ren was dumbfounded: "What... what's the point of you guys studying such high-tech stuff in a magical world?"

"What is high-tech?" Lanina looked at Hao Ren in confusion, "This is an alchemical masterpiece of elves and dwarves. It seems that the crystal must be very important to them... We miscalculated a bit."

Hao Ren was also a little helpless. Everyone else's actions were perfect, but he didn't expect the real difficulty to be on this box – no wonder Grigory was lured away so smoothly. After all this effort, the real tight security measures were not the human general, but the device in front of him.

He pondered over how to deal with this hot potato: it couldn't be dismantled, touched, or opened, and even carrying the box away was impossible, so he could only...

A flash of inspiration appeared in Hao Ren's mind, and he patted Lanina on the shoulder: "Let's go out first."

The succubus girl followed Hao Ren out of the window, puzzled. The two returned to the outside of the watchtower. At this time, it was still chaotic outside. The poisonous rock steam that had poured out of the Demon Mark Canyon had spread to the military camp, and soldiers were strengthening the barriers everywhere to prevent the spread of poisonous gas. The sentries around the watchtower had also been knocked down by Lanina's bewitchment spells and would not notice this side for the time being. And the "demon army" in the distance had already made contact with the Allied soldiers, and it was estimated that it would be exposed in a few minutes.

"What do you intend to..." Lanina turned her head and glanced at Hao Ren, only to see the latter raise his hand and pat the watchtower: "Collect—"

The portable space opened instantly, and the entire watchtower disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving only the foundation in place...

Lanina: "...?"

"Go alarm in another dimension," Hao Ren grinned and grabbed the succubus to run, "Go rendezvous with Big Guy!"

Lanina hadn't reacted yet. She had seen a lot in her life, and she had seen all kinds of strange people from various races, at least eight thousand if not ten thousand. But she had never seen such an unconventional person! He came to steal something and found that the box couldn't be opened, so he just took the whole house away...

At the same time, Grigory was leading his soldiers to charge towards those ferocious demon elite soldiers.

A high-ranking demon, three meters tall and wielding a large axe, charged towards him. Black-green fel flames burned fiercely on the obsidian axe, creating a terrifying momentum, even causing the seasoned soldiers around him to retreat slightly. But Grigory was fearless. His longsword was burning with a silver-white, majestic light, and he charged towards the enemy like a humanoid ball of holy light.

The longsword met the battle axe, silently slicing through. The entire demon let out a faint "bang" as it was burned by the holy light, then turned into a sky full of thin red mist and quickly dissipated. A bat fell from mid-air, but no one noticed the small black shadow.

Grigory was still holding his longsword, waiting to fight the demon. He was stunned for a long time, not feeling any murderous aura. He looked up and saw the scene of the blood mist dissipating.

His heart tightened, and he looked up at his surroundings. As expected, he found that the demons that the other soldiers were dealing with were also turning into blood mist one by one. However, the other illusions would only dissipate after being attacked for a certain period of time. Only on his side, the power of a high-ranking paladin's strike exceeded the limit of the illusion's endurance, and directly destroyed the illusion.

"They're fake!" a soldier suddenly shouted. Grigory instantly realized that he had been tricked.

"These are all illusions!" Grigory shouted, "First and second teams, immediately follow me back to defend!"

The "demon army" was still running around wildly, but the soldiers realized that these were harmless illusions and were only trying to delay them. So, no one bothered to deal with these strange shadows, and one by one, they followed Grigory back to defend. The "demons" seemed to lose interest and ran away in all directions. The "hellhound" in the demon team, which was only there to make up the numbers, also looked around, then picked up a stone and ran away.

No one noticed that there was a vampire lying on the fur on the back of this "hellhound."

Grigory returned to the camp, standing blankly in front of a vaguely familiar open space, wondering if he had gone to the wrong place. He turned his head to look at his personal guards: "...We didn't take the wrong path, did we?"

"Probably not..." The personal guards were also dumbfounded.

Grigory stared at the open space, not remembering for a moment that he should be most concerned about the red crystal. He scratched his hair and pondered for a long time before sputtering out a sentence: "...Where's my house?"

While the camp was in chaos, Hao Ren and his group had already taken advantage of the routes they had scouted in advance to get away from the center of the chaos and were advancing north towards the Obsidian Plain, quickly arriving at an obsidian spire located in a blind spot of the Allied surveillance.

This place was far away from most of the Allied camps, and the nearest sentry post was ten kilometers away. The reason why the Allied forces did not station guards here was because this obsidian mountain was located at the confluence of two lava rivers. Several huge obsidian mountains were surrounded by lava rivers spewing poisonous gas. The safe open space inside the obsidian mountain could not accommodate many people. Even demons would not choose to settle here, so naturally no one cared.

A thin water mist barrier enveloped the obsidian mountain, excluding the hot and poisonous gases. The open space surrounded by several obsidian mountains was where Hao Ren's group had successfully reunited. Nangong Wuyue had transformed into her mermaid form and was soaking her entire body in a large water basin to reduce water loss while maintaining the surrounding water mist barrier. Doudou was swimming around beside her, and the two fish were quite satisfied with the current situation.

People can only realize the benefits of a comfortable life in a harsh environment. Usually, Nangong Wuyue would complain that the pools in swimming pools were too small, but now she was so happy to have a basin...

"I told you, there's no blood magic in this world, they definitely wouldn't recognize that the demons were made of blood mist illusions," Vivian was self-praising with a smug look on her face, "Speaking of which, we were pretty successful today, weren't we?"

"It's all thanks to Izhaks' intelligence," Nangong Wuyue's tail stuck out of the basin and flicked, "He figured out how those guys would react in various situations... He really is an old opponent."

Hao Ren took out a small dark red stone from his portable space: "This is the crystal."

Vivian looked at him in surprise: "Is that house still in your portable space? How did you get the crystal out?"

Hao Ren shrugged: "Don't I have an autonomous machine stored in my portable space? I asked it to cut the box open directly. Let it alarm, it doesn't matter, it's in the portable space, there's no wifi in there..."

Speaking of the end, Hao Ren was still a little emotional: "Actually, we should have thought of this trick from the beginning, it would have saved a lot of trouble... My thinking is still not broad enough."

Vivian looked at Hao Ren with a strange expression. She couldn't imagine what extent this guy's thinking could continue to expand to...

"Alright, let's see what Izhaks' 'last words' are all about," Hao Ren handed the dark red crystal to Lanina, "Do you know how to use it?"

Lanina nodded, carefully injecting magic power into the crystal. Suddenly, a magical illusion appeared above the crystal.

Everyone was dumbfounded:

The illusion that appeared was actually Izhaks! Even his signature broken horn was lifelike!