Chapter 1 The Onset

Although Lily had tried her best to slow down, the impact of a five-meter-tall war behemoth covered in heavy armor crashing into the city wall still startled the soldiers guarding the city. Some wounded soldiers who had just been rotated to the rear for rest even thought the city wall had finally been breached when they heard the loud noise. They looked up in horror toward the source of the sound and saw a nose as big as a calf swaying on the city wall.

Lily used all four paws to claw and scratch at the wall of White Maple Leaf City, trying to climb over it, but the towering, vertical wall and a layer of slippery magical shield made it difficult for her to achieve her goal. The husky girl jumped up and down anxiously outside, shouting loudly, "Open the door! Let us in! Can't you see we're here to help!?"

The city's defenders were in chaos. Of course, they could see that the behemoth in front of them was there to help, but the city's highest defense barrier had already been activated. Opening the gate at this time meant temporarily deactivating the magical barrier on the city's front, and the flame monsters outside were already gathering a new wave of attacks. Obviously, deactivating the barrier in this situation was not a decision that a group of front-line soldiers could make—in fact, even the commanders standing on the city wall didn't have that authority. They had to send a messenger running to the fortress inside the city, where the lord and other authorized generals were coordinating the overall situation.

At this time, a new wave of monsters had regrouped—in fact, it was beyond the concept of "a group of monsters." Countless humanoid creatures burning with flames were densely arranged together, advancing steadily across the plains. The sight was like a continuous sea of fire, and this sea of fire was launching a bombardment of tens of thousands of large fireballs per second at White Maple Leaf City. How magnificent was the scene?

At full speed, Lily could rely on her close-in defense guns and armored shield to break through a path, but now that she had stopped, the sight of the monster army regrouping naturally made her fur stand on end. The husky girl howled and twisted around, leaping towards the city wall—

With a very undignified posture, Lily climbed and kicked her way over the city wall, proving with her actions what "a dog will jump over a wall when desperate" meant.

Fortunately, the city's shield technology on this planet of La Hirein had not developed to the point of a full-coverage magical giant screen, but instead achieved it by embedding magic stones in the physical city walls to cover the surface with a layer of magical barrier, otherwise Lily wouldn't have been able to get in even if she was desperate...

The soldiers guarding the city watched as such a behemoth crossed the city wall above their heads, each of them dumbfounded. Some didn't even notice when the weapons in their hands fell to the ground until the commander reacted and shouted loudly to reorganize the defense. Only then did these soldiers wake up one by one.

At this moment, Lily had crossed the city wall and landed safely in an open space behind the wall... well, not exactly safely.

The teammates fixed in the "passenger seats" had undergone the triple test of rolling deceleration, embarrassing wall climbing, and finally, a desperate jump over the wall. Basically, none of them looked normal. Even Izhaks, with his super physique, looked a little dazed, let alone the others.

Frankly, if they weren't worried about the dog girl going berserk, they would have vomited long ago.

"Damn... this tossing of yours..." Hao Ren unlocked the buckle on the seat with a pale face, complaining as he got up. "Could you give us a warning before climbing walls or braking next time? You have several people on your back, have you forgotten?"

"How can I remember that?" Lily squatted down, scratching her ears as she retorted. "Usually, there's no one on my back..."

Hao Ren had just stood up when he almost fell back again: "Hey, hey, why are you suddenly squatting down... don't shake!"

However, he was too late to warn her. Lily had already started shaking her fur vigorously. Although she had a set of heavy armor and didn't have to worry about getting dust and gravel on her, she had still sweated a bit running this road. Before the environmental circulation system inside the armor took effect, she subconsciously started shaking her fur.

Everyone was thrown out...

"Woof..." Lily lowered her head embarrassedly, looking at her teammates who had been thrown out. She couldn't help but lie down, covering her head with her paws: "I didn't mean to..."

"I never want to ride on a big dog again," Vivian said. Although she could fly, she had still been thrown out just now because she was caught off guard. "I even thought it would be cool before."

"We're finally back in White Maple Leaf City," Nangong Sanba said, having recovered from his dizziness at this time. Seeing that a wave of soldiers had gathered around, he came to Hao Ren's side and asked in a low voice, "What do we do next?"

Hao Ren looked at Leah, who was standing aside looking lost, and said, "We're going to the magic district, Leah's magic tower."

"What about these people?" Nangong Wuyue said, pointing the tip of her tail at the soldiers who were wearing expressions that were three parts dazed, three parts nervous, and four parts like "the leader is messing with me": they were all reserves left behind the city walls to participate in subsequent defense battles, but they didn't expect the order to go up the city wall hadn't arrived yet, but a siege behemoth armed to the teeth had fallen from the sky. This was obviously far beyond their expectations.

Hao Ren thought for a moment, then walked to Lily, who was still in a daze, and casually took out a microphone from the leg armor slot and put it to his mouth: "Ahem..."

An ear-piercing static sound suddenly resounded throughout the block.

"Please make way, we're here to assist in defending the city. We just repelled a wave of attacks on the city's front, but now the defenses in the magic district are weak, and we must get there as soon as possible. Please cooperate, repeat, please cooperate."

Lily looked at Hao Ren in a daze: "Landlord, why do I have this on me?"

"I told you, this set of equipment is a comprehensive battlefield support module. As a mobile stronghold, how can it work if it has too few functions?" Hao Ren rolled his eyes at Lily. "There's an ice cream machine behind your neck."

Lily: "...Landlord, I have a feeling I'm being taken advantage of!"

Hao Ren chuckled dryly, ignoring the husky girl's question. At this time, the soldiers around seemed to have received orders from the city wall and began to disperse in an orderly manner, but a man who looked like a garrison officer walked up to Hao Ren.

"No matter who you are, White Maple Leaf City thanks you for your help," the garrison officer said, standing up straight. "But the situation is special, and the order I received is to find out where you came from..."

"They are helpers I found!" At this time, Leah, who had been offline for most of the time, seemed to have finally come to her senses. Although the development of the situation was still beyond her comprehension, she still judged that she should say something. "Foreign mercenaries, very reliable."

The garrison officer looked at Leah twice, as if recognizing the identity of this poor magician: "You are... the poorest one in the magic district..."

"The smartest one!" Miss Leah waved her iron staff vigorously. "I'm a registered great magician and ancient civilization scholar! And I've also found a team of super powerful mercenaries to help defend the city! Just for that sentence you said, I have to ask you for two hundred more gold coins, you understand?"

The garrison officer subconsciously took two steps back, not knowing whether he was afraid of Leah's aura or the iron staff in her hand: "Okay, okay, I understand, I will report to my superiors truthfully..."

The junior officer already understood. Neither the siege behemoth in front of him nor the berserk magician wielding the iron staff were tough nuts he could handle. He himself was just completing his orders while biting the bullet. After asking the routine questions, he couldn't wait to run away—anyway, this group of people did help repel a wave of attacks, and now a well-known figure in the city had jumped out to prove the identity of this group of people. If he said any more, he would really be courting death.

Taking advantage of this gap, before more changes could occur, Hao Ren immediately urged everyone to go to the magic district.

"What are you going to do at my magic tower?" Although Leah followed the team in confusion, she, the theoretical employer, was the most confused at this time. "Oh, I see, you still plan to rob my family property, right... But that's not right! Looking at the equipment you're showing off now, you should be richer than me! Even if my magic tower and the land it's on were sold together, it wouldn't be enough to get Miss Lily's armor, right... Wait, I understand what's going on! You want me to go home and pack my luggage and prepare to run away? You think White Maple Leaf City can't be defended? To be honest, I also think it's a bit difficult to defend this city, but this is my home after all, and I still have some feelings for it... Hey, why aren't you talking?"

"Please, miss, can you restrain your imagination a little?" Hao Ren looked at this scholar miss with an exploding curiosity and super power to overthink with a headache. "We're going to your magic tower to look up some information."

"Look up information?! At this critical moment?" Leah was immediately stunned. "I always thought it was weird enough that I only went to learn how to defuse bombs after I activated the alchemical bomb my teacher made..."

Hao Ren: "..."

While talking, the group had already arrived at the magic district located in the south of the city, which had also entered a state of combat.

Each magic tower lit up with orange pillars of light representing enemy attacks. Huge magical energy was drawn from the magic nodes everywhere and continuously injected into White Maple Leaf City's defense system, while combat puppets of various types went to the areas where fighting was taking place in batches under the command of their masters.

This "holy place of knowledge and mystery" had completely lost its former detached and peaceful appearance at this moment.

Since its owner was not present, Leah's magic tower was the only building that had not entered a combat state, but this broken and old tower stood alone in a corner, and no one paid attention to it.

After letting Lily return to her original form, the group entered the magic tower in a hurry and went straight to the library on the second floor.

Leah followed behind, not understanding what was going on, and then saw this group of people start rummaging through the old books. She was at a loss: "What are you looking for? If you really want to find some important information, you can go to the library on the upper floors. These are just some recreational reading materials that lack authority..."

Hao Ren interrupted the magician miss, picking up an old book and waving it in the air: "No, I've already found it."

The book was not an authoritative academic work, but only a "popular science reading" that was dismissed by the academic community as "absurd rumors," studying the Great Pit. Its author was Ronzel, an unknown "scholar."

Hao Ren opened the book and quickly found the description of the Great Pit.

On those yellowed pages, Ronzel described his discovery of the Great Pit like this: "...I looked directly at the Great Pit and saw a pure darkness... There is no up, down, left, or right in the Great Pit, nor are there any fixed ground or buildings. Only all kinds of grotesque fragments float in the void... It's like a destroyed world, its fragments floating inside the Great Pit... I, Ronzel, can responsibly declare that the Great Pit is a different space. Apart from some absurd images, we can't find anything logical inside it."

Looking at the description on the pages, Lily couldn't help but widen her eyes: "The last time we saw this book, it didn't say this!"

"These words... are different from what we remember," Nangong Sanba also said in amazement. He also found other books, which he had also looked through before. "And these, the descriptions of the Great Pit on them have all changed. No book mentions poison gas and monsters anymore..."

Elizabeth blinked her eyes: "Uncle Ren, what's going on?"

Hao Ren didn't show much shock when he saw the changed words. He just took a deep breath and nodded slightly to Vivian.

"The setting has changed," he said.