Yes, Madam Prime Minister

Page 120

Agustina thought about it. She hadn't been able to see the top from such a distance before, and even now, looking up at the sky up close, she still couldn't see the top. This tower was indeed taller than she had imagined.

“It’s at least a thousand meters or more, two thousand meters wouldn’t be surprising,” Agustina said, offering a guess.

“To compromise, let’s say it’s 1,500 meters. Climbing these stairs floor by floor, who knows how long it would take,” Ronan said. “And the most crucial part is that there are only two different shoe prints on the other side of the stairs.”

Agustina quickly looked down and up, and indeed, as Ronan had said, there were only two different kinds of footprints.

She immediately understood; it must be that "Lex" had climbed the tower using some special method, instead of taking the stairs.

“Who exactly is this guy impersonating Lex?” Agustina asked.

Lichfield is someone who can go toe-to-toe with the captain in terms of magic power, so he must be at the sixth rank, already among the top-tier, second only to those seventh-rank old men standing at the top.

But even someone as strong as Lichfield was able to have his "key" pierced through the chest and taken from his body—something Lex couldn't have done even with a sneak attack.

As a second-tier upper class, soon to be a third-tier one, Agustina believed that even without using magic, she would have to use the strongest magic to hurt someone like Lichfield. Once he fully deployed his magic defense, she wouldn't even be able to break through it.

And what level did Lex demonstrate? First-order level.

If this wasn't a fake, she would have cut off its head.

"I don't know," Ronan replied casually, and walked to the spot where "Lex's" footprints disappeared, which was right in the middle of the first floor of the tower.

Ronan stood in the middle, carefully observing the ground, touching it with his hands, and even forcibly activating his magical perception, but still found nothing unusual. This location was no different from the surrounding area.

He felt a pulsating power within him resonating with the circular floorboards.

Just as Ronan was completely lost in thought, Agustina suddenly said, "On your head."

At that moment, three women appeared above Ronan's head. Ronan couldn't make out anything, but Agustina could. The three women's clothing style and facial features were the same as the women in the huge painting in the villa.

Immediately, two doors appeared beneath the three women.

"Of the three of us, one only tells the truth."

"One who only tells lies."

"It could be the truth, or it could be a lie."

"Only one of the two doors can get you up there."

"You can only ask two questions, and you can only ask one person one question at a time. The answer will only be 'yes' or 'no'."

"It's time to start."

The three voices finished resonating in Ronan and Agustina's minds, and then silence fell.

Ronan thought for a moment, then looked at Agustina and said, "You do it."

"Huh?" Agustina exclaimed in surprise.

Ronan looked relaxed. "It's just a game. Besides, it's okay if we make a mistake. Even if we do make a mistake, we can't rush off. Just to be safe, we have to wait for Dinia and Elena to come. Once they arrive, we can probably trigger it again."

The fake Lex should have already reached the top by now. This guy's strength is no less than Lichfield's, at least at the sixth rank. Are he and Agustina in such a hurry to go up that they want Dinia to collect their corpses later?

“Oh.” Agustina understood immediately. “Then let’s have some fun. Let me sort out my thoughts first.”

Agustina, no longer under pressure, began to think about how to solve the problem with a playful attitude.

Ronan sat on the ground to rest, wanting to see how logically Agustina, who had been a sheriff for three years, could reason, and certainly not because his mind was a little fuzzy.

After thinking for a while, Agustina took a deep breath and walked to the person on the far left. "Is the person in the middle more likely to lie than the person on the far right?"

The person on the far left answered, "Yes."

Whew, Agustina took another deep breath. The first question she asked was to eliminate those who might be telling the truth or lying, and to determine who to ask the second question.

If the person on the far left answers "yes," then the person in the middle must not be the one who is both true and false.

If the person on the far left answers "no," then the person on the far right must not be both true and false.

Now, she's going to ask the person in the middle her second question.

Agustina asked the person in the middle, "Which of the people on your left and right sides has the firmer stance? Would the one on the left say that the door is the right door?"

Ronan smiled with satisfaction; Agustina was right.

Chapter 271 Identity, Story, Path to Immortality

The woman being questioned replied in her image, "No."

Agustina pointed to the door on the left, "This is the right door."

Then the three women's figures disappeared, the left door opened, and the right door also disappeared.

Ronan gave Agustina a thumbs up, "Well done."

“Of course.” Agustina smiled proudly at the praise, and, unusually, ran over like a woman, hugging Ronan tightly.

Before Ronan could react, she kissed him.

The next second, Agustina's expression froze, and she stood there as if petrified.

Ronan didn't react at first, until he sensed a magical fluctuation, turned around, and saw Dinia and Elena.

"Well, you guys got here pretty quickly," Ronan said calmly.

He was already cursing in his mind. It was all because of this damn tower that severely suppressed magic. He had simply turned off his senses, otherwise he would have been able to detect Dinia's approach.

“Not as fast as you guys,” Dinia said, her two red eyes fixed on Ronan, unmoving in their sockets.

Elena nodded in agreement.

Agustina gave a forced smile. "Captain, I'm just testing the thickness of his skin for you."

"Stop with the nonsense." Dinia walked over and pointed to the door. "So, what's going on here?"

“It all started when we found the footprints when we came in…” Ronan recounted the whole story to Dinia and Elena, “…If nothing unexpected happens, we can go directly to the top of the tower by going through this door.”

Dinia then realized what was going on. The fake Lex had arrived first and gone up through the door, followed by Henry and his butler. For some reason, the two of them hadn't noticed the footprints and were now climbing the stairs.

As for Lichfield, he hasn't arrived here yet, and whether he will eventually enter the Black Gate and come to this space is unknown.

There's not much to say. The only thing we can do now is catch up with the fake Lex. As for whether we can do it before he achieves his goal, we don't know.

"You two stay downstairs, Ronan and I will go up," Dinia said, then went straight inside.

As soon as she entered, the door began to close, just like the black door before. Ronan followed immediately, entering before the door closed completely.

Once inside, Dinia quickly experienced a feeling she had never experienced before.

For Ronan, it was a long-lost, familiar feeling, like riding an elevator.

It didn't take long for Ronan and Dinia to reach the top floor. This couldn't really be called the top of the tower; it was a circular platform with a diameter of over 100 meters, forming a hemisphere. If viewed in conjunction with the tower, it looked like an extremely long chopstick supporting a bowl, giving it a somewhat déjà vu feel.

Above the platform is a star-studded night sky, as if you could reach out and touch the twinkling stars.

And not far away, stood a man.

The man was hunched over, and one of his hands looked like a stalk covered with wrinkled skin and age spots. Judging by his physique alone, he looked like a man in his seventies or eighties. But his face did not look like that. He looked only in his fifties or sixties, and his beard and hair were just gray.

“Young man, not bad.” The old man sighed silently to himself, speaking in Seres.

Ronan looked at the old man, "Grand Duke Flagg?"

The old man's eyes, which had been half-asleep, suddenly opened, and a smile appeared on his lips. "Worldly identities mean nothing to an old man like me who is about to die."

“You seem quite robust,” Ronan said.

“Ha, it’s just the last glimmer of light before a candle burns out,” Grand Duke Flag replied with a laugh, then took a few steps toward Ronan with his hands behind his back. “Let’s make a deal, you two young people favored by fate.”

Ronan gestured for him to speak, "Tell me about it."

"Let me tell you a story," Grand Duke Flag said in a gentle voice.

Dinia was taken aback. Shouldn't a transaction involve you doing one thing and me doing another?

Ronan turned to Dinia and said, "This old man is just telling stories to buy time, so we're just making a deal by listening to him."

Before Ronan and Dinia could respond, the old man began to speak on his own, “About 1,800 years ago, gods from another world came to this world. At that time, humans only had two kinds of magic: elemental magic and summoning magic, which is now called ‘ritual magic’.”

"Later, the god of the other world left, but he left behind many things, including his servants, who were later regarded as gods, and the Holy Son was one of them."

Ronan simply smiled and didn't interrupt. It seemed that this Grand Duke didn't know everything either, because according to the gardener Tyr, the Holy Son or Holy Daughter was not an artificial intelligence robot brought by otherworldly beings. Strictly speaking, this thing was originally tasked with eliminating otherworldly beings.

"There was one in the New World as well. She also created another group of people, the women in the painting. Later, these women created a group of men, the men in the painting. These men and women are the demons in the legends of the natives of this continent."

"Like the Haidi people, they eventually became gods of death, but they were stronger, so they succeeded."

"You know about the Seapipe People?" Dinia asked.

“I tried to find traces of their civilization, but to no avail, while you succeeded, didn’t you?” Grand Duke Flag asked rhetorically.

“The man in purple,” Ronan remarked.

Grand Duke Flagg, who had been dead for almost twenty years, knew that he and Dinia had entered the alternate dimension of the Seapipe Ruins. Ronan couldn't think of any other possibility besides his connection with the Purple Robe Organization.

“That’s outside the scope of the deal,” Grand Duke Flagg didn’t admit. “Let’s continue our story.”

"After killing the god, they were cursed. In order to get rid of the curse, they began to find a way to change their bodies. In the process, some of the men did a little thing, which was to teach the inhabitants of this land some power, which is now called 'witchcraft'. In fact, witchcraft is not bad, but unfortunately the people here are really ignorant. Oh, or rather, the progress is too slow. They have failed to develop witchcraft and each generation is worse than the last."

"The Seres of the distant East are much stronger than them. They have developed a more comprehensive cultivation system with a higher ceiling than magic, based on a system similar to our 'ritual magic'. Although this system also has many shortcomings compared to magic."

"Uh, I've gone off on a tangent. Let's get back to the main topic."

"They successfully created the technology to separate souls. Not only that, they also accidentally discovered this tower, which was built by the servants of the otherworldly gods and could lead to the divine realm. So they modified it, intending to escape the curse and enter the divine realm to achieve immortality."

"And I will do the same thing, no, I will go a step further."

Chapter 272 Confidence, Pierced, Consciousness Vanishes

The divine realm? Ronan and Dinia were both puzzled.

"No one knows exactly what the Divine Realm is, but judging from the fact that the servants of the otherworldly gods want to enter, and even those who killed the gods' servants want to enter, it must be a good place," said Grand Duke Flag. In fact, according to that Seresian, the Divine Realm is related to the magic of this world and is the place where the true creator of this world once resided.

"It's time to say goodbye to this world."

As soon as Grand Duke Flagg finished speaking, the entire circular ground began to flash with white light.

Just then, a mushroom sprouted from Grand Duke Flag's back, transformed into a hand, and snapped his neck.

There were no magical restrictions at the top of the tower, so Dinia had already completed her spell.

However, the Archduke of Flagg, whose neck had been snapped, simply ripped his neck and head off with one hand, and pulled the mushroom out of the flesh with the other.

Its entire body twisted and writhes, and its head and flesh grew back. "Metamorphosis type, me too."

His shapeshifting ability allows him to create and alter his own body structure at will. Head? That's just a fake decoration.

His true form has always been a humanoid shape the size of a fingernail; this body is actually a physical form that he transforms to pilot.

The next instant, a violent and pure red magic, like a beam of light from a laser cannon, slammed into Grand Duke Flagg. At the same time, Dinia was already in front of him, elbowing him to the ground with one elbow and then delivering a high downward kick like a guillotine cleaver aimed at his spine.

The magical attack just now wasn't a real attack, but rather a way to detect the location of the opponent's source point. Apart from Dinia herself, the weaknesses of other shapeshifters are, unsurprisingly, located at the source point.

Flagg's weakness lies in the middle section of his spine.

Dinia aimed her weapon at Flagg's "cockpit".

Just as Dinia was about to strike, Grand Duke Flag's body shrank drastically, moving with lightning speed, like a snake slipping away from Dinia's feet to the other side. Then, like a snake shedding its skin, it stretched out its outer skin and reappeared in human form.

Grand Duke Flag, in his true form, smiled at Dinia and said, "If I weren't confident that I could hold out until the tower was fully activated even if you launched an attack from the start, do you think I would have left a mark so that you could quickly get up here?"

“Alright, stop pretending. You let us up here because you need us.” Ronan immediately saw through him. “You’ve been hiding for twenty years and even fooled Lichfield. Does it make sense that such a cautious person would forget to erase his tracks when entering the tower?”

“I think this tower needs to draw a lot of magic to start, so you need other people, which is why you did some things that seemed like you were getting carried away.”

“It’s too late for you to leave now,” Grand Duke Flag said. “Oh, it’s not impossible. With your combined strength, if one of you holds things off, I can’t stop the other from leaving.”

“Go away,” Dinia said.

“I’ll go first,” Ronan replied. “Dinia, we’ll just stand here and watch him die.”

Flagg's expression changed immediately. Was Ronan deliberately trying to scare him, or was there some truth to it?

In that instant, Flagg wavered. He was afraid of death; in the twenty years since faking his death, his fear of death had only grown stronger.

Before the tower is truly activated, should he leave? Impossible. He spent thirty years meticulously planning everything to get to this place; how could he give up now?

But then he reaffirmed his resolve. So what if he were to die? If he couldn't achieve immortality, he would just be surviving for another seven or eight years.

Flag stood still, arms crossed over his chest, eyes closed, quietly awaiting the outcome.

Seeing Ronan's confidence, Dinia did not take any further action.

In fact, Ronan couldn't be certain about Flagg's fate, but his statement that Flagg would die wasn't entirely baseless.

First of all, according to Faith, the leader of the purple-clad men is also pursuing immortality and knows the art of soul transfer. Moreover, the leader of the purple-clad men knows Grand Duke Flag. If that's the case, why didn't the leader of the purple-clad men pay attention to this place?