"Has Kardak been besieged?"

  Upon hearing the news, Zhan En furrowed his brow and looked towards Verna in front of him. After convincing those idiots from the Church, he found an excuse to go take a look at the Dark Territory, then turned around and returned to the underground city, but didn't expect that before his butt had even warmed up, he received such news.

  And noticing Zhan's gaze, the dark elf reluctantly opened his hands and nodded.

  "That's right, I don't know what they're up to inside either. Anyway, based on my observations over the past few days, these dwarves are all a bit neurotic and somewhat abnormal."

  Although Verna's attitude towards Jan has always been bad, she still does things with great care. As a dark elf, Verna has a natural advantage in the dark territory. These gray dwarves are not afraid of her, but they also dare not provoke her. So Jan arranged for Verna to be at Blackstone Watchtower, first to make use of its architectural function and secondly to let her easily monitor the movements of those gray dwarves. It's just that Jan didn't expect that after leaving for only a few days, such a thing would happen.

  "Why was the city closed?"

  When Zhan En asked, Weirna gave him a strange look before opening her mouth to speak.

  "It's said that the group of surface crawlers wiped out the fire lizard and also swept away many dark creatures in the surrounding areas, scaring Cardak quite a bit. They were afraid they would come looking for trouble, so they simply issued an order to seal off the city. For these days, the gray dwarves hid inside their turtle shells without moving, even making it difficult for me to enter the city."

  Upon hearing Verna's words, Zane shrugged his shoulders. He naturally understood why Verna would stare at him so strangely. It seemed that the dwarves had closed off the city because they were intimidated by him. Previously, Zane was only thinking about how to infiltrate the Holy Church of Sanctum and had forgotten to pay attention to the dwarves' reaction. However, upon careful consideration, it made sense - Kardel didn't know the key points and would think that humans gathering here in large numbers were preparing to launch an attack.

  "Is there anything else?"

  "I heard that old Cadrek seems to have been scared out of his wits by this bunch of surface crawlers, and has already sent people to inform Morsleeb and the Brain City. It looks like he's planning to form another alliance."

  "Hmm... I see."

  Upon hearing this, Zhan En slightly furrowed his brow. If humans indeed had the intention of delving into the dark territories, then the Dark Elves and the Heart Demons would not turn a blind eye to it. They regarded the dark territories as their own backyard; if humans truly intended to delve into the dark territories, they would inevitably be met with a united attack from all the underground forces.

  However, Verna obviously didn't plan to let Jan get away with it so easily. She glared at him impatiently before continuing to speak.

  "What's more, I've found traces of a Dark Elf patrol lurking around the vicinity."

  "Are you sure?!"

  Upon hearing this, Zhan En suddenly sat up straight, and his previously drowsy mind became clear once again.

  The patrol teams of the Dark Elves are not ordinary, due to the extremely low birth rate of the Dark Elves and their tradition of "mutual slaughter", the population of the Dark Elves has always been a problem. Therefore, their patrol teams will not occasionally go around the periphery of the dark region like the Grey Dwarves or Black Magma City. On the contrary, the Dark Elves never leave their underground city, at most they clean up some underground monsters near the main city. It is precisely because of this that the Dark Elf patrol team is all elite and not weak in strength.

  In fact, the strength of the dark territory and the ground is two grades different. Take the people sent by the Holy Temple this time, for example. If calculated according to the strength calculation method of Jianen Underground City, then currently in the dark territory, three-fifths of the soldiers are one-star and a half to two-star, which is at most the elite level. The remaining two-fifths are two-star and a half to three-star, which are those holy knights and seasoned mercenaries.

  Apart from these people, only the Grandmaster of the Knights of Rox, the Archbishop of Bosen, and Gustav and Barf, who were previously killed by Jain, are considered to have truly entered the realm of legend. Among them, except for Gustav, a four-star quasi-legendary powerhouse, the other three are just barely entering the legendary domain.

  What about the dark territories? Let's not mention Jenn's underground city, just in the dwarven city, excluding women and children, other dwarves have at least three-star level strength. Those elite dwarven guards even possess Master-level strength. Although due to the dwarves' bloodline limitations, they can't possibly have legendary-level strongmen, these dwarven elite warriors alone are enough to make the temple drink a pot of wine.

  In an online game, this is like nearly a hundred sixty-level warriors with excellent equipment and full talent points teaming up to take down a group consisting of two seventy-level leaders and the rest being thirty or forty level newbies with poor equipment but excellent skills. Who wins or loses is almost a foregone conclusion...

  No wonder, after all, in the dark realm, strength is respected, and those who are not strong enough have been "naturally eliminated". Those who survive must be non-weak. Not to mention these intelligent creatures, even those monsters in the dark realm, if you don't have a level of at least 20, you won't dare to come out and greet people, right?

  Due to their innate defects, the Dark Elf patrol teams also took elite routes, and almost all Dark Elves who could go out had the standard of the Dwarf Guardian Squad. Moreover, the Dark Elves specialized in assassination, which greatly increased their threat in the dark territories, and even had "brilliant achievements" such as assassinating legendary mages. Now hearing that a group of Dark Elves had actually sneaked up to the door, this suddenly made Jain also raise his vigilance. Mors Brayles was not around here, so it was definitely not the Dark Elf patrol team that came here this time, but an expeditionary force. However, there were only two possibilities for the Dark Elves to dispatch an expeditionary force: one was their usual "custom" of going to the surface to slaughter elves, and the other was...

  "How did you find them?"

  As he thought of this, Zhan En's face turned somewhat gloomy, and he stared at Verena, asking her to speak. Noticing Zhan En's expression, Verena first looked at him with a hint of pride before explaining the reason. It turned out that in recent days, Verena had been secretly investigating around Brandon Stone City, trying to figure out what these gray dwarves were up to. It was during this investigation that Verena inadvertently discovered a dead petrified lizard. From the wounds on the corpse, Verena immediately judged that it was caused by the unique weapon of the dark elves.

  As soon as she realized this, Verna became vigilant. The northern wilderness was not a place where dark elves liked to come, and she had also escaped here at the beginning. Now that these dark elves have arrived, they won't be planning to take her back, will they? Thinking of this, Verna immediately followed the trail and tracked them down. As a dark elf, she was still very skilled in this aspect, and without much effort, Verna discovered the tracks of this group of dark elves. That's why she rushed back to report to Zhan En.

  "What do you think they're doing here?"

  Thinking of this, Zhan En rubbed his forehead and asked. The appearance of the Dark Elf Patrol Team disrupted his original plan.

  "I'm not sure, but they're definitely not part of the surface slaughter squad. It's not close to the surface here, and there aren't any of those white-skinned gathering places nearby. So..."

  "They were sent here on orders..."

  Verna hadn't finished speaking when Janen sighed and completed her sentence. There were only two possibilities that could prompt the dark elves to send their elite patrol team all the way out here, far from the main city: either it was a routine slaughter mission or a direct order from the Dark Elves' Matriarch. But whatever the possibility, there was only one reason they would take action - to curry favor with their spider goddess.

  So... Rose is also going to interfere with her own territory?

  As he thought of this, a glint flashed in Zhan En's eyes. He had never directly interacted with this woman, and the evaluation of her in the demon world wasn't very good either. Fortunately, Rose only cared about the dark elves, and didn't usually interfere with other aspects, so no one in the demon world went to look for trouble with her. And now...

  Thinking of this, Zhan En slightly curled up the corners of his mouth, revealing a hint of a smile.

  For the demon clan, any unexpected event will lead to a good development of things.

  "I understand."

  Thinking of this, Zhan En didn't say anything else and just made a gesture to Verna. Seeing Zhan En's action, Verna also couldn't say anything else and had no choice but to turn around and leave. And it wasn't until the Dark Elf left that Zhan En stretched out his hand and tapped the bell on the table. Very quickly, the door of the study opened again and Enoa walked slowly into the room.

  "Is anything wrong, master?"

  "That's right."

  At Enya's inquiry, Zhan nodded and stretched out his hand. Soon, a star-shaped badge appeared in the palm of his hand.

  "This time I went out and found something good... It's also time for me to fulfill my promise."

  At the same time, a line of system prompts also floated in front of Zhan En.

  "Found fusion equipment legendary star, is it designated for hero unit use?"