Chapter 58: Plundering the Grand Arena
History records that when the Venetian ships loaded with Frankish knights suddenly and unreasonably barged into the Golden Horn, the first reaction of the Constantinople defenders was bewilderment.
When the news reached the Golden Throne Palace, the two Empresses were also dumbfounded, and even subconsciously asked their ministers to confirm whether the alarm was mistaken.
After all, Constantinople had not been invaded for hundreds of years.
The Franks landed on the Galata Peninsula, which had no city walls for protection, directly across the Golden Horn from Constantinople’s main urban area, and quickly occupied the nearby industrial park.
The scattered police and magistrates were no match for these knights.
The remaining defenders could only retreat to the main urban area along the Galata Bridge and, together with the capital guards who rushed to the scene, began to set up a machine gun defense line along the Galata Bridge.
On the Thracian plain not far away, the girls were horrified to discover that black smoke was already rising from Constantinople behind the city walls.
“I have always been teaching and training you in martial arts.” Asker, walking at the front, said leisurely, “However, in real war, in addition to personal martial prowess, strategy is also a very important factor.”
“When you encounter such a sudden event, you must immediately adapt: 1. Quickly assess the situation; 2. Decide how to respond; 3. Immediately implement the countermeasures.”
“Now, everyone discuss these two questions: 1. What happened? 2. How should we respond?” He looked at the girls leisurely, throwing out two questions.
Seeing Asker’s calm demeanor, everyone who was originally uneasy also calmed down. Mia was the first to speak:
“What else could it be? There’s a fire, there must be unrest in the city! Maybe the Seljuks have arrived at the city and started to attack!”
“Impossible.” Medea immediately retorted. “We are so close to Constantinople. If the Seljuk army had arrived at the city, they would definitely send scout cavalry to patrol behind the siege formation – but we haven’t encountered any enemies along the way.”
“So rule out the possibility of the Seljuks attacking the city.” Asker said with his arms crossed. “Continue.”
“Is there a possibility of civil unrest in the city?” Nuo asked.
“That’s the most likely possibility.” Eleanor analyzed. “It is said that when Constantinople was first built, it was often attacked by hill giant tribes from the Thracian plain, so the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople were built extremely large. They are over 100 meters high, with three layers, and there are a large number of machine gun towers, mortar emplacements, and watchtowers distributed among them. Any location outside the walls will be simultaneously attacked by crossfire from at least three machine guns, so it is almost impossible for it to be successfully invaded from the outside.”
“Not necessarily.” Asker said, “There is no fortress that cannot be breached.”
“Another famous saying is that fortresses are always breached from within.” Eleanor added. “So I think the possibility of civil unrest in Constantinople is the greatest.”
“The possibility of external enemies is not impossible.” Medea offered a different opinion. “The Golden Horn coast has the largest container terminal in the world. The frequent flow of commercial goods in and out makes it impossible to cover this direction with city walls, nor is it possible to achieve perfect urban defense and security.”
“If there are external enemies invading, they will definitely choose to break through from the Golden Horn.”
“There are navigation locks outside the Galata Bridge, and iron chains can be raised at any time to block the waterway.” Eleanor retorted. “The defenders of Constantinople wouldn’t be unaware of this?”
“Come on, you’re also half a foot into the supernatural world, you should know that there are too many supernatural means to deal with this kind of situation.” Medea said disapprovingly. “Disguise as friendly ships to sneak in, use psychic powers to control the operators, etc. I can list 10,000 ways to make those navigation locks fail.”
Seeing that the two of them were about to have a heated debate, Asker hurriedly said:
“So, it’s obvious that there is unrest in Constantinople, the question is whether it’s civil unrest or an invasion by external enemies.”
“No matter what the reason is, the order in the city will definitely be out of control to a certain extent. So what should we do next to maximize the interests of our team?”
Everyone looked at each other. Eleanor and Medea thought of the key point at the same time and exclaimed:
“Potion materials!”
…
It was not only Asker and his team who had their eyes on Constantinople.
Almost all cities that relied heavily on mercenaries faced similar problems: in times of strength, mercenaries could greatly supplement your combat power; in times of weakness, mercenaries would turn around and bare their fangs.
The last emperor of the Western Solomon Empire was killed by a foreign mercenary leader, causing the entire country to collapse overnight.
With the deterrent power of the giant walls of Constantinople, most mercenaries still didn’t believe that the capital would fall, so they temporarily remained well-behaved.
Only a few greedy mercenaries – about a thousand people in total – began to loot the city wantonly.
Then they were basically all ruthlessly suppressed by the Paladin troops sent by the Church.
As the headquarters of the Orthodox Church, Constantinople certainly stored countless supernatural materials, but its supernatural power was also second to none.
Even if they could no longer manufacture powered armor, the existing stock was enough to crush these thousand mercenaries hundreds of times. High-frequency vibration swords and jet engine warhammers directly sent these lawless elements to meet God.
Every time Asker and his team walked a certain distance, they would see the corpses of dead mercenaries by the roadside, basically either beheaded or crushed to pieces, their deaths more gruesome than the last. In the mental channel, Nuo’s worried voice rang out:
“Asker…”
“It’s okay.” Asker replied. “Everyone, stay calm.”
So they could only pretend to be calm, passing by the vigilant gazes of the police on the roadside.
Constantinople was much more desolate now. Most of the shops were closed, and there were only a few pedestrians on the streets, wearing hats and masks, hurrying along, covering themselves tightly even in the summer heat.
Arriving at the Grand Arena of Constantinople, the nearby streets were surprisingly clean, without any debris, corpses, or bloodstains from the riots.
After all, the people inside the arena were all used to killing, and no hot-headed mercenaries dared to target the arena for now.
Except for Asker.
Staying in a nearby inn until late at night, Asker and Mia came to the street outside.
In the distance, in the direction of the Golden Horn, there was still fire blazing into the sky, and the faint sounds of gunfire and explosions could be heard every few minutes.
It seemed that the Franks hadn’t broken through the Galata Bridge’s defenses yet, otherwise, the main city wouldn’t be as peaceful as it was now.
Walking into the arena with Mia, Asker skillfully climbed over the iron fence and walked towards the Hall of Honor.
Suddenly, he stretched out his arm to stop Mia and pointed to the ceiling with his other hand.
There were cameras.
Mia confidently patted her chest, meaning: Cameras are no problem, I have rich experience in dealing with them, you just go back to Furnace Island first.
Asker suddenly shuddered, God knows how he read so much meaning from her one action.
Had his thinking already synchronized with this little girl?
Asker, who had been here before, had already memorized the internal route, so he stuffed the map he had drawn in advance to Mia and then extended his spirituality, teleporting back to Furnace Island.
Mia tiptoed to the shadows in the corner, activated the Shadow I supernatural characteristic, and slowly “melted” into it.
In the Shadow Vision, her body had transformed into a gray spirit body, able to move freely in the darkness.
The light in the environment turned into countless dense clusters of lines, as sharp as blades. Once her spirit body touched these clusters of lines, she would suffer a certain amount of spiritual damage.
She bypassed the surveillance range of the cameras from the darkness. Ahead was a corridor, the moonlight outside the window spilling onto the ground, which, in Mia’s eyes, were countless sharp and dangerous lines, so she could only exit Shadow Vision and return to reality.
There was a surveillance camera at the end of the corridor, pointing towards her. If she moved forward rashly, she would definitely be caught on camera.
Mia didn’t dare to gamble on whether there was anyone in the monitoring room now, but she had rich experience in dealing with this kind of situation.
She took out chewing gum from her pocket, tore off the wrapper, put it in her mouth and chewed it hard a few times, then took it out with two fingers and applied superglue to the remaining part.
Throw!
The chewing gum stuck firmly two centimeters away from the camera. It missed… Mia silently sweated, fortunately Asker wasn’t here.
There were two more packs of chewing gum in her pocket, so she took out another piece and chewed it, repeating the process. This time, the chewing gum accurately stuck to the camera lens.
In the monitoring room, one of the screens suddenly went black without warning. The staff on duty stood up in confusion, intending to go to that location to check.
He thought the camera was probably broken…
Following the route on the map Asker gave her, Mia re-entered Shadow Vision and quickly arrived at the door of the Hall of Honor.
This was where the “Daily Champion” received their award every day, and the prizes were in the warehouse next door. The spiritual pressure generated by the many supernatural items piled together made Mia, a Transcendental, sense it from more than ten meters away, her heart pounding with excitement.
However, a bigger problem was that the warehouse was covered by a spiritual wall and an infrared monitoring network. No matter how she broke in, it would definitely alert the entire arena.
This wasn’t even the most troublesome part. According to Asker, the owner behind this arena was a demigod.
In the current magic tide stage, demigods generally wouldn’t take action because the spirituality they consumed couldn’t be replenished.
However, once his property was looted, the demigod of this arena would definitely not sit idly by.
Then they would have to face the pursuit of a demigod, as well as the city-wide search by the Church of Constantinople.
This was not a fun thing. In the “Iron and Fire” game world of her previous life, if you provoked a demigod, you might as well commit suicide.
Otherwise, if you fell into their hands, your account might be ruined.
Demigods had no shortage of means to permanently harm Transcendents.
Replaying the “strategy” plan Asker had formulated for her in her mind, Mia took a deep breath and took out the lockpicks from her bag.
People die for wealth, just as birds die for food. I’m going for it!
The lockpicks were inserted into the keyhole, and Mia skillfully fiddled with them twice. The door opened – at the same time, a shrill alarm sounded, almost alerting the entire arena.
Mia rushed inside, not even having time to see what was in the room. Her spirituality surged and swirled, teleporting everything she saw to Furnace Island.
Cabinet? Teleport!
Chest? Teleport!
Stool? No time to think, teleport!
In just five or six seconds, Mia had completely looted the entire room. Then she turned and ran out of the warehouse, just as someone turned the corner opposite her.
The enemy arrived much faster than she expected.
She leaped into the air, curled up into a ball, and slammed into the window!
The window shattered, and she jumped down from the third floor. Ignoring the damage from the moonlight outside, she entered Shadow Vision in mid-air, and then quickly extended her spirituality, teleporting herself back to Furnace Island.
Only the artifact ancient book, “Absurd Dreams,” fell with a thud in the Shadow Vision, landing in the garbage heap below.
The next second, the owner of the arena, the demigod Williams, appeared downstairs, his expression gloomy. He stretched out a hand, and his solidified spirituality quickly swept across a radius of several hundred meters.
No one, as expected.
He slowly closed his five fingers, and his spirituality began to scan the secondary planes that overlapped with this space, such as Shadow Vision, the collective unconscious, and so on.
Although his own Sequence didn’t have these abilities, as a demigod, he still had some accumulated supernatural items to deal with various situations.
Shadow Vision, no one.
Collective unconscious, no one.
…
How could there be no results at all?! Williams’ expression became even more gloomy, and he scanned everything again, unwilling to give up.
There were no living beings, not even spirit bodies or mental bodies in the surrounding secondary planes, as if the thief had never been here.
Williams continued to search repeatedly, but found nothing.
And in the Shadow Vision, an inconspicuous ancient book lay quietly in the garbage heap, mixed with other waste paper, mineral water bottles, and old socks.
If you didn’t focus your spirituality on it and scan it carefully, you wouldn’t find the entrance to the semi-plane fragment hidden inside.
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