"You still can't let go of your old ideas. It's been so many years, you're still like this!" Galadra shook his head, looking unsurprised but troubled. Of course, this was useless. If Michelle would listen, things wouldn't have come to this point.
"Whatever your goal is, I won't let you succeed easily!" Adrian declared fearlessly. Since Michelle had stated her position so clearly, he naturally wouldn't back down as the representative of humans. But I was a bit worried, afraid she might charge at us in anger.
"If your main target is humans, then is this also something you sent out?" Luckily, Michelle held back, and the situation didn't spiral out of control again. However, after hearing Michelle's words, Nicola thought for a while and suddenly pulled out a round object from her storage ring and asked.
I recognized this thing. It was the head of the robot that was destroyed when we were ambushed by Blanche during our trip to Makalan City! This robot was very powerful. Although it probably wouldn't be a match for me now, it took a lot of effort for the lizardman Kurnel to destroy it with a sneak attack back then. Nicola had kept it in her storage space ever since.
"Intelligent Guard Type One!" Michelle immediately blurted out this name with a strange look on her face. But she didn't seem to care that the robot had been destroyed. She just didn't understand why Nicola suddenly brought this up with a gloomy face, "How did it end up in your hands? And why are you suddenly mentioning this now?"
"Yesterday, on my way flying here, I happened to come across several dozen similar beings. They were staying with the human army, and both sides seemed to get along very well. After some inquiries, I found out they seemed to be planning to work with humans to do something fishy with the descent of the Cycle of Rebirth! Although I haven't seen them actually show up yet... if all this was under your orders, it doesn't make much sense, does it?" Nicola explained casually, but the meaning behind her words was clear. Michelle had just claimed that her ultimate goal was to wipe out humans, but secretly she had sent out robot troops to cooperate with humans to try to seize the Cycle of Rebirth. This was a blatant slap in the face!
"Impossible! How could I possibly work with humans! I only have a few Intelligent Guard Type Ones in total, where would dozens come from! And they are very loyal, impossible to follow orders from anyone other than me, unless..." Michelle immediately got angry when she heard this and couldn't help raising her voice to argue. But towards the end, her expression seemed not so certain. She seemed to remember something and suddenly became a bit hesitant.
"Unless what?" Galadra immediately asked, following up with some intelligence she had gotten through earth element monitoring. "I've also seen some similar figures on the continent. They often go in and out of some small countries in the south, claiming to belong to a secret organization in the north, with the identity of magic puppet! Whether these magic puppets are really magic puppets is unknown, but their purpose is quite strange — usually when they arrive at a place, they initiate cooperation requests, willing to provide funds and labor, seeking to build some large-scale magic facilities with unknown purposes together with the local authority. Because of this, they've actually received warm welcomes in many areas."
That's even more ridiculous. If these really were mechanical troops sent out by Michelle, how could they cause destruction in the north but secretly cooperate on construction in the south? Unless she had a mental problem and split personality!
"Unless this is my ally's own idea!" Michelle waved her hand angrily. She seemed to realize that things were developing beyond her expectations. Her appearance instantly became a bit flustered. After hesitating for a long time, she finally had to answer, "After all, the Intelligent Guard Type One was a gift from my ally. As for how many he has himself, I don't know. Perhaps all those you just mentioned were done secretly behind my back!"
"Is your ally a mysterious person in white clothes? And is he also a light mage! We found earlier that he was in close contact with Emperor Reider, also wanting to interfere with the descent of the Cycle of Rebirth, but was rejected by the Emperor in the end."
Hearing this, I immediately thought of those mechanical bugs I saw in the underground tunnel, plus all the things I saw and heard later in the base. It was easy to connect the two.
"Mysterious person in white? Light mage? What on earth are you talking about?" Unexpectedly, Michelle looked completely clueless. It seemed she really didn't know much about this person's identity. This confused me too. Could it be that the mysterious person in white and her ally were not the same group? How many underground organizations with secret high-tech were there on this continent?
"Who exactly is your ally?" Galadra finally couldn't wait anymore and asked anxiously. It was only then that I remembered when I first met Galadra, she had indeed mentioned that Michelle was actually under house arrest in the Cycle of Rebirth before. Later she was rescued by someone unknown and ran to the Dark Continent. No wonder Galadra was so emotional now.
"Impossible! I still don't quite believe it! My ally clearly stated the same goal as me when we first met — to wipe out humans. It was because of this that I agreed to work together!" However, Michelle didn't answer. She just waved her hand very irritably and suddenly spread her twelve wings and flew up.
"What? Even if you don't believe it, do you want to fight a second round with us?" Nicola looked up and reminded her in a deep voice. If we fought again, it would be hard to say who would win. Moreover, we were now only in the outer area of the Cycle of Rebirth. Even if Michelle barely won in the end, her remaining power might not be enough to break through the space restrictions and enter the high-dimensional space to seize the core of the Cycle of Rebirth.
"Damn it!" Michelle's face changed between light and dark as she hesitated for a long time. She seemed to realize this point too. In the end, she didn't attack again but turned and flew away.
"I'm going to get to the bottom of this. You got lucky this time! If I find out you're trying to trick me, don't blame me next time!" Before leaving, she didn't forget to make various threats. But no matter what, she had retreated. It felt so good not to have to fight!
"Uh... since that's the case, then..." It suddenly became a bit quiet. Now that the biggest enemy had left, only Adrian and I were left here, along with Nicola and Galadra.
Galadra was fine, after all, her goal was the same as ours. With Michelle gone, the Cycle of Rebirth was considered safe. But the situation with Nicola looked really tricky.
She was staring hard at Adrian, and Adrian was fearlessly staring back at her. The tension between them instantly escalated after the common enemy disappeared. Seeing this situation, I couldn't help feeling a bit panicked.
"Hey, hey, do you know what you're doing? This is inside the projection of the Cycle of Rebirth. Fighting in such an unstable space could be fatal!" I flashed in between the two of them. Okay! I admit this was just nonsense. The space was indeed unstable, but not to the point where we really couldn't fight, otherwise we wouldn't have faced off with Michelle earlier.
But did the two of them really need to be at odds for my sake? To be honest, it felt really ridiculous. I never thought I had become so important, and I even felt Nicola was being completely unreasonable. But she was just that stubborn and headstrong, especially after she got powered up later.
"Feliciana, don't you understand my feelings even now?" Unable to see Adrian for the moment, Nicola could only turn to look at me. She suddenly took out two card-like things from her storage ring, her expression seeming a bit sad.
"Do you know why I insisted on spending a lot of money to buy these back then?" Those were the phantom magic cards that Nicola secretly bought with her savings when we were renting a house in the capital Norvale. At that time, we had just arrived and were new to everything. Since these cards can materialize the images on them, the experience was quite amazing. When plugged into other magic devices, they could even be used for online battles!
However, looking at it now, it's no longer surprising. To put it simply, it's just based on a small built-in magic array. Unfortunately, it seems Nicola's motivation for buying them was more than this.
"When we first came to this world, we didn't know anything and didn't have money. But you not only taught me how to make money and live, but you were also willing to squeeze into a small broken house with me, and even cook for me! You kept this big young master who usually only knows how to spend money from going hungry... That was the first time I felt the warmth of a home, so I always wanted to give you something."
Looking at the cards in her hand, they were a six-winged and an eight-winged angel card. Nicola's voice sounded a bit choked up. "At first, I planned to buy four-winged ones, so we could have one each! But those were the only angel cards left in that shop, so later I desperately did quests and fought monsters to level up. I always thought it might be better to give them to you after we both reached the ranks on these cards..."
"Actually, I wanted to give it to you a few days ago when we were still in Crescent City, because I had just reached eight wings then, while you still had six wings." At this point, she still handed me the card representing the six-winged angel, looking very disappointed. "But now you've leveled up too. Have I really missed everything?"