Arcane Lord

If it was a normal time, and the underground passage was discovered by chance, Shado might not have such worries, but now it is obvious that the Illuminati is behind this.

If the Illuminati and the drow are in collusion, even if it is just a possibility, it is enough to make the entire North panic. The last drow war was only a few years ago. Even if the drow was defeated last time, they still had room to fight back.

Otherwise, considering the fear and hatred of the surface elves towards the drow, they must completely eliminate the drow. Of course, the reality is that the drow has not been completely eliminated, but has been forced to retreat to the deeper dark areas.

This is enough to show that the drow still has the strength to fight. If they are instigated by the Illuminati, they may not break out of the surface again, but it is hard to say whether they will break out from that area this time.

There are also passages connecting to the Underdark in Netheril. There are two that Shado knows of. One is to the east of Daxia Territory, but it takes a hundred meters to go underground to find it. However, this distance is almost equivalent to nothing for the drow who travel through the Underdark all year round. Because the underground passage is under the surface, Shado took a long time to find it.

The other one is the basin lake south of Daxia Territory and south of Wolf God Mountain. According to Shado's actual exploration, there is a Undersea there. Compared with other passages, the water passage is undoubtedly relatively safer.

At least, Shado has not seen any records about the Undersea in the archives of the Alliance. In other words, the underground passage on the basin lake side is very likely to connect to a completely unfamiliar Underdark.

But the Alliance has no records, which does not mean that the drow have no records. If the drow choose to rush out of the surface through the water passage, then Netheril will be the first to bear the brunt.

More specifically, it is the South Territory and the Great Xia Territory. If the drow really rush out of the surface from the basin lake, judging from the situation of the last drow battlefield, the entire South Territory may be destroyed in the war.

…

After learning that a new underground passage was discovered, Xia Duo's vigilance and sense of crisis almost reached the peak. After hesitating for a while, he still turned into an avatar and went back to the territory to repeatedly check the two nearby passages.

Fortunately, no traces of drow were found for the time being, which made him feel relieved and at the same time, he had a stronger sense of urgency. After setting up warning magic for the two passages, he let the avatar return to Evereska.

Originally, he did not set up any warning magic for the two underground passages. After all, the warning magic itself is a flaw. In the absence of other insiders, it is the best choice to pretend that nothing happened.

And now, he really can't bet that the Illuminati doesn't know, so he can only set up warning magic there, even if this behavior may make the Illuminati aware of it, but at least it is a warning measure.

Once something happens, he can also know it in time.

The most troublesome thing now is not what the Illuminati has done specifically, but that they have been in hiding. As long as they dare to show their heads, even without Xia Duo's action, the Alliance itself can deal with it.

And this also makes Xia Duo look forward to the arrival of Richie's envoy.

If the core of the Illuminati can be found through the Moon Shadow Family, or at least a major blow can be dealt to their core members, then this final decisive battle will be at least half won.

The remaining half is still in the time-related ceremony, and since this does not involve the abyss, the envoy may not be able to help much, and the mortals in the main plane need to deal with it themselves.

...

Yongle City.

Xia Duo, who was meditating with his eyes closed in the time acceleration array, suddenly relaxed his eyebrows and thought of the method to crack the last chain encryption element of the Illuminati's excited state artifact.

Since the time acceleration array can only affect a limited area, and the energy density of the magic net is also limited, most spell experiments cannot be carried out in the time acceleration array, because the accelerated time will reduce the energy density of the magic net.

Of course, this is when only the magic net function is used. If the researchers can provide energy by themselves, or even conduct experiments without the help of the magic net, then there will be no impact at all.

However, Xia Duo still chose to leave the time acceleration array. No matter how to avoid it, there are differences between the environment inside and outside the array. In the end, it is still necessary to return to the normal environment for verification. Now it is just a step further and conduct experiments directly in the normal environment.

Time acceleration development is still more suitable for simple thinking or calculation. It is better to be cautious about all the elements involving reality.

Xia Duo prepared all the materials needed for the experiment in the time acceleration array, and then paused the array and returned to the real time and space of the laboratory.

Then, he carefully took out the excited state artifact that was stripped down to only a small part of the core components. Of course, it is somewhat inappropriate to call it an excited state artifact now.

Because the artifact is no longer in an excited state at this moment, Xia Duo has analyzed it until now. If he can't even do this, it would be too failed. More than a year in the time acceleration array is not a vernacular.

However, there is still one last chain encryption element, which almost links all the elements of the spell. As long as this last lock is unlocked, the true face of this Illuminati artifact will be revealed.

When Xia Duo thought that he could find a way to counter the Illuminati's time-related rituals through this artifact, his breathing became a little hurried, but the more critical the moment, the more he had to deal with it calmly.

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. His eyes had become extremely calm, and at the same time, his hands began to bridge the external elements of this last part of the artifact. This is a common method when cracking artifacts.

Shado has used this method since he first came into contact with artifact cracking. The advantage is that he can find all the magic elements involved in the target artifact like peeling off silk from a cocoon.

The disadvantage is also obvious. This is almost brute force cracking, similar to the process of decompiling programs on Earth -

From binary code (magic net string changes) that cannot be hidden under normal circumstances, it is transformed into readable instructions (magic elements), and then the specific process, variables, functions, etc. of the program (combination of magic elements) are deduced from the instructions.

Once restored, it is a complete program (spell or artifact).

This process may also involve encryption, which is even more complicated, but the idea is the same. As long as you are willing to work hard, you can always crack it.

There are almost no spells or artifacts in the world that cannot be cracked.

The Illuminati artifacts are of course no exception. The only shortcoming is that the sample size is too small. If Xia Duo is given more than ten or twenty identical artifacts, he can shorten the time by more than ten times.

Isolated samples limit too many available means. Fortunately, everything is over, and the true face of this artifact will eventually be exposed to Xia Duo.

Then, Xia Duo cast a spell to artificially remove an inconspicuous spell element in the magic weapon. Without any surprise, the external bridge component successfully replaced that element!

"It's exactly what I predicted!"

At this point, Xia Duo can even say that he knows more about this magic weapon than the Illuminati members who made it. Of course, it is limited to the element composition of the magic weapon, not its specific functions.

The specific function needs further testing to be determined, but the most difficult work has been completed, and testing the function is just a matter of hand.