In just one day, the number of adventurers who accepted the "Investigate Missing Caravan" commission was so high that it made the wrists of the clerks responsible for registration ache.
The long paper list stretched from the oak counter all the way to the stone brick floor, over a dozen pages insufficient to record all the scrawled or neat signatures and their respective team information.
The matter of the Misty Bay Harbor Trade Alliance was far from over.
Yano, the nominal Guild Leader of the Adventurer's Guild, was still stationed at the Gold Lionheart Fortress. Therefore, this preliminarily screened list of adventurers could only be presented in the main control room of the floating castle for Chen Yu's personal review.
Silver Sparrow hovered beside the oak desk, her slender fingers gently waving as the floating lists and documents flipped rapidly as if moved by an invisible hand.
Her voice was ethereal, like a precise instrument reporting: "Master, the preliminary review of the data is complete. No records of obviously forged identities or backgrounds have been found. All applicants meet the basic conditions stipulated in the Trade Alliance agreement."
Chen Yu squatted on the high-backed chair, his round, gelatinous body swaying slightly with thought. He said with satisfaction, "That's fine. The so-called review is essentially superficial work done for the merchants of Misty Bay Harbor. As long as they can't pick out obvious flaws, we don't need to set the bar too high ourselves."
He understood very clearly that this adventurer exchange was, fundamentally, not some friendly cultural exchange. It was the product of an unspoken game and probing between the Slime Kingdom and the Misty Bay Harbor Trade Alliance after the Gold Lionheart Fortress incident.
He wanted the kingdom's adventurers to enter the Trade Alliance with legal status. On one hand, it was to investigate the whereabouts of Casimir's caravan; on the other hand, it was also to gather commercial intelligence within the Alliance.
They probably hoped that the Slime Kingdom's adventurers would clash with certain behind-the-scenes forces during the investigation, thereby sharing the pressure for them.
The legions of the Slime Kingdom had just stormed and occupied the Gold Lionheart Fortress, demonstrating thunderous methods. Immediately after, a bizarre fire broke out at the Blackwater Guild headquarters, with the patriarch, Old Bartley, and the core members all perishing, and key accounts burned to ashes... Any slime with normal intelligence would feel this was definitely not a simple accident.
However, the downfall of the Blackwater Guild could have been done by anyone—rival guilds, internal traitors, external enemies, or even Old Bartley himself playing with fire and getting burned... but it absolutely could not have been done by the Council representing the interests of the vast majority of merchants in the Alliance.
Judging by the speed at which those councilors groveled during the Gold Lionheart Fortress campaign, as long as Old Bartley was still alive and could talk, they might have had him bound hand and foot and delivered him respectfully to the gates of the Gold Lionheart Fortress the very next day, along with compensation, in order to settle the matter and avoid greater military conflict and commercial losses.
For the vast collective of interests that was the Misty Bay Harbor Trade Alliance, territory itself was not important. The Gold Lionheart Fortress was not important. The Blackwater Guild was not important.
What was important was the continuous flow of taxes, tolls, and the safe, unobstructed network of trade routes. As long as these lifelines were not completely severed, the loss of a border fortress, or even a few merchant guilds, was an acceptable price.
Chen Yu had no doubt that with the astonishing wealth accumulated by the Trade Alliance, if they lost a Gold Lionheart Fortress today, they could use gold coins to build another one tomorrow.
Therefore, investigating and clarifying the true identity and purpose of the behind-the-scenes force that orchestrated the silencing of the Blackwater Guild and also detained Casimir's caravan became the key to breaking the deadlock.
With virtually no clear leads at present, investigating the mastermind within the territory of the Misty Bay Harbor Trade Alliance was very difficult.
But for Chen Yu... this matter seemed very simple.
I bounced and turned to Chen Yu, asking, "Chen Yu, how does it feel to connect to the Gel Network?"
I had opened the Gel Network to Chen Yu and granted her near-administrator secondary permissions. In theory, she should almost be able to manage all the information flowing on the Gel Network.
Chen Yu tilted her head slightly, as if thinking. Finally, she pressed her gel together between her palms, her movements elegant and pious, as if performing a prayer ritual.
A few seconds later, she slowly opened her eyes. Her voice was still ethereal, but upon careful listening, it seemed to carry a subtle emotional fluctuation.
"Replying to Master, it is very wondrous. It's like... entering another world, an intangible network composed of information, perception, and will, like an extended perception... as if possessing countless eyes and ears, able to see and hear the information transmitted by life."
"I seem to have become part of a great will."
She paused, as if organizing a more specific application comparison: "Taking the castle's main cannon system as an example, currently, the aiming and locking of the castle's main cannon rely entirely on the castle's own Magic Formation's fuzzy detection array."
"This type of array can detect and sense magical fluctuations and life auras within a certain range, but its precision is limited. Moreover, once it exceeds the effective radius of about fifty kilometers, the perception rapidly decays until it completely fails, unable to provide precise coordinate guidance for the main cannon."
"But if we could use individuals connected to the Gel Network as network nodes, obtain the precise coordinates of enemies in real-time through their senses or positioning beacons, and transmit this information back via the Gel Network... then, Chen Yu could immediately mobilize the Zhou Tian Xing Dou Grand Formation, draw down the power of the celestial bodies, condense it into starlight strikes, and perform over-the-horizon precision strikes on locked targets."
The theoretical firing range would no longer be limited by the castle's own detection arrays, but would depend on the coverage of the Gel Network and the precision of the coordinates provided by the nodes.
Silver Sparrow's description was full of a cold, efficient logical beauty, as if stating an inevitable truth.
"But as I know, life units are fragile and their state is unstable, easily affected by emotions, injuries, environment, and other factors. They are not ideal long-term stable network nodes."
"Perhaps Master could consider creating specialized gel golems, connect them to the Gel Network, and use them as network nodes. This way, we could achieve continuous monitoring and information feedback for key areas, gradually constructing a domain-wide coverage reconnaissance system with the Gel Network as the neural center and network nodes as the sensory endpoints."
She concluded, "The reconnaissance and command system centered on the Gel Network still has significant room for optimization and potential."
Chen Yu helplessly swayed his gelatinous body, bouncing a little on the velvet cushion.
Of course he knew how high the potential of the Gel Network was, but his original intention in asking Silver Sparrow was actually just to simply inquire about the current location of the reconnaissance team he had sent out...
Instead, he got a serious, comprehensive answer from Silver Sparrow. If it were Count Bran, he would most likely understand what Chen Yu wanted to ask and then proceed to boast extravagantly.
Silver Sparrow understood tacitly, gave a slight nod, and proactively switched the topic: "Currently performing triangulation positioning and path deduction based on the real-time position beacons of each network node."
The silvery-white glow in her eyes flashed rapidly a few times, as if processing large amounts of data.
Simultaneously, on one side of the main control room wall, a dynamic map composed of magical light and shadow slowly unfolded.
The map covered a large area from the Dark Realm to the Misty Bay Harbor Trade Alliance, displaying clear terrain contours, major rivers, city markers, and several slowly moving green dots.
"Analyzing based on the continental geographic map you provided, your Royal Guard squad is estimated to have already successfully crossed the tributary of the Jade River and reached the area near the inland trade city in the central-north of the Misty Bay Harbor Trade Alliance—the Old City of Edinburgh."
"So it seems they're almost there," Chen Yu muttered, his gaze falling on the green dots on the magic map.
He wasn't naive enough to think that simply having the kingdom's adventurers wander around within the Alliance territory would easily reveal the whereabouts of Casimir and the missing caravan.
The ones actually carrying out the investigation were the Shadow Royal Guard he had secretly established not long ago. Led personally by Nilly, they had stealthily infiltrated the territory of the Misty Bay Harbor Trade Alliance with the three little Stone Descendants to conduct in-depth investigations.
Simultaneously, they carried a gel clone. As long as Casimir was still alive and within the range of the Misty Bay Harbor Trade Alliance, he could establish contact with the clone via the gel communicator.
Shadow Assassins were originally the stealth specialist branch within the assassin profession, especially skilled in infiltration, reconnaissance, and assassination.
Not to mention, the shadow creatures they contracted were somewhat special—they were Shadow Slimes capable of growing by devouring shadows.
Chen Yu estimated that by the time these youngsters reached Misty Bay Harbor, their size could grow larger than a hunter's cabin.
Once they intervened in reality with the power of the Stone Descendants, their sheer tonnage alone could easily crush many Elite Professionals.
Not to mention, the shadow power enhancement the Shadow Slimes brought to the Stone Descendant Assassins was unparalleled. It wasn't just longer Shadow Traversal or more special Petrification, but even... a faint trend toward merging with the shadows like Yano, transforming into a Shadow Lord.
Chen Yu suspected they might already be touching the threshold of The Extraordinary profession, just not yet clear about what kind of trial they were about to face.
For such an assassin squad, finding Casimir's whereabouts shouldn't be difficult.
Unless... this unlucky fellow's luck was just too terrible, and he met his demise before Nilly's arrival.
Then, the tranquil cemetery with a few fir trees planted outside the Slime church would probably really need to erect a few new tombstones.
Of course, given that vampires generally had the special quirk of "liking to crawl into coffins to sleep when they see them," perhaps some believers would try to bury themselves as well, to "catch up" with Bishop Casimir.
Even though that was a bit of a dark joke.
Chen Yu stopped overthinking it. He bounced away from the main control room and walked along the castle's internal corridors toward the outside.
Passing by the castle's power core chamber, he coincidentally bumped into Little Flower leading a group of what looked like still very inexperienced young Slime Scholars on a tour of the castle's internal structure.
"King!"
Upon seeing him, the eyes of those young Slime Scholars lit up, and they exclaimed in surprise.
Their round bodies, stopping abruptly, accidentally bumped into each other. Their gels squeezed against each other and bounced apart, scattering across the floor like a spilled box of multicolored jelly.
"Brother." Little Flower bounced closer and gently rubbed against Chen Yu, expressing affection.
"How is the research progress on the floating fortress?" Chen Yu suddenly remembered this long-standing concept; it seemed he hadn't heard any new developments for a long time.
Hearing this, Little Flower deflated her gel a little, an action that made her look like a deflating water balloon. "The arcane arts are good. Forging is recruiting Dwarves. Magic is difficult; needs powerful mages."
Silver Sparrow floated over silently and timely reported: "The analysis and learning progress of the arcane magic formation is currently approximately 20%. We can preliminarily understand its basic principles and have established a basic levitation system framework in small-scale experiments."
"But Silver Sparrow needs to remind you that during the construction of the fortress, the former master integrated the spiritual energy system and the mana system—two energy systems that typically do not interfere with each other—along with the levitation power system, furnace energy system, and offensive magic system formation modules. Through ingenious formation design, they were combined into a complex, ultra-large-scale composite magic formation—the Hydra Cavern Main Array."
"This means that all formation systems, whether for levitation power, defensive barriers, attack spells, or internal ecological maintenance, are integrated under the same vast and unified system. It can even flexibly use a hybrid power of spiritual energy and mana to drive different functions of the castle as needed, to achieve optimal efficiency."
"Even with Silver Sparrow's participation, significantly simplifying the Hydra Cavern Main Array, the resulting Hydra Fortress Main Array still has considerable complexity and construction difficulty."
"Given the current severe shortage of talent reserves in the kingdom regarding high-level magical theory, Silver Sparrow suggests seeking cooperation with a Grand Mage to jointly conduct research and reverse engineering work. This would greatly accelerate the progress of the floating fortress project."
"..."
Chen Yu's body stiffened slightly, feeling his gel brain buzzing a little.
He sometimes truly wondered what kind of brain that senior had, to be able to design such a complex formation.
But Silver Sparrow was right. The ones who understood magic formations best were Grand Mages; that was professional expertise.
The question was, where was he supposed to find a Grand Mage?
Wait.
Actually... there really might be one.
Chen Yu's little eyes lit up slightly. He had almost forgotten that there was a Forest Sage idling away in Slime City, eating and drinking for free.
After the alliance between the Slime Kingdom and the Forest Sage Council came to nothing, Alders had been staying in Slime City.
Not only did he build his own meditation room and small botanical garden in the best environment of the city's canopy district, but every day he either stared blankly at Treant saplings and recorded data, immersed himself in the city's public library reading books and scrolls, or occasionally gave pointers to young slimes or Elf residents interested in nature magic.
His life was quite comfortable, giving off the distinct vibe of intending to stick around and not leave.
But in reality, Forest Sages like Alders were mostly Grand Mages of The Extraordinary level, proficient in various types of nature magic, with unique insights into elemental analysis and magic formation construction. Studying magic formations was precisely their professional expertise.
An idea popped into his mind.
Perhaps... he could cooperate with the Forest Sage Council to jointly develop the floating fortress?