That ring of light seemed to have been from the reflection of sunlight on a metallic object. The reflection moved rapidly, quickly becoming visible to the naked eye.
Everyone on the beach was suddenly scared stiff when a fleet of silver warships appeared in the distance. The warships were sleek; the silver streaks extremely stylish, but it was obvious the ships were not from Dawn Academy.
“Go back! Return to the fortress!”
Xiao Lin reacted immediately, shouting out as he pulled Gu Xiaoyue and ran back toward the fortress. He was extremely shocked.
Who owned those warships?
Just as Gu Xiaoyue and Xiao Lin had discussed, the orcs had very limited craftsmanship abilities, so warships that could brave the seas, especially those refined looking ones, were definitely out of the question.
The merfolk and the nagas were water-dwelling races, so if they really wanted to launch a sneak attack, they would not have used warships; the same way a bird just needed to flap their wings to fly instead of going on a plane.
The fortress was also in chaos. Everyone had allowed themselves to relax after a number of days of peace, so the sudden appearance of those warships caused them to panic. The current situation was absolutely beyond everyone’s predictions.
The fortress’s gates were shut tight as everyone prepared themselves for battle, heading to the city walls with their weapons in hand. However, they could not help but be worried, especially since they had no measures against warships.
Those silver warships stopped a distance away from the shore, not showing any movement even after ten minutes, nor launching any long-range attacks. However, no one made the mistake of assuming those ships were there to sightsee.
“What’s going on?! Where did those warships come from?!” Inside the temporary headquarters, the acting class monitors shouted so loud, practically the whole fortress could hear them, but no one had the answers to those questions.
Cheng Ming was steely. Since the very start, none of them had ever considered the possibility that their opponents could have warships. Now that they no longer had the protection of the naval troops, their defense of the fortress suddenly got a lot more difficult.
“Was anyone sent to scout?” Class Four’s Han Manman said.
“How would we scout it? Do you expect us to send someone swimming?” Class Twelve’s Chen Dao answered her with an unfriendly tone.
Han Manman was annoyed. “Everyone calm down. First, let’s split our current understanding of the situation into two parts. The first part is what we learned from the captains; we should trust in the accuracy of that information for now. The other part is what we learned from our history lessons, which we should definitely put our faith on. After all, history already happened, so surely there shouldn’t be any problems.”
“Han Manman, are you trying to say that the warships might not be enemies?” Cheng Ming answered.
“That’s right. Based on history, there were no other races that participated in the war other than the orcs and the merfolk; not even the naga. The orcs couldn’t have built these warships, so if we take all that into account, the warships might not have evil intentions.”
“That doesn’t make sense!” Chen Dao had his doubts regarding Han Manman’s guess, slightly mocking her as he said, “Did you just ignore your geography classes? Don’t forget, other than the orcs and merfolk, there are no other races near Dawn City.”
Han Manman was furious. “Then why don’t you tell me who owns those warships outside!”
Chen Dao was temporarily stumped.
As they were furiously arguing, the door to the headquarters was suddenly pushed open. Xiao Lin walked in with an exhausted look on his face, taking a deep breath after he sat down.
Han Manman and the rest of them were slightly surprised. No one had noticed that they were actually missing one monitor during the meeting, but that was likely due to the fact that a number of them did not regard Xiao Lin as higher.
Xiao Lin’s next words caused a lot of shock. “I think I know who owns those warships.”
“Who?!”
“The elves!”
“What?”
“The elves! Don’t give me those looks. The marks on those warships are definitely elven. Of course, the marks could very well be faked.” Xiao Lin tossed a used magical scroll on the table that he had just used the scroll to scout earlier.
“How do you know what the elven mark is?” Han Manman said in her sharp voice.
“I’ve been to New Washington, and a lot of elves do business there; that’s where I’ve seen it. They love to carve the Tree of Life onto everything, even small ornaments.”
“Tree of Life?”
“Yes, according to legends, the Tree of Life gave birth to the elves. They respect that thing a lot; it’s basically god to them.” Xiao Lin recalled. When he was in New Washington, he passed by elven stores regularly and had asked about it before.
“That makes no sense either! Even if those really are elven warships, why are they here? Did they get lost?” Han Manman still refused to believe it.
“You’ve seen the elves?! It’s that race full of beautiful women, just like in fantasy novels, right?” Chen Dao’s eyes suddenly widened, but he had shifted his attention to something else completely. Everyone else rolled their eyes, ignoring him.
“Actually, I do remember the elves having a good relationship with the Americans.”
“How long would it take for the elves to get here?”
Even though everyone paid attention in their history and geography classes, that detail was not something anyone could answer, so they shifted their gaze to Xiao Lin. Even if they verbally denied it, all of them had some amount of envy toward the fact that Xiao Lin had been to New Washington.
“A warship from New Washington to Dawn City would take at least one month. With the technology of this era, I feel like it would take at least two to three months. I’ve never been to elven territory, but since they’re close to the Americans, and also just as close to the sea, it would probably take the same amount of time,” Xiao Lin said.
After that, everyone’s expressions changed. It took at least two to three months to get there from elven territory, but they had only taken over the fortress for less than five days.
If those warships were really elvish, then unless they were just passing by, it would be quite a big issue. They started to feel like everything they had been doing from the start had been a trap.
This particular mission had been noted down as a failure in the history books, and in the final records, there were no indications that elves had appeared. At the same time, this mission had barely appeared in the history books. Just as Qin Chuan had told Xiao Lin, the academy might have tried to cover up this operation out of humiliation.