Player Reload

London time, 4:35 AM

4 minutes until deep crimson alert arrives.

It's beginning to drizzle from the sky. Next to Whitehall, in the Westminster District, beneath the compound alloy fiber reinforced concrete defensive layers of several meters thick of No. 10 Downing Street, an underground bunker.

The elites of Great Britain scurried through the intricate network of tunnels, each clutching one or more phones, racing against time to gather intel, communicate information, and seek assistance.

Armed officers, plainclothes agents, and soldiers dispatched urgently had no clue of what was happening and could only stand at the corridors' doorways, acting as security statues.

Meanwhile, they perked their ears, attempting to piece together the truth of the event from the snatches of conversation leaking from the surrounding cacophony of phone calls.

In the innermost meeting room of the underground bunker, laden with smoke and disorder, the temporarily summoned Indian-origin Chancellor of the Exchequer wore a look of distress, smoking intensely.

The royal family and the Prime Minister's spouse were immediately evacuated; he, the Chancellor, was temporarily dragged in to serve as the wartime leader.

Or perhaps, the ultimate scapegoat.

His left hand holding the cigarette trembled incessantly, forcing the Chancellor to slap the table forcefully with his right hand, shouting with resolve, "Request, GOC for assistance! Request, Holy Temple Knights for assistance! Request, European Heavy Industry for assistance! Request, Prometheus for assistance!"

The Prime Minister's private secretary, lowering his voice, murmured in his ear, "The Transcendents of the Holy Temple Knights are on their way, and several other guilds have told us they are rallying manpower."

In fact, four minutes should be more than enough time for major guilds to temporarily open a large Teleportation Gate, sending a Level 35-led elite Transcendent battle squad of average Level 25 across the oceans.

Yet, the harsh reality is, except for the local guild in London and the Holy Temple Knights with a spirit of religious martyrdom,

none of the normally-friendly major guilds that claim to be part of the Western civilized world's family came to help,

including the United States, Britain's traditional ally.

The reasoning is straightforward: who knows in what form a disaster at a deep crimson alert level will manifest?

What if the disaster's anomalous fluctuation index hits 5000 points simply because the prediction machine maxes out at 5000 points?

What if the disaster transmits and spreads in the form of psychic pollution?

What if the disaster permanently warps the minds of all Transcendents and ordinary people within range?

It's better to wait for the nuclear bomb to detonate and then have all factions enter the scene for assessment, disaster relief, or to profit from the chaos.

After all, they can avoid the monk but not the temple; London is the Bell Tower Guild's stronghold, so they'll surely be the first to rise to the occasion.

The Chancellor's vision darkened, quickly bracing himself against the table, hopeful: "What about the gentlemen and ladies of the Bell Tower?"

"We are here."

A cold voice echoed in the void, as a circular light-blue Teleportation Array, adorned with intricate and lavish patterns, materialized on the floor, from which a group of men and women appeared out of thin air.

Leading them was a stern-faced, unsmiling Caucasian middle-aged man, dressed in a woolen black coat, holding an Elder Wand, his sideburns meticulously groomed.

Level 35, [Mobius]

And behind him, the men and women were also the mainstay of the Bell Tower Guild, all above Level 25. Among them was Nikola.

"Mr. Mobius."

The Chancellor knew the man before him; he was one of the eight Great Mages of the Bell Tower Guild's Arcane Council, also a Grandmaster of the Spellcasting System, and the guild's secretary, overseeing finances and intelligence.

A Level 35 Transcendent was already halfway into the threshold of top-tier powerhouses,

The Chancellor sighed with relief, cautiously asking: "Lord Hornheim now..."

"You're out of luck, the president and the other six Great Mages of the Arcane Council are exploring the killing field and are temporarily uncontactable. The observatory is currently under the charge of [Merlin],"

Mobius replied calmly. The headquarters of the Bell Tower Guild is set 9 kilometers southeast of Whitehall at the Greenwich Observatory, and usually isolated from the real-world observatory by Space Magic.

Tourists visiting the Greenwich Observatory and Bell Tower members enter and exit the same place without mutual impact.

As Mobius spoke, Nikola and the other mages were already wielding their Magic Wands, casting spells to reinforce the underground bunker.

Among them, several formed a circle, collaboratively releasing beams of light from their Magic Wands, weaving a three-dimensional map of 1,500 square kilometers of London City. Every faint blue dot symbolized a human being.

Eight or nine million people in London City,

Despite Britain's history causing the Bengal Famine, the Chalisa Famine, the Skelph Famine, the Agra Famine, the Irish Famine, twelve Indian Famines, the Bengal Famine,

Despite Queen Victoria's solo kill-death assist ratio being more than the total of ranks two to ten combined,

Despite Britain being the first in the Boer War in South Africa to invent concentration camps, inspiring a certain unnamed art student,

Despite Churchill saying, "With or without famine, Indians breed like rabbits,"

Despite the modern British government covering up decades of imported AIDS blood from the United States, experimenting on its own infected children,

None of that matters,

What matters is, the friends and family of the Whitehall elite, the London gentlemen under the Union Jack, haven't had time to evacuate the city yet!