What did you do with the dice?

Alice then revealed an expression of admitting her mistake: "I'm sorry, I just offended you. I'm sorry, Madam Lord."

Okay, it’s a great help to admit one’s mistakes and improve oneself. Rusalka forgave her.

Alice turned around and pointed at Sanitieta. "Can I get similar treatment to him? I know that. The intelligence mentioned that he's your mage staff member, right? I'm also a mage. I was once ranked in the top three in school. Why don't you be my staff member? I can even command the other companions who join you and be your captain for a while, hehe."

Rusalka sighed, turned to Phoenix and said, "How about you do it, Phoenix? Tell everyone that she choked to death while eating and give her a proper burial."

Sanita: "I second the motion."

Alice: OAO?

----

Next, after asking Alice about the number of people who came here and their plans, they felt that they could not get to know the secrets above. Feeling that there was nothing left to ask, everyone went to take a look at the archer Shana.

Well, the empty plate, the girl pretending to be asleep, Alice is not lying.

"Stop pretending. I know you're just pretending to be asleep."

Shana opened her eyes, tugged at the chains on her hands and feet, snorted coldly at the crowd, and said calmly: "No matter what you do to me, I will not surrender. Even if my body is defiled, my pure soul will always belong to the God of Nature."

Rushakana was puzzled: (Why does she look so excited?)

Sunita: (Probably... because it's an elf.)

Rusalka: (Well, it's an elf after all.)

So Rusalka asked Phoenix to take out a pitch-black, mosaic-covered, wriggling thing. Sure enough, when Shana saw this thing, she was so scared that she dared not move, for fear that the opponent would pass the card. No, she felt fear out of biological instinct.

"What...what do you want to do?"

"The cell feels so clean, so I wanted to put some of this here as decoration."

"Damn it, just ask!"

"what?"

"Ah? Aren't you trying to get information by torturing me?"

"No, I just wanted to throw a G, Phoenix..."

"You devil! Don't throw it, don't throw it, ahhhh!"

In the end, Rusalka didn't do such a cruel thing. Instead, she said before leaving: "Dinner time is 7 o'clock. There may be extra cream cakes tonight. What should I do with them?"

Shana swallowed imperceptibly but said nothing.

"Forget it, let's give it all to the elven wizard next door."

Shana couldn't help but: "Why?!"

Rusalka: "Why? Because she is prettier than you."

After saying that, he was kicked by Phoenix.

Shana was anxious: "You bastard, can't you let me have a good meal before I die?"

"I told you, because she's prettier than you."

After saying that, Rusalka took Sanita and Phoenix away, leaving only the frantic sound of chains colliding behind them.

Rusalka: (It's so fun to tease the elves, even more fun than playing Tata with them.)

Sanita: (Indeed, at night Phoenix will let you know that everything has a price, including happiness.)

Rusalka: Oo

Chapter 146 Journalism

A "prison escape" plan was arranged for the little wizard, and it was agreed that the action would be carried out in three days.

When she passed by Sana's cell with a bunch of "cream cakes" as a reward, she saw her jealous eyes and the way she wanted to speak but her self-esteem and pride did not allow her to beg Rusalka. This made Rusalka feel good again. But when she thought about releasing her in a few days, she felt a little reluctant.

Sanita: (Escape from prison is one thing, just pretend. It’s better not to let them hurt others.)

Rusalka recalled the look in Shana's eyes when she looked at the cake and nodded: "Then I'll order someone to protect the cake shop on the commercial street in the city center."

Sanita was confused by Rusalka's inexplicable thoughts.

The next day, Rusalka had nothing to do, so he got out of bed at noon. In the afternoon, he sat in the office with Phoenix in his arms, who was sitting on his lap. Opposite him was the Sani Tower. He looked at the map spread out on the table, took out some war games and snacks, and discussed the next strategic arrangements.

Before the show started, Rusalka naturally introduced some irrelevant topics: "Is the weather getting colder? I've been feeling chilly lately, or maybe someone is missing me."

Rusalka added in the PL channel: (Probably my little wife Theresa.)

Sanita laid out the chess pieces and markers on the map one by one. Since you couldn't just write or draw on a strategic map, he had to use these things as markers. As he did so, he replied to Rusalka's small talk: "I think you're losing your mind due to the heat. It's summer now."

Rusalka's tone then became a bit puzzled: "A cold snap in late summer? That's new."

Sanita: "You are truly incredible, in every sense of the word. Okay, I'm ready, let's get started. The following is the story: the conscription and training over the past six months has enabled us to deploy a total of approximately 3 soldiers to the battlefield.

While our equipment is excellent, our soldiers are inexperienced, with 20,000 of them being new recruits. Fortunately, the borderlands are full of martial virtue, so this doesn't matter. However, some of these recruits have seen combat before, but haven't been regular soldiers, making it more difficult to integrate them. Therefore, if your initial plan is to march westward, capturing cities along the way, and ultimately conquering the Marquis's city, then I can only say that your idea is basically a failure.

Therefore, if we want to fight, we can only find a way to lure the enemy into the valley or jungle, and in the encounter outside the city, we will deplete the enemy's manpower as much as possible."

Rusalka sighed, "Sigh, why is it that in fantasy games, high-skilled armies are always given away with a single click? Landing on a deserted island at the start, you get a beautiful fox priestess and a mermaid wizard wife with a single click. Legendary equipment is instantly available when you go out to sea. Landing on the vast land of Cuileng Territory gives you access. Rare tribes can be tricked into the snowy mountains with bananas. High-end combat power is captured directly by passing mythical beasts. This army is all picked up along the way. I've never seen one trained by themselves, and there are zero casualties in battle.

The most important thing is that I really like reading that book, and I’m eager to try it out.

How can I describe the feeling after experiencing it... It's like suddenly realizing that the world I live in was designed by Hidetaka Miyazaki.

Rusalka saw Phoenix, who was in her arms, shaking his ears, as if trying to comfort him or remind him that she still existed.

This originally heartwarming scene didn't stop him from itching. "Okay, I picked up the cat, but why are you only giving it away as a gift? So stingy? If I had a few more powerful cats like Phoenix, I would have taken over Alice City long ago."

As soon as he finished speaking, he was hit in the face by a series of slaps from the tail by Phoenix, who was sitting in his arms and snorting softly.

Sanitieta smiled and said, "Want to get troops and experts for free? Of course there is a way. What I'm going to talk about next is the plan of 'announcing that the Crown Prince is in your hands.'"

Rusalka touched Phoenix's ear. "I'm not very intelligent, so don't lie to me. I know this idea is really good. After all, there's no evidence after death, and the El Empire is far away, so it's difficult to dispel the rumor. But the Seven Sins Church had already released the news of the Grand Prince's death, and several archdukes with their own ulterior motives acquiesced to this information. Even if we suddenly reversed the verdict, Marquis Banner is already dead, so I guess no one would believe it.

What's more, other parts of the Snidi Kingdom now view me as a 'traitor who sided with Esidi'. I was once a small baron, but I gained this land entirely thanks to the Esidi army. Will people think that I have the prince in my hands? How is that possible?

Sanitta: "Alas, that's not the case. Whether a lie will be believed depends on how much you are willing to invest in it. If all your actions are in the service of 'restoring the Sinidi Royal Family,' then the existence of the Grand Prince is actually irrelevant."

Rusalka: "Okay, I'll trust you this time. How do I do it?"

Sanitta: "Brother, would I lie to you? Come, write a few letters as I tell you, and send them to the homes of nobles above the rank of earl and to Alice City. After that, I will go out and spread the contents of the letters, and everything will be done."

Rusalka: "Ah, why can't we just create a group, pull in all the noble family heads above the rank of Marquis of Sinidi, and then at all of them? It's really inconvenient to have to write so many letters. Okay, what should we write, and how many letters should we write?"

Sanita: "Let's prepare ten first. It's not a lot. Each letter is only about 400 to 500 words."

Upon hearing this, Rusalka imitated Tang Keke's fainting expression and leaned back in her chair. "Can I apply to use the printer? If I don't have one, go build me one with your magic."

Phoenix was very considerate and wanted to share Rusalka's burden: "I can help write it."

Rusalka thought this was unreliable and decided to just endure the hardship. "Your handwriting is different from mine. If they compare it, won't it be exposed? I'll just write it. I don't have anything to do anyway."

Phoenix said calmly, "I can imitate handwriting. I wrote your father's suicide note."

Phoenix's words left the two of them silent. Wow, this ancient mystery was finally solved today. They were wondering why Rusalka's adoptive father left a suicide note for him to inherit the estate. They thought it was just a casual blame on the "setting", but they didn't expect that this thing was imitated by Phoenix.

Since it had been brought up, Rushaka simply asked, "Then why did you leave that suicide note?"

"Because I want to stay here, compared to Lord Ropa, your words are more..." Phoenix couldn't find a good adjective. The tips of her ears drooped. After thinking for a while, she uttered a word: "Ignorance."

Although he knew that she was not scolding him, nor was she talking about his current self, but that under the circumstances at that time, finding someone who knew nothing about the matter to inherit the Pearl Tear Territory would make it easier for Phoenix to continue to hide her identity in the Pearl Tear Territory family.

But Rusalka felt that she was still mentally hurt and needed the cat's kiss to recover.

Sanitta coughed dryly, interrupting the interaction between the two who were about to enter pink time: "Write a declaration of war, stating that war is being declared against the Three Dukes and the Church of the Seven Sins at the same time."

Rusalka: "Huh? I beat all of Sinidi? Really? Are you crazy or did I hear it wrong?"

Sanitieta nodded and said, "Yes, ordinary people would think you are crazy after seeing this notice. But think about it the other way around. If you are not a lunatic, but a person who can rise from a small baron to a great marquis who has taken over the entire eastern border in a short period of time, then what is the meaning behind this declaration of war?

It's easy to guess. Either you plan to quit acting altogether and become Esidi's dog; or, you must have something else to rely on. Does this reliance just happen to coincide with the prince you mentioned earlier?"

Rusalka also understood what Sanitieta meant. If you announce a true piece of information, there will always be nitpickers or official intelligence officers in the world who will attack its authenticity from various angles, saying that it can be identified as false at a glance, making the information you said with good intentions seem plausible, and ordinary people who want to know it will be confused and become unbelievable.

However, when people discover that a piece of information is so false and outrageous that it cannot be more false, the rebellious psychology in ordinary people will take over and they will begin to doubt whether this is actually true information.

At this time, those who are trying to confuse the waters have nothing to say. You say this thing is fake, but it has already made it clear to you that it is fake, and you have nothing to add.

But you can't say it's true, because your position is to say it's false.

There will always be people who firmly believe that this thing is true, and their argument angle will be very rogue, in order to highlight their sense of superiority. This kind of argument is often impossible to prove, so most people will have an attitude of "doubt it is true" towards the news.

Anyway, this theory of "telling the truth and believing the lie, telling the lie and believing the truth" is very magical. It is very effective even in the 21st century when the Internet is very developed.

Most people don’t need to see any evidence. After hearing a friend talk about an outrageous piece of information and subjectively telling him that this thing is indeed possible, they will subconsciously think, "Oh, this thing might be true. Has it been officially debunked? Then it is more likely to be true! It’s just that we can’t see the evidence with our own eyes."

What ordinary people think about the matter is of course not important. What is important is that if more people follow the crowd, the loyalists may really send people to test whether the eldest prince is on Rusalka's side.

After tricking people over, what needs to be proved is not whether the "Grand Prince is here or not", but from another angle, it is enough to prove to them that "Rusalka's behavior is loyal to the royalists". Based on Rusalka's current family background, she can really get support and surrender.

Sanitta firmly believed that if he couldn't convince the other party, it must be because his rhetoric was not sophisticated enough and his performance as a bard still had room for improvement.

Of course, the declaration of war is official intelligence, and the eldest prince cannot be mentioned in it, otherwise it will be too fake in the eyes of those high-level officials. They are different from ordinary people. With their intelligence network, they will not be deceived by such petty scams.

Of course, Sanitita had a backup plan. He was going to spread the following news among the people: Rusalka would soon end his cooperation with Esdi, and personally lead Sinidi's troops to escort the eldest prince to Alice City. He would use the key that was said to be usable only by those of royal blood to open the door to the kingdom of the Lord of Arcana, and with the Lord of Arcana's absolute and just will, he would wipe out all of Sinidi's traitors.

Since the function of the key has not been made public yet, Sanita's false information of "I already know the purpose of the key" will make people say things like "There really is a prince here in Rusalka, otherwise how do you explain that he knows the purpose of the key?"

This is what so-called simple journalism is like: fabricating facts out of thin air is the first step, adding "real arguments" to this false information is the second step, and spreading the news to the right people is the third step.

The fourth step is to achieve the purpose of spreading the news, and then fade the fake news itself from people's sight - it doesn't matter whether you can fish or not, as long as the fish in the fish basket can be used to calculate the competition results. Anyway, once the competition is over and the reward is obtained, there is no way to find out whether the fish in the fish basket were caught by me personally.

It didn't matter whether there was a Grand Prince or not. What mattered was that Rusalka had used this intelligence to gain the reputation and army of the royalists and pacify the Kingdom of Sneidi. After doing all this, even if there was no Grand Prince, what would it matter? Who agreed and who opposed?

Well, the above is the plan given by Sanita. Although the future looks bright, it is still in the stage of realizing the first step. I hope Rusalka can actively cooperate and not give up.

Rusalka: "What if they really decide to stabilize the country before fighting foreign enemies? For example, Grand Duke Delai believes that I really have the eldest prince, so he decided to turn around and deal with people like me first."

Sanitieta shook his finger and said with a smile, "If you only declare war on his family, he might come directly to attack you; but if you declare war on everyone at once, he really won't come specifically to deal with you.

Because in his eyes, you're a fool who's isolated and helpless. So what if you have the prince? Since you've already lost the possibility of forming an alliance with anyone, and you insist on using the royal family as a pretext, claiming you don't want to rely on Esdie's name to go to Alice City, then even Esdie will definitely not give you his full support.

In this situation, you are basically no threat. You have changed from a hidden danger behind your own back that may cooperate with any force to stab him in the back at any time to a neutral wild monster. As long as they don't give you the opportunity to approach Alice City, they will have time to kill you whenever they want.

Think about it, although we have unified the border, in the eyes of the Grand Duke, I am just a border marquis. How many divisions do you have? And you still want to go to Alice City? Once you leave your city, he can send two marquises to pin you down at the border and make you unable to move. It won't be too late to deal with you after he takes Alice City.

Sanitieta was speaking the truth, but Rusalka was about to start rebelling. "Are these predictions you're making really true? What if he just wants to kill me first to vent his anger? How can you be so sure he'll follow your lead? If it were me, I'd definitely turn my gun around and kill you first. Wouldn't you be furious?"

Sanitieta threw up his hands helplessly. "Sure, then if he does what you say, it means he's just like you, with an IQ of 5 who doesn't consider the overall situation. He's pulling the main force back from the front lines just to save face. Honestly, his decision is just like the recent decision of the Seven Sins Church. Three defeats in three battles isn't unreasonable. We can just do whatever we want with a little planning. You can fight however you want, wherever I tell you to. Follow my command, and we're guaranteed to win."

Rusalka was so angry that his face turned red, but he also knew that he was the one who started the argument. To be honest, if he spoke from his conscience, what his brother said was indeed completely correct.

Phoenix smiled. Although she couldn't understand most of the conversation between the two, she inexplicably enjoyed listening to Sanitieta's intellectual attacks on Rusalka.

Phoenix was happy, so Rusalka naturally couldn't be angry anymore. But when he thought about what made Phoenix happy, he always felt that he was carrying too much.

Fortunately, it seemed that the great system also noticed Rusalka's contradictory psychology, so a prompt popped up here to cheer him up.

【The progress point has been updated.】

【Please select the progress reward. 】

(Author's note: The book Rusalka mentioned is "Beast Blood Boils," an ancient novel, but it's really great.)

Chapter 147 I don’t know, I found it

Progress points, this thing was given once at the beginning, but it has never been given again since the game went on.

However, there had been no fighting recently, and it even felt like they had done nothing but training, resting, and recuperating in the city. However, this prompt popped up inexplicably, and for a moment, both Sanitieta and Rusalka were a little confused.

The main selector of this award is Rusalka.

Sanita: (What did you do again?)

Rusalka cracked a dirty joke: (No, if you insist on saying what it was, it could only be Phoenix. Or maybe I picked up something unwanted on the road and triggered this thing. Just treat it as a system bug! Open the treasure!)

[Progress point rewards are as follows:]

[1. High-ranking Lord: When engaging in homeland warfare, all combat-related aspects of our side will receive a certain degree of improvement, including but not limited to "weapon durability," "morale," "steed stamina and speed," etc. If expressed numerically, this roughly translates to an overall performance increase of approximately 1.34 times.]

[2. War Commander: Obtain a "Legendary Dice". When making a combat decision with specific options, you can use this legendary dice to obtain a "best choice" prompt. The cooldown period for this dice is 3 months.]

3. Legendary Path 2: "Sani Tower" and "Rusalka" each gain a new legendary action, and the effects of the legendary actions are upgraded.

[4. Cannon Fodder Transformation: Increases the training speed of friendly soldiers by 200%-20% (decreases exponentially based on their combat experience and war proficiency), and increases their loyalty.]

[5. Flexible points: 15 free points + 1 upgrade module.]