A group of coolly dressed drow female soldiers surrounded a drow mage and floated down from the tall city wall and landed in front of the truck.

“Stop!”

Following a voice in elvish with a slight accent, a drow soldier came forward with a scimitar in hand and shouted to stop them.

Thorin stepped on the brakes and did not run over the other person.

Scorpion gestured to Thorin, and Thorin immediately opened the car door.

"Friends from Obsidian City, we are adventurers who have unfortunately fallen. Can you tell us how to return to the surface?"

Using the elven language with the same accent, Scorpion tried hard to reach some kind of deal with the drow on the opposite side.

"Humph! A degenerate who covets the prosperity of human society!"

Without directly answering Scorpion's words, the drow soldier snorted coldly and looked at the Scorpion in front of him with great disdain.

However, the drow wizard behind her reached out and pulled her behind him, then asked Scorpion, "You need to provide property corresponding to the intelligence, weapons or food are also acceptable.

But I must say in advance that the journey to the surface is very dangerous, and there are many monsters living there."

Hearing this, Scorpion narrowed his eyes slightly and looked again at the situation of these drow in front of him.

"Their weapons are a little damaged and their clothes are messy. They must have just experienced a battle not long ago?"

Scorpion's experience as an intelligence officer gave her certain analytical abilities. Through some clues, she immediately discovered the abnormality of the group of people in front of her.

'She just said that we should exchange money, weapons or food for information.

Food? This kind of thing shouldn't be that hard to get in the Underdark. Wait, we don't seem to have encountered any living creatures along the way. Is Obsidian City short of food?'

Thinking quickly, Scorpion said: "The collapse we encountered was very sudden, and we don't have much property on us. How much do you hope to get? Let's see if we can gather it together."

Without first questioning whether the information provided by the other party was true, Scorpion tried to use these words to determine the other party's true purpose.

She, Baine, and Thorin had experienced food shortages before, and in that situation, money had become a burden.

Sure enough, these words caused a commotion among some soldiers in the opposite team.

But the drow mage quickly raised his hand to suppress his voice, and then continued: "You can take out some of the things I mentioned and let me see their quality, or you can hire us."

At this point, the drow mage emphasized: "The road to the surface is very dangerous!"

Out of the instinct of an excellent intelligence collector and bargaining expert, Scorpion planned to talk more with the other party to test his patience, but at this moment, an explosion suddenly sounded in the Obsidian City.

The pupils of the drow mage and her subordinates shrank, and they instinctively wanted to find a place to hide.

Just as Carl and others were wondering about the other party's current performance, several huge flames rose from the city.

Carl and his companions had often seen this scene when they were traveling a few days ago. At that time, they thought it was some tradition of Obsidian City.

Along with the appearance of those huge fireballs, some huge figures with red skin jumped out of the flames.

They held huge machetes that were almost as tall as themselves, and orange-red flames surrounded them and their weapons.

As soon as they jumped out of the flames, they fell rapidly downwards with cruel smiles.

The machete heated to an orange-yellow color by high temperature was swung so hard that afterimages appeared. The drow mage and drow soldiers quickly hid under the city wall, trembling all over.

Although we don't know what exactly happened in Obsidian City, it's obviously not a good thing.

In order to avoid being affected, Scorpion quickly returned to the truck. The truck transformed from a mecha and her husband Bane could give her enough sense of security.

"What on earth happened?"

Lying on the steering wheel, Thorin muttered to himself in confusion.

He had already recognized who those giant red-skinned figures were; they were the nobles of the Elemental Plane of Fire - the Fire Giants.

Perhaps because of the violent nature of the fire element, these vile creatures are extremely aggressive and are also the giants that love to raise slaves the most.

Most intelligent creatures in the entire Elemental Plane of Fire are slaves of the Fire Giants, and they even try to enslave super-giant fire elementals.

The sounds of fighting within the city wall soon stopped, and the fire giants that jumped out of the flames left one after another after a brief killing.

Perhaps stimulated by the fire giant’s behavior just now, the drow mage and her companions were a little anxious this time.

Seeing that the noise in the city gradually calmed down, they quickly ran to the truck and beat the hull of the truck with all their might.

"As long as you provide food! We will try to escort you out of here!"

Instead of taking out the food for his own people, Carl used the grain-making technique to provide these drow with plenty of dry food and fresh water.

This drow team consists of a drow wizard and eight drow soldiers, and the food-making technique can produce enough food to satisfy the normal appetite of at least 15 people.

Moreover, the food produced by this spell is clean and there is no possibility of poisoning.

Carl used a magical device called optical camouflage to cover the truck and the land around it, and the drow sat on the ground and ate their dry food and water.

"What on earth is going on in your Obsidian City?"

Wearing a full set of power armor, Carl clasped his arms across his chest and asked a group of drow about the situation inside.

The drow mage wanted to change the subject, but he suddenly thought of something and after pausing for a few seconds, he continued to explain the matter truthfully.

“After we settled here, we from Obsidian City embarked on a completely different path from the rest of our people. We used the abundant fire elements in this place to practice and became firebenders who could freely manipulate flames.

However, just a few decades ago, a group of drow sorcerers who regarded the fire giant as their leader came to Obsidian City.

They claimed to be the drow who left here hundreds of years ago because of a failed struggle, and defeated the firebenders in the city with the help of the power of the fire giants.

Over the years, they have controlled Obsidian City.

But a few years ago, they suddenly announced that Obsidian City would have a comprehensive marriage with the Fire Giants, and all female drow must be pregnant with Fire Giant children. "

At this point, the expression on the drow mage's face became somewhat uncertain.

"Many drow who disagreed with this were exiled. We thought this situation would come to an end temporarily, but as more and more drow were exiled, those sorcerers actually summoned the fire giants to the main plane! From then on, we became slaves of the fire giants. They would kill the male drow in the city at will. In less than two years, almost all of the few male drow were killed by them."

At this moment, Scorpion asked his own question with some confusion: "Then why don't you run away?"

Hearing this, the drow mage looked up at her with a complicated expression.

"Because we saw the miserable plight of those exiles! Before those sorcerers implemented this decree, they had already asked the fire giants to summon countless monsters from the elemental plane of fire to occupy the passage out of this cave.

Most of those monsters were immune to fire, and the Obsidian City, which once represented the strongest firebender, was helpless against them.

Moreover, in the entire cave, only Obsidian City produces food. If we leave here, we won’t even be able to survive until we get out.”

"Tsk, that's really miserable."

Shaking his head, Carl looked at these drow and couldn't help feeling sad for them.

"You are a good rogue, why are you playing with fire? You are being targeted now, right? If you still maintain the original tradition and inherit the rogue training method from giants and elves, you won't be so defeated by the fire giants!"

Even a wizard from the School of Evolution would not learn only one move, Fireball. But this group of drow actually wanted to become the king by relying on fire magic alone.

Karl continued, thinking: "How did you escape? I saw that those fire giants were so brutal. If you dared to run, how come you were not caught by them?"

When this was mentioned, the drow mage showed a guilty expression on his face.

"We are responsible for guarding the city wall. In fact, there is nothing worth defending, but Obsidian City is occasionally attacked by giant fire elementals or earth elementals. We found you and wanted to escape. We escaped after knocking out the other diehards.

Those sorcerers and fire giants thought they controlled the only food source in the cave, so they didn't care about those who tried to defect, because according to past experience, the defectors would escape back soon. "

The drow mage did not continue to say how the defectors who returned would be treated, but everyone could guess.

"In that case, you can act as our guides, but you cannot sit in the car."

People can actually sit on the roof of the truck, but the temperature outside is really touching.

"No problem! As long as you can provide food!"

After temporarily relaxing their vigilance against these drow, everyone immediately set out and headed in the direction they pointed.

During this period, Carl deliberately allowed the truck's optical camouflage to remain on for a while longer.

He didn't remove the optical camouflage until he felt that the people of Obsidian City couldn't see him with the naked eye.

Carl and the others did not believe all of the drow's words. After all, the situation in Obsidian City was obviously problematic, and they certainly could not go in to verify it.

Just like that, with vigilance and expectation, Carl and others set out again towards the so-called passage back to the surface.

In the Obsidian City behind them, the fire giants would still appear from time to time above the city, but these had nothing to do with the journey of Carl and others for the time being.

(End of this chapter)