Volume 3: The Land of Mist Chapter 5 Their Later Life (Part 2)
Today is the third of the Rainy Moon. The next day will be the day when the crazy fool Valk is summoned, and it is also the annual April Fool's Day carnival.
Compared to the martial law scenes when William came here several times before, the order on the streets of Thorn City has basically returned to normal. At least there are no more black-armored Thorn Black Guards patrolling the streets and searching for Moon Realm believers, causing panic among the people.
Perhaps because April Fools' Day was approaching, merchants were selling bamboo pieces and cardboard everywhere in the market. Many children in dirty and ragged clothes held a few crumpled copper nars in their hands, buying the raw materials for making beggar crowns from the merchants.
For children living in the slums, April Fools' Day or Beggar King's Day is one of the few festivals that belong to them in a year. On this day, as long as they wear a woven beggar's crown, they can go to the streets to ask for food and money from those who look rich without worrying about being rejected or retaliated.
In fact, in order to maintain order in the city on April Fool's Day, nobles in many places on the continent of Wick would even send special personnel to distribute food to the slums on that day.
Thinking of this, William couldn't help but feel a strong sense of irony.
The Void Kings of the Moon Realm are undoubtedly the greatest enemies of all intelligent creatures in the world, but their existence has indirectly prompted progress in certain areas of the world.
After all, who could have imagined that a joke that Valk used to mock power would evolve into a festival that brings some benefits to the poor over the centuries?
As a world where individual strength can create a huge gap, this world does not have the basic conditions for launching a revolution from the bottom up. Since the Black Iron Age, which is the first recorded history of the Vic Continent, there have been more than 12,000 years of civilization, but for nearly 8,000 years of that time, the political structure of mankind was in the most primitive and ignorant tribal system.
After all, the rule of the families that inherited the divine blood and witchcraft secrets was unshakable, so naturally they lacked the motivation to change their lifestyle. Even now, the use of extraordinary power has largely gotten rid of the reliance on blood inheritance, and the system of magic-related knowledge is no longer a secret, but knowledge that can be spread in public, but absolute power is still in the hands of a few powerful people.
Because of this, the political system of the entire continent is still in the medieval structure. And most rulers are not that concerned about the living conditions of their subjects - compared to the threat that they might bring about by their uprising, the threat that they might be chosen as a joke by the Mad Jester on April Fool's Day and have their identities swapped with an unknown beggar is greater.
It is so great that it can suddenly make them feel compassionate and willing to personally humble themselves to comfort the poor in the slums on this day.
Not only that, in the past when the threat of the Moon Realm was within reach, the major kingdoms on the continent of Vic were afraid that the war would intensify the power of the war lord, the King of Dead Blood, and feed back into the human world. Therefore, they always maintained an extremely restrained and conservative attitude towards war.
However, after the End Watchers sealed the last Moon Realm rift in the entire continent, theoretically completely cutting off the Moon Realm's influence on the Vic Continent, the nations that lost their worries instead ignited their interest in war, which directly led to the chaos of the Age of Kings for the next two hundred years.
From this perspective, the King of Dead Blood, the illusory king who symbolizes war, violence, and blood, is actually the greatest guardian of world peace.
The destruction caused by the malice of mortals in this world is no worse than that of the Void Kings. At least back then, the Void Kings failed to kill Du Wei, the "Lord of the Separatist" who was the second in command.
Thinking of this, William felt a sense of emotion.
As the name suggests, "Fort Lord" means "Lord of Twilight Fortress". As a Watcher of the End, Du Wei's qualifications are even deeper than William himself. In the game, the protagonist inherited the will of the previous Chief Judge. When he first came to Twilight Fortress, Du Wei was one of the last two remaining Watchers of the End.
In the early stage of the game story, he and another person acted as guides for William the new player. Du Wei was responsible for supervising and operating everything in the Twilight Fortress and publishing the main storyline related to it, while the other person was responsible for publishing the main storyline of collecting the Judgment Arms throughout the continent. In the middle of the game, the developer would maliciously choose which player to be the victim of the plot and die in the first invasion of the Moon Realm based on which side's mission progress was faster.
However, this oldest End Watcher, who had survived three Moon Wars and fought against Moon monsters all his life, eventually died at the hands of his own people in the present world.
But who killed him?
When William asked this question, Blake said he didn't know either.
In terms of motivation, "Lionheart" Byron, whose proposals have always been rejected by the other party, has the most reason to do so, while in terms of ability, "Shadow" Kos is the most likely person to do it.
Not only that, in addition to the internal members of the Tribunal, under the complicated situation of the Vic Continent at that time, there were countless forces that had the reason and ability to do this. Even... Although the Moon Realm has been blocked from the world, it is not impossible for the Void Kings to manipulate their remaining believers in the world to complete the assassination.
But no matter who was behind the assassination of the Second Seat of the Judgment Seat, if the other party hoped to use this to stir up chaos in the entire Vic continent, then it can be said that his goal was fully achieved.
Just like when Jackdaw ran away, the death of the Second in Command once again broke the balance. The four people who could not trust each other tore the End Watcher apart once again.
In other words, the End Watchers were completely divided at this point.
"Lionheart" Byron supported the most powerful Kos Empire at the time according to his previous plan. "Shadow" Kos disappeared after dismissing the Black Sword. "Discipline" Markus locked himself in a dark room for a year and returned to the Holy Spirit Church. Windcaller "Jay" supported the royal family of the Storm Kingdom to stabilize the situation.
When William heard this, he couldn’t help but cover his face.
Isn't this the worst choice?
From the perspective of William, a person from another world, with the assistance of magic, which can far surpass the current social technology, after losing the shadow of the threat from the Moon Realm, the Wick Continent will undoubtedly establish a unified country sooner or later, and this is also the only way for magic to be further popularized.
During this process, the End Watchers, who possess absolute power at the beginning, can choose to disband on the spot and not participate, or they can act as arbitrators to supervise the war so that it does not get out of control, or they can even personally choose to support the reliable party to quickly complete the unification process and reduce unnecessary casualties.
But no matter what you choose to do, you must be decisive.
Because the worst option is to hesitate and try to take everything into consideration, which will eventually lead to the entire team becoming a mess and each team fighting on their own. This will not only fail to solve the problem faster, but will increase the intensity of the conflict by several levels.
And this is exactly the choice they made.
Although judging from the final result, the End Watchers did end up in the end. But they did not play the final role, but instead added pressure to several forces, making them feel that "their destiny is here", which further fueled the situation on the continent.
At this point, the entire continent completely entered the Age of Kings, which lasted for more than two hundred years. As for what happened after that, including the final outcome of the last four members of the Council of Five and the events of the Terran Expedition, Blake, who lost consciousness during the promotion ceremony, did not know much.
"The last time I regained consciousness in the Moon Realm was after the conquest of Terra. At that time, I felt thirteen Moon Realm rifts opened at the same time, and the power of thirteen Void Kings extended to the continent. I originally thought that the Moon Realm was about to launch an invasion of the real world, so I sent my own familiars into the real world, hoping to find the former members of the Tribunal to remind them to prepare. However, in the end, I only found Remedios in Ava..."
"She told me that there is a person with a temperament similar to yours, Judge, but definitely not you, who has appeared on the continent. He has unified the entire Vic continent and is currently gathering a fleet to cross the Broken Sea, intending to bring the entire Ava continent under the rule of the new empire."
William walked in the bazaar of Thorn City, silently recalling Blake's last description.
Blake's memories after he was promoted to the Father of Crows were extremely fragmented, so his description of this period of history seemed a bit discontinuous.
Blake paused for a moment before continuing:
"My consciousness became completely blurred after the storm started. I only remember seeing Remedios shoot Terra Riel's head with an arrow from the Glazed Moon on the warship. It was impossible for that person to return to the empire alive."
As William had tested before, the damage caused by spells or anything else could not be completely equivalent to the data in the game. It was like William in the game, with his high enough dodge and resistance, the damage caused by the low-level character, even if he stood there and let others cut him, he might not lose any blood even after several hours.
But if William himself gave up all resistance now, made no attempt to dodge, revoked all his regular defensive techniques, took off all his equipment, and stretched out his neck for a new soldier to chop with an iron sword, he would undoubtedly die.
When I was hit by Coles' "big cover", I also wore the [Blue Shining Ring] which was specifically designed to deal with lightning damage.
Therefore, if Terra Riel was really hit hard on the head by an arrow from "Liuliyue" as Blake described, there should be no reason for him to live to the end of his life as recorded in historical records.
Very problematic...the so-called founding emperor who claimed to be his own reincarnation.
After passing through the market and going around several streets, William arrived at the lower city area of Thorn City.
The so-called downtown area is actually a slum.
A few skinny children were huddled in a corner weaving crude beggar's crowns. When they saw William coming over, they couldn't help but look at him a few more times.
Because he knew he was going to the slums, in order not to attract attention, William specially chose a set of the simplest clothes from the treasure hall, which was called [Poor People's Clothing]. Poor quality fabrics, rough workmanship, William thought he could perfectly blend into the environment nearby, but when he really came, he found that he was still too naive.
Walking into a slum in this outfit is like walking into a tavern in a tuxedo.
Among the children, a particularly thin one hesitated for a while, put the unfinished crown in his hand on his head, then walked to William with light steps as if walking on cotton, and stretched out his hand to him.
William didn't have a wallet, and his storage space only had a lot of gold coins from a thousand years ago. So he hesitated for a moment, reached into the lining of his clothes, and pretended to take out a small piece of Baranno biscuit and put it in the child's hand.
The other party looked at the white triangle-shaped food in his hand and blinked in confusion.
"Eat it now."
William said in a gentle but commanding tone.
It goes without saying which is safer: a child from the slums takes a piece of baranno, which is specially provided to the nobles, to exchange for money, or eats it directly to fill his stomach.
The other party nodded and swallowed the cookie in one gulp. Then he immediately widened his eyes and a look of surprise appeared on his face.
“This… this is…”
The child spoke incoherently, perhaps because his taste buds felt an unprecedented shock.
William didn't say much about this. He just turned around and picked up a child who was trying to steal something from his waist, then smiled and shook his head at him.
Then William loosened his hand and watched the children - including the one who had begged from him before - run away.
“How sad…”
William sighed slightly.
The magic in this world can cut through mountains, boil rivers and lakes, and cause raging storms, but the vast majority of people in this world still have to dig for food in the land.
This world shouldn't be like this.
William did not try to catch up with the children, nor did he plan to provide any relief here. He did not even plan to go back and ask Vincent to improve the situation in the lower city of Thorn City.
Doing so might save a few people, a few streets, or even the poor people of the entire Thorn City, but that's all .
If we don’t solve the more fundamental problems, helping more people now will only be a drop in the ocean.
In order not to attract attention, William used shadow spells to hide his figure this time, and then jumped into the sewer of Thorn City from a hidden location.
After wandering around the sewage treatment network for several times, he finally arrived at his destination.
Uncovering the shadows, he knocked on a secret door at the end of the passage.
The observation hole on the secret door lit up slightly, and when it was seen that the person coming was William, the door opened immediately.
It was Nezemar who opened the door.
"Saint...Lord Cain."
The other party almost couldn't stop talking again.
William didn't bother to be polite with her, but asked directly:
"What are the current results? The Thorn City Magic Network 1.0 Project."
