Malphegor
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MoP: Ch. 24
🕑 Added 2025-01-09 00:36:54 +0000 UTCFuki angrily pounded the wall, his knuckles whitening with each strike.
"Brother Gunther and Brother Sebastian were more than capable of handling a small-scale magic tide... Now we'll need another way to survive the magic tide."
"The capital not only refuses to send reinforcements but is also urging Abel to pay the aid compensation quickly. And that compensation comes from the hands of ordinary people!"
Clearly, they gained no benefit, yet they were forced to pay a high price for aid. And still faced the encroaching crisis of the magic tide!
The more Fuki spoke, the angrier he became, his hands trembling with suppressed fury.
"Two esteemed clerics, and yet they died crossing the Frostwind Plains! Truly...!"
The rest of his words were too vulgar to say aloud in Edgar's presence.
The paladin remained silent for a moment.
Two clerics from the Radiant Church?
Frostwind Plains?
It turned out that even the crisis in Nary Town was, in part, driven by their actions.
Seeing Fuki continue to curse the clerics for being unworthy of their reputation, Edgar suddenly thought, Perhaps the information he has is not as comprehensive as I first imagined...
He coughed lightly. "The only solution for Nary Town is to prepare another aid payment and seek help from another power. Is that why Abel has imposed heavy taxes and levies?"
It was already mid-summer, so help from the capital could not be counted on.
By the time reinforcements arrived, Nary Town would be long gone.
The best course of action was to seek shelter from the nearby Ironstone City.
If the town's defenses were breached, the next town in the magic tide's path would be theirs.
Thus, if Nary Town offered enough payment, Ironstone City would surely agree to help.
Fuki looked at Edgar with admiration, though tinged with bitterness. "Exactly! Lately, Nary Town's ties with Ironstone City have grown increasingly close! But even with their help, it only gives us a slim chance of survival."
"This winter is destined to be unbearably harsh for most residents of Nary Town!"
Aid didn't mean that Ironstone City would sacrifice everything for Nary Town.
Ironstone City, also within the magic tide's range, couldn't possibly send all their forces to help.
As a border city of the Kingdom of Yoan, Ironstone City didn't have many mages to spare.
At best...
By the end of winter, out of Nary Town's nine hundred residents, perhaps only half would survive!
And now...
Abel was in the process of selecting which among them were doomed to die.
Forcing them out early.
Some creatures in the magic tide carried infectious viruses.
Ordinary people without combat skills would only become burdens during the tide.
Fuki let out a long sigh, shoulders sagging. "Too few people are born with magical talent. Humanity is destined to be defeated under the magic tide."
Magic, after all, was a power held only by a privileged few. Ordinary people had no means to resist the tide.
They could only migrate to harsher environments in Aeltia, struggling to survive.
Edgar was silent for a while, weighing his next words carefully.
"Try heading west. Cross the wasteland and the Duskwind River, and you'll reach Letscher City. Though the city will also face the magic tide, it's a famous mercenary city with considerable strength."
"If you can make it there, you'll survive the winter."
Fuki gave a bitter smile and shook his head. "The monsters roaming the wasteland and the dangers in the Duskwind River—how could ordinary people possibly deal with those?"
"How would you know without trying?" Edgar retorted.
He walked past Fuki, opening the creaky wooden door.
"I'm only giving you a suggestion. Whether you act on it is up to you."
With that, he stepped out the door.
"Wait!" Fuki called out urgently several times, but there was no response. Don't leave us like this... not you too.
Edgar was already far away.
Frustrated, he punched the wooden door. "Damn it!"
The fragile door let out a groan, as if about to collapse.
He furrowed his brow, his mind filled with confusion and doubt.
"Why? Why did the plan go wrong?! Why wouldn't he take in the refugees?!"
He racked his brain but couldn't figure out what had gone awry.
If this man was truly Edgar Raynor, he shouldn't have reacted this way. The former glory of the Knight of Dawn and the heavy shadow of the Fallen Blade were like two insurmountable chasms.
They made the name Edgar Raynor a complex and ambiguous symbol in the eyes of the world.
To ordinary people, he was a traitor.
To those devout to the God of Light, he was an unforgivable apostate!
But Fuki was different.
As a child, he had once witnessed the last gleam of the Knight of Dawn before his fall.
It had been during an ordinary church baptism.
He had briefly interacted with him as the one being baptized.
Back then, the man embodied every ideal of knighthood. Humility, honesty, compassion, bravery, justice, strength... Like a lighthouse guiding believers back to the God of Light and the Age of Gods.
He had already shown signs of becoming the backbone of the Radiant Church.
Though Fuki didn't know why Edgar had betrayed the faith, upon meeting him again, the man's aura hadn't changed. His eyes still shone with clarity.
That was still the Knight of Dawn of old.
Yet now, the righteous knight had chosen to turn a blind eye to the people's suffering?!
"No, something must be wrong!" Fuki shook his head repeatedly, unwilling to accept his inner suspicions.
The knight's indifference to Nary Town's plight was so cold it seemed like none of it mattered to him. True, it really wasn't his concern.
But such behavior was unthinkable for someone committed to the eight virtues of knighthood. And this, despite the fact that his supply list clearly required manpower.
"Could the rumors be true? Has he really become a complete apostate?" Fuki murmured in disbelief.
Having spent years struggling among refugees, he scoffed at the notions of justice and kindness touted by the powerful.
When the lives of the lower classes were at stake, the privileged spoke of their deceit and treachery instead?!
In Aeltia, kindness was the most useless thing!
But he had genuine respect for Edgar, who had once embodied the knightly ideal.
He couldn't live up to it himself, but he respected those who could.
Sadly, it seemed Edgar could no longer do so either...
To witness a former light of humanity fall was like hearing the tragic end of a story.
It left an aching void in one's heart.
Fuki clasped his hands together and closed his eyes in prayer. "O Lord of Insight and the Web, is there truly no hope for humanity?"
Even the Knight of Dawn had turned his back on the faith.
Was humanity, as the gods proclaimed, truly a race incapable of unity, doomed to endless strife and eventual self-destruction?
---Viktor's POV---
Monsters, creatures that mutated and emerged after coming into contact with the remnants of fallen gods.
I've studied them extensively over my centuries of existence. They typically exhibited the following traits: Tremendous magical power, but extremely low intelligence.
Usually, after nesting in one location, they quickly altered the local environment, transforming it into a habitat suitable for their survival.
Thanks to these characteristics, they developed rapidly over the six hundred years following the fall of the gods.
Step by step, they occupied more than half of the territory of Aeltia.
Even dragons find themselves helpless against these creatures—harder to kill than cockroaches and masters of reproduction.
A single careless moment could lead to severe injuries from their relentless attacks.
The good news was, monsters were not without weaknesses.
For example, their mobility was severely limited. Under normal circumstances, most monsters didn't leave the area around their nests.
As long as ordinary people knew how to avoid monster nests, they could avoid 99% of encounters with monsters, except during major monster waves.
Unfortunately, if everyone played it safe, the profession of adventurer wouldn't exist.
The rising death rate in the Great Oak Forest year after year would be impossible to calculate without adventurers providing the denominator.
On average, a mercenary squad perished in the Great Oak Forest every week.
In a way, the outskirts of the the forest were even busier than many small towns in human kingdoms.
I sat on a branch of a massive tree—one that required four people to encircle its trunk—and let out a heavy sigh.
"I did say I came out here to recruit a few reckless fools to be NPCs," I muttered, "but isn't this way too fast?"
Almost immediately after stepping out of Honeyvale Town's magic array, I found bloodstains and footprints nearby.
Following the trail, I located over a dozen people. And every single one of them was at least an intermediate-level mage!
Right now, they were just a short distance away from the tree.
I felt both troubled and annoyed.
When did there start being so many mages outside the towns? And why were they all running to the Great Oak Forest to throw their lives away?
Currently, I could only muster the strength of an intermediate mage. Forget about capturing them and bringing them back to Honeyvale Town as NPCs—I'd be lucky not to get myself caught in the crossfire and lose my life!
To avoid being dragged into their mess, I could only climb up the tree for now and observe what would unfold below.
---Third POV---
Alyanne's clothes were in tatters, her face smeared with blood and full of unwillingness.
She tried chanting another spell, only to be wracked with pain.
"Ugh!" She coughed up blood, her face growing even paler.
The black-robed figures surrounding her immediately backed away, avoiding the spattered blood.
Their leader disdainfully brushed off his robes.
"Give it up, Alyanne. Do you still think you're the magical prodigy you once were? Now, you're nothing more than a failure—a useless shell of a person who tried to learn magic from heretical gods and suffered backlash!"
"Save your strength and enjoy the last moments of your miserable life."
Another black-robed figure folded his arms and sneered at Alyanne's plight. "Look at her, still refusing to accept her fate!"
"If you ask me, the lord was too kind, banishing her to the outskirts of the Great Oak Forest. He should've just thrown her into a monster nest. Leave her no chance of survival. Heretics deserve to be burned alive!"
"Such a pity... Who would've thought she'd turn out to be such an ungrateful wolf in sheep's clothing?"
Alyanne kept her head down, ignoring their words. She could feel the shattered magical pathways within her body.
What was once a mighty reservoir of magical power now felt like a dried-up well, incapable of yielding even a drop of magic and instead causing her constant pain.
It wasn't until the black-robed figures grew more aggressive with their taunts that she finally raised her head, revealing her heterochromatic eyes.
One of them instinctively took a step back, muttering how her "creepy mismatched eyes" were just like those of a heretic.
Alyanne licked her cracked, peeling lips, chapped from lack of water, and uttered her first words since being brought here.
"I didn't."
Afraid they hadn't heard her clearly, she repeated herself, "I didn't practice the magic of heretical gods."
Her voice was dry and raspy, like sand scraping against stone.
"What?" one of the black-robed figures exclaimed in disbelief. "The evidence is undeniable, and yet you still won't confess?"
Another black-robed figure chimed in, "Exactly! We saw you with our own eyes, using the magic of the God of Storm. Are you saying we all hallucinated? Heretics are all liars!"
The leader of the black-robed figures said nothing, waiting until everyone had finished their jeers. Then, he spoke at just the right moment. "That's enough. The Great Oak Forest is not a place to linger. Now that she's been delivered here, we'd better leave quickly."
"Don't be hasty, Karl! Alyanne is a strange one. What if she somehow escapes?"
"That's right. I need to stay here and personally witness the death of this damned heretic!"
Just as they finished speaking, a distant beast's roar echoed through the forest, drawing closer.
The group, who had just been so eager to watch Alyanne's demise, suddenly froze like ducks with their necks caught in a grip.
Witnessing the death of a heretic was one thing. But facing a real life-or-death threat was another matter entirely.
