Cthulhu Gonfalon

After reading out the order, the City Defense Army officer left with his soldiers, unwilling to stay even a second longer to provide a detailed explanation.

They left behind the restless poor who were trembling with fear as they worriedly discussed the order.

“What does this mean?” said one of the younger ones with a bitter expression. He was barely considered young and strong, but if the lord wanted to enlist commoners into the army, he would most likely be involved.

“What else can it be? Roping in servant soldiers,” an elderly man said with a sigh. Helplessly, he said, “Everyone, let’s pack up. Maybe we have to leave town soon.”

“Leave town?!” a lady cried in fear. “It’s going to be snowing soon; if we leave town now, how are we going to survive!”

“We can’t remain in the city. What do you think servant soldiers do? Suffering and enduring hardships aside, dealing with hunger and starving is for sure. When the battle gets life-threatening and the, it will always be the servant soldiers who are pushed to the front!” said that elderly man who was considerably more knowledgeable. His expression was so bitter that it seemed as though his face would start dripping bile. “The worst thing is, there are no benefits at all, and yet we have to be subjected to the restrictions of military rules. By then, even without the need for the baron to open his mouth, any knight-to-be can come up with a random crime to execute you… I was once a servant soldier, and I witnessed with my own eyes, a strong man, whose family owned a piece of field, refuse to continue being a soldier. Instead, he wanted to go home to plant in the fields. He was indifferently convicted of being a “deserter due to fear of war,” and then he was executed. Because he couldn’t return home that winter, his entire family, young and old, died…”

He spoke in a peaceful manner without much sincerity or sorrow. It must have been due to the long years that had passed why he could only feel numbness. But what the poor people around him heard was enough to make their hairs stand up. They could feel the piercing cold that not even their new winter clothes could fend off. Every one of them felt as though the cold could pierce through their entire being, from front to back, and there were even many who started trembling on the spot.

Right at that moment, a poor yet quick-witted man was struck by a sudden flash of inspiration and blurted out, “Let’s go find the priests!”

This line was merely a casual statement that he said subconsciously, but to the poor, it was as though an apocalypse had started. One by one, they were all hit by the same realization and started talking at once.

“Yes! Go to the priests! Let’s go find the good people from the Church of the Void Mask!”

Just moments later, they had already arrived at the encampment grounds of the Church of the Void Mask. The Sacred Warrior guarding the gate was shocked to see a group of people hurrying over with faces full of fear and panic. He hastened to stop them and asked for the reason of their visit.

After learning about the entire matter, he frowned. First, he let the poor people, who were perspiring profusely because of anxiety and worry, into the camp to rest; then he got a worker hired for miscellaneous chores to bring them some warm tea to warm them up. After that, he hurried over to the prayer room and reported this matter to Bishop Kabbalah.

Kabbalah calmly finished listening to his account and started to frown.

“Their means are really devious enough!” he said. “Wanting to send these poor people to meet their doom is not their actual intention. Now that it’s freezing cold and about to snow, if these poor people were to leave town, even with our help, a good half of them will still die. This is why they have no other choice but to take the risk and be enlisted.”

“If they are enlisted, of course, we’ll not sit idly around without doing anything,” the Sacred Warrior said as he too understood this. Then he asked worriedly, “But what are we supposed to do? The lord has the right to call upon these civilians; this is an authority that we are unable to refute.”

“True. If these poor people are being enlisted and we want to protect them, the better solution would be for us to also join the army for the time being and get them sorted into the troop under our command—but with this way, I’m afraid by then that there might be many traps and dangers awaiting us,” said Kabbalah, who was frowning as he spoke of his analysis.

“That’s the same as courting death!” said that Sacred Warrior furiously. “By then, even if he wanted us to slay a dragon, does that mean we’d all have to charge towards one?”

“It’s impossible to slay a dragon, and I’ve never heard of huge dragons within the vicinity of this place,” Kabbalah said with a smile to give the warrior some reassurance. But his eyes seemed to reflect worry, “But… if it were creatures like ogres or a group of trolls, the situation would already be very bad.”

He muttered something to himself, then sent the scared warrior out to appease the poor. Kneeling down before the altar, he started to pray.

Sui Xiong, unquestionably, received his prayers right away. When he finished listening to the introduction of matter, he frowned and cast his sights over to Dahl City.

At one look, he immediately saw an evil aura like black smoke rising from the lord’s manor.

“The temple is small, yet it carries such a strong, evil aura. The water is shallow, yet it accommodates so many despicable creatures!” he snorted. He paid no heed to the lord and his people; instead, he headed out to the wilderness surrounding Dahl City.

In the sharp eyes of the gods, all kinds of living creatures found in the wilderness were clear in sight. Be it the wild beasts, or the demons—none would be able to escape Sui Xiong’s observing eyes. Carefully, he scanned the wilderness to roughly learn more about which demon communities around this area were relatively more dangerous. After sorting out this information, he came up with a map. Together with a soft, white light, he dropped the map right before Bishop Kabbalah.

Kabbalah hurriedly picked up the map and skimmed through it. Then he started to smile.

With this map, he had enough.

After delivering this map to them, Sui Xiong did not leave right away. Instead, he continued to stay up in the skies above Dahl City to keep watch.

This city had been around for hundreds of years. This territory that was located by the edge of the Great Marsh was created only after generations of families had kept it in an operational state. It was not wealthy, nor were its lands fertile. It also did not manufacture any special products. But Baron Dahl was quite rich, and his wealth far exceeded the level at which this territorial land could provide.

If nothing else, just the porcelain ware in his restaurants and those spices used in the kitchens made it easy to know how rich he was.

In this world, fine porcelain and superior-grade spices were extremely precious. The former needed materials of superb quality and outstanding craftsmen, while the latter required suitable climate and soil. Both were hard to come by; they could only be found through sheer luck. After years of development, generally, for the former, only a few dwarves from the plains who believed in the God of Craftsmen were capable of producing such fine porcelain. The latter could mostly be produced in some temples that believed in Goddess Gaia, but the production level was pathetically low.

Sui Xiong was no engineer before he traversed the world, and he only had a bit of knowledge on agriculture. So even though he often saw the main characters making fritted glass or making gourmet powder in the time travel novels that he read, he was still at his wits end in the area of “production.” Just dealing with this steel-making blast furnace had taken him so many years in total. Eventually, he still had to hand over the information to Palin and company where the project was brought to completion.

This was why he had never thought of wanting to frit glass and porcelain. This was something he truly could not do.

As for spices, before traversing the world, he knew nothing about spices at all, much less trying to harvest them.

But… at present, in the low-grade spices market within the Main Plane, a substantial portion was under the control of Church of the Void Mask. They were mainly the products manufactured by several medicine fields, as well as by bay leaf planting on the borders of Garth City. As for the high-quality spices, only the deep-sea-produced ambergris was mostly under his control, and that would still depend on maintaining a good relationship with the Goddess of the Ocean.

Baron Dahl had a lot of spices in his possession, which not only included bay leaves of mid-range quality but also other expensive food flavors, like “fragrant pepper” and “clear Patchouli oil.” He owned even more varieties when it came to things like incense. To support such extravagant spending, even the merchants from the Commonwealth of Gold Coins would certainly not be able to afford this, much less a baron.

“Where exactly does the wealth of this lord come from?” Sui Xiong could not help wondering as he carefully observed the situation within the lord’s manor.