Chapter 430 430 Knowledge Crystal
Chapter 430 430 Knowledge Crystal
Wolfe continued the recitation of the history, eager to see if his expectations of Morgan Davos were in line with his own reactions.
[Davos did not send an envoy back with his message. Instead, he went himself with his wife and fifty of their Coven Guardians.
Lady Morgana announced as they left that she believed that the King’s proposal was evidence that the gift of free will that the Goddess had given the humans had been corrupted, and she intended to purge them of whatever curse had so influenced their decision-making.
Now, the older and wiser among the Magi thought that such a thing was pointless political posturing and that the King’s lineage should simply be prohibited from the grounds of the Coven, but that was not enough for the enraged parents.
When they arrived in the Fifth King’s castle, they demanded an audience. They were greeted at the gates by the Eternal Saint, the Undead Progenitor of the Noxus Family and inventor of the [Eternal Vigilance] spell, a masterpiece of Unholy Magic that bound his soul to both worlds at once so that he could use his magic to create a body at will and see all that happened in the world long after his natural death.
What happened next is unclear, but according to the Human Kings, the Eternal Saint refused to abandon his position as a neutral bystander and observer of current events, even in the face of atrocity. It was an accusation that the Magi as a whole would never truly live down, even until now.
What we do know is that Lady Morgana cast a curse on the entire Royal Family that stripped their free will from them and made them slaves to her magic.
The Magi Council heard of it nearly immediately, thanks to the Eternal Saint relaying the view to them as he watched from the sidelines. Morgan Davos was cast out and ordered shunned as an Oathbreaker for the attack on the Royal Family, and the Davos Family head stepped down for his part in raising such a person, leaving us a rankless Family with no status but shame.
We are no longer even the Davos Family. We are now known as the Morgan Family so that none might forget what our lineage is being punished for.]
That seemed a bit extreme to Wolfe, but attached to the narration was a copy of the actual scene, as it had been relayed by the Noxus Family Saint who had been present.
They had marched past the Royal Guards, slapped the King in the face, and then Morgan Davos had killed the entire Royal Guard and most of the court attendees while his wife had cursed the Royal bloodline.
It was a proper bloodline curse, too. The details were all in the crystal, and though Wolfe couldn’t use such magic, he could recognize it. It was less potent than the bloodline curse on the Witches now, but it would not be easily lifted, and it turned the King and his family into little more than a group of living zombies reliant on her will.
That explained why Morgan was considered his Family’s greatest shame, but not why Lady Morgana was called a Butcher. At this point in the story, she hadn’t actually killed anyone.
[Once the King was under her control, Lady Morgana began to call the citizens of the kingdom to the castle so that she could continue her work to eliminate the violent nature of humans by using them as lab rats.
Her theory was that by returning them to their primal state, the corruption of their free will could be reset.
So, she began to modify their minds and bodies, creating the first generation of the monstrous curse.
The experiment failed. Even after returning their intelligence after the monstrous curse was broken, their human nature remained unchanged. If the duo had stopped there and disposed of the test subjects, it would have been fine, and their infamy would have lasted no more than a few decades.
But they were so certain that they were right about their theory that they did not and could not stop. Instead, they spread their ideas to anyone who would listen to their theory.]
The crystal showed Wolfe a series of images, mostly of political meetings, some of passionate public speeches, and some in classrooms, but all of them were preaching the same thing. They all showed people beginning to believe that there was something wrong with them, a corruption that wasn’t their fault.
That corruption excused everything they did, no matter how horrible. It wasn’t their fault. After all, they were the victims. It was subtle, but Wolfe could see the simmering resentment for the Magi building, with more and more people beginning to become suspicious of them and their detached society, isolated from the corruption that was causing so much strife in the world.
[The theory that human nature was flawed spread far and wide, but it did not spread in the way that any of us would have expected. Instead, the view was that the Eternal Saint’s refusal to intervene was proof that the Magi held the secret to world peace and refused to release it outside the ranks of the Noble Families.
Though I harbour little goodwill to the Noble Families, I will say that the truth is that there was no secret. They had told the world for centuries how to overcome their warlike nature, but nobody listened because the answer was hard work and dedication, not a spell or a magical elixir.
As the answer wasn’t acceptable, the world began to embrace their violent nature even more fully, experimenting on each other with spells and curses intended to change their very souls or creating cruel medical experiments to extract what were deemed desirable aspects of the Magi Lineage. They even went as far as to create technological devices that could control the mind.
None of them led to a peaceful ending, and the failed experiments were released back into the world. Why is an answer we might never know, but eventually, the belief of the masses was that human nature was unchangeable. This belief persisted even when the evidence of newfound and rampant violent tendencies began to mount, and those who had been subjected to the modification processes wreaked havoc among their kin.
By the time the madness ended, over a million had died, and entire nations’ economies were devastated by the fallout of experiments run amok. But did the humans stop and ask how their experiments had gone so awry?
No, of course not. They blamed the Magi for not giving them the answers they demanded and for prospering in peace as the human world fell apart around them in a state of chaos and civil war.
It is for that reason that we have dubbed Lady Morgana ‘Morgana the Butcher.’ Her work has killed millions, and still, she refuses to see that she might be wrong.
In conclusion, I have enclosed an uncorrupted knowledge base, untainted by the madness and cruelty of the recent decades, in the hopes that one day, there will be a chance for it to return to the forefront of Academic thought.]
The rest Wolfe already knew. The civil wars had ended, and the nations had rebuilt, but the resentment continued to grow, and the blame was placed on the Magi, eventually leading to the Great War that destroyed the world as the people of the time would have known it.
It wasn’t one big thing but a buildup of decades of grievances looking for a scapegoat. Only once enough of the world agreed that they were the victims did it turn into a global war, with the humans and witches convinced of the righteousness of their actions to eliminate the Magi, who held so much power but who the rest of the world believed refused to use it to ease the suffering of others.
It was not out of malice but because the Magi believed that war was never the answer and it wasn’t their responsibility to stop others from doing as they pleased.
In the end, the reason didn’t really matter. The outcome would have been the same even if the Magi really had been withholding the means of bringing peace to the humans. It was just a bit more tragic that they held to their pacifism to the end and never convinced the world to follow them.