Holy Light, Great River

Ergons Tevalin really did not want to bring him along. He had already checked his Attributes long ago, and the man was simply a weakling.

His level was nothing special, his strength was poor, and he was inferior even to the new recruits. He had no ability in Item Management or Prisoner Management, either.

All he had going for him was his mouth. His Charm, one of his basic Attributes, was not particularly high, yet he had a whopping eight points in Trading and seven in Persuasion.

Could someone like him really join the battle? Was he planning to provide... verbal services?

But the pastor actually had an attendant bring over a large leather-covered chest, then patted it proudly with a beaming expression.

"Rest assured. I have the Holy Light as my weapon. It won't be easy for anyone to get close to me."

That finally piqued Ergons' interest.

Ever since crossing over, he had constantly heard Old Adam tell him that this world possessed the Holy Light.

This world had monsters. There were fishmen, sirens, and evil wizards. Supposedly, there were also magical beasts and demi-human races. Especially beyond the duchy, where the Holy Light could not reach, monsters were everywhere, and whether people could live to see the sun rise the next day was anyone's guess.

Yet what he had seen was merely a group of villagers living in a broken-down village along filthy roads. They went an entire year without bathing, left feces everywhere, and poured dirty water out of their windows.

If Ergons had not possessed the authority of a "Divine Favor," forcing them to bathe, clear the feces into the fields, and compact the roads, the village would still have had that natural trap:

A muddy patch that caused soldiers in heavy armor to sink into the ground, all while enduring the stench of fermenting feces and being attacked by villagers throwing stones. Note: The heavier the armor, the deeper they sank.

ㄟ(▔,▔)ㄏ

The living conditions here were brutally harsh. A simple cold could take a person's life, supplies were desperately scarce, and farmers used wooden hoes and forks to work the land.

A farmer who owned a sickle was practically a prized asset during the busy farming season. Long-handled sickles were shared by the entire village and were only brought out like treasures during the collective harvest.

This was the kind of wretched place where merely wearing a suit of chain mail meant one had to be a noble. Being clean was a mark of dignity!

Places like this, resembling the Middle Ages, were truly unimaginably dark, and the common people were truly unimaginably miserable.

The nobles lived in an age where ironware and steam intertwined. Mechanical clocks had even begun to appear. They wore velvet and silk, used porcelain, and drank honey, condensed milk, and cheese...

The common people, meanwhile, practically lived in the Stone Age. If the head of a household had two sets of clothes, one of them—patched over and over again—might even have been passed down through the family.

Whenever they traveled far to sell goods, they had to stuff a pocket with large stones, because those were more reliable. They were much better for throwing at people than the wooden clubs in their hands.

In a place like this, after constantly being told that the Holy Light existed and that pastors wielded it, Ergons could hardly be blamed for being curious.

Perhaps his curious gaze had been too obvious. Pastor Ramses Bolton tightened his grip on the leather chest and said, "The Holy Light can only be shown to enemies. It's best not to use it lightly."

Fine. Count Pastor Bolton as one person, then. Oh, and his attendant as well.

There were fifteen people in total. After eating a meal that could not quite be called breakfast or lunch, they set off toward the gathering point by the Giovanni River—Tewain Village.

The Giovanni River had quite a history. As the mother river that nourished the duchy's North Province, it had been named after the surname of the first Pope and raised the people living on both banks. Yet this great river had changed course several times throughout history, taking the lives of more than a hundred thousand people in total.

"The most recent change happened thirty years ago. This great river, which should have run from the inland all the way to the peninsula and emptied into the sea, shifted its course by more than a hundred and forty miles.

"Its mouth ended up nearly three hundred miles from the original one. That turned the entire region we're in into a desert. The place where your Tervain Village originally stood was right beside the great river.

"Isn't there a small dry ditch outside your manor? The one that only fills with water up to the knees during the flood season. That is the old riverbed of the former Giovanni River."

Pastor Ramses Bolton truly lived up to his reputation as a silver-tongued man. He really did know everything, and under his vivid description, it all seemed so lifelike.

They headed away from Tevalinburg, taking another road eastward. After only one afternoon, they could already see shimmering waves in the distance.

The river had to be incredibly wide, because the sunlight reflected from its surface seemed to form a mirage without any discernible scenery.

If someone had not told Ergons beforehand that it was a river, he might easily have mistaken it for the sea.

As a modern man who had traveled across the country in his previous life, Ergons Tevalin was convinced that nothing could truly shock him.

His original thought had been: No matter how wide it is, can it really be wider than the Yangtze? Wider than the Yellow River? Judging from the descriptions alone, how large could this duchy possibly be?

But when they advanced three miles along the riverbank, Ergons was astonished to discover that the visible range of his map did not even reach the opposite bank.

Only after he zoomed out the map did he see just how wide this river—which should really have been called a lake—was.

In the short span of two days, the terrain they traveled through underwent a tremendous change.

The mountainous, hilly region with sparse vegetation had been left completely behind. Their horses were no longer crossing tundra; instead, they had shallow grass reaching up past their hooves.

Even in autumn, tree crowns swayed across the hills in the fall wind. The abundant vegetation meant they no longer had to worry about their horses losing weight.

From then on, two-thirds of the dry rations they carried no longer had to be divided among the horses. The less-than-"abundant" feed for the five packhorses trailing behind the group finally put Ergons at ease.

"I suppose you really can trust the old hands. Uncle Adam said this much food should be enough to get us to Tewain Village. It seems I was worrying too much."

"Of course. Father followed two former masters into battle. With you, Young Master, this is already the third generation. Naturally, he wouldn't get these things wrong." Adamson chimed in happily, as if he had just been praised.

Tewain Village stood on a stretch of tidal flat where the great river bent around. It had originally been a small, dilapidated village of barely a dozen households, but the foreign army now stationed inside and outside it far outnumbered the village's original population.

These arrogant soldiers did not excessively disturb the commoners' lives, though their arrival was already the gravest disturbance of all.

All food had been requisitioned. What the villagers of Tewain Village would eat for their next meal had to be distributed by the quartermaster, supposedly to centralize management and prevent the enemy from poisoning them.

In reality, they ate even worse. Old wheat from who knew where became their only food, while the wheat, corn, and black beans seized from the village went into the nobles' horse troughs.

The boiled sweet corn was soft and sticky, yet it was fed to livestock. Old Hoyd would have no chance to let his little granddaughter taste her favorite food this year.

He had already hidden his daughter-in-law and granddaughter in the cellar. Even dividing his own assigned rations between the two of them was better than letting them face whatever dangers might exist outside.

To outsiders, he claimed that his daughter-in-law had quarreled with her husband and taken their granddaughter back to her parents' home.

Alfonso's family, at the eastern end of the village, had caught fire the previous night. Old Alfonso, his wife, and their daughter had all burned to death.

Yet at the scene, there were only the bodies of the elderly couple, their necks hacked open.

In this extremely humid tidal-flat region, the fire itself was suspicious. Even more suspicious was that whenever people looked at the shabby house, which had only burned halfway before the flames went out, they all said it had burned down.

When they saw the two bodies with their necks hacked open, they all claimed that the family of three had burned to death!

That was the current state of things.

Old Hoyd and Young Hoyd had been assigned to come out and repair the roads, but unease constantly gnawed at their hearts.