1050: Dusk Chatter-Only When a Piece Is Put on the Board Does It Become Clear It's Sacrificable

The Prelate General seemed intent on abandoning the pioneers of the New World. The Scholar merely expressed surprise, but otherwise made no further response.

The pioneers who had established a nation in the New World consisted, apart from the first wave of explorers who had arrived with the Explorers' Guild forty-nine years ago, of various down-and-out types and scoundrels from every nation who had trickled over from the Old World during the following three decades.

A considerable number had once been pirates. Beyond the New Federation of United States, they had also established a maritime power called the "Seven Isles Alliance."

For many years, before the Dagon merfolk stirred up trouble and forced the New World routes to close, plenty of "pioneers" had arrived in the New World each month along routes operated by the Martink Company. The number of them and their descendants soon surpassed 150,000. By now, it was approaching 300,000.

But so few people could never occupy the entire Holy Spirit Plains. As a result, more than half the population of the New Federation came from the Ganot people who had submitted to it. For various complicated reasons, these people had chosen to join the New Federation.

Most of them were slaves, though a few chieftains had been accepted as full citizens.

After all, in a world with psionics and sorcery, it wasn't as difficult as one might imagine to manipulate and brainwash large numbers of barbarians who had lost their protectors. And the Prelate General's scathing remarks about genocide were not baseless.

Dusk had come to the New World for one simple purpose: to find the Worldheart and carry out the great plan to destroy the world. Corrupting and manipulating the weakened demigods of the Holy Spirit Plains was merely a means of achieving that goal