Decrees

Fran's second approach to managing the territory was to utilize the knowledge of the Law School.

Fran took the time to learn about the School of School that Elan had once belonged to.

Regarding this Law School, well, it's not quite Fran School thought.

In her most basic understanding, the Law School should be about sophisticated things like 'prohibition of action', 'immediate death', and 'stopping time', but after getting to know it, Fran found that it was actually quite down-to-earth.

"All mages who study the Law School must be aware that the effects of all laws vary depending on the environment, and no law is applicable in every situation."

This was the first sentence of a basic book on the Law School that Fran found. At first, she didn't pay much attention to it, but after reading the rest, she realized how right it was.

The Law School does indeed possess the sophisticated spells that Fran imagines, but they all require high rank to use and can only be cast under specific circumstances.

In the law school, the first word "law" actually refers to the law, and the latter word refers to the spells created by the mages based on the law.

However, the spells created according to the law are not simply a matter of how the Alliance's legal provisions are written; if that were the case, the Law School would have become the Alliance's premier School long ago.

The 'law' upon which a decree relies refers to something that is agreed upon by everyone in a region. Even if a regulation is written into the legal text, if this matter is not agreed upon, then the decree has no effect.

For example, the Law School has two very basic laws: the Mutual Injury Decree and the Shelter Decree.

The effect of the Mutual Injury Decree is to increase the damage of all attacks by both yourself and the opponent after it is released, but you can decide when to release this decree.

This is a typical damage-increasing skill, the effect of which depends on the intentions of both sides to attack others and the attitudes of the people in the current area towards fighting each other.

The Shelter Decree reverses the previous effect, reducing all attack damage from both sides. You can also decide when to cast this law.

Its effectiveness depends on your and your opponent's willingness to attack, as well as the public's attitude towards the conflict.

In the current region, if it's a region like the Alliance's that has "every mage must not fight each other" written into its rules and is enforced quite well.

The Shelter Decree here is extremely powerful; even if the opponent is frantically trying to kill you, most of the damage they inflict on you will be negated.

Furthermore, once the Mutual Injury Decree is activated within the Alliance, its effect is essentially negligible.

However, in a highly turbulent region, such as the Trial Grounds in the Spirit Realm, everyone sees each other as enemies.

Such Mutual Injury Decree are extremely powerful. Arts can only cause a minor wound under normal circumstances may directly cause serious injury to the opponent here.

The Shelter Decree here are practically useless; they're as good as not being enforced at all.

This is the spell mechanism of the Law School; all their subsequent spells were designed based on this idea.

So how does this help Fran in obtaining the Territory Blessing? Yes, there is such a sentence in a Paper written by a mage of the Law School.

"Perhaps the so-called laws of the Law School are actually the same thing as the Territory Blessing, except that the Territory Blessing is more concrete and reaches the individual, while laws are more abstract and take a group as the object."

"But I couldn't find the connection between them, because no matter how I tried, I couldn't activate the Territory Blessing."

"Among the experiments I wrote about, there were quite a few cases where people almost felt the blessing of the territory, but I always fell just short."

Fran carefully examined the mage's experiment, and her final idea came from this Paper.

In fact, after using the knowledge of the Law School, this mage almost triggered the Territory Blessing many times, but the other party never knew what was wrong.

For example, if a mage uses a spell called "[Self-Establishment Decree]", the effect is to create a rule in an area, and when someone agrees to it, the corresponding effect will occur.

Originally, after establishing several rules, the mage had almost gained the territory's approval. However, at this point, he did something that seemed normal to other mages, but was quite unusual to Fran.

That is, making the rules you set seem correct, but in reality, they are not very feasible to implement.

For example, he required all citizens not to rob each other of their belongings without permission, which seems like a good thing, but he completely ignored or was unable to define the limits of this 'robbery'.

Some cunning people would deliberately touch the other person's hand with an item and then shove the item into their hand, thus falsely accusing the other person of 'stealing' their belongings.

Originally, after seeing the spiritual light of the rules being touched, the mage didn't take it seriously and directly punished the villager as if he had robbed someone.

He only discovered this later and then urgently modified the rule. However, after this incident, no matter how he modified it, the people always found ways to exploit loopholes, which meant he never had the chance to trigger the territory's protection again.

After dealing with these troublesome people for half a year, the monk finally gave up on the experiment, believing it to be a dead end.

However, Fran saw it as a good idea: to gain the Territory Blessing through the spell [Self-Establishment Decree].

The monk failed because he had absolutely no experience in managing so many people, and he thought it was completely impossible.

However, Fran had some experience from her previous life and could see the mistake the mage made during the experiment: the definition was too broad, and the legal provisions defined by it were not very feasible.

Territories with only a few hundred people don't need very complicated laws; they only need a set of rules that allow them to survive in the current environment and resolve conflicts among all the people in the territory.

This mage made this mistake; he projected his own perspective onto the issue and revised what he believed to be the correct legal provisions, which did not resolve the survival problems of his subjects or the disputes within his territory.

Fran might try this method; perhaps it will work?

However, before considering establishing a sound system, she first had to get the people to listen to her, whether by force or for other reasons.

However, Fran still had a mission entrusted to her by the Lord of Radiance, so she decided to take care of it all at once.

In the three villages of Snow Bear Territory that Fran had taken from the lord, there was one person who was very uneasy about the recent events.

Brian picked up a glass from a table in his humble house, only to find that it already contained a few ice crystals. He then realized that he had been distracted and forgotten to add firewood to the stove.

He hurried to the stove, opened the barrier gate, took out the firewood, and then slowly put it back in.

Only when he saw the flames inside gradually grow larger did he feel relieved. Then he sat back down at his table, thought for a moment, and then placed the cup on an opening closer to the stove to secure it.

He sat down again and couldn't help but sigh.

What troubled him was nothing other than the fact that the official had been driven away by the knight and a woman today, which made him extremely uneasy.

Although he had previously disapproved of the officials frequently creating pretexts to collect unnecessary taxes from them, it was he who told the villagers that not all taxes needed to be collected.

This led to an extremely poor relationship between him and the clerk; they would argue almost every time they met.

Although he usually disapproved of the official's behavior, it was undeniable that the official was sent by the lord to be in charge of their village.

Now that the official has been recalled by a knight, Brian has no idea what will happen next.

He had no idea how to deal with the increasing number of Magic Creature outside their village over time, or how to defend against the occasional thugs who passed by.

"Let's go ask that woman."

Knowing that sitting there wasn't going to work, he went outside, closed the door, and headed towards the former official's residence.

On his way to his destination, he saw a gray figure flash by in the grass outside the wall, which made him extremely uneasy.

When he arrived at the former residence of the administrative officer, he found that the once very tidy house had become extremely messy.

In front of the house, he saw three burly men adjusting the house under Anna's guidance. They removed the partitions, making the house feel quite spacious.

Brian mustered his courage, stepped forward, greeted him, and then said:

"Hello... may I ask if you will be leading the entire village from now on?"

Anna glanced back at him, then turned away and said slowly:

"It wasn't me. The lord entrusted this territory to my friend, and she's on her way."

Anna looked at the fence to the side, where the Black Horse used to be, but now it was empty because the Black Horse had gone back to the Northlands to fetch Fran.

Brian didn't care who actually owned their land; he had never met the lord before and didn't even know what he looked like.

His concern was how to deal with the Magic Creature in the surrounding area.

"What should we do about those Magic Creature near our village? I just saw Magic Creature in the bushes outside..."

Before she could finish speaking, Anna turned around and looked at her. Anna eyes seemed to be shining, as if she had encountered something interesting.

"So there are Magic Creature outside. Why didn't you say so earlier? Wait for me, I'll go and take care of those Magic Creature now."

With that, Anna picked up her bundle and walked out of the village amidst the shocked gazes of the others.