About the Law

Goldmask could be considered a god among men. He was a rigorous scholar who studied the Golden Order from the perspective of seeking the truth, unlike other believers who were single-mindedly devoted to faith and knew only how to blindly revere the Erdtree and the Golden Order.

At this point in time, Goldmask had not yet become completely strange. Although he was still disheveled and careless about his attire, looking as if he were running around naked, he at least still had a human appearance and could hold a conversation to some extent.

Alberich went to have an audience with the Two Fingers in a proper manner, while Goldmask plunged straight into the library.

He held a stack of paper and wrote and drew on it, which was covered in dense formulas and numbers, looking as though he were decrypting a mathematical puzzle.

"Excuse me," Zhao Si said softly.

"..." Goldmask did not even raise his head.

It seemed he had to go straight to the point and omit any meaningless pleasantries.

"Do you know why Radagon wanted to become the Elden Lord?" Zhao Si asked bluntly.

Goldmask's hand stopped.

Zhao Si continued, "Are there rigid requirements in the Law stipulating who is qualified to become a lord?"

"No," Goldmask's voice was hoarse. "As far as I know, no."

"After Godfrey was gone, Godwyn was in a position to succeed the throne, right?" Zhao Si asked.

Goldmask slowly nodded. "Right. As long as Queen Marika agrees."

Wait, there was a new problem. Would Godwyn need to marry his own birth mother if he succeeded the throne?

Zhao Si directly asked this seemingly absurd question because he had heard that some barbarian tribes would marry the previous king's wife for the sake of the orthodoxy of the throne. Might he also marry his birth mother? Who knew; anyway, they pursued legal and systemic orthodoxy.

"..."

Silence. After a long silence, Goldmask slowly spoke, "If one probes deeply, it ought to be a cooperation between the god and the lord, and marriage is an insurance policy. Theoretically, as long as there is a god and a lord, it is enough. Everything else is redundant."

"Then could the god and the lord be multiple? Or could the god and the lord be the same person?" Zhao Si felt this was a good opportunity to inspire Goldmask.

After the Shattering, Goldmask had been racking his brains over how to repair the Golden Order. He was essentially a programmer fixing bugs, hand-crafting Great Runes with his own hands and mathematics. His biggest obstacle and the thing he could not figure out was the relationship between Marika and Radagon. He could not understand why Radagon's name was part of the Golden Order, and it was only until the player "unlocked" the puzzle that Goldmask could reach a complete understanding.

"..." Goldmask fell into silence again. This time his hand did not stop, and he wrote a new melody on the paper.

Zhao Si muttered to himself, "After Godfrey left, Radagon abandoned his wife and children and hastily succeeded the throne, kicking Godwyn aside. I cannot figure out the logic behind this."

"..."

"You say is it possible-I mean if, hypothetically, Marika and Radagon are one-" Zhao Si grew anxious, eagerly throwing out this "earth-shattering secret."

Goldmask's religious status ought not to be low, and he had numerous disciples and followers. If he were to discover that the Golden Order had a bug and Marika was deceiving everyone in various ways,

it would surely stir up a "storm."

Yet before he finished speaking, he heard a sharp, furious shout coming from outside the door.

"Hey! You little loser, what are you doing?"

Judging by the voice, it was unmistakably Alberich. Her voice was truly loud, making the bookshelves shake.

Weren't mages supposed to be relatively quiet? Why was she so violent?

"I'm not a little loser, what are you doing?"

The second floor was close to the Two Fingers, so she certainly couldn't resort to violence, and Zhao Si's courage grew a bit.

An expression of anger appeared on Alberich's face. She walked in with her hands on her hips, grabbed the collar of Zhao Si's clothes, dragged him forcibly out of the library, and slammed the door shut heavily.

"Little loser, do not delay Master Goldmask's thinking!" Alberich pressed Zhao Si against the wall. "If you want to play, I can accompany you."

This big sister was as tall as a man and pinned Zhao Si against the wall in a kabedon. Zhao Si's heart thumped wildly, making him extremely nervous.

"Up close, I feel like you smell quite nice. You look like a good sacrifice." Alberich leaned her face closer, sniffing the scent on Zhao Si's body.

"Aside from the smell of sweat, there is nothing on me." Zhao Si tilted his head back, his occiput even bumping against the wall.

"Silly thing, I'm talking about the smell of blood and souls." Alberich smiled, revealing a full set of teeth. "Do you have any Runes? Lend me some."

--What kind of Roundtable Hold workplace bullying was this?

"No. When I was revived I had nothing to my name, and since coming here I don't have to spend anything on food and drink, naturally I don't have any Runes." Zhao Si put on a look of a dead pig fearless of boiling water.

"Eh? Then you can bleed a little to make up the number, how about it?" Alberich brought her face even closer.

This distance was either about to start a fight or about to kiss.

Not to mention, up close he could clearly see Alberich's face. She was a pretty-looking girl with a high, straight nose, a sharp chin, large eyes with double eyelids, and a pair of eyes flashing with a blood-red light. It was just that her expression was too distorted, too wild, and completely devoid of any facial expression management.

Zhao Si shook his head like a rattle-drum. "No, not good at all."

"It doesn't hurt. I can freeze you first and then bleed you." Alberich's fingers slid along Zhao Si's carotid artery, feeling the beating pulse.

"Slap."

Zhao Si instinctively pushed Alberich away with force.

"...Uh."

"Gulp," he swallowed with difficulty: this grudge was now officially formed.

"Hmm?" Alberich's reaction was unexpectedly calm, not as explosive and thunderous as he had imagined.

"Boring."

Dropping those words, she turned and left. This reaction was too strange; as expected, she was not a normal person.

While they were making a noisy fuss over here, Gideon was not idle either. He had gone to find the Two Fingers to clarify certain matters.

"Lord Fingers, does anything exist in this world that can threaten the Erdtree and the demigods?" Gideon also chose to get straight to the point without dawdling with the Two Fingers at all.

The dozing Finger Reader Enia awoke abruptly. "Why would you ask such a thing? The Fell God of the Giants has already been defeated, the Blackflame cannot stir up trouble, and nothing exists in this world capable of threatening the Erdtree. The demigods possess Great Runes and are even less likely to be threatened by others."

Compared to Zhao Si, Gideon acted with preparation.

He lifted a book whose cover was made of white leather, soft and warm in texture, feeling somewhat strange to the touch.

"Then I ask you, Lord Fingers, what is the meaning of this prayerbook?" Gideon raised the book in his hand to show the Two Fingers.

The Two Fingers immediately reacted, their two digits standing upright to form a "Y" shape.

"Heresy, absolute heresy! Sir Gideon, why do you possess that book?" Finger Reader Enia screamed.

Gideon was very calm. "Thanks to the library provided by the Fingers. There are many collected books within it, including no small number of out-of-print titles. This so-called heresy was mixed among them."

"Then have you read it?" Finger Reader Enia's face wrinkled together like steamed bun skin.

"Of course. Although it has undergone deletions and alterations within, I still discovered clues-Godskin." Gideon sounded somewhat as though he were interrogating the Two Fingers.

The fingers of the Two Fingers relaxed, drooping down and curving once more.

Finger Reader Enia sighed. "Sir Gideon, oh Sir Gideon, you truly are clever, too clever for your own good."

Gideon did not mention that it was Zhao Si who had pointed him toward that direction of thought. At first, no one would have imagined that the demigods could be threatened, seeing as there was the former Elden Lord Godfrey externally, and Marika and Radagon internally.

Entities capable of challenging the Erdtree system had long since had their fangs pulled out. That was until Gideon discovered this book-the Godskin Prayerbook.