Chapter 704: Theocracy

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

This was a truly a good generation for independent adventurers. The Elemental Tide’s arrival brought change to this era. Every day, there would be a new opportunity and new changes…

Fine, allow me to explain in more understandable terms. As long as you were strong or smart enough, there would be plenty of opportunities to make money and earn reputation. Money and glory wouldn’t only be wealth. You could also purchase more strength or status. Someone could become a noble overnight. Some previously forbidden products from ten years ago were now being sold openly today.

“Military recruitment, military recruitment, most wanted, military recruitment, reward… Why are things so messy in this day and age?”

I was currently looking at a public bulletin board which had lots of announcements and rewards for completing certain quests. Still, when compared to how this bulletin board would have looked in the past, it was the high number of military recruitment advertisements that attracted the most attention.

I originally thought that since this was a time of war, it would be quite difficult for strangers to travel through new cities, since spies and so on were critically important to defend against. I had guessed that the inspections everywhere would be quite strict. However, I didn’t expect that it was actually so easy for me to travel.

All of the inspection points had become even stricter towards inspecting the merchants’ wares, because all sorts of taxes had risen by an incredible amount. However, all weapon-bearing adventurers and knights were easily allowed in. In fact, even refugees, who were typically viewed as a disaster to deal with, were treated in an overly friendly manner.

Why was this? At first, I was confused, but then I instantly understood because I saw all of the excellent payments offered for military recruitment. In a way, population was also an important resource, especially in this chaotic era. Who would want to stop such a precious resource from entering their own domain?

Although these were military recruitment advertisements, it wasn’t only local kingdoms who were advertising. Merchants were hiring long-term guards, mercenary groups were hiring new mercenaries, the kingdoms were recruiting soldiers, the domain lords were recruiting soldiers, and even village and town mayors were recruiting militia soldiers.

The world being unsafe meant that the public’s feelings would be the first to be affected. Not only were nobles and merchants spending more money to feel secure, the domain lords were spending all of their savings on hiring as many soldiers as they could. The human kingdoms and empires were creating all sorts of new knight groups and mercenary groups. The autonomous regions and slightly remote villages were all creating their own militias and so on.

At all information stands and taverns, memory crystals with recorded images from the frontlines of battle were being played repeatedly. The difficult battles on the frontlines and the images of how other human kingdoms had been powerless to do anything but despair in front of the demon wave caused all human countries not on the frontlines of war to start preparing for battle as much as they possibly could. New battles were beginning every day which made use of the new recruited soldiers on these endless battlefields.

All of humanity’s combat potential would be developed as the Holy War continued. This was still only the beginning…

I went and gathered information along the way. There was plenty of information from all the battlefronts everywhere, yet nothing attracted my interest.

“You don’t intend to join in these battles? Someone as powerful as you would instantly be able to change the result on any of those battlefields.”

Harloys seemed more interested as she was voicing her own opinion as she flipped through the combat reports we had just obtained from the fairies.

“There’s no meaning to it. There’s too many battles.”

That’s right, there were too many battles. As the Elemental Tide became more active, harmless beasts were beginning to demonize. Magical beasts and evil Gods were beginning to break free from their seals. Countless invaders from other dimensions would be coming. The royal knights would need to deal with the dimensional invaders, while the domain lords would have to deal with the wild magical beasts. Even the militias would need to fight against magical beasts, evil cultists, and bandits.

This was a trial that the Holy War was giving to the entire human species, who were the current ruling species. Individual victories or a single area’s victories would be meaningless.

But due to the existence of Justice Points and the Contract Heroes system, along with many other improvements, the overall situation was already far better than in the game’s history.

I passed by countless battlefields on the way. It wasn’t that I was cold-blooded and didn’t want to intervene, but rather that it would be impossible for me to intervene in them all. And in a way, these battles were chances and tests for ordinary people. I looked forward to their growth rate with the help of Justice Points…

“Sigh, if only my dragon armor was repaired, I wouldn’t need to wear something so heavy.”

Currently, I was wearing a heavy set of golden armor while wielding an enchanted golden sword, pretending to be an “ordinary” high-level knight.

I appeared to be around 17-18 years old. I had “top-level” equipment and pretty good martial arts skills. I had a family crest and equipment which I intentionally made to look used. Someone like me would be far too common a sight in this generation where adventuring could bring great harvests.

The only part special about me was that I was riding a new steed: an iron motorcycle, a product of this magical engineering generation, rather than a tall horse. These motorcycles would be quite expensive.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to keep a low profile. The motorcycle had already attracted a dozen different bandit groups to me. It was that sometimes I would need to fly instead of ride my steed. I wouldn’t be able to teleport a living horse into my personal Hell world without it dying.

Still, the advantage of a magical motorcycle was that as long as it had enough mana powering it, it would operate. I wouldn’t need to worry like with a horse about it tiring itself to death.

Right now, the part most worth being happy about was that after I spent plenty of Justice Points, I finally had a physical appearance that befitted me more. I no longer needed to wear that bracelet which disguised my real age.

There was no helping it. In order to show the armor’s defense ability, I had to put a layer of copper paint onto the gold heavy armor and pretend that it was regular copper armor in before putting it on.

“Others paint gold onto their armor in order to show off that they have super strength or wealth. Yet, you paint copper onto gold. You make yourself look so poor…”

“There’s no helping it. Sharp weapons are dangerous. Safety first. If I made it clear that I was wearing gold heavy armor, well, that’s not something an ordinary human would have the physical strength to wear.”

Without my light and convenient dragonscale armor that was almost impenetrable, since I was a “knight” who focused on melee combat, I could only use ordinary armor. But since I wanted to improve my defense, I naturally wore the hardest and most expensive magically refined gold armor.

The durability of magically refined gold would be quite trustworthy. At the very least, I had passed through countless small battlefields already. Not only were arrows and bullets unable to penetrate my armor, even crossbow bolts and heavy cannons hadn’t managed to damage it.

The only weakness was that pure refined gold heavy armor was far beyond the weight limit that ordinary humans could wear. Even my refined gold Iron Horse Dawn War Memorial Edition #59 (my motorcycle) was almost unable to bear the weight of my armor. The motorcycle would leave obvious trails behind everywhere it went.

Some roads were in poor condition, so the motorcycle would devastate the road, or sink into the mud.

“You’ve loaded too much weight! You’re ruining all these roads with this. Be careful that the domain lords are going to ask you to compensate them. You should at least take off the armor while in cities. You basically have extreme paranoia.”

“…I’ll consider it after passing through here. It’s not a bad idea at all to be paranoid here.”

I was currently in the Stanley Theocracy. This country was a tiny country that one would have to look hard for on the map. However, this country was also the core of the “Northern Divine Battlefront Alliance”. Not only were high-level Cardinals from the Holy Church here, there were also several knight groups and angel squadrons.

I had already passed through more than ten temporary checkpoints since I entered the Stanley Theocracy. It was obvious that the people manning the checkpoints were being quite serious and going through far more procedures when checking the identities of anyone coming from the north.

Of course, I had more than a dozen “identities” on me. Not only that, I was also capable of disguising myself with Harloys’ slimes. These simple checkpoints were meaningless against me.

I had chosen to go through the Holy Church’s northern alliance here in order to check the situation and assess the God of Holy Light’s ambition towards the Northlands. However, the situation wasn’t very good here. The majority of local residents were devout worshippers of the Holy Church. There were also high-level Holy Knights and low-level angels constantly patrolling. Since the Holy Church had put so much combat strength in the Northlands where they had no ongoing war, it was evident that the Holy Church placed great importance on this area.

Due to my Northlands accent and my motorcycle that was obviously a Northlands product, I was checked far more than other travelers. However, this also helped me to learn who was in charge here.

“Bishop Habolo and Cardinal Soento…”

A bishop and cardinal had simultaneously been sent here. This country was a theocracy to begin with, and there would be a local head priest in charge here. This meant that three high-ranked members of the Holy Church had all gathered here in the same tiny country, which meant that the pope definitely viewed this place with great importance. I was also quite familiar with both these names.

“The Eagle of the Holy War and the Golden Shame? What an ironic combination.”

Due to the importance of the Holy Church to human society, the cardinals’ activities had been quite important in the game’s history. They either had renowned deeds or terrible reputations that would last for centuries or even millenniums. It was actually quite rare for cardinals to be unknown.

These two cardinals happened to be two extreme opposites.

Actually, Bishop Habolo had yet to be promoted to cardinal at this time. But in the game’s history, Cardinal Habolo had showed amazing skills in the future on the battlefield of San Antonio. He was one of the very few high-ranked members of the Holy Church who had excellent strategic insight.

During the most heated period of the Holy War, Cardinal Habolo led an angel squadron, Holy Knight squadron, and magical engineering squadron, acting as a mobile support force that went around everywhere to rescue people.

Meanwhile, Cardinal Soento obtained the legendary reputation of “being willing to even make deals with devils as long as he was given enough money”. Anywhere that he went, he wouldn’t care about the ongoing battle at all, but he would always make sure to make as much money as possible for himself. It was common for him to buy and sell military achievements. He was also one of the few cardinals known for directly negotiating with the enemy and selling out his own subordinates for the sake of money. Even though most other cardinals were incompetent and did more harm than good, they at least felt that they were trying their best for the sake of humanity, unlike Soento who was a traitor to humanity.

I felt rather conflicted now. I had originally wanted to try and stir up trouble for those in charge here, but I felt that it would be a pity to kill Bishop Habolo here. Yet, keeping him alive would mean that he would be a threat to the Northlands. And if I instead killed Cardinal Soento, I felt like I would actually be helping the Holy Church.

“I might as well leave Cardinal Soento alive. With him here, even if the Holy Church succeeds in completely sealing off the Northlands, we’ll be able to bribe him to let us through.”

Traitors were incredibly loathsome. However, it might not be a bad thing for me to keep around a traitor in the enemy’s ranks.

Right now, the Holy War was still in its early period. The cardinals had yet to undergo the “trials” of war. Cardinal Soento’s true nature had yet to be exposed. However, he was a political expert who was also likely the current real leader of the Stanley Theocracy.

Unless something major changed, it was likely that he would continue to remain here. In that case, I should probably even help Cardinal Soento obtain some “political achievements” so that his position here would be secure.

As for Bishop Habolo…

“Let’s leave him alive as well. Yeah, he’s one of the few higher-ups in the Holy Church who actually has a wise mind. Maybe I can even have a discussion with him.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep