Azure Scepter

Page 65

P.S.: I recommend a book called "The Witcher of the Whale Oil Era," it has a very fast pace.

Chapter 128 Tower of Stars

The weather in early April is very changeable; the sky, which was exceptionally clear at dusk, is now covered with dark clouds.

Trier sat on horseback, looking up at the sky.

The wind and rain were dark and gloomy, and a torrential downpour was imminent.

"Boom!"

The darkening sky was instantly shattered by a bolt of lightning, and rolling dark clouds, like maggots writhing in rotting flesh, obscured the gradually appearing stars. A torrential rain brewed within the clouds, and a howling wind swept in. Soon, the first drop of rain fell.

The first raindrop quickly accelerated to its limit and struck Trier's forehead in an instant, then wriggled and shattered with a rustling sound.

"Hurry! Faster! It's going to rain! We need to get into the city before dark!" Nordman shouted to the infantry behind him, brandishing his spear and the flag fluttering at its tip.

Unlike the town guards of Beavertown and the hastily assembled militia, Nordman's soldiers were rigorously trained standing troops. Despite being urged on, the fully armed soldiers maintained perfect formation and synchronized steps; from Trier's perspective, the gray army resembled a shifting fortress. When hundreds of iron boots landed simultaneously, the gravel road seemed to tremble.

“We haven’t been to Eraf in a long time.” Neu kicked his horse’s flanks and spurred it to Trier’s side. “The last time we were here was when we were kids.”

Before Trier could answer, Foutia, who was walking ahead, asked curiously, "Why?"

—As a very young elf, Fatiya had no idea how to ride a horse.

“In the Year of the Fallen Leaves of the Glacier, the Duke signed a decree stripping him of his public authority—you should have heard of this decree during the kidnapping just now.” Noy lowered his head, looking down at the elf. “According to the decree, Trier is forbidden from approaching any city within the duchy, and I voluntarily joined the church.”

“Madam, please be mindful of who you are talking to. Elves are not to be trusted,” Nordman said in a low voice.

Noy glanced at Trier first, then blinked innocently, and said slowly and deliberately, "Fodia is certainly trustworthy."

Suddenly, Fydea's fair face beneath her green hood flushed red. She shifted her gaze slightly, no longer meeting Noy's eyes.

“I am the military attaché at the embassy, ​​and I have the responsibility to gather intelligence…” After a long silence, Futia, her face flushed, managed to squeeze out these words.

The spirit-binding Noi gave a mischievous smile and said in Trier's mind, "Master, Futia is not good at dealing with straightforward words. I think I have found a way to control her."

Yes, that's right, a straightforward approach beats arrogance. Trier thought to himself—of course, he didn't put those words into his mental connection with Noy.

Seemingly sensing that Trier wasn't responding, Noy turned to Fythia and continued, "The diplomatic language of the elves is like poetry with feathers: it uses analogies more often than directness. Each breath has fourteen syllables, six rising, six falling, with alliteration or rhyme, and both honorifics and derogatory terms are stressed..."

Trier nodded slightly. Noy ​​was absolutely right. That was indeed the official diplomatic language of the Elves, and the subtle allusions and overall structure were even more complex than a labyrinth.

Fytia frowned slightly: "Are you telling a riddle?"

“So, by elven standards, Fydia, you’ve been very direct. Thank you for your honesty.” Noi lowered her eyelids. “With your honesty, how can I not trust you?”

Fythia's pointed ears outside her hood snapped open, a blush instantly spreading across the tips of her ears: "W-no...where? No, I mean..."

“Alright, Fytia, listen to me. To put it simply, the decree of stripping of public authority means that, for some reason, Trier accidentally injured the Duke when he was a child. The Duke was very angry, but he couldn’t punish Trier directly, so he stripped Trier of his inheritance rights and sent him to the countryside to recuperate.” Noy said very quickly.

Fythia looked quite confused, her bright red, pointed ears trembling slightly: "Some reason?"

“The Duke mistakenly killed his own eldest son, who was also Trier’s father.” Neuer gently pulled on the reins and casually put on the same hood as Fythia’s—they were almost there.

"Harlan is Trier's cousin?" Fythia's misty eyes widened in surprise, her eyelashes trembling slightly. "Really? I couldn't tell at all..."

"Boom!" The silver snake tore through the night, and the downpour had begun.

The lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the huge, tattered wooden road sign.

A line of exaggerated lettering is crookedly carved into the heavy fir wood road sign: “Welcome to Uraddon Town.” Below the large lettering is another line of smaller text: “Lampraya, and more lamprays.” A striking red cross painted on the entire road sign covers the entire sign. Next to the carved lettering, another line of smaller text is painted in red: “Plague, Death, Walking Dead.”

Trier slowed his horse down a gentle slope, where he could see the entire town of Uraddon and the distant city of Uraf.

"Araton" is a small town on the northern outskirts of Eraf City. As the city expanded, this town was merged and swallowed up by the rampant outer city. In the ancient meaning of the common language, the suffix "ton" has a variety of mixed meanings, such as edge bunker, fortress, and gloom. Therefore, Araton can also be translated as "the gloomy edge of Eraf City".

This name is quite fitting.

Trier looked up and gazed into the distance.

As dusk settled, a crimson moon hung high in the sky. A light rain fell, creating a misty haze, and countless towering spires pierced the night sky, like a forest of solid rock constructed by a giant of the heavens. The spires of the towers rose straight upwards, as if to cast aside the filthy world and reach for the brilliant Milky Way.

The tallest tower is nestled among the towers, its pure white color resembling ancient ice and snow under the cold, silvery moonlight.

“The Estádio do Arásico, hailed as one of the architectural wonders of mankind, that’s its main tower, the Tower of Stars,” Trier thought, squinting slightly. “It’s truly magnificent.”

Although he couldn't see the base of the Star Tower because of the city wall, he recognized that the facade of the Star Tower was a typical classical three-part structure based on his basic architectural knowledge.

The base steps, faintly visible beneath the city walls, are each a meter high, appearing more like those for colossal giants than for ordinary people. The enormous glass windows, symmetrically arranged with acanthus reliefs, have neat and dignified outlines, their dimensions representing the brilliance of reason precisely calculated by the architect through mathematics; their length, width, and spacing are all determined by the golden ratio. The top of the building is capped by sharp, ingenious Gothic pointed arches, pointing directly towards the crimson moon.

Whether it's the nimble and upright pointed arches or the transparent and light flying buttresses, everything exudes an upward tension.

—In the game's original lore, the Cathedral of Eraf collapsed completely with the outbreak of the undead horde, and Trir, engrossed in studying necromancy, never visited it. By the time he left the Great Swamp, it was already a ruin.

When Trier thought of ruins, he immediately thought of the outer city of Eraf, which was said to have been built on the ruins of an ancient dwarf city when the early human settlers first built it.

The sound of rain intensified, and a faint sob from a woman pulled Trier back to reality. He turned his gaze to the cramped and dilapidated town of Urardon beyond the road sign.

The rainwater, carrying the stench of excrement, hit us in the face.

The road was deserted, the gravel surface riddled with murky puddles. The puddles, stained with colorful oil, reflected the buildings on either side of the road: white vines clung wildly to the ancient ruins, riddled with holes and on the verge of collapse; through the narrow gaps between the ruins and the vines, one could vaguely see countless makeshift houses built of thatch and planks, piled up like spider eggs in a spiderweb amidst the ancient ruins formed by vines and broken walls.

With his extraordinary senses, Trier vaguely sensed pairs of numb eyes silently watching the street from inside the building.

“It’s a makeshift refugee camp,” Futia said softly. “When I left, things weren’t this bad.”

About ten meters away from the road sign, a wooden gallows stood on the roadside, and a shriveled corpse hung from the makeshift gallows. The corpse was covered only with tattered cloth, and its eyeballs and flesh seemed to have been pecked clean by crows, making it look quite miserable.

As if it had heard a noise, the still corpse suddenly moved. A ghostly blue soul fire suddenly ignited in his eye sockets. He flailed his arms, his hands withered and his broken finger bones clearly visible.

The gallows tightly bound the zombie's movements, causing it to swing back and forth on the gallows like a swing.

He was hanged before the plague reached its final stages. But death did not stop the magical plague from spreading; it rose again. Trier thought to himself.

“This looks even worse than Beaver Town, which was ravaged by the plague,” Futia sighed. “Oh my god.”

From a certain perspective, the town of Erladon before us is spectacular in a different way.

The ruins were dilapidated, the huts were broken, and the vines and branches clung to the walls; numbness, stench, and a sense of tangible despair filled the air. Everything seemed to be inevitably heading towards death and end in the vortex of the blood plague.

If Beavertown represents the brutal scene of the apocalypse, then this place represents the desolation just before the apocalypse.

Trier took a deep breath, the cold, icy air carrying a foul stench filling his chest, and turned his head to look behind him.

Fythia lowered her head, looking extremely uneasy; while Noy frowned, seemingly lost in thought; Aurelius still hunched over, his insecurity seemingly contagious to Hult.

As for Nordman and the mounted soldiers behind him, they looked extremely indifferent, as if they had become accustomed to the desolate scene.

Through Fyodor's deep blue eyes, Trier saw his own reflection—his expression was terrifyingly calm.

P.S.: I got stuck in traffic, so I'm writing slowly and the plot isn't finished...

Chapter 129 Eraf

Trier remained calm, as if the scene before him was not a desolate, gray ruin, but an ordinary fir forest by the roadside.

The warhorse neighed uneasily, seemingly fearful of the plague-ridden zombies swinging on the gallows.

Trier tightened the reins, adjusted the horse's direction, then lightly kicked its belly to keep the warhorse moving forward in small, shuffling steps. In the instant he approached the walker, Trier bent down and swung his sword.

The longsword flashed lightly, and with the added speed of the horse, Trier only felt a slight resistance in his wrist before the menacing zombie, along with the wooden plaque hanging on its chest, was cut in two with a single stroke.

Wood chips mixed with dried flesh splattered everywhere. Trier saw a wooden sign on the corpse's chest that read, "I am a thief, a devil worshipper."

[XP+50]

With a thud, half of the corpse fell to the ground, bursting into a small ball of light. The wooden plaque smashed into a puddle on the ground, then bounced along with the murky water droplets into the ruins next to the gallows.

Trier rode past the gallows, glancing down at the water droplets, and then saw a woman kneeling in the ruins beside the gallows, sobbing.

"Waaah..." The woman's hair was dry and yellow, and she was so thin that she was almost indistinguishable from the half-corpse hanging on the gallows. She knelt down on the ground in despair, her lifeless eyes staring blankly at the corpse on the ground, as if she were mourning.

Trier frowned slightly as he saw the woman holding a dead infant in her arms.

“Lord Oris has ordered that this demon worshipper be displayed for at least five days, and he’s only been hanging there for half a day.” Behind the woman, a guard in a yellow cloak crawled out of a thatched hut amidst the ruins. His clothes were disheveled, and he wasn’t even wearing his chainmail lining. “Uh, sir, we’re having a hard time too…”

Before Trier could speak, the head of the intelligence agency, Nordman, immediately shouted, "Nonsense! Put the body down right now!"

“But Lord Oris…” the guard looked troubled.

"Crack!" Nordman lashed the guard with his whip, the end of which cracked loudly, and a bloody welt immediately appeared on the guard's face, the blood splattering onto the woman's dry, yellow hair.

“Think carefully about who you yellow-robed men are loyal to,” Nordman said coldly. “Think it over carefully, so you don’t choose the wrong one.”

The guard covered the wounds on his face, lowered his head and did not refute. He stiffly turned around, called to the other guards in yellow robes who were taking shelter from the rain, and took the half-corpse off the gallows.

After the guards laid down the body, the chief spyman said slowly, "I know you, Foyle. Don't let this happen again. This is a very serious matter. Think of your daughter."

The guard, whipped, froze abruptly. The violent movement caused pieces of flesh to spill from the corpse he was carrying on his shoulder. After a long pause, the guard finally nodded, his lips pursed.

Soon, the guards disappeared into the thatched hut amidst the ruins, carrying the two pieces of corpse.

The whole process was quiet and swift; no one paid any attention to the sobbing woman, as if she were invisible.

Even after her husband's body disappeared, the woman remained unchanged; she continued to hold the dead infant, kneeling on the ground and sobbing.

Trier sighed silently, took out the Holy Symbol, and activated the Aura of Courage.

A desperate person needs a little courage.

A dry warmth welled up from the bottom of his heart. Trier saw the woman stand up like a puppet with stiff joints. She was still holding the dead baby in her arms. She stared blankly at Trier for a moment, then turned and left.

The transmigrator felt no self-satisfaction for doing good deeds. He had always been an extremely pragmatic person: the kindness and help provided by the Courage and Aura were insignificant, like a small candle flickering in a dark storm, and most likely useless—although the woman had temporarily regained her mobility, in the context of food shortages and poor security, it was only a matter of a few days' difference between dying sooner or later.

The real problem lies in the blood plague. Unless the blood plague crisis triggered by Lorraine is resolved quickly, such incidents will only increase.

Suddenly, Trier saw Futia follow the woman holding the dead baby like a ghost. Rain was hitting Futia's hood, and Futia silently slipped her hand into the woman's pocket.

Trier raised an eyebrow. He noticed that Fudia had slipped a piece of bread into the woman's hand, and because Fudia's fingers were so nimble, the woman didn't notice at all.

After doing all this, Fythia quietly retreated, and as if noticing Trier's gaze, she turned her head away.

“Something has to be done.” Although Trier didn’t speak, the elf saw through his thoughts.

The unpleasant little incident quickly came to an end.

As Nordmann continued his incessant accusations against Oris, Trier, mounted on his horse, closed his eyes.

He was trying hard to recall everything he knew about the city of Eraf from the game. If things went wrong and the situation escalated to the point where force was necessary, his comprehensive understanding of the city's terrain would give him an additional tactical advantage.

Pulses of memory flickered in the nerve bundles, and rumors and knowledge from his past life were systematically categorized and arranged. Soon, Trier had basically sorted out most of the information.

"Eraf is the capital of Earlhood of Harlan. Due to historical reasons, it is the largest city in the entire Southern Duchy. Even among the human kingdoms, Eraf is a giant city that ranks among the top."

"This city was originally a typical fortress. Long before Losevie established the Kingdom of Orko, the Eraf Fortress already existed. It was built by the early human settlers of the Dark Lands to monitor the direction of the Great Swamp and the ancient undead who were hostile to the living."

"As times have changed, Erlav has gradually expanded, and now the city's main industries are agricultural crops, a large number of handicrafts, fishing, and commerce."

"This giant city spans the entire River Ravenhey, which bisects the city. This wide river is the main channel for Eraf's commerce, transportation, and fishing. At the mouth of the River Ravenhey lies a small island, and the lighthouse on the island was later converted into the Great Lighthouse Theater during the reign of King Green-headed Mason."

Trier opened his eyes and saw the towering Great Lighthouse Theater—they had reached the heart of Erraton, the northern outer city.

The streets gradually filled up, but the roads remained empty, as there were clearly no madmen to block the Duke's standing army's route.

Trier closed his eyes with relief, knowing he had to start thinking.

"Now Eraf can be basically divided into three areas: the Upper City, the Inner City, and the vast Outer City. The former fortress area is the Upper City of Eraf, where the pure white Star Tower and other tower complexes are located. It is important to note that the entire Upper City is built on the mountain, and it can even be said that Mount Eraf constitutes the main part of the Upper City. The entire Upper City is easy to defend and difficult to attack. If you want to launch a strong attack on it, you must rely on a large number of high-level Evocation spells."

"The inner city was expanded at the end of Losevie's reign. Since the Duke of the South was killed by Auris, Losevie personally planned the inner city. The inner city is well-planned with a network of roads. Apart from the Dragonfire Bridge spanning the Ravenblack River and Dragon's Kiss Pass in front of the Dragonfire Bridge, there is basically no need to consider other places. If you want to cross the Ravenblack River, the best route of attack is to advance quickly along the central axis, Dragonclaw Avenue, seize Dragon's Kiss Pass before the defenders can react, and then cross the Dragonfire Bridge."

"Dragon Flame Bridge, Dragon Kiss Pass, the dragon mentioned in Dragon Claw Avenue seems to be Auris. Back when the city was being expanded, Auris escaped along this route—Lossevi really has a dark sense of humor."

The bronze dragon, which had been holding back its words, suddenly sneezed and looked around uneasily.

And Trier's contemplation of the city has come to an end.

"The outer city was once the ruins of a dwarven city, and the entire outer city was built on the ruins. There are many exposed porous black rocks in the ruins. According to some speculations, there is an even larger, abandoned dwarven underground city beneath the ruins on the surface, and these exposed porous black rocks are the ventilation vents of the Great Furnace."

"The outer city has a complex traffic network, and now a large number of refugees have poured in. If the blood plague breaks out on a large scale, it will provide ample space for low-level undead to launch urban warfare raids."

"But speaking of which, why are there so few people in the outer city of Uraddon?"

With this thought in mind, Trier opened his eyes again—this time, he saw a large number of people.

They had now reached the edge of the outer city. Not far away, countless people were bustling about. The rough dust was mixed with the smell of dried excrement, and the road under their feet seemed to be in even worse condition than the King's Road in the wilderness.

"So many people!" Futia exclaimed involuntarily.

Trier looked up at the crowd—the crowd was firmly held on the right side of the road, with yellow-robed guards maintaining order on the left. He squinted; the crowd on the right looked strikingly uniform—most of them were dressed in tattered rags, pale and emaciated, with sunken eyes, looking almost indistinguishable from women whose husbands had been hanged.

The guards appeared to be distributing relief food, mostly salted fish, with very little grain.

“They are all residents of the surrounding rural areas,” Nordman said. “Oris forced them to gather here without giving them much time to pack. It was a disaster. The city suddenly had so many mouths to feed, and we were completely unprepared.”

Trier nodded slightly, speaking for the first time since mounting his horse: "Indeed, but on the bright side, this prevents the spread of blood plague through contaminated food."

"Phew—" Nordman suddenly let out a long sigh of relief, but then he frowned. "The blood plague spreads through food?"