Chapter 735: Legacy of the Civilization


    Trantor: TransN Editor: Meh


    Rnd could easily guess what had happened next.


    After knowing that God’s Punishment Army was not the only way topete with demons on the battlefields any more, the Taqu survivors who didn’t want to reduce their own kind to the materials for shells must have caused a great conflict with Alice.


    Given that, the Battle of Faiths recorded in the written history of the the church probably is just a story made up to cover the truth of this dispute.


    As for the root of this disagreement, it did not just lie in the difference between the faith in God’s Punishment Army and that in the Chosen One. At that moment, all the leaders of the Union must have been very clear that neither of the choices was able to guarantee their victory in the war against demons.


    ording to Phyllis, the n proposed by the Queen of Starfall City to have God’s Punishment Army rest in an evesting sleep would indeed create 3,000 to 4,000 powerful, experienced extraordinary warriors before the third Battle of Divine Will, but the survivors of the Union had also noticed a fatal defect in this n. As souls needed lots of time to adapt to their shells, once this army suffered an inevitable loss during the wartime, it would be impossible for the Union to rece casualties with new warriors in a short time. As a result, this army might only be able to block demons for a decade, or even, by any chance, retrieve the ruined Holy City of Taqu, but they could never recapture the whole Land of Dawn.


    As for the choice to search for the Chosen One, they had thought it as an even more risky n because of its extremely slim chance of sess. However, they had also seen the benefit of it. If they found the one, human beings would be able to win the war at little cost and would even get closer to the deities based on the records on the lithograph.


    For the survivors of the Union, searching for the Chosen One meant betting on the future while the God’s Punishment Army n the present.


    "What about the result? Did you defeat the Starfall City?" Rnd asked.


    "Taqu was not the final winner. No one would be in this conflict. When both sides lose their Transcendents, Lady Eleanor stood out to stop this internal disord and integrated herself into the central carrier. She was the first witch merging with it."


    Shocked, Agatha asked, "You mean, in the ruins of the maze, all the Three Chiefs were..."


    Pasha said intively, "Yes, the Union lost all the three Transcendents in this internal struggle. It was also the end of the Three Chiefs system. As a result, the ruins of the maze became an indispensable part of the Union. Both sides decided to stop fighting and then reached an agreement through negotiation. As agreed, the survivors of Taqu stayed in the ruins studying the magic core and those of the Starfall City went to Hermes and built a new Holy City there. Due to the limited number of the original carriers, the survivors of the Starfall City also agreed to offer us a certain number of empty shells in the next 100 years. "


    "We also agreed that if we failed to make a breakthrough in the Chosen One n or found no leads of her, they would have the right to take back all the research results in the ruins, including the soul containers and the original carriers. They imed that by then they woulde with their God’s Punishment Warriors and that if we broke the agreement, they would neverpromise again."


    Notice something was wrong here, Rnd interrupted, "wait... After 100 years, the church didn’te to you, did they?"


    Based on what he knew, in the past hundreds of years, the witches of Taqu had hid underground and never had a say in the world. Meanwhile all the church’s God’s Punishment Warriors had been soulless. Despite the defect in the warriors, the church still greatly outnumbered the Taqu witches, yet it had never sent any troops to the ruins of the maze. Rnd wondered whether the church people had totally forgotten about this agreement.


    Pasha sighed. "For a long time we were unable to know what was going on in Hermes or any other things that happened outside the ruins of the maze since the original carriers could not be exposed to the sun and the witches who transferred their souls into new bodies needed a long time to adapt to them. When we were able to go outside, we were surprised to discover that they didn’t followdy Alice’s will when building the new order."


    Agatha said through her teeth, "I knew that! I knewdy Alice would never create such rules. Aspared to her n of God’s Punishment Army, what the church did was destroying the foundation of the witches!"


    All the Taqu survivors agreed with her at once.


    Rnd waited until they calmed down and changed the subject. "What’s a central carrier? Is it different from the original carriers?"


    Another voice started to exin, "They’re all shells. As the living beings of the underground civilization were extremely fragile, they had to live in shells. These things were immortal, but we can’t find any detailed information about where they came from in the documents left in the ruins. Based on what we know now, the original carriers are the mostmon shells, whereas the central carrier which looks simr to them stores many unconscious memories. You can consider it as an original carrier which had been used for many years but had no self-awareness. We need to integrate all the memories into it to understand the remaining documented experiement records in the ruins." She sounded soft and elegant, different from Pasha and the angry witch.


    Listening to this voice, Rnd quickly pictured in his head an academic woman who had a long thick braid and wore a pair of ck-framed round sses. He said to her, "Thank you for exining this to me, you’re..."


    "My name is Celine, Your Majesty. I was a member of the Quest Society and used to work with Agatha."


    Agatha got closer to him and whispered in his ear, "I’m not familiar with her. We worked in the same research tower but on different floors. I heard that she was a quiet girl, but every time when it came to magic power, she would be passionate, acting like a totally different person."


    Hearing this, Rnd thought, "Only someone like this woman would be a faithful follower of Natalia." He cleared his throat and asked her another question, "So, are the witches who merged with the central carrier still alive?"


    Celine replied, "not really. Apart from the dozen witches who severely injured in the internal battle, there was another thirty-six of us who volunteered to followdy Eleanor to merge with it. Not everyone was willing to turn into such a monster or spend the rest of her life trapped in a body that can’t feel anything. Their sacrifice finally activated the central carrier, but unfortunately, it can only say yes or no in a dialogue but can’t make a normal conversation."


    Rnd was intrigued at once. "It can answer yes or no to any question?"


    Celine also grew a little more excited. "It only answers a question it understands and it’ll respond more quickly if you specify your question. It enables us to mend or adjust the magic core. It’s essentially abination of all the Taqu witches’ willpower. The more witches merge with it, the faster its reaction is. For us, to apany Lady Eleanor was thest we can do to contribute to the search for the magic power."


    Meanwhile, Rnd was excited about something else. "Doesn’t the mechanism of input and feedback sound like a primary bioputer system? If I set all the conditions, will the central carrier be able to solve an equation orplete someplex calctions by itself? I really want to take this thing to Neverwinter and thoroughly study it here!"


    Knowing that it was not the time to make such a request, he decided to put those thoughts aside at this moment and express his wish in future negotiations.


    He drank all the Chaos Drink in his cup and said, "I see. Now I’ve got a basic understanding of your situation, but I still have one question. You, the church and those ancient books have repeatedly mentioned the Divine Will, and I heard that one could even feel the existence of the deities in a secret chamber exclusive for the Pope on the top floor of a secret temple under the Hermes teau. Could you tell me what the Divine Will is? "