Chapter 721 The Clues Come At Once
There weren’t many lawful G.o.ds.
They added up to only about one-third of the total number of evil G.o.ds and demon G.o.ds.
However, the lawful G.o.ds’ combat power was higher on average.
Even a somewhat out-of-whack lawful G.o.d like the Water G.o.ddess was quite strong in battle.
Especially in the main plane, she was so strong that only Winterwolf could rival her. The G.o.ddess of Storms wasn’t too strong in combat either, but she was a very gentle and independent G.o.ddess, and her teachings were similar to the Church of Love’s in that they both promoted female autonomy and independence.
But the approach was different.
One taught to let go of their minds and bodies, that they could do what men could do. The Church of Storms, on the other hand, preached self-discipline and chast.i.ty.
The two schools of thought were opposite of each other on the surface but were essentially following the same path.
The guide married a believer in the G.o.ddess of Storms, so he was destined to be “afraid” of his wife.
Roland, now somewhat aware of all the core doctrines of the church, asked with a smile, “How many years have you been married to your wife?”
“Over thirty years,” said the guide, with a smile on his aged face, as he whipped the yellow dwarf horse carrying the crate in front of him. “Back then she was as beautiful as a flower, pretty and tender, and now, like me, she has old chicken skin and has lost almost all her teeth, and her back is bent.”
Roland lay back on the crate and laughed. “It’s a rare and fortunate thing in this world that people can grow old together without pain or worry.”
It had been hard to live till sixty since ancient times!
For the average person in this world, this statement applied as well.
Natural disasters and diseases were already bad enough.
And then there were a whole bunch of superhumans in this world with pretty exaggerated fighting abilities. Countless ordinary people died like dogs just by being pa.s.sively involved in the open battles of the professionals.
It was because he had seen such a situation that Roland had this exclamation. “Yes.” The old guide said rather smugly, “My wife and I are the oldest couple in town. I’m the oldest elderly man.”
“How old are you?” Roland looked at him with some surprise. “You don’t look too old.”
“Seventy.”
“Impressive,” Roland said, rather admiringly. “It’s really rare to find one with such an agile body at your age.”
The old guide laughed and said, “It’s normal. We work in the field every day; we peasants are physically strong.” “Oh, that’s not necessarily true. It’s mostly because you have a good physique.” “Hahaha.” The old guide laughed very loudly. The carriage went slowly along the prairie road. Roland would certainly have been much faster if he had flown himself.
But it was not like he came here to fight for progress. He came to find someone and kill them.
So while lying on his board, looking at the blue sky and clouds, with his hands behind his head, Roland slowly asked, “By the way, old Beckrum, the fact that you can be a guide means that you know this meadow well, doesn’t it?”
“Of course. There is nothing in this meadow that has happened that I don’t know about.”
“So have you heard of any big names coming out of here?” asked Roland lightly. “Like, powerful Mages or something.” Beckrum shook his head. “None of that. This place of ours, it’s a magical wasteland. It’s possible to say that it produces Warriorsforget about the n.o.ble profession of Mages.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.” Roland sighed. “My teacher told me to travel around, and I heard that the scenery here is beautiful, so I came over to see it and find out if there are any fellow Mages. This way I can enjoy the scenery of the journey and communicate with fellow Mages at the same time.”
“If there was a wizard, he would surely be a celebrity in our Croatian Plain,” said Beckrum helplessly. “That sounds like something I would have heard of, but alas, there are none.”
“Yeah, quite a shame.”
Beckrum swung his whip again and said, “But our gra.s.sland girls, Master Mage, you must
try.”
Roland laughed and said, “There will be a chance.”
Then neither of them spoke again.
The carriage wobbled and carried Roland to a town in the gra.s.sland.
Just as they reached the entrance of the town, someone shouted to Beckrum, “Old drunkard, you’ve brought guests here again. It seems that you can drink again. Be careful not to get killed by Mama Sophie.”
“Oh, she can’t catch up to me.” The old man laughed aloud and hurried the wagon toward the town.
Some particularly curious people ran over to see what the cart was carrying, only to find a Mage in a robe and recoil in horror.
No matter what the place, the status of Mages was very high.
The carriage went through the town for a while, then came to a small mud-brick building.
The building was small but had a yard enclosed by an earthen wall about 1.2 meters high.
Several trees over three meters tall were planted in the small yard for shade.
In the shade was a round stone table and a few small stone stools.
It carried a strong aura of life.
There was an old woman inside, squeezing a kind of nut to get the pulp out of it.
And next to the old woman there was a small child who could not yet walk, wearing no clothes, covered in dirt, crawling about on the ground, drooling and yapping, and now and then uttering the characteristic, shrill laughter of a baby.
“Master Mage, this is my home now. You can settle in your room on the third floor, it’s guaranteed clean. The room’s payment is included in the hiring fee.”
The old guide then yelled out into the yard, “Old Sophie, go get some clean water for the guest.”
The old woman stood up, and though her back was indeed bent, she walked looking in good spirits.
After smiling politely at Roland, the old woman entered the room.
Roland’s attention was drawn towards the small boy crawling around on the floor who now was at Beckrum’s feet and opened his arms for a hug.
In his perception, the little boy’s whole body emitted a faint wave of magic power.
The elements in the air were channeled naturally into the little boy’s body, and finally, because they were not stored and used, they were then naturally “discharged” again.
Roland was slightly surprised.
Under normal circ.u.mstances, it would be difficult for ordinary people to channel magic elements, otherwise, the number of Mages wouldn’t be so low.
The little boy in front of him, however, possessed the gift of pa.s.sively attracting magic power.
What a promising future.
“Master Mage, is there something wrong with this grandson of mine?” The old guide held his grandson, and he felt a little worried when he noticed that Roland’s eyes were always glancing at his grandson.
“There is indeed something quite wrong.”
The old guide’s face paled.
Roland continued, “This grandson of yours has a very strong magical talent. It would be a waste to not let him become a Mage.”
Ah… the old guide was a little confused.
He had previously wondered if his grandson had some disease that ordinary people couldn’t see, only to have a Master Mage say that his grandson was very talented as a Mage?
He still couldn’t believe it until now. He was confused for a moment before asking again, “Master Mage, you’re not messing with me, right? How could we poor commoners, whose ancestors were all commoners, give birth to children with magical talents?” “Forget it if you don’t believe me.” Roland shook his head. “Just pretend I didn’t say it.”
“This…” The old guide was torn.
He wanted Roland to help him confirm his grandson’s talent again, but Roland was no longer willing to say more.
At this moment, the old woman who had just gone in to get water came out with a gla.s.s of water.
A porcelain bowl was used.
Roland didn’t care at first, but after a couple of sips of water, he suddenly felt that something was wrong.
It wasn’t so much the water that was wrong, but the fact that he found himself holding a porcelain bowl.
There were also beautiful patterns on it.
In this world, porcelain was a very expensive commodity.
Like the well-made porcelain bowl he was holding—the pattern on it even carried a bit of elven flair.
Roland carefully examined it for a while, and then asked in surprise, “This bowl of yours, where did you get it?”
The old woman laughed. “Picked it up. It’s been over ten years. I have to say, the things picked up on the ground around here are practical—so many years and it’s still broken. And It still looks new.”
“Where did you pick it up?” “In that black field just outside of town on the east side,” the old woman said slowly, her back hunched. “A lot of people have been picking out pots and pans and stuff there.”
“I’ll go over and see, then.” After examining his bowl a moment longer, Roland finally said, “I’ll come back to bed myself in a little while, just lay out the sheets on the third floor.”
Then Roland left.
The old guide called after him, “Master Mage, shall I take you there?”
But Roland didn’t seem to hear, as he left quickly. In a short time, he disappeared into the flow of people in the street.
Beckrum said helplessly, “What an impatient guest. By the way, Sophie, that Master Mage just now said that our grandson might have a great talent for being a Mage.”
The old woman glared at him. “Stop dreaming. When you were young you always wanted to be a Mage, but you ended up going to the big city a few times and running back on your own. Everyone in the village felt ashamed of you, and now you still have the face to mention this?”.
“I am trying to give my grandson a better education in the future. Don’t you think about how much our son has suffered because he can’t read and write?”
The old woman froze for a moment, then said, “Why don’t we wait for our son and daughter-in-law to come back and talk about this?”
“Okay. No matter what, we have to be ready to send our grandson to magic school first; money is the most important thing.”
“Over a decade, at least ten gold coins would have to be saved to barely get him enrolled in the magical academy established in Fareins.”
The old woman listened, then stroked her grandson’s head and smiled quite happily.
Roland went out of the city, then kept going east as the old woman had said, and soon he found the yellow area. After all, it was too easy to find a patch of yellow mud in a world full of blooming pink flowers.
It was as obvious as the bald spot on a programmer’s head, and it was extremely easy to attract the attention of others.
Roland walked over to the yellow mud, felt it for a moment, nodded, and said to himself, “There is indeed a faint residue of magic power. I just don’t know if it’s a sealing point for Jabezo.”
He spread out his mental power and used his mental threads to go deeper into the ground. Although he found quite a few trinkets, such as pottery jars that contained a lot of copper coins…
These weren’t the things Roland was looking for.
After a dozen seconds of searching with his mental threads, he was disappointed. “Although there is magic power residue, it’s not necessarily his doing.”
Roland didn’t think that he would be able to find the enemy as soon as he arrived.
Wouldn’t the first thing someone who had been sealed for hundreds of years did when they came out be to quietly slip away?
“But the magic residue is still there, and I’m guessing it’s not more than a few years old!” As Roland was thinking this, one of his mental threads suddenly made a discovery.
Using Mud to Stone and Stone to Mud, he quickly turned this yellow land over while finding and taking out that particular object.
Roland smashed the pottery jar which contained a lot of money, but then he poured out something even more interesting.
Well over a dozen gems.
Red, blue, green, and many other colors.
If the average person had seen these gems, they would have taken them and sold them for money.
Roland, however, knew that the gems, all of them, were spellcasting mediums.
In other words, there was probably a powerful Mage’s corpse buried under this yellow mud.
Roland was quite careful as he erected his Magic s.h.i.+eld and then started furiously using Stone to Mud.
The ground was gradually parted, and soon, he dug a large hole twenty meters deep.
Then, in the cave, new evidence was found.
A simply structured but s.p.a.cious grave.
There were many more magic items in this grave.
The old guide had said earlier that here in the plains, there were no Mages, at least none that he had seen.
So the grave in front of him, or the sealed s.p.a.ce… was it the place where Jabezo operated?
Roland stood up and jumped into the grave.
It was filled with a faint magic aura.
Not naturally wandering elements, but those being unintentionally emitted.
For example, when casting a spell, it was easy to let the magic power dissipate.
For a Mage, such magic elements were almost indistinguishable from something like body odor.
“Judging by the freshness of the magic residue, this man should have left less than ten days ago.”
Roland turned around in this underground s.p.a.ce and found nothing, so he jumped back up.
Then he searched downtown for a while, but found no other magic residue.
That meant the Mage probably left town.
This would make him difficult to find.
Croatia Plain was so vast. No one would know where he was hiding, and besides, the man might have left this small town quite some time ago.
Roland walked around the town, and finally went to the tavern to try and get some information.
It turned out that the taverns here, which were closed during the day, were only open for a few hours at night.
Roland could only go straight back to Beckrum’s house.
At this moment, Beckrum was holding his grandson and arguing with a middle-aged man across the room about something.
Roland walked over to them.
As he got closer he heard old Beckrum shout, “Money, money, money, that’s all you know. Of course I know it’s expensive to send a child to learn magic. But we have at least ten years left now, and with the whole family working hard, can’t we even earn the tuition?”
“Of course we can earn it, but why should we have to save all our money and then suffer from hunger for ten years for the sake of a child? We’ve done him a great favor by raising him. Old man, do you understand?”
Beckrum was so angry that his head was spinning
He rubbed his forehead and gasped.
“And how could a Mage come over to this small place of ours.” The middle-aged man scoffed, “Old man, you’re too old and lost your wit; you’d better not believe a word of this fake Mage’s nonsense.