Chapter 574 - 558: You Gave Yourself Away
A week later. Mage City, Alden Royal Capital.
Dressed in a fine but inconspicuous linen robe, Allen sat by the window on the second floor of a street-side tavern.
"Common language parsing at 99.6% completion," Jarvis reported to him. "Thirteen dialects identified, and a religious terminology database has been archived separately.
"Now loading the simultaneous interpretation module."
Outside the window was a bustling street. The noise, which just a second ago sounded like a cacophony of unintelligible chirping, instantly became clear and comprehensible. The drawl of drunkards, the jargon of merchant caravans, the slang of mercenaries, and the shouts of street vendors all flooded into his mind.
He could now even use the most authentic eastern rural accent of the Alden Kingdom to complain about this year’s wheat prices with the farmers downstairs.
In seven days, he had traversed three Mortal Kingdoms, leaving his footprints across dozens of towns. By analyzing massive amounts of language samples, Jarvis had already allowed him to seamlessly integrate into this continent’s civilization.
Allen picked up the cup of watered-down, sour ale and took a sip without changing his expression.
He had already formed a clear picture of this continent’s true nature.
There were three human kingdoms—Alden, Velti, and Saland on the southern coast. The royal families of the three kingdoms had intermarried for generations. Border frictions were constant throughout the year, but they never escalated into all-out wars. The reason was simple: all disputes eventually had to be sent to the central Holy Mountain, where they would be judged by the same master.
The adjudicator was the Blood God Sect.
This world believed in an entity known as the Holy Spirit Blood God.
Minstrels in the tavern, mercenaries on the street, and farmers in the fields—everyone fanatically extolled its "miracles." However, upon slight investigation, Allen discovered that all the legends defined as "miracles" were nothing more than ancient history, with the most recent one occurring over thirty years ago.
Even more interesting was the Extraordinary Power here.
Knights in Alden practiced Fighting Spirit, monks in Velti practiced Breathing Techniques, and Court Mages in Saland used Magic. On the surface, these were three completely different systems, but their underlying logic was the exact same thing.
Earlier, when Allen was setting a bone for a blackout-drunk veteran in a tavern, he got a clear look at what was on the man’s chest: a dark red mark shaped like an inverted drop of blood.
"A Holy Blood Mark," the old soldier had mumbled vaguely at the time. "Bestowed by the bishop’s own hands when I was baptized at twelve. Only with this can you ignite Fighting Spirit. Without it, you are destined to grub in the dirt for food your whole life."
[Comparing with the Association’s anomaly archives. Highest match: Flesh and Blood Rune System of the Black Wizard Organization, match rate 83.4%.]
[The characteristics of this Flesh and Blood Rune System highly align with the common methods used by Crimson Hand, a Black Wizard Organization expelled by the Wizarding World a century ago.]
Furthermore, according to Allen’s covert observations over the past few days, the so-called Holy Artifacts held by those priests were nothing more than inferior Alchemy Items with a few Light Magic and Treating Minor Injuries spells solidified into them. They were so crude that they couldn’t even compare to the graduation projects of Wizard Apprentices.
The Divine Arts cast by the clerics were essentially the lowest tier of Witchcraft, forcibly prying open the believers’ own vitality to cast spells using the Holy Blood Mark as a medium.
It was a Pseudo-God system built by Black Wizards, completely riddled with loopholes.
"Caught you red-handed," he thought.
Dressing up Dark Witchcraft in the shell of Holy Light—these rats hiding in the gutters were playing an excellent game of disguise. These Black Wizards had likely lurked in this Plane for a century, completely transforming it into their private pasture. They didn’t hide in dark caves or underground; instead, they sat brazenly on the Holy Mountain, accepting the worship of six hundred million people.
"When the tiger is away, the monkeys declare themselves kings," he thought.
Allen leaned back in his chair, a hint of coldness flashing in his dark blue eyes as the memory of infiltrating a grand cathedral the previous night surfaced in his mind.
Without triggering any Defensive Arrays, he had slipped into the sleeping quarters of a High Priest like a ghost. The man was sleeping soundly, a content smile on his face, as if he were meeting his Blood God in his dreams.
Allen reached out a finger and gently tapped the priest’s forehead, instantly extracting a massive influx of memory fragments.
Images flashed rapidly through Allen’s mind: countless exquisite Crystal Bottles filled with fresh blood collected from all over were continuously sent into the cathedral’s dark basement. There, the blood was poured into a massive Alchemy Array and refined into a scarlet Essence of Life. Ultimately, all the essence was loaded onto carriages and secretly transported deep into the Pope’s Kingdom, beneath the forbidden grounds known as the Holy Mountain.
Allen withdrew his finger, and the priest simply rolled over, continuing his deep slumber.
In the eyes of the Blood God, these mortals were no different from minerals or Magical Beasts. They were all just renewable "resources."
The monthly blood draws were packaged as a Blood Tax. To prevent rebellion from the lower classes, they even utilized large-scale Witchcraft with memetic effects for mass hypnosis. In addition, they distributed so-called extraordinary inheritances to strengthen their infiltration and control over the mortal empires.
The true mastermind was likely hiding within that Holy Mountain.
"Jarvis," Allen communicated while deep in thought. "Based on a blood draw of two hundred milliliters per person each time, calculate a refinement loss of thirty percent.
"Assuming this population of six hundred and twenty million pays the Blood Tax once a month.
"Calculate how many standard units of high-purity Life Crystals can be produced monthly."
[Calculating...]
Jarvis paused for a second.
[Estimated monthly production of high-purity Life Crystals: approximately 150,000 standard units.]
Life Crystals were a commonly used resource for Black Wizards of the Bloodline School. In the black market of the Wizarding World, a single standard unit of Life Crystal had a stable selling price of around two thousand Low-Level Magic Stones.
One hundred and fifty thousand units...
That equated to a pure profit of three hundred million Low-Level Magic Stones every month.
No mining costs. No refinement overhead. They didn’t even have to pay a single cent! Those two-legged sheep who were being drained of their blood would even kneel on the ground, gratefully praising the butcher’s mercy.
Allen’s gaze grew cold.
He wasn’t angry over the fate of these mortals. What enraged him was that a group of damned thieves was using such crude, inefficient, and barbaric methods on his land to poach the most precious "population resources" that rightfully belonged to him!
They were exploiting his future industrial foundation for free!
The so-called Pope’s Kingdom and Holy Light Faith were nothing more than a fence used to pen in these six hundred million two-legged sheep. But now, as the legitimate Lord had arrived, he was naturally going to reclaim everything—with interest.
Violently flattening the Pope’s Kingdom would be simple. He just needed to airdrop the Golem Legion from the Cybertron Fortress, and he could use naval cannons to raze the Holy Mountain to the ground in moments. Even if a Morning Star Wizard from the Crimson Hand was truly hiding inside, Allen wouldn’t flinch in the slightest.
However, he couldn’t do that. Forcibly destroying their faith would trigger a continent-wide rebellion, and the cost of rebuilding order would be far too high. He needed an entry point, a method to dismantle the Blood God Sect from within and logically take over this labor force.
Downstairs, several scar-riddled mercenaries were loudly boasting about their experiences hunting Low-Level Magical Beasts. A few scantily clad waitresses weaved through the crowd like fish, carrying wooden trays. The smell of cheap perfume mixed with the stench of sweat wafted up to the second floor.
Allen took another sip of his ale, preparing to plan his next move.
Just then, Jarvis’s voice suddenly cut in.
[Detecting covert acoustic communication.]
[No Magic Power fluctuations detected. Encryption method: Non-wizard system, localized musical notation encoding.]
Allen raised his eyes slightly. His gaze pierced through the wooden railing and instantly locked onto the source of the sound waves.
Behind the bar, a one-eyed tavern owner was vigorously wiping down a wooden mug. His movements were completely normal.
Beside the hearth on the other side of the tavern, a Minstrel carrying a worn wooden instrument case on his back was looking down and plucking his strings, seemingly just tuning his instrument.
The two were over ten meters apart and made no eye contact, yet high-frequency sound waves were being secretly transmitted through the air, carried by the seemingly chaotic vibrations of the strings.
"Decipher it."
[Collecting musical samples... establishing decoding matrix...]
[Deciphering complete.]
The content was just a single short sentence.
"The iris has withered, and the seventh violin is about to snap its strings. Notify all members to assemble at the square in ten days to make our move."
[Analyzing cipher...] Jarvis’s immense computing power immediately provided an answer. [Cross-referencing local slang, historical, and political databases... Big data analysis complete.]
["Iris": Refers to the royal crest of the Alden Kingdom. "Withered" likely implies the royal family has been completely reduced to Church puppets.]
["Violin": Likely a secret organization associated with a ’violin’ symbol. "The seventh" should refer to one of its core members.]
[Conclusion: This is an underground resistance organization coordinating the time and location of an uprising (93% probability).]
Allen lifted the cup of sour, stale ale to his lips, hiding the amused curl of his mouth.
"Talk about perfect timing," he thought.
He had just been contemplating where to start in order to tear open this Pseudo-God system in the most efficient and cost-effective way. Now, a pawn had delivered itself right to his doorstep.
"Assemble at the square in ten days, huh..."
To think that an organized underground resistance could actually exist within the tightly controlled Pseudo-God diocese of the Blood God Sect, and even pass intelligence in a tavern right in the Royal Capital.
"Interesting," he thought.