At the southernmost part of the Coristel continent, there was a strip of land that acted as a land bridge between the Coristel continent and the Priestley continent. Priestley continent was where the beastmen had settled; as the two continents were connected, the casualties caused by conflicts between beastmen and humans were equal in scale with those in the wars fought between humans and demons.
While humans and demons would only fight large scale battles every few decades, skirmishes between human and beastmen forces would happen constantly. The fires of war led to the large emigration out of the surrounding regions into one of the five great human empires, the Gabriel Empire(Swordsmen Empire). The empire of swordsmen, however, denied asylum to the fleeing refugees and this led to large amounts of jobless and desperate people turning to a life of banditry.
There was an abandoned town situated not far north of the land bridge, the town of Nelson had once been a bustling place but all the residents had abandoned the town after constant raids from the beastmen. The town was now effectively a ghost town.
Currently, on the mud trails outside of the town, a party of knights was traveling, there was only a few dozen of them and every single one of them was female. All of their armor and shields were crafted out of a dark-hued metal, none of them carried a lance typical of a knight. They were currently escorting several dozen large horse-drawn carriages filled with resources, the carriage at the front of the convoy flew the flag of the Church of Light, the flag looked out of place in the convoy and it was placed very casually; as if it was done just for the sake of it.
During their travels, there had been many suspicious figures that had followed these knights, it was rather hard not to attract attention with such a large convoy of resources in a region torn by war, especially a convoy that was guarded by female knights. Many bandit groups had set their eyes on this lucrative target, wanting to take both fortune and women. None of them realized that they had made a fatal mistake until it was too late.
Bella sat in the carriage at the front of the convoy with the lolis Angel, Mia, and Noesha. Eleanor rode with the knights at the front of the convoy, while Dolores rode with the rearguard. Roland acted as the coachwoman while Annie was standing by at Roland’s side.
“I didn’t expect this town to be completely free.”
Bella studied the map on the continent in her hands, feeling rather happy. A bar of gold was equal to 100 gold coins, and was worth more in border towns such as this one as a bar was much easier to carry than 100 coins, its price was raised by gold dealers to 120 gold coins per bar. That cardinal had given her 20 gold bars, this was enough money for her to buy a decent sized house in the capitals of any of the 5 great empires, and still have enough for a year of standard living expenses.
The Church sure has money, while that cardinal didn’t seem like a very good person, but he sure was open-handed, it would be nice if I could encounter him again. Bella was reminiscing when the carriage suddenly came to a stop, there seemed to be some commotion from outside.
“What happened? Who are those people!”
Bella opened the curtains and stuck her head through the carriage’s window, she saw that a large group of armed men had blocked the path ahead of the convoy.
“This is a robbery, leave the carriages behind and you can leave.”
The head of these bandits, Joseph, had hesitated for a while as he looked at the Church’s flag on the carriage before finally deciding to go through with the robbery. They were attempting to rob a convoy that flew the flag of the Church, they would try and avoid killing anyone as much as possible, or the Church might set its hounds on them.
“Do you know that we are the Church’s knights? You dare to try and rob the Church! Get out the way.”
Roland’s intentions were to save the lives of these bandits, but it was useless, none of the other bandits had listened to her, and what happened to those bandits was as expected, death. These bandits also paid her no heed and came charging towards the convoy, only two of Bella’s knights went to meet the enemy.
“Lady Bella…can we…”
“Being merciful to one’s enemy is to be cruel to oneself.”
After watching the two knights massacre the bandits, Bella returned to the carriage. The quality of these bandits didn’t even require Eleanor to deal with them, much less have the capability to become some of Bella’s ‘materials’.
Joseph’s bandits didn’t hold out for very long before they were completely eradicated and the convoy continued on. Through the carriage’s windows, Bella would often see beggars on the sides of the road. Bella did not pay any attention to them, as even though the convoy had large amounts of food and water, they did not have enough for every single one of the many beggars here; it would be too easy to lose control of the situation.
There were also some bandits who would ambush caravans by pretending to be beggars, Bella did not want to take this risk unnecessarily, they were not the peacekeepers with blue helmets from Earth. Bella’s eyes returned to the map on the table, she had bought the town of Nelson from Duke Viktor who owned the land prior, though Bella didn’t pay a single penny for it.
The duke’s wrinkled face immediately lit up after he heard that Bella wanted to purchase the abandoned town as if he had gotten rid of the hot potato in his hands. He also gave large swathes of the desolate lands around the town itself, Bella had wanted to give him several gold bars in payment, but he had turned down the payment after seeing her missionary certificate, saying that the town was a gift to the church and he wouldn’t accept payment even if Bella beat him to death.
Bella picked up the certificate that had been beside the map and studied it, the words on it were the same as the one that Stanley had given her, the only difference was a tiny red mark at the bottom left corner that looked like the thumbnail of a magic formation.
“Sister, this is a ritual array for summoning demons from other worlds. It’s just a beginner level array however, there are much more complex ones out there.”
After learning the meaning behind the symbol, Bella was more puzzled, why would a certificate from the Church of Light have something like this on it? Bella decided that she would think more about this later, the current priority was to get to the town and set up.
Bella didn’t think about looking for revenge against Lisha, she had not wanted to get involved with any more reincarnators after she had faked her death at the Anola Clark strip. Because of this, she chose a place far away from the Octavian Empire (Knights Empire) to expand and develop.
Count Harold was not implicated in the disappearance of Eleanor and Sidney, most likely because he had made some sort of ‘deal’ with the Church so that they would shelter him. It seemed that the Church’s authority was greater than Bella had previously thought.
___
After slaughtering over a dozen bandit groups, there weren’t any more bandits that dared to look for trouble, the news of what happened to those who had messed with this convoy had most likely spread through the region and deterred any other bandit group from setting their eyes on it.
“Hmph, these bandits won’t be around for very much longer.”
Bella’s convoy entered the deserted town of Nelson and headed straight for the church at the center of the town. Bella planned to continue flying the flag of the Church and set up her new base here.
“You girls can put that box over there, alright, you’re all dismissed for now.”
Bella directed her knights to carry a large box into the center of the church, then she followed the instructions that Mystica had given her to undo the box’s magical seal.
The box turned into dust after the seal was broken, a large and dark thing that looked a massively enlarged human’s brain was left behind. The brain looked as if it was alive, the flow of blood visible on the giant organ.
This was something called 【Devil’s Wisdom] also known to some as ‘Demon Brain’. It was one of the more important things that Mystica had given Bella, the 【Devil’s Wisdom] was a living thing and had its own intellect. Its main purpose was to grant greater wisdom to higher tier monsters, it could also command all the monsters within a very large radius, it was one of the must-haves for running a dark realm.
After the 【Demon’s Wisdom] appeared, it immediately gave off a weird aura that encased the church in the blink of an eye. Bella and the others weren’t affected it by all, this aura did not cause any harm to females, most like because its previous owner Mystica was also a female.
“Eleanor, bring in the box that holds 【Demon’s Heart] as well, I want to rebuild my dark kingdom here!”
“Understood, Lady Bella.”
Bella planned to rebuild her dark kingdom in this region, she would first revive all the cadre level monsters who had sacrificed their lives for her in the Anola Clark strip. This time she had learned the true way to create monsters from Mystica, it was time to put it into practice.
Outside of the church, Roland and Annie had mixed feelings as they looked at what was going on inside the church, they were currently the only humans left in Bella’s party as Eleanor and her knight corp had already accepted a demon god’s power, and could no longer be considered human. They currently witnessed the rise of a new dark kingdom, they had some very complicated feelings about this as they were still human.
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