A nest that has gone out of control...
Bud Wendell was stunned for a moment before realizing what the other party was referring to.
"It's underground in the eastern part of the Holy Spirit Plain..." He raised his head and looked at Gawain and Viscount Andrew. "It seems that you have found its entrance?"
"The issue of 'entrance' is not important anymore. The entire Solinburg area has been occupied by a huge plant that spreads up from the ground. It is probably a product of some kind of out-of-control technology of yours," Gao Wen said bluntly, "and Your only chance now is to confirm the situation there and come back alive."
Bud Wendell closed his eyes slightly: he didn't seem to have any other choice.
"I see," he bowed his head, "I accept this opportunity."
"Very good." Gawain glanced at Viscount Andrew, and then nodded to Bud, "Then relax a bit now, at least for this moment, you can temporarily escape from being a prisoner. Next, I have something to ask you."
The attendants quickly moved the chairs and asked Bud to sit in the middle of the room, while Viscount Andrew left the room due to business. When only Gao Wen and the former General Typhon Wolf were left here, the atmosphere became dull for a while, until Gao Wen Wen took the initiative to break the silence: "Actually, I have always been curious about what happened to General Wolf, who once had a bright future, to become a cultist of the end of all things, and even an extraordinary profession, from a divine knight to a dark druid. Yi."
Bud sat upright on the chair, maybe because he had something to do again, or maybe because facing the ruler of the "enemy country", his decadence seemed to have subsided a lot. Hearing Gao Wen's question, the man who had hidden many secrets was silent at first, but after a few seconds he let out a soft sigh.
There are some things that he never planned to bring up again, but when he saw the news of Gao Wen's coronation in the newspaper and saw the huge skull that was processed into a throne, the things he had insisted on no matter how hard he had become became Insignificant.
"Your Majesty, have you ever had faith?" He looked into Gawain's eyes and asked.
Gao Wen smiled slightly: "If you regard a certain belief as a belief, I have it, but if you refer to a specific god, then I don't."
"Then you must be unable to understand what it means for a person's belief to collapse instantly," Bard shook his head with a wry smile, "especially when experiencing life and death..."
"Although I really want to correct your narrow perception of 'faith' right now, I'm more interested in your 'faith collapse'," Gawain adjusted his sitting posture, leaning back on the chair, with a half-smile Looking at this wolf general who has fallen from a devout follower of the God of War to a dark druid, "Let me guess, what did you face... the truth of the gods? Did you find that the god you believed in was dead, or did you find out that the god you believed in was dead? Just a man-eating monster?"
Bud's eyes widened suddenly, and he stared at Gao Wen: "Why do you..."
"Do you think that you are the only ones facing the so-called truth and shouldering the so-called mission? The world is so vast, why does all the truth happen to be in the hands of a dark sect."
Bud breathed heavily, and it took him a long time to finally calm down. He closed his eyes, with a self-deprecating smile on his face: "Then we are really a joke..."
"This joke is quite destructive," Gao Wen shook his head, "Tell me about you, how did you become like this?"
Bud closed his eyes tightly, and the pictures in his memory flashed in his mind one by one
He remembered that it was a cold winter. The confrontation area between Winter Wolf Castle and Longwind Fortress was covered with ice and snow. It was the coldest winter he had ever experienced. For nearly half a month, it snowed almost every day.
He remembered that day when the Knights were patrolling the border in the snow and ice, the sudden snowstorm interfered with their vision, and the soldiers deviated from their route in the process of finding shelter from the wind...
He remembered that it was near the Paramer Heights. The soldiers had a brief encounter with the Ansu Knights. The fierce battle in the snowstorm lasted only a short time. After realizing that the situation was unfavorable, he led his men to break out to the south, Try to detour back to the Typhon side from the foothills at the end of the Dark Mountains...
He remembered the sudden attack. At the end of the Dark Mountain Range, near the wasteland of Gondor, the exhausted knights were attacked by monsters that looked like flesh and blood giants. The monsters continued to come from the direction of the wasteland. The Knights were outnumbered, he killed one monster after another, until the sword shattered, until the last comrade in arms fell down...
He also fell down, a fatal wound through the heart, theoretically impossible to survive, but he opened his eyes again, when he opened his eyes again, he was lying in a place like a magic laboratory, his body was full of blood. Catheter, half of the body is soaked in the solution, surrounded by men in black robes walking around, someone loudly announced the success of the experiment...
"...From that day on, I became one of them," Bud had opened his eyes, and said while recalling, and then in front of Gawain, he pulled off the clothes on his chest, revealing his dead body. The price of resurrection, "This is their 'gift' to me."
Gawain frowned. He saw that Bud Wendell's chest was covered with a steel plate. There was a circle of ugly scars on the fleshy skin on the edge of the steel plate, and several suture marks spread toward the direction of the artery extension. Quite creepy.
"He had to be inspected when he was changing clothes in the prison. This thing startled the soldier. I explained that it was the aftermath of a magic experiment accident, but he hadn't seen anything scarier yet..."
Bud laughed, and tapped the side of the steel plate with a special technique for a few times. With the click of the mechanical lock, the steel plate opened in response, revealing a more amazing structure inside: a layer of transparent flexible substance Wrapping his chest cavity, it seemed to be filled with a translucent solution like some kind of vesicle. A heart mixed with flesh and metal parts was floating in the solution, and it was beating regularly. It was okay beside the heart. A series of auxiliary pipes and magical runes were seen, the shimmering light from the latter illuminating Bard's entire chest.
This set of things should have been working for many years, and it looks like it will continue to work.
"They implanted an artificial heart in you?" Gao Wen frowned. He was not surprised by the biochemical technology of the Death of All Things Society. After all, it is an organization capable of producing artificial gods and masters the manufacture of artificial organs. It is not surprising that transplantation technology exists, even in secular supernatural organizations other than the end of all things, there are similar technologies
Some old mages and extreme druids will prolong their lifespan through various biochemical transformations or extraordinary rituals, and princes and nobles will not refuse to use implants to improve their declining body functions. After all, The upper level of technology in this world has never been low, and the only problem is popularity and cost.
What puzzled him was that Bud Wendell became a dark druid just because of this heart
"You want to repay this kindness?" Gao Wen frowned and looked at Bud, "I'm afraid it's more than that?"
"...they implanted not only this heart in my body, but also the 'knowledge' that flooded into my mind along with this heart," Bard shook his head as expected, "an ordinary heart cannot drive the body of a high-level transcendent , so they made it with something called a 'sin factor', and these sin factors... carry the knowledge of the gods.
"From that day on, I stayed in the underground palace of the Doom Society for three full years, accompanied by darkness and nightmares. In the nightmares, I looked directly at those indescribable monsters. I called out to the God of War I believed in, but I could only let myself Deeper in the nightmare, I saw their malice, saw their madness, saw them counting the moment of doom in the palace of false chaos...
"In the end, I thought I was dead, dying of severe body and soul rejection, and the priest who was in charge of taking care of me even dragged me to the laboratory for an autopsy after I died, but at the last moment, I Woke up from a nightmare.
"I lost my belief in the God of War, not only from the inner level, but from the inside out, all the talents and strengths that were once blessed by the God of War disappeared.
"After that, I became a priest of the death of all things, just like you can see."
Bud's memories were over, Gao Wen frowned, digesting the amount of information in the other party's words.
Vaguely, he guessed the purpose of those experiments on Bard by those believers of death of all things.
Those Shoe Cultists forcibly destroyed Bard's "spiritual seal" with surgical operations and spiritual transformation! Snatched a "God's Blessed One" from the realm of the God of War!
This genius and devil's experiment reminded him of those rebels and those persistent "ghosts" mentioned by Veronica.
Judging from the information he has so far, he is almost certain that there are rebels operating in the depths of the Death of All Things.
Gawain put his hand on the table, and subconsciously tapped the table with his index finger. His gaze swept over the beating artificial heart on Bud's chest, and he suddenly felt a little emotional.
The person in front of him should have been just an "experiment" in the eyes of the Doomsday believers at first.
The completely crazy shoe cultists and out-of-control rebels don't care what kind of status a person has in the secular world. They chose Bud Wendell, probably because they valued the value of the latter as an experimental material That's all, if you have to say that Bard's status as "General Wolf" has any meaning in the eyes of those Shoe Cultists, then I am afraid that it will also promote the deterioration of the relationship between Typhon and Ansu, and even cause the follow-up Ansu internal The sharp increase in pressure and the outbreak of conflicts have added a lot of firewood.
Considering the conspiracy, Gawain suspects that when Bud Wendell and his subordinates were attacked by mutants near the Dark Mountains, it was the arrangement of those Shoe Cultists. There is no doubt that the death of all things has a secret and complicated connection with the wasteland of Gondor. , the only surprising thing is that they had the ability to drive some aberrants away from the Great Wall so many years ago... Perhaps, the attack that Bud Wendell encountered back then was the one that destroyed all things. And the first attempt to infiltrate the Great Wall
This is really a huge, complicated, and secretive plan, and the span of time and space is astonishing, but if this plan was formulated by one or a few "disobedients", then Gawain would not be very surprised.
They can plan one thing for a thousand years, and do one thing for a thousand years.
"Rebels..." Gawain took a breath, his gaze seemed to fall into the distance, "What a group of terrifying ghosts..."
…
Veronica, or Ophelia Norton, was standing in the square of St. Luane's Cathedral at the moment, looking expressionlessly at the nuns assembled in front of her.
After completing the reconstruction of the Holy Light Cathedral and assisting the White Knights to take over the northern church, she came to the southern border with the second batch of "migration teams", and came to the training base of the White Knights at the invitation of the Patriarch Wright, namely Luan City, the former headquarters of the Southern Diocese.
The first purpose of her coming here is to observe the training process of the White Knight and the new-style holy light equipment. The second purpose is to take a look at the newly formed nuns of the Southern Church, and the nuns who will conform to the new doctrine canon Extended to other parishes of the empire.
The former disobedient, today's saint princess slowly moved her eyes, and the young nuns puffed up their chests in her sight, with serious and serious expressions. They were dressed in uniform white priest's dress robes. Some improvements have been made to the event. They are holding a metal staff that is almost as tall as a person in their hands. Both ends of the metal staff have peculiar mechanical and rune structures. It is obviously a new type of magic equipment...
In addition to the necessary staff for the clergy, each nun is also equipped with a lightweight magic terminal armguard and a mechanically wrapped glove on her arm, and a prayer book and a potion bottle are hung on her waist. Of course, as a clergyman The holy emblem is also essential, and that holy emblem is printed on every nun's combat backpack.
"The Combat Pack is lightweight and designed with aesthetics and comfort in mind..." Wright said next to Veronica.
"So..." Veronica said slowly while holding the platinum scepter, "This is the nun group who just finished training in the southern border?"
"The official name is 'Sisters of Arms', and the leaders of each combat echelon are called 'Sisters of War'," Wright nodded. "They have just finished training, but they are already reliable priests. Every girl is Resolute and brave warriors of the Holy Light should be able to faithfully spread the gospel of the Holy Light and the new order of the empire."
Veronica felt that her emotions, which had not fluctuated for hundreds of years, had ups and downs: "... Is the thing in their hands a tool for them to spread the gospel?"
"Yes, the tentative name is 'Gospel Angel'," Wright nodded proudly, with a smile on his face, "It can be used as a magic wand to release the healing spell of holy light when it is not firing."
Can be used as a wand when not shooting...
Veronica/Ophelia took a deep breath and closed her eyes slightly.
The Cecilians... what a horrible bunch.