Chapter 342 Big Event - Shadow of Cold Water Harbor
After the servants finished serving the dishes, they left one after another, leaving only the middle-aged head maid and two older maids standing aside. Lecia signaled to Shade that it was safe to talk here, and the two of them ate.
We talked about what happened in the morning.
"It seems that the Scarlet Secret Cult has already penetrated into Coldwater Port, and even the establishment of the city is related to them. Those fish people and cultists have always existed in the shadow of Coldwater Port, but no one has discovered this. I think it was the first to appear
Those mermaid statues are probably what they spread."
This is the conclusion that Shade deduced based on the clues he found in the morning.
"But what exactly do they want to do?"
Princess Lesia asked in confusion. She only took a small amount of food, probably because she was not used to eating too much at noon:
"The steps of the sea return ceremony have been basically confirmed. So what is the purpose of the ceremony itself? The last line of the nursery rhyme involves sacrifice, which is very disturbing."
She did not say the word "evil god" in front of the servants, but Shade understood what she meant and said while unskilledly manipulating the knife and fork:
"This time is different from the one in Tobesk. The church failed once in Tobesk half a month ago. There will be no accidents this time anyway. All we can do now is wait for news, and about you.
The problem."
Shade said very cautiously:
"The captain who played cards with me said that as long as you are prevented from entering the red ocean when it appears, the curse will naturally disappear when the ceremony is over. That means that when the red ocean appears, you will most likely be mentally affected.
Affected, unconsciously walking into the sea."
The so-called "sacrifice" should not be about selecting individual individuals, but all the people who are contaminated by the curse. They will eventually appear in the Red Sea, stagger on the beach, and then step into the ocean together. This kind of scene makes people scalp when thinking about it.
numb.
Leaving Coldwater Port is the first plan to be eliminated. This type of curse may break out immediately once it leaves the ritual location. As for the relics that suppress curses, Lesia already has sage-level ruby earrings.
And the Saint Laurent ring purchased at the Coast Lighthouse.
After asking for help from Zarath Academy of Literature, the academy could also lend some relics against the curse. Shade believed that the safest plan was for him to stay by Lesia's side when the Red Sea appeared.
Although he is just a second-level warlock who can't do anything, if the curse itself is really related to the power of God, then Shade's presence will make it easy to solve many things that ordinary people cannot do.
"So the difficulty we face now is that we don't know how the ceremony is progressing after the pirate ship was driven away by you, and when the red ocean will appear."
Lesia briefly concluded, while Shade frowned slightly:
"It will definitely be solved within a week. I have a very powerful fortune teller friend. She predicted that one of the male ring magicians who encountered the pirates with us will set off for Tobesk in a week. At that time, the curse will
The problem must have been solved."
It had been raining all day in Coldwater Port. Because of what happened in the morning, Shade did not leave Sophia's mansion this afternoon in order to avoid the limelight. Instead, he waited here for news.
Shade's moonlight attracted the attention of the Church of Peace. Although the other party was called the "Peace" Church, its full name was actually the "Church of War and Peace". It was theoretically the most powerful of the five churches. That ancient
The murloc stronghold on the street may become a thing of the past.
Lecia entertained Shade well in the mansion, and after dinner, she took him to spend the afternoon in the study.
She has a lot of official documents to deal with. Most of the adult princesses and princes of the Cavendish family will be assigned some government work by the king. This is why the outside world generally believes that when the king gets old in a few decades, there will be big problems in the fight for the throne.
s reason.
The study in Sophia's mansion is about the same size as the study of Larus III that Shade saw in Yodel Palace. The walls of the empty room are covered with bookshelves, and there is a desk in the center of the room. There is a set of desks at the door.
Sofa set for guests.
This is the preference of the current king, who likes empty rooms.
Lesia dealt with the matter at hand, while Shade was allowed to randomly select books on the bookshelf to read. Most of the dazzling books were related to political economy and history. Shade finally selected the semi-official publication "The Secret History of Cavendish"
.
This is a narrative literature describing the origin and history of the Cavendish family. Through this, we can effectively understand the development and prosperity of Delrayon.
Of course, Shade still has a lot of things left to do this week. He "wasted" this afternoon reading next to Lesia, mainly to find out the follow-up news related to the Scarlet Secret Cult.
Their actions that morning were not traced by the church, but the cultists who used the ancient streets in Nancheng District as their base were in bad luck. Among them, Mr. Jude, the ring warlock, was killed by Shade, and the remaining four ring warlocks
Only one of the warlocks managed to escape.
Most of the humanoid fish-headed creatures that fled from the ancient street were caught by the church. According to the information the princess received, there were at least 300 transformed targets on that street. And as you can imagine,
Yes, there are more in Coldwater Harbor.
Some of these monsters, which are highly capable of self-healing in the water, can switch between human and fish-like forms, but most of the human forms are extremely ugly. After the morning operation, the Church of the Five Gods directly cooperated with the officials of Coldwater Port
, launched a large-scale search of the entire city.
But this is not Tobesk, which is controlled by a large number of troops and police. Searching in this free port is indeed useful, but it is hard to say how useful it will be.
The church related those fish-men monsters, the Scarlet Secret Cult, the Sea Return Ceremony and the Mermaid Curse, and officially named this incident "The Shadow Over Cold Water Harbor in 1853". This incident
It represents the cult that has infiltrated the shadows of the city and has remained hidden since the port's inception.
The Peace Church successfully occupied Kesem Alley and Jude Mansion after a shootout with the fishmen in the rain.
Through the captured prisoners and the documents left in Mr. Jude's safe, the church gained more information about the "Return by Sea" ceremony. With a strong intelligence network and strong information search capabilities, the church gained a comprehensive understanding of the hidden
What are the cultists in the city going to do?
Therefore, before dinner that evening, Shade and Lesia received a total of three important pieces of information through the intelligence sent by the "well-informed people" installed by the royal family in the church.
First of all, the specific number of ring warlocks who encountered the "Fishbone Pirate Ship" with them at sea on Monday night has been determined, a total of thirteen people. Except for "John Watson" and "Miss Princes", the others
Two of the eleven people have been found by the church. Through the descriptions of these rational people, the church has a better understanding of what happened on the ship and the clothes of the ring warlocks who participated in the auction that day.
But those two warlocks should not be the second chosen ones, because the church is still actively looking for the remaining unidentified people with unreasonable "enthusiasm" and actively investigating the foreigners who suddenly appeared in Coldwater Port starting from Monday
Ring Warlocks, they do this because they want to eliminate competitors.
Secondly, the ancient text of the "Sea Return" ceremony was found in the Holy See Library where the Church was created. This ceremony is not the god-summoning ceremony that Shade was worried about.
"I knew how it was possible that wherever I went, I was summoning the evil god."
This was Shade's opinion when he was sitting at the desk and listening to Lesia reading the letter. With a relaxed smile on his face, Her Royal Highness the Princess glanced at him with her emerald green eyes and her voice was very decisive:
"Even if it is not the worst case scenario, if this ritual is successful, the consequences will be no less than the appearance of an evil god."
At the beginning of the Sixth Era, when Coldwater Port was not yet Coldwater Port, the influence of the Righteous God Church had not reached here. At that time, there were three different cult beliefs in the local area, namely, the "God of the Deep Sea Drowned" and "The Lord of the Scarlet Spiral".
] and [Raging Storm].
The three gods are all inextricably linked to the ocean. While the believers fight with each other, the common culture also penetrates into each other, allowing the coastal cultists to develop very similar customs and even very similar extraordinary abilities.
Strictly speaking, the "Sea Return Ritual" is a ritual that can be used by believers of the three evil gods, but the specific steps are slightly different.
The function of this ritual is to awaken the power left by the gods in the deep sea by sacrificing mortals contaminated with the power of the gods after the red ocean arrives, thereby summoning tides to flood the city and turn the cold water port from a seaport into an underwater city.
The Scarlet Secret Cult was not a temporary idea; they had been planning for this purpose for many years. The evidence is that although the four main steps of the ceremony correspond to nursery rhymes, the ceremony also involves a lot of other detailed work and requires decades of preparation.
The murlocs hiding in the shadow of Coldwater Port have been making plans, but it just happened to be this summer that the final steps were taken.
This is a veritable large-scale ceremony that is hard to see in the material world. The reason why the Scarlet Secret Cult wants to hold the ceremony is because they have transformed and developed too many fish-like humanoid creatures on land since the establishment of Cold Water Port.
.
They needed a new habitat, but while gaining strength, the murlocs were bound by the ancient contract signed between their ancestors and the gods and could not leave the cold water port where their ancestors lived. Therefore, they decided to call on the power left by the gods in the deep sea to let the sea flood the city.
Let the terrifying fishmen occupy and live here forever.
"The good news is that this incident is only related to the local ancient cult belief Scarlet Secret Cult and has nothing to do with the other two ancient beliefs. Therefore, the only ones the church has to deal with this time are those who have developed and hidden in Coldwater Port for nearly a thousand years.
population of murlocs.”
Lecia said. Seeing that Shade was a little confused and wanted to ask questions, she explained to the outsider who had only been a one-month sorcerer:
“Only the secret sect of the guardian of the terrifying fish-men species [Lord of the Scarlet Spiral] has the tradition of transforming the dependents through rituals and divine magic.
The believers of the evil god [God of the Drowned in the Deep Sea] are mostly human sorcerers who control the undead, the floating corpses of the drowned. The followers of the evil god [Furious Storm] have nothing to do with marine life populations. They control storms and thunder. Therefore, only fish
People will want Coldwater Harbor to be flooded by the sea, and we don't have to worry about this being related to other sects."