Chapter 1017 — The Approaching God

"I have merely realized lately that the things I am doing grow more and more dangerous, and that your mind likely cannot handle work of this sort," Daniel said flatly. "When trouble comes, I would have to split my attention to instruct you on what to do."

Mary was stunned for a few seconds—it seemed she needed that time to grasp the true intent behind her mentor's words, and then to summon enough courage once she had grasped it. At last she gathered her thoughts and, boldly breaking the silence, said: "Mentor, I can take care of myself, and I don't want to go back to any countryside… I feel quite fine here…"

Her voice did finally falter. The courage she had summoned over those few seconds was only enough to carry those few dozen words before this imposing mentor of hers. Yet Daniel's expression turned somewhat surprised; he looked his apprentice up and down—one who had, in truth, never amounted to much over the years—and recalled what had happened a year ago, when he had found her parents in the countryside.

After a moment he withdrew his gaze and gave a cold snort: "Then do as you please. An opportunity like this will not come again."

……

The magic-powered train glided smoothly and swiftly along the tracks, the scenery outside the window receding rapidly—in the vast white snowscape lay harvested fields buried under snow and tranquil villages one after another.

"We still have some time before we reach Winterhold's eastern checkpoint, Your Majesty," Pei Yi said, looking at the Typhon Emperor seated in the chair across from him. "Would you like to go and rest for a while?"

"No need," Luo Yan said casually, his gaze sweeping over the scenery outside the window. "…Magic-powered trains really are fine things—and magic-powered machines as well."

"Indeed," Pei Yi said. "That is why, whatever the cost, we must find a way to build them ourselves."

Luo Yan gave a murmured "mm." His gaze seemed drawn to the fields beyond the window; he stared fixedly for a long while before breaking the silence again: "Pei Yi, do you remember our last hunt in the year 716?"

Pei Yi thought back. "You mean that winter hunt? Of course I remember—it left a deep impression… It was the year before your coronation. That winter was cold as well, and we took several deer at the hunting grounds north of Talenkins… It was also the last royal winter hunt. The year after that, you were crowned and temporarily canceled that year's winter hunt; the year after that, you formally announced the complete cessation of the royal winter hunt, and a royal tradition that had lasted several hundred years came to an end."

"Yes… Then do you remember what happened during that winter hunt?" Luo Yan said, glancing at Pei Yi. "Don't tell me all you remember is the deer."

"Of course I remember what happened," Pei Yi said, recalling it with great seriousness. "A hunter, on a day in winter when hunting was forbidden, trespassed into the closed forest preserve, hoping to poach a rabbit... His pregnant wife was ill and needed meat to build up her strength. But the soldiers patrolling the edge of the preserve found him. Without trial, without any report, they simply shot him down with their bows... exactly as they would have shot an animal inside the preserve."

"Yes — just like hunting an animal," Luo Yan Pingxi said. "In those days, plenty of people thought it was only natural."

"Even a few years ago, there were still those who thought it only natural — and only in the last two or three years has that begun to change. Among the literate commoners, more and more scholars appeared, along with capable merchants and rune artificers; commoners even began entering the government offices and councils at every level. Once the systems of nutrition, education, and prenatal selection matured and were set on a proper course, the number of superhumans awakening among the commoner class began to rise as well. Today there is almost no gap between the awakening rates of nobles and commoners. Only after that did the nobles have no choice but to admit that commoners possessed the same capacity for thought, learning, and growth as they did — or, to put it more bluntly... to admit that commoners were the same species as themselves."

Luo Yan listened to Pei Yi's account, his calm, faintly sinister expression concealing every shift of feeling within. Only after a silence of some ten-odd seconds did he break it, gazing toward the direction of Winter Fort, his voice soft: "Yes. It took us nearly twenty years to barely accomplish all of this..."

"Spending more than a decade to make a portion of people recognize an obvious fact that follows the natural order — that is a rather ironic thing," Pei Yi said with a sigh. "And what is more ironic still is that even you and I did not clearly recognize these things from the very beginning..."

But Luo Yan made no further reply. He only gazed out the window as though lost in thought, toward the direction of Winter Fort. At the end of the snow-covered fields on either side of the train lay the rolling mountains of the Winter Fort defense line, and Luo Yan's eyes rested on the vast, boundless sky between those mountains and the clouds.

In one of his eyes drifted a faint starlight, and deep within its pupil seemed to be set another eye, through which he could clearly see the anomaly deep in that sky —

A giant clad head to toe in iron-grey armor stood amid the clouds, looking down upon this small, fragile mortal world with hollow, cold eyes. On his back he bore banners and a greatsword, and in his hand he held a war bow as tall as a clock tower.

That was God. He stood beneath the clear winter sky as though reigning over a hunting preserve that belonged to Him alone. The towering cities and the sprawling countryside alike seemed, before that colossal body, to be no more than hunting-ground decorations stuck with colored banners. Beneath God's war bow, every mortal in the world — king or commoner, hero or menial — seemed no more than an animal awaiting slaughter.

The wheels rolled, the train roared, and between the repulsion mechanisms and the relay pylons gusted winds thick with snow grains. The arcane train gradually gathered speed, charging straight toward the towering deity at the end of the horizon, who was by now almost fully entered into this world.

And as this arcane train sped toward the border, along more than ten transport lines running from the heartland of Typhon to Winter Fort, across wilderness and valley, between rivers and plains, dozens of knightly orders and battle-mage corps, and hundreds of thousands of superhuman soldiers, were moving toward the war zone.