Chapter 87 — A Miracle Even Mortals Could Join
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Under the command and guidance of the two knights, the warriors and common folk of the Cecil settlement were at last stirred into action.
Word that the aberrations were coming had already spread through the entire camp, but under Gao Yang's deliberate guidance and insinuation, the panic and pressure this news produced had been temporarily suppressed—or rather, diverted. The spoils they had brought back earlier and the name of Gao Yang Cecil played a decisive role in this.
And on this point, what pleased Gao Yang most was that, at least so far, no deserters had appeared in the camp.
The serfs and commoners might be ignorant, but they were not stupid. So long as they were made to understand that this was a savage land far from civilized society, that beyond the camp lay nothing but towering mountains and primeval forest, and that monsters roamed among those mountains—that to flee to the relatively safe town of Tanzan would take at least three or four days' travel, and that with the aberrations already close, running out would only mean dying faster—then those who thought of fleeing would naturally weigh their own lives.
Gao Yang had specifically had Heddy stress this point to the settlers.
So despite their faint terror, despite the memory of the blazing inferno that had consumed Cecil Territory months ago and the boundless horde of monsters still squatting in their minds, the people still mustered their courage. They had heard that the hero lord from seven hundred years ago had a way to deal with the aberrations, and they saw Heddy and Rebecca confidently directing the soldiers in their preparations—and so they, too, gained a little confidence of their own.
And the tasks assigned to them were another source of that confidence.
In the furnace district they fired the "slag" that was said to serve as weapons, built treadle traps, carved and finished runes—work that even illiterate commoners could do well. And while they worked, soldiers stood nearby constantly emphasizing that these things could be used against the monsters. So the laborers began to feel that this "ancient duke" must truly be capable, and they threw themselves into their work with redoubled effort.
And in truth, even the soldiers responsible for "reading out" the instructions were not at all certain what these things were for. They simply followed orders, shouting to the working commoners the very words they had heard from Gao Yang.
"Crystal shards go on the bottom layer, then the stone slab carved with the formation on top! If a slab's broken, come here and swap it for a new one!"
"Finished pieces go over here!"
"Remember to check whether the crystal's lit—an unlit crystal's no use, come here and exchange it!"
"Everything you're making is a weapon, made specially to kill monsters—this is Duke Gao Yang's order! He's the bane of those freaks!"
Gao Yang led Rebecca and Heddy across the open ground northeast of the camp. This stretch of clear space was devoted entirely to the making of "art." Gao Yang had originally intended to name the place the Louvre or something of the sort, to signify its identity as a treasure house of the arts, but no one understood the reference, so he had to let it go.
He bent down to inspect the objects neatly stacked at the tallymen's feet: wooden containers half a foot square and less than two inches tall, packed inside with Rebecca crystal granules, and atop the crystals, slabs of black stone carved with detonation formations.
But these components alone could not set off these magic-version "landmines." They still required runic triggers to activate them.