Chapter 556 — Migrants and Deserters
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
The red-haired youth who had left the registration passage carefully held his "reporting card" and walked the road toward meeting the next "registrar sir." In this vast, unfamiliar city he was confused and uneasy, but more than that, he was curious and excited.
This was Cecil, or at least a part of Cecil.
But this place was completely different from what he had imagined, and completely different from what he had heard.
The northern noble lords said Cecil was a savage, desolate, cruel place where order had collapsed; they said the noble system of the Southern Region had been utterly wiped out, and that a man who had crawled out of a coffin had destroyed all order with savage war; they said that on this land superior and inferior had lost their places, that authority no longer existed, that lowly serfs and noble knights could walk the same road; they said this place had been burned to scorched earth by the Cecilites' magic fire, and that in the scorched earth there was only a warmongering duchy...
But all the red-haired youth saw here were broad, clean streets, tall and imposing buildings, upright and friendly "sirs," and a wharf plaza so prosperous it was hard to believe—if this was the savage, cruel, order-collapsed scorched earth the noble lords described, then were those noble lords themselves living in a cesspit even more dreadful than scorched earth?
Looking around the plaza as far as his eye could see, Sala thought the noble lords had gotten only one thing right: here, indeed, everyone walked the same road.
That road was truly wide. Everyone could walk it.
If only the few fellow villagers who had fled with him had chosen the same path... but alas, they all worshipped the God of Holy Light, and they had gone north.
The red-haired youth walked slowly forward, his eyes seemingly unable to take in enough, observing every new thing here.
There were indeed far too many new things here—so many that a person hardly knew what to do with them, so many that a person was left dazed and at a loss.
Neat rows of lamp posts stood along both sides of the broad road, but what hung on them were not oil lamps but magic crystal stones; in the open ground in the distance stood a peculiar metal tower, with a great slab of crystal floating atop it; at the far end of his vision, workers were building something, and every tool and machine they used was unlike anything he had ever seen or heard of...
"Sam, you would never believe what kind of place I've come to..."
The red-haired youth muttered the name of his good friend from home. He walked slower and slower along the passage, his attention almost entirely captured by those strange magical devices he could make neither head nor tail of—had it not been for the fences lining both sides of the passage, he would surely have run over to those devices by now to examine them closely.
His slowness finally drew the irritation of those behind him, and someone gave him a hard slap on the back. "Hey! Get moving! You are blocking the way!"
The red-haired young man hastened to apologize and then stepped forward to move on, but just as he was about to set off, a sudden glow of light and shadow rising from no great distance, together with a sound that rang out at the same moment, startled him into standing stock-still where he was.
At the center of the dock square, upon a platform that rose slightly above the ground, a large magical device had suddenly activated. Above it thereupon floated a gigantic holographic image, and with the image came a brief strain of music—it sounded like a mingled playing of flute and lyre.