Chapter 411 — The Day History Moves Forward

The attackers in the night had finally withdrawn. After the two most powerful Church knights and several other mages, knights, and priests who had led them fell, the handful that remained fled in panic into the deep darkness under cover of night, leaving behind a dozen or so corpses and a scene of wreckage — and in the end, nothing gained.

One Cecil combat soldier had been badly wounded: in a close-quarters fight with a knight his force-field shield had been shattered, and then a gash had been opened below his chest deep enough almost to show bone. But after several vials of alchemical potion were poured down his throat, the man's condition had stabilized.

Beyond that, Cecil had suffered no other casualties.

With the fighting over, the soldiers began to inspect the battlefield, sort out their equipment, and confirm the enemy's situation — but not one of them went near the open ground beside the well.

Wright stood quietly on that open ground, a clear, bright holy light still wrapped around him, covering him like armor and a cloak forged of light. The holy light shone on his surroundings and on the horizon beyond, and there on the open ground bathed in it, Emily had already closed her eyes.

Those big, bright eyes would never open again.

"Is it the Holy Light you believe in, or the God of the Holy Light?"

A question the lord had asked him before they set out surfaced in Wright's mind. It had circled there for many days; the contradiction it contained had kept him awake night after night. He had not understood — not understood why he should have to choose between the Holy Light and the God of the Holy Light. But now he understood.

In his anger and his vast disappointment in the God of the Holy Light, he understood. It was a blaze of light in his mind, a thunderous crack as some steel brand upon his soul broke apart, and in that instant of clarity he abandoned the master he had worshipped for decades and embraced the true Holy Light.

But someone had paid a price that should never have been asked of her.

A faint coolness touched his face; threads of rain fell from the sky onto this land soaked in misfortune and grief. The summer rain, a whole night late, had come at last before dawn. In that cool drizzle Wright knelt half-upright beside Emily and laid his hand on the little girl's forehead.

"...May the Holy Light shelter the road ahead of you... may you no longer be trapped in cold and darkness... may your soul be at peace... and from this day on, may there be no more hunger and no more suffering..."

Ansu Year 736, the 22nd of the Fire Month, the first days of summer.

The first White Knight in human history was born in the wilderness of the Southern Region.

Though at this moment, no one yet knew what this brand-new class ought to be called.

In the lord's manor of Cecil Territory, Gao Yang received the two knights, Byron and Philip, who had just returned from the front.

They had ridden hard all the way back from the Horsman prisoner-of-war camp, and arriving with them were over a thousand special captives brought out of the noble coalition.

"As you ordered, we brought back ahead of schedule those nobles and their knight and mage retainers, along with the Holy Light priests, Church knights, and transcendent mercenaries mixed in among the coalition," Byron reported. "But since we had to travel fast, we only brought part of them — there are still more than a thousand at the Horsman camp, and two hundred at the Tansan camp we didn't bring over."

"That's enough. The main thing is to get the nobles and their vassals here; the rest can wait," Gao Yang said. "Before the whole Southern Region is consolidated, there's plenty left for us to do."

"My lord, how do you plan to deal with those nobles and their followers?" Philip asked curiously. "Those people... ever since they were fed, they've done nothing but shout that they want to see you, to explain to you the... misunderstandings in this war."

"...They're shouting to meet me about that? Good — their brains haven't completely seized up, though they're not much better off," Gao Yang waved a hand dismissively. "They can save their breath. They still haven't figured out what this war actually means."

Hearing this, Byron immediately leaned over to Philip and muttered, "See? I told you. Just keep them locked up. If they want to shout, let them shout — worst case, lock them in with the big machine pumps at the waterworks and see who makes more noise..."

Philip ignored Byron entirely and continued to Gao Yang: "We captured as many of the Church knights and Holy Light priests in the noble coalition as we could, but quite a few still escaped pursuit once they reached the plains. Some are trapped in Cecil-controlled territory and are being rounded up slowly, but a considerable number of Church knights and priests have fled to the Holy Frost Cathedral to the northwest... that place isn't under our control."

Beside him, Byron could not resist muttering, "Take it and it will be."

"Ahem." Gao Yang cleared his throat twice. Though he would have liked to say that Byron had spoken his own mind exactly, at the last moment he refrained from letting himself go too far, because he knew very well that the Holy Frost Cathedral — and Frostgate City, where it stood — held a very special significance not only within the Luminary sect but across the entire Southern Region.

It was the headquarters of the Blazing Luminary Church's southern diocese, and also a theoretical "neutral ground."

Frostgate City theoretically belonged to the direct control of the royal family; the city had no lord, only a Chief Administrator appointed by the crown. But the Chief Administrator was essentially a figurehead — the real master of Frostgate City was the Holy Frost Cathedral within it, and the southern bishop and the order of priests in that great cathedral.

Of course, the southern bishop was gone now, and the high-ranking knights and priests of the Holy Frost Cathedral had for the most part died in this war. The whole cathedral's strength was no problem at all for Cecil as it stood now — but what Gao Yang had to consider was not the cathedral's defensive capability in the least.

What he had to consider was whether he could attack it directly, and under what name he could attack it.

That bore directly on the order of the Southern Region in the days to come, and on his influence over the region's great many followers of the Holy Light.

And there was a more practical question besides: what came after taking the Holy Frost Cathedral? Would he merely occupy Frostgate City, or arrest every Luminary priest in the city — or even tear the cathedral down? If the former, then the Luminary Church's influence over the Southern Region probably could not be fully driven out; if the latter, then the social order of the Southern Region would likely face severe upheaval, and the more devout followers of the Holy Light in his new territory would begin to question the "righteousness" of their new lord.

After all, occupying a city and a cathedral could still be called the normal course of war — because Lemont, the southern bishop, had "attacked" Xuanyao City with twelve fully armed Church knights and a high-ranking priest, and that could be regarded as an act of war. But if, after taking the city, he went on to destroy the Southern Region's system of Holy Light faith, then the several hundred thousand followers of the Holy Light in the Southern Region would begin to doubt the rule of Gao Yang Cecil.

Gao Yang had no way to simply erase the Holy Light faith from the minds of those hundreds of thousands of people, and given his current influence in the Southern Region and the actual state of religious belief in this world, he could not possibly push through any overly radical program of church reform either.