The soldiers had blocked all the main roads and completely surrounded the business center of the gray elves. However, this did not stop the rumors and the truth from quickly fermenting among the common people. Soon, countless rumors of darkness, blood, sacrificial rituals, and heretical cults spread throughout the town. At night, the skeletons that were carried out of the business center seemed to confirm the rumors.
Escorted by the soldiers, the Duke of the Western Region, Baldwin Franklin, arrived at the scene in a low-key manner. He frowned as he looked at the business center, which was still emitting a faint smell of blood, and at the ignorant ignorant people who were peeking in from afar. He was in a terrible mood.
It was not necessary for a duke to personally pay attention to what happened in a small town. However, when the incident happened, Baldwin Franklin happened to be hunting in the hunting ground near Jinlin Town.
Recently, the cultists had been causing trouble everywhere in the kingdom. Not long ago, the king had sent him a message warning him to be careful of the cultists. Indeed, there had been several disturbing terrorist incidents in the Western Region. Duke Bodwin Franklin was worried about this. That was why he chose to come to this secluded place for a winter hunt to relax. However, he did not expect that the cultists would appear right under his nose at this critical juncture as if they were specifically targeting him.
"My Lord," a trusted aide came from the side and whispered, "do you want to disperse those lowlifes?"
"They are just ignorant. They don't know what fear is," Bai Dewen said in a bad mood. "I asked the soldiers to block the road to save the lives of those idiots, but since they are too stupid to understand this, then let them gather one street away, as long as they don't affect this place."
"Yes, my Lord. Your kindness is very moving," the trusted aide said with his head lowered. "Do you want to go in and... see it yourself?"
"That's why I'm here."
Baldwin pushed open the door of the business center, and a strong smell of blood immediately hit him in the face.
Dried dark red blood could be seen everywhere in the business center. The floor, the walls, the roof, and even every table, chair, decoration, and window sill were covered with blood. It was as if a madman had dipped in all the blood and carefully smeared it on every surface. It made one's scalp tingle.
And in the middle of the blood that had already solidified, there were human-shaped prints with darker colors. It was very strange.
"What's going on with these imprints?" Baldwin Franklin asked as he sensed the faint mana fluctuations coming from the imprints.
"It's caused by corrosion, my Lord," a man dressed as a priest came out from the crowd of people who were cleaning up the scene. He performed a Holy Light Believer's salute in front of the Duke of the Western Region and respectfully replied, "Judging from the traces on the scene, those who were affected by witchcraft or participated in the cult's sacrifice first carried out crazy self-mutilation activities in this hall and smeared their blood all over the corners of the room. Then, they gathered in these positions, and the residual blood in their body began to boil and rot under the influence of evil magic. Their flowing flesh and blood formed these corrosive marks, so when we came here, we only saw bones."
The Duke of the Western Region angrily said, "I don't want to know too many details, I just want to know who did it."
"This is a typical sacrificial ground of the Cult of All End," the priest replied. "They advocate the destruction of flesh and blood and embrace death. According to my judgment, the cultists who carried out this evil sacrifice were among the bones collected at the scene. For a blood sacrifice of this scale, the cultists would choose to self-destruct with the victims to achieve their goal to the greatest extent."
The Duke of the Western Region looked into the priest's eyes and asked, "Their goal? What is their goal? "
"They must be planning to create a plague and spread it to the western border of the kingdom and the moss forest at the same time." The cleric pointed at the nearby walls. On the blood-stained walls, faint golden runes of holy light could be seen flashing faintly, and wisps of black gas were quickly dissipating under the illumination of the holy light. "When I arrived here, the whole building was already filled with the smell of the plague. Fortunately, the Lord guided me to discover the conspiracy of the cultists in advance. I was able to dispel the evil magic that was about to take shape and set up a purification enchantment. My Lord, now there's no need to worry about the plague. "
"These depraved and twisted freaks! Their souls should be taken away by the devil and never run out of hell! " It was rare for Baldwin Franklin to be truly enraged, but he still tried his best to maintain his composure. He nodded at the Holy Light Priest and said, "Father, you have saved this town and the lives of everyone around it! You deserve my gratitude and reward. "
"Purifying evil is the path that the Lord has given us," the priest said compassionately. "Compared to personal gains, I'm more worried about the crazy cultists attacking areas that are not under the protection of the Lord."
"The church of the Blood God is near this business hall, but the priests there are unaware of the evil happening around them." The Duke of the Western Region shook his head and said, "The first to arrive were the few priests of the Holy Light led by you..."
"The messengers of the Blood God are not to blame," the priest of the Holy Light immediately said. "It's just that their divine spells are not useful at this time. The power of the God of Holy Light specializes in fighting evil, and we just happened to run into our duty. "
The Duke of the Western Region showed a thoughtful look and said, "Fighting evil... The cultists in the kingdom are getting more and more rampant, what we need at this time is the power to fight evil..."
The priest bowed his head deeply and said, "The servant of the God of Holy Light will not shirk my duty."
...
The cultists were troubling the nobles all over the Ansu, but the situation in the Southern Region, where they first stirred up trouble, was gradually stabilizing.
It seemed that after the successive setbacks of the Everything-Endgame Association and the Eternal Sleeper, the dark cultists felt that this desolate and backward area adjacent to the Gondor wasteland was a little tricky. Since there were still a lot of targets to choose from in the kingdom, they temporarily gave up the idea of continuing to cause trouble here.
Gwen could not guess the cultists' thoughts, but he was happy to accept this rare peaceful time and planned to take advantage of this opportunity to continue the technology tree in his territory.
The basic rune array analyzed by Jenny and Rebecca was gradually coming in handy.
On the desk in front of him was a disassembled universal gauntlet, which was the "Type I Scorching Ray Gun" currently equipped by the territorial soldiers. Compared to the crude experimental model, the mass-produced gauntlet had a more reasonable internal structure, and the various parts were more standardized and easy to replace. After opening the outer shell and a layer of protective cover, Hao Ren could see the modular rune trigger, magic capacitor, magic card slot, and the scorching ray substrate at the front of the gauntlet. In addition, there were two empty slots in the magic card slot, which were designed according to Gwen's instructions, and were expandable areas for later modification and upgrade.
Jenny and Rebecca stood beside the desk, and the latter took out a rune substrate and handed it to Hao Ren. "This is for you."
Gwen took the substrate, and on the edge of the hexagonal metal plate, he saw a line of neatly stamped words: Universal Type I Force Field Shield Module.
He opened the restriction buckle on the magic card slot inside the gauntlet and installed the new module in place. With a slight click, several runes on the force field shield module glowed faintly — the energy from the magic capacitor had successfully activated the new module.
Jenny explained, "After the force field shield is activated, the number of shots of the scorching ray will be reduced by half, but the force field shield is not a function that needs to be activated all the time. You can rely on adding a new rune trigger to control its activation and deactivation. As an energy shield with a limited defensive area, the soldiers can only activate the force field shield when they are in close combat. "
Rebecca quickly added, "We originally planned to directly make a level three eggshell shield, but then we found that the energy consumption was too high, and the gauntlet could not last more than a few minutes, so we had to first put in the level two magic force field shield!"
Gwen raised his eyelids and looked at Iron Head. "What the hell is an eggshell shield? That's a mage's shield! Don't randomly give it a name just because it looks like an eggshell, okay? "
Rebecca scratched her head. "Hey, hey, hey, you know what I mean anyway …"
Gwen helplessly looked at the girl. "How many functions of the next generation armor have been implemented?"
"Oh, we have successfully integrated the backpack and the armor, and it's detachable. This way, the magic circle on the armor can be directly powered by the backpack, and when necessary, the backpack can be abandoned to reduce the weight or replaced. Because the breastplate also has a magic capacitor, it can continue to fight for a period of time even without the backpack," Rebecca said excitedly as she took out the blueprint she had drawn overnight and showed it to Gwen. "Look, we first integrated the level one Breeze Shield into the breastplate. It has the lowest energy consumption, and although it does not have much physical protection, it can filter out poisonous breath and disease spells, making the soldiers safer in harsh environments. Then, according to your instructions, we also added heat insulation and weight-reduction runes on the inner layer of the armor. These are all cantrips or level one spells, and they can be used continuously with the backpack as the energy source …"
Rebecca described excitedly, and Gawain nodded in satisfaction. Although it was only a basic function, the idea of using a new magic circle to achieve an effect similar to that of enchanted equipment was obviously correct. However, Rebecca stopped and looked a little depressed. "But you mentioned adding a jet behind the armor, and the soldiers only need to shout 'Xiaya!' and 'Xiaya!', the soldiers only need to shout 'Xiaya!' I really have no idea about this function. I wanted to add a fireball circle behind the armor, but I found that it would blow up the surrounding teammates … "
Gawain almost choked on his own saliva. "Pfft — didn't I tell you it was a joke?!"
"But it sounds super cool!" Rebecca looked at Gwen with sparkling eyes. "And there's a bunch of glowing streamers on the back of the armor. As long as the soldiers jump three meters high, they can shoot arcane missiles in all directions …"
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