Chapter 672: Miracle

Translator: imperfectluck  Editor: Kurisu

Fissures? If the Undead Emperors had never been solid to begin with, why would there be any fissures between them?

Any mage would forever search for the endless truth. Archmage-level existences would pay a certain amount of respect to and treat each other with some friendliness since they would all be comrades searching for their own truth. They would only pay superficial respect to the Gods, out of deference only to the Gods’ tremendous power and in order to avoid trouble.

A pure mage would never truly lower their head to any powerful existence. A powerful enemy would only pique a mage’s interest and curiosity, making the mage want to analyze, dissect, and learn from the enemy’s power, and then become even stronger than their enemy.

“A true mage will never be a loyal follower of any God of belief. That is because the mage will only be curious about the source of the God’s power, also believing that as long as they analyze the God’s power, they can become even stronger than the God. They will even capture and dissect the God in order to prove their own research theories.”– Truth Symposium archmage, “Levin the Desecrator”.

Well, it was likely that the Haletdam scholars generation had gone more overboard than anyone else. They had indeed taken this doomed path with their research into time rewinding, the secrets of souls, and the Cycle of Reincarnation. The undead Tark Republic had also been crushed by the Gods due to the same reason.

That was why mage organizations were typically quite loose alliances. This was due to mages’ very nature. Mages who gave all their personal research over to royal authority or powerful individuals would find it difficult to reach the top.

The reason for this? In the world of magic, knowledge equaled power. The foundation of research and seeking the truth would be doubt and analysis. If you lost your ability to doubt, how could you possibly break past a mystery and discover new knowledge?

It would be impossible for there to be very strong ranking systems where a leader’s orders were highly important in such loose alliances. At the very most, perhaps some respected individual could lead the rest with reputation and connections. Obviously, the Undead Emperors’ alliance hadn’t managed to deal with its issues.

Aso’s premature death caused the Undead Emperor alliance to lose its core, central member. The Undead Emperors all knew that their alliance would soon fall apart by itself, which was why they had chosen to all attack together for one time before the alliance fell apart.

And the moment that their attack was impeded, they all left to go their own ways.

In that case, what I could do here was obvious to me.

“…It’s unbelievable even when I’m witnessing it myself.”

Sandro and I had now secretly slipped out from the royal palace. We were idly walking around on the streets while wearing thick white wolf fur capes.

Sandro wasn’t being astonished with our high-tech magical engineering. Rather, he was astonished that a high-level undead skeleton was openly selling his wares at a streetside stall. The skeleton was currently advertising his bone accessories and toys for children. The buyer was an ordinary human citizen with no special powers.

The skeleton was even haggling with the human. Even though the high-level skeleton could easily slap the human to death, he was instead smiling while explaining about the bone accessory design and price.

Even though the buyer was clearly interested, she was still trying to drive down the price.

This was actually quite common for any transaction. However, it would be impossible to see the living and the undead trading with each other anywhere else.

“…How is this possible? That skeleton general is truly trying to patiently sell things to that woman? He can clearly kill her so easily! And, that woman isn’t even the slightest bit afraid!”

I could understand why Sandro would think this way. For people like us, no matter what information we heard from our spies, we would always be suspicious until personally verifying the information. Oftentimes, even if we personally saw or heard something, we still wouldn’t treat it as real.

Sandro had come to visit unexpectedly. As an Undead Emperor, his understanding of soul wavelengths meant that it would be impossible to fool him in any matter related to the soul. He could tell that this scene was absolutely real. This seemingly simple transaction was the best example that here in Diffindor, the living and the undead were both considered ordinary citizens, no different from each other.

Yet, Eich was a world where power was everything. In this world where undead were widely considered evil, this scene would seem even more inconceivable to Sandro that even a forbidden spell.

I was confident that this scene couldn’t be replicated anywhere else, past or present.

Previously, there were also countries where the undead and living could coexist together in peace, such as the ancient Tark Republic or the Xiluo Empire affiliated with us. However, in those countries, the undead and living would never be equal. Although they could coexist in peace in those countries, they would basically be on completely different levels.

In the original Xiluo, the great majority of living were slaves, part of the lowest social class. The upper social classes were filled with solely undead.

Back in the Tark Republic, the great majority of living would choose to study undead magic. The political power rested with the Senators, who were the strongest undead mages. Thus, it was common for the living to actively seek to become the undead in order to improve themselves.

It could be said that in both these countries, the undead ruled over the living. The natural differences between the undead and living meant that peaceful coexistence as equals would be incredibly inconceivable.

“…Just how did you accomplish this?”

I fell silent at this simple question. Indeed, achieving it could be termed a miracle. Countless definites and coincidences had combined to create this miracle which would be impossible to replicate.

“I’ll tell you as we walk…”

We continued walking around the business district. Even though several large snowfalls had already come, this place was still quite flourishing.

The temperature had long since fallen below zero degrees. Even though there were no more horses or donkeys out in the streets due to the cold, there were still plenty of vehicles going around, purchasing or selling items. In the past, the business district would have long since stopped doing business at this time of year. It would be impossible to do most transactions with human strength alone. Any wares that couldn’t be shipped would be nothing more than useless baggage that couldn’t be sold.

But right now, numerous caravans were hurrying past us. To them, this was actually just the beginning of their year-end and new year sales.

Some of them were riding on winter edition snow Iron Horses (motorcycles). Some of them were driving vehicles which had treads instead of wheels. However, most were actually using undead modes of transportation.

Skeleton horses, ghost horses, zombie horses, and so on. These creatures would typically be considered nightmarish rumors by the living, yet they were now dragging sleighs, carriages, and other vehicles as they proceeded forward, not knowing fatigue.

Here in Diffindor, the competition between magical engineering products and undead magic products was incredibly fierce when it came to transportation. In normal times, ordinary horse-drawn carriages would also be a fierce competitor, but in the cold winter of the Northlands, the horses could only hide in their warm stables as frostbite would be quite expensive to treat.

The Iron Horses, magical versions of motorcycles, wouldn’t have any problem traveling in winter. They also had numerous modifications for the snowy weather. The goblins, who were so skilled at making money, had long since started selling special winter editions. However, the relatively high price meant that they weren’t particularly popular on the market.

Meanwhile, an undead horse-drawn carriage controlled by an acolyte undead mage (with two free zombie laborers thrown in) could be hired for an entire day for only three gold coins. This was far cheaper than an Iron Horse which would be sold for 500 gold coins at the cheapest. Thus, the undead transportation methods actually managed to conquer 70% of Diffindor’s winter transportation marketplace.

And since undead magic didn’t have high talent requirements, and was also cheap to learn along with being easy to make money from, “ordinary citizen undead mages” became more and more common in Diffindor, where studying undead magic was legal. In fact, due to supply and demand, the price for hiring an acolyte undead mage was even lowering. I heard that the undead mages were even discussing whether or not they should establish a guild to control the prices…

I proceeded forward in silence, while Sandro seemed to have his own realization about what he saw.

“…Connecting undead magic to the citizens’ benefits in order to remove their fears? This is indeed a good idea. However, our Tark Republic also accomplished this in the past, but it wasn’t anywhere near as effective.”

I shook my head. Shared mutual benefits wasn’t the critical point at all. It was only a result of the undead being accepted by the world.

“…How should I explain? This is a coincidence that’s impossible to replicate, but it’s also something definite…”

I recalled the past—it all had probably started on that day. The remnant defeated undead knights lifted up their tattered combat flag as they hesitantly returned to their homeland. Yet, they were still accepted and welcomed by the residents of Diffindor who still remembered quite well about the spirit of the Mist.

This had been a chance, as well as a miracle. The People of the Mist still felt nostalgia about their destroyed Mist Kingdom, and they respected their heroes from history. Their respect for the undead knights, along with the promise of the Mist royalty along with my return all helped the People of the Mist to accept this undead army.

These undead knights had all previously been royal knights of the Mist Kingdom. They deeply loved this land, and regretted that they weren’t able to properly protect their people. They would never harm the living.

Meanwhile, to the living, these undead knights were all heroes who had tried their best to defend the Mist Kingdom. Thanks to Princess Reyne’s guidance, the undead knights who returned with Prince Roland were viewed with respect and trust, as heroes.

Trust needed effort to be put in by both sides. This coincidental return had achieved the best possible result. The undead started being accepted by the living.

Yet, just this alone wouldn’t be enough. The undead knights became more active as they were sent to various core industries and jobs, such as alchemy, military, winter hunting, and even basic construction. These guardian knights were quite active in greatly improving the citizens’ day-to-day lives, serving to also greatly improve the relationship between the living and the undead.

With this as the opportunity, we began to spread a new way of seeing the undead. These old undead knights were seen as still protecting the People of the Mist, which helped to eliminate the citizens’ discrimination against the undead. Diffindor thus became a holy land that undead mages could only dream of. Countless undead mages would travel thousands of kilometers to come reside here.

As for why I said it was a miracle, that was because there was indeed a miracle with later developments. The creation of Diffindor as the Crimeless City meant that even undead strangers could be seen as innocent. Only after people no longer discriminated could friendship and trust be truly established.

After that were the great benefits brought from majorly developing undead magic here, along with helping undead magic studies become commonplace. Only after all that finally appeared this scene where the living and the undead truly coexisted in peace, as equals.

Although it all sounded quite simple, this scene was the amalgamation of countless coincidences, even including Wumianzhe’s divine miracle. Yet, there were also definites. Without the return of my knights, without these cute citizens who were willing to accept their ancestor knights, and without this Flag of the Mist which had protected this land for thousands of years already, this miracle never could have occurred.

I didn’t intend to hide any of this. I told about all this to Sandro, who also fell silent. He was contemplating and recalling his past while making an important decision.

“It will be impossible to replicate this scene anywhere else in a short period of time. Still, this place doesn’t reject the undead, as you can see for yourself… So, what do you think about the Tark Republic? This will directly impact our future choices. If you feel that the Tark Republic is a country that should still belong to the old rulers, and that only conquering a land for the undead is truly reviving the Tark Republic, then we’ll have nothing to talk about. But if you instead believe that the past civilization is a type of inherited culture, perhaps we’ll be able to have a good discussion,” I told Sandro.

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