Holme was a serf ——but he wasn’t a serf from birth. During the time even earlier, he had been a miner in the mines.
Miner, and not slave laborer.
There were two types of people working in the mines — miners who had freedom and slave laborers who had no freedom. The former were freemen who willingly chose to “dig rocks” in the dangerous mines for the sake of bringing the bacon home, while the latter was the private property of the mine owners, equated to the tools and livestock in the mines. However, there weren’t any differences between the two in some aspects —— they were all expendables that could die in the mines anytime, and no one would care to ask about them even after their deaths.
The process through which Holme lost his freedom was highly dramatic: he wasn’t a miner who “remained in his place”; compared to immutably digging up rocks in the mines, he preferred searching for new objects —— whether they were new ores or plants, so long as they were novel things. On this point, there were often people who teased him, saying that his ancestors might have had a bit of the dwarf bloodline, but Holme had always taken this teasing with good humor. As he worked in the mines, everything that he had in mind all day long was whether he would be able to dig up some extraordinary treasure underground. And finally, one day, he really did “dig” out a “treasure”.
He had run into the scene of the mine owner’s wife cheating with a supervisor in the mine.
It was very easy for supervisors to beat one or two miners or slave laborers to death. They just had to palm it off using reasons such as the mine caving in or the like after the incident, and there would be absolutely no problem. Holme had even personally witnessed such scenes before. Thus, he chose to flee at the very first moment —— once he did, he never returned home.
After being a refugee for a year, he settled down in the old Cecil territory. Viscount Cecil of the previous generation did not expel him, but he had no choice but to rely on selling himself as a serf to seek survival.
In normal circumstances, this would be all to his short yet miserable life —— after being locked to the land, there would no longer be any changes in serf Holme’s life, no more new encounters, or even hope. He would carry the heavy pressures imposed by the landowner and spend his whole life crawling in the soil, living out his remaining 10 to 15 years as a serf. And if he could, by luck (or unluckily) have offspring during this course of things, then his offspring would also inherit the identity of a serf, thus living under the whip of the landowner generation after generation. And his experiences as a miner in his early years, as well as that bit of restless curiosity during his youth, would one day completely vanish from his memories.
However, after that calamity, everything changed.
The old Cecil territory was gone; the landowner was gone; the land was gone. The new feudal lord walked out from a legendary story, leading the survivors to build a whole new homeland at the foot of the Dark Range. Faced with an all-new land and the Dark Range that was full of secrets, the feudal lord promulgated inconceivable new laws one after another. And the serf Holme was rewarded for his participation in making traps during the “Defense Battle” in autumn. He became a free person once more, even freer than a freeman.
The feudal lord allowed residents to take all sorts of jobs according to their forte and rewarded anyone who worked hard. On the notice board in the center of the town, new recruitment notices would be put up almost every day, and anyone who wanted to contribute more to their family expenses could respond to the feudal lord’s call through to this channel. To people of this era, the feudal lord opening up so many work posts and even providing remunerations for them was practically an unbelievable gift of grace. Moreover, it was winter whereby in former years, they could only stay home to starve and await death. ——Thus, each time new recruitment notices were put out, countless people who were waiting for jobs (or to provide for their family) would swarm forward, searching for jobs that suited them.
The majority of the people in the territory were originally illiterate; they could only wait for the soldiers standing in front of the notice board to read out the contents on it for them. However, the soldiers would only begin reading them out six hours after the new notices were put out. —— In order to understand the recruitment content a few hours earlier, Holme forcefully learned thousands of new words within the brief period of a few months and was then able to stumble through the contents on the notice board.
In night school, people like him who worked hard to learn to read due to similar motivations weren’t few; literate people could know the details of the recruitment several hours in advance and head to the internal-affairs human-resource department to look for clerks to register themselves. By the time those illiterate people went forth to sign up, more often than not, all the posts would already be filled. Those people who did not work hard to become literate at the beginning were all regretting it now.
And Holme was very glad that he had learned words in time. When the feudal lord announced the organization of a new exploration team that would enter the mountains, he signed up at the very first moment. This team did not require many people. Although there were some risks, the remuneration was even higher than for the technical jobs in the factories. Besides, there was also a small team of magic-infantry troops protecting them. How great could the risks be?
The newly organized mountain exploration team entered the Dark Range through a newly discovered mountain path. They saw many incredible mutated animals, plants, and rocks along the way. Because of his former experience in the mines, pretty agile mind, and best literacy, Holme became the leader of this team (of course, another important reason for this was because he’d once been personally commended by the feudal lord; this was a rare honor). Under his leadership, the team found those unusual “raw stones” with a faint purple luster from a stretch of weathered rock with weak cohesion.
In the process, Holme’s curiosity that had once been slowly worn away by life was gradually revived…
…
Under the soldiers’ lead, Gawain and Amber found the “exploration team’s fortified point” in the Dark Range. Several simple tents sat in a small empty space in the mountains, while the fully armed Cecil Combatants kept guard around this small campsite. Gawain saw the person-in-charge of this exploration team, a middle-aged man who wasn’t tall but was very robust.
Looking at the person’s tanned face and slightly bent body, Gawain instantly sensed familiarity. The memory of a satellite spirit played its role very well at this point. He recalled that he indeed knew this person: during the Cecil defensive battle against the aberrations in autumn, a serf called Holme had been commended for his outstanding performance. To set an example, he’d even been given public recognition —— the facts proved that he really hadn’t misjudged him back then.
“I remember you’re called Holme.” Gawain nodded to this resident who was once a serf. “You participated in the exploration team this time?”
“Yes—yes Lord!” Holme didn’t expect that Gawain would actually remember his own name; he was instantly slightly filled with profound respect and humility. “You personally presented a… a medal to me!”
“You’re a little fatter than you were then. Very good.” Gawain nodded with a smile. “You were the one who discovered the ores?”
“Yes, Lord.” Holme worked hard to manage his nervous emotions. He was someone who’d gone up the commendation stage once; he had to be that bit more composed than the average man. “The location of the initial discovery isn’t far from here. Let me point it to you…”
On a rock formation not far from the campsite, Gawain saw the few collection points that the exploration team excavated.
Such ores with immense potential value were actually “buried” in such shallow areas.
Gawain came to the collection point. He saw a layer of thick grayish-white porous rock stratum that looked weathered covering those ores, and those ores with faint purple or blue lusters were “mounted” in it, like some kind of condensation nuclei.
“They’re all very small pieces of ores on the surface — the deeper we dig, the better and bigger the quality and size of the ores. I think the veins that truly have exploitation value still needs to be dug deep to find.” Holme explained at the side. “Such a loose weathered rock stratum isn’t too suitable to be dug as a mine—— It will collapse easily, so it would be better to directly make it a quarry. With Rebecca Crystals, blowing up the rock layers wouldn’t be difficult.”
Gawain nodded. “I saw the reports that you sent back. You all discovered many things that the outside world has never seen. Moreover, the animals and plants all show signs of mutation.”
“Yes, Lord,” Holme replied. “This is the first time an extensive area of mineral ores like this were found.”
Gawain responded with an “mm” before lifting his head to survey the surrounding terrain —— Gawain Cecil from 700 years ago had once led troops to search for paths in this Dark Range. And back then, this area had yet to be affected by the Dark Wave. In Gawain Cecil’s memories, there were no such peculiar things here.
They had appeared after the Dark Wave.
Amber pulled out her dagger and curiously picked up a broken piece with a mixed bluish-purple luster from one of the rocks that had been dug out in the collection point. She held it under the sun and examined it. “What a strange thing, old… Gawain. This is what you mentioned — changes to natural substances due to the influence of the Dark Wave?”
“The essence of the Dark Wave is an extremely powerful surge of magical power. Although this portion of magical power cannot be used by mortals, it can still engender a far-reaching influence on the natural environment,” Gawain explained casually. “Do you know that the magical materials that can be found in the ruins of the ancient Well of Deep Blue are even more than the amount found here?”
Amber’s eyes were wide. “How reckless does a person have to be to dare to mine in there!”
Gawain shook his head but did not answer her question.
He looked at the ore before his eyes, but what he was thinking about at heart wasn’t just these ores in sight.
He’d once guessed that perhaps the Dark Wave had not broken out just that one time.
The surveillance satellite left in the sky was clearly a kind of early warning equipment targeted at the Dark Wave (or similar phenomenon). The calamity that happened previously at the Cecil territory also showed signs of the Dark Wave making a comeback. And the surveillance records from when he hung in the sky in the past had also shown the phenomenon of all civilization on the continent vanishing entirely for no reason, the whole ecosphere starting from zero like a shuffle and reboot.
In the “satellite era”, his observation of the world was disjointed due to severe “frameskip”, so there were many times when he couldn’t figure out how those earthshaking changes had come about —— in the blink of an eye, primitive man had created magical power cannons; then with another blink, they were living in tree trunks wearing animal skins and line dancing around a bonfire. The geomorphology and distribution of vegetation in his vision were also turned upside down. Perhaps there had been a destructive war lasting decades or possibly 49 days of floods and tsunamis. However, to a satellite spirit who saw one frame per thousand years, this “swift yet brief” moment of disaster was really difficult to capture.
But there was definitely something causing such “shuffling” —— if there weren’t other answers, the only answer would be the Dark Wave.
The Dark Wave would cause qualitative changes in the substances in the natural world. These things in the Dark Range that had never been seen before in other places were enough to prove this point.
And even if the Dark Wave had retreated, these changed objects would not resume their original form; instead, they would be consolidated to become an all-new material —— the ores found in the Dark Range could similarly prove this.
Then, supposing that the Dark Wave had occurred more than once in the world, Gawain would have reason to believe that the majority of the things in this world might have been influenced by the Dark Wave.
He came up with the boldest guess throughout history:
Those magical materials, magical creatures, or the common soil and rocks that appeared to be completely unrelated to magical power had been gradually molded to become what they were at present through the tempering of the Dark Wave time and time again.
The Dark Wave was a “world-shaping phenomenon” that would persistently occur and had not stopped showing signs of recurring, even to this day.
Holme was a serf ——but he wasn’t a serf from birth. During the time even earlier, he had been a miner in the mines.
Miner, and not slave laborer.
There were two types of people working in the mines — miners who had freedom and slave laborers who had no freedom. The former were freemen who willingly chose to “dig rocks” in the dangerous mines for the sake of bringing the bacon home, while the latter was the private property of the mine owners, equated to the tools and livestock in the mines. However, there weren’t any differences between the two in some aspects —— they were all expendables that could die in the mines anytime, and no one would care to ask about them even after their deaths.
The process through which Holme lost his freedom was highly dramatic: he wasn’t a miner who “remained in his place”; compared to immutably digging up rocks in the mines, he preferred searching for new objects —— whether they were new ores or plants, so long as they were novel things. On this point, there were often people who teased him, saying that his ancestors might have had a bit of the dwarf bloodline, but Holme had always taken this teasing with good humor. As he worked in the mines, everything that he had in mind all day long was whether he would be able to dig up some extraordinary treasure underground. And finally, one day, he really did “dig” out a “treasure”.
He had run into the scene of the mine owner’s wife cheating with a supervisor in the mine.
It was very easy for supervisors to beat one or two miners or slave laborers to death. They just had to palm it off using reasons such as the mine caving in or the like after the incident, and there would be absolutely no problem. Holme had even personally witnessed such scenes before. Thus, he chose to flee at the very first moment —— once he did, he never returned home.
After being a refugee for a year, he settled down in the old Cecil territory. Viscount Cecil of the previous generation did not expel him, but he had no choice but to rely on selling himself as a serf to seek survival.
In normal circumstances, this would be all to his short yet miserable life —— after being locked to the land, there would no longer be any changes in serf Holme’s life, no more new encounters, or even hope. He would carry the heavy pressures imposed by the landowner and spend his whole life crawling in the soil, living out his remaining 10 to 15 years as a serf. And if he could, by luck (or unluckily) have offspring during this course of things, then his offspring would also inherit the identity of a serf, thus living under the whip of the landowner generation after generation. And his experiences as a miner in his early years, as well as that bit of restless curiosity during his youth, would one day completely vanish from his memories.
However, after that calamity, everything changed.
The old Cecil territory was gone; the landowner was gone; the land was gone. The new feudal lord walked out from a legendary story, leading the survivors to build a whole new homeland at the foot of the Dark Range. Faced with an all-new land and the Dark Range that was full of secrets, the feudal lord promulgated inconceivable new laws one after another. And the serf Holme was rewarded for his participation in making traps during the “Defense Battle” in autumn. He became a free person once more, even freer than a freeman.
The feudal lord allowed residents to take all sorts of jobs according to their forte and rewarded anyone who worked hard. On the notice board in the center of the town, new recruitment notices would be put up almost every day, and anyone who wanted to contribute more to their family expenses could respond to the feudal lord’s call through to this channel. To people of this era, the feudal lord opening up so many work posts and even providing remunerations for them was practically an unbelievable gift of grace. Moreover, it was winter whereby in former years, they could only stay home to starve and await death. ——Thus, each time new recruitment notices were put out, countless people who were waiting for jobs (or to provide for their family) would swarm forward, searching for jobs that suited them.
The majority of the people in the territory were originally illiterate; they could only wait for the soldiers standing in front of the notice board to read out the contents on it for them. However, the soldiers would only begin reading them out six hours after the new notices were put out. —— In order to understand the recruitment content a few hours earlier, Holme forcefully learned thousands of new words within the brief period of a few months and was then able to stumble through the contents on the notice board.
In night school, people like him who worked hard to learn to read due to similar motivations weren’t few; literate people could know the details of the recruitment several hours in advance and head to the internal-affairs human-resource department to look for clerks to register themselves. By the time those illiterate people went forth to sign up, more often than not, all the posts would already be filled. Those people who did not work hard to become literate at the beginning were all regretting it now.
And Holme was very glad that he had learned words in time. When the feudal lord announced the organization of a new exploration team that would enter the mountains, he signed up at the very first moment. This team did not require many people. Although there were some risks, the remuneration was even higher than for the technical jobs in the factories. Besides, there was also a small team of magic-infantry troops protecting them. How great could the risks be?
The newly organized mountain exploration team entered the Dark Range through a newly discovered mountain path. They saw many incredible mutated animals, plants, and rocks along the way. Because of his former experience in the mines, pretty agile mind, and best literacy, Holme became the leader of this team (of course, another important reason for this was because he’d once been personally commended by the feudal lord; this was a rare honor). Under his leadership, the team found those unusual “raw stones” with a faint purple luster from a stretch of weathered rock with weak cohesion.
In the process, Holme’s curiosity that had once been slowly worn away by life was gradually revived…
…
Under the soldiers’ lead, Gawain and Amber found the “exploration team’s fortified point” in the Dark Range. Several simple tents sat in a small empty space in the mountains, while the fully armed Cecil Combatants kept guard around this small campsite. Gawain saw the person-in-charge of this exploration team, a middle-aged man who wasn’t tall but was very robust.
Looking at the person’s tanned face and slightly bent body, Gawain instantly sensed familiarity. The memory of a satellite spirit played its role very well at this point. He recalled that he indeed knew this person: during the Cecil defensive battle against the aberrations in autumn, a serf called Holme had been commended for his outstanding performance. To set an example, he’d even been given public recognition —— the facts proved that he really hadn’t misjudged him back then.
“I remember you’re called Holme.” Gawain nodded to this resident who was once a serf. “You participated in the exploration team this time?”
“Yes—yes Lord!” Holme didn’t expect that Gawain would actually remember his own name; he was instantly slightly filled with profound respect and humility. “You personally presented a… a medal to me!”
“You’re a little fatter than you were then. Very good.” Gawain nodded with a smile. “You were the one who discovered the ores?”
“Yes, Lord.” Holme worked hard to manage his nervous emotions. He was someone who’d gone up the commendation stage once; he had to be that bit more composed than the average man. “The location of the initial discovery isn’t far from here. Let me point it to you…”
On a rock formation not far from the campsite, Gawain saw the few collection points that the exploration team excavated.
Such ores with immense potential value were actually “buried” in such shallow areas.
Gawain came to the collection point. He saw a layer of thick grayish-white porous rock stratum that looked weathered covering those ores, and those ores with faint purple or blue lusters were “mounted” in it, like some kind of condensation nuclei.
“They’re all very small pieces of ores on the surface — the deeper we dig, the better and bigger the quality and size of the ores. I think the veins that truly have exploitation value still needs to be dug deep to find.” Holme explained at the side. “Such a loose weathered rock stratum isn’t too suitable to be dug as a mine—— It will collapse easily, so it would be better to directly make it a quarry. With Rebecca Crystals, blowing up the rock layers wouldn’t be difficult.”
Gawain nodded. “I saw the reports that you sent back. You all discovered many things that the outside world has never seen. Moreover, the animals and plants all show signs of mutation.”
“Yes, Lord,” Holme replied. “This is the first time an extensive area of mineral ores like this were found.”
Gawain responded with an “mm” before lifting his head to survey the surrounding terrain —— Gawain Cecil from 700 years ago had once led troops to search for paths in this Dark Range. And back then, this area had yet to be affected by the Dark Wave. In Gawain Cecil’s memories, there were no such peculiar things here.
They had appeared after the Dark Wave.
Amber pulled out her dagger and curiously picked up a broken piece with a mixed bluish-purple luster from one of the rocks that had been dug out in the collection point. She held it under the sun and examined it. “What a strange thing, old… Gawain. This is what you mentioned — changes to natural substances due to the influence of the Dark Wave?”
“The essence of the Dark Wave is an extremely powerful surge of magical power. Although this portion of magical power cannot be used by mortals, it can still engender a far-reaching influence on the natural environment,” Gawain explained casually. “Do you know that the magical materials that can be found in the ruins of the ancient Well of Deep Blue are even more than the amount found here?”
Amber’s eyes were wide. “How reckless does a person have to be to dare to mine in there!”
Gawain shook his head but did not answer her question.
He looked at the ore before his eyes, but what he was thinking about at heart wasn’t just these ores in sight.
He’d once guessed that perhaps the Dark Wave had not broken out just that one time.
The surveillance satellite left in the sky was clearly a kind of early warning equipment targeted at the Dark Wave (or similar phenomenon). The calamity that happened previously at the Cecil territory also showed signs of the Dark Wave making a comeback. And the surveillance records from when he hung in the sky in the past had also shown the phenomenon of all civilization on the continent vanishing entirely for no reason, the whole ecosphere starting from zero like a shuffle and reboot.
In the “satellite era”, his observation of the world was disjointed due to severe “frameskip”, so there were many times when he couldn’t figure out how those earthshaking changes had come about —— in the blink of an eye, primitive man had created magical power cannons; then with another blink, they were living in tree trunks wearing animal skins and line dancing around a bonfire. The geomorphology and distribution of vegetation in his vision were also turned upside down. Perhaps there had been a destructive war lasting decades or possibly 49 days of floods and tsunamis. However, to a satellite spirit who saw one frame per thousand years, this “swift yet brief” moment of disaster was really difficult to capture.
But there was definitely something causing such “shuffling” —— if there weren’t other answers, the only answer would be the Dark Wave.
The Dark Wave would cause qualitative changes in the substances in the natural world. These things in the Dark Range that had never been seen before in other places were enough to prove this point.
And even if the Dark Wave had retreated, these changed objects would not resume their original form; instead, they would be consolidated to become an all-new material —— the ores found in the Dark Range could similarly prove this.
Then, supposing that the Dark Wave had occurred more than once in the world, Gawain would have reason to believe that the majority of the things in this world might have been influenced by the Dark Wave.
He came up with the boldest guess throughout history:
Those magical materials, magical creatures, or the common soil and rocks that appeared to be completely unrelated to magical power had been gradually molded to become what they were at present through the tempering of the Dark Wave time and time again.
The Dark Wave was a “world-shaping phenomenon” that would persistently occur and had not stopped showing signs of recurring, even to this day.
