Chapter 33: Milk and Honey

Chapter 33: Milk and Honey

In the Forsaken Land of the Gods, Moon City.

Adal, Xin, Rus, and the others heard the High Priest’s voice resound throughout the entire city-state, and all at once, they became unusually excited.

Almost simultaneously, they stood and shouldered the beast-hide bundles they had prepared long ago.

Inside those bundles were the mushroom powder, dried mushrooms, sheets of monster hide, and Beyonder characteristics of varying quantities and conditions that had been assigned to them.

Although they were now excited and filled with longing for the future, the suffering they had endured in the past made them unwilling to be careless in the slightest. Each of them carried as much food as possible.

Several rounds of lightning before, Moon City’s priests had received Mr. Fool’s divine revelation. They stopped sending hunting teams outside and instructed every resident to pack important belongings and be ready to leave at any moment.

In only a few dozen seconds, Adal and the others, holding lanterns, left their homes and arrived on the streets.

When their gazes met, their faces—some ugly, some marked by all kinds of deformities—were filled with undisguised joy. They held not the slightest negative emotion toward abandoning Moon City and leaving their homeland.

This place was the source of their nightmares. For countless generations, people had lost their joy while still in childhood.

After gathering at the square with the high platform, they suppressed the excitement in their hearts and lined up in orderly fashion according to their places of residence. At the same time, they checked whether their neighbors had all arrived.

Before long, every resident of Moon City was present. High Priest Nim walked onto the platform and spoke, unable to conceal his smile.

“Everyone, I have received an oracle.

“Mr. Fool will soon help us leave this cursed land and obtain a new life.

“Praise Mr. Fool!”

He took the lead in pressing his right palm to his left chest.

This was a gesture they had invented themselves to praise Mr. Fool, and Mr. Fool had not rejected it.

“Praise Mr. Fool!” The residents of Moon City all pressed their right palms to their left chests and loudly expressed their gratitude and piety.

As their voices echoed, Nim, with his graying hair and deeply lined face, raised a hand and pressed downward.

“We will first go to the City of Silver and join the survivors there. Then together, we will head to that bright world outside.

“Do not worry. Mr. Fool will protect us.

“All right. Close your eyes and begin praying.”

After saying this, the High Priest clasped his hands together, pressed them to his lips, and devoutly prayed to Mr. Fool, hoping that this great existence would fulfill the greatest wish Moon City had accumulated generation after generation over the past two or three thousand years.

The next second, this demigod of the Darkness pathway sharply sensed that their surroundings had changed. He opened his eyes and looked around, discovering that stone pillars were becoming clear, lanterns were hanging from them, and tall figures were swiftly being outlined.

This is the City of Silver? We have already arrived in the City of Silver… This is the might of a god… Praise Mr. Fool! Adal, Xin, and the others immediately began observing their surroundings as well.

Subconsciously, they felt some goodwill toward the City of Silver, because God’s missionary, the respected Lord Gehrman Sparrow, had once mentioned that after entering this cursed and forsaken land, the first place he reached had been the City of Silver.

This was the beginning of God’s radiance spreading through eternal darkness. It was the starting point of all hope.

Those figures soon appeared completely. The overwhelming majority of them exceeded two meters in height. Their features and bodies were normal, without deformity, and they were looking at the residents of Moon City with gazes mixed with curiosity and caution.

That deeply oppressive height and enviable normality made Xin, Rus, and the others grow nervous all at once, both ashamed and uneasy.

However, as their eyes swept across the crowd, they saw many residents of the City of Silver biting into mushrooms with browned surfaces and, from time to time, sucking steaming liquid from the plump white mushrooms.

This familiar sight gradually relaxed the people of Moon City, causing them to regard those “half-giants” as their own kind.

Chief Waite Chirmont of the six-member council nodded at Moon City’s leader, the High Priest said to be named Nim, and asked,

“Are you ready?”

His gaze was calm and natural, without the slightest discrimination because the majority of Moon City’s people had “terrifying” appearances.

Afraid that something unexpected might happen, Nim immediately answered,

“We are ready.”

Waite Chirmont then turned his gaze toward the residents of the City of Silver.

“Finish eating within three minutes and begin praying.”

In less than a minute, the people of the City of Silver finished drinking their “milk,” put away the remaining food in their hands, and began praying devoutly to Mr. Fool.

The ancient survivors of Moon City had miraculously descended before them, giving them several degrees more confidence in leaving the Forsaken Land of the Gods and truly allowing them to believe in Mr. Fool.

A few seconds later, everyone on the City of Silver’s training grounds disappeared.

The city sank fully into silence. Before long, polluted weeds would grow here, and monsters would wander through its streets and houses.

In the time it took to blink once or twice, the residents of the City of Silver and Moon City arrived before the Giant King’s palace, where the light of dusk was frozen in place.

This was Klein’s deliberate arrangement. He wished to give these ancient survivors of the Forsaken Land of the Gods a “ritual” to bid farewell to the past.

While the people of Moon City were shaken by the magnificence, epic grandeur, and mythic feeling of the Giant King’s Court, the majority of the City of Silver’s residents instinctively turned their heads to look downward and into the distance.

Beyond the orange-red dusk was land completely submerged in darkness. Only when lightning occasionally crossed the sky did the outlines of ancient buildings, towering peaks, and mutated plants appear.

When the lightning faded, darkness surged forth again, devouring everything once more.

Then the people of the City of Silver and Moon City all turned back and cast their gazes toward the depths of the Giant King’s palace.

There stood an open door. Beyond the door was an ocean dyed blazing gold.

The people whose eyes had been filled with sunlight immediately felt their surroundings blur and the scene shatter rapidly.

Those fragments swiftly reassembled, becoming a deep-blue ocean, the fishy smell of sea creatures, the clang of hammering, and an orange-red sun that had not yet approached the horizon.

The residents of Moon City and the City of Silver looked around in astonishment and anticipation. They saw lush forests that were not twisted in the slightest, saw stone buildings that had not yet undergone any renovation, saw Liaval and the others, and saw the road leading to the harbor and the ships docked there.

The vision of many people suddenly blurred, as though they were undergoing a baptism of holy light.

They could clearly sense that this place did not contain that fallen, filthy, mysterious power.

The majority of residents from the City of Silver and Moon City either lowered their heads or knelt on the ground. They loudly praised Mr. Fool and excitedly kissed the soil that seemed to carry a fragrance.

The rest were not ungrateful toward Mr. Fool. They were simply still immersed in the change of scenes, body and mind both shaken.

After they initially recovered, Liaval went forward. In his eyes, there was only his wife and daughter.

Once he drew near, he opened his mouth with uncontrollable excitement and joy, wanting to tell his wife and child everything he had seen and heard during this period. Yet he discovered that there were far too many things he wanted to share. They were like countless surging rivers, rushing all at once to his throat and blocking it there.

Only after several seconds did Liaval finally say one sentence:

“We… we have a new home…”

Before he finished speaking, the nearly two-and-a-half-meter-tall “half-giant” hurriedly reached into his pocket, then stretched his hand out toward his wife and daughter.

“This is what Lord Divine Envoy distributed to us. Milk candy. They… they all say it tastes very good…” Liaval’s face filled with a smile.

Lying quietly in his palm were two thumb-sized objects wrapped in thin paper. Their surfaces were wrinkled and slightly damp with sweat.

“Milk candy…” Liaval’s wife did not quite understand this word. In Jotun, it was a newly constructed term formed from “milk” and “honey.”

But their daughter was infected by her father’s emotions. Boldly, she took the milk candy and was about to put it into her mouth.

“No, no. You have to peel off the outer layer.” Liaval hurriedly took the two milk candies back, peeled off the wrapping paper, and handed one each to the mouths of his wife and daughter.

His daughter bit down. Her teeth exerted force, producing a crisp crack.

Her eyes then slowly narrowed, and her expression gradually took on a touch of intoxication.

During this process, she was even reluctant to open her mouth to speak.

Seeing his daughter’s reaction, Liaval’s wife also put that milk candy into her mouth.

She felt it was something extremely precious. She did not directly bite it apart, but held it in her mouth, allowing it to slowly dissolve.

The indescribable milk fragrance and sweetness slowly spread, causing Liaval’s wife to gradually become immersed in it as well.

Seeing this, Liaval’s smile became even more obvious. The words that had earlier been blocked in his throat poured out one after another.

“Lord Divine Envoy said that we can go to Bayam City to look for work, accept commissions, and earn gold pounds. Then we can buy even more milk candy. We can also sell unwanted Beyonder characteristics and monster hides to the Church of the Sea God…

“The Sea God is a subsidiary god of Mr. Fool…

“It will be dark soon. I will take you to the seaside to watch the sunset. It is truly beautiful. I go to watch it every day, always thinking that when you came, I would take you there too…”

…

It is finally resolved. My anchors have stabilized quite a bit… And fulfilling the wishes of the people of the City of Silver and Moon City has digested quite a portion of my Miracle Invoker potion. But it was not as much as what happened in Constant. As expected, “God of Wishes” is not the most correct way to act… Above the gray fog, Klein slowly exhaled and tossed the Staff of the Stars back into the junk pile.

Next, he would continue wandering, creating miracles, and occasionally go to the Forsaken Land of the Gods to turn some monsters into marionettes in preparation for the later ritual.

For the next stage of acting as a Miracle Invoker, Klein planned to accumulate wishes related to modifying appearances and body shapes, until he could solve the problems of Moon City’s deformed residents and create another miracle.

That shouldn’t be too difficult… Quite a few young ladies and women have wishes like removing acne, cutting double eyelids, or making their noses taller, and I do have some methods for realizing those… Accumulating bit by bit from low to high, from simple to difficult, sooner or later I will be able to treat the deformed people of Moon City… Now that they are in the outside world, their inferiority complex is growing stronger… Klein muttered inwardly for a while before suddenly laughing self-mockingly.

“Then I can call myself ‘the dominator of the beauty industry, the patron god of designers and construction workers, the miracle creator of long-distance travel’…”

…

After entering waters without a safe sea route, the Queen of Mysteries Bernadette seemed to lose all sense of time. If there had not been a precise wall clock hanging in her captain’s cabin, she would certainly have forgotten how many days she had already spent in this dangerous region.

The violent winds and torrential rain sent the ship sometimes flying upward and sometimes sliding sideways, as though proclaiming the arrival of the apocalypse.

Bernadette watched calmly and waited patiently, not interfering too much with the Dawn’s condition.

After an unknown length of time, the storm finally subsided.

At that moment, several black outlines appeared in the distance.