Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 395 Execution
Carl discovered that something was wrong with the food rationing that began yesterday.

When queuing up to receive food, the amount of bread distributed for each meal was half more than before, and the amount of meat and vegetables doubled. More importantly, it increased from two meals to three meals.

Based on his twelve years of life experience, this was definitely not good news.

Carl is a native of Guntherfred, but he is one of the hardest-working people in the city.

His mother, two younger sisters, and his father who had passed away many years ago - they were all survivors of the Storm. During the War of Unification, his father was a squire of a knight in the northern garrison of the Storm Dynasty.

The knight was very kind to their family, but on the first day that the Golden Dynasty army arrived at Guntherfred, he was nailed to the city wall by a siege crossbow arrow.

After the city was broken, my father was reduced to a coolie in the Golden Dynasty army. It was not until General Neo of Sol City signed a peace agreement with the Everqueen and the War King that his family and hundreds of thousands of Storm People like them were finally able to regain their civilian status, but they had already lost everything they once had.

Land, property, homes, countless dead relatives and friends, and dignity.

Moreover, as survivors of the storm, they were unable to live in the city of Sol, which was protected by General Neo, nor were they able to live in Otina and Odysseus, where there were more survivors and some of the features of their homeland were still retained.

Guntherfred is an important military town for the Golden Dynasty to control the Far East. In other words, the reason for the existence of this city is to guard the unstable elements suppressed by the dynasty in this land.

Who are the destabilizing elements?
Giants? But the giants have been killed quickly, and they are probably the only ones left.

As far as he can remember, his mother had to work four hard jobs just to feed the family. When he was six years old, he had taken on half of the family burden.

At first, he helped the city's newspaper office deliver newspapers and letters, and ran errands and did odd jobs for those impoverished nobles who could not afford formal servants. Later, when he had grown a little stronger, Karl also harvested wheat for farms outside the city, tanned leather for factories, and even cleaned stables and toilets for others.

But those labors could not be called hard - Carl had seen those older and stronger unemployed survivors become slave fighters. They were sent to the arena, fighting mountain goblins with tattered daggers, and only if they won by chance could they get food for the next week. If they lost, they would become the goblins' food.

Those were truly hellish days. While cleaning the swill buckets for the arena, Carl had seen the dinner that the managers served to the slave fighters on the last night before the fights. Only at those times could people like them eat as well as everyone else.

Eating well is like going to die immediately.

This seemingly illogical equation has been engraved deep in Carl's mind since he was seven years old.

Even though the arenas have been banned one after another in recent years, and the slave fighters have gradually returned to their normal status, or even been sent to unknown distant places by freight caravans, he still insists on believing this.

No one would specifically tell a Storm Survivor child where the slaves had gone. To the child, they probably all died in a foreign land.

This time, the giants broke through Guntherfred and ate almost all the adults who once dominated the city. Nearly half of the residents became remnants in the giants' stomachs within three days after the city was captured. The rest were driven into the prisoner camp and temporarily stored.

Fortunately, Carl's family had not been eaten yet; they were all part of the "food reserve".

Unfortunately, the dynasty's northern expeditionary army that drove away the giants suddenly provided food and clothing so generously that it went without saying that those adults once again needed them to die for the dynasty.

The twelve-year-old Karl was no longer as naive as he was in his childhood. He stood in a long queue to receive food. His little face was red from the cold, and his numb and slightly desolate eyes looked up at the high city wall, where a row of knights stood on each side.

He was more familiar with the row of knights on the left. Their armor was engraved with golden tree patterns. Although it looked much more majestic than the armor of any knight Carl had ever seen, it still represented the Golden Dynasty.

The row on the right was a little unfamiliar, with dark silver armor carved with storm-shaped patterns, somewhat like the "lost knights" in his childhood memories. However, they did not have the decadence and desolation of the lost knights, but only a murderous aura as sharp as a sword or a spear, which seemed to prick Carl's skin slightly from a hundred steps away.

He didn't know what those armors symbolized, but he knew that behind all the unknown things there would be no surprises, but only new and more deadly dangers.

The leaders of the dynasty army recaptured Guntherfred, and they must continue to advance. To recapture more lost territory, they naturally need more people to go ahead and reduce unnecessary damage to the army.

After distributing food and clothing to these refugees, the next step will probably be to distribute a batch of crude weapons and even some horses for carrying supplies. After that, they will have the "glorious", "rare" and "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity to fight for their country, and then use their bodies to fill the traps and trenches set by the giants, block the slings and arrows from the city gates, and become a footnote in the records of the great cause of suppressing the rebellion that may never be mentioned.

My mother told me that my father died in such a glorious journey eight years ago, and now it is his turn.

"Everyone listen!" A general in armor and holding a sword on the city wall shouted loudly.

"After you get the food, don't disperse. Follow the team leader closely and line up under the ninth tower of the city wall. All men over the age of twelve and women over the age of fourteen will receive a set of leather armor and weapons. Then go through the south gate to the outskirts of the city. There will be officers there to pick you up!"

“Repeat that.”

Carl shook his head. He no longer cared what the general said.

Everything went as he expected. He just hoped that after his death, his miserable life could at least allow his mother and sisters to live a few more days.

The long team meandered forward, and they received food, leather armor, and weapons in turn. Carl was only surprised when he got the extremely sharp spear.

The adults actually distributed such sophisticated weapons to the cannon fodder, and the guards in charge of distributing the weapons did not hold whips and yell at them to get out of here. Instead, they personally held the sets of weapons in their hands.

No one made trouble, and no one dared to take the opportunity to escape. Under the orderly restraint of the soldiers, half an hour later Carl saw the newly repaired South City Gate, with the iron sheet of the door still stained with the giant's blood.

In any case, dying in a crusade against the giants who destroyed their homeland was far more glorious than dying in a slave fight.

The team stretched out of the city like a long dragon, and the view gradually opened up, but Carl's eyes became more and more confused, until he stopped at the edge of a huge basin and looked down, he suddenly realized - he was wrong, wrong from the beginning.

The basin seemed to be transformed from a "feeding pit" of giants. The difference was that the scorched earth and corpses inside had disappeared. The entire pit seemed to have been burned at some high temperature, and the bottom of the pit was covered with large black crystals.

Karl inexplicably recalled the thunder that had been roaring outside the city all night last night, and the raging flames that even the city walls could not cover.

The refugees were all saying that the great magician in the army had shown his power and was hunting down the giant rebels outside, but now it seemed that the leaders of the dynasty army were just preparing for this scene.

Thousands of giants were bound with iron chains, which were wrapped with flickering flames, burning the giants and making them howl in pain and anger.

On the shoulder of each giant stood a knight in silver armor, each holding a several-meter-long steel spear, with the tip of the spear pointed at the upper back of the giant.

The refugees could not stop talking quietly, but the guards around them did not stop them. Instead, they let the discussion grow louder and louder until it became noisy and boiling.
This was not an expedition at all; it was clearly a public execution witnessed by tens of thousands of people!

(End of this chapter)