Astartes of the Bear School

Chapter 1900, Chapter 1872: The Temple Illusion
Marika slowly knelt beside Godwin's body, raising her hand to smooth her eldest son's golden hair, which was just as bright as hers.

This is clearly a very sad scene, one that should evoke sympathy and pity.

But for some reason, everyone present felt a sudden... sense of danger, as if there were needles next to their hearts, and a feeling of dread.

The Eternal Queen's power is so great that, in this Golden Age, any fluctuation in her emotions can have a near-tangible impact on people!

Even if it's just sadness, even if it's just sorrow.

People continued to flock to the Golden Tree Cathedral throughout Rodel.

The news of the Golden Prince's death could not be concealed, nor did anyone have the right to do so.

Because those currently arriving at the Golden Tree Cathedral are not only members of the Golden Dynasty, but also knights directly under Prince Godwin's command.

These knights were loyal only to the prince himself, and not even to the Golden Dynasty.

This phenomenon is not uncommon among the nobility, so everyone can understand it—if anyone were to try to stop them now, blood would probably be spilled on the spot.

Prince Godwin was not usually ostentatious. Although he was already dazzling enough, he usually preferred to let Knights Rodel handle things rather than using his own private order of knights.

This behavior of restraining one's private influence and taking on more public influence can already be described as demonstrating a strong sense of ownership.

After all, since he is the universally recognized heir to the Golden Dynasty, it makes no difference to him whether his personal influence decreases or the dynasty's public influence increases.

This also shows how secure the Golden Prince's position is.

Whether it was himself or others, everyone thought there was nothing wrong with his way of doing things.

However, this also meant that his private order of knights rarely appeared in public and left no impression on people.

For example, Lann was seeing Godwin's Knights for the first time.

The knights still followed the style of the Golden Dynasty, with their armor and weapons mostly made of gold. However, they had many more eclipse wheel patterns on their armor and their helmets were also decorated with a circle of eclipse wheels.

Because Godwin's ruling planet is the 'faded sun'.

These knights used their lord's guardian star as the symbol of their order.

Moreover, in terms of prestige and legitimacy, the Golden Prince is even higher than the current King of Elden. Even if he doesn't want to expand his influence within the Golden Dynasty, his influence will grow spontaneously.

A group of people will spontaneously gather around you.

Lan En also saw some knights who, although wearing golden armor, also had 'peeping cuckoo' patterns on it.

The patterns on the knight's body were unlikely to be random. Although this group did not follow the red and blue color scheme tradition of the Cuckoo Knights, they must be related to the Cuckoo Knights.

More and more people arrived, and gradually the area around the Golden Tree Cathedral became too crowded to accommodate everyone.

And all the knights who were loyal to the Golden Prince knelt on one knee amidst the clanging of their armor, drew their weapons and braced themselves on the ground, their heavy breathing audible even through their helmets.

Anger and sadness are like a pile of gunpowder, just one spark away from exploding!
One knight after another arrived, and one after another knelt down on one knee. The clatter of armor and the sound of breathing gradually made the scene noisy.

The king knelt down beside the queen, raising his hand as if to comfort her grief.

Lann couldn't see their faces directly from his angle, but [Lyman's Ear] filtered out a significant amount of noise and interference for him.

This allowed his ears to hear the whispers between the king and the god.

“They killed him,” Marika said in a low, cold voice, “but only his soul! It shouldn’t be like this! They made sure he didn’t even have a good death!”

“That means someone used the power of the Death Rune to kill someone else’s physical body at the same time,” Rdagan analyzed in a low voice. “Death should be a complete process. Only when two deaths occur simultaneously can this process spontaneously split.”

In a normal world, death would be an ongoing process every moment, with countless deaths occurring simultaneously.

But this is a world where death has been defeated by the Golden Law; death is a sealed and guarded, unique 'contraband'.

In this world, at the moment Godwin was assassinated, there should have only been one death. This power was far from being rampant.

Getting even a small portion from that Marycus was already unimaginable.

Compared to Queen Marika and Radagan, who haven't even interrogated the captured Black Knife Assassins yet, Lann probably knows much more.

"So," the witcher thought to himself, "the demigod Lani said she's short on time tonight, does that mean she's arranged another death?"

“But things have come to this, I have to try!” Rdagan said to Marika in a low voice, leaving no room for argument. “Otherwise, even we wouldn’t know how the death of a demigod would affect the Golden Law!”

“Falsanx has already entered his post-mortem consciousness, where he is struggling with death and trying to delay it. We don’t know how long he can hold out! We must seize the opportunity!”

This tone surprised Lan En, who was eavesdropping from a distance.

After all, this King of Elden only rose to power by marrying the Queen, and even in the minds of most people in the borderlands, his role was similar to that of a 'gigolo' or 'son-in-law'.

But how could someone who rose to power through marriage dare to speak to their spouse so assertively and so matter-of-factly?

It seems that the Golden Clan, this family composed of gods and kings, holds quite a secret.

Radagan's words were rambling and incoherent, but Queen Marika seemed to have understood them completely and, in her grief over the loss of her son, had no interest in them. The king then stood up, and the long, intertwined golden and red hair that had been obscuring their faces separated.

"Godwin's body is still alive!" Wang Fu's words immediately resonated among the sea of ​​loyal knights outside the cathedral.

Radagan continued his sermon: "Under the Golden Tree, the spirit and body of demigods are immortal!"

"Now that things have come to this, if we can find his soul, then there is hope of saving him!"

Radagan's words made the kneeling knights raise their heads.

Thousands of helmets were raised, the clasps and seams of the armor scraping together. Thousands of eyes peered eagerly through the slits in the helmets.

Faced with these looks, Radagan continued to speak plainly.

"Among the ancient arts of the rare people, and passed down through the royal family of Lieniacaria, there is a technique called the [Temple of Spirits]! It can summon back souls!"

Gideon Ofnier looked up from the crowd; he clearly knew about the technology, or at least had heard of it. But he didn't speak.

"Your Majesty!" came the knights loyal to the prince, who spoke eagerly. "What do we need to do? How can we retrieve our lord's soul?"

“We need a specially made clock,” Radagan replied immediately, “but that’s none of your business. The rest…”

Beneath Wang Fu's red hair, his golden eyes swept over them indifferently.

"We also need soldiers who are loyal to the dead."

"What do you need us to do?" one of the knights asked again. "Please tell us!"

"You will also need to cut off your own heads and accept the curse so that your souls cannot return to the Golden Tree. Instead, you will stay near the Great Bell, wandering and calling out until your loyalty and the bond between you and your lord draw his soul back."

"I said decisively."

"The specially made bell tolls continuously, and the spirit of the loyal knight who severed his own head keeps calling out. Combined, they form a [mortuary]."

Without the slightest hesitation, doubt, or fear.

Without a single doubt, countless knights rose straight up and looked up at the red-haired King of Elden.

"Your Majesty, where should we hold the ceremony and bear the curse?"

"Immediately." Radagan helped Queen Marika, who was kneeling beside her eldest son's body, to her feet and walked towards the palace. "The Queen and I will open the passage to the deep roots beneath the Golden Tree."

"Place Godwin's body there; there's a large clock there. And I think with the blessing of the golden tree, his chances of recovery will be greater."

The king helped the queen leave to open the passage leading to the roots of the great tree.

The remaining people didn't dare to delay and immediately carried the still-living 'corpse' of the Golden Prince away from the Golden Tree Cathedral.

Without making a sound, Lan En, taking advantage of his position on the inner circle, reached out and helped the Golden Prince.

The corpse was not visible when it was lying on the ground, but after the witcher lifted it up by its back, he immediately felt a huge and hideous scar!
The scar covered Godwin's entire back, shaped like a large centipede twisted into a semi-circle! The scar was wide and deep.

Lann's eyes were fixed on Godwin's body.

As Radagan said, even though the scars on his back were so deep that the internal organs inside his ribs were visible, his body still had body temperature, nerve twitches, and many bodily systems were functioning normally.

Under the Golden Law, the immortality of demigods is not just empty talk.

However, one of the demigods, who should be immortal under the Golden Law, has now fallen into a state of soul death... How will the Golden Law react to this?
For some reason, Lan En suddenly thought of those small programming programs that get stuck during runtime.

After helping to prop up Godwin's body for the knights outside who were loyal to the Golden Prince, he looked up and glanced at them.

I happened to see Radagan helping Queen Marika up the steps back to the palace.

Just a moment!

Lan En immediately deactivated his [Spiritual Vision].

Even so, he felt as if an incredibly strong golden light pierced directly from his eyes into the depths of his brain!

His muscles tensed up instantly from the pain, but were forcibly relaxed under his unparalleled control, so that no one noticed his abnormality, not even the black-knife assassin he was dragging.

But Lan En, who was only feeling a sense of disorientation in his vision, was thinking about something else entirely.

He pressed the bridge of his nose: 'Deep within Queen Marika's body, that fleeting, multi-layered nested ring—was that the Elden Ring?'

If it really is that "principle of the world's operation," then his glance just now was truly risky.

'But why... is there one inside Radagan's body too?'

'Was it just a dazzling illusion?'

(End of this chapter)