The Great Arcanist Who Traveled Through the World of American Variety Shows.

Chapter 539 Theocracy Replaces Druid

The morning sun illuminates the earth.

A sudden rain last night left Mia's face with a faint blush, and her delicate and beautiful face was full of laziness.

Richard got up and went to the balcony. Smoke was rising outside the window. After Richard's replanning, the camp became well organized.

After a few days of rest, he had convinced these people with his powerful force and fair dealings. The next step was to train these people, so that they would understand military formations, how to cooperate, and how to protect themselves.

Among these fugitives were not only slaves and serfs, but also some gladiators and deserters. Logically, the fighting skills of these gladiators and deserters should be good.

But in fact, this is not the case. Fighting alone, gladiators may be stronger, but on the battlefield, an army that can cooperate with each other can completely defeat those gladiators.

Individual force does not give an advantage over the military.

Richard planned to teach these people some simple military formation training. As for more complex military formations, it would be impossible to do it without long-term training.

On the other hand, Mia also began to move among the women in the camp. She was extremely beautiful and had a noble temperament, which made people dare not look directly at her. However, with her healing ability, she soon made these peasant women worship her.

Mia successfully spread the faith here.

These slaves did not have any clear beliefs. After all, before this, they were all slaves. No one cared about the slaves' beliefs, and there would be no priests to preach to them.

They are more concerned with worshipping and sacrificing to their ancestors.

These people couldn't even get enough food to eat, so naturally they didn't care about any beliefs. After Richard became the leader here, these people quickly accepted Mia's beliefs.

They don't care about faith. They will believe in whoever keeps them alive and gives them enough food to eat.

Monotheism was not very popular at the beginning and was even persecuted by polytheists. Note that polytheism here does not refer to one sect, but to almost all sects that believe in multiple gods uniting to persecute monotheists.

One of the reasons is that monotheism preaches that only their Lord is the only true God, and the gods of other religions are false gods. Another reason is that they do not worship their ancestors.

The Roman Empire at that time also had freedom of belief. Although there were conflicts between religions, they were still able to exist in the Pantheon.

But the emergence of monotheism broke this rule. It is like another person running up to you and saying that you believe in an evil god, you are possessed by the devil, you are going to hell, your ancestors have all gone to hell, and if you don’t want to go to hell you must believe in my Lord.

Normal people would definitely take action after hearing this, and this is not a case of victim blaming. After all, he is unique among monotheistic religions in that he can make all polytheistic religions reject and persecute him.

After monotheism was recognized by the empire, whether out of faith or hatred, it would inevitably retaliate against other polytheistic religions in double measure.

Next, Richard conducted simple queue training for these people. He did not teach them any more skills, but only let them practice stabbing with spears.

There is not much room for maneuvering in the military formation. It all depends on who is faster and more accurate. There is no need for too many things.

It is simply unrealistic to expect these slaves and serfs to be trained to master martial arts.

Therefore, Richard used these simplest training methods, and after being equipped with archers and cavalry, he formed a regular battle formation, which was enough to deal with those Germanic barbarians.

The Germanic barbarians were able to defeat the Roman Empire not because they were so powerful, but because Rome itself was corrupt.

Many of the current Roman Empire garrisons are barbarian mercenaries, bankrupt farmers, and slaves, with very few real Roman citizens. They are not even close to the Roman legions in their heyday.

Otherwise, the Roman legions would not have been able to sweep across Europe and establish a powerful empire.

Richard selected several people from these refugees, slaves and deserters, named Sean, Cruise and Betley. These three people were the most promising ones in these camps.

Sean was born a gladiator. He was a privately raised gladiator by the nobles of the Frankish province. His martial arts skills were the best among these people, and he was also quite smart.

Cruise was a runaway slave and had basically nothing, but he had previously managed three teams with Richard and did a good job.

As for Betley, he was a bankrupt farmer who was forced to join the army. Later, he could not bear the oppression and exploitation from above and took the opportunity to escape.

Although the three of them were of humble origins, they had one advantage: they were eager to learn. They learned the fastest from what Richard taught them, so Richard gave the army to the three of them to lead.

Richard then ordered people to build defenses. In fact, there were not many places that needed to be built. This camp was originally chosen to be easy to defend and difficult to attack, so all they had to do was build a stone wall next to it.

Besides, no one came back to encircle and suppress them.

Richard stayed here for a week, leading the entire camp back on track, and then began to look for other rebels.

There were a large number of refugee uprisings in Gaul. Even though tens of thousands were killed during the suppression, there were still many hiding in the mountains and forests. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the barbarians were able to quickly establish a kingdom, and these people played an indispensable role.

Richard took Mia to the forest. With Mia communicating with the animals in the forest, Richard and Mia soon got news about other rebels.

Then Richard and his companions crossed the mountain ridge and soon arrived at the other side of the forest. Then Richard activated his mental power and soon found a simple camp. But to Richard's surprise, this camp seemed to be not just for the common people and slaves. Richard actually sensed some weak natural forces.

Richard took Mia to the camp. The closer they got to the camp, the more trees and thorns there were around it. It seemed that these people had deliberately set up the camp here.

Although the road was difficult, it was nothing for Mia and Richard. As nature spirits, they still had some power even after becoming humans.

The trees and thorns in the forest would automatically move out of her way.

When the two men arrived nearby, Richard discovered that although there were only one or two hundred people in the camp before them, many of them were obviously professional warriors.

The most powerful among them was a middle-aged man with thick hair and beard like tree roots. He was sturdy, wearing animal skins and a deer horn helmet. He carried an oak shield on his back, and a dagger and a one-handed hammer hung on his waist.

Richard vaguely felt some natural power from him.

"Druid?" Mia's eyes lit up and she recognized the man's identity.

Druidism is the belief of the Celts. Originally, these Celts lived in Gaul, Munich, and Germany. After the rise of the Roman Empire, the Celts were defeated by the Romans.

Some Celts were conquered by the Romans and submitted to the empire, but some Celts migrated to the British Isles.

The Celtic beliefs were also integrated into the Roman Empire. Under the influence of the Roman Empire, the Druid beliefs began to abandon blood sacrifices.

Later, the Pantheon was closed, and many druids were forced to give up their faith and became pharmacists. However, some druids were unwilling to give up their faith and were hunted down by the Priory.

The camp in front of us should be some Celts who are unwilling to give up their Druid beliefs.

Richard and Mia quickly arrived near the camp, and the people on guard immediately spotted them.

The sound of a bowstring was heard, and the next second an arrow fell from the sky and hit the ground three meters in front of the two people.

"Stop, what are you?"

Mia stepped forward and said, "Don't be nervous, child. I am Mia and I want to talk to your priest."

Seeing Mia's appearance, the man was slightly stunned, obviously shocked by her beauty.

He looked at Richard next to him again, then nodded and said, "You wait here, I'll send someone back to report!"

After about a few minutes, the druid hurried over.

After seeing Mia, the druid was slightly stunned, and then a hint of surprise flashed in his eyes, and then he said: "Are you a natural elf?"

"As you can see, yes," Mia said with a smile.

"Are you able to leave your territory? Is it the gods who responded to you?" The druid said excitedly after hearing Mia's admission.

Ever since the Pantheon was closed and the Olympian Flame was extinguished, these priests have lost the power bestowed by the gods, and no gods respond to them anymore.

Because of the rules of this world, it is difficult for humans to master magic, and only priests can master some magic.

According to the saying of this era, only those who have unique talents or are favored by gods can have the ability to practice witchcraft.

There is no complete witchcraft tradition here.

More of it is a gift from the gods.

"The Romans have abandoned their gods, and the gods no longer respond to me." Mia said in a low voice.

During the Roman Empire's conquest process, they would let the Roman gods devour the gods of the nations they conquered, and let Roman gods with similar divinity devour other gods.

For example, the Roman deity Diana merged with Hecate after Rome defeated Greece, and Hecate became an aspect of Diana.

When hearing Mia's words, the Celts had very complicated expressions. When the Pantheon existed before, they could still believe in their own gods, but now that the Pantheon was closed, they had become pagans.

They were hunted down, judged, and killed by the monotheists, so they had to flee to the mountains and forests.

Before the Pantheon was closed, they were priests with a high social status. After the Pantheon was closed, they became rats crossing the street, and everyone wanted to kill them. They could only hide in the deep mountains and forests to survive.

As for resistance, the Pantheon and polytheists have resisted more than once, but each time the result was failure. Many people have already lost hope.

Gods do exist in this world. The fact that monotheism was able to challenge so many gods alone and gain the ultimate victory shows that the strength of both sides is not at the same level at all.

(End of this chapter)