Witch Troupe and the Undead

The standard spear of the Crowned Knights is 2.4 meters long. The shaft is made of the hardest snow giant wood in the North, and is wrapped with layers of resin and fine metal wire, making it both strong and tough, enough to withstand the impact of heavily armored orc warriors weighing more than half a ton.

The spear blade is slender and triangular, with star-shaped short spikes on the left and right sides. This prevents the spear blade from penetrating too much, while also allowing it to better shred the orc's internal organs and break through their heavy armor.

Even though the runes on the spear blade have faded and become irrelevant, it is still a valuable and exquisite weapon. Basically, most of the knight's fortune is in this spear. Ordinary bandits and thieves would tremble at the sight of this spear, and even the most unruly adventurers would become cautious.

Because every warrior who possesses this spear has killed an orc warrior in one-on-one combat, a superhuman warrior who, when armored, weighs over half a ton and is over two and a half meters tall—killing ordinary adventurers might not even require a second strike.

Compared to this fine spear, he only had a worn-out, rusty chainmail and a retired old horse. After leaving the Crowned Knights, the armor that originally belonged to him had to be given to the new recruits. He could only take the chainmail and the lining; he didn't have enough fine enchanted plate armor to take with him.

"Help me up~" The knight had a limp, making mounting the horse particularly difficult for him. Fortunately, the retired old horse was experienced enough to slightly bend its front legs so that the knight could successfully sit on the saddle with the help of his servants.

"Good girl, good girl!" Gisano patted the horse's neck. This horse was the one he had taken from the Knights after giving up a generous compensation. Although it was quite old, as a qualified highland warhorse, one could still see its strong muscles and huge, bowl-like hooves. Crushing a person's chest would be no more difficult than a child breaking through a puddle of ice.

"Ring the bell, summon my infantry!" However, it took quite a while for seven or eight staggering militiamen to come over. After all, he was not a true knight and was not qualified to maintain professional infantry, nor could he afford to.

These militiamen, armed with hand axes and wooden shields, constituted his entire force. Even among the surrounding villages and towns, they were considered a highly elite unit—at least the Knights of Gisano did indeed train these militiamen regularly. Perhaps they didn't understand military discipline or tactics, but at least they had some experience in killing people.

"Master, look! It's a swift eagle, flying in from the east!"

"It must be urgent intelligence, hurry up!" The warhorse raised its eyes and glanced at the swift eagle in the sky. It seemed to recall the northern plateau where fine snow always fell. Its lazy posture suddenly became much more determined. Following its master's command, it swung its hooves and galloped at its maximum speed on the dirt road, as if it had found a part of itself again.

"Sir, slow down!" The militiamen couldn't keep up with the warhorses that had started to pursue them, and they were panting heavily behind them.

The Swift Eagle lowered its altitude slightly as it flew over from the northeastern valley, expending a great deal of energy. The sulfurous stench emanating from the city also frightened it somewhat. Its wings swept over the towering city walls and across the city. The downstream river had dried up, revealing a bare riverbed and the tops of huge runic stone pillars on it.

A demon forcefully pushed through the soil, cursing in hellish language as it crawled out. Before it could even reveal a bloodthirsty expression to the unsuspecting villages around the city, whose outer walls had collapsed due to the earthquake, a gleaming spear pierced through its head, which had two goat horns.

"Whoosh~ Huff~" The warhorse puffed out hot air as the knight pulled on the reins and drew his spear from the demon's corpse. "What kind of monster is this?" Knight Gisanor had seen orcs and killed many monsters that invaded villages, but he had never really seen a monster like this before. After all, he was not of noble birth, and he had only heard of demons from the priests in the chapel. He had never actually seen one.

Under normal circumstances, a lesser demon is enough to fight a knight in his prime to a standstill, but that refers to fighting on flat ground. Against a knight who has already charged forward, especially when he is exhausted and defenseless, he can only be killed by a single spear thrust.

"Holy Lord above..." The knight looked through the city gate and saw a horrifying spiral wound inside the twisted and deformed gate and iron fence. Water flowed from the broken riverbank into the abyss. The stone bridge was reduced to a lonely pier in the middle of the river and a small section of the bridge deck. The familiar inn in the southern district was only visible through a few twisted chimneys, like dark blue fingers of a dead man clinging to the edge of the broken road.

The aristocratic villa district on the eastern hills is relatively intact, but it has become uneven, like a toy house carelessly placed by a child. A statue lies horizontally on the street, clearly launched by some kind of catapult or magic.

The pristine white marble was stained with putrid black blood. Several clones struggled beneath the stones, only to be swiftly killed one by one by the knight's spear. "What on earth happened..."

The once solemn, prosperous, and magnificent capital city is now nothing more than a giant garbage dump filled with corpses and sewage. Only the academy remains shrouded in a reassuring runic barrier, sitting solemnly and even indifferently atop a massive, protruding labyrinthine tower, overlooking the collapsed streets and city.

Occasionally, a silver arrow would shoot out, blasting apart the clones and worms that had gathered in small groups on the street.

“This is simply…hell on earth…” The knight pulled on the reins, making his warhorse walk slowly to avoid falling into those huge chasms. He was very experienced in this; those who were inexperienced had all died under the ice and rock crevices in the North that could crack at any moment.

Further away, the walls of the Royal Guard had turned a rotten black. Based on his experience, he could tell that it wasn't the mark of a fire, but blood. Countless drops of blood had washed over the bricks like a waterfall, leaving behind such marks.

There seemed to be people still stationed on the ramparts, and the black smoke from burning corpses shrouded the entire stable area on the east bank. Only the golden-red spire of the palace shimmered atop the thick smoke, indicating that the city's fortress, palace district, and college district had barely escaped the disaster.

On the original riverbank, only half of the city hall remains; the other half has vanished. The clock tower spans a crack between the two banks, and at least several hundred civilians or workers are camped around it, seemingly searching for something. Occasionally, a holy light can be seen flashing.

"Sister Alicia, I need help here!" The busy nun hurriedly dropped the black bread she had just barely taken a bite of, which she had dug out from the ruins, and rushed towards the temporary tent not far away, lifting her now yellowish-gray dress. The light inside was gradually dimming, and the young, wheat-colored-haired girl was almost exhausted.

"Let me do it!" Sister Alicia gestured for the other person to rest aside. After a brief prayer, the faint, almost vanishing divine grace once again enveloped the wounded man on the ground who had been hit by a stone.

"The Horse-Headed Order? Never mind..." The church knight, who was sitting halfway on the ground, hesitated, but ultimately remained silent. In another situation, he would have shouted "heretics" and rushed to kill people, but now... a horse head is fine, at least it's cuter than a demon.

"Do you need help?" The knight and his militia finally became the first to enter the capital for rescue. "Knight? Great! There are still dozens of people trapped north of the city hall, and some mutant creatures and worms are active there."

“Take me with you…” The silent church knight stood up, supporting himself with his sword sheath. “You look like you need more rest.”

"No, I'm fine, I just need to catch my breath." He felt uncomfortable being around the Horse-Headed Monks, so he decided to do something he needed to do.

"name?"

“Revanno, Guardian Knight…”

"Gisano, Knights of the Crown," the knight shook hands with the other man, "Find him a sword."

"Sir, we don't have a sword, but would an axe do?"

"..." Lei Vanno didn't complain and reached out to take the wood-cutting axe. Although this weapon couldn't even break through the defenses of a lesser demon, it could still kill clones.

In the northern part of the city hall, the priests of the Earth Goddess were working hard to maintain the stability of the stone wall. Countless spikes protruding from the wall blocked many of the attacking clones and opportunistic bandits outside the ruins. Behind them, several assistant priests of the Earth Church were suspending the ruins in the air, using them as materials to reinforce the ground and bridges in the cracks.

"It's the Swift Eagle! Reinforcements have arrived!" The eagle's feathers seemed to be edged with gold in their eyes before disappearing among the northern chimneys.

Then came the faint but undeniable sound of hooves from the street. The Knight of Gisano took the lead, charging through the street, his spear first striking along his side, like a polo match, driving several clones into the cracks by the roadside.

He then released the reins, drew his longsword from his waist, and placed it on the side of the saddle like a reaping sickle. With the force of the charge, he lifted a row of heads, straightened his spear, and then lifted a writhing demon from behind, throwing it into a nearby rift before it could move.

"Huff~ Huff~ Huff~" Such vigorous exercise was indeed a heavy burden for an old knight. "Much easier to deal with than orcs..." The worm demons are brainless, and the clones are uncouth.

“Move everyone to the academy; there are still vacancies there,” Sister Alicia said, pointing in the direction of the academy. It could accommodate some refugees, but climbing onto the isolated island where the academy was located was not something everyone could do.

In the northern factory district, molten iron from furnaces flows freely through the streets, cooling into large areas of black slag. Everywhere you can see corpses cast into human shapes by molten iron and charred buildings that were burned but extinguished by the river after sinking underground.

On the cracked riverbank, a sturdy basement had been completely transformed into a hanging house. The swift eagle finally folded its feathers, swooped down and landed at the door of the hanging house, pecking at the door with its beak. Soon, a Night Judge came out, took the letter tube from the eagle's leg, and fed the large bird some jerky and bread.

"A reply came from the valley; they have prepared the materials and equipment and will be sending them over soon."

“Uh…” The elder looked at the completely shattered city outside. It was clear that these materials were no longer needed. That evil creature Gregory would definitely not stay here, especially since he had sensed an outburst of the goddess’s divine power.

If the evil entity wasn't caught by the goddess on the spot, it would have fled far away. However, those materials and equipment weren't entirely useless. Because in times like these, there will definitely be plenty of opportunistic bandits, especially when a large number of outsiders come in for rescue. Unless you're living in heaven, you'd be lucky to avoid a few profiteers from the dead.

These materials are at least enough to set up the Night God's ritual, to protect the night and make it less terrifying and dangerous. Meanwhile, inside the academy...

The large influx of refugees has made the once peaceful campus exceptionally noisy. Fortunately, no one dares to cross the barrier and venture deeper. The mages guarding the mage towers have no sympathy for these civilians; if you dare to force your way in, they will indeed throw a fireball down.

"Princess Livia and Master Roch haven't come up yet..." "No need to wait for them," Elena waved her hand. These two were visiting professors, so it was normal for them to leave midway. "They have some things to take care of, and the academy has also been having difficulty with teaching recently. By the way, has the reinforcement of the library been completed?"

"It's done." The library was reinforced immediately. In addition to various books, it also contains a large number of historical artifacts and various collections. It can almost be said to be the place that houses the most precious treasures and cultural products of the entire country, second only to the Royal Library and the Imperial Palace Treasury. If this were to sink underground, the loss would be greater than the destruction of the entire capital.

After a full day of work, the further cracking of the city finally stopped, and craftsmen and civilians continued to work around the cracks, reinforcing the ground with wood and stones and building bridges.

Some relatively intact houses were also cleared out to house refugees and serve as work sheds. The city is gradually recovering from the destruction, but it will take at least centuries to restore it to its former appearance or to rebuild it into a completely new city given the irreversible damage to the landscape.

Of course, there is another option: to rebuild a new capital city centered on the reclaimed territory of the Duke of Catherfield, Flosser. Both of these options require a great deal of resources, time and money.

Fortunately, in such matters, all countries will offer some form of assistance, providing funds and aid. After all, each country has a basic understanding of the quality of its own nobles, and no one can guarantee that their own family won't cause the same trouble.

Moreover, they were genuinely afraid that the entire empire would actually be thrown into hell or aided by demonic power, which would put them in a very precarious position.

However, these aid efforts were merely symbolic; for example, the Kingdom of Rada sent a team of about 150 people, consisting of half-elves, humans, and forest elves, to help.

After entering the country, the thing they did most was use life magic to encourage the growth of the plant seeds they brought, thereby using sturdy trees to support a portion of the crumbling land. However, the magic crystals consumed were provided by the Empire; they were merely contributing a little effort to reduce the workload for the academy's life-type mages.

Meanwhile, the Orc Alliance in the north announced the cancellation of their original winter campaign plans, demonstrating their sympathy for humanity in this disaster by refraining from taking advantage of the situation.

The southern archipelago did offer some practical assistance, providing the empire with an interest-free loan of 5 gold coins, which alleviated some of its immediate crisis.

Most of the aid from other countries is in this awkward state: some send people to lend a hand, some provide some harmless supplies, and some simply promise not to kick someone when they're down, which is the greatest help they can offer.

However, this disaster wasn't all bad for the Empire. After all, only a very small number of stable parts of the demon equipment would remain. But with such a large number of them, they still obtained a considerable amount of Hellfire iron materials and equipment. After purification, these things could still be considered a valuable asset.

However, all of this had nothing to do with Roach and his companions, because the witch's cottage had arrived near the western gate of the capital, like an isolated island that had risen due to a crack in the ground.

"This is your getaway vehicle? Isn't it a bit... conspicuous?" Leon looked at the small house in front of him, somewhat puzzled. "Do you guys run away so openly?" "There's an anti-spy barrier; you can't see it unless you get close."

Like the barrier of the living forest, from a distance it looks like an ordinary grassland or forest, but only when you get close can you see an unremarkable little wooden house on a stone platform protruding from the ground.

"So, which way are you planning to run?"

"Let's go east, okay? Are you really going to run away with us?"

“Of course, you'd better not get any funny ideas until it’s safe!” Leon repeated. “We signed a contract, after all.”

Chapter 374 Guide to Living in the Witch's Cottage

"Holy Light, that demon is worth fighting!" Almost as soon as he stepped onto the top step, Leon drew his sword and pounced on the demon opposite him. The bull-headed demon was carrying a bucket in one hand and a ladle in the other, his face showing bewilderment and astonishment at being suddenly attacked.

"Thump!" A pitchfork by the roadside suddenly jumped up and hit Leon on the head. Then tree roots on the ground, logs piled up in the stable and cowshed all jumped over and gave him a good beating.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" Roach barely managed to stop the bullying of the newcomer before rescuing Leon. "Why are there demons invading here too...?"

“Uh, that’s the gardener,” Roach pointed to the tool in the minotaur’s hand, his head still spinning from the knocking. “Don’t be too surprised, it’s just a laborer… uh, a gardener, who’s usually responsible for tilling the fields and taking care of the young lady’s garden.”

Minotaur nodded seriously, agreeing with Roach. He was just an ordinary gardener now. For others, what happened in the capital was too far away, but for him, watching from dozens of kilometers away was no different from watching a live broadcast. The aura of a Hell Lord suddenly disappeared. Can you guess why?

“Gardeners?” Leon stared at the water ladle and bucket in the bull's hands, and the mud on its hooves and legs, and fell silent. “How did you do that?” He wasn’t a fundamentalist, so he couldn’t fathom how Roach and the others had managed to get a demon to lay down its weapons and claws and pick up tools and a water ladle.

If this method becomes widespread, then Hell could be called a "new continent," and could even be the site of trade and friendly diplomatic relations.

“It’s very simple…” Of course, Roach knew how Old Ma had tamed the bullhead: “Beat it, keep beating it, beat it hard until it submits, making it unable to escape back to hell.”

“…Good idea!” Leon showed a determined look. He could consider promoting and trying it in the future. If it was about using some kind of contract, he had a whole bunch of reasons and examples to convince Roach and Livia that this was unreliable. Demons have eight million ways to exploit loopholes.

But the method you just mentioned is "beating," right? Throwing a heavy punch and beating someone hard, right? Then there's no problem.

This plan is very reliable, and for a knight of the Holy Lord, it is a perfect plan. Whether the demon is beaten into submission and falls into goodness, or the demon refuses to submit and is eventually beaten to death, it is a good thing, and even something a priest should do.

The cabin can't be activated yet because the little witch is in a deep sleep. Without her, no one can get these animated old men moving. "There's no room for you in the cabin right now. You can consider squeezing in with the bullhead, or staying in the workshop shed at the back." The workshop shed is mainly for storing gardening tools. The animated tools there are quite cheerful and should get along well with the newcomer.

However, the guys in the garden greenhouse were all xenophobic, especially the carefully tended magical plants, who seemed to regard everyone else as country bumpkins.

"The residents in the workers' sheds are very friendly, but they are also quite short-tempered and direct. When you stay there, it's best to ask these seniors about the rules. Also, the people in the greenhouses are a bunch of pampered young ladies with strange tempers, so don't go there unless you have to."

“My lab doesn’t have any native inhabitants, but it’s full of explosives. I don’t know if you have a resurrection spell, but it’s best not to take any risks while the young lady isn’t around. Even a necromancer would have a hard time resurrecting a bunch of corpses.”

“Um… there are other residents here.” Leon thought the tool and wood that had jumped up and hit people earlier were the effect of demonic magic, since most telekinetic spells have such effects.

"There are many residents."

"I didn't see them. Are they all invisible?" Leon became more vigilant. After all, it wasn't hard to understand why a mobile magic workshop, or even a witch's stronghold, would have invisible guards.

"No, they're all right in front of you. The plants and even a lot of the furniture here are alive, literally alive. You don't want to get hit on the head by a toilet while you're using the bathroom, do you?" Leslie threatened him with alarmist words. Well, the toilet was dead, its soul extinguished by the little witch herself. Also dead were the bathtub, the towels, and everything else in the bathroom.

Also, those in Roach's lab are all dead. The main reason is that his instruments don't live long enough to develop souls. Even the "long-lived" ones spend their days under various intense magical impacts, and any nascent souls they have will be blasted away within five minutes of their birth.

"By the way, there's a furnace and tools in the basement. You can repair your armor and weapons. The furnace itself is inanimate, but the thing that's heated inside isn't. It's extremely volatile. I suggest you take this with you if you're going." Roach took out a fist-sized bottle from the laboratory. Inside was a snowflake-shaped crystal. Even through the special alchemical protective material, you could feel the frost magic radiation emanating from it.

"Polar Storm Bomb, made by Livia, is specifically for punishing the fire-stokers in the furnace. If they misbehave, you take this out and shove it in their mouths."

Leon fell silent, wondering if he had stumbled into some kind of haunted place, like a demon king's castle. The things here and the daily necessities sounded just like those folk tales and fairy stories.

He stopped believing in tooth fairies and green goblins when he was five years old. Around the age of seven, he learned that the toys in his house wouldn't whisper in the middle of the night, and that so-called witches were just female sorcerers, a relatively rare type of spellcaster; so-called witches, if they weren't the clumsy kind of sorcerers, were mostly high-level sorcerers, beings that even his miller father would kneel down to show respect to.

There's no candy house, no talking birds, and pigeons, besides pooping on their own roofs, won't bring back twigs from the World Tree. And now, you're almost 40, and you're telling him these things really exist?

"Oh, right, I forgot to mention, this house is also alive. Don't try to test your sword against the wall or the ground; there are wooden targets over there for you to practice on."

No sooner had he finished speaking than several wooden and straw human-shaped targets on the open ground to the side of the house began to make fist gestures at Leon. If the lower half of the targets hadn't been stuck in the ground, he suspected that these guys would have come over and engaged in a fierce, hand-to-hand combat with him.

"They spar with each other all the time when they have nothing to do, and their punching skills are amazing. Vivi and Alessina have both used these targets to practice their punches and kicks before," Roach shouted, pointing at the targets. "Hey, quiet down, everyone. If you want to fight, someone who just loves to fight will come over later!"

"Clang!" The wooden arm, which was holding a wooden sword, slammed its head against the metal pot above its head, making a salute. Then the targets stood still in the setting sun, as if they were dead.

Leon heard a lot of taboo stories, while Alessina sent the little witch back to her room. The blanket on the bed was automatically wrapped around her, the pillow was adjusted so that the witch could lie comfortably on it, the window was naturally closed, and the curtains snapped free from the thin rope and fell down.

The noisy little ornaments in the room all returned to their proper places. Next, it was time to check the supplies. The original quantity was sufficient, but now that there was an extra knight, it might not be enough.

Even if they were to make people sleep in a workers' shed, they should at least provide a straw mat. Fortunately, Leon wasn't particular about living conditions. He simply left the stone platform where the hut was located and found two benches near the deserted station. He put them together to make a makeshift bed.

As for the hay, there was plenty in the stable. They took a few bundles and wove them into a simple straw mat, then tied a few more bundles of hay into a simple pillow, and the bedding was done.

“I’m not one of those pampered guys; I have a lot of experience marching in the field.” “You can tell.” A knight who has servants and attendants to do everything for him doesn’t have such skillful straw mat weaving.

"Oh, no, I used to help my family weave straw mats to sell." The miller was a member of the upper class, but in an era of limited productivity, even so, he still needed a lot of side jobs to maintain the operation and life of the whole family.

Compared to ordinary farmers, they were much more respectable. They could afford meat, wear nice clothes, and send their children to church schools or training camps in the hope of becoming spellcasters, priests, professional warriors, or even knights.

However, it's impossible to live off land rent like those nobles, eating and sleeping all day long. Even among nobles, these pig-like creatures only exist in the prosperous areas around the capital. The sons of nobles on the border live just as busy and miserable lives.

Hunting, carpentry, and blacksmithing were all skills required, and mending armor was a basic skill for noblewomen on the border. Relying on buying new armor or hiring professional armorers for repairs wouldn't even cover the costs of rent and spoils of war. Therefore, Leon, born into a miller's family, had done practically everything except farming.

"I've fed horses and herded sheep, and I know some basic carpentry. If the windmill has a minor malfunction, you can't exactly go to the city to ask a master carpenter from the guild to fix it, can you?"

"Those hay and the like, besides being used as animal feed, are also woven into various kinds of straw mats and sold to traveling merchants and adventurers for some pocket money. Although my sister does most of this work in the family." Leon said while his hands kept moving. It was clear that even though he had become a little rusty over the years, it was still part of his muscle memory and not so easy to forget.

"Didn't your family give you any pocket money?"

“Master Roach, you look like you were born into a wealthy family, don’t you?” Leon looked at Roach with sharp eyes. “You should know that, let alone children, there are many adults in the village who have never even seen what money looks like in their entire lives.”

Taxes were paid in kind, and transactions were barter. Sometimes, there was nothing to trade, and they had never even seen what copper coins looked like in their lives. Their greatest wish in life was to be able to struggle to eat their fill of gruel.

Of course, this is related to the fact that he was born in a not very wealthy and fertile region. The barren land meant that the locals did not have much of a comfortable life.

“There was no such thing as pocket money. Even snacks were given to the eldest child first, because he had a better chance of surviving,” Leon calmly recounted these past events. “As for pocket money, you had to find other ways to earn it yourself, and most of it would be taken by your parents.”

In such places, apart from the eldest and youngest, the rest of the children are not much different from slaves. Even among brothers, after the eldest inherits the family property, the younger brothers either take a meager inheritance to fend for themselves or become oxen and horses for their elder brothers.

"Yes, I did know that, but I didn't expect your family to be in such a predicament. But you shouldn't be struggling financially anymore, right?"

"I suppose so." After all, as a paladin, his salary was quite substantial, enough for a miller's family. Moreover, with such a status, the lord wouldn't dare impose excessive taxes, and merchants would be more willing to lend or buy on credit at low interest rates. Even if he didn't have money to send home, he could live more comfortably. Besides, he had to send money home every year, twenty gold coins each time.

“Use the Church’s Swifthawks,” Leon said, seeing Roach’s hesitant expression. “No one would dare to embezzle the money.” Using the Empire’s postal system was another matter entirely, but using the Church’s Swifthawks was a different story.

"So now that you're dead, what about the family..."