Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

Lucas, Eris, and Christina all gasped.

Sometimes, when a raid goes wrong, brigands and pirates would resort to killing civilians or possibly even burning down whole villages, but that was actually quite a rare occurrence for many reasons.

It wasn’t that rouges and bandits had some sense of morality or restraint, but rather that they were primarily profit-driven, and senseless slaughter was bad for ’business’; after all, if you kill everyone in a village and raise it to the ground, you can never rob it again.

Also, if menacing pirates show up in a village and demand payment, most of the time, the poor villagers would rather pay than fight to the death as it simply wasn’t worth the risk.

However, if your raiding party starts slaughtering indiscriminately, people will fight back because they have no other choice, which will likely result in casualties on your own side as well.

All of these were typical reasons pirates and thieves tended to avoid killing their ’livestock’ as much as possible, but it wasn’t actually the primary one, especially along the Lorren.

The real reason these criminals showed some measure of restraint was because as long as they didn’t go too far, the authorities would basically ignore them.

Putting it bluntly, people died all the time, and theft was common amongst the lower stratum of society, while the government’s resources were limited.

In order to stop all piracy and banditry along the over 1,000 km east coast of the Rockwell Kingdom, tens of thousands of soldiers would be necessary, and that was to say nothing of all the inland settlements.

Celestina was a compassionate ruler, one who cared about her subjects more than most, but in this regard, she was truly helpless. She simply didn’t have the manpower or the resources required to secure such a spread out, sparsely populated area.

That being said, as a Marquess with 200 years of governing experience, it wasn’t like Celestina had completely ignored this issue and done nothing about it.

Training sessions for the villagers conducted by professional soldiers, assistance with planning for such raids, money to build stronger walls and sturdier shelters, distributing old weapons that were being retired from the military’s use, and even conducting random roaming patrols were all steps Celestina had taken to try to protect innocent civilians and deter criminals.

These measures had actually been fairly successful, with bandit attacks in the Balfour March and the greater South-East Province being quite a bit lower than other place in the Rockwell Kingdom, but now this mysterious new group had appeared, throwing the whole situation into chaos.

Lucas, who was well aware of the measure his Master had taken, couldn’t help asking, "Have none of these bast... none of these bandits been caught?"

"No," Celestina shook her head, narrowing her eyes, "We haven’t even recovered a single enemy corpse, which is the most suspicious part of all."

"En," Christina nodded solemnly, "There’s no way all those people just laid down and let themselves be killed. They must have fought back, so how come not even a single enemy has been found?"

"Could they be taking their wounded or dead back with them?" Eris suggested.

"Even if they were, that would still be suspicious," Celestina explained, "The only reason they would do that is if they were all extremely loyal to one another, or they were trying to conceal their identities."

"Loyalty amongst low-level thugs is basically unheard of," Lucas scoffed, "These people are clearly hiding something."

"I agree," Celestina snorted, "Which is why I doubled the patrols recently and even visited some of the sites of the attacks myself, but still..."

"Nothing," Christina concluded, her brow knitting in thought.

"How..." Eris hesitated, "How many villages have been lost?"

Pursing her lips, Celestina seemed to not want to answer this question to spare her Disciples from this harsh reality, but then she recalled that these 3 had gone through worse, much worse, so she ultimately explained, "At first, it was just 2, both around the beginning of March. The local Baron investigated, then sent a report to Count Molt, but since no clues were found, and no further raids happened after that, the matter was set aside."

"Then, however, around Eris’ birthday, another 5 villages were wiped out in rapid succession," Celestina continued, "When I learned this, I led a team myself to investigate, but we still found nothing. I thought it might have been because too much time had passed, so I increased the patrols and even deployed a few Spirit Initiates to supervise the area."

"But the raids kept happening?" Lucas asked, feeling like the whole situation was a bit unbelievable.

It was one thing for pirates to act bold and unruly when they thought no one was paying attention, but the increase in soldiers along the Lorren could not have been missed by this group, yet they kept attacking, and if his guess was right, with even greater frequency.

Sure enough, Celestina nodded, "Since then another 13 villages were wiped out, all told... about 4,000 people have died."

"Animals!" Eris cursed, slamming her prosthetic right hand against a nearby table in anger.

Christina’s expression didn’t look much better as clear killing intent began leaking from her body.

As for Lucas, he looked perfectly calm and indifferent on the surface, but anyone who know the young boy would understand that he only got like this when he was really mad.

4,000 innocent lives lost, with no clue as to who was behind these murders or why they were committing such wanton killings.

Even if they had all witnessed mass suffering and death during the explosion crisis, that didn’t dull the indignation Lucas, Eris, and Christina felt when they learned this.

Seeing her Disciples respond this way, Celestina was both proud, and a little sad. Proud that they cared enough about strangers to want to protect and avenge them, but sad because most kids their age, especially those of such high standing, were far more naïve and innocent about such matters whereas Lucas, and the girls seemed almost used to the horrors of life.

Shaking her head, Celestina was about to offer a few words of encouragement when Christina suddenly looked up, stared her right in the eyes, and made a shocking request, "Please allow me to join the patrols, Master."

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