The Holy Man of Another Century Gospel

Chapter 184 At the Black Ice Great Wall

Upon reaching the top of the watchtower, the guards immediately saluted Princess Natalia, then looked at the two unfamiliar faces who had followed her up.

“This is Her Highness the Holy Maiden,” Natalia said.

“…Your Highness, Holy Maiden!” The guards even knelt down before Eric.

"Get up."

Eric patted him on both shoulders, and the guard quickly removed his helmet. Eric then patted him on the head.

“Your piety and perseverance are not only clear to me, but also to Yela. You are a brave warrior who protects the creatures of the continent.”

The guard was very excited, but Natalia waited until he finished expressing his piety in a flustered manner before speaking, "You may leave now. I have some things to discuss with Her Highness the Holy Maiden."

"Yes, Your Highness."

As the guards left, Eric let out a soft sigh. "I've never seen anyone worship me like this in the Holy City."

Natalia seemed to smile slightly. "The further away the object of worship is, the greater its influence on a person."

“But now His Holiness the Pope, who is furthest from the believers yet has the greatest influence on them, seems to be planning to abandon the Empire,” Eric said.

"..."

The slight smile on her face vanished instantly.

"What does this mean, Your Highness?"

“His Majesty is preparing to preserve the Church’s strength in the impending crisis.” Eric paused for a moment. “Of course, this is just my guess based on his current attitude.”

Natalia looked very unwell. They had known each other for over a year, and his guesses had always been accurate.

“His Majesty Clement XI is a staunch conservative.” Eric walked toward the window at the top of the watchtower, where a large telescope, more than a meter long, was mounted. “What he cares about is not how much the Church has progressed under his leadership, but how much it has lost.”

“The Church won’t directly confront the demons!” Natalia said, her voice trembling with emotion.

“Of course, as long as we don’t actively attack the demons, they won’t shift their focus.” Eric looked at her, understanding her feelings at the moment. “So I guess His Holiness the Pope’s approach is not to retreat proactively, but rather to remain inactive overall, so that he can quickly regain his reputation afterward.”

Natalia was silent for a moment, then sighed and raised her hand to pinch her forehead.

"I thought Your Highness had come all this way to bring me good news."

"I am sorry for disappointing Your Highness."

The princess took a deep breath of the cold air, exhaled after a while, and looked at Eric, who had already walked to the telescope.

"With that telescope, you can see very far... though not very clearly. It's been used for many years and seems to have broken down. Nobody here knows how to fix it, so we just have to make do with it."

Eric adjusted the binoculars, squinted with one eye, and saw a blurry, white expanse. He adjusted his view for a long time and still didn't know where he was looking.

"Aren't there any alchemists around here who know how to do this?"

Telescopes were crafted by alchemists, a very time-consuming process, resulting in low availability and significant variations in quality.

Natalia walked to the telescope and looked directly out the window. "This isn't Lutia, Your Highness. Alchemists don't come to places like this where there's no one and no money."

"If I had known, I would have kidnapped an alchemist from the south; there are plenty of them there."

Natalia forced a smile. "Your Highness, I haven't heard you talk about your trip to the south in detail yet."

“I will stay here for a few days, and I should have a chance to talk to His Highness.” Eric put down his binoculars and looked directly at the Ice and Snow Demon Realm on the other side of the Black Ice Wall.

The world is now only black and white.

Black is the bay that never freezes, and white is the snow that never melts, stretching for hundreds of miles until the horizon meets the earth.

"You can't see anything, right?"

Natalia stared intently into the distance. "Even after being here for almost a year, just looking at it, I find it hard to believe that countless demons would emerge from this almost frozen land."

Elise stood behind Eric, gazing at the pure white demonic realm she was seeing for the first time. "But it's real, Your Highness."

“I know…” Natalia looked away and glanced at her. “Even if I don’t want to believe it, it’s the truth.”

"Have any of the scouts Your Highness recently sent out returned alive?" Eric asked.

Natalia shook her head. "None of the teams we sent out to distant places have come back alive. The most recent team was sent out a month ago, and even if they come back alive, it's not time yet."

"Is the Demon Realm really that big?" Elise asked instinctively.

“It’s huge,” Eric said. “The Demon Realm is bigger than the whole of Northria. The current map isn’t accurate, but you can’t blame the cartographers, since it’s a place that even winged people can’t fly over.”

The Northern Demon Realm is the coldest place on the Gaia Continent and the main source of the cold air currents. The frigid and intense air currents at high altitudes prevent even the winged people from venturing deep into it. In fact, very few winged people are willing to fly towards the Black Ice Great Wall.

Natalia looked at Eric and said, "If only I could see what Your Highness saw."

“I also hope to tell Your Highness everything I see in my mind,” Eric said, looking at her.

“Am I not devout enough?” Natalia whispered.

Eric was about to speak when she shook her head. "I am indeed not devout enough. I have never truly believed that gods can solve the problems of mankind."

"This is the mindset that human leaders should have. More than five hundred years ago, the demons were not driven away by the gods, but were driven to another side by humans and other races united together."

Natalia smiled. "What His Highness Eric said doesn't sound like something a saint should say."

Eric bowed slightly. "If I were that kind of clergyman, my contact with His Highness would probably have ended after that chance encounter on the outskirts of Lutia."

The two looked at each other and smiled, while Elise unconsciously turned her face away.

When they met, she was running errands for the demons... she even summoned Simago from the city.

"Would Your Highness like to take another look?" Natalia asked.

Eric looked north. "I even thought about going down to take a look... though it wouldn't make any sense."

Natalia paused for a moment, then said, "It's easy for Your Highness to go down; just take a gondola. That's how all our people go down."

Since she had said that, Eric decided to go down and see for himself.

After descending from the watchtower at the top of the tower, Eric prepared to go outside, but Natalia told him to go inside the city walls from the tower and take the passageway inside, rather than brave the wind and snow up there.

So he followed her down the spiral staircase at the foot of the tower and into the hollow area at the top of the Black Ice Great Wall.

This is also the passage connecting the living area of ​​the Great Wall garrison. It is quite dark, with lighting mainly relying on the inferior luminous crystals on the walls. Oil lamps or candles are used in the rooms, and there is only a small ventilation opening every few dozen meters.

A cold front from the Demon Realm kept blowing in, and it was hard to say that it was warm inside the city walls; at most, the wind and snow couldn't get in.

“No wonder His Highness doesn’t want to stay here,” Eric said softly.

"Even if I say I don't want to, I've lived here for a year now."

The group walked along the dimly lit corridor for a while, then Natalia suddenly stopped. "This is my room."

To be precise, her room was beneath their feet, accessible through a narrow opening beside the passage, without doors or windows, as were the rooms of all those living on the city walls.

"Does Your Highness wish to go down and take a look?" Natalia asked.

“Let’s see when we get back,” Eric said, then suddenly remembered something, “Looks like I’ll have to stay here too?”

“There are many empty rooms on the city wall,” Natalia said. “If Your Highness does not wish to stay here, you can also stay in a tent at the foot of the city wall.”

"talk later."

After walking a little further, Natalia stopped and returned to the top of the city wall through a side opening.

The wind and snow were blowing fiercely, seemingly even more intense than when they had first arrived.

On the north side, that's where the suspended basket is located.

Eric climbed into the gondola, Elise following closely behind. He glanced at her, then at the knights who had come with him. "You all stay up there; I'll go down and take a look." "Your Highness..."

Before Knight Commander Edward could say anything, another prince suddenly climbed into the basket as well, saying, "I'll go down and take a look too."

Natalia climbed in, and Eric was only slightly surprised before signaling the soldier controlling the basket to lower it.

"Has Princess Natalia gone down there before?"

“I’ve thought about going down several times, but I’ve been dissuaded.” Natalia gripped the basket tightly and smiled at him. “Just like Your Highness said, it would only be dangerous for people like us to go down there; it would be pointless.”

Eric tried not to look down, saying, "As long as I don't fall, there's no danger."

Elise held his hand tightly, then grabbed his arm when Natalia looked at her.

The basket slowly descended amidst constant swaying, and after a moment, it finally landed on the ground.

Eric flipped the basket over and pulled out Elise and Natalia, one in each hand.

“Your Highness Eric, you and I may be the only people from our respective families in the last hundred years to have personally set foot in the Demon Realm.”

The cold and the long descent made Natalia's legs tremble. She grabbed his arm and it took her a while to regain her balance.

“From a family history perspective, I seem to be the first person in the Chimino family from ancient times to the present,” Eric said.

The relentless cold wind made Natalia's smile stiffen. "I'm different. The King of Heroes once personally led an expedition here."

"So you are royalty, and I am just a nobleman."

“Your Highness, you are quite like those nobles of Lutia now.”

The infamous Northern Demon Realm, at least in the area close to the Black Ice Great Wall, is just ordinary snowfields.

Eric and Natalia weren't content with just getting off to look around, so they walked a little further north. Elise followed the whole way, finding it much easier than Natalia, who was struggling to keep her feet on the ground.

"That's it."

Eric stopped, and Natalia, already panting, looked back at the towering city walls that still required her to crane her neck to see the top.

"Your Highness Eric...can you tell me what kind of power is needed to break through such an obstacle?"

Iris lent a hand, and Natalia's breathing gradually calmed down.

"A black ice wall stretching for hundreds of miles, of uniform height and width, without gates, without a single weak point. Beneath the bays on both sides lies a gigantic, perpetually effective magic array, ensuring the seawater will never freeze... I can understand five or six, or even a dozen, demon assassins sneaking across by water, but I cannot imagine how tens of thousands of demon troops would break through here?"

She looked at Eric, "Even if, as you warned me before, there might be demon spies among the defenders, even if they kill all the defenders, they still can't break down this giant wall, can they?"

But this place has indeed been damaged, Eric thought.

He visited this place many times in "The Crown of Thorns". The section of the Black Ice Great Wall that was destroyed was at the eastern end. The wall broke in the middle and collapsed, creating a gap about ten meters wide.

The East Watchtower is now isolated in the sea. Without using a flying mount, you can hop up the broken sections of the ground wall, piece by piece, until you reach the top of the watchtower. This will earn you a rare achievement: "How Did the Wall Collapse?"...

Eric also wanted to know how the city wall had collapsed.

"All I can foresee is that it will collapse."

He quickly thought of someone: "I'm afraid only the most powerful mages have the power to destroy the city walls."

“But the mage accompanying the army told me that, given the thickness of the Black Ice Wall, only the dozen or so remaining Moon Elf archmages on the continent could concentrate their attacks on a single point to cause substantial damage to the wall. But I don’t think those sages would all side with the demons at the same time,” Natalia said.

"……Yeah."

Perhaps it was a matter of talent, or perhaps it was the preconceived notions brought about by his past life memories, but Eric found that he did indeed lack an accurate understanding of the power of mages. What he thought in the past was quite different from what he had actually seen and re-understood in the past few years.

When the goal is to inflict damage, the magical power unleashed by a mage can indeed be described as devastating, but when the goal is the world itself, the mage's destructive power is just so-so.

The most obvious example of this difference is Eileen.

...Eileen?
Eric paused for a moment.

He was certain that the Black Ice Wall in "The Crown of Thorns" was not destroyed by Eileen, but the power that destroyed most of Lutia was remarkably similar to the power that destroyed this place.

The key to the problem was indeed Xinmagu.

How exactly did he give Eileen that destructive power?
"Your Highness Eric?"

Seeing that he was lost in thought, Natalia called out to him.

Eric took a deep breath of the pure, cold air of the Demon Realm. "I don't know exactly how the Demons intend to destroy the Black Ice Great Wall, but holding this position will completely block their southward advance. Your Highness should try to concentrate more forces here."

Natalia sighed deeply.

"Perhaps I should have died when I was assassinated by the demons last time. Maybe that would have drawn the attention of the entire continent to this place."

Eric opened his mouth slightly, understanding her frustration at constantly seeking help only to be met with setbacks. "Speaking of which, how is Your Highness's recovery going?"

“I’ve recovered long ago.” Natalia glanced at her arm instinctively, and Eric guessed that was where she was injured. “I only suffered a minor injury.”

She paused, looking at Eric, "The grave of the warrior Vili is inside the Wall. Would Your Highness like to visit him?"

“That’s exactly what I was planning to do,” Eric nodded, then glanced at the white, misty demon realm. “Let’s go back.”

The three of them trudged through the snow back to the foot of the Great Wall, rode up in a gondola, and came down in another gondola from the other side. Natalia led Eric to Vili's grave.

"His Highness's uncle, Earl Edgar, wrote to me, wanting us to send the body of Warrior Vili back to Dantshire. But he fell from such a high wall, and his body was... far too broken. We did not want Warrior Vili's remains to endure the long journey, especially since it was the height of summer for most of the continent, so we buried him here."

"I heard about this from my uncle. Your Highness's choice was right, so there's no need to worry about it."

Eric knelt down before Willy's tombstone, brushed away the snow, and touched the name on it. "The first time I went to the Holy City, he drove me there. It was also my suggestion to my uncle that he come here to investigate the mole..."

He sighed deeply, "Rest in peace, Vili."

Natalia stood behind him and whispered, "Since then, we have increased our surveillance of the bay. Day and night, people are watching the ice-free bay. As a result, we have intercepted some demons who tried to cross at night and stopped many humans who wanted to cross over."

"Humans who have illegally crossed the border?" Eric tilted his head slightly.

“They went to the Demon Realm to collect ‘spices’,” Natalia said. “A kind of spice that can only be found in the Demon Realm. It is said to be very expensive, which makes many people willing to risk their lives for it.”

Eric recalled the demon prime minister Luca, who, in his youth, apparently ventured into the demon realm to gather spices, only to defect to the enemy after a series of unforeseen events.

“These are the heads of those demon assassins.” Natalia brushed away the snow beside her with her foot, vaguely revealing several demon heads in front of the grave. Despite the year-round cold, these heads had not rotted but were frozen solid.

Eric kicked one of the heads away, sending it crashing into the city wall, sending snowflakes flying.

"..."

Natalia merely moved her lips, watching him walk toward where his head would land.

After a while, he returned carrying half a head and pressed it back into the snow in front of Vili's grave.

"You broke it. I'll get you a fresh one next time."

Eric patted the cold tombstone again, then looked at the princess. "Let's go up, Your Highness."

"it is good."

The basket slowly rose, and Natalia and Elise watched in silence as Eric cast a healing spell on his feet to dispel his fear of what lay beyond the basket.

Back on the Great Wall, before engaging in further conversation, Natalia first arranged accommodations for the group who had traveled from afar.

"The conditions are not good... no, the conditions are terrible. Please make do for a few days, Your Highness."

"It's alright. I've slept in the ruins where the undead roam around for a few nights. It's just a bit cold here."

Natalia smiled. "That's good. There are plenty of empty rooms here, please choose one. If possible, I would like Your Highness to stay next to my room. We should have a lot to talk about."

(End of this chapter)