The Holy Man of Another Century Gospel

Chapter 271 Campus Recruitment Fair

Because he was unsure of the size of the attackers and their main direction of attack, Eric did not leave Natalia alone, but instead kept her in the room to wait and see.

"Do you have those protective scrolls with you?" he asked in a low voice.

“I’ll take it,” Natalia replied.

Eric glanced at her in the darkness. "If someone rushes at you, just use it."

"I see."

Eric guessed that the attackers were the demon warriors, at least not including the traitorous mages, otherwise the commotion wouldn't have been so small...

As he was thinking this, the view outside the window behind him suddenly became bright.

He and Natalia turned around and saw a huge fireball rising outside the window, growing larger and brighter as the spell was cast.

With a soft rustling sound, Natalia tore open a protective scroll without hesitation, and a magical shield instantly enveloped her.

Seeing that the shield only covered herself, she quickly shoved a protective scroll into Eric's hand, only to have him push it back.

"Follow me!"

Eric grabbed her hand, burst through the door, and rushed into the hallway.

boom!
The giant fireball that rose outside the window finally came crashing down, but the attacker didn't seem to know which room the two were staying in; it attacked the entire hotel.

Flames poured in through the windows and spewed out from the doorway, instantly illuminating the second floor of the hotel, but their power was greatly reduced by the time they reached the edge.

Eric easily dodged the flames spewing from the room, while the temperature in the air was rising rapidly.

He glanced in the direction he was going downstairs, when suddenly shouts of killing and the sounds of battle came from outside.

Several knights living nearby fought against the attackers.

"Fire! Fire!"

"what's the situation?"

"It's a fireball! Have those mages gone mad?"

Despite it being late at night, the commotion was so loud that even the dead pig was awakened, and the other guests in the hotel poured out of their rooms.

Avoiding the crowd, Eric pulled Natalia into a room on the other side of the corridor, went to the window, and glanced at the backyard below.

"Let's jump down."

"Huh?" Natalia was instinctively a little panicked.

Eric glanced at her. "I'll catch you."

After saying that, he jumped down first.

The second floor was only two or three meters high. As soon as Eric landed, Natalia jumped down after him, quite decisively.

He reached out and caught her steadily, then immediately pulled her towards the stables.

Eric casually mounted one of the horses, but seeing Natalia about to mount another, he quickly called out to her, "Get on my horse!"

Without hesitation, she quickly climbed onto the horse and wrapped her arms around his waist.

Eric swung the reins sharply, increasing speed and charging outside.

As soon as he arrived at the front of the inn, he saw a knight locked in combat with several demon warriors. "Hold them off!"

"Yes!"

Someone noticed Eric and Natalia trying to escape on horseback and immediately gave chase, but they were quickly stopped.

Before he could even escape the inn's grounds, Eric saw several mages gathered outside, raising their staffs and conjuring a second giant fireball, seemingly intending to burn the entire inn to the ground.

Eric crouched low and kicked the horse beneath him hard with his heel. The horse, in pain, suddenly sped up.

Eric dashed past the mages who had no time to react, wielding his longsword and slashing several times, quickly severing the throats of some of them.

Seeing that things were not going well, one of the monks turned and fled.

Eric hesitated, refraining from throwing the longsword in his hand.

He put away his weapons without looking back and ran with Natalia away from the hotel.

"Your Highness! What about those knights?" Natalia turned around and looked around.

“You are the target of those demons! I’ll take you to a safe place and then go back to help them,” Eric said.

After running for a few minutes and confirming that no one was following him or watching him, Eric found a secluded corner in the shacks where the mages lived outside the academy and told Natalia to stay there for the time being.

"Your Highness, please hide here." Eric handed her several scrolls he had on him, and finally took off Agnes's protective ring and put it on her finger.

"This ring can also protect Your Highness, with the same effect. You can activate it by silently reciting 'Revenge Protection' in your mind."

After giving a quick explanation, Eric mounted his horse again and galloped towards the inn.

"..."

Darkness quickly enveloped the surroundings. Looking in the direction Eric had left, and then at the ring on her hand, Natalia took a deep breath of the night air and cautiously concealed herself against the low shack next to her.

When Eric returned to the hotel, the area was already ablaze with flames, and the battle was still raging.

A holy and awe-inspiring golden light emanated from his eyes, face, and even body. Eric gripped his longsword and joined one of the church knights in battle against a demon warrior.

when!
Eric blocked the demon's curved sword that was slashing down, gripped the sword with both hands, and pushed it back. The demon warrior glared at him, trying to resist with force, but forgot that it was another church knight who was originally fighting it.

puff!

Another longsword covered in golden light seized the opportunity and pierced its body.

The demon warriors quickly retreated, creating distance.

However, Eric's arrival had already disrupted the balance, and by then it was too late to get rid of him.

"Leave its life to me!" Eric shouted, and the knight immediately changed his strategy from waiting for an opportunity to kill to launching a strong attack to create space for him to fight.

The demon warrior roared in resentment, slashing his curved sword repeatedly as he parried the knight's desperate attack while keeping a close eye on Eric's movements.

he came!
Seeing Eric suddenly attack from the left, it immediately shifted its main attention to that direction, raised its curved sword, and easily deflected Eric's thrust.

However, his years of combat experience told him that the danger had not disappeared, but had instead increased to its maximum.

wrong!

The next second, the enemy in front of it had disappeared, and a cold sensation entered its body from behind.

With a single sword piercing his heart, Eric swiftly drew his sword, gathering his strength, and decapitated the defenseless demon warrior.

Having secured the kill, Eric regained all his powerful buffs and removed all negative status effects, leaving him with no further worries. He then turned to engage in the battle on the other side.

With successive kills, the demon warriors were constantly being reduced in number, and the advantage brought by the sneak attack was quickly reversed. Moments later, under the glow of the burning inn, there were no demons left standing.

Eric glanced around at his men. "Is anyone injured?"

"I suffered a minor injury," all the knights said.

"As long as there are no casualties, that's fine."

He glanced at the demon warriors lying on the ground. The last one who had fallen was not yet dead, but he was not far off. Blood was gushing from his body, and he was on the verge of death, still staring at them with hateful eyes.

"Those mages who escaped, I don't know where they've hidden, I guess we can't catch them."

Eric glanced at the growing crowd of onlookers. Only the human mages were fleeing; the demons were all staying behind to fight them to the death. He walked up to the demon warrior, bowed his head, and asked, "Do you have anything else to say? I can accept your surrender."

"Kill...kill you all..." The demon warrior coughed up blood, his trembling hand still trying to pick up the weapon that had been knocked away.

Eric didn't waste any more breath. He gripped the hilt with both hands, aimed the tip of the sword at its eye, and thrust it in, slowly turning it around once.

Only after the experience of flying had penetrated his body did he draw his sword.

Looking back at the inn engulfed in flames and the bodies of innocent people lying in front of it, Eric took a breath and looked to the other side: "Isn't there a single mage who knows water magic to help put out the fire!"

Some people turned and left, while others watched for a while before stepping out of the crowd and unleashing their respective water-based spells at the burning hotel.

As the flames gradually died down, Eric gave a few instructions, telling the knights to keep an eye on the situation, and then mounted his horse again, galloping towards where Natalia was hiding.

Natalia could clearly see the firelight from the shed, and she remained tense until she saw Eric reappear before finally letting out a sigh of relief.

"Your Highness..."

"It's alright, it's all taken care of." Eric helped her onto the horse.

The two of them stared at the fading firelight in the distance for a while.

"What does Your Highness think of tonight's attack?" Natalia asked.

“I suspect it might be that demon sorcerer who has been elusive all this time. He returned from Mafia Castle and, upon learning of Your Highness’s presence here, launched his operation,” Eric said.

When he said it was just a guess, Natalia understood that he still hadn't found any trace of the sorcerer.

"Let's go back to the monastery first."

The two returned to the monastery first, and the knights followed one after another, spending a relatively peaceful night in the monastery.

The next day, Natalia stayed at the monastery, while Eric and a dozen knights returned to the Star Origin Academy to track down the mages who had sided with the demons, based on the intelligence they had gathered earlier.

Without exception, they had all escaped.

Eric estimated that after the operation failed last night, the mages scattered and fled. At that time, they did not know the specific scale of the enemy's operation and had limited manpower, so they had to give up for the time being.

"But of all times, none of the moon elves are here..."

In the Castelfair operation, Eric's only outside help, besides the few monks in the monastery, was the moon elf archmages of the Star Origin Academy. If they were there, he could use their power to mobilize many human mages inside and outside the academy.

But just over a month or two later, all the moon elves left.

The academy badges from the moon elves in his hands might fool some people, but to think he could use them to mobilize them was wishful thinking.

After searching cautiously for several days, no trace of demons could be found near the Star Origin Academy. Natalia returned to the area to continue her recruitment plan.

To facilitate their operation, she publicly revealed her and Eric's identities and occupied a classroom in Xingyuan Academy as a recruitment point to give presentations.

Perhaps because she talked about things that had nothing to do with magic itself, her lectures attracted quite a few mages to attend.

Eric sat in the front seat, watching Natalia talk incessantly, and it was hard not to feel the same way he did when he was applying for a job in his past life.

All that's missing is a PowerPoint presentation behind her...

Natalia's conditions for these mages were both systematic and hierarchical, such as how many gold coins a third-tier mage could earn per month, how much subsidy a fifth-tier mage could receive, and how much reward they could receive based on their performance in each battle.

According to what she told Eric in private, this was an adjustment made based on the treatment of Imperial military mages. She had previously managed a group of military mages at the Black Ice Wall and knew all about it.

This approach might be met with disdain by ordinary people in Castelfel, but it works very well for these mages, who can easily understand that the Grand Princess of the Empire is serious.

The remaining problem is how to get these mages from the chaos of Castelfel to Lutia—letting them join the army on their own means, they might be killed by roadside bandits before they've even left the academy.

“We need a squad of soldiers to escort these mages. At least from the Star Origin Academy to the border, they need someone to protect them. Once they enter the Empire, there will be no danger,” Natalia said during the discussion.

Eric thought for a moment, “The closest place to Castelfelt is Gradia, but they can’t send any men right now. The next closest is Dorne. We haven’t had any in-depth contact with Governor Igor of Dorne yet, but Sterling said they have a good relationship, so we should be able to get Igor to send some soldiers over through him to escort them in batches.”

Among the southern kingdoms, perhaps only Castelfel's border allows for such free movement in and out.

“Perhaps we don’t need to send them to Lutia. With the Great War of Gradius imminent, we need mages here as well,” Natalia said.

Eric nodded. "In short, let's get them to the Empire first."

Although the letter to Sterling had just been sent, at the academy's recruitment fair, Natalia's explanation was that the soldiers sent by the Empire to escort them, the mages, were already on their way.

With money to be made, relatively lenient conditions for joining the army, and free escorts, many mages still signed up, even though they knew they would be facing real demons on the battlefield.

This is different from recruiting merfolk. Each of these mages has their own name, and their mastery of magic varies greatly, not to mention their specific factions. Although there is no need to arrange accommodations and manage them for the time being, just registering their information is troublesome enough. As they get busy, Natalia and Eric are increasingly stretched thin.

There were very few trustworthy helpers. The church knights were exceptionally strong in combat, but they were also overwhelmed by such trivial matters. Eric could only temporarily pull some monks from the monastery to help—after all, there were no believers here who needed their counseling, and the monks were quite idle anyway.

However, he and Natalia planned to establish a stable mage recruitment point here, and the two of them could not stay here for long. There needed to be a person in charge and a team who could take over completely after they left.

"I think that bishop and the monks he brought are very reliable."

“They are members of the Church, Your Highness. We can’t keep exploiting them just because they’re free and useful. Although they’re here to help at my request, if Lesser issues an order, the other side will take higher priority. Does Your Highness want to see these mages dragged to the Holy Capital to fill in the gaps?”

“…I don’t want to.” Natalia sighed. “Then we’ll have no choice but to look for manpower from the Empire?”

“Let Igor send someone to take over,” Eric said. “But that would mean we’d have to stay here a little longer.”

They had been here for more than half a month, and the empire had entered the true winter.

The demonic offensive, which had been detected long ago, is gradually unfolding.

Sterling's army has entered Grandia, set up positions on the border, and is on guard against the demons who might turn their attack from Tebunetti.

The daily stream of intelligence from Lutia and Guradia was as plentiful as the snowflakes falling from the north, and Eric and Natalia had no choice but to read and understand it.

"I didn't expect you to stay here for so long."

Upon seeing Eric again, Rusdy immediately complained, "Didn't you say it would only be a few days?"

“Sorry, things here are more complicated than we thought, and we’re facing more than just troubles here now…” Eric looked at Rusdy, “You didn’t come all the way from the Mage Tower just to complain to me, did you?”

“I need a stable environment to continue my research. Besides, if I stay any longer, they’ll dig up all my secrets,” Rusdy said, referring, of course, to the group of alchemists led by Ferdinand.

Eric paused for a moment, then smiled and said, "It seems your collaboration is going quite well."

Rusdy wanted to deny it, but his face showed both excitement and a somewhat indescribable bewilderment, which was hard to hide.

“These past few days, I’ve helped them achieve unprecedented breakthroughs, but in doing so, I’ve also seen even bigger bottlenecks…”

"—Another unprecedented breakthrough. Can they create soldiers for us who can fight against the demons on the battlefield?"

Natalia, looking exhausted, overheard their conversation and casually asked, "Or perhaps we could have an assistant who's half as smart as Prince Eric to help us with some of the work?"

Rusdy said seriously, "Your Highness, we are creating an artificial human that is truly close to a human. Since that is our goal, the quality of the artificial human is just as uncontrollable as the birth of humans. After all, we humans can't even control whether we have children or not, can we?"

Eric shook his head. "Just a moment ago they were complaining about Ferdinand, and now it's 'us'..."

Natalia stated that if this is the alchemists' ultimate goal, then she cannot understand what the point is.

"The meaning lies in creation!"

Rusdy grew increasingly excited as he spoke, "Using our human hands to imitate the gods' every move in creating this world. This is only the first step; in the future, it will be us alchemists who will take over this world!"

"Then I'll have to take over your dangerous alchemists ahead of schedule..."

Natalia's voice grew softer and softer. Eric looked over and saw that her head was tilted to the side, and she had fallen asleep in her chair.

“It’s only a few days left, let’s wait a little longer.” Eric then looked at Rusdy. “The people who are helping us are already on their way. Once they arrive, we can leave.”

(End of this chapter)