Warriors will die if they charge.

"A silver mine has been discovered in the snot ditch area."

Fielding's calm tone was like that of a family dog ​​being ridden by the neighbor's dog; you wouldn't interrupt, and might even bet with your neighbor how long the dog could last.

Marcus was blinded by the dim light in the council chamber, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the relics of the Silver Age in the town council chamber—basalt dug out of Card Hill in one piece.

From top to bottom, from the ridge to the ground, the rock surface is covered with names.

Some were recorded with full names, some with only a code name, and some slaves had no records at all, only the number of people who died in a certain mine.

The Thousand Stone Tablet is a memorial that records the deaths caused by silver, a shared memory of Linhe Town.

After the nobles, merchants, and the church determined that the silver had been completely depleted, they left with all their ships. A group of farmers and slaves who were sent to the southern rainforest struggled to build a small town in the rainforest around the docks where the silver was transported.

On the advice of an elder, those who had completed the initial construction work began to return to the mine to collect the remains of the deceased and to carve their names on the basalt with chisels forged from blood and tears.

The number of thousands is just a general figure; the exact number of people buried in the rock layers beneath the rainforest remains unknown.

"We have to take out the Visi family." Sitting to the side, Kuran's face, which used to be always laughing, was now as cold as a thousand stone monuments commemorating the dead.

His father died of chronic mercury poisoning. In his later years, he lost his teeth, experienced unnatural convulsions all over his body, and even cried out in pain when urinating.

"Killing won't solve the problem. Even if the Visi family is gone, there will be Vidong, Vibei, and all sorts of other nonsense. As long as the silver mine is still there, the trouble won't disappear."

Marcus's calm analysis was unlike his previous rough and tumble manner. He looked at the prominent figures in the town, his heavy expression seemingly about to burst forth with mercury.

Apart from him and Kuran, everyone in the council chamber had personally experienced the bloody and insane Silver Age.

"We can't let lead and mercury get into the rainforest anymore." The elderly doctor, Pedro, was sixty-two years old.

At the time, the sixteen-year-old young man, with the noble ideal of saving lives, came by ferry to study mosquito diseases in the rainforest. After witnessing the tragedy in the mining area and the evacuation of nobles, merchants and the church, he became the only doctor left behind.

He was the one who knew the dangers of silver better than anyone else; his hands, covered in age spots, had touched countless times the ulcerated mouth and the rusty bones.

Aunt Nora nodded, turning her head to look at Boss Hawke:

"Hawk, I heard that the person in charge of the Visi family is Moraka's daughter, Eileen. She runs the Chamber of Commerce very well. Even if she really has her eye on Silver, she wouldn't send a group of mercenaries to demonstrate first. What happened in the city?"

"I don't know. I haven't had any contact with the Vichy family since that old bastard Morgan died." Hawke gently stroked the armrest of the chair, his eyes filled with undisguised ferocity.

When Morgan's father, Pyrrhus, led people fleeing war to the rainforest, the settlements along the river were small, with only a hundred or so people. Life was hard, but at least they could survive.

However, as Pyrrhus offered this unclaimed land to Bruno II, news of the discovery of silver reached the north, and Morgan, who had received his father's title, ordered all males over the age of twelve to enter the mine.

Hawke's older brother was killed in a landslide at the age of thirteen.

He is still looking for an opportunity for revenge. If the Moraka brothers had died in Riverside Town, this old water ghost who roamed the Nicarro River would certainly be the prime suspect.

Most of the elders in the council chamber harbored hatred and contempt for the Vichy family, which caused Fielding, who had served in the army for many years, to struggle internally.

Killing wouldn't solve the problem, and he didn't know who had found the silver in the snot ditch and sent the news to Silver Mountain City.

If the news spreads, according to the laws of the Griffin Kingdom, adventurers blinded by silver will also be mindful of the Visi family's baronial status, thus forming a layer of institutional protection.

After killing the Vissi brothers, Riverside Town not only faces hordes of adventurers and bandits, but also the Griffin Royal Family, who are interested in all precious metals.

Fielding suddenly raised his hand, signaling for everyone to be quiet:

"I am negotiating with Moraz. He says that out of a noble duty, he is willing to rebuild the town's drainage canals at his own expense, and hire people from the town to work for him, paying them five copper coins a day, including lunch."

"This is a trap," Marcus interjected.

"Today we're repairing the irrigation canal, tomorrow the boardwalk, and the day after tomorrow we'll be cutting down the vines in the snot ditch."

"Listen, Marcus, you've become a professional, found an elf wife, and have a reliable dwarf master as a companion. But most people are not like you. They can only stare at the broken boxes on the dock every day, hoping to support their families with the few copper coins they earn."

Old Hank, a representative of the dockworkers, wrapped in a blanket even in the sweltering heat, gritted his teeth:

"I support the plan to repair the irrigation canals; it will benefit the town, and the rotten ditches should have been fixed a long time ago."

"We can organize the repairs ourselves, but we can't let the Vici brothers' plan succeed," Kuran said.

"Us? Kuran, you've never worked at the docks. Ask Marcus. The workers have nothing to spare except their arms. It's the busy farming season now, so everyone is busy with work. But in a while, the streets will be full of homeless men with fighting cocks causing trouble."

"..." Marcus fell silent. The original owner had worked at the docks for five years and had only saved up three gold coins to buy a wife. If asked to donate money for repairs, no one would be willing.

He looked into Kuran's cold eyes: "Five copper coins and lunch, that's no small sum."

"So what?" Kuran said, "So we're going to work for the Vizi family, who killed your parents and brothers, and let them steal your silver, only to have them come back forty years later? No, we can't do that!"

He said firmly, "What you're worried about is the army coming from the north. If they come, we'll go into the rainforest and wage guerrilla warfare, attacking their mines. Even if we become subjects of the Water Demon Queen, I'll never kneel and lick the assholes of the Visi family!"

Hawke stood up, picked up the tequila and handed it to Kuran, patting the flushed young man on the shoulder and praising him as a man of honor.

Young people's self-esteem.

But Kuran's ideas had to be taken seriously. He was highly respected among the young people in the town and was known for his loyalty. Whenever conflicts arose between locals and outsiders, he would lead the militia to demand justice. On several occasions, he threw hooligans who harassed women into the river to feed the water ghosts.

Marcus frowned, pondering how to resolve the situation. Negotiate with Moraz? No, he didn't believe the ruthless and shrewd mercenary leader would be willing to waste even a second of his time mining silver.

wow~

In the noisy council chamber, bone dice rolled out from the shadows, tinkling and rolling on the floor with a crisp, unique sound.

The gambler was mesmerized by the lone bone die rolling on the ground. The grooves on the die's surface were filled with mud, obscuring the patterns covered by the mud. He stared intently as the finger-thick bone die rolled at his feet.

The bone die swayed in the light for a while, looking listless and lifeless; given the speed at which it had rolled, it stopped too quickly.

A mirror, or more precisely, the obsidian-encrusted side of the bone die, was aimed at Marcus's eyes.

He bent down and picked up the bone die that had fallen between his feet. As he pinched it between his fingertips, the mirror and other patterns disappeared, turning into a six-point die, the most common type of die in casinos.

Marcus looked at the old woman emerging from behind the thousand stone tablets and asked in confusion, "Grandma Keshachi?"

Keshachi, an old woman with black hair, brown skin, and a flat nose, whose origins are unknown, seems to have lived in the town long before the miners were abandoned.

Some say she is the Queen of the Water Ghosts, who helps the town escape floods, mosquito diseases, and plagues, while also using mysterious witchcraft to take people's lives.

But who she really is, where she comes from, no one knows the truth.

Marcus, holding an obsidian die, lifted his thin linen coat to reveal his right arm, which was tattooed with feathered serpents.

Kshachi grinned, revealing a few remaining, shriveled teeth, and smiled contentedly in a language that no one but Marcus could understand:

"I heard it, the call of the rain, the scales, and the wind. Come with me, brother. Let these strangers handle the matter of the blood silver themselves. We need to find a suitable place to divine the oracle of the smoke mirror."

Marcus gripped the obsidian dice tightly in his hand and pulled his clothes up over his shoulders:

"No, Navater is your hometown, while I live in Riverside Town."