The Villain Saint is my secondary account

Locations already visited:

The Loren Empire:

Valond Province (Royal City [North District (Royal Palace), West District (most prosperous area: Loren Sanctuary, Adventurer's Guild Hall), East District (Princess Residence, Five Fingers Bar), South District (Anstan Avenue (Paradise, Hope Town)), Central District (National Noble Academy), Outlying Settlements (Slums, Rom Settlement, Elf Astrology Hall)], Blue Dragon River [Blue Dragon River Tributary Forest], Liangqiu Village, Howling Mountains [Grey Gold Town, Grey Gold Mine, Lyre Peak])

Coastal Province (Stormport)

The North:

Lingfeng Valley (Bardes Village)

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That's all for now. As for other things like characters, pantheons, skills, and items, there doesn't seem to be much need for that yet (there are just too many, so I'm being lazy). I'll leave that for later and see if any of you experts need it, hahaha o(〃'▽'〃)o

Volume 3 Storm City

Chapter One: A Temporary Rest in Gray Gold Town

"Are you awake?"

Ye Xiao opened his eyes and was shocked to see Greta's baby face pressed against his forehead.

"Fuck!"

"Wow! What did you say? You scared me to death!" The frightened maid bit Ye Xiao's arm.

"Open your eyes and you'll see a big face. Anyone would be impressed!" Ye Xiao pushed away the pink-haired head. In his field of vision was a forest path that was constantly receding and several freight wagons covered with dark green canvases.

He felt the wheels beneath him spinning on the uneven road surface, bouncing up and down.

"Where have you been?"

"We're almost at Greygold Town." Greta crossed her arms. "What's going on? You've been sleeping all afternoon since we left the capital, and it's still broad daylight."

"Maybe I ate too much for lunch; carbohydrates can make you sleepy."

"What flowers and mist?" Greta looked completely bewildered.

Ye Xiao shrugged. Of course, he couldn't tell the little maid that he had actually been having a meeting in his dream.

Today marks the start of our journey to Stormport with the guild and the Holy Church delegation. It has also been exactly one week since our last meeting at Good Hill Ridge, where we met through the bond of faith with Lilia and the others.

Although he was on the road, he had a rare free time, so he still organized a meeting.

This time, we didn't talk about much; we mainly discussed the Full Moon Order with Lilia.

This is a secret cult whose headquarters are said to be located in the Kingdom of Valen, and the plague hunters under its command seem to be searching for and hunting unknown deities everywhere.

Unlike before, this meeting also included Marilyn and Wingerman.

The main reason was that when Ye Xiao was escorting the little girl who was being chased by the man with the severed finger, he mentioned this to Marilyn when he was stuck upside down in the roof of the carriage.

As a result, the hunter girl's eyes were filled with resentment, giving off a feeling of "you guys actually went to a party without me."

Left with no other choice, Ye Xiao had to bring her into the meeting as well.

She went in, and Wengerman followed her in eagerly, claiming it was to protect his senior sister from the influence of the gods. But once inside, he just kept staring at Ella, unable to look away.

"Brother Ye, I was just being cautious." Ye Xiao still remembered that when the other party said this to him, his eyes were still fixed on Ella, and he didn't even wipe the drool from the corner of his mouth. "But to be honest, it was a bit dark at the time, otherwise I would have surrendered long ago."

However, with these two people around, many questions about the plague hunters have been answered, but the details are too complex to discuss here.

"Hmph, you sleep for most of the day, aren't you bored?" Greta pouted.

"Why don't you go play cards with Li Cheng and the others in the carriage ahead?" Ye Xiao said helplessly.

He had deliberately chosen the back seat of this carriage, which was laden with goods, hoping to avoid being disturbed by the others and get some sleep.

As a result, the little maid insisted on following along, like a stubborn leech.

“That won’t do. What if I’m not paying attention and you suddenly die?” Greta shook her head. “Your soul might slip away then.”

"Thank you so much for your concern."

……

Before long, the convoy arrived at Grey Gold Town.

This is also a pass through the Howling Mountains. From here, you can cross the mountains that block the south of Valond and walk for about two days to reach Storm Harbor.

On such long journeys, various groups traveling together usually form a large caravan, which is more effective in resisting attacks from monsters or bandits than traveling separately.

Therefore, this rather large caravan was actually composed of Ye Xiao and Li Cheng's player guild "Seven Stars Society", the Holy Temple delegation escorting Ella, and a caravan and its guards heading to Stormport.

In terms of both the number of people and the number of carriages, the caravan transporting goods naturally had the most. Ye Xiao and his guild members even rented empty seats on other people's cargo carriages to save money.

As soon as they entered the town and the carriage stopped, the little maid jumped off the carriage, grabbed Ye Xiao's clothes, and clamored to go for a walk in the town.

Freya, who was learning to play cards with Li Cheng and the others in the front carriage, saw this and hurriedly followed.

"Dude, I never knew you were this good before." Li Cheng put down the cards and looked at Ye Xiao with a sour expression. "For all these years of brotherhood, teach me a few moves."

"What nonsense are you talking about? I just want to buy some ore. This town has a lot of minerals, and most importantly, they're cheaper than in the capital."

"I need to buy more clothes! I need to buy you clothes!" Greta shouted.

"...Alright, I'll buy some clothes while I'm at it." Ye Xiao touched the spatial ring on her hand, feeling a little sorry for the meager amount of gold coins inside. "Want to come along?"

"I'm not going to be a third wheel." Li Cheng tossed the cards into the carriage. "You wait, I'm going to go to the tavern and find a few more. They can't match your quality, but I'm confident in my quantity."

"Then take care of yourself." Ye Xiao waved his hand, then turned and left with Greta and Freya.

The market area in Greygold Town is not particularly large, and most of the stalls sell ores.

Greta only took a few steps inside before yawning repeatedly, looking completely uninterested.

Freya, on the other hand, looked around with great interest. Having always been in the upper echelons of the sanctuary, she rarely saw these distinctive folk customs.

Those large, bright blue eyes made it difficult for Ye Xiao to reconcile this candidate saintess with the cold, aloof high-ranking priest from before.

Sometimes, when she sees some oddly shaped minerals, she will stop and look at them for a while.

"This is a high-purity black steel rock. It doesn't have as many shiny impurities on the surface, so it looks especially black." Seeing Freya take a liking to another piece of completely black ore, Ye Xiao explained from the side, "Shields made from this stuff will be particularly hard, but high-purity ones like this are quite rare."

“Oh…” Freya nodded, then pointed to a small stone that was completely black but had a golden sheen, “Then what about this one? Why is it golden?”

“This is Grey Gold Rock.” Ye Xiao picked up the palm-sized rock and examined it. “It should be one of the top three most magically efficient minerals on this continent. Unfortunately, this piece has a lot of impurities, so it probably won’t yield much pure Grey Gold after purification. However, this is a strategic resource. The high-purity ones are probably snapped up by the Loren government as soon as they are mined. What’s sold here are usually scraps.”

"Wow, Mr. Ye is so knowledgeable about these things." Freya took the gray gold ingot that Ye Xiao handed her, feeling that it was quite heavy.

"Tch, this mediocre material is better at guiding magic than even the stones at the bottom of the River Styx." Greta yawned repeatedly.

"Is Styx Rock something a normal person can mine?" Ye Xiao curled his lip. "If you can get me one, I'll switch to being a necromancer."

"Here." Greta flipped her hand, and a dark stone appeared in her palm. Faintly, one could even hear the stone emitting some faint cries.

"Damn, you should just put it away." Ye Xiao quickly grabbed the little maid's fingers and wrapped them around the strange stone.

In the previous life, this thing appeared in the mortal world because the blasphemy against the Holy Maiden caused a natural disaster that blurred the boundary between hell and the human world, resulting in a part of hell merging with certain places in the mortal world.

Therefore, areas where this thing appears are basically filled with dead people, so seeing it suddenly at this moment is somewhat unlucky.

"Do you want it or not?" the little maid muttered.

"After thinking about it, my handsome necromancer isn't quite suitable... Can I exchange it for a Soul-Radiant Pearl? I want to make a Yama Blade." It was rare for this little guy to be so generous, so Ye Xiao decided to aim for an even bigger dream.

"You wish," Greta coldly refused, putting the stone away somewhere. "However, if you come to hell with me, I might consider taking you there to collect it."

Ye Xiao wasn't about to risk his life for a cool-looking knife, so he politely declined, saying, "That's really unnecessary."

Freya looked at the two of them, wondering in surprise if Greta had become so familiar with Ye Xiao.

The three chatted idly in a corner next to the stall, unaware that just after the maid took out the Styx Rock, a crow quietly landed on a rooftop not far away.

Its jet-black eyes stared at the three people in the market, as if it were thinking about something.

Chapter Two: The Gravedigger

In a suburb far from the town, a hunched, burly figure gripped a rusty shovel and dug into the yellow earth.

He was surrounded by mounds of earth, which looked rather desolate on this barren slope where there was no grass.

These are the graves of miners.

In the mines of Greygold Town, migrant workers from other places often die in accidents.

The burly man digging the soil is the gravedigger who collects the remains of these homeless souls.

A black crow flapped its wings and landed on the mound of earth beside him, opening its black beak and emitting a piercing, eerie sound.

Hearing the birdsong, the burly gravedigger paused, then gently shook his head. "Impossible."

After saying that, he continued with his work.

The crow suddenly leaped up and landed on the man's shoulder, its beak opening and closing as if it were eagerly telling a story, making a particularly noisy noise in this quiet, desolate mountain wilderness.

"Sigh..." The man sighed, picked up a cloth bag from beside the pit and threw it into the dug pit. "That's not my dream... I just want..."

“…Never mind.” The man, who had been muttering to himself amidst the cawing of crows, suddenly changed his mind halfway through his sentence. “Give it a try, but don’t get your hopes up too high.”

After saying that, he shoveled up the yellow soil piled up in a small mound next to him and splashed it onto the tattered cloth bag.

……

The sun quickly set behind the hills.

As the air grows colder, night falls earlier and earlier.

The town, built on rolling hills, was already lit up with twinkling lights early in the morning.

The town's only tavern became even more lively—as the only place to rest on the main road connecting Stormport and the Royal City, it was small in size but had a lot of travelers coming and going.

Ye Xiao, Li Cheng, and other players were raising their glasses in celebration at a long table by the window. The wine here had a distinctive earthy smell, which Li Cheng said was a local specialty, but Ye Xiao felt it was just because the glasses hadn't been washed properly.

Meanwhile, Ella, draped in a gray cloak, sat to the side, chatting quietly with Freya, who had just joined the guild.

Perhaps because they had already experienced it several times, the players of the Seven Stars Society had gradually become accustomed to the Holy Maiden who frequently attended this gathering. Although they still maintained the proper etiquette in their words and actions when facing her, they no longer felt as restrained.

After all, these are players from Earth, and they are not bound by social status and hierarchy like in feudal society.

Freya's face was slightly flushed as she drank alcohol for the first time; the shadow cast by Evans's affair had not completely dissipated.

But her stubborn nature prevented her from mentioning these things to Ye Xiao. It was only when she met Ella, who knew the truth, that she unconsciously stammered out some information.

Everyone chatted and drank, but Gladys sat silently next to Ye Xiao, holding a glass of orange juice and looking like a cat with a sullen face.

The petite girl's pink nose twitched amidst the smell of alcohol on the table. Her pair of blinking golden eyes noticed that Ye Xiao seemed engrossed in chatting with Li Cheng, so she reached out her small hand to grab the wine pot that was placed not far away.

As if he had eyes on his shoulders, Ye Xiao immediately turned around and grabbed Greta's restless little hand: "Hey, stop messing around, you just drink your orange juice properly."

"I don't want juice," the maid protested. "Why are you the only ones allowed to drink alcohol?"

“This is absolutely not acceptable. If you want to drink, go somewhere else and drink secretly. Don’t torture everyone here.” Ye Xiao’s lips twitched. He had a very deep impression of the terrible scene this guy caused last time he drank.

"Hmph." Upon hearing that Ye Xiao wanted to send her away, the little maid immediately fell silent.

This guy can't hold his liquor, but he loves to drink. Ye Xiao was speechless.

"It feels like a lot of big things have happened lately." Li Cheng picked up the wine jug that Greta had been trying to steal and filled Ye Xiao's cup, then changed the subject, "It makes me feel a bit powerless."

"What's wrong? Why are you suddenly feeling sad?" Ye Xiao asked curiously.

"It's like... it feels like we can only take on small quests like goblin hunting right now." Li Cheng scratched his head. "Like that time in the plaza, to be honest, if it weren't for the Holy Maiden's intervention, I think I might have died without even knowing why. Even now, there's always this inexplicable feeling..."

"A sense of insignificance?" Ye Xiao replied.

“Indeed.” Li Cheng nodded. “When I first transmigrated here, although I was a little scared, I was also a little excited. This system is like a game. Fighting monsters in the wild, I thought what kind of magnificent life would follow.”

"Later, when I arrived in the capital, I found that I could only take on missions with meager rewards, and there was no way to improve my skills and attributes. In the end, when I encountered truly powerful enemies, I had no ability to resist at all, and I was easily crushed like an ant."

"Relax, it's only been two weeks since we transmigrated. Believe me, compared to the natives, the speed at which we players improve with the system's help is terrifying." Ye Xiao patted Li Cheng on the shoulder.

He roughly understood his good brother's feelings. Indeed, as an ordinary player, after seeing the exaggerated battle between High Priest Evans and Ella, it's inevitable to feel a sense of awe and disparity.

Faced with such overwhelming and irresistible power, they would feel that their significance in this world was merely struggling to survive under the control of these "big shots," and thus, they would gradually begin to miss their distant homeland.

However, Ye Xiao was somewhat surprised that Li Cheng could have such meticulous thinking.

I don't know what made this optimistic guy suddenly have this kind of tender feeling... Thinking this, Ye Xiao touched a long, dark brown hair on Li Cheng's shoulder.

"...Damn, what's wrong with you? Are you in a post-coital state right now?"