Chapter 101: The Ancient Book and the Traces It Gives (Part 2)

He read the next line.

The Devils grew each day in number. Every day we became fewer.

God’s Stone of Retaliation was unable to stop them. It would work against their unnatural powers, yes — but even without those powers, they were terrible enemies.

The Holy City of Taquila has fallen. We have scattered in all directions — over the mountains, across the rivers, fleeing as far from the Gates of Hell as we are able.

But where next? Where is there left to go?

It doesn’t matter. It is not something I need to decide. I am going to die, Natalia.

The Devil’s corruption is inside me now, and nothing we have is slowing it.

I am writing this down because I have one request to leave you.

Alice’s test of the God’s Punishment Army is nearly complete. The test was a success — even facing the extraordinary Devil Warriors, they have nothing to fear. But she has forgotten the essential point: even if the God’s Punishment Army wins, that victory will not belong to us.

The God’s Punishment Army will be our end.

To stop her, only you remain.

Roland set the book down and closed his eyes.

He ran through it twice more from the beginning — the full readable section, the whole arc of it — and then he tried to see it from Cara’s perspective. Tried to see it from the inside of a worldview that had no category for actual alien creatures, no framework that included the possibility that “the Devil” was a species rather than a theology.

Assume Cara read this and had no knowledge of the wildlands creatures. Assume she processed “Devil” as the Church’s word for witches — which it was, in every public discourse she had ever encountered. Work from there.

Then the text read differently. A Church member, fleeing from witches who were growing stronger while the Church’s warriors dwindled. The God’s Stone suppressing their powers but not stopping them entirely. A Holy City — Taquila — fallen to their advance. The author dying of something the Church’s medicines couldn’t treat.

And at the end: a warning about an army being built to fight back. An army that would win but deliver victory to the wrong hands.

To someone who had spent her life being called the devil’s instrument, this would have read as revelation. The Church had been losing, for centuries, to the people they called witches, and they had been hiding it. They had built their theology of persecution on top of a history of defeat.

I can see why she thought what she thought, Roland acknowledged.

But the holes were significant. The text said the enemy possessed “strange powers” beyond what ordinary people had — but witches could be blocked by God’s Stones, and a God’s Stone would only partially suppress these creatures. The text made it sound like partial suppression was all you could manage. That didn’t fit. And the note about the enemy’s numbers growing daily didn’t fit either — witches were born, not multiplied, and the Church had been burning them in quantity for generations.

She was probably so eager that she stopped examining her own reading, Roland thought. Or there was content he still couldn’t parse — the corrupted passages, the missing middle sections — that had made it seem more coherent to her than it looked to him now.

It didn’t matter. What mattered was what the text actually said.

And what the text actually said was this: a Holy City called Taquila — a name he had never seen in any history book he’d read — had been lost to an enemy that grew in number while the Church’s forces dwindled. The God’s Stone of Retaliation had worked only partially against them. The survivors had scattered.

And someone, in the final hours of their life, had written a warning about a weapon being developed to fight back.

He opened his eyes and read the passage again.

Even if the God’s Punishment Army will win, this victory will not belong to us.

The God’s Punishment Army will be our end.

He only knew the Church’s Army of Judges — the God’s Punishment Army he had never heard of. Of course, that didn’t rule out that the former fourth prince had simply been ignorant. But if they really could raise warriors strong enough to fight whatever the text described — this enemy with numbers that grew while the Church’s fell — then why would the author consider it a catastrophe? If it won, why would that victory not belong to them?

He didn’t have enough information to answer that. He wasn’t sure he had enough information to even frame the question correctly.

He stood, moved to the window. The back garden was below him: twelve witches in various stages of their morning training. Lily was working on a tray of vegetables, methodical. Mystery Moon sat in the grass with a pile of smooth stones. Soraya was sketching something he couldn’t make out from this angle.

“Nightingale.”

“Still here.” The dried fish was gone; she was watching the garden too, from somewhere behind him.

“Cara found this book in the east. How?”

A pause. “When I joined the Association, they were already walking. But Wendy told me the beginning.” Nightingale shifted; he heard the couch creak. “It started in the Sea Wind Region — Cara, Wendy, Scroll, a handful of others. They found what they thought was a safe meeting place, a hollow in a forest. And they found something they hadn’t expected: an entrance to a ruin below the ground.”

“Below the forest.”

“Cara went down alone. She didn’t tell anyone what she found, or not fully. When she came back up, she had the book. Not long after that, the Church somehow learned the location and came in force. Less than half of them escaped.” Nightingale’s voice was flat, reporting. “That was when Cara decided on the Holy Mountain. Built the Association around it. Everything that followed.”

Roland turned it over. A buried ruin in the eastern forests of Graycastle, old enough that no current history acknowledged it. Taquila — the Holy City that the book’s author had watched fall. Could they be the same site?

Possibly. Probably.

I would need to go there, he thought, and it’s entirely impossible right now. The journey across the kingdom, the political situation, the campaign against Longsong Stronghold that had to come first. He filed it under necessary future problems and made a note in his margin.

He looked back out the window. The garden, the witches, the ordinary industrious morning.

Twelve of them now. Which meant it was finally time to formalize the structure.

He had been thinking about this. He didn’t want a military hierarchy — that created the wrong incentives and the wrong dependencies. He didn’t want a guild structure, too much internal politics. What he wanted was something closer to a professional association: a framework for coordination and accountability that didn’t pretend to be something else.

Two rules. He had it down to two.

First: a witch could not use her ability to violate the laws of the territory. Second: a witch could not use her ability to evade the laws of the territory.

He had considered more elaborate formulations — the kind of layered restrictions that tried to enumerate every possible misuse — and had discarded them. Rules that tried to account for every scenario were rules that broke down in novel scenarios. Better to have two simple principles that covered the underlying logic. And deliberately avoiding the framing of “do not use ability against ordinary people” or any construction that emphasized the distinction between witches and the rest of Border Town: that was a gap he was actively trying to close, not widen.

Witches are citizens. Their abilities are tools. Tools are governed by the same laws that govern everything else.

He wrote the two rules down cleanly on a separate sheet.

The name had come to him a while ago, and it still seemed right.

The Witch Union.

Simple. Professional. It described what it was without apology.

He wrote it at the top of the page, drew a line under it, and sat back.

He glanced at the ancient book one more time. The hurried handwriting on the last pages. Natalia, whoever she was — did she survive? Did she stop Alice? Did it matter, given that the God’s Punishment Army clearly existed?

He didn’t know. He had more questions than answers, and the ruin in the eastern forest was two kingdoms away, and the snow outside was still melting, and Longsong Stronghold was fifty-five kilometers up the river.

One thing at a time.

Chapter 101 The Ancient Book and the traces it gives (Part 2)

What does this mean? Roland rubbed his fingers over the handwritten line, had the original owner of this ancient book also had to fight against those monsters in the wild lands? He turned his view further down and continued reading –

“The Devils grew each day in number, but every day we became less.”

“God’s Stone of Retaliation was also unable to stop them. It would only work against their unparalleled strange powers, but even without relying on their magic, they were still fierce and terrible enemies.”

“The Holy City of Taquila has already fallen into the enemy’s hands, the only option left to us was to scatter in all directions.”

“Over the mountains, across the rivers. Trying to flee as far away from the Gates of Hell as possible. ”

“But for the next time, where to should we flee?”

“But, this isn’t something I have to think about. I am going to die, Natalia.”

“The Devil’s power is corroding my body, and every one of our drugs are malfunction.”

“I’m writing all this down because I have a simple matter I want to request of you to do for me.”

Alice’s test of the God’s Punishment Army is already approaching its end, and the test was a success. Even when facing the extraordinary Devil Warriors they have nothing to fear, but she forgot the important point, even if the God’s Punishment Army will win, this victory won’t belong to us.”

” That’s right. The God’s Punishment Army, will lead to our end. ”

“To stop her, only you are left.”

The text he managed to read wasn’t long, Roland swept his gaze once more from beginning to end. He then closed his eyes and began to think about what he had read. Trying to see it from Cara’s perspective.

Assuming that she wasn’t aware of the existence of the Devil’s. And she thought the Devil to refer to a witch. Using this assumption, it would be easy to imagine that the book was written from the perspective of a member of the Church, fleeing from the witches. Then in combined with widely circulated rumors – after all, the rumours say that the witches are all the Devil’s minions, and that they gained their magic from the Gate of Hell.

Cara most likely thought that the Church actually wanted to hide the truth: That they changed the entry to the Holy Mountain to the Gate of Hell, and that for several hundreds of years, witches already had access to the Holy Mountain, and that they found there an eternal life. So the witches became more and more, yet the warriors of the Church became less and less.

Of course, this theory had many holes to it For example, the author of the text said that the other side possessed strange powers when compared to ordinary people, clearly there were no witches who possessed these characteristics. Another example was that even under the suppression of the God’s Stone of Retaliation, the witches were still able to let the church suffer a crushing defeat, which seemed too bizarre. So in the end, the reason why Cara went on the journey to the wild lands, was still unknown. Maybe she had just been so eager that she didn’t realize that it had already affected her judgment. There was still some content that he wasn’t able to understand, maybe the real cause stood therein?

Roland preferred the latter possibility.

At least he knew now, that the Devil that was described on the last page wasn’t a witch, but was the description of the real alien race.

But all this didn’t reduce his doubts, instead it only his increased his already numerous problems.

In the end, since when was the Church fighting against the Devils?

Even so, again and again Roland went through the content of the book, but he was still unable to find the relevant content. The Church had established their base in the North, since the end of the war of faith. The base was built to defend against the huge gap in the Impassable Mountain Range against the demonic beasts. Later, they simply built a fortress on the plateau of the Hermes, and simply called it the New Holy City. These two cities are now connected together, one on the high ground and the other was low lying, but both were used to withstand the demonic beasts attack and not the Devils. Besides, he had never heard before of a place called Taquila.

If all of this was true, the Church would have no reason to hide it. According to church’s history books, they were always able to resist the attacks from the demonic beasts, and were also able to achieve great victories in their battle against the witches. This was all described in great detail as if they feared that anyone would forget of their great merits.

But compared with the confrontation against the Devils, how can they still treat the matter of the demonic beasts and the witches to be more worthy to particularize?

The last question concerned the God’s Punishment Army.

Evidently this member of the Church didn’t want to see the God’s Punishment Army to appear, furthermore, they even entrusted others to stop the person in charge of the experiment. Apparently, they seemed to have succeeded? Roland only knew that the Church had an Army of Judges, but he had never heard of the God’s Punishment Army – of course, that doesn’t rule out that the former 4th Prince was simply just ignorant.

However, if they really could foster warrior strong enough to fight against the Devils, wouldn’t it just increase the power of the Church? So why would the author of the note write that it would cause their destruction?

The place where they found this book, should have additional information.

“It was Cara who found the book. Do you know where she found it?” Roland raised his head and asked Nightingale.

“When I joined the Witch Cooperation Association, the sisterhood had already set foot on the road towards the Holy Mountain.” Nightingale who was still chewing the dried fish, answered absently.

“But Wendy had mentioned, that at the beginning the sisterhood didn’t call themselves the Witch Cooperation Association, they were just a couple of witches from the Sea Wind Region. Also among them were Cara, Wendy and Scroll. Afterwards when they left the Sea Wind Region, they found a secret meeting place within a forest. But no one had expected that there would actually be a secret entry to an ancient ruin hidden there.”

She took another bite from her snack, licked her lips and then continued, “But except for Cara, no one else had went down to explore it.”

“Did she find the ancient book within the ruins?

“At least, that’s what Cara said,” Nightingale curled her lips.

“And later then, they began to gather more and more witches. But it seems that their hiding place accidently got leaked to the Church, which later then brought a large army to surround the meeting place. Only twenty witches were able to escape, which was less than half of them. It was then that Cara decided to search for the Holy Mountain. So they established the Witch Cooperation Association, with the goal of finding the Holy Mountain as their highest priority.”

After hearing this story, he once more began to think about it, to study mysteries while knowing so little was just too inconvenient, even more so when it was history mixed with legends, leaving a blank in his mind. The ancient book didn’t mentioned the year that it was written, and there was also no other big war mentioned in other history books he had read.

The first person involved in discovering it was already dead, but maybe we can go to find the ancient ruin ourselves, he thought.

But to Roland it was also clear that it was basically an impossible task. The forest in the east was just too far away from Border Town, it was much more than just a short walk, it was a journey across the whole Kingdom of Greycastle. But at this moment the development of his territory was his highest priority.

Roland stood up and walked to the window, there he had a perfect view over the back gardens. In the garden, the witches were training according to his training program. Now that his group of witches had grown to twelve, it was finally time to set up an organization.

In his conception, the organization didn’t need any program or guideline. It was just designed to facilitate the management of the witches and the ability they were able to wield, its function would be similar to the future generation of industrial associations.

The rules of the organizations would also be as simple as possible, there would only be two rules: Do not take advantage of your ability to violate the law of the territory. And, It is forbidden to use your ability to evade the law.

At the beginning Roland wanted to use the three laws of robotics, restricting the ability of the witches by not allowing them to injure or attack ordinary people and so on, but then he thought that it would actually be unnecessary. Their ability was just the same as guns. When confronted with hazards, there was really no difference between using a gun or a witch’s ability to defend themselves. And by deliberately stressing the difference between witches and ordinary people, the gap between these two groups would only grow further apart.

So it wouldn’t become illegal, he couldn’t avoid his responsibility as a scientist and engineering dog, he had to express himself in the most concise way.

As for the name of this organization, Roland had already long ago found a good one.

The name of the new collective will be “Witch Union.”