Yes, Madam Prime Minister

Page 152

Only Faith is a little better. To be more precise, her physiological structure is quite different from that of a normal person. Simply put, she is not human. She can feel cold, but it's basically the same.

"Let's go get something to eat and change our clothes. We're going further north next."

Ronan said.

Compared to the creator god who was rather bad at geography, Ronan was better at it. He roughly determined their current location, which was roughly equivalent to Gothenburg.

This is a port city, and it's relatively bustling, so it was easy to find a restaurant.

However, the food here is far inferior to that in the capital of the Kingdom of Phos. It's barely edible, though not quite at the level of culinary disaster.

After having a meal, Ronan and his two companions went to buy some supplies and changed their clothes.

Elena put on a leather hat, and over her original trench coat, she wore a wolfskin coat. She didn't change her woolen long skirt and thick tights, but added a pair of long woolen knitted socks. She changed her boots to deerskin boots with fleece lining.

Faith also wore a leather coat over her original nun's habit and changed her shoes to leather boots.

Ronan was the same, wearing a fur coat.

After spending a day in the city, Ronan and his two companions left and headed east.

That's right, instead of heading directly north, we went east and took a boat again.

In this era without railways, traveling by land was not so tiring as it was slow.

Ronan and his two companions boarded a ship again at the eastern port and sailed along the coastline all the way to the highlands of northern Sweden.

This was the place Elena's relatives, who had come to the capital to seek refuge, had told her about, but these relatives were unsure whether another branch of Elena's clan still lived in this place.

Ronan had prepared himself for the possibility of not being able to find anyone, but to his surprise, he ran into Elena's fellow countryman in less than a day.

But the fellow villager brought both bad and good news. The bad news was that most of them had migrated to the south decades ago, while the good news was that a small number remained near the altar. However, he didn't know their exact location and needed to find someone to guide them.

But this person isn't here; he's in a village on a snowy plain.

Got it, I need money.

The fellow villager said again, "It's not about the money."

Got it, I'll have to pay more.

After being given a lump of gold, the group set off smoothly.

When fellow villagers meet, they might stab each other in the back – that's roughly the meaning of the saying.

It is said that the fellow countrymen speak Wehland German, which Elena and Ronan cannot understand because of its strange accent. Only Faith, the "Englishman," can understand it.

In short, this fellow villager with a beard and braid will always say the same thing whenever you ask him: "We're almost there, the village is just ahead."

After dozens of such conversations, Ronan and his group finally arrived at a village.

The village is both large and small; "large" refers to its land area, while "small" refers to its population size.

There will definitely be no more than one hundred people.

Ronan distributed some gifts to the villagers, including some candies that were worthless to him but very rare to most people in that era.

Afterwards, the village gave Ronan and his companions a very warm welcome.

Ronan had no expectations for the food and drinks in this village. Fortunately, they only served meat and salted fish boiled in salt water. It was a bit fishy, ​​but he could bear it and eat it. If they had served some particularly flavorful pickled food, that would have been really embarrassing.

Few outsiders come to the village, let alone foreigners. With Ronan handing out candy to everyone and Elena looking very much like a local, the villagers were celebrating like it was a festival. The village chief insisted that Ronan and his group stay for a couple more days, as he planned to hold a banquet the next day and invite them to join.

The village chief was a surprise to Ronan. He was a first-tier mage, a fact Ronan already knew, as the guide had said. Ronan had come to the village to gather information from him, but he hadn't expected the chief to speak French.

Unable to refuse the invitation, Ronan agreed to attend the banquet.

Because Ronan gave them gold, the village chief gave the three of them the new house that he had prepared for his son and daughter-in-law, which they had not yet moved into, and also moved the wedding forward.

Chapter 346 A Shot in the Back, Past Events, The Seal

The wedding ended hastily the next day; weddings in the village weren't very elaborate.

Next came the banquet.

The banquet started with people eating meat and drinking wine, but it quickly turned into a chugging affair. The village chief put his arm around Ronan and started telling stories from his youth.

The story, told by the village chief, sounded like a legend, but the others showed little interest, clearly having heard it countless times before.

This village chief joined the army when he was a teenager, but was defeated and fled. Later, he became a mercenary and served the Kingdom of Phos. He even participated in the battle between the Kingdom of Phos and the Empire of Will more than ten years ago. In that battle, he awakened the magic of fate and became a high-ranking mage. He returned to his hometown in his late thirties or early forties, married, had a son, and became the village chief a few years later. Now he is fifty years old.

In the end, only two people were still standing: Ronan and Faith. Ronan was a seasoned drinker, while Faith drank like water. As for Elena, she was also drunk.

The following afternoon, Ronan and his two companions arrived at the village chief's house.

Elena didn't waste any words and came up to ask the village chief if he knew which village it was.

The village chief appeared calm, clearly already aware of the group's purpose in coming. He slowly uttered a sentence, "The weather will be good the day after tomorrow, and I will set off with you."

After resting for another day and night, the village chief Lars Ronan and his two companions left the village and headed north towards the village where the altar of the Goddess of the Moon was located.

The village chief, Lars, told the three that the village could only be reached on foot. Ronan asked him how he knew so much about it, since even Elena's fellow villagers didn't know about it. Lars remained silent.

Ronan didn't ask any more questions.

The four of them walked on the vast expanse of white snow. It was freezing cold and the snow was extremely thick. Even though the weather was good and there was no wind, they still made a dent with every step.

Ronan is already close to the fifth rank, Faith is also at the upper-middle level of the fourth rank, Elena is at the threshold between the second and third ranks, and all of them have superhuman physiques. However, the village chief Lars is only at the first rank. Although he is over fifty years old and his body has not weakened, he still finds hiking in such a high-altitude snowy place quite strenuous.

For an ordinary person, they would collapse after walking only a short distance.

"Can you still hold on?" Ronan asked Lars.

According to Lars, the village is both in and out of this world, cannot be marked on a map, and can only be reached on foot.

Without the old village chief Lars as their guide, they would have to return empty-handed.

Old village chief Lars took a couple of swigs of wine, his eyes full of determination. "It's nothing, I've just been living a comfortable life for a few years and gotten a little complacent. I'll be fine in a bit."

"That's good." Ronan nodded.

The group moved on.

Soon, Lars began leading Ronan and his two companions in circles.

Logically speaking, this vast expanse of white snow with no obstacles should not require taking detours; one could simply walk in a straight line from the starting point to the destination. Yet, he kept going around in circles.

Another day and night passed, and the group of four arrived at the foot of a mountain, where a cave appeared.

Ronan was certain he had passed through this area yesterday. Although his footprints were covered by snow, the marks he had made were still there. He could vaguely see the mountain at the time, but there was definitely no cave.

“Let’s go, we’ll be there once we get past this.” Lars said, lighting a torch.

Ronan and his two companions also lit torches and followed Lars.

The cave appears to be naturally formed, but it also bears traces of human intervention. Some of the uneven stone walls inside have been smoothed out and then decorated with rock paintings in a very primitive and rustic style.

This puzzled Ronan, because both the Moon Goddess and Gardener Tyr were super artificial intelligence robots from that technologically advanced alien civilization. Moreover, according to the records, Gardener Tyr was just a peasant who worked in the fields, while the Moon Goddess was a bricklayer. The ruins where Gardener Tyr lived were so high-tech, so was the Moon Goddess just that?

The cave paintings here are at the level of humans from the primitive tribal era thousands of years ago, and are ten pyramids inferior to the relics left by the ancestors of artificial humans like the Haidi people.

Elena is also a worldly person, and she has a similar feeling to Ronan.

The cave wasn't very deep. After walking for about fifteen minutes, the group of four came out. The scenery changed drastically. Outside the cave was a world of ice and snow, but here the grass was lush and green, just like a springtime countryside. Strangely, however, they couldn't see anyone. Even when they used their magical senses, they couldn't detect a single person.

Looking back, the cave they had come from had disappeared.

Elena instantly pressed a sword against the old village chief Lars's neck. "Old man, I'll give you three minutes to explain yourself, or you're dead."

Lars remained calm. "Didn't the person who brought you here already tell you that most of the people here have already left?"

"What nonsense are you spouting?" Elena used a bit of force, and the sharp blade cut Lars's skin, causing tiny beads of blood to seep out.

Faith's expressionless face curled into a slight smile. "He means that those still here are no longer human."

“That’s how it is,” Lars replied. “After the sleeping moon goddess began to awaken, a strange plague broke out here. No one could completely stop the moon goddess from awakening, nor could they solve the plague. So the priests used special magic to isolate this place from the outside world, and then the entire tribe migrated. Of course, you could say they ran away, but when the moon goddess really wakes up one day, this isolation will not be able to keep her away at all.”

"Ha, fellow countrymen meeting, a shot in the back, that was quite a shot, Elena." Ronan laughed, and after a few laughs, "So, Mr. Lars, why did you come here? Don't tell me you want to stop the awakening of the Moon Goddess?"

“I just wanted to save one person,” Lars said with emotion. “The place where the Moon Goddess resides is beneath the altar, and those without the bloodline of the Moon Goddess cannot open that door.”

“You sound like you have quite a story to tell,” Ronan said with a hint of sarcasm.

Lars wiped his nose and gulped down two mouthfuls of wine. "There's no story. It's just that an ordinary, powerless man fell in love with my brother's woman. Later, that woman became part of the seal, and my brother's dying wish was for him to rescue her."

"No wonder," Ronan sighed.

A first-tier mage is already capable of building a substantial fortune on their own, and could easily become a minor village nobleman, living a stable and prosperous life. Yet Lars stays in a village located in such a harsh and cold place.

Elena lowered her sword. "I'm curious, why didn't my fellow countrymen come with you?"

"Of course, they're afraid of breaking the seal. As for why they're willing to guide you now, it's simple: even if they do nothing, the seal won't last more than a few years. It's better to hope that someone can completely resolve this issue," Lars replied.

"Why are the bloodlines of the Moon Goddess afraid of her awakening?" Elena asked again.

"Why do you think the moon goddess is asleep?" Lars asked rhetorically.

Chapter 347 Everyone's a rebel, and this is it? It's devastating.

Ronan couldn't help but laugh. It seemed that the things created by the advanced artificial intelligence of the other world were inherently rebellious. Whether it was the Heidi people who were good at playing with technology, the demons of the New World who combined witchcraft and magic, or Elena's ancestors, they all unanimously embarked on the path of "killing gods".

The Haidi people failed, and their civilization collapsed along with them. The demons of the New World succeeded, but they had no desire to associate with humans and were solely focused on pursuing immortality. Elena's ancestors succeeded in making the Moon Goddess "temporarily" rest.

Lars was somewhat surprised to see that Ronan showed neither anger nor panic.

After a long while, the old man, who was over fifty years old, threw away the empty wine jug. "Let's go, you three. Either rescue that woman, or we'll all be trapped here and die."

"We can't get out of here?" Elena asked, somewhat incredulous.

“I only know how to get in,” Lars replied confidently, and even smiled.

Elena, enraged, raised her sword again. "You dare laugh!"

Ronan held Elena's hand. "It's alright, this isn't the first time we've encountered something like this." Actually, Ronan, no, not just Ronan himself, Elena and Faith had felt from the beginning that there was something wrong with that fellow villager, and then the village chief named Lars was even more suspicious. But Ronan observed that Lars had never hesitated or backed down along the way, so he obviously didn't have any worries.

Since that's the case, Ronan decided to let things take their course.

Beside her, Faith couldn't contain her excitement. Although she was a high-ranking member of the heretical sect, the Cult of the Holy Maiden, this was the first time she had come to the place where a "god" resided, and had the opportunity to witness firsthand the hidden truth of this world.

As for the issue of leaving, she wasn't worried at all. If she could leave, she would definitely find a way to do so.

The group of four set off again, entered the village, and headed straight for the central altar.

The altar was a stone disc with a statue in the center, a statue of the moon goddess, basically an enlarged version of the moon goddess statue in Ronan's house.

Arriving at the statue, Lars drew a small, birch-handled Scandinavian knife from its leather holster. "Come on, Miss Elena, see that groove over there? Just fill that little groove with your blood."

“I don’t need your knife.” Elena raised her sword, dispelling the magic defense membrane and imbuing the blade with magic. As a second-tier mage, without imbuing it with magic, even without any defense, this sword with a certain magic-repelling effect could not easily cut her with a single stroke.

In this state, Elena took off half of her coat, pulled down the sleeves of her trench coat and cardigan, revealing her snow-white arm. With her right hand holding the sword, she easily made a long cut on her left forearm, and the blood that flowed out dripped down her forearm and the back of her hand into the groove.

Soon, the groove was filled with blood, and Elena pulled a roll of white cloth from her backpack and wrapped it around the wound on her left hand.

Before Elena could put her clothes back on, a section of the statue had cracked open, revealing a circular hole.

When Lars saw the scene, which was exactly the same as his deceased best friend's description, he remembered the woman he could never forget, who had become the meaning of his life, and jumped down without hesitation.

After Elena finished dressing, Ronan picked her up, whose left arm was slightly injured, and then jumped down.

Faith followed closely behind.

The drop was only five meters, posing no threat to the group. After landing safely, Ronan put Elena down and began to look around.

To Ronan's surprise, although the place was entirely man-made, it lacked any sense of technology. Apart from the ancient and primitive carvings on the stone walls being so well preserved that they showed no signs of age, there was absolutely nothing that a high-tech civilization should have.

Putting aside everything else, just look at those white lamps in the passageways of the Heidi Man ruins; they still work perfectly after a thousand years, but here there isn't even a candlestick.

An engineer-type artificial intelligence from another world, is that all?

The group of four continued along the sloping passage, taking at least half an hour to traverse it before arriving at a spacious area.

There are no visible lighting fixtures, but it is indeed bright, as bright as a church in broad daylight.

The surrounding area is surrounded by huge supporting stone pillars, each of which requires four or five people to encircle and is over ten meters high.

This underground structure is magnificent and solemn, giving people the feeling of entering an ancient temple.

In the middle is what looks like a statue, but upon closer inspection it should be a living female giant, at least over six meters tall.

Judging from her appearance and figure, the female giant is undoubtedly the goddess of the moon.

Surrounding them were complex array patterns that Ronan couldn't understand at all. In the eight directions, eight people lay there, some men and some women. Ronan said they were people because he guessed they were originally human, but their current state could no longer be described as human.

Some people have half of their bodies transformed, and the texture of the transformed part is like white porcelain. Some people have become completely ceramicized, while others have not only become completely ceramicized, but have also developed cracks and crazing all over their bodies, with some parts disappearing as if weathered.

There were also two or three people whose hands and feet were partially ceramicized, but most of their bodies still looked like normal people who were completely asleep.

Ronan turned to the village chief Lars, about to ask him what to do next, when he found Lars slumped on the ground, his lips slightly parted, his eyes unfocused as he stared at a woman who had been completely turned to porcelain, his body motionless.