Chapter 171 171 – Stone Village

A rainstorm hit an outdoor place as Raymund’s servants landed. Their eyes immediately fell on an old woman who was kneeling on the stone floor facing a statue.

She glanced back. Her wrinkled face showed great shock. “Are you ladies servants of the gods?”

After the old woman finished saying that, the rain suddenly stopped.

“Yes, we are servants of God.” Yua approached the woman and crouched in front of her, smiling. “Are you praying to our god, lady?”

Instead of answering, the woman was crying. Yua tried to calm her down but to no avail.

Kimi and Elise looked at the stone statue that was there. The statue’s shape is indeed a woman with long hair in traditional clothes that are foreign to them. However, they could find features similar to Raymund’s on the clothes.

“What’s your name, lady?” Yua asked the woman whose gray hair was in a bun and was wearing the brocade upper garment.

“My name is Rumi.” The woman was finally able to speak again..

***

Rumi then took Raymund’s servants to visit her village. It was different from the settlements Raymund was used to seeing in Levidna. All the buildings there are made of stone, including each of the fences. The walls are decorated with intricate abstract carvings.

Except for Kimi, Raymund’s servants looked around while walking on the dirty streets, which were also made of stone.

“This place used to be very clean.” Rumi sighed while looking sadly at the scattered leaves. “But we lost the will to clean it for some reason.”

Raymund’s servants noticed that the people on the terraces of their respective houses were glaring at them.

“Don’t mind them. They’re not used to strangers.” Rumi continued.

“One thing I want to ask, lady Rumi,” Yua responded. “Since entering this village, I have only seen children and elderly residents.”

“They are forced to work outside this place.” Rumi’s lips started to tremble. “To build a cursed building.”

Elise gulped. “Was the one in charge of the construction of that building someone called the Scarlet Wizard?”

“Ah, I heard that name was mentioned by the guards who watch over the workers there.” Rumi nodded her head. “However, we refer to her as the Crimson Shaman. I met her once when she persuaded the people of our village with sweet words.”

Suddenly a child threw something at Raymund’s servants. However, Elise reflexively caught it before it hit her.

“Get out of here, invader!” The boy screamed with rage.

“Hey, watch your attitude, Adri!” Rumi snapped in a louder voice. “These ladies will help us!!!”

The boy named Adri rushed into his house, and Elise checked the object in her hand: an egg with a slightly unpleasant smell.

“It’s a rotten egg.” Rumi took the egg from the female warrior’s hand. “Forgive the child’s behavior, please. His parents were forced to work there, so he had to take care of his three younger siblings alone. We do help, but very limited because we are old.”

“No problem.” Elise clenched her fists tightly. “We will definitely help you.”

***

I ordered Elise to send Ciel to scout. Once the bee arrived at the construction site in question, my magic pond featured a view of workers carrying large boulders lined up one path to a place. Both men and women all do the same.

“No one is lazy!” One of the supervisors waved his whip in the air, making quite a loud noise. “Or you’ll taste my whip, and you won’t have dinner!”

A worker stumbled, and the supervisor immediately whipped him mercilessly. “You didn’t hear me, huh!? Don’t be lazy! Get up!”

The worker got up with difficulty, then returned to hauling the piece of stone. His comrades just looked on with blank stares and desperate expressions. They would have the same fate as that person if they tried to help.

“Gross.” Erbau snorted. “How can a human treat other human beings like that?”

I just glanced at the god of buildings, choosing not to comment. Erbau himself had also done something similar to his construction workers. Maybe he did think they were not equal to him.

Ciel kept moving until she finally arrived at the construction of the building in question. It turned out that the people were building a giant statue in the shape of a monster with bulging eyes and long fangs.

“That’s where I felt that divine aura.” The god of buildings hissed. “Wait a minute…. After getting close enough to it, I felt something else, which was so dense and dark… This was the aura of darkness? I don’t know, but this makes me really uncomfortable, Ray.”

I narrowed my eyes to examine the statue more closely. “Hey, is it possible that the scarlet wizard will give life to the statue to cause destruction?”

I looked at Erbau, who looked back at me with bulging eyes.

“That’s possible… In theory….” Erbau looked back at the pond as he clenched his fists. “Not given life…. Maybe controlled from within…. They were making a golem. However, to make such a massive golem must be very difficult. It’s not impossible, but it takes a lot of magic energy to do it.”

Ciel surveyed the area around the building that seemed almost finished, from the workers, the guards who were drinking, to the female cooks in the oversized kitchen.

“Stop, Ciel.” I gave orders while several people were carrying a man’s body.

“Someone died again, huh?” One of the guards squeaked.

The other guard sighed. “At this rate, we might have to take people from the next village.”

From how they spoke, I felt they only saw humans as objects.

I ordered Ciel back to move until she finally arrived at a location some distance from the giant statue. There, I saw a green-scaled dragon that was only three times an adult’s height, very different from the one in the poppy fields at the third mission.

“What?” I can’t believe my own vision.

Even though his face had changed, now covered in burn marks and bald hair, I still recognized the person sitting next to the beast.

Jorge?