Cthulhu Gonfalon

Chapter 132

Satan’s coming back to life was really a good thing for the church of the Void Faceless. It was not because this church was in shortage of a spell-caster; it had more to do with the fact Satan was one of the founding member of this church. Besides, Sui Xiong had already officially appointed him as the chief wizard of this church.

Moreover, he was the only one that capable of cultivating new wizards. Since Sui Xiong defeated the legendary wizard Green, ‘the green sea dweller,’ the relationship between the church of Void Faceless and the Mifata Federation had become very bad. No wizards of the medium high level would be willing to come to teach, no matter how much money Rode offered.

Now that Satan had come back to life, the wizard business was settled. But While this problem was dealt with, another problem showed up.

Recently, the whole church had been busy in building the altar, so they hadn’t had the time to open up the wasteland up in the north. It was already autumn, and since the church was in a very high altitude, winter would some soon. It would be impossible for them to proceed to the north when winter came.

In addition, it was not that easy to buy food in the winter. Rode said that their food supply could last for the whole winter with the money he church had collected. Still there was another problem: how to cheer up the followers.

The ordinary people could only feel secure when they could plant their crops and harvest them all by themselves. They would feel worried even if they could get food from the church, or saw that the warehouse was full of food.

The time of harvest was approaching, and the followers had nothing to harvest at all. More and more people were becoming unsettle,d and soon everyone in the church was becoming rather depressed.

Since most of the followers were farmers, they had gotten used to the farming and were used to getting food by working for a certain period of time. Even if farming was more tiring than other work, they still preferred farming. Once they couldn’t farm on the land, they would feel unsettled.

Sui Xiong could do nothing about this. Back on earth, even in the 21st century, the politicians also found it very hard to change the farmers’ view that their lives were determined by the farming and the farmland. Usually, to tackle this issue, the politicians would use force, but Sui Xiong didn’t want to do so.

If Sui Xiong was as powerful as he had been before, he could easily solve all these problems. but he had almost used up all his energy in the last fight with the Goddess of Ocean and the God of Storm. Recently, he was not feeling very well, and was not as energetic as he was before. His body was very feeble, too. To practice a spell of resurgence, he would need to have a good rest in advance, and rely on the power of belief of his followers.

Sui Xiong continually asked the God of Justice when he would recover. The God of Justice said he just needed to rest for a while, but when Sui Xiong asked how long that would take, the God of Justice faltered, and only gave a vague time. It would at least take 30 to 50 decades, and most eight centuries for Sui Xiong to recover.

“Could I have a more precise time?” Sui Xiong was complaining, but still he could do nothing to change the situation.

The two fights with both the Goddess of Ocean and the God of Storm had almost cost him all the magic energy he had. If it were not for his special soul, he could have been tired to death, even if he won. In fact, not only the God of Justice, but also the other powerful Gods, all found it very strange that this jellyfish had such high combat effectiveness and could stand for so long in the fight.

If Sui Xiong hadn’t gotten exhausted or injured, or used up almost all the magic energy he had, he would have already been caught by some curious and evil Gods to be carefully examined. When Sui Xiong heard that some Gods wanted to catch and examine him, he was very worried, and imagined many scenes of himself being cut apart and studied. At last, nothing really happened, since the reason Sui Xiong was so powerful was he had been been over-consuming his ‘future’ energy.

This was all very rare, but in the past, there had also been Gods that had the ability Sui Xiong did.

For example, among the mythical creatures that had been living since ancient times, more than one had a similar ability. Moreover, there was even a mythical creature that had once cooperated with a certain God to find out why they possessed such a brilliant ability, but they failed to get any result.

Actually, this ability to consume ‘future’ energy was something endowed by nature.

Sui Xiong himself was not sure if he had gotten the ability to consume ‘future’ energy, but he didn’t intend to challenge this definition, and accepted the fact that he had this ability.

Either way, he was very feeble and it would take a very long time for him to fully recover. Compared with a mortal, Sui Xiong was still very powerful, but it was impossible for him to do things like he used to. Thus, Ray and the others had to rely on themselves to cheer these followers up.

“How about holding a banquet?” Gerrard suggested. “I think they would immediately feel happy after they eat delicious food and drink delicious wine.”

Hearing this, Sui Xiong sneered and denied this proposal.

These followers were here to exploit the north and to do labour. They didn’t come here to live an extravagant life! Eating delicious food and drinking delicious wine… and how about going looting later? How ridiculous! You think these followers are vikings?! Did you intend to give each one of them a horn helmet?

“How about teaching lessons? Teaching them how to read,” Ray said. “Since we have a lot of spare time now, we should make use of the time to cultivate some elites.”

Sui Xiong thought this was a good idea, and ordered Satan to teach the followers. In less than a week, Satan began to complain to Sui Xiong.

“Your Majesty… I am fed up!” Satan’s hair was very messy, and he had bags under his eyes. He looked very haggard, as if he had been had sex with more than one Steele. He said in a very weak voice, “They are even more stupid than the pig!”

Sui Xiong asked him what had happened, and Satan could no longer suppress his feelings and began to complain while crying: these followers had never been to school before, some couldn’t even count from one to 20, worse still, they didn’t show any interest in studies. Satan and other educated followers had been working very hard to teach them for a week, and were very upset by them, and could no longer continue the teaching anymore.

“If this has to continue, I will definitely burn them to death by throwing a fire ball at them; or myself.”

Seeing the haggard and desperate Satan, Sui Xiong had no choice but to abandon this plan.

As a result, Ray’s seemingly good plan failed to cheer up the followers made them even more depressed. Satan also felt a bit depressed by the failure of this plan.

Thus, Sui Xiong tried to ask for help from Steele, who was always feeling very happy.

“It is really easy to make them happy!” Steele began to laugh in a slutty way. In the blink of an eye, Steele became a pig.

“Enough! I know what you mean.” Sui Xiong sighed and pushed away Steele, who was writing something on a wood board.

He shouldn’t have asked Steele, since she was probably the least reliable person in this world, and could never give any decent suggestions. So he turned to others.

Palin couldn’t understand why the followers were feeling low. He believed they shouldn’t be like this since they had good accommodation as well as enough food and water. After hearing Sui Xiong’s explanation, Palin said, “Your Majesty, a shallow person like me can never understand what you are thinking, and I fail to understand what you mean. Please forgive me.”

Rode said, “They are feeling low simply because that they haven’t got the land to farm? I think they are just feeling bored! Order them to practice the martial arts together with Master Gerrard! They shouldn’t stop practicing until they exhaust themselves. This way, they will neither have the time nor the energy to feel bored!”

“This sounds nice… but how about the exploitation to the north?” Sui Xiong asked. “The winter is coming, and after they have been practicing with Gerrard for the whole winter, they will be as strong as the formal soldiers. Would they still be willing to do the exploitation? Would they feel they hadn’t been appreciated enough?”

Hearing this, Rode sighed. “Your Majesty, you are being too merciful with them! In my view, there is no need to care about if they are feeling low or not! Picking out the faithful follower from the ordinary followers is just like sifting sand for gold. It takes time. The followers who are in low spirits don’t deserve your attention, since they just don’t strive to make progress!”

Sui Xiong agreed with Rode, but even so, it was not helping. Since it was Sui Xiong himself who had gathered this people together to push up to the north, Sui Xiong felt he was responsible for these people’s happiness. He might seem too merciful on these followers in Rode’s view, but he thought that since he had the ability to cheer them up, why not try to work harder to do so?

Later, Sui Xiong went to ask the experienced Snow.

“The morale of the followers is a rather complicated issue, but you are right!” Snow said. “Boosting their morale can not only help to cultivate more faithful followers, but also helps to foster the collectivism among the whole church. Actually, if you don’t mind, you can send them to the dragon roaring town, where there are many employers hiring employees all year around. Even if they are not able to work as farmers there, everyone in the dragon roaring town is very positive, and this will do them good.”

Sui Xiong though about this for a while, and agreed that this might be a way worth trying out. So he decided to send the followers to the dragon roaring town.

As Snow had said, people in the dragon roaring town were overly positive. If the followers came to this town to work, not only could they learn a skill, they could also be more high spirited.

Emotions are contagious. One could feel more and more depressed if he spent time with the depressed; while one could become happier and happier when he spent time with someone who was feeling happy. Even if those followers were feeling rather low due to the lack of farmland, they could soon become happy and positive if they got the chance to live among the happy villagers and adventurers in the dragon roaring town. This wouldn’t do them any harm; laughing is better than crying and being happy is better than being sad.

Later, hundreds of followers were sent to the dragon roaring town. Snow arranged some followers to work as butchers who helped to dismember the evil monsters, and most of the followers to work as backmen. Just as Snow had said, soon the followers gradually become more happy and positive, although they were not working as farmers.

Seeing them finally laughing and smiling, Sui Xiong was relieved. Meanwhile, something else happened.

“Your Majesty, I have met a very interesting person.” When the first snow of the year came, Wendy woke up the doppelgänger that had been sleeping in the magic pagoda. “I think he would be of great help to you.”

“Ah? Who is he?”

“Akane Pasteur,” Wendy said. “He is the son of my teacher’s late good friend, a Druid who excels in the spagirism.”