Cthulhu Gonfalon

Making a trip to the huge underground and looking at landscapes full of a foreign country’s style, the visitor group left with sense of fulfilment. Oh; leaving one behind, who was sleeping soundly on the pile of gold coins. She was sleep talking.

Sui Xiong got closer curiously, but he heard dragon language that was echoed from the back of the throat. After he used his ability of command of language, he then understood that she was murmuring, “Gold coin, gold coin, blanket, blanket… Sleep….”

“I can’t save this little girl!” He shook his head and quickly cast a ward to disperse Graupel’s dragon power to its widest range, in order to prevent the nearby magic beasts to get closer and affect her sleep. It would let the adventurers realise her existence earlier so that they wouldn’t get close to her mouth carelessly.

Although Graupel had never eaten any human, under a situation where she was sleepy, who could be certain about it? And, even if she didn’t eat anyone, what if she was woken up one day and she got angry, and released Stonifying Dragon Breath? What then?

With Graupel’s age and capability, the intensity of her Stonifying Dragon Breath wouldn’t be high. Basically any qualified adventurer should be able to withstand it. However, those that would come into the maze for an adventure were just commoners!

After setting up the ward, Sui Xiong thought and put a signboard at the border that said: Authorised personnel only. Beware of beast. Then he left, feeling content.

As for the problem of if the adventurers could understand simplified Chinese, it was totally forgotten.

The maze underground was almost done. Next would be the pathway that connected to the ground and the theme park facilities on ground.

Rhode wanted to ask for help from the trailblazer, but Sui Xiong rejected his suggestion.

“This is interesting,” he said. “I tell you, facilities are very interesting!”

Rhodes couldn’t understand what the fun of being a laborer was, but he thought that if His Void Mask Majesty could build such a huge maze underground happily, maybe His Majesty liked to play with soil and bricks.

Then, he understood.

From the theme park on the ground to the maze underground, Sui Xiong set up three different pathways.

One was the main pathway, wide and big. The ground and underground was connected with an extremely long and high set of stairs. The steps spiralled upwards, up to 100 meters. Every ten meters there would be a hall. He was preparing to arrange other auxiliary facilities in the future, such as hotels, restaurants, training grounds, restrooms, libraries, and so on.

Although there were similar facilities on the ground, the style on the ground and underground would be entirely different. They could construct a ‘foreign culture’ atmosphere.

The second pathway was a huge and deep well that was sufficient enough to contain three people walking alongside each other from the top to the bottom of spiral stairs. In the middle, there was a pillar that allowed people to slide down. It was prepared for the people that wanted to take up a challenge. To enter the region where Graupel was, they’d have to go down from there.

The last pathway was an extremely long slope that extend to somewhere far far away. It wouldn’t be used normally, but only as a backup for the crucial times.

Of course, besides these normal pathways, there were another two transmission rooms. A huge fixed transportation portal could send users into the transportation point in the rest area in the maze, and vice versa.

Besides that, when users encountered huge danger, the magic that was set up in advance on their bodies would take effect and immediately send them back to the transmission room, in prevention of accidents.

In order to ensure safety, there was another small temple next to the transmission room, for provision of emergency services. If there were any unlucky bastards that got a myocardial infarction or a cerebral hemorrhage and died in the maze, the temple could provide resurrection services.

…Of course, that would come at a price.

The set up of three pathways and transmission rooms used up a lot of Sui Xiong’s time. Until the peak of summer he was free to build the theme park.

At that time, the believers in the church of Void Mask were already arriving to this place that was scheduled to be a holy city, one after another, under the guidance of Gerald.

As the negativity that derived from underground had been cut off and the surface of the ground had been purified by Sui Xiong with magic, the woods did not have one bit of gloominess at that time. The dark brown soil was covered with thick weeds. But regardless of the tall trees or the short weeds, it showed a scene of greenery that was not supposed to appear in Ash Woods. There was even a clear river that flowed through the forest. The river was not like the ones that were polluted and gave out unpleasant rust smells. Instead it brought about a fragrant green grass scent.

Not knowing when it was, many birds started coming as well. They found the piece of clean soil and built their nests to reproduce and live there. Every morning, everyone would wake up with the chirping of the birds and would fall asleep with the deer at night.

Even though Sui Xiong did not give out any orders that prohibited hunting, trailblazers were not willing to harm these cute living creatures. They referred these birds as their “neighbors,” and even raised a petition to the manager of trailblazers, Madame Liv, to request if they could adjust the distribution of the city in order to keep sufficient living space for the birds.

Since she arrived at Ash Woods from Garth City using transportation portal, Madame Liv, who was promoted from patrol team leader to manager of trailblazers, approved of the idea happily.

She originally thought that she would come to a place with barren hills and untamed rivers, join the rude adventurers and dirty labourers, and be busy fighting with various kinds of dangerous magic beasts. She never expected it would be a forest with picturesque mountain scenery.

Oh, there was nothing wrong with clear water, but green mountain seemed to be incorrect. The nearest mountain was about hundred miles away. Over there, the sky was gray and the ground was black. Even the leaves on the trees were covered with a layer of black soot.

The bad reputation of Ash Woods: even she at the other end of mainland heard about it. But she couldn’t imagine what kind of measures Void Mask Majesty took to be able to open up such a human world in a terrifyingly dark forest.

However, she did not go to the theme park construction to ask Sui Xiong, who was busy playing the foreign world real life version of “My World” all the time. She kept the question to herself and concentrated on her work.

His Void Mask Majesty sent out messengers to lend them a helping hand at their hardest time. Madame Liv’s teacher was also a believer of His Majesty. I heard that teacher is a deacon. That’s weird; why isn’t he a knight group leader, but a main deacon? Teacher didn’t look like a clergy at all…

With the combination of multiple factors, she felt that this God was reliable, and she should complete the tasks that He gave out.

It was to repay His Void Mask Majesty and her teacher. It was also a great opportunity to realise her own life’s value without wasting anything that was thought by her father!

She remembered that her father would occasionally be depressed. He sighed in private that he learned a lot of skills on how to manage the nation and people, but never got a chance to put the skills into practice. Every time he taught his daughter one on one, he would sigh with emotion.

At the moment, it was time to put the things that her dad taught into practice, to see if it was correct, and to certify if her dad had the ability to be a good leader.

Of course, she definitely believed in her father!

The fact was that the set of knowledge that Knight Brian taught his daughter was very useful. Even though the staff that she needed to manage was much more than Garth’s patrolling team and their quality was different, she managed to get situated very quickly and maintained the order of the entire region.

Every morning, she would bring along a few soldiers to patrol the region and listen to the trailblazer’s opinions, and gather all the problems that they found. After lunch, she would put her hands onto the problems and solve them one by one. In the evening, she would look for Frost, who was in charge of cleaning up, to do a stock count in order to ensure the entire region had stable provisions.

To have Frost to look after the storehouse was her idea. Back then, Frost seemed to be unhappy, and he even threatened her in his giant dragon form. But Liv erupted with a startling courage, and she didn’t concede, even when she was dealing with the sharp teeth of the giant dragon. In the end, Frost didn’t dare to really bite her to death and finally gave in, unwillingly becoming a store keeper.

The job did suit him. He became a young man that always looked unhappy and treated everyone with a “you owe me money and you better pay me back” kind of expression. Plus, he gave off a faint hint of dragon power, and the trailblazers didn’t dare pull any tricks with him. Even the most cunning old foxes didn’t try to take advantage of the giant dragon.

They didn’t have such strong nerves like Madame Liv, who dared to fight against the angry giant dragon. They’d rather not get into trouble!

Madame Liv was in charge of agriculture management. She worked along with a Druid ‘South’ that claimed to work for short term, assisted the farmers to cultivate the land, and sowed the seeds of crops using Elf Spells and Nature Spells.

As the soil was purified properly, they did not grow Golden Vine that took too long to grow and tasted bad. Instead they grew stem tubers and cereal crops, and vegetables.

The soil in Ash Woods was rich and fertile and the crops grew really well. It was the midsummer then, and even the temperature in the north of the city was considered warm. When the seeds were sown into the soil and matched up with the effects of magic, they sprouted in a few days. After only half a month, it was the picture of prosperity.

“But the winter here will be very cold,” South, the Druid with a weird name, said. “I am afraid that these plants can’t pass through the cold winter.”

“Don’t worry. The God that rules here can manipulate cold air as He wishes. By then, He will have absorbed the surrounding cold air so that it can maintain its warmth around here.” Madame Teague, who had communicated with Gerald earlier, and knew the information, replied. “If you are interested, stay back longer to watch it with your own eyes.”

South shook his head. “Although it is out of kindness, such actions that go against nature are opposite to what we Druids practice. It’s better if I don’t stay.”

He was a stubborn person and he meant every word. The autumn in the previous years, after the bumper harvest, he helped the farmers to complete the harvest and insisted that “the contract had ended;” then he left.

The autumn in winterland passed by very quickly. It felt like a blink of an eye, and the first snow would gradually fall.

The winter of Ash Woods, arrived earlier, as always…