Miller Theo was a retainer of Horan Faust, the Silver Eagle Duke.
More precisely, he was the son of the Minister of Finance of the Silver Eagle Duchy, and he himself hadn’t been given any actual post yet. In fact, he had just had his coming-of-age ceremony a couple of days ago, and still hadn’t been granted the title of a knight.
Miller liked to travel and explore around the continent to experience the colorful culture and rich history that it had to offer, but because of his position as a noble, most of his travels were within the borders of the Valla Empire. Other than that, he was a rare believer of the God of Travel and Arts, Grimund.
This deity would bless his believers so that they would have safer travels, and have greater creative inspiration. True believers of this deity would also be able to easily get food or accommodation from strangers through their arts, may it be singing or even telling stories.
In conclusion, the believers of Grimund were extremely weak in battle, but his blessings were all surprisingly useful in everyday situations. Also because he didn’t have many believers, just like Xi Wei, as long as his followers became a true believer, they would be able to get a blessing…
Unfortunately, there were only a small minority of people that would travel all of their lives, and a great majority of the believers of Grimund would choose to settle down at a single place when they become of age. Other than the ones that chose art-related jobs like actors or painters, most of them would choose to believe in another deity.
After Miller’s coming-of-age ceremony, he was delegated to send a letter to the duke’s youngest son, Angora Faust who had been sent to Anurad that was near the Valley of the Tragic Dead.
Miller naturally didn’t refuse a delegation from the duke himself, so he immediately set off to the fief that was given to Angora Faust, a small town that wasn’t even noted on the map of the kingdom.
Miller had thought that even though this small place had the title of a town, it was probably just a regular village. This wasn’t a baseless guess on his part, because he had seen many similar ‘towns’ that were just glorified villages on his travels. The only reason why these villages were called towns was to obtain support and help from nearby cities.
But Angora’s town gave Miller quite a shock.
Even though this town was definitely smaller than average, and only had around a hundred townspeople, it was developed quite well, and was even somewhat… Exquisite?
This was the only adjective that Miller could think to describe this town after pondering over it for a long time.
First of all, this town wasn’t big, and its area was a simple and neat square. If Miller walked around the sides of the square, he would be able to arrive at his starting point in about half an hour.
From the outside, there weren’t even walls that marked the borderlines of the town, with only a trail of simple and crudely made wooden fences.
At first, Miller was quite disappointed in this small town, and he had even asked one of the farmers that was probably in the middle of worshiping the God of Harvest why there weren’t any walls, their answer was because it was a pain to tear walls down when the town was expanded later on.
This answer made Miller scoff. Many natural disasters had been happening on the continent lately, and many of the towns by the borders of the kingdom were only sparsely populated. It would already be a blessing to not reduce the size of the town, and this farmer said that they would expand it? Were they dreaming? He had expected this of these foolish commoners that didn’t even know how to sculpt the God of Harvest, and could only worship a strange-looking sculpture of a sphere…
As he entered the town, he realized that this conclusion of his might be wrong, and that his experience with the other villages couldn’t be used on this one.
All of the buildings in the town looked clean and new, and the roads were paved neatly with red bricks. The entire town was sparkling clean, and in clear contrast to the roads in other villages that were grimy and covered with disgusting muck, there wasn’t even a piece of rubbish on the road. The entire town was so clean that it didn’t even seem like people actually lived here.
After that, he learned that the cylindrical items set by the roads were called rubbish bins, and that all of the townspeople threw their rubbish into those, that would later be disposed of together. According to them, these machines were installed by the lord of the town, saying that they could increase the Happiness of the townspeople and allow him to get something called Yield Points…
More surprising to him was the fact that these rubbish bins had seemed to be created using some sort of alchemical technique that was similar to golems, and whenever someone was going to throw rubbish, they would ask, “What type of rubbish are you (carrying)?” before telling them which rubbish bin to throw it into. Some rubbish bins were placed in remote places, and would even exclaim in delight whenever they saw any townspeople walk over to them to throw rubbish, saying things like, “The rubbish is coming, the rubbish is coming!”
Even though Miller felt strangely offended when these rubbish bins talked, it was true that this technology made the streets become clean and tidy…Perhaps he could advise the duke to use this sort of technology in the Silver Eagle Duchy after he completed his mission?Read more chapter on NovelFull
Other than the clean roads and the clear signs, and a tavern that looked pretty good even by his standards, there were even open-air hot springs in this town! Miller had only been in hot springs once when he and his father went on a diplomatic mission to the Grand Duchy of Rimross, and that was an experience of a lifetime.
After that, he had tried to search for similar hot springs in his travels, but he had never found any in the Valla Empire. He had never thought that he could have his wish granted in such a remote town.
There were even many different types of hot springs here, like simple springs, carbonated springs, mineral springs, elemental springs, and more.
Because he was in a rush, Miller only tried the simple springs that were said to be the most basic hot springs, and even so, he was filled with nostalgia as he soaked in the relaxing springs. After he came out of the hot springs, his mood became better, and even his skin that had been weathered from his travels seemed to become somewhat smoother to the touch. Of course, he didn’t know that this hot spring had the ability to give sin-related buffs to those that used them, and the only complaint he had about them was that a bunch of monkeys came out of nowhere and started pointing at him mid-soak…
In conclusion, if he would give marks solely based on environment, this town would definitely be in the top three places in all of the places he had travelled to, and could even be said to be the best.
Yes, if it were solely based on environment.
In contrast to the exquisite environment, Miller felt that the townspeople were somewhat…Odd?
First of all, he had felt the gazes of most of the townspeople on him ever since he entered the town, and most of their gazes were not on his body, but on the top of his head…?
This even gave Miller the wrong idea that there was something on his head, and he had tried to reach up and pat around his head to no avail.
Other than that, the townspeople of this unnamed town seemed to pray to sculptures all of the time—Farmers prayed as they sowed crops, construction workers prayed as they carried bricks, and even people that were throwing rubbish were praying…The object of their prayers were all that strange spherical statue, and Miller even suspected that at some unknown corner of the town, there was someone selling them in bulk…
Other than worshiping the sculptures, the townspeople also seemed to be quite violent.
Miller had been worried for this small town that didn’t even have any walls because it was right outside of the Valley of the Tragic Dead, and so it was prone to attacks from revenants at any given time.
When those revenants came out of the Valley of the Tragic Dead, this beautiful town would definitely become their target!
As he expected, the event that he was worried about had happened right after he came out of the hot springs, when the lookout towers had released smoke signals that a group of revenants were sighted outside the town.
Miller had wanted to rally and convince the townspeople to fight the revenants and protect the town, but before he could do so, he saw the townspeople all run out of the village in the direction of the revenant attack.
‘Ah, how pure and courageous these townspeople are!’ He thought, and even wanted to fight by their side.
But before he even got to the entrance of the town, the townspeople came back angrily with a bunch of broken bones from the revenants, cursing all the way. Apparently, they seemed to be angry that the revenant horde was too weak.
Seeing a malicious and bloodthirsty aura rise from the townspeople, Miller didn’t even have the courage to ask them where the other body parts of the revenants went…
After that, he saw two townspeople with swords start quarreling over a trivial matter, shouting something about ‘whether the food from the Iron Cauldron Tavern tasted better or the food from the System Restaurant did’.
It was apparent that neither of them could convince the other, and the quarrel slowly became more and more heated. As Miller guessed that they were about to start fighting, the two townsmen stood face to face and started dancing strange dances with passionate expressions.
At the side, there was even a young girl that shouted, “Don’t fight, don’t fight!”
…There was definitely something wrong with their heads.
“Milord wants to see you.”
When a young woman that seemed to be Angora’s maid, the one that didn’t look especially pretty but was easy on the eyes and had a great figure said these words, Miller was so touched that he almost cried. He had a sneaking suspicion that if he stayed any longer, something would go wrong with his head too.
