The coming of age ceremony.
I felt the blessing of the gods enter my body.
Book 1-2.1 The Crimson Desert
The
Crimson Desert that divides the large continent in half. The people of
the continent were divided to the Eastern and Western continent by this
Crimson Desert. They weren’t very different, but this desert was large
enough to make a decent border.
There are many unique characteristics to this Crimson Desert.
First
of all, the name Crimson Desert comes from the fact that the sands are
red in color but also because there is blood always being shed here.
There are a total of twelve different tribes in the Crimson Desert.
The
land where during the day there is a blistering heat, and at night, the
icy coldness could even freeze your soul. Half of the desert is made of
quicksand, so it was difficult for people who did not know the way to
even move freely (TL: it says Drift of Sand in the raws, but it’s
quicksand. So it’ll be quicksand. What the heck is drift of sand?). With
a single miscalculation, the sand would be where their souls will be
buried in a moment’s notice.
And of course, water was important.
In the desert, there are approximately two hundred oasis that have not
dried up for a long time, and will not dry up. There are also
approximately two hundred oasis which dry up and then refill itself in a
cycle. Finally, there are approximately one hundred oasis which appear
and then disappear.
Just hearing those numbers, you might be
thinking that there are a lot of oasis. But for a desert this large,
that amount of oasis would be considered on the lower end.
The
level of strength for each desert tribe is based around how many
never-drying oasis they had control over. That is why all of the desert
tribes are always fighting. They are trying to increase the number of
Oasis that their tribe controls.
Truthfully, even though the
number of oasis are low, there was plenty of water. In fact, there was
enough water that even if the population of the desert increased by
three hundred percent, there would still be enough.
Sadly, people
don’t know what satisfaction means and they are animals who live in
fear. Since water meant survival, they could only relax when they had
more water. The tribes always fought, worried that if they lost their
Oasis, they could die or end up as slaves for an enemy tribe. Living in
this type of environment was the reason the majority of the men in the
desert were growing up to become rough and violent Warriors.
Although all of the desert tribes originated from the same ancestor, this actually led some tribe to become bitter enemies.
The tribes who have the most violent wars and have been fighting the longest are Yulian’s
Pareia tribe and the Shuarei tribe.
As
the saying goes, the two tribes would get fussy about not being able to
eat the other tribe (TL: Not literally cannibalism, just a figure of
speech). Because each of the tribes had these types of issues, it became
known as the Crimson Desert for the continuous bloodshed.
In
addition, regardless of all the other things, the reason the strong
nations in the East and the West could not just leave the desert alone
was because of a resource that existed in the desert.
This resource was known as the ‘Black Water,’ or ‘Burning Water.’
This was the reason Yulian’s pride was hurt significantly.
The interference of the great powers.
Not only the Pareia tribe, even the Rivolde tribe, the largest tribe who owned seventeen Oasis, could not avoid it.
If
all of the desert tribes united together, it could become the scariest
country on the continent, but the tribes were currently split in so many
ways.
The desert is a scary place, but if you put your mind to
it, it was still a place that could be invaded. That was why all of the
desert tribes paid tributes to the strong nations; in the East, these
were the Inama Kingdom and the Puria Kingdom, and in the West it was the
Silence Empire and the Rojini Kingdom.
The Rojini kingdom does
not have a border against the desert, but because they were a strong
kingdom located right next to the Silence Empire, it could be said to be
a strategic alliance.
Of those, Pareia has been paying tribute to
the Silence Empire. On the surface, it looked like they had a favorable
trading partnership, but compared to the amount of work that went into
harvesting and storing the burning water, they were getting the short
end of the stick, receiving pennies in comparison. This made it obvious
it was a tribute and not a trade.
When you consider the violent
nature of these tribes, the fact that they would sit still for this type
of plot was weird, but putting the danger of invasion second, they
could not say no because the payment they were receiving for the burning
water was iron.
If their tribe was the only one to reject the
trade, it was guaranteed to create a difference in the number of weapons
they possessed compared to the other tribes.
In war, the warriors were important, but the right weapons for the warriors were just as important.
Weapons
are used up each and every battle. If two warriors have the same level
of skill, a warrior holding a wooden shield will be pushed around by a
warrior with a steel shield. With the current situation in the desert
where each tribe is itching to eat up the other, iron was more important
than gold.
This was why the desert tribes ended up in the
situation where they were being forced to listen to the outrageous
demands of the strong nations of the continent.
