Chapter 143 - Standing and Kneeling

Chapter 143 Standing and Kneeling

John Senior wasn’t wearing a knight’s heavy armor, just hard leather armor.

It wasn’t that he was too old to wear heavy armor… The lifespan of a professional was much longer than a normal person, and even aging was much slower than a normal person’s.

Although John Senior was in his forties, he now looked, at most, to be in his early thirties, and that was because he had purposefully grown a full beard.

If he had shaved off his beard and gone out on the street with his son, John Junior, people who didn’t know them would have thought they were brothers, not father and son.

Having someone help with putting on armor was a ritual, usually done by a knight’s apprentice, and if a close offspring was asked to help with it, it was to tell them that it was almost time for them to go to war, and it was time to get used to the atmosphere of the battlefield beforehand.

John Junior was thrilled to hear his father’s words.

As the only heir, he had been well-protected before and had never set foot on a battlefield.

The more that people weren’t allowed to do, the more that people would focus on them.

John Junior had a special interest in the battlefield, but due to his father’s orders, he never actively approached such a place.

And now, an opportunity to observe the battlefield directly, without any danger, lay before him.

John Junior didn’t want to miss this opportunity.

John Senior also didn’t want his son to miss this once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity, where he could teach in person.

With his son’s help, John Senior finished donning his full-body hard leather armor, then turned to John Junior and said, “Son, from today onward, you will officially appear in everyone’s sight as the future heir of the city of Delpon, and from today onward, the skylarks will sing of your glory, the brooms will bloom for you, and you will become one of the most honored persons in Hollevin.”

John Junior’s whole body trembled with excitement, and he dropped to one knee and looked adoringly at John Senior. “I will always love you, my beloved father.”

While the mayor’s family was showing fatherly love and filial affection, Roland and Jett were sitting in a small boat.

Although the sun was blazing overhead, so much so that one’s hair was almost on fire, Jett’s face was a little pale.

Roland sat across from him, flipping through the magic books he had taken from his Backpack as he said, “Are you afraid of water? Don’t you know how to swim?”

“No, I’m seasick!” Jett laughed awkwardly and dryly. “I’m a little nauseous with this boat rocking back and forth on the waves.”

Roland thought about it for a moment, peeking over the side of the boat, and he extended his finger and tapped lightly on the river.

With his finger as the center, the surface of the river began to freeze rapidly, white ice fragments were the first to form, and a thin ice layer with a radius of about five meters was soon formed.

The thin layer of ice then rapidly thickened, and soon became a floating platform with a thickness of at least half a meter.

The small boat was also frozen in it.

Although the ice layer was still floating on the surface of the water and slowly drifting down the current, at least the boat was fixed and would no longer be bobbing around.

Jett was so happy that he jumped onto the layer of ice, stepped on it, and found that it was solid. He exclaimed, “Oh frick, this is too awesome. What kind of magic is this? Ice Ring, or the Fingers of Frost?”

“Neither, but simply converting the magical elements into ice nature and injecting it into the surface of the river.”

“Like the feeling of dropping a bit of ink into freshwater?” Jett asked.

Roland nodded, and he too jumped from the small boat and stepped onto the ice.

The five-meter radius circular ice floating platform was already quite large if it was considered a riverboat.

With both of them on it, it still seemed very spacious.

Due to the chill of ice layer, the two of them gradually felt that the temperature was becoming quite cool.

Jett looked at the floating ice beneath his feet and then at Roland, asking the question he had been wondering: “What is your current mana limit?”

“200!” This wasn’t important information, so Roland didn’t hide it.

There was a formula for mana growth that could be applied, and with the addition of the Spell Seeker title, it would be clear to anyone who had the heart to do the math, so there was no point in lying about it.

Jett looked at the sky with a bit of sadness. “I’m only at 82, and that’s also counting the specialty additions. We’re all spellcasters, and our levels are the same, so why is there such a big difference in our mana bar values?”

Roland said helplessly, “We mages mainly stack intelligence growth, whereas you priests mainly stack resistance—one has a high mana cap and one has a fast mana regeneration speed. We can’t compare with each other.”

“But you have a special exclusive mana regeneration skill, double the effect!” Jett looked at him grudgingly. “It’s much better than what we have.”

Oh… it seems to be true. Roland not only had twice the maximum mana Jett did, but more importantly, his mana regeneration was much faster than Jett’s, who was a priest.

Although priests didn’t have to learn spells to cast them as mages did, when they cast spells, they had to use their mental power to communicate with the gods’ spiritual power and borrow the power of the gods to accomplish the purpose of spellcasting.

This was why things like mana were important to priests as well.

“Forget it, there’s no comparison between an ordinary person and a genius.” Jett was also quite open-minded. “Do you think John Senior and them will fall for it?”

Roland thought about it and said, “There should be a good chance that they’ll fall for it.”

“Why would you make such an inference? As for John Senior’s personality, we all shouldn’t know much about it.”

Roland threw the magic book back into his Backpack and said, “I don’t know if you’ve ever played the online game Mount u0026 Blade, the kind where you can lead an army.”

Jett shook his head.

“Mount u0026 Blade is supposed to mimic cold weapon warfare. I like to use light cavalry the most. Once I saw someone on their own or slightly away from the main army, I would instinctively take advantage of this opportunity to charge and strike,” Roland said rather nostalgically. “Most of the time, it would be successful. The players who mainly played cavalry had this habit of looking for ‘openings’—it was even an instinct, a rather confident kind. it’s just that, sometimes, it’s a trap set by the enemy, and when you charge in front of them, you’ll find a few troops suddenly rushing out next to you to surround you.”

Jett understood somewhat. “So you’re judging based on your own experiences, assuming that John Senior will surely make a move when he sees us ‘divide the army’?”

Roland nodded. “I’ve played nearly ten thousand games of cavalry in Mount u0026 Blade for several years. I can’t say that I’ve fought all over the server without a single rival, but I also have an extremely high win rate, and I usually only play cavalry, believing that cavalry is the supreme type of soldier. Even in street battles, I would use cavalry. I was scolded harshly by my teammates, hehe.”

“This kind of thinking seems a bit like John Senior!” Jett froze for a moment, then realized, “You guys are one of a kind.”

“Yep, so I think there’s a good chance he’ll launch an assault,” Roland said in a casual tone.

Jett was a bit disappointed. “I suddenly feel a big difference compared to you guys who play with tactics. Hawk has a civil engineering background, and with a few hundred vagrants, he easily built a dock and constructed an anti-cavalry entrenchment overnight, whereas you actually used your opponent’s fundamental personality to launch a counter move. In contrast, I can only go to the church and pray for blessings, which is utterly useless. Looks like I’ll have to read some psychology or something from today onward.”

Roland laughed aloud. “That’s just my personal speculation, John Senior may not fall for it…”

Then, Roland was proved wrong.

“Ding~! Hawk has shared an epic-level quest with you.”

Repel the Attack of the Delpon Army.

At this time, all four of them were in the group interface, and when they saw the request to share the quest, they directly clicked confirm.

Quickly reading the details of the quest, Jett looked at Roland with a kind of disdain, one extremely like a meme: Shang Wai, and say you don’t know martial arts[1]!

Roland played along with a laugh, then he looked into the distance and said, “The plan worked, but we’ve got to settle some troubles before we go to back up Hawk.”

Upstream behind them, there were two medium-sized battleships just riding the current downstream, and they were fast.

The large white sails were painted with the shield-shaped insignia of the city of Delpon.

At the same time, Hawk and Link were standing on a tower, watching a fully armed infantry come out of Delpon.

There were about seven hundred of them, and they came out of the city and ran directly to the docks. Then the formation spread out and surrounded the entirety of the docks from a far distance.

A group of archers was assembled behind the infantry.

A visual estimate of about two hundred men, almost a thousand people in total.

There was no cavalry.

Link looked behind him at the big river, then turned back and said, “The river is also blocked, but there are two battleships going downstream. They should be going after Roland and Jett.”

Hawk drew in a breath. “All as Roland had guessed. This guy is really strong in his scheming—if only he could be pulled into our guild, I’d be willing to give him the position of deputy leader.”

Link just smiled. “You’re the only one I recognize as deputy leader.”

Hawk didn’t mind; he and Link had met in a game a long time ago and had switched games many times since then.

Although they hadn’t met in reality, they were soul brothers, the kind that understood each other.

Hawk waited for a moment and said, “Let’s go mobilize our troops.”

The two of them descended the bartizan.

There was an army of about three hundred men waiting before them.

These men stood very straight, with their hands on their outer thighs and their heads held high.

They looked spirited.

Hawk looked at them and said sternly, “We were originally beggars, filthy and lowly. The nobles were unwilling to pay attention to us, the merchants looked down on us, and the commoners stayed away from us. No one was ever willing to help us, and now, we’ve finally made a good living on our own through great difficulty, but… they don’t seem to want us to live better, they want to destroy everything we have now, they don’t think we deserve a good life. They want to trample us back into the mud again! Are you resigned?”

These simply-dressed soldiers had fury in their eyes.

“Now, it’s time to test our unflinching righteousness. Why were we born low, why can’t we live a good life, why can they ride on top of us—piss and sh** on us!” Hawk patted himself on the chest and roared, “I’m not resigned! Live on your knees or die standing up, what is your choice? Tell me aloud!”

The soldiers were stirred up such that their faces were red, veins popped out on their foreheads and necks, and they raised their weapons high in the air. “Die standing up!”

“Die standing up!”

“Die standing up!”

The continuous roars were like a dragon’s roar, frightening away all the nearby birds and sending wild dogs crawling with their tails between their legs, afraid.

Hawk pressed his hands down and the soldiers immediately quieted down, but the pupils of everyone’s eyes seemed to burn with fire.

“We can make a happy life for ourselves with our own hands, with a hoe and sickle. Now, with our own hands, we can also take up arms, defeat them, make them look at us squarely, even fear us, and strip the word ‘lowly’ from us, so that our future generations can walk the streets of the city with dignity! They won’t be without a fixed dwelling, they won’t panic at the sight of merchants and nobles, and they won’t feel ashamed because of their own status.”

In the eyes of these beggar soldiers, there had only been flames of fury, but now there was something more: hope.

Hawk laughed lightly. “So, defeat them and we can live standing up!”

“Live standing up!”

It was as if the roars of hundreds of lions rang out at the same time, and the loud noise seemed to shatter the low-hanging nimbus clouds in the sky.

The clouds parted piece by piece!

[1] A line from Hail the Judge, 1994 HK film made into a meme