Cthulhu Gonfalon

Chapter 299: Chapter 9

Reif did not go home to rest. He was the only member of his family, so there was no need to go back home.

There was a table, some chairs, and a heated brick bed in the duty room next to the construction site. The most important thing was that there was also a hot stove. The old man on duty was very easy-going. As long as you brought your own food, he didn’t mind helping you to make some while preparing lunch for himself. With hot soup, Rief could eat a warm meal. He then went for a walk under the sunshine or chatted with a few co-workers; that was how he spent his afternoon.

The food that Reif had brought with him was Golden Vine Powder, almost the same as the other co-workers. The old man on duty had originally helped them make to bake some cakes. Later when the mayor had come to check up on them, she had said that the lunch should at least contain some oil and had ordered people to send them some. With oil, they could make pancakes, and those tasted much better.

In terms of soup, the old man on duty paid much attention to it. He used rye flakes and small green vegetables to stew it, occasionally adding in some minced meat into the soup. The rye flakes were his own, the minced meat was a gift from Lord Jose, and the small green vegetables were given to him by a student of the magic school. The young mage was doing experiments on plants being grown in the winter time.

Unlike the big men that Reif had met in the past, the newcomers in Pyroxene Town were very amiable. The key point was that they were willing to actually help the poor, not just be polite in words.

The young mage who sent the vegetables every one or two days had once said that the great god, the Void Mask had taught him that if he really cared about others, he should use actual actions to express it. Cheap words were the same as cheating. The young man was very convinced of the teachings of that great god, so he had planted two test fields of vegetables even though he only needed to plant one.

“Of course two fields have their own benefits.” Steve, who had just learned primary-level spells, had written these words in a report. “The two fields are in contrast to each other, which can improve the efficiency of the experiment.”

As for the hard work of planting two fields, the farmer-born youth did not take this hardship to heart.

Felix was also quite satisfied with this student. Although compared to other students, Steve was a bit stupid—he was a slow learner and didn’t understand spells quickly—he was still calm and diligent. He had a rigorous style and worked hard, and that was enough to make up for his lack of intelligence.

If he followed the path of the traditional mages, then Steve wasn’t destined to go too far. However, the “Magic Bomber” was a special mage who was extremely biased towards battles. What that mage paid more attention to were agile actions and careful thoughts, so the requirements for intelligence were not that high. Even if Steve couldn’t become a good Magic Bomber, he could at least become a good battle mage.

In fact, if Felix could break through the limits and step into the Legendary Realm, it would not be difficult to promote a student who was slightly less talented but diligent and attentive to a higher level. The “talent” thing was an insurmountable gap for mortals. However, for the extraordinary, the gap between “mediocrity” and “genius” could be completely eliminated. Only the gap between “talent” and “genius” was impossible to pass across.

For the vast majority of professions, “talent” was completely sufficient.

For example, among excavators, Reif was the most talented in his batch. Even wearing a thick protective suit, he was able to adjust his body well; his body was burdened less under the same work, and he was able to finish more work in the same amount of time.

The pickaxes they were using were enchanted. They were stronger than normal pickaxes and could record the number and power of their swings—this was the key to calculating rewards.

It had been more than a month since the start of the construction. When the wages were settled, Reif received nearly 20% more than an average excavator. This meant that although he also worked eight hours a day, the same as other excavators, his workload was equivalent to more than 9.5 hours.

It was a pity that he only worked hard and was not good at interpersonal communication and management. Otherwise, Felix would promote him to the leader of the excavation team!

“What a pity!” At a meeting, she had specifically mentioned that excellent excavator. “He is obviously very talented, but it is a shame that he is not good at talking or management.”

“There are always some people who are not good at other things except working hard and finishing their own work,” Sui Xiong said with a smile. “At the end of the year, you can give him a ‘model worker’ medal.”

“Model Worker?” Felix’s eyes lit up; then she nodded after carefully pondering for a while.

People were not pigs or dogs, so they were not satisfied just with fulfilling their stomachs. As a mayor, she not only needed to improve the income of residents and their living conditions, but she also needed to let the residents see hope and have the motivation to move forward. This could make their life more radiant.

It was a good idea to give medals to outstanding workers like Reif!

This kind of thing also happened in the army sometimes. Some outstanding soldiers would still be awarded medals even though they had not been able to make enough merits for promotions. Of course, the gold content of those medals was much lower than the medals awarded for meritorious service. However, medals were medals. In any case, they were still a rare honor.

Moreover, the soldiers who could get such kinds of medals would be respected a lot after they retired. The medals meant that they might not have been good enough or lacked opportunities, but they were still very reliable.

Such people might not be qualified in key positions, but they had to be the backbones of the grassroots level and the local level. They could win others’ respect and love. Exaggeratedly speaking, they were the pillars that supported the building of society.

Felix and Jose had specifically sent vegetables and oil to the excavators mainly to win those strong labors’ hearts as soon as possible. Sui Xiong had told them that money was secondary because people’s wills were the key to success. Therefore, both he and the mayor had all thought of ways to win people’s hearts as much as possible.

For example, Jose now was patrolling in the forest near Pyroxene Town with some people. They were searching for the collection points of negative energy with a magic compass whose development was led by Satan, the head of the Mage Corps. They would nail specially produced purification columns down into the ground during the daytime and then push the force of the columns. The force could temporarily destroy the collection points, and it could also create temporary cleaning points in the same areas.

This action aimed to reduce the possibility of the appearance of skeletons in the night around the town; this would thus avoid the skeleton tide of the “Extreme New Moon Night” that happened every year.

“Extreme New Moon Night” was a concept of astrology. There was a night where negative energy was very active between mid-autumn and late autumn every year. Such nights were called the Extreme New Moon Night.

In the Ashes Woods, on the Extreme New Moon Night every year, an inexhaustible army of skeletons would appear, launching a crazy attack on all the people who settled here. Many villages of pioneers were ruined on the Extreme New Moon Night, with no survivors left in the whole village. Even the four towns with stronger defenses were afraid that they wouldn’t be able to resist the horrible skeleton tide if they were not built on the edge of Ashes Woods.

When he had first come ashore, Sui Xiong had once witnessed the skeleton tide; it had been a terrible catastrophe.

Not only that, a small skeleton tide would often appear at new moon nights every month. Those skeleton tides were not a problem for the towns, but they were still very threatening for the villages.

Jose destroyed the collection points of negative energy around the town one by one to establish purification nodes, finally aiming to build an extremely large purification array.

This was the subject of Mage Satan’s current research. He had chosen the direction of “purification” as his key to breaking into the Legendary Realm. According to his calculation, if this kind of large-scale purification array could succeed, it would mean that his thinking methods and calculations were correct. Then, what he only needed for stepping into the Legendary Realm would be enough magic power.

For him, a scholar-type master mage, magic power was not a problem, but rather a large ceremony. The key was to ensure that you were in the right direction to avoid the failure of the ceremony.

If his research was successful, then it would not take long for the Church of the Void Mask to have a true legendary mage, a wise man who could help travel steadily down the path of ability and wisdom.

People in Pyroxene Town were not aware of those things, but they at least knew one thing—what Jose and others had done was really good for the town.

Really good!

This made the residents of the town feel a bit better about the horrible red-haired giant man whose nose was able to spout sparks. They also trusted Town Mayor Felix who ruled the town, and the Church of the Void Mask behind the mayor a bit more.

The rulers in the past had only paid attention to the construction of the town walls, but they had never cared for the lives or deaths of the people outside the town walls. Compared to them, this group of new rulers obviously cared more and were more humane. They thought about the people.

Raising wages, stabilizing prices, repairing houses, rebuilding farmlands, developing mine veins, and purifying the environment—Town Mayor Felix and her partners and subordinates were indeed doing something beneficial for Pyroxene Town.

Some of what they’d done gained good results immediately. Some of them did not make any effects for the time being, but they would be good in the long run. Some of them were even the very things they had already wanted long ago but were impossible to own.

In the case of such measures running at the same time, the residents of Pyroxene Town naturally chose to trust and support Town Mayor Felix. Whenever she appeared in the town, the residents would take the initiative to salute her. At this time, what they had in their hearts was not fear, but admiration.

Not only that, but the influence of the Church of Void Mask in Pyroxene Town was also rapidly increasing. Many residents who did not have a clear faith in the past were willing to go to the bishops of the Church of Void Mask to follow the lectures, praying with them to praise the great god who looked strange.

When the special mushrooms in the first tunnel flourished, they purified the soil around them. Seeing the ground fade to gray and then back to the color of the soil itself, as well as the sprouting of the vegetables planted for tests on the ground, the residents of Pyroxene Town finally couldn’t help but cheer, laugh, and cry tears of joy.

“You are such a great person… Oh, great god,” in the air, the Goddess of Wealth, who had covered her figure with divine power, said to Sui Xiong, “I have never seen a god who can win people’s hearts in this way. In my opinion, you are not like a god. Instead, you are more like a virtuous emperor who has never really existed in the legend of the human world.”