Chapter 128 - 44: [Shadow of the Heart of the Remains: Oak Knight and Greenka]

Chapter 128: Chapter 44: [Shadow of the Heart of the Remains: Oak Knight and Greenka]

The Empire’s entire southern border pressed tightly against the Heart of the Remains.

Before the Battle of the Heart of the Remains, a massive, bustling city once stood in this southwestern region. Within the ancient Empire’s territory that spanned half the continent, thousands of roads once crossed the central plains. Travelers of different nations and races gathered here. It was the crucial transit hub closest to the center of the world, a prosperous city of commerce and trade known as the Splendid City of Greenka.

However, the war, corpses, and plagues from the Battle of the Heart of the Remains had transformed the Luoxin Plain at the center of the continent into the terrifying Heart of the Remains.

Bizarre trees, as hard as copper, stood tall on the muddy earth mutated by Spiritual Energy. Their gnarled roots and twisted, deformed branches resembled the ghostly hands of specters. Hidden, filthy swamps were ever-ready to devour the living. The central area was perpetually shrouded in a freezing mist, while venomous scavengers, plague-infected, half-rotted Magical Beasts, and hordes of the Undead roamed the entire land.

The roads across the plain were completely cut off by the Undead and the plague. Having lost its trade routes, the Splendid City of Greenka gradually fell into decline, deteriorating into a crumbling, dilapidated ruin.

Although the architecture left behind by the ancient Empire remained sturdy and reliable, and the towering structures from Greenka’s prime still stood firm, everything was entirely different within the shadows cast by the dark bricks and concrete blocks.

The broad streets once built for carriages were now flooded with sewage, choked by crooked wooden sheds and illegally constructed hovels. Covered with foul-smelling, tattered tarpaulins, these shacks left only a narrow aisle resembling a labyrinthine corridor. Scantily clad people with lifeless eyes stared out from the slums that littered the streets, watching every passerby.

Gang thugs roared in roadside shops, threatening to smash the establishments while demanding the owners pay a daily "storefront tax" to operate. Young hoodlums swaggered in the shadows of the towering ancient buildings, toying with their daggers and sizing up seemingly vulnerable pedestrians to single out their next targets for robbery and extortion.

During Greenka’s golden age, long ropes spanned the streets, strung with colorful pennants and brocades. But now, only filthy, moldy bedding and dripping wet underwear hung from them. The sheer volume of the laundry blotted out Greenka’s sky, obscuring its former glory and dreams.

If you stood on Greenka’s narrow, sewage-filled streets, tilted your head up toward the dim, oppressive, and cramped sliver of daylight, and cast your gaze past the mud, the low shanties of the slums, the gang-ridden alleys, and the chaotic clotheslines fluttering with moldy quilts and underwear, you would see an ancient castle on a distant hillside, surrounded by manors. Framed and guarded by the converging dark brick rooftops on either side of the street, it sat majestic and aloof, as if the castle itself were the only source of sunlight in this place.

That was the castle of the Oak Knight Olo Clan in the southwest, one of Ederic’s four major Knight Clans.

And this place was the Olo Clan’s Knight Territory.

Relying on their fief, the Splendid City of Greenka, the Olo Clan had once been the most powerful and prosperous of the four major Knight Clans.

However, the Battle of the Heart of the Remains had caused severe casualties for the Oak Knight Olo Clan. The older generation of Knight Lords and their heirs were almost entirely wiped out in combat.

The new heir was chosen from a collateral branch of the clan. After taking over the mess, he originally intended to revitalize the clan using Greenka’s wealth and the merchant trade routes spanning the center of the world. But instead, the merchants brought the corpse plague from the Heart of the Remains, causing a sudden and drastic plunge in population.

The mist of the Heart of the Remains began to spread from its central zone, and the Undead gradually rose from the rot, severing the trade routes through the world’s center. Three-quarters of Greenka’s trade economy had essentially been wiped out. To barely sustain the economic operations of the southern Olo Clan’s Knight Territory, the new heir violated his ancestors’ teachings and collaborated with Greenka’s urban gangs, turning the city into a despair-filled den in the shadows.

The degeneration of the successive heirs was like a continuous stop-motion film plunging into an abyss. It began simply with the collection of an additional, unreasonable miscellaneous tax in the Knight Territory. Then, merchants steered clear of Greenka to avoid these extra taxes. The collapse of the local trade economy led to a larger financial deficit, which in turn required more and heavier taxes to maintain the superficial glory of the Knight Clan. Street thugs began to run rampant, and the gangs controlling local taverns and casinos proposed a partnership to the Knight Clan, running amok on the streets of this ancient city under the guise of assisting the Knight Territory in tax collection.

In short, the Olo Clan had fallen.

This was one of the dark sides of the Empire. No matter how great something was, it had its shadows; no matter how glorious the achievement, it had its flaws. Perfection was an absurd and harsh punishment that dragged idealists attempting to create greatness into a rotting swamp steeped in festering corpses.

Old Duke’s Exile Tribe merchant carriages passed through the dim, narrow streets. Amidst the CLOP-CLOP of hooves, the dwarf horses quietly watched the young hoodlums on the street.

THUMP THUMP. A fist roughly pounded against the side of the carriage.

Adjusting his glasses, Old Duke gently poked his head out, looking at a burly gang enforcer and several young hoodlums standing before him.

"Paid the toll yet, old dog?" The enforcer, wearing a short jacket draped over his shoulders and toying with a shortsword, glared at Old Duke. "You look awfully unfamiliar. New here?"

"Oh, I wasn’t aware that McKinney’s friends still needed to pay a toll," Old Duke asked mildly.