Chapter 11

The journey was long and boring. Ray always wore a helmet and didn't say a word. He was obviously a serious and quiet knight. Joyce remembered his great power when he met him last time. He tried to say hello to Ray politely, and Ray just answered his few words casually. He didn't let Joyce get on his Pegasus, just walked on the land with him all the way.

Occasionally, the taciturn paladin would take off his helmet, revealing his pitted, bruised bald head, and the shocking facial features like stitched up. At this time, he would avoid Joyce, in case he scared him.

Joyce finally couldn't help it one day, and said, "I have no intention to offend you, sir. I apologize to you for what my brother has done last time."

Ray replied: "If you care about this, you can personally apologize to the pope, I think he will give you a clear answer."

Joyce thought for a while, then asked, "Did you find that magic bead in the end?"

"Found it." replied.

Joyce was relieved, but he then said: "An evil mage got it."

Joyce: "..."

"Have you taken it back?" Joyce asked.

"No." Ray said again: "The Necromancer used it to cause a natural disaster, which resulted in the loss of thousands of people from the Holy See."

Joyce was a little guilty, remembering his dreams, and described it once. After listening to Joyce's dream, Ray loosened a little and said: "Yes, it was the battle. At the moment, the whereabouts of the Dragon's magic Orb is still unknown, and it may be used by the North at any time, to cause an invasion of the undead army."

Joyce said again: "Is the army withdrawing now?"

"They organized a new line of defense in the north. You have to ask Ibran about the specific situation." Ray then said: "Your brother may know better than many people, otherwise why would he deploy defenses at the border?"

Ray seemed to have some indications in his words, and Joyce couldn't help feeling a little nervous when he heard this.

After Ray gave a brief explanation, he did not speak again. Joyce was worried. They did not talk for a few days. When there was an inn along the way, Ray would take Joyce to stay in the lodging, and occasionally sleep in the wild. At this time, Ray will inevitably have to sit by the campfire with Joyce.

After that apology, Ray's attitude towards Joyce was a little better, and they will arrive in Silver Wing City tomorrow. Joyce said politely, "Thank you for your care along the way, sir."

"You're welcome." Ray Shen said: "It's my task to take care of you."

Joyce glanced at the Pegasus in the wild. It was eating grass with its head down. Joyce thought to himself that if he rode a Pegasus and flew all the way, it might be much faster. Ray seemed to see through Joyce's mind and said, "Alice will not let anyone but me and the Pope ride on its back."

"Ah." Joyce said quickly, "Sorry, I didn't mean to offend."

Ray casually added some firewood to the bonfire, and Joyce said: "Are you the papal guardian knight?"

Ray glanced at Joyce and said, "Yes."

Joyce smiled and said, "It's my honor to have you come and send me to the assessment in person."

"It's also my glory," Ray said lightly.

From seeing Ray's first side, and even seeing more now, he gradually felt that this disfigured knight with bumps on his face was not so scary. After watching it for a long time, he felt a sense of admiration. Tomorrow is going to be separated. Anyway, they have lived together for ten days, as a companion on the journey, it is somewhat of a stumbling block.

Ray also looked at him intently, and Joyce realized that it was rude to look at him that way, and quickly said, "Sorry, you are a good person, thank you for not hurting my brother that day."

Ray said lightly: "Unless necessary, our Paladin is not killing randomly."

The bonfire was reflected in the faces of the two of them, and Joyce looked at 's face again, guessing that he might be very handsome when he was not injured many years ago.

"What?" Ray said lightly.

"Nothing." Joyce's face was a little red. He felt he was too cautious, but said, "Remember Gry?"

"Gry is...?" Joyce was a little dazed.

Ray said: "In the year you were born, His Majesty Gly and I, Knight Ibram, visited you while visiting the canonization province."

"Ah, it's the Pope!" Joyce was suddenly a little delighted and felt that the relationship between each other was a little closer. He didn't expect that this paladin had known him many years ago.

"Have you followed the Pope for many years?" Joyce was a little nervous, wondering if this question was presumptuous, but he replied indifferently: "I am not the first knight to follow him. I didn't know him until he was promoted to bishop. "

Joyce nodded, thinking that since Ray is the papal guardian knight, he must love each other like himself and Alex, and they are inseparable from each other, but the pope has seven knights and his love for them, Is it equal? Wouldn't it be biased towards one side? Putting it on himself, Joyce always felt a little weird but seemed to be accustomed to it.

"His Majesty..." Joyce said, "What kind of person is it?"

He felt that he should be promoted to a priest, and one day he would stand in front of the pope. His heart was full of curiosity. Ray thought of the pope as if he had opened the chatterbox and his tone was no longer so serious. Only slightly older than you."

"How come?!" Joyce laughed in disbelief: "He has been in charge of the Holy See for almost 30 years!"

"Holy light flows in the priest's body." Ray explained: "Holy light will slow down your growth rate until a certain critical value, you will no longer grow old."

Joyce said: "How about the Guardian Knight?"

Ray replied, "Guardian Knights cannot produce the Holy Light by themselves, so they will age. I am already forty-five years old."

Joyce frowned, "In other words, teacher, he will..."

"Scott will grow old slowly." replied, "All guardian knights are like this until they are old and die. Priests will remain young forever until the day death comes to take them away."

This is too sad. Joyce could not accept this reality for a while. It seems to be mentioned in the priest's manual. He was a little uncomfortable. Ray said again: "Of course, after the Pope has gone through his life, he will also back to God's embrace. We are not sorry for the return of life to the true God."

Joyce then thought about it and had to accept that the priest just looks like he won't age, and the life span is still limited after all. What is the appearance and what is the difference? As long as you fall in love with the Guardian Knight, and this love will not fade away due to the passing of time and the face, it doesn't matter.

Joyce still wanted to ask a question, but he was always embarrassed to ask. He wanted to know how's knights' comrades got along, and who would the Pope be particularly fancy to? Will there be prejudices between each other? Of course, this question is really stupid, but Ray seems to have seen through what he is thinking, and said lightly: "Little prince, when you become a priest, you will understand."

"Can I pass the assessment?" Joyce asked a little nervously, "It is not mentioned in the priest's manual. What needs to be done in the assessment."

"Ask this question." Ray asked, "Don't you think you are stupid and ashamed of your guardian knight? In order to fight with you, he has conducted various training and achieved excellent results. In the past years, knights During the assessment, he was the only one who was urged by Paladin Commander Ibran."

"Sorry." Joyce said immediately, "I still...not very confident."

Ray got up and put his hand on Joyce's shoulder. Joyce felt a lot more stable. He looked up and watched Ray walk over to the stone and lay down to sleep, knowing that although he reprimanded himself harshly, he actually encouraged him. Looking at him, there was a burst of warmth in my heart.

Joyce lay in front of the campfire, missing Alex, and the pulsation of the stigmata was more obvious, just like golden roses blooming in the splendid spring, brilliant and dazzling. He was getting closer and closer to Alex, just a stone's throw away.

The next morning, Ray took Joyce into the City of Silver Wings. Even as the prince of the Shaq Kingdom, Joyce was still completely shocked by the scene in front of him.

The capital shown in front of him is the most prosperous and beautiful city he has ever seen. The Golden City was the center of the entire continent thousands of years ago, and the main city of all national alliance fronts, where countless emperors and popes have lived here. Until a thousand years ago, the King of Heroes won the Holy war victory, expelled all the wizards from the mainland, and expanded the Silver Wing Twin Cities on the east and west sides of the Golden City.

From the sky to the earth, the Golden City and the Twin Cities of Silver Wing are like a crown on the earth. People here come and go, and devout believers come from all directions, looking forward to rushing to the Golden City before the festival of grace to worship.

The three big cities are like a small country on the mainland, accommodating tens of millions of people. Both sides of the road are spotless and full of winter plum blossoms. It takes three full days to walk from the east wing to the west wing. Joyce was dazzled, and he looked around like a bunny as soon as he entered Silver Wing City.

The past Vatican guards bowed to them one after another and wore a silver helmet and Joyce walked on the street without delay. The road is like a leaf's meridian, extending in all directions. Ray turned around and explained to Joyce: "We are now walking on the main road in the east wing."

Joyce nodded and saw the clean buildings on both sides of the road and the spotless pavement. He thought to maintaining this city would require too much money every day. Compared with this, Dansington, the capital of the Shaq Kingdom, is simply a small, tattered city. What's rarer is that there are no beggars here!

"Haven't you been anywhere before?" Ray asked.

"No." Joyce's eyes were full of admiration. He began to understand those adventurers and bards. Many places in this charming continent need his own eyes to observe and his own footsteps to travel. .

"When you become a priest." Ray Shen said: "There will be a three-year travel period, at which time your knight commander will recruit knights for you. There is time. Instead of being impetuous, it is better to prepare for your assessment in ten days."

Joyce was reminded of this and remembered the assessment again, and his heart was unspeakably nervous. Ray took him into the west wing main city, into the first temple, the white angel statue soared, and the sculpture was written with a line. : Under the holy light, the souls are equal.

Joyce couldn't help being in awe, and Ray said, "My duty is to bring you here. Goodbye, little prince."

Saying that Ray gave Joyce a knightly ceremony as if waiting, Joyce immediately understood and said: "May the Holy Light protect you, my noble knight."

He stretched out his hand to help, but before the two sides touched, got up and left without looking back, leaving Joyce standing alone in front of the sculpture.

"Please follow me." A young priest in a dark brown robe pushed his glasses and said, "Prince Joyce Shacks."

Joyce quickly saluted him. The young priest led Joyce into the gate of the Silver Wing Temple and said: "This is the West Wing Temple, dedicated to the spirits of the archbishops of the jihadists. An assessment will be held for you in ten days. You will temporarily Live here and prepare for the assessment. Have you brought the holy scripture?"

Joyce quickly said, "I did, are you a priest?"

"Sorry, no." The young man observed Joyce from behind the glasses and said: "I am just an ordinary pastor, preaching and preaching, accepting confession. If you fail the assessment, you can also choose to be like me. Pastor."

Joyce was a little embarrassed when he heard this answer. The young priest just stopped and walked forward and said, "Before the assessment, you cannot meet your guardian knight. Even if you accidentally ran into it, please Do not have any conversation, otherwise, it will be treated as cheating."

"Okay." Joyce had mixed feelings in his mind but thought that after waiting so long anyway, it wouldn't matter to wait ten days. The young pastor took him out of the hall again. The pastors in the hall came and went, and when they saw Joyce, they stopped and nodded slightly in salute.

Joyce responded one by one and asked, "Where is Alex and how do I know where I won't see him?"

"He is in the East Wing Hall in another city. All the candidates for the knight commander are under the management of Lord Ibrahim." The young priest took Joyce to a garden. Although it is the border between autumn and winter, the flowers here are Open lushly. In the white courtyard, golden fish are swimming in the fountain. There is a clear blue sky above the patio, and there is a swing in the corner of the garden.

It is simply beautiful! Joyce was speechless for a moment when facing this pleasing courtyard. Every marble sculpture was a carefully crafted work of art.

"This courtyard is for you to use." The young pastor pushed his glasses again and said politely: "If you need to enter the Pope's library, please apply to Calbus, the intellectual priest in the west wing. Ceylon, Teckran, Andassis, Lorlawney..."

On the side of the courtyard, the maid whom he called by name came forward. The young pastor clicked ten or so names and said, "They are responsible for your daily life and food. Please feel free to ask if you have any requirements."

"Okay." After all, Joyce is a prince, so he nodded to the maids when he was used to this pomp.

The young pastor added: "Theoretically, your freedom of movement is not restricted. If you want to go for a walk, you can pass at any time, but I suggest you don't wander around in the city. It will easily cause unnecessary discussion and you may even run into you. Knight."

"Okay," Joyce said quickly.

Finally, the young priest said again: "On the highest point of the West Wing, on the Feather of Urian, you can see the scene of the East Wing City. If you miss your lover, you can go up to the high platform to have a look at dusk. "

"Thank you," Joyce said.

"May the Holy Light bless you." The young pastor gracefully flipped the palm of his left hand, pressed it on his right shoulder, and bowed slightly. Joyce also saluted him. The young pastor confessed and turned and walked away quickly.

Joyce lived here. The Holy See is the richest place he has ever seen. The treatment is far worse than that of the Shaq Kingdom. When he grew up in the palace, there were only two or three attendants by his side. Here, there are twelve people dedicated to taking care of him. Joyce is very unaccustomed to being followed wherever he goes.

It took him a day to get acquainted with the etiquette and rules of the Holy See. The rules of the court are similar, and it is not difficult to get used to them. It feels that the Shaq Kingdom is remote in the mountains of the mainland and does not pay much attention to many etiquettes. He restrained himself very carefully, tried not to go in the wrong place, never said the wrong thing, and controlled the number of inquiries, so as not to be laughed at by the attendants.

For breakfast and lunch, someone will be sent to the courtyard for him to eat. For dinner, he will come to the gathering place of priests top.

After dinner. The rest of the time he was reviewing the scriptures to deal with the upcoming assessment.

A few days later, in the evening, he asked the director and climbed the Ullil Feather, which is a huge sky garden where archbishops sometimes watch stars. The breeze is breezy. Although it is already winter, the climate of the Golden City is like spring. On the platform where the flowers are in full bloom, he leaned on the railing to look into the distance and vaguely saw the panoramic view of the eastern city in the distance.

The entire Golden City is very lively, the buildings are magnificent and skyscraping, and a touch of the setting sun shrouds this palace like the kingdom of gods in golden glory.

Didn't he say that you can see the knights of the East Wing here? Joyce couldn't see anything at all, and then he found the telescope on the garden side, couldn't help but laugh, went to adjust the stargazing telescope, and looked east.

The focal length is not clear, but I can barely see a certain square as if under another sky garden, there is a huge knight training ground.

Many people are practicing piercing assault right away, which one is Alex?

Joyce couldn't help searching and found that there were people wearing armor everywhere. In the evening, when the bell was ringing across the city, they dismounted one after another and gathered towards the center, waiting for the instructor's order.

The sky gradually darkened, and Joyce watched for a while before leaving the sky garden reluctantly.

They had been apart for a full year, and the parting period seemed to be yesterday, but Joyce was thinking about seeing him as soon as possible. As soon as he turned and went downstairs, a maid hurried up and said, "Your Excellency Joyce, you have a visitor."

"Who is it?" Joyce said, "Where is it?"

The maid said: "It's a man, he can't wait for you to go back, he has already left."

Joyce said: "What does it look like?"

The maid couldn't tell, Joyce then thought, could it be Alex? No, Alex should be aware of the ban and asked: "I don't remember having a friend in the Holy See. Does he have any trust to pay me?"

"Just let me say hello to you." The maid said: "He said there is nothing particularly important, just come over and see you."

Joyce nodded and had to give up.

That night, he applied to the intellectual priest who administers the library and wanted to enter the Holy See to look up information. If they pass the examination successfully, Alex will be an official guardian knight. He will have his mount...Most knights' mounts are horses.

Since Joyce saw the Pegasus of the Temple of the Holy Knights, he has been full of longing for this creature. When he was a child, he also heard the legend of Pegasus. They wandered on the peaks of some unreachable mountains and were extremely difficult to control. If Alex could get such a flying horse, it would be very handsome.

At night, he carried a lamp and entered the library. The collection of books in the library was like a vast ocean. It would take a full day to walk through all the bookshelves. He searched the book index and found some more meaningful information. I forgot about the flying horse and began to read the book without sleep and food.

The first is a more detailed manual of ancient priests, which records the existence of the Holy Light in detail. He spent the night in the library and went back to sleep at dawn the next day. After dinner, I soaked in the library and found a book about evil creatures, which mentioned various undead creatures in the Northern Rift...

In the middle of the night, Joyce put the lamp next to the bookshelf, leaned against the bookshelf, and was wrapped in a blanket to read seriously.

The origin of the Northern Rift was a battle in which the gods released their supernatural powers on the two continents in ancient times. This battle is called the Twilight Battle of the Gods. In order to protect the safety of the creatures on the southern border, the ice dragon god detonated his dragon power and created a crack spanning tens of thousands of kilometers.

This crack divides the mainland into two and is divided into the southern continent that is illuminated by the holy light, and the north that is shrouded in ice and snow all day long. After the holy war a thousand years ago, almost all magicians were driven to the north by the King of Heroes. Since then, the northern continent has been called the "Magic Exile Land."

It is worth mentioning that the book also quoted a sentence from a human archaeologist:

"Undead creatures and magic are an inseparable part of this world. Since the Holy Light came, the residents of this continent had to wander in the north, and there is no hope of returning to their hometown."

Joyce: "..."

"What does it mean?" Joyce whispered: "Since the light came?"

In other words, the Holy Light was not originally the power to dominate this continent. However, in the holy scriptures, the Holy See explained what God said at the beginning of creating the world: "There must be light."

Then there was light, and that light opened up the world and became the purest holy power in the world, but what was mentioned in this ancient priest's manual was obviously contrary to the holy scripture. Joyce rummaged through the book and found that he had never quoted any words from the archaeologist Kalana.

He put away the book and went to look up the index. There seemed to be footsteps in the quiet library. He held his breath and listened. The footsteps were far away and disappeared silently.

"Karanna..." Joyce opened the drawer and found the initials index. After searching all the cards, he could not find the archaeologist's work. Now that he quoted a sentence, there must be at least one or more finished books. Could it be that the book has been lost?

Joyce rummaged through the drawers and finally noticed a small black box in the corner. There was no sign on the box. He opened the box and saw a stack of book cards inside.

found it! Joyce took out the library card and found that it was marked "Seventh Room".

Where is the seventh room? Joyce took the library card and walked across the rows of bookshelves, and saw that on the last shelf against the wall, on a certain row, there was a dilapidated parchment book.

This is the sixth room for old sheepskin scrolls, and the bookcase next door is the eighth room.

Inexplicably, Joyce took out a stack of parchment and glanced at it. It was a map of the parish hundreds of years ago, and on the edge of the shelf where the parchment was placed, there was a copy of "The Holy Book".

Without a clue, he took down the holy book and flipped through it, and saw a gem embedded in the bookshelf where the holy book was originally placed.

Joyce: "..."

He stretched out his hand and pressed it on the gem, urging the power of the holy light in his body. The gem lit up, and the bookshelf retreated silently and rotated, revealing a long corridor with bookshelves on both sides of the corridor. To the end of darkness!

Joyce: "!!!"

He carried the lamp, shuttled through this vast maze, looked blank, finally recovered, and started looking for the book he wanted.

In the entire seventh area, the records are all dangerous books, about curses, undead creatures' research, magic power augmentation, and other technologies. Joyce knows that every library has more or less some of these books, even My own home is no exception. This kind of book would be very dangerous if they were circulated, but Joyce would not be affected in the slightest if he studied it himself.

His job is a priest, even if he is practicing according to the magic book, the holy light in his body conflicts with the magic power, and they will only corrode each other, unable to obtain any mana.

He found Karanna's work, which was "Archaeology of Chaos", and sat down and read it with relish.

It was not until dawn struck the bell that Joyce closed the door of the seventh room and left the library. At the beginning of the next day, he would come every day to find these strange materials and proceed.

Three days later, in the evening he heard footsteps again, this time directly in the seventh room. The footsteps made him alert and turned off the lantern beside him.

A man's voice sounded: "...Your request like this will only make King Tucker very embarrassed."

Another young boy's voice said: "The Holy See is now defending the entire southern continent against the invasion of the Legion, providing icons and sending the Scorpion God to assist us. What is the loss for him?"

"All the countries on the mainland are closely related, and no one can stand by ." The young man stopped and said to the man: "There are more and more magicians infiltrating the southern continent. If he doesn't take action..."

"He has taken action." The man's voice said: "The domestic power is very unstable. As you know, he has sent six of the most elite S-level mercenaries to assist the Holy See in hunting down the magician."

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