Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 317 - 316: Tiel’s Impression of the Gods

A report from the Rune Research Center was placed in front of Gawain. He read it for quite a while and finally let out a breath, stood up, and opened the door to the terrace, stepping outside the room.

The cold wind of winter hit his face, but the cold winter air did not plunge the Cecil Clan into silence. Under the bright sunshine after the snow, the residents of Cecil were bustling through the streets and alleys, heading to their various jobs or visiting the Administrative Office to seek new job opportunities.

"Managed to achieve a certain degree of signal transmission within the coverage of the magical power field..." Looking at the still thriving land in the winter, what came to Gawain’s mind was the content he saw in the report, "In the magical power field, magic shock of a specific frequency can achieve wireless transmission, and the ’black box’ part of the communication spell seems to function by allowing the frequency of magic shock to achieve wide-area variation... Could it be that the entire world is enveloped in a magical power field? That primal magic is not the chaotic energy wandering in nature, but a complexly structured large-scale field?"

Gawain’s thoughts wandered, and his gaze casually swept over the courtyard below. Halfway through, he couldn’t help but stop.

He saw a pretty, elongated girl, acting like a thief, cautiously poking her head out through the manor gate. It was Tiel, the sea demon who nearly never left her room. This peculiar creature seemed unsure of what she wanted. Hesitantly, she edged to the courtyard gate, then very carefully poked the tip of her tail out—to nudge the snow outside the courtyard gate that hadn’t been swept away.

The next second, Gawain saw Tiel suddenly straighten up like a rod, snapping her tail back swiftly.

The two guards standing at the gate just looked on bewilderedly at this strange sea caterpillar creature.

Unable to contain his curiosity, Gawain called out, "Tiel, what are you doing?"

The sea demon, startled by the voice from above, nearly bounced out the gate in surprise. She looked up to see Gawain standing on the terrace of the second floor and waved her tail: "I want to go out! But winter in your human world is too cold..."

"You actually have times when you go out?" Gawain said in surprise, "Is your hibernation over?"

"Well, I haven’t swum in the river for a long time. I thought today, with the big sun, I’d take a swim to relax, but it turns out... yikes—the snow is too cold! I’m not going anymore..."

Listening to what Tiel said, Gawain couldn’t help but look up at the massive sun that almost covered half of the sky, thinking that the sea demon was right; the sun was indeed big...

Tiel now spoke again, waving her arms and the tip of her tail vigorously: "Human Lord, are you sunbathing up there?"

Gawain casually replied, "Yes."

"Then I’ll join you in sunbathing too!"

The sea demon shouted from afar, then flicked her tail and moved towards him. Gawain initially thought she would enter the house and climb the stairs to the second floor, so he turned to open the terrace door. However, before he could take action, he realized something was amiss—Tiel had stopped at the courtyard center, her long tail coiled on the spot like a spring, trembling slightly. Then she started to put pressure, compressing her whole body tighter and tighter—by this point, Gawain guessed what this bright-minded creature was attempting to do and hurriedly stopped her: "Wait a minute..."

But his words were a fraction too late. As his voice fell, he watched Tiel completely compress herself into a flat spring, then with a "boing," her entire body flew towards the terrace...

Above the terrace, a pale blue light curtain instantly appeared, covering all angles leading to the terrace. Gawain watched with open eyes as Tiel crashed headfirst into the barrier, her tail following with a "thud" against the light curtain.

The confused mermaid (both water snakes and salted fish) slid down from the barrier right before Gawain’s eyes.

A few seconds later, the shield vanished automatically. Gawain leaned over to look below the terrace, catching sight of Tiel using her tail to coil around the support pillar beneath the terrace, huffing as she slowly climbed up. Despite the peculiar manner in which she controlled her tail, making her ascent difficult, fortunately, the second floor wasn’t that high, and with some effort, she’d nearly made it up...

A moment later, the sea demon reached out from outside the railing: "Hey, don’t just stand there watching, give me a hand."

Gawain, expressionless, extended a hand to pull the salted fish essence onto the terrace: "Okay."

After finally getting up, the first thing Tiel did was put her hands on her hips and complain: "Why on earth would you put a barrier over the terrace when you’re just idling? It wasn’t there a few days ago!"

Gawain spread his hands: "Mainly to guard against Amber—now there’s a barrier outside every window, balcony, and terrace of this house. If you approach quickly, you’re bound to bump into the barrier."

Tiel glanced at Gawain: "Does it work?"

Gawain sighed: "No, it doesn’t. Amber just shadow travels right in. It’s not even as effective as a mousetrap."

Tiel looked helpless, coiling herself into a ball as she muttered: "I live in this house too, more or less. How come no one told me about such a major renovation..."

"Nonsense, you spend most of your time sleeping, and when you’re awake, it’s just to have a meal. I suspect that even if the entire Cecil Clan territory was blown up one day, you’d only find out when it’s time for your next meal..."

Tiel looked Gawain up and down and suddenly blurted out: "Usually, you always have a stern and imposing demeanor in front of people. I wasn’t expecting you to be quite amusing in your speech."

Gawain was taken aback for a moment, then couldn’t help chuckling: "Actually, my nature isn’t that serious, but you must understand, as a leader, and especially one who’s practically stepped out of the history books, I have to consider my image."

"You humans are really strange, with too many self-imposed rules," Tiel shook her head, her ocean-blue hair shimmering like waves in the sunlight, "we sea demons never fuss over such intangible things—we are a straightforward species; all our thoughts and actions are expressed without reservation. Well, in most cases..."

Due to Tiel’s peculiar habits and lazy demeanor, Gawain hadn’t had many opportunities to learn about the deep-sea matters from this sea demon. So when she took the initiative to bring it up, he immediately asked: "Speaking of which, what do you do in your community?"

"Me? I’m a Tide Master," Tiel shrugged, "a combat personnel."

"Tide Master?" Gawain blinked, feeling he had heard quite an impressive title, "What kind of position is that?"

Tiel crossed her arms, using the tip of her tail to tap her chin in thought: "In human terms...it might be considered a combat priest? A rather senior combat priest, responsible for creating strategic-level magic effects on the battlefield. If you had to translate it into your military ranks, it would probably be equivalent to a centurion."

Gawain was genuinely surprised this time: "So, you’re that powerful?"

He had originally thought that someone like Tiel, who lived such a carefree life and even managed to swim the wrong way from the Endless Sea to the human world just returning home, couldn’t possibly be powerful. Even among those deep-sea heretic gods, she had to be a solitary recluse. Yet to his utter surprise, she revealed such an impressive identity with just a few words—though he wasn’t quite clear about the position of a combat priest among the sea demons in their military hierarchy, it was undoubtedly mid-to-upper level!

Ummmm...suddenly curious about the social mobility mechanism among those sea demons...perhaps they select commanders based on appetite and walking posture.

"Feels like your mind is entertaining some unpleasant thoughts," Tiel stared at Gawain’s eyes for a long time, "let me tell you, don’t be fooled by my usual laziness, when there’s actual danger and a watery environment around, most of you would flee... wouldn’t hold a candle to me!"

Gawain felt like she had accidentally used some peculiar wording just now, but he figured pointing it out directly might cause her to abruptly end the conversation, so he simply changed the topic: "You mentioned you’re a combat priest—is the word priest in your language also a religious term? Do you sea demons have your own religious and belief systems?"

He recalled Tiel mentioning before that sea demons don’t believe in gods.

"If by religion and belief you mean worshiping a specific deity like humans do, then we sea demons don’t worship gods. But we do have our objects of reverence," Tiel explained, "we revere the ’spirit’ of all sea demons, and the ’collective consciousness’ of our species and the entire ocean. We call it ’Eva’. I don’t know if you can understand this symbolic form of ’worship idol’, to us sea demons, Eva is not a god, but she holds a similar position to your human gods in our society."

Gawain stroked his chin: "Revering the spirit of a species, and parts of the natural environment symbolically... I can understand this, actually this kind of belief exists on land too. The tribal country of Augari in the western continent has a ’pan-belief’ in nature and natural phenomena. Some worship their ancestors, others worship elements in nature like thunder, wind, rocks, and plants, while some even venerate the ’cycle of fate’ of life and death. This relates to the diverse races living in their country. Additionally, the modern Druids also have a tendency towards pan-belief, revering ’nature’ and ’life’ rather than specific deities."

"That I do know—the chewy great white deer has passed away, after all," Tiel nodded, "but on another note, I find the beliefs and religions of you land-dwellers really strange... your churches change one after another, even entire civilizations change, yet every time a chaotic wave comes, the civilizations of land-dwellers cut off once, but no matter how thoroughly they’re interrupted, once civilization re-emerges, you all still worship those gods... clearly, they’re just a bunch of powerful creatures good for a chew, why do they hold such appeal for you earthlings?"

Tiel said this merely in passing, yet when Gawain heard her last few words, his heart suddenly skipped a beat—

Does every chaotic wave reshuffle the world, yet the newly emerged mortal civilizations establish almost the same belief and religious systems?