Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 699 - 698: The Unshakable "Resident

Wearing brand-new boots and a crisp uniform, adorned with an elegant and attractive badge and armband, Director Maxilin walked the corridors of the prison with his head held high. This man in his thirties had his hair neatly groomed and his beard perfectly trimmed, carrying a reserved smile as he walked, the keys and baton hanging from his belt clinking with every step.

This is a newly built prison, as brand new as the "Administrative Office" in the city. It boasts spacious and bright corridors and sturdy, beautifully constructed cells. One of Maxilin’s daily tasks is to patrol all the corridors and rooms with two wardens to ensure no prisoners are breaking out, self-harming, damaging confinement facilities, or engaging in secret brawls. Though this work is rather dull, it suits Maxilin just fine, given his affinity for routine and order.

Everything was normal in the regular control zone. The detainees here were mostly minor thieves and drunken hooligans, some arguably not worth being imprisoned at all but were here temporarily due to limited space in the Security Office’s holding cells. These folks generally wouldn’t dare confront the supervisors, nor would they engage in secret brawls to extend their detention time, making patrols in this area always easy and pleasant.

After passing through the regular control zone, Maxilin led the two wardens toward the supernatural Containment Area. In front of the staircase leading underground, the warden glanced at the heat exchanger and ventilation devices working normally on the wall beside him.

After confirming everything was normal, Maxilin couldn’t help but mutter lowly, "It’s truly a good era... even jail is so comfortable now."

After walking down a section of stairs and passing through a fence gate, there was a heavy alloy gate. Standing in front of the gate, Maxilin adjusted his belt and uniform, his expression becoming slightly more serious.

This gate led to the prison’s depths, designated for holding Transcendent criminals.

From this area onward, the place was filled with sensory magic symbols and alarm devices detecting Magic Power fluctuations. The cells were far more robust than those in other zones, and numerous mechanisms and traps specifically for negating Spellcasters were set up. Even though no Transcendent riot had occurred since the area was built, Maxilin, who had once faced Transcendents on the battlefield, instinctively maintained vigilance and seriousness.

He instinctively touched the scar near his chest, a mark left by the scorching blade of a Transcendent. After recalling the burning pain, he activated the Barrier Generator at his waist and triggered the mechanism at the baton’s base, ensuring the "Magic Countermeasures" were always ready to fire.

The two accompanying wardens also checked their equipment before approaching simultaneously and placing two keys on either side of the gate.

Accompanied by the creaking sound of machinery, the heavy gate slowly opened before Maxilin.

The director slightly turned his head and instructed his subordinates, "Check the protection."

The two wardens separately went to verify the completeness of the protective magic symbols, while Maxilin stepped through the gate, taking a look inside.

The rooms used for holding Transcendents were noticeably fewer than the ordinary cells outside, with only four individual confinement rooms. At this moment, there were only two prisoners in the entire area:

In the first room on the left was an Arcanist, who had been reckless and drunk yesterday. After firing an arcane bullet that killed the neighbor’s dog — which he mistakenly thought was challenging him to a holy duel — he ended up here for a week after legal compensation. Maxilin suspected that the Arcanist would spend at least half of that week sobering up.

He is someone worth being cautious and careful around, as he is still drunk — one cannot say for sure if he would mistake the visiting guard for another duelist and fire another arcane bullet.

The "guest" in the second room on the right had been here for quite some time, a mysterious Druid imprisoned for undocumented spellcasting and illegal crossing. In Maxilin’s eyes, this silent Druid was comparatively "safer," despite his somewhat gloomy demeanor.

After verifying that the drunken Arcanist was still spouting nonsense, Maxilin proceeded directly to the cell of the Druid named "Bard Wendell," knocking on the alloy grate embedded with magic-conducting materials with his baton, "Hey, time for a room check."

In the small cell, a middle-aged man in a gray-white prison uniform sat on the bed facing away from the cell door. Hearing the commotion behind him, he moved his arms slightly but did not turn his head, saying, "Wait a moment, I’m about to solve this problem."

"...Ha, you sure treat this like your home," Maxilin said amidst laughter and irritation, "I shouldn’t have given you a set of math textbooks to relieve boredom — look at what you’ve drawn on the walls!"

Nearly every wall and floor in the small cell was covered with dizzying numbers and symbols, along with some improvised poetry and short phrases, quite lively — writing and drawing on cell walls is a "classic hobby" for many prisoners, and the guards have always turned a blind eye to this behavior. Yet, Maxilin is genuinely surprised to see someone writing entire sets of equations and short phrases on two walls, making this perhaps the most peculiar prisoner he has seen.

Having briefly been a knight apprentice, Maxilin could read, but what Bard had inscribed on the walls was beyond his understanding. He instinctively judged that the prisoner likely had some background, but then again, which Transcendent didn’t?

In the cell, Bard, who was sitting on the bed, finally finished solving his equations. This disheveled middle-aged man stood up, placing the draft paper and pen aside, saying, "Don’t worry, sir, I’ll clean it off myself later."

"Of course you will clean it off — because you have new equations to write!" Maxilin glared at Bard inside the cell. "I came to inform you that your detention time is up; you can leave tomorrow. Once you’re out, quickly go to the Administrative Office to file a migration..."

Just as the prison director was halfway through his words, he saw Bard inside the cell casually pull out a small piece of hard bread he had secretly hidden under his pillow and fling it towards the outer wall beyond the bars with a flick of his wrist. A layer of protective light film rippled on the wall under the astonishing wrist strength, immediately followed by the sound of alarms...

Maxilin and the two wardens who had just walked in were altogether unable to stop it.

"Damn it! You can’t keep extending your detention this way!" Maxilin shouted angrily, "This is a prison, not a place for you to extend your stay day by day! Are you even listening... You two, why are you still dawdling? Go turn off that damn alarm!"

The two wardens hurriedly ran to turn off the alarm, while the drunken Arcanist began loudly talking nonsense in the nearby room. Bard, inside the cell, shrugged at Maxilin, "It’s pretty nice living here; I don’t want to go anywhere."

"Next time, I’m going to search your room entirely, and I’ll take away your pen and your bread," Maxilin said in frustration, "Let’s see how you’ll cause trouble then."

Bard thought for a moment and earnestly replied, "I’m not a weak mage — I could set off the alarm with boogers too."

Maxilin: "..."

The director, for a moment, was at a loss for how to respond to this irrefutable answer. He could only watch helplessly as the despicable Druid slowly returned to his bed, laying down like an animal preparing to hibernate, slowly pulling up the blanket, appearing oblivious and maddeningly infuriating.

"You’re wasting the Empire’s money!" Maxilin finally couldn’t help but shout, "Listen, I’ll report back to the Security Bureau and the Administrative Office, this breach will be patched soon, you can’t just keep freeloading here forever!"

A voice came from the bed: "I trust you’re diligent, sir— but before that, I just want to get a good night’s sleep."

Maxilin left in anger once again, just like the two previous times.

The heavy alloy gate slowly closed with the sound of machinery, and the area inside the Containment Area fell silent once more. The drunken mumbling from the adjacent cell gradually faded out, and Bard Wendell, lying on his bed, opened his eyes for a glance, then slowly closed them again.

For so many years, this was the only place where he could sleep peacefully.

Maxilin finished his patrol of the entire prison and returned to the office with a touch of annoyance.

Starting from a knight apprentice in the first generation of Cecil Clan warriors, having experienced all the territorial defense battles and the southern borders unification wars, he had adapted to the basic environment where "every ordinary person is making an effort." He couldn’t understand why a Transcendent would willingly degrade themselves to such a state.

A few minutes later, the warden picked up paper and pen from his desk and began writing a report.

At the very least, he needed to find a way to get Bard Wendell out of the cell— otherwise, with the way that guy was staying put, he’d likely remain in this prison longer than the warden himself!

...

"This is the latest report from Norris in the Plains of the Holy Spirits, ancestor, please review it."

In Cecil Castle, Gawain’s study, Aunt Heidi placed a thick report on the desk and briefly summarized the contents.

"Investigators from the Department of Agriculture and the ’Holy Spirit Plains Reconstruction Temporary Office’ have entered the southern Fertile Woods, conducting preliminary statistics and assessments on the towns and farmland along the way. The working group believes that the most severely polluted areas are further north, likely around The White City and Sorinburg. In the current areas found, over fifty percent of the land can be reharnessed within a year. Norris also specifically emphasized that these lands not only have mild pollution but might become even more fertile after being burned and rested."

"That’s rare good news," Gawain relaxed his eyebrows, "The crystal dust pollution was stopped very timely, the crystal dust and accompanying plague haven’t penetrated the soil too much, allowing the land to be directly reused. The grain shortage crisis next year can largely be resolved."

"The key issue now is the abandonment of basic infrastructure like towns, roads, and water sources," Aunt Heidi nodded, "All original residential areas were ravaged by Crystal Cluster Giants the most severely, subjected to concentrated bombardment and thorough burning, resulting in the destruction of infrastructure very thoroughly. Relying solely on the Administrative Office to organize teams for reconstruction followed by population resettlement might be slow and consume significant resources—even before managing to cultivate those not yet completely abandoned farmlands."

Gawain rubbed his chin and mused: "...This is indeed a problem, the Plains of the Holy Spirits is too vast, even the eastern region of the plain is almost equivalent to half of the southern borders...."

"Norris proposed a suggestion on this."

"Oh?" Gawain raised his eyebrows, "What suggestion?"

Aunt Heidi organized her words slightly: "In the mild pollution zones, Norris encountered many returning refugees; all of them had fled from polluted zones, wandering outside our control, eventually hearing that the war had ended and wanting to return to their homeland. Through inquiries, combined with rough statistics of southern, western, and the Duke of the East’s barriers, these people may occupy about one-tenth of the original population of the plain’s eastern region—that’s more than we imagined."

Gawain blinked.

After the disaster, there was a large number of homeless refugees wandering the Plains of the Holy Spirits, a situation Gawain had foreseen from the beginning—the "Cecil Order" is indeed efficient and rigorous, capable of effectively managing populations and aiding refugees, but the premise is to establish an effective administrative system at a great cost. The Plains of the Holy Spirits is not the southern borders, relying on limited containment and resettlement teams and temporary administrative office aid cannot achieve comprehensive management; this inevitably leads to the appearance of many refugees.

One-tenth...

This number is staggering; once prosperous, the eastern region of the Plains of the Holy Spirits truly is now ten rooms with nine empty.

But at least one room is not empty.

"These wandering refugees need to be settled. And their disorganized wandering through polluted areas is very dangerous. Norris suggests we form a ’United Reconstruction Group,’ led by the Supreme Administration Office, with new recruits Construction Army and official pioneer groups as the core, setting up several reconstruction teams, and then attracting, gathering, recruiting these refugees through various means, also encouraging those willing to return home and temporarily settled elsewhere to join the teams, to come back and rebuild their homeland...

"The refugees only need the most basic survival guarantees, and we can provide them survival guarantees, as well as construction tools, guidance, under the motivation of returning home and receiving land, there should be many responders. Utilizing the same experience from building new Cecil territory, organizing a batch of young clerks and administrative rookies needing practice, and adding the construction army as the core, the reconstruction group will have the scale to reclaim more lands before they are completely abandoned by wild grass and wolves."

"Reclaiming land from wild grass and wolves... this can serve as a good promotional symbol," Gawain nodded, in addition to being satisfied with the proposals, he felt gratified by the growth of officials like Norris in the Administrative Office over the years, "Is this the extent of Norris’s plan?"

Aunt Heidi nodded: "Yes."

"Then let me add on—that after reconstructing towns and social order, the reconstruction group can take root locally to establish an administrative office, synchronizing with the construction and networking of transportation, communications, commerce."

The Eastern Holy Spirits Plain is already a blank page; Gawain now aims to cover it with a complete Cecil Order directly. When the wasteland is rebuilt, the fertile land of the Eastern Holy Spirits Plain will become a "new land" like the southern borders, and this new land can directly connect to the old capital St. Soniel from the rocky ridges Fortress stretching northward, also connecting to the northern parts of the Dark Mountain Range, connecting to the East...

The desolate wasteland once burned down completely will eventually sprout new buds. The newly-born flesh after shedding decay will be healthier and stronger than before.