Er Mu - Release that Witch

She was now facing a dilemma — if they were indeed one of these evil things from folklore, they would have killed all Devils, but then it would become difficult for her to escape after having trespassed into their domain. But if the other party was still able to hold on until now, shouldn’t those Devils still be inside then, what should we do?

After hesitating for a moment, in the end, she decided to fly back to Maggie to discuss the next step with her.

After hearing a short narration about the current situation, Maggie raised her head and said, “We could extinguish the torch and stealthily find our way in goo, this way those Devils won’t be able to see us.”

“Uh, but then we won’t be able to see them either.”

“I can turn into an owl,” said the pigeon rubbing her face, “The dark of night isn’t a big problem for me, goo.”

Lightning’s eyes lit up, “That’s a good idea, but… those legendary evil creatures, they live in the dark all their lives. Doesn’t that mean they might have a way to find their prey? Otherwise, they should have died from starvation long ago, right?

“Didn’t you say that they were all made up stories meant to frighten people?”

“It wasn’t me who said that, it was my father.” The little girl corrected.

“That’s all the same. Anyway, living in Greycastle I have never heard of those undead monsters, if they were indeed so horrible, they shouldn’t only remain in a little place like the Fjords, right?” Rays of light suddenly broke out of Maggie, and the pigeon suddenly began to swell, turning into a gray-brown owl, her eyes full of eagerness, “I thought you would be interested in these legends.”

That’s right, if I want to qualify as an explorer, I should never let go of an opportunity to verify a legend. Not to mention that I still have to defeat my heart demons, if I flee now, I will waste all of my previous efforts. After hesitating for a moment, Lightning decided to go along with Maggie’s suggestion.

But wait… the reason why I want to explore the ruins at all cost is so that I can overcome my fear, but why is Maggie so interested in exploring them? Could it be…

“It can’t be that you’re so impatient because of the basket of eggs, right?”

Hearing the question, the owl blinked her two big eyes before turning her head away.

…

Once again standing in front of the entrance to the basement, Lightning took a deep breath, tightly gripped her revolver as she silently entered into the deep darkness.

She felt much calmer compared to before, that was probably because Maggie was squatting on her shoulder.

The ground under her feet felt very wet, even so far that they could encounter some puddle of water from time to time. This area was the terrain’s lowest point, thus the rain falling over the tower would slowly come to gather here. Although the basement was equipped with a drainage system in general, after facing wind and rain for hundreds of years, these hidden ditches were most probably already clogged up since an earlier time.

Maggie patted her head with her wings, signaling that there were stairs leading downward in front of them.

Lightning slowed her pace, and carefully, little by little she searched her way to the edge of the stairwell. Then, after having cautiously gone all the way down the stair and turned a corner, she suddenly saw a light appear ahead of them.

A soft yellow light coming from the end of the stairs penetrating all the way through the dark, which, when falling onto the ground, would be reflected in shaking waves.

She carefully studied this for a moment only to discover that the slight shaking on the surface was actually a piece of sewage. By looking at the lower half of the door which was buried in the water, it could be seen that the water level in the basement was about knee deep.

She slowly walked to the point between the staircase and the water, lifted both her feet from the ground, then slowly floated over to the door and throwing a probing glance to the inside.

And saw that the area behind the door was spacious and empty — the stone tower’s basement was unbelievable huge, offering far more space than the area it had covered on the ground. She couldn’t detect any burning torch which created the yellow light. Instead it seemed that the light came directly from the stones that were embedded in the walls. It roughly outlined the contours of the basement, while at the same time allowing Lightning to see everything within the room.

A stone platform was erected in the middle of the chamber with several figures standing on top of it. According to their burly size and the carapace on their back, it seemed that they were all Devils. Luckily, the enemy hadn’t yet noticed any movement coming from the door, Instead each of them were holding a spear in one hand and a large shield in the other, surrounding a blue stone erected on top of the platform.

At this moment, the cry for help was becoming clearer and clearer, as if someone was shouting directly into her ear.

“Save me, save me…”

Lightning had to swallow. What should I do next?

“We…”

“Go and save her, goo,” Maggie whispered into her ear.

“Eh?” The little girl got startled,” But there are several Devils… We cannot win against them!” She felt her hand that was firmly gripping the revolver begin to sweat, “It wouldn’t be a problem if it was Sister Nightingale instead of me, but I alone… cannot do it.”

“Are they the demons you spoke off?” Maggie inquired, “It seems as if they are already dead, goo.“

“What? Dead?”

The moment her voice fell Maggie had already thrown herself into the air flying toward the stage, giving Lightning quite the scare, stunning for a moment. Otherwise, she would never have forgotten to pull her friend back. But when she finally came back to her senses Maggie had already thrown herself against one of those Devils. With no other option left, Lightning clenched her teeth and raised her gun; trying to remember all the important points that Nightingale had taught her.

But what she then saw, was completely unlike what she had expected, when the owl pecked a Devil twice, it crumbled down, just like a piece of broken stones after experiencing countless years of wind and frost, turning into a pile of floating ashes.

What’s going on? Lightning stepped beside Maggie and looked at the other three Devils in amazement.

Looking at them under the weak yellow light, she discovered that their bodies were covered with tiny cracks, and that spiders had spun nets between their legs, looking through their hideous helmets, she could see that their eyes and skin had turned pale, showing no traces of vitality. It was like this, she thought, within the dark light, an owl’s eyes are indeed several times better than mine, which allowed Maggie to be able to speak so confidently.

But before she could relax, Lightning’s gaze was already completely attracted by something else.

On the high platform surrounded by the Devils stood a huge cube. What had looked like a stone column from a distance actually turned out to be transparent crystal when seen from up close. Wrapped within the crystal cube was a woman who wore a gorgeous robe, her eyes were closed, her hands stretched open, and her hair spread out behind her as if it was still fluttering in the wind.

“Is she a witch, goo?” Maggie asked as she flew to the top of the crystal then fiercely pecked against the surface. However, this time it didn’t crumble into countless pieces, but instead sent out a sharp and clear hitting sound, “Very hard, goo!”

“I do not know,” Lightning murmured as she laid her hand against the crystal. A cold chill penetrated her skin — the crystal’s surface was covered with thick dust, which made it obvious that the woman had been in this “sarcophagus” for a very long time. Yet her expression was still so lifelike, her eyebrows were raised into a frown, looking a bit confused, but even more than that, they also seemed a bit anxious and worried.

“Save me…”

The sound could be heard once again, it was coming from behind the crystal.

Roland scratched over the surface with the brush, writing a long paragraph on paper.

Before he came to this world, he had only drawn mechanical blueprints using the computer. At that time he had already thought that there would only be small chances where he would ever need to write characters using a pen, never did he expect to have to use this kind of ancient form of recording ever again.

Two papers filled with text laid next to his hand, containing the next plans for what he wanted to implement.

One plan was the large-scale production of sulfuric acid and the new equipment that was needed, made by the hands of Anna and Soraya. Instead of using lead for the reaction vessel, they would use the more robust and reliable iron together with an anti-corrosion coating. Furthermore, the vessels would be made three times larger than the previous trial version’s.

Considering that at the present stage there was fundamentally no way to collect or purify the produced industrial waste gas (mainly used from combustion of sulfur and leakage of nitrogen oxides), Roland decided to place it at the southern end of the industrial park — far enough away from the residential area and the Redwater River. Furthermore, he planned to use stones so as to better isolate the building and also erect a chimney to raise the altitude at which the emissions would be released.

Increasing the output of sulfuric acid was of great help to enlarge the scale of concentrated nitric acid, so putting this equipment into production would be the most important task at present. The content of the document were instructions to Kyle Sichi to select a group of disciples who will be specializing in the production of sulfuric acid. In addition, Barov also needed to recruit some reliable local residents who could work as auxiliary handyman, raising the number of staff required for the chemical plant to around 100 people.

The second document was the formation of a public health care system.

To be honest, Roland wasn’t familiar with this subject. Talking about it, he didn’t even understand a single thing about modern medicine. However, this didn’t prevent him from using his common sense to develop a plan which meets all of their current needs.

First of all, the biggest task of this department would be to give publicity to modern scientific discoveries. Things such as boiling the water before drinking it, the fact that meat has to be fully cooked before eating, the cause of illnesses and how they manage to spread, the difference between parasites and microbes, and so forth… Thanks to his growing prestige it wouldn’t be difficult for him to get people to do what he wants, but if he wanted them to understand why they should do something, he would need someone to do the publication and education for him. It would be useless if they only spoke once about these things. Instead, it had to be repeated seven or eight times, maybe even dozens of times, like those slogans that were hanging at the edge of the field. If they continually spoke about it, their view would always become accepted in the end.

The second part was encouraging the birthrate — since the City Hall only had a limited number of staff, Roland did not want to set up a separate family planning department. Thus he temporarily also placed this under the public health care’s responsibility. The population was always the most scarce resource in this era, and the best way to confront this was by leading people to give birth to more lives. Nana’s ability completely erased the risk of giving birth and many of the other thorny problems. And with her help, the post-natal survival rate would almost be around one hundred percent. In order to avoid the abandonment of baby girls, as well as restricting any changes of something like that happening in future, Roland developed a full subsidy and punishment policy. For example, the subsidy for baby girls was slightly higher than for baby boys, subsidies would be given in installments, and the abandonment of babies would be punished with fines or imprisonment, and so on.

The last point was the regulation of payment. Except for fertility treatment, the hospital would charge a fee in accordance with the amount of magic that Nana needed to use. This way it would reduce the little girl’s burden as well as lay the foundation for the future hospital system. Roland had also already found the first person he wanted in charge of this department, Viscount Tigu Pine, Nana’s father.