250 Military Parade Part 2 of 2 (1/2)

Before the first rays of sunlight streaked across the sky, pitch-black dark elves appeared before the humans, as if they were messengers of the night.

When everyone present noticed that the group that had appeared next consisted of dark elves, their expressions were filled with shock and surprise. After all, in most situations, their species were the representation of evil. Perhaps it were only the demons and devils from the Chaos Abyss who had a worse reputation. Even the undead were better received than they were.

The ones in front of the audience, however, were doubtlessly an abnormality among dark elves. They were dark elf knights clad in golden heavy armor, and this was the first time they had revealed themselves on the surface of the mortal plane. Orderly and unhurriedly, they proceeded forward. Other dark elves were known to be skilled at using daggers and poisons, but these wielded glorious sacred swords and sturdy tower shields. Most importantly, they wore crosses, which were enveloped in Holy Light. Even the knights themselves were surrounded by Holy Light, which caused the human Holy Knights witnessing this spectacle to be the most astonished of all.

”Dark elves are capable of becoming Holy Knights?”

”How is this possible!? How can the evil dark elves possibly receive the blessing of Holy Light!?”

”Because your God of Holy Light is an idiot.”

Of course, I didn't say my line of thought aloud, as that would definitely brand me as a heretic. However, I didn't have any intentions of hiding the fact that I was filled with negative intentions, and I sarcastically made fun of them.

”Heh heh, I have a friend who's a dark elf Legend-ranked Holy Knight. Not only that, she has the possibility of reaching Saint rank. Sigh. A pity that she's not here right now.”

Some of the Holy Knights were filled with disbelief, while some nodded with shocked expressions. I didn't make any attempt to conceal my insulting laughter, which earned me an angry glare from Aivla. Ever since she had gone back with Estrada and learned that Holy Knight Rolo's real identity was me, she became hostile and unfriendly. It would seem that I had accidentally made her feel greatly pissed off at me.

The emblem of the dark elf Town Security Knights was a tightly clenched golden fist, which represented the spirit of teamwork and cooperation. Stuck above the fist was also a blunt sword, which represented the usage of violence only to a necessary degree—yep—it definitely didn't represent anything else, especially not my personal complaints against a certain Riot Games company, which had a fist as its emblem… Irelia was so cute, so why did they always nerf her? They should have been focusing on Teemo who was always polluting the environment with his explosive mushrooms instead. [1]1

Cough, I should stop getting sidetracked with topics from my original world. Let's return to the main topic at hand.

Unlike formal knight orders, which had actual combat as their main tasks, the Town Security Knights' most important tasks were doubtlessly smaller-scale battles like suppressing riots, bandit groups, and wild beasts. In order to make it more convenient for them to separate and battle in different locations, they were all mainly separated into small teams.

Each small team's captain and vice-captain were dark elf knights that came from the Underground. It was still the classical method of veterans leading the novices. While the members were of a large variety, but most of them were still knight type job classes that had tough skin and high endurance, or they were youngsters that had decided to become knights.

The reason for that? Indeed, thief job classes were agile and dexterous, while warrior job classes were much more flexible. Mages were even more adaptable and seemed to be quite appropriate for working within a city like this, but when you looked at the overall reputations of these three main and common job classes, none of them were that good.

Everyone knew that thieves would get up to no good and only work for money, while the warriors had the image of being barbaric and violent to the point of only talking with their fists; this was apparent to everyone. The mage job class was also seen by everyone as connected to evil and untrustworthy. While mages could easily obtain respect and fear, they definitely couldn't obtain trust; they had far worse of a reputation than Holy Knights, Knights of Justice, or even just regular knights.

Holy Knights needed to obey the teachings of the Holy Light, Knights of Justice needed to follow the law, and normal knights needed to follow the knightly code of chivalry and swear loyalty to their lord and king; reputation and honor were more important to them than their lives. In order to obtain the people's trust and internally obtain the newcomers' trust of the Town Security Knights themselves, almost all the small teams' leaders were of knight job classes.

To use a certain person's quote, ”Although tin cans mostly have empty air for brains, but they can all survive based on their handsome faces…” Yep, that was a certain quote said by someone when he was still a Holy Knight, but he had ended up getting beaten up by all his comrades. Fine, I'll be honest; apart from someone like me, a grand master at shooting oneself in the foot, who else could have said something so ridiculous?

The future Town Security Knights spent most of their time performing tasks within the city, and they had special intelligence, logistics, and magic support squads of their own. Whether or not their work would be a success here depended more than anything on whether they would be able to create a trustworthy and fair impression of themselves, which was why choosing these knights that had ”tin cans for brains” was the best choice. It had already been proven back in Sulfur Mountain City.

Each small team consisted of ten to twelve members, and would be led by an elite dark elf knight. They had top-level equipment, and any criminal would get a headache just looking at them. The Town Security Knights were planned to number 14,000 in the end, which would be more than sufficient to deal with the protection of multiple cities at once.

As for why I had to begin the military parade so early before the sun even rose? It was also out of consideration for these dark elves, who weren't suited for appearing under the sunlight. For the time being, they would also have to mainly work during the night, but when their specialized equipment was completed, they would be able to move about normally during the day as well.

What was their specialized equipment? Momo here was wearing the prototype.

The main reason the dark elves feared the sunlight was that their pupils and skin couldn't bear the sunlight. It wasn't as bad for their skin, although they would begin to suffer from severe sunburn if they stayed out in the sun for too long, but their weak pupils couldn't tolerate any sunlight at all… actually, this wasn't something unresolvable.

They would wear black gnomish anti-wind glasses with dark green tree resin lenses. They would have water element top-level hydra skin crafted into cool jackets, leather gloves, and black collars. They would wear high-heeled boots and long socks on their long, beautiful legs, plus purple eyeshadow and lipstick, which would give them a rebellious sense of beauty that seemed out of this world…

As for whether or not I copied elements from a certain special job from my previous world, a dominatrix—cough—cough—at the very least, I wasn't crazy enough to give them leather whips. Of course, some dark elves with special interests already had this type of item on their own, such as a certain crazy dog named Momo, who was currently—and happily—giving a whipping performance that caused various exclamations from the citizens… let us just ignore those perverts who had voluntarily came up for whippings.

With such top-level water element equipment provided to them, and when you add on the fact that they would put on Olivia's specially made sunscreen lotion for the skin that they revealed, they would basically be entirely protected from the sunlight so that they wouldn't have to imitate other dark elves on the surface—they wouldn't have to wear pitch-black capes and only dare to move about at night.

With such equipment, their anti-sunlight resistance rose greatly. Some dark elves had already volunteered to experiment for me, and, with the help of this water equipment and sunscreen lotion, they were able to normally move about under the sunlight for approximately five hours. As their bodies gradually got used to the sunlight, even increasing the time to eight hours under the sun per day was acceptable. When a gray elf like Momo put on this equipment, she was practically able to ignore any negative effects the sunlight would have on her.

To be honest, based on the Underground dark elves' level of magic, finding a way to deal with the sunlight wasn't something impossible to begin with. However, under their society where Lorci had controlled everything, anyone that researched this topic was basically declaring their intentions to go against Lorci.

”What? You're researching a method to deal with the sunlight? You intend to betray Lorci and escape to the aboveground world?”

Now that Lorci was dead, I figured that the dark elves would eventually come up with new ways to deal with the sun on their own.

Of course, even now, these equipment sets for them weren't cheap. The gnomish protective glasses originally used gemstone lenses which still let in too much sunlight for the dark elves, so I recommended Amelia's specially-produced tree resin lenses which were a big success, but it still wasn't easy to mass produce them.

Although there was already a mother tree, I had to wait until Amelia's magical tree grew into a forest before I would be able to have the tree resin lenses mass produced. And even though I had plenty of hydra skin on my hands, it was still rather precious, and using it only to block the sun seemed like a waste.

Hydra skin which was impenetrable by ordinary weapons and had defense equal to or surpassing that of steel armor, but I didn't have any top-level smiths that were able to make use of such a high-quality material. In order to avoid wasting any hydra skin, I only had very small and simple modifications done to them, without even having them enchanted with any spells or runes.

Although the defense value was only the hydra skin's natural defense value alone, that was already significant. The magic resistance properties of hydra skin added with the fact that the dark elves already had a talent for magic resistance helped them completely ignore any magic spells that were below Gold-rank. This made them into true mage killers.

I nodded in satisfaction as I watched them pass by. Not only were they the future Town Security and the backup knights for our main forces, but they were also specialized anti-mage troops. Of course, if it was necessary, I would have them truly act the part as mage killers.

And after this ”Riot Company” squad finished walking past us, the next group was rather unexpected.

The one at the forefront was a certain tall and strong tauren who was smiling in an honest and direct fashion as he continuously waved to people on both sides of the road. Xueti's name was quite famous, after all.

However, due to some special reasons and some rather extreme quotes of his, such as ”Why does a good man have to cover up?” or ”What's wrong with a man being perverted?” he obtained the extreme disgust of a large majority of females as well as the support of a large majority of males. Of course, there were also some females who were into extreme things that supported him.

After this highest priest walked past us while enjoying both cheers and boos, the well-equipped Church of Law members showed up behind him in all their might.

This was a group of black-robed judges, but they were also Law Incanters, Judgementors, and Knights of Justice. They weren't many, nor was their procession very orderly. However, the pride of the strong was as bright as daylight in the eyes of those that recognized their power.

”How is it possible that they have so many Gold ranks?”

”Gold ranks? Take a closer look, there are actually so many Legends among them.”

”…The rumors about the Underground were actually true? Legends are everywhere, liches are like dogs, and randomly tossing a brick can kill two SemiGod Liches?”

I viciously glared at the fool who had compared liches to dogs and even intended to kill SemiGod Liches with bricks, before returning my focus to the procession.

I was quite satisfied with their appearance. These old guys from the Church of Law were, at the very weakest, of the Gold rank, and all of them were those who could be judges. They were the true power of the Church of Law, accumulated over the past hundred years.

236 Gold ranks, 46 Legend ranks, and 4 Saint ranks. This was combat strength that was more than sufficient to rule over the Underground, and this military parade was a way to let everyone witness the true power of the Church of Law. It was also precisely because of their existence that Diffindor could be termed ”Infallible.”