Chapter 187 - What Are Sea Demons (1/2)

To be honest, seeing some strange variations in the course of reading his life biographies wasn’t outside of Gawain’s expectations. Seven hundred years of time transition was enough for those imaginative scholars of unofficial history to bizarrely make up things about any ancient figure. And Gawain Cecil was a well-established name that the entire continent knew of. Anything related to this pioneer hero’s 35 years of legendary life could be said to be an everlasting topic in the talk of people of all classes. As the saying went —— a highly meritorious and famed person dies an early death. Where would one go to find such a great theme?

At this point, Gawain was even a little glad about the backwardness of this world, glad that the cultural industry of this world had yet to be able to welcome an explosion-like development as it was still controlled by the upper class. If this place was as advanced as Earth, there would be the possibility of him seeing the pioneer forefathers from 700 years ago taking turns to get their character portraits changed and hung in the in-game stores. Charlie I would be gifted once you log in… Duke Wilder would require seven days of logging in, and Gawain Cecil would be inside the first recharge package…

And there would be new skins launched for this bunch of people every month. Those two granddaughters of his were extremely likely to throw all their money at the game just to admire their ancestor’s new character portrait —— and he, the party involved who rose from his coffin, would remain awkward and embarrassed++ (with more than 200 ‘+’ signs), wishing he could destroy his whole family…

Gawain slapped his own forehead hard, forcefully gathering his thoughts that were starting to run reckless. He sighed and looked at the “popular reading material” full of absurd fabrications. ——Everyone knew the stories in here were fake, but it was the favorite escape literature of the madams and young ladies in the central and southern regions of the kingdom. This sufficiently proved the thriving vitality of popular literature, as well as how boring the daily lives of people in this era were.

However, as the party involved, Gawain caught some implicit truths in those carelessly concocted love stories. ——The stories in here weren’t completely false.

Apart from those female soulmates who were forcibly added in, this book mentioned many adventure tales related to Gawain Cecil. These tales did not appear in any official biographies. Outsiders might, after reading them, group them with those female soulmates as the wonderful imagination of a certain second-rate novelist, but Gawain knew —— at least half of those unknown adventures were real.

Searching for the ruins of an ancient tomb in the Gondor Wasteland; finding clues about the Spirit of Elements; leading a small number of soldiers to look for a safe passageway when cutting across the “magic scorch mark” and stumbling upon the Gondor Master Mage group that had become crystals; going deep into the mountains during the establishment of the Cecil territory and then communicating with the elements and receiving blessings.

These were another aspect of Gawain Cecil as a pioneer. It could be seen from these experiences that he’d indeed lived like a hacker with a halo… Of course, it wasn’t important whether he was a hacker or not. What was important was that these unknown stories had actually appeared in an absurd Knight novel. This provided much food for thought.

This novel had been circulating for a long time. The original author could no longer be identified. Probably because he had worried about getting beaten up when he was writing the book, the only clue this author left behind was his pen name, “Wandering Minstrel Mr. C”. Gawain had no idea how Mr. C knew about these stories, but that was definitely a fellow who was patient and had enough contacts. He interviewed countless people who had interacted to some extent with Gawain Cecil or their descendants before he could put in order this information. And in all of these adventure tales, one mentioned the story of Gawain Cecil challenging the deep sea.

It was written like this: After Gawain Cecil assisted the great founding king, Charlie I, to establish the kingdom, he was deeply worried about the monsters that ceaselessly wandered out from the Gondor Wasteland, as well as corrosion from the Dark Wave that was still spreading. Therefore, he asked for help from the earth, water, fire, and wind Spirit of Elements. The four princesses of the four elemental planes (those things had princesses too?) were convinced by the young heroic Knight; thus, they offered suggestions to him. Gawain Cecil ultimately accepted the water element’s enlightenment and set off towards the ocean to search for answers.

Although he did not have a Storm Cleric as a guide on the sea, Gawain Cecil received the help of sea elves (of course, under the pen of Mr. C, another princess appeared within the sea elves in this process). The sea elves helped the fleet of ships pass through the storms surrounding the continent and pointed the fleet towards the east.

After countless days and nights of sailing, the sea elves suddenly got into a panic and urged Gawain to stop going forward because the sea area further east was the territory of the “sea demons”, and it was impossible for any terrestrial species to contend against the powerful sea demons in the ocean. However, Gawain Cecil did not fear. He insisted on continuing to move forward, thus the sea elves had no choice but to leave the party. Most of the ships in the fleet also left with the sea elves; only Gawain and a few loyal guards continued to drive the ship forward. And soon after, they met the sea demons.

The clever reader Gawain immediately expected —— there was definitely also a princess amongst the sea demons…

But this story was a little anticlimactic here. Mr. C only sloppily recorded that Gawain Cecil gained the trust of the sea demons and was guided to a “sacred and beautiful” place. The party drank good wine to their fill for three days and three nights and then was directly tossed back to the Loren Continent by a storm.

This was clearly bluffing the readers.

Intuition told Gawain that this story was the record of the deep-sea navigation that was missing from Gawain Cecil’s memories.

But a peculiar race appeared in here: sea demons.

Gawain was very unfamiliar with the name of this race. The memories that he inherited also only contained that little bit of impression, but all it pointed to were strange and unusual myths and weird tales, completely insufficient to obtain facts from.

Just then, a knock sounded on the door of the study. After the door opened, the Druid Pittman walked in. “Lord, I heard from Amber that you were looking for me?”

Gawain nodded. After telling the Druid to come in, he got straight to the point. “Have you heard about sea demons before?”

“Sea demons?” Pittman touched his chin. “I’ve heard a little about the legends related to them.”

Gawain’s eyes instantly lit up. The Druids were indeed the occupation that knew the most about the races in the world. Even if what Pittman knew were merely legends and tales regarding the sea demons, the level of detail would certainly be much higher than that of the average person’s knowledge!

“Tell me about it!”

Pittman twiddled his beard and began unhurriedly. “The legends of the sea demons are mostly concentrated in the east and south of the continent. There is rarely anyone who mentions it here on Anzu’s side. Even if they do, it will only appear in horror stories or similar thrilling, weird tales. It is said that sea demons are one of the oldest intelligent beings in this world. Their history is highly likely to go as far back as the gigantic dragons’. Long before the rise of humankind, they’d ruled the oceans for tens of thousands of years.