Chapter 144 (1/2)

Chapter 144: The King’s Rewards

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio  Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

In the game, King Leon was about forty years old. He had a lean face, a head of gray hair and a gentle nature. Garbed in his luxurious royal garments, he was just the perfect picture of a gentleman.

He was also a wise king no matter which point of view one could judge him from. Although he had the rotten luck of being the king of Norton when it fell to the Dark Side.

“I have never committed any sins or made any grave mistakes, yet why is my kingdom falling into the abyss while it’s in my hands?” Those were his last words.

He didn’t live to see the day when the Kingdom of Norton collapsed completely. On the eve of the collapse, he was killed by his most beloved niece, Princess Annie who had by then gone mad. Not only was his head cut off, even his soul was sucked into an evil demon device that was in Annie’s hands, imprisoning him even in his afterlife.

Because of this, he held the first spot in Firuman’s top three most tragic figures.

But right now, none of these events had happened yet. When Link saw the king, he thought he looked just like the king in the game, but with some crucial differences. Because he met the tragic king a year earlier from the main timeline in the game, he didn’t have that much gray hair on his head and his wise eyes had not yet been darkened by despair and frustration.

“Your Majesty,” said Link in a humble tone. He took a deep bow and performed a ceremonial gesture that a Magician would do to another Magician of a higher rank.

“Take a seat,” said the king as he waved his hand. Servants in the throne room then led Link to his designated seat.

King Leon waited for Link to settle down as he looked on with a gentle smile on his face.

“Annie has been telling me about you,” he said. “To be frank, I was a bit skeptical when she told me about how you saved her life and the whole city during the massacre in Gladstone. But now that I’ve heard of what happened here today, I finally believe everything she said about you.”

The court Magicians have already divulged everything that transpired in the square of Jade Street to the king – everything from what spells were used and the details of what went on in the battle were revealed to him with nothing left out.

King Leon could make out from the reports that there was indeed a very powerful Magician at the scene—a Magician so powerful that only a few others in this kingdom could rival his strength. In fact, he might be the only one with these kinds of capabilities right now because the other Magicians were academic scholars. They were obsessed with abstract pursuits like discovering the true nature of reality and the world and thought fighting in battles should be left to the crude Warriors.

That was the reason why the Battle Mages in the army were usually those of average skills and limited knowledge and who knew that they had no future in academia. In addition, they were born into families having low status. These Magicians were looked down upon by the scholarly Magicians and because of that, these Battle Mages would usually hold themselves in low regard as well.

He would be surprised to find another Magician like Link in the kingdom, someone who possessed high talent and battle skills and who had a promising future in academia if he chose to go down that path.

In this regard, the king estimated that the Dark Elf Kingdom of Pralync would also be facing the same problems, though probably not as serious as the Norton Kingdom.

Because of this, King Leon had planned to assign Link to the battlefield in the North as the commander of the Magic Legion in the army.

Meanwhile, Link was still unclear of the reason why the king had summoned him. Thus he decided to respond with utmost courtesy and humility, just to be safe.

“Your Majesty,” said Link, “I only did what duty and honor compelled me to do.”

“It is just as you said,” nodded King Leon, “you did what duty and honor compelled you to do, and so I shall do the same. Alder!”

Then, a white-haired scholar walked in slowly, holding a thick book in his hand as he approached the king reverently. He flipped the book open and placed it on the reading table next to the throne.

The eagle-eyed Link noticed that the book was titled The Land Records of the Kingdom. His heart began to beat faster as he realized what the book title would entail, though he managed to keep a calm facade.

The reason was simple – in the Kingdom of Norton, whenever the king was presented with the book, it meant that the king was about to reward someone with a piece of land!

Link was about to receive his own piece of land!

In the game, he was already a Level-7 Magician and had climbed up through the ranks to become the commander of a legion in the army before he was rewarded with his own land. Although it was only a small piece of land with an area of about ten miles, he had received enormous profits from it, plus everyone who inhabited the land would address him as my lord and bow to him whenever they met him. He’d even had young and beautiful maids working in his residence. All in all, it was simply a blessed life to be a landowner.

The king sat on the throne as he flipped through the book quietly. He stopped after flipping more than a couple pages into the book and turned his gaze back to Link.

“There’s a wasteland called Ferde Wilderness southeast of the Girvent Forest. The land there is poor and infertile, the climate is insufferable with its constant harsh winds. No one wanted to have anything to do with this piece of land, but if you like, this wasteland with a radius of more than a hundred miles will be yours.”

Herrera couldn’t hold in her thoughts any longer, so she stood up the minute the king finished his sentence.

“Your Majesty,” she said, “please pardon my effrontery, but how could you reward such a desolate land to someone who had made a genuine contribution?”

Herrera had been so happy to see that the king was going to reward Link with land. She knew that such rewards were only given to the best of men, especially to those who had made an exceptional contribution to the military. Link had rescued the city of Gladstone – that could be considered as a great military contribution.

And since the king had decided to reward Link for his achievements, shouldn’t he be given something decent instead of this ghastly place with no profitable value like the Ferde Wilderness?

The Ferde Wilderness was an infamous desolate wasteland in the Norton Kingdom. Although it was connected to the sea in the east, the sea there was full of jagged reefs which made it an unsuitable site for commercial ports or even small ordinary docks. There would be at least three large-scale hurricanes coming in from the sea every year, and the squalls there could lift a grown man off his feet and carry him off. Needless to say, the soil there was so infertile that even weeds wouldn’t grow on it, let alone crops. Although its area was vast, the population there consisted of no more than 5000 people, and all of them had to eke out a living in very poor conditions.

In fact, even robbers, bandits and fugitives who had little choice for the places they could go were reluctant to go there. Only those who were extremely vicious and extremely desperate ended up in the terrible place.