Chapter 802 The Will of Hughes
"Chloe is here," Ash suddenly said from the side.
Hughes looked up and saw a banshee rushing towards him. She was not wearing armor and had come from Blood Harbor.
Chloe usually works in the Bloodharbor Tribunal, so she must have rushed here in a morgue.
Sure enough, when Chloe opened the diary, her handwriting was all sloppy.
"Is something wrong? If not, I'm going to take a nap; I feel dizzy."
Hughes hesitated for a moment, then picked up a pen from the table and began writing in his diary.
"Dizziness is normal, and I did encounter some trouble."
"This feeling... Hmm? You're injured?"
How did you know?
There's blood on the tip of your pen.
Hughes then noticed that the blood that had just been spilled on the table had not only stained the documents, but also the pen.
"A bit of a surprise."
"Don't let your blood stain your diary again. I always feel like too much of that stuff will purify me."
Hughes then remembered that his blood did indeed have a certain purifying ability. When Monica was building the prototype of the steam engine, she used his blood to draw a magic circle in the furnace to control the pollution.
At that time, he was worried that if steam engine production increased in the future, he might be drained dry.
"Wait, my blood can only purify pollution and evil gods, right? When did you become an evil god?"
"There's not much difference between the extraordinary and the evil. Touching the extraordinary inevitably leads to drifting further away from humanity. If you can purify an evil god, then it's not surprising that you can purify me too."
"Besides, I'm already dead. Now only this little bit of me remains, and I'm incredibly fragile."
Hughes suddenly fell silent.
It seemed that he only realized at this moment that Chloe was dead, that the somewhat stingy girl who liked to read quietly by herself had been gone from him for a long time.
Perhaps Chloe was still working for him, causing him to subconsciously ignore it, or perhaps he was actually refusing to accept this fact deep down.
"Feel sorry."
"What's the use of 'sorry'? You might as well give me more overtime pay, or urge Richard to get me a new body. This diary is just too boring. There's even a legend in Blood Harbor that the presiding judge of the Inquisition is invisible, and all you see on his desk is a diary."
"Don't you feel lost? You're already dead, but you still have to work for me, and sometimes you even have to work overtime."
"Why would I feel lost? I am a moth drawn to flame, born to chase the light. I would die for it while I live, and even in death, my obsession remains undiminished—what do you think is the reason I exist?"
“I am not working for you. Castells is your fiefdom, but it is the ideal world for each of us. I have loved reading since I was a child, but the Papacy burned down my study and killed my parents, so I became their enemy. Castells took me in, allowing me to stop wandering and pursue knowledge, so I am willing to protect it with my life.”
"You built Castel, that's good, but even without you, I would have built my own Castel."
"Castel is everyone's dream. I'm willing to work overtime for my dream, and I'm willing to give everything for it."
"Of course, it would be even better if there was overtime pay."
"So, what did you want to see me about?"
Chloe's words struck Hughes' heart like a heavy hammer.
The enormous sound, like a buzzing in his mind, suddenly made him understand many things.
Who he is doesn't matter, nor does his past matter. Whether Hughes is real or not, at least one thing is certain.
He wanted to bring about some change to the world.
The resentment of repeated deaths, the decay and conservatism of the empire, the arrogance of the nobles, and the Papacy's monopoly on knowledge and technology.
He loathed all of this, and he wanted to change it all, to let the torrent of steel sweep away all filth, and to share science and technology with every soul that thirsted for knowledge.
Whoever he is, whether he's a time traveler or a fictional character, even if everything is fake, the anger in his heart is real.
He can die, he can fail, he can lose even his name and his memories.
The only thing they cannot yield to is...
Hughes' eyes gradually brightened, and his hesitation and weakness melted away like ice and snow in the sunlight in the face of the fire that ignited in his heart.
His fingers gently touched his chest, as if he could feel the burning heat, which was his will, a will that could transcend reality.
"It's alright now."
After finishing writing, Hughes threw the pen aside, closed the diary with both hands, and stood up.
"Alright, there's no time to waste. Let's investigate what's going on first. Hmm?"
Hughes paused abruptly, then his expression turned strange.
Not only him, but the surrounding succubi also exchanged glances, all somewhat surprised.
They had just received intelligence from the front lines via a telepathic link.
"On the battlefield near Isabella, Nora and Gwen destroyed the steam tank, and then Lina performed an unknown ritual?"
"The sacrifice of thousands of Papacy soldiers and priests points to Castells?"
"Could this dream... be something she's playing on me?"
Hughes sat down again and opened his diary.
"Chloe, I need your help."
Nora and Gwen stood silently atop the rock face on the side of the valley, watching the Tis soldiers below clean up the battlefield.
No, this isn't actually a battlefield, and these soldiers didn't die in battle, but rather from some strange ritual.
"Lady Nora, don't you know the effects of this ritual?"
Nora shook her head slightly and jumped onto Gwen's shoulder: "I'm not very good at this. Actually, I haven't been a superhuman for very long, and the instructors were always slow and didn't teach me much."
The immortality of the Burialers is not limited to combat; their lives are infinite, and they have no concept of lifespan at all.
This also leads to the Burialers having a different sense of time than others, always habitually procrastinating—after all, life is eternal, so why rush?
Therefore, Nora's learning progress was quite slow. She grew up in the Silent Church, but all she learned in those decades was less than she learned in just one or two years in Castells.
"I can only be certain that this ritual most likely points to Castel; as for the rest... let's wait for reinforcements."
"Is there any support? I remember those tech priests in Castel, their expertise in the supernatural is rather average."
"It's okay, I contacted the other side. Oh, I've arrived."
Gwen turned around upon hearing this and saw a slightly weathered-looking middle-aged man walking over.
“Alas! Patriarch Ignatius!”
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
