I will be crowned king

Cold, tired, weak, confused.

That's what Philby, the tavern owner, felt now.

This feeling is almost exactly the same as when I came to the colony many years ago, after I was thrown into the sea by the captain for stowaway; it was an endless abyss and bone-deep ice; you stared at the light above your head, but you could only watch. It gets further and further away from itself, falling into darkness.

In the end, even consciousness was swallowed up, blurred, dim, and dissipated.

That guy... the bastard who calls himself 'Fabian'... smells like a Guardsman... he poured himself some weird... decoction... which made him sleepy to death... but... he couldn't sleep...

This feeling is simply more painful than being whipped or being splashed with hot water in the ice and snow.

The other party didn't even need to make a move... With his extremely clear mind and inextricable sleepiness, combined with the claustrophobic and narrow environment of the interrogation room, he only needed ten minutes of silence to be driven crazy.

"are you asleep?"

There was a sudden sound in the darkness, and Philby, who was gasping softly, was shaken. His bloodshot eyes on his pale face suddenly widened. The eyeballs were so protruding that it always made people feel like they would fall out in the next second.

"It's you?!"

He stared intently at Anson Bach, who was sitting in front of him. His weak and hoarse voice could not conceal the surprise and anger in his tone.

"it's me."

Sitting on a chair with a glass of rum, Anson smoked his pipe leisurely and said while looking up and down at Philby who was tied to the chair with chains like a rice dumpling.

"What do you want to do?!" Philby's tone became alarmed again.

"What you're saying...is a very strange question."

Anson put down his pipe and said lightly with some surprise: "What do you mean I want to do? Isn't it you who killed the soldiers and caused a commotion that made me almost want to bombard the port and blockade the whole city?"

"But I've said everything I can say..." Philby said weakly:

"We did it all... It was just an accident... Just a moment of excitement... A mistake... We didn't want to be your enemy... It's just... just one..."

"Accident?" Anson looked at him coldly:

"I do not think so."

Philby opened his eyes weakly, and his parted lips trembled slightly.

"A group of talented people who have awakened the power of blood... If you were in the mainland, you could easily get a stable job or even a title; but you just show up in the colony and become ordinary immigrants."

"It's not going to be easy for us..."

"Yes, because you are a group of traitors and rebels." Anson interrupted directly:

"The empire has a very high tolerance for talented people who have awakened to the power of blood. Even killing people on the street will be forgiven. There is almost no law that can convict knights - except for treason."

Philby's eyes narrowed.

Regarding his defection from the empire, he did not reveal a word to Fabian. In this case, the other party could only be from...

"The one your friend told me was the one who was hiding in the corner of the tavern at that time." Anson played with the wine glass in his hand:

"Remember his name is..."

"Sev...er..."

Philby gritted his teeth, almost word by word falling out from between his teeth.

"Don't blame him, he had no choice but to tell us." Anson did not forget to comfort the other party:

"I think you should be able to guess... From the time you were captured here to now, you two have no chance to collude in confession, and we here can use continuous interrogation to get information from each of your mouths, and then lie to each other. This is not... difficulty."

Anson, who was smoking a pipe, put down the wine glass in his hand, took out a notebook from his arms, and opened it gently in front of the other party. On it were the two confessions recorded by the little clerk during the interrogation of Fabian and Karl:

[The Faithless Knights, an underground group composed of native defectors. Most of the members are talented people who have awakened the power of blood. They firmly believe that the belief in the Ring of Order is just a lie fabricated by the church. They have sympathy for the natives of the New World. Their main economic The sources are small industries, personal guards, mercenaries...]

Philby looked ashen.

Anson observed his expression quietly and took a sip of rum, not in any hurry.

Karl and Fabian have already done what they need to say and do; all they need to do is wait for the other party's will to completely collapse and cry for mercy, for example...

"What do you want?"

Philby repeated the question again, but he lost his confidence.

Pushing away the diary and leaning on the table with his elbows, Anson came up to him and said with great sincerity:

"I want to help you."

"Help us?!"

"I think the Faithless Knights are a very good organization, especially in terms of supporting the weak; and although you no longer believe in the Ring of Order, as gifted people, I still want to believe that you are not the kind of extreme thinkers and doers. Extreme clique.”

In order to make the other party feel his sincerity, Anson deliberately spoke very slowly so that the other party could hear every word he said in detail:

"Seeing that you did not plan it deliberately and paid the price, I can let this incident go by the wayside and even give you the legal status to act openly in the colony."

Um? !

Philby looked as if he thought he was hearing something.

But he knows better that the other party cannot release goodwill for no reason:

"Then...what's the price?"

"I want to know how many organizations like yours there are in Beluga Harbor and who are the sponsors behind you." Anson was quite candid.

It is impossible for any group to be without financial resources, and for an organization that is mainly composed of talented people, it is impossible to maintain a "Knights" by relying solely on businesses such as taverns and mercenaries with unstable incomes.

Therefore, Anson is very sure that there must be a sponsor behind the other party as their main source of income, in exchange for the "services" they provide at important moments.

Trying his best to open his bloodshot eyes, Philby's expression looked a little complicated:

"Sponsors... you even know who we are, there's no way you don't know their names."

"Yes, I know." Anson didn't hide anything:

"But I still want you to tell me yourself."

"Of course, if you find it difficult to ask a question, you can tell me another one first - don't deny it, because I can find out this one too."

"If you are not even willing to say this...then I must also regret to tell you that in less than three months, Bishop Riper and his Alliance of Promise Keepers will kill all the indigenous people in the city, and the entire White Whale The city of Hong Kong turned into a sea of ​​fire."

"Within four months, half of the people in Ice Dragon Fjord Colony will die violently, and a quarter of the towns and farms will be burned to the ground."

Anson spoke calmly, as if he was narrating a story that was far away from him.

"Why did you do this..." Philby was about to ask, but then he realized that he had been fooled.

"I didn't do anything - even if I didn't intervene, Bishop Riper would still form the Faith Keepers Alliance and behave even more extreme than now; not to mention that even to maintain superficial stability, it is necessary to support the faith of the Ring of Order."

"Don't forget, Ice Dragon Fjord is a colony of the Clovis Kingdom. I am the garrison commander appointed by the Royal Army. As commander, my task is not only to maintain the security and stability of the colony."

Anson's expression gradually turned cold: "If you are willing to cooperate, I can also think of ways to protect 'heretics' like you, but if you are not willing, well..."

"If half of the colony must be killed in order to keep the Clovis King's flag flying over the Ice Dragon Fjord... I think the mainland will not refuse - you will not send an infantry division to the mainland just because of the mainland. The colonies are just to be wary of the empire, right?”

Philby's pupils trembled.

"Are you... threatening?"

"Blackmail? No, no, no... you misunderstood." Anson showed a kind smile again:

"No matter which outcome is the same for the mainland, the royal family of Osteria and the Privy Council don't care about the life or death of the colony; they only care about whether the wood, coal, ore and seafood shipped to the mainland every year can grow steadily."

"If the riots in Beluga Harbor eventually get out of hand, then I must find a way to make up for the shortfall caused by the turmoil; if the conflicts can be eased even slightly within a controllable range, there will still be room for negotiation."

"In order to maintain the unity of the colony, the League of Promise Keepers must exist; in order to ensure that the fanatic believers will not kill all the natives and pagans in the colony, a more suitable enemy must be found for them, and the remaining ones must be turned into 'can Tolerated friends'...get it?"

At this point, Anson is basically showing off his cards to the opponent.

Philby's expression was pained.

The "awakening potion" that Fabian fed him was very effective. Even though he had just experienced twenty-seven hours of non-stop high-intensity interrogation, and was extremely exhausted both physically and mentally, he still could not fall into a deep sleep.

Of course, that potion was actually obtained by Fabian from a kind-hearted lady in the name of "serving Commander Anson Bach"... But he had to know this.

What pained Philby the most was that he had to betray certain people.

The Faithless Knights... was originally a self-deprecating name for these "imperial traitors" who abandoned their family and beliefs and longed for a new beginning in the colony, hoping that this would be a lawless land that would not be restricted.

Their dream came true... only at first, of course.

The beliefs of the indigenous people in the New World are very confusing, but they are not very exclusive of outsiders. To a certain extent, they even welcome the colonists of Beluga Port and bring them novel civilizations and commodities. The exchanges between the two sides are very harmonious.

Only in the beginning.

So these "traitors" who abandoned their faith began to call themselves the Faithless Knights, working for both sides at the same time; they would not only protect the safety of the colony, but also be willing to serve the indigenous employers - even if they knew that the other party was 100% someone Followers of the evil god.

This goes on for so long that they feel like it could go on forever.

Of course, they are not completely unable to feel the smell of gunpowder in the air... The expansion of the colony and the act of catching slaves will inevitably anger the indigenous people, and the colonists cannot tolerate so many aliens who believe in evil gods around them.

After all, there are Old Gods even among the colonists, but they are an absolute minority compared to the huge number of believers in the Ring of Order; and in order to maintain unity in a strange environment, even those who were not very pious before will become fanatical.

Despite this, Philby is still working hard for peaceful coexistence between the two sides, and the tavern on Teapot Street is one of them; although it is only a small place, it allows both the discriminated indigenous people and the new immigrants to have a place. Find a temporary shelter in the coldest winter.

Unfortunately there was only so much he could do.

"There is an internal belief group among the indigenous people in Beluga Harbor. They have a rather extreme concept. They believe that the towns and farms in Beluga Harbor and Ice Dragon Fjord are cities built on the corpses of the indigenous...their compatriots. "

"They regard the colonists as blood-sucking parasites, and Beluga Harbor is a wound that has been forcibly opened, and the wealth that belongs to them is continuously drawn from their hands like blood."

"If we, the colonists from across the sea, are not killed, the entire new world will turn into a huge corpse, and we...will build a kingdom of death on the corpse."

Philby spoke softly and tried his best to open his eyes, which were already in pain.

"Well, it is indeed a very extreme concept and completely unrealistic - especially it ignores the contribution of the colonists to the economic development of the New World." Anson took a sip of rum and said:

"Any more?"

"Although they are a religious group, their beliefs are quite divided. They believe in three evil gods at the same time; haha... just like our Old God Sect." Philby, who had a splitting headache, raised the corners of his mouth, and the smile he tried to maintain looked ferocious. Incomparable:

"The number of people in this organization is not very large, but it is widely distributed, including almost all the farms in the port and surrounding areas. It is extremely united, very wary of the outside world, especially us colonists, and does not fully trust its own people."

"If they encounter an accident, such as being caught by the enemy, they will take every opportunity to commit suicide, and they will definitely smash their own heads... because they believe that their souls reside in their heads."

Anson raised his eyes: "Just like what you did that time?"

"Which time?" Philby was startled.

"nothing!"

Anson immediately stopped talking, pushed the wine glass in front of him, picked up the confession on the table, stood up and left: "The interrogation is over - tell Fabian that from now on, except not being able to leave, let him meet all your needs. !”

"Everything...but I haven't told you who our sponsor is..."

"No need!"

A guy who can afford to build an armed organization composed mainly of talented people in Beluga Harbor, and who can be so secretive that no one knows about it...

Besides the Wetzler family, the richest man in the area, could there be a second one?