The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

After nightfall, the checkpoints set up in the Newski Mountains in the New Porto area are much more lively than during the day. People who went into the forest to hunt monsters and beasts during the day also returned to the checkpoints one after another. Most of them had more or less bodies. Most of them were injured, and some even missed and stayed in the forest forever.

Although the surrounding monsters will be cleared regularly in the Xinbodo area to reduce the danger of monster attacks in the entire area, after each cleanup, there will still be some monsters that will continue to hide in the cleared area, unless the monster's activity area is in Xinbodo Otherwise, these monsters that have not been completely cleared will be handed over to hunters and mercenaries.

These monsters were able to avoid the clearing operations of the army in the new wave area, and some even escaped after fighting with the army and the special department in the area of ​​new wave area, all of which proved their own strength, and different from other monsters, they were more intelligent , and even some monsters mutated by extraordinary people are hidden in it. For example, the monsters entrenched in the forest around this checkpoint are likely to be monsters mutated by extraordinary people or family members.

To ordinary people, monsters are just monsters, and no matter what a monster was before, it is now just one thing, and that is a monster.

But for hunters, mercenaries, and those official departments formed specifically to clear monsters, the monsters that appeared after the Fog Disaster Year are actually divided into many types, and most people are used to dividing them according to ethnic groups, such as beasts, extraordinary creatures and There are three types of monsters transformed by humans.

More than ninety-nine percent of the monsters in these three categories are beast monsters, because the reproductive power of beasts has doubled after the mist disaster, which caused the explosive growth of the beast population, and the number of mutated monsters also increased rapidly. Even if the human civilized society tries its best to hunt and kill these wild beasts and monsters, and even hunts down the herds of beasts that have not mutated from the root, it still cannot stop the growth of wild beasts and monsters.

If someone can make a complete distribution map of monsters, they will find that whether it is the Velen Continent, the Mosang Continent, or even the Minsk Continent, the cities and towns in those civilized countries have all been surrounded by beasts and monsters. It is no exaggeration that the world after the year belongs to the world of beasts and monsters.

If it weren't for these wild beasts and monsters who prefer to devour other beasts and monsters according to their instincts to strengthen their own strength, perhaps the entire civilized world now except for a few core city-states, other areas may have been swallowed by the endless tide of wild beasts and monsters.

Although the number of beasts and monsters is so large and terrifying, for human society, there is no need to worry about these beasts and monsters for the time being, and it is only necessary to deal with the tide of monsters and beasts that will occur every once in a while.

What really poses a huge threat to human civilization are those extraordinary creatures and monsters mutated by humans. Most of these monsters still retain the wisdom before the mutation, and even become smarter. They don't behave like those wild beasts and monsters. There are also traces of the animal nature and attack methods in the past. Their behavior and thoughts are disordered and chaotic, their attack methods are not fixed, and they even know how to avoid danger.

These monsters don't like to devour other monsters. They prefer to devour humans. It seems that they can extract useful things from human bodies, so even if these monsters account for less than one percent of the monster group in the entire world, they The threat to human society is also far greater than those wild beasts and monsters.

Among these two types of monsters, the number of monsters mutated by extraordinary creatures is relatively small, and most of them like to occupy a fixed habitat and activity area. No danger will be encountered.

But the monsters mutated by humans are not the case. Some of them even disguise themselves as normal humans and sneak into human society, silently hunting the ordinary humans around them.

The camouflage ability of these monsters is very strong, before they start attacking the surrounding humans, they have almost no danger of being exposed, and among these mutant human monsters, those mutant family members are the most difficult to expose.

Because these mutant family members can not only perfectly transform between monsters and human forms, but can even disguise themselves as priests through their own power, and they also retain most of the wisdom, memory and even behavior of human beings. Society gets married, starts a family, and more.

For example, the primary hunting task on the bulletin board of the checkpoint in the deep mountain is to hunt and kill a monster hiding in human society and disguised as a priest. This monster has a strong latent ability and can avoid the special department of the Bodo government after being discovered. He chased and killed him all the way, and fled into the deep mountains to hide, which undoubtedly shows the strength of this monster.

The bounty on this monster has increased several times in recent months, making it one of the monsters with the highest bounties in the New Porto area, and the content of the bounty has also changed from hunting to capturing alive, and even the latest content Changed to only need to provide the correct location of the monster, you can get this bounty.

Attracted by the huge bounty, a large number of hunters and mercenaries came to this checkpoint in the deep mountains, looking for the whereabouts of the monster in the deep mountains every day.

It's just that these hunters and mercenaries searched for many days, but they couldn't find any traces of the monster's existence, so some people wondered if the monster was in the deep mountain forest area.

Facing the questions from the hunters and mercenaries, the Xinbodo area gave a very positive answer, saying that the monster was still in that area, but did not explain why the monster did not escape to other areas.

If it was just the news released by the New Bodo government, the hunters and mercenaries would not be completely convinced, but then the Church of the Lord of the Sky sent their holy warriors, senior priests and temple guards to the checkpoints, entering every day. Searching for the whereabouts of the monster in the forest, they completely believed that the monster was still hiding in this area.

The reason why the Church of the Lord of the Sky is so concerned about this monster, even at the expense of agreeing to some demands of the Dodd Group, and to get people to go into the mountains to hunt down the monster, is entirely because the monster pretends to be a senior priest of the Church of the Lord of the Sky , and not just ordinary missionary priests, but also the kind of priests who can cast the magic spells of the Lord of the Sky Church.

If it hadn't happened to fall into a trap set by a special department when it was preying on humans, it might still be perfectly disguised as a priest and be admired by everyone.

A priest who can cast gods and gods turned out to be mutated from a man-eating monster. This incident dealt a very heavy blow to the reputation of the entire Church of the Lord of the Sky. Although this did not shake the foundation of the Church of the Lord of the Sky, it still The follow-up impact is very far-reaching. If this matter is not resolved in time, sooner or later, there will be cracks in the sky lord's tower of faith.

This is because this incident has caused the public to have extreme distrust of the Son of the Sky Order, one of the core strengths of the Church of the Lord of the Sky, and many people even think that the family members of the Lord of the Sky are all cannibals. monster.

Before the Year of Fog Disaster, almost all the family members were no different from monsters in the eyes of ordinary people and even some secret forces, but with the gradual return of gods and the rapid mutation after the Year of Fog Disaster, people also began to Learn more about the special group of Familia, and be able to distinguish it from monsters.

Compared with those unowned family members who are still regarded as monsters, those family members who believe in the existence of gods are in a completely different position. Most of them are regarded as children of God by ordinary people, and the church also recognizes their status, even They have been given the right to match their identities, and even the rights of some churches have been transferred to these children of gods, such as the Church of the Sea God, the Church of the Lord of the Sky, and so on.

This is not because the top leaders of these churches are willing to let go of their rights and hand them over to others, but with the return of the gods, the power of these gods' families is increasing rapidly every day, and they can even directly obtain incomparable power from the gods. A clear oracle, no matter how powerful the top church leaders are, when faced with the pressure of the gods, their strength will all be invisible.

Although this incident of pretending to be a priest can hit the prestige of the children of God in the church, those senior clergy who have their rights divided in the Church of the Lord of the Sky will be very happy, but the premise is that this blow cannot spread to the entire Church of the Lord of the Sky, No matter how much they fight for power and profit, they are very clear about where their roots lie.

Therefore, the incident of the monster pretending to be a priest within the Church of the Lord of the Sky is also extremely unified, and all the sects in the church have cooperated with each other. Soldiers and 18 temple guards, such a strong lineup is very rare. Some people joked that if such a lineup cooperates with the followers of the Lord of the Sky, it can even launch a large-scale religious war.

Originally, everyone thought that with such a strong lineup, the monster would be hunted down quickly, but the result was completely beyond everyone's expectations. The elite team of the Sky Lord Church had been staying in the mountain for dozens of days. , but never completed the task, and even lost three temple guards.

Although the people in the church did not say how they lost the three temple guards, but from what they said and did, it is not difficult to guess that they should have encountered their own target. A templar died at the hands of the target.

Although the soldiers at the checkpoint are not allowed to drink, there is a tavern specially prepared for hunters and mercenaries inside the checkpoint. At night, the hunters and mercenaries who return to the camp will gather in the tavern to exchange information obtained during the day. Or replenish the lost manpower and form a new team. In addition, some people will teach the harvest during the day with the businessmen who have stayed here for a long time, and so on.

Most of the hunters and mercenaries here are ordinary people who have received combat training. If people like them encountered monsters in the past, they would have only a dead end, but with the weapons developed by the Dodd Group against various monsters Equipment, so that these ordinary people have a fight after encountering monsters.

Normally, these hunters and mercenaries would not dare to behave rudely to the people of the church, but after the hunting team sent by the church suffered a lot, they were very embarrassed every time they returned to the camp, which made these people who were already dying The hunters and mercenaries who ignored it also gradually lost their respect for the church. Under the influence of alcohol, they even dared to blatantly mock some of the church's embarrassing things.

After the fire dancer caravan set up camp, Leo followed some merchants of the caravan to the tavern at the checkpoint. The merchants of the caravan did not come here to drink, they mainly wanted to see if there was any Opportunity to buy a batch of hunting from the hunters and mercenaries here, as for Leo, he wants to collect useful information from the conversations between these hunters and mercenaries.

Not long after entering the tavern, the merchants of the caravan have already completed several transactions, which can be said to be very rewarding. As for Leo, he also collected a lot of information, such as the composition and classification of monsters, such as a team of sky warriors. The reason why the elite of the bishop's church is stationed here and so on.

Although these materials can be said to be public low-level data, for Leo, the data he needs to collect most now are these low-level data, and what he lacks the most is these low-level data, because with the changes in the world, the development of human society The way of life has also completely changed, and analyzing things based on the previous data, I am afraid that there will be very big fallacies, so he needs to rebuild the data database from the bottom.

In order to be able to collect information completely, Leo will naturally say some guiding words at certain times, so that those hunters and mercenaries who are slightly drunk can say more useful content, such as the one who can cast the magic of the sky lord monster.

Leo could understand why the bounty for monsters would change from killing to capturing, because he was also curious about why this monster could perform magic.

However, as bystanders with special emotions, the clergy of the Lord of the Sky who also came to the tavern to relax had other ideas after hearing Leo's conversation with those hunters and mercenaries. The type of words was deliberately aimed at them, trying to humiliate them and mock their incompetence through the drunken words of those hunters and mercenaries.

Originally, this operation had gained nothing and lost manpower, which made these clergymen extremely depressed and depressed. In addition, the look of contempt and contempt shown by hunters and mercenaries intentionally or unintentionally during this period of time made their mood even worse. Oops.

However, Leo's deliberate guiding question now seems to have hit their most painful vital part, causing the two holy warriors with the worst temper among these clergy to stand up at the same time and walk towards Leo. The other clergy didn't intend to stop them either, and they seemed to want to use Leo as a model to teach other disrespectful people.