"Maybe, maybe Pastor Rockefeller just had something urgent."
Torren was still trying to find excuses on his behalf, but it wasn't long before he caved under Mickey's teasing gaze.
"Fi-fine! I'll buy you a couple drinks at the bar."
Once they arrived at the tavern and ordered two glasses of cheap liquor, Torren and Mickey sat quietly to one side, savoring a taste that was usually far beyond their reach. For men like them, even the enjoyment of cheap alcohol was something of a luxury.
The bar was plainly one of the places where information gathered the fastest and in the greatest quantity. From amid the noisy surroundings around them, a steady stream of news filtered into Torren's ears.
"All the wizards are done for — Shiewicks, Arundel, and even the Spire City. There are campaigns to purge the wizards everywhere."
A burly red-nosed man dressed in obvious mercenary attire let out a belch so loud that it seemed to shake loose specks of dust from the tavern's ceiling.
"Hey, Red Nose! You just got back from outside, right? Got any fresh news for us?"
There was never a shortage of the curious wherever one went. A skinny man nearby immediately snapped his fingers, and the bartender understandingly placed a full pint of honey mead in front of the red-nosed mercenary.
"Heh heh… when it comes to the accuracy of information, who around here can compare with me? Red Nose's reputation isn't something to joke about."
The mercenary grumbled for a moment before finally getting to the topic the listeners wanted most to hear about.
"Out there right now, it's an absolute mess. Every church is pulling back, and the royal army is the same. The places that have lost their enforcers have descended into total chaos, and the witch hunts against wizards are the most violent of all."
"Those high-and-mighty wizards — once they lose their spells, they're just like the rest of us common folk. Even weaker, maybe."
Red Nose drained the entire pint in one go, his whole face flushing scarlet.
"Just think — all you have to do is take out a trembling old man, and you get everything he has. Beautiful slave women, fertile land, huge gemstones, and shiny gold coins. The citizens have all gone mad, and even the nobles have started tearing off the mask to go after the wizards directly."
Those who wield power inevitably control authority, and those who control authority then amass even greater resources — breeding the envy and hatred of others.
That was exactly how the wizards were.
Wielding the power of magic, they were above everyone else no matter where they went, enjoying the finest treatment. But now, with the
Having lost their power, they were like plump, well-fattened sheep, drawing the covetous gazes of the greedy.
And even among the most reputation-conscious wizards, who didn't have a few relatives and servants hanging around them? They had almost inevitably used their usual privileges to bully the farmers and freemen in the neighborhood, so the moment someone with ulterior motives stirred the pot, it erupted into a full-blown riot — a grand feast of destruction and plunder.
Once they confirmed that the wizards were utterly powerless to resist, the nobles moved fastest of all!
Inciting the populace against the wizards was only the first step. The mob would at most make off with some liquid assets; the most valuable lands and buildings would ultimately end up in noble hands anyway.
They could even deploy troops afterward to "suppress" the riot and collect all the wealth the mob had seized right back into their own coffers — almost effortlessly.
Such an enormously profitable scheme was something the nobles, polished gentlemen on the surface and rotton to the core beneath, had long since mastered.
In the blink of an eye, the transfer of power was complete. The wizards, stripped of all strength, had no right even to resist — they could only weep as their families were seized, their wealth plundered, and their very lives snuffed out, all while enduring horrific tortures before death.
"Hey! Red Nose, are you absolutely sure those wizards don't have any power left?"
A hulking man in a black coat, a scar running across his face, rose to his feet. Standing a full two heads taller than an ordinary person, he radiated a menacing presence.
"Of course I'm sure — I got a late start myself, otherwise I could've grabbed some gems too, even a few of those luscious women. Those wizards are all rolling in it."
Red Nose thumped his chest in assurance.
"Then what the hell are we waiting for?"
The big man in black let out a savage roar: "Isn't there still a Lord Hoffmann out on the edge of town?"
A bone-chilling gust of wind swept through, making Torrin shudder.
Then — he found himself standing in the mansion of the only wizard in town, Hoffmann, with no memory of how he had gotten there. All around him rang the cacophony of cursing and the crashing of things being smashed.
He looked up in a daze and realized he was clutching a sharpened wooden stake, its tip flecked with dried blood.
Several points of pain throbbed across his body. At some point he had picked up a few injuries, though mercifully they were nothing more than scrapes.
His drunken head was still spinning. With a little effort to recall, Torrin remembered exactly what he had done.
The people in the bar, spurred on by the dual intoxicants of alcohol and the promise of wealth, had gone completely feral — transformed into a mob of brutes.
Led by the big man and Red Nose, they had marched straight to Lord Hoffmann's estate on the outskirts of town, smashed their way in, and launched into the revelry of pillage.
"Ugh"
Looking at the weapon in his hands, then down at the corpse already lying at his feet, Torrin could take it no longer. He dropped to his knees and vomited, weeping uncontrollably.
"God, what have I done?"
He sobbed, gazing at the feasting mob around him, at the torches that had already been set ablaze.
This sort of behavior stood in stark contrast to the faith of his Suffering God, making him feel as though some kind of demon had taken up residence inside his own body!
"Take a look, everyone!"
At that moment, amid the war cries of the thugs, Redbeard emerged draped in garlands of gaudy silk, and hurled a white-haired old man out into the open.
The old man's twig-like arms were clasped over his head as his body shook violently. It took Torrin considerable effort to recognize the man's true identity — it was none other than the once-unassailable Mage Hoffmann!
"This old codger not only goaded the lord into building him a mage tower, but helped himself to our wealth and our people — and look!"
Red Nose pointed toward the granary that had been pried open, its interior packed to the brim with wheat, filling the air with the fragrance of grain.
"While we've been starving, this old dog has been hoarding all this wealth and food through nothing but cruel exploitation!"
In any era of scarcity, the one person who hogged a massive share of resources for himself was the one the mob despised most.
And as Red Nose continued his speech, more and more eyes in the crowd began turning red with fury. Even Torrin recalled the time Hoffmann's steward had kicked him and extorted the last few decent planks of lumber from his home — and a surge of rage shot straight to his head.
"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"
The mob roared, each cry swelling louder than the last.
Just then, old Hoffmann seemed to spot something. He scrambled desperately toward a boy's corpse and collapsed over it, wailing.
But this deathbed lament was no longer capable of snapping the rioters out of their bloodlust.
Torrin's head had cleared for a brief moment after being shaken by the old man's crying, but then he caught sight of Mitchy.
The man was crawling out from under a makeshift tent fashioned from a tablecloth, hitching up his belt as he went, and he shot Torrin a knowing look that every man understood.
"That's a noble lady in there! Don't you want to take a turn?"
In an instant, a certain memory surfaced in Torrin's mind — the time he had been summoned to repair furniture for the great Mage Hoffmann, and there, wearing a white dress, beautiful and noble, like an angel descended to earth, stood a young noblewoman.
Of course, that repair had been completely free, and the look of utter disgust the girl wore upon seeing something so filthy had wounded Torrin to his core, leaving him in a gloomy slump for quite some time.
As though the demons found the torment insufficient, a pair of calves as white as jade slipped out from inside the tent, tracing elegant curves, while the purple daffodil juice on those painted nails tormented Torrin's very brain, drawing from his throat a guttural, beast-like growl as he lunged forward.
The fall of the Goddess of the Weave was merely a catalyst. What truly mattered was the destruction of the Weave itself.
With the Weave's support gone, not only had every mage been rendered utterly useless, but other deities too had lost their convenient inner-Weave passages. The sudden surge in divine power consumption left them no choice but to abandon the faiths on their fringes, and they began to pull back.
The resulting collapse of public order, combined with the wave of mage-robbing that swept the land, fed into a terrifying vicious cycle.
The governance of the gods' world had always been rather threadbare, relying on temples to fulfill part of that function. And once the twin checks of faith and secular authority evaporated, the destructive power unleashed by the mob was truly horrifying.
Mages stripped of their magical abilities were like guns without bullets. Aside from the fortunate few who had stockpiled ample spell scrolls and magic items, and the legendary mages who could operate independently of the Weave, every other mage endured a round of horrific plundering.
The people's long-suppressed fury, fanned by the nobility's deliberate machinations, erupted all at once.
And the nobles quietly laughed and cheered behind the scenes, raising their glasses to celebrate yet another harvest.
By the time the riots had largely run their course, the rioters had either been crushed or were still wallowing in wretched poverty.
The lion's share of the spoils, however, had been divided up among the nobility — nearly every noble with real power had grown fat from this feast of power.
It was at this very moment that a great plague, without the slightest warning, began to sweep across the entire Material World.
Lamentation and death instantly became the world's only refrain.
Some said it was a scheme hatched by the Plague Goddess, others that it was the curse of all those dead mages. But the one undeniable truth was this: as the plague continued to spread unchecked, the population of the entire Material World was plummeting.