Chapter 123: Idealist’s Club
“I hit him with a big hammer.” The Overseer swung his arm down until some imagined target stopped it, appearing to relish the memory of squishing a man. “I was something called an Overstrength Knight back then. The only one I ever heard of, too. The fool tried to block my best shot, knowing that. Made a good sound when he broke. There’s a song about it I’m fond of.”
“Neat. Can I see your hammer?” Riv had fully lost track of the conversation’s initial purpose now. Elisa sent Marco a let him talk look, and he refrained from breaking in when Riv pulled out his club. “I have this one, but once I finish absorbing what it can do, I need ideas on what to do next.”
The king held out his hand and touched the club, then raised his eyebrows. “That’s a neat little skill. You don’t see them inside weapons very often. Sure, you can see it. Hell, you can have it if you want. Not like it’s doing any good up on a wall. Let me get this talk done first, though.”
Riv stiffened up a little bit as he came back down to the ground from the excitement of the clubbing people to death talk. Elisa shook her head at him, letting him know it wasn’t a big deal.
“Point is, I took the temple from him. After that, I could have kept on going, but there were people starving on this island. This wasn’t the safest place back then, and I decided to stay a little bit to make sure they did all right. Pretty soon, it was a permanent thing. I got stuck. Didn’t hurt anyone, really. Not even me. I’ve had a good run.”
“But now something’s changing.”
“Two things. I’m dying. The system doesn’t do much about old age, you see. You get to it, generally, but you can’t beat it. I’m coming up on ninety-eight years of life, if you believe that. That’s about enough for anyone. If I die and nobody has claimed this temple, it and every other temple I have become an up-for-grabs affair. This wasn’t an inner sea when I found it, you see. I don’t think I’d like to see it backslide.”
“You made it an inner sea?”
“I helped. Drove off the worst of the pirates, killed the biggest monsters. Pacified it a bit to help the people. Sooner or later, I got a notification that I was the ruler of an established, reasonably safe territory.”
“Can they really revert?” Elisa asked. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Don’t know, don’t want to find out.” The old man took another swig from his water. “The second issue is that while I don’t know what those temples are really for any better than you do, I’ve found out what they aren’t for in some ways. I have… oh, I don’t know. Several of the things are under my control; I lost count at some point. I figured there was a chance I was fulfilling the plan for the buildings when I settled here. Recently, though, the system has been telling me I’m wrong.”
“Oh?”
“In no unclear terms. I had my scribes write this out for you once I found out from the system that you were on your way.”
| Temple Stagnation Event You have been in control of several temples for a long period of time without further increasing your temple-controlled territory. While the system does not control the specifics of the temples’ objection to this act, it can see and understand some of the coming backlash. The power of the temples is increasingly running wild within your territories. For many years, the consequences of this would have been difficult to discern; however, they are now becoming increasingly apparent. Taking the form of various irregularities in the weather, the behavior of the sea and earth, and the overall normality of the beast population in your territory, these effects are either running amok or are prepared to do so at any time. Please venture into uncontrolled territory and seize an additional temple to restore stability to your territories.
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