Chapter 288 : Chapter 288
Chapter 288. Edicts
Fulan’s second line of thought for handling a territory was to use the knowledge of the Law School.
As for this school that Elan had once belonged to, Fulan had directly studied its related knowledge whenever she had free time.
Regarding this Law School, how should she put it? This school was somewhat different from what Fulan had first imagined.
In her most basic understanding, the Law School should have been full of impressive things like “forbid action,” “die immediately,” and “stop time.” But after coming into contact with it, Fulan discovered that it was actually quite down-to-earth.
“All mages studying the spells of the Law School must take note: the effects of all edicts change according to the environment, and not all edicts are applicable in every environment.”
This was the first sentence of a basic study book on the Law School that Fulan had found. At first, she had not cared about it, but after reading the later content, she realized that this sentence was far too correct.
The Law School did indeed have those high-class spells Fulan had imagined, but they all required a high tier to use, and they had to be released under specific circumstances.
In the Law School, the “law” in “edict” referred to laws, while the “edict” referred to spells created by mages based on those laws.
However, spells created based on laws absolutely did not mean that whatever was written in the Alliance’s legal articles would become the effect of an edict.
If that were really possible, the Law School would have long since become the Alliance’s number-one school.
The “laws” that edicts relied on referred to matters recognized by everyone in a particular region.
Even if a rule had been written into legal articles, as long as that matter had not gained recognition, the edict would have no effect at all.
For example, the Law School had two very basic edicts. One was the Mutual Harm Edict, and the other was the Sanctuary Edict.
The effect of the Mutual Harm Edict was that after it was released, it increased all attack damage dealt by oneself and the other party.
However, this edict could be released whenever you decided to release it.
This was a very typical damage-amplifying skill. Its effect depended on both sides’ intent to attack others, as well as the attitude of the people in the current region toward mutual conflict.
The Sanctuary Edict reversed the previous effect. It reduced all attack damage dealt by both sides. This edict could also be released whenever you decided to release it.
Its effect depended on your and your opponent’s willingness to attack, as well as the people’s attitude toward conflict.
In the current region, if it was a place like the Alliance, where “every mage must not fight one another” was written into the regulations and enforced quite well, then the Sanctuary Edict’s effect would be extremely powerful.
Even if the other party wanted to kill you like a madman, most of the damage that landed on you would be negated.
And if the Mutual Harm Edict was activated within the Alliance, its effect would basically be equivalent to nothing.
But in an extremely chaotic region, such as a trial site in the Spirit Realm, everyone there regarded the other party as an enemy.
In that kind of place, the Mutual Harm Edict would be extremely powerful. A technique that could normally only leave a small wound might directly injure the other party severely there.
Meanwhile, the Sanctuary Edict would have no real effect in that place. Activating it would be the same as not activating it at all.
This was the spell mechanism of the Law School. All their later spells were designed according to this line of thought.
Then, was this of any help to Fulan’s desire to obtain territorial blessing? Yes. In a paper written by a mage of the Law School, there was such a sentence.
“Perhaps the so-called edicts of the Law School are actually the same kind of thing as territorial blessing. It is just that territorial blessing is more concrete, reaching the body of an individual, while edicts are comparatively abstract, taking a group as their target.”
“But I have not found the point that connects them, because no matter how I tried, I could not mobilize territorial blessing.”
“Among the experiments I wrote down, there were quite a few cases where I almost sensed territorial blessing. I was simply always a little short.”
Fulan carefully read that mage’s experiments. Her final line of thought came from this paper.
In truth, after that mage used the knowledge of the Law School, there had been many times when he had nearly stirred territorial blessing. However, he had never known what exactly he was lacking.
For example, this mage had used a spell called 【Self-Establishing Edict】. Its effect was to create a rule in a region. When someone recognized it, the corresponding effect would be produced.
Originally, after this mage had roughly established several rules, he had almost obtained the territory’s acknowledgment.
But at that point, he had done something that seemed very normal to other mages, yet did not seem very normal to Fulan.
That was, he made the rules he established look very correct, but in practice, they had almost no feasibility.
For example, he demanded that all people must not privately seize objects from one another. This sounded very good, but he had completely ignored, or had simply been unable to define, the boundary of “seizing.”
Some cunning people deliberately touched the other party’s hand with an item, then directly stuffed the item into the other party’s possession in order to falsely accuse them of “seizing” their belongings.
Originally, when that mage saw the rule’s spiritual light being triggered, he did not take it seriously and directly punished that villager according to robbery.
Only later did he discover this point, then urgently modified this rule. But after this incident, no matter how he modified it, those troublesome subjects thought of every possible way to exploit loopholes, causing him to never again have a chance to touch territorial blessing.
After struggling against these unruly people for half a year, this mage eventually gave up on the experiment and concluded that it was simply a dead end.
But in Fulan’s view, it had provided her with a very good line of thought: using the spell 【Self-Establishing Edict】 to obtain territorial blessing.
That mage had failed in this matter because he had absolutely no experience governing so many people, so he believed it was completely impossible.
But Fulan had some experience from her previous life and could see the mistake that mage had made during the experiment.
That was, his definitions had been too broad, and the legal provisions he defined had almost no feasibility.
Territories with only a few hundred people did not need any extremely complicated legal articles at all.
They only needed a set of rules that could allow them to survive in the current environment and handle the conflicts between everyone in the current territory.
That mage had made precisely this mistake. He had inserted his own perspective into the matter and revised the legal articles he believed were correct.
This did not solve the subjects’ survival problems or the disputes within the territory.
As for Fulan, perhaps she could try using this method. Perhaps it might succeed.
However, before considering the establishment of a complete system, she first had to make those people listen to her, whether because of force or for some other reason.
But Fulan still had the task entrusted to her by the Lord of Radiance, so she decided she might as well resolve them together.
---
Among the three villages in Snow Bear Territory that Fulan had taken from the lord, there was one person who felt extremely uneasy about the recent events.
Brian picked up a cup from a table inside his simple house, only to discover that there were already a small number of ice fragments inside the cup.
Only then did he suddenly realize that he had just been distracted and had forgotten to add firewood to the furnace.
He hurriedly walked to the side of the furnace, opened the separating grate door, took the firewood from inside, then slowly placed the wood in.
Only when he saw the flames inside gradually grow larger did his suspended heart settle back down.
Then he returned to the side of his table, thought for a moment, and fixed the cup onto an opening closer to the furnace.
He sat down again and could not help sighing.
The thing that troubled him was nothing else. It was precisely the matter of that administrative officer being driven away by a knight and a woman today. This made him extremely uneasy.
Although in the past, it was because he could not stand the administrative officer constantly fabricating pretexts to collect many unnecessary taxes from them that he had told the people in the village that not every tax had to be collected.
This caused that administrative officer’s relationship with him to become extremely poor. Almost every time they met, they would argue.
Although Brian normally could not stand that administrative officer’s conduct, it could not be denied that the administrative officer had been sent by the lord to take responsibility for their village.
And now that this administrative officer had been summoned back by a knight, Brian did not know what would happen next.
What should they do about the monsters outside their village that had been gradually increasing with time? How should they resist the thugs who occasionally passed by? He had no idea at all.
“I should go ask that woman.”
Knowing that sitting here was not a solution, he went outside, shut the door tightly, and headed toward the administrative officer’s former residence.
On the way to his destination, he saw a gray figure flash through the grass outside the palisade, which made him feel extremely uneasy.
When he reached the administrative officer’s original residence, he saw that the house, which had originally been very tidy, had now become extremely messy.
In front of this house, he saw three strong men adjusting the building under Anna’s guidance. They had taken down the partitions inside the house, making the interior look very spacious.
Brian gathered his courage, walked forward, greeted her, and then said,
“Hello... May I ask whether you will be governing the entire village from now on?”
Anna turned back and glanced at him, then turned her head away and slowly said,
“Not me. The lord handed this territory to my friend. She is still on her way here.”
As she spoke, Anna looked toward the fence off to the side. That had originally been where the black horse was, but now it was empty, because the black horse had already returned north to pick up Fulan.
Brian did not care who actually possessed this land. He had never seen the lord before, and he did not even know what the other party looked like.
What he cared about was how they would deal with the monsters in the surrounding area now.
“Then what should we do about the monsters beside our village? I just saw a monster in the grass outside...”
Before he finished speaking, Anna turned back and looked over. Anna’s eyes seemed to be glowing, as though she had encountered something interesting.
“So there are monsters outside your village. Why did you not say so earlier? Wait here for a while. I will go deal with those monsters right now.”
As she spoke, Anna picked up her bag and walked toward the outside of the village under the shocked gazes of everyone else.