Cthulhu Gonfalon

Crick’s extremely outstanding power made it more convenient to look for talents. He took action as fast as possible. It took him less than two days to travel around the hill, and he found eight young men with a perception above 12 and an intelligence above ten. According to his estimates, they were capable enough to become low-ranking priests with that talent, since many of the low-ranking priests he had met were all about this level.

Among them, there was a tall man named Thatch, and his perception had been amazingly high—sixteen! Although his intelligence was only nine, Crick still counted him in and planned to recommend him especially.

What did his perception of 16 mean? Take Crick as an example—his perception was 12. When he was sitting inside a house, there was no one who could pass by outside the house without being noticed by him. He could even know whether the one passing by was wearing armor or not or was tall and strong or short and weak.

Crick’s wife, the former Baroness Amyveile, had a perception of ten. She could hear whether there was someone passing by outside the house as well, if it was pretty quiet inside the house. If someone deliberately walked gently without any noise outside, she would not know it even though it was very quiet inside the house.

Then with a perception of 16, what would Thatch be like? Even if someone glanced at him secretly, he would feel it and look back. He could also exactly feel whether others liked him or not. At the selection of talents, a group of young men was standing there, waiting for Crick’s choice. Crick looked at them one by one, and then he stopped at Thatch for a moment. After he looked at his attributes, he smiled. Thatch felt that immediately and smiled, too.

Later, Crick asked him what he had smiled at. Thatch answered, “Your Lordship, I felt that you were satisfied with me.”

Crick was astonished at that, he asked, “Then can you feel what I’m thinking now?”

“No, I can’t. But just now you seemed very surprised,” Thatch said with confusion. “Is there anything surprising?”

If this guy was capable enough to read people’s mind, Crick would definitely not let him be a priest. It would be better to send him to learn more about Raffle or Rena; then he could be a spy, disguising as a soldier beside him.

That brought Crick great surprise in his heart. He had never expected that one would be so capable with such relatively high attributes. Then he thought of Mage Felix, whose perception was also 16.

Sh*t! She had been very kind to me after several words. Was it because she felt that I admired her great attributes and rank…? That’s embarrassing…

But it was too late to regret. Crick sighed in his heart and left this matter aside. He began to think about other things.

Most of these eight young men would be able to learn something and make further achievements in the future. Some of them would even be able to become mid-rank or high-ranking priests. Then how would he make sure that they would stay loyal to Keane Hill rather than going to other hills after their graduation?

He thought it over it a bit but figured nothing out.

There were always more solutions than questions. Where could he find the solution? It was planned by the people.

No matter what if Crick planned to stop them from going to work for other hills, they could find solutions to escape sooner or later. If they escaped to the remotest corner of the world one day, would he chase them there? Absolutely not!

Thinking on that, he smiled bitterly and shook his head, giving up the plan to restrict these young men.

If they wouldn’t come back after graduation, then just let them go. They learned how to cure disease and save people, so it would be a good thing wherever they went. They would make a living based on what they had learned, and that would at least not be a shame for Keane Hill.

If they were willing to come back here, Crick would warmly welcome them. If they wanted to adventure to other hills, Crick would support them as well. Since countries on the earth supported their young men to study overseas and create a career abroad, he, a space-traveler, should be as generous as that too.

Maybe several years later, these young men—for example, Thatch— could succeed in their career and make great achievements as famous great men; they would more or less help Keane Hill developing.

Thinking in this way, Crick felt at ease.

He took the time to give them a lecture, mainly advising them to work hard, not to be afraid to ask questions, and to communicate with their teachers and classmates and make more friends, etc.

Although these young men were still normal citizens right now, most of them would be priests in the future. As long as they became priests, they would step into the circle of adventurers and low-ranking nobles. They couldn’t be as loyal and cowardly as normal citizens anymore. They had to be more active and move forward.

Crick talked for such a long time that his mouth was dry. He was not sure whether what he had said would be useful to them, but he knew that that was all he could do.

After the lecture, he treated these young men to a good meal and asked the servants in the Baron House to help them get dressed. All of them put on new clean clothes. Next morning, Crick brought them to visit Mage Felix.

Hearing that it had taken only two days for Crick Keane, who had been ill, to travel around the hill and select eight excellent young men, Felix couldn’t help but feel surprised. She looked at Crick in a more respected way.

Keane Hill was not very large, but it was not small either. A man, who knew nothing about transmission magic or flying magic, could travel around the hill and screen out talents within such a short time. His working efficiency was amazing.

How talented are these young men?

Thinking on that, she cast a spell and looked at these young men with her eyes full of flashing silver light.

Through this spell, she could see the basic attributes and talent of others. Though it was not as exact as Crick’s magic, it was just enough. In fact, Crick’s magic was based on this spell, too. It was given to him by Sui Xiong after several adjustments.

At this moment, in her eyes, these young people were shining in colorful lights which symbolized the basic attributes of their bodies and souls. If one had a special talent or blood, there would be a special light on their body—however, if their talent was too weak or their blood was not special enough, there would be nothing.

She was astonished at what she had seen.

She had thought that it would be good if one or two of these young men had good qualifications. However, to her surprise, although they looked ordinary and one of them even seemed to be a little dull, their qualifications were amazingly good. All of them had much higher perception and intelligence than ordinary people. In a word, even the one with the worst qualifications had the possibility to become a low-ranking priest.

What was even more surprising to her was Thatch, the tall man who seemed a little dull at first sight. Although he had a slightly lower intelligence, his perception was surprisingly high, and he hadn’t received any training yet.

Generally speaking, after the professional training of priests, the trainees’ perception would be improved. After they became formal priests, it would increase a little more. If they managed to become mid-rank or high-ranking priests, it would increase again. Therefore, high-ranking priests had a surprisingly high perception. They could know the exact number of a group of walking people by a simple glance, they could easily find out which one had a wounded leg and was not flexible in walking among these people by listening to their footsteps, and they could even figure out which one was older among a nest of ants that were crawling around. Some of them were so capable that they could see through most of the traps and magic arrays only by looking, and they could tell whether others’ words were true or not by listening. They could feel whether the space nearby was stable or not by feeling. Determining the quality of weapons by touching and telling whether food was poisonous or not by smelling was a piece of cake to them as well.

It was amazing how powerful the perception of those outstanding high-ranking priests was.

If Thatch were trained to be a priest in the future, as long as he advanced to a high-ranking priest, he would be one of this kind of priest with amazingly high perception.

However, would he be a high-ranking priest?

Felix was not sure about it. But at least judging from his current talent, there should be no problem.

For priests, the most important thing to improve their abilities was to feel and understand God, so perception remained highly important. Thatch’s perception was so high that it was possible for him to become a high-ranking priest. Maybe he would be a slightly dumb one, but what did that matter? Behind the priest was God, and His Majesty Void Mask was never afraid of losing face. He surely would support the priest directly at any critical moment. No matter how dull Thatch was, it didn’t matter. His Majesty was smart.

That was enough. For the rest, it depended on personal experience and luck.

The silver light in Felix’s eyes faded away, and a satisfied smile appeared on her face.

When the effect of the spell was about to disappear, she had an idea and looked at Crick next to her.

Then she was shocked and frowned at what she had seen.

Although there were lights in various colors that represented different attributes on him, there was a more intense number of divine lights. On his body, there were several Divine Powers entangled with each other, and it was hard to tell if they were good or evil.

But anyway, if a human body was entangled by several contradictory Divine Powers, they would definitely hurt him!

Maybe… This is his secret?

Felix quickly suppressed her astonishment. She said that these young men were excellent and thanked Baron Keane for selecting them. She especially praised Thatch for his promising future and also encouraged him to be self-reliant and not to waste his talent.

After that, she was ready to take the young men away. Before she left, she suddenly remembered the strange situation on Crick’s body. She could not help but ask, “Baron Keane, is there anything else you want to talk about? Or… Is there anything I can do for you?”

Crick was surprised at first, then overjoyed, and tentatively said, “As far as I know, the Void Mask Land has been buying a lot of grain to make good wine, hasn’t it?”

Felix was also surprised for she had not expected that he would talk about something else other than his body’s condition.

“Yes, that’s right,” she answered. “But because of the inconvenience of transportation, we bought a lot of grain at a time and took it away directly by magic.”

Crick laughed. “That’s great. We’ve got a bumper harvest this year at Keane Hill, so we have a lot of grain to sell. Can you take your time to see if it’s worth doing business with?”

A Baron Hill, no matter how good a harvest it had, how much grain could it produce?

Felix laughed in her heart but accepted the request. She followed Crick to a well-guarded warehouse.

She froze when the warehouse opened.

Golden grains piled up like mountains, almost filling the entire warehouse. This was definitely not a Baron Hill’s harvest!

She turned her head around in surprise and wanted to ask something, but she didn’t.

Everyone had their own secret. There must be a big secret behind such a rich harvest. She and Baron Keane were not very good friends, and so, she should not ask about such secrets.

Crick rubbed his hands, smiled anticipatively and asked, “These are not for eating this year. Can I sell them to you?”

“Of course.”

After Felix left, Crick stood in the empty warehouse and couldn’t help but laugh.

“Now, those greedy guys can’t rob any grain from me!”

Since he laughed, he started to cough violently. However, the worse he coughed, the more happily he laughed.