Chapter 123: Gathering the Remains
Once he had recovered a bit, Charles slowly stood up.
"Sister, I still have some things to do. Charles said to Elizabeth.
He led Elizabeth and Artoria to a stone wall some distance from the altar, and found a boulder clinging to the stone wall.
Artoria pushed the boulder away, and a stench of decay poured out of the hole behind the boulder.
Elizabeth grabbed Charles, who was about to enter, and then stood in front of the cave and cast a magic spell inside. After the green light of the magic passed, the smell that could make people faint was gone.
The cave was filled with corpses, and after the children's skulls were used to make magic items, their headless corpses were all discarded in the cave.
Charles carefully picked up the body of the victim child and placed it on a stone slab.
The slab was cut by Artoria with her sword from the boulder blocking the entrance to the cave.
The further inside, the more decompositive the body became, forcing Charles to carefully gather as many of the child's remains as possible in the light of magic.
When the three of them gathered and carried the remains out for a short time, a rope was thrown out of the hole that Charles had blasted out, and several people slid down the rope.
They are a scout team sent by the Temple of the God of War, the Kingdom of Bischberg, and the Kingdom of Fringen.
They saw movement on Charles's side at the entrance of the cave, and then walked slowly and vigilantly towards it.
Elizabeth and Artoria spotted the Scout Team at the beginning, but they didn't react, just quietly assisting Charles in sorting out the remains in the cave.
Artoria wielded her sword and slashed down several stone slabs before taking them into the cave. A moment later, together with Elizabeth, she placed the stone slabs containing the remains neatly in the open space outside the cave.
With a "clang", a short sword fell to the ground, shattering the eerie silence here.
One of the scouts was stunned by the rows of headless remains of the children in front of him, and the short sword in his hand slipped and fell to the ground.
"Quick!" he called out to a man with a cage at the back of the line, "Hurry up for reinforcements!"
The scout came to his senses and scrambled to pull parchment and pen from his pocket. After writing a few lines on the parchment, he opened the cage, tied the parchment roll to the leg of the caged owl, and asked the owl to carry the news out of the hole where it had entered.
When the owl flew away from the hole, the scout joined the others in gathering the remains.
Soon, more and more people came here through the hole. Eventually, even Barnett I and the third prince of Bischberg, Evis Bischberg, and the bishop of the Temple of the God of War in the city of Tanghausen, Girod, arrived.
At this time, Avis's face was very ugly, because this land was his territory, and after he saw the golden light in the castle in the distance, he immediately rode a griffin and several griffin knights to rush over.
Now his first task was to clear his name and the suspicion of the matter, so instead of turning down the uninvited guests of Barnett I and Girold, he invited them to come and testify with him.
The success rate of those people using children's skulls to make magic items was not 100% successful, and there were many more "half-finished products" in the cave. Some of the children's heads even looked like half-peeled oranges, and their faces were still covered with skin, and the skin on the skull part was gone, and the exposed skull had a notch that was clearly cut to the half.
When the remains in the cave were cleared, Charles had the thirty headless remains moved to the edge of the altar by someone who came later.
He then took the skulls from the altar and reunited them with his body.
Every time Charles put a body together, a burst of light would emerge from the side, and then the points of light would slowly disappear into thin air.
This is the revenge of the resentful spirits of those children, and the remains have been collected and they no longer have nostalgia for the world.
The people around the altar, from Elizabeth and Artoria to Giraud, Barnett I, Aavis, to the soldiers, whatever god they worshipped, all chanted the hymn of transcendent rest.
When the remains were finished, the exhausted Charles was so tired that he was crumbling again.
Elizabeth then took Charles with Altoria, and she stayed behind to tell the other three bigwigs about the operation.
After Artoria carried Charles from the hole to the surface, Charles finally breathed a sigh of relief and fell into a deep sleep.
It was a few days of sleep, and when he woke up, he found himself lying on a soft and comfortable bed, covered with a down quilt.
The movement of him sitting up from his bed quickly alarmed the rest of the room, and Artoria soon came to his bedside.
At this time, Artoria was wearing a long-sleeved light yellow plain dress, the straight skirt only had a belt tied around the waist, and this red belt tied a bow at her side, revealing her waist. Her usual bun had been loosened, and her long golden waterfall hair was spread behind her.
If it weren't for her dull hair, Charles wouldn't have recognized Artoria at all.
"Have you seen enough?" asked Artoria to Charles, who was staring at her intently.
Charles shook his head, it was the first time he had seen Artoria dressed like this.
"Where is this?" Charles asked, certainly not the hotel they used to stay in.
"This is the Temple of the God of War. Artoria replied, "You've been asleep for days, and you're hungry, I'll give you something to eat." ”
Charles was really hungry, so he nodded.
As he ate the cake, sausage, and milk, Artoria told him about what happened that day, and how it had unfolded.
The identities of those believers were being verified intensively, and Barnett I Filingen and Antoine II Bischberg both ordered at the first time that all families associated with this time should be investigated to the end, and the minimum punishment was to take the title, and some families were all reduced to slavery.
Antoine II did not even hesitate to slash the first knife at the head of the deceased queen's family.
Other countries have followed suit, and all of the nobles involved in previous child trafficking cases have been listed as key suspects.
Several of the top leaders of the child trafficking ring, who were absconding from the company, were "turned themselves in" after being caught by their umbrella design, and they confessed all the buyers they knew in an attempt to distance themselves from the matter.
The children who were killed are also being identified so that they can return to their homes for burial.
The most shocking thing is that the person in charge of the search scene has found a lot of valuable documents, and in the rooms of the "Pope" Nanami Daitomi and the "Holy Maiden" Kobayashi Heiyuki, a large number of studies on the magic array written in "otherworldly languages" have been found.
This discovery seriously shook the image of the brave men of the other world in the hearts of the world, and for a while, there was a discussion about whether our world really needed those brave people.
After listening to Artoria's story, Charles asked a question that had puzzled him for a long time: "What does it mean to be a 'brave'?"