(This is the penultimate chapter of the first volume.) As a chapter of "World Exploration", don't worry if you find it cumbersome, just skim it over, and the important settings will be explained later.

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An excerpt from the Minutes of the World on the Clouds, written by the Venerable "Eternal Blood", a traveler from another world, on the occasion of his arrival in this world for a year.

On the back of the manuscript, "Eternal Blood" reads: "I know very little about many subjects, and can only make a rough assessment of what I have seen and heard." ”

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1. Historical division

The term "ancient" in the continent of Seeran generally refers to antiquity, the era before the continent rose to the clouds. Only in the annals compiled by the kingdom of Elrios does the word "antiquity" include both antiquity and medievality, i.e., the history before the founding of Elrios is considered "ancient": the period before the cloud age is antiquity, and the period before the cloud age is until the founding of the Erios state is medieval.

One study showed that folklore rarely uses the word "ancient" and instead uses "age of the gods" instead. In fact, aside from the well-educated spellcasters and clerics, the average person in Seerland does not have a strong enough sense of history, for them, the "rise of the continent to the clouds" is the only significant historical event in all of the past, and some people will also see the establishment of their political entity as an event worth mentioning. Other than that, they don't care about what happened in the past.

There are very few surviving historical records of the period before the beginning of the Cloud Age. There are two main reasons for this phenomenon: first, the escalation of the continents into the clouds itself caused a huge catastrophe, causing a large number of deaths, accompanied by a serious book scattering; Second, in the first hundred years of the beginning of the Cloud Age, the Cloud Church rose rapidly, and in order to strengthen its legitimacy, they systematically exterminated the only remaining historical records of the old era by making their own written history the only legitimate history.

The published history, or mythology, of the Church in the Clouds claims that in ancient times people lived on a vast land of Theeland. All of this is naturally arranged by God. Because of sin, the gods became disillusioned with the people and caused a great flood that destroyed two-thirds of the continent, but the benevolent gods still raised the rest of the continent above the endless sea of clouds as the last refuge for the good.

Geological studies have shown that the continent was indeed once a part of a larger ancient continent of Seerland. There is also a lot of evidence that there is indeed a vast ocean made of liquid water thousands of meters below the bottom of the continent. However, because the caster's power is no longer effective when he enters the sea of clouds, it is impossible to find out if the so-called Celeran Ancient Land is still on the surface, sunk into the water, or even non-existent. A very small number of skeptics are even skeptical of the "rise of the continent" itself.

The only good news is that the overall stability of the continent in the last few hundred years has created the conditions for archaeological work to be carried out. Scholars have discovered a large number of ancient ruins, most of which are temples. Although most of them have been looted, they still give us a picture of a time when the continent was still on the surface of the sea. We learn that, as folklore says, there were indeed beliefs in many different gods on the ancient land at the same time. Today's churches dismiss these gods as "evil gods," "false gods," or "subgods" based on their characteristics, but for the people of the time, these powerful entities did exist and were uniformly called "gods."

Just as today's priests prayed like a sea of clouds to obtain divine magic, ancient priests prayed to the gods they believed in to obtain divine magic. Each "god" has its own church or temple.

Nowadays, in the Errios academic circles, the "true god and false god theory" is increasingly becoming the mainstream. According to this view, the Church's claim that the God who is both the creator and savior of the continent does not exist, and even if it does, it is a metaphysical being, or even a particularly powerful ancient "god." Many scholars have pointed out that the rise of the continent from the sea was probably the work of the ancient gods, and that we just somehow lost contact with the ancient gods.

This view is fascinating, but like the church's "salvation doctrine of God," it lacks further evidence.

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2. Language

No one can tell how many languages have been spoken on the continent of Seerland. More than seventy-five percent of people use the so-called "lingua franca" and sixty-five percent speak the "lingua franca" as their mother tongue. The State of Errios has repeatedly declared that the "lingua franca" is the "human language", which is clearly opposed by those who do not use the lingua franca as their mother tongue. We can find many clues that in ancient times, at least seven or more completely different languages were widely spoken among humans, and today, only two remain, namely Au-Ocadian (lingua franca) and Central Occad (Central Ockadian). About 30 percent of the human population still speaks Central as their mother tongue.

Central is more popular in the interior of Okad. The coastal region of Okad, although further away from other cultural centers where the Aucadian language was spoken, and separated by the use of Central and Elven languages, continued to use the lingua franca, making the lingua franca a continent a ring. Hence the name of the Au Caba language.

Central and Aucadian are not a language at all. Except for the completely different letters, the word order of the Middle Language is "subject + object + predicate", which is very different from the "subject + predicate + object" in Occad. Trans-Occad is a language in which there is only one correct pronunciation of a written sentence, while Central Chinese has a regular pronunciation, but there are many special cases. Circum-Occad has three sexes and four cases, while Central has three sexes and six cases.

There are many dialects of Ring Okad.

As for the lingua franca of the Okad region, it is a puzzling fact that the Okad lingua franca is farther away from and more similar to the lingua franca of the Southern Empire. There was a huge gap between the lingua franca of the Southern Empire and the lingua franca of the Elrios, and if a Southern Empire peasant met an Elrios merchant in the market, he would need the Errios to repeat it several times before he could understand exactly what he meant. However, the most popular dialect of the Empire, the Northern Empire Lingua franca and the Errios lingua franca are not far apart, although the Errios often laugh at the accent of the Empire.

In addition, there are elven languages, dwarven languages, and orc languages on the continent of Seerland, and except for elven languages, which are compulsory for mages, they are only used by these minority groups. The mages also have to learn the language of the dragon.

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3. The people and the state

In the continent of Seerland, the term human is divided into narrow and broad senses. In addition to humans in the narrow sense, humans in the broad sense also include the three major races of elves, dwarves, and orcs that can produce offspring with humans. In addition to this, there are also intelligent beings other than humans.

Because of the existence of a pan-human race that is completely different in appearance, but can produce offspring, the national concept within the Seeran humans in the narrow sense is not strong.

The social status of women in the continent of Seerland is lower than that of men, but it is not absolute. Because women can also be powerful spellcasters, casters are equally respected by women and men, and there is no shortage of outstanding female rulers in history. In addition, women's physical fitness is still generally lower than that of men, but one study has shown that women on the continent of Seeran are not as good as men who have undergone the same exercise in all situations after adequate exercise, that is, they have the same potential as men. Women are now accepted into the military and in some public positions in most regions, but inequality persists in many places.

Most of the people on the continent of Seerland have a clear sense of family. In most areas, people form clans with their blood relatives. In recent centuries, the strength of the Elrios legal state and empire has also made their people like to call themselves "Elrios" or "imperials" rather than "great-great-grandsons of so-and-so", or "sons of so-and-so tribes, sons of so-and-so". In fact, in Elrios and the Empire, the concept of clans was downplayed.

Excluding the tribal organizations in the remote areas, the continent can be divided into about fifty political districts, most of which claim to be a "nation". The Erios Legacy, the Greksia Empire, and the Occad Commonwealth occupy more than half of the continent, while the rest of the states are small and weak, often allied with each other to survive the threat of the great powers. The main alliances were: the Northern Alliance, which was located north of Elrios, the Five-Power Alliance, which was sandwiched between Elrios and Okad, the South Bay Commercial Alliance, which was south of Okad, and the White Arches Entente in the southeastern part of the Empire.

There are about ten countries that are purely city-states. In fact, they are often under the domination of some great power, their enclaves beyond their borders.