Under the quiet starry sky, everything was silent, and everyone had fallen asleep.

Norman sat on the ground with a soft blanket underneath him, covered with a thick layer of hay so that he could no longer feel the hardness and coldness of the ground. Looking up, he couldn't see the stars, but the heavy cloth of the tent, and the bonfire outside the tent penetrated through the unclosed curtains, and the light of the fire was bright and extinguished on his face.

This is Donn's tent, with the support of Jacob and Rushn, and no one dares to have any objection to Norman sleeping here.

Done's inheritance is very rich, although Demps asks for a very high price, there is an element of difficulty, but Done's inheritance is enough to pay Norman's ransom price, and Norman even bought Atrimisia easily.

The price of this slave girl was far inferior to him, only 2 Quintalan - with Demps's eyesight, it was obviously impossible to see the true value of this slave girl, not to mention that he had been trembling in the tent when the battle had just happened, and he had not seen what was happening outside.

Donn's tent was large enough for three or four people to sleep together, and now Atrimicia was lying beside Norman, sleeping soundly. But Norman didn't look at her, his eyes just passed through the curtain of the tent and threw himself into the campfire outside, thinking about something.

Today's night raid took a toll on the troops, and Donn's death was undoubtedly the most painful loss, and the others were also killed: according to Jacob's statistics, in today's battle they lost 8 warriors, 11 warriors with varying degrees of wounds, 4 slaves died, and 3 slaves were seriously wounded, and the civilian losses were minimal, only 2 were killed in the initial indiscriminate arrows, and 2 were burned by the fire caused by rockets.

With Norman's current ears, he couldn't hear anything as he sat here, but he knew that there were many wounded moaning in pain in all corners of the camp, tossing and turning and unable to sleep.

What's next?

If it was the Norman of the past, it would be very simple, just continue to lead the team forward. As long as it wasn't for a large number of dragons coming, he believed that nothing would be able to cause him trouble, but not Norman now.

He was wondering what he was going to do.

Was it for the Knights Templar to teach him how to regain strength?

His current eccentric state was contributed to by the Knights Templar, and with Norman's knowledge of the Knights Templar, he believed that the Knights Templar should be capable of helping him regain his strength, but he did not want to do that, he did not want to be a pawn of the Templar Order again.

That's right, chess pieces.

In the days since he left Arica, Norman didn't have to think about anything: he didn't have to think about how to improve his strength, he didn't have to think about what to do next, how to do it, and he didn't have to learn all kinds of things from the Templar Order.

Not only did he abandon everything from his social identity, but he also emptied himself in his thoughts, which made his thinking suddenly open up and see a new world.

It's kind of similar to a story Lancelot once told him about playing chess.

In Lancelot's story, there is a chess game called Zhenlong's chess game, which is the most difficult chess game in the world, and countless intelligent people in the world cannot solve that chess game, and the consequence of forcibly solving it is only to fall deeper and deeper, and eventually lose the whole game.

The only solution to this chess game is to commit suicide at the beginning, the strong man breaks his wrist, kills a large number of his chess pieces, and then moves step by step to successfully free himself.

Norman's fate is somewhat similar to this game of chess.

He left everything behind Arica, which was the key to suicide, and after this son, although the situation was tragic, it suddenly opened up, opened up a new world, and saw unprecedented scenery.

Then he "saw" the oddities of the Knights Templar.

According to what the Knights Templar taught, all actions occur for a reason, and the more complete and complex the act, the more profound the cause. So the Knights Templar had been doing their best to help themselves, but for what and what was their purpose?

Norman, who had just arrived in Cárdenas, did not think about this question, because he did not understand anything at the time, and Norman did not think about it later, because he was sinking deeper and deeper into the web woven by the Templars, and although he felt that he was still conscious, he was led by the nose by the Templars with all kinds of clever invisible means: at first the Templars tempted him by becoming a nobleman, then by becoming a mage, and then by increasing his strength, Tempting him by getting rid of Chen Qinghe's control, as well as the fear of the complicated situation of the struggle for imperial power in the kingdom, the urgent need for strength to fight against Sowell, and so on.

After jumping out, Norman realized that the Knights Templar had been secretly and skillfully guiding him.

He was like a chess piece, and the Knights Templar were like chess players, manipulating the chess piece to get the final position they needed.

It is true that they did not run a charity, and the Knights Templar had invested so much human and material resources that they obviously wanted to help him alone, and they certainly wanted something out of their actions. Unfortunately, Norman was unable to see what the Templars' ultimate goal was.

He had been thinking about this question for a few days, but he had never been able to figure it out, and the only result of his repeated thinking was that the Knights Templar's goal might be related to the astrolabe.

After his mental power turned into an oval, Norman's mind was no longer sharp, but his memory did not deteriorate. In the repeated recollection and reflection of these days, he finally discovered some anomalies in Lancelot.

It was after figuring out the true purpose of the astrolabe, and Lancelot seemed to be unusually excited for a while.

Compared to all the memories of Lancelot, Lancelot had never been so excited: not when Norman first successfully cast a spell, not when Norman first successfully cast a forbidden spell, not when Norman was dying after a blood sacrifice but finally escaped death, not even after Norman was in absolute death and the Templars had given up but finally managed to escape death with the help of Sowell.

When things go wrong, there must be demons, and Norman vaguely feels that the answer he wants is in the astrolabe, but he can't think of anything. So he threw away the astrolabe on the prairie to see if Lancelot would react in any way, but he didn't see it.

Lancelot behaved as he had done during the time, and there was no reaction.

After that, of course, Norman did not pick up the astrolabe again.

He abandoned the astrolabe, abandoned everything, and cut off all his desires.

People do have a fear of the unknown, and Norman is no exception.

He didn't know what the Templars' ultimate purpose was in hiding in the dark, but because he couldn't see it, he was terrified and wanted to flee, not wanting to continue to be a pawn in the hands of the Templars.

Lancelot was right when he said that man is a complex animal.

Norman felt that the reason he was who he was today was not simply because of a simple superego awakening, nor simply a desire to break free from the control of the Templars, which was the product of a combination of the two.

But when the two goals are the same, it is naturally easy to say that they advance and retreat together, but when the two goals conflict, where should he go?

Now Norman is in such a state of conflict.

He wanted to save the lives of these people right now, and he hoped that they would be safe and not happen tonight, but with his current ability, it would be difficult to do so.

The strength he relied on most in the past was gone, and with his wisdom and knowledge, he couldn't think of any good way—all he could think of now.

One, just turn around and stop moving towards Siam.

According to Donn's previous opinion, as long as he doesn't go to Siam, it will naturally not be dangerous, but this method goes without saying that Norman knows that Demps will not agree, after all, he has sold everything, in order to go to Siam, and then go back, not to mention the invasion of the dragons, even if the dragons do not invade, he has nowhere to go.

It's basically impossible to go back, and the second way is to improve the strength of the entire team. If all the warriors in those ranks had the strength of Atramicia, and the cultivator became a black-robed mage and became a blue-robed or even white-robed mage, then naturally there would be no problems, and they would definitely be able to reach Siam safely.

But this approach is even more impossible.

Norman had learned a lot of clever tricks from the Knights Templar, all kinds of subtle and effective combat moves, but they were all tailor-made by the Knights Templar for him to practice the strong flesh of the Funeral Heart Sutra, what was the use of him just teaching those warriors these combat moves? They didn't have the strong flesh to bring out the power of these moves.

It can be seen from tonight's night attack that in this level of battle, strength is everything. Those attacking aliens don't know how to make any moves, the weapons are all messy, and they don't even have a serious weapon, and they don't just beat these warriors to cry and cry for their mothers?

Increasing the strength of these warriors is the best way to quickly increase their combat effectiveness, but Norman is not familiar with knights and does not know how to start. The only knowledge he has to do with knights is the "Funeral Heart Sutra", but the reason why he can cultivate the "Funeral Heart Sutra" is entirely because he has the relationship of Ji Gang's dragon blood in his body, and he really wants to practice the "Funeral Heart Sutra" for these warriors, he doesn't mind, but I'm afraid that it will not help them but harm them. If they really practiced and didn't need those alien races to attack, they themselves would explode and die one by one.

If you can't improve the strength of the warriors, what about improving the strength of the mages?

The Norman knight knew a little bit about it, but in the realm of spells, it was definitely a real archmage, but after thinking about it carefully, he still felt that there was no way.

With the help of the mana pool, he was confident that he would be able to teach Xiu to become a blue-robed or even white-robed mage, but that would take time, a lot of time.

With the magic pool, Xiu can break free from the shackles of magic, but he can't break free from other aspects.

The effect of the magic pool on Norman himself was so great at the beginning because Norman's mental power, knowledge of ancient languages, and spell entries were far beyond his own magic level, and the magic pool just appropriately filled this shortcoming, but the cultivation was different. From the release of Xiu's spells, Norman can see that Xiu is a very orthodox kind of mage, and the magic pool is just turning his magic power into a longboard for him, but his knowledge of ancient languages, spiritual power, etc. are just black-robed mages, and if he wants to improve his strength, what he needs is to pull up all those shortcomings one by one, which will take a lot of effort.

The study of ancient sayings, the exercise of mental power, and the collection of spells and spells all take time, but what they lack most now is also time, and it is obviously impossible for the entire team to stay in place for a year and a half, and wait until he teaches him to become a red-robed or even blue-robed mage before setting off, so the method of improving the strength of the mage is not good.

This is not good, that is not good, it is impossible to think about anything, the only way seems to be to ask the Knights Templar for help, after all, the Knights Templar have a huge think tank and advanced technical knowledge, they may have a good solution to the current predicament, but if they ask the Knights Templar for help, it will be contrary to Norman's original intention to get rid of the control of the Templar Order.

Norman's originally unified heart was conflicted.

Either he left them alone and let Atramicia sneak away with him, or he could submit to his superego and ask the Templars for help and head back in the unknown and mysterious direction.

It was a very difficult choice, so Norman just sat there and kept looking at the campfire outside.

Atremisia slept without a sound, and with Norman's current ears, she could barely hear her breathing in the stillness of the night, and the white stick that she had held in her hand to repel many aliens lay quietly beside her right arm.

I don't know how long it took, but the bonfires gradually grew smaller, and it looked like they would be extinguished soon.

The vigil passed by, and silently added some firewood with his uninjured left arm, and made the campfire bigger again, and then glanced sideways at Norman, who was sitting there not sleeping but in a daze, and said nothing, turned away, and went on the vigil.

Norman sat like this for most of the night, not moving, like a statue.

The night watchman came six times to refill the firewood, and he saw him six times.

When the night watchman came to add wood for the seventh time, the long-standing sculpture finally moved.

Norman met the eye of the night watchman who had hung a strip of cloth on his wounded right arm, then turned around, upward, and threw himself into the vast night sky.

Who is the chess piece and who is the chess player, who can tell?

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