I don't sleep in the middle of the night, and I don't seem to be quite right, but it seems to be just a simple cheap crow, which is really a bit abstract.

Seeing that the other party had no intention of leaving for a while, Xiuge didn't bother to pay attention to it, he forcibly took away the newspapers and documents that were trampled under the feet of the raven, and continued to read by the light of the lamp.

This series of actions made the blue raven in the room a little sluggish, and it screamed twice in protest, but Xiuge directly plugged his ears with a trick, completely blocking the noise.

For how to quickly get into the working state, Xiuge has its own set of methods.

After a quick reading of two commentaries, he took out his notebook and a new magic fountain pen from his table, and began to take notes on the news, and as he wrote, his mind gathered at great speed.

It didn't take long for him to be completely immersed in reading and writing.

The magical ritual used to keep the room warm began to work again, and soon the warmth filled the room.

For a moment, there was only the sporadic sound of snowflakes hitting the window and the tip of the pen rubbing against the paper.

Augustine Sophia was a little dazed right now.

As the current considered princess of the Kingdom of Wattle and the best student of Ernst's reign, she has always had the power to move freely through the Ernst Manor, and these days, with so many important matters to be dealt with directly in the Leyland district, she naturally moved into the Ernst Manor.

Here, there are two villas dedicated to the Wattle royal family, which are designed to cope with certain special circumstances.

She often gets the highest amount of freedom when she moves around Ernst Manor, where she doesn't need to be accompanied by guards, bodyguards, or the royal housekeeper Finn, but can use her shapeshifting magic to her heart's content, flying through the sky like a real bird, and shuttling as she pleases.

This is the unique talent of the Wattle royal family in magic.

It is also the reason why members of the royal family like to call themselves "heirs of the sky".

Queen Sophia, of course, was tired after a long day, but when she was about to arrive at her accommodation, she was surprised to find that in the middle of the night, there was still a room in the villa with the lights on, and the guest seemed familiar......

On a whim, she landed on the windowsill of this room, and then, with a tentative thought, jumped straight into the bedroom.

And then there's what just happened.

Sophia was sure that she had concealed her magical aura this time, and she disguised herself as a real raven as much as she could—she wanted to see if Xiuge was really aware of her existence before, but she never expected that Xiuge's attitude towards animals would be so ......

She just couldn't find the right adjective.

For a raven who rushed into the bedroom and was not willing to leave easily, his attitude was indeed very kind...... But this is simply the friendliness of a human being when dealing with animals and even pets!

This strange treatment is the first time for Sophia.

Sophia has always been a very logical person, and she believes that this is the key to her ability to stand out from the royal struggle.

But now, when she manages to get a whole set of treatments for real ravens from Shug Ernst as a raven, she is a little at a loss for what to do.

Luckily, Sophia is just as good at endurance and improvisation.

She quickly settled into the scene, and brushed her feathers in the light like a raven accustomed to seeing humans, and then wandered around the bedroom, and it wasn't long before she found a spot that suited her perfectly.

So she flapped her wings and flew nimbly to the lampstand of the magic wall lamp near the desk, where she could condescendingly observe Xiuge's movements, and she could also see his desk clearly, and she could move away from Xiuge's vision.

She wanted to see if this guy was pretending or if he really hadn't noticed his anomaly.

At first, Xiuge was really pretending.

But when he used tricks to block out the voices of the outside world, and concentrated all his spirit in the words in front of him, he began to ignore the existence of the raven.

Although he had always been able to feel the gaze from above, he was not writing anything strange now, just doing some simple speculation and combing, so he did not feel uncomfortable because of the external gaze.

In this state of complete concentration, the "identity" of the raven is no longer so important, whether it is Princess Sophia or not, Xiuge has no other choice now - pretending to be stupid to the end is the best solution.

He gently flipped through the latest newspaper, and on a large page, he saw an article.

Like all of Vanne's newspapers, the Bolden Zeitung also invited scholars and critics to comment on important current events and publish them.

Generally speaking, those who are fiercely worded are more popular with readers, because they tend to make their articles as easy to understand as possible so that they can resonate with the public, but those who are commissioned by scholars are less likely to receive attention.

After all, the vast majority of people who read newspapers pay more attention to the big news that can affect their lives, or they want to pass the time and have fun......

But the Bolden Zeiton was clearly more professional in this regard than the others, for Schug saw the author of the long article at a glance.

"Meyer?"

He pronounced the name softly, then adjusted the lamp and placed the newspaper squarely in front of him.

It was the second time he had seen the pseudonym.

The last time he saw it, only a few days after he had been in Vann, he had been thinking about how to escape from the city of Seren, but now that he was in the most comfortable dwelling in all of Bolden, the contrast between before and after made him feel a little unreal.

"Alright, Mayer, let me see what you'll say this time."

Hug poured another cup of tea, and then he began to read carefully and carefully.

"Tick, tick, tick......"

The hands of the magic clock danced to a gentle rhythm, and the snow outside the window grew heavier, and the cold hit the window, but it made the room warmer.

Standing on the magic sconce, the raven craned its neck cautiously, quietly reading the article about the current tension and the imperative war with the young man at the desk.

Finally, Shuge put down the newspaper in his hand.

His mood fluctuated slightly because of the article, so he got up from his chair and circled the room several times, and when his thoughts had calmed down, he finally felt a little sleepy, so he undone the trick that had been put on him, and looked up at the raven.

Probably because of the warmth in the room, the raven seemed to be asleep, so he smiled helplessly, cleaned up his desk, pushed the window open slightly, kept it a gap that could barely get in and out, and then extinguished the lamp, and burrowed into the cold bed with a complex thought and sigh.

As for the visitor who pretended to be asleep on the lampstand, he didn't bother.

The second half of the night is restful.

The vigor and magic of the "Walking Forest" made Xiuge's spiritual world more stable than ever, and the essay written by the scholar Mayer, which he read before going to bed, brought some indescribable color to his dreams in sleep. Z.br>

The solid and profound words swirled in his mind, like a flock of white snow cranes slowly flying from his distant past, they flapped their wings gently, but they swept up the cold wind, and when the wind blew, the phantom of the past and the reality of the present were entangled again, indistinguishable from each other.

In the cold of winter, days

It always lit up a little late, so the sky was often deep in the early morning, but there was a faint light in the heavy black.

The raven that had suddenly visited Xiuge in the middle of the night had quietly left at some point.

The cold wind blew in through the cracks in the window, causing the newspaper articles pressed against the desk to roll continuously, as if even the cold wind were reading the words.

"Everyone knows that war will begin."

"But we are not here today to discuss the possible direction of the war—there are many good people who have expressed their views on it before me...... What we need to discuss is another proposition that has not been paid attention to, namely, why did this war happen? What is its essence? In the midst of this imminent upheaval, how should we behave as the "majority" of humanity?"

In another villa, not too far from Xiugu's residence, Princess Sophia, who had changed into civilian clothes, sat at her desk, with a pair of dark circles under her eyes and a freshly brewed and steaming refreshing drink in her hand.

And in front of her, there was an outdated newspaper, the same page, the same article.

She read the words softly.

"This war is destined to be unlike any of the previous battles in Vann, and if it were to break out, I would personally call it the Great War...... It is generally accepted that the war is related to the impact of new technological changes on the old world rules...... It seems to me that this is in fact a continuation of a dynastic war that is a mixture of competing interests, resource allocation, class contradictions, etc., in which all combatants, regardless of their capacity, will inevitably end up plundering resources and dividing markets."

"However, if this is all there is to it, I do not need to write this article – I think that what I have said above is in fact what will inevitably happen to our world at the present stage of development, which is certainly not pretty, but which will certainly be difficult to reverse or change in the short term......

「…… At the end of the past Gin Moon, we all witnessed a terrible tragedy, and the catastrophe that struck in the city of Salem revealed to us a problem that may never have arisen in the past."

"Or rather, it's a potential crisis."

"Should we, the human race, as the largest group in the Brahma Grace, be in awe of more potentially dangerous existences, in addition to the contradictions and conflicts that arise on the basis of concepts such as nation and interests?"

A faint light of day shone on the walls of the city of Seren.

There was a suffocating smell in the air.

The terrible impact of the magic caused by the magic has added new wounds to the tragic city, and while the uncontrolled magic has destroyed the ceremonial grounds that have shrouded the city of Seren, it has also succeeded in tearing the ground of the city apart, and many buildings have collapsed and broken, and the old brick and stone streets that had witnessed two hundred years of peace are now in pieces.

The sewers that had been buried underground were exposed to the sky due to cracks in the ground, leaving the city dwellers who were still struggling to survive without the courage to step out of their homes.

In the past few days, they have learned that beneath the beneath the city lies a terrifying monster capable of devouring the living in a strange and cruel manner.

It wasn't a beast, it was some kind of intelligent being.

The spellcasters in the Legalist branch of the city of Celem have launched more than one pursuit and hunt for this monster, and at first, there were still a large number of people willing to cooperate with their actions, but with the failure of the operation again and again, and more and more people became rioters due to the lack of living materials, the number of actions of these spellcasters began to decrease significantly.

Now, they can only huddle in the premises of the Legislative Committee, using the resources there to protect themselves.

For the inhabitants of Salem, the streets of the city are now no different from purgatory.

At some point, they noticed that there would be some suspicious figure on the street—but it wasn't alive at all

, but one after another of the human forms made of sticky black pus, and what is even more frightening is that these figures seem to have human instincts and consciousness.

They talk, move, and even do weird things.

Now, for example, in the street near the old Ernst house, a group of short black figures are slowly moving down the street.

Of course, there was nothing in their hands, but they kept shaking their arms in a carefree way, and with these movements, faint sounds continued to come from the depths of these liquid masses.

"Newspapers! Newspapers!"

"The latest newspaper!"

"Mr. Writer...... Would you like a newspaper?"

They shouted questions to the empty, dilapidated streets.