Chapter 896: Dust-laden Secrets
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
In the darkness, Roland felt that two hands had simultaneously grabbed him. Nightingale said alertly, "What's going on?"
"The illusion created by this sigil is directly projected into everyone's brain," Agatha explained. "It will seem like you have been teleported to another world alone, but the reality is unaffected. We're still standing in the grand hall."
"If you don't want to watch it, you can just walk out of the effective range of the sigil" Isabella added.
Not long after, the darkness gradually faded away, and the transparent glass dome, marble floor, and spacious roundtable appeared in front of their eyes. Sitting around the table were witches in the Union-style copes, among them was the impressive Queen of Starfall City whose hair was as fiery red. Although this was a scene from 400 years ago, everything in the phantom looked so realistic. Even the tea on the table was giving off puffs of hot steam. It felt as if a moment that had long been buried history had been revived to the present once again.
If such a technique had existed from where Roland came from, historians who had worked their asses off in the dirt to search for a few pieces of text fragments would definitely be moved to tears.
Seeing that there was no danger, one hand let go of Roland. However, the other one did not loosen its grip at all, but instead moved down and eventually the two's fingers were tightly intertwined with each other.
Roland instantly knew who that was.
He smiled and softly squeezed the other person's fingers before he shifted his attention to the center of the phantom.
Isabella activated the magic stones one after another. The locations in the phantoms changed from the witches' escape route to Taquila, then to Starfall City. As Alice became younger and younger, the appearing witches kept on changing, and by the end, only a few familiar faces could be seen. Undoubtedly, during this prolonged brutal war, the Union suffered tremendous losses, and very few senior witches were able to survive until the escape.
This was the result of the witch empire's systemic flaw: the more powerful a witch was, the higher ranked she would be. It sounded logical, but when war erupted, the high-ranking witches had to fight on the front lines themselves, instead of commanding the war effort from somewhere safe. Roland had heard from Agatha that Alice evolved into a Transcendent during an extremely dangerous battle. During her reign, she went through several massive battles just like that one. In other words, if she had made even a single mistake, then the history of the Union... or maybe even the history of the entire human race would have turned out differently.
Such was the case for the Head of the Three Chairs, let alone the other high-ranking witches.
As a matter of fact, that system did not provide a suitable place for leaders to be developed—a rookie only had to survive one or two battles and taste some fresh blood to become a veteran, yet a high-ranking officer had to go through quite a few battles and witness thousands of deaths to genuinely mature. Having the leader personally lead a charge was indeed the best way of enhancing an army's morale, but this should only be used as a last resort. If everything went well, the troops would keep on fighting with high morale without the need for a leader to make an appearance.
Leaders and common troops do not have the same value—when faced with a large-scale war where large numbers of casualties were inevitable, such a practice was truly reckless.
Roland was not expecting to find any astonishing secrets through the sigils. He believed the past Popes must have repeatedly watched these phantoms, so if there were records about the origins of the Divine Will or the nature of the relics of gods, then the church wouldn't have fallen to such a sorry state today. The purpose of his trip was, apart from satisfying his curiosity, to gain some more experiences for himself.
He found that what had happened was more or less the same as he had imagined. As the phantom played out, the group mostly saw scenes such as important conferences, festivals, and battle mobilizations. It was understandable that the Sigils of Magic Stones were only used on such occasions.
According to Agatha, sigils that were able last for such a long time cost quite a fortune.
Soon enough, they came to the last phantom—Alice and the other two chairs were nowhere to be found, and instead, there was a crowd of senior witches in disheveled clothing. The image quality was also visibly worst than the previous playbacks.
Agatha asked with surprise, "Are those people..."
"The founders of the early Union?" Phyllis asked.
"Who are they?" Roland asked, raising his eyebrow.
"The Extraordinaries who survived the first Battle of Divine Will. It was them who founded the Union. Look at the documents on the table! Could this be..." Phyllis asked in surprise.
"Indeed." Agatha's voice was full of joy. "I never expected to witness the well-known vow of the three queens with my very own eyes!"
Roland was bewildered. He raised his head and tried to get a better look, only to find texts written with magic power, which were only readable to witches.
"Can someone explain what the vows were about?"
"Allow me." Agatha's voice came from in front of him. "It was considered as a symbolic event in the history of the Union where this loose organization integrated into a centralized power. This event was something every awakened witch had to learn about. After the end of the first Battle of Divine Will, the Union, which was entirely under the witches' rule, was founded. At that time, different opinions were circling around the young organization, whether it was about the ruling of ordinary people or the methods of fighting against demons. Such debates lasted for years until three major powers emerged. Over time, the three forces grew until they finally overpowered the other lords and city-states, after which the Union ended up with the oligarchic organizational structure that we all know about."
"Were the three powers Starfall City, Taquila, and Arrieta?" Nightingale asked.
"That's right. Due to the special positions of these three Holy Cities, their lords were often crowned as 'Queen,'" Agatha replied. "The Three Chiefs of the last tenure in the Union were the Queen of Starfall City Alice, the Queen of Sunchaser Natalia, and the Queen of Moonradiance Eleanor."
"No wonder." Roland thought. To witches in that era, the vow of the three queens was more or less the same as the founding constitutional amendments of a nation. This event signified the point after which the Union had transformed from an unofficial alliance to a unified political entity. No wonder witches like Agatha and Phyllis were this excited about the vow. Indeed, it had important historical significance. Although the Union ended up in a disaster, without the Three Chiefs system, it would have been defeated much sooner in the second Battle of Divine Will, let alone leaving behind the numerous witches who took on "resisting demons, recovering Taquila" as their lifelong mission.
But such information was not particularly interesting to Roland. With his mind drifting away, he laid eyes on the minor details in the phantom such as the witches' clothing, the cups and stationery they used, and the furniture and decoration in the hall. Since Alice came from a time several centuries ago, the furnishings of her age were much shabbier. Obviously, after the defeat of the first Battle of Divine Will, the domain of the witches ended up in an extremely underdeveloped stage.
On the walls of the conference hall, Roland saw over ten portraits, and surprisingly, two of them were men. He guessed that they were probably some outstanding heroic figures from the war.
Apparently, at that time, the Union hadn't started to consider ordinary people as lower beings, since men could still attend such an important conference.
Just when Roland was about to ask Agatha whether she knew who they were, he felt as if all the blood in his body suddenly froze.
An indescribable chill rose from the bottom of his feet and penetrated through his spine. The panic was so intense that goosebumps sprung on his arms and his fingertips started to shiver slightly.
"What's wrong?" noticing his uneasiness, Anna asked urgently.
"That, that painting..." swallowing his saliva, Roland was able to barely stutter out his words.
"Painting?"
"The person in the painting... I've seen her before."
It took him quite a lot of effort to utter those words—although the phantom was not as clear as the previous ones, he could still distinguish the silhouette of the person in the second to the last portrait. It was a middle-aged woman, not outstanding in appearance, with her black hair coiled on the top of her head, one of her eyes covered with a patch, and was sitting on a high-backed chair with her hands crossed over each other.
Her appearance was exactly the same as Lan, Garcia's master in Roland's Dream World!