The Shepherds Are Dense – Chapter 1172

Chapter 1169
Adler is… a Savior?
Unlike the Blood Heavenly Envoy, who actively transformed all the Children of the Moon before their fall, the Fallen Heavenly Envoy did not eliminate all the demons.
In the original timeline, this was the task of a Ring Heavenly Envoy who had obtained a Fragment of the Fallen Heavenly Envoy. He decomposed and reconstructed the demons, transforming them into elemental spirits. However, these demons are currently merely surviving in the Dream Realm because the Demon Scholar has lost her power and was forced to disband them back into the Dream Realm. Not even the contracts themselves were severed.
But now, the demons have lost the domain of the Fallen Heavenly Envoy and their home. They can only survive in the domains of other Heavenly Envoys or in the desolate wilds of the Dream Realm, without any Heavenly Envoy’s shelter.
Furthermore, after losing the power of Great Sin, the strength of almost all Upper Demons has greatly diminished.
Specifically, those Great Demons who were originally Upper Phantom Demons have lost their “divinity,” which allowed them to unconditionally increase their priority, and they can no longer grow stronger as they have lost their Mark of Sin.
Despite this, demons still objectively exist. And Viness, who inherited the authority of the Fallen Heavenly Envoy, can control demons to a certain extent.
Regardless of whether the three Ritualists were bound by rituals or curses that prevented them from betraying Adler in life, transforming them into demons bypasses this restriction.
Gazing at the iron plate embedded in his chest, which contained the power of ritual and curse, and thus had stolen his consciousness, turning him into a living ritual core, Eivass the Troll Ritualist frowned slightly, reciting the name on the iron plate:
“Adler’s benevolence… Adler…”
After thinking for a while, Eivass finally remembered… where he had heard this name before.
Before he became Pope, he had come into contact with some Trolls from the Church. There was an old Troll, a quite skilled Great Ritualist… He was kidnapped by that infant-like Perfect Being embryo and intended to be sold to the Ancient Kingdom of Anxi.
At that time, he happened to overhear a Cardinal casually mentioning this matter – the buyer was a Lord from the Ancient Kingdom of Anxi, and his name was Adler.
“I remember now—”
Once he remembered this, other memories followed sequentially – that Lord was said to need some particularly trustworthy sorcerers, which was why he intended to purchase Troll sorcerers from the Southern Continent. Because they were alone and had no one to rely on, they were absolutely unlikely to be spies for other Lords.
—But in reality, there was something strange about this matter.
To prevent his Curse Master from easily collecting his personal belongings and thus cursing him to death, upon receiving the Curse Master’s defection, the Lord would bind his own life to the Curse Master and the sorcerers in a one-way manner – if you die, I don’t die; if I die, you all die.
Under such circumstances, Troll sorcerers, who were not of the same race as himself and were captured, were instead unstable.
Because they were not sorcerers who defected but rather enslaved and kidnapped individuals. This person was unfamiliar with the territory; what if one day they decided to explode and take him with them? To take a step back, since they were not of the same race, their aesthetics, communication, and culture would also pose obstacles – humans find Trolls ugly, but Trolls also find humans ugly!
Human Ritualists could bestow attractive female slaves as rewards, but they wouldn’t know what to bestow upon Troll Ritualists. Humans could not understand Troll aesthetics, so it was naturally impossible to specifically capture “female Trolls whom Trolls find attractive.” — They couldn’t bestow delicious female slaves, could they?
Given this, why specifically procure high-level Troll sorcerers?
It was neither safe nor convenient, and their strength was not necessarily greater than that of local sorcerers. Just look at these three loyal human Ritualists… Such large-scale petrification rituals must be harmful to the body.
And they were clearly not there to supervise and protect this Troll sorcerer in completing the ritual… otherwise, they wouldn’t have been so unprepared and wouldn’t have set up any traps at all.
They seemed more like they were there for testing and data collection.
It was like entering a site right after a nuclear bomb had exploded to collect data – they could have collected one round of data and left immediately. But they did not make any preparations and continued to linger in this empty city.
So, Adler definitely had the ability to win people’s hearts. This level of loyalty could not be achieved by slave contracts alone.
And now, Eivass finally understood – why did Adler specifically spend a large amount of money to purchase Fourth Tier Troll sorcerers.
—Precisely because humans could not sympathize with man-eating Trolls, he could dispatch Troll sorcerers engraved with incantations anywhere without worrying about them escaping or being harbored by others!
Preventing the Ritualist who activated the grand ritual from escaping was clearly also part of the transaction – just like seed companies, when selling high-quality seeds, would prevent farmers from making their own usable seeds for the next harvest.
If they could sell for one round and then never need to buy again, or even produce seeds infinitely themselves, who would they sell to afterward?
Adler’s thinking was similar – he wanted these Troll sorcerers to irreversibly burn themselves out after activating the ritual, so that the grand rituals he developed would not be leaked, and others could not master this secret!
Thinking of this, Eivass could not help but feel… this was Adler’s protection of his intellectual property.
Or rather, since such a matter could be reasonably taken into consideration… it indicated that ritual plagiarism in the Ancient Kingdom of Anxi had clearly become a trend. However, this was also normal. After all, everyone used the same language, the same culture, and the same materials; it was not difficult to replicate rituals invented by others. Even if they could not reverse-engineer them, they could steal information by bribing slaves.
Eivass never imagined that the Ritualists of the Ancient Kingdom of Anxi, as the origin and most prosperous and developed place for mystical arts related to rituals and curses, would, upon advancing to the Sixth Tier, prioritize developing their own ritual encryption technology…
Judging by the time he recruited the Troll sorcerers, Adler must have been preparing for this matter for a long time.
Eivass dared not forcibly stop the Troll sorcerers from performing the ritual before obtaining conclusive information – he also worried that even a slight problem could lead to those residents being permanently petrified or unable to be freed.
Although he could also transform into a Sin Eater Beast to pray for a miracle, Eivass’s synchronization rate was already too high. If he continued to use the power of the Sin Eater Beast recklessly, his soul would soon be completely corrupted.
However, although Viness was manufacturing demons for the first time, her craftsmanship was quite steady – after the Ritualists could no longer even scream, she tormented them for a while longer before kneading their souls into demons.
Two of the three Ritualists transformed into Eye Demons – demons embodying the sin of envy; the other became a Rictus Demon, representing the sin of gluttony.
After transforming into a Rictus Demon, his head was completely split open, and he lost his thinking ability. Fortunately, the Eye Demons could still communicate normally.
Towards the Night Demon, who inherited the authority of the Fallen Heavenly Envoy, the two Eye Demons offered their absolute loyalty without any hesitation.
But they gave an answer that was completely beyond Eivass’s expectations—
“Adler is… a Savior?”
Lixia next to him repeated in disbelief, calling them out directly: “Are you idiots? Do you even know what a Savior means?”
These Ritualists from Heaven City had found the answer – their utmost loyalty to their own Lord.
—They actually regarded Adler as a Savior and worshipped him fervently!
(End of this chapter)