When A Mage Revolts

After running around Ferelden for half a month, Benjamin finally returned to Rayleigh.

The black flags above the houses had yet to be taken down. According to tradition, when a king dies, the whole kingdom mourns his death for a year.

But, the city streets have slowly started to regain their usual hustle and bustle. The church’s puppetry had yet to really make an impact on Rayleigh.

The only jarring part was that priests would suddenly come out of the crowd and grab pedestrians whilst shouting, "God wants to impart to you his will".

Even though a lot of people were not used to it, there was nothing much that they could do. Many mages had already had conflicts with these people, to the point where there have even been street brawls. But ultimately, they could not just kill them; So, the priests continued their preaching.

"Sir, God wants to impart to you his will."

Even Benjamin was stopped as he made his way to the inn to drop off his luggage.

"Leave me alone." Benjamin ignored the priest and walked away coldly.

However, he underestimated the man’s adamance.

Every priest had their own way of preaching. Some of them preached kindly like monks, others would change targets once something goes wrong, and still, others would continue harassing their prey like salesmen. Benjamin soon realized that he was being bothered by the salesman type.

"Sir, you are disrespecting God - it will bring you tragedy, "The priest grabbed Benjamin’s wrist, and slowly said, "I have a ‘Bible here; you can take it home to read. God is omnipresent, if he feels your remorse, your sins will be forgiven."

Benjamin’s eyes flashed with annoyance.

After thinking for a while, he turned on his water elemental sensing technique and scanned the priest from top to bottom as he rambled on, completely oblivious to the spell.

Hmm…not that formidable, and not like the priests that the Church personally trained, who were normally fully equipped with Crosses of Protection.

Benjamin had heard that there were already about a hundred priest in Rayleigh. Because of this, he suspected that they were probably priests of lower ranks and that the Church did not really put much effort into them, only providing them a cross each and sending them out to start preaching.

Thinking of this, while the priest was still busy explaining, Benjamin secretly used the trick that he pulled during his military training to trip the priest, before sneakily stealing his Cross of Protection.

He used the Pillar of Steam to quicken himself, making his movements a blur.

A few bystanders were shocked and rubbed their eyes in disbelief. However, they brushed it off by convincing themselves that Benjamin was just a really experienced mercenary.

This priest stumbled a few steps backward before falling to the floor. He did not notice that his cross had been stolen.

But, for whatever reason, he was probably used to this kind of bodily impact and shrugged it off to continue his rambling.

"Sir, what we have are all gifts from God. You can choose not to believe what I say, but you should not disrespect God..." He said while walking forward, trying to tug at Benjamin.

But, as he was walking, it was as if somebody had tripped him. He fell to the ground next to Benjamin’s feet, almost breaking his nose on the ground.

"What is this…"

He struggled to get up and looked at his own feet, but did not see anything suspicious. The floor beneath his feet was flat, and he did could not spot anything that could have tripped him.

Benjamin looked backward and shrugged.

He opened his mouth and said, "Maybe… this is God’s will."

"..."

The priest was speechless, and could not say a word. A few onlookers heard this and could not help but laugh.

Benjamin could not be bothered with the man anymore; he merely turned around and left.

What a lowly priest. Even after receiving training from the Church, his mental energy was only a little stronger than that of a normal person’s. Benjamin could use the pillar of steam to trip him over a few times without him noticing at all.

As formidable as the Church was, they could not train that many good priests. These kinds of things relied heavily on talent, and unfortunately, this sorry excuse for a priest did not have any.

Thinking of this, Benjamin shook his head.

Despite how sad this one priest’s efforts were, countless others were preaching successfully. The Church’s expansion over such a wide area would eventually gain them many followers.

Because Benjamin could not possibly kill all the priests, he had to quickly think of a solution.

Benjamin pondered all the way to his room at the inn.

After touring the country for half a month, he was tired. Thus, when he returned to his room, he put down his luggage, lay on the bed, and tried to get some much-needed shut-eye.

But, in desperate times like these, idling was an unaffordable luxury.

"What’s wrong? Has your brain turned wooden? Did you not notice what was on the floor as you walked in? "The System suddenly said to Benjamin.

"On the floor?" Benjamin opened his eyes and looked towards the door.

He saw that there were a few pitch-black feathers stuck to the doorframe.

Benjamin raised his eyebrow.

"The Crow…has something happened to them?" He scratched his head and got up, "Whatever. I might as well take a look, it won’t take much time."

Although the "Crow" did not really make much progress in Rayleigh these days, they still contributed to a lot. Whether it was stealing building materials, or tossing piss onto the Church, or even disturbing the priests on the streets. These things were minor inconveniences, but if done continuously over time, had quite a huge effect.

The "Seven Days of Hell" mercenaries that he recruited were based at Randt. Benjamin had ordered them to cause trouble for the Church, but according to their reports, the Church’s progress there was significantly better there compared to Rayleigh.

Benjamin had just returned to his room but did not even have time to catch his breath before he put on his disguise and hurried out of the inn.

"I wonder what happened?"

Fifteen minutes later, he met with Jessica.

"We have a problem." Jessica stared at him, her dead serious, "I think the Church is fed up with our antics. According to the latest news, the capital has just issued an ordered to arrest us. Rayleigh is the main target, with us being the priority. "