The Swordsman of Faerûn

Then the old mage secretly went to the world of flames and saw William's real hole cards. This is why he went to the Watcher's Hill to meet William, and then reached a deal on the ownership of the territory.

The reason why William didn't close the Flame Gate after summoning the Flame Legion was because he found that the old guy Elminster had already been to his Flame Astronomical Territory, and the secrets inside were almost no secrets to the old mage. On the contrary, Elminster had to do his best to help William keep the secret of the Flaming Sky Phenomena territory, because there was a friend that the old mage cared about——Hellen.

Although Elminster was exiled to another world during the confrontation with the Saint of Bane, he had already arranged the handover of the territory in advance before he left. When William led the army into the city to receive it, he followed up with his own almost smoothly. The backyard is average.

Of course, this is also related to the current tragic situation in Shadow Valley Town.

Compared with before the monsters invaded, the entire Shadow Valley lost almost two-thirds of its population, among which young and strong laborers accounted for more than half.Shadow Valley lost all its crops (destroyed by monster waves), and ran out of war supplies. Almost half of the once powerful Shadow Valley Guards were killed or injured, and almost everyone who survived was injured.

The point is that at this moment when the magic is gone and the magic is difficult to cope with, these wounded can't get the immediate treatment of the healing spells like before. They can only be treated with some herbs that have no obvious effect and slow effect. , Most of the seriously wounded are hard to live to see the day when their injuries heal.

The high-level personnel of Shadow Valley also suffered heavy losses. The lord Haksgaard Moglin was attacked by the saint Bane and died on the top of the city on the spot.

Currently, the one with the highest status and prestige in Shadow Valley Town is Storm Silverhand, who was unable to come to the front line in person because of her heavy injuries. She is Elminster's best friend, and it is too late for her to agree with the old mage's arrangement. Will cause any obstacles to William's takeover behavior, on the contrary, she will eliminate all obstacles, such as the Charlotte who is dissatisfied with William.

When William really took over Shadow Valley Town, he realized that he had indeed taken over a mess.Dozens of cottages and farms in the entire Shadow Valley were destroyed, and only one Shadow Valley town was left intact. In its heyday, Shadow Valley had a population of about 4000, but now there are only four to five thousand old, weak, sick and disabled crowded in the town. The key to lingering is that there is already a shortage of food and materials in cities and towns, and the shortage of medicine and other materials is even more desperate.

Including soldiers and civilians, at least half of the people are wounded, that is, close to 2000 people need medical treatment, and there are three to 400 people who are seriously injured and dying.

Obviously, if William doesn't try to solve the problem, the people in his new territories will lose at least a thousand people in the future.

Fortunately, it's hard to say about other things, but when it comes to the ability to treat trauma, William is definitely worthy of anyone.Without hesitation, he ordered the people who were still intact to carry the wounded to the open space in front of the avenue, lined up the seriously wounded and dying wounded on the ground, and then with the assistance of Miluna, he restarted the flame Gate, summoned several cursed fire phoenixes from the flaming celestial phenomena.

Under everyone's horrified and inexplicable eyes, William inhaled the energy stored in the cursed fire phoenix into his body, and then transformed it into a majestic fire of life, injecting it into the bodies of the wounded.

However, it was seen that the wounded who were burned by the fire quickly recovered their wounds at a speed visible to the naked eye, and their injuries healed quickly.However, although their injuries had healed, it was difficult to replace the lost blood, so all of them were weak, and most of them fell asleep directly on the spot.

It is said that destruction is easier than construction. William believes that healing and repairing consumes more energy. In order to heal more than 400 seriously injured, William did directly consume all the energy storage of his curse fire phoenix. If all the energy is converted into lethality, Even enough to kill these wounded ten times.

Except for the one that saved Hillen's life, the rest of the cursefire phoenixes have all turned into the original cursefire seeds. To recharge them, William needs to put all the cursefire seeds into the flaming sky and let them stand all day.Before that, he couldn't treat more people, unless he wanted to consume his own lifespan.

Of course, William would not do such a foolish thing. After all, the dying and seriously wounded were almost cured, and the remaining wounded should be able to stand up for another day or two, waiting for the next wave of curse fire energy to be cured.

While William was treating the wounded, two teams of horsemen came from outside the town of Shadow Valley. One team was the elf Pegasus Knights from Myth Draenor. With the holy flying horse, it has an otherworldly charm.

In normal times, these elven armored Pegasus knights would be regarded as powerful elites, but now they are mostly equivalent to exquisite decorations, because elven knights rely more on the powerful enchantment attributes on the magic mail armor. The time has completely dissipated, and now they are a pile of scrap copper and iron.

However, the arrogance of these elves has not diminished in the slightest. They rode Pegasus and stopped neatly outside the gate of Shadow Valley Town, and then sent someone to hand over the tokens that belonged exclusively to the Cormanthor elf court.

The other team came from the lower reaches of the Ashaba River. They sailed upstream in a sailboat and slowly entered the river bay wharf in Shadow Valley Town. Then an elite cavalry team got off the boat and landed. In Shadow Valley Town, they are the Knights from Misty Valley, a valiant and combative force.

The two teams were very surprised at the outcome of Shadow Valley driving away the Zhentil Castle army ahead of time. They thought they would have a life-and-death battle.The members of the two supporting forces were very concerned about the information on how Shadow Valley defeated the enemy. They urgently sent representatives to find out about the situation from the person in charge of Shadow Valley.

William didn't have the heart to pay attention to the thoughts of the two support troops. When he was treating the wounded, he was so busy with the countless post-war disposal matters that he couldn't be idle for a moment.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that there are so many troubles in Shadow Valley Town. The key is that the residents here always have more ideas, and then those so-called officials always hand over all kinds of things, big and small, to William’s hands. , awaiting his deliberation and judgment.

William was completely annoyed after only one day of work. He summoned all the officials and leaders from all walks of life, criticized everyone as useless in person, and then carried out a thorough rectification of the town's management model.

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William is not a person who is good at management. In his two lifetimes, he only remembered a few impressive cases.

One is related to his living environment since he was a child. In his previous life, William was born in a small town with a strong martial arts style. There were often conflicts in the surrounding villages, and the clan antagonism was relatively serious.

And when he was young, it was the time when the spiritual attributes of the country were overflowing. At that time, villages were divided into groups, towns and towns were divided into streets, and the organizational structure penetrated into the grassroots, which almost suppressed the power of the original clan forces to the extreme. The simplicity of the people is astounding.

Not to mention the subsequent changes, but in William's view, that kind of pervasive social structure is definitely an existence that can explode the combat effectiveness of the entire social group (in fact, we are still the absolute beneficiaries of this structure).

The second one that had a profound impact on William was "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms". Emperor Zhaolie, who had been displaced for half his life, could get the late-stage cards of the double king and five bombs such as the five tigers, the crouching dragon and the young, and his human and (able to win) attributes It can be described as unparalleled in the world.The biggest reason why Boss Liu can win people is that he treats people with sincerity. Although this made him miss a lot of talents, he got more because of it (the part that impressed me the most was the part where Xu Shu ran away. It's a pity, now that I think about it, a boss like Boss Liu can't do anything, that's the biggest irony to a splendid civilization).

Then William also has two relatively simple understandings, which come from his comprehension in the mercenary and fugitive career in the later period of his previous life. One is to leave professional things to professional people, and the other is not to be stingy and need to be driven by profit When you are a person, you must give enough money.

Thousands of homeless people clustered in crowded towns, without effective organization or fine management, resulting in a smoky chaos in Shadow Valley Town.

William didn't want the town he just started to be in such a mess. With the help of the silver-haired sisters Storm and Dove, he organized capable people to identify and group all the homeless in the town, and appointed a team leader temporarily.When all the wounded have been treated, the population structure of the entire Shadow Valley Town has also been initially organized.

All people have organizational affiliation, no matter he (she) is a refugee from outside, a resident of this town, or an adventurer from other places.After William conducted a preliminary management grouping of these people and conducted a thorough investigation, he also had a more reliable understanding of the current problems and difficulties facing Shadow Valley.

At present, the first thing is to start production and save yourself. Ms. Storm suggested that William send envoys to Misty Valley, ask them for humanitarian assistance, and collect as much food as possible to help the hungry refugees.She even hoped that William would take to the streets in the name of the lord and personally distribute free bread to the people in order to gain a better reputation and reputation, which would help appease the angry hearts of the refugees.

William sneered at this, in his view: If I go to the river to catch two fish, it will be more conducive to feeding those hungry people than running on the street to put on a show.

William directly ordered the personnel he brought from Dagger Valley, especially those experienced people from Dagger Falls, to go to the team leaders to recruit people, and then go to clean up the battlefield outside the city.

The way William thought of was still the same old way, using work for relief.The method is not afraid of being old, as long as it is useful.

This time, because there are more old and weak, and many of them are single gangs who have lost their relatives (no relatives at all), William divided them into two parts when distributing the remuneration.Some of them are those who are responsible for the work. They are under the unified management of the new lord William. They cannot be said to be completely full, but they are definitely enough to support their labor consumption.

The other part is the team that sends out manpower. For every qualified laborer, the team will get a food subsidy, and the team leader is responsible for feeding the remaining team members who cannot work.William didn't care how the group leader was assigned, but there was one thing: no one in the group could starve to death, otherwise William would directly execute the group leader, and then the remaining survivors would choose a new group leader.

The rules set by William seemed so cruel that the silver-haired sisters strongly opposed his almost tyrant-like governance method. In their view, those team leaders responsible for distribution were completely innocent. There is no such thing as starving to death in this world. things happen.

Both Storm and Dove are old monsters who have lived for hundreds of years. They have seen so much darkness and ugliness in the world. It can be said that it is rare for them to be able to maintain a kind heart. We cannot expect them to be good at economical use. talent.

It's just that these two old goblins have a very annoying bad habit, a bad habit that William will sometimes commit, but they want to intervene in whatever they don't like, and they will not hesitate put into action.

Fortunately, William didn't assign the two of them to take care of this kind of thing, otherwise William's decree might not even be able to leave the Lord's Mansion.

Of course, William never expected that the government orders he promulgated would be implemented smoothly. With his experience in Dagger Valley, he knew the hearts of the people in this world too well.

Be fearful but not virtuous!Even if there are some saint-level perfectionists, they cannot reverse the overall moral trend of this world.

Fortunately, those laborers who were recruited to clean up the battlefield outside the town were led by Dagger Valley people with some experience, and coupled with the clear work, basically no major mistakes were made.

However, only the remaining team members who were unable to work in the cities and towns were in trouble on the first day of distributing food subsidies. At the first moment, he either embezzled it himself, or sold it again. This frankly did not take William's prestige into consideration, and it even ignored the lives and deaths of a group of vulnerable hungry people.

William also became ruthless. He immediately arrested all the team leaders who were reselling materials, announced their guilt in public and beheaded them. The next family ransacked the house and disposed of it together.

As for those who embezzled materials, although William did not kill them, he also dismissed them, chased them back, and then put them into coolie camps for free labor education.

With a population of nearly 5000 in Shadow Valley Town, more than 170 groups were organized and divided into 170 administrative districts, which meant that there were a total of [-] group leaders and representatives from [-] administrative districts.

William was also ruthless. He actually killed 79 team leaders and three government district representatives in one go, and sent most of the rest to labor camps.

And there are very few lucky ones who can escape this catastrophe this time. Only one government district representative and nine team leaders did a good job and were rewarded and promoted by William.

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The only purpose of biological evolution is to obtain better survival and continuation.Among them, becoming the leader of the population and becoming the king is the best portrayal of biological evolutionary instinct, because this type of dominant individual can obtain more resources, more sufficient food, and more mating-mating-rights.

And this biological instinct is embodied in human civilization, and it has evolved into another unique humanistic tendency-domination.In layman's terms, it is the desire to be an official. No matter in William's previous life or in Faerun's three-acre land, becoming a master is always the most longed-for pursuit of all humanoid creatures with brains.

We can even say that this instinct imprinted in the genes of creatures is the invisible driving force that drives the entire civilization forward. If any intelligent group loses this instinct, then she is not far from extinction.

William met with ten lucky ones who passed the test, and after communicating with them, he promoted seven of them to be the new representatives of the administrative district.

The so-called representatives of the government affairs district are the superiors of the team leader, and any government orders issued by William or the distribution of materials are realized through the representatives of the government affairs district.The only difference between the representative of the political area and the group leader is that the group leader is self-selected by the group members, while the representative of the administrative area needs to be appointed by the lord, because they represent the extension of the lord's will and are the guarantee of the lord's governance.

Of course, William does not need to maintain his dominance through the so-called balance of personnel. His dominance comes from his strength, from the powerful and formidable Flame Legion under his command.

William's only request to the representatives of the administrative district and the team leaders is to ensure that no one under his command starves to death.Regarding the issue of food, William has never worried about it, not to mention that the rich products of the entire valley are enough for Shadow Valley to have many ways to tide over the difficulties. What is more important is that William has confidence in himself. As the strongest, he is confident that even if the situation really gets out of hand, he can still break the situation by himself.

Isn't it just that there is not enough food?Isn't it just not enough to eat?At worst, I will steal, rob, and hunt in a huge country. How can I feed these thousands of mouths? !

By the way, the Great Kingdom is a peculiar specialized outer plane, and everything in it is hundreds of times larger than the same kind on the main material plane. It is said that it is the origin of the giant race.

The reason why William didn't directly take action to solve the problem now was that he didn't want to raise a bunch of waste. He needed people from Shadow Valley to be self-reliant. After all, he wasn't everyone's nanny.William hopes that even without his own caretaker in the future, the people under his hands can still live in this land firmly and grow up on their own.

This is the greatest love and the best help for these people in William's mind.

Regarding the mess that Elminster and others made in Shadow Valley, William had the urge to laugh awkwardly.Are you kidding me, sir?After living for hundreds of years, you will only engage in this kind of personal heroic protection in Shadow Valley. Are you really stupid or fake!

What William wants to do now is to knead the people of Shadow Valley into a solid whole through this disaster, and train an efficient team with certain political capabilities.

That's why he selected the nine surviving team leaders. Among them, seven talented ones were promoted to higher positions, and two incompetent ones stayed in their posts, but they received generous material rewards from William. One hundred pounds of fine bacon jerky (this is real hard currency, and can even be used as currency in many places).

Of course, the only surviving government district representative was also rewarded with a hundred pounds of bacon jerky. This lady named Rumsfeld is a harp player and all the government district representatives recommended by Ms. Storm Among the talents, the only member from the Harper League.As for those idiots who failed to escape William's butcher's knife, most of them were natives of Shadow Valley or adventurers from Cormyr.

In this regard, as one of the leaders of the Harper Alliance, Ms. Storm is worthy of recognition in terms of character.If another person with no brains came, he would not have to place his cronies all over the place.

But this does not mean that William can coexist peacefully with the silver-haired sisters. On the contrary, irreconcilable contradictions and conflicts broke out between them.

The cause of the contradiction was William's harsh treatment of those who erred.

Whether it is the execution of 82 embezzlers or the labor reform of more than a hundred selfish people with minor mistakes, it is extremely inconsistent with the life philosophy of the Storm Sisters.

"They just made some mistakes that normal people would make. This should not be a reason for them to be severely punished, let alone an excuse to be killed! William, you can't arbitrarily deprive people of their lives, this is wrong! Those poor people also have family members, and their families will cry for it." Storm stood beside the lord, lobbying William vigorously.

However, William said without giving an inch: "Ms. Storm, you only saw the pity of these one hundred and ten people. Did you see that there are more than 900 people who are more innocent, more pitiful, and more innocent under their feet?" Help?! Let them put those poorer lives behind them, their fate is already doomed."

Storm shouted angrily: "Damn it! William, you can't sacrifice the lives of a few people for the benefit of more people! That's wrong! The importance of life should not be measured by the number!"

William was startled when he heard this. He was familiar with what Lady Storm said. This was a famous ethical and philosophical torture in his previous life.

The source of this problem is a thought experiment. Suppose you are a train driver with more than ten years of service experience. When you are driving to a crossing point of railroad tracks, you see five train drivers in front of you from a distance. Children are playing.

You honked the horn urgently, trying to get them to dodge quickly, but these five children didn't understand what it meant, and they were still having fun on the railroad tracks, and they were about to crash into them.

Just near the intersection you find that you can turn onto another track, unfortunately there is a road worker on that track, and the clock is so tight that the worker must not have time to avoid the train.

How should you choose at this time?

The thinking triggered by this thought experiment is, is the life of one person or five people more important?Then came another thought, should we sacrifice one life to save more people?Are heroes and martyrs worthy of praise?Should people be more selfish?

William was also confused by this question for a while, but it wasn't until he experienced a lot later and got a solution from a sensible person that he really understood the sinister intentions behind this question.

This is a bowl of poisonous chicken soup that deliberately distorts the true meaning of the core of human civilization. The purpose is to weaken the unity and resistance of the society, and cultivate the kind of selfish, profit-seeking fools who have no vision and brains. It is called "exquisite egoism" (to put it bluntly, it means destroying the core values ​​of our traditional culture by weakening the chivalrous and heroic plot in the bones of our nation).

William looked at Storm Silverhand coldly. He didn't expect to encounter similar problems in this different world. William gritted his teeth and said, "Ms. Storm! Because you are Hellen's younger sister and you have a good reputation." , so I respect you very much and tolerate your stupidity. However, please don’t take this stupidity as your personality. Remember! I understand the weight of life better than you!”

The storm's complexion became ugly, and she asked, "I really want to know what your measurement method is?"

William snorted and said, "When a person bases his own happiness and happiness on the pain and suffering of others, this is an unforgivable original sin. As the lord of this land, I cannot ignore this Original sin exists, but it should be eliminated as much as possible so that more people can be happy.

Similarly, we cannot sell the goodness of a few people for the original sin of a group of people, because this is evil and unjust. "

Storm actually thought what William said was very reasonable, but she couldn't tolerate a group of poor people being beheaded right in front of her eyes, so she could only bite the bullet and argue: "William, your statement is too absolute! These poor people People do make mistakes, but they are definitely not worthy of death, you can expel or exile them instead of killing them directly. You are too cruel! This kind of tyranny should not exist!"

William was also a little angry, and he said angrily: "Idiot! What time do you think it is now? There are 5000 people waiting to be saved, but you are here entangled in the life and death of dozens of scumbags! Do you know what is called Use heavy codes in troubled times?!"

At this time, Dove, who had been listening to the side, interjected: "William, there are more monsters than people on this land, and every human life is precious. Now that Shadow Valley has suffered such a heavy blow, and wants to restore the population of its heyday, I don’t know if it will take dozens or hundreds of years. You killed nearly a hundred people at once, even if it takes ten years, you can’t make up for it! I hope you can think lightly and spare their lives.”

Of course, William knew the value of human life. The human head was not a leek, and it could grow back after cutting it off. Besides, the people who were killed were all the backbone of the thousands of survivors. They were either prestigious or talented. The worst is also a scene person.

But he also knew that if the rules could not be strictly established from the beginning, this dilapidated Shadow Valley would have no future to speak of.

William established the rules in Dagger Valley with eleven killing orders. How can this Shadow Valley keep up with the pace of Dagger Valley without severe punishments?

Therefore, William shook his head firmly and refused: "Back off! Two ladies. I have made up my mind. There will be no change in beheading the criminals in public at noon tomorrow. If you are free, you might as well take care of those homeless people. They are the poor people who really need someone to worry about."

Storm found that William could not be persuaded, but said bitterly: "William! Damn tyrant, you will regret it!" After she finished speaking, she left angrily.

Dove sighed, shook his head disappointedly at William, and left with the storm.

They are no strangers to the public execution of prisoner William and his subordinates from Dagger Valley. Of course, these young people who have personally experienced the [-]th killing order can't help but shudder when they think back to the horror scene at the beginning, that kind of nightmarish scene They definitely don't want to go through a second time.

But now they are the ones who use similar rituals to deal with other people. Somehow, there is an indescribable excitement and excitement in their hearts.More than 900 people, led by the newly elected team leader and representatives of the administrative district, lined up on the moat outside the town wall. Under the combination of this small team of 30 people, it should have There was an order never seen in the chaotic crowd, and not even many armies could match them.

But this incomprehensible change caused many bystanders in the dark to change their faces.

When William led a group of former Shadow Valley wounded soldiers to escort the criminals who were about to be executed to the edge of the moat, the waiting crowd suddenly burst into cheers, mixed with a small amount of crying and The exclamation was the plea of ​​the criminal's family.

William took a deep breath, stood on the edge of the moat, and signaled to Miluna, who was a little follower, to bless him with a [Great Roar], he said: "All the people of Shadow Valley who survived the suffering! I am your new lord William. Some of you may know me, and some of you are strangers to me, but this does not affect my attitude towards all of you.

I hope that all of you can live well and happily, and live peacefully until your twilight years.But there is a premise for all of this, that is to abide by my rules, obey my laws, and don't commit crimes or violate laws and disciplines.Otherwise, these scumbags in front of you are your role models.

I think many of you should know why these people were sentenced to death, and of course more people are still ignorant.Here I solemnly declare that these people were executed for the crime of beheading. "

"There are many people who violate my decree, but not all of them deserve to die. Those who are not worthy of death are punished by me to do hard labor. And these people who cannot escape the death penalty not only violate my decree, but also ignore his The lives of those innocent people in the districts and groups, just to satisfy their own selfish desires.

Such evil people are not qualified to survive in my territory, death is their best destination!

Now!Execution! "

All the criminals were lined up by the moat, and ten big and round executioners each held a machete, ready to start beheading work, but the crowd of onlookers was very noisy.

At this time, there was a sound of horseshoes in the distance, and Storm Silverhand led a large group of knights to the execution ground.Storm rode a vigorous silver-white Pegasus, rode the horse up to William, and said solemnly: "William, I want to take away these people who were abandoned by you!"

William said with a cold face: "Why?!"

The storm said: "The cavalry behind me are the elf wind knights from Myth Drannor. They are the knights who are the best at raids in the world. There are also the Mist Knights in the Misty Valley. They are the bravest knights in the entire valley. They have once defeated Countless powerful enemies. William, I don't want to fight with you, I just want to take these poor people away."

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From the very beginning, William knew that Storm Silverhand would definitely cause him trouble. This woman was quite paranoid in some aspects. It should be said that most capable people in this world have similar problems. extreme.

William once imagined that the storm might interfere with some of his methods of killing people, but he never thought that Storm Silverhand would choose the worst one.

Not to mention that William never thought of giving up his prestige, this was his first step in establishing a foundation for this land, just like the "Three Chapters of the Covenant" of Liu Rogue at the end of the Qin Dynasty in the previous life, it cannot be measured by personal feelings.

What William resented even more was the fact that Storm threatened him to let go by force. This was a humiliation that no man who walked out of that yellow land could tolerate, and it was a scale that could not be touched in his heart.