Chapter 337 - 336: The Reformer

The little girl stared at Gawain, slightly dazed, and curiously asked, "You know my name?"

Gawain smiled and gently patted the little girl’s hair, "You seem to know me too."

"You’re Gawain, the great hero from long ago!" the little girl said happily, but her voice had a slight rasp, very different from the clear, pleasant voice in the dream realm, "My dad used to tell me your stories... the maids are all saying that you’ve come to the castle..."

As the little girl spoke, she started running out of breath and stopped to pant a little, seemingly too excited to remember her physical condition. Gawain quickly said, "Speak slower, no rush, I’ll be staying here for a while."

"My god..." Amber’s voice finally came from behind Gawain, the half-elf looked on with a pained expression, a tone full of astonishment, "How could she end up like this..."

The maid standing behind the chair lowered her head, seeming quite uneasy in front of Lady Ropeney, "I’m sorry, my lady, but Miss Patty..."

"I know," Lady Ropeney looked at her daughter, her tone filled with helplessness, "Take the young miss back to her room to rest."

Patty immediately tried hard to raise her head, "But Mom, I want to..."

"Be good, go back to your room and rest," Lady Ropeney reiterated, then hesitantly glanced at Gawain. Before she could speak, Gawain stepped forward and said to the little girl, "Listen to your mother, go back and rest. I’ll come see you."

"You must come!" Patty blinked her big, bright eyes at Gawain, completely unaware that the person in front of her was "Uncle Celsey" whom she had seen many times in the psychic network, and was instead just fascinated by a "hero" from the stories.

Confronted with the little girl’s expectations, Gawain just smiled and nodded.

The maid took Patty away, using a chair that looked specially made, like some kind of rudimentary wheelchair. Gawain watched their figures disappear down the castle’s deep corridors, then turned to Lady Ropeney, "How did she end up like this?"

The lady clearly didn’t want to bring up this subject, and her answer was vague, "She got caught in a fire when she was very young."

"A fire?" Gawain shook his head, "The one involving Viscount Roman Gran, right..."

Roman Gran was Ropeney Gran’s husband, the previous leader of the Gran Viscountcy, a young aristocrat labelled as "mad, arrogant, and cursed" by nobles and bards alike.

Ropeney’s expression noticeably stiffened a bit, her eyes showing a hint of distant detachment. She turned towards the banquet hall’s door, taking a breath, "My lord duke, we shouldn’t keep the guests waiting too long."

"A ball can last until dawn, and in the meantime, a host can always have the butler handle everything," Gawain said softly behind Ropeney, "We might chat about ’land law’ and ’freedom law’."

Ropeney paused her steps, turning to look into Gawain’s eyes.

Gawain said lightly, "Let those inside wait—they don’t have valuable time."

"I have no interest in the topics you raised," the lady said, "those are products of failure and error."

Gawain looked at her with a faint smile, "Aren’t you curious why your husband failed back then?"

Ropeney was silent for a moment, then waved over the butler who had just come outside to observe the situation. After giving some instructions, she looked at Gawain, "We can go to the study on the second floor. But I still emphasize—I’m no longer interested in what you want to talk about."

Gawain and Amber followed the lady to the study on the second floor of the castle. There, Gawain once again saw the portrait of Viscount Roman Gran—the young man with a smile in the frame, as if still working in this study.

But what made Gawain feel somewhat awkward was—hanging opposite Roman Gran’s portrait was another painting, showing him holding the Sword of Pioneers and the shield of the protector, standing high on a hill, looking majestically ahead, which was the most widely spread image of Gawain Cecil.

Amber immediately nudged Gawain’s waist from behind, "Hey, hey, look, you’re hanging on the wall!"

Gawain discreetly dodged Amber’s fingers, somewhat awkwardly, "I thought after I ’rose,’ everyone had already taken my painting off the wall..."

"My husband regarded you as an idol," Lady Ropeney said blandly, "since he left, this study has remained exactly as it was."

Gawain nodded silently, walked to the desk, and gently tapped on its surface: "Was this where he wrote the freedom law?"

"I already said, it was a product of failure and mistakes—the subsequent facts proved everything," Ropeney said coldly, "so is this your real purpose for coming here? Not to meet new neighbors, nor to discuss business, but to discuss the mistakes my husband made in his lifetime?"

"No, my initial purpose for coming here was indeed just a visit. But after learning some things about Viscount Roman Gran, I also became interested in his life. However, I don’t think his entire legacy can be summarized by the simple word ’mistake.’

Gawain spoke unhurriedly, as the details of Viscount Roman Gran’s story, compiled by Amber’s investigation, gradually took shape in his mind. After removing the parts that were deliberately distorted and misinterpreted by the ignorant public, an image of a pioneer reformer emerged in his thoughts.

"Abolishing all slave trade, freeing all serfs and slaves on the territory to become free citizens; re-measuring the land, confiscating all beyond-limit, unjust, and unregistered lands and distributing them to the new free citizens; allowing anyone to conduct business, engage in craftsmanship or hunting, and repealing the ’commoner restriction law’ within the territory, allowing freed slaves to learn trades and become craftsmen; abolishing the noble children’s privileges to become knights, allowing commoners and children of nobility to undergo knight apprentice selection equally..."

Gawain listed the points, watching as Ropeney Gran’s expression became increasingly somber, and finally, shaking his head: "They were all great ideas."

Indeed, this was the information gathered and organized through the Intelligence Agency investigations about Viscount Roman Gran.

A pioneer who already tried to stand up and change the age before Gawain rose again.

Ten years ago, a young southern aristocrat awakened, seeing with an unusual perspective the darkness and filth hidden beneath the prosperity, realizing the outdatedness of Anzu’s current system, realizing the constraints of the noble hierarchy on society, realizing the senseless oppression of various traditional laws on commoners, and the wasted productivity during this oppression, he might have even realized the power of the people—or at least their "value."

Then he embarked on reform, charging forward with a youthful vigor.

In the initial stage, the dominant authority of the leader and the sluggishness of the old aristocratic system allowed his reform to commence smoothly. He implemented new decrees on parts of the territory and reaped some results...

But this initial stage was exceptionally brief.

The backlash was ferocious. Almost no one understood what this young noble was doing. He was labeled as "insane," "deviant," "corrupted by devils," and almost in the blink of an eye, the young promising Viscount became the epitome of violating kingdom orders and corrupting aristocratic standards, with the outrage covering almost half of the southern borders.

Following this, records became blurry and chaotic, with no reliable texts or even unreliable bards able to describe the events that ensued. Amber only found the fate of Viscount Roman Gran in a scattered poetry booklet:

"On that stormy night, the Viscount ventured into his experimental field, seeking forbidden knowledge to satiate his ever-hungry mind—fortunately, the gods intervened in time, dispatching a sacred messenger to end the Viscount’s madness, a great fire descended from the sky, purging everything with resplendent flames!"

The poetry booklet was likely the work of some audacious bard, and bards with such guts...were probably long since hanged in some square, making it impossible to trace the source.

Yet, Ropeney Gran still remembered those events:

"The mob stormed into the castle, dressed in mercenary and peasant attire, mixed with knights and mages with extraordinary abilities, they charged up the mountain, broke down the doors, and rushed into the inner hall. The knights and mages who should have defended the castle vanished at the crucial moment, leaving my husband to face the mob alone...until the Magic Core of the castle exploded," Ropeney stated with a cold expression, "then, suddenly, the mob halted, ’reinforcements’ from several neighboring leaders ’arrived’ just in time, there was a chaotic skirmish, the mob retreated, my husband died, and my daughter was left barely alive..."

Gawain looked into Ropeney’s eyes: "Because aristocratic dignity must be maintained, the ’mob’ could storm the castle and kill nobles, but could never conquer the castle or destroy a family name—thus, those behind the scenes had to step in at the crucial moment, appearing as protagonists of righteousness, to erase all unsightly evidence after the mob completed the assault."

"You indeed have a sharp eye," Ropeney sneered, "then do you know what happened afterward?"

"A reckoning and transaction; you expressed willingness to return to the proper path, while the nobles declared that Viscount Roman Gran was only cursed by a devil, hence his changed behavior. The rioters who stormed the castle were condemned; hundreds were hanged on Gran Castle’s walls, and after their bodies dried, they were thrown off cliffs—justice was served, order restored, at least in the eyes of the people."

Lady Ropeney suddenly clenched her teeth, the muscles on her cheek trembling uncontrollably: "Do you know who those were who stormed the castle and got hanged?"

Gawain remained expressionless: "Only ordinary people without extraordinary powers could be caught and convicted. Those knights and mages who truly ’did the work’ fled from the start, so those hanged were the serfs who gained land, the commoners allowed to trade, and the hunters and craftsmen who prospered under the new decree—on the castle gates, there were not only scars from swords but also dents from pitchforks and hoes, and that was solid evidence."

"Those people were guilty!" Ropeney Gran gritted her teeth, breaking the facade of indifference she had maintained until now. Upon realizing that Gawain had investigated everything and knew the truth of that year, she no longer concealed anything, "Those who benefited and gained freedom were the mob! They should be hanged—if death could happen more than once, I would gladly have them resurrected and hanged again!"

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