Toyokawa Shoko doesn't want to become a witch

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"I told you that's enough, there's something big planned for tomorrow."

"Wow, even my little master isn't on my side. Don't you miss Master Chu Huahua? I remember you drinking alone under the moon for several nights, murmuring Master Chu Huahua's name!"

Boom!

A few fighting stars appeared on Ai Yin's head, and she collapsed to the side.

"Alright, let's ignore her." Xiangzi cleared his throat, his cheeks flushed an unnatural red.

"What does it mean to be alone facing the moon?" Chu Hua asked curiously.

"I advise you not to ask," Hailing's voice came from the shadows.

“Xiang needs time to be alone.” Mu sat beside her. “Sometimes she writes letters before going to bed, but she never sends them.”

"Mu——!"

"Anyway."

Hailing emerged from the shadows, dressed in monk's robes with two knives at her waist.

She nodded to Chu Hua.

"Welcome back to the team, Chuhua."

The Tale of the Lost: The Lost Child - Chapter 334: Understanding the World Further (Part 2)

After a bit of a commotion, Xiangzi finally stepped in to smooth things over and gathered everyone together.

"Cough cough!"

Xiangzi cleared his throat in a pretentious manner, and stood in the middle like a little adult.

"Tomorrow is the day the resistance forces will carry out their attack plan. We are the main force, and we will be joining the operation and leaving the headquarters shortly."

Xiangzi leaned on the wooden table placed in the center of the tent, on which two maps were spread out.

One is a large map encompassing the eight kingdoms excluding the divine kingdom, and the other is a smaller map that only includes the world of life desires, but is much more detailed.

Chu Hua looked at the map on the table with curiosity.

She played the game "Once Upon a Time" for a while when she was doing promotional ads, but she never touched it again after that. She had forgotten most of the world view, game mechanics, and other elements. Not to mention that it has undergone a major version change over the past three hundred years. Chu Hua is completely out of touch with Xiang Zi's pace.

It's like quitting a game when it first started with a melee at the village entrance, only to return after several major updates and find that the final boss has been deployed to outer space.

Hmm... that's roughly the feeling.

"Since Chuhua is new here, she doesn't know the current situation yet, so before we set off, I'll briefly review what we've done in these four cycles."

Fortunately, Xiangzi was prepared and wouldn't let Chuhua wake up in a daze to find them sitting in a rickety carriage, with Xiangzi wearing this tattered nun's habit, tilting his head and talking to her.

"Hey, you. You're finally awake."

Then he slowly began to explain, and everyone gathered around the wooden table.

“One hour in the real world corresponds to one day here, so I will use 24 days as a cycle. The time when Chu Hua arrived here is exactly the end of the fourth cycle. Tomorrow will be the start of the fifth cycle.”

Xiangzi leaned on the table, looked around, and then continued.

"When the first cycle just started, it was just me and Aine. Our understanding of this world was very limited. We basically took it one step at a time, accepting bounty requests in various cities to earn a little money."

“Yeah!” Pink-haired girl nodded in agreement. “Besides that, we also learned more about the local culture and calculated the land area of ​​the World of Desire.”

"Finally, based on various maps, conversations with locals, and our own two legs, we roughly estimated the size of the world of desire."

According to the measurements Xiangzi took on foot, the land area of ​​the Shengyu World was about the size of Honshu Island. It wasn't small, but it wasn't that big either. The distance between cities wasn't far, and the population density was higher than he had imagined.

"The process of accepting commissions here is similar to RiNG's offline model. You tear off the commission form on the board, complete the commission, and come back with the evidence to claim your reward."

In the first cycle, Xiangzi and Aiyin mainly came into contact with people from the Empire, and the bounty requests they received were all obtained through official channels of the Empire. These were nothing more than requests to capture wanted criminals, whether dead or alive, or to kill monsters that appeared in a certain place.

The Empire is the most powerful nation in the eight worlds, controlling the entire territory of the World of Desire. The current de facto ruler is the Regent, formerly known as the "Wolf Knight," while the Red Queen, reportedly too young, has been largely stripped of power. The Regent employs a repressive policy, levying a tithe on each territory—a periodic collection of one-tenth of the total assets held by the entire territory. Failure to pay this tax results in the Empire forcibly imposing taxes.

It was called a tithe, but in practice, the empire collected one-tenth of the tax from its territories. The territories, in order to maintain their own operations, had to collect additional taxes from the lower levels. The lower levels then collected taxes from the lower levels, and so on. By the time it reached the common people, the tithe had become seven-tenths, making it an undeniably heavy tax.

Moreover, and most importantly, the people's resentment was directed at the Red Queen as the symbol of the empire, rather than the Regent who actually orchestrated everything.

The people are deeply dissatisfied with the policies, which in turn breeds more monsters. These monsters destroy the empire's property, and the empire has to spend more money to eradicate them, thus requiring more taxes... It's a vicious cycle, and the only one who ultimately benefits is the regent.

“I feel like I see this kind of situation all the time,” Chu Hua said.

“Of course it is,” Xiangzi sighed. “Throughout history, there have been countless examples like this. Oppressive rule and harsh environments will inevitably lead to resistance sooner or later, and the resistance forces around us are one of them.”

“This brings us to the second cycle,” Aine continued. “Our first real contact with the resistance was after we met Mumu.”

“The resistance is almost entirely composed of weirdos who are rejected by the empire and are not even allowed human rights,” Xiangzi continued. “Even spellcasters, who have features similar to those of these weirdos, are also rejected.”

“Xiang’s arms have grown feathers, and it’s hard to hide it,” Mu said softly. “So we hid in Stranger Street.”

Xiangzi was the only one who chose the spellcaster profession. Because he had the ability to reproduce offerings, he did not restrain himself from using them, and his arm soon began to change.

After this change, in order to avoid the eyes of the Empire, she could only go to the local Eccentric Street when entering a territory.

Eccentric Street is a special residential area found in all major cities within the empire. It was established when the Regent began implementing repressive policies. At that time, society was extremely uneasy due to the heavy tax system, and all the bad things were indiscriminately attributed to eccentrics. The Regent established this special residential area to house all the eccentrics in the empire, so that they would be kept away from ordinary people.

Stranger Street is a classic no-man's-land, inhabited by far more than just strange people; the area is rife with unsafe and disorderly conduct. Forced into this appalling environment, many of the strange individuals have once again transformed into monsters.

There are even schemes where people deliberately set up traps to turn monsters into monstrous creatures and wreak havoc on the surrounding area, forcing the empire to issue bounty requests. They then accept the requests, kill the monsters, and collect the bounty by carrying the monsters' heads.

"How appalling." Chu Hua frowned. "Have you been wandering around in such a dangerous place all this time?"

"Well, no, it's not that. Strange Street is actually quite safe now." Xiangzi pointed to the ground. "It's actually right where we are right now."

"Rebels?"

“Hmm, that brings us to Saint Seiya. They’ve only been around for less than a year, yet they’ve grown to this size, which is inextricably linked to Strange Street,” Xiangzi said. “This story begins before we even came into this world.”

The changes in Strange Street stemmed from a plague.

A severe plague struck, and out of fear of infection, no one in the empire dared to treat the patients. Finally, the empire set up a treatment facility in the Eccentric Street, dumping all the patients there at once.

The eccentrics were then branded with a new crime—the jinx of creating the plague.

The treatment facility claimed it was a semi-isolation measure to prevent the spread of infection, but in the end, even the task of caring for patients was pushed onto the weirdos.

In the desolate and bizarre neighborhood of Strange People Street, this was tantamount to throwing patients in there to die.

But for some reason, patients in various strange neighborhoods began to recover.

Most of these strange beings retain the physical characteristics of monsters and some of their monster powers. Some possess monster abilities that aid in healing, while others have become spellcasters who can use offerings that can heal people.

Hearing the rumors, patients began to spontaneously gather in Stranger Street. As the scale continued to expand, even some lower-class residents who were not patients joined Stranger Street. In just a few months, it had grown to a considerable size, and under the guidance of some mysterious opinion leaders, it even began to demand independence from the government.

The conflict escalated rapidly under these circumstances, with one street of oddballs even declaring itself a resistance force, leading all the oddballs on the street to form a militia.

These mysterious opinion leaders are none other than Saint-Exupéry. The resistance army that Xiangzi is currently in is also a result of their guidance.

"We were resting in that strange street when we happened to witness the riot by the strange people, so we naturally joined them," Mu explained.

“Those weirdos all looked so pitiful,” Ai Yin added. “We figured the Empire wasn’t any better anyway, so we went along with them.”

“I don’t think that way.” Xiangzi shook his head. “Strange people are indeed a very unstable factor in society. The Empire’s approach is brutal but effective. Besides, Saint Hugh’s purpose and motives are certainly not as pure as they say.”

"Who exactly is Saint Hughia?" Chu Hua asked. "It sounds like this is an organized and premeditated operation aimed at inciting resentment against the empire among the common people."

“They are not from the world of desire, but from one of the other seven worlds,” Xiangzi said. “But as for which one, I don’t know.”

"Could there be something fishy going on here?"

“Of course there are. The Empire has monopolized the world of Desire, which has the largest usable land area.” Xiangzi pointed to several other worlds on the map. “There will always be people who are envious.”

Apart from the world of desire, the other worlds have very small habitable areas, with harsh natural environments occupying the vast majority of the land.

"Then let's..."

"The ones who are suspicious are those few leaders who are elusive and whose true nature is unknown. Most people are still quite simple and honest. Many of them turned into monsters because they couldn't make a living and had no way out."

“The Grail fragments specifically target these people, luring them into becoming monsters,” Chu Hua murmured, “just like Kyubey.”

“Hmm.” Xiangzi nodded. “Let’s put the matter of Saint Hugh’s Ri aside for now. We’ll talk about them again later. Then it’ll be the next cycle.”

She turned her gaze to Hailing, and to Lixi beside Hailing.

Lixi seemed to sense Xiangzi's gaze, raised her head, and met her eyes.

Lixi's eyes were sharp, as if asking: What are you looking at?

The two had a conflict on the ship, and it hasn't been fully resolved yet. At most, they are just colleagues.

“In the second and third cycles, we followed Saint-Shuari’s activities, and we’ve already shared most of the information we’ve gathered,” Xiangzi said. “Now it’s your turn.”

She was already used to Li Xi's prickly gaze, and besides, Li Xi wasn't unreasonable; it was just that her prickly gaze didn't affect their duties.

Since there were no problems with his duties, Xiangzi couldn't possibly have any objections.

Hai Ling raised her eyes, looked at the two of them, and decided to speak first:

"Lixi and I entered the third cycle, and we didn't reunite with Xiangzi until we were close to the fourth cycle. In these ten days or so, we escaped from the world of sloth to the world of gluttony, traversed the entire world of gluttony, and finally arrived at the world of life desire."

Hailing drew a line on the map with her finger, connecting the blocks labeled Gluttony and Sloth.

"The Gluttony World is a world filled with famine. It is more desolate and cruel than the World of Life, where monsters roam and only a few people survive."

"The world of sloth is completely occupied by monsters formed from the corpses of the dead. I don't know why the dead can become monsters, but the entire world of sloth is... a huge tomb."

“The worlds are separated by natural barriers. The world of sloth and the world of gluttony are separated by a rift valley. The world of lust is surrounded by mountains on three sides and faces the sea on one side. Other worlds must cross the sea or mountains to come here.”

Hailing paused for a moment, then continued.

"However, it's not that there's no way out at all."

Hailing turned her gaze to another map, a map of a world of mere desires, on which the mountains on three sides were marked with several specially drawn points.

"These are passageways to various worlds. The roads are dangerous, but at least they are roads."

These are the passages she and Lixi discovered immediately after returning to the World of Desire.

In fact, all adjacent worlds are interconnected, and the world of laziness also has paths connecting it to the world of desire, but Hailing had not yet discovered this at the time.

"I've said everything I wanted to say." Hailing looked up at Xiangzi and took a step back. "This is all the we've gained between the third and fourth cycles."

"Then, finally, we'll return to Saint-Shuari once again," Xiangzi said. "About this organization, and our goals for tomorrow."

[Attack]

This was the word Chu Hua heard most often when she followed Xiangzi through the camp.

Who to attack, where to attack, and when.

Chu Hua had already gained some understanding of the world through Xiangzi, and was naturally very curious about this word that she had heard several times tonight.

Who were we killing?

“The Red Queen,” Xiangzi replied briefly.

The Lost Tale: The Lost Child - Chapter 335 The Bloodless World

"Assassinate the Red Queen, that's our goal for tomorrow."

Xiangzi explained casually, while drawing a route on the map, finally stopping his finger in the middle of the canyon, at a simple square.

This is a city of three, also known as Wu (Seven) Jiu Liu Yi, and a pass.

"The Red Queen conducts an inspection of each territory every year. Tomorrow she will be heading to the city guarding the gateway to the World of Wrath. It is a canyon with only one road leading to the other, making it a high-success-rate ambush site. Tonight at midnight, we will accompany the resistance forces to the ambush location. We expect to arrive around noon, and the Red Queen's convoy will arrive around 10 p.m.."

"Huh?" Chu Hua's eyes widened as she looked around at her companions. "Why? Wasn't the Red Queen just a child? If she's a political puppet, why kill her?"

"This is Santos's plan, it has nothing to do with us."

Xiangzi spoke in a flat tone, as if the life or death of the Red Queen had nothing to do with him.

"All we need to do is complete the task."

"But......"

Just as Chu Hua was about to say something, she saw Xiangzi raise an index finger and put it to his lips.

Bang, bang, bang.

The sound of metal clashing rang out from outside the tent, and a tall figure was cast onto the tent curtain.

"Miss Xiangzi, how are your preparations going? We're almost ready to leave."

A mature, husky male voice came from outside the tent.