Chapter 763 - Is That So?
Chapter 763 Is That So?
This little ball of light was the fragile soul of the young mother. No consciousness, no intelligence, just a mass of energy with a fear for her daughter’s safety.
Even if Roland didn’t touch her, she would be completely gone in an hour or two.
After all, there was no paradise for souls to exist in this world, and no soul would be destined to last.
Perhaps there was, but Roland didn’t find it.
So Roland didn’t have any psychological burden in sucking her into his soul.
This young mother’s soul was too tiny compared to Roland’s, and as soon as it entered Roland’s head, it was dissolved into countless pieces by his huge soul.
Many thought fragments unfolded in Roland’s consciousness.
Most of the memories he saw were recent.
After all, memories were all the more clear the more recent they were.
Searching through all the memories, Roland soon found images of the young mother after her accident.
In her soul’s vision, a ball of light similar in appearance to her own existed right next to her.
But this ball of light was much larger and brighter than she was. She had an instinct to get closer.
But then two figures suddenly appeared, one white and one gold, both emitting an intense light, and it was impossible to see what they looked like.
One of them, the white one, even reached out and smacked the little ball of light to the side.
Then they took the large ball of light with them and disappeared after flying into a strange light gate.
After reading this memory, Roland opened his eyes. His body shook slightly.
A bodyguard next to him came up and asked in a whisper, “Boss, is everything all right?”
It was a custom within the system to address leaders as “boss” when they were outside, and when they were conducting some confidential missions or when they were out and about and needed to keep their identities secret, they would go along with the general trend of addressing leaders as “boss” to distinguish between subordinates and superiors.
It was more confidential this way, after all, the whole world used the word.
It was more confidential than something like Director Huang or Chief Huang. Roland waved his hand and said thank you before pedaling home with his bike, while the two bodyguards followed him.
His parents were naturally happy to see him back.
But they had also heard about Betta; after all, Betta had visited with the other friends over the years, and the old couple knew him.
The old couple was also saddened to know that Betta had died so tragically. Roland helped arrange the two bodyguards to sleep in the guest room. He then went back to his room.
As he lay in bed, he kept thinking about where that spatial door led, and whether Betta’s soul had been sent away.
Is Betta alive somewhere else?
Such a jumble of things went round and round in his mind that after two hours he drifted off to sleep.
After a night’s sleep, Roland followed the car to the crematorium according to the phone number given by Schuck.
Although burial was no longer allowed in the south of the country, a temporary funeral hall was set up and a funeral master was invited to recite the sutra.
Many people came to the funeral hall. The dead young mother’s side also sent a few representatives over; after all, Betta had died to save the little girl. Otherwise, he would have escaped. Those oddly dressed, neither Taoist nor monk, funeral masters began to jump and dance while blowing suona and knocking wooden fish. Also, they sang the traditional rituals of the parting of the dead and the living.
After nearly three hours or so of the ceremony, Betta’s father’s hair had gone almost all white overnight and his mother was still unconscious in the hospital.
All their friends and relatives knew that the family was lost.
The old couple would be as good as dead.
The tragedy of a family bereaved of its only child wasn’t something that outsiders could even imagine.
The F6 friends were all here, and looking at the funeral photo of Betta in the funeral hall, Husseret and Raffel who were more emotional cried out on the spot.
Roland also felt a lump in his throat and a tight feeling in his chest.
After staying at home for two more days, Roland then returned to the base.
Now that Andonara felt secure enough, Roland’s disappearance for a short time was no longer a problem for her.
Roland had thought that this was the end of the matter with Betta, but he hadn’t expected that things would be so troublesome.
He hid in the floating city to experiment with magic.
The master builders gave priority to building his lab.
After not even half a month of quiet, Schuck pinged him in the guild chat.
Schuck: “Roland, there’s trouble in Wetland City, go over and help stabilize the situation. I’ll be right behind you. Li Lin and the others have already rushed over.”
Once Roland saw this, he knew that something was probably wrong.
He immediately fired up the floating city and spent a little more than half a day flying to the wetlands.
At this time, the mayor’s residence was a mess. Most of the staff were hiding away while two groups were facing off in the city hall. Roland soon found that on one side was Li Lin and the others, while on the other side was a small group formed by several famous livestreamers, led by Charles, the chairman of Cornucopia.
Li Lin pointed at Charles’s nose and shouted, “This is Betta’s territory, what is Cornucopia doing running in here? I repeat, get out.”
“With Betta dead, then naturally Wetland City is ownerless. What’s wrong with those who are capable of taking over?” Charles smiled, then looked at the livestreamers and said, “Those of you who are watching the livestream, isn’t that right? This Wetland City, it’s true that Betta built it first, but it’s the result of all of us players working together to make it as prosperous as it is now.”
“That’s no reason why Cornucopia can become the ruler. When did it become an unscrupulous organization like Cornucopia’s turn?”
“There is no such thing as unscrupulous business, there are only rules,” Charles said indifferently. “Whether or not we Cornucopia are qualified aside, are you qualified? Where were you all when we were building Wetland City, on the belly of a woman or fooling around in some brothel?”
Li Lin and the others’ faces turned ashen.
It was no secret now that the priestesses of the Church of Love could help players level up.
Being the first to discover this secret, they naturally took advantage of it.
Now there weren’t enough priestesses in the Church of Love to go around… There were too many male players. The livestream was full of snickering.
Although many netizens yearned for nude parties, in most cases, especially in public situations, this was still scorned.
Looking at Li Lin and the others who could not say anything, Charles, who had already taken the moral high ground, said with a smile, “So, Wetland City is everyone’s city, and it is right that everyone should decide who the next mayor is.”
“I don’t think so.”
Roland walked up.
Seeing Roland, Charles didn’t show any special expression, but rather, Roland’s appearance was completely expected.
The fact that F6 was very united was well known to all guild chairmen.
“Oh, the number one elite in the entire server is here. Do you think that you should be the mayor of this Wetland City?”
Charles was taunting and provoking.
Several livestreamers even made sarcastic remarks.
“As the number one elite in the entire server, it’s normal to be a little greedy.”
“Nothing wrong with taking your brother’s heritage.” “I heard that there are two beautiful maids hidden in Betta’s room. I guess Roland will also put them all together too. Doesn’t he like married women the most, haha.”
There was also a frenzy among the pop-ups, having an opinion against Roland, and things seemed to be going badly.
But it was a silent majority; the people who supported Roland weren’t speaking, waiting for Roland to retort.
Now those who were spamming comments were just paid commenters.
“The mayor of Wetland City is certainly not me, because according to the law of inheritance, Betta’s legal wife and parents are eligible to inherit his legacy and position. And it certainly can’t be you, Charles.”
Once this was said, the comments subsided for a while, and then it was comments like “it makes sense” and “it should indeed be so” that covered the screen of several livestream rooms.
Charles’s cheeks twitched as he said coldly, “A game’s a game, what business is it of reality. I’ve never heard that family members can inherit from a game account.”
“That’s your ignorance; inheritance of virtual information property, such as online games, has long been written into the law.”
Charles frowned.
Roland was strong, Schuck was strong, and F6, in general, was ridiculously strong.
But why would he want to get some say in Wetland City even at the risk of offending the strongest guild?
The reason was simple: money incited people.
Wetland City was now a gathering place for players, and the output and circulation of assets here were growing at an extremely fast rate.
Before, when Beta was still around, there didn’t seem to be much tax revenue, and that was because Betta had been putting it back into the construction of Wetland City.
Infrastructure, roads, army expenses, and so on were all the main expenses.
But now, the foundation had been laid, and it was ready to be taken over. All that was left was to fix some of the places that could be improved and then one could lie down and collect money.
Charles had calculated that with the taxes in Wetland City, three or four thousand gold coins a year wouldn’t be a problem, and that was after accounting for necessary expenses.
In other words, it was equivalent to sixty or seventy million RMB.
Of course, someone couldn’t exchange that much money year after year in the game, but this didn’t mean that the game wouldn’t be publicly available in the future.
In the future, the number of people in the game might be five million, or even fifty million… then there would be more tycoons and it would be easier to exchange for money.
And at that time, Wetland City would have grown even more.
The economic system of this game was very realistic.
The amount of gold was limited. This was a real world.
There was paper money, no coins, and almost no inflation.
This was the reason Charles wanted to fight for control and would risk offending F6 after he knew that Betta had died.
He planned to mobilize public opinion and work with the netizens to make Wetland City public property, then occupy a small piece of the pie first before slowly eroding it and secretly mobilizing public opinion to make what was public his own.
This was something that the people around him were quite good at.
Except he hadn’t expected that Roland would just throw out the phrase: inheritance.
This was like a lethal weapon.
In one fell swoop, the moral high ground he had just taken was destroyed.
Charles pursed his lips and looked at Roland with considerable irritation.
It was a while before he said, “Betta’s parents, do they know how to play this game?”
“Whether they know how to play or not, that is also their business, and not something you, Charles, should consider.” Roland slowly walked into the city hall.
Here, he also saw an acquaintance.
Gerton Zell.
A half-elf, the chief of Betta’s Knights of the Round Table.
Roland ignored Charles, walked over, and asked, “Gerton, what are your plans?” “Is it true that Master died? Died in your world of the Golden Sons?” Gerton asked.
Roland nodded in silence.
Gerton looked at the back of his hand, where there had been a silver sword-shaped crest, and now it was gone as if it had never been there.
“Then I must leave.” Gerton looked around at the crowd with a miserable smile. “A Wetland City without Master is not worth my stay.”
Roland sighed and asked, “Where are the other members of the Knights of the Round Table?”
“One by one, they have already finished leaving.” Gerton sighed and said, “In fact, we have already understood that something happened to Master. I just wanted to be here, waiting for you guys to give a real and definite answer. Alas, why are all good people so short-lived?”
Roland didn’t know how to respond.
At that moment, a maid rushed down from the upstairs, and as she ran, she screamed, “No, something’s wrong! Lisa, she… Lisa, she…”
“What’s the matter?” asked Roland, walking up to her urgently.
“She is sleeping in her bed, so much blood… So much…” The maidservant was pale and incoherent.
“What floor is she on?” Roland asked in a hurry.
“The third floor.”
Roland immediately rushed up, and Gerton ran after him.
Charles and several livestreamers looked at each other and also chased after them.
When he reached the third floor, Roland immediately caught a strong smell of rust and ran to a room following the scent, opening it to find a woman lying on her back with a dagger in her chest.
The blood had flowed almost all over the bed. It was all sticky and black, so it had been some time since the accident.
Roland sensed the woman’s mental power for a moment, then shook his head.
She was dead!
There were no more mental fluctuations; it was more accurate than an electroencephalogram.
Charles and the others rushed in… then livestreamers gathered around the bed for a shoot.
Gerton said, feeling a sense of loss, “I guess she would be the one who was the most upset when Master died. After all, she followed the Master for almost eight years, served him closely, and admired him with her heart and soul. It’s not surprising she committed suicide.”
Roland looked at the woman’s face again and found that she was about in her early twenties, not very good-looking, but the more he looked at her, the more familiar she seemed, and then the memories of her surfaced.
This maidservant was the dying girl he saved in the cave when he and Betta went to Delpon.
After that, she became Betta’s maidservant, and unexpectedly, she followed him all the way here, without leaving him, and even followed him when he died.
“Could it be a murder?” Charles whispered. “The woman seems to be close to Betta and may have an inheritance, so maybe some people saw her as an eyesore and killed her, faking the scene.”
At that moment, Gerton suddenly said, “If there’s a killer, it’s you. Just half an hour ago, you were down there talking to the others about the Master being dead and reestablishing a new administrative system, and Ms. Lisa didn’t believe you and argued with you. You kept yelling at her that the Master was deaddead for sure—before she left dejectedly.”
Charles’s body stiffened.
A few livestreamers were also full of embarrassment. At this time, the comments in the livestream were dense and crazy.
Roland reached out, gripped Charles’s shoulder, and calmly asked, “Is that so?”