“Full marks!” exclaimed Heather clapping her hands, “This will effectively reduce the wild witches wariness, perhaps there will really be someone who could be attracted by this news and decides to go to Border Town to explore what the actual situation might be. It’s not hard to imagine this, since Border Town is without any member of the Church to overlook them, they would perhaps dare to do such a thing. We often say that it’s better to choose the lesser of two evils. Obviously, the other side has considered this and decided that the consequences of being unable to recruit witches is more serious than the consequences of them being exposed…” Here her voice became gloomy, “And I don’t like the feeling of being underestimated.”
“This isn’t a small problem,” Tayfun road angrily, “Once the witches have settled down, they will be able to fully display their capabilities without any fear, it’s also very likely that the so-called demon phage can also be avoided. This is exactly the reason why we encircle every settled down witch, only when we can force them into hiding or let them run into the exile, are we able to keep it a secret from them.
Mayne knew that the Tayfun side of the argument was right, a witch alone wasn’t a real threat to the Church, but as a group, it was a completely different matter altogether. And once they got rid of their identity as the “Devil’s messenger”, the Church’s propaganda would soon be exposed. Resulting in a great loss of influence for them, maybe even shaking the Church’s foundation.
He was now caught in a dilemma as they encountered such a possibility of whether they should send a large number Judges to encircle the witches’ base, but in the end Border Town was too far away from Hermes, and furthermore, the Church’s army should be attacking the Wolfsheart Kingdom soon. So, it was now too difficult to split off the manpower that they needed to wipe out this remote town. Coupled with the problem that if they were to send out such a large number of troops into the Kingdom of Graycastle, it was guaranteed that the nobility of the kingdom and of the other two countries would soon become vigilance, which could lead to a failure of the entire plan overall.
After much deliberation, they finally came to a decision.
“I will send a priest with ten Judges on a mission to Border Town, they should investigate this matter together with the High Priest. If the Witch Cooperation Association was acting independently from the Prince, the force should be strong enough to eliminate all the witches.”
“But what about if they are related to each other?” Heather asked.
The God’s Punishment Army was only allowed to march if they were led by Mayne himself or a few other high ranking members of the church, this rule had been personally made by the Pope. Remembering this he answered: “Then they should bring the news back to us and I will personally lead the God’s Punishment Army to march against Border Town.”
The Forest south of the Redwater River had been nearly been fully cleared out, and the day to start with its cultivation was getting ever closer.
In order to facilitate the people who were crossing over the Redwater River, Roland had commissioned for a nearly one-hundred-meter-long pontoon to be used. The pontoon was created from tens of wooden rafts, which were connected together with thick hemp ropes. He had also specially ordered for the carpenters to build the rafts both of the ends being pointed, in this way minimizing this the amount of water resistance as far as possible. The hemp rope had been tied around four wooden pillars on both sides of the river, fixing the rafts position together as far as possible. Between each raft laid four long planks with one end of it on each deck, they were two meters long and together they were four-meter wide from side to side.
A pontoon built out of rafts was very simple to set up, yet its service time wasn’t as short as would be expected. As long as the water level didn’t rise or fall by too much, which could lead to the wearing out of the hemp rope. The pontoon could easily be used for two or three years — the trees of the forest was an excellent material. For example, the Border Town’s pier was a good indicator and built out of the giant trees of the forest, it was nearly as old as the town itself by now. Despite the fact that walking on top of would give off a creaking sound, it still didn’t show any sign that it would collapse.
