Chapter 388

The Black Tower had plenty of space. Floors four through seven were residential areas, and most of the rooms were still empty.

The seventh floor consisted of suites, with even more spacious rooms, but no one had ever lived there.

Bratt chose a room on the seventh floor, furnished it and stocked it with everyday necessities, then settled Anser's parents in.

Only after arranging everything and making sure nothing had been overlooked did he hurry to the top floor and knock on Anser's door.

Anser was sprawled lazily on a lounge chair. Through the transparent stone wall, he turned his head to look down over the island outside.

"You look pretty calm," Bratt said, pulling over a chair and sitting beside him.

"That's because you weren't here earlier." Anser grinned.

Bratt didn't laugh. Instead, he sighed wistfully. "Must be nice being a spellcaster. Really nice."

For ordinary people, returning from the dead existed only in legends. It was something they had no means of obtaining.

After witnessing it firsthand, it was hard not to have some feelings about it.

"It's just resurrection. It's not that difficult." Anser looked completely relaxed. "So you guys can afford to be a little bolder in battle. As long as there are a few bones left, I can bring you back."

"Even so, put a blade in front of me and I'm still afraid of dying." Bratt shrugged. "Your parents... what are you going to do about them?"

"They need a few days of proper rest before they'll fully recover. Keep an eye on them for me and make sure they have everything they need. When you have time, sit down and talk with them. Tell them about what we've been through lately."

"Once they've recovered, they can do whatever they want. Farm, bake bread, whatever..." Anser instructed.

People his parents' age certainly weren't going to sit around doing nothing, but Anser had no intention of interfering. There was only one restriction: they couldn't casually leave Holrewen.

It wasn't safe outside.

"What about you?" Bratt caught the implication in Anser's words and looked puzzled.

"A racial war may be about to break out. I have important matters to deal with, so I probably won't have much time to spend with them," Anser explained.

"Fair enough." Bratt didn't suspect anything.

Managing little Holrewen alone already kept him impossibly busy, let alone an entire federation.

"By the way, who's that assistant of yours in the work group? How come I've never seen him?"

"He's a spirit. Very capable and very reliable, but it's inconvenient for him to show himself," Anser explained.

"No wonder he replies the instant I send him a message." Bratt looked thoughtful. "He assigned five people to me just now to help manage Holrewen. Where did they come from?"

He stood up and pointed at a young man below the Black Tower who was speaking with a villager, his expression turning serious. "Look at him. He's young, but incredibly knowledgeable. No matter what you ask, he knows at least something about it. That's not normal."

"Your counterintelligence instincts are pretty sharp," Anser teased.

But he knew there had to be a reasonably plausible explanation sooner or later. Otherwise, no one would ever completely trust them.

"During the purge on the Rock of Bral, we captured a large number of people carrying mind flayer symbionts. I had someone save them, but these people had malicious intentions to begin with, so we couldn't simply release them."

"They've all undergone mental conditioning and psychological guidance, so they're basically trustworthy. Don't worry about using them."

Anser didn't mention the process, but neither did he hide the result.

The Spirit Net Mark modified by Sakkors had already replaced and erased the mind flayer larvae. Even if a mind flayer arcanist came in person, they wouldn't be able to detect anything unusual about the Spirit Net maintenance staff.

Moreover, aside from a few particularly stubborn individuals, most of the maintenance staff still retained their consciousness and memories. They knew who they were and remembered their pasts, yet they still believed that who they were now was better and that their lives had greater value.

That was the power of an ideological imprint.

"So that's what happened." Bratt saw nothing wrong with it. "They got off easy."

If these people hadn't been discovered, they inevitably would have become minions of the mind flayers.

Under Waterdeep's laws, the souls of some of the principal offenders would even have been extracted and sealed inside the "Tomb of the Anvil."

As for Anser's "psychological guidance," that wasn't much of a problem either.

Good and evil were clearly defined in this world. Doing evil to good people was evil, but doing good to evil people could also be evil.

Even the Church of Tyr wouldn't show mercy to evildoers. Evil deserved punishment; only the methods differed.

A Paladin who had sworn an Oath of Vengeance wouldn't break their oath no matter how extreme their methods became when confronting evil.

Showing mercy to evil, on the other hand, could violate the oath's mandate to eradicate evil completely and cause them to break it.

"Psychological guidance" sounded frightening, but it was actually extremely common.

After all, religion was essentially a form of indoctrination, and no one understood that better than the churches.

Beyond the churches, Wizards and psionicists were also experts in the field.

Enchantment Wizards in particular could learn charm spells from the 1st level, followed by Suggestion at the 2nd, Incite Greed at the 3rd, and Modify Memory at the 5th...

There were countless spells of this kind.

Spells themselves weren't inherently good or evil. If they produced good outcomes, they were good; if they fostered evil, they were evil.

It was the same with many ordinary people. They didn't understand arcane magic and always assumed that spells from the school of Necromancy had to be bad.

Little did they know that Clerics, who saved countless lives, were among the spellcasters most proficient in that very school.

In practice, good people were often prone to softheartedness, excessive empathy, and an inability to distinguish when severity was necessary, believing that harsh methods were themselves a form of evil.

That was why Blackguards had a far worse reputation than Whiteguards and Greenguards.

"We should still try not to let word of this spread," Bratt mused.

It was the sort of thing that sounded bad regardless of the circumstances. Ordinary people wouldn't necessarily understand the distinction, and it could damage the Federation's image.

"We'll just say they're talented people we recruited from various places. Everyone will gradually get used to them," Anser said after thinking it over.

"Got it. This'll make my life a lot easier." Bratt stood and stretched, grinning wide enough to reveal a pair of canine teeth.

"You can come and go freely now. When you have time, go hunting in the Wood of Sharp Teeth more often," Anser said pointedly.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." The instant Bratt heard that, his smile froze. He turned and headed for the door. "I've got work to do."

Anser watched him leave and silently shook his head.

Bratt genuinely wasn't very interested in fighting. Otherwise, why would someone so young have gone to Baldur's Gate Harbor Hospital to settle into an easy life?

But this wasn't something Anser could interfere with too much. Even Stoll didn't believe he was certain to advance to Legendary. That was simply the limitation of their perspective.

Anser sighed softly, connected to the Spirit Net, and checked the latest data.

In just half a day, Spirit Net membership had skyrocketed to more than two hundred thousand—over three times what it had been before.

'Still showing some restraint.'

Anser was becoming increasingly satisfied with Sakkors.

If Sakkors removed all restrictions, membership could easily surpass a million.

Anser checked the new members. Humans and Elves made up the majority, though there were also Halflings, Half-Elves, Tieflings, Gnomes, Dwarves, and other races.

The proportion of professionals had soared, with quite a few High-level and even Peak Professionals appearing, but no Legendary Professionals.

Information such as race, professional rank, gender, and location could be filled in and made public at each member's discretion, though Anser, Sakkors, and the maintenance staff could see it regardless.

The Spirit Net was far livelier than before. Popular news stories and knowledge posts had heated discussions beneath them, often racking up tens of thousands of comments.

That was because the Spirit Net didn't discriminate against the illiterate. Even those who couldn't read could accurately understand the meaning conveyed through telepathy.

Nor was there any learning curve. A person could send a message with a thought, and the Spirit Net would automatically convert it into Common. Even an idiot could use it.

'So this is the otherworldly version of surfing the internet.'

To prevent chaos, Sakkors had divided the news section into finely organized categories using all kinds of tags and had even created several rankings.

Spirit Net Trending, Search Rankings, Regional Rankings...

'Don't these people have jobs?'

Anser shook his head slightly. The sheer level of activity was starting to look a little frightening.

When membership had been small, everyone had still been cautious. Once the numbers swelled, however, people's wariness dropped sharply.

'Should we add some kind of anti-addiction system?'

If people became addicted to the Spirit Net and stopped working, it would inevitably affect social stability.

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