Chereads / Blood Mage - The Undertaker / Chapter 40 - Chapter 11.1

Chapter 40 - Chapter 11.1

The unknowns were more or less dealt with. Yes, they turned out to be locals, colleagues of our stalkers. They were reluctant to communicate, they did not see us as enemies, but as ill-wishers for sure. The era of the world - Inruus - fit many of the development cycle of the Earth and did not fit any, such a contradiction. It was the usual (yes, yes, it was considered the most common thing for us now) magic that broke the resemblance. Along with handmade implements, scarcity of anything and everything, ploughshares and draught vehicles, there were amulets and magical things comparable to induction stoves, wireless lights, electromagnets, electro-hardening steel, and much more in everyday life. And then there were things that had no equivalent on Earth.

At the top of the power were the mages and the higher aristocracy. The zhretses had little regard for the priestly side. While there was a slight resemblance to the earthly milestones of history from the eleventh or twelfth centuries, when the Church was of enormous power, here religion was at the level of the local viscounts, or rather, the priests themselves had no more power than a nobleman of their rank. The temples of the gods had their own allotments, towns and villages, but paid taxes to kings and emperors on an equal footing with nobles and vassals.

If they wanted to.

The caveat is there for a reason. There were enough territories that belonged to no one and were not subject to official authority, although they were in kingdoms and empires, or rather in their possessions. Almost all of them were located on the outskirts of states. It was easy to capture them at the proper level, but it was not always useful, since independent territories were often in hard-to-reach places. For example, one barony could only be reached through a single road through a huge swamp and through a bad pass in impassable mountains populated by all manner of abominations. The other barony stood next to the fortresses of the Other, which could at any time destroy a passing caravan or heavily armed detachment of soldiers, mages, hit a cluster of metals and crowds of animals and people. Well, who needs such happiness, if to get into the barony could be small squads with a minimum of metal, it is impossible to conduct or enter a herd of animals or send archimage. which alone would be able to conquer a couple of cities and two dozen villages and villages of the barony? I suspect that these towers were nothing more than automated robotic defense stations plucked from another reality.

There were enough feudal lords who possessed powerful artifacts with which to reduce an invading army to a size where it ceased to pose a threat.

The others here were called people like us earthlings. Those who were ripped from their world by an unknown force and thrown onto Inruus in exchange for a piece of this world. Who or what and why does such a thing is a mystery. So are the cycles of transference. For example, there has been no mixing of worlds before us for more than a hundred years, but a century ago, during the same period of time, cities from other worlds were thrown onto Inruus three times.