Chapter 676: Change

Translator: imperfectluck  Editor: Kurisu

How were we supposed to find devils among humans?

“Toss them into the water. Those who don’t drown are devils, and those who drown are humans.”

How were we supposed to resist the devils’ evil temptation magic spells?

“…Loudly shout the name of the God of Holy Light. Wicked beings will be unable to harm devout believers. Our God won’t give protection to believers who aren’t devout enough…”

That sounded quite nice. Those who died weren’t devout enough? It wasn’t like the dead could talk.

How were we supposed to kill devils?

“…Burn them to death in holy fire. Those who die are devils, and those who don’t die… well, the holy fire should be able to burn anything to death. This book didn’t even write anything about what to do if the devil can’t be burned to death, nor did it say anything about how to toss a devil into holy fire.”

I helplessly tossed aside the small book, “Holy Church’s anti-devil guide (last modified in AD 324)”. Although the book’s title made it sound reliable, the methods contained within could only remind me of the witch hunts from the Middle Ages of my previous world.

“What is this rubbish? The Holy Church has used such garbage for so many years to find devils? This is clearly a guide on how to kill innocents.”

“Actually, this is nothing more than religious propaganda. Any devils capable of disguising themselves as humans in the mortal plane would have to be high-level at the minimum. Some would even be projections or incarnations of the most powerful devils. There were even historical examples of devils who successfully became Cardinals in the Holy Church. How could ordinary people possibly detect devils?”

“…So, they issued a guide to help assuage people? A crusading army that burns people on crosses is supposed to make everyone feel better? Truly vicious. It seems that all worlds are equally dark.”

I was currently walking along the long, dark corridors of Diffindor’s jail district, which I didn’t know how to comment on.

Since the jail was modified from the old city district, and also because Diffindor was now the Crimeless City, crime rate had plummeted immensely here. Thus, the jail was mostly empty, and seemed to have an ancient architectural style.

The dusty smell in the corridor made me hold my nose. The torchlight illuminated all the empty jail cells. This empty atmosphere made the jail, which had the smell of blood, seem rather frightful. I listened to the head jailer’s report as I observed the prisoners.

Apart from hearing the head jailer’s complaints about his work, I also learned the information I wanted to know. Only 127 new prisoners had been jailed over the past two months… Although this was an increase from before, as it would normally take six months to add so many prisoners, there was still currently the strange situation that there were several times more employed jailers than prisoners to watch over here.

In fact, I was even beginning to wonder if jails were even necessary here in Diffindor anymore. Diffindor was a major city with several million citizens, yet there were less than 1000 people imprisoned in the jail here. This was all because any crime committed here would result in being instantly arrested, thus lowering the crime rate to such an unprecedented degree. The great majority of those who still committed crimes had committed the unpremeditated ones.

“…It seems that I’ve arrived at a good time. These prisoners will probably be sent to labor camps in a few months, right?”

“Yeah. The mines and stone factories have been lacking physical labor recently. They keep complaining about that to us, that we’re not sending them enough prisoners. But, I’ve heard that they’re now beginning to hire acolyte undead mages for skeleton and zombie labor. Venerated mages can now be hired by us commoners? This generation is inconceivable…”

This comment was from a rather talkative young jailer. Still, what he said was within my expectations.

Compared to my more peaceful original world, where prisoners were simply locked up as the main punishment, the countries in Eich weren’t as rich… That was right, rich, because the prisoners in my original world had all their expenses paid for by the government. Such prisoners wouldn’t be forced into heavy physical labor, they wouldn’t need to worry about clothing or meals, and they could even receive a minimal salary for the work they did in prison. They could have an easy life in jail. If countries in the Northlands had such prisons, it was likely that the prisons would instantly be overfilled as countless people would start committing crimes just so they wouldn’t have to worry about their next meal.

The great majority of countries in Eich would treat lighter crimes such as theft by sending the prisoner to labor camps for a period of time. This time would typically be two years at the longest, while most were sent there only for a few months. But, the prisoner’s life wouldn’t be made too comfortable. Not only would the prisoner have to perform heavy labor, they would also be periodically physically punished, and they would be given a permanent tattoo upon release as a mark of humiliation that they would have to work hard to disprove for the rest of their life.

Aye, this was only for the lighter crimes. This was a chaotic era with heavy punishments, after all. For heavier crimes such as murder, the punishment would be far more direct—the prisoner would simply be executed. However, some places would use permanent physical labor or enslavement, or send the prisoner off to war as expendable cannon fodder in place of the death penalty. Still, the fate of those prisoners would often be worse than being directly executed.

Obviously, these punishments would often be quite unjust or inhumane. There were some who committed light crimes, but would still be sentenced to permanent hard labor, which was no different from a death sentence. There were also those who committed rather wicked crimes, but were still released after only two years in physical labor camp.

Still, people in this world saw all of this as perfectly normal since their society had been like this for thousands of years already. However, due to the painstaking amount of effort I put in, there was now a widely available, extremely detailed codex of law that set regulations for punishment types, length of punishment, and so on accessible to everyone. Moreover, as the Church of Law became more prominent, this codex became more widespread, and punishments became stricter and more suitable for the crime. The main idea was that prisoners wouldn’t be given free meals and care, but petty criminals didn’t deserve to die for their crimes. The prisoner’s life would be guaranteed, and work would have to be done to atone for their crime. Physical punishments that might cause permanent scarring or injury was eliminated, and tattooing was also eliminated as a punishment.

Currently, the codex of law was quite popular with many countries. The countries were saving money, and the prisoners were no longer worthless expenses. The prisoners also received opportunities to change themselves for the better. They would finally be able to reenter society and work at normal jobs again, without having to worry about never being able to hold a proper job again due to the prisoner tattoo, which would actually easily lead them down the path of crime again.

Due to the influence of a transmigrator like myself, Eich had made far more progress in the realm of law in the past 100 years than the past 10 millennia combined.

But, even the best legal system probably never expected to meet a situation such as a lack of criminals and empty jails. Mines, which typically relied on prisons as a source of free labor, now had the problem of lacking a sufficient number of workers. Of course, I wouldn’t mind this too much, as a lack of crime was obviously a good thing, while the lack of convicts to perform heavy labor could easily be resolved with the rise of cheap undead laborers.

It was now winter, which meant that physical labor outside would be impossible. If I had arrived later by two or three months and it was spring, then these prisoners would have been shipped out already to various mines and factories, so it would have been far more difficult for me to find what I was looking for.

It had been less than two months since the magical reactions were detected from the Demon Abyss. I simply needed to look for devils among these prisoners caught less than two months ago.

Rather than using the unreliable methods in the Holy Church’s guide, I had a much more effective and direct method.

“Look! A miraculous compass that can detect all devils! It’s famous detective Roland’s miracle watch (and my watch doesn’t shoot anesthetic needles!)… Fine, I’ll stop babbling. This is just my Contract Hero Armlet.”

The Contract Hero system was now incredibly popular. It was also one of the best ways to deal with dimensional invaders. Apart from automatically recording the number of dimensional invaders slain by a Contract Hero, it would also help guide the Contract Hero to the location of all dimensional invaders who would be marked by the star net right from the moment that they entered the mortal plane. Of course, the most powerful minimap radars would be quite large, which meant that they could only be placed in churches and mercenary guilds. The much smaller Hero Armlets would have more limited minimap radius functionality, and focused more on combat recordkeeping.

Although it didn’t seem like much to simply mark the dimensional invaders’ locations through the divine powered star net forbidden spell, it was actually showing its tremendous benefits as the battle went on. Being able to predetermine the Demon Abyss’s actions and learn roughly how many lower plane invaders it sent was also all thanks to this star net.

Since this star net was a tremendous forbidden spell with permanent effects, it would have the same advantages and downsides as other forbidden spells. The advantages would be that it was effective throughout the entirety of Eich without missing a single invader, but the weakness was that it would be relatively weak against individuals, and that it could also be defended against.

Back when we created this star net, apart from wanting to encourage Contract Heroes to hunt dimensional invaders, it was all in order to be earlier on guard against full-fledged dimensional invasions. Any mass-produced anti-tracking magical item or powerful anti-detection magical spell focused around a few individuals would be completely ineffective against the star net.

However, the devils had exposed themselves momentarily to the star net when they invaded through the Demon Abyss, but then instantly became hidden again from the star net’s view. This meant that they were either mega powerful individuals capable of getting rid of the star net’s marking entirely, or that they had special anti-tracking magical items with them. Since the former would obviously be impossible, that meant it would be the latter…

“Strip those prisoners completely naked for me, without leaving them even a single sock! Then, we’re going to test all the prisoners with my armlet! I refuse to believe that they can conceal themselves still!”

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