Chapitre 3: 2. Deconstruct Everything_2
The illiteracy rate in the Tatis Empire is as high as 60%. You, with your extensive knowledge, are a rare scholar among many.
Charm: 21 (7)
Before you come into contact with certain extraordinary factors, this value only relates to your personal image and temperament.
The higher the value, the better or worse the impression you leave on people you interact with. The specifics depend on your relationship and interest alignment.
[Energy Points] 14/15
Your 'Spirit' attribute is 15 points. This means that the speed of your energy recovery is 15 points every 24 hours.
[Blood Volume] Immeasurable
You are entirely organic. Your blood volume cannot be displayed in data terms. However, your blood volume is similar to that of an average adult male, with nothing particularly unique.
[Soul Strength] 2 points
You have absorbed the soul of the original master "Noland Lee Jarvis". Your Soul Strength is double that of an average adult. This attribute is basically useless until you learn how to consume Soul Strength.
[Skills]
Active Skills: Deconstruction, highest level. Decompose anything you want to decompose, and you will get the answer. Of course, the premise is that you have enough energy points.
Passive Skills: None.
Scholarly Skills:
Tatis Modern Mathematics, Level 5, equivalent to the graduation level of City College's moderate acumen.
Tatis Modern Literature, Level 6, equivalent to the graduation level of City College's moderate acumen.
Tatis Empire History, Level 15, equivalent to the graduation level of City College's high acumen.
Archaeology, Level 8, equivalent to the practical level of a City College History Assistant Teacher.
(This panel will be updated synchronously as more scholarly skills and knowledge are mastered)
...
Noland Lee read his personal panel from beginning to end, admitting in his heart that he was indeed a weak history student.
The memories of the Original Master are stored in his mind. As long as he spots certain keywords, a memory fragment belonging to the Original Master will pop up from the depths of his mind.
Just by reading his personal panel like this, several memory fragments automatically began playing in his mind.
Noland Lee has figured out the rough course of events.
The Original Master had a formal job as an assistant teacher of Tatis history at a City College.
It's precisely because the Original Master studied and researched history that Noland Lee has a Tatis Empire history skill of up to level 15 and an Archaeology skill of level 8...
And now, he, a person engaged in teaching history, is going to become a sinner in the Suffering Borderland...
How is this different from sending him to his death?
As Noland Lee placed his hand on his forehead and sighed silently, a glance at the debt scale on his personal panel made his eye twitch violently.
A personal debt of 3.11 million New Solon currency...
This was too agonizing, too unbearable...
The Original Master's father was a dealer with a business group.
He signed a big value distribution contract and needed to go to another city to expand the market.
During the relocation to the new city with his goods and family, a disastrous car accident occurred.
The Original Master's parents, brother, and sister, all died in the car accident. Only the Original Master survived because he was in a different location.
The goods waiting to be sold were all damaged in the car accident.
Due to the distribution contract, the dealer had to take responsibility for the damaged goods.
After all the property of the Original Master's parents was compensated to the business group, there was still a significant financial gap. This financial gap, under the operation of laws such as the Empire's "Debt Law", became a heavy debt.
Indeed, in the Empire called Tatis, like personal assets, personal debts are inherited by direct relatives after death.
While one can choose to inherit assets or not, debts are compulsory to inherit.
Since almost all of the Original Master's family had died, the debt naturally fell on him.
"Oh, no, to be more precise, it should be on my head." Noland Lee shook his head and sighed.
Speaking of which, this Tatis Empire really is peculiar.
For serious criminals, the punishment isn't just a bullet to the head.
Their approach to disputes arising from debt issues has its unique methods too.
When an individual is clearly unable to repay his debt, his citizenship rights will be forcibly taken away, reduced to a mere Sin Soldier, and sent off to the Suffering Borderland along with many other convicts to serve as fodder for the guns.
Now, Noland Lee was in precisely this situation.
The Suffering Borderland, it certainly wasn't a pleasant place.
It was the intersection of three forces.
It lies to the west of the Tatis Empire's western border and south of the Golden Federation's southern borderline, east of the Undead Cult's eastern narrow pass.
The Tatis Empire and the Golden Federation belonged to the camp of the living, while the Undead Cult was the realm of the lost souls.
Life and death, it's just like water and fire.
The clash of the two invariably gives rise to intense conflict.
Usually, death is the end of life.
Every time a living being dies, it adds strength to the camp of the lost souls.
Therefore, the camp of the living naturally stands at a disadvantage when facing the camp of the lost souls.
This was the the case in the Suffering Borderland:
The Undead Cult held an absolute advantage, occupying more than eighty percent of the territory in the boundary, which includes large areas of surface land and nearly all of the underground caves.
The living could only establish military fortresses on land and periodically clear the surrounding territories to contain the growth and spread of the lost souls' influence.
In this unfamiliar Suffering Borderland, the only thing Noland Lee could rely on at the moment was the deconstruction technique provided by the Deconstruction Core System.
He had to plan his energy points well, not wasting them on deconstructing insignificant items.
Only things that could change one's life, trigger a transformation, or provide skills and knowledge are worth consuming energy points for deconstruction.
Then, what kind of things meet this criterion? Noland Lee touched his cheek gently, wiping away the dried filthy blood.
He propped himself up on his arms, shifting from his half reclining position to a sitting one.
The car window reflected a haggard young face, pale with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. These eyes glistened with a crystal ice blue hue.
The hard yet soft lines on the face made this male face quite handsome, albeit steeped in a gloom hard to dispel.
Temporarily ignoring this face that was both strange and familiar, Noland Lee fixed his eyes on the bleak view outside the window.
Under the dim sunlight, the ruins were full of broken furniture, furtive rats, broken gun barrels, and many horrifying bone remnants.
All of these things could be deconstructed using the deconstruction technique, with the required energy point consumption ranging from 1 to dozens of points.
He estimated that the deconstruction result should be similar to the personal panel — an introduction to the specific parameters of the item.
Looking upwards, where the thick clouds covered the starry sky and the sun, Noland Lee curiously murmured, "Deconstruct cloud layer".
The system feedback message was somewhat beyond his expectations.
The cloud layer could actually be deconstructed...
[System Message: You are about to launch a deconstruction technique on the "abnormal cloud layer". Every 1000 energy points consumed is estimated to improve the degree of deconstruction by 1%. Confirm deconstruction?]
[Warning, your current energy points are insufficient, deconstruction technique will not get any results.]
Abnormal clouds... could it be that these clouds didn't form naturally?
Just for 1% degree of deconstruction, it requires consumption of 1000 energy points...
I wonder what kind of deconstruction result deconstructing the clouds will yield...
Noland Lee furrowed his brow in thought.
Just then, heavy footsteps were heard from the narrow hallway outside his room.
Somebody stood in front of the room's door, pulling the door open with his hand.
The same cigar-smoking yellow-toothed guard from before appeared before Noland Lee.
"You're finally awake, Sin Soldier Noland Lee Jarvis. Don't idle either, cooperate with me for a statement," he said.
The guard entered the small room, shutting the door behind him, locking the two of them inside.
Chapitre 4: 3. A cigarette butt
"Name?"
The guard sat across from Noland Lee, asking without lifting his head. A yellowed notebook lay open on the table in front of him.
"Noland Lee Jarvis."
"Age?"
"Twenty-one."
The guard flicked his ink pen at the floor, scribbling some words carelessly in the notebook:
"Ah, you can speak fluently already and without any confusion in your consciousness. It seems that the severe vomiting and diarrhea didn't damage your brain."
"Vomiting and diarrhea?" Noland Lee was slightly taken aback.
"Yes, vomiting and diarrhea." The guard glanced at Noland Lee, a warning in his gaze:
"If anyone asks what happened on the carriage, you only have these few words, got it? Vomiting and diarrhea."
The guards on the train must be afraid of someone leaking that sleeping powder was brought onboard.
It was an unexpected incident with potentially big or small consequences.
It all depended on how the informant handled it.
Beneath the eaves, Noland Lee honestly replied:
"Yes, vomiting and diarrhea."
"Good." The guard nodded in satisfaction, pinching the cigarette in his mouth with his fingers, flicking ash into the ashtray on the table before moving it back and taking a hard drag.
As he exhaled a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, he lamented:
"If only all the sin soldiers were as honest as you. It would save us a lot of trouble. Cleaning up blood, sweeping glass fragments, and fixing windows; I was almost outdone by the trouble those two bastards caused."
The guard wrote a few more words and continued talking to himself, seemingly treating this task of taking a statement as a rare break.
"Why do you think those two sons of bitches wanted to escape through the window? Did they think they could escape from the Suffering Borderland just because they dug up a few graves and sold some illegal tomb artifacts in South Capital Province? What delusional fools..."
Seeing the guard in a good mood and wanting to pry some information, Noland Lee timely asked:
"Chief Officer, according to you, are those two tomb raiders?"
The guard's eyes lit up at being called Chief Officer and his liking for Noland Lee increased. He grinned:
"Heh, tomb raiders? They are far more skilled than ordinary tomb raiders; they are tomb-robbing masters with some fame in the illegal forces of South Capital Province."
The guard took a drag of his cigarette:
"... I don't know the specifics.
"All I know is that these two are very good at stealing artifacts from ancient graves and have never failed. They are well-versed in tomb mechanisms and the obscure ancient Tatis language."
"If it weren't for their internal strife over the sharing of the spoils, local officers would have had a much harder time capturing them now."
Noland Lee narrowed his eyes slightly.
He keenly detected an unusual detail.
There were only three sin soldiers in the carriage he had been in before.
These were himself and the tomb-robbing brothers who met their end.
The tomb-robbing brothers were proficient in the Tatis ancient language.
So was Noland Lee.
Three individuals proficient in that language, all with some expertise in archaeology, were placed in a single carriage to be watched.
Was it a coincidence or intentional?
If it was intentional, what was the purpose behind the person who arranged it all?
As Noland Lee pondered, a wailing whistle sounded from the front of the steam train, followed by the harsh noise of brake pads coupling with the wheels.
The steam train was slowing down.
The journey was about to reach its final destination.
Noland Lee temporarily broke away from his thoughts and looked out the window, pressing his face against the glass to see ahead.
The towering city walls rose up on the horizon, blocking part of the overcast sky.
Behind the walls was a stone fortress with a distinctly medieval architectural style, with the flickering lights on the outer walls and corridors barely visible.
"Alright, Sin Soldier Noland Lee Jarvis, your graveyard has arrived."
The guard closed the notebook in front of him and stuffed it into his pocket.
"I have a pretty good impression of you... Don't die too quickly. If you are cautious enough and careful enough, you might survive three corps tasks."
The guard held the door handle with one hand and pinched out the cigarette in his mouth with the other.
He placed the remaining bit of the cigarette in front of Noland Lee:
"Take it and hide it well. Cigarettes are the most sought-after thing in Korabo Legion. Remember what I said, vomiting and diarrhea."
"Yes, Chief Officer. I understand." Noland Lee watched him leave.
He picked up the pathetic cigarette butt, waved it in the air a few times to let the guard's saliva dry quickly, and finally tucked the cigarette butt into his waistband.
This must be the guard's hush money.
It might even become a lifesaver.
...
The steam train entered the Legion Fortress, slowly stopping its heavy body.
Amid the long whistle of the train, Noland Lee was escorted off by guards and saw his fellow travelers.
About 30 sin soldiers were disembarking from a distant carriage.
Like Noland Lee, these men had violated the Empire's law and had been sent to the Suffering Borderland as sin soldiers.
However, their situation was somewhat different from Noland Lee's.
Noland Lee became a sin soldier as a result of the operation of the Debt Inheritance Act and the Individual Debt Processing Act.
From beginning to end, neither Noland Lee nor the original master had ever harmed anyone with violence.
But apart from him, the other sin soldiers were thieves, robbers, and murderers, full of instability and aggression.
Simply executing them would be a waste of the Empire's resources spent on them.
So, they would be sent to the Suffering Borderland as cannon fodder.
When cannon fodder knows they are cannon fodder, then trouble comes. They won't sit back and wait for death to come.
If management and control are slightly neglected, these highly explosive and dangerous men will revolt.
For this reason, the soldiers who came to receive the sin soldiers used a special tool to manage them.
That was the Electric Shock Collar.
Once this hard and icy metal ring was fastened around the neck of a sin soldier, any sin soldier who dared to defy orders would immediately be subdued by the sizzling electric current.
Noland Lee had one of these on his neck as well.
At the same time, he received his sin soldier uniform—a gray coat covered in dried bloodstains.
On the front and back of the coat, there were a series of numbers. This was the sin soldier's identification number, replacing their names from now on.
After all, there was no need for soldiers to remember the names of sin soldiers, who could die at any time.
Noland Lee's sin soldier identification number was 888.
Three eights, prosperous all the way, was the definition in his original world before crossing.
But in the unfamiliar world after crossing, the number 888 had no special meaning and would not guarantee his success and fame.
Cadeaux
-- Cadeau
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