Chapter 1232 - 105: A Spark Lifts the Throne! (Part 2)

Chapter 1232: Chapter 105: A Spark Lifts the Throne! (Part 2)

Dawn knew very well that even just saving his brother’s life would cost all their savings.

It was money earned through bloodshed, saved from life-risking endeavors.

This was a small, even somewhat shabby temple. When Dawn walked out, he saw a simple statue of a young man with well-defined features, his expression stern, and his gaze calmly fixed forward, both hands resting on a forged steel longsword.

Vow-keeper.

A divine artifact unheard of in any legend, so much so that its existence was uncertain.

Instinctively, Dawn knelt on one knee to pay his respects to this unknown statue, as its Church and Priest saved their lives.

No doctrines, no holy texts, and no offering box.

Everything about this emerging small Church seemed like a makeshift troupe. Except for a group of beautiful Priests appearing out of nowhere, everything seemed patched together on the spot. Compared to proclaiming doctrines, they spent more time doing tasks, basically focusing on two things: first was healing and saving lives, and second was supporting refugees.

When Dawn walked out, he saw a group of people sitting on the ground eating. They were refugees from the northwest. The flames of war had spread to Tifanton, and many people had fled to this place.

Whether or not you believed in the Black King, if you couldn’t survive, you could at least find a meal here. Of course, you had to work, doing things others might not understand well. For example, cleaning roads so caravans wouldn’t stir up clouds of dust, or clearing canals and unclogging sewers, all mundane but public works. You’d never get a free meal, nor would you sit idle.

People came and went every day; someone found a job through their craft and soon left, while others stayed nearby, finding odd jobs little by little.

Enough to eat, not starving; the Church’s aid was just for basic survival. These people wouldn’t stay long.

Dawn entered the backyard.

He saw the glow of divine technique. A Priestess, so beautiful he didn’t dare look straight at her, was performing a high tier divine technique. In Dawn’s incredulous joy, he saw his unconscious brother’s severed right arm, cut off by a Beastman, regenerating a new limb.

Seventh-circle divine technique, regeneration.

Simultaneously, Dawn felt a trace of trepidation because they couldn’t possibly afford this treatment cost. He hoped to see his brother fully recover, but his initial thought was just to save his brother’s life.

Even if they sold both of themselves, they couldn’t repay this debt.

Typically, in most cities, a potion for Healing Light Wounds costs 25 to 50 Golden Dellers, and hiring a Priest to perform a divine technique directly would be slightly cheaper. If it were the Church of a benevolent god, especially if luck favored you with one of Illmater’s Priests, it could even be free.

The Church of the Three Triumvirate God has always been accustomed to helping the poor.

By similar reasoning, healing medium wounds costs roughly a hundred Golden Dellers, and healing severe wounds ranges from 300 to 500 Gold Coins, while Healing heavy wounds is merely a third-circle divine technique, a world apart from the cost of a seventh-circle regeneration.

Although they are mercenaries, earning more than ordinary people, even hundreds of Golden Dellers means dulling your swords to a blunt edge, and the head of an ordinary goblin is only a few Silver Dellers.

For low-tier mercenaries like them, a typical job yields only a few dozen Golden Dellers, and you have to account for equipment wear and tear and medical treatment for injuries. Most of the time, surface wounds from swords and blades are treated by simply applying herbal bandages.

After completing a task, it sometimes takes nearly half a month to recuperate.

If compared to modern currency, discarded those legendary adventurers and heroes, the buying power of a Golden Deller is roughly about a thousand bucks, with an average regular mission for an ordinary mercenary earning between a hundred and two hundred Golden Dellers, which is ten thousand to twenty thousand bucks, usually split among four or five people, resulting in around five thousand for each person.

But that’s blood money.

They don’t earn significantly more than modern mercenaries, roughly equating to an annual salary of about a million. However, if they were injured or died, they’d have to fend for themselves without any compensation.

Low-tier mercenaries like Dawn use conventional means for herbal treatment when injured, primarily relying on resilience. Consulting a Priest for every mishap might mean losing money for a single job, which only adventurers and heroes from tavern stories engage in, hiring Priests for complete recovery at any whim.

At the core.

It still boils down to healthcare monopoly and divine technique monopoly, with pricing power entirely in the hands of the Divine Church, allowing them to dictate the market freely. They could whimsically offer discounts or even free services to famous adventurers, but for most ordinary people, these were insurmountable thresholds.

Without fame, fork over money honestly.

But how many heroic figures could there be in this world?

Ordinary mercenaries like Dawn are the most common, and only they take on those trivial tasks that genuinely threaten the daily safety of ordinary people.

How many heroes deal with goblins like weeds?

But people like them, lacking strength and dealing with genuinely precarious day-to-day jobs, are the ones most in need of divine technique healing yet unable to afford it.

Just like Duncan said, many benevolent gods’ Churches aren’t very useful.