GREED: ALL FOR WHAT? - Chapter 2066 2066: Nosy Lamp Bearers
Legion went about his day unconcerned for a week.
For that week, he was busy with his job as a probationary officer. His major job was to patrol the city.
As a lamp bearer, his job is to prowl around for injustice wherever he sees it and then light the signal so that the lamp bearers can come around and intervene.
The lamp bearers are not the police force of the city. They are not paid by the Ivory noble family to protect their city. What they do, they do for free.
Yet, many people don’t like the lamp bearers. Many people call them nosy and disruptive.
Those people aren’t wrong. The lamp bearers interfere in things that don’t concern them and create a lot of enemies everywhere.
Many want their organization to be disbanded. Unfortunately, not many people can achieve it because the lamp bearers are too powerful.
They have even offended the royal family of the great country he is living in. Yet, they are still standing and even operating in the open without fear.
Usually, offending the royal family is one of the criteria for an organization or religion to be deemed a cult. A cult is denied rights in the country and is to be hunted down anywhere they appear.
The lamp bearers were also called a cult by the royal family. But that hasn’t changed much about the lamp bearers because they and their powerful god don’t care.
It wasn’t a small offense either. A lamp bearer went to the capital and killed the king decades ago.
Well, there was more to that offense than it looked. The lamp bearer had initially broken into the palace and arrested the king.
That lamp bearer took the king away for punishment. The king was supposed to spend only 90 years in jail. But he resisted and refused to tell his army to back down.
Not only did he encourage his army to try and break him out of prison, but he also told them to kill ordinary people every day till he was released. So the oracle of the god of justice came down, and he was beheaded in order to just eliminate the trouble he was causing.
That’s the definition of a capital offense. There’s supposed to be no offense greater than killing the king, but the lamp bearers are not ashamed of that crime. If anything, they will brag about it to anyone with a pulse in broad twilight despite being designated a cult.
The Ivory noble family also doesn’t like them because the lamp bearers don’t let them utilize the full range of their power. But they still have to respect the lamp bearers. After all, if the lamp bearers can replace the previous noble family, they can also replace the current one.
That meant that even though he is just a probationary officer without any real power, the police force of the city, the nobles, and ordinary people have to give him a wide berth.
They may hate him and they may not respect him, but they fear him and the signal flare he has in his hands. They know that once that signal flare goes up, trouble will descend.
Many people tried to bribe him so that he would look the other way whenever he saw them perform crimes and other unpleasant things, but he refused to take their bribes. He couldn’t take it because it was against the code of conduct of the lamp bearers.
He wanted to take the bribes, but if he did, it might sabotage his standing within the lamp bearers and cut him off from their knowledge and resources. He couldn’t allow that, so he refused to be tempted.
He told himself, “I’m going to be rich soon, anyways. I should not sabotage my future for a small, short-term benefit.”
Even when he becomes rich, he doesn’t plan to leave the lamp bearers. It is because they wield too much power and have access to powerful knowledge and resources that even noble families might not have.
Also, the identity of a lamp bearer will protect him when he gains a lot of money and his identity is revealed. Anyone who tries to kill him then must be ready to offend the lamp bearers.
This offense won’t be as simple as being branded a cult. It will be more serious than that because the one thing that the lamp bearers hate the most is bullying.
They hate when ordinary people are bullied and hate it even more when one of them is bullied. Like they always say, they may be poor, but they are not lowly and cannot be stepped on.
So it is a serious matter if someone kills a lamp bearer. Even if they are a powerful king with a powerful army and a big, well-defended palace, the lamp bearers will still come after them for their crime.
Even as an ordinary probationary officer, the lamp bearers will still go through a lot of effort for him if he is killed. It is because they will go through a lot of effort for an ordinary beggar who was killed.
At the very least, they must have an explanation for his death. Things will become much more serious if he becomes an official lamp bearer and someone kills him. No place in this world will be safe for his murderer.
Other than patrolling the city, his other jobs included filing documents and sending letters to people or to the telegraph station.
He is not allowed to do sensitive jobs yet, like sending letters with confidential information. But thay will change when he becomes an official lamp bearer because he will have to make an oath of allegiance to the god of justice.
This oath is the foundation of the lamp bearers. It is their promise to the god of justice and the rules that they will love by.
The oath is the reason why they won’t allow any injustice to go and will be fearless even when they are about to behead a king.
