A brilliant light hugs the land as the sun stretches out with golden arms. A brand new had begun, but Avalon was more noisy than usual; everywhere you go, you would see people talking, whispering about last night’s scene.
Because many did not believe in a supreme god in the empire, there weren’t many churches; most of these churches were owned by the Holy Crux empire. But strangely, last night, the biggest church in the capital got destroyed, and the church members disappeared; no one saw them, and in the place where the church used to be was a grandiose sentence: Done by the clown, who’s the next?
People had no idea what this meant, but it was enough to spark their imagination; many theories began to circulate; for example, the clown was a prank played by someone to make the whole thing more mysterious, while for some, a dark hero was born, those that thought this was mostly people that didn’t like the church presence in the empire. The situation inside the capital became chaotic as people left their works to see the place where the church used to be. Greedy merchants saw an opportunity; they were like hungry hyenas; they immediately created many articles and accessories using the clown as an excuse; even so, people still bought those things.
While people were busy checking and spreading what happened, another shocking piece of news reached them, another one church got destroyed, and those same words were left behind, this time, believers were inside the church, but strangely they were safe. In contrast, the church’s members disappeared before the building was destroyed.
This sent the whole empire into an uproar; they couldn’t believe what happened, even news began spreading outside of the empire; one of the principalities was the first one to receive this news; they immediately became alert, especially the members of the Holy Light church.
Meanwhile, Alex, the culprit of this situation, was visiting the palace; he had an audience with the emperor, he handed over a copy of the memory stone he had. Like the name suggested, a memory stone is used to record things; naturally, Alex recorded what happened, the church member’s confession.
When Julius saw those recordings, he was extremely shocked and became furious; he vowed to make the Holy Crux empire pay.
Alex chuckled when he saw the emperor’s exaggerated emotions.
The emperor’s response was in the form of a question.
”Alex, why are you looking at me like that?” He asked, and Alex answered.
”You don’t have to pretend with me. I know that you knew since a long time ago, but you didn’t do anything; you were waiting for an opportunity, waiting for someone to do the job in your place, and I happened to be this person.”
Julius was shocked by Alex’s straightforwardness; he chuckled before asking.
”What do you want?”
Alex gave the emperor a beautiful smile that made
the emperor shiver.
”I want to sell you the copyright of the clown.”
The emperor’s face twitched; he almost cursed Alex for being shameless but stopped doing so. They were both smart people; it was Alex’s idea, the clown thing; he had the right to sell it. Although this world was not advanced technologically like Earth, copyright still existed, so Alex’s demand made sense.
As for why Alex was making this proposition it was simple, he didn’t have time to go around destroying every church in the empire; he would need assistance, and coincidence, the emperor also wanted to use this opportunity to uproot the church once for all, or at least made them suffer a lot of damage. And what good excuse other than using the mysterious clown who had just appeared to help him accomplish this goal?
There would be no perfect opportunity if they didn’t immediately act; the more time passed, the more they would lose, and the church’s members would have buried most of the proofs by the time they arrived.
What was at stake was not only rescuing the population but a huge profit. Every weak believer would make donations; those donations represented a huge amount of money which most of the churches safeguarded; the two churches Alex destroyed, the amount of gold he earned was astronomical. It was around seven thousand gold coins in dollars; it would be equal to $70 millions.
So one should imagine how much they would get if they quickly destroyed the other churches. Ten thousand, twenty thousand? In any case, the amount of money they would reap would be enormous; it was an opportunity they couldn’t miss; the emperor would be a fool if he were to miss this opportunity.
But first, there was something he first wanted to know.
”Alex, how much do you harvest from the two churches. Be honest, we are a family after all, and in a family, we should share and be honest with each other.” Julius said with a righteous expression.
Alex almost vomited what he ate this morning, he knew he was shameless, but this man before him, his father-in-law, was more shameless than him.
”5 thousand golds.” He responded; naturally, he must be lying, he had earned more than that, but he was not going to say it.
The emperor’s eyes and even one of his shadows were shocked; he secretly made a calculation; there were still hundreds of churches across the empire, imagining that they were fast enough and destroyed sixty or fifty of them, and per church, they harvested two thousands gold coins, they would reach the astronomical amount of hundred thousand gold coins which was not a small sum of money even for their empire.
It was at this moment the man knew that the Holy Crux empire had made a mistake; they would have never seen this coming; this was a huge blow to their economy, so much money would be cut off from them; he didn’t want to be in the Pope’s place once he learned what happened. It would not be the only blow he would receive; the man shuddered by imagining what Alex had in store for the Holy Crux empire.
‘This man is dangerous when angered.’ he concluded.
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