Chapter 141: The Red Queen’s Finger and the White Queen Paper

Chapter 141: The Red Queen’s Finger and the White Queen Paper

…

The Stogg Athletic Field in Englen City was built on a hillside in the city’s ‘Cape District’, just a few kilometers away from Englen City’s largest seaport.

The residential and commercial areas around the grand field were very prosperous, with dense rows of tall buildings nearby, but compared to this grand field, those structures looked like little bumps.

As Louis approached the venue, he saw many huge airships floating in the sky and biplane gliders flying past. The cheers from inside the venue reached the outside, sounding very lively, as if the celebration had already started long ago.

When Louis and the others entered the stands, they saw that the seats across the entire grounds were already filled with crowds. The roar was like a mountain torrent and sea storm; it seemed the competition had started early—it was similar in nature to the Olympics, but there were also performances of knights fighting in armor groups, and contests of mounted shooting and jousting with long lances.

Louis could see that in certain areas of the maze, the wizards had done something tricky. Things from inside the competition field couldn’t hit the stands, but the people on the stands could cast Magic Spells into the field.

Louis began searching for the wizards.

Many people from various kingdoms had come to participate in the celebration today, so the crowd in the spectator seats was dressed in all sorts of ways—many of them were probably actually wizards from noble families. Their attire seemed a bit out of place, looking somewhat medieval. Especially eye-catching.

But the most eye-catching was the stand area directly opposite the royal box. The people sitting there were probably from several wizard principalities. They were numerous, and the people on the platform were dressed very stylishly, all in those Victorian-style double-breasted overcoats. They fit right into the era.

But strangely, a large section of people there were holding parasols. They stood there one by one, cold and stiff, like pieces of wood.

‘Vampires?’ Louis’s eyes lit up slightly.

There were twelve thrones. According to Yingling, the order of the seats had nothing to do with strength but was arranged according to the family’s age.

Louis was immediately drawn to a red throne because of the woman wearing a Crown and dressed in bright red clothes. She should be the Red Queen that Yingling had mentioned.

Her family must be very ancient. Her seat was very close to the center.

And at that moment, she was biting her own finger, looking at Delphinia on the opposite royal stand with an extremely perverse and eager expression. Her gaze seemed like admiration, but her beautiful face was hideously twisted.

One wondered what expression Delphinia had on her face in the distance.

But it seemed the more powerful wizards in this world were not quite normal—except for Ign.

Another stand was also very eye-catching—the throne was pure white, indicating a family even older than the Red Queen’s. But this Queen seemed not to have come. Only a paper figure was placed on the throne, and all the seats in that stand area were also filled with paper figures!

And these paper figures seemed to be moving.

The wizards didn’t seem willing to get close to those eerie paper figures, and the wizards whose seats were near the paper figures kept wiping cold sweat—from a distance, it was indeed a bit spine-chilling.

Looking closely, those paper figures seemed to be real people transformed into that state; only when the competition ended would they turn back into human form.

And these paper figures themselves were unaware of their situation. They often talked to the nearby wizards, which scared the wizards from the Ministry of Magic so much they trembled, all pretending not to see or hear. But if someone accidentally answered them, that person would blankly find themselves slowly turning into a paper figure.

“Earlier, the Ministry of Magic demanded that no Muggles should sit near the wizard seating areas,” Yingling said, her eyelid twitching. “The White Queen accommodated the high officials’ suggestion.”

People said the Red Queen was a bit ‘special’, but it seemed this White Queen was even more ‘special’ than the Red Queen.

‘The Twelve Great Noble Houses seem to have some substance.’

Louis paid careful attention. Besides the white throne, many other thrones were also empty. Only five or six had occupants.

The attitudes of the Kings and Queens who did not come were quite nuanced.

The Ministry of Magic was merely a wizard government serving the Great Family Nobles, with its high-ranking officials taking turns being supported by the Twelve Great Noble Houses. For the past eight years, it had been the turn of someone supported by the Red Queen Family to be in power.

Therefore, this wager between the Ministry of Magic and the King was actually a wager between the Red Queen and Delphinia.

The most interested party was the Red Queen. The interests of other Noble Houses were less involved.

This made many wizards’ attitudes towards this wager quite nuanced as well.

For example, the White Queen belonged to the reclusive faction. Her entire wizard principality was ancient and mysterious, rarely participating in external conflicts and rarely making public appearances. That’s why she didn’t come this time.

Some others simply did not support the Ministry of Magic entering the Parliament Building, as this would mean wizards showing their faces in the Muggle World—they were the extreme conservatives.

So, if the Red Queen won and the Ministry of Magic entered the Parliament Building, it would withdraw every eight years when another Noble House took its turn in power.

However, originally this matter concerned something important to wizards and Muggles. Wizards were still quite interested, so some leaders of certain families (like QK) came to watch the fun.

But because Delphinia had also pulled the rug out from under the Red Queen behind the scenes—she had reached some agreements with certain Great Noble Families, so even if they came this time, they would maintain a spectator attitude during the King’s bet.

Therefore, as Yingling had said before, this bet was actually between Delphinia and the Red Queen.

Still, even though only a small fraction came, the number of Noble Wizards was not small.

This time, they seemed to have occupied many, many seats under the names of various countries. Plus, those Agents who had sneaked in posing as Mages, the total number was quite substantial, taking up one-fifth of the entire stadium’s seating. They had forcibly taken many seats from others.

Comparatively, the Ministry of Magic was more rule-abiding—at least they borrowed the identities of Mages and entered the stands properly with tickets.

But these people from the wizard principalities and the Great Family Nobles were different. They all entered without tickets. The original seat occupants had been driven away by their spells—they were truly arrogant and domineering, paying no heed at all to the various legal clauses and bills of the Ministry of Magic and the Magic Council.

And Muggles were like ants in the eyes of these Noble Wizards—no wonder, they had once followed Anthony to slay gods.

But the former heroes now seemed to have all turned into Evil Dragons.

“This way, Louis.” Earl Crowley waved his hand, and Louis quickly followed.

A series of cannon fire boomed; they were blank shells and salutes fired by the fleet of warships in the harbor.

Louis looked outside the field and found that standing here, he could overlook the clusters of buildings near the harbor and also see the various huge ships and sails, masts and sterns connected, outside the harbor.

The fleets of many countries seemed to have come today. It seemed the higher-ups all knew today’s date meant something.

The warships were lined up in rows upon rows on the distant sea. There were tall and majestic multi-masted invincible warships, there were those long and gigantic five-masted giant ships. There were also the low-slung steam-powered ironclad warships with huge three-masted sails and smoking funnels.