Golden Dragon: Six Thousand Years of Empire.

Chapter 333: Fallen Paladin, Holy Dragon Blade
"Paladin!"

Noah regained consciousness, and a thoughtful look appeared in his blazing golden dragon pupils. He had found the mastermind who had established an extreme hunting organization in his name on the continent of Alvis.

They were the professionals he trusted the most, a group of paladins, or more precisely, a group of paladins who had fallen and turned evil, a group of pitiful people whom he could not help but sigh for.

Every paladin who can obtain a response from the Holy Light has a steadfast belief and noble pursuits. They are the group most hated by the ruling class, and are also the professionals most feared by evil believers and the fallen. For the lower-class people who are in distress, they are also the extraordinary people they most want to meet.

They are so noble that each paladin looks like the embodiment of perfection. Even Noah is willing to give them enough trust and entrust them with important tasks.

In the order dominated by the Holy Dragon, even a Holy Knight in reserve has the opportunity to take charge of a city, and even gain authority that only his followers can obtain.

But even with extremely harsh employment conditions and such a seemingly perfect profession, there will still be fallen ones. Holy knights are not out of the realm of human beings. Moreover, even gods have a lot of cases of fall, let alone mortal intelligent creatures.

The corruption of a paladin can be divided into four types. The first type is the corrupted one who breaks his oath. If a paladin develops bad habits such as stealing, or actively attacks or sneak attacks non-hostile creatures, he will violate his oath of dedication.

If you harm natural creatures or destroy the natural environment, you will violate the oath to nature. If you do not actively compensate the innocent victims of the battle after the battle, you may violate the oath of revenge.

This is because of the paladins who broke their oaths and fell, and the second type is those who gave up the path of law and goodness.

If a paladin's behavior and values ​​undergo a major shift toward chaos or evil, such as frequently using fraud, violence, and other means to treat innocent people and no longer abiding by laws and moral norms, he will be abandoned by the Holy Light, fall into darkness, and thus become corrupted.

The third category is those whose faith is shaken, and they are the most pathetic and pitiful fallen people.

When a holy warrior who holds on to his faith encounters suffering and disasters one after another in reality, and the gods he believes in are indifferent to them, and he himself has no ability to solve them, he will doubt his faith and then waver.

Although the faith of the paladin during this period is shaken, the Holy Light will not abandon him. However, the paladin himself will voluntarily give up the power of the Holy Light because of doubt.

If at this time, there are evil gods or demons who tempt them and promise to give them more powerful power to help them and to fulfill the tasks that the gods they believe in cannot do, the paladins may give up their faith and turn into the arms of evil.

The last category is that moral concepts are forcibly distorted or collapsed.

The impact of the environment on living things cannot be ignored, and the same is true for paladins. If a paladin is caught in the dark hell, unfortunately falls into a dungeon ruled by demons, or falls into hell and the abyss, and stays in an environment full of evil and corruption for a long time, this paladin may be affected, become numb, accept and participate in evil behavior, and eventually corrupt.

There is another situation, that is, the paladin spends a long time with evil or morally weak people, is influenced by their behavior and thoughts, causing his own moral standards to decline and eventually degenerate.

However, the fourth type of fallen paladins are extremely rare. As long as they can become paladins, their will is extremely firm and it is difficult for them to fall due to external influences.

It is for this reason that many evil demons and even evil gods take pleasure in capturing strong-willed holy warriors and seducing, forcing, and causing them to fall.

Because successful cases are so rare, there are many holy warriors who will not surrender even if they are tortured to the point of spiritual collapse.

More holy knights fall due to the third reason. They see injustice and injustice in the world, which the gods ignore, and they are powerless to change. As a result, they question their faith, which causes their inner beliefs to collapse, and they fall into depravity in self-destruction.

This is also the main reason for the fall of the paladins, and the number of paladins who fall because of this is also the largest. As for the other three types of paladins who fall, it's fine. If Noah really encounters one, he doesn't mind crushing them to death.

But he really felt sorry for the third type of holy warriors who were heading towards destruction because of their own powerlessness and the injustice of the gods and could not bear to see the suffering and disasters in the world.

Therefore, when Noah discovered that this type of fallen holy warriors took advantage of the spread of the Holy Dragon Worship in the continent of Alvis to build up their own forces and eliminate corrupt officials and evil nobles, he fell into deep thought.

If an orthodox good god discovers that a corrupted paladin is using his name to assassinate and execute the ruling class of a country with complete order.

No matter what reasons and difficulties the fallen ones have, no matter what just purpose they have, even if those they execute are heinous criminals who deserve to die, the gods will not pay attention to these. He will only send out the power of the church under his command to eliminate all these fallen ones who use the name of God.

This is the righteous God. He will never accept believers who use violence to eliminate those who maintain order, no matter what position the maintainers of order hold or what they have done.

Using killing and war to solve the problems encountered is undoubtedly the behavior of believers of evil gods. Even if there are similar ideas and behaviors, they must never appear in doctrine.

This will affect the spread of faith in gods, causing the faith in gods to be attacked and targeted by the ruling class when it spreads among the secular world, which will seriously affect the foundation of the gods themselves.

The righteous gods advocate order, and those who build and maintain order will never tolerate the rampant development of a force that threatens them, even if they themselves do have problems.

However, Noah didn't care, because Noah had an order that implemented his own thoughts and ideas. He was very happy to destroy those orders that were different from his own and cover the ruins with his own order.

Order and chaos are indeed hostile, but the real enemy of order is always a different order, just like Noah could not stand many feudal systems.

It is not that these systems are bad, but that their ability to self-correct and self-cleanse is so poor that these systems collapse after an extremely short period of time, before a dragon is born and has even entered adulthood.

Therefore, Noah wanted to establish an order that would last for at least a thousand years, which required strengthening the correction and cleansing capabilities within the order. So, Noah granted many privileges to the holy warriors who were willing to join.

Now, facing a group of holy warriors who are questioning their faith, whose ideals are gradually collapsing and falling into depravity, Noah is considering whether to give them power.

Although Noah is not a god, he can use the Word Spirit Emperor to do this because that group of fallen paladins have all established a kind of belief relationship with him similar to that of a god. These paladins have visited his territory or have enough knowledge about the Land of the Holy Dragon.

In the ideal place established by the Holy Dragon, there is no place for corrupt officials to gain a foothold. Apart from the Holy Dragon himself, there is no privileged class. Even the closest relatives, once found to have violated the law and made mistakes, will be stripped of all honors and executed on the spot in public.

Orphans who have lost their loved ones, the elderly who have no children to support them, the disabled with limited survival ability, these special groups whose survival is particularly difficult can all be well taken care of in the Land of the Holy Dragon.

After seeing or hearing about such a beautiful ideal place, and then looking back at the primitive society ruled by feudal aristocrats, especially when you find that you have no ability to change it all and even praying to gods is useless, the impact on faith can be imagined.

Humans are pragmatic creatures. When they begin to doubt certain gods and even the path of the holy warriors, they will naturally have different emotions and thoughts towards the holy dragon who established the ideal place.

"Use the laws and regulations of the Golden Dragon Code as the standard to execute officials and nobles from other countries."

Noah couldn't help but feel helpless when he recalled the basis and principles of the actions of the fallen paladins after they abandoned their original beliefs.

As for the Golden Dragon Code he formulated to restrict the nobility and bureaucracy, even if they were on his territory, even under his nose, he would kill a group of them every year.

If such standards were applied outside his territory and targeted at the feudal nobles and the bureaucrats who served them, wouldn't they just kill as many as they could catch? How could anyone survive?

"If you want to launch a massacre against local bureaucrats and feudal nobles, why use my code as an excuse? This will only make me a target!"

After thinking it over again and again, Noah decided to provide assistance, or at least give this group of fallen paladins enough power. He should not let them go to extremes, but should lead them in the right direction.

As for cleaning them out and executing them, Noah had no such idea. They were just a group of seekers who had seen the ideal country with their own eyes but found that they did not have the ability to replicate the same ideal place, so their beliefs were shaken and they went to extremes.

Noah would not do anything to them just for some insignificant reputation. Because of the gap between ideal and reality, there were fallen paladins in the past, there are still many now, and there will be no shortage in the future.

Noah believed that he had an obligation to guide these lost holy warriors. The righteous gods would no longer accept them. If he refused again, then the final fate of these holy warriors would be miserable.

"You can't use my sword to kill officials from other countries. That's not appropriate."

Although he decided to help and guide this group of fallen paladins, Noah also decided to impose some restrictions on their behavior, otherwise it would not just be a massacre.

Many bureaucrats and aristocrats are indeed hateful, and it is not an exaggeration to describe them as guilty of the death penalty, but the problem is that their existence represents a kind of order, no matter how bad this order is, it is a hundred times better than chaos.

If the fallen paladins simply vent their emotions and execute officials and nobles according to the Golden Dragon Code, without filling the gap left by the loss of order, then chaos will descend, and the destructive power it causes will be immeasurable.

This is also the reason why many orthodox paladins turn a blind eye even when they see officials and nobles abusing their power, taking human lives and mistreating the poor, because they do not have the ability to rebuild after destroying order, and they cannot bear the consequences.

Violence and killing can only be used as a means and cannot solve all problems.

……

"Brother, I'm back!"

After crossing thousands of miles of sea and mountains and rivers, and leading tens of thousands of dragon people, Tairamus finally arrived at the Gaoertai area ruled by his brother.

Although he experienced many hardships and difficulties along the way and encountered many difficulties and obstacles, with the assistance of a group of dragon lords and the cooperation of many dragon people who were eager to make achievements and eager to show themselves, Tyramus overcame everything and finally arrived successfully.

This young golden dragon looked extremely tired, but at this moment his eyes were shining brightly. He felt that his soul and will had undergone a baptism because of this journey, which was an experience completely different from the training in the cemetery.

"Tyra!"

When he saw his brother appear in front of him, even Eliade, who had been in a high position for a long time, could not hide his joy and a bright smile appeared on his face.

"See how many reinforcements I brought for you?"

The young dragon proudly showed his brother the dragon army he had led all the way. Although they were able to cross such a long distance mainly because of the high qualities of the Dragon Lord and many dragon people, as a leader, he also had an honor that was difficult to denigrate.

"You are truly amazing!"

The many dragon lords who had followed along the way immediately stepped forward to greet the eldest son of the Holy Dragon Lord. After Iliad praised his younger brother, he quickly returned the greeting.

Although the thirty-two dragon lords present were older and more senior than the two brothers, in terms of identity and status, the two brothers could look down on these dragon lords, especially Eliad. His background was too extraordinary, and any dragon who knew him would be in awe of him.

What's more, no matter whether it is Iliad or Tyramus, they are not the second generation who only rely on their background. Based on their own bloodline, they have also discovered very powerful personal martial arts, especially Tyramus, who has the body of a young dragon and controls mechanical undead with legendary combat power.

"Brother, we can counterattack now. Now, it's time for me to fulfill the promise I made when I left and help you conquer the six countries. After all these countries are conquered, you can be crowned as the real king."

Teramus's expression was filled with excitement and agitation. His brother was a very humble dragon. Even though he controlled the principality, he called himself a lord and was unwilling to establish a country because he thought it was inappropriate. Now, it was time for his brother to live up to the title of lord.

(End of this chapter)