Chapter 218: Princess Isabelle and Searching for Clues

"Jack the Giant Slayer"! Geralt was also sitting by the fire, listening to the story told by the old man. It was actually a very simple story, like a fairy tale.

Monks discovered God, and then they used an unknown method to create magic bean pods, used the beans taken from the bean pods to grow a path to the sky, wanting to go and find God.

But when they climbed up the path to the sky and arrived at a new place, thinking they had come to the gates of heaven, they encountered a tragic fate.

Between the human world and heaven, there was a floating continent named Gantua, which was the territory of the cruel giant race.

When they killed the monks and discovered the path to the human world, the giant race brought disaster to the human world.

They burned, killed, and looted. Human soldiers were like ants in front of them, and when they discovered the deliciousness of human flesh, these giants went completely crazy, starting to treat humans as food and carrying out destruction on a larger scale.

And the human King Eric, having witnessed this disaster, immediately ordered the monks to use magic again to create something that could control the giants' minds.

So these monks melted a magic bean and added various kinds of magic, finally forging an unprecedented crown, and this crown was called Eric's magic crown.

As long as the king wore this crown, all the giants would become his slaves and obey him implicitly.

So King Eric ordered the giants to return to their homeland and had people cut down the vine bridge grown from the magic bean, cutting off the path between Gantua and the human world.

Finally, the kingdom was safe, and before King Eric died, he took the crown and the magic beans into eternal sleep together.

After finishing the story, the old man Thomas's granddaughter listened with great interest. After listening, she asked her grandfather very excitedly:

"Grandpa, are there really giants? Do magic beans and magic crowns really exist?"

The old man stroked his beard, shook his head, and said: "How is that possible? This is just a story. There are no giants, and there are no magic spells or magic crowns. However, there was indeed a King Eric. He is the ancestor of our current King Brauwell, and the current royal family is indeed the descendants of King Eric."

After explaining to his granddaughter, the old man discovered that Geralt was also listening to him tell this story from the side, so he asked with a smile:

"Mr. Geralt, have you never heard this story? This story is very famous in our kingdom; basically, all children have heard of it."

Geralt smiled and explained that he came from a distant country and had not heard such a story.

However, he knew very clearly in his heart that this was not a story. Although he was not sure what time period it was, in the movie, the male protagonist obtained the magic beans and accidentally planted them, resulting in the path to the sky reappearing and connecting to the giant territory of Gantua in the sky.

Even the princess of the kingdom was accidentally sent there and captured by giants, and someone stole the crown. Finally, the giants launched a large-scale attack on the ground, the male protagonist accidentally obtained the crown, married the princess, and became king, and the story had a perfect ending.

A quite cliché story.

He couldn't remember the specific details clearly, but he still remembered that this happened after the princess came of age and before she was about to be betrothed to the villain. The villain stole the crown, the male protagonist Jack obtained the magic beans. As long as he went to the royal city to confirm, he could figure out what time period it was.

Having cleared his thoughts, Geralt took out the gold beans he had prepared, showed them to old Thomas, and asked:

"Mr. Thomas, I don't have the currency you have here. Can I pay directly with gold?"

"If possible, I would also like to exchange some gold for some of your coins."

"Of course, I won't let you suffer a loss. I can pay a little more as a reward for your hospitality."

………………

In the afternoon, Geralt rode a mare and left the old man Thomas's farm.

His luck this time was not bad; the first indigenous people he encountered were a group of good people. They not only exchanged some coins for him, sold him a gentle mare, but also invited him to have lunch together.

Clearly, the commoners in this world are normal people, unlike those unruly mobs in the Wizard World who are always thinking of despicable things like swindling, cheating, murdering, and looting.

For the journey of more than ten kilometers, Geralt rode his horse for two hours. When he led the somewhat panting horse and approached the royal city of the Kingdom of Albion, this city, which could be called a fortress, was fully reflected in his eyes.

Not only did it have a moat seven or eight meters wide and a huge drawbridge-style city gate that could be raised and lowered, but even the city walls were nearly twenty meters high, and the building materials used were hard rock.

On the city walls of this royal city, there were also four huge rapid-fire ballistae. Geralt had an impression of this weapon; it was a powerful weapon capable of shooting giants.

Behind the city walls, there were secondary walls capable of secondary combat. Overall, it could be described as impregnable.

It is a pity that in Geralt's memory, those giants were all seven or eight meters tall, very powerful, and could use a whole tree or a huge rock as a projectile for attacks; they were simply human-shaped catapults. Human soldiers were like mice in their hands. Even knights in full armor were estimated to be just tin cans, unable to cause any real damage to them.

The defense of this royal city might be able to deal with those ordinary human soldiers, but it still seemed a bit stretched when used to deal with giants and could easily be broken through by various methods.

In the original movie, if the male protagonist hadn't appeared in time with the crown that controls giants at the last moment, it is estimated that the soldiers and commoners in the city would all have been caught by these giants as spare ingredients.

The entry fee was not expensive, only two copper coins. After paying the coins, Geralt pulled the horse into the city.

Like the medieval cities in his impression, there were also some shops in the city. He led the horse, first found an inn to stay, and then wandered around these shops, wanting to see if there were any local specialties in this world that were worth buying and taking back.

It is a pity that after wandering for an afternoon, Geralt did not find any good things; they were all common food, daily necessities, and clothing. However, it was not without harvest. After wandering for half a day, he found a bookstore. In this bookstore, he bought several books with gold beans, mostly about history and mythology.

Geralt wanted to see if there were any other main storylines worth noting in this world besides the story of Jack the Giant Slayer.

And the reason he didn't buy more books was mainly because the books here were too expensive, several times more expensive than the books in the Wizard World.

It might be because printing technology had not yet been popularized, almost all books were handwritten copies, and the paper was quite thick, so every book was equivalent to a luxury item, and ordinary people could not afford them at all.

However, fortunately, the language here was almost no different from English. With his English level, he could barely understand the text inside and read seven or eight out of ten.

And this world might not be as simple as Geralt imagined, because he saw the legend of Merlin in this book, as well as Viking warriors from the North, and various legends that were somewhat similar to those on Earth but had some differences.

Just like this, he stayed in the city until evening. At night, he found the most lively tavern in the city, entered it, and while drinking, used his keen hearing to collect the information he wanted.

However, perhaps it was because this country had been at peace for too long, the patrons in these taverns mostly talked about trivial matters: whose wife cheated, whose business made money, or which young man became a knight's squire and was appreciated by nobles—useless information.

Not only that, this kingdom called Albion was simply a culinary desert. In this most lively tavern, he ordered their best specialty dish.

As a result, what was served was mashed potatoes, fish and chips, and a meat pie decorated with a salted fish head—a dish comparable to "stargazy pie," which made Geralt, a top chef, feel uncomfortable all over.

He barely finished the mashed potatoes and fish and chips, drank two bottles of fruit wine, and finally heard some useful information from someone else's mouth.

A young man with a strong build, who might be a guard in the palace, boasted to his friends:

"Princess Isabelle is really too beautiful, and she has reached the age of marriage, and she is the king's only daughter."

"If anyone can marry her, he will become the future king of this country."

"I don't know which man will be such a lucky person."

After hearing the young man finish sighing, some of his friends immediately asked with interest: "Blot, you stay in the palace every day. Don't you know which man the king is preparing to choose to be the princess's husband?"

That young man named Blot smiled mysteriously. Under the urging of his friends, he lowered his voice and said: "I guess it's Count Roderick. He is a great noble and a great lord in the kingdom, and he is not married. His Majesty the King has always kept him in the palace and trusts him very much. I think he definitely intends to match him with Princess Isabelle."

After hearing this news, Geralt nodded with satisfaction. At least he could be sure that this Princess Isabelle was not yet married and had reached the age of marriage, which meant that the story in the movie was about to happen.

It is a pity that he did not know where the crown and the magic beans were hidden. Otherwise, he could have sneaked into the palace directly, found those two magic items, and then he wouldn't need to wait for the plot in the movie to happen normally.

However, this did not have any influence. Anyway, when the vine to the sky appeared, he could go and get the crown and magic beans, and incidentally deal with the giant race; all of this was possible and would not affect the final result.

Moreover, he had not thought about how to handle the subsequent matters.

Of course, he definitely wanted to get his hands on the crown. As long as he had the crown, these giants would become his slaves—a batch of powerful giant warriors that could even be taken to other worlds to fight wars for him when necessary.

However, as for how to treat other mortals, Geralt had not thought it through.

He himself was not an evil person and could not allow the giants to slaughter ordinary commoners, but he also did not want to give up this power that could be controlled—the giant race.

But the giant territory was too far from the ground, estimated to be thousands of meters high. Without the bridge of the magic vine, he could not fly directly to the giant territory.

The number of magic beans was limited. Cutting down a magic vine thousands of meters long would also cause great damage to the surrounding buildings when it fell to the ground.

If he wanted to use the power of the giant race in the future, the best way was to tame the entire giant race, and at the same time, maintain the existence of the magic vine so that he could travel between the giant territory and the ground at any time.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 219 =====