13 (77)

Mihoff, Anok, and Mark Jay received an order from Louis to track down and kill the Wandering Guild members. There were only two surviving Wandering Guild members. The two were fleeing.

“I think we took the wrong direction.”

Mihoff grabbed the reins of her horse. The sound of horses stopping noisily continued. The pursuit squad stopped all at once. The next to stop was Anok.

“What is it?”

“I said we took the wrong direction. There is nothing in this direction.”

“I definitely saw it.”

“This is not the direction. You saw wrong.”

“I told you I saw it.”

“There are no traces at all. Besides.”

Mihoff’s face turned toward the sky. It was ink-dark. It looked as if rain might fall a little later. If the traces were washed away by rain, there would be no way to find them. The voices of the two, who had never gotten along well to begin with, grew louder. Mark Jay looked at them, then quickly dismounted from his horse. His brown hood shook deeply. He examined the ground closely. Grass and mud were tangled together in a disorderly mess. At a glance, it was ground that no one had stepped on. However, the eyes of Mark Jay, a skilled hunter, shone. He stroked the ground once, then grabbed the slightly damp soil. A strange scent of blood. He straightened his waist, looked at the two, and said,

“I found traces.”

“What?”

“Where?”

The two came toward Mark Jay. Mark Jay pointed once at the ground, then pointed northwest with his finger. Anok examined the traces and said,

“There is…. nothing here?”

“Look. It is artificial.”

“Ahem…. Is that so?”

After hearing that, Anok looked again, but he could not discover anything. Mihoff was the same. She narrowed her eyes, then quickly climbed onto her horse. She thought that a first-rate ranger trusted by Lord Louis could not possibly make a wrong judgment.

“I will take the lead. Please understand, both of you. Time is short.”

Mihoff and Anok looked at each other’s faces, then soon nodded.

Temporary tents stretched on endlessly. Trees were being cut down, and fences were being made. Mines were forming throughout the mountains. They were gold and jewel mines that every country desperately wanted but did not have. Wagons carrying mining tools followed one after another. People gathered regardless of age or gender. Their eyes blazed. One could feel their will to definitely grasp food and money in their hands. Among them, there was a woman who stood out especially in the center. Platinum-blond hair swayed over modest clothing. Her clothes were neat. Unlike her calm appearance, her face was excited. Christina checked the number of wagons coming in.

‘Fifteen wagons.’

‘This should be enough to start. The unfortunate thing is that we do not have the technology to cleanly sort the gold and jewels.’

Even if they simply handed them over as they were, they would gain enormous profit. But a loss was still a loss. She decided to meet Louis today. When she thought of Louis, her heart suddenly began pounding.

“Um…. Lady Christina?”

“Ah…! Yes. Everyone, distribute the tools! Work begins today. We must mine as much as possible. To secure the next food supply, we absolutely must sell these within the quarter, so let us do our best!!”

Perhaps showing signs that the wagons had come from the capital, they looked clean, made with good-quality timber and reinforced with steel. Long, dull-colored hide cloths were messily tied over them. Such wagons were lined up in a long row. When Christina’s order fell, the soldiers wearing thick helmets walked toward the wagons. Some climbed onto the wagons, while others grabbed the cloths on both sides. The soldiers pulled away the cloths.

Iron tools that looked freshly made appeared. All kinds of tools were piled up like mountains. Every wagon was the same. Someone whose eyes looked as if he wanted to work immediately moved his feet. Though he was gaunt and dressed in rags, his movement was swift. He intended to be the first to receive one. Starting with him, people went one by one toward the wagons, and soon they gathered in a swarm like bees.

Her red lips naturally lifted. Christina smiled. She mounted the horse that had been tied nearby. The escort soldiers who saw her also mounted their horses one by one. She moved her horse toward the city. It was to meet Louis.

The cup sitting neatly on the table was transparent and clean. Red liquid was poured into it. Drip, drip. When the vivid color settled down, Louis grasped it. Soldiers were reporting in front of Louis. Their robes were thick, and the iron plates hanging around their bodies signified that they were rangers. They were kneeling on one knee, their bodies deeply bowed. Their eyes were directed downward, but respect was contained in those eyes. Beside Louis, a young female attendant stood with her shoulders exposed, holding wine.

The rangers finished reporting to Louis, stood up, shouted a slogan, and slowly left. The next one to enter was Christina. Whether she had changed clothes at some point, she was wearing a dress that faintly showed her skin. Her face was subtly flushed. She came to Louis and greeted him.

“The matter you ordered is progressing.”

“I see.”

“However, if I may mention one unfortunate point……. To perfectly sort the gold and jewels, we need a special method. Until we discover the technology, we have no choice but to sell them cheaply to other countries.”

“There is a technician who can sort them. I will send him soon.”

“……Truly?”

“Yes. I prepared in advance. More importantly, is the strategy for attacking Ruderwin ready yet?”

“Yes. I am still considering it.”

“For the time being, focus on that matter.”

“Understood.”

After she left, Louis fell into thought. In truth, there was no technician. But he had the technology. It was a technology he had incidentally obtained in the past when he unlocked iron mining and casting in science. He had to separately instruct and educate the technicians. They were on their way here from the capital.

‘Heh heh. I look forward to the profits….’

One more thing. Jewels fetched a higher price when processed and sold than when sorted and sold at cost. Louis needed jewelers. For now, it was a pie in the sky. There was no way the Duchy of Eron, with a cultural power of 170,000, had technicians with such advanced skills. Louis had not yet even thought of a route to process and sell them. More importantly, three things had to be handled immediately. Stabilizing the cities. The execution ceremony in the capital. Eliminating the Wandering Guild members. Two Wandering Guild members were fleeing, and Louis had belatedly attached Mark Jay to Mihoff and Anok, who were tracking them.

‘This is taking longer to deal with than expected. If there is no response in two more days, it will mean they crossed the border, so I will have to abandon this quest.’

He did feel a little regret. He wanted to go personally, but dealing with Nestor had come first. If he had ignored her plan and focused on the quest to deal with the Wandering Guild members, they might still be at war even now. Louis leisurely rose to his feet. When he stretched, his joints made sounds. The attendant standing beside him was startled and flustered.

The attendants who had come here yesterday were northern girls. They were virgins given as gifts by a slave trader who had come from the north to sell slaves to Louis. Louis considered going to a solitary room for mana training, but then thought he should tear down the wall there. For Louis, who had always worked while looking out at the open sea, this place felt very stifling.

The capital, Lebledna, ran short of food. Dissatisfaction soared in an instant. Prices were slowly rising. Wheat, barley, and even fish caught nearby rose in price. Only the salt coming into the capital maintained its proper price. Louis put pressure on House Boarne. House Boarne possessed the largest salt-producing region and had until now ignored the king’s opinion and set prices however they wished. However, Louis was different. They were like mice before a cat. With a single word from Louis, all of them could be hanged for treason, so they could not resist and faithfully carried out the order.

The people of the capital did grow dissatisfied as food gradually ran short, but they did not express it. Whenever they gathered in taverns, a common topic was Louis’s wartime feats. The most popular story was still the war against House Boarne at the Rhine River. Because of that, they were also eagerly awaiting new stories.

As the food situation gradually worsened, Louis’s army returned to the capital with a large number of slaves. They began going in and out here and there, telling their experiences, and conveyed unbelievable stories about Louis to the citizens.

The atmosphere among the citizens reversed. Dissatisfaction quickly subsided. The citizens also began to show immense interest in the circus Louis provided. As if addicted to opium, they gossiped all day about Louis’s heroic tales and the execution ceremony. They forgot their hunger to the point that they had no time to feel dissatisfaction.

Warm sunlight poured down. The Colosseum was not even complete, yet it was already enormous in scale. Its rough outline was an arch shape without a roof. The inside was wide enough to hold tens of thousands of people, and it was currently being filled. Outside, a long line stretched as people tried to enter. Peddlers had taken positions beside the line, and soldiers were patrolling here and there to maintain order.

In the center, watched by tens of thousands of people, were blood-soaked people. One side was gladiators, and the other side was Nestor’s subordinates. The gladiators were dressed freely and wore helmets and simple armaments, but Nestor’s subordinates held daggers or half-rotten swords and, far from being armed, were naked except for a single rag.

Their legs and forearms were connected by iron chains, so the structure was such that if even one corpse appeared, that entire row would be annihilated. Their bodies were full of grotesque tattoos, proof that they had worshiped the Demon God. Corpses filled the surroundings. Since there were five people in one row, five rows had made a sea of blood. Even those who were alive were in the middle of floundering while bleeding heavily from fatal wounds.

There were about eight gladiators in total, and one of them was Kaiser. The greatsword he held was as long as a person’s height. The greatsword was being swung wildly at one row of humans.

It cut through them like splitting firewood, without distinguishing between necks and bodies. Heads flew off, and blood sprayed onto the sand. When three became cold corpses and lost their balance, the remaining two were also tangled in the chains and pinned to the ground. One was pinned badly, crushing his windpipe, and he flailed his hands as if suffocating. Soon, thunderous cheers from ten thousand people burst from the stands.

With this, the Duchy of Eron’s cultural power was 171,000. Cultural power was directly connected to productivity, so the higher it was, the more it promoted industry and agriculture.

‘Good. Now I can fill the capital’s food shortage with crops from Pantalist.’