Chadra’s Conqueror (3)

“I would drive them back, so please do not worry, and Sir Pavel should continue to carry out your duties as Acting Chapter Master here in Fireglyph.”

Azadine reassured Pavel and left the office. Izmilla followed and asked.

“A-Are you sure? I don’t think they would just sit still.”

“Those who come looking for me to join them are still the ‘manageable’ kind. Necromantic Knight Sir Sok, and the half-vampire Niselda… wouldn’t they be more dangerous?”

“Then that’s an even bigger problem, isn’t it?”

Izmilla asked in alarm. They had to govern Fireglyph temporarily, yet he was making all the prisoners below raise the banner of revolt.

Given that their forces were practically warlord armies, it was no different from a High Lord forcing the lesser lords under him to rebel.

No matter how much of a High Lord he was, this was the sort of thing that would not let him survive—so what in the world was Azadine thinking?

When the negotiations with Azadine broke down, the one with the greatest dissatisfaction was Chashan.

Even if Azadine had refused to negotiate, the other two—Sir Selim the Hippogriff Rider and Sedrin the Wild Druid—would remain in a state of status quo.

But to Chashan, this situation was not a status quo. In fact, Chashan and his organization had been in a certain contract with Sir Hexenmaier.

Outwardly, Chashan claimed he pioneered perilous routes and transported drugs through them, but that would never allow the trade volume he had now.

With Sir Hexenmaier’s tacit approval, he moved goods through Fireglyph, which let him handle this volume and gain that level of money and influence.

But now Sir Hexenmaier had been ousted, and Azadine, who had taken his place, was blocking the clandestine trade. To Chashan, Azadine had become an obstacle that had to be dealt with one way or another.

In a damp, shadowy tavern in Fireglyph’s back alleys, Chashan was meeting his underlings.

His smuggling organization already had its roots in Fireglyph, so the moment he finished his talks with Azadine, he could meet them at once.

“Khah. On my ancestors’ name! Even if this is a tavern we turned into a hideout, this beer tastes too awful. It tastes like someone mixed horse piss with donkey piss! Can’t you brew it properly?”

Chashan grumbled as he wiped the beer foam from around his mouth.

“What should we do about that bastard Azadine? I don’t think we can soften him up with bribes like Sir Hexenmaier.”

A man—both the tavern owner and an organization member—said as he wiped the table.

“Hm? Why do you think that?”

“Well… I saw him catch the doppelgangers with an angel. How should I put it… I know this might sound strange, but he was beautiful and filled with dignity—he even looked like an angel himself.”

Having directly witnessed Azadine’s exploits and the poise that captivated people, the man fidgeted, unsure how to convey the shock of that day to Chashan.

Azadine, who looked like an incarnation of an angel, an advocate of justice itself, became the most terrifying presence to criminals from that day on.

“Sounds like the one you saw and the one I saw are a bit different.”

Chashan snorted and raised the beer he had derided as horse piss to his mouth. The Azadine he had seen was an ambitious man. And an ambitious man would never hate the overwhelming wealth drugs brought.

Even if he hated the drug itself, there was a good chance he would tolerate it under the excuse of serving his ambition.

“Relax. I’m not planning to win him over. He can’t become Chapter Master anyway. There’s no need to bother recruiting someone who’s only squatting in the seat until a Chapter Master is appointed. So we remove him.”

“Should we hire an assassin? But ordinary assassins won’t stand a chance. He’s of the Messenger Clan—an soulless blasphemer.”

“You idiot, simply killing him and tossing him aside isn’t always the best answer. If we loose griffins to raid the couriers traveling back and forth, who do you think that bastard will resent?”

“That bull-headed hippogriff fetishist, I suppose.”

“Exactly. And if we loose undead to attack merchants? If we stir a fight with the other Chadra Five Ogres—can the one who just started acting as Chapter Master run Fireglyph properly? In the end, he’ll agree to forming a committee. Even if he bares his teeth in fury, won’t the blowback hit others, not me?”

“Ah, I see.”

“There’s no need to assassinate him ourselves. He’s only someone occupying the seat temporarily during the Chapter Master’s absence. If we just show that he can’t hold that seat, he’ll submit on his own—”

But it was right as Chashan was saying that—

“So this is the Fireglyph branch of the smuggling organization. Ah, no need for a menu. I’m not fond of beer made by mixing horse piss and donkey piss.”

A clear voice struck Chashan’s eardrums.

Startled, Chashan looked—and saw Azadine, a long-limbed half-elf, and a huge half-orc entering the hideout’s entrance.

It was a tavern in name, but they had posted guards at the door, and he could see them being pushed back without accomplishing anything.

“No… there were no signs of being tailed. How?”

“Because I got my hands on Sir Hexenmaier’s journal.”

Azadine said so and sat at the table.

“That damn bastard. Ah, not you—Hexenmaier, I mean. If you take bribes, you shouldn’t write this and that down in a journal.”

“Looks like he believed his position as Chapter Master would last forever—until the day he gave it up himself.”

Azadine replied as if it were nothing. In truth, Sir Hexenmaier, of course, had not written a single word about bribes or backroom deals in any official journal.

He had kept a secret ledger and recorded things separately there, but the reason Azadine could find Chashan was simply because he had tailed him using Arael’s voice.

Still, there was no reason to tell them what Azadine could do and what he could not. It was better to let them misunderstand.

Chashan gulped down his beer, then tossed the empty mug to the bartender and turned to Azadine.

“So you finally came looking for me. What’s your angle?”

As the tattoos carved into Chashan’s body began to glow, a red radiance surged from his eyes like sulfur-fire vapor.

Chashan, a powerful sorcerer, was fully ready to burn Azadine to ash with magical flame at any moment. Yet Azadine did not even blink at Chashan’s blatant threat as he asked,

“Have you ever thought about forming a legitimate trading company and running it instead of smuggling?”

At that moment, Chashan’s underling Sir Braham flinched. Azadine’s proposal was beyond common sense.

Offering smugglers the chance to form a legal, legitimate trading company? But wasn’t that outside the Order’s policy?

‘I thought he was just a madman who got lucky and put down Sir Hexenmaier… but it seems not. He’s drawing something bigger.’

Unlike Braham’s shock, Chashan did not seem to think deeply about Azadine’s proposal.

“Oh? Are you in your right mind? We’re criminals. Even the Rescue Knights Order doesn’t want us leaving the plateau and flexing our power. Your suggestion would go against the Order’s policy, wouldn’t it?”

“I know. But as things stand, we can’t stand against the ruin that’s coming.”

“Haha. Are you another market lunatic who prophesies the Age of Jupiter?”

“If I have to, I’ll even accept being treated like a lunatic.”

“Are you sane?”

Chashan snorted.

“If we cut out drugs, what do you want us to do? Nothing makes more profit than drugs. Transport is hard, and the profit doesn’t match it. Sugar is the one thing that can bring profits close to drugs, but no matter how fertile the Chadra Plateau is, we can’t produce sugar.”

“Food and weapons, wool, fur, cloth, medicinal salve.”

Braham clicked his tongue as he heard the goods Azadine listed. They were heavier than drugs and cheaper—items completely unappealing to smugglers, for whom transport costs swallowed everything.

But if war broke out—if the Age of Jupiter arrived—these would be priceless supplies.

‘Does he truly believe the Age of Jupiter is coming?’

A sudden chill ran through him. If that was true, the man in front of them was a fanatic.

Someone you couldn’t reason with, someone threats and coercion wouldn’t work on. It meant Chashan’s violence, intimidation, blackmail, and bribery would not work on him.

‘He really believes in the Age of Jupiter? Then…’

Sir Braham suddenly felt his heart start pounding.

It was a heart that had grown old and corrupt and no longer beat like this. Sure, as a member of Chashan’s violent and savage organization, heart-dropping moments were routine—but a heart that truly raced like this was something he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

While Braham’s heart trembled at Azadine’s words and the vision he painted, Chashan underestimated Azadine.

“You lunatic. No need to talk further. If we sell that, how do we take back the Dwarven Arrow? Drugs aren’t just some simple indulgence. They’re the power to dominate and rule humans. Even if the Age of Jupiter is real and we must produce food and weapons, it’s the same. No—if anything, it’s better. All the bastards who tossed me into this backwater will be ruined.”

“What I’m weighing, Chashan—”

Azadine stared at Chashan with an icy gaze.

“—is whether keeping you alive benefits me, or killing you benefits me.”

“What?!”

“Do you truly mean what you’re saying? Or are you afraid someone will look down on you unless you prove your nerve through reckless deviation?”

“You crossed the line, you bastard!”

At that moment, the tattoos carved into Chashan’s body flared up like fire. The red gleam in his eyes was not mere intimidation.

—Burning Gaze!

Pure crimson mana erupted from Chashan’s eyes and crashed into Azadine. It was the magic by which Chashan had slain countless resistors.

Sir Braham recalled the time Chashan had attacked a senior knight with that Burning Gaze.

After seeing a noble knight in plate armor struck by a beam of flame and left with only his lower body, Sir Braham had become Chashan’s trusted right hand.

But Azadine was different from that senior knight.

—Flowers, Birds, Wind, Moon, Swarm Strike!

Countless magic bolts formed before Azadine and poured forward, colliding with the Burning Gaze. As the gaze and bolts exploded, Azadine, at the same time, shifted and sat in the chair beside him.

With a motion like leaning back into a rocking chair, a kick smashed into Chashan’s jaw.

It looked less like a kick and more like an arrogant, flamboyant way of taking a seat—yet Chashan was sent flying backward and crashed down.

“Kgh!”

Chashan’s jaw was shattered, and blood streamed down.

Chashan the Frenzied, founder of the Dwarven Arrow, had been turned into a wreck by a single kick from that young man.

“Huh?! What—”

Caught off guard, Sir Braham reached for his sword, but Rijen rushed in and grabbed his wrist.

“Stay still, old man. Unless you want to check out of this world today.”

The half-orc Kuntachi also drew a massive falchion like a chunk of iron and threatened the others.

‘Tch, a mistake. We should’ve left Fireglyph quickly. To think he’d come for us first.’