Chadra’s Conqueror (5)

“Why did you kill the Order’s geological survey team?”

‘To be precise, I killed them, but I didn’t kill them.’

“What does that mean?”

‘They were suffering from mutation. The same thing as the brand stamped on me. I had to kill them before they mutated. If I didn’t, a monster would burst out of their bodies and kill me.’

“Then who branded you?”

‘I don’t know for sure. The one who branded me was a priest of the Rescue Knights Order.’

“A priest?”

‘Yes. Not a Holy Knight—a priest. But he wore a huge hood over his head, so I couldn’t see his face.’

“What did they make you do? What exactly did they want from you?”

‘They demanded I hand over the angel’s blood I’d secretly siphoned out of the Order. But I’d already traded the angel’s blood for that drug, so….’

Giacomo hurriedly scrubbed the slate with a rag to erase the water-written words.

“Where did you get the angel’s blood?”

‘I stole it from the alchemy workshop of the Wisdom Order.’

“Angel’s blood was in an alchemy workshop?”

‘Yes. And in large quantities. It’s usually used in ceramite casting.’

In other words, Giacomo took part in ceramite production, siphoned off angel’s blood, joined the geological survey team in that state, then was attacked by an unknown priest—and was branded with a Nether mark and controlled. That was the picture.

“If there’s angel’s blood in bulk, then it doesn’t seem they’re making Celestials out of angel’s blood.”

‘I don’t know the method for making Celestials either.’

“Any other distinguishing details? Secrets you learned while working, for instance.”

‘I’m not sure, but it seems angel’s blood is mined at Saint Mallory—Saint Mallory itself.’

“Hm? That’s a city.”

‘I don’t really know. But something that tightly controlled wasn’t being transported in or out night and day—it only moved within Saint Mallory, so I figured angel’s blood must be coming from there.’

“What do you know about Celestials?”

‘That there are quite a lot of them. But Celestial research wasn’t my job. It’s a secret only high-ranking leaders of the Wisdom Order would know. I’m just one of the alchemy slaves at Banreung Academy who can barely be called a student. Not like Bernard, the genius.’

“What kind of man is Bernard?”

“Ahem. Cough-cough….”

When his name came up, Bernard cleared his throat—then started actually coughing.

‘The dwarves treasured him. Though at Banreung Academy, anyone who isn’t a dwarf is a slave anyway.’

If Giacomo was telling the truth, Banreung Academy sounded like a truly horrific place.

After two days of marching, the group arrived at the Southeast Rock Wall.

The Southeast Rock Wall had already sealed its gates and assumed a solid defensive posture, as if braced for battle.

The sight of logs and sandbags reinforcing the exterior of the wall was ominous. The dwarven sorcerers, having locked the gates after noticing Azadine’s approach, began broadcasting their demands with amplification magic.

“Have you come, Messenger Clan?”

“Release Chashan!”

“And give us freedom of trade!”

“Otherwise you’ll be greeting the Rescue Knights Order’s supply corps as corpses!”

“Burn it.”

“Yeah. Burn it—huh?”

Everyone froze.

When the alchemist Giacomo spread his arms wide, his robe lifted, revealing the leather bag strapped at his waist.

He pulled out a glass bottle.

“Kahahahaha.”

Alchemist Fire.

A trump-card firebomb used by alchemists.

With Giacomo using blood magic on it, the alchemical solution became a spray-like projectile and fell onto the hemp fields, then turned into pillars of flame that shot high into the sky.

—Fwoooosh!

In an instant, the blaze began devouring the hemp fields. Giacomo was out of his mind, perhaps from the joy of taking revenge on the dwarves.

“B-BURN! Burn it a-all dooown!”

Even with his short tongue, he cackled as he set fire after fire, hurling curses and abuse.

“You, you madman! I knew you’d do this! Hey! Braham! Are you just going to stand there and watch this? Do you have any idea how much that’s worth?! How hard do you think it was to build all this?”

Sir Braham was a drug addict. After coming to the Chadra Plateau and seeing the visions of ruin, he had been terrified, submitted to Chashan’s violence, fled into drugs, and become Chashan’s faithful dog.

To an addict that severe, watching the farm burn was like watching someone throw away gold—an utterly intolerable sight.

But Braham spoke firmly to Azadine.

“Burn it, Sir Azadine. I will follow your will.”

“Y-You stupid bastard. You think you can quit because you’re riding a mood right now? Give it some time and you’ll be begging for a fix like a dog again! That’s how it always goes!”

Chashan raged as he watched Alchemist Fire consume the drug fields. If they rushed to put it out, they could probably limit the damage—but for that, his men would have to open the gate and come out.

And since many of the smuggling crew were addicts, watching the source fields burn would be a rare and agonizing torment.

“The gate’s opening!”

In the end, addicts who couldn’t bear watching the fields burn opened the tightly shut fortress gate and burst out. Among them were the dwarven sorcerers who had led the rebellion.

Wearing ornate dwarf-forged armor, they rode wild boars with protruding tusks—Wolfschwine—and shouted at the expedition force.

“Hey, you bastards! What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Do you know how much that’s worth?!”

“Go out there and put it out, right now!”

The dwarven sorcerers barked at their men, ordering them to drive back the enemy and extinguish the farm’s fire.

“N-No, but Sub-Boss, they say the Messenger Clan are crack shots—if we open the gate and go out, won’t we get hit by arrows?”

“The alchemist is setting it on fire! That powder—no, that alchemist fire—whatever it is, it’s terrifying….”

“Relax! Our magic will protect us—neither arrows nor fire will touch us!”

But the moment the dwarven sorcerer said it, an arrow flew straight at his helmet. A barrier of force formed around the dwarven sorcerers.

“Oooh… o?”

Yet the incoming arrow tore through the barrier with ease, turned into a blue comet, and struck the dwarven sorcerer’s helmet.

“Kuhk!”

The helmet flew off and fresh blood sprayed. The dwarven sorcerer pitched headlong to the ground, and the comrades behind him trampled over him.

“Kuok!”

“Damn it! It’s Azure Steel!”

The dwarven sorcerers panicked as they realized the enemy was firing Azure Steel arrows.

Weapons forged from Azure Steel specialized in destroying armor—so arrows shot with them were lethal.

When more Blue Steel Blades—Azure Steel arrows—came flying, the startled dwarven sorcerers layered barrier after barrier to block them.

But two arrows arrived at the target at the same time, shattered the barriers, and ambushed the dwarven sorcerers before a new barrier could form.

It was the Messenger Clan’s specialty: the Two-String Bow.

“Kraaa!”

The dwarven sorcerers couldn’t withstand Azadine’s arrows and were all thrown from their mounts.

“Better to use expensive arrows quickly than to hoard them. Now then, Rijen. Kuntachi. Charge.”

Confirming the enemy commander had been unhorsed, Azadine appointed Rijen and Kuntachi as charge captains and ordered the assault.

“Yes, Captain!”

“Uwoong!”

When Rijen transformed into a werewolf and charged, the morale of the Southeast Rock Wall soldiers plunged into the abyss.

“Aaah! We surrender!”

“We’re Sir Braham’s men! The dwarves threatened us!”

Sir Braham’s men surrendered at once, and the other criminals didn’t dare challenge the werewolf Rijen.

In the end, the battle was over in an instant.

Azadine captured the Southeast Rock Wall in a single fight.

“Damn it. If you won, shouldn’t you put out the fire? Isn’t it your property now?”

Chashan fumed as he watched his farm burn.

“I planned to burn it from the start. You gave me a rebellion—so it worked out even better.”

From Azadine’s perspective, he was going to burn the drug farm anyway, so it was a welcome development.

If the smuggling organization had surrendered peacefully and then he burned the farm, the backlash would have been enormous.

“If you burn this down, what are we supposed to live on now? If we farm something else, how much profit do you think we’ll even make? The ones who farm here never escape poverty! Do you have any plan for the drop in profits?”

Enraged that Azadine had destroyed the foundation he built, Chashan poured out complaint after complaint.

“I’m not saying I agree with that dwarf bastard, but what are you going to do now, Captain?”

Camilla asked Azadine.

“You sound like you’ve got complaints.”

“Telling smugglers to live righteously now is nonsense. And they’re addicts. Once they run out, they’ll cause hell again—and honestly, anyone can grow poppies or hemp anywhere. Falling back into addiction is easy.”

Camilla stated her opinion. Azadine’s answer was succinct.

“That’s a problem for the next Chapter Master. I’m only temporary. Now that things are mostly settled here, shall we go occupy the next one?”

“Huh? What? Are you serious?”

Camilla couldn’t understand what Azadine was plotting.

When they first heard that someone of the Messenger Clan had come to the Chadra Plateau as a trainee knight, everyone found it curious—yet now they accepted it as nothing special.

The Chadra Plateau was the bottom of the crucible where prisoners and troublemakers were exiled.

If someone of the Messenger Clan became a Holy Knight, there was naturally nowhere else for them to go but here.

However, Azadine’s radical actions afterward shocked everyone.

In less than two months after his appointment, Azadine exposed Chapter Master Sir Hexenmaier’s corruption and arrested him.

And in only one week, he captured Chashan—the founder of the Dwarven Arrow, called one of the Chadra Plateau’s Ogres—and even dismantled his power.

It was only natural that Azadine’s name thundered across the entire Chadra Plateau—no, across the entire Rescue Knights Order now.