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Dilia, the manager of the Van Dyke Trading Company’s Fireglyph branch, had fallen into an awkward situation.
Through her dealings with Azadine, the Fireglyph branch’s sales had risen by roughly ten times compared to the past.
As Azadine annexed several territories of the Chadra Plateau, he cleared farmland, integrated land registers, and reorganized the agricultural lands so that greater yields could be produced with fewer farmers.
And not only had he ordered from the Van Dyke Trading Company the massive quantity of goods needed to turn the surplus labor force into soldiers, technicians, and workers, but he also manufactured various goods the Van Dyke Trading Company wanted, greatly increasing the company’s profits.
By doing business with Azadine, Dilia had gained enormous economic benefits.
However, the Messenger Clan’s Council of Elders was furious, saying that Azadine had to be killed immediately.
It was already an insult to the Messenger Clan that a traitor of the clan had openly entered the Rescue Knights Order and made a name for himself, but he had also interfered with their important enterprise.
In particular, the Council of Elders saw his disruption of the Grain Transport Ship raid as an intolerable challenge and issued Dilia a direct order.
‘Identify Azadine’s weakness, and if possible, cut off trade and assassinate him directly!’
Along with that, the Council of Elders gave Dilia a dagger.
‘No, what am I supposed to do with a single knife?’
Dilia had seen Azadine’s abilities from close by and knew them well.
For some reason, Azadine had used his astonishingly improved martial might and magic to subdue the Chadra Five Ogres or form alliances with them, then take control of the territories of the Chadra Plateau. Not only that, but this time, he had even brought Count Sandokar under his command.
She could not believe the mental state of the Council of Elders, who believed such a person could be killed just because they had given her one knife.
‘They burned grain in this situation?’
No matter how convenient a path to victory that might be, with Fimbulbert approaching, she could not understand the actions of the upper ranks of the Messenger Clan, who had not merely tried to plunder the Grain Transport Ships but burn them instead.
‘Did they go insane after joining hands with those Naga bastards? Senile old fools….’
Attacking military provisions was important enough to be called a basic principle of warfare. But what was the future that would arrive if they burned all that food?
Dilia was not the only one who harbored this question. Many of the younger members of the Messenger Clan had instead begun to question the Council of Elders’ actions because of this incident.
They wanted to rule the people of Hubris, not exterminate them. The Council of Elders seemed to envision a life together with the Nagas after exterminating the people of Hubris, but the Nagas were an entirely different race from them and were beings that practiced cannibalism.
There was no way the Messenger Clan’s young people would sympathize with a future together with the Nagas.
And Dilia sympathized with the future Azadine showed.
“Ah, I must be insane.”
“What do you mean, Manager?”
“Ah, no….”
It seemed she had been lost in thought and unconsciously spoken aloud. Dilia, whose answer had become awkward, pointed to the back of the horse pulling the carriage in front of her.
“I mean this. This.”
Right now, she was personally leading a caravan toward Banreung.
“How many of my subordinates, my doppelgangers, did that Azadine fellow kill? And now, just because that fellow told me to, I’m personally taking a merchant caravan to Banreung.”
“For someone saying that, you do not look all that displeased.”
“No. I am angry. Ngh.”
Yes. She was angry at Azadine. He used her in various ways, killed her doppelgangers, and yet shamelessly brought her business items and made demands.
But if she fulfilled those demands, the income was certain.
The results were not bad either, and if she fought Azadine, she had no confidence that she would be able to preserve her life. But if she simply listened to him, he gave definite rewards. After repeating rational choices, before she knew it, she had become like one of Azadine’s subordinates.
She even thought that she would rather become his subordinate. Azadine promised firm rewards to his subordinates, and they said that he had truly inflicted suffering worse than death on Chashan’s gang, who had attacked and tortured the caravan this time.
News had reached her as well that Chashan had suffered so much that, not satisfied with castrating himself in order to be freed from the pain, he had struggled to commit suicide.
If Azadine had normally been cruel by nature, she might have been shocked and disgusted by that cruelty, but those who knew the usual Azadine instead trusted him.
They believed that Azadine was not savage by nature, but that he simply could not forgive Chashan for harming his subordinates.
Just the fact that he was sincere about avenging his subordinates’ grudges made him a far more ideal superior than those foolish elders.
‘But he is not telling me to betray the Council of Elders and join him, so can I betray the Council of Elders first… No, why is he not asking me to become his subordinate? Does he not want to take responsibility for me, but still wants to use me? Pleasure without responsibility? Is it something like that?’
As she was thinking that, a half-orc walked over from the front of her caravan. It was Kuntachi, a member of Azadine’s warlord faction.
“Soldiers appeared up ahead. Manager.”
“Really? What kind of soldiers?”
“Uh, what kind of soldiers were they?”
Kuntachi did not know either and turned around to ask into empty air.
Since he had come alone as a messenger, who would answer his question? Kuntachi, who had been asking a question into empty air by himself, scratched his head awkwardly.
“No, why would he make a half-orc a messenger of all things?”
If orcs were a race known for their outstanding intelligence and humanity in proportion to it, half-orcs, who were mixed-bloods of them and humans, tended to lean toward extremes, either having only developed muscles and no intelligence or only developed intelligence and a frail body.
A half-orc with such a sturdy body was bound to have degraded intelligence, so if someone like this was made a messenger, there was no way the message would be delivered properly.
However… Dilia soon came to know that words were unnecessary. An enormous number of human and dwarf refugees appeared up ahead.
“What is this?”
There were soldiers up ahead, but behind them were refugees fleeing with all the valuables they could carry piled on their backs. Kuntachi had summarized this as soldiers coming from the front.
It was not wrong, but at a time like this, he should have said that they had encountered refugees! She was angry, but there was no time to argue.
At the head of the refugees was a nobleman wearing splendid armor. Fatigue and defeat had left deep wounds on his face, revealing a destitution that could not be hidden even if he tried to cover it with aristocratic bravado.
“What merchant caravan is this?”
“This is the Fireglyph branch of the Van Dyke Trading Company. I am the manager, Dilia.”
“I am Jerod, Baron of Ivkar. Could I perhaps exchange solid-wood furniture for food?”
“…….”
Dilia gave a bitter smile after hearing those words. One of the most common mistakes refugees made was bringing high-class furniture with them.
High-class furniture, carved by artisans from premium wood into something close to artwork, was extremely expensive when purchased and very valuable.
But it was far too heavy for refugees to carry while fleeing. Even if it was expensive in peacetime, in wartime it was worth less than precious metals and food.
“It seems you are in the middle of fleeing.”
“That is right. Is this not good for you as well, since you will not be making a wasted trip? If you go farther north, you will only encounter monsters.”
“What on earth happened?”
“I do not know well. Only that monsters are pouring in from the north.”
“According to rumor, monsters are coming up from the ground. From deep within the heart of the mountain range.”
An old man who appeared to be the baron’s steward also added a word. From the look of it, monsters had begun appearing throughout the entire Banreung Kingdom.
“And Elemental Wailing is attacking people. Hmm. Would that be enough of an explanation?”
“Good heavens….”
Dilia clicked her tongue, sensing that this situation was no ordinary matter.
A cold wind pushed in from the north and scraped past her skin. Though it was still summer, the chilly air made her body tremble.
“Uh….”
“It is snow.”
At that moment, snow fell from the sky. Since the temperature on the ground was high, it turned into rain the moment it fell, but in the upper air, it was unmistakably snow.
The horses pulling the carriages were startled by the cold rain and snorted. It was not only the Banreung Kingdom that was collapsing. This entire world was collapsing.
The fingertips of ruin had taken substance and were slowly tightening around the throat of all humanity.
However, Dilia had no time to soak in the aftereffects of that shock. The starving and exhausted Baron Jerod was pressing her.
“It is dwarven-made ebony furniture. It is decorated with silver leaf, and when it was purchased, it cost more than the same weight in silver. It was my mother’s dowry, and I had carefully preserved this masterpiece to give to my daughter later when she married.”
In a dying world, the baron who had fled with his subjects while leaving his territory behind was urging Dilia so that he could sell the furniture inherited as a family treasure and buy bread.
“Understood. I will purchase it. However, I have a condition….”
Baron Jerod’s furniture was certainly a masterpiece, but in the current situation, it was not a particularly good trade item.
However, Dilia decided to buy it and hire Baron Jerod’s group as mercenaries. In any case, now that they had encountered refugees here, there was nothing to gain by forcing the trade journey onward.
Dilia, who had decided to turn the caravan around and return to Sandokar, first released a carrier pigeon and sent a message that frankly described their position and situation, as well as the rumors concerning the Banreung Kingdom.
Now all they had to do was turn the carriages back and retrace the road they had come from.
But going back the way they had come was no ordinary task either. It had certainly been an uneventful road when they came, but on the way back, many refugees and a rapidly changing climate awaited them here and there.
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