Chapter 114. Childhood Friend – Maps and Jewels
– Neigh!!
Bante snorted roughly. His breath met the cold air of deepening autumn and spread like mist.
However, Lev’s horse, Bante, had changed significantly. He was no longer ‘brown.’
Bante had become a complete black horse.
The black spots that were only near his hindquarters had spread to cover his entire body, and the eyes that usually blinked slyly but without malice now gleamed with ferocity.
Lev wandered around the outskirts of Nevis to exterminate the remnants of the Dorf family. It was a quite troublesome task, but fortunately, Barbatos’s [Target Hunting] ability was helpful.
The [Target Hunting] ability was superior to {Tracking}. It accurately pinpointed the prey’s location and could find the ones hiding even without applying debuffs.
Many more family members than the gangsters themselves were sacrificed. However, Lev didn’t care about killing them.
They were the families of those who led me and Lena into the pit of tragedy! They were related to those who ruined the life of my beloved, so he had no intention of showing mercy.
He also needed divine power.
Killing gangsters and their families, evading the guards who were shocked by the indiscriminate murders, Lev suddenly realized a way to imbue other creatures with divine power.
It was something he knew but had forgotten for a while, so he experimented on Bante first.
The result was satisfactory.
Bante, infused with Barbatos’s divine power, became stronger. Despite not being trained as a warhorse, he didn’t hesitate to charge at and trample humans.
What if it were applied to humans?
Curious, Lev thought about returning to the Marquis of Guidan. Starting from the base of the Dorf family in the east and circling around Nevis, he turned his horse around.
‘Let’s see…’
Lev pulled out several maps from his saddle. These were maps showing the locations of barbarian tribes. The Dorf family, involved in the slave trade, had mapped many barbarian tribes, and these maps had come into Lev’s possession.
‘This one is the best.’
He crumpled and threw away all the other maps, leaving only one. The map he took from the gang leader who first kidnapped Lena was the most meticulously recorded.
– Norangde Tribe: Polygamy. Children are raised as communal offspring. They go fishing on a large scale after a meeting at the beginning of each month.
– Dwinner Tribe: A tribe that farms by clearing mountains. Not many warriors. They believe in a god called ‘Ailetia.’ Hostile to outsiders.
The writing was hard to decipher.
It seemed to have been written on a palm, as the letters were crooked, some were heavily tilted, and many sentences lacked periods.
As he was memorizing and heading towards Nevis, Lev encountered something familiar.
Heavy cartwheels rolling and grim-looking coachmen. A large merchant group was approaching.
‘Ah, they must have departed from Nevis around this time.’
It was a caravan of the Theovic family, a large family in Nevis whose main business was illegal arms trade.
Lev had once accompanied them to cross the border.
It was during the time when he was fleeing from the Holy Kingdom after being marked by a crusader, and Lena had been expelled from the church.
‘But why are they heading northeast?’
To reach the Holy Kingdom, they should head north from here. But they were heading in the direction of the Kingdom of Belita.
‘And what’s with the time? I met them at the border next summer.’
No matter how slow the wagon loaded with weapons was, would it take more than half a year to get there?
Lev was puzzled for a moment but didn’t dwell on it. Whether they went northeast or north, their journey ended here. They would be swept away by the crusaders anyway, so dying by his hand wouldn’t be unfair.
“Let’s hurry. The horses can’t exert their strength because the wagons are heavy, so we need to switch horses periodically.”
“Brother, why are we rushing so much? It’s almost winter…”
“Hey. The price of weapons in the Kingdom of Belita is said to be worth gold these days.”
As he approached, he overheard the gang leader and his minion chatting. Lev, enhanced by divine power, heard their conversation clearly.
“Why?”
“Dunno. I only heard the price skyrocketed, but I didn’t hear the reason. Maybe a big territorial war broke out somewhere.”
Aha!
Lev now had an idea.
Even though Leo killed Gilbert Forte in the previous beggar siblings scenario, a war broke out between the Kingdom of Belita and the Kingdom of Astin.
He didn’t know the specifics, but it seemed highly likely that the Prince of the Kingdom of Astin was humiliated and returned around the time autumn came two months ago.
If that incident repeated itself, the Kingdom of Orville would be engulfed in the flames of war, causing weapon prices to soar, and the Theovic family must have hurriedly dispatched the weapon-loaded caravan upon hearing the news.
Orville, rich in ore due to its many mountains, produced a lot of weapons.
They would have produced so many that they couldn’t sell them all, so the gangsters who liked metal must have stockpiled them.
They wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to unload all their stock at once.
Lev understood why the caravan would reach the border of the Holy Kingdom next summer.
They must have changed their destination upon learning about the war while on their way to sell weapons to the Kingdom of Belita.
Selling weapons illegally to a kingdom at war was foolish.
There was a risk of getting paid the market price or even getting robbed, but if they sold them near the warzone, they could get double the price.
“What? Hey, you there! Stop!”
At that moment, a gangster shouted at Lev, who was approaching on horseback. Lev snapped out of his thoughts.
How should he kill them?
He hesitated for a moment, then waved his hand to indicate he meant no harm and turned his horse around. He rode ahead of the caravan’s direction, smiling cruelly.
[Trap Hunting], let’s use this.
It was a power he gained from Barbatos while exterminating the Dorf family.
The weapon caravan was large. Over thirty large wagons and more than four hundred gangsters escorting them.
Though it was easy to take them down, he didn’t want to let even a single one escape. Especially after the trouble he went through to track down the remnants of the Dorf family.
Lev busily scouted a secluded path where the caravan was sure to pass. If anyone had seen him, they might have thought he was a disoriented young man unsure of where to go, or perhaps someone out of his mind.
Lev squatted by the side of the road and placed his hand on the ground. After a while, he ran to another spot and touched a tree.
How long did he repeat these actions? Seeing the caravan approaching in the distance, he hid.
“What’s up with that guy?”
Some gangsters pointed at the young man they had seen earlier.
He was leisurely leaning against a tree, his eyes shining as if he was expecting something.
The gangsters didn’t bother with him. They were in a hurry and not slavers.
– Neigh!!
Then, the carnage began.
A gangster was hanged by a tree.
“Aaah!”
“W-What is this?!”
From Lev’s perspective, it looked like the gangster was hanged, but to the gangsters, it just seemed like someone was floating and struggling in the air.
“Argh!”
The gangsters were shocked but had no time to process the bizarre phenomenon.
One gangster fell to the ground and thrashed around. Screaming, “Aagh! My head! My head!” When he finally stood up, a clear bite mark like a square molar print was visible on his head.
Another gangster grabbed his foot and fell. As if caught in a steel wire, a red line appeared around his ankle, tightening and causing the flesh to tear, Levealing purple blood.
It was a scene of chaos and horror.
A gangster struggled as if crushed by a heavy rock, another held his torn stomach in shock at his spilling entrails, and yet another crawled blindly, crying, “I can’t see!”
Despite the gruesome sight, Lev, watching from a distance, merely complained, “What is this?”
He had laid the traps densely, activating them when the caravan was in the center, but the effect was minimal. The only trap that instantly killed its target was an unlucky noose, while the others managed to escape and gather themselves.
Moreover, many gangsters, whether by luck or intuition, avoided the traps. Watching them stumble into traps later seemed like mere luck, but Lev frowned.
He was disappointed in the lethality. At this rate, it was no different from a real trap.
Traps were meant to capture prey alive if possible, not kill them outright. High-lethality traps were difficult to make and not always necessary.
Disappointed, Lev straightened up from his leaning position against the tree.
What use was it if the traps were invisible and remotely controlled? If he had to cut them himself, the utility of this power was limited.
Still, he could reclaim some of the divine power from the traps, so Lev approached the gangsters casually, thinking it fortunate.
The gangsters were frozen, fearing to move lest they fall into another trap, crying where they stood.
“Please, spare us!”
As one gangster pleaded, the others echoed for help. To them, Lev, walking toward them unharmed, seemed like a savior.
Of course, they were mistaken.
Without a word, Lev collected their lives one by one. He plunged his sword into the chest of a sobbing gangster without hesitation.
The gangsters panicked.
Some tried to flee only to fall into traps, others tried to run the same way Lev had come and ended up caught like fish on a hook, and those who managed to dodge the traps were struck down by Lev’s blade.
“Please, spare me! Please!”
They pleaded, talking about bedridden mothers, offering their entire wealth, claiming to have daughters, or saying they planned to quit after this trip. Some had pregnant wives. They begged, realizing he was the culprit, but it didn’t matter to Lev.
After killing the leader he had bargained with at the border, silence fell. Standing in a pool of blood from four hundred people, Lev looked up at the sky.
The clear sky felt refreshing.
And, he gained a new ability.
Thinking today’s harvest was worthwhile, Lev finally liked this game. He discarded the cumbersome map he had in his pocket.
* * *
By the time Lev returned to the Marquis of Guidan, it was winter. Visiting numerous Theovic family armories had taken up a lot of time.
“…Welcome back. I received the gifts you sent, but I’m worried we won’t have any guests at the banquet.”
Harvey Guidan, the Marquis, was no longer strongly enchanted. Offering a conversation in the manner of a noble, he looked suspiciously at his ‘master,’ making Lev contemplate slapping him but deciding against it.
‘Oh right. I forgot to test it on a human.’
He gestured for the Marquis to come closer.
Though displeased, the Marquis approached, frowning, and Lev grabbed his shoulder, pouring in divine power.
“What are you doing?”
However, it had no effect on humans.
Despite being imbued with Barbatos’s divine power, the Marquis remained unchanged, unlike Bante.
As Lev tried to reclaim the wasted divine power, a strange sensation connected.
It was vision.
Lev was looking at himself. No, he was sharing the tall Marquis’s sight, seeing a cold-faced young man.
The young man looked haggard.
His unkempt hair covered his once-neat forehead, and his cheeks, once healthily tanned, were now sunken.
Even so, his eyes shone brightly as he examined me (or the Marquis) with curious eyes.
‘Is that me?’
The thought that Lena would have been shocked to see him like this suddenly cleared his mind. What a disaster… But the clarity lasted only a moment, and Lev cut off the shared vision, turning his attention back to the Marquis.
The deep furrow in Marquis Guidan’s brow had since smoothed out. It was as if the finger beckoning him a moment ago had been no offense at all.
It seemed the more divine power imbued, the stronger the charm.
Though it would gradually diminish, there were many tasks for the Marquis to handle, and Lev himself had plenty to do, so it was convenient to leave the divine power as it was.
“Sit.”
“Yes. But where did you obtain such a large quantity of weaponry? Perhaps…”
“Your guess is correct. I looted a family of weapon dealers.”
Lev had enchanted passersby to bring the wagons from the pool of blood back to the Marquis’s estate.
He had intended to send everything from the Theovic family armories each time he looted one, but the warehouses had been empty, save for the caravan’s load.
“I see. But is there a reason you are gathering all these?”
Lev chuckled.
“Are you pretending not to know when you must have some inkling? That’s quite insolent.”
Despite being under the enchantment, Marquis Harvey Guidan was no fool. He had likely tried to hide the influx of weapons into his estate.
“I apologize. I thought you were preparing for a rebellion.”
“So, what preparations have you made?”
“…I apologize. I doubted my lord’s intentions.”
“You did nothing, then.”
The Marquis hung his head in shame. But Lev had expected this and did not press further.
“Prepare to summon the border troops to Nevis, discreetly. The knights and squire-knights under your command as well. If possible, persuade your friend, Marquis Drageen, to join the rebellion too.”
“I understand. But Ebeny won’t move. He…”
The Marquis hesitated, but Lev raised his hand to silence him.
“That is for you to handle.”
“…Understood.”
“Good. Now, I’m tired. I’ll be going.”
As he rose to leave, the Marquis called out to him.
“Lev.”
“What?”
“My daughter has returned. Harriet said she has something to tell you… It’s probably nothing, but I wanted to introduce her.”
“Is that so? Then summon her.”
After a short wait, a young lady with green eyes like her father’s entered and bowed politely to Lev.
“It is an honor to meet you. My father speaks highly of you.”
Lev did not return the greeting but simply observed her.
It felt nostalgic.
He had seen Harriet Guidan in the past scenario of childhood friends. Back then, Lev had been a servant, and she a noble lady of a distinguished family, issuing commands with a mere gesture.
Unlike Lena, who was a maid, Lev had had no interaction with Harriet and had only glimpsed her a few times while riding in the coachman’s seat.
She had never even come near the coachman’s seat.
At the time, he had been too busy comforting a sullen Lena to pay much attention to Harriet…
Now, seeing her up close, she was quite beautiful.
Her porcelain skin needed no makeup, her delicately closed lips, small egg-shaped head, and sorrowful green eyes were stunning.
‘She can’t compare to my sister Lena, but… wait, what’s that?’
A dark red gem rested in the cleavage of Harriet Guidan’s chest.
It was a faintly pink gold necklace.
At the end hung a gem resembling a closed flower bud, which inexplicably drew Lev’s gaze.
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