Chapter 42 - 89-91

Chapter 89: Acquiring milk

The Pure-breed Vampires worshipping Hihiryushukaka, the Evil God of Joyful Life, had gathered in a room illuminated by the beautiful moonlight streaming in through the windows.

However, one of the three chairs was empty.

"Good grief, things have been far too noisy as of late. Don't you think so, Gubamon?"

"The most disagreeable thing for me is being called out here by you, however, Birkyne."

At a table that should have seated three people, Birkyne, who resembled a young nobleman, faced Gubamon, who resembled an evil, elderly mage.

"Please don't be in such a foul mood," said Birkyne. "The collection you love so much won't mind you leaving for a little while. More importantly, it would be best to deal with the matter that we have been discussing. If we are not careful, we will lose our balance."

The matter that Birkyne was referring to was the information leak by the Guild Master of Nineland's Mages' Guild, Kinarp, and his subordinates.

Thanks to their information, damage had of course been done to Ternecia's faction who had been making deals with Kinarp, but the damage suffered by Birkyne and Gubamon's subordinates and those cooperating with them couldn't be ignored, either.

The Vampires had placed their roots deep in the Amid Empire, but their venomous fangs had been planted just as deep in the Orbaume Kingdom.

The Pure-breed Vampires had existed since a hundred thousand years ago. They knew from experience that if all of their influence was gathered in one country, they would be burned if that country was to fall to ruin. In an era where two great nations existed, they would extend their reach into both nations.

That was why it was painful that those who had infiltrated the Orbaume Kingdom were being hunted down.

"Lose our balance?" Gubamon repeated, and then his wrinkled face twisted as he let out a cackle. "When did you grown so fainthearted, Birkyne? No matter how many of our subordinates and those working with them are hunted down, it is impossible for us to be at risk," he said. "If we leave them to be hunted down, those humans will eventually be satisfied. There will be none who can reach us, and even if there are, we simply need to kill them."

There was some truth to his words. No matter how many of their subordinates were exterminated, the darkness enshrouding the Vampires was deep. If blessed with incredible fortune, the humans might be able to play with the Vampire society's tail. It was absolutely impossible for them to reach the Pure-breed Vampires at the head of the society.

And even if there were some heroes among heroes who managed to reach them, the Pure-breed Vampires would simply turn on them and kill them.

If the Pure-breed Vampires were on their own, it was possible that they could be defeated by an A-class adventurer party, an S-class adventurer or an S-class adventurer backed up by several A-class adventurers.

But they were not on their own.

The Pure-breed Vampires normally competed against each other pointlessly, but they had made a pledge that they would work together to stand against mutual enemies attacking from the outside.

Thanks to that, they had even managed to escape when they were attacked ninety thousand years ago by heroes with the divine blessings of Bellwood and Ninelord, who had become heroic gods. Five thousand years after that, they had emerged victorious in a battle against Pure-breed Vampires who worshipped a different evil god. They had been able to overcome many other dangers after that as well.

The fact that the faction that worshipped the Evil God of Joyful Life hadn't fallen apart, and the fact that it was now managed in a parliamentary system by the three Pure-breed Vampires, were all because of those experiences.

… No mutual enemies had appeared during the past fifty thousand years, however.

That was why Gubamon's words were correct. If the three Pure-breed Vampires worked together, it was likely that they would even be able to defeat the Orbaume Kingdom's entire army. If the Five-colored Blades were included, things would be a little more difficult, but the result wouldn't change.

Their subordinates would likely perish, but they would simply need to make more afterwards. Even the Noble-born Vampires were nothing more than easily-replaced pawns.

They would simply need to survive and rebuild their influence in a new darkness. As long as the three Pure-breed Vampires survived, they could rebuild their society.

"That is indeed true," Birkyne said in agreement. "No matter how bad things become, there will never be any danger to us. But it is problematic for us to lose too many subordinates and those working with them, isn't it? We live long lives, so daily enrichment is essential for us. Isn't that right, Gubamon?"

"Hmm…"

Now that Birkyne was saying this to him, even Gubamon had to think about making a move. It was true that he was a powerful being, but in order to perfect his collection of Undead made from the corpses of heroes, his efforts alone were not enough.

He needed many eyes and ears to gain information and many hands and feet to work on his behalf.

"But what do you specifically have in mind?" Gubamon asked. "The information has already been leaked, and it is too late to erase those who know of it. Even if you wanted to have our subordinates disappear… That's right, that Chipiras fellow under Ternecia was defeated as well. Are you planning to make it appear as if all of this was his doing? And Birkyne, when will Ternecia be here?"

"Ah, Ternecia won't be coming," Birkyne told him.

"What?! That little girl, she has stood us up after I have made the effort of coming out here?!"

"No, Gubamon. I never invited Ternecia here. The only one I called here is you."

"What? What are you playing at, Birkyne? It couldn't be…"

Birkyne gave Gubamon a gentle expression as he spoke his next words. "This incident was caused by Ternecia's failure."

Was Birkyne going to proposing to Gubamon that they should feed Ternecia to the humans? Their sworn ally of a hundred thousand years?

Gubamon's eyes opened so wide in surprise that it looked as if they would fall from their sockets… but he quickly saw Birkyne's real intentions and twisted his mouth in a smile as he laughed. "I see. You intend to weaken Ternecia by throwing her to the humans, and then 'Judge' her?"

In terms of pure strength in battle, Ternecia's was the greatest. However, Birkyne had a trump card that he held in reserve. It was a trump card that forced others to obey him.

It was powerful but risky; despite having lived for a mind-boggling number of years, he had only used it a few times in the past. Even if not using it would place his life at risk, he had to be careful in using it.

That was the kind of trump card it was.

But if there was someone equally powerful to him but weakened to the point of being unable to resist… That would be a time to take a great risk but use this trump card to gain a tremendous return.

"Ternecia is responsible for this incident," said Birkyne. "Isn't it only natural for her to take responsibility?"

"I suppose that is one way of thinking about it," said Gubamon. "It was the human that Ternecia was using as a subordinate who leaked the information, after all."

"Yes, and she did something to the tunnel connecting Talosheim to the Hartner Duchy," Birkyne added.

"What? That is the first time I am hearing of this; what are you talking about?" asked Gubamon.

The Pure-breed Vampires who worshipped an evil god had sent numerous subordinates to the Hartner Duchy, which was adjacent to the new national border of the Amid Empire. Ternecia had put a considerable amount of her strength into this, but Birkyne and Gubamon had dispatched several of their subordinates there as well.

"Actually, the adventurers called the Five-colored Blades, the ones who are mainly responsible for hunting down Ternecia's subordinates, are doing something interesting," said Birkyne. "It seems that they are looking for Eleanora."

Through those subordinates, Birkyne had heard of the movements of Heinz and his party.

"Eleanora, you say? That cannot be; how are they, people who are in the Orbaume Kingdom, searching for a traitor who should be on the other side of the mountain range? Could it be… she was there? When the castle sank and the Demon King's seal was removed! Then the fragment of the Demon King is in that little girl's hands?!" Gubamon was visibly agitated.

"No, that is not the case," said Birkyne, flatly denying that possibility. "I am her former owner, after all. I know the limits of her strength. No matter how much more powerful she has grown over the past year, she would be immediately consumed by the Demon King's fragment. If she was the one who removed the Demon King's seal, then she would have been seen rampaging like a beast in Nineland. The one who removed the seal was… Eleanora's current master."

"Her current master… That Dhampir. To think that he has already emerged… so was he behind the incident with Kinarp as well?" asked Gubamon.

"Most probably," Birkyne replied. "Eleanora's Charming Demon Eyes only work when eye contact is maintained, so he likely used some other method, however."

There were also the incident of a Dungeon appearing in the city of Niarki and the incident where the slave-run mine had turned into a den of Skeletons and the mine itself had become an empty plot of land. Birkyne and Gubamon suspected that Vandalieu had been involved in these incidents as well.

They couldn't imagine what his intentions had been in doing these, however.

People measure others by their own standards. In that regard, Birkyne and Gubamon were very much like people.

They would never have been able to imagine that Vandalieu had wanted to register as an adventurer, that he had investigated the relatives of the Undead that they treated as pieces of their collection, or that he had caused this series of events as a result of that investigation.

The Pure-breed Vampires had concluded that Vandalieu had been after the Demon King's fragment, and that this series of events had been for that purpose.

He had undoubtedly released the Demon King's fragments in the southern region of the continent or sought out evil gods other than Hihiryushukaka in order to gain information. It could even be that there had been a sealed fragment of the Demon King near the slave-run mine that Birkyne and Gubamon didn't know about.

And hadn't Ternecia actually known about all of this? Birkyne suspected that she was already communicating with Vandalieu. Her subordinates had suffered the greatest losses, but it seemed likely that this was all part of the masquerade.

Birkyne felt this distrust because he had his own plans to make a deal with Vandalieu and turn him into an ally. Perhaps if the Pure-breed Vampires had spent a hundred thousand years building bonds like a blood-related family, then things would be different, but they were currently bound only by their common interests; the trust between them was brittle. If one crack formed in that trust, there would be no preventing it from falling into pieces.

"I see… The one who destroyed the tunnel was Ternecia, wasn't it? If they are plotting something, it makes sense to make Ternecia take the blame," said Gubamon.

"That's how it is… now then, let us get to the main topic of discussion, Gubamon," said Birkyne.

The Hartner Duchy was suffering from the economic recession caused by the Sauron Duchy being occupied by the Amid Empire, but with the recent 'accident' that had caused the castle to sink, the people had been worried that taxes would increase to pay for the castle's repair or the construction of a new castle.

Of course, the repair or rebuilding of the castle would be a public project, so there would be opportunities for business as well. However, those who planted crops and ran dairy farms as their main occupations would not receive the benefits of this.

A married couple who had barely been able to make a living working a small field were having a discussion late at night while their only son was asleep.

"If the taxes go any higher, we won't have any choice but to sell Tom…"

"Please wait, dear. He's only five years old; if we sell him, he'll be sent to the mines."

It was incredibly common for boys too young to be used for physical labor to be sent to places where they would be worked to death, such as the mines.

The wife was trying to stop her husband from sentencing their son to such a fate after she had gone through the pain of giving birth to him, but it wasn't as if the husband was willing to sell his own child, either.

His face crumpled as he spoke again. "But at this rate, even if we feed ourselves on seeds and strangle every single one of our goats, we won't make it through the winter… Rather than have our whole family starve to death, we have to gamble on the choice that gives us at least a little more hope… You know, Tom is quite smart for his age. I'm sure there will be a master who will buy him and use him as a servant."

The man's wife sobbed. "If only the rice plants hadn't become sick…"

The poor farming couple who hadn't been able to harvest a sufficient amount of rice seemed to have decided that they had no choice but to sell their son. But then a miracle happened.

"Wait… Azan… You must not sell that child."

A voice that the couple had heard before reached their ears. However, the voice was one that they had thought they would never hear again.

"It can't be, Ma?!" Azan, the husband, opened his eyes wide in shock. Standing before his eyes was his mother, whose corpse had been found in this year's summer, the day after she left to pick some wild plants.

Her form was undefined and transparent; the wall behind her could be seen through her body.

"Mother-in-law?!"

Azan screamed in terror. "Please, rest in peace!"

"You must not sell Tom… More importantly, you must tie the family's goats to the outside of the barn's door. And until the morning sun rises, you must keep all the windows closed and not step foot outside the house," the Ghost of Azan's dead mother said to the couple who were trembling in fear.

"The goats?" Azan repeated.

"Azan, listen to what your mother tells you," said the Ghost. "Listen to me. Leave your seeds outside the barn's door. Wait inside the house and do not leave until the morning sun rises. If you do that, then something good… The goddess Vida's blessings will be upon you."

"V-Vida, you say… Ma, didn't you convert to believe in Alda-sama?" Azan asked his mother.

Without answering her son's question, Azan's mother's spirit quietly vanished without a trace. The couple stared blankly at the place where the spirit had appeared for a while before looking at each other and nodding.

"Mother-in-law did love Tom, didn't she?" said Azan's wife.

"That's right… Those goats are soon going to be too old to squeeze any milk out of them anyway. Let's try believing in Ma," said Azan.

Azan and his wife tied the goats to the barn's door and waited for morning as they had been instructed.

When the sun rose, something astonishing had happened.

"This is…!"

There was a person-sized doll made of clay standing on the spot where the sack of seeds had been. If Azan and his wife had any knowledge of Japanese history, they would wonder what an earthen figure was doing here, but there was something that Azan was even more concerned about.

At the earthen figure's feet, there was a wooden club that he had never seen before. Thinking that he was meant to break the earthen figure open with it, he picked up the club and struck the earthen figure.

The earthen figure easily split open, and boxes and bags filled with food and treasure fell out from inside, one after another.

"Salt, there's so much salt…! There's enough for a year! And this one is wheat! These bottles are… There's even oil and vinegar!"

"Honey, aren't these silver coins?! There are even some gold coins mixed in with them! And this shiny thing here, could it be a gemstone…?!"

The value of the food and treasures inside the earthen figure were dozens of times more than the pitiful amount that they would have gained by selling their only son. Not only would they not have to sell Tom, but they would easily survive the winter and have more than enough left over to buy new, young goats.

"Ah, thank you, Mother! Goddess Vida-sama, thank you very much!" Azan cried.

Vandalieu, who was surrounded by earthen-figure-shaped Golems in a plain covered thickly in tall grass a little distance away from the village, was pleased with himself as he looked at the results of his actions.

"Goats, rabbits, seeds for southern rice, multiple kinds of beans that we don't have in Talosheim, seeds and seedlings of fruits that aren't sold in the cities because they spoil easily… this is superb," he said to himself.

Seeing how happy the farming families were, including Azan and his wife, Vandalieu did think that he could have taken a little more, but it wasn't a big problem.

The Ghosts of Hannah and the others who had been killed by Kanata had told him the locations of several poor farming villages in the Hartner Duchy, flew to them and gathered the spirits in order to secure the people he needed to negotiate. And through these spirits, which he had used Visualization on to make them visible to normal people, he had offered his trades.

There were several families who ignored the offers, but many villagers of the deeply religious farming villages had believed the spirits and accepted Vandalieu's trades.

As a result, Vandalieu had gained a lot.

There hadn't been any farming horses or cows that could help with work on the farms, but he had acquired several animals like goats and rabbits that could be raised just by feeding them grass, whose manure could be used as fertilizer. He had acquired the oldest animals in the trades, but there would be no problem if he used Youth Transformation on them.

The items he had given in return had been things that he had acquired in Dungeons or from bandits that he had encountered and exterminated along the way, so he didn't feel any loss from giving them away.

"I'm not in a social position where I can buy livestock and seeds normally."

Vandalieu wasn't the owner of a farm or a pasture, so he would stand out considerably if he tried to buy living livestock and seeds. That was why he was acquiring these through a method like this.

Click-click-click-click-click.

"Pete, you mustn't eat those yet," said Vandalieu, stopping Pete, who had extended half of his body from Vandalieu's head towards one of the rabbits.

"We have to breed them properly first… Tomato stew with rabbit meat… garnished with goat-milk cheese…"

It was the rabbits rather than Pete who had frozen in fear of Vandalieu's unconcealed hunger as the earthen figure Golems stored them inside their hollow bodies.

"Now then, let's move to the Dungeon I created yesterday. I want a few more goats."

Vandalieu left the plain behind, followed by the earthen figure Golems that were useful for transporting things.

And then he repeated the same thing in several villages. With this, all kinds of livestock were introduced to Talosheim.

In addition, the goddess Vida's religion became more active in the Hartner Duchy's farming villages. A custom spread where the believers offered the crops harvested that year to dolls made of clay during harvest festivals, and then everyone would break the dolls the next day and take the broken pieces home with them as good luck charms.

The members of the Five-colored Blades sighed in frustration that their investigation was not going well.

"It's not going well after all," said Heinz.

"You're right about that," said Edgar. "Just where did she disappear to… The rumor that Vampires can turn into fog is just a superstition, right?"

"It's mostly just a superstition," said Diana. "However, it is said that there were once Vampires who possessed a unique skill to do so."

Heinz and his companions had been chasing after Eleanora, defeating Vampires who would probably have information on her and questioning them, but no results were to be had.

After she was seen in Nineland, there wasn't a single trace of Eleanora anywhere. The Vampires that Heinz's party had defeated with Kinarp's information had known that Eleanora was a traitor, but hadn't known where she currently was or what she was doing.

In fact, they had been surprised, wondering why Heinz and his party were looking for Eleanora.

And since taking Chipiras alive would have been an impossible task even for Heinz's party, they had only been able to question his underlings. They had tried finding someone with the Spiritualist Job to try and question Chipiras, but no Spiritualist had been able to communicate with the spirits of powerful Vampires.

From the limited information available, Heinz had concluded that the Vampires had been instructed to report any sightings of Eleanora rather than having been instructed to look for her, and that Eleanora's master was considered to be an individual of far greater importance than Eleanora herself.

This was because Ternecia and the other Pure-breed Vampires had limited the information they provided to their underlings. As a result, rather than gaining information regarding Eleanora from the Vampires, Heinz and his party had inadvertently informed Birkyne that Eleanora had appeared in the Hartner Duchy.

Unaware of this, they had continued searching, but they couldn't find any leads at all.

"Good grief, it really is strange. Even if Noble-born Vampires can fly, it's not like they can stay in the sky all day. So why can't we find any leads?" Jennifer wondered.

But both Eleanora and Vandalieu were now outside the party's search area of Niarki and the duchy's capital, so it was only natural that they couldn't find any leads.

If Heinz's party had visited the cultivation villages to the south, they might have been able to learn of Vandalieu and make the connection between him and Eleanora, but when the incident had occurred at the slave-run mine, they had been near Nineland so they hadn't had the opportunity to visit the cultivation villages.

"Well, we were unable to find the criminal who undid the champion's seal and released the Demon King's fragment, but our actions were not in vain," said Diana. "Not vain for us as adventurers, or vain in the fact that we are protecting Selen."

The Five-colored Blades had defeated well over a hundred Vampires, if including the Subordinate Vampires. They had even been acknowledged as saints by the Church of Alda.

Their pockets were quite warm with the rewards they had received for defeating the Vampires as well as the spoils of war taken from the Vampires themselves. Heinz's promotion to S-class was becoming a reality.

The more the Vampires' numbers were reduced by Heinz and his party, the safer the Dhampir girl Selen was.

That was why their efforts hadn't been entirely pointless, but…

"We should change the way we're conducting our search," said Heinz. "I think the fact that we have no leads whatsoever means that we've overlooked something."

The party was now sitting in the Adventurers' Guild, discussing how they should conduct their search. There had been a suggestion to see the ruins of the slave-run mine with their own eyes despite having already seen the search report, and another suggestion to investigate other known locations of champions' seals.

However, they were completely oblivious to the conversation that was going on behind them. But even if they did notice it and were interested in its contents, they would have thought that it had nothing to do with their search.

"Did you hear? They apparently appeared in Youda Village as well, the goddess's clay-doll-samas."

"By clay-doll-samas, do you mean those rumors? Where the spirits of dead parents or siblings appear and tell you to offer your aged livestock and seeds outside in the middle of the night? And then when morning comes, there's a clay doll standing in their place with food and money inside?"

"Yeah, those rumors. Jeez, I wish I could get some of that luck. Can't they visit our house?"

"… But your parents and brothers?"

"Yeah, they're alive. Grandpa and Grandma are still going strong, too."

"Then there's no way that the clay dolls will come, is there? And you're a shoemaker, aren't you? What are you planning to offer?"

"Suppose you're right."

"Haah, I went out and got nothing again. I went to exterminate some bandits to find that they'd all been killed by monsters, and all of their treasure was gone as well."

"Maybe they had a fight amongst themselves or someone took revenge on them; all of their throats were slit. That was the work of a real pro."

"You as well? We didn't have any luck, either. Well, our prey was Ghouls rather than bandits, though."

"The venom on their fangs can be used for medicine, and the manes of the males are selling for more these days because they make for good materials, but… for some reason, I haven't seen them around recently."

"I wonder if the slave traders hired someone to do it? I've heard the females sell for quite a lot when trained."

"Really? Those guys would have killed the males and taken their Magic Stones. But there weren't any male corpses left in the remains of the village."

"… Hey, don't you smell something? I smell a conspiracy? I'm sure the many events that have been occurring recently are somehow connected in secret. I know this for sure."

"Roger, have you already had something to drink? Keep your drunk conspiracies under control."

In truth, as the adventurer named Roger had said, these things were all connected; they were all the doing of Vandalieu and his companions.

The goddess's clay dolls were obviously Vandalieu's work, but he had also conducted the extermination of the numerous bandit groups in passing, using them to gain Baum coins as bargaining tools, improving his Unarmed Fighting Technique skill and using them as prey to earn experience for Pete and the others.

Listening to the spirits, he had frequently encountered evil bandits who had committed murder many times, so he had ended up annihilating the bandit groups one after another despite the fact that the Adventurers' Guild would normally send extermination requests for them.

And the fact that Ghouls had been disappearing from the Devil's Nests of the Hartner Duchy was because Vandalieu had gone around inviting them to live in his nation after learning the locations of Devil's Nests where Ghouls lived from the Guild receptionist who had been killed by Kanata and from Luciliano who had previously worked as an adventurer.

He had started doing this because it annoyed him that that the Ghouls were being hunted by the adventurers of the Hartner Duchy, but the Ghouls had fallen to their knees and bowed before him at the mere sight of him.

It seemed that when Ghouls saw Vandalieu, they felt as if a god had descended upon them.

His leveled-up Death-Attribute Charm skill as well as his Ghoul King and Holy Son of Vida Titles appeared to be doing their work.

After that, all there was left to do was creating tiny-scale Dungeons inside the Devil's Nests and using underhanded tricks to take them back to Talosheim. The Ghouls' leaders would have fistfights with Vigaro or compare their magic against Zadiris's. Once they decided who was superior, they would obey Vigaro and Zadiris as well, so there were no problems after the Ghouls' migration.

But many of the Ghouls had been unaware that their race had been created by Vida, and were very surprised to learn this truth.

It seemed that living in isolated, individual Devil's Nests was a problem for the Ghouls.

Incidentally, it seemed that there were no villages of Vida's other races in the Hartner Duchy. There were apparently some in the former Sauron Duchy, but the security around the national border was strict at the moment, so Vandalieu planned to sneak into the Sauron Duchy to obtain rice seeds later when the security was more relaxed.

And so, Vandalieu acquired some "essentials," livestock and farming crops, and visited his "mother's distant relatives," the Ghouls who were created by the goddess Vida, just as he had told Kasim and his friends he would.

Incidentally, while Heinz and his party were having their discussion, they learned that there were strange, small Dungeons that were difficult to even call E-class recently appearing one after another in the Hartner Duchy and decided to follow this trail.

All of them were Dungeons that Vandalieu had created with the Labyrinth Construction skill to use as a method of transport, abandoned after he was done using them. Heinz's party wasn't entirely off the mark, but they didn't gain anything from this, either.

Nobody but Vandalieu could teleport from Dungeon to Dungeon, after all.

And around the start of winter, Vandalieu headed for the cultivation villages to make sure that they would get through the winter just fine.

"The equipment is packed, right?"

"Everything is organized!"

"Alright, let's go!"

Karcan, who was mounted on horseback, left the city of Niarki with the unit under his command, Froto and two carriages of equipment.

They initially headed north before leaving the highway to take a side road south.

All in order to conceal their true destination and goal, which was to disguise themselves as bandits and attack the cultivation villages to the south.

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Chapter 90: Let's go, you sorry bastards!

It wasn't snowing yet, but cold enough for the breath of the men in the unit led by the knight Karcan to turn white as they took the side road south.

There were about fifty of them, and although they belonged to the Knights' Order, only three men other than Karcan, including the vice-captain, had formally been decorated as knights.

The unit was made up of those with the social position of Equestrians, future knight candidates and the apprentices of knights. They were less skilled than knights, but equal to or slightly above the average soldier.

They were wearing old leather armor with numerous patches and stitches rather than suits of armor and helmets bearing the crest of the Hartner Duchy. At one glance, they appeared to be an orderly mercenary band.

"This is certainly not a pleasant mission, but this is for the sake of Lord Lucas, for the sake of the Hartner Duchy's future and for the sake of our people. Don't make those faces; you look like the remnants of a defeated army," said Karcan.

"But is this really necessary? Isn't Lord Lucas's succession to the family already almost certain at this point?" a man asked, voicing his opinion.

He was Froto, the spy who was participating in this mission as a staff officer, the man whom Vandalieu believed to be a virtuous priest of Alda.

Lord Lucas was the eldest son but his mother was a concubine, so people had thought it would be difficult for him to succeed the family. But as Froto said, Lord Lucas's succession to the family was now more or less decided.

The great scandal caused by Kinarp, the former Guild Master of the Mages' Guild, and his subordinates, who revealed that numerous noblemen had connections with Vampires who worshipped an evil god. Lord Belton, the second son born to the duke's legal wife, had been almost certain to succeed the family, but he had been caught up in the big waves caused by this scandal.

He had managed to protect himself, but the fact that his subordinates had been working with the Vampires had been revealed, so he had withdrawn from the dispute to succeed the family. Becoming a duke in the Orbaume Kingdom meant gaining the rights to be a candidate to become the king. Those of the other duchies and the current king himself had expressed their opinions one after another that they couldn't entrust this position to someone whose followers had been traitors to humanity.

Meanwhile, Lord Lucas had given a performance where he conducted a strict investigation to find out if any of his supporters had connections to Vampires and personally hunted and sentenced them.

Lord Belton was trying to appeal his innocence by doing things such as hiring the Five-colored Blades, but people already doubted him, people wondered whether he was simply a lizard sacrificing its own tail to survive.

Now that he had lost the people's confidence and his prominent supporters, every Church, including the Church of Alda, had distanced themselves from him and nobody sympathized with him. Lord Belton had lost his standing.

Of course, the worst-case scenario was that he would be taken somewhere to rest to recover from a "sudden illness" or be made to live a religious life in a remote church somewhere, so the result of losing his standing wasn't particularly unsatisfactory.

Once Lord Lucas succeeded the duke, Lord Belton would live on as the head of the branch family.

And it seemed that the current Duke Hartner wouldn't last until the spring. With the circumstances as they were now, Lord Lucas's succession to the family was all but confirmed.

Froto couldn't be blamed for doubting whether there was any meaning in crushing Lord Belton's cultivation project now.

But Karcan whispered in Froto's ear. "You may say that, Froto-dono, but if you do nothing now, you will return to your previous meaningless position."

Froto's face stiffened. He had been content with his meaningless position in the Mages' Guild, but the reason he had disguised himself as a priest and gone around the cultivation villages gathering information was all for the sake of becoming one of the duke's personal mages.

He had gone through a lot of trouble in order to become more renowned. That trouble would all go to waste at this rate.

"Either you perform one more job and acquire the reward you wanted, or receive thanks for your cooperation up until now and a little money before returning to your original position. It is one or the other," said Karcan.

"… I understand," said Froto. Being pressed like this, he was unable to refuse.

The truth was that the actions of Karcan and his unit would not be of any benefit to Lord Lucas. In fact, it would cause slight harm.

But Karcan's seniors had been busy dealing with the recent series of events; they hadn't given him any orders to cancel the plan to destroy the cultivation project.

"Standby for now."

That was the order that Karcan had been given. Lord Lucas himself and the high-ranking members of the Knights' Order supporting him had made it clear that now was not the time to make careless moves.

But Karcan had read too much into this, assuming that he had essentially been told, "We have no expectations of you lot anymore so don't make a move." He feared that he would be discarded for not having been of any use in Lord Lucas's victory in the dispute to succeed the duke.

Now, he was trying to execute his originally-devised plan of having his unit pretend to go on an expedition, enter a side road far from the city, disguise themselves as bandits and destroy the cultivation villages.

If one just thought calmly for a moment, they would give up on such a plan, but as Karcan had been assigned to do all the dirty work, his sense of suspicion was greater than most people; his perspective had grown narrow.

If he didn't make a move, would the consequences he had threatened Froto with not also happen to him? That was how paranoid his thoughts were.

But Karcan showed not the slightest sign of having been driven into such a mentality as he looked around the unit he was in charge of. He had managed to convince Froto; he was carrying on silently alongside the fake traveling merchant who had been a spy right from the beginning. But the morale of the other men didn't look high.

Things won't go well at this rate, he thought.

The cultivation villages had no significant ability to defend themselves in battle. The largest village was the Seventh Cultivation Village with a population of two hundred and fifty; none of them were soldiers in occupation. There were three former refugees who were adventurers, but according to the information available, they were E-class adventurers whose D-class promotion had only just become a realistic dream for them. In terms of ability, they were probably no different from the Equestrians of Karcan's unit.

With fifty armed men, it wouldn't be difficult to slaughter the entire village. They would need to be careful of the adventurers, but there would be no problems if they did.

The only concern was the Dhampir boy. He had fled the city for some reason so his whereabouts were currently unknown, but even if by some tiny chance he was in the cultivation villages right now, he was only about as strong as a D-class adventurer other than his healing magic (or so they thought). If the True Knights with Froto's enchantments, including Karcan, surrounded the villages, they would be able to dispose of the people in the villages one-sidedly.

But the low morale wasn't good. If they were careless, unexpected failures could occur. Villagers might survive after seeing their faces, or even kill one of Karcan's men when they let their guard down.

Karcan wanted to avoid that.

Deciding that it couldn't be helped, he spoke to his men to get them into the mood to work. "Gentlemen, I know this mission is an unpleasant task," he said. "Even if we succeed, officially speaking, we will have done nothing more than conducted an expedition, so we will not be praised for our work. However, due to the nature of the mission, it is necessary for us to disguise ourselves as bandits. And what is it that bandits do when they attack helpless villages?"

At first, the Equestrians gave Karcan a puzzled look before suddenly being taken aback at what he meant.

What bandits did in villages was pillaging, violence, rape and kidnapping.

"Commanding officer?! Is that really alright?!"

Equestrians lived their everyday lives under strict discipline. As they were those who would soon succeed their True Knight parents, they had to motivate themselves to learn the art of combat and study academic subjects on a regular basis; they had to become an example for the soldiers.

In the future, they would command soldiers and defend their nation with their swords. Because of the position they were in, they couldn't openly enjoy gourmet foods and drinks or make love to the women of the red-light districts.

Especially since the Sauron Duchy had fallen to the Amid Empire, there was a lingering atmosphere that they needed to be ready for combat at all times, so they couldn't loosen their restraints by even the smallest amount.

These were the Equestrians that Karcan was speaking to.

"Of course," he said. "But we will not be kidnapping anyone. Once you have enjoyed them like bandits, dispose of them like bandits. Don't loosen your restraints too much just because there is no risk of making any children! Those who injure their backs and can't ride their horses will be dragged back by force!"

The Equestrians were suddenly excited. Some of them were more in anticipation of the extra money they would earn rather than the women, but given the strange circumstances of being told that they could rape the women as much as they liked, most of them were unable to hide their excitement.

Froto turned pale as he imagined what the men would do in the cultivation villages.

His original role had been that of an informant; he had never imagined that he would have to directly witness the villagers suffering and being killed.

He would suffer a greater impact by seeing the corpses with his own eyes and watching the villagers suffering as they died.

But now that he had come this far, he couldn't say that he would quit, nor could he escape.

If you are going to resent anyone, resent the Amid Empire who took your homeland from you. I have done nothing wrong; all I wanted was to gain a social position befitting of someone like me, thought the fake priest, shifting the responsibility away from himself.

Having gone around the villages and seen that their preparations for winter had gone well, Vandalieu performed his usual healings and secretly stationed Golems at each village before returning to the Seventh Cultivation Village.

He caught Rank 2 Bloodsucking Rats on the way there. He had the owner of the jack-of-all-trades store cook their meat, which was richer than it appeared, and shared it with everyone.

And then he stayed the night in the same room as Kasim and his friends.

Things are going well for now, he thought.

Now that the slave-run mine was gone, traveling merchants no longer came to the cultivation villages, but it seemed that there would be no problems lasting until spring. Once it became warmer, Kasim and his party would have to escort the young men to buy things at the city, however. While they were there, they planned to consult the Commerce Guild to see if they could arrange other traveling merchants to visit the cultivation villages.

Despite not being citizens of Talosheim, these people were people who adored Vandalieu. Despite it having been for the sake of rescuing the Titan slaves, he felt a little guilty that he had caused such an inconvenience to the village.

If the Fangs of Dark Nights were still functioning, I would have been able to take measures against that, but… I wonder if these people would come to my nation?

If they did that, Vandalieu wouldn't have to hold back when it came to various things. He would be able to give them houses, furniture and food and offer them work, just like he had done with the people from the First Cultivation Village.

He would be able to have them eat delicious dinosaur meat, fully seasoned with all kinds of flavors, instead of preserved Gobu-Gobu.

There wouldn't be any need to station dozens of Lemure lookouts, Stone Golems and Death Iron Golems at every village. No matter what the Hartner family did, they would be able to live in safety inside Talosheim, which was currently having its sixth outer wall built.

It did occur to Vandalieu that he should just tell the villagers everything.

But that would be equivalent to pressing the people of the cultivation villages to separate themselves from human society.

Vandalieu wasn't confident that this would lead to their happiness.

If the Hartner Duchy was a little more trustworthy, if the innermost members of its government and Guilds didn't have connections to the Pure-breed Vampires, then he would have had more options, however.

In the end, the Pure-breed Vampires and Heinz's party are in my way. I have to erase them somehow… or at least reduce their numbers.

If Vandalieu took direct measures, the Pure-breed Vampires would interfere. If he took indirect measures, Heinz's party would interfere.

The Pure-breed Vampires and Heinz's party were supposed to be enemies to each other, but they were hindering Vandalieu as if they had joined forces.

I could get rid of one member under the right circumstances. If things go well from there… Ah, but I suppose it's dangerous to presume that there is a chance of things 'going well.' I don't know how much they were cornered by the information I made Kinarp reveal; if the timing doesn't match up… The spirits of Chipiras and the other Vampires were horribly damaged, so I can't get any good information out of them. With Isla's information alone…

Heinz's party had done things in a flashy way. Thanks to that, the Lemures stationed in the sky over the city had been enough to let Vandalieu know that battles had been occurring, and he had been able to find the spirits of the dead to communicate with them, but… Couldn't anything be done about heavy damage to spirits?

Vandalieu had turned the 'Hound' Isla, one of Ternecia's 'Five Dogs' that were her trusted retainers, into an Undead straight away, so there was almost no damage to her memory. But the spirit of the 'Fine Dog' Chipiras, who had been split in two by Heinz, was damaged all over.

The only other spirits Vandalieu could obtain were those of the 'Mad Dog' and the 'Fighting Dog.' The fifth, the 'Foolish Dog,' was apparently not moving from a hiding place. Vandalieu just hoped that he could get good information from the Mad Dog and the Fighting Dog.

As these thoughts ran through his mind, he looked at the room's ceiling, which he could see clear as day thanks to his Dark Vision skill.

He couldn't fall asleep.

For some reason, Pete and the other insects that Vandalieu had equipped inside his body with the Insect Binding Technique skill were moving around inside him late at night, disturbing his quiet sleep with the sensation of them squirming beneath his skin.

It tickled, so he was inadvertently letting out stifled laughter.

The Status Effect Resistance skill kept sleep deprivation at bay, so Vandalieu was completely awake now. There's no helping it, he thought, deciding to get up.

Sunrise was close. Vandalieu decided to pass the time by doing some morning training.

He silently crawled out of the bunkbed, spread a handkerchief-sized piece of tanned leather on the floor so as to not wake Kasim and his friends who were still sleeping and then began to do push-ups with his tongue.

It was harsh training that required not his arms, but his tongue extended with the Body Extension (Tongue) skill, to support his entire body weight. The tongue was a muscle, so it would surely be very effective training.

It would be quite the problem if he were to be seen by Kasim and his friends, but the three of them were humans and they couldn't really see in the dark, so there wouldn't be any problems if he just stopped right after they woke up.

But Vandalieu did only a few of these push-ups before stopping. The Lemures stationed around the village had detected several shadows of what appeared to be bandits.

… Who are these guys?

Through the Lemures, he could see a group of several dozen armed men wearing leather armor and cloths over their faces. Seeing this, Vandalieu would assume they were just bandits, but for some reason, many of them were riding horses.

One or two bandits might have been normal, but there were around twenty mounted men. They were all sturdy horses; the one at the front carrying a man holding a kite shield was particularly sturdy-looking, so muscular that Vandalieu would feel the urge to touch it.

Normal bandits might have carriages to carry the items they pillaged, but they would not have a cavalry. Horses cost money to feed, as they didn't simply eat anything they were given, and they were normally cowardly creatures. And the bandits themselves were farmers and residents of slums who had gone broke, so they didn't have the technique for fighting on horseback. That was why having war horses would just be a waste of money to feed.

Selling those horses would actually yield more profit than attacking one small village.

In fact, Vandalieu had never encountered a single mounted bandit among all of the bandit groups he had attacked and robbed.

Then maybe these bandits are mercenaries who have gone broke.

There were people in Lambda who would normally do mercenary work, then act as bandits to make a living when there was no work available.

And because such people sold their strength on the battlefield to earn their money, they were far stronger than normal bandits.

At the very least, they were stronger than ordinary soldiers, possessed skills and used martial skills.

Though it was late, Vandalieu now felt a reaction from Danger Sense: Death. At this rate, it was possible that the village would be annihilated… no, its annihilation was certain.

"This is bad…" he muttered to himself.

As enemies, they weren't a threat to Vandalieu. If the bandit group were to aiming only for Vandalieu, he would be able to overwhelm them, just like he had done with the Goblin King and the pack of one thousand Goblins.

The difficult thing was to defeat them without losing any of the villagers as casualties. If he held back as he had been doing up until now, he would definitely lack the manpower to accomplish this.

… There was no helping it. Vandalieu decided to get a little serious.

He quickly cast Energy Absorption and Bloodshed Enhancement on the equipment of Kasim's party that was in the room.

And then he used his Scream skill to let out a loud voice, waking up Kasim's party.

"IT'S A BANDIT ATTACK!"

"An attack?"

"On this village?!"

Even though they were novices, they were adventurers. Despite being surprised, they got out of bed quickly. Vandalieu quickly explained the situation to them.

"Several dozen strong bandits are closing in on the village," he said.

"What?! Really?!"

"Yes, my insects have told me."

Vandalieu had noticed the bandits so quickly because he had been unable to sleep due to Pete and the other insects had been making so much noise, so this wasn't exactly a lie.

Hearing this, the three young adventurers hastily began equipping their weapons and armor.

"If it was Fester saying it, we would have doubted him," said Kasim.

"We trust you because it's you, Vandalieu!" said Zeno.

"Unlike me, you don't say things while half-asleep!" Fester added. It seemed that he had a history of speaking nonsense while half-asleep.

"But will we be enough to handle strong bandits?" asked Zeno.

"Don't complain; there are dozens of them. Even if we're not enough, we have no choice but to do this!" said Kasim.

There was audible tension in their voices.

"I think you'd manage if you were fighting them one-on-one," Vandalieu told them. I've applied enchantments, too.

In fact, yesterday, Kasim's party had told him that they would soon be allowed to take the D-class promotion examination, so they were already stronger than average soldiers. As long as they could kill people and have their minds stay normal after killing them, there was no way that they would lose in a one-on-one battle.

But surprisingly, it wasn't Kasim or Zeno, but Fester who called out to Vandalieu with a serious look on his face. "Hey, Vandalieu. Do you have any tips? For kill… fighting people."

They seem to have sensed that Vandalieu was experienced in fighting other people while they repeated their training and practice battles with him. Since the only human-shaped creatures they had killed so far were Goblins and Kobolds, they were asking him for advice.

"Tips?" Vandalieu repeated.

He was hard-pressed to answer this question. He had killed multiple people with his own hands, drank their blood and used their corpses as Undead, but he didn't remember thinking anything in particular about doing so. For him, killing people was no different from preparing fish after catching them.

Meanwhile, the bandits had made their preparations for the attack. They were split into three groups; the archers and infantry would go around to surround the village, and once they were in position, half of the cavalry would attack the front gate facing the highway while the other half would attack the smaller rear gate.

The cavalry would cause chaos while the archers and infantry would bring down the fleeing villagers.

Golems, activate. Exterminate the enemies as they approach.

Princess Levia and the other Ghosts, stay transparent and standby in the sky.

Hmm, what advice should I give Fester?

Vandalieu's head was working hard, using the Parallel Thought Processing skill to give orders to the Lemures and Golems as well as telling Levia and the other Ghosts to stand by.

The response he gave in the end was a cliché one.

"Imagine what will happen if you don't fight or what will happen when you are defeated," he told Fester.

"Imagine?"

"Yes. What will the bandit group do to this village, what will they do with Lina-san, if we are defeated?"

Lina was the poster girl of the jack-of-all-trades store, the sole employee of the Adventurers' Guild branch in the village. What the bandit group would do upon finding a young woman like her didn't need explaining.

Fester, who had feelings for her, gripped his sword tightly.

"… Alright. I'm still not confident that I can kill someone, but I'll leave the feelings of fear and vomiting for afterwards," he said.

Vandalieu had used a line that he had seen a heroine in a manga on Earth say to encourage the protagonist who disliked fighting, but it seemed to have been more effective than he had expected.

I was contemplating between this and telling him to imagine that his enemies are pumpkins or something, but I suppose this was the right choice.

"Don't worry. I'm the Shield-bearer; I'll protect you properly," said Kasim.

"I'll watch your back, but I'm not going to pat it," said Zeno. "Ask Lina to do that for you afterwards."

"No, I didn't mean that I'd actually vomit… Sheet, Vandalieu, where should we go?" Fester asked. "Do we go to the front gate?"

"I'll leave the back gate to you," said Vandalieu. "Around ten mounted men will come that way; please hold out until I arrive. Tell the villagers not to leave their houses. I'll handle things at the front gate."

"Alright!"

Normally, they would stop a boy half their age saying that he would handle things on his own, but Kasim's party knew that Vandalieu was so strong that they couldn't defeat him even if all three of them attacked him at once. They watched him open the wooden door and fly out without stopping him before heading for the back gate.

"ATTACK! ATTACK! BANDIT ATTACK! CLOSE YOUR DOORS AND STAY IN YOUR HOUSES!"

Vandalieu was using the Scream skill to warn the villagers who would slowly be waking up around this time.

"It's so noisy. Could it be that they've noticed us?" asked one of Karcan's subordinates, seemingly afraid.

"Even if they have, the plan does not change!" Karcan shouted, drawing his sword.

He had a bad feeling about the high-pitched voice that he could hear coming from the village, but he ignored it and commenced the plan.

"Don't hold back, pillage and kill! This is for the sake of justice! Let's go, you sorry bastards!" he roared.

Seeing their commander charge forward, the Equestrians disguised as bandits let out violent war cries as they followed.

"Hyih! They really came?!"

"You stupid fool, stay calm!"

The men who had been keeping watch at the front gate during the night trembled with pale faces at the fearsome war cries and hoofbeats drawing closer.

It seemed that bandits were far more terrifying than Goblins or wild beasts.

"Doctor! We'll leave the rest to you!"

"Let's see here*," said Vandalieu, whom many had started to call "Doctor" because he had been conducting medical treatments every time he visited the village.

He prepared his method for killing all of the bandits.

These men were probably mercenaries acting as bandits, but they were nothing but small fry for Vandalieu with his current power. He would simply need to fire Death Bullets as they approached and swing his claws a few times, and that would be the end.

But they were riding horses.

The horses should provide quite a bit of income for this village.

He wanted to leave the horses alive. If the wind had been blowing the other way, he could have just released volatile paralyzing venom into the air, but unfortunately, the village was downwind.

"Now then, I'm counting on you," he said.

Eight spears of black flames appeared.

"Uwah, is this magic?!" one of the villagers cried.

"Yes, this is fire-attribute magic," said Vandalieu, lying without hesitation as he released a Dead Spirit Magic spell.

"I'll destroy the gate with my martial skill; follow me - GAH?!"

A spear of black fire pierced the chest of the man at the front who was raising his sword. A second and third spear followed, incinerating the internal organs of the man - of Karcan.

Karcan opened his eyes wide in astonishment as he stared at small, white-haired boy floating above the wooden gate.

Impossible?! He wasn't just a user of healing magic and the Unarmed Fighting Technique?!

With the astonishment still etched on his face, he tumbled off his horse.

"Captain?!"

"Karcan-dono?!"

Seeing Karcan's subordinates and Froto stop their horses, their formation falling apart, Vandalieu saw a chance and released more spears of black flames and threw kunais at them.

"Higyah?!"

"Stone Wall! GUAAH?!"

"Gah… It's poison! There's poison on the… Kahah!"

One after another, Karcan's subordinates had their chests pierced and their organs burned from the inside, or fell to the poison on the kunais made by Datara and Tarea (which had also been turned into Cursed Weapons).

There were some who immediately raised their shields and used their martial skills, but martial skills like Stone Wall with level 1 Shield Technique were meaningless against Vandalieu's Dead Spirit Magic and Throwing skills.

The kunai that he had turned into Cursed Weapons, made of Dragon bones and Death Iron, thrown with his level 4 Superhuman Strength, were about as powerful as cannonballs. And since they were coated with poison, even a graze would spell the end for these men.

Froto, who had been at the back, let out a scream of terror as he tried to flee. Vandalieu raised a kunai to throw into his back… but upon hearing the words of the spirits of Karcan and his men, who had approached him due to the Death-Attribute Charm affecting them because they had died, he stopped.

"Pete, everyone, please capture him alive."

Several dozen insectoid monsters, including Pete, flew out of Vandalieu's body and chased after Froto.

He had his remaining insects inject paralyzing venom into the horses and used Death-Attribute Magic to turn the bandits who were still breathing into ashes.

"You didn't have to go that far…" one of the villagers murmured.

"They were still breathing, so I had to do it just in case," said Vandalieu, lying to them again. He had now lied to them so many times that he had lost count. But he had no choice; these bandits… Karcan and his men, were knights of this nation.

Vandalieu hadn't heard the fine details of why they had attacked this cultivation village yet, but…

Things have turned out badly. Now that it's come to this, I have to kill the knights so they can't be recognized, he thought as he turned around.

"By the way, what are those insect-looking things?!"

"They are my pleasant companions," said Vandalieu. "You don't have to worry about them. Now then, I'm going to take a look at the back gate."

Hearing the villagers' shouts of "Alright!" and "We're leaving it to you!" behind him, Vandalieu headed for the back gate where Kasim and his friends were fighting.

"Doctor was a tamer, huh."

"Yeah, he's amazing. Ah, but should we say something to him about bringing them into the village without mentioning them?"

"Maybe we should… he did cure my athlete's foot only yesterday, though."

"Now that you mention it, he did something about my toothache as well… I suppose we'll just give him a slight warning."

"Yeah."

The gate guards, who were now tying the horses up so that they wouldn't run away, didn't know that insectoid monsters had been deemed untamable by the Tamers' Guild.

This was the level of knowledge of people who had never actually seen a Tamer.

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Chapter 91: It would have been good if nothing happened, but...

In terms of actually protecting the village, the battle to defend the Seventh Cultivation Village from Karcan's unit of knights disguised as bandits was going well.

By the time Vandalieu killed Karcan, half of the thirty archers and infantry surrounding the village had already been killed.

"OOOOOOOOHN!"

"UOH! A Golem?!"

"WAAAAH! What the hell is this Slime?!"

The Equestrians who were on standby after surrounding the village should have only needed to be shooting the villagers who had barely escaped with their lives, the only things that approached them were Stone Golems and Golems made of liquid Death Iron, which looked like Slimes at first glance.

The Golems that Vandalieu had diligently made and placed in the ground were ten Rank 3 Stone Golems and three Rank 7 liquid Death Iron Golems. All of them were affected by his Strengthen Followers and Strengthen Subordinates skills; they were as powerful as monsters one or two Ranks above them.

If the Equestrians were all gathered together, even if they couldn't defeat the Golems, at least half of them would have been able to escape because the Golems were slow to move. But because they had been surrounding the village, they were all separated.

"Why are there so many Golems and black Slimes in a place where there are only supposed to be Goblins?!" shouted the final knight, before being covered an engulfed completely by a Death Iron Golem.

The Death Iron was a liquid, but it was just as heavy as the iron it had originally been made from. And since the Golem had its own superhuman strength as well, escape after being swallowed by it would be impossible without a tremendous amount of physical strength.

And then the Golems groaned as they carried the Equestrians' corpses to the small-scale Dungeon that Vandalieu had created in order to hide them.

Kasim and his party were putting up a good fight against the ten mounted bandits.

"UOOOOH! Stone Shield! Shield Bash!"

Unable to withstand the blow of Kasim's strengthened shield that he had swung with all his might, one of the Equestrians fell off his horse.

Zeno aimed for that fallen Equestrian, but one of the other Equestrians stood in his way, blocking his line of fire.

"Guh! Are you trying to show off?!" shouted the Equestrian. Fortunately for him, the leather armor he was wearing was lighter than what he normally used, so he got to his feet quickly.

As usual, Kasim's skill level was still too low to use Shield Bash. "It's the embodiment of my fighting spirit!" he yelled back.

They were being forced to fight three against ten; they wouldn't last without some fighting spirit.

Fester was swinging his sword bravely next to Kasim as well. "UOOOOH! Lina, I'll protect you! Triple Thrust!" He used a Swordsmanship martial skill, releasing three swift, consecutive thrusts, aiming at one of the enemies on horseback.

The Equestrian twisted his body to avoid the first thrust, deflected the second with his own sword and was hit by the third, though the third thrust only took a little flesh off his side.

"There's your… weakness?"

Triple Thrust was a martial technique with three consecutive thrusts at a fearsome speed, but once the three thrusts were endured, there was an opening where the user was vulnerable.

The Equestrian knew this and had planned to launch a counterattack after enduring the three thrusts despite having suffered a slight wound, but all of his Vitality was taken away by what was supposed to be a light wound in his side, sapping his strength.

This was the effect of the Bloodshed Enhancement enchantment on Fester's sword.

"ZEYAH!" Finding the Equestrian's opening instead, his regular thrust slipped through a gap in the Equestrians armor. The Equestrian's eyes rolled back as he fell off his horse.

"ANTON!"

"WHO'S NEXT!" Fester roared. "COME AT ME! I WON'T LET YOU LAY A SINGLE FINGER ON LINAAA!" He was making full use of Vandalieu's advice to endure the mental shock of having killed someone for the first time.

"Who is that?!"

The Equestrians were shaken after watching their ally fall.

"This is for Anton!" an Equestrian shouted as he and another Equestrian charged at Fester.

"You idiot, what are you provoking them for!" said Zeno.

"Provocation!"

Zeno's arrows kept the Equestrians at bay while Kasim used the Provocation, a martial skill that forcibly directed an enemy's hostility to himself.

"These guys are stronger than we heard they would be," the unit's vice-captain whispered to himself.

Kasim and his party were strong. The three of them were E-class adventurers, but they already had abilities worthy of D-class. In terms of ability, they were more than a match for the Equestrians. With Vandalieu's enchantments added to their equipment, they had become threats that couldn't be taken lightly, even ten against three.

To the point that the vice-captain now feared that they would all be individually defeated as a result of having split up to aim for the villagers.

What's taking Captain Karcan so long?!

The Equestrians were supposed to have charged through both the front and back gates, cause chaos and crush every adventurer and villager that tried to resist, but at this rate, even if they weren't defeated, they would suffer heavy losses.

Thinking that it would be bad if more casualties were suffered, the vice-captain of the unit turned to give orders to the agitated Equestrians.

"I'll deal with the swordsman! Two of you keep the Shield-Bearer busy and the rest of you take care of the Archer!" he shouted, riding his horse towards Fester.

As someone with the Job and social position of a True Knight like Karcan, he possessed greater abilities than Fester. He wouldn't be defeated easily if he utilized his advantage of being on horseback, even with the enchantments on Fester's equipment.

"Sheet! Zeno, try to run around!" Fester shouted as he moved to engage the vice-captain.

And then he felt something flying over his head at incredible speed.

The head of the enemy he was trying to engage vanished with the sound of a bursting fruit.

"EH?!"

Fester and the Equestrians let out foolish-sounding noises of surprise. Not noticing that its master's head had exploded, the vice-captain's horse continued running right past Fester.

The long sword dropped from the vice-captain's shaking hand.

"I almost hit the horse. It's hard to aim this Telekinesis rifle, even though it could be useful because I don't have to worry about the bullets exploding since they're made of liquid Death Iron. I suppose it's no use without a gun barrel," said a voice from overhead.

Everyone looked up to see Vandalieu floating there, surrounded by several black, fist-sized spheres floating around him.

"Well then, I'll go for the remaining ones the normal way."

Before the very eyes of the Equestrians, who still hadn't recovered from their astonishment, numerous black spears of flames appeared around Vandalieu.

"Wait -"

"Black Flame Spear."

Starting with the one who looked like he was about to surrender, Vandalieu released his magic at all of the Equestrians, one by one.

"Hang on - Oi! Weren't they trying to surrender?!" Kasim shouted.

"Sorry, I couldn't stop myself in time," said Vandalieu. He had lied so many times now that he was starting to feel bad, but there was no helping it.

"I see… Well, I suppose it was just my imagination. They were still holding their weapons, after all," said Kasim, having lost interest in the Equestrians who were now corpses. From his perspective, the Equestrians were simply bandits, so he hadn't had any intention of criticizing Vandalieu for killing them mercilessly to begin with. It seemed that he had simply shouted out in surprise. "You saved us. If you were any later, things could have gone badly. It's the second time you've saved us now," he said.

"Is this all of them?" asked Zeno. "Well then, we need to clean up the corpses and gather the horses inside to make sure they don't run away."

"Blurgh!"

"… Fester, you go and explain what's happened to the village chief," said Zeno.

"Leabe it to be," said Fester, struggling to speak.

"There is one bandit who escaped, so I am going to chase after him," said Vandalieu.

"Are you alright on your own - Hmm, I think you are, but do you want help with anything?" asked Kasim.

"It's fine. Rather than help me, I will ask you to take care of things here."

"Alright."

Kasim watched Vandalieu fly off and then grimaced as he realized that he had to pick up the broken fragments of the enemies' heads that Vandalieu had smashed to pieces.

"I should have asked him to just burn them all," he muttered to himself.

"Kah… Kakeh…"

Terrified at the fact that his body refused to move, as if it was now made of stone, Froto looked in despair at the countless compound eyes that were gazing at him.

Rank 3 Paralyzing Moths that scattered scales with paralyzing venom from their wings.

Rank 2 Carrion Flies that used their acidic saliva to dissolve weakened creatures as they consumed them.

Rank 3 Clear Dragon Butterflies, which could turn transparent for short periods of time.

Rank 4 Chameleon Mantises, the assassins of the forests.

And then there were the Rank 5 Cemetery Bees that had poisonous stingers and jaws that could destroy metal armor as if they were decorative pieces of candy, as well as a Rank 4 Lance Centipede with horns and a carapace tougher than iron.

To Froto, the sounds of their jaws and wings sounded like the countdown to his death.

He was an outstanding mage, but since he was fundamentally a researcher, he had little experience in real battles. Karcan had brought him not for his ability in battle, but because he knew all of the villagers' faces.

Even so, he might have been able to manage to repel the small number of monsters present except for the Cemetery Bees and the Lance Centipede. If there was only one type of venom to deal with, he might have been able to counteract it.

But even though the monsters were all insectoids, Froto didn't have the strength to fight against over a dozen monsters of different races, nor did he have the ability to counteract multiple types of venom.

Th-this cannot be! Someone, please save me! I'm not the kind of person that can be allowed to die in a place like this! My death would be an immeasurable loss for this nation!

His eyeballs, the only moving part of his body, searched for help, but there were no signs that any help would come. Karcan, Froto's superior, had been killed right at the beginning, and his subordinates had quickly shared the same fate. Froto had the feeling that the spy had been among them.

Considering that, it was likely that all of the other Equestrians had been slaughtered by Vandalieu as well.

Even if there were survivors, they weren't close enough to Froto to come and save him, and even if they did come, it was difficult to imagine that they would be able to defeat these monsters.

Just as Froto gave up hope, a crimson and purple eye appeared from behind the insectoid monsters.

"It's been a while," said Vandalieu. He had killed Karcan and his men in a flash, and now he was looking down at Froto. There was no emotion in his voice or on his face.

Unable to speak, Froto screamed internally.

"I've heard the gist of the story from the spirit of the man named Karcan," Vandalieu continued, extending his hand towards Froto. "You were a hired mage who infiltrated the cultivation villages in order to destroy them, not a priest. Your objective was to gain a better position for yourself, it seems."

He knows everything?! He was a Spiritualist as well?!

Froto felt surprise and fear, and cursed Karcan in his mind for selling him out so quickly after dying and becoming a spirit.

Wait, I stopped! I knew this attack was pointless, but Karcan forced me into it!

Before this attack, several of the other cultivation villages were supposed to have been destroyed by plans that Froto had put in place himself, and he had conveniently forgotten this. But his tongue, paralyzed by the venom, was unable to produce any words.

"It seems that you have something to say, but there is nothing I want to hear from you," said Vandalieu. "But you really have done something troublesome."

He had repelled bandits to protect the village. There would be no problem with that. But the fact that the bandits were actually knights was a problem.

Normally, Karcan and his men would have been treated as a shame to all knights. But there was the fact that the cultivation project to alleviate the refugee problem was actually a plan to leave the people to fend for themselves, and the fact that Karcan had been acting according to Lucas's will, even if he had been making decisions mostly independently towards the end. Thus, it didn't seem that things would end so simply.

It seemed that they had come out on the pretense of going on an expedition, but… It was certain that the people of the Knights' Order would realize that the missing Karcan and his men were the bandits who had been massacred in the cultivation villages.

When that happened, what would they do? It would be convenient for Vandalieu and the cultivation villages if they didn't make a move.

If the Knights' Order and the noblemen acted as if nothing had happened and treated the death of Karcan and his men as them having gone missing during their expedition, then nothing would happen.

However, considering what had happened up until now, Vandalieu had no faith in the Hartner family or the noble families close to the Hartner family.

They would definitely try something.

"If I knew they were knights before I killed them, I could have taken them alive and possibly tried various things to cover it up, but… your disguises were too elaborate," said Vandalieu. "To actually die so quickly like real bandits, how unf… I suppose going as far as to say that would be unreasonable."

Vandalieu's hand drew steadily closer to Froto. Froto was waiting in suspense, wondering when black flames would appear from that hand, when claws would extend from its fingers.

But that didn't happen. Vandalieu's hand lifted Froto's face up. Froto wondered whether he was being spared.

Thank you, truly, thank you! I'll tell you everything I know, and I'll do anything for your sake! So spare -?!

Insects silently emerged from Vandalieu's cold hand that was touching Froto's cheek.

Just as Froto saw the eyeless heads of numerous colorful, venomous-looking Worms coming out of Vandalieu's hand, their long bodies began twisting and crawling over his face.

"They're beautiful, aren't they?" said Vandalieu. "These are creatures that live as parasites in the bodies of other creatures. They can infest all kinds of places, like the brain or other internal organs. I'll tell you now that your consciousness will not be taken over. You will feel the pain and everything else vividly."

The slimy parasite creatures began entering Froto's body through his mouth, nose and ears.

He let out stifled screams.

Watching him tremble and convulse ominously, Vandalieu made a confession. "I'll say this now because perhaps you haven't noticed. I am very angry."

Vandalieu felt anger and disappointment at Froto's betrayal. He had admired Froto and thought he was a good person for a believer of Alda.

But he had betrayed Vandalieu like this. Vandalieu wanted to erase the past where he had worried for Froto's safety.

"Well, as you were a spy to begin with, I'm sure you thought that I was a fool for not noticing," Vandalieu continued. "Your eyes are telling me that I was a fool to be deceived, too."

I'M NOT THINKING ANYTHING LIKE THAAAAAT!

The voice of Froto, who was still alive, couldn't be heard by Vandalieu.

Vandalieu waited for the parasites to finish infesting Froto and then grabbed his body.

And then Froto's body silently began entering Vandalieu's hand.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MEEE?! SOMEONE SAVE MEEEE!

With his screams unheard by anyone, Froto disappeared inside Vandalieu.

"This is an underhanded trick, but I can equip creatures infested by parasitic insects with Insect Binding Technique," Vandalieu explained.

In order to use Dungeons to transport the Ghouls who had been living in the Devil's Nests of the Hartner Duchy and the livestock he had received in trade with the farming villages, Vandalieu had made parasites infest them, equipped them inside his body and then teleported to Talosheim.

Of course, he had only used a single harmless parasite for each person, only having them infested just before teleporting and then quickly releasing them straight after arriving in Talosheim.

If Vandalieu transported Froto to Talosheim alive and disposed of him there, his corpse wouldn't be found by the villagers, nor would there be even a sliver of a chance for him appearing near the village if he turned into a Ghost.

Death-Attribute Charm wasn't flawless, so Vandalieu was sure to take precautions where he could.

But perhaps because his capacity had decreased after equipping Froto; he was now one insect short of equipping all of them.

"I suppose unexpected, troublesome situations like this arise if I equip so many insects close to my limit," Vandalieu murmured.

Click-click-click? Pete seemed to be asking what they would do. Now that his Rank had increased and he had become a Lance Centipede, he was now larger than an anaconda.

"… Well, the gatekeepers already saw you, so I'm sure it will be fine."

Vandalieu might be scolded a little, but it would probably be fine for him to bring Pete with him.

"Once the bandits are all disposed of, I have to set some Lemures around Niarki and Nineland. Then I have to release some Undead Insects and…"

Vandalieu's words trailed off as he let out a sigh.

The villagers of the Seventh Cultivation Village were shocked by the bandit attack and praised Vandalieu and Kasim's party for defending them. It was still morning, so there wasn't a feast thrown to celebrate. They stripped the bandits of their equipment, had Vandalieu burn the corpses and bury the ashes so that they wouldn't rise as Undead, and gathered all of the horses. Then it was noon and the celebrations began.

"Don't go screaming my name like that!" said Lina.

"But I was desperate to protect you!" Fester told her.

"So I'm telling you, don't go shouting that to everyone! … Say it when we're alone together."

Fester seemed to have recovered from the mental shock of having killed someone for the first time, and his relationship with Lina was moving forward as well.

Apparently, a couple consisting of an Adventurers' Guild employee and an active adventurer couldn't get married until one of them retired, so their goal was still far off, however.

"… I don't really get it," said Kasim. "But I did know that he's liked Lina for a while."

"More than not really getting it, it's just lonely," said Zeno. "Being single, that is."

"Did you know? That Morris went and got engaged at that age, apparently."

"Yeah, with his childhood friend… I wonder how you get a girlfriend?"

Kasim and Zeno were both staring into the distance.

That reminds me, Braga and his single companions were saying the same thing until this spring, thought Vandalieu.

"Vandalieu, you probably don't understand at your age, but… make sure you get along with girls," Kasim told him.

"… I'll do that." This was the only response Vandalieu could give, as he imagined how they would complain if they learned of his circumstances.

Also, he was staying silent about Froto, who was currently convulsing inside Vandalieu's body.

After that, Lina, as an employee of the village's branch of the Adventurers' Guild, reported that twenty bandits had been repelled and paid Kasim's party the reward… The villagers didn't even know about the existence of the other thirty that had been defeated by the Golems.

The horses that Karcan and his men had been riding were now all Vandalieu's. He was the one who had defeated most of the bandits, after all, so the rewards went to Kasim and Vandalieu got the horses.

But Vandalieu had no use for the horses, so he divided them among the cultivation villages. They would live new lives as farming horses.

"I'm currently still just a civilian, so if I receive money, it would count as doing business and I would have to pay taxes. So please just pay however much you want to the adventurers," Vandalieu told the people of the other villages.

"Hmm, are you sure about that? We don't really have anything we can offer you as a collateral…"

"It's fine. I'm leaving all of the responsibilities of taking care of the horses to you, after all."

And besides, if Vandalieu brought living horses back, Sam would be upset.

Vandalieu had accidentally been given a farming horse when he was collecting livestock from this region's villages. This was the conversation that had taken place when he brought that horse back to Talosheim:

"Bocchan! You have me, and yet you would use a living horse as your legs?!"

"Sam, you don't have to say it like you're reprimanding your husband for having an affair…"

It seemed that Sam felt threatened by the fact that Vandalieu could spend long hours flying through the sky and had now even gained the ability to teleport between Dungeons.

Maybe I should register at the Commerce Guild as a horse leasing business.

This idea suddenly occurred to Vandalieu, but where he had obtained the horses would be problematic to explain, so it was probably best to see how things went for a while.

After that, having prepared themselves mentally during the fight against the bandits, Kasim's party apparently managed to get through their D-class promotion exam that they took at the city of Niarki.

At that point in time, nothing had happened yet.

『The levels of the Insect Binding Technique, Coordination, Strengthen Subordinates, Strengthen Followers, Death-Attribute Charm and Throwing skills have increased!』

『You have acquired the Thread Refining skill!』

Shortly after the new year, Lord Lucas looked at his completely-petrified subordinate, feeling no desire to bring his mouth to the mulled wine that had been poured into his cup.

Lord Lucas's office preserved the heat well, but his subordinate looked as if even his innards had frozen solid. His face and shoulders were completely stiff.

Perhaps it was not Lord Lucas that needed the hot wine, but this subordinate. However, it was not warmth, but a businesslike question that Lord Lucas gave.

"So, where is Karcan Lassen and his unit?"

The subordinate's face stiffened even further.

The problem was that the knight named Karcan Lassen, who had planned to go on a two-week expedition, as well as his entire unit, had gone missing.

To Lord Lucas himself, Karcan's name and face were things that he could barely recall from the corner of his mind. Karcan was the man in charge of one of the background operations conducted in Lord Lucas's dispute with his younger brother Belton over the succession of the Hartner family.

Karcan was a man from the Lassen family, who had served as knights for the Hartner family for generations… In other words, he was a man from a family who had never risen above the mere status of knights despite having been around for generations; a very ordinary knight.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with being a mere knight. They had the splendid duty of protecting the land from monsters, criminals and enemy nations, as well as acting as role models for the soldiers and the people.

However, Karcan had desired a position above his own ability. The petrified subordinate before Lord Lucas… The captain of the Red Wolf Knights' Order, Pablo Marton, had noticed him and entrusted him with one of Lord Lucas's plans.

"That is… There has been no contact despite the expedition's planned duration having already passed, and when we sent people to investigate, it was found that they were not at the expedition's destination. Also, the Adventurers' Guild apparently received a report that a cultivation village was attacked by about twenty bandits on horseback, but the bandits were repelled safely."

Hearing Pablo's response, Lord Lucas felt dizzy despite not having drank any of the wine.

"I see," he said. "That cultivation village was attacked by twenty wealthy bandits with horses, but they repelled them successfully. That small village? … Pablo, is there any chance that there were fifty of those bandits, not twenty?"

"No; according to the Adventurers' Guild's records, there were twenty. However… I am thinking the same thing," said Pablo.

In other words, it was likely that Karcan had led his unit out of the city, pretending to go on an expedition, then attacked the cultivation village disguised as bandits, where they were defeated.

A small cultivation village had annihilated a unit of three True Knights and fifty Equestrians. Even considering that they had lowered the quality of their equipment in order to disguise themselves as bandits, it was difficult to believe.

However, numerous unbelievable events had occurred in the Hartner Duchy last year.

Both the actions Karcan had taken and the fate that he had met were nothing more than more of these unbelievable events.

"I believe I ordered him not to lay a hand on the cultivation villages… No, I believe I ordered the cancellation of every secret plan after Belton's scandal, did I not?" said Lord Lucas.

Lord Lucas had ordered all of his secret plans to be cancelled, knowing that it was no longer the time for him and Lord Belton to be pulling at each other's feet.

Belton himself was apparently innocent, but the fact that several influential noblemen had connections to the Pure-breed Vampires caused an unbelievable scandal. If this wasn't dealt with correctly, it wasn't a matter of the Hartner family losing the trust of the other duke families. It was more than possible that many would demand that the Hartner family's status as a family of dukes be revoked.

No, before that, perhaps rebellions would begin occurring all over the duchy.

It was a critical moment that could have spelled the end of the Hartner family if Lord Lucas and Lord Belton had continued dragging each other down, which was why Lord Lucas had ordered all secret plans to be cancelled, but… Why had Karcan made a move?

"That is… It seems that he was desperate for success," said Pablo.

"I see. With people like this selected to work for us, I suppose it cannot be helped that things turned out this way." Lord Lucas sighed as he thought about how to deal with this problem.

It would not be good to treat all of them as having gone missing in an accident during their expedition. It wouldn't be good, but it wouldn't be a big problem, either.

The Equestrians led by Karcan were apprentices of knights; there were the second and third sons of noble families among them as well. Of course, their families were those that supported Lord Lucas. Naturally, they knew of the conflict between the brothers.

That was why they would probably not be satisfied with the explanation that they had simply gone missing. Although it would cause some displeasure, it would be possible to silence them by brandishing the power of the nation.

However, the problem was that there was something ominous going on in this cultivation village.

"What do you think of the people in this cultivation village?" Lord Lucas asked.

"Most likely… they are threatening us, perhaps," said Pablo.

"My thoughts exactly," said Lord Lucas.

The Adventurers' Guild had received news that it was twenty, not fifty bandits. Lord Lucas interpreted this as the cultivation village declaring to him, "You know that we're keeping quiet about this for you, don't you?"

In fact, a scandal at a time like this would be bad. Normally, scandals would be dealt with one way or another, but the king and the other dukes were currently scrutinizing the Hartner Duchy. There was no telling what kind of faults they would find with the Hartner family.

That was why knowing the truth behind the incident was more than enough for the cultivation village to blackmail him.

Thus, Lord Lucas thought that the villagers and adventurers from the village somehow managed to kill Karcan and his men in retaliation.

If Lord Lucas and Pablo had received a detailed report on Vandalieu, they would have come to a different conclusion. However, until the moment of his death, Karcan had believed that Vandalieu was someone who could be dealt with by his unit alone, so he hadn't provided much detail in his reports out of fear that his ability would be doubted.

"Perhaps knights of the Sauron Duchy were among the refugees," Pablo suggested. "It could even be that they are planning to establish their own independent power. There are no Devil's Nests around there, and that incident occurred in that slave-run mine, so not many will approach those villages from now on."

Lord Lucas sighed as he listened to Pablo's words, realizing that he couldn't just leave the cultivation village alone after all.

He had treated the refugees cruelly and tried to turn them into disposable, low-grade soldiers, and he had even intended to use secret plans to destroy several of the other cultivation villages. Thus, he was now unconsciously thinking of this village as an enemy that would harm him if given the opportunity.

And he couldn't leave these people from the Sauron Duchy alone when they possessed an unknown amount of military might and political power in the Hartner Duchy that he would soon be in charge of.

"Pablo, this is your responsibility," said Lord Lucas. "Use the Red Wolf Knights' Order to deal with this."

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