Chapter 42
Chapter 42
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 42
Chapter Title: Cautious Approach
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Please take good care of this.
“I think we should first make contact with the successor.”
As Lattis’s voice echoed through the meeting room, a mix of joy and frustration crossed their faces.
Uman slammed the table with all his might and spoke in a low voice, suppressing his anger.
“Explain. Why do you think that? Quickly!”
His intensity was no joke, causing the other elders to hold their breath and glance nervously at the two.
In the tense atmosphere that felt ready to explode at any moment, Lattis cut through it with a firm voice.
“From the start, jumping straight to kidnapping without even trying to persuade them is hardly rational, sirs.”
“What?”
Uman shot up from his chair in outrage, filling the meeting room with a taut tension that seemed about to snap.
But as if oblivious to the sight, Lattis continued in a businesslike tone.
“Elder Tia surely isn’t suggesting we just tell the successor everything outright and hand over our treasures only to get stabbed in the back.”
At Lattis’s sharp words, Tia cleared his throat with a somewhat uncomfortable expression.
Having heard this, Uman righted his toppled chair, dusted it off, and sat back down.
His face was still full of dissatisfaction, but he stared silently at Lattis, as if willing to hear him out for now.
“First, we need to learn what kind of person they are. Are they greedy? Frugal? Just? Evil? Brave? Cowardly? Cautious? Reckless? We know nothing.”
“Well said.”
Elder Arman stroked his beardless chin and nodded in agreement.
Lattis nodded back in thanks and continued.
“I suggested from the beginning that we discuss how to approach them, not rush into action. Isn’t this the time for utmost caution?”
The four elders fell silent for a moment.
Since founding this mage community, they had invested nearly forty years toward fulfilling their long-cherished wish, and now that the final key to their goal had arrived, they had all lost their composure.
Lattis’s pointed remark made them all realize this.
“We’ll start by slowly attempting contact, but we must thoroughly hide who we are and what we want. We can gain their trust as much as possible, learn about them, and once we’re convinced they’re trustworthy, reveal everything and ask for cooperation.”
Seeing Uman’s dissatisfied expression as he said this, Lattis added,
“Of course, if they prove untrustworthy, we can stab them in the back more easily with the trust we’ve built.”
“How long do you plan to wait?”
“That depends on how quickly we build rapport with them.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury you do.”
At Elder Berg’s words, Lattis glanced at the other elders while subtly wiping his face.
Unlike him, still in what could be called middle age, the “founding elders” who had created this mage group were all old wizards fitting the term perfectly.
“We’re old men who wouldn’t be surprised to drop dead tomorrow. Patience is a virtue of the aged, but enduring long waits is hard.”
“Isn’t rushing and making a mistake once enough? It’s been decades since we started searching for successors, and we’ve only found two. They might be the last one left in the world.”
Since they had clearly identified and begun searching for successors, the first one was found fifteen years ago.
As that successor was an ordinary fortress resident, they were easily swayed by offering substantial benefits and promising even greater gains.
The problem arose when their indiscriminate activities under the pretext of aiding the successor exposed their true nature to the local estate lord.
The lord was a typical man of common sense who despised and feared mages, and naturally viewed this mysterious mage cabal with suspicion.
Seeing a chance to eliminate a threat and gain many mage slaves, he gathered all his forces for a deadly ambush.
The losses to the mages from that attack were immense.
Most of the mages who were members at the time died or were enslaved, including the leader who had formed and guided the group.
Nearly all the artifacts they had painstakingly unearthed and gathered over the years were seized.
Decisively, the successor they had found and served was killed while fleeing.
Considering this, Uman’s outburst that knights and estate lords couldn’t be trusted wasn’t something to dismiss lightly.
What they had endured was a lesson that bitter.
The mages’ habit of raiding fortresses to survive winter and leaving come spring stemmed from a paranoid fear of armies.
In winter, there was little exchange between fortresses and estates, so their presence wouldn’t be discovered.
“First, let’s start by deciding how and to what extent we’ll make contact.”
* * *
“Hah!”
With a powerful shout, the bladeless longsword grazed Arsen’s cheek perilously close.
Observing even the blade’s patterns as it passed slowly by, Arsen dove straight into the opening his opponent had created by swinging.
Fellow knight Baltan, who had swung the sword, tried to knee Arsen away, but Arsen was already a beat faster, pressing down on the rising thigh with his left hand.
Without missing the opponent’s moment of panic, Arsen thrust his staff into Baltan’s solar plexus.
“Guh!”
As Baltan collapsed from the suffocating pain, the sound of wind whistling reached Arsen’s ears, and he immediately ducked low.
A metal staff grazed his occiput, sending a cool breeze down his spine.
A woman’s incredulous voice rang out.
“This guy...”
Before she could finish, Arsen thrust his staff backward without turning.
There was a heavy thud of impact, followed by a sharp cry of pain.
Keeping the neutralized Baltan in view, Arsen stepped diagonally to bring the enemy behind him into sight as well.
Another fellow knight, Isha, clutched her side with a grimace, glaring at him.
“Dodge that? Are you insane? It’s not like you have eyes in the back of your head.”
“I heard the sound. Swing it without making noise next time.”
“That’s ridiculous... Ah, feels bruised. Damn, that hurts.”
At that moment, Baltan, barely recovering his breath with hacking coughs, stood and grumbled.
“Go easy, will you? Thought I was gonna die.”
“Didn’t you say at our first spar that training should be like real combat? Forgot already?”
“No, I didn’t know it’d be like this back then.”
At Arsen’s words, Baltan broke out in cold sweat, cursing his past boastful self.
Right after becoming a knight, drunk on surging mana and immense power, Baltan had boldly challenged his friend who was two years younger but had become a knight much earlier, vowing to put him in his place.
Though Arsen was his senior as a knight, Baltan was confident that with his greater age and longer training in martial arts, he could at least match him, if not dominate.
That is, until the first spar where he took a blow to the head after just five exchanges and went rolling.
Even in subsequent bouts fueled by rivalry, the results never changed.
Arsen had stronger mana, matched him physically, and crucially possessed overwhelming reflexes and the combat skills derived from them.
Only when Isha, who became a knight around the same time and was thus his peer, joined for 2-on-1 spars could they somewhat balance things.
They still lost embarrassingly like now sometimes, but occasionally luck brought a draw.
He sometimes suspected Arsen was going easy.
“One more? This time with swords, not staves.”
“Fine! Then I’ll take the staff this round.”
“Me too, sword.”
As the three swapped their unused weapons, a shout rang out.
“Sir Arsen! Sirs Baltan and Isha are here too!”
Arsen, honing his swordsmanship on the training grounds, turned at the voice.
A young man with a particularly prominent hooked nose greeted them happily.
It was Ridat, the estate lord’s second son.
“Greetings, Young Master.”
“What a pleasant surprise. In the middle of training?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Did you come to train as well, Young Master?”
At Baltan’s question, Ridat smiled faintly.
“I figured as a warrior, I should at least pull my weight.”
He usually never showed his face, a cynical thought flickered, but Arsen masked it with a smile, showing respect for Ridat’s words.
There was no gain in antagonizing the next heir.
Now that he’d received word from the estate lord naming him successor, it was clear he was trying to win over the knights’ favor, unlike his past restraint to avoid his brother’s scrutiny.
“I’m glad you’ve decided to train. Looks like you plan to get help from these friends behind you.”
“That was the idea. But you were sparring? Uneven numbers—sure that’s okay?”
“We usually gang up two-on-one against this guy. He’s just that good.”
Baltan boasted shamelessly, without a hint of embarrassment.
For knights, needing two to face one was hardly honorable, yet he showed no shame.
“What’s there to brag about...”
Whether Isha looked at him pitifully or not, Baltan nodded with a strange expression and stylishly swung the staff he’d picked up.
Impressed, Ridat said,
“That’s a sharp whoosh. Is Sir Arsen really so skilled you need two? Mind if I watch one?”
“We were just about to! Let’s go!”
Baltan shouted boldly, aiming his staff, while Isha reluctantly raised her sword at Arsen and took position.
Arsen slowly turned his head, lightly spinning the bladeless longsword.
As the three shifted positions for a few seconds, Baltan yelled.
“Here I go!”
At Baltan’s signal, the two knights thrust staff and sword simultaneously.
* * *
“Ah, feels broken...”
“Don’t be dramatic. I didn’t hit that hard.”
As Baltan rolled on the ground whining, Arsen lightly kicked him with an exasperated look.
Watching this, Isha said,
“Actually, that last hit from Baltan landed properly. Your left arm okay?”
“A bit?”
Arsen rolled up the sleeve of his training armor, revealing a bruise.
Ridat, who had been watching, spoke up.
“Impressive! To think the knights guarding our estate are this formidable. And to go all out even in sparring—I didn’t expect such valor. Truly!”
“It’s basic for knights!”
Seeing Baltan beam at Ridat’s passionate praise, Arsen bowed his head with feigned emotion.
From his proper conversations with Ridat so far, the public’s assessment of him didn’t seem far off.
Who knew what lay beneath the surface, but outwardly, he appeared gentle and mild-mannered as rumored.
“Come to think of it, my uncle praised you a lot too, Sir Arsen.”
“You mean Sir Ramun?”
Ridat nodded, and Arsen pictured the gruff-faced knight.
Imagining him praising anyone “a lot” was a stretch.
“Sir Ramun is an incredible knight. In the last southern campaign, he took on two knights and slew them both.”
“The person I respect most is first my father, and second my uncle.”
Ridat said this with a good-natured smile. In that smile, his prominent hooked nose stood out even more.