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Side Story Episode 3
Zeke first examined how far the excavation had progressed after discovering that the Hound Unit was looking for Elder Dragon ruins.
'Since they can't enter through the main entrance, they're having slaves dig a detour. But they still haven't properly entered yet.'
The original plan was to intercept the relic when they discovered and moved it. But knowing they hadn't even entered the ruins yet, he changed his plan.
'Hound bastards. I'll leave you to die here.'
Zeke concealed himself again, his eyes gleaming with an eerie light.
* * *
"Move faster!"
The Hounds accelerated the work of digging a detour path, dragging the Bird tribe slaves.
They needed to enter the ruins as quickly as possible to deliver the relic the Emperor wanted. As the pressure had intensified recently, the Hounds were also in an anxious state.
During the brutal excavation work that was proceeding as usual, a sound suddenly came from inside.
"Supervisor! There's something here!"
Several Hound Unit members supervising the slaves ran toward the sound.
They thought perhaps an entrance to the ruins had been found.
The Hound Unit members who hurriedly entered the inner part of the ice wall cave felt something strange.
SWISH!
They instinctively drew their swords quickly.
At that moment, a dagger sprang from the floor, slicing past the Hounds' ankles.
"UGH!"
Just as they were about to shout to alert others of the situation, Zeke immediately rose and slit their throats with his dagger.
The Hounds died bleeding, unable to even scream.
Zeke moved the dead Hounds aside, then stripped the clothes from one with a similar build to him and put them on.
After taking the key from a Hound's possession, Zeke took something out and stuck it to the inner wall.
It was a magic time bomb.
Zeke set the timer on the bomb and went outside.
With his helmet pulled down, Zeke shouted at the slaves like the other Hounds.
"Hurry up!"
Meanwhile, he was counting down the time until the bomb exploded.
Soon, the bomb inside exploded at the time Zeke had set.
KABOOM!
The excavation site began to shake violently with the massive explosion.
"It's co-collapsing!"
Although there was strong vibration, the explosion wasn't enough to collapse the cave.
But it was sufficient to cause confusion among the Hounds.
Zeke used the key to unlock the chains binding the slaves while the other Hounds were confused.
The freed slaves immediately changed their stance and began to riot.
"RAAAAAAH!"
Some ran outside, but rebellious dwarves and beast kin members didn't flee and instead rushed towards the supervisors who had oppressed them.
As the slaves suddenly charged, the Hounds were also confused as they tried to stop them.
During this commotion, Zeke headed toward the camp where the Hound Unit was stationed.
He lit the bomb devices he had previously installed and left the area.
As the fuse shortened due to the flame, the bomb soon caught fire.
KABOOM!
With the powerful explosion, the camp and main facilities were blown away in one shot.
"What's going on here?!"
The Hound Unit commander appeared due to the sudden disturbance.
The main facilities of the camp were blown up, the slaves were freed and running wild, and the cave had collapsed, rendering all their work so far futile.
The commander, belatedly grasping the situation, shouted furiously.
"You idiots! There's an intruder! Find the intruder immediately!"
At the commander's order, the Hounds finally came to their senses and formed groups to search for the intruder.
But Zeke had already prepared for this situation.
He deliberately left traces to lure the trackers to the snowy mountains behind the excavation site.
The Hounds urgently followed the traces Zeke left, but in the middle, those traces completely disappeared.
"Where did he go?"
The surroundings were nothing but snow-covered fields and trees sticking out here and there.
There was no trace of the intruder to be found anywhere.
As the Hounds hesitated, Zeke, who was thoroughly concealed nearby, threw daggers at them.
SWISH!
Some of the Hounds were hit by Zeke's daggers and stepped back, but most blocked the flying daggers by swinging their swords.
Unlike the Syndicate's assassins, the Hounds were all formally knight-trained individuals.
Knights who could handle aura had exceptional senses, allowing them to respond calmly to Zeke's attack.
"UGH!"
However, any Hounds who were even slightly grazed by the daggers soon lost consciousness and collapsed on the spot.
This was because Zeke's thrown daggers were coated with deadly poison.
Losing consciousness during battle on such a snowy field was equivalent to death itself.
The Hounds became more vigilant as they watched their fallen comrades.
"He's using poison! Don't let the daggers touch you!"
In fact, this was also Zeke's plan.
This way, they would think his dagger was coated with poison and would have no choice but to react more sensitively.
Zeke had a natural talent for exploiting these gaps in awareness.
WHOOSH!
Zeke changed his position again and threw a dagger toward them.
Like before, the hounds tried to deflect Zeke's dagger by swinging their swords.
But this attack was different from the previous one.
Since the dagger was imbued with the power of his spirit energy, it flew faster and stronger.
THWACK!
The daggers lodged directly into the hounds' throats and foreheads with unexpected force.
THUD!
Most of the hounds that had been chasing Zeke became corpses.
The surviving hounds retreated backward while watching their surroundings, then exchanged glances before deciding to retreat and tried to run back toward the camp.
But Zeke did not leave them be.
WHOOOOSH!
He jumped out from his hiding place, drew Gram, and unleashed a sword strike toward the fleeing creatures.
The sun sword Gram transformed the mana concentrated in Zeke's lower diantan into aura.
An aura blade surged from Zeke's sword, slicing through the hounds' bodies in one breath.
"KUHAK!"
The hounds who met their end by Zeke's sword fell while bleeding.
After killing all the fleeing hounds, Zeke gathered the bodies and rolled them down the cliff of the Ice Dragon Valley.
After erasing all traces of himself, he took out equipment he had hidden in the snow.
It was equipment for climbing ice cliffs.
Zeke carried the equipment and moved toward Ice Dragon Valley.
It was to both avoid their pursuit and find a detour to the ruins.
Zeke hung from the massive ice cliff of Ice Dragon Valley, relying on a single rope.
"PHEW."
Trusting his senses, he moved sideways little by little while hanging from the ice cliff.
He needed to find an entrance to the ruins before the hounds did.
* * *
CRASH!
"You're telling me you don't even know who infiltrated?!"
When the pursuit team that went to catch the intruder hadn't returned by the next day, the commander shouted in anger.
"Catch him immediately! Otherwise..."
But at that moment.
THUD!
A heavily armed unit of unknown origin approached the excavation site.
The hound unit gripped their swords, wary of the sudden approach of outsiders.
They approached to a certain point and stopped, then a knight at the front dismounted from his horse. His uniform looked somehow familiar.
THUMP!
Emitting an extraordinary aura, he approached the commander.
His red hair fluttered in the cold north wind.
The commander immediately recognized his identity.
"...Abel Draker."
Abel Draker, the new head of the Draker family that had become the Rom Empire's new blood alliance, had appeared.
He approached the hound unit commander with a smile and spoke.
"Seems like quite a complicated situation. This is a message from the Emperor regarding the ruins excavation."
Abel, with a relaxed expression, handed over a letter to the commander while wearing the distinctive gauntlets of the Draker family.
The letter was none other than a personal letter from the Rom Emperor.
The commander showed a bewildered expression upon seeing the letter Abel brought.
He had been given full authority over the excavation of the ruins, so he couldn't help but be surprised that Abel Draker, who was practically an outsider, had come here with the Emperor's personal letter.
The commander hurriedly opened the Emperor's letter to check its contents.
He immediately frowned.
'Take orders from Abel Draker?'
It was an order to transfer all authority over the excavation site to Abel Draker.
Abel smiled as he looked around the excavation site.
"So this is it. The Elder Dragon ruins that the previous family head tried to excavate twenty years ago using the Black corps ."
As the muttering Abel tried to approach the ruins entrance, which was blocked by magic, other hounds instinctively blocked his path.
Seeing this, Abel shrugged and looked at the commander.
Despite receiving that gaze, when the commander said nothing and gave no separate orders to his subordinates, Abel slowly nodded.
"Ah, I understand now."
At that moment, Abel instantly drew his sword and swung it.
THWACK!
The heads of the hounds who had blocked Abel's path rolled onto the ground.
The commander, as well as the other hounds, were shocked at this sight.
"W-what is this…?!"
With eyes filled with madness unlike before, Abel pointed his sword at the commander and said,
"Disobeying orders is grounds for immediate execution, isn't it?"
Now that command authority had gone to Abel according to the Emperor's orders, the person in charge here was none other than him.
Even the hound unit commander would die by Abel's sword if he committed insubordination.
When the hound unit members who didn't understand the situation exactly expressed displeasure at Abel's threat and gripped their sword handles, a sharp aura erupted from behind them.
The unidentified men who had followed Abel revealed their killing intent toward them.
The commander wondered about the identity of those following Abel.
'They're not Draker knights. Just who are…?'
While he frowned with suspicion, Abel sheathed his sword and spoke as if reading the commander's mind.
"Perhaps you'll understand if I say we're the extermination unit of the hound squad newly organized by His Majesty."
The commander's face turned pale at his words.
Until now, the hound unit had mainly handled espionage and covert operations in the shadows.
He had heard rumors that a specialized assassination division had emerged among the hound units during the Rom Empire's unification of the continent.
Furthermore, they were a special unit organized to confront not ordinary knights but black knights, commonly called the extermination unit.
The commander couldn't understand why this extermination unit, known only through secret rumors, had appeared here with Abel Draker.
Abel approached the commander, patted his shoulder, and said,
"You probably don't even know what you're dealing with here. That's why you're making such a stupid expression."
The commander asked with a stiff expression,
"...What do you mean? What we have to deal with?"
"You don't think it's a coincidence that the excavation site ended up like this, do you?"
The commander flinched at his words.
It was puzzling how Abel Draker, who had just arrived at the excavation site, knew about the intruder.
Seeing his face, Abel clicked his tongue and continued,
"Not even knowing the Ghost of the North has come... How pathetic."
The commander's eyes widened at those words.
"The Ghost of the North? Surely... you don't mean Zeke Murray has returned from the dead?"
Zeke Murray, famous as the Ghost of the North, was like a nightmare to the Rom Imperial forces.
He was known to be stronger than knights, appearing and disappearing mysteriously, popping up unexpectedly anywhere, and skilled in disguise, making it nearly impossible to track him.
It was believed he had died in battle along with the Wolf of the North when Himonas Castle fell, so the commander couldn't help but be surprised when that terrifying name appeared again.
Abel shook his head at his words.
"Dead? As if he could die. He's perfectly alive. Dreaming arrogantly of assassinating the Emperor."
The commander, horrified by Abel casually mentioning the Emperor's assassination, struggled to suppress a hiccup.
Abel patted the commander's shoulder again.
"We will dedicate all our efforts to capturing the Ghost of the North. Presenting his head to His Majesty. That is our mission."
The commander bowed his head with a stiff face.
"I... understand."
As the commander gathered the hounds to relay the situation and give orders, and they moved in unison according to his commands, Abel wore a subtle smile.
'Zeke Murray. No, Zeke Draker. You cursed youngest child. Go ahead and struggle all you want. I will devour you and grow even stronger.'