Two Shadows: Lapilwood Subjugation (3)
“Ugh!”
Mateus took one look at the brutal way I finished off Lapilwood and vomited on the spot.
Pasvachio patted his back with a smile.
“What’s this? A young fellow with such a weak stomach won’t last long out here.”
“You killed him too cruelly! I was taught to grant even my enemies an honorable death…! Blegh!”
“Haha, with that kind of attitude, how do you expect to survive as a mercenary? Besides, our captain spent some time with a bandit group in the past. Those cruel, rough habits he picked up back then still show themselves from time to time. There are moments when even I look at him and see less a man than an untamed beast. But I like that about him. The captain is like two sides of the same coin—one side gentle, the other savage. If you want to keep living this life, you’d better set chivalry aside for a while and adapt to our world quickly.”
“I-I understand…! Urgh!”
The floor of the room was slick with blood. Corpses lay scattered everywhere—limbs severed, chests and bellies split open with entrails spilling out, and more than a few heads cleaved clean in two. The floor was so thick with blood and gore it was difficult to find a spot to plant your feet.
Outside the door, soldiers who had heard the commotion were pounding on it and shouting.
“Open up! Open this door right now!”
Pasvachio and Mateus were throwing their full weight against the door to hold it shut. I quickly counted our members. It felt like someone was missing. Dana was here, Unia was here, Pasvachio and Mateus were blocking the entrance, and… huh?
“Where’s Epibia?”
I scanned the room, worried she might have been killed, but there was no sign of the plump girl’s body. Unia, who had been rifling through the corpses for rings and necklaces, lifted her head sharply.
“Epibia? Before we came inside, she slipped off somewhere by herself. Didn’t you see?”
“I didn’t. I was at the front the whole time.”
“She said she was going treasure hunting and vanished. She must still be somewhere in the mansion.”
My head was starting to throb. Still, I waved urgently at Dana. She nodded, brought her hands together, and began to chant with solemn focus.
"Morte kiya pin ikmaniya…"
⟨ THUNDER ORB ⟩
Dana’s hair whipped wildly as her body rose slightly into the air. The more she chanted in that alien tongue, the larger the orb of crackling lightning grew between her palms, spitting sparks with a fierce crack-crack. When the sphere had swollen like a balloon until it completely hid her upper body, I shouted at Pasvachio and Mateus.
“Open it!”
The two men, each gripping one side of the door, flung it wide and dove aside. The instant dozens of soldiers outside poured into the room, the condensed orb of lightning flashed brilliantly and unleashed a ferocious beam.
I had expected the sphere to fly forward and explode on impact, but it turned out to be a straight-line beam. The thick pillar of light vaporized the soldiers in a single sweep. As its energy drained, the lightning orb between Dana’s hands gradually shrank. By the time it had dwindled to the size of a golf ball, the soldiers in the corridor were either coughing blood on the floor or, in the worst cases, had been blasted straight through the thick walls and out of the mansion entirely. The hallway was so cleanly swept that not even an ant remained.
“Time to go.”
We hurried out of the room.
“Kkukku. This room carries a very strong scent of minerals. It is definitely suspicious……”
Epibia had slipped into the lord’s bedroom on the third floor and was busily searching the lavishly decorated space. She pressed her nose to the wall and sniffed. The thick smell of earth she had encountered countless times before told her something was off. The corners of her mouth curled up in a bright grin.
“Minerals are behind this wall. Definitely. Hehe.”
She pulled out the hammer-like tool she carried on her back. Gripping the handle with both hands, she swung it with all her strength and smashed the wall.
CRASH!
The wall crumbled, revealing a hidden space through a cloud of dust. Inside lay a fortune in coins and gold and silver treasures.
“This is amazing!”
Epibia stared with her mouth hanging open. Dwarves lose their minds at the sight of gold. With an ecstatic expression, she swept every gold ornament and trinket into her sack. Then her eyes fell on a piece of bone hanging on the wall—a broken fragment roughly a meter long. It was too incomplete to identify which part it had come from, but its long, flat shape suggested it belonged to some enormous beast. She approached and examined it closely. A parchment scroll hung beside it; when she unrolled it, the page was densely covered with writing that looked like a certificate of authenticity. Unfortunately she could not read the human language.
“Lapilwood family, generations, five hundred years… is this perhaps that thing……”
Rather than relying on the scroll, Epibia used her experience, her nose, and her sense of touch to identify the bone. Its texture and scent left no doubt—this was dragon bone. She had once helped her father craft armor from the same material. It was a rare ingredient she would never forget, along with the back-breaking labor that had come with it.
“To find dragon bone here is incredible!”
Epibia could not hide her joy; a huge smile spread across her face. The moment she saw the bone, she thought of Hyun-woo. She had already been planning to make him a sword, and now such priceless material had appeared! The idea of forging his blade from dragon bone filled her with excitement.
“I will definitely make a wonderful sword and receive a kiss on the back of my hand just like Dana-nim!”
All the human men she had met so far had rejected her for being small and plump. So she had changed her thinking. If she could not win a heart with her own heart, perhaps she could buy one with gifts. If she gave a present, maybe she could at least earn a kiss on the hand? Right now, a kiss on the back of the hand seemed far more attractive to Epibia than a kiss on the lips. She had seen Hyun-woo do it to Dana and had been enchanted by how cool and beautiful it looked. She wanted the same. And if, after the kiss on her hand, he lifted her up and placed her on his horse, she thought she could die happy.
“I look forward to Captain’s hand kiss so much! Ah……”
She had closed her eyes, clasped both hands over her chest, and was trembling with anticipation when someone suddenly grabbed her ears from behind and lifted her clean off the ground.
“Ah, ah! It hurts!”
Flailing her arms, she twisted around and saw Hyun-woo’s face. His expression was stern and severe.
“You. Who told you that you could wander off on your own?”
“Aaaah! I’m sorry! I won’t do it again! Ah! Ah! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!”
I kept tugging her ears, giving her a moment of unforgettable pain. After firmly warning her never to wander alone again, I released the struggling Epibia and looked over the secret space she had discovered.
“Sorry. Owww……”
While Epibia rubbed her bright-red ears and sniffled, I found important documents inside a paper box tucked in the corner. They were papers proving that Lapilwood had secretly formed a bandit group and carried out raids. Along with them were secret ledgers that could substantiate his many other crimes.
“We got lucky. Good thing you came here, Epibia.”
“Yes……”
“Sorry for scolding you earlier.”
“It’s all right……. Sniff.”
I stroked the dejected girl’s head as she placed the dragon bone into her sack, then looked down at the ledger in my hand and smiled with satisfaction.
“Perfect. With this, we can cleanly handle any fallout from what we did today.”
I had no idea the object she was packing was dragon bone, nor did I pay the slightest attention to anything else she had collected. My eyes saw only the evidence that could prove Lapilwood’s guilt.
The Lapilwood family fell into complete chaos. Their territory consisted of three villages, and for hundreds of years the bloodline had been scattered across those villages, enjoying wealth and wielding power. The moment news spread that the lord had been attacked, everyone from the lord’s close associates to his relatives, siblings, aunts, uncles, and even distant in-laws immediately took up arms.
“The Kether Mercenary Group is heading for Nobern with the lord’s secret ledgers. We must pursue them at once and capture them!”
“If the evil deeds the dead lord committed are revealed to the world, our entire Lapilwood family will be wiped out by the king! We cannot let them escape!”
The Lapilwood clan was less angry about the lord’s murder than terrified that his years of atrocities would come to light and drag them all down with him through guilt by association. They gathered every knight under their command and even pressed the lowest servants into service, assembling a pursuit force of roughly one hundred and fifty men overnight. The swiftest and most skilled among them were given horses; combining all the mounts from the three villages gave them ninety-five cavalry. Those ninety-five set out first as the vanguard, galloping in pursuit, while the remaining infantry followed at a run.