Chapter 7
Chapter 7
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 7
Chapter Title: Wolf (1)
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Knight Alto was rushing back to his territory almost at a sprint, refusing to set up camp even as night fell, desperate to put as much distance between himself and Lartania as possible in every passing second.
Because of that, the sound of heavy panting echoed around him constantly, and the soldiers had even abandoned the wagons they'd brought from the territory. But the knight didn't reprimand them for it.
No, he couldn't.
His mind was fixed on survival as the top priority, far above punishing soldiers for ditching the wagons right then and there.
'My mission definitely wasn't supposed to be like this...!'
The task Lord Harancia had given Alto was simple: head to the crumbling territory and retrieve a fragment of the Territory Stone.
He'd set out from the distant northern continent seeking better prospects without knowing much, but according to the lord, Lartania had once been a place of great prestige ten years ago.
To Alto, the mission sounded straightforward, and indeed, things had gone smoothly up to the midpoint.
The Lartania he'd arrived at barely qualified as a territory at all.
That is, until it appeared.
Knight Alto recalled the scene from moments ago.
A single leap from those Red Eyes had shredded hundreds of monsters in an instant—a sight he'd never witnessed in his life.
And the wolfkin who had pulled off that impossible feat was glaring at him with raw fury on her face. Recalling that image, Alto gritted his teeth without realizing it.
'Monster... that thing's a monster...!'
He quickened his pace even more.
Beyond a brisk walk now—he was practically sprinting.
The knight clung to his sense of duty to report this to his lord as an excuse, but really, he was fleeing the terror that made his body tremble uncontrollably.
-Fleeing from those Red Eyes without rest.
And just as Knight Alto was about to crest the uphill mountain path...
Thud-!
His body suddenly pitched forward.
Clang-! Thump!
He grimaced at the sharp pain in his chest but felt a twinge of shame all the same.
He knew exactly how pathetic he must look to the soldiers trailing behind him, no matter how gripped by fear he was.
'Gotta get up—'
Swallowing his humiliation and trying to act casual as he pushed himself up, Alto paused.
"?"
Something felt off.
His lower body felt light.
For a knight clad in plate armor—heavy enough that even donning it was a challenge, yet capable of blocking an ogre's club—this sensation was utterly alien.
So when he naturally glanced back...
"Huh?"
Alto could see it.
Unlike his upper body sprawled forward, his legs were still planted firmly on the ground.
And.
Splurt-!
Blood was gushing from the severed stumps of those legs.
The moment he realized that, excruciating pain flooded his mind, which had been too stunned to comprehend.
"Gaaahhh!"
He understood: his legs had been severed.
Before he could even notice.
At the same time.
"Did you really think you could escape?"
Through eyes laced with terror, he spotted Merrillda standing atop the hill, gazing down at him.
"A-attack! Attack her!"
Alto blurted it out instinctively upon seeing those utterly emotionless Red Eyes staring at him.
But of course, none of the soldiers obeyed the knight's order.
And why would they? The soldiers who'd been climbing the mountain with him...
"Ah-"
They were all already dead.
Shiver-
Alto whipped his head around with trembling eyes, staring at the soldiers who'd died without even a scream.
Their bodies were trisected or headless, painting the mountainside red.
Gazing at the carnage, Alto turned back to those Red Eyes.
She approached slowly, her glowing gaze shining under the moonlight, her expression still blank.
"S-spare me—!"
Alto cried out.
He had no thought of fighting back against those Red Eyes.
No, he couldn't.
Because of his mortal wound?
No.
Alto had realized it long ago.
Even at full strength, he stood no chance against the monster before him.
So his desperate plea was a primal scream for survival.
But Red Eyes simply walked toward him in silence.
"I-if you touch me, do you think my territory will just sit by!? Our Lord Harancia is under the protection of the Kalan Kingdom!!"
Terror surging at her approach, Alto's polite tone gave way to a hurled threat, but Merrillda kept walking silently.
However.
The moment Red Eyes closed in and emotionlessly raised her fist...
"Y-you think killing me means Lartania's lord gets off scot-free!?"
Halt-!
Merrillda's movement stopped at Alto's scream-like shout, and in that instant, Alto instinctively knew.
This was her weakness.
Desperate to live, he started babbling.
"If I don't return, our lord will know something happened and send an army! Think you can stop that army!?"
"No way!? You can't take on our territory's forces! We've got three heroes, you know!"
"Sure, you could run!! But can the lord you're protecting run?! No way! Your lord will get captured by our lord's army and face the executioner's block!"
Alto screamed at the frozen Merrillda.
In truth, his words wove clever lies into grains of truth.
Harancia did have a large force of soldiers, as he said.
Three powerful heroes? True.
Over fifty knights, an elite class? Also true.
But the one lie: they wouldn't mobilize over one hero's death.
At least not until the lord made his call.
That was the kind of man Alto's lord was.
But none of that mattered to Alto now.
Only survival.
Spotting the flicker in Red Eyes, he wove more lies into truth and shouted.
"So if you kill me here, your—"
A triumphant smile crept across his face as she fully froze, fist raised. But as he opened his mouth...
"-"
Alto stopped.
His throat wasn't slit.
His head was still attached to his body.
His tongue was fine.
Eyes, nose, mouth—all intact.
Yet he stopped because—
"Say it again."
"Ah-"
Shiver-
His body trembled.
He was suffocating under the killing intent pouring from those Red Eyes, her face twisted like a vengeful demon glaring down.
"What was that?"
Shiver shiver-
The knight couldn't answer.
He only realized one thing.
Lartania's lord—who'd declined for ten years, holding nothing of value—wasn't her weakness.
The lord was—
Crunch-!
—Red Eyes' reverse scale.
The one thing she absolutely couldn't tolerate being touched.
Too late, Alto realized his fatal mistake as his right arm was torn free, and he screamed.
Ignoring his cries, Red Eyes seized the knight's head, forcing eye contact.
"Listen well."
"Urgh-!"
"No one—no one—touches my lord. If they do—"
Staring into his eyes shaking with fear and pain.
"—I'll kill them all, no matter what it takes."
Crush-!
She clenched her fist, bursting his head.
Thud-! Thump.
Red Eyes' wolf casually tossed the corpse aside.
"No... absolutely—absolutely not."
She glared north toward Harancia territory.
"No one touches my lord."
Her Red Eyes flashed.
"No one."
Clutching a small gift box close to her chest.
About two days after the Labyrinth Break incident ended, Kim Hyunwoo finished sketching blueprints for Lartania's reconstruction and dove into the real work.
Of course, issues cropped up along the way.
No—plenty of them.
No buildings remained in Lartania except the Lord's Castle, and even the surviving residential houses were such wrecks that the territory warehouse didn't count them as proper structures.
But that was fine.
From Kim Hyunwoo's perspective—who could use in-game currency just like back in the day when he played ten years ago—such problems were solvable.
No building resources? He could buy them with slightly inflated prices using in-game cash.
Thanks to that, high-quality timber—enough for a palisade wall around the entire territory and houses—now towered behind the Lord's Castle, higher than the castle itself.
He'd stocked up generously on stones, iron, and other minerals too.
And that wasn't all.
He'd used Red Stones to buy "Blessed Holy Water" for 2,000 stones, turning a small percentage of the barren land into tillable farmland.
Now all that remained was building essential structures, proper homes for residents to settle in, and kicking off primary industry with real labor.
The problem hit right here.
'No manpower—and I mean no manpower.'
As explained countless times, residents were king in Arteil.
Their numbers equaled available labor.
In a game that constantly burned through resources, labor to generate them was essential.
And Lartania's construction menu—with residents barely scraping 90...
Was in a truly pitiful state.
Even with 90 residents, fewer than 50 could actually work.
Even if all 90 counted as labor, those disastrous timelines wouldn't budge much.
'...If only I could buy labor with cash currency.'
Kim Hyunwoo clutched his head, head throbbing.
But even back when he played Arteil as a mobile game, it was oddly fair: brutal BM only for heroes, reasonable for territory management.
In other words, no buying labor with cash or in-game currency unless he built a proper trade post or allied with another territory for labor support.
That's why he'd been agonizing over solutions just yesterday.
Yes, up until yesterday—he'd been agonizing.
"The territory influx rate—isn't displayed wrong, is it?"
[No.]
"...Why the sudden change?"
[Well, I...]
292%
※ Due to an event triggered by the incident, the influx rate penalty from development level is removed!
That notice hadn't appeared before Kim Hyunwoo.