Chapter 86

Chapter 86: Bandits and Refugees

The Chairman of the Far East Front Alliance.
Apart from the annual meeting, this was the first time a second assembly had been convened in the Far East, a place where there was rarely a reason to gather in large numbers.
Ferda examined the fourteen lords one by one.
Some had lost the plump appearance they showed in the first convocation, and their jawlines were beginning to show.
Observing them, Ferda spoke.
— There is a young man named Stefan.
A young man named Stefan.
It was not the kind of expression a brat soon turning nineteen should use.
However, even that choice of words worthy of mockery possessed enough weight to permeate the atmosphere.
— I trust you all know very well what kind of person that young man is.
— We know.
— Thanks to him, we can go fetch whatever we need immediately.
Each offered words of praise toward him.
Self-sufficiency in the Far East had its limits.
For that reason, most had lived letting things slide conveniently or ignoring them as if they had never existed in the first place.
Stefan was a good merchant who had created the necessary space to improve everyone’s lives.
— The reason you were able to do that is because I promised one thing to that young man.
Ferda raised his index finger.
— I promised that I would help him become the owner of the commercial company.
— The owner of the commercial company, you say?
— If it is Young Master Pascal, he has plenty of capacity to become the owner of the Pascal Commercial Company and much more.
— I am of the same opinion. But it seems the young man is having such a hard time that he is on the verge of giving up on that dream.
A brief silence.
Under normal circumstances, Consilirus would have rekindled the flames in this situation, but he limited himself to observing in silence.
Because he wanted to gauge the true general sentiment.
— In that case, isn’t it natural that we step forward?
A viscount who seemed to burn with righteousness leaped to his feet.
Another lord, enthusiastically agreeing, stood up and shouted.
— That’s right! This Far East has become a livable place thanks to someone; we can’t simply act as if we know nothing!
— If they don’t even think of repaying that favor, they deserve the judgment of the Sun and much more!
— True, true!
Aside from them, there were also faces nodding sternly.
Ferda memorized those faces in detail.
— I understand your intentions well. I would like to request the dispatch of troops to escort the Pascal Commercial Company until it stabilizes. Of course, without hindering the defense of this Grand Duchy.
— Of course! We will send thirty men from our standing defense force.
— We will send thirty-five…!
— Forty…!
The atmosphere heated up with a competition to prove loyalty, so Ferda reluctantly set a maximum limit of thirty men.
Even so, that gathered four hundred men in an instant, and about fifteen knights were also recruited.
Ferda handed the agreed documents to Count Consilirus.
— I’m counting on you.
— As the Regent wishes.
The matter of the merchant escort was settled more or less halfway.
The other half depended on whether the fundamental problem was solved.
Meanwhile, Ferda decided to do his own work.
— Ruri.
— Yes.
— Can you take me to where the ambush occurred?
— Do you think I am Ferda-nim’s private transport?
— Because I don’t want to waste time.
Grumbling, she slid her hands between Ferda’s shoulders and embraced him.
— Hold on tight. If you fall, I’m not going to catch you.
Ruri spread her massive wings and took flight.
It was a two-day distance from Valdrova Castle, but they arrived in less than a minute.
The scene of the incident was quite far from the Grand Duchy, in an ownerless land.
Which meant it was a useless and dangerous land.
Fitting for the fateful season, the scene had been devastated with brutality.
The people of the Grand Duchy guarded the perimeter, preserving the site as best as possible.
Those conducting the investigation of the scene were dragon spawns sent to maintain the magic circle.
The one commanding them was Administrator Isabella.
She spotted Ferda and Ruri and bowed respectfully.
— Have you come? Ruri-chan came as well.
— Yes, it just happened that way.
Ruri showed a look of disgust toward Isabella.
Rather than the usual interdepartmental conflict, it seemed she disliked Isabella herself.
— How is the damage assessment going?
— There were a total of ten wagons moving toward the Grand Duchy. Of those, three were wagons to carry monster corpses, and the other seven were delivery wagons with goods to store in the branch of Count Consilirus’s territory.
The three intact ones were the wagons loaded with monster corpses.
They carried disgusting things you wouldn’t even want to get close to; naturally, they didn’t touch them.
— Casualties?
— Eleven of twelve merchants dead, one missing. All twenty workers dead. Two of the twenty hired mercenaries dead. The staff was wiped out; the mercenaries mostly escaped alive.
— Textbook.
In the sense that everyone died but the mercenaries lived to tell the tale.
— Anything unusual?
— There is.
Isabella pointed toward where the corpses were.
Bodies with a single sword wound each were neatly arranged.
Ferda naturally thought they had laid them out like that for the recovery of the remains.
— They were like that from the beginning.
— Neatly aligned?
— Yes. Just in case, I asked the scout from the merchants’ side and he told me he didn’t touch them.
Faced with the unexpected situation, Ruri muttered in disbelief.
— I guess the humans of the Serdes Continent have leveled up. Who knew bandits could be so polite.
— So it seems.
Ferda examined their state.
All lay in straight lines, with their hands placed on their chests.
Was there any reason to go to so much trouble?
— There is one more strange thing. There are workers armed with weapons, but there are no traces of battle.
— No traces of battle means…
— Everyone died from a single blow. It means it was a surprise attack.
Ferda understood immediately.
— They hired bandits, not mercenaries, from the beginning.
— That seems to be the case.
Textbook.
Even that textbook scenario contained something incomprehensible right now.
Ruri caught that detail and tugged at the collar of Ferda’s clothes.
— Ferda-nim, they ambushed merchants, so clearly they came to rob, right?
— That is correct.
— But for a robbery, it ended too modestly, don’t you think?
Ruri pointed to the wagon carrying the valuables.
— Look. Those things over there… they didn’t touch them and simply left, right?
The container housing the gold candlestick was completely open, practically screaming “here I am.”
Even so, the wagon with the valuables was hardly touched.
Everything stolen was fresh produce.
Some of the stolen items were emergency rations and weapons.
And regarding jewelry and higher-value items… only four pieces in total.
— Ruri-chan, if I may answer, it is probably due to anti-theft magic.
— Anti-theft magic?
Ruri asked as if talking to herself.
— To explain for Ruri-chan’s sake, some high-value goods have tracking magic that attaches a mana tag the instant someone outside the merchant touches them. Modern merchants often use it as insurance.
— I see.
Tracking magic that sticks like a criminal’s label.
Even with such magic, logic dictated that those who wanted to touch the items would touch them anyway.
— Were all the stolen valuables items without that tracking magic?
— Confirmed. That is correct.
— Who knows that fact?
— They say that apart from the merchants themselves, no one else knows.
Ferda stroked his chin in thought.
— The two dead mercenaries.
— Yes.
— Did that tracking magic happen to catch them?
— I will verify it.
Isabella released her mana to examine the two corpses.
Ferda’s prediction proved accurate.
— Just as the Regent said, they have the tracking magic on them.
— It seems they killed the guy who got greedy.
Synthesizing the given situations, Ferda arrived at a new hypothesis.
— It is very likely that the missing merchant bastard is the ringleader.
— It seems so. It is a method that occurs from time to time in small and medium-sized trading companies.
A merchant had brought a band of bandits planning to betray Stefan from the beginning.
The scenario of pretending to have been wiped out, gorging themselves conveniently, and slipping away.
The general outline was drawn; even so, Ferda could not shake off the doubts.
It still did not paint clearly in his head.
Fixated on something, he meditated deeply and then asked Isabella.
— What if theft was not the intention from the beginning?
Ruri and Isabella asked in turn.
— No intention to rob?
— What do you mean by that?
— Theft is secondary; murder and conspiracy are the main purpose. To show that they are falling apart from internal division like this.
— Murder and conspiracy…
Hearing Ferda, Isabella nodded and then tilted her head.
— But that creates a strange point.
She showed the stolen items to Ferda and spoke.
— If the purpose was murder, would there be any reason to take ALL the fresh food?
— Couldn’t they have taken it because they lack food?
At Ruri’s words, Isabella countered.
— If they lacked food, they would have taken all the emergency rations. Stealing fresh produce when you are in a position to flee is not something even a third-rate novice would do.
Isabella was right.
Fresh food is bulky and difficult to preserve.
To escape hit-and-run style, they would have taken all the emergency rations that are easy to store.
— The things that would take that… those who lack food, refugees, I suppose.
— Synonymous with bandits.
Which means there is no guarantee they didn’t cooperate either.
Ferda also agreed with Isabella’s words.
“It’s annoying.”
Ferda turned it over and over in his head trying to understand this irritating situation.
He was more suspicious than usual, trying not to leave a single shred of doubt unscrutinized.
At that moment, a dragon spawn assisting with the investigation whispered something in Isabella’s ear.
— Good news. Upon verification, it was confirmed that there is a person with a tracking magic tag attached.
A strange story.
The two mercenaries who got greedy and fell into the tracking magic died on the spot.
— What did he steal?
— They say he took a gold coin from a merchant’s pouch. With this, we can track those bandits.
— A gold coin?
— Yes.
Ferda asked again.
— A pouch with only one gold coin, and they took that single one?
— It was not like that. Verification revealed it was one of the remaining gold coins after deducting one gold coin and thirty shillings used for expenses, out of the five gold coins intended for travel funds.
From a pouch with three gold coins and seventy shillings, they only took one gold coin.
— In which direction are they heading?
— Surprisingly, they are heading toward the Grand Duchy.
A truly surprising situation.
They went to great lengths to avoid the tracking magic, only to be caught for a single gold coin.
A heap of contradictions.
Flawless and yet showing openings,
Cruel and yet polite.
A chaos where two irreconcilable things mingled.
Perhaps,
That stupid bandit bastard could provide the answer directly.
— Immediately organize a pursuit team, and instruct them to capture every last one alive…
— No.
Ferda cut off Isabella’s words.
— There is no need to send anyone to catch them. We will move ourselves.
— Us?
Isabella showed a look of disagreement.
— It is not good for the Regent’s status to personally annihilate a mere band of bandits. It is better to leave this to subordinates.
— That’s right. It is better not to do this sort of thing.
Ruri agreed with Isabella and tried to stop him.
But if he listened to that, he wouldn’t be Ferda.
— My personality will not be at ease unless I do it myself. And in this matter, I don’t want to leave room for doubt.
— Doubt?
— That’s right. No doubt must remain.
Only Ferda knows.
Revenge is most beautiful when it is clean.
— This is a work of revenge for Stefan.
A work of revenge must be clean.
A work of revenge for someone else must be even cleaner than usual.
That was Ferda’s creed.
— —
Sunset.
Following the tracks left behind, what appeared was a camp of what seemed to be bandits.
Unlike the expectation of vicious and despicable criminals,
There, nearly forty men, women, and children were gathered in small groups around a campfire.
— Can we eat now?
— No. It needs to cook more.
— I’m going to starve to death! Listen! My stomach is rumbling guruguru!
— It’s better than dying of a stomach ache.
Even though Ferda and Isabella approached quite close, no one noticed them.
Their senses were focused on the campfire; precisely, on the pot sitting on top of it.
— Done.
The children cheered and the adults smiled.
Only for this moment, they had probably forgotten that they were destined to disappear ephemerally like mayflies.
Isabella, Ferda, Ruri.
Any of them could blow these people away with a snap of their fingers.
Instead of moving his fingers, Ferda kicked a pot rolling on the ground.
Thud! Thud!
The men focused on the pot turned their gazes.
A pot rolling and suddenly flying toward them.
They looked up, and standing there were a man and two women.
— …
— …
A brief silence.
The one who broke the silence and moved was a bearded man.
That man hurried to draw his sword.
Sreung!
The firelight reflected dimly.
A well-forged sword that did not match his appearance.
Ferda knew at a glance that it was the merchant company’s lost sword.
— What are you doing?! Draw your weapons!
At that command, they moved, understanding the situation late and trying to draw their weapons.
— Stop!
Everyone froze.
The one who spoke was a man in half-plate armor.
Unlike the other refugees who were dazed in confusion, he had discernment.
— Everyone lower your swords! Lower your swords, get on your knees, and put your hands on the ground!
— But what…
— If you want to live, do it now!
At the man’s words, all the men and women knelt and placed their hands on the ground.
Accustomed to surrender rather than fighting spirit, they moved quickly.
Truly quick judgment.
For Ferda, who planned to use one as an example to strike up a conversation, it was a blow.
The man stood up from his spot and knelt before Ferda.
— I am William, I lead this group of refugees. The honorable guest’s name is Ferda Valdrova… the Regent, correct?
He asked.
His manner of speaking was not that of a third-rate bandit.
— That’s right, it’s me.
— And you have finished investigating the robbery… and tracked us here, I presume.
— That’s right.
He seemed aware that an investigative team would be sent to examine this.
— I am sure you are curious about the full story of the incident. I will tell you, so could you please allow the children to eat first?
He asks politely.
That is why Ferda sneered.
— Do you rats eating someone else’s grain still dare beg for sympathy pretending to be human? You do not deserve to eat.
Ferda glanced at them sideways and spoke.
— From now on, anyone who moves without my permission dies. Adults, children, the elderly; no exceptions.
Ferda sat right on top of the pot he had kicked.
— Confess properly. If not, I will kill the children first.