Chapter 225
Chapter 225
Certainly, while we were walking around the city, we were not stoned, but we had to feel uncomfortable in the cold stare, except for the rare occasions when we entered an inn.
“Hmm. It’s not like he committed a crime, so that’s a bit embarrassing.”
Seneran, who had been glancing at the surroundings with a sullen expression, could not bear it and spoke a word in a not small voice, but the citizens did not show any resentment or anger at her reaction, but just clicked their tongues and turned their heads away as if they were disapproving.
In that reaction, in addition to hatred and annoyance, it seems that subtle fear is also present. Seneran frowned at the citizens and asked.
“How much did the whole city have to rob to be dissatisfied with adventurers?”
“Wouldn’t genocide be more of a problem than looting?”
The answer unexpectedly came from Asilier’s mouth. When Seneran and I asked a question with our eyes, Asilie tilted her head and continued talking as if she was surprised.
“Huh? Is the content worthy of such a reaction? I thought it was natural.”
“I don’t have anything else in mind, but… genocide? Why?”
I couldn’t understand why he was talking about mass slaughter among the two pieces of information, murder and plunder.
“Think about it. You wouldn’t have worked hard to infiltrate into the city and plundered ordinary houses.”
“Yeah…is that right?”
“They must have come in after targeting the rich or wealthy people of the city, but I can’t have this much resentment against plundering their property. Ordinary citizens regard rich people as gossip when they are harmed, and they don’t get angry like that. Even here The city patrols and guards in the city are not easy enough to neglect the raids and plunder of bandits. Did you see them?”
Come to think of it, the gate guards really moved in perfect order. It was a movement that was familiar to the body after many repetitions of training.
“So, my sister said… It was good that the bandits entered the city through some method and tried to plunder, but in the process, for some reason, there was a massacre of citizens, and that this would have created this antipathy. yes?”
“Wouldn’t that be a fair decision?”
I hear it and it seems like that.
I didn’t even have the idea that mere thieves would have such abilities, but from Asili’s point of view, things like thieves took control of the city’s logistics or changed jobs as cultists and captured all the village girls were absurd. It wasn’t so far-fetched to say that he set a record that would go down in history with murder and plunder.
“If the culprit is the massacre of ordinary citizens by bandits as Mr. Assilier said, then it is understandable that the city is investigating so diligently, including this atmosphere. I’m sure you want to deal with it quickly. But… even if you allowed the unexpected surprise attack, why is it that the situation hasn’t been resolved yet?”
It was a situation that could only be heard as a story about not being able to find things in the front yard of one’s own house, even to the extent of requesting a request from the guild. If it wasn’t that they were digging some kind of secret tunnel, the situation had to end immediately, just like Seneran’s question. However, Asilie shrugged her shoulders and answered calmly.
“Couldn’t a deserter have intervened among the bandits and provided them with military knowledge? Since Englem is a city built on an ancient subterranean conduit, they may have figured out a route from the outside.”
“Ummm. If you figured out that, it’s understandable that you came up with the bold idea of raiding a city and put it into action…” It must
have been a city with a deep history. Anyway, an ancient underground waterway. I don’t know if there’s a monster sitting coiled up somewhere, plotting to overthrow the city…
“Wait, military knowledge?”
It was just a passing possibility, but there was one name that popped into my head as soon as I heard it.
And Ashley, who saw my reaction, showed a puzzled expression as if the same possibility had come to her mind.
“Envelde.”
The rebel forces that the super coward had amassed. Many of them were thieves and bandits scattered across the valley. What if he trained them and prepared his own way to take over cities that didn’t cooperate with the rebellion?
“What is it? Why is Envelde out there?”
Seneran, who had no direct relationship, expressed doubt without understanding the context, but it was hard to erase the idea that this was quite possible for me and Asillie, who had slaughtered all the bandits near the capital by selling their feet.
Although we almost destroyed the bandits within reach, it was too much to call it eradication. Because they were only a small part of the trade with the slave traders.
“There were quite a few criminals among the miscellaneous things that he tried to rally and use, saying that he was a rebel force.”
“…In the process, it could have provided training equivalent to military knowledge or secrets useful for capturing the city.”
As expected of a person who makes a lot of money in business, Seneran was quick to understand.
“But how else did you know that?”
“I had a competent connection, and I was lucky. Sister, you need to look into this a little more.”
“Are you trying to intervene?”
I answered with a deep sigh after a long thought.
“Look at the situation.”
Even if it really had something to do with Envelde, it wouldn’t be like doing something like this out of loyalty to him. A thief is a thief after all. In a situation where Envelde disappeared and only the knowledge he passed on remained, the actions those guys would take were obvious, and they meshed very well with the current situation.
They have a perfect plan that makes it possible to raid a city that they would never have dreamed of.
“First of all, let’s do some research. Maybe we should meet the graveyard.”
Barely resisting the urge to leave the city right away, I set out to get some information.
It wasn’t an easy process. It was a struggle to find those who were not hostile to us. It was after Gaendal’s party’s efforts that we started to get the right information that we settled in an inn large enough to accept us.
As Kunzu said, the innkeeper seemed really happy with the unusual boom. After ordering a large meal there, I was able to extract the location of the cemetery and specific experiences about this incident.
As for the results, Asilier’s predictions were correct.
After hearing that a group of unknown people suddenly appeared from nowhere to rob a nobleman’s mansion, they collided with private soldiers and other city guards, and in the process of fleeing, they killed or took hostage and killed quite a few people without remorse. I headed to the graveyard with Asilie.
“Damn it.”
It is a cemetery that is not even able to properly bury the bodies of hundreds of citizens. Asilie looked at the tombstones and priests who were busy moving and said with a firm expression.
“I think I can understand why the guild is bothering to ask for it.”
I had no choice but to agree with Asilie’s opinion. However, the reason we reacted like that was not the corpse, but the wounds that were supposed to be their cause of death.
The filthy wounds, as if bitten by wild beasts, tore the victims’ bodies apart as if they were straw.
“Are the thieves right?”
“…well.”
Those in the graveyard didn’t particularly stop us. It seemed that already several citizens besides us were looking for dead family members among the barely assorted corpses. In fact, there were quite a few people who looked like adventurers among them, so we were able to blend in naturally.
“The wounds are very heterogeneous.”
“why?”
“Look over there.”
What Asilier pointed out was the corpse of a young man.
At first glance, the man who was an adventurer belonged to the neat side of the body. But that wasn’t the point.
“Someone gave the sword an explosion magic.”
Unlike the clean sword wound that went down diagonally from the left trapezius muscle to the heart, the wound that stretched from the heart to the right waist area was like being bitten. At first, I wondered if I had been attacked twice by accident, but when I looked more closely, there were more corpses with such wounds than I thought.
Asilie, who had been examining the wound for a long time without even realizing what she had done, said with a very nervous face, which is rare.
“This might be a magic sword.”
The joke never came out. Asilie’s expression was too serious for that. But even so, I couldn’t help but ask with a doubtful expression on my face.
“A real magic sword?”
“Yes. A real demonic sword. I’ve heard of demonic swords that leave wounds similar to this one.”
She said that it is true that there is a difference enough to add the explanation of ‘similar’, but it is also true that she has never heard of anything that can leave such a scar other than a magic sword, so she said that she made that decision.
Thanks to that, I desperately wanted to hear the testimony of the eyewitness… but I couldn’t even dare to do something like garbage chasing people who were drowning in sadness and gathering information.
In the end, what we found out at the cemetery was the strange wounds and mass deaths of people that we saw and confirmed with our own eyes. And judging by the fact that the corpse was less decomposed, it was only that it hadn’t been long since the incident.