Chapter 9 Part 3 of 3 (Patreon)

“We have many people on official business, who do you wish to talk to?” The guard was unfazed.

“Aditya, he should do.”

The guard raised his eyebrow.

“I will pass your information on to the administrators,” The guard said.

“You wish to stand in my way?” Ikeda demanded.

There was movement on the top of the wall as guards looked down between the crenellations.

“You might kill us but you wouldn’t make it out of here alive,” the guards both held their weapons.

Ikeda clicked his tongue.

“Salyn, the letter!”

Salyn had a meek and sorrowful look on his face as he played his part, holding out the letter.

“Stop there,” The guard growled.

Salyn pulled up his horse.

“Throw it,” The guard ordered.

Salyn threw the letter but it turned in the air and dropped on the ground.

“Scan it,” the guard said to his partner. He grunted and pulled out a spell scroll.

Salyn and the others watched as the guard tore the spell scroll apart.

Spell scrolls are so rare but this guard is using it too frivolously!

A light shot out from the spell scroll and landed on the letter. The letter seemed to be illuminated from within before a green light appeared.

The second guard grabbed the letter and walked backwards.

“Please go and wait at the side,” The first guard said.

Ikeda clicked his tongue and pulled on his reins. The group moved over to the side, unable to see completely into the tunnel and gate that led to the inner city.

Time passed as they waited. Ten minutes or so later, a man came out with four guards.

He wore colorful clothes while the people with him carried curved swords, iron armor embedded into beast leather.

The man seemed to invite conversation while the guards’ eyes scanned the area as well as the Shikoshi Kingdom delegation.

“My name is Emmanuel Fayad. I deal mostly with trade and exterior relations. My Lord Aditya does not have time to deal with your excuses to try and place pressure on our Alliance. A messenger was dispatched to your nation with an invitation for five of your youth to join the Beast Mountain Range Consortium. That invitation will be recalled. We will not tolerate these childish games. Your tax rate will increase by fifteen percent when dealing with any trader of the outpost alliance. If you want to threaten us again, with some made up excuse of fleeing traitors, and that one of our longest standing supporters somehow hiding them,” Fayad’s smile faded. “We will cut off all trade to the Shikoshi Empire and will ban others from reselling products bought from the alliance to your nation. Good day.”

“You!” Ikeda nudged his horse forward, three arrows landed around him and made his horse rear up.

“Do not take our outpost alliance’s patience as weakness Lord Knight Ikeda. I would ask you to leave King’s Hill within the next three days. The guards are rather interested in testing how well your people outside the walls can really handle our new beast issue.” Fayad looked at Lord Salyn. “I hope that you have learned better manners compared to last time Lord Salyn.”

I need to push this all the way.

“If you don’t hand over the traitors then the Shikoshi Kingdom will~”

“Lord Salyn!” Ikeda glared at Salyn, cutting him off.

Salyn put on a surprised expression. Shit.

“If you’re interested in making trouble for King’s Hill, I hope that you would talk to your neighbors. They will not be happy to have you attacking their children.”

With that Emmanuel Fayad turned and left.

Salyn made to speak but Ikeda silenced him with a look.

“Let's get a room to stay, I have a feeling there is much more to learn.”

***

“What do you think that they will do?” Evernight asked, looking in the direction of the main gate.

Aditya glanced up from the map on a large table in the middle of the room. It showed the Beast Mountain Range with King’s Hill in the middle. Floating reds, purples, whites, greens and blues showed the position of most forces within the Beast Mountain Range.

“Emmanuel knows nearly everything that is happening in the Beast Mountain Range. With him going out there and talking to them. He knows of no plot with Alva. No matter what the spells he is speaking the truth.

“He has the power to deal with an envoy from another land and the position to do so. Also, he really hates all of the people that are coming around pushing their weight around to try and get more benefits.”

“With your growing toy it will be hard for anyone to move in the Beast Mountain Range without us knowing.”

“Those life detect formations are incredible, with linked medallions and being able to recognize a person’s mana signature, it’s almost scary.”

“You still didn’t answer my question,” Evernight said.

“Lord Salyn must have been tipped off by something. I think seeing the Alva Healing House must have reminded him about Alvavillage he left behind. I don’t know what it is. Throw in the missing Earthers, Queen Ikku wants her people back, at the end of a slave contract. The Red Falcons being here proves it. If it was a few weeks ago, she might have been able to wage war and get some people to join her. Now? With the Consortium’s rise, the new resources and the dungeon our surrounding ‘friends’ are now being rather friendly. If someone wanted to attack, they would strongly suggest they didn’t. They have their future generations trying to join the school. It would look good on them to attack others that would attack us and secure more positions in the Consortium.”

“No wonder you’re so calm.”

“Well, even if Lord Salyn knew for sure that Alva Healing House was from a group of people in Alva village, hell if we told the entire Ten Realms, not many people would really care. Wait, why don’t we do that? Just say that the Alva  Healing House is from the Shikoshi Kingdom, a group of escaped villagers that happened to get some healing knowledge?”

“It would look badly on Salyn as we have people come out and reveal the ‘truth’. Queen Ikku would be forced to deal with Salyn herself and it would look like he was trying to use her to hide his mistakes,” Evernight rubbed her chin in thought. “We would have to send the information to her directly. We wouldn’t want to broadcast it. It would have a greater impact on her standing. Though it would spread across the First Realm. We might have an information leak so we don’t need people to talk about Alva, Chonglu or too much about the Silaz family. I’ll send it higher and see what they say.”