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Chapter 186: 099. The Blackened Village -1 (Part Two)

**

I stepped outside the prison. Charlotte on standby near the exit bowed her head and asked me, “What will you do now, your highness?”

“Well, we did make a deal, so…”

Ruppel agreed to tell me the current location of the relic belonging to the first Holy Emperor, Ordin Olfolse. And the price for acquiring that knowledge was to make sure that Rose went through the proper channels before getting her head lopped off under the guillotine.

“Prepare for a little trip, Charlotte.”

“To the kingdom of Lome, your highness?”

“That’s right.”

“However, no one knows for certain where the Second Crown Princess Consort is currently hiding.”

“That’s right, no one knows for sure. However, I did get a hint from him.”

I recalled the last part of my conversation with Ruppel. He told me some stuff about Rose and her maidservant, then even informed me where the Second Crown Princess Consort could possibly be found as well.

-I shall tell you the likeliest location of my mother.

As he followed around her all the time, Ruppel knew quite a lot about the people within Rose’s inner circle.

-If you’re talking about a potential helper, then it must be the First Prince of the Lome kingdom, Barus Victoria.

That was the name of the leader of the rebellion, the one who murdered the king of Lome to take over the throne.

-The First Prince has been tasting defeat over and over again in the civil war, which means he now has only one avenue left.

Ruppel sucked in a deep breath and continued on.

-The village named Rost. That’s where the royal court’s top knight Raiden lives. He’s famed for facing off and killing a dragon, and as a result, he’s often referred to as the dragon slayer. The First Prince and my mother will most likely ask for his aid. That’s why, if you go there…

According to him, I might run into her there.

I issued an order to Charlotte.

“We’ll depart as soon as possible. Our destination is…”

**

(TL: In 3rd person POV.)

The village of Rost.

It was a small settlement located in the northern region of the Lome kingdom.

Supposedly, it was a village of farmers filled with much vitality, but the young man coming to visit this place couldn’t help but get a completely different first impression instead.

“Is this really the village in question, Rost?”

The young man, who had turned twenty this year, was none other than the First Prince of Lome, Barus Victoria. He was currently standing in front of the village’s entrance along with a contingent of escorting knights.

Even if it was fairly late in the evening, the village itself was cast in an unnatural amount of darkness.

The prince turned his head. He could see some farmers staggering among the fields dyed in the golden-amber hue of the setting sun.

One of the escorting knights shouted towards the farmers, “Oii! You over there! Yes, you! I want to ask you about something!”

The staggering farmer reacted to the call and turned his head towards the knight.

“Is this the village of Rost?”

The farmer opened his mouth at the knight’s question, only to close it shut right afterwards.

No voice came out.

He was so silent, in fact, that Barus got this weird feeling instead.

Rather than saying something, the farmer raised his hand slowly and pointed at the village.

The knight distorted his expression in displeasure at that response. “You insolent fool! Whose presence do you think you are in front of?! Daring to point with your damn fingers…!”

When the knight displayed signs of unsheathing his sword and pouncing on the farmer, Barus reached out and grabbed his escorting knight’s shoulder, then shook his head to say no.

“It’s fine, the hours are getting late. We are merely visitors to this land, so we shouldn’t bother our subjects when they are still working diligently like this.”

The knight could only shoot some dissatisfied glare at the farmer before bowing his head to Barus.

Barus shouted out, “Thank you!” to the farmer and began walking forward once more. The farmer stared at the prince and his knights with a pair of sunken eyes.

While walking closer to the village, Barus quietly studied its perimeters.

Around three hundred people were supposed to live here, yet he couldn’t sense any presence whatsoever.

He walked up to a nearby hut and knocked on the wooden door. “I beg your pardon, is anyone home?”

There was not a sound nor a hint of response coming from the inside.

In that case, could it be an abandoned house?

Hold on, could it be that the hundred-plus houses found in the village were all empty?

Just as Barus began frowning, a drop of water fell on his head.

He looked up, only to discover that the murky, gloomy clouds had swallowed up the moonlight before anyone had noticed it.

Raindrops began falling one by one before it became a heavy downpour.

“What should we do, your highness?”

A knight asked and Barus groaned before replying, “For now, let’s seek a shelter in an inn. Surely there must be some people there, we can ask around where Raiden is living.”

Barus and his escorting knights headed to the village’s inn.

Thankfully, some light was leaking out from its windows. While feeling somewhat relieved, Barus pushed the building’s door open. But when he stepped inside the fairly large interior of the inn, he ended up furrowing his brows even more.

There was no one inside the inn as well, only a bunch of lit candles chasing away the darkness.

Barus called out loudly, “Waiter!”

More silence.

Whether it was a waiter or the owner of the inn… no one showed up.

Barus glanced at the escorting knights and they quickly spread out. Some cautiously headed towards the inn’s kitchen, while some went upstairs and began rummaging through the guest rooms.

While Barus stood there feeling nervous, someone suddenly addressed him from behind.

“There’s no point, unfortunately.”

The prince quickly turned his head. He saw a boy and a girl standing by the inn’s entrance, soaked in rain from head to toe.

The boy kitted out in a robe strode nonchalantly and settled down on one of the unoccupied tables as if it was the most obvious thing to do, then pulled out a bottle of liquor seemingly out of nowhere.

While lightly shaking the bottle around, he addressed Barus, “I also arrived in the village not too long ago and had a brief look around, but well, I couldn’t find anyone in the end.”

The escorting knights were about to roar out in anger at the behaviour of the boy as well as his manner of speech, but Barus stopped them. He walked over and settled down on the opposite side of the boy. “I beg your pardon?”

Barus quietly studied the two people before his eyes. The boy seemed to be around seventeen, maybe eighteen at a push. The robe he had on looked very expensive.

What about his companion next to him?

‘She’s no doubt a knight.’

The girl seemed to be around eighteen or nineteen.

The odds of her being a trainee knight were quite high. Although her traveller’s robe hid it, Barus did spy white-coloured armour that looked very luxurious covering her torso.

In that case, was this boy a scion of a noble house?

But for him to have a young female knight as an escort and not some experienced, battle-hardened knights… his taste must’ve been particular, to say the least.

Barus got a feeling that the boy was a pampered son of a noble who had never sneaked out of his house before.

“You say there’s no one in this village? What do you mean by that?”

At Barus’s question, the boy made a troubled expression and poured himself a cup of that liquor. “Ah, you mean here? Honestly, I also don’t know much myself. We only arrived here not too long ago, after all. What I heard before coming here was that this village is filled with vitality, that wheat is its speciality product, and it’s famed for its beautiful scenery. So I figured I’d come here to sightsee and also humour my older brother’s request at the same time, but now…”

The boy shrugged his shoulders.

The village had been ruined. That was the first thought popping up in Barus’s head.

He asked, “Can you guess as to why?”

“Maybe the civil war is to blame.”

At the boy’s reply, Barus could only grit his teeth.

He didn’t expect the ripples from the civil war would reach this far in the outskirts of the kingdom.

“Unfortunately, this whole thing is too artificial for that explanation.”

However, what the boy said afterwards ended up making Barus puzzled.

“This place has already become a zombie village, you see? Not just any, but one with a seriously bad stench too.”

“What?!”

“Your highness!”

Barus flinched in surprise at the knight’s call and hurriedly turned his head.

The knights were yanking their swords out, their glares currently locked on the outside of the inn. They could see the villagers staggering towards the building.

However, their faces were bitten off in some places, while some part of their bodies had rotten away to reveal their bones underneath.

Crimson light burned in their eye sockets as their jaws split open, ripping apart their rotting cheeks in the process.

Barus stared at them and muttered in stupefaction, “Zombies…?”

“Well, then. Barus Victoria.”

When his name was brought up, Barus turned his head towards the source of that voice.

The boy, Allen Olfolse, raised his head up from his cup and smiled refreshingly.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

< 099. The Blackened Village -1 (Part One and Two) > Fin.