Chapter 310: Maneuvers Stemming From a Misunderstanding

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After parting with Haumea, ambassador Balto left the Adventurer’s Guild, and headed to the direction of the embassy.

However, on the way he turned from the path, sneaking into a back alley with few people. After confirming that there were no eye-witnesses around, he quickly chanted a spell.

“Crimson two, Blue one, Jade one—Dispel.”

The moment the spell activated, his elderly gentlemanly figure dissolved, replaced by a skinny face of a man.

He had not a trace of Balto’s appearance left. Instead he had a small horn on his forehead.

In other words, he was a Half-Demon.

“Phew… It’s not easy imitating the nobles.”

Heaving a big sigh, his straight back reverted to its original bent form. His speech didn’t change that much, yet the air he gave off was completely different.

He was now looking so shady you would find him suspicious with one glance. It was clearly not the air of someone involved in the official duties.

He took something like a hat from his pocket, put it on, and spoke the keywords for a spell.

“Ah, Kufar, did it connect?”

“…Yeah, I hear you.”

There was a few seconds of delay before the other party responded. For a moment, he worried that he made contact at an inconvenient time.

“Was this bad timing?”

“No, it’s fine. There’s no one around. What about there?”

Having asked in turn, the man checked his surroundings once again. It was an alley with almost no people to begin with, so he couldn’t find anyone looking his way.

“Yeah, everything’s fine here too.”

“I see. So, how did it go?”

“It turned out to be a dummy, after all. The one that showed up was a typical blond-haired and blue-eyed Elf.”

“So she faked her identity, huh?”

“I used Disguise just in case since the other party was an Elf, but she didn’t realize it at all. It was quite a let-down.”

“It was because it happened inside the Guild. Even if she was nervous, she probably wasn’t vigilant.”

The voice of the other party didn’t seem particularly surprised and was instead calm.

This result most likely fell in Kufar’s expectations. He was knowledgeable beyond his age, held charisma, and managed to found an organisation in the blink of an eye.

This man was also one of the people who had joined Kufar from the start. It had already been five years since then.

However, Kufar’s outward age stayed at around 14-15. This was a characteristic growth of Half-Demons.

Half-Demons grew to a fixed age, and then their growth stopped. When it stopped depended on the individual, but it was typically between mid-teens to latter thirties. In other words, Kufar’s age was… Not known by anyone.

“So Haumea’s tracks stop here, huh?”

“There’s also the option of asking the ‘old fool’ directly.”

“I can’t take that much risk. That aside…”

“Hmm?”

“Maybe we should shake Raum a bit next? If we succeed, maybe she will show herself on her own.”

“How?”

There was no answer to his question for some time. Instead, there was the sound of rummaging through papers coming from the magic item.

A few minutes were spent in that silence. And then, Kufar finally started speaking.

“Found it. There are descriptions of abnormal evolutions of monsters in one of the old documents. According to it, when they are exposed to high concentration of magic power for a long time, specimens that had undergone a unique mutation seem to appear.

“Oh?”

“There was a Ley Line north of Raum, wasn’t there?”

“Yeah, but the ‘old fool’ buried it.”

“It’s not like he sealed it with a spell. We can just dig it up. Tunnel spell should be more than enough to handle some digging.”

“Well, yeah.”

“We could… Right, we could just throw goblins that have a fast rate of replaceability. If everything goes well, maybe we’ll manage to get a General or a Lord to show up.”

“Will it really go that well?”

As the man reflexively objected, Kufar responded with a curt reply.

“It doesn’t have to go well. As long as they have a safe nest, goblins will multiply on their own. As they grow in number, they will attack nearby villages. That chaos alone might manage to lure our target.”

“Is that really the case?”

“But if we do it while the ‘old fool’ is present in Raum, he could just wipe them out in one go. Can’t we lure him somewhere else somehow?”

“How about we spread false information there and lure him like that? But what about the ‘strategist’?”

“Leave that one alone. Our goal isn’t to annihilate Raum, it’s to cause chaos. If we don’t have the goblins be exterminated at a suitable timing, it would decrease our income of the ‘goods’.”

“Got it. Let’s go with that then.”

“Be extremely careful. It would be bad if they notice our movements again.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Kufar was a careful man. But at the same time, he was also bold. His current instructions could have been said to be bold too.

The earlier instructions were quite rough, too. It was true that if you threw goblins that quickly replaced their generations in a place with condensed ley lines, there was indeed a possibility of mutation.

Even so, there was no guarantee that it would happen for certain, and it was also unknown whether they would form together and attack Raum.

However, the man also understood that he wanted that to happen.

“In that case, I have to lead them there somehow. Maybe I should make a bigger nest and throw a few of them there together. Maybe I’ll even throw in a woman that’d serve as a seedbed…”

Then he suddenly remembered the Haumea woman that he met earlier. She seemed to be slightly aged, but she was still a beauty. He started using her as a fodder… but then he shook his head.

Haumea herself of course, even the man named Cole seemed to be skilled. Trying to get involved with them and risk getting exposed would be bad.

Kufar was temperate with his comrades, but if the need arose, he would mercilessly get rid of them.

“Dangerous, dangerous. Our motto was ‘everything steadily’ wasn’t it?”

The man muttered and returned to the form of the ambassador Balto. This was because he couldn’t control two spells at the same time.

He took on the fake appearance to go and make the information consistent. At this rate, it would come out that there was an interview that ambassador Balto didn’t remember ever holding.

If he delivered the information to the embassy fast, they would know that Haumea was not the one they were looking for.

If he did that, they should stop looking deeper into this situation.

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