Chapter 447 - Scouting Valenhart

After Marcus spent some time helping Lyra with her worries, he took the next couple of days to rest and maintain his gear.

Yet, the time seemed to move almost too quickly and the day of the rebellion's move on Lyra's home was here.

During this time Marcus stuck next to Lyra, acting as a member of her squad.

Luckily, the movement of troops went off well, and other than a few close calls with magical beasts and monster no real problems were encountered.

Currently the bulk of the rebel army was waiting in the hilly forest nearby Lyra's home city of Valenhart.

'So that is Valenhart.' Marcus thought as he started at the city from up high.

He was currently on a reconnaissance mission to scout of the city and make sure that no ambushes were waiting for the rebel army.

Naturally he was the best choice for this type of mission, since he could go pretty much anywhere and was unnoticeable by almost everyone

'Hm it is around the size of Loursend in Borealia I would guess. Though the two cities are definitely much different.'

Even from where he was, he could see the stunning waterways that webbed through the city, creating the canals that were used instead of roads.

Looking at the city, Marcus was reminded of places from Earth like Cape Coral, Venice, and Amsterdam, which were all known for their canals.

However, Valenhart was a not exactly the same, in that all of its waterways were fresh water, being fed by two large rivers that met perpendicularly like a cross.

It actually reminded Marcus a bit of River Landing, though Valenhart was far larger, and had rivers that allowed it to transport and receive goods from pretty much anywhere in the kingdom.

Once Marcus had finished taking in the sight of the largest hub within Tralenstein, he began his descent into the city.

The first thing he did was to investigate the kingdom's forts and garrisons to make sure that no exceptionally strong force was already lying-in wait.

'Hm. There do not appear to be any really strong combatants around. There is certainly a great deal of soldiers, but most of them are only around level ten to fifteen and are just more of a suppression force against unrest. Still, I have only checked the normal installations. Now it is time to dig deeper.'

Having finished checking all of the most obvious places, Marcus turned his investigation towards the castle that was once Lyra's home and was the seat of power in the city.

It was a quite the grand building and Marcus guessed it was about two hundred thousand square feet in total. 

The castle also stood in the middle of the two large rivers where they both met, on an artificial island and was connected to the rest of the city by four large bridges, each extending from the four cardinal directions.

Normally this would make it quite difficult to infiltrate, and Marcus certainly found that the security was not lacking. But it made little difference to him.

He simply slipped in and began a thorough search of the castle for any hidden troops.

'Bingo.'

Finding what he was looking for, Marcus came across a high-level regiment of soldiers that were led by a great knight and an elite mage.

Of course, at this point Marcus had already been given the description of all of the kingdom's top fighters and mages, but he had actually already met this great knight.

It was the tenth ranked great knight Edek, and the one that he had blown away with his railgun during Cibor's ambush.

'Looks like they have shored up their defenses here in case of an attack. Unfortunately for them, it does not look like were ready for the entire rebellion to invade.'

After finding Edek and his troops, Marcus continued searching the castle and soon came across Lyra's cousin.

He was currently sitting at a desk in his room and was going over and filling out stacks of documents.

In fact, the poor guy looked less like a noble and more like an overworked office employee right now.

Also, unlike Lyra who was a full-blooded fox beastperson, her cousin was only half, his ears and tail being less pronounced.

Taking a look at the documents Marcus found them to be unnoteworthy and they were just about day-to-day operations of the city.

Moving along he investigated the nearby rooms and found the current duke's family all sleeping together.

His wife and two children were currently snuggled up together and sleeping peacefully.

For a just a moment Marcus even felt bad that he and the rebel army were going to ruin this peaceful scene, but hopefully after everything was over they would be better off for it. 

Once he was satisfied with this area, he quickly finishing up the rest of the castle, and did not find any other hidden forces.

Still, he was not satisfied yet, and began doing random sweeps of the city, searching in nestled away buildings and even under the canals.

Fortunately, he did not find any sort of extra army waiting below the city, though he did discover some seedy areas that were engaged in questionable business at best.

'Yeah, this is not lasting another night.' Marcus thought as he looked at one of the most deplorable practices he had found.

In a large underground warehouse, were hundreds of children that were caged up and being sold as slaves.

Marcus already had a natural distaste for slavery, and as he watched all of these kids being corralled, his rage began to rise as he remembered what had happened to Lilia.

'Iron Golem.'

Conjuring his iron golem, Marcus gave it the command to kill all of the slavers and their goons.

Quickly a massacre occurred as Marcus' iron golem flatten all of the slavers that tried to fight back, and Marcus wrapped up the fleeing ones with his tendrils of shadows and used his life drain ability on them until they were only lifeless husks.

It honestly looked like a scene out of a horror movie, but Marcus made sure that not a single one of these slavers that traded in children survived.

Once he had finished that up and cleaned up the mess so as to not scar the children even further, he took the form of Ludwik and began freeing all of the children from their cages and bindings.

"I have dealt with all of the bad people that locked you up in cages. Now I need all of you to stay here for a couple of days. My friends and I will be back then, and make sure that those of you that have a home to get back to reach there and those of you without are taken care of."

After saying that, Marcus did his best to comfort the kids, and left them a large store of food to eat until he could come back.

He then pulled out a large magic core from a level forty plus monster and cast his iron golem spell again.

This time the iron golem formed around the core and would allow it to last for quite a bit longer and work automatously.

Though eventually the golem would still disappear like usual after it burned up the magic core sustaining.

"Protect the kids until I return. Make sure that if anyone come by you capture them, or if that is impossible kill them" Marcus said, giving his iron golem its orders.

After taking one last glance and saying a few words of reassurance to the frighten kids, Marcus left the underground warehouse, and began making his way back towards the rebel camp.

Now that he had finished scouting out the city, they were going to make their move soon, and if all went well, the capital of the duchy would be under the rebel army's control.