Chapter 213 - Suspicions

The next day, the Little Kings split into two parties. Cecil, Yuna, Veli, and Lucius were in one party, while Ainz, Eli, Lucia, and Fina were in the other.

The party was split this way so that each team had 1 individual that could use both Blink and Misty Gate to quickly back up each other in case one of the parties encountered a situation they couldn't cope with.

Because of the pact that they had formed, Lucia and Yuna could share each other's vision. This was a unique perk that Yuna had recently told her about. The benefits of the pact were that Yuna's being was directly connected to Lucia's. So sharing vision, mana, and magic spells were also part of the benefits.

There were still many other perks to the pact, but even Yuna and Lucia still didn't know most about it. The knowledge regarding pacts that came from Yuna's unique dragon knowledge was limited to only what was known in the current era.

There were far more benefits to a pact than what was known by present day people. It's just that the not many people still had knowledge regarding pacts. The best people would do was create bonds and turn monsters into their battle pets.

Pacts were a long lost ancient art of beast taming that was now only known to the long lived races. And by long lived, this meant the several millennia long lived. Only the dragons and guardian deities were known to live that long.

Even elves and other similarly long lived species only lived up to 500-800 years. Just take Yuna for an example. She's 170+ years of age, but even then by the normal species standard, she was only in her late teens. She was still a long way from young a.d.u.l.thood.

The party separated and began patrolling their assigned areas. During the first few days, all they caught were smugglers, thieves, and bandits, none of the dubious individuals described by the Darkfang family.

It was a little boring since the people that were caught were just your petty, everyday criminals. It was a little discomforting that it wasn't only beastmen perpetrators that were caught, but even some beastkin were also part of the list of criminals.

"Looks like not all the beastkin are united...just like in every society, there's the good and the bad..." Cecil said as their team caught yet another few bandits who were just caught raiding one of the Empire's caravans.

The group of bandits Cecil caught this time were a mix of beastkin and beastmen. It's like these people wanted to disrupt the delicate peace that was earned by the two powers on purpose.

"Hey, Cecil...just look at them..." Lucius said while nodding his head over to the captured criminals.

"..."

"Not a single one looks remorseful or even begging for forgiveness. They're even smirking like they've accomplished something."

"...is there some kind of internal problem happening in the Kingdom?"

Lucius pondered for a moment, but nothing seemed to come to mind. There was one thing he was unsure about however.

"I'm not really sure...but there have been rumors about how the Empire will launch an invasion on us once they've cleared out the humans, right? With how the King is being a little passive on the surface, the citizens didn't take it too well..."

"Hm? Well, this is only conjecture, right? I mean the King already had a proper response and you guys are currently carrying it out."

"Yeah, but the people don't know this. The King doesn't want to openly antagonize the Empire, so we're doing things in the dark. On the surface, the King is only playing a passive stance and my guess is that some of the populace didn't take it too well."

"...then what about those beastmen mixed up with them?"

"They're probably also there to lend a helping hand with the chaos...who knows, maybe the Empire were the ones that even bribed them to cause problems at the border. See how most of the caravans being attacked are from the Empire and not the Kingdom?"

"...yeah."

"Well, what could they possibly be carrying that'll warrant the bandits to attack them when they're coming in? Most of the magi-techs being exported are in the caravans of the Kingdom, so shouldn't our people be the ones being attacked the most and not them?"

"...they really do resort to anything, huh?"

"Yeah...it must be pretty tiring for you since you're also one of their targets..."

"Yeah...but I'll put my trust in the kingdom's royal family, Eli's family..."

Yuna walked over to them and interrupted their conversation.

"Cecil, Lucia and the others...they met with some resistance and were forced to kill. They're requesting for help with the cleanup."

"Tsk...Maybe I should just start killing all these bastards without asking questions...maybe this'll deter them from doing anything stupid!" Cecil spat angrily.

"Eh?"

"Forcing Lulu to dirty her hands like this..."

Hearing his dangerous words, everyone now understood why he was royally pissed off. His girlfriend had her hands dirtied because of those fools and he didn't like it. Everyone thought it was amusing because he was normally running away from Lucia and Serilla whenever they got too close. Not to mention he was previously clueless so it was kinda frustrating to watch, but now...

"Take us to them, Yuna."

"...alright."

Yuna waved her hand and conjured a Misty Gate in front of the party. Cecil was the first to walk through, followed by Velicia, Lucius, and lastly, Yuna herself. The guards at the station where Cecil had turned in the criminals were surprised to see the spell. The Misty Gate soon closed after Yuna walked through.

*****

When the team walked out of the gate, the smell of blood wafted into their noses. Cecil frowned and looked at the battlefield. Lucia and the others were currently busy piling up the corpses of beastmen onto one side while Ainz was busy repairing the damaged land with magic spells.

"Yo brats, you're finally here. Come help me with this, Lucius, the rest of you should go help the others out." Ainz said as he filled a large crater with dirt and soil.

"...I'll go help, I'm the only one here that uses Earth magic after all...and Veli, you don't have to touch the corpses if you don't want too."

"Please, I can take care of myself just fine! Go ahead and help Ainz, we'll take care of 'that' cleanup." Veli responded with a dismissing wave. It wasn't her first time facing death and corpses. Her fiancé should lighten up a little.

"...alright."

Lucius went over to help Ainz and the rest quickly made their way to Lucia and the others.

"Any of you guys injured?" Those were the first words Cecil asked. There weren't any bloodstains or visible injuries, but who knows.

"No, they were pretty weak, we didn't even break a sweat," Eli said while she used wind magic to raise a corpse into the air before flinging it onto the somewhat large pile of corpses not far from them.

"...how come there are a lot?" Veli asked.

The amount of corpses in the pile was indeed questionable. The ones that they caught previously were only in small group of 10-15 people, but this group that Lucia annihilated was more like a company of soldiers. There were at least 50 people in that heap and most of them were wearing some pretty decent armor.

"...all of them are beastmen too..."

"Uhuh...and they were pretty well coordinated as well, but they were still pretty weak." Eli answered. Fina also added, "They couldn't even stand upright when Eli unleashed her Intent."

Lucia and the rest finished up the last of the cleanup. Now all they had to do was wait for the territory's guards to come over and finish it.

Cecil once more looked around the area. He spread his mana sense and didn't pick up anyone on his radar, but it seemed that what Lucius said was right.

"Looks like he's right..."

"Who?" Lucia had already arrived next to Cecil when the boy started mumbling.

"Lucius...he said that the criminals here are only harassing the merchants, mostly the Empire's, because they want to spark conflict between the Kingdom and Empire."

"Hm?"

Cecil turned his attention back onto the heap of corpses and pointed,

"Look, those guys you just killed earlier, they're wearing pretty decent equipment...bandits and thieves won't have the funds to equip a whole team of 50 plus people with those. Not to mention you guys said that earlier they coordinated pretty well with each other."

"...mhm."

"They're obviously not soldiers, but they've also received some form of training...its painfully obvious who's behind this..."

"The Empire..."

"...maybe we really should just start killing all these nuisances. This way we'll at least be able to scare off any potential criminals from acting up here."

Hearing his words, everyone was shocked.

"!"

"H-hey, Cecil! Isn't that a little extreme?!"

"Y-yeah!"

"And if we were to do that, then wouldn't they just run off to another territory and—hey! You can't possibly mean—"

"Yup...we run across the entire border killing off every one of those groups or individuals. We've got the means to transport ourselves quickly across the area...so why not?"

Everyone was surprised to hear Cecil's radical suggestion. Surely, there wasn't the need to do that, right?

"...is it because of that?" Lucia asked.

"..."

During the previous days, Cecil had been feeling that there were multiple pairs of eyes constantly monitoring him. Whenever he tried to search around, they would all quickly vanish without a trace in the next instant.

It caused him to feel uneasy, but then again it could just be his imagination. However, his instincts and senses have never failed him before, so they weren't obviously going to fail him now.

If he were to take drastic measures from an early point, then maybe it'll scare off any potential kidnappers from making a move on him.

Suspicious? Then kill without question. If he took this kind of approach and blatantly showed his actions to the ones observing him, then they wouldn't be able to take the subtle approach.

Their only way was to go at him from head on, and for Cecil, fighting a visible enemy was much easier than fighting against an invisible one.

"Haah...We'll only take those kinds of actions if even a SINGLE ONE of us is endangered during our time here...I will not be lenient towards my enemies if they mean to endanger any of our lives..."

"..."

"..."

His cold declaration was only met with silence. However, his friends could finally see that something was indeed bothering the boy. They turned towards Lucia, but even she only shook her head at their silent inquiry.