Chapter 86 : Chapter 86

Chapter 86. Kill Him

Morning light struggled to pierce the heavy clouds, scattering itself stingily across Black Territory Valley.

Eli braced a hand against his aching lower back and bared his teeth as he eased himself down from the broad wooden bed in the lord’s keep.

Last night... ahem.

The emotions Aila had bottled up from fear and anxiety had burst out all at once, and they had truly been hard on his back.

He stretched his somewhat stiff body, walked to the window, and pushed open the wooden shutters.

The cool morning wind poured in, blowing away a little of the weariness in his body and the lingering tenderness in his mind.

By force of habit, he sank his consciousness into his mind.

A deep violet beam of light flared up abruptly.

【Purple: Count Alders of the Western Frontier has already reached a provisional cooperation agreement with Sabda Medici.

Alders has promised to dispatch two hundred household soldiers from his family to secretly support Sabda under the pretext of an “investigation.”

Sabda, in turn, has verbally promised to hand over Lucerne City once the matter is settled.】

Eli’s brows knit tightly, and he was instantly wide awake. Sabda alone was already difficult enough to handle, especially with that Gold-Tier Knight at his side.

And now there was a Count of the Western Frontier waiting to stab him in the back as well?

Eli began considering ways to respond.

Should he go and complain to Sir Lucius? The thought had only just surfaced before he crushed it himself.

The mind of that Governor of the Western Frontier ran deep as the sea.

If two newly risen barons smashed each other bloody on the border and wore each other down, that might well be exactly what he wanted.

“Ah... why is it so hard to develop in peace for even a few days...”

“I can only rely on myself...” Eli murmured softly, a trace of helplessness in his voice.

Aika still had not returned, and the World Intelligence Support System had not yet given him Sabda’s current troop deployment. He was completely in the dark.

He forced himself to calm down, his mind racing as he searched for a way to break the deadlock.

Send reinforcements? Strengthen the defenses? Launch a preemptive strike on Runestone City?

One idea after another flashed through his mind, only to be rejected one by one.

The new recruits had trained for only a few days, Brandon was already under heavy pressure over in Lucerne City, and Captain Buck could not split himself in two...

Just as he was thinking,

“My lord! My lord! Something terrible has happened!”

The voice of Ulu, the administrator for slave affairs, came from afar, accompanied by a burst of frantic footsteps. The study door was suddenly flung open.

Ulu rushed in, his face deathly pale and his breathing ragged.

“What are you panicking for?” Eli suppressed his mood and said calmly. “Has the sky fallen?”

“M-My lord... M-My lord! This subordinate is incompetent! This subordinate deserves death!”

Ulu dropped to his knees with a thud, his voice trembling on the edge of tears.

“The Seventeenth Slave Squad and the Eighteenth Slave Squad... over in the living quarters... they’ve... they’ve started causing trouble.

Both sides are facing off now. The situation... the situation is almost out of control!”

“What?!” Eli shot to his feet. Enemies pressed in from outside, and now a fire had broken out within as well?

His face darkened so completely it seemed ready to drip water. “Lead the way!”

“Yes, yes, yes! My lord, please come with me!”

Ulu scrambled back to his feet, bent low, and hurried ahead to lead the way.

The slave living quarters lay on the eastern side of the valley, made up of rows of crude but fairly orderly wooden sheds.

At this moment, the usually quiet area had erupted into chaos.

The two groups faced each other in clearly divided lines, with several members of the security patrol caught in the middle, desperately trying to hold them back.

“Why do your sheds have straw mats on the floor? How can you even partition off a little room for yourselves? And why is there even oil floating in your wheat porridge?!”

A somewhat plump slave pointed at the other side, red-faced and thick-necked as he roared. He was Huck, the captain of the Eighteenth Squad.

Behind him clustered a group of newly arrived slaves, each of them filled with resentment.

“That’s right! We’re all slaves, so why do they get to live better than we do?

It’s unfair! We want a change!”

The new slaves behind Huck shouted along with him in righteous anger.

“Bullshit!”

The captain of the Seventeenth Squad, a burly man with a scar across his face, nicknamed Scarface, roared back without the slightest restraint. The old slaves standing behind him glared furiously as well.

“When we first got here, we lived in drafty broken sheds too, and all we ate was thin vegetable soup and black bread.

These straw mats and these partitions? We made them ourselves after work.

We chopped the wood ourselves, cut the thatch ourselves, and built them bit by bit with our own hands!

And the food? That was an extra reward from the lord and the administrator because we worked hard!

You lazy bones have only been here a few days.

You’ve barely done any work, and yet you want to stand on equal footing with us? Dream on!”

“That’s right! You’re too lazy to do it yourselves, so now you want to steal what’s already there? Have you no shame?!”

The slaves of the Seventeenth Squad all joined in with curses.

“Who’s lazy?! We just haven’t had the chance!” Huck retorted with his neck stiffened, though his eyes flickered.

He had originally been the son of a bankrupt merchant in a border town. Because he had a quick mind, Ulu had chosen him to be a squad captain.

He considered himself a cut above these crude slaves.

During the days since arriving in Obsidian Territory, he had also made careful inquiries and observations.

He had discovered that although the white-haired lord was strict, he could genuinely be called merciful.

He never beat or killed slaves without cause, and he truly did improve the treatment of slaves who worked hard, even granting them more freedom.

He had guessed that even if he took the lead in making trouble, at worst he would get a scolding or a whipping. After all, the law could not punish the masses.

It would also be the perfect chance to win some benefits for the newly arrived men and establish his own authority.

The scene was a chaos of shouting, cursing, and shoving.

It was on the verge of escalating from a war of words into an all-out brawl.

The security patrolmen trapped in the middle were miserable. They could only spread their arms, wave their wooden clubs, and desperately try to hold the two sides apart.

“Stop it!” they shouted at the top of their lungs, but their voices were drowned beneath the rising din.

“ALL OF YOU — SHUT — UP —!”

A roar like a thunderclap instantly drowned out every other sound.

Ulu came scrambling into the crowd, shouting with every ounce of strength in his body.

“The lord has arrived —!”

The entire living quarters fell instantly silent.

All the arguments, curses, and shoving came to an abrupt halt in that single moment.

Every gaze turned in unison toward the young figure standing at the edge of the crowd, his face calm as still water.

Eli stepped forward one pace at a time through the passage the crowd automatically opened for him.

His eyes swept calmly over the slaves on both sides, who now stood as silent as cicadas in winter.

In the end, his gaze settled on Huck, who had dropped to his knees, and Scarface, who still stood there with his neck stiffened.

“You two, squad captains. Step forward and speak.”

Eli’s voice was not loud, yet it reached every ear with perfect clarity.

Scarface strode forward without the slightest hesitation, dropped to one knee, and spoke in a ringing voice.

“My lord! Scarface, captain of the Seventeenth Squad, wishes to report to you.

Huck, captain of the Eighteenth Squad, incited the new slaves to make trouble and slandered your lordship for being unfair.

What we live in and what we eat were all earned through our own effort! I ask that you see the truth clearly, my lord!”

Huck also hurriedly shuffled forward on his knees and knelt down, imitating Scarface.

He raised his head, forced an aggrieved expression onto his face, and began pouring out his grievances in a tearful voice.

“My lord! You must stand up for us newcomers!

What Captain Scarface said... is true, but... but we just arrived, and we don’t know anything yet.

We do the dirtiest and hardest jobs, yet we live in the worst sheds and eat the poorest food.

The brothers are suffering in their hearts! We’re all slaves, so why is the gap between us so great?

We... we only want fairness, my lord!”

He carefully avoided the matter of his own incitement.

He spoke only of unfairness, trying to win sympathy.

Eli listened quietly, his face completely expressionless.

Only after Huck had finished did he speak calmly, his gaze falling on Huck.

“Fairness?”

“What Scarface said, was it true? Did they improve their own sheds? Was their food rewarded extra?”

“Y-Yes... it’s true.”

Huck did not dare deny it and could only answer stiffly.

“But, my lord—”

Eli cut him off at once. His voice remained calm and even, yet Huck felt his heart sink into an abyss.

“So it is not that you cannot improve your situation. It is that you think it is too tiring, and you do not want to.

So you decided that instead of doing it yourselves, you would stir everyone up and make trouble.

You would put some pressure on me so that I would simply divide up what they had painstakingly improved and hand it over to you fairly.

Or perhaps... you wanted me to issue an order forcing the old slaves to give up their things to you?

Is that what you had in mind, Captain Huck?”

“I... I...” Huck’s whole body trembled, and his face turned as white as paper.

He felt as though the lord’s calm blue eyes could see straight through every petty thought in his heart.

This was nothing like the scene he had imagined.

Was the lord not supposed to soothe the new slaves, scold the old ones a little,

and then symbolically improve the new slaves’ treatment by just a tiny bit?

How... how had he laid bare his little scheme so directly?

“M-My... my lord, I... I was only... for the sake of the brothers... for... for our territory...”

Huck stammered, incoherent, still trying to defend himself.

But Eli’s gaze had already shifted away from him and landed on a young security patrolman holding a wooden club nearby.

Eli remembered him. He was one of the constables who had received a medal at the commendation ceremony, a meticulous and conscientious young man.

“You,” Eli said, raising a hand to point at him.

“Your name is A-Tu, correct?”

The young security patrolman jolted all over, overwhelmed by surprise and honor. Then he immediately straightened his back.

His voice rose out of nervousness, almost cracking. “Yes! My lord! This subordinate is A-Tu!”

Eli looked at him, his eyes as calm as a deep pool.

But the order he gave sent a sharp gasp through everyone around them.

“Kill him.”