The city was burning.
This was the Tibun Viscounty, a border territory of the Kingdom of Carnel.
And within it was a city in the outer district.
It had originally been a fairly large agricultural city.
But as the devastation of war worsened, the embers of conflict had finally reached this place.
The city and its villages burned.
The homes people had lived in were turning to ash.
Soldiers of the Kingdom of Pettiman hurled torches into houses, feeding the flames.
One of the Pettiman knights, commanding the soldiers from horseback, pointed his sword at the line of refugees outside.
“Look, proud soldiers of Pettiman! There are the remnants of those vile Carnel dogs! Don’t let a single one of them escape! Cut them down!”
The soldiers flinched at the lead knight’s thunderous shout.
Seeing their hesitation, the knight roared.
“What are you doing?! Hurry up and chase them down!”
“S-Sir! No matter how you look at it, those aren’t remnants of the Carnel army, they’re refugees!”
To begin with, there was no reason for remnants of the Kingdom of Carnel’s army to be here.
The Kingdom of Carnel had recently been defeated in an all-out war with the Kingdom of Pettiman and had pulled its troops far to the rear.
While the Carnel army regrouped, the Pettiman army was occupying Carnel territory.
There should have been no fighting here.
Even the rank-and-file soldiers knew that.
“You fools! The moment swords and spears are placed in their hands, they become an evil army threatening our proud Pettiman!”
The man who appeared to be the knight commander berated the soldiers.
With bloodshot eyes, he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.
“In His Majesty’s name! Uproot this evil! Establish justice! That is your mission, proud soldiers of the Kingdom of Pettiman! Slaughter every last one of them!”
“B-But sir! There are elderly people and children among them...!”
The knight commander’s eyes twitched as he looked at the soldier trying to reason with him.
“You dare defy an order?”
The knight commander dismounted and approached the soldier.
“It’s not defiance.”
Stab!
“Gah?!”
The knight commander’s sword plunged into the soldier’s abdomen.
The soldier, trembling as he coughed up blood, collapsed.
“Ignorant fools who live under His Majesty’s grace yet fail to recognize it.”
Disgust showed in the knight commander’s eyes.
“You who have betrayed His Majesty’s grace are no longer the great army of the Kingdom of Pettiman, but traitors. Knights.”
Shing!
At the knight commander’s grim voice, the Pettiman knights drew their swords.
The soldiers’ faces turned deathly pale at the sight.
“Execute these shameless traitors!”
“Glory to our great King, His Majesty!”
“Justice is with us!”
The knights, cloaked in Aura, moved to slaughter the soldiers under their own command.
“Aaaargh!”
“P-Please, spare us!”
The terrified soldiers fled.
Each of them carried weapons.
But none of them had any intention of fighting back against the knights.
Having experienced war, they knew all too well.
They knew exactly how meaningless it was to fight knights who could wield Aura.
The knight commander sneered at the soldiers fleeing in terror.
“They once served in His Majesty’s name, so they should have accepted death with reverence. And yet they run in such a pathetic manner. There’s no saving such worthless trash.”
The knight commander adjusted his grip on his sword and turned toward the soldier twitching on the ground.
“You die too.”
Just as he swung his sword to finish off his former subordinate.
Grab!
“From where I stand, you’re the ones who are beyond saving.”
An outstretched hand caught the knight commander’s blade.
The knight commander flinched and looked at the one who had seized it.
Icy red eyes stared back at him.
“Who the hell are you?! A lackey of the Kingdom of Carnel?!”
The knight commander roared as he tried to yank his sword free.
But the blade caught in Leo’s hand didn’t budge.
'What kind of strength is this?!'
His eyes widening at Leo’s incomprehensible power, the knight commander summoned his Aura.
“I’ll cut off your hand along with the sword!”
At that, Aura erupted from the blade like an explosion.
The knight commander, who had been smiling triumphantly, watched his expression twist in shock.
The sword still did not move an inch from Leo’s grasp.
Leo tightened his grip.
Crack!
“Gah?!”
The sword exploded, Aura and all.
Shards of sword and Aura scattered in every direction.
Not a single fragment left a scratch on Leo, but the knight commander’s body was torn apart.
Lily appeared in front of the knights who were about to slaughter the soldiers.
“As knights on a battlefield, you’re trying to butcher your own subordinates. Have you no shame?”
At Lily’s cry, the knight at the front swung his spear.
“I don’t know who you are, girl, but daring to block our path! You’ve got a death wish!”
With a roar, the Aura-cloaked spear shot toward Lily.
Fwoosh!
But before the spear could reach her, Lily had already summoned her Battle Hammer and sent the knight flying.
Crack!
“Gah?!”
The knight, struck squarely by the Battle Hammer, was launched into the air before crashing to the ground.
“You’re a knight sent by the Kingdom of Carnel!”
Lily swept her gaze over the ten knights surrounding her, their weapons cloaked in Aura. Then she raised her Battle Hammer and slammed it into the ground.
Boom!
A wave of earth surged up and swallowed the knights whole.
“Kuaaargh!”
The knights’ death cries rang out.
A moment later, the knights stuck their heads out of the ground like moles, their mouths gagged.
Lily, her Battle Hammer slung over her shoulder, approached them and said,
“You should be grateful I’m here as a student of Lumene. If I’d come here on family business, I would have smashed your heads in.”
The knights trembled in fear as they looked at Lily, who spoke in a grim voice.
Leo, who had been watching, took a Potion from his pouch and treated the wounded soldier’s abdomen.
Then he walked over to the knight commander and said,
“I have something to ask you.”
“You... you’re not from Carnel! Who are you?!”
The knight commander screamed in response to Leo’s question.
“Can’t you tell by looking at these clothes?”
Leo replied, sounding irritated that he even had to answer.
The knight commander flinched at Leo’s words and ground his teeth.
“Lumene?! Lumene is supposed to remain neutral! Ha! So those wicked Carnel dogs dragged Lumene into this! You should be ashamed of yourselves! To think those who aspire to be heroes would dare side with evil!”
The knight commander shrieked, his eyes crazed.
Seeing that, Leo narrowed his eyes.
'A conversation is impossible.'
“Long live our great King, His Majesty! Justice will belong to the Kingdom of Pettiman!”
Leo raised his foot toward the knight commander, who was screaming like a madman.
“The Justice Guild will punish you...!”
Squelch!
Leo irritably stomped on the knight commander’s head.
'The Justice Guild?'
Leo’s eyes narrowed at the knight commander’s final words before he died.
The Justice Guild.
It was a name Leo knew.
A Hero Guild.
Among the human Hero Guilds, it ranked third after Twilight and Imperium.
'Has the Justice Guild intervened in this war?'
Just as Leo was thinking that.
Thududududu!
The sound of hooves pounding the earth reached them.
Turning his head, he saw knights galloping toward them at full speed, carrying a banner emblazoned with a familiar crest.
Leo checked the request form in his pocket.
'The Tibun family crest.'
They were none other than the knights of the Tibun Viscounty, the ones who had sent the request to Lumene.
“Whoa!”
The young knight at the front was riding a Griffon.
A knight riding a Summoned Beast.
Anyone could tell at a glance that he was a high-ranking knight.
The young knight looked at Leo and Lily’s uniforms with a perplexed expression.
“Lumene uniforms? How did students of Lumene get here?”
Seeing the young knight’s puzzled face, Leo showed him the request form.
“We are students dispatched from Lumene to handle the request to investigate the robbery of the Hero’s Tomb. We would like to see the client, Viscount Relgen Tibun.”
At those words, the young knight dismounted from his Griffon and stood before Leo.
“Thank you for answering the request. However, the client no longer exists.”
“What do you mean?”
Lily, standing beside Leo, tilted her head.
“My grandfather passed away a month ago. The current Viscount Tibun is no longer Relgen Tibun, but me, Eshimon Tibun.”
Viscount Eshimon removed his helmet with a troubled look and gave a bitter smile.
“I’m grateful that you answered the request, but you’ve come at a truly difficult time, students of Lumene.”
Lily’s expression turned serious at Viscount Eshimon’s words.
Looking at Eshimon, Leo said,
“Could you explain the situation?”
Eshimon nodded.
“I will. But first, it seems we need to detain the knights and soldiers of the Kingdom of Pettiman. I’ll explain everything after that.”
Lily’s expression grew grim at his words.
“It looks like this is more serious than we thought, Leo.”
“......”
“Leo? Is something wrong?”
“You’re right.”
Leo, who had been staring at the sky for a moment after Lily spoke, clicked his tongue.
'Someone’s watching us from far away.'
Leo’s Hyper Sense had detected a gaze.
“It seems something really is going on.”
===
“You’re both familiar with the history of the northeastern part of the continent, I assume.”
“Yes. For a thousand years, ever since the fall of the Tarim Empire, the divided kingdoms have been in constant conflict.”
The Tarim Empire.
It was a nation of heroes that had once existed in the northeast of the continent.
And the Tarim Empire was the most powerful human nation after the Age of Heroes.
The founder of Tarim was from the same era as the Genesis Heroes.
To be precise, he was a hero from the generation before the Genesis Heroes, a man recorded in the Hero Record as the Nether Knight, Tamuss.
But he had another epithet, one more famous to the public than Nether Knight.
The Hero Emperor.
He was the strongest hero of his era, a man who had countless heroes under his command.
During Tamuss’s lifetime, the Tarim Empire had been called the Hero Empire, a kingdom where countless heroes had gathered.
'He may have been incredible in his own right, but now he’s become a total laughingstock.'
After the Fragment of Erebos was revived.
The Nether Knight, Tamuss, declared that he would subjugate Erebos.
However, the Tarim Empire’s army of heroes was defeated by the armies of the Monster Queen and the Giant King, let alone Erebos.
Of course, even after that defeat, the Tarim Empire itself remained intact.
The empire endured for another two thousand years after the Return of the Calamity ended.
That alone was proof of how formidable Tarim had been.
But after that first battle, the Nether Knight and the Tarim Empire did not return to the battlefield again, choosing instead to preserve their strength.
That was why later generations ridiculed them.
Still, regardless of that, it had once been the greatest nation in history, and the legacy it left behind was immense.
Countless heroes had been born in the northeast of the continent even after the empire fell and fractured into many smaller nations, all thanks to that legacy.
However, after such long years of war, it had now become a region where the seed of heroes had dried up.
Recalling the history of the northeast of the continent, Leo said,
“The northeast has been fighting for a long time, but since war is so commonplace there, I heard they don’t cross the line, right?”
To be exact, they couldn’t cross the line.
It was true that war never ceased, as each of them claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Tarim Empire and fought to monopolize Tarim’s Legacy.
But after a thousand years of conflict, outright massacres no longer happened.
More accurately, they no longer had the foundation needed to wage war on that scale.
For a thousand years, they had hated one another and pointed swords at each other, but by now, they had exhausted even the strength needed to wage such wars.
The wars continued because the resentment lingered.
But the nations of the northeast all knew that the moment a full-scale massacre began, it would result in mutual destruction.
The wars in the northeast had effectively become a kind of territorial game. If one side was even slightly disadvantaged, it would retreat, and the winning side would not press further, settling only for taking the occupied land.
Other regions even went so far as to call it a ‘fake war.’
Eshimon let out a deep sigh at Leo’s question.
“The political situation in this region changed a month ago.”
Lily looked puzzled at his words.
“Did an outside force intervene?”
“Yes.”
At that answer, Leo crossed his arms.
“Is it related to the Justice Guild?”
“It is.”
===
“Your Majesty. Today as well, your great soldiers have brought tidings of victory. With this, Your Majesty’s territory has expanded even further.”
“Indeed.”
The King of Pettiman curled his lips as he looked at the woman bowing before him.
“Sir Jerome, in your opinion, what is the reason my army keeps winning?”
The King of Pettiman asked the man standing beside him.
“Is there any answer other than one?”
Jerome smiled faintly.
“It is because justice is with Your Majesty. As the true legitimate successor of Tarim, it is only natural that all this land should belong to you.”
“Hoohoohoot! Hahahahaha! Sir Jerome’s words are always pleasing to hear!”
As the King of Pettiman burst into loud laughter, the head of the Justice Guild, Jerome Cadium, spoke.
“Soon, countless heroes will be born from among Your Majesty’s subordinates.”
“Is that so?”
The King of Pettiman beamed.
Looking at the king, Jerome nodded.
“Of course. True war gives birth to heroes.”
***
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter