Chapter 1189: Chaos Within Raydoss

Several more days pa.s.sed since Fran began teaching swordsmans.h.i.+p.

Fran spent the days peacefully in the quiet village, despite Raydoss still being in the midst of a war. Until our long awaited visitor finally arrived.

One of Quint’s friends had returned with a report. While the visitor came by himself, it seems he collected information from the various brigade members and collaborators scattered throughout Raydoss.

「Nice to meet you. I’m Loktem.」

The man was tall but quite slender, with an una.s.suming appearance.

It seems he served as the head scout for the mercenary brigade. Having such an una.s.suming appearance likely a.s.sisted him in performing that job.

「My apologies, but we have yet to determine our captain’s whereabouts.」

「What are you here to report then?」

Quint raised an eyebrow, since his report was originally scheduled for a little later. Coming all this way just to report that Neidhart’s location was still unknown seems rather odd.

However, he apparently had intel important enough to warrant an immediate visit.

「A facility that we identified as a possible location for the captain has been destroyed. And not just that one. Another marked facility was destroyed immediately afterward.」

「How is that possible? The Kranzel army has yet to restart the invasion, correct?」

「We don’t know who is responsible.」

According to him, two Raydoss’s research facilities quite distant from our current position fell in an incredibly short period of time. Both were so heavily guarded that the half-insectkin had no clue what was going on inside.

Nevertheless, they were completely annihilated in less than an hour.

They found almost zero survivors, and very little information about the culprit. All they managed to figure out was two details.

「The culprit was a single person. And it seems they employed death poison magic.」

Upon hearing this report, Fran widened her eyes.

（Maleficent!）

『Yeah. There’s no doubt about it.』

Maleficent must be wandering Raydoss in search of Persona. Which means he has no way of directly tracking Persona’s presence or mana.

But I can’t say for sure if that’s something he couldn’t do to begin with, or if Nameless was concealing Persona somehow.

As a result, it seems Maleficent had no choice but to attack any suspicious facilities he came across.

At this rate, Maleficent will only continue inflicting more and more damage. Meanwhile, we have to worry if his rampage will cause Raydoss to tighten their security, potentially hindering the Neidhart rescue effort.

Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that Neidhart will be safe from him. Maleficent slaughtered everyone in the facilities, whether they were test subjects or civilians. Not even Neidhart can survive taking powerful poisons while incapacitated.

However, Fran seemed to be concerned about a different issue.

「How do you know Neidhart is still alive?」

「Due to a skill I have, called “Insect Intuition”. This allows me to know whether or not the target is in danger.」

I see. So he knows that Neidhart is currently alive, and not in any immediate danger. He must be imprisoned somewhere, like we first thought.

「Also, some villages are suffering due to the reduction in the Red Knights.」

「What about the villages that pledged their support to us? Are they still okay?」

「They’re still fine, as we’ve been secretly a.s.sisting them. However, some of the more remote villages are beginning to suffer from monster attacks.」

We’re aware that Maleficent caused significant changes to monster habitats, especially since this village got attacked because of it. However, I never knew this was becoming a frequent occurrence throughout Raydoss.

I guess I should have expected it. Just like traffic accidents, a disturbance in one region is enough to cause traveling monster populations and spread the chaos throughout the rest of the country.

As a result, the villages found themselves with an unprecedented amount of monsters.

Normally, the Red Knights would deal with this sort of situation. Even without intervention from those on the captain level, ordinary knights are enough to defeat most monsters.

But not after the war significantly reduced their numbers. The Carmine Flame Knights were decimated, and the Blood Maiden Knights and Cardinal Flag Knights also suffered heavy losses.

The Dusk Rain, Red Sword, and Vermilion Eye Knights should be relatively unscathed, but this region isn’t in their jurisdiction in the first place.

From what I’ve heard, each order of the Red Knights has their own a.s.signed territory. Blood Maiden for the west, Cardinal Flag for the east, Carmine Flame for the south. Central Raydoss is handled by the remaining three orders: the Red Sword, Vermilion Eye, and Dusk Rain Knights.

None are sent to the north since the North Conquest Duke’s own order of knights handles everything. Which means they must be equally strong to the Red Knights.

Furthermore, the Dusk Rain and Vermilion Eye Knights also served as roving units, sometimes deploying to the other four regions as the situation required.

That’s how Raydoss protected their citizens from monsters up until now. However, the Red Knights could no longer reach the far corners of the country due to their significantly reduced numbers and confusion due to the ongoing war.

Another issue was the food shortage. Maleficent had rendered a significant portion of land barren.

Not only did this greatly damage the local food production, but the effects spread over the nation as a whole.

Raydoss would normally redistribute food from one region to another to alleviate shortages, but not anymore. The war forced them to stockpile rations, so there’s nothing left to redistribute.

As a result, the entire nation was running into food shortages. Even if people attempted to gather food in the remaining forests, the surge of monsters meant no guarantees on safety.

I’d say there’s a high possibility running into a serious famine. Back on Earth, countries with famine might be able to rely on aid from their neighbors. Raydoss can’t though, since they’re surrounded by enemies.

Isn’t this pretty bad?

（Master, can we provide more food?）

『Yeah, sure. In fact, we took a bunch of rations from the Raydoss army, which originally came from these guys. We should return those.』

（Nn. Let’s take them to other villages too.）

Fran listened to the report with a much more serious expression than usual. She must be thinking about what she can do to help.