Chapter 323,
Chapter 99. Villa Raid (2)
It was dense and deep. Abandoned forest where not a single road is properly laid out and even monsters appear.
There were not many people in the world who could build and maintain a villa in a place like this. Joshua had his guardian knights and hunting dogs resident here.
Geurruk, guruk…
Somewhere unknown monsters were making low cries.
However, the demons could not recklessly approach Jin because they were afraid of the Myeongwang clan’s energy emanating from him.
‘The secret villa and Joshua’s childhood.’
If Luna had not informed it, it would have been impossible to find this place even with the information power of the seven-colored bird.
In a way, this villa was in a position that was impossible to find unless you were a blood relative.
-When Joshua was a teenager, there was a forest where he went to practice on days when he was badly beaten by me. It was a forest where monsters appeared. It seems that he chose this place to follow his father’s training in the Black Sea.
The story that Luna told me while telling me the location of the secret villa.
The people of the Ekan Kingdom called this place the Abandoned Forest or the Dark Forest Abyssal Forest. Just like calling the useless and dangerous forests that have one in each province.
A nearby village was attacked by monsters and disappeared, and the Ekan Kingdom had no ability to clean up the forest.
As a boy, Joshua thought this was the perfect place for him to practice.
And I knew my father would be happy. I hoped that someday I would be recognized if I practiced in solitude in this forest, as my father did in the Black Sea.
Only once did Chiron speak to Joshua about the forest.
-You’re doing great. But you can’t catch up with your sister that way.
It was extremely rare for Shiron to fully praise his son.
Therefore, if you praise and criticize at the same time, if it is not the nuance of ridiculing at the same time.
That was definitely a story closer to praise.
But for Joshua at the time, even at that moment when he was training along with his father out of respect for him.
I couldn’t stand being compared to Luna.
So he personally led the faction cadets and set the villa on fire.
After that day, the villa disappeared from the records of Runkandel, and Joshua no longer sought Ekan Kingdom.
For some reason, about 10 years have passed since the first one.
Joshua returned to this place and built a cottage identical to the one he had built as a boy.
-Is it because of the love/hate for my father, or just thinking about it, did I like the forest, or did my inferiority complex disappear? I don’t know why, but it seems to be using it as a fairly important space anyway.
While thinking about Luna’s story for a while, Jin turned his head when he felt a presence. Masked people could be seen through the dense, dark trees.
Casimir and Alyssa Kuzan and Julian. Arriving in the forest, they have just come to visit Jin.
“I came here while erasing all traces left by Confucius.”
Kuzan politely bowed his head and said. As he said, his colleagues had come to erase the traces Jin had intentionally left so that they could find him.
“It was a lot of trouble.”
Three guardian knights and ten hounds.
According to the information Luna gave, that was the number of people residing in the villa.
“You can kill all the hounds, but keep the guardian knights alive if you can, but shoot them if they can’t be suppressed. In particular, Kuzan and Yulian may have old comrades who recognize your abilities, so you have to change the way you fight.”
The reason why he wanted to save the Guardian Knights was because they were loyal to Runcandel before they were Joshua’s henchmen.
In the future, I wanted to avoid killing the family guardian knight as much as possible. In other words, I wanted to give them a chance.
A chance to transfer or surrender before the full-scale all-out war with Joshua begins.
Before that, the knights who had made wise choices were willing to hire them.
“All right.”
Jin and Casimir Alyssa also brought something other than their original weapon. Alisa didn’t take gauntlets at all, but a pair of daggers.
Jin moved his gaze to Yulian.
Although he was usually extremely introverted and would always put on a frightened expression whenever Joshua was mentioned. Today was a particularly tense look.
“Julian.”
“…why?”
“It must be here.”
At those words, Yulian firmly closed his lips. Jin lightly tapped him on the shoulder and continued talking behind his back.
“Let it enter.”
Jin and his friends quickly began to advance through the forest.
Except for Yulian, everyone didn’t look too nervous. Three guardian knights and ten hounds were enough to easily kill them. Unless the opponent is at the level of an executive knight.
It was dark because the tall trees were densely packed, but it was still broad daylight. As the villa got closer, the trees gradually decreased, and eventually, as the flat land was revealed, the villa stood in the middle of the void.
The sun was pouring over a building made of logs in the middle of the forest. It’s a pretty tasteful scenery, but it didn’t look like it could accommodate a thirteen-year-old.
It was a building that Joshua originally built for his own use, and the scale was very small as he restored it as it was. To the point where it feels more like a cabin than a villa.
The group approached the entrance of the villa with muffled footsteps.
Inside were Joshua’s two hounds. They were gambling among themselves, and it was only after the party got right in front of them that they noticed the presence.
But by then it was already too late.
Hiss hiss!
Kuzan’s poison needle shot through the window pierced the two men’s throats.
As they banged their heads on the table, Kuzan skillfully retrieved the poison needle and erased the trace by slicing the scars it touched.
Except for the two of them, there was no one inside the villa. The three guardian knights and the other eight hounds were invisible.
they were underground
As the buildings above ground were small, it wasn’t too difficult to find the passage leading to the basement. As long as you know that underground exists.
Kki-Ik-!
Alyssa opened the door hidden in the floor and inspected the trap. There were no special traps at the entrance as the resident personnel often came and went.
When I got down, it was a pitch-black aisle. Without hesitation, the party turned on the magic lamp hanging from the waist of the two dead hounds.
Unlike the ground, which was only a small cabin, the scale of the basement was substantial even if it looked like it.
“Let us not scatter, Sir Casimir. You don’t know the internal structure at all.”
“I understand, Gongja Jin.”
After entering the basement and walking for about 10 minutes, the party did not encounter a single enemy.
In the meantime, the party had figured out that the underground was a prison-like structure. Beyond the iron bars, there were cells full of bloodstains, but all the places I had seen so far were empty.
The bloodstains were both human and dragon. In the cell where the dragon was confined, something like dead scales fell off, so it was possible to tell them apart.
Yulian couldn’t hide his anxiety at that appearance.
The reason the friends decided to raid this villa was because Yulian’s guardian dragon was imprisoned here.
‘All traces of the dragon’s confinement belong to the guardian dragons of the contractors that Joshua has.’
The number was by no means small.
So I had my doubts. How on earth was it possible to protect this many dragons with just 13 humans?
‘It can’t be. There’s some other device or means.’
The only thing that immediately came to mind was the Demon God Stone. It’s only natural that Jin knows the only way to terrorize or control dragons.
However, it was unlikely that Joshua would have the Demon Stone.
As I passed the hallway while thinking, I suddenly saw a person.
He seemed to be neither a Guardian Knight nor a hound. His back was bent so badly that he barely reached Jin’s waist. He covered his entire body with a black robe and held a cane.
A human who hasn’t heard from Luna.
No, I wanted to be human.
Everyone in the group, including Jin, couldn’t detect any energy from him.
[What is it that the ingredients were supposed to come in today?]
He said in a low, gloomy voice.
Just as Kuzan was about to subdue the mysterious man again with a poison dart, Jin raised his hand to stop him.
It was because he recognized the fact that the man’s white eyes were aiming into the empty space without focus.
‘He’s a man who can’t see. If not, there’s no way I would have reacted like that even after seeing these suspicious masks. But who is it?’
The rest of my teammates also noticed it a beat late.
[How many people came?]
Person A unit for counting people.
The material the man was referring to meant human beings.
“five.”
[It’s as big as a rat’s tail. I can’t do anything about it though. Roughly throw it inside and go back.]
“I’ve been curious about it before, what are the ingredients for?”
When Jin approached and asked, the man shook his head.
[Tsk Sir Joshua made mistakes for some reason. To have someone ask such a question…]
Exactly!
He hit the floor with his cane.
Then, an ominous purple magic circle suddenly spread across the floor and ceiling walls.
Intuitively.
Jin and his colleagues were able to recognize that it was an ancient dark world magic.
That means that even Jin has no idea how effective the magic is.
For a brief moment, several thoughts passed through Jin’s head.
Is it right to kill Lee, or is it better to defend against unknown magic and then subdue it to gather information?
The latter attracted, but the risk was too high to guarantee the safety of his comrades.
Seek!
Jin rushed forward and thrust his sword into the man’s throat. It was the judgment that cutting off the limbs might not stop the magic.
[Oops!]
Then the man flinched and fell forward. Less than a second had passed since the magic circle was activated.
“Are you okay, Confucius?”
“I didn’t know what kind of magic it was, so I killed it. It might be because he was trying to summon something from hell, like Muron did.”
Jin said as he took off the man’s hood. The purple magic circle lost its light again and disappeared.
It was an ugly disgrace. The face was so mangled that it was impossible to tell the difference between the nose and mouth, and the body looked like a mass of flesh someone had forced together.
Also, it seemed that he was already weak before Jin killed him.
“Good job. Huh What the hell is this… Wizard? No, it doesn’t feel like a human.”
“It definitely doesn’t seem like a human, and it looks like a demon. During my time in the special lease, I was taught that weakened demons become like this.”
Alisa added an explanation to Casimir’s question.
Jin was rummaging through his robes and checking his belongings. Out of the pockets inside the robes were strange old papers and fragments of bone, whether animal or human.
Took degururu…
And a black marble fell.
“Go Gongja. This…!”
Casimir looked down at the orb, startled.
The bead looked very similar to an object Jin and his colleagues were familiar with and was made of the same material.
‘Reiki Orb…!?’
Solderlet’s recording device.
It was the marble that fell from the man’s robe.
