Chapter 566:
The Bear Finishes Prepping
SELEIYU CALLED HER BROTHER’S NAME. But he was so far away, and he seemed unconscious. He didn’t respond.
“Is Keith alive?!”
“Yes, for now. After all, if he dies, I couldn’t hold up my end of the bargain.”
If I’d been able to use my detection skill, I could have confirmed what he was saying, but as of now, there wasn’t anything I could do. What a pain.
“What do you think? Isn’t it a spectacular view?”
The man threw out his arms, as if he was showing off the horde of monsters. From what I could see, there were wolves, tiger wolves, goblins, and even orcs. But why weren’t they attacking Keith?
“How did you gather so many of them?”
The man seemed giddy to hear Seleiyu asking the question. He started to explain.
“Oh, yes. After your mother was so cruel to me, I came across a certain individual. He claimed to be a monster tamer from the castle, but the king threw him out. In order to plan his revenge, he started to ramp up his research. Since we both wanted revenge, we started to collaborate. Soon, we found a way to control monsters.”
Revenge on the king? Monster taming? Those phrases rang a bell.
“It’s impossible to control monsters.”
Unfortunately, I knew that wasn’t true. I’d never met the guy, but he’d found a way to bring together a bunch of monsters like this too.
“You think so? You can see right there that your brother is in the middle of a monster horde and hasn’t been attacked. That is because I’ve commanded the monsters to leave him alone.”
He was right. Even though he was surrounded, the monsters were just walking around Keith, not attacking him. It wasn’t like they’d suddenly grown fond of Keith or anything—I could tell from here that they were still itching to attack him. They were like beasts waiting for their meal.
“If you truly don’t believe I can control them, would you like me to prove it by having them attack your brother? One arm should be enough.”
The man laughed as Seleiyu questioned him.
“I-I believe you, please don’t.”
Keith’s life was on the line, so she couldn’t call his bluff.
“Why did you even gather all these monsters in the first place? If you wanted to blackmail me, just having Keith is enough, isn’t it?”
He didn’t have a reason to gather such a large group. He had already killed Seleiyu’s mom, and she was the one he wanted revenge on. Technically, his revenge had already been carried out.
“You mean you want to know the role the monsters will play here? I’m going to use them to raze the town of the man who stole her from me.”
He was after Seleiyu’s father, then. Right—to him, Seleiyu’s father was the one who had stolen Seleiyu’s mother from him, so he hated them both.
“That’s not the deal we made. The townspeople are innocent.”
“I only promised to spare your brother’s life. I never agreed to leave the townspeople unscathed.”
Well, that sure was convenient of him. He just hadn’t even mentioned the townspeople, so he hadn’t promised to let them live.
“Without the adventurers around, I wonder how many of the townspeople might perish.”
“The adventurers are gone?” Seleiyu asked.
“Ha ha, you didn’t know? Most of the adventurers have left.”
“Seleiyu, the monsters around town had disappeared, so the adventurers traveled away.”
“So it’s true?!”
Seleiyu was shocked. Apparently, she hadn’t known.
“I heard it from the guild.”
Apparently, the monsters had been disappearing around this time of year for the last few years, so the adventurers had gone to other towns in order to make their money.
“It seems the young lady there understands. While the adventurers are gone, it will be easy to create many casualties in the town. The town has very few people doing voluntary patrols, and fewer soldiers. I should have more than enough monsters here.”
“Are you the reason why the monsters were disappearing at this time of year? It was because you were controlling them?”
“For someone so young, you’re a quick thinker. That’s right. In order to conduct my research, I lived far from the town. Sometimes I would visit, but when Seleiyu’s birthday would approach, I would go to visit her. During those times, I would practice controlling the monsters.”
“So that’s why the monsters would disappear every year around this time period.”
“Yes, it was a natural by-product of my plan. It may have been God’s will to bring Seleiyu and I together.”
Yeah, I was pretty sure there wasn’t a god around that’d do something like that. This world’s god was actually a pervert who loved toying with a weak girl by making her wear bear clothes. Ask me how I know.
“The town has a castle wall, so the wolves and goblins can’t get in there.”
Monsters couldn’t easily scale any fortifications. That was what the wall was for. A long as the monsters couldn’t fly, they wouldn’t be able to simply invade the town.
When I asked that, the man looked up, amused.
“Ha ha, look up.”
We did.
“Wyverns...”
I saw three wyverns circling in the air.
“If the wyverns break through the gate, the town is toast.”
That was what they’d been trying to do to the capital. I’d seen wyverns then too. Those ones were sleeping when I saw them, so killing them was easy. Since then, I’d already slayed plenty more wyverns while on Talgwei and in the Land of Wa. This kind of felt like a rerun.
Plus, there were only three of them. Or maybe this guy had a secret weapon up his sleeve like that wyrm in the capital attack? Even if he did, I’d just use my legion of flame bears to bake it from the inside out.
“Can I ask a question?”
“What is it, young lady?”
He answered with a smile. I guess he was in a good mood.