Chapter 367 Absolute power (2)
"This is the part of the city where my people are," Svan said. "I think it will be easy for you guys to blend it if you stay here."
The barbarians were using one district of the city which was mostly used by travelers. Hence, things were less struck there. There were many inns in that part of the place, but even so, many houses had been vacated to them. As for the mercenaries, it seemed that they were quite the rough bunch. They have been trained to serve those who paid their masters even from an early age and they were constantly deployed to participate in conflicts in order to finish things quickly. As such, they were camping on the eastern side of the city, but beyond its actual boundaries. It seemed that the leader of Galatea followers struggled a lot while thinking about hiring them, they were the so-called cutthroats, and sellswords… their only loyalty lies on money. Which was against the teachings of the goddess Galatea. Still, he hired them because it was better than letting his people be exterminated. He seemed like a good person since he made that choice, but Billy would rather not meet him. Having two wives certainly was some type of greed, and lust as well. Besides, Billy doesn't do well with the preachy types.
"Can we vacate one of the taverns so that we can talk?" Billy asked. "I would rather have some rooms in a quiet place as well since my kids and Lara will stay there most of the time."
"I think doing that would be counterproductive, you would draw a lot of attention," Svan said. "Also, we aren't in the mood for partying, so things have been slow and quiet here."
Even though they were a cheerful bunch, the barbarians could read the mood and they wouldn't party even when they were losing a battle. Things were quite complicated, after all. In any case, Billy looked around, but he didn't find the face of possibly the noisiest person he had met in that world. The former guild master, Marie. It would be hard to miss her and she also would make a scene if she had seen them before they had seen her.
"I thought that Marie would be here," Billy said.
"She is, but she isn't helping in the fight," Svan said. "She is terrifyingly skilled at entering and leaving places without letting others know, so she is in the enemy territory trying to gather Intel for us. She sends us messages occasionally."
"What have you heard from her?" Billy asked.
"Well, some weird things… First of all, even the places closest to the border are living their lives normally," Svan said. "Not a single soldier is preparing to fight right now… She checked many villages and towns and she only saw people living their lives peacefully."
That was indeed weird… the summoner was causing a lot of trouble with monsters alone, but a war of conquest was something that could only be finished by humans. Monsters wouldn't be able to do anything aside from killing and destroying things. It was hard to imagine that the summoner's end goal would be that… the total destruction of the world. If that were the case, he would exterminate the people of his own state as well. Considering that it is impossible to get experience by killing humans, he certainly wasn't doing that to level up himself.
"It seems that another Jeannette is on the rise… However, we had heard that the current leader of the Cegia state is a man," Svan said. "Well, that changes nothing… aside from the problem that he can control even more monsters than her entire army of beast tamers could."
Billy wished that he could explain why things were like that, but he couldn't without making himself look suspicious by knowing things that they didn't. Regardless, any plans to stop the summoner are probably out of the question right now. Even Icarus failed at defeating him, so things will be a lot more complicated. While defeating that guy would make his monsters probably disappear, that was also something only Billy and Icarus knew.
"How are things on the other borders?" Kate asked. "We have heard reports from Aura and Rosalie, but…"
"The enemy is concentrating the flying monsters here, so while they are having a hard time, it isn't as bad as here," Svan said. "To be honest, if you guys manage to deal with the flying enemies with magic, we can turn the tide of this battle and force the enemies to retreat and then we will finally cause some damage to their lands, so that they will hesitate in doing all this."
"We have come to help, not to deliver miracles," Billy said.
"Billy…" Kate said and then sighed.
"It might be possible, but then that will be against out goal of not standing out," Natalie said. "Jean was willing to support our coming, but things will be difficult if we end up putting the Hiloh state in the war… Although we don't share borders with Cegia state."
"We can't let them keep doing what they wanted with the flying monsters, Billy," Alexander said. "For the children's sake… We will have to stand out a bit."
"... it is rare for you to make any sense in this kind of situation," Billy said. "I suppose we will have to do that, but we will do so only once to make the enemy confused. We will go all out the next time the flying monsters appear."
It has been a while since they saw Billy going all out with his magic, so they kind of look forward to it. He could understand their feelings, but he didn't have any new tricks. Maybe Billy could think of new ones, but testing on a real battle and in an unknown territory might cause problems. Still, against flying opponents, Billy couldn't think of a better weapon than his lightning… However, that was too eye-catching.
