Chapter 385 - An Unlikely Alliance

Katya separated from her father and went back to her family's territory. She went ahead to contact Quinn with the MID she received from Cecil.

"Tch... how troublesome..."

"H-How is it troublesome?! Your Master wanted this you know so you can't blame me!"

"I won't blame my Master for the orders I receive. I only find it troublesome to help a few people who are doomed to lose..."

"W-what do you mean by that?!"

Katya and Quinn immediately had an argument right after they contacted each other. Quinn kept on going on and on about the deficiencies and lacking aspects of the Goldenia family's territory and military force.

The entire time, Katya could only take in all of Quinn's words and insults indignantly because what he said wasn't false. She knew that because of how their family had been keeping themselves busy with their territories internal affairs and economy, they neglected the military aspect of things for a few years.

The Goldenias had this luxury because their territory was relatively free from monster attacks so they didn't see the urgent need to build their forces beyond what was needed to keep their lands safe from the monsters.

It was only after the Faustus Archduchy showed signs of wanting to invade, did the Goldenias start recruiting more people for their army. Unfortunately for them, things weren't going so well because most of the people weren't too keen on fighting and the bravest ones had already taken up arms to defend the territory from monsters so they didn't get many new recruits.

Quinn had already done some investigations and in all of their lands, the Goldenia family was only able to muster up a force of 10,000 people. This was a lot but it wasn't enough to face up against the Faustus Archduchy's 100,000 men who were going to invade their lands sometime soon.

This gave both him and Katya a headache. The men under the Goldenia family were already being trained in both martial and magical combat. The one thing that the Goldenias had more of than the Silvarias were mages.

Since Katya had already spread the way of using magic in her territory, her family was able to cultivate more mages than the Silvaria family who only had a minor few who weren't even actually proper mages since all they could use was Cecil's Mana Bolt.

Instead of calling them mages, they were instead called Ranged Infantry. Cecil had developed a new magi-tech for these individuals that were in the form of bows and crossbows. The new weapons let these people channel their mana into them to form mana arrows and mana crossbow bolts which would then be fired after they were loaded.

It was a handicap weapon that helped people learn how to channel their mana to form arrows and bolts. With enough practice, these people would be able to forego using the weapons and just directly fire them on their own. This was the end goal.

However, when Quinn remembered that the Goldenias had actual mages, he thought that they could somehow pull through. He knew for a fact that his Master wouldn't leave him and the Goldenia family in a rut. This was just his way of testing whether or not the Goldenia family was still necessary or not.

If the Goldenias could pull through, his Master would keep them and treat their territory as one of their kingdom's satellite territories just like they did with the Merkruz Kingdom. On the surface, the two territories would be governed by their respective main powers, but underneath that, those two powers would have to answer to the Silvaria Family.

In Quinn's opinion, his Master always took the less troublesome route of settling things. Instead of directly destroying something and taking over, he instead spared them and acted as the puppeteer from the shadows.

Quinn knew that his master didn't want to do anything too troublesome nor did he want to throw anything troublesome onto his family. He knew the consequences of killing these kingdoms' leaders and implementing a new government to manage them.

It would take years to gain the people's loyalty and the dissent from the masses would also prove troublesome to deal with in many ways. Of course there were some cons with the way Cecil handled things in the long run, but it wasn't like he particularly wanted to keep a firm grip on these territories.

After a few years of constantly receiving some benefits from them, Cecil would stop caring about what happened to them. As long as they didn't touch the 2 cities that Cecil had taken for his kingdom, he wouldn't care if they decided to stop sending their kingdom anything.

It was a little unambitious considering the amount of power Cecil had, but Quinn knew that his Master didn't really care about such things. As long as he kept his family safe, that's all that mattered to him.

Also, Quinn knew that his master didn't really like flaunting his power. It was tiring and troublesome, so he says.

Quinn returned his focus back onto helping the Goldenia family and thought of the plausible ways he could help them win against their conflict with the Faustus Archduchy. The way he saw it, the only way to win was to keep them off of the land and attack them at sea.

Of course, what he meant was not to attack them directly, but to use guerilla tactics to slowly whittle away their numbers. Sinking their sh.i.p.s and drowning their soldiers was the only tactic Quinn could think of that would help the Goldenia family win against the archduchy when they eventually had to fight on land.

"I'll discuss more of this with that woman once she gets back here... I really wonder what Master sees in her family that he'd be willing to just let them off after finding out that they were the ones who had technically instigated the attack..."

Quinn shook his head and stopped questioning his Master's motives. Unbeknownst to him though was that his Master had long since stopped caring about the attack. No one from his family was harmed and it gave him a very good excuse to get rid of a thorn in his family's side.

If he could, he actually wanted to thank the Goldenias instead. However, it went against his principles to let the people who were seeking to harm his family off. Even though the Goldenia family did provide him with the opportunity to get rid of Elder Kuran but if things had ended up differently...

Quinn shook his head and began to move. On the day Katya got back, Quinn appeared in front of her. He used up the time when Katya was still on her way back to go and scout out the situation of the Goldenia family's territory.

It wasn't like he hadn't done it before when he was first sent there on the mission to uncover whether the Goldenias had something to do with the previous attack on his Master's family, but this time, he did a more in depth examination.

He was just about to go out and take a look at how the enemy was responding to the fact that their young lord had not returned after a few days due to him being held captive, Katya had returned and he immediately went to go meet her.

"So, you're finally back..."

"Ugh...why do I have to work with you..." Katya grumbled.

"Hmph, I should be saying the same thing to you. If not because of what my Master wanted, I wouldn't even be here. Just be grateful that you're even receiving any help," Quinn retorted.

"Whatever...anyway, how are you going to help me out?"

"You don't have to worry about that. Just worry about coordinating with your family to defend against the Faustus Archduchy. I plan on going to scout out their situation and their current reaction at the fact that they can't get a hold of their young lord anymore..."

"...Okay...do you need any help?"

"No, just do your own things and get your people ready. You probably already have something like this, but I took the liberty of compiling all of your family's forces into these doc.u.ments. Read over them and read the plans that I have for them at the end. Contact me once you've read them all," Quinn said before tossing over a spatial ring to her. Katya awkwardly caught the ring and she couldn't help but frown at Quinn.

This little accessory was worth fortunes in the Faustus Archduchy, but here he was just tossing one around like it was some pebble. Well, this spatial ring wasn't anything of great quality. It was disposable in Quinn's eyes since he had more of it with him.

These things were failed experiments that Cecil tossed aside when he was trying to create a white spatial ring. Since his Master didn't need them, Quinn thought that he should put good use to these scrapped magi-techs.

Quinn had to show how the spatial ring worked to Katya before she was finally able to pull out the doc.u.ments that were stored within. Once she pulled them out, her eyes narrowed when she saw the very detailed information about her family's territory.

She immediately wanted to ask just how did Quinn acquire all of this information but before Katya could even ask, the butler had already disappeared.

"...that stupid...butler... He's supposed to help me but he's just going around doing whatever he wants! And what the hell, how did that prick even get all of this info?!" Katya stomped her feet angrily.

She huffed but quickly composed herself and returned to her family's home and began sifting through the information that Quinn had on her territory.

"Jeez...how does that bastard have more accurate information about my family's territory than we do? Ugh, I just knew those backstabbing Pentras were trying to pull something behind our backs. They actually gave us false info about the people they recruited and the amount of food and grain they have stored up..."

Katya continued to sift through the information and the more she read, the gloomier her face became. Many of the other well-known families within their territory had shown different motives in the reports she was reading, some not being truthful about the reports of how many people they had recruited and trained and how much provisions they had stored up.

There were even some that showed notions of trying to defect to another nation. This caused Katya to grasp her head in frustration. She was glad that there were actually a few that were willing to stay and fight with them.

"Haahh...it's time to get busy..."