323 Episode 99. Attacking the villa (2)

It was dense and deep. The path is deserted, with nowhere to be found, and even a mare.

There were not many people in the world who could build and maintain villas in places like this. Joshua had his own guardian knights and hounds stationed here.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...….

Some unknown evil creatures were making low cries somewhere.

But the demons were not able to approach the camp because they were afraid of the energy of the Ming Dynasty from him.

'Secret villa and Joshua's childhood.’

If Luna hadn't told us, it would have been impossible to find this place even with the intelligence of the Seven Colors.

In a way, the villa was in a position that was simply impossible to find unless it had grown up together.

When Joshua was in puberty, there was a forest where he visited and trained on the day he was severely beaten by me. It was a forest with mana. I think you chose that place to follow your father's training in the Black Sea.

Luna told me the location of the secret villa.

The people of the Ekan Kingdom called it an abandoned forest, a dark forest, or a forest of abyss. Just as we call useless and dangerous forests that have one for each province.

The nearby village disappeared after being attacked by a demon, and the Ekan kingdom had no ability to clean up its forests.

When Joshua was a boy, he thought this was the perfect place to train.

And I knew my father would be happy. As my father did in the Black Sea, I expected that someday he would be recognized for his solitary training in this forest.

Only once, Xiron spoke to Joshua about the forest.

You're doing great. But you can't catch up with your sister that way.

Poetics were extremely rare to fully praise their children.

Therefore, if you have both praised and rebuked at the same time, unless you still have a nuance of ridicule.

It was certainly more of a compliment story.

But even the moment Joshua was training with respect for his father.

I couldn't stand being compared to Luna.

So he led the factional cadres in person and set fire to the villa.

Since that day, the villa has disappeared from Looncandel's records, and Joshua has no longer visited the Ekan Kingdom.

About ten years after one, somehow.

Joshua visited this place again and built the same villa as he did when he was a boy.

Maybe it's because of his love for his father, or just thinking about it, he liked the forest, or he's lost some sense of inferiority complex. I don't know why, but it seems to be a pretty important space anyway.

While recalling Luna's story for a moment, Jean, feeling the presence, turned her head. The masked men were seen through the dense dark trees.

Kashmir, Alisa, Kuzan, and Julian. They have just come to the camp after arriving in the forest.

"I came here erasing all the traces that Confucius left behind."

Kuzan said, bowing politely. As he said, his colleagues had come to him, erasing the traces that Jean had deliberately left to find him.

"Well done."

Three guardian knights and ten hounds.

According to Luna's information, that's how many people lived in the villa.

"You can kill all the hunting dogs, but save the guardian as much as you can, but kill if you can't control them. In particular, Kuzan and Julian may have an old colleague who recognizes your abilities, so they must change their ways and fight."

The reason why I wanted to save the guardian knight was because they were loyal to Luncandel before Joshua's blessing.

In the future, I wanted to avoid killing family guardian as much as much as possible. I wanted to give them a chance, so to speak.

An opportunity to transfer or surrender before the full-scale war against Joshua begins.

Before that, the knights who made wise choices were willing to be listed.

"Okay."

Qin, Kashmir, and Alisa also brought something other than the weapons they originally used. Alisa took a pair of daggers, not a guntlet at all.

Jean turned to Julian.

He was usually extremely introverted, and he always looked scared whenever Joshua talked about it. He looked unusually nervous today.

"Yulian."

"......why?"

"It's definitely here."

Julian's lips were tightly sealed at the remark. Jean patted him lightly on the shoulder and continued his back talk.

"Let's get in."

Jin and his colleagues quickly began to move on the forest path.

Except for Julian, not everyone seemed very nervous. Three guardian knights and ten hounds are simply enough to kill them. Unless the opponent is at the level of an executive engineer.

It was only dark with dense trees, but still in broad daylight. As the villa neared, the trees gradually decreased, and as soon as the flat ground was revealed, a villa standing in the middle of the empty space was seen.

Sunlight was pouring over the log-building in the middle of the forest. It's quite a picturesque scene, but apparently it just didn't seem to accommodate as many as thirteen people.

Joshua originally built the building for his own use, and it was very small as it was restored. It feels more like a cabin than a villa.

The party approached the entrance to the villa, killing their footsteps.

Inside were two Joshua's hounds. They were gambling among themselves, and only after the party was around the corner did they feel the presence.

But it was too late then.

Hiss hiss!

A poisoned needle shot by Kuzan through a crack in the window penetrated the necks of the two.

When they put their heads on the table, Kuzan skillfully recovered the sting, then cut back the scar on which the sting touched, clearing the trail.

Except for the two, there was no one inside the villa. Three guardian knights and the other eight hounds are invisible.

They were underground.

As the ground building is small, it was not that difficult to find a passage underground. Only if you know that underground exists.

Gaining!

Alisa opened the door hidden on the floor and looked at the trap. There were no special traps at the entrance, as the residents frequented the area.

When I got down, it was a pitch-dark passageway. Without hesitation, the group turned on the mana lights that hung on the waist of the two dead hounds.

Unlike the ground, which used to be only a small hut, the basement was also quite large.

" Let's not scatter, Lord Kashmir. You don't know the inside structure at all.”

"Okay, Confucius Jean."

While entering the basement and walking for about a dozen minutes, the party never encountered an enemy.

Until now, the group had been aware that the basement was similar to a prison. Beyond the bars was a cell filled with bloodstains, and all the places I had seen so far had been empty.

Bloodstains were human, and dragons were. It was possible to distinguish between the dragon and the scales of the dragon.

Julian could not hide his uneasiness at the sight.

My colleagues decided to attack this villa because of the captivity of Suho-ryong of Julian.

"The traces of the dragon being locked up are all of the guardian dragons of Joshua's contractors."

The number was by no means small.

So I wondered. How could you protect this large number of dragons with only 13 or so human beings.

'It can't be. There's something else, something else.’

The only thing that came to mind right away was the drinking stone. Of all the things Jin knows, that's the only way to make a dragon panic or control it, so it's natural.

But Joshua was unlikely to have a drinking seat.

While I was thinking, when I passed the corridor, I suddenly saw a man-young.

He seemed neither a guardian nor a hound. His back was so bent that he could barely reach Jean's waist, covered his whole body with a dark robe and held a cane.

A man not heard from Luna.

No, I was wondering if it was human.

All the party, including Jin, were unable to sense any energy from him.

[What, are the ingredients supposed to come in again today?]

He spoke in a low, dreary voice.

The moment Kuzan was about to overpower the mysterious man with another poisoned needle, Qin raised his hand to restrain him.

It was because he knew that the man's vain eyes were facing the air without focusing.

'He's blind. Otherwise, you can't react like that to these suspicious masks. By the way, who the hell is it?'

The rest of my colleagues noticed the fact a beat later.

[How many people are here?]

Name, unit of counting people.

The material the man was talking about was human.

"Five."

[Like a mouse tail. I can't do anything like that. Throw it inside and go back.]

"I've been wondering before, what's the material for?"

Jean approached and asked, and the man shook his head.

[Sigh, Lord Joshua made a mistake for some reason. I can't believe you asked me this question.….]

Just like that's perfect!

He hit the floor with his cane.

Then, on the floor, the ceiling, and the walls, there was an ominous purple magic camp.

intuitively

Jean and her colleagues could recognize that it was an ancient dark magic.

That means even Jean has no idea what magic works.

Several thoughts passed through Jean's head in a short moment.

Is it right to kill this guy, or is it better to defend a magic trick that is completely unknown and then subdue it to dig up information?

The latter was attracted, but the risk was too high to guarantee the safety of his colleagues.

Si Ik!

Jean shot and stabbed the sword into the man's neck. It was a judgment that the magic might not stop by cutting off the limbs.

[Cuck!]

Then the man flinched and fell forward. It has been less than a second since the magic team was activated.

"Are you all right, Confucius?"

"I didn't know what magic was, so I killed him. Maybe he was trying to summon something from hell, just like Muron did."

Jean said, taking off the hood of the fallen man. The violet magic was again losing its light and disappearing.

It was a hideous figure. The face was crushed to the point where the nose and mouth were indistinguishable, and the body looked like the flesh of someone forced together.

It also seemed to be in a state of weakness before Jean killed him.

"Good job. Huh, what the hell is this guy...... The Wizard? No, I don't feel like a human being."

"I'm sure he's not human, he's like a horse. I've been trained to look like this when I was on a special lease."

Alisa added an explanation to Kashmir's question.

Jean was rummaging through his lobes to check his belongings. From the pockets inside the lobes, strange old paper and bone fragments that could not be identified as animal or human flowed down.

Tuk, Degur...….

And a black bead fell.

"Go, Confucius. This is...…!”

Kashmir looked down at the bead in a fright.

The bead was very similar to what Jean and her colleagues knew, and was made of the same material.

"Yeong-gi bead..."!?’

The recorder of a solderlet.

That was the bead that fell from the man's lobes.