Slave hunter Etbum.

After being thoroughly beaten by Luca, he quit slave hunting and became a spy.

He didn’t have much money saved up, but since he was secretly stealing and using the property of his dead comrades, he was still comfortable for now.

‘Tsk. But even if they tell me to send information, I need something to send.’

The slave hunting group Etbum belonged to wasn’t very large.

They mostly just kidnapped sons of rich families who wandered in clueless, or commoners from the nearby regions who had gotten lost.

Compared to specialized slave hunting groups that raid villages, or capture people hiding in other countries or state-owned lands, it was just pocket money business.

‘At least, I have some information about the slave dealers…….’

Still, being at the bottom, he couldn’t send much information.

To get more, he’d have to join a bigger slave hunting group, which meant he’d have to catch more slaves.

But he couldn’t catch slaves anymore.

‘Will I have to push my way in somehow?’

With this conclusion, Etbum decided to spend all the money he had left to build connections and join another slave hunting group.

On that day as well, Etbum was drinking at a tavern with a member of the large slave hunting group “Dolphinus”.

“So, in our group, we even catch demi-human, you know!”

“Wow, demi-human, really?”

“Yeah! It’s a secret, but in the land of Migdna…”

“Hey. You shouldn’t be talking about that.”

“What does it matter? This guy will be in our group soon anyway.”

After several days of effort, Etbum finally caught a member’s eye.

He humbled himself before them as much as possible.

“You want to bring this guy into Dolphinus? He looks like the type who will run at the first sign of trouble.”

“Hey, don’t be like that. He’s a good guy.”

“He’s the one who left his original group behind, after all.”

Another member was clearly not fond of Etbum.

Etbum could feel his lips getting dry.

Just then, a commotion broke out outside.

“M-monster……!”

“Damn! Run!”

“?”

The tavern owner, going to check what was happening, returned with a face drained of color and shouted.

“Everyone out! Right now!”

“?”

“Hey, owner, what’s going on?”

Someone asked, and the tavern owner replied, trembling.

“The Venom Guild… The Venom Guild’s Viper Battalion is here!”

“!”

Venom Guild.

It was the strongest guild in this area.

True to their name, they were infamous for their use of poison, with viper, scorpion, and spider units—of which the viper unit was notorious for tracking down and killing anyone who trespassed on their territory.

“Why is the Viper Unit here?”

“Damn. Who messed with those guys?”

“This is bad. Anyone here with the Venom Guild’s insignia?”

The Viper Battalion’s extermination style was to kill anyone in a designated area without proof of association with the Venom Guild.

Of course, because that could easily clash with other factions, the Viper Battalion rarely moved out.

But today, they’d appeared all of a sudden.

“Damn. What do we do? Dolphinus isn’t allied with the Venom Guild, right!”

“Damn it. What are you waiting for, let’s get out of here!”

The two Dolphinus members quickly grasped the situation and tried to flee.

‘This is my chance!’

At that moment, Etbum’s eyes gleamed.

“Gentlemen! Please follow me!”

“What?”

“There’s a place the Venom Guild never goes! If you hide there, you’ll be safe!”

Etbum was a member of an organization allied with the Venom Guild.

So he knew well where the Venom Guild wouldn’t touch.

“Should we trust him and go?”

“If you lead us somewhere strange, you’re dead!”

They decided to follow Etbum for now.

Once the Viper Battalion was out, it was safer to follow Etbum than to run and risk being killed.

“This way, please!”

Etbum immediately left the tavern, heading for a shelter.

Screech.

“?”

At that moment, he saw a huge man ahead of him drawing his sword and heading toward the Viper Battalion members.

‘That hair color and eyes……?’

Etbum hesitated for a moment when he saw the man.

Then the Dolphinus members behind him shouted.

“What are you doing? Weren’t you supposed to guide us?”

“Y-yes! I’ll show the way!”

Etbum, startled, started walking toward the shelter.

As he guided them, he glanced back.

The Viper Battalion was surrounding the massive man.

“…… No way.”

Shaking his head, Etbum ran toward the shelter.

* * *

“We’ll search Baron Max’s territory. There might be something useful.”

“I’ll do my best to have that finished by the time you return.”

The potion to restore Luca’s life force had not yet been completed.

So, while the potion was being finished, Luca decided to search Baron Max’s house.

“By the way, what do you mean by something useful?”

Luca and Ottbo were heading to Baron Max’s estate in an auto-carriage.

Ottbo, driving, asked with a puzzled look.

Luca answered calmly.

“A registered auto-carriage.”

“Ah~.”

A registered auto-carriage can drive automatically on roads.

“You drive during the day, and at night, if we use another auto-carriage for auto-driving, we can arrive much faster.”

“True. Even at top speed, as long as I rest, I don’t have to worry about magic power.”

Even during the day, if Ottbo was tired, they could take another registered auto-carriage and rest while moving.

“It’d be nice if there was anything else useful, but… we shouldn’t expect much from a backwater baron’s house like this.”

At Luca’s flat tone, Ottbo couldn’t help laughing.

“Hey~ Still, there’s got to be something… What is that?”

Suddenly, Ottbo’s face turned stiff as he spoke.

Luca followed Ottbo’s gaze with a twisted lip.

“Ottbo. Stop.”

“Okay.”

After getting out of the auto-carriage, the two approached something at the side of the road.

When he checked it, Ottbo turned away and threw up.

“Ugh! Uweeeeh!”

“… Tsk.”

Luca struggled to suppress his own nausea.

It was a corpse.

“Uweeeh! Ugh!”

Even someone as gentle as Ottbo wouldn’t react that badly to a corpse alone.

The reason for Ottbo’s reaction lay in the state of the body.

“Disgusting.”

This was the southern region—hot and humid.

Even after a short time, bodies’ flesh and organs would rot with maggots swarming.

Of course, the bodies in Baron Max’s estate were in that state.

“U-ugh!”

Ottbo kept retching.

Luca sighed and patted his back.

“Go rest back there. I’ll look around inside first.”

“Ugh… Uweeh! Uuuu……”

Ottbo couldn’t even answer properly and hid behind a tree away from the corpse.

‘He’s still just a kid. Saw something he shouldn’t have.’

Shaking his head, Luca headed deeper into Baron Max’s estate.

The corpse outside was just the beginning.

The further in he went, the more corpses he saw.

Flies buzzed, maggots writhed, and the stench of rot assaulted his nose.

There were also beasts and monsters feeding on the corpses.

Of course, monsters and beasts that weren’t enhanced weren’t even a threat to Luca.

‘So that’s why they had prepared flammable materials.’

He hadn’t understood why there were flammable materials in Albino’s cargo auto-carriage, but now realized they had planned to burn the territory down along with the bodies.

‘Monsters. Well, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of their atrocities.’

Luca shook his head as he recalled the atrocities Albino had committed in the original story.

This was also why he didn’t want to save Ravinia Way.

‘To them, humans are nothing but prey.’

Life force lumps to multiply White Noise.

That was what humans were to Albino.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. Now that I know White Noise is weak to lightning power, there’s nothing for me to be afraid of.’

The scariest part about White Noise was the officers who revived again and again without any loss of power, even if killed.

But now that Whistle’s lightning power could burn them, there was no problem.

‘My only worry is whether I can make White Noise my own.’

In the original story, the protagonist used the power of “storage” to absorb the immense life force White Noise had amassed and put it to use elsewhere.

But Luca didn’t have storage.

Meaning, he’d have to use White Noise as it was, not adapt it.

‘Does that mean I’ll become like Albino?’

The side effect of White Noise was turning the skin and hair white, and eyes red.

Of course, for a man like Luca Traverse, it would look rather fitting, but he wasn’t interested in changing his appearance now.

‘Hmm… I need to find a solution.’

Luca casually looked up at the sky.

He could feel Whistle, watching over him from where she couldn’t be seen.

‘I wonder if Whistle can absorb it?’

If Whistle could absorb devil’s power, surely she could absorb White Noise too, he thought.

‘I’ll have to ask her later.’

With that in mind, Luca entered Baron Max’s mansion.

Fortunately, it was clean.

‘Should I call it modest, or just say he had no room for extravagance?’

Like the other local nobles, baron Max’s residence was small and shabby.

Certainly better than where commoners lived, but not rich enough for any luxuries.

‘Looks like he lived hand-to-mouth.’

After taxes, nothing was left—no opportunity for luxury.

Maybe that’s why he so badly wanted to expand his territory.

‘But there must be at least one auto-carriage, right?’

He remembered seeing them bring in necessities from other territories, so surely they hadn’t walked each time.

As Luca searched the mansion, he sensed movement outside.

It was a familiar feeling.

“…… Ottbo?”

Luca headed toward the source with a puzzled look.

There he found a tired Ottbo, who managed a faint smile at him.

“I just couldn’t sit still……”

“Ha. There must have been even worse things than the bodies.”

“I regretted it halfway… should have just stayed put……”

Smiling bitterly, Ottbo scanned the surroundings.

Then he pointed somewhere.

“The auto-carriage is probably there.”

“?”

Luca had only searched around the mansion, but Ottbo immediately spotted a small garage-like building a bit away.

“Huh. You have a good eye.”

“Hehe.”

To an expert, it was immediately obvious.

Luca and Ottbo entered the building suspected to be the garage.

As Ottbo guessed, there was an auto-carriage inside.

“Wow… This is really an old model.”

It was so old, even Ottbo was impressed.

‘Really old, huh.’

Even Luca, a layman in these things, could tell it was an old model.

It still resembled the original carriages he’d seen in movies.

“It feels like they just slapped an engine on a regular carriage. Wow, the drive magic is ancient. The magic stone is tiny. People really use stuff like this?”

Ottbo examined the auto-carriage with the gaze of someone viewing an artifact in a museum.

Luca asked, half-interested,

“Is it usable?”

“Yeah. Looks like it was used recently. But it’ll be slow.”

“Even if it’s slow, just being able to move at night is a plus.”

Ottbo nodded, then put it into the bracelet-shaped subspace pouch on his wrist.

He looked toward the mansion.

“Anything inside?”

“Nothing. Literally nothing.”

“Haha. Figures. Let’s go back, then?”

Luca and Ottbo once again passed through Max’s territory, with its decaying corpses, and returned to Potro village.

Seeing their early return, Bern raised an eyebrow.

“Hm? Back sooner than I thought.”

“There was nothing left in the territory.”

“That so? There was never anything there anyway.”

Bern shook his head, looking sorry.

Luca spoke bluntly.

“So the potion isn’t ready yet?”

“Heheh.”

In response, Bern chuckled and took out a flask, shaking it.

“It’s already finished. The potion to restore your life force— ‘Hyperblood’.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep