Only My Magic Levels Up - Chapter 209



Only Noblemtl

Episode 209: Wise Exploration Life (7)

Lilia, who had scattered the sword of light, shook her hand. When Galen lightly snapped his fingers, the magic of the Vanity Flame spread out and revived the lantern.

MacLaine, huddled in the corner of the conference room with two other elders who had not been involved in the fight, swallowed dryly as the two men turned their gazes toward him.

“Brother McClane?”

Lilia’s cheerful attitude was no different from before the battle. That made it even scarier. It seemed like she thought she had just done something trivial.

“Yes, yes.”

“Are the two people next to you also elders?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What is your name?”

The elders, who had been even more stiff than McClane, quickly called out my name like new recruits at full military training. Lilia nodded.

“Fortunately, you’re not on the list!”

“yes?”

“Oh, the list of people to be investigated.”

“You will now understand clearly why this investigation was necessary.”

Galen added a word and picked up a sword lying on the ground and threw it at McClane. McClane, who caught it absentmindedly, flinched.

“This, this is… … .”

“I believe that someone who is the elder of a prestigious family would know about horse medicine.”

“Other people, please hurry and check it out! There are a lot of them around!”

Lilia’s suggestion was practically coercion. The three elders had to touch each weapon of the people lined up outside the hallway, and their expressions became increasingly ashen.

“Do you have any excuses?”

“…doesn’t exist.”

McClane, who was the highest ranking among the three, answered in a dying voice. Of course, it couldn’t have been possible.

If I could bury Galen, Lilia, and the cavalry all together and make it seem like nothing ever happened, that would be one thing. Of course, if I tried, today would be the last day of the Mashrik family.

“In fact, one could point out that the three of you were just watching.”

“Hey, that’s okay. No matter what, we’re still family, right? It must have been hard to cut ties so mercilessly!”

The hearts of the three people who had dropped upon hearing Galen’s words barely returned to their original state upon hearing Lilia’s words. In a short period of time, they went back and forth between hell and heaven.

The archbishop suddenly starts talking about the cavalry, and the head of the household suddenly attacks the archbishop. Guys wearing armor I’ve never seen before rush out. It was only after their helmets came off that I realized they were the head of the household’s personal guard.

These were three people who put into practice the adage that if you stay still in a situation where you have no idea what’s going on, you’ll get somewhere in the middle.

Neutrality is not always an invincible shield. In this case, they should have at least pretended to stop it. There is no way it would be okay to attack the Archbishop. It would not have been unreasonable to think that they were all in the same boat just because they stood by.

Fortunately, Lilia was generous and forgiving, but the three knew that the price of forgiveness would have to be paid elsewhere. Galen knew that too.

“I told you, Lilia is too kind. Well, I guess she wouldn’t be protecting the Gaju gang now that their crimes have been clearly revealed. Right, you three?”

“yes.”

“Of course.”

“Then I guess I don’t need to tell you how you should act from now on.”

Galen took out a piece of paper from his bosom and handed it to me. It was a list of people to be investigated, that is, the names of the ‘seventeen people including the head of the household’ that Lilia had mentioned.

“I want you to start by arresting those who are on the list but aren’t lying here. For example, the general.”

“All right.”

The elders quickly flew away.

* * *

The Gapsa Parish, which had been turned upside down by Lilia’s sudden visit, was turned upside down once more soon after hearing of the commotion from the Mashrik family.

Priests, including the bishop, rushed to the mansion, but the guards who should have been there to block them did not come forward. In fact, they were not even there.

This was because the elders had declared a sort of martial law, and everyone in the mansion was tied up in one place.

If the head of the Mashurik family was the head of the household, then the main staff members were the main body. They had already been summoned by Lilia and had gained experience as cavalrymen, so they were quietly controlling their subordinates.

To ordinary people, the devil is a terrifying being that they don’t even want to think about. It was rare for a loyal subject to side with the family even after knowing that they were connected to the devil. Those diehard members had already defected to the royal guard and were receiving cavalry.

“Yes, Your Majesty? What the heck is this… … .”

“I told you, didn’t I? I’m going to go scold you. I’ve finished all the important parts, so I’ll just ask you to interrogate me!”

“Oh, I understand!”

All the people on the list have already been captured.

The clergy of the Gapsa diocese, who had lost face because the archbishop had been left to do all the work, decided to diligently clean up the mess.

Those of lower rank took the place of the guards and controlled the area around the mansion and watched over the household members.

Those in higher positions were very enthusiastic about interrogating. In other words, they were very enthusiastic about torturing.

“Eww!”

“I guess you still have the energy to scream. What, your fingernails are still there?”

“I will correct it!”

“AAAAAHHHH!”

The world is wide and there are many bad guys, so every parish is bound to have one or two priests who are skilled at torture.

There were such experts in the Gapsa diocese, and they caught the criminals very well.

Meanwhile, there were those who were not users of the magic weapon but knew of its existence and condoned it, and they were arrested on the spot.

The wind that started towards evening continued all night.

The priests were naturally busy with work, and their families were not in a position to sleep leisurely, so they trembled and prayed for the work to be over quickly.

Galen and Lilia, who were also not sleeping, called the elders again.

The time is late in the morning, well past midnight, and the place is the Duke’s office.

It was truly outrageous that a complete outsider, not even a member of the family, was rummaging through the head of the household’s office, but the guilty elders could only watch in silence.

“You don’t have to worry too much.”

Galen, who was reading a thick folder as if it were his own study, suddenly spoke. His gaze was still fixed on the document.

“Of course, you wouldn’t want an outsider to know important information that only the heads of the family have access to. But I don’t have any plans to use it.”

“…I never thought that would happen.”

“If your expression had been just a little brighter, I might have believed you.”

“… … .”

“But, really. If you wanted to screw the Mashrik family, you could have just blown them all away here. Before you even talk about the cavalry, I was also a victim of an attack by Deckard’s men.”

Galen blurted out the chilling words without a care. What was even more chilling was that they were not mere threats, but real. Cold sweat ran down the elders’ backs again.

“The church’s tone is to restrain itself from overreacting, and I’m also letting it slide for the sake of Lilia, so I hope the Mashrik family will behave well in the future. Be thankful that it didn’t turn out like the Spirius family.”

“Would you like to say this?”

From now on, they were told to listen carefully to what the church said, and the elders readily agreed. It was inevitable anyway.

If a statement is made in the church, the family’s reputation will be greatly damaged, and since they have lost both gold and jewels, their actual power will also be greatly damaged.

If we want to preserve even the remaining forces, we must cut off all responsibility from Deckard and Duke and their men.

To do so, paradoxically, the church’s statement had to be more affirmative. The statement that “the rotten part of the Mashrik family has been uprooted” also meant that what remained was clean.

The prestigious Mashrik family that had stood stiffly even in front of the church would no longer exist. It was a miserable reality, but it had to be accepted. As Galen said, it was better than the Spirius family, which had been ruined by the destruction of all of its high-ranking power.

“Oh, there’s just one thing I have to interfere with.”

“yes?”

“I heard that the Brave Mercenaries are quite famous in the Northwest.”

Galen snickered at the sight of the elders who couldn’t completely hide their startled reaction to the name that came out of nowhere.

“I don’t think the elders don’t know what the general knows, do they?”

“…I know.”

McClane hesitated for a moment, then admitted it readily.

Among the subjects of the investigation, Lilia first interrogated the Duke, the Elder, and the Chancellor, who were the most Altoran, and Galen also observed. If they found out the names there, there was no use denying them.

“You’ve been secretly funding me for almost ten years.”

“yes.”

“You should stop now.”

“… … .”

McClane couldn’t answer easily this time.

It was not uncommon for a renowned mercenary band to settle in a suitable city and transform themselves into a warrior family.

The Brave Mercenary Group was the result of nearly ten years of investment by the Mashrik family, a prominent family in the West but also bordering the Northwest, in an attempt to expand their influence to the Northwest.

He told me to just throw it into the air, but no matter what the situation was, I couldn’t just nod my head.

But Galen’s subsequent words instantly rendered McClane’s hesitation useless.

“Because they are our next target for subjugation.”

“…yes?”

“The source of the contamination was over there.”

A similar case was Dabia.

Originally, he was just a mercenary magician with friendly relations with the Murad family, but he was recruited by the Demon Sect a few years ago, and the cult used that friendship to naturally approach the upper echelons of the Murad family and successfully recruit Ivan.

Likewise, the Brave Mercenary Group was once incorporated into the Demonic Cult, and through that connection, they reached out to tempt the upper echelons of the Mashrik family.

There was nothing particularly strange about it, as it was cross-checked with information obtained by questioning Davia and Duke. The reason Galen and Lilia were trying to go through the northwest in the first place was because Davia mentioned the Brave Mercenary Group.

“this person…….”

Let me summarize it a bit. The elders trembled.

It was so frustrating to find out that the pet I had been feeding and raising with all my heart was actually the culprit that had caused my family to fall apart.

To be honest, Deckard and Duke, who fell for the temptation, didn’t do anything wrong, but Galen didn’t necessarily do a fact check.

“Since they were the ones receiving subsidies, they would have sent regular reports. They wouldn’t have written honestly, but they wouldn’t have written anything ridiculous either.”

Galen glanced at the bookshelf. There were so many documents that he couldn’t get a feel for them after just a quick glance.

“I would like you to find the relevant materials and hand them over to me.”

“I’ll give you as much as you want.”

McClane’s answer this time was without a trace of hesitation.

* * *

The church, which had been intensively interrogated until the next day and had punished everyone who had even the slightest connection with the cavalry, announced the full story of the incident that afternoon.

The city, which had already felt an ominous atmosphere the day before, was turned upside down. Fortunately, the entire family was not blown away like in the case of Spirius, so it did not spread to the point of total chaos.

First of all, it was stated that all those who had committed wrongdoings in the name of Archbishop Lilia would be punished, and the Mashrik family also desperately blew their trumpets that the remaining people were innocent, but no matter how hard they did, it was inevitable that the family’s image would be damaged.

It will be a long journey to completely resolve the situation, as they will have to worry about choosing a new head of household right away.

Of course, until then, Galen and Lilia had nothing to worry about.

The two stayed in Gapsa for three more days.

I took a break, walked around the city, and comforted the anxious citizens. I also observed whether there were any problems between the church and the family.

I wrote a report to Miriam and sent it south, and asked her to gather information from the north through the Kalia upper class. Since a mercenary group, not an individual, could not disappear overnight, I planned to go there and sort things out right away.

After finishing their business, the two men set off north. This time, of course, they traveled by carriage.

On the second day we crossed the western and northwestern borders, and another day passed.

When evening came and they entered the inn, a messenger from the upper part of Kalia came to see them.

“Here, here’s the information you asked for.”

“Thank you.”

Since it was a simple request to just report on the Brave Mercenary Group’s current situation, the entire report was contained on one page.

Lilia, who had been sitting next to him and looking around, tilted her head. Galen called the messenger who had not yet retreated and was waiting with his hands clasped politely.

“Are you from the Northwest?”

“Yes. I am a native.”

“Does the word ‘plateau’ have any special meaning here?”

It was because the current location of the mercenary group was only written as a plateau.

“Oh, when you talk about a place, if you just say the plateau, it only refers to one place. It’s almost like there’s no other place mentioned.”

“I guess it’s a famous place.”

“I guess it’s because it’s a unique terrain. Fairies live there too… … .”

“Are you a fairy?”

Lilia’s eyes sparkled.