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Chapter 489: Conservation

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

When we returned to the Rhino Bar, Katerina still had a dazed and panicky expression as if she had received a serious psychological impact.

She learned that her father, Old Barton, had hidden many things from her. She learned that she wasn’t human. Yet, she was only panicky, but hadn’t utterly collapsed. This already proved that while she might have seemed weak on the surface, she was actually quite strong inside.

But, the moment she entered the bar, her anxiety still caused her to instinctively look towards her father in search of assistance.

The bar owner Old Barton felt pain in his heart to see his daughter with such an expression. He then immediately glared at me. As for all the other patrons of the bar? They didn’t care one bit why the barkeep’s daughter and a drunkard had suddenly disappeared together and then reappeared. They were all busy with their own affairs.

And right now, in the middle of the bar room, two merchants traveling on foot and wearing plain clothes were tied up on some chairs. Their personal items were placed on a nearby table, and the most obvious item among them was a black and silver skeleton head accessory. This was the symbol of the Death Council.

It would seem that we had overanalyzed things. This time, the dark cultists from the Death Council weren’t locals at all. Instead, they were traveling merchants that could easily move around freely in disguise. And since I had no recollection of their faces, they must have camped outside the town rather than staying at a tavern inside town.

This was also something that I’d expected. I had already investigated the few nearby small towns, but hadn’t discovered a single undead mage. However, the fact that they had been camping outside the town also faintly hinted at another truth—since these two obviously didn’t have enough of a power level to survive outside in the wild by themselves, the Death Council probably had many people, and perhaps even an entire independent base. Then, this meant things would become complex.

“How troublesome. It doesn’t seem that there’s only a few scattered dark cultists; the Death Council is actually well organized in the area. These two are probably nothing more than scouts, which means the dragon lich commotion has likely alerted them. The Death Council will probably take action at any moment.”

I arrived at such a conclusion in just a short moment. All this meant was that I had become far too experienced at meeting and dealing with trouble. I doubted that these novices would be able to guess all this, however. Right now, I was trying to think of a way to give these novices a hint without revealing myself so that they could swiftly obtain this information and make suitable preparations…

“I… I surrender, don’t kill me! There’s fifty of us in total. Priest Blackeye is our leader; he’s a Saint-ranked undead mage.”

Alright then, I supposed that this idiot was probably just an ordinary person not long ago. Even though stalling for time and waiting for help to arrive would be the best decision for this Death Council disciple right now, he actually sold out his allies so easily? It would be quite difficult to expect anyone to come save him now… And then, I glanced at everyone else who had expressions saying “Oh, that’s how it was…?”

“Is this a contest to see who’s more of an idiot?”

“Don’t compare them to you. That’s completely unfair. Is there anyone in the world that has more experience than you in causing trouble and being hunted by others?”

Seeing how the youngsters were hurriedly trying to interrogate the two Death Council disciples, I shook my head helplessly, and focused on Old Barton instead. Right now, the black-clad Old Barton was so emotional that he was constantly trembling. If I didn’t stop him now, there would probably be a nice family drama to watch soon…

“Wait a moment, why would I stop him? Old Barton was forcing me to wash dishes for him just yesterday. I’m still his master who taught him fighting techniques, so that makes me at least half a teacher to him. He actually dares to treat his teacher like that? How inhumane!”

“…Didn’t you say that you would wash dishes in order to pay off your debts and bar tab? As for one’s attitude towards their teacher, I have so many comments I want to make that I don’t know where to even start. The only part I agree with is that there’s no reason to stop him. Come, let’s watch and enjoy the show. Yep, it’s definitely not because I’m angry at him for the evil act of attempting to use expired milk to feed the cat.”

The silly cat instantly revealed certain things, but we then exchanged glances and simultaneously pointed at the bald Old Barton.

“See, that old baldie there is Barton Anton.”

Barton paused in surprise for a moment, but he didn’t get to react when there came a fragrant breeze, together with a soft sensation that caused him to stay still.

“Wahh, my poor child, you’ve become so old already, you’ve been through so much… Daddy… Mommy’s here now, so go ahead and stay with Mommy from now on. Mommy won’t let anyone else bully you.”

A golden-haired girl who appeared no more than twenty years old was now hugging a middle-aged bald man and shouting about how “her son had gone through so much.” This scene was so beautiful that I almost spat my drink out even though I was expecting it.

And since we were like that even though we were expecting such a scene, everyone else in the bar had even more outrageous reactions. There were plenty that spat out their drinks, and one unlucky dwarf even tore off a piece of his wooden mug and swallowed it before he noticed.

“Ptui, I, Old Entric, was so startled by this! Barton, you little brat, this is your mom? She looks so much younger than you, yep, and a lot prettier too! Are you really her son? Glorious Eich above us, there’s such a tremendous difference.”

“You idiot, don’t you see that she has pointy ears, which means she’s an elf? How could an elf give birth to a pure human? Inconceivable! Just what race could Barton’s father have been?”

“Ha, I don’t know what race his father was, but his father was definitely ugly, even uglier than Old Entric. Otherwise, how could such a beautiful mother have such an ugly son?”

“Ptui!”

Alright then, as expected of the dwarves who were all so direct. The dwarf shieldbearer and his companions’ comments caused a second round of spitting out drinks.

At this moment, everyone had forgotten about the two criminals being interrogated. The bar owner vicious in appearance actually had such a flowery mother? What gossip could possibly be more interesting than this?

Right now, Old Barton was probably the most pitiful of all. At first, he had been too startled to react, and right now he wasn’t moving, though not because of the beautiful elf woman’s allure. It was because it was impossible for him to break free.

Yep, although he was a relatively outstanding warrior, Barton discovered that his arm was stuck in a rattlesnake-like vicegrip. His bones were making creaking sounds and his entire body was in pain. Rather than breaking free, if this hug went on for any longer, he would likely soon be suffocating to death.

Barton no longer even had any energy to speak up. In his despair, he glanced over at his always unreliable “teacher”. Seeing that I was nodding at him, indicating that I understood, Barton finally felt some relief.

“Barton must be so happy right now. He doesn’t want us to interrupt their family reunion. Everyone, back off a little and give them a little privacy.”

“Ptui!”

This time, Old Barton was the one who spat something out, most likely his blood. Er, it really was his blood, and the amount of blood he was spewing seemed a little exaggerated…

“Ahh, hurry and save him!”

And so, with the blood-spitting old baldie at the center of it all, the entire bar sunk into utter chaos.

Cough, after things finally calmed down, meaning that I had finally enjoyed enough of the show, I finally stopped the dragon lich who was “overflowing with motherly love”, preventing him from using too much strength with his emotional embrace and accidentally crushing his only descendant to death.

“This time, I bet he’ll learn how to respect his teacher, hah! Male students are great, they’re a lot sturdier and much harder to kill. Previously, my teaching others was a failure because I was too soft on all the girls! Yep, that’s how it is.”

“…I don’t know how successful your teaching methods are, but I do know that you’re about to suffer great misfortune. Just look behind you.”

Alright then, when I turned around, I saw Katerina glaring at me viciously, her hand right on my waist and about to attack me, with her eyes seeming to contain a grudge as if I was some evil person who had done a greatly villainous deed.

“You dare to call yourself a good person?”

I directly ignored the silly cat’s comment. I was such a good person who was simply always misunderstood…

More than half an hour later, after we wasted a lot of time on explaining everything that happened (Barton: Is this supposed to be my fault? You weren’t really going to watch me die, were you?), we finally returned to the main topic.

Since the Death Council hadn’t come yet even after more than half an hour, it seemed unlikely that the Death Council would be paying the bar a direct visit. Still, it would be impossible to hide the fact that such a large group of people had captured two of their scouts. And once we obtained more information from the captured Death Council scouts, we started regretting having taken these scouts here.

Our previous guess wasn’t off the mark at all. The Death Council’s activities in the mortal plane only had two objectives: first, to obtain a powerful undead creature, and second, to open a Dimensional Door to the Death Planes so that even more Undead Calamities could descend. Yet, learning about the powerful ancient dragon’s corpse in the ruins here wasn’t actually their main objective.

In their minds, a small matter like “picking up some bones” wouldn’t require a high-level priest with more than fifty followers. Their real objective was a ruin in the nearby Halen Mountains. It was said that the dimensional space around that area was quite unsteady, making that location highly suitable to establish a new Dimensional Door.

After hearing this, while the others didn’t have much of a reaction, Old Barton who had just recovered his complexion instantly made an ugly expression. I suddenly recalled how Old Barton had previously mentioned to me that he found Katerina in ancient ruins.

“Could it be that much of a coincidence…?”

But seeing how Barton’s expression was worsening and that he kept sneaking peeks at Katerina, unable to hide his concern, it would seem that I had unfortunately hit the mark again. In that case, the goal of those who wanted to obtain those ruins was quite obvious.

“Ruins from the scholars’ generation? Many strange and wondrous items in the Holy War were all discovered from such locations. Perhaps there are even some weapons hidden there that can affect an entire war. Even without our contract with Kalumandas, the God of Wisdom, we couldn’t possibly allow the Death Council to obtain those ruins.”

As for the adventurers, even if they didn’t know what ruins from the Haletdam generation truly represented, just the possibility of a Death Plane Dimensional Door opening up right next to their home would have incredibly obvious consequences.

“We absolutely have to stop them!”

Yet I focused on other things instead. And if it wasn’t for the fact that people were watching, I even would have used soul searching secret techniques to completely drain all the secrets from these two Death Council disciples.

It wasn’t suitable for me to be standing out, so I had Old Barton speak up in my stead.

“Opening a Dimensional Door requires a large amount of sacrifices. Don’t tell me that you’ve already prepared the sacrifices?”

Everyone’s expressions flickered upon hearing this. The Holy War had been going on for so many years now, and the undead and demons were infamous for greatly desiring soul sacrifices. Could it be that the Death Council hadn’t been active here only for the sake of the dragon bones?

“We… we’ve brought many slaves with us.”

“You captured them around here?” Old Barton viciously glared at the pudgy Death Council disciple.

The disciple didn’t dare to look Barton in the eyes, and lowered his head. However, Barton dragged his face up again by the collar and roared thunderously into his ears, “You’ve already attacked the nearby villages?! You captured people to use as sacrifices?!”

The fatty lifted into the air was barely even able to breathe. He kept kicking the air as he was no longer in contact with the ground, but he still managed to hurriedly nod.

“We… we originally didn’t want to come here, but Sir Blackeye said that there weren’t enough sacrifices, so he wanted us to…”

Everyone then looked at the skinny dark disciple, who hurriedly nodded as well and confirmed this information.

Now then, this was truly a great deal of trouble. Still, I needed even more information.

“A one-way dimensional connection is meaningless. Which Undead Plane are you connecting to? Which Undead Emperor is behind this affair, do you guys know?”

As expected, both disciples shook their heads. However, the skinny one suddenly seemed to recall something. “I heard Sir Blackeye mention that as long as we completed this mission, Emperor Conservation’s high-ranked subordinate, General Wuer, would give all of us eternal life.”

“Emperor Conservation? Was there an Undead Emperor by the name of Conservation? Why do I have a premonition that I’m going to be misfortunate again?”