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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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The Dragon Priestess, seemingly frustrated by the lack of communication, sighed and put her hand to her forehead. Her eyebrows furrowed as if she had a headache.
“I apologize.”
“No, it’s alright.”
The Dragon Priestess forced out an apology.
Honestly, I wasn’t particularly moved.
If anything, I was mildly intrigued by the fact that dragon-kin had to spread their fingers when touching their foreheads because of their horns.
“So, you were asking me to explain why the pirates came to Royen, right?”
“Yes, the pirates attacked Royen first, then Salamander, and then Royen again.”
“That’s right.”
The saying “hitting where it hurts” might apply to people, but it doesn’t really resonate with a town like this.
Royen was already devastated, there wouldn’t be much left to gain from another attack.
They just came to kill dragon-kin.
“Why didn’t they go to Salamander? Based on the pirates’ movements, wouldn’t Salamander be more likely to be attacked?”
Did they think these attacks were like a chess game, taking turns? But the cardinal continued to support his opinion.
“The pirates won’t come to Royen anymore. They’ve already been here twice and confirmed there’s nothing left to gain. There’s no need for them to come a third time.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’re being unreasonable!”
The cardinal scoffed, telling me not to say such nonsense.
He probably thought that no matter what I said, he wouldn’t believe me and would just raise his voice.
“Well, you’re not here to stop the pirates, but to confirm if the pirates were really humans. That’s why you’re safely rummaging through a place that’s already over.”
“……”
“So, did you find anything?”
“Cardinal, please stop.”
The cardinal finally shut his mouth at the Dragon Priestess’s warning.
Perhaps because he believed in the Dragon God, he was quite different from the Batian Paladins I knew.
“If you don’t mind, could you please explain?”
The Dragon Priestess was demure yet ashamed of her rudeness.
She felt similar yet different from Lucia, our saint, and I began to speak.
“There are two reasons. First, unlike the cardinal, I believe the pirates will return to Royen, not Salamander.”
This was the conclusion Eve, Sen, and I had reached while in the carriage to Royen.
Mainly, I suggested ideas, and they examined the logic.
“The pirates attacked Royen twice. They deliberately returned to Royen, which had already been completely destroyed by shelling in the first attack.”
“…What’s the meaning of that?”
“The point is that it was a completely unprofitable action for the pirates.”
No matter how much I thought about it, there was no reason.
Neither Sen, who was from the Chokugen Faction, nor Eve, with her vast knowledge, could find a reason.
There was no merit in the pirates plundering a place they had already plundered so recently.
Royen was like a forbidden fruit.
Difficult to pick, but ultimately tasteless.
Because they had already attacked once, many Inquisitors were stationed there, but there was nothing to gain.
At best, the Inquisitors’ supplies?
What use would they have for hardtack and rations?
It would be much easier and more profitable to dock in another sea area and raid a nearby village.
The reason they didn’t do that.
“We think there’s no reason at all. No profit either. Yet, the pirates deliberately attacked Royen again.”
I glanced at the city under reconstruction.
The faces of the people, exhausted from the continuous attacks, and the excessive number of Inquisitors and guards.
“Fortunately, we already have the answer. Just look at the town and follow the trail, assuming that this sight is the result the pirates wanted.”
I felt like a teacher.
The Dragon Priestess and the cardinal were listening to me with dazed expressions.
So, I declared, as if waking them from a dream,
“They wanted more troops to come to Royen.”
“What? Why?”
The Dragon Priestess reacted immediately.
Honestly, I had a hunch, but I couldn’t say it now.
At least not in the presence of the cardinal.
This wasn’t something we deduced, but information from the Rin of the second iteration and my own experience.
“Well…”
So I just smiled and brushed it off.
The cardinal immediately scoffed and sneered, but the Dragon Priestess seemed to notice that I was hiding something.
“What’s the second reason?”
I smoothly moved on to the second reason, which I had no intention of explaining.
“To find the hidden pirates.”
This was something I had to show rather than explain, so I turned around.
Sen would probably be running around diligently, searching.
In the second attack on Royen, they were helpless against the combined attack of the pirates hidden inside.
It would be the same this time.
And I thought it would be the dragon-kin.
‘It’s too risky for humans or other races to hide in Royen. They’ll probably be hiding as workers who came to help with the reconstruction.’
As expected, Sen was running around like a child who had come to the workshop with her father, stirring up the dragon-kin.
Since they tended to look down on and ignore humans, they naturally cursed at her, but the girl’s cold eyes, honed in the Chokugen Faction, continued to chase the truth.
Eve was panting behind her, following her.
As soon as Sen saw me with the Dragon Priestess and the cardinal, she stopped in front of me and nodded.
“Found them. Four in total.”
“Four? That’s less than I thought. There’s a possibility that they’re hiding somewhere else.”
“There would be some hiding in case they’re discovered.”
Sen nodded in agreement and immediately pulled out a dagger from her bosom.
“I’ll take two, so Daniel can take two. The dragon-kin with the red cloth around his neck carrying lumber under the watchtower, and the bald one building the fence on the opposite side.”
“Confirmed.”
“You! What are you doing!”
The cardinal immediately stepped forward and yelled at Sen, who held a dagger in each hand, and me, who slowly placed my hand on my sword.
But mere shouting couldn’t stop us.
Sen’s daggers flew.
At the same time, I turned and headed towards the watchtower.
“Gah!”
“Ugh!”
I heard the rough screams of two dragon-kin, presumably hit by the daggers. The two, who hadn’t yet grasped the situation, were within range.
Their time stopped.
The rest was easy.
Just subdue them and bring them back.
I stabbed them with my sword just in case they went berserk, so they groaned in pain but also cried out in frustration.
“Why! Why are you doing this to us!”
“What is this! This is how you treat us after we worked so hard!”
“Sob! This is unfair!”
“Are you just going to watch as humans treat us like this?!”
The four dragon-kin shouted so loudly that the entire workshop could hear them, and the other dragon-kin started looking at us with displeasure.
“If you don’t give us a valid reason, your pathetic lives end here.”
Cardinal Theosander, in particular, glared at us menacingly as if he had finally found an opportunity.
However, Sen was not intimidated at all and explained in the midst of the lava-like killing intent.
“Pirates mostly live on deck, so their skin is much darker. They also have fewer scales than other dragon-kin.”
“Just because of that…!”
The cardinal tried to interrupt Sen, but she continued as if she hadn’t heard anything.
“They have a strong sense of camaraderie. They carve a unique mark on their bodies to symbolize that they are family on the same ship. These people have the same mark on the soles of their feet, shoulders, calves, and palms.”
At her words, the cardinal immediately went and roughly checked the bodies of the dragon-kin.
They tried to resist, but there were indeed identical marks carved on their bodies.
Sen covered her nose and gave the last reason in a dull voice.
“Lastly, the smell of blood is too strong. It’s been ten days since Royen was attacked, but the scent still lingers. I heard that dragon-kin and pirates don’t like to wash, but they should have washed more thoroughly.”
Dragon-kin hate water, and pirates just live as they are.
Even the dragon-kin, whose sense of smell is better than humans, didn’t notice it, and honestly, I didn’t know either, but Sen, who had lived in a world reeking of blood, seemed to feel it.
“And this is a personal matter.”
Sen, still covering her nose, slowly approached the bald dragon-kin I had brought.
She held the dagger in reverse grip and looked down at him, asking,
“Why do you have the side effects of the drug used by the members of the Chokugen Faction?”
“……”
“It’s obvious that you’re pretending because your emotions are dead. You shaved your head because your hair color faded, but didn’t you have time today? It’s grown a little.”
Sen plucked a slightly grown hair. It was a pure white hair that had lost its color.
“I’ve never heard of there being a dragon-kin in the Chokugen Faction.”
The killing intent that erupted momentarily was enough to surprise even Cardinal Theosander, who was nearby.
The remaining pirates were terrified, but only the dragon-kin Sen pointed at silently looked up at her.
“I hope you don’t use the torture methods you learned.”
Sen, staring at him with menacing eyes, had returned to her former assassin self.
Of course, I didn’t let Sen torture him.
Even though they were pirates, the Dragon Priestess refused, saying she couldn’t go as far as torture, and I also didn’t want Sen to relive her memories of the Chokugen Faction.
Sen, unlike usual, made even the escorts who came with her flinch with her fierce words, saying that she would pull out the dragon-kin’s claws and nail him down.
It was only natural that they would be surprised to see the innocent child who had been bouncing around excitedly at the sight of the wyvern before we got on the carriage suddenly change like this.
Anyway, they were restrained.
We checked the marks on the bodies of the pirates who had attacked before, and they were the same, so it wasn’t that difficult to find them.
That’s probably why they carved the marks on places that aren’t easily visible, like the soles of their feet.
Pirates sometimes acted inefficiently and foolishly.
They would shout that it was the way of the sea, that it was romantic, but it didn’t look very romantic from an outsider’s perspective.
Anyway, we tied up the pirates, who were now silently keeping their mouths shut, and I, Sen, and the Dragon Priestess’s escorts started searching.
No matter how I thought about it, this number wasn’t enough for the pirates to do anything. Thinking that, we went out to the nearby plains.
At a glance, the wide open plains didn’t seem to have anything.
There were only wild animals roaming around and some bumpy rocks.
But Sen deliberately chose this place.
“A place that looks like nothing on the outside is the easiest place to hide. Since there was someone from the Chokugen Faction, they probably taught him camouflage techniques.”
“……”
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