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Volume 2 Chapter 2 Part 5

「Better and more fair… 」

Elmer muttered dumbfoundedly.

「Ah, yes, I will fight head-on as a heavy knight of Waldrind and kill the Baron. 」

Elmer pondered over Franz’s words.

「If you kill the Earl of Artuk, then the entire country is going to be mobilized against us. 」

Yana said while putting her hand on Elmer’s arm.

「But if you go and defeat the Baron and steal the his Crest from him, we will be able to achieve our goal. 」

「If we continue to hunt Werewolves in such a half-hearted manner, then we are just going to waste even more time than we already did. At this rate, we are running a serious risk of Lady Marine cutting us off from her Crest and its protective power. And if that happens, then there is no longer going to be any reason for you to cultivate your Crest for her sake. 」

Franz ignored the witch and insisted on Elmer.

「Let us go back and test the power of your newly-grown Crest then. 」

Yana put her face close to Elmer’s ear and whispered into it.
「Yes, you are right… 」

Elmer nodded absent-mindedly.

「It’s dangerous to stay here. The Werewolves might come back with their pack to hunt us down. 」

「Yes, it is going to be dangerous. 」

Elmer nodded again, clearly not listening to Frantz’s words.

「Now, let us be on our way. 」

Then Yana stood in front of Elmer and kissed him on the lips, and Elmer immediately became ecstatic, and his face felt as if it was on fire.

(Isn’t Elmer being manipulated by this witch?)

Looking at the exchange between the two, Franz thought to himself as such.

Elmer returned to Waldrind from the battle of Selvis more than ten days after his main force had returned home. As his second-in-command and best friend, Franz was delighted to see that he has returned safe and sound, but ever since he came back, Elmer’s behavior was growing increasingly strange by the day, and he also brought this Yana woman with him. Then Elmer proceeded to tell Frantz about everything that has happened ever since he got separated from the main part of his unit.
And one of the things that he said was:

「Unless Artuk is destroyed, Waldrind and the Factory Alliance have no future. 」

Incidentally, Frantz was of the same opinion about this matter. In the battle of Selvis, the Knights of Waldrind fell victim to the machinations of Vilar, Earl of Artuk, and suffered a crushing defeat because of him. Selvis has also become a member of the Fantasia Union, and Clovis and Forvis are also being threatened. If the thing continued to progress at the current pace, then eventually Marine Kraische, the current leader of the Factory Alliance was going to lose all of the momentum at which she was going, leading to the collapse of the Alliance as a whole.

But there has to be something that hey can do to prevent that from happening, right?

「I have a plan. 」

Elmer confided in Frantz one day.

「If successful, Artuk will be in chaos, and may even self-destruct. 」

Moreover, he also said that because there are influential collaborators engaged in that plan of his, the probability of success was pretty high.

Franz said that if he really had such a plan, then he should have presented it to Lady Marine, but Elmer denied it. He said that there was no way for someone like Lady Marine, who was known for her obsessive personality to accept his plan, which was at its core very anty-monarchy.

「The burden of this plan is the one that I need to bear alone. 」

He could clearly remember Elmer’s expression at that time when he spoke those words. It was an expression of a man who was prepared to do everything that he needed to do in order to see his ambition fulfilled.

Elmer shared no plans with Frantz at that time.

However, if he decided to move on his own, it would be a violation of the knight order’s discipline. It wouldn’t be strange if his Crest would be taken away from him just because of that.

Franz was trying to persuade him to desist multiple times, but Elmer’s resolve did not change in the slightest, and that is why Frantz has also made up his mind. He decided to share his fate with his captain and best friend, Elmer. From then on he took on a proactive role, persuading trusted subordinates and close associates to join him in his plans, and in the end, he gained thirteen comrades and infiltrated the territory of Artuk together with them.

The full details of the plan were revealed only after crossing the border, and it turned out that it was truly a terrifying undertaking, and that even if they managed to succeed, their success would not be something that should be celebrated, because it would result in great chaos indeed.

Franz used to be excited when he was first informed of the plan, but as the plan got put into action, his excitement began to wane and dwindle. At the same time, his earlier suspicions about the witch named Yana were growing stronger.

Apparently, the plan wasn’t Elmer’s, but Yana’s. Why this witch is cooperating with Elmer was a complete mystery to him though. The two seemed to love each other, but whenever he was looking at them when they were together, he could feel a sense of incongruity.

Yana might be using Elmer for some ulterior purpose, but even with the suspicions from earlier still floating in his mind, he did not decide to leave Elmer’s side.

(I can no longer turn back.)

Franz knows it very well.

If the plan is not carried out, the heavy knights of Waldrind and their leader would sooner or later lose their honor, and for him, such an outcome was utterly unacceptable.

* * *

「It’s really nice of you to come all this way here. You are all most welcome. 」

A woman with a plump, womanly figure spread her arms wide and welcomed Siluca and others. She is the werewolf queen Clara. To her left and right were several young men and women.

There were now in a Werewolf village about five days of travel west of the village of the witches. The number of houses in the village was about 100, and the entire place looked like it was well-fortified.

「How’s the Earl doing these days? I heard he defeated the heavy knights of Waldrind the other day. He is thin and looks weak, so I thought that he was going to have more trouble dealing with them in a full-fledged battle, but it’s nice to see that I was mistaken. We made a pact with him, so we will come to his aid if he ever needs it, but whoever is going to become the Lord of these lands, our daily lives will not change much because of it. 」

As she talked non-stop without any breaks, the queen grabbed Siluca’s shoulders and forcibly brought her to the mansion. Siluca was then led into a room with a large table. The table was piled high with delicacies and lined with bottles of booze. Siluca is forced into one of the chairs. Theo, Irvin, and Priscilla were also made to sit separately. The men and women who guided the three of them fought for a while about who was going to sit in an empty seat. Next to Siluca, two young men who had fought and lost to an older man for the seat next to Priscilla sat down reluctantly.

「Too bad. 」

Siluca whispered so that only the two of them could hear her.

「No, no, it’s not like that. 」

「We are still young. 」
They hurriedly said, but it wasn’t even a good excuse. I wanted to explore a lot of what it meant for both of them, but right now Siluca is acting as Artuk’s emissary, and the Werewolf queen is a powerful figure in the country. She didn’t want to ruin the good mood they were having, so she decided to let it go.

「These are all my children. 」

Clara laughed and spread her arms wide.

「All of them… your children? 」

Siluca counted how many there were, and there were seven in total. Four men and three women. Two of the women seemed to be twins and had almost the same figure.

The twins had bluish-gray hair that were tied down on one side of their heads. That was probably a method that they employed to make it easier for people to guess which of them was which.

Of course, they are all brothers and sisters, so it was a given that they would have a lot in common.