The Extra Strategist’s Royal Road Chapter 219

The Extra Strategist’s Royal Road Chapter 219

At the entrance, we soon discovered Master Ilya facing off against hundreds of opponents.

Even for Master Ilya, it was too much to handle alone in both quantity and quality, but fortunately, the opponent seemed to be showing off by engaging in one-on-one combat.

The opponent’s appearance matched that of Alaga, whom we found out about while investigating earlier.

With his distinctive spotted pattern – whether due to being a mixed-blood beast-person with strong beast blood, or just naturally hairy – he looked like a pure-blooded beast-person at first glance.

He was fiercely pushing Master Ilya back.

“Hiyah!”

Clang! His strength must have been exceptional, as master couldn’t fully deflect the attacks and was being knocked around.

This made Alaga even more arrogant, further increasing his momentum.

There were two reasons why time was being delayed despite this.

First, the opponent wasn’t aiming for vital points out of caution for the teleportation scroll.

The opponent wanted complete suppression and capture to prevent the teleportation scroll from activating. With such a handicap, the fight couldn’t end quickly.

‘Still, he’s quite strong.’

As expected of an upper Alliances leader. His martial arts level seemed higher than mine. Moreover, he seemed experienced in fighting humans, with few openings in his movements.

However, even so, it wasn’t beyond Master Ilya’s ability to subdue him.

The reason for dragging out the fight was to boost the opponent’s momentum and continue the one-on-one battle.

The opponent seemed to be slowly catching on to this intelligent stalling tactic.

“You… You’re not under the delusion that you can escape just by stalling for time like this, are you?!”

“Heh, if you had noticed a bit sooner, it might have been impossible.”

“What…!?”

That’s when Ash and I burst in.

“Hup!”

I created three small explosion magic spears and threw them at the group while joining up with my master.

Boom! When the explosions occurred, the opponents temporarily fell into confusion.

“Master, let’s escape quickly!”

“What about Yumir? Couldn’t you find her?”

“Unfortunately not. But we did get some clues.”

“Hmm…! That might actually be for the better.”

“Yes.”

If Yumir had been here, the difficulty of escaping would have increased dozens of times.

On the other hand, without Yumir, escaping was quite easy now.

If worse came to worst, we could just end ourselves.

“Let’s go!”

The opponent soon regained their senses and launched a wave of magical attacks.

Only after negating everything with an aura barrier could we enter the upward passage.

“How dare you defile my paradise…! Just wait. I’ll definitely tear out your throats! Definitely!”

Leaving behind Alaga who was spouting such third-rate villain lines, we began quickly ascending the passage we had come through.

For some reason, the opponent didn’t pursue us.

Ash, who had been watching our rear, let out a sigh of relief.

“Phew! This is unexpectedly anticlimactic. Did they concentrate their forces at the exit? No, even so, there’s no reason not to chase us from behind.”

“There must be another definite method.”

“Another method? What’s that?”

I glanced up slightly.

It would take about 10 more minutes to reach the underground market above. If the opponent truly wanted to catch us, they should fight in this enclosed passage.

The fact that they didn’t, meant they had other confidence. For instance, destroying this entire passage with us in it.

Rumble! Sure enough, the passage began to collapse with tremors.

“Tch! So that’s why they didn’t pursue.”

I thought this might be some kind of last resort. Even from the opponent’s perspective, if this passage collapses, it would take over a month to restore.

During that time, the underground city would be completely cut off from the outside.

This would probably only be activated in one case: if the underground city’s slaves revolted.

The opponent used such a last resort just to deal with us.

It meant they were both that angry and inexperienced with infiltrations to the point they couldn’t judge calmly.

“Well, it’s actually fortunate we didn’t find Ms. Yumir.”

“That’s true.”

The Yumir rescue operation had already failed when Elliot’s group independently escaped first.

The best scenario would have been for us, smaller in number, to escape with Yumir first, followed by Elliot’s group, but things got complicated when it happened in reverse.

We had to helplessly watch the collapsing passage. No matter how skilled we were, we couldn’t stop this.

“Those crazy bastards! Ars! Can you take those confidential documents with you through the teleportation scroll?”

“I’m not sure. Probably possible though.”

Just in case, I decided to put the important documents inside my clothes.

“Then we at least have some achievement. See you above ground, Ars.”

Swoosh! Ash disappeared just before the rocks fell on his head. Master also vanished as the teleportation scroll activated before being crushed by rocks.

I held the confidential documents tightly and waited for my teleportation scroll to activate.

***

“Damn it!”

Alaga was displaying his anger without filter.

Initially, he approached with a light mindset of hunting rats, but he quickly realized the situation wasn’t so simple when he saw the corpses of Alliance executives killed by Ilya.

An attack by incredibly skilled individuals.

In this situation, Alaga’s response was terribly poor.

First, engaging in one-on-one combat with Ilya. While partly due to his competitive spirit, this was primarily for political reasons.

By personally dealing with Ilya, who had killed several executives, he aimed to uphold the Alliance’s dignity and demonstrate his own strength.

Though a clever choice, it ultimately failed as Ilya’s skills far exceeded his expectations.

His second mistake was letting his anger get the better of him and destroying the passage.

“Bury them all!”

“B-but Brother Alaga, that’s our last resort. It’ll put us in a difficult situation too. Whether we can survive on stored food until the passage is rebuilt…”

Opposing opinions poured in.

“The enemy is likely using teleportation scroll anyway! We lose more than we gain by destroying the passage. Let the underground market’s guards handle pursuing them!”

“We’ve finished our preparations too! If we pursue them now, we can surround them from front and back together with the market guards!”

Though these were loyal and logical arguments, Alaga couldn’t stand them, feeling as if they were challenging his authority.

“Shut up! Do it now! Are you saying you won’t follow my orders?!”

“N-no, sir!”

After destroying the passage, Alaga returned to his base, fuming. By then, he had cooled down somewhat.

While internally regretting if destroying the passage might have been excessive, his eyes widened at seeing his room in chaos.

“Those bastards!?”

His ransacked base. Alaga hurriedly checked for the confidential documents, but they were nowhere to be found as Ash had taken them all.

While primarily due to leaving the base empty, fundamentally it was due to his dangerous complacency in leaving such confidential documents without proper security.

“It’s over…!”

There was much sensitive information there. Everything from matters concerning the Forest of Lament to the Alliance’s involvement in the Ellan Kingdom’s succession dispute.

The problem was that he couldn’t inform those above ground about the leaked confidential information.

So the upper Alliances would proceed as planned, not realizing the information had been leaked.

If things went wrong because of this incident, he would likely be eliminated by the upper Alliances.

Gulp! Alaga swallowed dry saliva.

He could only pray that those who infiltrated had no connection to the Ellan Kingdom.

He turned pale as he made this desperate wish.

* * *

With a floating sensation, my vision flipped.

I had moved from the dark passage to the location where I used the teleportation scroll.

“Ugh!”

Whether a side effect of teleportation, I felt nauseous for a moment. Ash was continuously vomiting without pause. In contrast, Master Ilya was smiling as if she had just experienced something rare.

“Ars, let’s move quickly. We might catch unwanted attention.”

“J-just a moment. Ugh!”

I waited for my stomach to settle before moving.

At the abandoned mansion that served as our base, Elena’s group, who had finished their operation, was waiting. It seemed there had been quite a battle, as Gunther was covered in wounds and receiving treatment from Sophia.

“You’re back!”

Gaspar, who came out to greet us with a bright face, frowned when he noticed Yumir wasn’t there.

“What? So she wasn’t there after all?”

Gaspar seemed to have anticipated this possibility internally, as he showed disappointment rather than anger.

I gave him an ambiguous nod.

“Yumir wasn’t there, but we found a promising lead.”

“Let’s talk inside first.”

After explaining everything, Gaspar’s expression hardened.

“You’re saying that child had already left that place?”

“If she was there, Yumir would have tried to contact us after noticing the commotion. Since that didn’t happen, it’s reasonable to think she wasn’t there.”

“But you only searched the harem while calling out Yumir’s name. If she was somewhere else, she might not have noticed the commotion.”

“I… Can’t deny that possibility.”

“You should have made sure! Do you know what could happen if she’s still there!”

The passage to the underground city is now blocked. Even if we tried to raid again, it would take about a month, and it wouldn’t be easy as the enemy’s security would be heightened.

“Please calm down, Mr. Gaspar.”

Ash steps forward as if defending me.

“That was the best we could do in that situation. All attention was focused on us after Elliot’s group left first. Besides, we have evidence that Yumir escaped. Elliot said so. Many supplies were moving in and out of the underground city. And among the goods coming from the underground city, there were many carts and carriages with contents hidden by cloth.”

“Carts with contents hidden by cloth…. You’re saying Yumir escaped through those?”

“It’s a possibility, right, Ars?”

I nodded at Ash’s supporting fire.

“There might have been discord among the upper Alliances using that mine.”

Right away, Elliot’s group boasted they could bring down the upper Alliances once they had evidence.

If that was the case, there was plenty of possibility for the upper Alliances to backstab each other. If they could properly expose everything, they could cause all other upper Alliances to fall and rise to an unrivaled position.

“There’s a good chance they were secretly moving people from the underground city outside for that purpose. To use them as witnesses later. Though I can’t explain how Yumir could have contacted such forces…. Whatever the case, if she did escape from there, it was recent. She seems to have been there at least when we put the tracking spell on the blood stone. So if we put another tracking spell on the blood stone, we should be able to find Yumir’s location for certain.”

Finally, Gaspar’s expression brightened.

“Y-yes, that’s right. No, no! If that’s the case, I can find her. If she’s outside, I can track her by scent!”

“Not now!”

I somehow managed to stop Gaspar, who was about to rush out immediately.

Right now the situation was like stirring up a hornet’s nest, so we couldn’t move carelessly.

“First, we should talk with Elliot’s group and decide our next move. Until then, let’s take some time to regroup.”

“Phew! Then I’m going to take a nap. I’m dying of exhaustion.”

As Ash skillfully lightened the mood, everyone nodded and took a rest.

Though I wanted to rest too, I had to organize the confidential documents we brought back.

Sophia showed interest in these confidential documents. As we were short-handed anyway, I decided to accept Sophia’s help.

Sophia, who was well-versed in Alliance politics, correctly judged what information was important.

“This is really incredible information. To think that the Millium Alliance, which was supposedly destroyed by monsters, was actually expelled by the upper Alliances!”

“Why are you surprised? Similar things happened plenty in our continent too, right?”

“That’s true. Like noble families that fell due to bandit attacks, most of those were actually plots by political enemies….”

Just like how the forces my birth mother belonged to were said to have died in a bandit attack, but in reality, it was the Crossing Republic that attacked them.

Such things were commonplace. It wasn’t even really confidential.

Even if this was exposed, it probably wouldn’t cause much of a stir.

Real confidential information means something that could deal a fatal blow to those forces.

Like this information right now.

“Checkmate.”

The words came out naturally.

The confidential documents detailing the succession dispute of the Ellan Kingdom.

It contained everything, including who the informants were and who orchestrated this.

Though I had already anticipated the contents, getting physical evidence made it even more certain.

‘Now I understand why Rinoa kept quiet about the other traitors.’

Even I wouldn’t have been able to speak if it was something like this.

‘With something like this, the preliminary operations will be a bit complicated.’

It was impossible for me alone, at least.

So I decided to contact the kingdom’s chancellor through Godric, our informant.

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