The Extra Strategist’s Royal Road Chapter 277
As we continued to expand our exploration area, we decided to return to our base for now.
Other teams had also completed their exploration without any damage and were preparing dinner in advance.
Eonia, who had traveled with Master Ilya, was stirring the soup while grumbling.
It seemed she was dissatisfied that I didn’t include her in my team.
I approached her and said,
“Did you have a good trip?”
“Ars, you’re back! Did something happen? Did Anton possibly cause some trouble on his own!?”
“Nothing happened.”
“I see….”
“So, you really want to join my team?”
“Absolutely!”
Her immediate response was cute, and I thought it would be good to have Anton stay with Master Ilya, so I decided to arrange a trade.
Afterwards, during dinner, discussions about our future direction continued.
Master Ilya, who had scouted the northeast, spoke,
“It truly deserves to be called a demon realm. Monsters were swarming everywhere I went. Some of them were even too much for me to handle.”
“Hmm….”
“More than anything, this place is too vast. We should consider it difficult to explore the continent with our current number of personnel.”
“The purpose itself is to rescue the missing people, so we don’t need to explore everything.”
At that moment, Gaspar interrupts my words, looking quite exhausted from his solo advance reconnaissance mission.
“Something is strange about this place.”
“Strange?”
“It seems like the monsters have some kind of purpose.”
“I did encounter goblin and ogre groups trying to raid.”
“If it were something like that, it would be easier to understand. The ones I encountered were carrying out some kind of operation.”
“Operation…?”
It was strange. The idea of monsters conducting an operation was bizarre, and this place had been abandoned for a long time. How could there be an operation here?
“What kind of operation are you talking about?”
“From what I sensed, it seemed like a border patrol mission. A mission to repel outsiders. That’s why I couldn’t go too deep.”
At that point, Ash raises his hand and speaks,
“I think we should focus on searching for the missing people first. I understand wanting to gather information about this place, but I believe it would be faster to find the missing people and hear their story.”
“That’s reasonable, but Melodie and Lysithea are in the most dangerous area. If we rush their rescue, we might actually suffer significant damage.”
Nod. Ash nods heavily.
“So I think it’s best to first find Rutger, who is alone in the south.”
“Ash, you….”
Although he must have wanted to rush to Lysithea immediately, he made a cool-headed decision.
“Then let’s do it this way,” Sophia proposed a mediation plan. “Some will remain here to continue building the base. We remember the route, so we can bring more personnel from the kingdom. I’ll dispatch about 2,000 soldiers from Rosa and have them stationed here to build a military fortress. In the meantime, you go south where Rutger Rosenberg’s location has been discovered. We’ll meet again after finding him and bringing him here.”
It was a typical Sophia-like reasonable judgment. Having performed the duties of a prime minister, she quickly drafted a personnel allocation and fortress construction schedule.
Since no one objected, they decided to proceed in that direction.
* * *
They decided to use a ship to head to the southern region where Rutger was located.
Going by ship and making a large detour would be more efficient.
They planned to return to the Beastkin’s Island first to open a sea route to the kingdom.
“Whew! Traveling by ship is indeed tough.”
“Please go rest in your room quickly.”
“Yeah, but I want to see Ryuna and the twins first.”
The children were being looked after by Olaf and sister Julia.
Ryuna seemed anxious due to her parents’ disappearance, crouching and vigilantly scanning her surroundings.
She was holding Ed and Ernie tightly, seemingly determined to protect her twin siblings.
Jade, Olaf and Julia’s son, was playing around, occasionally hitting Ryuna.
Ryuna just made a blank expression without fighting back.
When I appeared, she brightened her expression, pushed Jade away, and ran towards me.
“Dad!”
“Oh my, my daughter. Are you being shy again?”
“Yes!”
She answered energetically without understanding the meaning of my words.
Sister Julia also sighs in relief.
“You can’t imagine how cautious she is. She won’t even eat food unless she’s at least 10 meters away from it. She doesn’t seem to take after the youngest, but she resembles Yumir a lot.”
“Yumir?”
“Huh? Didn’t mother tell you? When Yumir first came to our mansion, she was incredibly cautious. She would run away if someone talked to her, and she wouldn’t properly eat the food mother prepared. Meanwhile, she seemed hungry and would secretly eat the grass in the garden.”
When I glance back, Yumir looks embarrassed and doesn’t know what to do.
“J-Julia! About that time….”
I couldn’t quite imagine the scene of Yumir eating garden grass.
‘Even so, I’m worried about leaving Ryuna behind.’
But leaving either Eonia or Yumir behind didn’t feel right either.
‘Well, it’s not urgent.’
For now, the sea route construction was the priority.
We rested on the island for about two days, waiting for support from the kingdom.
Rosa responded quickly.
She dispatched a large fleet carrying 2,000 soldiers and supply ships.
“Even though they were marines hastily conscripted, perhaps because of that, their military discipline was actually quite strict.
Sophia will personally direct their efforts to establish a full-scale defensive position in the western part of the Eastern Continent.
I was preparing to depart to the south when I suddenly received a strange piece of news.
“Mr. Wade.”
A man suddenly spoke to me like that. As I narrowed my eyes, Anton stepped in and said, “He is an officer from our Crossing. It seems he has just been newly dispatched.”
“I am Raillen from the Special Forces 3rd Battalion. I have been urgently dispatched to deliver a message to Lord Wade.”
What he handed over was several sheets of paper.
“What is this…?”
When I unfolded the papers, I saw the rapidly changing situation of the Central Continent was written there.
The content was beyond my expectations.
“Bülang is going to attack Liande… They are faster than anticipated.”
“Yes, Bülang has decided not to recognize your kingdom, Liande. Since it is not part of the Continental Treaty, they believe they can invade without consequences.”
“What happened to the power struggle among the princes of Bülang?”
“Specific details are not yet known, but judging from the current situation, it appears that the three princes have decided to establish their own independent states.”
“Bülang split into three pieces…?”
From our perspective, this would have been good. However, the problem was that before their separation and independence, they had united to wage war.
“Bülang intends to destroy your kingdom, Liande, and then conquer the Crossing territory in the south. Afterward, they plan to divide the territory into three parts and establish new states for each prince.”
“So it’s a war with political objectives.”
This was going to be troublesome. Liande’s military was not yet perfect, and our territorial control was relatively weak.
There was a risk that the nobles might immediately side with Bülang.
There were also stories about the western war.
And in the last passage, I couldn’t help but doubt my eyes.
“…What is this?”
“It is exactly as written. The 80,000 troops of Alvard and 10,000 troops of Crossing are engaging in battle in western Liande. Crossing’s commander Juras Pamilion has been killed in battle, and Alvard’s commander, the strategist Kaien, has also died from wounds sustained during the war.”
The situation seemed incredibly contrived.
“Juras has been killed, and Kaien has died…?”
Although not yet officially announced, Alvard, Crossing, and Liande were supposed to form an alliance.
And now Alvard and Crossing are clashing.
“Is this true?”
“According to the information received…”
“That’s not what I’m asking. Juras must have left some instructions.”
“No, sir. There has been no word from Juras since then. The officers are even testifying that he has been killed…”
“What…!?”
The confrontation between Juras and Kaien had its reasons.
Since I had told him the truth, Kaien would have harbored hatred towards Crossing and Juras. It would not be strange if he was trying to kill Juras, the enemy of his daughter Rizna.
‘No, he wouldn’t move so rashly.’
I had a feeling that some kind of stratagem was stirring.
* * *
As the situation in the Central Continent was unusual, we needed to accelerate the search for the missing person.
I quickly moved to the southern region where Rutger was located, accompanied by my vassals and 500 soldiers.
The Eastern Continent’s north and south are different in character.
While the northern region became ruins long ago due to continuously flooding lakes, the southern region had human history significant enough to be recorded in historical texts.
So, although old, there were at least maps available.
“This is the Guslam Mountain Range… Elliot, are Rutger’s traces definitely here?”
“I’ve told you multiple times that my tracking magic is not absolute. It’s just for reference, just for reference.”
Anyway, the tracking magic pointing to Rutger was definitely indicating this location.
If Rutger was not here, the clues about him would become zero, so we could only hope he was present.
We used the Teleportation Scroll and slowly climbed up the mountain range.
“It’s strange. By this point, monsters should be swarming around…”
It felt as if the military had been conducting periodic subjugation operations. It was that clean.
There were even signs visible.
Signs that looked too neat to be from an ancient era.
They were inscribed with unrecognizable characters.
“Mirabel! Can you read this?”
Mirabel frowned and then shook her head.
“I can understand the spoken language, but I can’t read many written characters.”
“I see.”
Since we couldn’t understand the characters, we couldn’t determine if it was a warning sign or a guide sign.
Still, since there were signs, we decided to follow them.
After following several more signs, a hilly area in the middle of the mountain range appeared.
A mountainous region with gentle slopes.
“What…?”
I couldn’t help but be speechless.
This was because smoke was rising from residential buildings lined up in a row.
This was not a trace of a distant civilization we had seen before.
This was a civilization that was currently ongoing.
This was an unexpected sight of the Eastern Continent, called the Demon’s Realm of Non-Humans.
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