Migrating Caravan and the Fallen Viscount

Migrating Caravan and the Fallen Viscount

On the Axeniel Continent, after passing through the Planar Gate, Ryan felt that it was even colder here.

"The winters here seem to be getting colder too."

Pulling his Deerskin Cloak tighter around himself, Ryan passed through the Planar Gate after his eleven retainers. Amid the swirling snow, he could not make out any direction.

In any case, this time, he had not appeared in the village where Brandt and the others had once been.

There was a spatial discrepancy when the Planar Gate opened.

Including Ryan, there were twelve of them. Each was wrapped in a Deerskin Cloak, forming two lines as they walked through snow that reached past their knees. Brandt walked at the front, while Ryan was in the middle.

"How is it, Brandt? Can you tell the direction?"

"My lord, that direction should be South."

Brandt pointed ahead, then at the falling snow overhead.

"In the past, every winter, fierce winds and blizzards blew from north to south."

"But I don't know which direction nearby has people. The heavy snow has buried every trace. Based on experience, even if there were a village just dozens of meters away, we would have trouble finding it in weather like this."

Brandt held a deer antler with a rope tied to it. He kept throwing the antler ahead to determine whether the snow-covered ground could bear their weight.

In snow that was knee-deep even in the shallowest places, one wrong step could send them plunging into the boundless snow.

These were lessons Brandt had learned from hunting alone in the past. Aside from him, several soldiers around Ryan were doing the same.

To travel through a world like this, the people of the Axeniel Continent had experience bought with blood.

Yet not long after, Brandt stopped. The twelve of them had already been covered by wind and snow, blending into the Snow Plains amid the blizzard.

They looked ahead. A long procession stretched through the snow, with many people holding torches. The flickering flames wavered uncertainly in the wind and snow.

The bellows of Great Horned Deer could not carry far through the storm. They seemed to have been domesticated, carrying bundles on their backs as they walked in the middle of the procession.

"Ah!!!"

A miserable scream rang out, followed by a disturbance at the front of the procession. Someone seemed to have lost their footing and fallen into some spot.

At that cry, the entire procession halted. Many of those holding torches looked around in terror.

Because they did not know whether the ground around them was safe.

"Why have you stopped?"

From a sedan chair carried by six people in the middle of the crowd came an angry roar. Then, a man wrapped head to toe in fur garments emerged. In the next instant, he ducked back into the sedan chair and shouted.

"Why aren't you moving already? Where are the soldiers?! Kill two slaves and keep moving."

Immediately, soldiers wearing beast-hide armor and carrying longswords stepped out. They directly cut down two people. After blood spilled onto the snow, the procession began moving again in silence.

"A noble?"

"Follow them," Ryan ordered.

Brandt led the way, moving more slowly, because the clearly migrating procession ahead was traveling at a sluggish pace.

People kept dying along the way. Some stepped into empty ground and fell into the snow, never to rise again. Some had their legs freeze stiff and could no longer move forward. Others were executed on the increasingly irritable noble's orders.

After walking for roughly five or six hours, nearly thirty people had fallen along the road.

At last, the procession of more than five hundred people reached the entrance of a Cave.

The pitch-black Cave amid the wind and snow gave off a sense of warmth. Upon arriving here, everyone in the procession let out a sigh of relief. If the journey had been any longer, they truly would not have held on.

The noble in the sedan chair finally stepped out, accompanied by a refined woman and a young boy.

"Soldiers! Take this fortress, and we will no longer suffer from the cold!"

The twenty or thirty soldiers immediately roared, then began urging the slaves at the front to charge into the Cave.

Soon, Ryan and the others outside heard beastlike roars coming from deep within the Cave.

The roars grew fiercer and fiercer before, in an instant, turning into wails.

"We're going in." As Ryan spoke, all the Knight Retainers moved in front of him and approached the Cave behind Brandt.

"If anything happens, take my lord and leave immediately."

Brandt instructed them, and the ten retainers answered in low voices.

The wind and snow outside were white, but the initial downward stretch within the Cave was completely dark. Two soldiers could only take out torches and light them.

Only then did Ryan see the state of the passage clearly.

"This is... a Mine?"

He looked at the stone walls around him, where scattered ore could still be seen embedded within. Their black gleam reflected the torchlight, carrying a sharp chill.

These ores had been deliberately fashioned into this frightening appearance.

As the view ahead grew wider, Ryan gradually spotted some corpses.

Most were human. A small number were half the size of a person, with exposed dark-green skin, pointed ears, and dense, razor-sharp teeth.

"Goblins?"

Just as Ryan spoke in surprise of this foreign race, someone noticed them as well.

"Who are you?"

In the darkness, numerous torches illuminated the Cave. The noble from before walked over, his eyes fierce as he stared at Ryan's group. Behind them lay an even larger Goblin corpse.

It was more powerfully built than two strong men put together. A wooden spiked club, studded with iron spikes, lay in its hand.

It was dead, with a bloody hole in its head.

"An Earth Goblin."

Ryan parted the human wall standing before him and removed his Deerskin Cloak.

In an instant, everyone saw clearly. A young man with jet-black hair appeared, its shoulder-length strands meticulously groomed and tied behind his head.

His slightly reddish eyes resembled gemstones, while his fair, tender skin bore no trace of ever having endured wind or hardship.

A noble. The moment they saw Ryan, everyone understood. Even the man who had shouted at them unconsciously lowered some of his guard.

"I am Viscount Whitman. Who are you?"

The man looked at Ryan and extended his hand. On it was an emerald ring engraved with a mountain peak.

That was the crest of the Whitman Family. Seeing it, Ryan realized that he seemed not to have designed a baronial crest for himself yet.

"Ryan Clayton. You may call me Baron Ryan."

"The Clayton Family?" Viscount Whitman was somewhat puzzled. He had never heard of this family.

But it did not matter. He had the soldiers beside him step forward to drive them away.

"This is land I have claimed. Leave this place immediately."

"I have no interest in this place."

Ryan looked at Viscount Whitman, then at the slaves around them, who had clearly endured the wind and snow for a long time.

"Though you are a Viscount, such status seems meaningless now. A Viscount with only five hundred slaves, twenty or thirty soldiers, and not even a territory of his own."

"Viscount Whitman, your family has fallen into decline."

Standing in the Cave, Ryan's voice was calm and assured.