Branton gave Yveta ten gold pounds as a deposit, and also handed him a Ruby Ring he had been wearing.
It was collateral.
On the side of the Ruby Ring was the Family Crest of the Moro Family: a howling wolf. It represented the responsibility the Moro Family had shouldered for generations, guarding the only road into the Viscount Country from the west.
In this age, a signet ring could represent its owner's identity. It could even be used to write letters to others in the owner's name.
Therefore, offering it as a deposit showed great sincerity.
In Yveta's previous life, this would have been like handing him one's identity card.
That way, Yveta wouldn't have to worry about Branton refusing to pay him afterward.
Branton led them to the side of the road. "I'll take you through the mountains to the forest where my sister went missing."
"We could easily be spotted here."
"For some reason, my father particularly hates me looking for my sister. Maybe he thinks I'm acting crazy."
Leili asked worriedly, "Where should we leave the carriage, horses, and ox?"
The Old Witch said bluntly, "I can cast a Human Expulsion Curse. It'll make any humans who approach unable to see our carriage or ox."
As she spoke, she had Black Wolf tie the carriage and ox beside two trees.
Then she gathered a pile of stones from the ground and found a few dead branches.
She used the branches to draw symbols on the stones, then arranged them in a circle around the carriage and ox.
"That should do it."
Branton looked at the Old Witch fearfully. "S-she's a witch?!"
"Got a problem with that?" The Hearthstone Great Witch looked at him disdainfully.
"I... I don't." Branton's mind had stalled. He hadn't expected one of the explorers he'd hired to be a witch.
Wasn't this a little too good a deal?
He really couldn't tell whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.
Yveta said, "All right. You should hurry up and take us to where your sister went missing."
Branton said, "Y-yes, that's right."
Branton led them along the mountain path and into a small patch of forest, rare in this mountainous region. It was deep and dark, and even more dangerous at night.
It was full of wild beasts.
Fortunately, the beasts weren't stupid. They wouldn't attack humans carrying iron weapons.
That was a lesson their ancestors had learned in blood.
As they walked, they spoke quietly and learned that Branton was a Knight Attendant of the First Rank Sequence, with an Extraordinary Heart.
The problem was that, according to him, he'd only recently become a Knight Attendant and wasn't much of a fighter.
Leili told him he was a warrior who had taken the Warrior Secret Medicine.
Black Wolf, meanwhile, said that he was a Demon Hunter who had passed four trials.
The Old Witch said, "I knew it. When you used a Griffin School Potion Trap at the waystation, I knew you weren't an ordinary Demon Hunter."
"Heh, Your Grace, he's no simple man."
Yveta looked at Black Wolf in confusion. "You've passed four trials?"
"What rank does that make you? Which stage of a knight or witch does it correspond to?"
The Old Witch respectfully explained to Yveta, "Your Grace, the First Rank Sequence for knights is the Knight Attendant. Above it is the Second Rank Sequence, the Formal Knight, then the Third Rank Sequence, the Great Knight."
"There's the High Knight of the Fourth Rank, then the Fifth Rank, Sixth Rank, and so on..."
"For Demon Hunters, passing the first trial makes them professionals of the First Rank Sequence."
"It's equivalent to the Knight Attendant rank."
"Once a Demon Hunter passes two more trials, they're equivalent to a Formal Knight."
"Black Wolf has passed four trials. If he passes one more, his Demon Hunter rank will be equivalent to a Great Knight."
"So his strength should be around the level of an ordinary knight at the peak of their abilities."
Yveta hadn't expected Demon Hunter Black Wolf to be so strong.
The Old Witch took the opportunity to stab Black Wolf in the back. "You've never used your full strength. You've always had ulterior motives. And you still dare to serve Your Grace with divided loyalties?"
"You even want to abandon him."
"You're nowhere near as loyal as I am."
She said it without the slightest embarrassment.
In truth, she was the one who'd been looking for a scapegoat and planning to get away from Yveta.
Demon Hunter Black Wolf's expression darkened, and he immediately looked at Yveta. "Your Highness, don't listen to her nonsense."
"At the waystation, I was trapped by Charlemagne's Army Formation, made up of seventeen Knight Attendants. Forget a little Demon Hunter like me, who has passed only four trials—even a Demon Hunter lord who had passed seven trials wouldn't have stood a chance against them."
"That was a tactic used by Knight Orders in war. Knights are the strongest profession on the front lines. Us Demon Hunters, who fight alone, simply can't beat them."
Yveta frowned. "But Black Wolf, could a Fallen Prince really afford to hire you?"
"I..." Black Wolf said, "I swear by the God of All Things that I would never harm you."
"If you died, I'd go bankrupt."
"The little bit of property you have now wouldn't come close to covering all the weapons I lost helping you!"
When he'd taken Yveta away from the estate, he'd left behind a great many spare weapons and taken only a few he could carry.
His losses had been so severe that even in his dreams, Black Wolf was thinking about how to get Yveta to pay him back.
Yveta's expression suddenly shifted from blank to smiling. "There's no need to go that far. I only asked a few questions."
After saying that, he acted as if he truly didn't care.
Actually, Yveta was just thinking that Black Wolf was nothing more than a mercenary.
He had no real right to demand to know whose man Black Wolf was.
It wasn't his place to interfere.
At least Black Wolf was a little better than the Old Witch. She'd previously wanted to kill him, and even now she didn't seem trustworthy. Every day, she urged him to hurry to Ambrose.
Who knew what she was up to?
Sigh. This team was hard to manage.
After all that, only Leili and Alicia counted as his own people.
Everyone else had their own agendas.
He finally understood how hard a lord's life was.
Unless someone had been raised by your side, and you knew them inside out, it was truly hard to guarantee their loyalty.
Burton had been listening in with his ears perked up. A Demon Hunter who'd passed the Fourth Trial, a prince, an assassination...
He was speechless.
Had he hired a group of explorers, or a whole team of immortals?
He began treating Yveta with more respect.
No wonder the witch, Demon Hunter, and warrior treated this teenager with such deference and let him take the lead in everything.
It turned out he was highborn.
Burton was a little frightened. He suddenly stopped in the woods. "Y-Your Highness, please forgive me for not knowing who you were earlier. We've reached the place where my sister went missing, but I can't ask you to do this kind of thing. I wouldn't be able to face you. I've been terribly disrespectful."
The nobility of this age took social hierarchy very seriously.
Even if he was a prince from another country, even if he seemed to be in a bad situation, he was still a prince.
Yveta waved him off. "For now, we're just explorers."
"Have we arrived? Let's look around first."
Burton was deeply moved. Different people could do the same thing and get very different responses.
Even if a commoner helped a lord, the lord wouldn't thank him very much.
But if a prince helped a lord, the lord would be immensely grateful.
In this age, Yveta didn't need to worry about revealing his whereabouts, because he was the rightful heir to a kingdom.
Even if the King of Arthas put out a bounty on him, he could only do so through the Brotherhood, a shadowy group of assassins with no sense of honor.
There was no other reason. Yveta was the king's son.
No noble would dare accept a bounty to kill Yveta. In an age that placed such importance on rank and title, almost nobody would dare do something like that openly.
On the contrary, if Yveta had enough money, he could try putting out a bounty on the current King of Arthas.
He was nothing but a usurper.
But Yveta had no money, and the King of Arthas had an army. No one would take such an outrageous bounty.
Yveta also had no intention of announcing his identity everywhere in a grand fashion. That would attract ambitious schemers with ulterior motives, which would be bad too.
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