21 Damn, I've Become the Barbarian Leader

Landen helplessly led his knights to follow the Wandering Badger Tribe cavalry. Landen knew this group definitely didn't have good intentions, but he wasn't confident he could keep all eight of his cavalrymen safe if he tried to stay behind.

He had no choice but to bite the bullet and follow along; at the very least, keeping his team concentrated would make it easier to break out later.

As they drew closer to the Wandering Badger camp, Landen noticed the massive tent. In Landen's eyes, although the diameter of this tent was larger than the surrounding round yurts, there was no need for it to have a pointed roof. Even in terms of internal space utilization, a pointed roof required a central pillar, and for a tent of this size, that pillar would not be small.

It was a massive waste of space.

Therefore, the purpose of this pointed roof was simply to establish a center within the camp and reinforce a certain status.

Continuing forward, he saw the sprawling barbarian camp. Landen felt this camp must house several hundred people. It wasn't just the large tent at the center; the surrounding circle of round yurts and the various tents on the periphery all shouted three words: I am wealthy.

A tribe this wealthy was even harder to deal with. Landen deeply regretted not running away in the middle of the night yesterday; in short, he regretted it immensely.

Finally arriving, Landen watched a group of people gathered in front of the camp. Most of these people were non-magic users, with dozens of barbarian magic users standing at the very front of the crowd. Further ahead, two barbarians lay in a pool of blood, and everyone was staring at the barbarian wearing iron armor in front of them.

"This is a duel," Albert said, being well-informed. "Barbarian... duels here, once initiated, must be agreed upon by all participants for the duel to be considered concluded."

"Truly simple folk customs," Landen couldn't help but praise.

"Welcome, everyone, to the Wandering Badger camp. Just now, we have all decided to form a new alliance, and the Wandering Badger Tribe will provide food for everyone.

Please have your respective tribes move here immediately."

"A new alliance? Moving tribes?" It was Albert who spoke.

"Yes, as new members, you have entered the alliance grounds and should also abide by the alliance's decisions," the other party said.

"Who is the leader?" This time, it was Landen who asked.

"Everyone has decided that I shall be the leader!"

"Are you not being a bit too immodest?" Actually, Landen wanted to say, you just appointed yourself, didn't you?

"If any new members have objections, they may propose a duel, just like those two did."

"Fine." Landen pulled the reins with one hand, absorbed a magic crystal with the other, drew his saber, and flew forward.

"You—" Before the other party could finish speaking, Landen's horse had already charged. In truth, Landen didn't need to waste a magic crystal to hack the man down; after all, the man hadn't even had time to grab his spear.

"What?" Several of Darkeye's cronies nearby saw the situation turning sour and moved to draw their swords and spears, but Landen, seeing this, simply hacked and slashed.

With the aid of the magic crystal, Landen's saber trailed a white light as he cut down one man, then turned to slash another, felling four in a row.

In Alivia, faith itself possessed weight. Landen was the bearer of the faith of the hundreds of people in his territory. They believed Landen could lead them out of the plains, lead them to find Hark, and lead them to a peaceful and carefree life.

Although the faith Landen carried couldn't allow him to fight across tiers, it was not difficult to fight against unarmored opponents while armored, or to fight on horseback against infantry.

After hacking down the four barbarian guards, the barbarians present stopped talking. Landen, at this moment, also didn't know what to do.

He didn't know what this leader he had just cut down was actually trying to achieve, nor did he know if the remaining people were still willing to risk their lives against him. Thus, Landen and everyone else stood stunned at the camp gate.

"Everyone, listen up!" A few seconds later, out of options, Landen could only bite the bullet and speak. "I am Landen Gallop, leader of the Gallop Tribe!

Today, this leader of the Wandering Badger Tribe had people bring me here—rather than calling it joining his tribe, it would be more accurate to say he was plotting to seize mine!"

"He just said he was the chief of all tribes and that anyone who disagreed could duel him. Now that I have won the duel, I declare that this tribe before us is hereby annexed into my Gallop Tribe!"

"Lord Gallop?" a young-looking child in the crowd asked. "The Wandering Badger lord just won against our tribe's elder in a duel, and now you have won against him. I want to ask, if our tribe pledges loyalty to you, will you lead us to attack the human race in the south?"

"No. The relationship between tribes on the grasslands and human cities should not be one of mutual conquest," Landen said firmly.

"I know you all just agreed to this Wandering Badger leader's duel, where the winner becomes the alliance leader. Now that I have defeated him, does anyone else wish to challenge me?"

The barbarians acting as spectators now had just finished breakfast and were wearing cotton clothes, linen, or animal skins, having run over to watch the excitement. Who would be foolish enough to attack a cavalryman wearing full armor?

Only the two elders from before were unwilling to see the tribes they had painstakingly managed be annexed by the Wandering Badgers. Of the other four tribes, two had split off from the Wandering Badgers, and another had no combat strength left and could only follow the crowd.

Even the few Wandering Badger cavalrymen who had brought Landen were silent, clearly afraid to cross blades with him.

"This... this Lord Gallop is simply a leader sent to us by the gods." If one needed a shill, one had to find a professional. The headman who had been advocating for the merger earlier had already begun promoting a new merger plan. "My Lord, you..."

"My name is Landen."

"Oh, right... This Lord Landen has indisputably defeated Darkeye Wandering Badger and is now the new leader of this tribe."

Landen glanced at Albert at this moment, and Albert nodded.

"Good. Since everyone has accepted me as leader, we shall gather here. Please move your camps over," Landen said, then allowed the remaining tribes to disperse. Landen himself was led by the barbarian cavalry into the main tent.

Landen now had a tribe—a true, medium-to-large barbarian tribe.

According to the non-magic users here, this tribe originally had only 20 barbarian cavalrymen. Under the leadership of the previous chief, they had gradually annexed several tribes and split off three others. In the end, the Wandering Badger Tribe had fewer than 30 cavalrymen, and including the surrounding small tribes, there were fewer than 50 in total.

During the Grey Goose Alliance, Darkeye had sent all the cavalrymen who didn't belong to his faction to the Grey Goose Tribe, leaving only 15 in his own tribe. Five had fallen just now, leaving 10 magic users. The small tribes outside had about 25 magic users remaining; these were all the magic users these barbarian tribes possessed.

Inside the main camp, there were 12 human magic users, three of whom were knight apprentices.

Landen felt this was very tricky. Although he wanted to turn the entire camp upside down right now and find all the magical items that belonged to him, he knew that dealing with the relationship between the barbarians and the humans was the most pressing matter.

He didn't know how to make these barbarians accept the human magic users as equals, nor did he know if his own subjects could accept that there were truly barbarians in their territory.

But Landen was certain of one thing: there was no need for barbarians to live exactly like humans.

Landen decided to find the barbarians from the original Wandering Badger Tribe to chat first. He summoned the messenger who had led Landen and his group here; this barbarian messenger was named Slant-Ear Rabbit.

"What is your opinion on those human slaves?"

"My Lord, they all belong to you; I have no opinion." Having watched Darkeye act with such decisive ruthlessness over the years, Slant-Ear Rabbit dared not guess his leader's thoughts.

"Do you have any human acquaintances?"

"I do, Leader. My mother is human."

"Oh? Your mother?"

"Yes, barbarians always intermarry with humans; every tribe does it."

"Very well. You may go."

Landen spoke with all nine Wandering Badger barbarian magic-users individually and discovered that these nine people all had human relatives to some degree, such as mothers, brothers, or older siblings.

Consequently, Landen first found the human relatives of these cavalrymen and informed them of his plan to split the camps, letting the barbarians form one camp and the humans another.

The barbarians still lived a pastoral life, so the non-magic-user family members of the current cavalrymen, along with the non-magic-user family members of the barbarians who had defected, continued to form a separate Gallop Tribe camp according to their original lifestyle.

All human magic-users and those humans who no longer wished to live a nomadic life joined the group of Landen's direct subjects.

Landen summoned the human magic-users in the camp, revealed his identity, announced that these Wandering Badger human slaves were now liberated, and then declared his decision to split the camps.

Having just been relieved of their slave status, the human magic-users naturally had no objections to Landen's decision.

Throughout the entire afternoon, the Wandering Badger Tribe completed the camp split; the nine barbarian cavalrymen moved to the right side of the main camp with their forty-plus family members.

The camp on the left consisted of the liberated human magic-users, the family of the Wandering Badger leader, and the families of the magic-users who had traveled with the Grey Goose Tribe; all of these people were now under Landen's direct command.

By evening, barbarians from four or five small tribes had arrived at the right camp one after another. Now, the right camp held a total of 35 barbarian magic-users and 230 non-magic-user barbarians, while the left camp held 12 human magic-users and 100 human non-magic-users.

Landen still dared not relax; at noon, he had sent one of his own knights to run back to the main camp to bring the entire force over.

However, his main camp currently held over 400 people, significantly more than the newly occupied camp.

The relocation and merger of the entire camp were not completed until noon the following day.

Having successfully resolved the integration of the pseudo-barbarian Galloping Horse subjects and the Galloping Horse barbarian tribe, Landen finally entered the delightful stage of counting the spoils of war.

In truth, the most valuable item of the Wandering Badger Tribe was this main tent where Landen was staying. Inside this tent were over a dozen small magic arrays that could effectively regulate the air circulation, and even adjust the temperature and soundproof the interior.

According to a confidant of Wandering Badger, Darkeye had spent over a hundred gold coins to buy this tent from a merchant. It was said to be a tent that only princes or higher-ranking members of the human empire could use during the Great War between humans and orcs 1,000 years ago, and it had been stored in the underground warehouses of Night-Kirin City until it was unearthed by the merchant after the war was won.

Upon hearing this, Albert scoffed. Regardless of the era, the empire always brought a large number of various types of mages on campaigns; a single Earth-element magus could build an entire camp out of earth and stone in an afternoon, so what need was there for a tent?

Furthermore, some of the magic arrays in this tent had only become popular in recent years; they likely hadn't even been developed a thousand years ago.

However, Albert did not deny the value of the tent. When he was in the Imperial Capital, Albert had seen similar tents used for courtyard events by families of marquis or duke rank and above; each one was a rather precious asset of the family.

The tent Landen now had in his possession, besides being able to regulate indoor temperature and air quality, could also be quickly deployed or folded via magic arrays. Such a tent would cost over a hundred gold coins even in the Imperial Capital.

One could only say that Darkeye hadn't made a bad deal when he bought it.

However, Landen and Albert searched for a long time without finding any family crest on the tent, only seeing a signature in one spot: "Sherman Iron-Drill."

Since several small nomadic tribes had effectively "bought shares" in Landen's Gallop Tribe, the original wealth and livestock of the small tribes were preserved and remained the property of the original tribe members.

This included the small camp Landen had raided the previous night; the original supplies were also returned to the barbarians of that tribe.

The Wandering Badger Tribe's 150 gold coins, a dozen magic crystals, rune boards, 12 sets of armor, and the magic-patterned armor on Darkeye's body all went to Landen. In addition, Wandering Badger possessed 6 Black-Scaled Horses, 50 pack beasts, 220 long-haired sheep, and several dozen pheasants and grey geese.

Landen tried on Darkeye's magic-patterned armor. According to Albert's explanation, a set of magic-patterned armor required a suit of superior iron armor or leather armor made from the complete hide of a Magic Beast, and a caster of Great Mage rank or higher had to draw magic-patterned arrays onto it using magic-conducting metal.

Common magic-conducting metals include blue steel, purple copper, mithril, and ether-gold, among others. Sometimes, gems or magic crystals must be embedded in the center of the magic arrays.

After Landen put it on, he tried to channel a little bit of battle qi. The battle qi activated the 12 magic gems on the various magic arrays of the armor, and the magic patterns lit up accordingly.

Landen immediately felt as if he were inside a mecha; his physical strength and speed increased instantly, and yet, his body's flexibility remained unaffected after donning the armor.

After gripping his sword, Landen clearly felt his battle qi being conducted onto the blade. Landen was very satisfied with this magic-patterned armor; his only question was how Darkeye, wearing such a suit, hadn't managed to hack him to death at the time.

Of course, five minutes later, he found out why: his battle qi had been completely drained by the magic-patterned armor. The armor itself was no heavier than ordinary iron armor, but because Landen was extremely weak after his battle qi was exhausted, he had to have Raul and the others help him take it off, by which time his clothes and trousers were already soaked with sweat.

This armor required a massive amount of battle qi to operate the magic arrays. If one's battle qi was insufficient, one could use magic crystals as an energy source; a single standard small magic crystal could power the magic-patterned armor for about half an hour.

Mechas really are power-hungry; I can't afford to run this, Landen thought to himself.

No wonder that Darkeye didn't activate the magic-patterned armor and just wore it to show off; barbarians didn't possess battle qi themselves, so once the functions were activated, it was nothing but a crystal-devouring beast.