Landen reluctantly followed the Wandering Badger Tribe cavalry with his knights. He knew these people had no good intentions, but he wasn't confident he could keep all eight cavalrymen here,
so he could only grit his teeth and go along for now. At least his own group could stay together, which would make it easier to break out later.
As they drew closer to the Wandering Badger camp, Landen noticed the enormous tent. In his eyes, although its diameter was greater than that of the round yurts around it, there was no need to give it a pointed roof. Even if a pointed roof made better use of the interior space, it required a central pole, and a tent this large would need a massive one.
That was a terrible waste of space.
So the point of the peaked roof was to establish the tent as the center of the camp and reinforce its status.
They continued on and soon saw the vast Barbarian camp. Landen reckoned there were several hundred people here. The huge tent at its center, the ring of round yurts around it, and the assorted tents on the outskirts all said the same thing: We're rich.
A tribe this wealthy would be even harder to deal with. Landen deeply regretted not fleeing during the night. All in all, he regretted it very much.
They finally arrived. Landen saw a crowd gathered at the camp's entrance. Most of them were Mana-Less, while dozens of Barbarian Mana-Wielders stood at the front. Farther ahead, two Barbarians lay in a pool of blood. Everyone was watching the Barbarian in Iron Armor before them.
"This is a duel?" Albert asked. He was well-traveled. "Barbarians... Duels here, once started, can only end when everyone involved agrees."
"What a simple, honest way of life," Landen couldn't help remarking.
"Welcome to the Wandering Badger camp. We've all just decided to form a new alliance. The Wandering Badger Tribe will provide food for everyone.
"Each tribe should move here at once."
"A new alliance? Move our tribes here?" Albert asked.
"Yes. You're new members, but you've entered the alliance's meeting, so you should abide by its decisions," the other man replied.
"Who's the Chieftain?" Landen asked.
"We've decided that I'll be the Chieftain!"
"Aren't you being a little presumptuous?" Landen wanted to say, You've just appointed yourself?
"If any new members object, they can challenge me to a duel, just like those two did."
"Fine." Landen gathered the reins in one hand, absorbed a Magic Crystal with the other, drew his saber, and charged forward.
"You—" The other man hadn't even finished speaking before Landen's horse rushed at him. Landen didn't actually need to waste a Magic Crystal to kill him. After all, he hadn't even had time to grab his Spear.
"What?" Several of Black-Eyed's close followers saw trouble coming and reached for their swords and Spears. Landen immediately hacked at them.
Bolstered by the Magic Crystal, Landen's saber flashed like a white streak, cutting one man down. He wheeled around and struck another, cutting down four in all.
In Alivia, faith itself carried weight. The people nearby—hundreds of his Territory Residents—believed Landen would lead them out of the Grassland, help them find Hark, and give them a peaceful, carefree life.
The faith Landen bore couldn't let him fight across a rank, but facing unarmored foot soldiers while mounted and armored wasn't difficult.
After he cut down four Barbarian guards, the Barbarians present fell silent. Landen himself had no idea what to do next.
He didn't know what the Chieftain he had just cut down had been planning, nor whether anyone else still wanted to fight him to the death. So Landen and everyone else stood frozen at the camp entrance.
"Everyone, listen!" A few seconds later, Landen was at a loss, so he could only force himself to speak. "I'm Landen Gallop, Chieftain of the Gallop Tribe!
"Today, the Chieftain of the Wandering Badger Tribe sent someone to bring me here. He claimed he wanted me to join his tribe, but what he really wanted was to seize mine!"
"He said just now that he was Chieftain of all the tribes, and anyone who disagreed could challenge him to a duel. I've won that duel, so I hereby declare that this tribe will join my Gallop Tribe!"
"Lord Gallop?" A boy who looked quite young spoke up from the crowd. "Earlier, that Lord Wandering Badger defeated our tribe's elder in a duel. Now you've defeated him. I want to ask: if our tribe pledges allegiance to you, will you take us south to attack the Human Race?"
"No. Tribes on the Grassland and human cities shouldn't be trying to conquer one another," Landen said firmly.
"I know you just agreed that whoever won the duel against the Wandering Badger Chieftain would lead the alliance. I've beaten him. Does anyone else want to challenge me?"
The Barbarians gathered to watch had just finished breakfast. They'd come over in their cotton clothes, hemp clothes, or animal hides to watch the excitement. Who would be foolish enough to attack a fully armored Knight on horseback?
Only the two elders from earlier were unwilling to see the tribe they'd worked so hard to build absorbed by the Wandering Badger Tribe. Of the other four tribes, two had split off from the Wandering Badger Tribe, and one had already lost its fighting force, leaving it no choice but to go along with the others...
Even the Wandering Badger cavalry who had brought Landen here stayed silent. They clearly didn't dare face him.
"This... This Lord Gallop must be a Chieftain sent by the gods!" If anyone knew how to find a stooge, it was a professional. The Chieftain who had just been urging everyone to merge their tribes was already promoting the new arrangement. "My lord, you..."
"My name is Landen."
"Oh, right... Lord Landen has unquestionably defeated Black-Eyed Wandering Badger. He is now the new Chieftain of our tribe."
Landen glanced at Albert, who nodded.
"Good. Since everyone has accepted me as Chieftain, we'll gather here. Please move your camps over." Landen spoke, then let the remaining tribes disperse. The Barbarian Cavalry led him into the main tent.
Landen now had a tribe—a genuine medium-to-large Barbarian tribe.
According to the Mana-Less people here, the tribe had originally had only twenty Barbarian Cavalry. Under its previous Chieftain, it had gradually absorbed several tribes and spun off three more. In the end, the Wandering Badger Tribe had fewer than thirty cavalrymen left, with fewer than fifty in total across it and the surrounding small tribes.
When the Grey Goose Tribe held its alliance meeting, Black-Eyed had sent all the cavalry who weren't part of his faction to the Grey Goose Tribe. That left just fifteen people in his own tribe. Five had fallen just now, leaving ten Mana-Wielders. The small tribes outside had around twenty-five Mana-Wielders left. That was the full number of Mana-Wielders across these Barbarian tribes.
Inside the main camp were twelve human Mana-Wielders, three of them Knight Apprentices.
Landen found himself in a difficult position. He wanted to search the entire camp right away and find all the magical items that belonged to him, but he knew that the most urgent thing was figuring out how to manage relations between the Barbarians and the humans.
He didn't know how to get the Barbarians to accept human Mana-Wielders as their equals, or whether his own Territory Residents could accept having Barbarians in their territory.
But one thing was certain to Landen: the Barbarians didn't have to live like humans.
Landen decided to talk to the original members of the Wandering Badger Tribe first. He called over the messenger who had brought them here. The Barbarian messenger was named Crooked-Eared Rabbit.
"What do you think of those human slaves?"
"My lord, they belong to you. I don't have an opinion." Crooked-Eared Rabbit had spent years watching Black-Eyed make ruthless decisions, and didn't dare guess what his Chieftain was thinking.
"Do you know any humans personally?"
"Yes, Chieftain. My mother is human."
"Oh? Your mother?"
"Yes. Barbarians all marry humans. Every tribe does."
"Good." He dismissed him.
Landen spoke individually with all nine of the Wandering Badger Barbarian Mana-Wielders and discovered that each of them had human relatives of some kind—a mother, sibling, or older brother or sister.
So Landen first spoke to the human relatives of these cavalrymen. He told them he planned to separate the camps, with the Barbarians in one camp and the humans in another.
The Barbarians still lived by herding. The Mana-Less families of the cavalrymen, along with the Mana-Less families of the Barbarians who had joined them, would continue their old way of life in a separate Gallop Tribe camp.
All human Mana-Wielders and any humans who didn't want to keep living a nomadic life would join Landen's direct territory residents.
Landen summoned the human Mana-Wielders in the camp, revealed his identity, and announced that the human slaves of the Wandering Badger Tribe had been freed. He then announced his decision to split the camps.
The human Mana-Wielders had only just been freed from slavery, so they had no objections to Landen's decision.
By the end of the afternoon, the Wandering Badger Tribe had finished dividing into two camps. Nine Barbarian cavalrymen moved their families, numbering more than forty, to the right of the main camp;
the left camp housed the freed human Mana-Wielders, the Wandering Badger Chieftain's family, and the families of the Mana-Wielders who had traveled with the Grey Goose Tribe. All of them were now under Landen's direct authority.
By evening, the Barbarians from four or five small tribes had gradually moved into the Right Camp. It now held thirty-five Barbarian Mana-Wielders and 230 Mana-Less people under their authority. The Left Camp had twelve human Mana-Wielders and one hundred human Mana-Less people.
Landen still didn't dare let his guard down. At noon, he'd sent one of his Knights back to the main camp to bring the entire camp over.
His main camp had more than four hundred people, considerably more than the newly occupied camp.
It wasn't until noon the following day that the two camps had fully moved in and merged.
After successfully sorting out the mix of pseudo-Barbarian Gallop Territory Residents and the Gallop Barbarian tribe, Landen finally got to the enjoyable part: counting the spoils.
The most valuable thing in the Wandering Badger Tribe was the main tent where Landen was now staying. It held more than a dozen small Magic Arrays that regulated the airflow inside the tent quite well. They could even control the temperature and block out sound.
According to one of the Wandering Badger Chieftain's close followers, Black-Eyed had paid more than a hundred Gold Coins for the tent. He'd bought it from a merchant, who claimed it had been used by Human Empire princes and higher-ranking nobles during the war between humans and Beastmen a thousand years ago. After the war, it had been stored in an underground warehouse in Night-Kirin City until a merchant discovered it.
Albert sneered at the story. No matter the era, an Empire's army always brought plenty of Mages of all kinds. An Earth School Magister could build a camp from earth and stone in an afternoon, so why would anyone need to live in a tent?
Besides, some of the Magic Arrays in this tent had only become popular in recent years. They probably hadn't even been developed a thousand years ago.
Albert didn't deny the tent's value, though. He'd seen similar tents in the Imperial Capital, used in the courtyards during large gatherings hosted by families of Marquis or Duke rank and above. Each one was a valuable family possession.
The tent Landen now had could regulate the temperature and airflow indoors, and its Magic Array could also expand and fold it up quickly. Even in the Imperial Capital, a tent like this would cost more than a hundred Gold Coins.
Black-Eyed hadn't made a bad purchase after all.
However, Landen and Albert searched for a long time and couldn't find any family crest on the tent. The only thing they found was a signature in one spot: "Sherman Iron-Drill."
Since the small nomadic tribes had effectively "bought into" Landen's Gallop Tribe, they were allowed to keep their original wealth and livestock, which remained the property of their original owners.
That included the supplies from the small camp Landen had raided the previous night. Those were returned to the Barbarians from the original tribe.
The Wandering Badger Tribe's assets—150 Gold Coins, a dozen Magic Crystals, a Rune Tablet, twelve sets of armor, and the Magic Pattern Armor Black-Eyed had worn—all went to Landen. The Wandering Badger Tribe also had six Black-Scaled Horses, fifty pack animals, 220 Long-Haired Sheep, and dozens of chickens and gray geese.
Landen tried on Black-Eyed's Magic Pattern Armor. According to Albert, a suit of Magic Pattern Armor required a fine set of Iron Armor or a complete suit of armor made from beast hide. A spellcaster of at least Great Mage rank then had to inscribe Magic Patterns on it using Mana-Conductive Metal.
Common Mana-Conductive Metals included blue steel, purple copper, Mithril, and serkin. Sometimes, a Gemstone or Magic Crystal also had to be set in the center of the array.
Once Landen had put it on, he tried using a little Battle Qi. The Battle Qi activated the twelve magical gemstones in the armor's various arrays, and the Magic Patterns lit up.
Landen immediately felt as if he were wearing a suit of power armor. His strength and speed increased at once, yet even with the armor on, his movements weren't hindered.
When he gripped his sword, he could clearly feel his Battle Qi being conducted into the blade. He was very pleased with the Magic Pattern Armor. His only question was how Black-Eyed, wearing a suit like this, hadn't managed to cleave Landen in two.
Of course, Landen found out five minutes later. The Magic Pattern Armor drained all his Battle Qi. The armor itself was no heavier than ordinary Iron Armor, but Landen was so weak after running out of Battle Qi that, by the time Raul and the others helped him take it off, sweat had soaked through both his shirt and trousers.
The armor needed a great deal of Battle Qi to power its arrays. If the wearer didn't have enough, a Magic Crystal could be used as an energy source instead. A standard small Magic Crystal could power the Magic Pattern Armor for about half an hour.
Power armor really was a power hog. Way too expensive to use. Landen thought to himself.
No wonder Black-Eyed hadn't activated the Magic Pattern Armor and had only worn it to show off. Barbarians didn't have Battle Qi, so if they tried to use its functions, it would turn them into Crystal-Devouring Beasts.