Kente People

Two more days passed. The fledglings grew remarkably fast; now they were full of life, chirping as they waited for food.

The hunting party that had been sent out returned once more. This time, they had brought back seven or eight crows.

Komoro stood beneath the great tree, gazing coldly at the bound crows. Pointing at one whose wing had been broken, he said icily, "Though these crows have not yet come under my lord's dominion, that is no reason for you to injure them."

"Who hurt it? Step forward." Komoro swept his gaze across the members of the new hunting party. "Unless you intend to provoke the great Negary's wrath."

One person looked around, then finally stepped forward, trembling all over. Komoro knew him well—he had been his childhood playmate. Yet now, there was nothing but fear in the man's eyes as he looked at him.

Seeing his former companion's terrified appearance, Komoro hardened his heart. The injured crow was merely an excuse; the reason he needed such an excuse was, naturally, because Negary had ordered Komoro to prepare a sacrifice.

During this time, Wang Yuan had only absorbed the white mist provided by the "Black Crow" pathogen. The reserves of white mist were now running low, so sacrifices were needed. Wang Yuan conveyed this task to Komoro through the Domination Pathogen.

It was not impossible to simply seize a villager for sacrifice, but that might provoke fierce resistance from the villagers. So an excuse was needed—those who had made mistakes could be used as offerings.

And now, this childhood companion was the one who had run straight into the spearpoint. Komoro did not dare defy Negary's command. He could only wrong this man.

Komoro narrowed his eyes and was about to say something when he saw a member of the guard riding toward them from afar.

"Lord Komoro, we've found traces of the Kente People." The guard hurriedly dismounted, came to Komoro's side, and spoke in a low voice.

"The Kente People?" Some less-than-pleasant memories flashed through Komoro's mind. Turning to his childhood companion, he continued, "By rights, your crime should be paid for with your life."

"But now I will give you a chance. A life for a life—join the guard, capture a Kente, and redeem your sins with his life!" In the end, Komoro had softened and spared his childhood companion.

Wang Yuan paid no attention to Komoro's little thoughts. Instead, he considered the information about the Kente People.

The Kente People were known as born bandits. The instinct to plunder was carved into their bloodline. This description was not racial discrimination; being bandits was simply the Kente People's nature. Even with acquired education and reform, it was almost impossible to change them.

Once, in the nearby Kingdom of Roas, there was a kind-hearted noble scholar. He believed that the reason all Kente People became bandits was because they had been exposed to banditry since childhood and learned only the skills of robbery. Naturally, when they grew up, they could only become bandits.

If a Kente person were raised in a normal family, he would surely become a normal person.

So, during one of his outings, he stopped a group of adventurers from killing a newborn baby girl from a Kente bandit gang. Declaring that the infant was innocent, he adopted the girl amid the adventurers' expressions of Are you kidding me?

The noble scholar never told the girl that she was Kente. From childhood to adulthood, he hired etiquette teachers to teach her every refinement expected of a lady, regulated all her behavior, and treated her as his own daughter.

Then, at the age of fifteen, she nearly inherited the noble scholar's title. Had she not been accused—and had the evidence not been conclusive—of beginning to poison the noble with a slow-acting toxin at the age of twelve, she would now have been called Lady Ika Alisa rather than the great thief Ika Alisa.

At twelve, before she had ever come into contact with any wicked knowledge, Ika had happened to learn about a kind of slow-acting poison. With no grudge whatsoever against the noble scholar who had adopted her, she poisoned him.

That was the Kente People's nature. They did not consider plundering others shameful; indeed, they delighted in it. Sometimes, even when they had no need, they would still plunder others simply to savor the pleasure.

Of course, though the Kente People were addicted to plunder, they were not fools. They would not attack forces too powerful, nor would they wipe out those they plundered in one stroke. Otherwise, once there was no one left to plunder, these Kente People who disliked labor would also perish.

These Kexi villages belonged to the sort that was plundered. Every year, Kente-led bandits came to raid the villages, and every time, the villages had to rack their brains to resist them.

If a village had no power to resist and was completely taken by the bandits, then everything in it would be at the bandits' mercy. Their worst year had been when bandits broke into the village and set a fire, burning down many houses. Had the Kente People not spared the remaining villagers for the sake of sustainable development, the village would have ceased to exist long ago. That year, many Kexi People starved or froze to death.

Of course, there were also relatively peaceful years. Both sides would flex their muscles, and if the bandits found the bone too hard to chew, they would demand a certain amount of grain from the village before withdrawing.

But this village was now completely different. It had already come under Wang Yuan's domination. How could Wang Yuan allow what belonged to him to be manipulated by others again?

Thus, Wang Yuan's decision regarding the Kente People from the start had been total extermination. After all, these Kexi People were under Wang Yuan's domination—property that required sustainable development—so Wang Yuan could not treat them too cruelly.

But Wang Yuan did not care nearly as much about the Kente People. Most pathogens cultivated in the current environment were not very infectious. Could the bloodline of the Kente People, imbued with the instinct to plunder, perhaps cultivate an extraordinarily infectious pathogen?

Wang Yuan was looking forward to finding out. Before that, however, he needed a certain amount of armed strength. The village's original fighting force had not been large to begin with, consisting mainly of the guard and the hunting party.

Yet Wang Yuan had nearly wiped out the hunting party, leaving only the novice Komoro. Jacques of the guard had also been killed, while some members had been reassigned into a new hunting party to search for crows. The village's fighting strength was weaker than ever before.

If not for their faith in Negary, many villagers would likely have already been preparing to flee.

Looking at the captured crows, Wang Yuan thought of the still-incomplete "Black Crow" pathogen, and an idea gradually took shape. This Kexi village was far too isolated and knew far too little about the outside world. Perhaps this time, they could learn some information about the outside world from these Kente bandits.