Author: 冬瓜茶仙人 / Winter Melon Tea Immortal
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 80
“Hunting beauties is a traditional activity of the Lion family,” said the rabbit-headed shopkeeper, perched on a half-man-high rock, whittling a flute with a small knife. “If you’re not interested, it’s best to decline outright… but people from that family won’t give up easily, so Erica might be in trouble.”
Hearing this, Hasting turned to look. About twenty steps away, a group of mercenaries were loudly gathering firewood, setting up a soup pot, and Eugene was among them, gesturing with a dried duck, which caused laughter among those around him.
“It doesn’t matter if they hear. These things are hardly secrets on the continent,” Charlie said without looking up. “It should be said that their reputation for liking handsome men is as well-known as their exceptional combat skills. Many are known for being favored by the Lion family, and they take it as a compliment.”
Hasting shook his head, not bothering to correct the rabbit-headed shopkeeper’s misunderstanding.
What he was actually watching was Eugene.
This man has an unexpected gift for languages. In just two weeks, Eugene managed to learn about sixty to seventy percent of the mercenaries’ mountain dialect. Although his grammar wasn’t perfect, his accent was remarkably accurate. Using this roughly spoken language, he had quietly bridged a gap with the mercenaries without them noticing. Now, like this break in the middle of their journey, they even accepted him joining them for a meal from the same pot—though Eugene’s various sausages and beers also played a part, it’s notable since mercenary groups were typically very insular. Even the Duke was somewhat surprised that he could integrate so well.
Charlie, noticing no response from Hasting, looked up in the direction he was staring and saw Eugene imitating a mercenary with a particularly raspy voice, which made everyone push and shove each other, noisy enough that even the wild rabbits didn’t dare to show up.
If Hasting knew that Eugene had once witnessed a murder in the dark alleys of Syriacochi, he would have even more respect for Eugene, understanding the deep-seated fear he harbored against these men.
Because neither the Duke nor Charlie had ever asked him to force himself to get close to the mercenaries.
“He seemed like just a street rat at first,” Hasting murmured as he turned his gaze away. “I was short-sighted.”
The rabbit-headed shopkeeper chuckled. “Your master is so picky. Ordinary street rats certainly wouldn’t catch his eye.”
Eugene had his own skills. Among this group, only Eugene could naturally get close to the mercenaries, something even the half-grown Shiloh couldn’t manage.
Although the mercenaries weren’t overly defensive against Shiloh, they wouldn’t close the distance with him either, which Charlie thought was probably due to the traces of his background.
Members of the knight order were generally not pretentious (only the Duke was good at that), but Shiloh’s manners still betrayed his well-educated background, which instinctively put off those accustomed to scrapping from the bottom.
Eugene should have belonged to the latter group, but he had seamlessly integrated into the new collective, even if his initial introduction by the Duke had been in such a humiliating fashion. He never adopted the submissive posture that lower classes typically reserve for their betters.
Charlie believed that if Eugene had started with that attitude, neither Columbus nor Shiloh would have accepted him as naturally as they did later.
It was hard to say if Eugene was aware of this, but so far, he has never erred in judging which demeanor to adopt before whom.
Hasting was still not quite used to Charlie’s habitual disrespect in his language towards the Duke, but if even the Duke hadn’t objected… he decided to remain silent, watching as the shopkeeper put away his knife, blew off the wood shavings, and stood up.
“Where’s Shiloh?” he asked.
Hall always stayed out of sight, but Shiloh usually couldn’t be kept hidden. It was odd that he hadn’t appeared by now when even the tea had boiled.
“He’s on the carriage,” Hasting replied, extinguishing most of the fire, leaving just enough to keep the teapot warm, a habit of the Duke’s, who needed a strong cup of tea to fully wake up after a nap.
Shiloh was growing rapidly, sometimes waking up from pain in the middle of the night. Recently, he was truly sleep-deprived, and even the time allocated for Eugene’s sword lessons had been reduced. He was grabbing every possible moment to catch up on sleep.
Charlie glanced inside their carriage, where Shiloh had cocooned himself in a blanket, steaming with warmth as he slept.
He thought for a moment, then closed the carriage door and watched as a yellow-brown paper figure meandered towards him, stopping at his feet before climbing up the axle.
Charlie bent down to pick up the paper figure, straightened up, and saw Hasting approaching with a large pot of tea.
“Was something moving just now?” the young knight frowned.
For a second, as he approached, he thought he saw something quickly running towards the carriage.
“I didn’t see anything coming… Maybe a startled field mouse?” The rabbit-headed shopkeeper shrugged. “Is he awake?”
“Yes, we’ll set off in fifteen minutes,” he said tersely, handing the teapot to Charlie and climbing into the carriage, unceremoniously dragging Shiloh out of his blankets.
The rabbit-headed shopkeeper stood watching Shiloh wrestle with Hasting, then thought better of it and carried the teapot to the largest carriage in the convoy.
The Duke had a headache.
Lately, he had been sleeping poorly, especially during the day. Being in unfamiliar places made it hard for him to relax fully, and the longer it went on, the more unbearable it became to wake up.
As Charlie opened the door, he saw the Duke, whose beauty was often likened to that of an elf, glaring at a decorative dagger hanging on the carriage wall, looking as if he wanted to swallow it whole.
The strong tea Hasting had prepared for him was still steaming, but the Duke hadn’t touched it yet. Instead, he slowly turned his head to watch the rabbit-headed shopkeeper close the door of the carriage.
“You should get out and walk around.” Charlie examined his face carefully. “Some sunlight would do you good.”
The Duke, who even when freshly awake insisted on sitting up straight, muttered something quietly, which Charlie took a moment to understand as “I don’t like those rough men.”
The high-nosed, robust mercenaries indeed didn’t fit the Duke’s aesthetic. His Brandenburg Knights were known for their disciplined, graceful demeanor—in this, Shiloh excelled, with Lemena once commenting that his fighting style was “more mesmerizing than a dance”.
It wasn’t until after finishing an entire cup of strong tea that the Duke’s heavy head began to clear, by which time the rabbit-headed shopkeeper had already polished off a whole plate of crispy cookies, complaining all the while about the bitterness of the tea Hasting brewed, claiming it was hard to drink without something sweet.
The Duke was unmoved, pouring himself a second cup of tea.
If Priscilla were here, she would have made a big fuss about it—truth be told, before leaving Lemena, he had never even touched the handle of a teapot. While the purpose of this journey had not yet been achieved, he had made numerous breakthroughs in self-care, from pouring tea to dressing and washing.
After all, as capable as Shiloh was, he couldn’t fully replace the work of the dozens of servants under normal circumstances.
This realization—that his years of smooth living were built on such a vast amount of human labor—had surprised the Duke, and he wasn’t prepared to admit this to anyone.
Especially not to Rabbit Head.
“Where’s Eugene?” he asked, tiredly ignoring the other’s suggestion to take a walk in the wilderness.
Charlie pulled out a silk handkerchief, meticulously cleaned his fingers, and then pulled a small paper figure from his pocket that matched the color of the springtime rural fields.
“Internal meetings are off-limits, but casual chats and meals are no longer a problem,” he said. “This is from this morning… It’s about time.”
This paper figure was a variant of his small magic “Gray Sentinel”, derived from the ingenuity of a friend during his student days, capable of discreetly eavesdropping on secrets not meant to be shared.
The little paper figure stood on the tabletop with hands on hips. Charlie muttered something to it, and a small slit automatically opened in the paper figure’s head, beginning to recite the conversations it had overheard.
Eugene hadn’t fully mastered the language yet, especially as some people’s dialects were quite thick, and it was easy to get confused when they spoke quickly. So, he kept this little spy hidden in his outer robe pocket to remember all the information for him.
Both Dwight and Charlie were fluent in the Highlands language, recognizing it without much effort. The paper figure couldn’t filter information. It could only mechanically repeat it, and it took them quite some time to extract something remotely useful from it.
This mercenary group was in the lower middle tier within the Lion family, roaming the southwest of the Doran continent, far from the northern power centers. Much of the family news came through other troops, and they were quite cautious, only discussing trivial matters in front of Eugene, an outsider.
But even these scraps could be of value to those with a discerning eye.
“The current head of the Lion family is under forty, in their prime, but this year there’s an unusually high number of youths entering the continent for their rite of passage. The girl Erica met must be one of them.” Dwight pondered for a moment. “If she’s not close to death, then there must be some other reason making her dissatisfied with her current status, eager to advance her influence to lay the groundwork for further power expansion.”
The rabbit-headed shopkeeper thought for a moment, almost blurting out “dying isn’t impossible,” but held back.
He wasn’t wishing death out of dislike for the lion, but because of another hallmark of the Lion family.
Members of this family were generally born robust, plus the extreme cold of the Highlands enhanced their cardiopulmonary functions and muscle thickness beyond that of average people. On this foundation, the Lion family had never ceased in their pursuit of ultimate physical strength. Over generations, they had developed training methods considered brutal by ordinary standards and advanced further than anyone in their research on strength-enhancing drugs, dominating the market with their enforcers.
Especially the Lion family heads, always the most formidable. However, intensive training and drug use always came with side effects. In history, there were many Lions who died early due to excessive exertion.
Although this is an objective analysis, out of basic decency, Charlie couldn’t voice such a statement about a woman he had never met, so he remained silent.
The Duke’s light eyes watched him, and even without Charlie saying it aloud, he understood what his unspoken words likely were.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her physically. Adeline Lion is ambitious, not just a muscle-bound fighting machine,” he stated calmly. “Shivers has a Fox, Erica has run into Lion, and if something unexpected takes us to White Bridge, there will be Wolf waiting, as will the family’s inseparable brother, a manipulative opportunist, the long-armed Monkey family.”
“The activity level of these families this year is more exaggerated than the active volcanoes on the border. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
Charlie also looked at him. The two stared at each other in the rocking carriage, their emotions unclear.
After a long while, the rabbit-headed shopkeeper raised his hands in surrender. “Alright, you win.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences either,” he said. “After centuries of lying low, these families are probably tired of skulking in the dark. They want to hold sway openly, just like you, with legitimate authority and wealth, and even the king’s blessing and the people’s favor.”
“They’re dreaming,” Dwight said without hesitation.
“In the past, of course, they were dreaming. No matter how big their business and power, no kingdom would truly acknowledge them. In the eyes of the people, they’d always be synonymous with darkness,” the rabbit-headed shopkeeper admitted. “But now, things are different.”
“The potential advent of the ‘Holy Grail’ has given them enough space to dream big. If the world won’t recognize them, then they’ll seize power, overturn all order, and build a new continent. By then, they’ll naturally become the true new kings.”
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