Chapter 329: An Abrupt Lead

As a popular trope goes: the villains always come in a five-man team; four horsemen and their leader, who will be riding a white steed. However, there were no white steeds in this scenario. After the four Heavenly Kings had said their piece, they turned their gazes to an elderly man sitting in their midst.

He looked to be about sixty or seventy-years-old, and his eyes were like black mirrors reflecting glows of wisdom. His was sitting up straight and appeared sturdy, and his muscles, which was partially covered by the monk-robe he was wearing, were just as firm and herculean as the other northerners present in the room.

This was not his most captivating trait, however. The elderly man, who had the countenance of a commander of the Northern warriors’ envoy, was most noticeable for his light-reflecting bald head. With his firm muscles and his common northern robe, he perfectly depicted the picture of ripped, elderly bald monk.

“Master, whit says ye o’ this Hope? ” The beefy man with the sleeveless shirt asked.

“Th’ glint o’ a rice; th’ glow o’ a firebug’ — unimposing, unthreatening, ” the bald monk replied calmly and confidently. “‘Tis th’ savages who oor guard mist be raised against.”

“What about him must we take into our hearts?” The one who looked to be the studious type hurriedly asked.

The monk’s face relaxed into a state of nostalgic serenity as he recollected an event from his younger days. “When I was but a novice monk, my master teuk me tae th’ wasteland fur oor ascetic training. We met an auld shaman o’ th’ steppe; he was an acquaintance o’ my master. As thay talked, th’ auld shaman mentioned these barbarians.”

“Of thair characteristics, he told us that thair brawn makes th’ ground shudder; their javelins thrusts thro’ th’ sky bfore returning tae earth, and their howls can chaynge th’ coorse o’ a gale. When thay charge, thair motion set th’ world upside-doon. Thay named themselves th’ Divine Warriors, th’ ‘Beloved Bairns o’ Th’ Mountains’.”

After listening to the elderly monk’s tale, an expression of incredulity — the type that people make when listening to exaggerated legends — appeared on the face of the short northerner, and he murmured, “Exaggerated, all o’ it. The barbarians o’ th’ steppe hae ne’er seen a real warrior afore, sae thair stories might hae become misinterpreted. But tae hae wise auld master tae sae easily lend trust onto it..!”

He had spoken softly, but his words did not escape the leader’s ears. This made him turn to look at short northerner before slowly saying, “Aye. This was whit I used tah say whin I was a young, novice monk. But one day, I saw how mistaken I was…”

“My master ‘n’ I hud entered th’ mountains, ‘n’ there, we bore witness tae a fray noth imaginable tae common men. There were dragons — scores o’ th’ mighty beasts — blocking th’ sky from th’ earth. Yet, batlin th’z lords o’ th’ sky — wi’oot bein’ overwhelmed — were th’ Divine Warriors. ‘Twas then I realized that although th’ auld shaman’s stories can be fanciful, these barbarians’ actions had left on me as big a searing impression as thay hud on him. I cannae forget whit I hae seen ’til now.”

“Luck has favored us. There are only three o’ them, and oor work at hand demands more than mere brawn,” the leader finished. “Seeing them traivelin beside that man, Hope, has drawn some respect from me, but alas, soul armatures, in their entirety, are ootcomes o’ heretical southern practices. Things that are inherently unrighteous… They will ne’er remain.”

“Mercy, since the great abbot from the Martial Lodestar Monastery has already given us a direction, then we shall follow and make sure we take notice on these barbarians! But what are these savages hope to gain by bringing their goats with them to the outskirts of the city? Do they intend to steal some corn from the farmers?” The northerner had been reading the report on Baiyi earlier on jovially said.

However, his joke was met with silence; his companions had not found it funny.

The bald monk, the leader of this group, closed his eyes silently and entered a state of deep meditation. The others changed the topic of conversation and began deliberating on which foe might pose more problems for them: Walthart’s royal force or the Church.

Neither of these northerners had considered Baiyi a threat to their success. They did not consider the Church a threat either. Although the Church had stormed Capital City with a large number of soldiers, including templars, paladin grand crosses, and even bishops, they had not gathered any spy reports on the same targets that most powers did; they only announced that they had come to defend the city. However, no power bought into their facade. They believed that there was more to the Church’s activities than it let on.

If the spectators had to place bets on who they thought would obtain the treasure, based on the spy reports, no one would bet on Baiyi, lest they lose their savings. After all, to the various powers who were having Baiyi spied, his activities were not serious enough for one who intended to fight for this holy grail!

At that moment, however, Baiyi, the target of many spy reports, was nothing thinking about any of that. He was busy making an apparatus which his barbarians friends could use to fly. With the aid of the Scholar Walker and the Engineer Walker, Baiyi was able to manufacture something akin to a metal jetpack. The ‘jetpack’ was actually a chunk of mithril that had been sculpted to resemble a small backpack and had a hollow interior. Within the sculpted jetpack, Baiyi drew the formation for a levitation spell, then he placed enough mana crystals to fill the metal backpack on top the formation. These mana crystals were there to power the formation.

Baiyi also had to solve another conundrum. He needed something that would enable the barbarians, who could not use magic at all, trigger the formation in the metal backpack and control their movement in the sky. For this, Baiyi enlisted the help of the Voidwalkers and was able to create a formation that allowed one without magic to control the metal backpack.

However, this success was not without its price. It had cost him 800 gold coins to create just one formation! The materials needed were staggeringly expensive. Baiyi placed this formation on a gauntlet made using goatskin. Whoever wore the gauntlet would be able to control the metal backpack change their flight path at will by gesturing with their fingers.

It costs so much to produce one metal backpack that Baiyi quickly gave up his initial plans to mass produce them for commercial purposes. Baiyi also knew that such a product would not appeal to greatly to the public; after all, if they wished to fly, they would have to pay a price lesser than the cost of one metal backpack to hire a sorcerer who would cast a levitation spell on them. In fact, for the price of one of Baiyi’s metal backpacks, one could ask their hired sorcerer to stay with them for a year! Furthermore, the levitation spell was a simple spell that even Intermediate-level sorcerers are able to cast skillfully, while Advanced-level sorcerers would be able to cast it almost instantaneously. The metal backpack would also only be favored by those who could not manipulate magic, like the barbarians.

Seeing as the original spell was so basic, there was not even a need to use a metal backpack. With that, there was one less reason for them to be produced commercially.

Baiyi only made six metal backpacks, and they were gifts for the barbarians.

When he was done making them, he left the magus lab and returned to the royal manor on the outskirts of the city. As soon as Baiyi got to the manor, he was surprised to see the barbarians already there, and they seemed restless. Baiyi found them sitting on the grass and scraping some rocks with their fingernails.

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He felt as though he was watching sculptors carving idols out of wood or kids creating effigies of objects out of clay. The three black rocks in the barbarians’ hands had been carved into humanoid shapes.

No one in the manor knew were they had gotten the rocks from.

When they saw Baiyi approaching, the barbarians quickly offered their sculpted rocks to him as gifts. “Brother Hope, look! Which one of our figures resembles you the most?”

‘Aww, you guys… had me in mind while you were making this?’ Baiyi felt his chest warm up as he quickly accepted the small sculptures.

When he examined them, he felt like laughing and crying at the same time.

Huskar’s sculpture looked decent, and it was the only piece that had a human shape, even though the human seemed deformed. Zar’Zar’s and Char’Char’s sculptures looked pretty bad; one resembled something out of a Cthulhu mythos, and the other resembled a Xenomorph.

“Are these… the best artists in your tribe? Or is this really what you people think I look like — a pumpkin-headed bizzaro?” Baiyi muttered quietly. He still accepted the bizarre sculptures, albeit reluctantly, because the look in the eyes of the barbarians was one of earnestness. He also took care not to answer their question about the best sculpture, to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings.

He produced three metal backpacks from his storage pouch and said, “Give these a go.”

It was an invitation that neither of the three could resist.

Soon, audible cheers and excited howls could be heard as the barbarians soared across in the sky with their metal backpacks. The cheers, which later began to sound like the wails of banshees, persisted until the sky had darkened. Only then did the three barbarians return to the ground with expressions of unwillingness.

Baiyi had spent the time pacifying the patrol teams that rushed over because of all the noise — which was akin to the roars of monster descending to the world. He quickly explained the situation to the patrol guards and sent them on their way.

When the barbarians landed, Baiyi handed the remaining three metal backpacks to them and explained to them how to take care of their makeshift jetpacks. “The mana stored in here is enough to last five hundred hours; this means if you don’t fly wantonly, the mana could last a year,” Baiyi said. “Remember, if it ever ran out of fuel, look for a white dragon’s blood, pour it into your backpacks, and they will start working again.”

“Oh! So easy!” Huskar sighed, even though no one could tell what was so “simple” about it ¹ .

“Alright, so I upheld my end of the bargain. What about you guys? Any good news?” Baiyi asked.

The faces of the barbarians instantly darkened. They exchanged meaningful glances, with identical shame-filled expressions. After a quiet moment, Huskar sighed and said, “Sorry, Brother Hope; we… We couldn’t find anything. You have given us such priceless presents, but we, in turn…”

Baiyi was not surprised. If he, the heir of the Sage-Emperor of the Magi, had no idea where the Book of Servitude was, then it was not surprising that a couple of barbarians could not find it.

With a serene tone of voice, Baiyi reassured the barbarians: “It’s alright, my brothers. You can’t force something you’re looking for to appear.”

“Our goats and Cuckoo took us out of town to a human settlement. We found tons of visually captivating and aromatic corncobs there, but we did not find any powerful treasures, ” Zar’Zar added, bashfully.

“You guys did not steal their corncobs, right?” Baiyi asked, looking a little alarmed.

“No, no! I traded one of my bracelets for them,” Huskar quickly replied and shook his wrist to show Baiyi the absence of one of his bracelets. “It was a perfect bargain! After the corncobs were roasted, they tasted like heaven! We wanted to bring some back for you, but you can’t eat; hence, we picked up the rocks from there and used them to make sculptures of you.”

‘That’s not a great bargain, my friend. If I’m not mistaken, your bracelets are made from dragon teeth. Taking their market price into account, one bracelet of dragon teeth should have earned you a million carts of corncobs!’ Baiyi thought to himself in amusement.

After talking for a while, Baiyi saw the barbarians back to the rooms that the maids had prepared for them. Their goats were sent off to the royal manor’s stable, where high-class steeds were housed.

Baiyi returned to his room and had nothing to do. He took out the barbarians’ sculptures and began to admire them, and his lips could not helping curling upwards.

He was just about to burst out laughing when something dawned on him. Seized by a sudden realization, Baiyi rushed out of his room and into the next room, where Huskar was fast asleep and snoring loudly. As soon as Baiyi rushed into the room, Huskar was jolted awake.

“H-huh? Brother… Hope? W-what’s wrong?” He opened his blurry eyes and glanced at the sculptures in Baiyi’s grasp. “Did you just come in to — yawn — tell me that my sculpture resembled you the most?”