The correct way to open the elf

Chapter 403: The City Lord Died in Battle

One noble said, "Are we really going to leave? Our family has sold all the remaining ancestral property and invested it all here. If we leave now, I'm afraid we won't be able to make a living in the future."

Another said, "Who isn't? But what else can we do if we don't leave? You've seen the situation outside. Although it seems that we can still fight those monsters now, we all know that the city lord's force is not enough to defeat those monsters."

Several nobles immediately sighed. What was supposed to be a long-term business that would make them rich ended up losing everything right at the beginning. No one could accept this.

But in the final analysis, life is more important. If you don't run, not only will you lose your money, but you will also be left here.

"Walk……?"

"Let's go! If we don't leave now, when we really can't bear it anymore, I'm afraid we won't be able to leave even if we want to."

"Since we are leaving, let's not leave empty-handed..."

"That's right!"

Several people gathered together and started to improve their retreat plan one after another, striving to gain more benefits.

Although the Brocade Empire does not allow nobles to recruit soldiers, every noble family has servants and guards. Although the number is not large, it is not a small number when they are gathered together. If nothing unexpected happens, safety can still be guaranteed.

These petty nobles had discussed their plan and thought the city lord would stop them when they fled.

However, what surprised them was that although they left with quite a bit of noise, the city lord and the guards seemed to have let them go on purpose and had never appeared in their plan from beginning to end.

Even though they took a lot of things they shouldn't have taken, they were not stopped. The soldiers who were supposed to be on guard were transferred away by the city lord at that time to support several adventurers who were attacked by harpies.

Does the city lord really not know their plan? No, that’s not the case.

But at this point in time, everyone is planning their own retreat.

Although they didn't know what the city lord's plan was, these small nobles knew that the city lord was also planning something, and they were afraid that their departure had become part of this plan.

The fact that the nobles had left their houses could not be hidden from the eyes of the people in this half-finished city. The city lord who received the news was very angry. He rode on horseback with his guards to carefully check the empty nobles' houses.

After listening to the report from the guards, the city lord started cursing and even threatened to report to the empire in public, because when those petty nobles left, they stole some spare weapons and stored food, and stealing military equipment was a serious crime in the Brocade Empire.

Naturally, this movement could not be concealed from the adventurers. They were ordered to cooperate with the garrison in the city to defend it, and they were already reluctant to do so. They were even very disgusted and worried. However, they secretly remembered the escape of these nobles.

Many adventurers had their own ideas in mind. They naturally knew what the nobles here were like.

Those nobles were willing to pay a huge price to leave the city, probably because in the eyes of these well-informed nobles, this city had completely lost all hope of being worth staying in.

So, if the nobles can run, why can't they?

The nobles at least had names, so as long as these adventurers changed their clothes and threw away their weapons, no one would be able to recognize them.

In this way, the food storage warehouse in the city was robbed again. Some "foresighted" adventurers took enough dry food and ran south at night.

As for going to other cities in the Meteorite Mountains, that is impossible.

No one is stupid. If they want to run, they have to run away thoroughly, completely out of this huge fire pit of Meteorite Mountains. Do they have to run to other cities here to be recruited again? !
The city lord cooperated well and re-enacted the previous scene of "swearing in the street" in a rage, but everyone in the city knew that this somewhat "cowardly" city lord could only vent his anger by talking.

There were not many regular soldiers in the city, and they had to defend against the harpies along the simple city walls during the day, so they were naturally very tired, and it was impossible for them to perform other tasks at night.

Therefore, the city lord was very "cooperative" and assigned the task of guarding the grain to the three largest adventurer teams in the city, asking them to supervise each other and guard the grain warehouse.

What happened next was just as the city lord had expected. Not only did the three groups of adventurers flee overnight, they also wiped out the warehouse's inventory in one fell swoop, taking away the few remaining stocks.

At this point, even the dumbest adventurer would understand that this city was finished and if they didn’t run away they would never be able to escape.

Faced with the simple city gate that was unguarded at night, the adventurers filed out one after another and ran away clean within two nights.

What was strange was that none of these adventurers had thought about why the city lord's guards slept so soundly at night, and no one tried to stop them.

Where are the city guards at this time? They are all in the empty houses near the simple city lord's mansion.

As the number of people in the city decreases, they have to gather together to ensure their own safety.

"Is everyone gone?" the city lord asked his personal guards.

"Clearly gone!" the guard replied.

"Have all the family members gone out?"

"The caravan sent a telegram saying that Madam and the others have left the Meteoric Mountains."

The city lord nodded and said, "Send them a telegram and ask them to wait for us at the place we planned."

Although the city lord's family has fallen on hard times, that is relative. To be one of the five city lords, he must have something going for him.

Apart from anything else, as a warrior who made great contributions in the war and was named the city lord, his subordinates are impeccable and their loyalty to him is still very high.

As a soldier of a high position, he had actually long realized that they and those adventurers had been used by the Empire as a human line of defense against plane enemies, and could be said to have been abandoned.

He had already guessed that the imperial army might have already begun building a new line of defense at the border of the Meteorite Mountains.

They and those adventurers were just pawns used to buy time for the empire to deploy troops and build defense facilities.

He knew that he had few options left. Even if he pretended that the city was breached by the harpies and he was defeated and retreated, he would be dragged to the new defense line along with his guards to continue fighting because of his mistake.

By that time, even if these deserters were not executed, they would be placed on the front line, under the supervision of the regular army of the Empire to resist the harpies, and they would still be in danger of death.

Therefore, after the city lord analyzed the situation with his personal guards, they chose another way, which was to pretend that all of them died in battle in this city.

(End of this chapter)