Your Majesty's money, why don't you engrave my name on it?

"We can weaken the enemy, we can muddy the waters." A smile replaced the anger on Fidel's face. "I used to think that the lives of hundreds of people would be enough to please the Five-Headed Dragon God, but now it seems that this is far from enough. We must drag down every kingdom in Western Inassus."

"How can such a thing be done?" an elder of a small clan couldn't help but ask.

"Use your rusty brain!" Fidel shouted sharply. "The Kingdom of Latour, is there anyone who has never been satisfied with it? The Kingdom of Fika!"

"So if the Fika Kingdom defeats the Latour Kingdom, who will be most threatened? And if it were to send troops to stop the Fika Kingdom, who would be the biggest beneficiary?"

The clan leaders and elders looked at each other in shock. They had never imagined such a way of war, but the scene described by Fidel was so chaotic yet clear that they had to look for the maps of West Inassus and compare the relationships between the various forces.

Fidel was weaving a less complex web of suspicion, but one whose reach stretched as far as Central Inassas and beyond. If the Kingdom of Latour were mired in such a quagmire, they might not even need to construct a second "Messenger"; they could resolve everything with the utmost speed and achieve their goal directly!

And before these suspicions subside, no force will have the time to pay attention to a suddenly rising Dragon Kingdom!

"But this plan is so serious. Who should carry it out?" A stuttering voice rang out among the Dragonborn. "If a Dragonborn were to come forward, wouldn't his intentions be too obvious..."

"Of course I'll go. I'll plan, implement, and be responsible for everything," Long Zhi sighed in extreme disappointment. "And you guys will just be responsible for the final killing and enjoying the fruits of your labor, haha."

"If you can still hold me back in this situation..." Longzhi raised his hand and pointed at the dragonborn around him and in the distance, but in the end he could only put his hand down in frustration, "No, you can't accomplish such a difficult task."

Chapter 214: Pixie's Return

"Why do I feel a little cold on my back?"

Far away from Fidel's base, in the wilderness outside the town of Diaohou, Jinman shook his body uncomfortably like a cat as he watched the town getting closer and closer.

“It felt like something bad was going to happen.”

"I don't feel that way," Shanli paused for a moment, then shook his head in frustration. "Sister Jin, when was the last time you took a sand bath?"

"...Do you think this has anything to do with it?!"

Jinmang jumped over and grabbed Shanli's mouthpiece: "Xiaoli, we took a shower together last time!"

"It can't be related to that snakeman... He's going back to the Devouring Swamp," Edward tried to separate them, but a single glare from Cindercrown made him withdraw his hand. "Even if he's truly in danger, it won't be for a long, long time."

"Maybe it will never happen. The internal strife among the snake people is very serious." Daisy played a few soothing notes on the mater. "In the snake people's classification of things, 'snake people' are between threats and fresh meat. It means the same kind, it means opponents, and it also means..."

"Someone I can eat alive." Reslaufer laughed lowly. "I'm more looking forward to the day when he appears before me half-crippled."

"I thought you wouldn't let an opponent like that go, Uncle Raslaufer," Angelita tilted her head, "because... of us?"

"Not all," Raslaufer said without intending to lie, "you can also help me defeat him more easily, but why?"

"The benefits of taking the risk of killing him aren't significant enough, and then I might have to worry about retrieving the body. Otherwise, the hook might kill someone and I might be held responsible." Leslaufer shrugged, perhaps meaning he didn't really care. "The gains are far less than the losses."

"As for the Bronze Dragonborn, I think we can't miss this possibility: if Fidel gives him some tricks, perhaps we can plant more on him."

"You mean..." Daisy gestured something above her head and beside her. Although they couldn't understand what it was, everyone thought that the poet was thinking the same thing as them - it was a living eavesdropping device that would expose their whereabouts.

"We really can't take such a risk," Frostbone bit his claws. "Fidel's strength is already superior to ours. We just set a perfect ambush last time. If he figures out our location, one of our few advantages will be gone."

"Anyway, we won't have to worry about the snakemen for a long time!" A Pixie flew around excitedly. "And I won't have to look at that pile of bones anymore! You're a good person!"

It seems that she is the one who is mainly responsible for guarding the snake-man corpses.

"I'd better avoid this kind of 'chivalrous' activity," said Leslough, waving his hand. "I thought it was just an evening stroll, but I almost got myself into trouble. This is very expensive."

Reslaufer had only casually complained, but he hadn't expected the two Pixies to take it seriously. "It doesn't matter! We all know the price of someone like you, East Inassus? With your skills, twenty gold coins for one move is about right, right?"

"It should be at least doubled. You have to pay for their travel expenses." Another Pixie immediately retorted to her companion.

"Yeah, yeah...but it's worth it!"

"Here's a suggestion for you," Feng Daer suddenly said, "It's better to have your own people guard your home. I don't know what you are in Fishhook Town, but anyway, a standing army is far better than mercenaries."

"You're undermining my position," said Raslaufer, glancing at the dwarf with a half-smile. "But most lords wouldn't agree with your view unless someone could back it up with a great victory."

"Otherwise, the huge expense of maintaining a standing army alone would be enough for the rulers to pay for me."

Mercenaries were expensive, but that was a one-time payment. As for the standing army, if the lord didn't want to care about the citizens, from their eighty-year-old mothers to their three-year-old children, then there was no point in expecting their fighting power.

Therefore, whether in the Empire or Inassus, mercenaries have always been the main force, followed by the knights and their followers, and then the slaves - this depends on whether they own slaves. As for the citizen standing army... the guards that Leslaufer and others brought along along the way were all they had.

They are good at maintaining public order and can be relied upon in defending cities and engaging in street fighting, but in real battles, they can only play a role other than fighting.

"That's due to a lack of guidance," the dwarf shook his head. "Back in the Dwarf Empire, it relied on well-disciplined citizen warbands to win almost every battle..."

But now that the Dwarf Empire had vanished into thin air, Reslaufer didn't mind hearing these words. If he told them to those lords, it would be a great mercy if he was not thrown into prison as a liar.

However, for some reason, when Angelita glanced at the two Pixies, she always felt that they seemed to be thinking about this problem seriously.

But... pixies? In this river? They don't even live in town, more like part of a legend than a real, living neighbor.

"Okay! Thank you for your help, kind people. That's all for now!" When everyone arrived at the lake again, the Pixies said goodbye to everyone warmly and friendly. "We don't have anything to give you - except for the perch."

"But fly-fishing Jeff says the most important thing about fishing is the 'catch', not the 'fish'! So you can come and fish for fun if you want!"

"I promise I won't take the bait!"

"But besides that," the Pixie who was probably the leader at the beginning flew in front of Reslaufer, and the crystal dust scattered in the air, making people's noses itch, "I have some personal gifts for Miss Daisy!"

"Me?" the bard blinked. But why stop in front of Raslaufer?

"Your song isn't top-notch, but you sing beautifully!" Pixie regained her usual cheerful demeanor. "As for why I didn't tell you directly, it's because you can't pretend to be our return gift!"

"Big man, we can sense the mark of the goddess Eldas on you. Can you show it to us?"

The goddess's mark? Reslaufer didn't even react for a moment, but he quickly took off the nearly transparent pendant and handed it to the Pixies, who were almost the same size as it.

Looking at the pendant that had become a little "strange" due to the warrior's improper use, the two Pixies looked at each other.

"Is this from the goddess..." "Of course it is." "But why do I smell blood..." "Don't tell me, I also..."

Chapter 215 The Battle of Illusion

It was impossible to keep anything on Reslaufer's body free of blood, and even if the Pixies disagreed, there was nothing they could do. In the end, some of the glittering dust that fell from their bodies was incorporated into the pendant in a special way, making it less transparent.

"This is, Pixie Dust?" Edward's pupils shrank in surprise. "How many spellcasters want to get a little of this!"

"They do want it, but we won't give it to them!" The Pixie puffed out his chest proudly. "Those guys always want to lock us up and exploit us until every last bone in our body is ground into powder!"

"So they'll never get real pixie dust!" another pixie shouted.

"This... is such a precious gift. Thank you!" Daisy stared intently at the dust contained in the pendant, which constantly refracted various interesting illusions under the light. "But how do I use it?"

"Use it however you want! Because this is a gift from us!" Pixie chuckled. "You can use it to do anything we can do! You can fly! You can become invisible! You can give people good dreams or nightmares! Just a little at a time! You don't need to learn all that messed up stuff to make it work. Just use your imagination, that's all!"

Reslaufer handed the pendant to the poet, asking her to examine it more closely. "Can you make a wish to double the dust?"

Daisy was like she was meeting Reslaufer for the first time: "Brother, are you using a card bug?"

"See, I said it was right to give it to Miss Daisy." "Right, right..."

Daisy thought seriously for a moment, then looked at the pixie dust in the pendant. "Can you conjure a piano for me? I've always been curious if there are any bards who can carry a piano on their backs and go on adventures..."

"Is this right?" "Oh no, no!" The two Pixies started muttering again.

Pixie dust clearly wasn't a universal wish-granting machine, so Daisy could only accept the gift with some regret and bid farewell to the two friendly pixies. The latter giggled and vanished into thin air, perhaps returning to the surface of the lake or perhaps flying off to continue their lives elsewhere. None of this likely had anything to do with Reslaufer and the others.

"You can keep the pendant," Leslough said, not accepting the magic item Daisy had exchanged for. "I suspect I've ruined it. It's better for those of you who know magic to take care of it."

"I'm actually quite curious about why your first reaction was that the Goddess of Peace would give you a weapon," Daisy said without being too polite. Everyone had witnessed how Reslaufer had used this magical item. "Because She is kind?"

There was a lot of teasing in the bard's words, but the only Eldath believer in the team had to pretend that he didn't hear it - how could Bella know something that even the priests in the temple couldn't explain clearly?

When everyone returned to the caravan camp, Philip and the caravan leader quickly came to meet them. However, they were not in a hurry - probably because there was no point in being anxious.

"If you've finished your business, then get ready to go," Leslaufer nodded at the two of them. "If you want to hear a story, go find someone who can tell it. I'm not responsible for that."

After reducing the sugar content by 60% and adding a large amount of smoked fish and a small amount of magically processed fresh fish, the caravan sauntered away from the town where the legend of someone catching 26 bass in one go was not about killing a high-caste snake man. Raslaufer sat alone at the end of the last car, leaning against the haystack used to feed the pack animals, gazing at the gradually shrinking statue of Fly Fisherman Jeff.

"How did you do it back then?" There was a completely different scene in Reslaufer's eyes. The illusion performed by the Pixies and the reality he saw by the lake slowly overlapped and changed. A snakeman named Ushas, who was bigger and stronger than the snakeman who claimed to be Sabelmon, was taking a rest in the grass by the lake, and the statue in his eyes became vivid, and finally seemed to become a real person.

He wasn't as funny and irrational as Daisy's version, but when he discovered the snake man, the man took out two shiny daggers.

The imaginary battle quickly ended in Reslaufer's imagination. Jeff's head was easily chopped off by the scimitar, and even the mercenary himself subconsciously shrank his neck. This was one of the solutions he could think of, and he originally thought it was the most feasible one. But now it seems that he underestimated the snake man's tail.

The second battle soon began again. This time it was the snakeman Ushas who fell, but Leslaufer only received a second disappointment: he remembered the wound on the corpse that had not been completely erased - this time he chose to weaken the snakeman's strength intentionally or unintentionally.

If he used the same trick against Sabelmon after this, he would be the one to die.

A third time, a fourth time... Time and again, these fantasies flickered and faded in Reslaufer's icy blue eyes. The Ushas by the lake grew increasingly cunning and vicious. Besides their superior physical abilities and unusual human-like movements, Reslaufer also incorporated more spells, both possessed and not possessed by snakemen. Correspondingly, fly-fishing Jeff's strength and skill were also improving simultaneously, even more so, to the point where the odds went from 50-50 or even 46-60 to 73-80 or even 82-83.

The most important point is that the weapons in "Jeff's" hands are changing from a pair of daggers to a fishing rod, and finally to a two-handed greatsword and a fighting sword.

At this moment, the imaginary battle that Leslaufer had imagined no longer belonged to the past, but to... some time in the future.

The illusionary "Ushas" swung its scimitar indifferently, its body shrouded in a distorted light and shadow, causing Reslaufer's blade to deflect several times. This time, however, was particularly deadly. When Reslaufer finally broke the spell, the scimitar had already reached the side of his neck and cut it down without mercy.

But in the end, it was just a little bit off.

Ushas quickly turned into a pile of bones, the scars on his bones exactly where Reslaufer had seen them—this was the outcome of that battle, that glimmer of opportunity! Posture, force, angle, and timing—everything was calculated by the mind and controlled by the senses! Just this seemingly accidental, yet in fact inevitable, strike could either free the fish or kill the snake-man!

It's just this little difference!

The illusion around Reslaufer suddenly dissipated, leaving no trace. However, his free hands still maintained the slashing posture. However, the one in front of him was not a snake man, but Angarita with a confused face.

"Reslaufer, uncle?" The little princess looked at the mercenary in shock, as if she still couldn't believe that he was awake. "In the dream, all the spirits became restless..."

"Forget about those spirits, child!" Leslaufer hugged Angelita in his arms, not caring at all about the momentary stiffness of her delicate bones. "Soon, there will be new ones!"

Chapter 216 Travel Night

The number of spirits was dwindling. When Reslaufer recovered from his excitement and closed his eyes to observe his surroundings, the phantoms that had once surrounded him became sparse, and at least two-thirds had disappeared.

The beast phantoms around Angelita seemed to still be there, but according to the girl's narration, they had been extremely violent and... terrifying for more than an hour.

Interestingly, when Reslaufer tried to figure out which phantoms were missing, he couldn't remember at all. The only thing that came to his mind was the snake man named Sabelmon.

"It seems I was too eager to kill that guy," Leslaufer chuckled and ruffled Angelita's hair. "But don't worry about that. I'm sure I've already dealt with it. Even if he really appeared before me now, he would have to stand still."

"I'm more worried about you, Uncle Leslough," Angelita looked at Leslough worriedly. "These phantoms of yours... these phantoms around me, what are they? I don't think they are the spirits that Uncle Patrick mentioned! They—"

"They're dead, Annie," the mercenary waved his hand nonchalantly. "They're just the dead I killed once. Perhaps my brain capacity as a mercenary is really limited. When I can't hold any more prey, I just 'clean up' them. It's no big deal."

"If you don't want to be bothered by these guys coming over here anymore, we can find a medium or a shaman to get rid of all the phantoms over there. They would have died if they had seen me when they were alive, and now they have to die a second time."

"That's not what I meant..." Angelita said tangledly, "You don't have the ability to cast spells, remember? But even a real spellcaster probably can't do it like you... Oh my God. Uncle Leslaufer, have you never thought about figuring out all this? How can you let them linger around you with such peace of mind?"

"Because only when they're around can I feel at peace, Annie," the mercenary said after a moment's silence. "Look, ever since I took on your order, the frequency and quality of my kills have increased even more than when I was a soldier. I've been able to sleep well for the first time in a long time. Do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Do they really matter? More important than my own lack of energy, or my own life lost in battle because of it? I don't think so at all. So, let them be what they want. If these dead linger around me, ready to avenge themselves, then so be it. I'm actually curious what they'd become if I killed them again."

"Nothing...will change." Perhaps this was why they had suddenly become so agitated. Reslaufer's imaginary sparring session was to obliterate the last of their existence.

Angelita didn't need to be asleep to feel the panic in the air around her. The creatures that haunted her were beasts, and their emotions were so obvious that they affected her.

But Leslaufer remained unconcerned: "That's even better. If you're scared, you can sleep here for a night. I'll keep an eye on the phantoms and prevent them from causing any trouble."

Should she do this? Or is it the opposite? Angrita couldn't answer this question. The man who had given her a sense of security along the way was now more clearly a threat to her existence. However, when she asked herself, Angrita could no longer be as determined to escape from Raslaufer as she was a few months ago.

This is not an empire, but the tip of a white blade is exposed here. Without protection, she is as fragile as a worm that has not yet emerged from its cocoon. All her previous efforts may be wasted.

She needed Leslaufer, not... Oh, she still had the balance of 600 gold coins to pay, so Leslaufer should need her too.

Angelita couldn't help but laugh softly when she thought of this.

"How can I help you?" Leslaufer, who had just finished his excitement, was not sleepy at all. He let Angelita lie down beside him slowly. Seeing that the girl seemed to have suddenly shaken off her worries, the mercenary asked casually.

"I was thinking of something...happy," Angelita said, seemingly talking about something completely different, but perhaps not entirely. "My birthday is next month."

"Of course, if nothing goes wrong we should be able to reach Qingzun City," Leslaufer nodded. "It's certainly not as good as Magpalez, but outside of the entire empire, there are probably only a few major cities like this where we can celebrate your birthday."

"Have I mentioned this before? Qingzun City, like Magparesh, is a 'Star Port', but it's not as strictly vetted as the Empire or the Elves, so anything can be found there."

"Black Claw should have come from there, and maybe Miss Daisy too." Angelita nodded. People like her would only know earlier than Leslough that they were not alone in the universe.

However, visitors have their own rules and things to do, and the world will continue to operate as it should. Angrita once met a planeswalker who was invited to tell stories to royal members in the palace. These people with broader vision are also more... respectful.

Perhaps they were meant to serve a more powerful being rather than a secular king.

"Is there anything you'd like? Like that big 'dinosaur' Black Claw mentioned earlier?" Leslough glanced at the Shouzhi long poem that Angarita almost always kept with her. "Patrick is so generous, I really don't have anything to give you as a gift."

He even changes his equipment at any time.

"I'm not a boy, what do I need such a big thing for?" Angelita almost forgot what happened just now and said something casually, "How about you give me a set of swordsmanship?"

“You’re already learning.”

"That's not a gift, and that's your experience, not 'swordsmanship,'" Angelita said, rolling over and sitting up, forming a small booklet with her hands. "Is there a secret manual like that? The kind you could keep in a library? My family had some, but they all seemed like nonsense, with all that 'feeling' and 'intuition' stuff, but they didn't explain it completely. I wonder if that was intentional."

"If you asked me to write down what I taught you, it would probably be something like that," said Reslaufer, amused. "Do you think I'm some old scholar? I'd thank the gods if I could just express it with my mouth! Why write a book?"