Chapter 314 — "Foresight"
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
The Southern Region, the County of Hossman.
The tall, powerfully built Count Karlov Hossman sat in his reception room, scrutinizing the guest who had come to call.
As one of the most powerful landed nobles of the Southern Region, Karlov Hossman had always taken great pride in his surname and his family's excellent bloodline.
His family had originally been a branch of the Hossman clan of the Holy Spirit Plain. A hundred years ago, his far-sighted ancestor had grasped in time the true course of the Mist-Moon Civil War and won his own glory by answering the call of the "Northern Crown Prince." That ancestor, who had possessed no right of inheritance, was granted an exceptional title by the royal house after the Second Dynasty was founded, and only then did the family obtain a plot of land of its own in the Southern Region and rise to become count-tier landed nobles. From that day on, and for the hundred years to come, the Hossman family of the Southern Region had remained prosperous and strong.
This proved beyond doubt the excellence of the family bloodline, and all the more the importance of that quality called "foresight" to the family. Karlov Hossman kept this ever in mind; thus he always kept his eyes polished, watching with care and keenness everything that happened in this land—not only on his own domain, but throughout the whole of the Southern Region.
Ever since that "Founding Duke" returned from the dead, his gaze had never once left the Cecil Territory.
Ever since the Mist-Moon Civil War a hundred years ago, the royal house had deliberately kept the Southern Region's development in check. The ancient and colossal Cecil family was like a great beast: even if it collapsed overnight, the flesh and bone of its remains would still hold formidable power. To prevent the nobles great and small who still swore loyalty to the Cecil name from stirring up the situation, the royal house had divided this land more than once over the course of a century, and had turned nearly every Southern noble into a direct vassal of the Crown, while ensuring that no noble title in this land rose above that of count. Thus for a full hundred years, Count Hossman had always been among the highest nobles of this land—but that order had been broken less than a year ago.
The Southern Region had a "duke" once again.
Though this duke had not immediately demanded the return of his lands, nor made any claim upon the Southern Region's present noble hierarchy, but had instead gone off to the Dark Mountains to launch exploration and construction while retaining only his title, Count Karlov Hossman had never for a moment relaxed his vigilance toward that founding hero returned from death. He had a keen nose, and from the duke's series of actions he could smell something different—ambition and menace, hidden away.
"These are all the reports that have come out so far," said the guest before him. "The spies we sent have successfully infiltrated an organization called the 'Twenty-Fifth Production and Construction Brigade.' In the vocabulary invented by that resurrected duke, it is a 'secret construction department.' According to the intelligence our spies have gathered, this department takes orders directly from the lord and undertakes the highest-grade territorial construction tasks, so the reports it sends out should be reliable—and of extremely high value."
"Very good... Mr. Green, the spies you trained have not disappointed me," Karlov Hossman nodded in satisfaction, then frowned slightly. "So then... this Duke Gao Yang Cecil has a batch of very powerful weapons in his hands? And they may have been provided by the elves?"
"Yes. They use these weapons against the monsters that wander in from the wasteland."