Chapter 696: Already Knew, or Intended

The sky looked like it could collapse at any moment, yet the rain had stopped again. It felt like a giant, larger than a city, was puffing its cheeks with a mouthful of water, staring down at the ground.

After days of this same moody weather, Enkrid almost wished it would just pour already.

He struck a flint to light the lamp.

Clack-clack— Twice the spark flashed, and soon a small flame bloomed on the lamp’s wick, casting light around the sparse room.

There was no fireplace. Just a table beside the bed and a single wardrobe that held clothes and other necessities. A modest room, really.

“You’ve been gone a few days.”

Enkrid spoke while sitting on the edge of the bed. Three Iron still leaned against the corner, the same way he’d left it.

Then he unfastened his oil-soaked cloak. The rain hadn’t come down hard, but even a persistent drizzle could soak one to the underclothes.

As the cloak came off, water droplets fell in a light thud-thud, and the grime in them made the water indistinguishable from mud.

“You’ve been moving around quite a bit.”

Enkrid said, just from looking at Grida’s appearance and demeanor.

“Yeah. Something felt off.”

Grida stood straight as she opened her mouth, then paused briefly, as if considering where to start. But she just dove right in.

“You know the saying—a great tracker makes a good hunter?”

A saying that rang true among trackers. Not exactly slang, but it implied that someone with excellent tracking skills would naturally excel at hunting.

Which made sense.

Trackers weren’t just wanderers. But even if a tracker made a good hunter, that didn’t mean they'd become a great hunter.

It was a bit of a wordplay—yet one that carried weight in this field.

If you picked it apart, what Grida was saying had a dual meaning.

Just as /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ there were bad, good, and great trackers, there were hunters of varying levels. She was saying that while she might be a good hunter because she was an excellent tracker, she wasn’t at a hunter’s level as a hunter.

The premise being—great outranks good.

And she said it knowing that Enkrid had his own experience as a tracker.

A short sentence, but one packed with implications.

In short, she was saying: while scouting as a tracker, she found something—like a hunter would.

And, layered beneath that, that she lost the trail.

“What did you find? If it’s monster tracks, this place is crawling with them.”

The other side of this region bordered the Empire. Below was the Pen-Hanil mountain range. Three villages lay nearby. This was the kind of place where not finding monsters would be strange.

“They don’t have the manpower to mount a sweeping monster-cleansing campaign like the Border Guard.”

They might engage monsters here and there, but there weren’t enough hands to completely purge the surroundings.

A knight could cut down a thousand if they paced themselves—but a single knight wasn’t worth a thousand soldiers.

“And when it comes to monsters, cutting down a thousand in a day isn’t happening either.”

Monsters didn’t come in neat battalions. Slaying a thousand was a battlefield fantasy.

Besides, no one here seemed particularly inclined to try.

While he mulled it over—

“It wasn’t just monsters. What I saw were tracks—clear traces of coordinated movement.”

“A colony?”

“Tch. Yeah. Call it that. I saw a few lizards crawling on all fours.”

Lizards—those same beasts that had fought alongside the Scalers.

Bigger, stronger—even more threatening than Scalers in terms of sheer combat power.

Grida seemed to relax a little. She exhaled and kicked her damp cloak aside.

“But that’s not the problem. Colonies are routine here.”

Routine. That’s what this was for them.

These people competed with each other, trained and taught and pulled each other up. They improved through experience and kept their ambition alive through their environment.

Geography itself forces them to stay strong.

Monsters constantly flowed near Zaun’s borders. Strong outsiders frequently arrived to test their skills.

It wasn’t a secret. But it was one of the reasons why Zaun was strong—though not visible on the surface.

The threat of nearby monsters sharpens their swordsmanship.

If Enkrid was refining pure technique, Zaun was doing everything necessary to raise knights.

Neither path was right or wrong.

Each did what they believed in.

“Ever heard of named monsters? Ones that aren’t demons but still infamous?”

Grida asked, perching on the edge of the small table with her toned glutes resting against the corner.

“Unique entities?”

“Yeah. When a unique survives long enough and becomes known—that’s when it becomes named.”

Grida, who had traveled from the borderlands to the south, understood well the danger of such creatures.

A monster whose strength surpassed the norm was called a “named.”

Or a Name, in colloquial terms.

The idea was the same as with humans: when a powerful warrior made a name for themselves, the name stuck. These monsters fought so well and survived so long, people began referring to them by name.

The Demon Realm was called the graveyard of knights.

And some monsters in that realm were known as knight-slayers.

There were monsters in this world who surpassed their limits.

“It started as a small snake... but then it grew horns, began casting spells—and evolved over time. I found traces of it.”

It was a story he’d heard before.

A monster with the face of a human and the lower body of a serpent.

“Lamia?”

The name for a serpent-type monster that evolved into a humanoid form. Human upper body, serpentine lower body.

Said to cast charm spells.

Genderless, yet resembling a woman—luring men with that appearance.

But there were higher-tier versions of such beings in the Demon Realm.

Grida shook her head.

“No. Medusa.”

A monster with a head of living snakes. One glance could curse you with petrification.

Her eyes reflected the lamp’s light. Not with fear.

Whistle.

Enkrid gave a low whistle.

Not many people would react like this upon discovering a monster like that.

Grida wasn’t surprised by his reaction either. She knew Zaun would react similarly.

A rare monster appears?

“Let’s go catch it.” That would be the response.

The problem was—they’d followed the trail and lost it in the end.

“There were signs of sorcery.”

Which meant the trail was deliberately obscured by spells.

Spells they’d encountered before, even on their way here.

“What did you mean by the family head acting strange?”

That, finally, was the real reason Grida had sought out Enkrid.

Grida turned the question back on him.

“Why do you think he’s doing nothing in a situation like this?”

Enkrid heard that and gave a small, almost invisible nod.

From the journey to now, too many strange things had occurred.

“Schmidt smelled like spellwork.”

He lingered after his business was done.

“There was an ambusher targeting Anne on the way here.”

But after arriving—nothing happened.

Was it because the enemy couldn’t reach them? Or were they waiting for the perfect moment?

If it was one of those two—where should he place the weight?

That was why Ragna hadn’t left Anne’s side. She’d been wandering all over Zaun during that time.

Enkrid compiled everything he knew, everything he’d seen and heard since arriving.

Was Zaun disconnected from the outside world? No.

Yet they claimed ignorance of Odinkar’s disappearance and all external events.

Not just the family head.

“Scalers? Sorcery? Spells? First I’ve heard of it.”

He’d asked Lynox during a spar. That was the reply.

“Same here,” said Heskal.

“This isn’t because the enemy is brilliant.”

Someone inside was intentionally corrupting the information.

Grida had discovered that gap while scouting, then stumbled on the monster’s trail.

Zaun had routine patrols circling the outer lands. You’d need knowledge of their routes to manipulate information like that.

Grida had already reached her conclusion—and came to Enkrid because he knew Zaun more intimately.

That, alone, confirmed her suspicions.

Someone had covered Zaun’s ears and blinded its eyes.

That was the conclusion. And—

“The family head knows something.”

If you retraced the steps and ran through the logic, it became obvious. The reason?

“He’s the head of the house. If he does nothing, knowing things are going wrong—”

Even if he didn’t know every detail, multiple people had warned him of irregularities—and he’d shown no effort to learn more.

Not wanting to know meant—

“He already knows.”

Or it was intentional, and thus he had no need to ask.

“The family head is strange.”

Grida finally said it, her expression now visibly uneasy. If she were to put her true thoughts into words—

“Or maybe... he planned this.”

But what reason would the family head have?

That was Enkrid’s question.

Actions required reasons.

But this time, the reason was nowhere in sight.

In the damp air, Enkrid blinked slowly.

“Magrun said he’s down for a while due to treatment.”

Grida added,

“Who told you?”

“Millesthia.”

A healer within Zaun. Apparently, she didn’t even know how to wield a sword. He’d never seen her face.

Too many oddities. Too little knowledge. And the forces behind it all were hard to guess.

During his mercenary years, Enkrid had seen plenty of “fixers.”

Specialists among mercenaries. They’d track missing persons or solve strange crimes.

If a murder happened in the city, they were the ones who’d investigate.

“Feels like this is fixer territory now.”

But even if one was around—unless nobles or wealthy merchants were involved, they wouldn’t touch a case with knights.

Regardless—someone was messing with the family. And Grida suspected the family head.

Not just him, though. Others too. That’s why she had come to him.

“It feels ominous, Enki.”

BOOM.

Thunder rolled. Lightning lit up the room. Just a flash—but it briefly outlined Grida’s face in flickering shadow.

That shadow mirrored the growing concern on her face.

Despite the thunder, the rain didn’t fall.

It had happened before. Alexandra once referred to that kind of thunder as a “false strike”—a herald of storms.

“I think something’s happening inside Zaun.”

Grida’s words rang true to Enkrid—but he didn’t nod.

It was time to dig in and start figuring things out.

So far, the facts were clear:

“There’s a sorcerer and a spellcaster.”

They’d targeted Anne.

Outside, monsters—including a Medusa—were gathering.

“And they used sorcery to conceal it, which means they’re still trying to hide it.”

Some people overcomplicate things and fail to see the simple truth.

But not Enkrid.

“Why do you think those monsters gathered?”

He asked.

Grida lowered her head, then raised it again.

“Hm?”

“To attack, obviously.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, they do reek of being deliberately gathered.”

“So they’re going to strike at some point. Unless they’re heading for Imperial lands.”

“Of course they’ll attack.”

“Then we just kill them when they do.”

That’s how you handled monsters. Simply, directly.

“And someone’s meddling inside the family. But the family head isn’t the only suspect, right?”

She’d been gone a while—but this was still her home. Minor changes were fine. But the core of it shouldn’t shift.

She had acted because something that shouldn’t have happened did.

That something, she now firmly believed, was that someone was sabotaging the family.

Enkrid saw it that way too.

“...For days, I even wondered if I’d fallen for a confusion spell myself.”

That’s how carefully she’d evaluated things. Only three days had passed—but her thoughts had solidified.

“There are five people who could exert this kind of control over Zaun. Seven, if you count Magrun and Odinkar. But they’re out, and I’ve been gone too long. So they’re unlikely.”

To Enkrid, her words meant she was also considering Odinkar and Magrun as potential suspects—even though they’d traveled together.

“So?”

He gave a prompting nod.

Grida raised her right hand and spread her fingers. Five in total.

“The family head and his wife. Lynox. Heskal. And Andante.”

Of these, Enkrid had met all but Andante.

And more than just meeting them—he’d sparred with each over the past three days.

Those conversations and bouts were still vivid in his memory.

“That’s going to be tough.”

Enkrid muttered.

“You can’t trust them.”

Grida answered. She didn’t hide her tangled emotions. And Enkrid agreed—she had every reason to be tangled.

Everything she’d said meant that those born in Zaun, shaped by its values—had now betrayed them.

And not just anyone.

But someone at the very core of the family.