Chapter 113 – LV.Nine Priest Seo Yun – [Two]

The Great Khan of the centaurs takes mighty warriors as his generals and turns his own kin into vampires. It is both a reward and a form of domination.

Becoming someone’s subordinate vampire is like binding an iron chain to your own heart and respectfully offering the other end to your master.

Once a centaur warrior becomes a vampire, despite their immense strength and military authority, they dare not challenge the Great Khan. A vampire cannot rebel against their superior in the blood hierarchy.

What the centaur vampire instructed Lieutenant Colonel Lee Hoon was also related to that principle.

The centaur told him to seduce key members of the Dawn Corps into becoming vampires, thereby subjugating them to Lieutenant Colonel Lee Hoon himself.

“Do not turn those you trust and intend to rely on heavily in the future into kin. After the conquest is complete, unqualified kin will all be purged.”

At the same time, the centaur forewarned that the soldiers turned into vampires would later be executed all at once. After all, becoming a vampire is a privilege, and those unworthy of receiving that privilege must be eliminated. Only then can the value of becoming a vampire be maintained.

Lieutenant Colonel Lee Hoon thought that if those vampire soldiers were to be purged, he himself might not be an exception. However, he didn’t dwell on that thought for long, nor did he research any methods to survive at that time.

It wasn’t that he was confident in surviving or that he was careless. He simply had no will to think about an unpleasant problem for too long.

After becoming a vampire, Lieutenant Colonel Lee Hoon felt that something was wrong with his frontal lobe. He was more prone to boiling anger than before, found it harder to suppress those emotions, and made impulsive decisions in all matters.

It is the Curse of the Goddess of Beauty, which shatters the mind of those who are not beautiful when they become a vampire, in proportion to their lack of beauty.

Because Lieutenant Colonel Lee Hoon was somewhat ugly, his Spirit was reduced by 2 points. This is a fact he confirmed by casting a Detection Spell on himself as a Mage. Ultimately, his Mental Stat, which was 5 points, was whittled down to 3 points.

A Spirit of 3 points is at the level of a 7-year-old child. Compared to adults, children have underdeveloped brains, making it difficult for them to suppress impulses and lacking patience. Therefore, the pleasure of the moment is more important than long-term plans.

Lee Hoon simply thought: Whatever the situation, why should he take it seriously? Right now, he was just happy to have pickled that damn Division Commander. Whatever happens later happens…

The centaur vampire said.

“Keep the soldiers pacified throughout the winter and maintain complete control. When summer comes, we will march.”

Lieutenant Colonel Lee Hoon nodded and recalled the face of a certain girl. A smile naturally flowed out.

‘If we march south… I might get to see that girl again.’

He didn’t think any deeper than that, nor did he have the will to do so.

The outsider who came to the mountain valley camp was a Dwarf. A Dwarf Mage leading riflemen.

To be precise, it was an illusion created by the Dwarf Mage himself. Was it to avoid coming all this way to trade only to get buried in the back mountain and have his goods stolen?

The camp people planned to sell guns, ammunition, etc., to that Dwarf and buy provisions and coal. They planned to buy a little coal and mainly provisions, as the Hearth Priest had promised to leave them fire, so fuel wasn’t extremely urgent. Also, unlike other regions where even roadside trees had all been used as firewood, there were quite a lot of trees left in Gangwon-do, so they had prepared a fair amount of firewood.

So, they didn’t really need coal to survive immediately. What they lacked right now was provisions to endure the winter.

“Here, take this.”

However, the items the Dwarf Mage and his subordinates set down were all coal. Briquettes, processed somewhere with great effort into the familiar shape people knew.

Among the brought items, no provisions were visible at all.

The camp’s Leader, the Dark Mage, stared blankly at the briquettes and asked.

“What about the potatoes?”

The Dwarf Mage replied.

“None.”

“You said if we gathered lots of guns and ammunition, you’d exchange them all for potatoes? We don’t need coal… Go back right now and bring the potatoes!”

It was a voice filled with rage, the voice unique to someone who has been swindled. Well, it was understandable to be angry. The reward for hunting soldiers while getting shot at until now had vanished.

The Dwarf Mage coughed awkwardly and said.

“It’s not that we don’t want to give them to you. Our trade has been cut off too.”

“Cut off?”

“You know why we work so hard in the coal mines, right? We trade with Troll NPCs. We can sell coal to them and buy provisions, so we work hard digging coal we can’t even eat… That damn Troll was supposed to come by now, but he hasn’t.”

“He hasn’t come? Why?”

“Don’t know. Anyway, that Troll bastard is supposed to exchange coal for potatoes, but since he’s not coming, we’re going crazy too. We even put people who need to secure provisions for trading with him into the mines… Anyway, we don’t have potatoes to give you, so you know how it is.”

The Dwarf Mage boasted that originally many wanted to cancel the trade altogether, but they couldn’t bring themselves to do that, so they at least brought coal.

Of course, as the Dark Mage, this was no consolation.

“Does telling us your situation solve anything?”

“Then what do you want us to do?”

The Dark Mage complained, asking what use piling up this coal was, and eventually resorted to threats.

“Do you know how much we’ve suffered until now? Whatever your situation, if you don’t hand over the promised provisions right now, you’re dead!”

However, the Dwarf Mage did not raise a white flag. He brazenly said.

“You’ll kill us? If you want to, go ahead.”

“I’ll really kill you!”

“Kill us? I’m just an illusion anyway, and if the friends who came with me die, I won’t feel good, but well… Wouldn’t that mean fewer mouths to feed? We’re in a tough spot too. If you want to kill us to save on provisions, then kill us, man.”

In the end, the Dark Mage let the Dwarf Mage and the riflemen he brought leave. Only the briquettes they set down on the ground and didn’t take back remained piled up in the camp.

As far as Seo Yun knew, it was becoming increasingly difficult for people to obtain provisions. For the past few years, they had survived by finding and eating discarded food here and there, but the limit was slowly approaching.Amidst all this, there weren’t many survivor groups capable of farming. As could be seen from Happy Village, essential yet scarce professions like Sun Priests tended to gather around the most powerful groups in the vicinity. Similarly, the Sun Priests in this region were in the Dwarf village that had been found earlier. Not in some remote camp like this.

What Seo Yun heard happened afterward was as follows.

The Dark Mage, now known by the name Jeong Haneum, calculated how much provisions would be needed to survive the winter and concluded that if things continued as they were, everyone would starve to death.

And so, to ensure at least some survived, he decided to discard the unnecessary mouths.

He decided to expel some members from the camp.

Choosing who to drive out was easy. The survivor group consisted not only of essential personnel for the group but also useless members attached to those essential personnel. The families of the essential personnel.

And by now, there were quite a few members who truly had no reason to be kept. The camp had many men who had died from various causes, and the aunties and elderly who were their families had now lost their providers.

Jeong Haneum declared that he would finally drive out those he had kept until now.

Immediately, an opponent emerged.

“You can’t do that, Haneum. How can you abandon family we’ve lived with until now?”

Jeong Haneum didn’t shout to cut out the good act and shut up. Because he wasn’t someone who could do that.

“It’s not abandoning, Mom. It’s sending them out. To find their own way to survive.”

“Do you think your mother is a fool? If they leave here, they’ll die immediately. What on earth are you saying?”

Despite his own mother’s persuasion, Jeong Haneum displayed a ruthlessness befitting his profession.

“Mom, if we don’t discard the members we need to discard now, we’ll all die together.”

Jeong Haneum forcibly dragged out some aunties and elderly and drove them out beyond the village barricade.

A group followed behind those expelled. Grandmothers and grandfathers who were friends with the elderly who were to be driven out.

Among them was Jeong Haneum’s mother. She packed her belongings and stepped out, saying she would share their plight rather than leave her friends to die outside.

Jeong Haneum couldn’t bear to watch his mother walking toward the blizzard in the dead of winter. He first brought them all back to the camp.

Thus, it was a victory of friendship, a victory of a mother against her ruthless son. The elderly who had survived for the moment rejoiced, but that joy didn’t last long.

The next day, Jeong Haneum left the camp, saying he would lead a group out for another hunt.

And then he didn’t return. Not after one day, nor after two.

Those left behind in the camp easily realized what had happened. Jeong Haneum, the camp leader, had left forever. Taking only the most important members from the camp, leaving behind the useless members.

How many people leave behind bothersome dogs or cats at home when they move? The people of this camp had become abandoned pets.

Why he had tried to dissuade his own mother from leaving directly but thought it was okay to leave them here was easily understandable. Depending on the method of abandoning a pet, the psychological resistance differs.

Leaving a dog behind at home when moving is somewhat easier on the heart than actively driving out to a remote place to abandon a dog you raised. Actively discarding a dog far away is active abandonment, but leaving a dog behind and only themselves leaving abruptly is a more passive abandonment than that.

‘That son of a bitch…’

Seo Yun, who belatedly learned the whole situation, groaned inwardly.

Naturally, Jeong Haneum hadn’t proceeded by reporting all these matters to her side. Seo Yun hadn’t known what was happening in the camp and only now learned the result.

She hadn’t expected to witness such a thing while staying in the camp, unable to leave immediately due to the blizzard.

“How much provisions are left in the camp?”

“Well…”

As Seo Yun checked, Jeong Haneum had left behind provisions when he left, like leaving a bag of pet food when abandoning a pet. But no matter how frugally eaten, it was only enough for about a week, never enough to last the winter.

Naturally, if things continued like this, everyone would die.

Seo Yun looked at the ‘useless’ crowd and elderly left behind here.

Those elderly had been a nuisance to her until now, but in the process, she had at least become familiar with their faces. If she left them all to die like this and left herself, it would certainly be uncomfortable for her heart.

‘I don’t really know what I should do for my own peace of mind…’

They hadn’t immediately asked for her help. Everyone knew she had no such responsibility.

While Seo Yun was blankly lost in thought, Han Siwoo asked.

“What are you going to do? Are you going to leave like this?”

To Han Siwoo’s question, Seo Yun replied.

“Give me a moment… let me think a bit.”

Seo Yun thought about the Troll. Why on earth had that Troll not participated in the trade? Was it dead? Surely that couldn’t be the case.

She wondered if it was her side’s fault if the Troll had fallen ill and taken to bed because of that incident.

Of course, even she thought that was a leap in logic. So, while she didn’t consider saving them her duty, she did think it was somewhat related to her side.

And then, after discussing with her two teammates, she decided whether to help them and, if so, to what extent.

Gathering the camp people, Seo Yun said.

“Let me say this in advance: I won’t be sharing provisions.”

This was an important principle she had set in her heart. Because the provisions Seo Yun had were not items for herself but brought for her teammates. She couldn’t do good deeds with others’ belongings.

So, if she wanted to do good deeds for others, she had to manage it herself without burdening her teammates. How?

One method came to mind.

“But I should repay the hospitality I received here.”

At the words hinting at help, the gazes of the camp people focused here.

Seo Yun pointed at the useless items left behind with the useless people and said.

“These coals, can I sell them off?”