How a Second Life Knight Lives

15. The minimap is a cheat code.

Brandon had a look of disbelief on his face.

No matter how you interpret what the mercenary knight William said, it was a roundabout way of saying that Ethan was suspicious.

Ethan is someone Brandon is personally grooming to be the next generation of executives.

If something were to happen to Ethan, Brandon would not be able to avoid responsibility either.

Moreover, they are currently on a long-distance trade journey, and Ethan was Brandon’s right-hand man. This means he was involved in every aspect of planning, preparation, and execution of this long-distance trade journey.

Brandon was so overwhelmed by the mix of disbelief and the need to prepare for the worst that he could barely speak.

However, Brandon was a seasoned merchant who had been through many ups and downs.

Among the leaders of the Powell trading company, there was no way he hadn’t encountered situations like this before.

He had experienced it all.

So, he could solve this too.

Brandon took a few deep breaths to calm his excitement and clear his head enough to think.

In front of him stood the mercenary knight William.

Brandon had seen this young knight literally smash the sailors of the Bram trading company.

Smash.

It means to break.

It also means to beat to death.

Merchants know better than anyone how reckless those who are both pirates and sailors can be. Frankly, they could never say that none of the ships that left the port of Kalmar with goods and never returned were not the work of the Bram trading company.

If they appear weak, they get plundered, and if they seem a bit troublesome to deal with, they trade. That’s the nature of merchants who sail ships.

Prepared pirates, experienced soldiers, merchants who have abandoned their conscience.

That’s how outsiders view merchants who travel by ship.

But this young knight had ‘smashed’ such sailors.

It was so exhilarating and one-sided that it made you gasp in admiration.

So, they spent a fortune to recruit him.

An amount unimaginable to offer to a mere mercenary knight who hadn’t even been knighted.

Because they thought it was absolutely necessary.

This long-distance trade journey would be very dangerous.

Everyone who knew the situation expected it to be so.

So, they had to struggle to secure a contract with escort mercenaries. It was only natural that it cost a lot of extra money.

In the midst of this, a newcomer with outstanding skills appeared, so they did their best to recruit him. It was possible because they didn’t even think about making a profit on this trade journey.

They could trust his skills.

But could they trust the person himself?

Could they at least believe that he didn’t have ill intentions towards the trade journey?

When William said something shocking, Brandon knew the answer to that question through his experience as a merchant.

Brandon judged that William was a trustworthy person. At least, he was confident that William wouldn’t play tricks with the contract.

With that belief, he demanded a more detailed explanation.

William tried to avoid answering, but to Brandon, that attitude was clearly artificial.

It was as if he didn’t really want to talk, but if you wanted an explanation, he would give it.

If you couldn’t notice that much, you should quit being a merchant.

So Brandon was able to press hard. After all, he would explain it anyway.

In the end, Brandon was able to hear the explanation.

“To put it bluntly, if I were in charge of this trade, I would have sent Ethan back to Kalmar. It would be better if he went with those who were close to him or had connections.”

“Are you so sure?”

“Yes. I feel terrible. To explain this terrible feeling, it’s like if I leave that guy alone, I’ll get hurt.”

There is ‘mystery’ in this world.

There are forces and rules that humans cannot understand or comprehend.

Only a very few can understand and properly utilize ‘mystery’.

Such people are sometimes called wizards, priestesses, druids, or saints.

They were those who handled powers that humans could not possess. So, there were often those who did not think or speak like humans. The more such people were, the more powerful they used.

And there are those who touch the fragments of ‘mystery’.

For some reason, without even knowing why, there are those who use that power without understanding the mystery. Their abilities and powers vary, and most of the time, they are so strange and useless that you wonder, “What is this?” But sometimes, there are very useful ones.

Brandon had also met such people.

He had seen those who healed minor wounds, tracked the traces of beasts from days ago, and saw through the minerals in the ground.

And among such people, he had met an old woman who prophesied. She spoke vaguely and in a roundabout way, but in hindsight, her prophecies were very accurate.

So he could accept William’s words.

This is William’s foresight.

That’s how Brandon understood it.

Brandon’s actions were without hesitation.

He immediately summoned Ethan and ordered him to return to the city of Kalmar with the coachman who was close to him.

“Tell the head of the main branch directly. Don’t tell anyone else. Just say that situation 17 has occurred in the mountains and request immediate action. It’s urgent, so hurry as much as possible.”

Ethan repeated the order with a pale face and immediately left the caravan.

The news sent by the head of the main branch had to be sent as quickly as possible. The private sanctions imposed when the head’s orders were disobeyed were harsh. In severe cases, people even died.

However, Ethan was not in a state to worry about the private sanctions of the merchant guild. His face had turned pale not from tension, but from fear.

The cause of that fear was Brandon’s mention of ‘Situation 17 in the mountains.’

Originally, the code sent by the sub-guild to the main guild should not be known even to someone of Ethan’s position. However, Ethan knew what Situation 17 was. Someone working in the Count of Kalmar’s household had sent him the codebook.

The numbers themselves are not important. You can make up any situation number you want, like Situation 17, Situation 1, or Situation 22, What matters is the sum of the digits. For Situation 17, 1+7 equals 8. For Situation 22, 2+2 equals 4.

The resulting single-digit number is then combined with a predetermined word to point to a word on the code table. In this command, it becomes ‘mountain.’ So, the word corresponding to [mountain-8] on the code table is the key to this command.

It is said that the sub-guild members have memorized all 200 words on the code table. Ethan had also memorized the code table by heart. It wasn’t that difficult.

Thanks to this, Ethan could decipher the code Brandon had sent to the main guild.

It was the word ‘traitor.’

“Turn the carriage around.”

“Ethan? What’s going on? Didn’t Brandon order us to return to the main guild?”

“We’ve been found out.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you decipher the code to be sent to the Powell merchant guild, it becomes the word ‘traitor.'”

“My God.”

“Moreover, they sent both of us together. They’ve become suspicious. They just aren’t certain yet. That’s why we haven’t been tortured or executed. But if we return to the main guild like this, we’ll definitely end up in prison. I don’t know if we’ll come out alive.”

“This is crazy. I have a family in Kalmar!”

“Calm down. Let’s head to the mountains first. We need to inform the bandits we’ve been preparing.”

*

I don’t know what kind of conversation the two traitors had.

But I knew what decision they had made.

I was watching Ethan’s movements.

The red dot that was heading back to Kalmar changed direction to move ahead of the merchant guild’s path as soon as it was out of sight. It was moving at quite a speed.

“By the way, is there any place we should be cautious of in the direction the merchant guild is heading? Any place that was attacked before?”

Captain Zhukov answered my question simply.

“Not for a while. We’ll be on the Salt Road for about ten days. The Salt Road is maintained by tolls, so the lords around it take care of it. It’s said that even a lone merchant can travel safely, though that’s an exaggeration.”

“So, the problem starts when the Salt Road ends.”

“Yes. Right where the Salt Road ends and the regular road begins is where the Powell merchant guild’s trouble lies. I’m worried about what they’ll do this time.”

“What if those bandits enter the Salt Road?”

“They’ll be exterminated. The toll revenue from the Salt Road is quite substantial, so the lords around it will never leave it alone.”

I nodded.

The Salt Road was created as a result of transporting salt from Kalmar to the surrounding cities. Since money moves along this road, the lords are said to desperately strive to maintain public order.

If public order deteriorates, they will transport salt via another route, and the money that salt transportation brings will disappear.

Even experienced mercenaries say that the Salt Road is safe, and the surrounding lords are sensitive to the stability of the Salt Road.

It might be true.

So far, that is.

What about the future?

Well, that will be decided by the red dot running towards the bandits and the bandits themselves.

Perhaps the lords managing the Salt Road as well.

Ethan returned just four days later.

Of course, he did not return alone.

He was accompanied by so many red dots that it was difficult to count them all.

About a hundred, maybe?

They seemed to be the bandits who were said to be stationed at the end of the Salt Road.

Instead of waiting for the Powell caravan to arrive, they decided to come and attack first.

The Powell caravan was still on the Salt Road. The distance they had traveled in four days was just over 50 km? It was really slow.

But it was to be expected.

Hundreds of wagons were moving in a line, followed by hundreds of people, carts, and livestock.

It was a large-scale movement rarely seen. Unless it was an army on the move, such a sight was hard to come by. The speed of movement had to be slow.

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They must have been so anxious while running, hearing that the Powell caravan had noticed their presence.

If the Powell caravan, acting crazy, gave up on transportation and just turned back, it would be a disaster. I thought that someone who desperately needed the rock salt transported by the Powell caravan would not just sit and watch.

But I never thought they would come running like a wild boar hit by a prepayment.

Whoever it was, they must have been really desperate.

I looked for Brandon while watching the now stationary red dots.

Brandon had a lot to do, such as dealing with the mercenaries allied with the bandits in advance and preparing for a night raid.