Here's the second regular chapter of the week. Sorry for the 1-hour-late release. It slipped my mind. ;-P
Fedley Senbaud felt that his luck was pretty good. When the empire's civil war first broke out, he was merely a one-star-silver-ranked garrison squad leader. After the First Prince declared rebellion, he became one of the company leaders of some suicide troopers at the frontlines. It didn't take long for him to be abandoned in the midst of battle due to his injuries. By the time he regained consciousness, he realized there was nothing but corpses all over him.
Lord Gunmock's corpse was not far away from him on the battlefield. He was shocked to see him lying there. Sir Gunmock was one of the most renowned gold ranked knights at the city Senbaud served at as a garrison squad leader. Rumor had it that Gunmock would break through to the three-star gold rank soon. Whenever he passed through the city gates, Senbaud had to offer his greetings. He was ignored every time. Senbaud really didn't think that a person of such caliber would perish on the battlefield just like that.
As he dragged his injured leg with him while he crawled towards the corpse of Sir Gunmock, he saw that a crude crossbow bolt had pierced the neck of the dead man. Senbaud was dumbstruck at the thought that a gold ranked knight had died on the battlefield just like that: from a stray crossbow bolt. He hadn't even been given the chance to use his abilities!
Sir Gunmock must have died a really horrible death, for him to perish here without anyone knowing anything about it. He couldn't even compare to me. I managed to slay two enemies before getting injured...
Senbaud eventually recovered from his stupor. Since the two could be considered to be from the same hometown, he dug a ditch within which to bury Gunmock, lest his body be mutilated by wild birds and beasts. As expected, when he searched the corpse, he found that the dead man was actually a walking treasure trove. The stainless steel, full-body armor, was undamaged as Gunmock had died from a bolt straight to his unprotected neck. Senbaud couldn't help but wonder what kind of unspeakable sin one had to commit to deserve such an unlucky ending.
The corpse also had a sack filled with roughly four hundred imperial gold coins and several other precious gemstones. There was even a golden bracelet which still had bloodstains on it in the sack. It seemed that during the past two days occupying the small town nearby, Sir Gunmock had profited quite a bit. However, Senbaud didn't understand why Sir Gunmock carried so much of his valuables with him in person.
Aren't they really unwieldy on the battlefield? Well, whatever. At least I get to take advantage of it.
The thing that he was the happiest about was his discovery of a high-ranked battleforce manual within the sack Sir Gunmock carried with him. The battleforce attribute of the manual was the same metal type as his own. Flipping open the manual titled 'Metaltemper Battleforce', Senbaud discovered that one of Sir Gunmock's ancestors was a blademaster who had unfortunately perished in battle during one of the empire's invasion attempts on the trade union.
The blademaster had recorded his insights and realizations in the Metaltemper Battleforce manual. It was to be passed down as a family heirloom so that his descendants would not have to go through trial and error in their battleforce training. It was a shame that nobody in the family after him had the same metal attribute battleforce, save for Gunmock. Even so it was till a shame; he had only trained to two-star gold rank at the age of 50. He was simply too lustful and greedy.
Now that Senbaud had stumbled upon such treasure, he decided to become a deserter. He found himself two strolling horses whose owners had died, stripped Gunmock naked as a newborn baby, and loaded the goods on one of the horses before taking his leave.
As the company leader of some of the suicide troops, he was privy to information on a portion of the battle plans, intelligence, and contingencies. He was a rather intelligent man; he didn't head straight home. It wouldn't take long for him to be forcefully reenlisted and placed on the battlefield once more. He traveled to the coast with his two horses instead and built himself a small grass hut in the wilds not far away from the Sea of Grief. He would hunt for a living and occasionally travel to a small town not too far away to buy some food. The rest of his time he would spend training in the Metaltemper Battleforce. In times of war, the key to survival was to have a well-trained body.
Sometimes Senbaud felt that he was like one of those protagonists in the chivalric novels he read. Now that he had his fortunate encounter, his time to shine would soon come. Three years later, the 27-year-old finally broke through to the three-star silver rank, on his birthday no less. Just as he was on the way back from purchasing some alcohol to celebrate, he stumbled upon an unconscious beauty and brought her back with him.
Just like something directly out of a novel, that beauty described her life which was full of drama and grudges when she awoke. There was a bandit lair around two days' travel from the place Senbaud lived.
Actually, it would be more accurate to call it a pirate lair. The men there often raided at sea and seldom operated on land. That was why he wasn't aware that he was the neighbor of pirates all this time.
The beauty was, in fact, the daughter of the original head of the pirates, who had been killed off by the second and third heads of the group because he divided the spoils unequally. At first, the third head even wanted to take the beauty as his wife, but the men that were loyal to the beauty's father ambushed the third head when he was about to force the beauty to sleep with him. After that, all hell broke loose. During the conflict, the beauty was injured. She managed to escape, but was pursued. In a fit of panic, she ran as fast and far as she could, before fainting in the middle of the road where Senbaud coincidentally met her.
Thus, Senbaud drew his sword for the sake of the beauty and helped her travel along the path of vengeance. He had heard that the pirates originally had four silver ranked fighters among their ranks. The beauty's father was a two-star silver rank, the second and third heads, as well as a man referred to as 'uncle Torin', were one star silver ranks. It was uncle Torin who had brought some others to ambush the third head. At the time, only the one star silver ranked second head remained. Senbaud felt that it would be stupid of him to not take that opportunity to intervene.
All went according to plan and Senbaud was able to triumph over the second head, helping the beauty exact her vengeance. The remaining pirates then took him as their leader. With the aid of uncle Torin, he rebuilt the lair of the pirates and took the role of their boss with the beauty as his wife and mistress of the lair.
Ten years had passed in a flash and Senbaud already had two sons and one daughter. He lived a mostly blissful life, but his career was a little lackluster.
As the pirate boss, Senbaud understood the principle of 'the early bird gets the worm, but the early worm gets eaten by the bird'. That was why he had always been extremely careful when it came to raiding at sea. Whenever he decided to act, he would only do so against smuggling ships or ships that sailed astray from their fleets, without ever touching those belonging to large merchant guilds or nobles. He also never flaunted the wealth he got from raiding.
The pirate lair had developed much during the ten years and began to resemble a normal fishing village more and more. Its population was already reaching 1000 people. Senbaud didn't only focus his attention on raiding, he also recruited vagabonds to begin farming and tending to livestock at the wastelands near the hills. As a result of his foresight the pirates no longer had to rely on trading with the outside world for food. He also had the elderly, women, and children gather firewood, boil seawater for salt, and even formed a small trading convoy to trade their surplus salt, and raided goods for some other resources the fishing village needed. When there was an opportunity, he would set sail to take it. At other times, he would live an honest life fishing and tending to his home. His life was one filled with relaxation and freedom.
But he was aware that even if he managed to disguise the pirate lair as a fishing village, they were not completely safe. There wouldn't be a problem during times of war when others were out killing on the battlefield. But when the situation stabilized, dominion lords or standing armies would be well within their rights to act against the lair. By then, the scene of peace before him would instantly turn to one of blood, fire, and ash.
Additionally, the location of the pirate lair wasn't that well-hidden. There were many outsiders who knew of the place, and the terrain wasn't particularly dangerous. It was situated at the coast at a rural and hilly area. The local dominion lord didn't care much about the lair since the pirates didn't raid his dominion in the first place.
These hills were considered a part of Count Seleih's dominion. Count Seleih used to be a division leader of the former empire's army, but he followed Duke Lormo during the civil war of the empire and helped him establish the Lormo Duchy. Thus, he was promoted from a baron to a count and given the piece of land he currently occupied. There were three villages and one town in Count Seleih's dominion, but most of them were congregated within its southern area. The northern area of his dominion was mostly wastelands, forests and tidelands.
It had been two years already since Senbaud first got in touch with the count. He had hoped to obtain recognition from the noble, and to legalize the existence of his fishing village. For that, he was willing to become the knight of the count and was also ready to pay a huge sum in taxes.
However, Count Seleih was often absent from his own dominion because he served by Duke Lormo's side. Senbaud's letter ended up in the hands of the supervisor of the dominion appointed by the count, who looked down on Senbaud's pirate background and didn't care for his three-star-silver-ranked battleforce. His master was a gold ranked knight, after all.
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