43 Tread Carefully
Ever since we transferred our armies to a larger, 75,000 men army, the way they treated General Dunham was visibly getting worse and worse. Everyone hated him and they all wanted him gone from the position especially after hearing what happened to Weiss and Quentin, 2 very respected Majors in the army.
"Tsk tsk tsk. Why did Weiss and Quintin get transferred? We may be from different armies but I've heard about their bravery on the battle of Gaogu"
"I know. I heard that it's because they talked back to their General. The General sucked at leadership or something"
"Yeah! Apparently, he kept more than half of the heroes for himself to protect his life"
"Seriously? Tsk, what kind of world do we live in to give these types of people thousands of men to command?"
This isn't just anger at the decision to try Weiss and Quentin for treason but anger at the unofficial official promotion of one of the worst Generals ever. He has lost multiple armies before I came here and has given false information to allies, leading to their demise.
With this, a revolution is very imminent but they're scared of being ousted as a traitor and having their families killed. That's where I come in. The only problem for me isn't persuasiveness or cunningness, this is a problem of logistics.
My stash of mind-altering drugs are stashed how many weeks away from where we are and even with my super speed gotten from Michael, it's going to take maybe 3-4 days to go there and back. Too long for any hero to be gone, especially when they were newly found.
That's where Dunham will benefit me. In my luggages are Loren and another very important thing to survive. No, not food, not water. It's money. What else would it be? Money is the most important over here in Calko. Hell, you can see countless examples of betrayal, power and manipulation through money.
With this, I'll gift it to Dunham and he'll in turn, let me get extra credit for a 20 day surveillance mission of the Jinjin area. There, I'll take Lyca, her women, any alive mana tanks and the moss to hide in a destroyed house in Jinjin.
The buried money can wait for a while since in my bank account, I do have 20,000 gold.
Obviously, Dunham was very friendly and amicable to me considering the status I have. In fact, he knows I can whatever I want and blame it on him. If he fights back? That's his family gone. The only thing he can do is lay down and accept whatever punishment comes his way.
This is why I don't believe I and the others heroes will be kept alive after this; we are too damn powerful and once we mature into smarter adults in our 30-40's, we will understand the power we could have.
Maybe 1 or 2 will be kept as a backup system but their freedoms will be extremely limited and will be kept in cages and used as equipment.
"So let me get this straight. You, hero Kim Min-chul, want me to send you on a 20 day surveillance mission to check on if any demons or looters are plundering Jinjin?"
"Exactly. And for this your bonus will be 100 silver"
"100!...I'll get it ready"
"That's good. Your bonus will be given out in halves; one now, one later. Sounds good?"
"That sounds lovely, Hero Min-chul"
After we shake on it and he gets his advanced monthly bonus, I start packing up my items for travel such as food, water and Loren. I need to introduce Lyca to Loren so that she won't feel abandoned as most employees do when you hire another one.
"Master! Where are we going???"
"To Jinjin. Hop on my back and hold tight"
"Un!"
Taking off, I start running as fast as my body could allow. For this journey, I planned to run or jog for at least 9 hours a day and when running, I run at 35 kilometers per hour. Considering the weight of the backpack, it's contents and Loren, I'd probably run at about 20-23 kilometers per hour. Also consider the jogging pace of likely 14~ kilometers per hour.
With this information in mind, I'm looking at around about 160~180 kilometers per day. The distance of Jinjin and Jinqiang is about 400 kilometer away, this would make the journey take about 3 days to complete, 2 and a half if I rush.
But before calculating all of this, the longest journeys start with the first step. Running off into the distance, Anna and Hana don't even know where I'm going and if anything happens to me, I already left a note for them that reads:
"Dear Anna & Hana,
I know you must be wondering where I left off to. Well, I was sent on a recon or surveillance mission to check on the state of Jinjin for 20 days by General Dunham, much to my dismay. I will be back soon and I wish you 2 the best of luck in the upcoming siege.
Love, Min-chul~❤️"
Obviously, this letter is meant to inform them that if it weren't for General Dunham, I wouldn't have left their side, something they adamantly didn't want to happen. Tension is created, revolution is growing bigger and despite me not being the head of it, I still whisper the ideas into Anna's little ear.
Hana isn't too bright so I guess she can bugger off somewhere but Anna certainly has the charisma and charm to convince multiple men to follow her and to make her one of few female generals. Even though it isn't common, they will believe she is much better than Dunham anyways.
After about 3 hours, Loren taps my back asking for a lunch break. It's fine I guess, I can run for longer the more nutrients I get so this isn't too bad. Unfolding the blanket and eating our food, we finish in only 30 minutes before setting off again.
The trip for a day wasn't eventful until we found something interesting. We walked right into a highway robbery of a group demon bandits robbing a human merchant, most likely passing here to avoid some tax points. Quite smart but it seems this particular dumbass forgot to commission some mercenaries or adventurers to protect their goods.
"Hand it over, damn hornless!"
"Alright, alright! Calm down!"
Reaching inside, it seems like he is actually planning to give it away which, to be honest is a smart move if he wants his life. Running straight past them, some of the demons are suspicious but seeing that I'm continuing on, they ignore me and continue the hold-up.
Jogging for about 1 hour, we encounter a graveyard filled with the bodies of human soldiers who sided during this particular siege. Seems like about 500 died which is a pretty good number considering they had no heroes and Dunham was hoarding us all.
Looking at the various landmarks such as a massive oak tree with various carvings and dilapidated cabins and motels that were run by demons and are now burnt to ashes or destroyed beyond recognition aside for the signs.
There were multiple robberies that I witnessed and out of the 6, I only stopped one because they got greedy and asked for Loren. That's mine, uhuh! Touch her, you gotta pull her out of my grip before you do and I got a good grip on my items.
Again, we were just traveling, eating, traveling, resting, traveling and then sleeping. The 9 hours of running really paid off as I already saw the indents of the marching soldiers on the path leading to Jinjin with various lost wooden planks, the smell of urine and excrement and the footprints being the most prominent feature.
The imprints are so deep that if you walked without looking, you have a high probability of tripping over some of the harder dirt turned into mounds of rock-like things.
Going over the horizon of the hill, I see it. My kingdom. I used to rule this place and now, it's dust. Crumbled walls, rotten wood, unused military equipment and the stench of blood...it's beautiful. I'm sure if I were here to witness it, I'd be throughly impressed at the site. Just with the massive amounts of dried blood puddles, I can tell how many people were there.
.....that's a squad that was blown up, that's a man who slipped in his comrade's blood and that's a man who was run over a siege machine. Visually pleasing indeed. But I have a job to do, a cave to visit and an equipment to fetch.
I hope she has matured properly without me...
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(A.N) chapter chapter! Another chapter and I hope you enjoyed this one. Please do support with any way you can. Even commenting on my chapters makes me incredibly happy and leaving a review, donating power stones and adding to library show me how loved my book is! Anyways, I hope you enjoyed, peace ✌️!
