Danger

Step Step Step

A man donning common clothes and a cloth mask looked at his surroundings with furrowed brows as he saw the people around him.

Step Step Step

In his surroundings, he saw soldiers walking around their patrols while the nurses washed dirty garbs and put disinfectant herbs on them later to give them a thorough clean for their next patient.

Step Step Step

But even as he saw everyone do the work they were meant to do, he couldn't ignore the sweet and intoxicating scent in the air that made him sure that things were not as they were seen.

And the smell wasn't a smell that any common man could smell or see wafting in the air.

It was a privilege that only cultivators were allowed to have.

Sniff Sniff

'The scent of a new law...' The man thought momentarily after sniffing the air.

This man had been suspicious of his surroundings since a few days ago when he had sensed someone's breakthrough into a new cultivation realm.

Sure, it could've just been a rogue solitary cultivator that just happened to breakthrough near his camp. But that was until it happened again. It was another breakthrough, but it was a minor realm. Barely a stage in cultivation.

But, regardless... something had seriously gone wrong.

Because the breakthrough happened inside his camp.

And that was also the time when he started to notice the faint workings of the law in his surroundings. Mostly affecting people who were a couple that seemed to love each other very much.

At first, the man saw these relationships as a natural thing. The nurses and soldiers were stressed after they were forced to join the war by the king's decree. It was perfectly natural to have some intimacy with each other, especially when fighting together on the frontlines. To unload some of that stress between each other through acts of pleasure was a perfectly human thing to do. He could not fault these men and women for just being human.

This is also why he hadn't scolded anyone until now whenever he heard the moans and grunts near the nurses' tents.

He didn't want those men and women to have broken minds by the time they were out of this war. He wanted them to adjust properly to society afterwards and go about this war as if it was a bad dream.

That was until he realised there might be a cultivator between them.

And one just as powerful as him...

Sure they might've not reached the same stage as him, but he was confident this mysterious cultivator was also in the beginning stages of the Law Accumulation Realm. Most likely close to reaching the Early Law Accumulation Realm, but still in the Initial stages.

But what frightened him more than anything was just how fast they were cultivating and breaking through new stages. It was a frightening speed to already reach the early stage of the Law Accumulation after just breaking through into it!

And that was when the man decided he had to end this soon!

Because if not...

Cough Cough

The man quickly ended his thoughts when he heard some disgusting specimen cough near his vicinity.

'At least go to the nurses if you're coughing so badly...' The man thought with a helpless sigh, before looking away and stomping his foot as he showed his back to the sick man.

So, back to the topic. Ever since then, the man had begun following the trails of this new cultivator in his camp. He had found very well-hidden specks of the law in question. He didn't know which law it was since there could be as many laws as there could be people, but it was definitely a unique enough law for him to follow the tracks left behind. Making him begin his journey in search of this mysterious person in the Kron camp.

But the man was too naive... He hadn't expected the person's influence to be with literally every single person in the camp besides the new soldiers that recently came with him from Aldraha. But even they were starting to get affected by this mysterious law!

And the most bizarre thing happened when he went to check up on them. When he saw them, they seemed to be fine in nature, disposition, and health. The only thing the soldiers found interesting to happen to them was how they were having a lot of luck with women nowadays, which the man ultimately shrugged off as childish talks and went on with his investigations.

But when he went around and asked the other people living in the Kron camp, he strangely got the same answer: their love lives were becoming much richer than they were before arriving at the Kron camp.

Now, once was unimportant, and twice is a coincidence, but if it's the 37th time, then there was surely a pattern going on that the man couldn't ignore anymore.

'Does this person have a law related to love...?' He thought with a peculiar expression as he asked his 38th suspect for investigation.

It was a truly bizarre phenomenon. From what the man was hearing, everyones' love lives had taken a significant improvement, and some were even starting to cheat on their previous spouses back home as they started to take the new lovers in Kron as their only soul mates.

'What the hell kind of debauchery is this camp filled with!?' The man thought with shock.

There were very few people in this camp who did not cheat or have sex with anyone in this camp. But that did not explain away the nature of the law. If it was just a law of lust, the people least affected by the law should've had the least sex, if any.

But the man soon realised that even those most affected by the law didn't cheat or have sex, while some least affected by the law had become lustful demons of the night as if they couldn't control themselves. There was no pattern. There was no trail. The law didn't even seem to have any effect on the sexual habits of people, while the people he had talked to also expressed how they would've never cheated so blatantly before coming to this military camp.

Now, the people most affected by the law were six people in the camp. Strangely it was two of the three nobles he saw hated, in that category. A blonde girl by the name of Emma, another by the name of Sarah, a soldier by the name of Laurier, and two other soldiers named Matt and Devon.

All in all, there were six people strongly connected with this law. And that girls named Sarah and Emma, and that bastard Anthony were the people with the thickest scent of that law.

Now, even if their scent was thick it didn't mean that they could've been the cultivator. No, a cultivator would not have anything called a scent, they would just outright have internal Law Qi or Mana. But he didn't sense it from any of the people he had interacted with.

Though his mana senses did go off when he tried to smell the fragrant law on that girl named Sarah.

He asked some questions to the girl about where she came from and who she was. What he was left with, was a story about a poor girl living in the slums with her brother, only to just barely make it to the big cities when the war was suddenly thrust upon the duo.

It was quite a heartbreaking story.

From what she told him, she and her brother worked hard for years in the slums to scrounge up enough money to leave the slums. They wanted to enter the city of Alron to begin a new life. To have a chance at a new life.

That was all until the misfortune of war came upon the two and separated them as a cruel punishment for dreaming.

For some reason, he empathised with the girl's story a lot. It reminded him how in the end, war made his hard work a pile of shit when he came back home.

And the girl's story also showed him how her efforts also became a pile of shit by war.

They were, in some sense, kindred spirits.

But other than finding out about her personal life, she had also given a clue about an incident a few days ago that included growls and scratching noises in the middle of the night whenever she woke up.

Now, she played it off as just something she heard in the night, but the man made sure to keep that piece of information close to his heart.

Because that was the last piece of information that was starting to tie everything together.

He soon travelled away from the paths as he made his way to the biggest tent in the camp and entered it without thinking twice. Immediately took off his hood and mask, revealing a scar leading up to his cheekbone from his cheek, and a quite cold expression as he looked ahead with determination.

In a hurry, he laid out the map of the camp on his desk along with a book with jutting pages sitting by his side.

Soon after getting his map and information ready, he picked up a quill near him and opened up the bottle of black liquid as an inky smell filled his surroundings.

He dabbed his quill into the ink, and he started drawing new shapes and crosses on the laid-out map as he wrote down a legend at the bottom left of the parchment as a starter.

As he moved his hand across the map and drew out the shapes, he placed names near the circles that represented those that had sex with more than one partner. Triangles near names that said found new love, squares on those who sighted the Beastial Demi-human or witnessed it, and crosses on those that were virgins or those that hadn't had sex not once ever since they arrived at the Kron camp.

Next, he drew a square grid on the white space of the map on the boundary of the parchment as he drew them out until each grid represented the amount of wood there was in the area by square meters. He had mapped it out to 67 grids on the parchment, drawn. If his math was correct, and with that much wood, it was possible to make about 134 units of planks for buildings around the camp as a temporary basis for new lodgings when the climate would eventually change to something crisper.

Spring and summer weren't going to last forever. Fall would soon arrive, and they had to get into construction since the man was almost sure the war was going to last at least until winter. He had to get these soldiers ready in case anything went bad in the future.

Now, there was the commander of the camp, whose main responsibility was to deal with this, but he used to be a general before he was kicked down to a Lieutenant. So he hoped that the woman now standing on top of him in the hierarchy would at least take his advice when he showed her the schematics and the plan.

As he dotted the lines across the maps, he opened up the book with the jutting pages to a clean page as he started to write down witness reports he had received from the soldiers and nurses. Underlining any important or strange information as he went along and drawing lines on the map and shapes as well.

And he went on with his compiling, processing, and sifting of the reports, he was starting to see a picture.

The law, the damage to his vehicles, the Demi-human...

He was starting to reach a conclusion that he was sure was right!

'It has to be that damn Demi-human!' The man thought with a cold expression.

Of course, that wasn't all he found. He was able to narrow down the functions of the law he was chasing after into a few key characteristics that were mostly related to love and lust.

'First, it increases the charisma of those affected to those they love, wish to acquire, or lust after. Second, it affects both sides of the genders regardless of who is affected. Third, there are no recognisable characteristics between those affected by the law and those who aren't.'

After reaching this point, he still found the law quite confusing despite how much he had narrowed it down.

'What a strange law... It doesn't specifically target the lust of a target, but at the same time, it doesn't only aim for the heart either. It seems like a law only focused on increasing charisma and centred on the aspect of love. Now I don't exactly know if it has any effect on lust, but from what I'm seeing every night by the tents... I think it's a safe guess it affects that as well,' The Lieutenant thought as he rubbed his head with a groan.

All of this information was starting to give him a headache, but he quickly breathed in a few breaths with his cultivation technique and regenerated his focus momentarily to continue thinking about the problem.

'The law is centred around charisma, affection, and lust. Mmm... could it be seduction?'

'No... it can't be just seduction. Or else how would it affect literally everyone in the camp? It would mean that this mysterious cultivator would have to seduce literally every single person in this camp to get that kind of effect on the folk here. But at the same time, I can't know the specifics of this law since it doesn't seem to be a core meaning of the world. Something this abstract could only be a central meaning. It's not my law that borrows the laws created by the world that represents life and death...'

'That would mean I am against a cultivator with a central meaning. And if that's true...' The Lieutenant narrowed his eyes.

'This might be more troublesome than expected.