Chapter 94 - The Hunt Begins!

[Chapter Size: 2000 Words.]

Third Person POV

Northern kingdoms.

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As Nilfgaardian soldiers continued their march toward Sodden, the pace was slow. As they moved, they stopped at this moment to camp before continuing their journey. Thousands of kilometers were filled with tents as men marched across the land, destroying villages as they plundered them. Many villages had already been abandoned due to the invasion, but not everyone left, thinking they would not be affected; those who stayed met a very unfortunate fate.

As the hours passed, the current army general, Hyuuir Ysiuty, was marking the map, reviewing the army's movement and trying to reformulate the strategy to reach the eastern border as quickly as possible. Navigating tens of thousands of people around mountains, lakes, and rivers was quite stressful.

"My lord!" A soldier entered at this moment while the general glanced at him with an annoyed look, after all, he didn't know what kind of reason his men would have to bother him here.

"Speak." was all he said with a somber tone.

"We found a noble from Cintra who managed to escape the battle in the south... He said he knows... Madara Uchiha, the boy with red eyes, and said you might be interested." The soldier replied nervously.

"He knows the boy? What's his name?" Hyuuir asked, curious, gaining his attention.

"He said his name is Horace Rushford," the soldier said.

"Rushford? He is one of the greatest nobles Cintra had... leading a group of at least 2,000 men with him in battle... so he survived... it was no wonder he wasn't identified among the dead." General Hyuuir had memorized all the information. "How did you find him?" He also wanted to know.

"We found him by chance while patrolling the region, with a group of two dozen trying to flee. We quickly caught them and eliminated most of them, and when we got to him, he said he had important information as he spoke of this Madara, which hearing about made many havoc in the fight in the south..." The soldier spoke, and Hyuuir nodded.

"Great, show me this person." He requested.

A moment later, they brought in a man in his nearly 30s, making him kneel in front of the general. The man looked cautiously at the man in front of him.

"So you are the former noble of Cintra, Mr. Rushford, it seems you ran away like a dog..." Hyuuir mocked in Nilfgaardian.

"..." Horace remained silent, not knowing what to say in a language he did not understand, but by the tone, this general was mocking him.

"I forgot you do not speak the southern tongue... after all, the north has just begun to be conquered." He now spoke in the northern language. "Anyway... do you have information about Madara Uchiha?" He asked.

"Yes... I know many things about him..." He spoke confidently.

"That is strange and even suspicious... why would you think of betraying the hero of Cintra?" Hyuuir asked with a smile.

"Because he killed my father and is responsible for my brother's death many years ago." Horace said, after all, his brother died in the capital event involved with the drug while Madara returned with him dead from another place and the arrow that killed his father was clearly from Madara, after all, only one arrow was shot to that side and precisely his father was hit, which should have been one chance in a million.

Even though no one believed his words, as everyone seemed to declare Madara a hero, he still knew deep down it was him, since his father had sent many assassins after him unsuccessfully to avenge his youngest son.

"Hmm... that sounds quite reasonable for seeking revenge... but I do not believe you could give information like that." Hyuuir spoke at the end.

"If you let me live, I will give you all the information I have on him, after all, I have still been monitoring him in recent years. I am sure these pieces of information will be useful!" He said.

"Well, you have 10 minutes to write down everything you know about him, if I do not like it. You will die." Hyuuir spoke in a serious tone as he pointed to a piece of paper and a pen with ink on the table. "I hope you can write." He said in his native language at the end while the men around him laughed.

"..." Without a choice, Horace stood up and nodded, approaching the table and quickly grabbed the pen before starting to write everything he knew.

A moment later, he finished and Hyuuir picked up the paper for a quick read. "This... is somewhat reasonable," he began, before breaking into a smile.

"Will I be spared?" Horace asked, now only wanting to live, especially since his lands were worth nothing with them being conquered by Nilfgaard, unless they were ceded back to him, which he hoped for if he survived now that he had been captured while trying to flee the country.

"You will be... for now." In the end, Hyuuir just scoffed; he didn't care if this man delivered information that they mostly already had about the one who took the princess. He harbored anger towards all Nilfgaardians and turned a blind eye to all the war crimes his men committed in this region, wanting to make any citizen of Cintra suffer.

The Nilfgaardians already treated these people like dogs, even when the youngest son of Hugkil surrendered his lands, they had planned to kill him in the end so much so that they no longer cared about him and even abused his mother under his roof and did not heed any of his requests.

"What do you mean?" Horace frowned.

"Well, Mr. Rushford. You will be on the hunt for Madara in the north, I want you to be prepared, so get some sword and armor and you will be sent by a mage along with a group to the north," Hyuuir treated all this as a joke; he didn't care whether this noble lived or died, so he wanted to play with him.

"But..." Horace didn't know how the situation could change for him to end up having to work with the Nilfgaardians.

"You have no choice, if you are not successful, you will be executed, if you disobey an order, you will be executed, if you flee, you will be executed, are we clear?" Hyuuir said so that this former noble of Cintra understood very well what he was getting into.

"Yes..." Without a choice, Horace ended up nodding.

"Great. Now get out of here. I have some things to do," Hyuuir said in the end and Horace was removed from the tent.

Rushford had to take a bath after the fight and being treated like an animal as a prisoner, before Nilfgaardian men approached and threw things at his chest, like his armor and weapon, saying things he didn't understand but clearly offending him and laughing at him. But without a choice, he just stayed silent.

The next day he was woken up with a Nilfgaardian kicking him in the back, with him getting up and quickly getting dressed. The men returned cursing him and pushing him out while they continued cursing him.

"You are the fool who will come with me?" A man in armor like an officer, looked at Horace with disdain.

"Yes..." was the only thing he managed to say.

"Very well, follow me," he commanded as they headed to another group of Nilfgaardian men. None of them accepted Horace well, but they just left it at that.

"As you know, we are one of the squads that will be hunting the princess, among many others, but I hope it will be our group that finds her, after all, Emperor Emhyr will give us a lot of gold for this, so I expect you to follow me. For those who do not know me, I am Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach," he spoke to his group in the southern language. Horace just listened without understanding.

"Yes!" The men responded with an excited tone.

"Now let's go! Elfa, open the portal!" he spoke to the mage, and Francesca, who was there, began to conjure her spell before a space opened a hole with chaos energy in it, and the men proceeded through it, leading directly to Verden.

Meanwhile, in the lands of Verden, Madara was in a major city of this country at that moment as he continued traveling hidden through the country, ending up mainly through forests. He had stopped camping in the middle of the woods to give the girl some comfort a few days earlier, before continuing, after all, she had been sleeping in those conditions for the last two weeks since they left the capital.

He knew she was quite uncomfortable, although she did not complain to him, so he decided to go to the city a few nights ago, after spotting it and taking an empty room at an inn. He used a genjutsu when someone tried to enter it, with the person leaving afterward, and then used another genjutsu on the owner after he had the first person call him. He paid for the inn for the days they would stay, but the man would not remember them when they left, and even the mages could not pick up this information.

As he stood at the window, Cirilla was still sleeping that morning, while he remained vigilant, looking down at the streets below the inn. Madara didn't know why, but there was an unsettling feeling in him that day.

As he watched all the people there, he tried to figure out if coming to this city to rest for the last three days had been a good idea. The last few days had been quiet, but this one in particular seemed more ominous.

Of course, the war in the south had affected the city, and people looked suspicious as they talked about the danger of the black soldiers who were invading the north and wondering when they would be next or when their children or their parents would be called to fight a bloody battle.

The guards continued to patrol, and even the noble owner of these lands and the mayor of the city seemed to want to keep order to prevent panic, while soldiers ended the discussions happening among the residents and merchants.

Madara turned when the girl woke up at that moment. "Good morning..." She murmured, yawning.

"Eat that meal," Madara said, pointing to the table where he had left some food for her.

She nodded, and Madara returned to the window. "How long are we going to stay here? It's getting tedious being inside all day..." She asked, a bit dissatisfied, after all, Madara still opened his fuuinjutsu scrolls to read and even placed a genjutsu on Cirilla for her to train.

"If you're ready to continue the journey, then that's fine, we'll leave here by the end of the morning," Madara replied, focusing again on the window.

Cirilla had finished eating and approached Madara, curious to observe the streets like he did every morning. However, as soon as she laid eyes on the street, she was caught by Madara in a lightning-fast move, unable to react. Madara put his hand over her mouth and threw her to the side, hugging her tightly while she looked on in surprise.

"Stay quiet," he murmured. There was a man dressed in ordinary clothes entering that street at that moment, but in the thousandth of a second that Madara looked at him, he clearly noticed that he was more than he seemed. "There's a mage out there," he said, and he knew this mage was there for them.

The man walked calmly, but his gaze wandered the streets and especially the windows of the houses in the city non-specifically, as if he were looking for something.

"How did he find us?" Madara was quite surprised by this. He did not like the idea of being found and hunted by mages at this moment as he traveled north.

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