Chapter 52 - Preparing to mislead the enemy

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Chapter 52 - Preparing to mislead the enemy

Camille: “Merlin… You are aware that you just stole my first kiss, aren’t you? How exactly do you plan on making it up to me?”

Those words and her happy smile sent shivers down Merlin’s spine. Nevertheless, he soon came up with a solution. 

Merlin: “Camille, please undress and lie down on the bed.”

Camille: “O-ok”

Suddenly, she was terrified by how the situation was turning out, and wondered if she had taken the matter with Merlin too far. However, she also realized that, for a young girl in her position, becoming the lover of a powerful man was indeed one of the best outcomes, and for what she had seen about Merlin, he didn’t seem to be a bad choice. Soon after, Camille’s moans resounded in the room. 

Outside the closed window of the room, the man who was previously tailing Merlin and Camille, was attentively listening to the sounds coming from the room, and once he heard her moans and had confirmation, he finally went to see his employer to inform him of the situation. 

He had intended to go to his employer right away, but he changed his mind and decided to confirm the relationship between Camille and Merlin, before reporting it to his employer. He wasn’t the only one spying on those two, though, another person was outside the room, with an ear placed on the door, listening to the sounds coming from the room. That other person was the viscount.

Hearing Camille’s moans he wore a satisfied smile on his face and thought *Good, now the boy will be willing to work with us and make the plan successful!*

Had the viscount or the spy taken a peek inside the room, they would have seen Camille lying down on the bed in her undergarments, and Merlin giving her a full body massage, which was what was making her moan. 

However, people have a surprising ability to adequate facts to their convenience, and both, the viscount and the spy, thought Merlin and Camille were having some adult fun, but they didn’t bother confirming that was actually the case.

Before the viscount and the spy left, Merlin, who was aware of their movements, sent a mana speck out to mark both of them, which he planned to use to track their movements inside the city at a later time. 

A few moments after they left, Camille fell asleep, exhausted. Merlin decided that it was time to start putting his plan into motion. Ever since he decided to help Camille, he had been planning how to do it. It didn’t take long for Merlin to realize, that as long as they were alive, the Dollan Empire wouldn’t stop hunting them down, only after their deaths had been confirmed would the Dollan Empire let the siblings alone.

With that thought as a starting point, Merlin started to depict a plan to fool the Dollan Empire and make them believe the siblings had died. The first step in his plan would be to make sure the man spying on Camille and him never made it back to his employer, then interrogate him after administrating veritalis, a strong truth serum, to him.

The second step would be going to the commercial town of Katra and buying a couple of slaves which could make good fresh bodies in his play. Though he was reluctant to kill two innocent slaves, without 2 bodies to confirm their deaths, the Dollan Empire would never stop their chase. However, he decided to buy two slaves whose minds had been so thoroughly broken, that killing them and putting them out of their misery, would actually be an act of pity.

The third and last step of the plan would be to frame either the spy or his employer for the death of the siblings, in a public manner. Then he would disguise the appearance of the siblings with the same spell he used on Mandy, and make them pass as his companions or slaves. 

He didn’t have the time to hesitate. He quietly slipped out of the room through the window, and traced the speck of mana he had previously left on the spy to know his location and go for him.

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In a house on the opposite side of the city, a few men were drinking some beer jars while conversing loudly among themselves. Those men were dressed exactly the same way as the bandits Merlin killed when protecting the carriage.

Only one man wasn’t joining in the fun, and was sitting in a corner. The way the others looked at him from time to time, made it obvious that man was their leader. He had been looking through the window the whole time, but his face suddenly darkened and one of his men couldn’t help but ask him what was wrong.

???: “Captain, why did you suddenly make that horrible face? Is something wrong, sir?”

Captain: “Yes, Alistair. I was tracking the man we hired to spy on the cursed children inside the viscount’s manor, but his presence has suddenly disappeared.”

Alistair: “But sir, your tracking skills are unparalleled in our division… How could a mere former adventurer escape to them?”

Captain: “He shouldn’t be able to, and the only way to do that would be by either dying, or entering a place with a high level barrier… The church is close to the location I lost track of him, he probably entered inside and I’m just worrying for no reason…”

Saying those words, he relaxed and started drinking the beer in his jar. Little did he know that what had actually happened was very different from his hypothesis, Merlin had knocked the spy out, and coated him with a thin layer of his own mana. It took almost his whole natural mana pool to do it, but in his opinion, it was worth it.

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Merlin was shocked by the information he had obtained from the spy, the people sent by the Dollan Empire sure were vicious! They were up against 2 children, and not only they had orders of killing them, they had to be thoroughly tortured before being allowed to die, and anyone who had even the slightest contact with them, had to be quietly killed.

The truth serum Lokiseth had taught Merlin how to concoct was very effective, the spy had spilled everything out, and the information he had given to Merlin, made the latter wonder whether his opponents were in their right mind. 

They had given the spy way too much information about their own plans! They either were overconfident in their abilities and thought that even if the spy was caught, he wouldn’t talk, or they planned on him being caught and giving fake information to the enemy. 

However, Merlin doubted that the information given by the spy, was bad information fed to him by his enemies, using the spy as a proxy. The reason for that was that most of the information the spy told him, Merlin had already acquired it through Camille, which confirmed its reliability. 

Ruling out the possibility of a trap, Merlin decided to move forward with his plan. Hearing what those men had in store for the siblings, almost made Merlin go massacre them in a fit of rage, but he soon calmed down and realized that getting rid of them wouldn’t solve the problem, the Dollan Empire would just send more people. 

Reaffirming his certitude that his plan was the way to go, Merlin put the spy to sleep and left him in his room in the inn, then, he slipped out of the city without being noticed by the guards, and used the teleportation orb to go to the commercial town of Katra.

It didn’t take long for Merlin to get inside Katra after teleporting into the woods nearby. The last time he had been in the town, he had noted down the location of the slave shops that treated the slaves the most poorly, and it was precisely in one of those shops, that he would find the slaves he needed for his plan. 

Merlin disguised himself as an old man, and went into the first slave shop on his list. Soon after, he came out empty-handed. The slaves who had been shown to him in the slave shop, were the worst slaves they had in stock, but they weren’t as broken as Merlin needed them to be, and he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to kill them.

The same happened in the second slave shop he visited, and in the third… He was starting to get a little desperate, and trying to think of other cities he had visited that might had slaves who fitted his requirements, when he came across the last slave shop on his list.

Shopkeeper: “Good evening, mister. How may I help you?”

Merlin: “Good evening. I would like to see what slaves you have in stock.”

Shopkeeper: “Is there any special requirements for the slaves you wish to acquire?”

Merlin: “Actually, yes, there are some. I wish to see all the slaves you have, both male and female, aging between 12 and 15 years old. Also, their bodies should have no distinctive markings whatsoever, and they should have lost any will to live.”

Shopkeeper: “Those are some harsh requirements… I think we only have three young female slaves and a young male slave that fit those criteria. Please, wait here for a moment and I’ll bring them here for you to see.”

Merlin: “Thank you!”

Merlin went to a corner and sat down on a sofa, while a well dressed female slave brought him a cup of tea. Almost like if the shopkeeper had planned it beforehand, he came back into the room, bringing the slaves with him, as the same time Merlin had finished the tea in his cup.

Shopkeeper: “These are the slaves in stock that fit your criteria.” *Please, take them all away, that way we won’t have to continue wasting food on these useless slaves!*

Merlin: “Let me see…”

He had chosen right away the slaves he was going to buy, but he didn’t want to show any eagerness which could make the shopkeeper remember what his pick had been. He chose the male slave, and the female slave on the outer right.

Merlin: “Hmm… If this is the only male slave you have that fits my criteria, I’ll have to take him… And about the female slaves, could you tell me their origin?”

Shopkeeper: “Does it really matter their origin?”

Merlin: “Not much, nevertheless, it could affect the way they do their work, so I would prefer knowing it before buying them.”

Shopkeeper: “Ok. The one on the left is Narthi, a female debt-slave. She is a half-elven girl who was sold to the owner of a brothel 3 years ago. After her mind broke under the stress of the situation, she was brought back to the slave shop.”

Merlin: “I understand.”

Shopkeeper: “The other two are sisters, Lina and Liza. They were rescued from a bandit lair in the north, however, they killed a guard of Katra after having accused him of being one of the bandits who raped them. Both of them are crime slaves, who were forced to serve the sons of the deceased guard, until they became like they currently are.”

Merlin: “Thank you for explaining their situation to me. Ok, I’ll be taking both the sisters too.”

Shopkeeper: “That will make 3 large coppers.”

Merlin: “Here.”

Shopkeeper: “Thank you for your purchase. Please come again if you ever need to buy more slaves!”

Having left the slave shop, Merlin brought his newly-bought slaves to a side-alley near one of the entrances in the wall of the commercial town of Katra. Several minutes later, Merlin made use of a change of shifts in the guards, to bring the 3 slaves out of the town. Only when they arrived to the woods, did Merlin dare to relax. 

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