Chapter 2075: Outside the City
Virion’s appearance—fiery red hair, green eyes, and large stature—was objectively dazzling, very fitting of his abilities.
It was no wonder that despite his relative indifference to romance, so many women, even those outside his small harem, remained steadfast and loyal in their affections to him.
His appearance pretty much confirmed that there was more to this mission than dealing with a rogue village.
"You must be the couple from Alterra, I’ve been wanting to head there but various responsibilities stop me," he said, raising his hand in greeting.
"I’ll be sure to head there within the next few months and be a diligent taxpayer."
To be accurate, he was continuously blocked. His brother knew him too well. If he started his adventures again, it’d be years until he returned.
Now, using his own illness and the recent betrayal of their only relative, Valhalla had managed to keep Virion and force him to help out.
The latter got so bored that, to escape from his responsibilities, he declared that he’d be going to seclusion to finally level up.
Virion had now shot up to level 37 after his long-term isolation, using about ten aether crystals in the span of a month.
Althea had a good impression of this person, especially since he was the one who gave the pearl that helped out her husband when he was going berserk.
Virion looked at the beautiful woman, eyes sparkling. "This must be Lady Alterra. The rumors of your beauty have reached all the way to our City, making people’s curiosity itch. It turns out, all those rumors were understatements."
He smiled, that charming roguish smile that many young women would swoon for.
Althea, on the other hand, almost rolled her eyes. If flirtation was tangible, she’d like to literally swat it away.
This guy could habitually flirt with any beautiful woman and be smooth with it.
Unfortunately, it irked her possessive husband very much.
Case in point, the temperature of the surrounding area lowered significantly.
Virion’s eyes sparkled, and he leaned down slightly while facing Garan’s direction. It was almost like he was ready to fight.
Althea wanted to facepalm. What was with the unnecessary tension? Is everyone bored?
Virion was certainly not romantically interested in her, and her husband could probably tell, but they were still being like this.
No, rather, were they just itching to ’try’ each others’ strengths? She didn’t know much about Virion, but she knew her husband.
She could almost feel his palms and fist itching to punch someone.
"Focus. You two are the leaders of this expedition," she said. "If we waste precious consumable or worse, someone gets injured, because two are playing around, be prepared to pay for the damages."
"You can spar when this is all over."
Virion’s roughish smile did not disappear, though he did stop trying to flirt with her and his taut stance was also loosened.
Garan also calmed down, ironically increasing the lowered temperature in turn.
The others, who were either prepared to intervene or prepared to run away from the area of conflict, looked at Althea with new eyes.
Wow! She could control these two so easily! Even the Lord would probably struggle to keep Master Virion down when he wanted to fight!
Virion was pretty much the paragon of what it meant to be a local warrior of Warrior City—a proper war freak who lived to fight.
When he returned from his ’kidnapping’ back then, he pretty much beat everyone who annoyed him, mostly from his uncle’s faction.
This was done secretly at first. He even wore robes to hide his identity. He targeted the enemies who went out of the city, causing a lot of major injuries and some disabilities.
He still knew not to alert the enemy at the start and had returned secretly. He only knew his uncle had betrayed; he didn’t know who else did so.
It was fortunate that even when the Uncle had indeed entrenched deeply, almost all of the major powerhouses in the City had signed oaths of loyalty to the Lord.
These were all very old people from the generation before the Lord, and many of them had taken oaths with respect to the previous Lord who hoped to maintain protection for his heir at the time.
It was just that due to their age, they hadn’t shown themselves in public for decades. It was to the point that people forgot they existed.
They didn’t mind; they were too busy going through seclusion to extend their lives and train the younger generation, who were far and few in between.
When Virion returned secretly and revealed his uncle’s betrayal, he and Valhalla immediately made a move and asked the old people for assistance.
Virion finally appeared in public and started beating people up even within the City. He was lawless.
However, those he targeted were not only associated with Uncle’s party, but he always caught them when they were doing something indecent or evil, making sure the masses would approve of his move rather than vilify him.
In the end, they forced the Uncle to show his true self and start a rebellion, only to be defeated when the powerhouses appeared together, catching the enemies off guard.
The oldies definitely helped out a lot, otherwise, Virion and Valhalla wouldn’t have been able to get out of the rebellion unscathed.
Of course, they also received a rather large amount of aether crystals, draining nearly all of the city’s stockpile. They left just enough for Virion to use for a while.
Anyway, after dealing with the Uncle’s faction along with his brother, uprooting them from the root, he continued to vent.
Even those who who were a few levels above him were not spared. Of course, he was also properly injured so there were null times.
Speaking of Virion’s anger, had Basset Town not surrender to Alterra and became its subsidiary so quickly, he definitely would’ve found a way to make them suffer, all while dragging some Basset ancestor outside the territory for a good fight.
Anyway, with this little episode finally over, the company resumed their trip to the East.
There were more than three dozen mercenaries there excluding the couple.
The main fighting forces were the half-orc level 40 Beru, Virion, and then Garan. While there were several level 30s with higher levels than Garan, the latter was still given a position by Virion.
Whether it was to test him or to assist him in getting support from the team remained to be seen.
Regardless, the three dozen people, for most part, were respectful to them. Those assigned to the mission were given a background and they knew that Althea and Garan were the Lord’s personal guests—the kind who could sleep in the main palace!
One had to know that the Main palace had several side palaces. Not all guests were given the right to get a room in the main palace. This meant that they were not just guests, but they were personally close with the royal family who lived in the main palace.
Though there were naturally some grumblings here and there originally—it was just a natural reaction until the person proved their own strength—no one dared to provoke them openly.
Rather, they were more concerned whether they would be able to protect the two ancestors.
Their levels were around the same as them, but many nobles were dependent on the aether crystals to level up, especially those foreign nobles. After traveling a bit, everyone knew that only their Warrior City had such a fighting culture.
This meant they were worried these two had empty levels and would be extreme burdens instead.
"We can protect ourselves, don’t worry," Garan said. "Just focus on your own mission."
They were just going along with them and there was no need for the other people to adjust to them. That’d just be wasting resources.
Traveling through the vast forests this time was very different from their previous experience. They were now near a City, after all. There were far more beasts here and the appearance of super high-level monsters was very possible.
Plenty of low-level beasts also surrounded the territory, but they would always come in large mobs led by high-level monsters, perhaps even the supermonsters past level 30.
Ironically, encountering a village-level monster mob near a city meant facing a mob that could easily take down a village.
Traveling within the scope of influence of a city was just fraught with battles. It was inevitable. This was particularly annoying because people hadn’t gone far but their energy was already consumed by a big part.
Many city dwellers who had to travel on foot or by beast cart were heading to weaker territories (if it was to a fellow city, if it were connected to their arrays, they would use the teleportation array instead), so the latter part of the trip should be easier.
However, wouldn’t a stressful beginning be unsatisfactory?
As such, there had been plenty of attempts to lessen the burden.
One of these was creating tunnels to minimize the encounter with monsters.
However, City monsters were not weak. The structural requirement for such a tunnel would be too immense, not to mention the existence of digger-type beasts.
The beast repelling plants certainly had limited abilities. At best, those plants (as also seen in the Alterra region) would only shoo away village-level monsters.
However, if they were led by stronger beasts, then even the weaker monsters could trample on these plants, rendering them completely useless.
Althea listened to people’s ’wish lists’ very well. Who knows if she’d come up with something someday?
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