Godfather's System 228

As I walked around the camp, I was frowning tensely, wondering if my strong suspicions about the fact that I was the target were correct.

Of course, when I said they were targeting me, it wasn’t about any of the many identities that I cycled back around the border. I even doubted that they were searching for my true identity, as the hero that had been tragically lost during the explosion — or, from the perspective of Bertnam’s organization, in their control already.

No, the most likely state of affairs was that they had been searching for the mysterious hero who decided to save the general from imprisonment. There was no other justification for mobilizing more than fifty undercover agents.

For this base only. My mysterious recruit had multiple bases, revealed by his movement patterns, and it was absurd to think that they had limited their agents to only here. The involvement of a hero justified such investment, but it also implied that the general had collaborated with an outside force to catch me.

It was technically a betrayal of my assistance, but I wasn’t angry at him. On the contrary, I admired such a decision. I helped him out of selfish reasons, merely to create a distraction, and I wasn’t naive enough to think that he owed me anything. In his place, I might have done the same.

Unfortunately for him, my pure hatred for wanton slaughter was far stronger.

I walked around the camp, carrying a large box like I was making another supply run while I carefully watched the movements of the third group, trying to find their base of operations. It certainly existed, but finding it was another slow, painstaking work as I prioritized staying hidden.

I walked among the camp, watching people as I replicated their fatigued state and their hardened gaze as they continued to practice their new skills, talking about their future glory, victory, and other vague concepts for when they defeated Somaton.

I noticed that there was no mention of actual objectives or a timeline. They were being trained, but they were nothing more than blunt weapons, ready to be unleashed when the time arrived.

However, every indicator I could see showed that the promised time was not imminent, giving me some time to interfere and solve the issue.

As I continued searching, I talked with Dahmut, asking him to try and see if he could dig for any information about what had been going on. Meanwhile, I continued following the mysterious agents to find their base.

Knowing who to follow, and finding the exact base location of the base had been easier than it any right to be. They had a concealed tunnel, leading to a small base, which, like others, had little to no protection. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much inside. Just some magic weapons, healing pellets, and a communication array that was currently inactive, therefore couldn’t be traced.

Once my objective was complete, I left the secret base without trying to observe more. They were professional enough not to casually babble their mission, and emotional manipulation via Charisma wasn’t some kind of miracle solution that could unwrap their tongue easily.

“I’m so glad that I have time,” I muttered once I left the secret base behind, and started searching for the next one. What I had just discovered was very important, and under theoretical time pressure, I didn’t like my options.

I would have to either draw one of the Somaton flying castles here to ignite the battle earlier, with potentially disastrous consequences, or trigger the trap and try to deal with a mysterious organization alone even as they came bearing their full might.

Neither option was particularly appealing.

Luckily, at this point, I wasn’t afraid that, in my absence, the border region would suddenly fall apart. Raising the youngsters to be capable and strong leaders on their own had taken a lot of time, but it was certainly paying off.

They were handling the operations excellently, allowing us to focus on more esoteric problems. Zolast was free to focus on his experiments of constructing better dungeons, and I was finally free to move around without worrying about the guild and the church every day, searching for Jertann freely once I dealt with my own mistake.

Hopefully, once I was done dealing with the general, Dahmut would have discovered some clues I could follow.

I wasn’t afraid that he wouldn’t be able to find any. While Bertnam’s organization proved elusive, if the push came to shove, there were some methods I could unseal, but some of them were even worse than triggering a war at the border of two countries, so I was reluctant to use them unless there was no other choice.

With that, I started visiting the other bases.

Since I was able to track the location of my party members, I was already aware of the general location of the bases. Finding the first one took long, because I had been careful to decipher their security methods layer by layer to avoid being noticed — a move that had paid off immensely.

Since I knew what to look for, finding the other bases barely took an hour each. Infiltrating the bases had taken slightly more, but still, it took barely a full day for me to visit the other bases and observe them all. And, since I knew exactly what I was looking for, I didn’t need to spend a day each, just several minutes were enough to see that the satellite bases shared a similar structure.

In total, I discovered eight bases, each visited by the general regularly. Every single one of those bases was deep underground to conceal their presence, all of them using underground caves to their benefit, and were all structured similarly.

The population of the camps had been based on the size of the underground formation they used, the smallest of them slightly larger than two thousand, while the largest reached seven thousand. The total was just above thirty thousand, each armed with master skills of dubious origins.

Moreover, the details about the bases were pretty similar. Every base was made of the same three groups, the noble armies, the commoners, and the agents. Even their ratio was pretty similar, implying a level of organized recruitment that was almost as shocking as the master skills.

It was a shocking number, and even more shocking organization. So shocking, it couldn’t be achieved by a single person in a month, no matter how skilled, when he was supposed to be a prisoner prior to it. Unless, of course, he had been offering something truly valuable to a party that could afford it.

A hero.

It was still merely a theory, but I was getting more and more certain of it. However, ironically, the more I watched them, the less confident I felt about their objective. I had initially assumed that they would want to capture me, similar to what Bertnam had done. However, maybe I was misreading it. Maybe they planned the army as a gift for the hero, one that would allow them to court my allegiance for the upcoming disaster.

As for the reputation of the general, why would they care, when the hero in question had chosen him as a representative. After all, it wasn’t like a hero would just sneak into a random flying castle and accidentally free such a notorious person.

A sigh left my mouth as I looked at a random tree. “I hate it when I outsmart myself,” I muttered, shocked at just how much of a reaction one of my random actions was snowballing into, just because it came from a hero.

It looked like, even after everything, I was still underestimating the value of a hero — a value that had been on the rise as the Calamity drew closer.

Of course, that was the literal most optimistic representation, believing that someone would grant me an army just to help me fight against the Calamity. Meanwhile, the worst version included them capturing me and forcing me to use the Heroic party for their agents.

Well, the third worst. The second worst one was being killed. Meanwhile, the worst fate I could imagine was being sold to Set, who would realize that I was the hero who had ruined his plans.

Looking at the way he treated his followers, I didn’t want to experience how he treated his enemies.

I sighed as I started to think about what to do. I considered ignoring the issue and letting Somaton Unfortunately, my personal beliefs wouldn’t allow that. I might have changed my mind if it was a threat that represented certain death, but anything lesser wouldn’t dissuade me.

“Too bad,” I muttered to myself in amusement even as I started to move. “I would have loved to watch Marquis Somaton struggle with this mess.” It was tempting, particularly since he had been one of the few men I had fought against indirectly which I could somewhat respect. I won handily, but I was aware that my easy victory had been a giant gulf in information, where he wasn’t even aware of my existence, let alone my capabilities.

In a way, it was the equivalent of ambushing someone in the dark. Even a world-class boxer was helpless against a blow to the back of their head.

Unfortunately, testing the closest thing I had to a worthy enemy — albeit not close enough — wasn’t enough to risk a potential war.

Instead, I started moving toward the location of my party member. I had already gathered all I could indirectly.

It was finally time to meet with him personally…