Night of the Soulless Heathens – 244



#244. Rookie Paladin Azadin 5

It is no exaggeration to say that the cinnabar mined at Fort Vermilion is an essential ingredient for alchemy and this was originally the best place that all knights wanted to serve.

This was because even if you just stole a little bit of the mined cinnabar you could accumulate enormous wealth.

Offering all sorts of bribes and sexual favors in order to serve in the Vermillion fortress was a common occurrence at the Knights’ headquarters in the Chadra Plateau.

Even so since Oji is a place where only Oji people live especially men it was natural that dissatisfaction would build up.

So the knights serving here at Fort Vermillion would break the rules of the Order of the Salvation Knights and buy slaves.

“A slave? Are you crazy?”

Azadin was horrified to hear the ugly truth about Fort Vermillion.

“The higher-ups also know this. There have been many accidents caused by touching the wives and daughters of farmers.”

“Even the upper echelons of the Knights Templar turned a blind eye to it?”

“Well isn’t that what the Knights Templar do the slave trade?”

It was already a public fact that the Rescue Knights brought people in and made them work under the pretext of edifying and saving the poor.

Moreover since Fort Vermilion was located in a remote area even in the Chadra Plateau slavery was even more severe.

Because cinnabar is so toxic workers working at mining sites eventually become seriously ill and die. Despite this the Knights are blinded by the profits cinnabar brings and continue to employ workers.

“So? What happened?”

“The knight who was assigned previously brought a female prisoner. She was a witch with a remarkable beauty.”

“witch?”

“She was a witch who used nether magic. So everyone was afraid of her but anyway at the time the paladin platoon leader and the female prisoner were on good terms with each other and were in a common-law marriage. But….

“The platoon leader died and a new one took over. To be exact the new one was the previous platoon leader’s superior but he wanted the woman and the income from Fort Vermillion so he killed the previous platoon leader and took his place.”

“The woman ran off into the wilderness and disappeared and the new knight who was appointed was torn to pieces and killed. From that day on every night a week after a new platoon leader was appointed a voice whispered in the darkness….”

“Region. You checked right?”

Azadin looked back at Legion. Legion was delighted.

“Of course Captain! You know I’m brave.”

“No a werewolf wouldn’t be afraid of the night. So what was it?”

“It was a shade hag.”

“Shade Hag?”

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“Yes in the wilderness of the Chadra Plateau there are witches who use nether magic and they are often corrupted by the power of the nether turning into fiends with hooked fingers and beaked noses. The female slaves used to be quite beautiful but now they have become completely hideous monsters.”

“….”

Azadin sighed upon seeing the ugly appearance of the Knights. They broke the commandments and sacrificed humans to turn them into monsters because of their dirty desires.

“So that’s why everyone treated me like I was dead. Shade Hag will definitely kill the knights. How many have died so far?”

“There are six so far.”

“What? Then the curse would be over?”

“yes?”

“Oh no. The first platoon leader to die wasn’t killed by Shade Hag so there were actually five people killed by Shade Hag.”

Azadin did the math.

Not only among the Hags but also in Nether Magic and Primal Magic systems 6 is a sacred number and the number of termination.

If a female slave wishes to the Shade Hags and begins to transform into one of them six sacrifices are required to complete the transformation.

If you start killing the platoon leaders with the curse of revenge you will try to fill the number of 6. And coincidentally the last platoon leader is Azadin himself.

“That’s too bad.”

“Huh? You say it’s a pity? Are you Captain sympathizing with that witch?”

“Yes. To end the curse you have to fill in the number 6 of Wild Magic and to complete that number you have to kill me but unfortunately I cannot die.”

“….”

Everyone who was listening was shocked. How could they be so arrogant?

However Azadin made his decision based on conservative calculations.

The Shade Hags’ abilities cannot harm Azadin because he is the Emperor’s one and only messenger and the younger brother whom Arael gave everything to save.

“Soldiers are dependent on drugs?”

“I tried to escape but the Shade Hags had this town surrounded at large. They wouldn’t let anyone who was involved in Fort Vermillion live. That’s why I sold the jinsha and used the money to buy luxury goods and fine pearls from each region. Otherwise everyone would have gone crazy already.”

“Can merchants come and go?”

“yes.”

“Looking at that it seems like the paladin wasn’t the only one who did bad things to that woman?”

“Hahaha. Not me.”

As he spoke Legion looked at Azadin as if he was in ecstasy.

“Yeah yeah. You’re not.”

“Huh? Captain. Don’t be fooled. This guy can do it with women too.”

Kallan warned Azadin.

“What about women? Oh no I really don’t care about your sex life so don’t talk nonsense. My head hurts. Besides if that’s true why does that Shade Hag only attack the Paladins and not the soldiers?”

“Looking at the fact that they only kill those who leave Fort Vermillion I guess they’re trying to stop them.”

“What about the merchants?”

“The merchants didn’t touch the woman or her husband.”

From what I’ve heard it seems that the woman who hated the Vermillion Fortress and the Knights became Shade Hag and after that she went on a hunt to kill the knights who came to her place leaving this place uninhabited for half a year.

“Ha. Okay. Now that I understand the situation I’ll try to fix it.”

When Azadin said that everyone looked amazed.

Even after defeating those who rebelled with their own strength they did not hate them at all and instead offered to save them so everyone could not help but look upon Azadin favorably.

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Especially the region was added.

“Oh my goodness. You are so beautiful.”

“Shut your mouth.”

Azadin called for the herald MacDougall.

“Yes. I’m going. What’s going on here?”

MacDougal was bewildered to see all the squad leaders suddenly bowing down before Azadin seemingly unaware of what had happened during the storm the previous night.

“McDougal. First stop all Jinsa mining operations.”

“What? You want us to stop operations? The losses will be huge.”

“The poison is so strong that it kills people. If we stop it quickly more people will live.”

“Hey Captain. I appreciate your consideration for the people but the Knights have a quota for the number of jinsha. If you don’t send them…”

Azadin will be punished. MacDougall heard that point but Azadin remained calm.

“There is a way to solve it.”

“You can solve it?”

“Yes. But there’s something I need to do. MacDougal. Can you do some research on the townspeople?”

“The villagers?”

“okay.”

All the soldiers including Lieutenant MacDougal felt puzzled.

*********

Instead of stopping the cinnabar mining operation Azadin sent the workers out.

“Let’s start clearing the area now. Let’s repair the ruins and reclaim the devastated fields.”

“Excuse me. If you do something like that what will Jinsa do?”

“Farming is much less profitable than becoming a scholar.”

It was known among intellectuals that cinnabar mining was poisonous and caused a fatal disease but the workers did not know this.

The toxicity of cinnabar does not manifest immediately but rather takes a long time to develop but the miners at the time could not survive long in other mines anyway.

In other words workers are not fully aware of the dangers of jinsa.

Meanwhile during the half-year absence of the platoon leader soldiers and workers at Fort Vermilion embezzled the money earned from mined cinnabar.

Most of it was taken by soldiers with swords but some water was also given to the workers.

As mining became more profitable workers became more interested in the money it brought than in the dangers of ginseng.

“Don’t worry. Jinsa mining is still going on. But not you guys…”

As Azadin clapped his hands something came walking with a creaking sound.

“omg?”

A group of skeletons were walking in an orderly manner carrying pickaxes.

“Skeleton?”

“Oh undead?”

Everyone was confused. Azadin was using necromancy to summon the undead.

“From now on the mining of jinsa will be done by these undead.”

When Munjanggwan MacDougal saw that he was terrified.

“Are you crazy? What do you think the Salvation Knights are? Using the undead?! Necromancy is evil magic!”

“Then it’s okay for people to die from poisoning with toxic substances? Isn’t it much more evil to have people collect cinnabar?”

“So the reason you asked me to check the unclaimed graves was so you could use this necromancy!”

Azadin had ordered MacDougall to identify the unclaimed graves the graves of people with no living family or descendants.

As he said the undead here now are all undead without descendants or family relationships. After all necromancy is repulsive to people and no one would like their family’s corpses being used for labor.

“Actually I thought about it a lot. Instead of using corpses that have families I thought about paying the families a fee every week for using the corpses but no matter how much I thought about it I didn’t think that was right.”

Even though Azadin said that at that moment people were surprised.

“That sounds good!”

“How much do you give me?”

“….”

People seemed willing to tolerate the labor of digging up the corpses of their own family members as long as they were fairly compensated for it.

“Even if I ignore the rules isn’t that too much for a knight in name only?”

“It’s not too much at all!”

“No!”

“Isn’t that too much?”

Azadin repeated the words as if he were broken somewhere.

So in order to prevent the residents from dying from cinnabar poisoning Azadin gathered all the corpses he could find created undead and used them to mine cinnabar before moving on to expanding his lodgings and farm.

Unlike the simple task of mining cinnabar which can be completed by simply inputting the tasks building a building requires a lot of improvisation so it is a task that can only be done by people.

It was also intended to provide wages to those who did not have farmland at the time.

It was beneficial to give them jobs and improve the conditions at Fort Vermilion as there were many workers who would starve to death if their income from the cinnabar mines stopped.

While we were reorganizing the Vermillion stronghold we prepared for the curse of Shade Hag.

I thought about going to the Shade Hags myself but it seemed foolish to go around looking for their dwellings so soon after taking up my post.

Anyway the Shade Hags will come to kill Azadin soon.