Elite Mages’ Academy (Web Novel)

Chapter 332: Red Beard’s Mercenaries

Xiao Lin rested for more than an hour, but Lilith did not feel tired at all. In her words, it was all just a warm-up.

Xiao Lin went to check up on Ibeiya again. She only turned around to face him when he repeatedly said that he would not hate her for that. In fact, there were only a few shallow scars on her neck, but the rest of her fair skin all around was really dazzling.

No wonder Lilith was that surprised. Back then, Xiao Lin saw that Ibeiya’s head was almost completely cut off, yet it did not take long for her to have healed to such an extent. He vaguely felt that such a strong self-healing ability could not simply be explained by the vampire race’s superiority.

Ibeiya had many secrets, but after Xiao Lin’s rest, his focus shifted to the three captured people. They had also recovered from the initial loss of consciousness and seemed to be very scared of Lilith. As long as that woman was beside them, they felt as though they could not even breathe.

The benefit of that was a very smoothly-conducted interrogation. Xiao Lin believed that they would not dare to conceal any information due to the circumstance of having their life at stake.

The task of translating their statements was entrusted to Ibeiya. Despite Lilith’s greater proficiency in Normese compared to Xiao Lin, those people had a thicker accent—in other words, a dialect—that neither Lilith or Xiao Lin could understand. They were lucky to have Ibeiya around, as that illegitimate daughter who claimed to be a member of the Rosa Kingdom’s royal family possessed a strong language talent. All she had to do to understand the dialect was focus her attention and listen for a while.

After some questioning, their identity was easily extracted from them. The three men proclaimed themselves to be individuals of Red Beard’s Mercenaries. They frequently made trips to-and-fro the mine all year round, their task was to escort the starmetal to its destination. They went there once in the month, but on that particular trip, they discovered that the mine had been abandoned. When their search came empty handed, they planned to leave the place. It just so happened that Xiao Lin’s group suddenly appeared, and it was obvious that malicious thoughts surfaced in their mind when they laid eyes on Lilith and Ibeiya.

The reason for the fight was very simple, but in Ibeiya’s words, such fights were but a normal occurrence for Red Beard’s Mercenaries. Since they had targeted Ibeiya to satisfy their pleasures of the flesh, Ibeiya was filled with righteous indignation and spilled all the information she knew about them.

Although they were called a mercenary group, they actually started off as bandits who made quite a reputation for themselves around the area. About a year or two ago, their leader, who claimed to be Red Beard, was recruited by someone from a merchant group and soon became their private mercenaries. Such incidents were not at all uncommon in Silver Province.

Many thieves or bandits often choose to attach themselves to a certain force in order to prevent themselves from being annihilated. However, it is relatively rare for them to be so attached to a certain merchant group, just like how Red Beard’s Mercenaries did. However, Red Beard’s Mercenaries could no longer change their fate after being recruited. Whenever they saw any weaker merchant groups during an escorting assignment, they often took advantage of the situation and robbed them, gaining infamy as a result. Except for the merchant group that recruited them, they basically had no contact with other people.

Lilith’s appearance seemed rather solemn after hearing their answers. This starmetal had been operating as usual for several years already, and preliminary observations suggest that the metal’s contents were not that high, it was not difficult to imagine how much of starmetal ores had been lost after such a long time.

Colonizers had a great demand for starmetal, and Normans of all races knew that very well. Although they were powerless to stop the colonizers, there was no guarantee that the locals would remain similarly idle in private.

As for the origin of the merchant group with which Red Beard’s Mercenaries were associated with, all three individuals shook their heads. Lilith’s repeated threats elicited no answers and they simply claimed to play a minor role in everything. They escorted the ores purely to get money since the merchant group was quite generous when it came to paying them a commission.

“What else do you want to know?” Ibeiya asked.

Lilith shook her head. She already found the topographic map of the surrounding from those people, but all three clearly knew nothing about the information she wanted, such as Asabanor, for example.

“Then dispose of them,” Ibeiya suggested eagerly in Chinese. Color drained from the face of all three captives, and even though they did not understand Chinese, they could easily guess from that little girl’s gleeful look that things would not be ending well for them.

“It is a bit troublesome to bring them along,” Lilith said vaguely. They would be going straight to Gold City after leaving the valley, making it incredibly inconvenient to have three additional prisoners on the road. However, she still shot Xiao Lin an unsure gaze.

Xiao Lin had a contemplative look and suddenly said, “Red Beard? What a familiar name.”

Lilith originally wanted to listen to what he said. He thought that Xiao Lin was going to say something, but she could only roll her eyes after hearing what he said. She felt that she and Ibeiya had been preaching to deaf ears, but as soon as she was about to get up and settle everything herself, Xiao Lin came to stop her.

“I think I’ve read about Red Beard’s Mercenaries before I came here. Oh wait, it should be the Red Beard Bandits,” Xiao Lin pulled Lilith to the side and chatted in a low voice.

Lilith nodded. “I’ve heard of Red Beard too. It’s normal that you’d know a bit about them seeing as they have something of a reputation.”

“Uh, no, no, no, I’m not talking about the publicly-known stuff. I’m talking about their wealth.” Xiao Lin thought for a while and concluded, “I think I know where their wealth is hidden.”

Lilith’s eyes widened. Even if those bandits had turned a new leaf, the wealth accumulated from their past looting would certainly be a staggering amount. Therefore, the larger the band of thieves, the more concealed their hidden lair was. Some of the more qualified people would even set up various specially-arranged traps in their lairs, and oftentimes it was only their leader and a small number of people who would know about it.

Xiao Lin happened to be aware of Red Beard’s lair. if memory served him right, their location was not too far from there because Red Beard used to be active in the vicinity, hence the reason why that merchant group chose them as the guardian of the mine.

Yu Mei had previously given him a lot of information regarding those bandits before he left. That madwoman wanted him to rob those places should he have a chance of doing so. That would be their way of raising military funds for the sixth regiment. Xiao Lin did not think too much of it initially, but the chance now seemed to have presented itself before him.

Xiao Lin knew the approximate location, but he did not have a clue as to how to reach there. That was where Red Beard’s Mercenaries came in—they would be the ones to point him in the right direction.

“What do you think?” Xiao Lin asked.

“It’s interesting, but first things first, let’s come to an agreement on how to divide it.” Lilith was a fearless person and Xiao Lin’s proposal undoubtedly whetted her appetite. The two hit it off on the spot and quickly started talking about sharing the spoils.

“Fifty-fifty split,” Xiao Lin said decisively.

“Ahem, did you forget that we have a third person here?”

“Oh Ibeiya. Well, she isn’t an adult yet. She has no right to share the spoils!”

“Sick pervert!”

“…”