Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel 2025 - Chapter 706
Chapter 706: Conscription (1)
The first impression I got after using the portal to come over to the underground Noarkan fortress was “quiet.”
Except for the harsh breathing of the members who had just escaped a tense. situation, our surroundings were eerily quiet.
The palace soldiers who should’ve been patrolling the fort’s square weren’t anywhere to be seen, and neither was any other living creature.
To be honest, I didn’t really expect it. Sven Parav, who was practically our human fate compass, made that much of a commotion before being thrown into the portal, so I worried that something dire was going to be waiting for us on the other side.
“Ahh… Uh… Argh…”
But this guy was still complaining.
“Get yourself together, Sven Parav.”
He continued to just shiver and showed no signs of getting better. I walked over, watching over him while wondering what to do.
“Are you alright? Mr. Parav, please wake up. Please?” Lilith Marrone, the military wizard who had joined our clan through our connection from the Ice Rock Expedition, approached him and grabbed his hand. “I don’t know what it is you’re afraid of, but it’ll be fine. Please don’t worry. I will protect you.”
It was a wasted effort.
I mean, even if you do that, I don’t think he’s in the right mental state to respond—
“Ah, ah… M-Ms. Marrone?”
Huh?
“U-Um… M-Ms. Marrone? Can you l-let go of my h-hand for a…?”
That… That worked?
What was the difference between me and her?
“Ah! I’m sorry… You looked cold, Mr. Parav…”
“N-no! D-don’t apologize. I-I should be the one apologizing!”
An odd silence filled the area as Marrone quickly retrieved her hand away from him.
What was going on? Did these two have a thing going on like Rotmiller and Shavin Emoor?
Hmm… Looking at Marrone, I don’t think that’s the case…
I couldn’t know for sure. Relationships were difficult to begin with, and honestly speaking, it wasn’t important what the relationship between the two of them was either.
No, the important thing was that Sven Parav regained his senses. That was all.
“Parav, if you’re awake, get up,” I barked, grabbing him by the shoulder and forcing him to stand. “Stop looking ugly down there.”
“Pardon? Ah, ah! Yes…!” He seemed to have regained his bearings somewhat as he stayed standing.
Alright, then I could probably talk to him now.
“Are your senses still telling you the same thing?”
“Yes…”
I sighed. That meant that an “incident” was bound to occur pretty soon.
“Got it. Tell me immediately if something changes. Things are going to get chaotic, so follow from the back while taking care of yourself.”
“I’m sorry.”
I ended my conversation with Parav there and called for Amelia and Versyl.
“Do we know why no one is around us? I thought you said the palace soldiers were investigating the area when you guys came outside.”
“They were. It was a pain trying to activate and leave through the magic circle without getting caught.”
“I don’t know why the palace withdrew either. There’s nothing that comes to mind.”
Hmm, I see…
I had even prepared a speech to tell the palace soldiers if they were here when we returned. The fact that I wouldn’t need to do it was pleasing to me, but I also felt a little uneasy at the fact that we had no idea why the palace soldiers weren’t here.
“Yandel, so what are you planning on doing from now?”
I thought for a moment over Amelia’s question.
There were two choices I could make this time as well: We could either stay hidden in this abandoned underground fortress and wait it out, or return to the city to check on what was happening within it.
It may be obvious, but the decision was already made.
“We’ll return to the city for now.”
Closing my eyes and ignoring reality wouldn’t change anything. No matter how afraid I was, I needed to force my eyes open and look in front of me.
That would at least tell me what I was afraid of.
Of course, staying underground while blocking our eyes and ears was definitely a path we could take, but that was a decision I could only make after learning everything I could about what was going on. It wasn’t a decision to be made just because I was afraid and wanted to hide.
“Which district are we going to go to?”
“We’ll go to District Seven first to check the situation and decide our next destination from there.”
With that, we left the quiet underground city and went up to the sewers, which could be considered the border between Noark and Rafdonia.
Our formation wasn’t focused on movement speed, but rather was a guarding formation that we would use whenever we entered a new area in the labyrinth or when we were moving through an area we knew to be exceedingly dangerous.
Although no one said anything, most of the members had similar expressions on their faces.
Why are we going out of our way to do this?
Honestly, it was a natural question to have.
From their perspective, all they did was step outside the city walls for a bit before returning right away. While I was calling the shots since I was certain that something dangerous was going on, I was also the one who seemed weird to them.
Well, thanks to having earned their trust already, they all believed that there was a reason behind all this.
Boom!
And so, as we continued to walk through the sewers with Amelia at the front, the ceiling and floor shook for a moment as if hit by an earthquake. Although it was a relatively small tremor, it was enough to make all the members, who were already on edge, even more anxious.
“It was a tremor from somewhere very far away.”
“Is something really going on in the city above?”
If they had been skeptical at first, the members all now had serious expressions on their faces, seeming to sense the oddness of the situation.
It didn’t take long for the uneasy feeling to intensify.
“Blood?”
Above the muck of the sewage was red blood.
“It’s a corpse.”
Following its trail led us to a corpse thrown on the ground. It was immediately obvious that the person had died quite recently, and it wasn’t difficult to figure out their identity either. It seemed that whoever killed him quickly left after taking the expensive loot, and a lot of equipment was left behind.
“This person…is a palace soldier.”
A palace soldier had died.
Even if the sewers weren’t frequented by many people, a soldier had still died within the territory of Rafdonia.
“The possibility that he simply got robbed by the vagrants here… is pretty low, right?”
There was no way that was the case. The probability of a vagrant living in the sewers attacking a palace soldier was close to zero.
“Emily, keep guiding us. We need to get to the surface as quickly as possible.”
We went past the corpse of the soldier and increased our pace, only to come across the corpses of a few more palace soldiers before we finally reached the exit that led outside. However, we didn’t experience another tremor like the one that shook the entire sewer system before.
Hmm, just what was happening?
“It’s unexpectedly quiet.”
After arriving at the exit of the sewers, we didn’t just burst out and instead opted to observe what was going on outside first. Due to the angle, our vision was limited but the road we could see directly in front of us was very quiet.
That didn’t mean I could let my guard down, of course. Even while considering that the sewer entrance was on the outskirts, it wasn’t normal to see absolutely no one outside. In the middle of the day as well.
“What are you going to do?”
“We’ll wait here for now. We’ll draw attention to ourselves if this many people move at once. Emily, could you take a few people and check on the situation outside?”
“I don’t need a few people. It’s easier for me to move alone for something like this.”
“Still, it could be dangerous—”
“Being by myself will be safer. If it becomes dangerous because we get spotted, it won’t matter how many people I bring with me.”
Hmm, that didn’t change the fact that I was still worried. But since she was the expert here, I figured I should probably trust her.
“Sure. Be careful. I don’t want a lot of information, so don’t push yourself and return to us.”
“I’ll… be going, then.” Amelia took a moment to organize herself before leaving through the sewer entrance. Her movement was so stealthy and quiet that I immediately lost track of her.
Although it bothered me that she didn’t respond to my request for her to not push herself, I decided to trust in her and pushed ahead to do what I needed to do while waiting.
We didn’t have time to waste.
“I put in a mana transmission to the coordinates of the message stone in the clan house, but I didn’t get any responses.”
“That’s to be expected. When I checked it, it seemed there was a barrier on the entire city that was blocking the propagation of mana signals. I can’t contact the remote video recording crystal in my research lab either.”
“I did wonder! My mana felt like it was being dispersed in the middle…”
“Ah! I heard that the military has magic tools that perform such functions. However, I thought they only used it during war times… Huh. Something really must have happened to the city.”
“Just what happened in the two months we were outside?”
While Amelia was off scouting, we tried to gather as much information as we could as well.
More time passed.
Creak.
Amelia opened the iron gate of the sewers and returned to us. She looked a little tired but I couldn’t find any traces on her clothes and body that she had been in a fight.
“Are you hurt?” I asked just in case.
She smirked at my question. “Don’t worry. I’m not.”
Then, she began to relay to us the information she obtained outside.
“The soldiers are all near the city walls, and I couldn’t approach them because they were using all sorts of detection-type magic tools and abilities. However, the thing I’m sure of is that an incident occurred in Bifron, which has been overtaken by the Noarkans.”
“In Bifron…?”
“You’ll see it when we go outside, but the barrier surrounding Bifron disappeared.”
“So… It really does look like a war is going on.”
“That’s probably the case, seeing how this was in the letterbox of our clan house.”
Amelia took out a letter she’d found in the clan house we had been using as our base. From the seal, I could tell it came from the palace, and it had already been opened by Amelia.
“This is…”
And when I checked its contents, it was a pretty long letter, as expected of an official document from the palace. To summarize…
“It’s a conscription notice.”
“Yeah. And from the looks of it, I think it’s not just us, but all the clans within the city who were summoned.”
“There is a law that states that during war times, adventurers and other individuals capable of combat can be forcibly conscripted into the army.”
Well, that made sense. What sort of country would limit themselves to only official soldiers when war broke out?
Kaislan, who had been a part of the army before, let out a sigh with a heavy expression. “However, it seems the situation is truly dire. Even when the Noarkans invaded us around a year ago, the conscription law wasn’t enacted…”
“Why was that?”
“It is because calling for conscription would weaken the authority of the palace. The power of the palace must be absolute, but giving out these conscription notices would suggest that they need help.”
Oh, was that so? “To put it simply, if the palace could deal with it themselves, they never would have resorted to using this law?”
“That is what I believe…assuming I am right.”
Kaislan’s affirmation sent my head spinning. That didn’t mean I could just sit here with my hand on my chin, though.
“But really, the situation has become very troublesome… Uh… Ms. Raines? Did you perhaps find a document in the letterbox that wasn’t directed at the clan, but the captain?”
“I didn’t… But what do you mean by troublesome?”
“It’s that our captain is a titled noble. When the conscription order is given, the affiliation of all titled nobles will be transferred to the military command.”
“Military command…?”
“Hmm, this is a bit of a complicated concept, so I don’t know how I should explain it…” Kaislan seemed to slowly piece together his thoughts before giving us the most basic explanation he could. “It means that as soon as we return to the city, our captain will become a part of the military body and be on standby at the royal capital.
“Then what about the Anabada Clan?”
“We’ll carry out missions given to us by those above. There is a very high likelihood that it’d be on the frontlines, the most dangerous location to be. And just by ourselves as well, without the captain.”
To put it simply, we needed to elect someone into the currently vacant vice-captain position if we wanted to return to the city and do it right now.