Leon looked at his father with a shocked face, he couldn’t believe what he just heard.
“I’m serious, look at how old am I. I think it high time to see how you perform!” William said as he calmed down, weirdly enough now that he thought about it he agrees with Cain.
Going to war in the winter was a bad idea and it’s best to deal with it diplomatically. It was unknown how Ourals lord will react when he knew that his men were all killed but William could care less, simply being caught in his territory was a death sentence let alone in his daughter’s house.
“Try to solve with the least amount of deaths, but if he asked for war don’t hesitate to show him what we’re capable of!” William looked at Leon and then at Lisa, “Let your men work under him this time, we two are going to just watch from the side-line and see how they will perform.”
Lisa just nodded, it was obvious that William didn’t intend to stay out of this. Just giving his son a chance to prove himself. She quickly poured him a second cup as he had finished his and laid back on the couch.
“Now then, how about the S-rank dungeon? I bet you’re more ready to listen to me this time.” Cain looked at Leon with curious eyes, he seemed to be deep in his thoughts.
“It’s true that last time we didn’t take you seriously but I did research the undead you talked about. Our city’s military force has no way of dealing with them if they came in the numbers you said.” Leon stood and walked to a small desk that was to the side of William’s and pulled a document from the drawer. It held information about zombies, skeletons, ghosts, death knights, and lichs.
Cain quickly went through it and then nodded, “You did a great job. You did an amazing job considering you didn’t take me seriously.” The information there was correct and precise, showing how much effort he had spent researching the topic.
“Do you think we can deal with them?” Leon asked, “I doubt our walls would withstand their attacks for more than a few days.” He was right, In Cain’s past life the city walls crumbled after three days from being constantly hammered by the wave of zombies.
“We can use traps and AOE magic to lower their numbers. It’s best to let them out of the dungeon for a bit before destroying the gate with a high-tier spell and forcing the boss out prematurely.” Cain looked through the document “You seem to have neglected researching how dungeons work.”
Leon just looked at him with a puzzled face, was there some special function they didn’t already know about.
“The dungeon core usually rests at the top of the broken gate frame, if you have enough firepower you can shatter it and force the boss to emerge weakened! The dungeon core is its power source after all.” Cain’s words struck Leon as unnatural, dungeon cores were supposed to be indestructible. Countless people have tried hammering them and they failed.
“Are you sure? How could you even break that?” Leon asked as he got a bit curious.
“It’s simple, all we need to do is hit it with extreme force. A spell-like [Meteor fall] would work fine.” Hearing the spell name Leon spat his tea. William as well choked and start coughing.
[Meteor fall] was a ninth-tier spell. Just thinking about using it was stupid. Ninth-tier spell books are national treasures that people have traded whole cities for, was Cain telling them to sell the whole city for it? Even if they had the money where will they find such a book for sale and who will even use it?
“Stop joking, in my whole life I’ve never seen someone able to use eight-tier spells let alone ninth-tier!” William laughed it off.
“He is right, that joke was even worse than my father’s.” Leon brushed it aside as well.
“I just happened to know the spell, I just need to reach level 17 to be able to use it.” Cain thought it was a good idea to keep the fact he knows more ninth-tier spells than there are first-tier spells a secret.
Cain looked at the two baffled men with their gaping mouths, he would’ve understood if they didn’t believe him but it seems that they are partially doing. Lisa just looked at them with an empty face, she didn’t seem to think about it that much.
“Well, let’s try to prevent the dungeon from ever opening by sabotaging his plans. As long as we prevent him from gathering more dungeon cores we can stop it.” Cain said trying to get them back into the conversation.
Leon quickly shook his head and took a big gulp of his tea. “I remember that last time you said something about when the dungeon break will happen.”
“Yes, we have about two and a half months left. It might be hard to prepare with such a short time.” Cain pushed his cup toward Lisa who filled it again for him, from the look on her face she didn’t seem that happy to serve him tea because he just embarrassed her earlier to make a point.
“Yeah, let’s try and avoid having the dungeon break in the first place. Killing Ourals lord would be the fastest way but it could lead to the royal court chasing us.” Leon made a good point. They might be lords but they were still under the king’s influence. Fighting among each other like this can lead to them both losing their authority.
“He must be using this underhanded method to push the blame on a natural disaster so he can please the court. ‘The city got destroyed by an unfortunate disaster, my troops are there just to protect order’ is the bullshit he will spit.” William made a disgusting face as he looked at the distance, “Don’t give me that shit, having your troupes in another land is an invasion no matter how nicely and noble you try and describe it!”
“Father, do you have any idea of how to stop him?” Leon asked his father for advice, looking him directly in the eye.
William stared back at him then opened his mouth, “Do you want to hear the dirty unmoral way or the moral way?” Leon quickly answered with “Both.”
“The moral way in negotiation, we sacrifice something for peace, usually land or money. The immoral way is utilizing his only daughter, we can kidnap and use her to pressure him.” William knocked with his finger on the table.
Leon looked troubled, “I don’t want to resort to underhanded methods. Negotiations are also hard with us being pressed for winter.”
“How about you listen to my suggestion?” Cain interrupted them, they both looked at him with open ears.
“I will utilize his daughter…” Before Cain could finish William cut his short, “Do you want to cheat on my daughter?” He was angry.
“Let me finish. I will inflict her with a disease similar in symptoms to what Alice suffered from, this will force him to negotiate with you to get my help. Taking into account that we announce my marriage with Alice to the royal court so he wouldn’t think about trying anything funny.” Cain showed them an evil smile.
He, Alice, Sofia, and Selena weren’t officially married yet. But if they did Cain would be considered as one of William’s family and he can’t be threatened directly by an outside force.
“You can do that?” Leon asked, “I can as long as could reach his daughter, an infiltration mission is our only way!”
“Can’t we inflict the bastard himself?” William asked as he looked at Cain with judging eyes.
Cain seemed to think about it for a moment, “It depends on his age and health, we don’t want him to die and have the court start an investigation. It’s better to use it on a healthy person!” Cain said this but he was thinking of a whole other thing.
Ourals lord is going to die, now that Cain knows that he was behind everything, his fate was sealed. Cain wanted to inflict his daughter because he was planning to take over his city after killing him by manipulating his daughter.
He tried to manipulate Jack and failed so Cain now was going to show him how it’s done.
“He did manipulate Jack, are you pitying his daughter after he didn’t pity your son?” Cain added, trying to make a parallel to Jack and convince William to go with the plan.
“I don’t want to hear about that swindle of a son. He was set to inherit everything from me yet he was easily swayed. Also, Ourals’s lord had nothing to do with him dabbling in devil magic.” William pointed out a point that Cain had missed, It was true, where did Jack even learn about Curse magic?
‘Are we missing something?’ Cain thought as an uneasy feeling engulfed him.