Chapter 10: Hidden Threat Discovered
A few minutes after Kevin disposed of the young man, a sliver of sunlight from the east had already permeated the horizon.
He inwardly praised how lax and comfy the soldiers were behaving on the frontlines of such a cruel battlefield. Then again, these people are squeezing their best peaceful moments to fool around.
This provided him sufficient time to clean up on his end and stand on the watchtower, waiting for someone to come cycle positions with him.
While waiting, Kevin gave the flask of wine a glance for the fourth time. After a moment of hesitation, he reached out with the intention of gulping down a mouthful or two when a sharp sound of an arrow cutting through the air echoed behind him, followed by a loud explosion.
"A call to assembly?" Kevin snapped back to observe the barracks, a bit surprised and confused. Regardless, blending in at a time of chaos like this would make the best cover.
Thus, Kevin snatched that flask of wine and descended the watchtower in haste, running in the direction of the congregating crowd as he replicated their strides and pacing.
"Now or never I guess."
As he shuttled together with the crowd under the dimly lit sky of early morning, in the disembodied grunts of both pleasure and reluctance while soldiers filed out from one aromatic tent after the next, Kevin slowly deviated toward the conspicuous tents of the bunch.
He assumed them to be the locations of the high-ranking officers.
People who had higher merit, skill, intelligence, and of course— ego.
Kevin lowered his military helmet to cover half his face in its shade as he crept into a nearby tent under the eyes of many soldiers. There was no point in playing hide from sight as that would have been more suspicious— at least in this manner, anyone's first thought would be of a diligent soldier reporting to an officer.
And reporting oh he did, viciously at that.
"At ease soldier, I already heard the call— pfft!"
This particular officer was halfway through putting on his garb and badges of honor with meticulous care when a long dagger stabbed through his left eye. He wasn't a weak combatant per se, but so was the hitman who came knocking.
Kevin didn't have the time to waste chartering about so he ended the farce with a stab in the eye, a slit to the throat that followed in the pace of the former, and a finale to the heart before exiting the tent.
A moment later, blood finally gushed out through the wounds but the thick blankets did a marvelous job preventing the fluids from spreading beyond.
Kevin frowned even as he rushed away, he almost blanked out in thoughts the moment he burst the officer's heart and absorbed the latter's soul. Unlike the last time, there wasn't a substantial effect on Kevin's third eye, almost as though what should have been a mouthful of water was now but a drop in the ocean.
Thinking about it though, his soul had fundamentally changed from an ordinary human to a full-fledged mage now, of course, he wouldn't be affected much by such a quality of souls.
But what if the quantity increased instead of the quality?
He couldn't help but wonder what sort of transformation would occur were he to reap hundreds or thousands of souls in replacement for magic resources. While other families scour the lands for magical resources to help the young mages into progressing from novice practitioners to amateurs, Kevin can do just that by simply killing people indiscriminately.
He was truly tempted to go on a killing spree only to douse these thoughts with a sprinkle of rationality; this endeavor was pointless.
Put bluntly, it was borderline suicidal.
A list of sixteen officers surfaced in his head, responsible for sixteen platoons respectively.
With one of them down and fifteen to go, he couldn't afford to waste time reflecting on the peculiarities of his third eye.
Some officers were drowsy, some were energetic, some were indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, and some were washing alcohol down their throats.
Very few and in between had successfully evaded Kevin's first fatal strike, but the following strikes were fierce and unrelenting, let alone exceedingly ruthless. In a matter of minutes, Kevin caught up to the majority of the traffic in the base and joined the crowd of soldiers in the main square.
"Don't over-exert yourself, young soldier," a veteran soldier next to Kevin elbowed the latter with a hearty laughter, giving the young man a meaningful wink. "You'll need the energy for whatever is to come."
"Ha… I was pushed to my limits since I had too limited of a time to act," Kevin laughed it off in response, wiping his forehead with the sleeves of his long coat. "Do you know why they suddenly called for an assembly?"
This middle-aged soldier seemed like a seasoned man of charisma with connections. Even as he spoke to Kevin, he was occasionally waving a salute to other soldiers who responded in kind, albeit with an emphasized respect.
"News came from across the border that the conflicts in the Badger Barony came to a conclusion, we can no longer follow through with the previous plan of blindly sweeping in," the man scratched the stubble on his chin with callous fingers as he hummed an answer. "We might strike prematurely despite the grace period, but that depends on the arrangements on the other side of the border."
Kevin was shocked. "We're going to mount a sneak attack? What about the resistance on the borders?"
"Don't act so surprised," the man rolled his eyes. "This entire grace period is a farce; a tacit agreement per se. We're not entitled to a winter of peace and neither are they."
"When are we going to strike?" Kevin asked, his tone as curious as it was excited. Deep in his heart, however, he knew that the plans to strike early were as good as ruined, but he was nonetheless curious about the identity of those undercover agents on the other side.
The first suspect that came to his mind was of course the count, that man might have tossed his lot with the opposing kingdom.
Kevin knew better than to toss random speculations in his head and thus, he quickly shut down that train of thought. He reached into his pockets to feel out the iron name tags of the sixteen officers, these are valuable merits of war.
Since these guys are also playing foul, guess I will have no qualms when explaining myself to the marquis later.
His eyebrows locked together as he sank in thought.
Even as he ruminated, his feet began to move, silently withdrawing from the crowd when the other man diverted his attention for yet another round of salutations.
"We will most likely stress the borders with guerilla warfare and buy time for the reinforcements—," the man's speech came to an abrupt stop as he realized something; the young man was long gone and replaced by another, even younger-looking brat.
This brat was shaking in his military boots from the sudden revelation, not at all having expected the assembly was in fact a call to arms. The man shook his head, sighed, and stood in attention.
It was only half an hour of clumsy organizing later that the assassination of sixteen platoon officers came to light, shocking the entire military base. As for Kevin, he was crawling his way along the cold riverbed, having already changed back to hid black fittings.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone