Chapter 114: The Fastest Intelligence One Rider, One Raid

"Before sundown, you said?"

The Adjutant narrowed his eyes, a faint, cynical smirk playing at the corners of his mouth.

Supply timings and routing schedules were among the most fiercely guarded secrets any military possessed information notoriously difficult to unearth under the best of conditions.

Even confirmed intelligence often carried the risk of being a cleverly planted trap.

That inherent difficulty was precisely why he had handed the task to Kael in the first place: it was a mission engineered to fail quietly, humiliating Kael and, by extension, discrediting Elara’s judgment for vouching for him.

Instead, the man had the sheer audacity to promise results before sundown.

Sensing an even better opportunity taking shape, the Adjutant’s mood brightened considerably. He schooled his features into a mask of severe authority.

"The army doesn’t tolerate jokes. What happens if sundown comes and you’ve brought back nothing?"

"Military discipline exists for a reason," Kael met his gaze, his voice cold and level. "I’ll accept whatever is standard."

He paused, tilting his head slightly. "But let’s talk about the other outcome. What happens if I actually deliver?"

The Adjutant’s brow furrowed, though amusement still lingered in his eyes. "Name your terms."

"Simple. You walk out of this tent, stand in front of every soldier in camp, slap yourself three times, and announce loudly that you’re a small-minded fool who judged a man before earning the right to."

"Done," the Adjutant agreed without a moment’s hesitation, confidence radiating from him.

He had every reason to feel certain. There was no realistic universe where Kael pulled this off by sundown.

And even in the astronomically unlikely event he managed a miracle, nothing stopped the Adjutant from simply dismissing whatever he brought back as fabricated. A bet with zero downside.

>Quest Accepted: Espionage

> MReturn accurate intelligence on the enemy’s supply route before sundown. Success grants a significant reward. Failure carries serious consequence.

The moment the system notification cleared, Kael turned and strode out of the tent.

Elara caught up with him outside, biting her lip, her voice tight with guilt. "I’m sorry, my lord. They’re only targeting you because of me."

Kael stopped and turned to look at her. He reached out, resting a steady, grounding hand on her shoulder.

"Don’t carry that weight," he said, his tone softening, though the underlying certainty remained absolute.

"Men like him only look down on anyone who hasn’t yet proven they’re worth fearing. The only real answer to that is strength enough of it that looking down on us stops being an option anyone has left."

He held her gaze. "One day, neither of us answers to people like him. We stand above it entirely."

"Are you with me for that, however long it takes?"Something shifted in Elara’s expression, deep-seated resolve locking into place.

"I am. Whatever it takes, however long the road you’ll have everything I can give you, for as long as I’m able to give it."

"Good," Kael said simply, the approval in his voice genuine, heavy enough to anchor her.

A flicker of anxiety crept back into her voice.

"My lord... truthfully, do you think you can actually manage this before sundown?"

"It’s not as complicated as it looks."

A confident smile touched his lips. "Tell me

who actually knows the enemy’s supply schedule best?"

"Their quartermaster, obviously." The answer slipped out before she had even finished processing the thought, and her eyes widened a half-second later. "Wait. You’re not planning to"

"Just wait for the good news." He grinned, squeezed her shoulder once, and pivoted toward the edge of the camp.

With a sharp whistle, he summoned Thunder Roc and climbed skyward, banking out over the Silverflow River toward the opposite bank.

The strategy, stripped to its bones, was straightforward: locate the man who scheduled the convoys, extract the details directly, and bring them home before the deadline.

Only two real obstacles stood in his way: locating one specific officer inside a sprawling, heavily fortified enemy encampment, and pulling him out alive then getting him back across the river without triggering a full-scale engagement.

Finding him posed the harder problem by far. For anyone else, it would have been impossible.

Kael, however, held two distinct advantages no one else on this field could match.

The Seer’s Eye carried him through the first leg.

Even riding Thunder Roc at high altitude, the relic’s clarity sharpened the world below into crisp, legible detail troop concentrations, supply depots, and weapon caches resolving into actionable intelligence far beyond ordinary human sight.

Lyra filled the second gap. Bonded or not in this exact moment, her connection to Ebonreach’s people ran deeper than a simple contract.

Starborn loyalty didn’t simply evaporate the instant a technical bond lapsed.

With a rough picture of enemy positioning mapped from the air, Kael moved with ruthless efficiency.

He picked off a handful of low-ranking officers who had strayed beyond the camp’s perimeter on minor errands, struck with blinding speed, and triggered Warden’s Mandate on each in turn, extracting clean, verified intelligence straight from the source.

Nearly two hours of patient, methodical work finally narrowed the target down.

The quartermaster wasn’t hiding inside Rivergate proper.

He was stationed dozens of miles out, at a heavily fortified staging camp directly opposite the city a sprawling position holding tens of thousands of troops, overseen by multiple generals sitting well past level 70.

Storming that position outright would have been suicide, plain and simple.

Fortunately, brute force was never the plan.

Kael intercepted a courier from the Westfall Army mid-route, subjected him to the same coercive extraction, and used the forced compliance to issue a false order in the man’s own voice a fabricated dispatch claiming the enemy commander urgently required the quartermaster back at Rivergate for an immediate, high-priority briefing.

He circled Thunder Roc high above the clouds afterward, patient and silent, watching the camp below for any sign of movement.

Before long, a small column broke away from the staging camp, the quartermaster himself riding at the head, moving briskly toward Rivergate.

Kael’s mouth curved into a satisfied smile.

He let the column put real distance between itself and the safety of the camp before committing, a cold, sharp light flickering in his eyes.

He gave the mental command, and Thunder Roc folded its wings into a steep, terrifying dive, plunging downward as crackling lightning flared across its feathers.

Thunderfall.

A sudden, devastating storm of lightning bolts crashed down over the column in an instant, tearing through the open ground and shattering their formation.