Chapter 560 - 346: A Bad Teammate Is Often More Dangerous Than an Enemy

Chapter 560: Chapter 346: A Bad Teammate Is Often More Dangerous Than an Enemy

arrived in Loman. To better conceal his identity, he gave himself a new name.

Long Jing.

It was a very Ordinary name, with a slight Dwarven feel to it. Not the kind of name someone from a good family would have.

It fit his assumed role as an attendant perfectly.

As a con man, he was all too familiar with making up names and assuming fake identities.

Sometimes, however, he had so many names that he would get them mixed up, leading to some embarrassing moments.

Fortunately, none of his other identities would be needed in Loman.

Not long after arriving in Loman, the lucky yet pitiful Golden Hair had his wedding.

The wedding wasn’t a large affair; only a small group of people were invited. The formidable Duke Welton didn’t even show up, sending only a trusted subordinate in his place.

Golden Hair’s new wife was even less favored than the rumors suggested.

’Fifty-plus children is still too many,’ he thought. ’The Duke probably doesn’t care about any of them except the ones with inheritance rights.’

Then again, Long Jing found it rather strange. It was hard to say whether this Welton fellow was responsible or irresponsible.

He was certainly not the only noble with a ton of children—illegitimate offspring were all too common—but as far as Long Jing knew, he was the only one who had acknowledged so many.

And yet, acknowledging them didn’t mean he raised them well.

As for Golden Hair’s wife, she seemed like a good person. She treated the servants well and wasn’t one of those terribly cruel nobles.

She just had some minor quirks. It didn’t matter. In any case, Long Jing wasn’t the one responsible for satisfying those quirks.

As for Golden Hair, he didn’t seem to be walking too steadily the day after the wedding.

All in all, the situation was better than Long Jing had imagined.

He had a considerable degree of freedom, which would allow him to get started on the main objective of his trip.

Relying on his silver tongue, Long Jing quickly got to know many nobles...

...’ attendants.

There was no helping it. Forging connections with nobles wasn’t that easy.

Besides, he was just an attendant himself right now.

The good news was that he could still pry a lot of interesting information from these attendants’ mouths.

For example, whose child wasn’t actually their own, which lady was seeking comfort from which family’s stableboy, and which old nobleman had unconventional tastes.

Most of it was this type of news.

As expected, no matter where you went, salacious rumors always drew the most attention.

But that didn’t mean there wasn’t any higher-value intelligence.

At the wedding banquet, Long Jing learned from a maid in the Duke’s Mansion that Duke Welton was recently displeased with his most-favored youngest son.

The boy had recently become addicted to a game, had repeatedly argued with his tutors, and would even lock himself in his room and refuse to come out.

Simply put, the little brat was in his rebellious phase.

Long Jing made sure to ask what game it was.

A "homegrown" game called *Glorious Battlefield*.

That’s right, Loman had its own internet and games. They had made it themselves, and it was quite widespread.

Even attendants had access to networked devices.

There were a few terminals in the residence specifically for the attendants’ use, but there weren’t many. At most, you could get about an hour of time per day.

Long Jing tried it out and could only describe it as a crude imitation of the Zog Group’s network.

Every single feature gave him a strong sense of déjà vu; he could find the original version in a Zog Group product.

And the imitation wasn’t even well done.

It couldn’t compare to the Zog Group in terms of content richness, user-friendliness, or network smoothness.

Having grown accustomed to the Northern Domain’s ultra-low latency network, he found it difficult to adjust to this low-spec version.

Furthermore, the content was subject to very strict censorship.

Long Jing could clearly sense that almost everything on the Loman network was geared toward cultivating an atmosphere of victimization—that Loman had been humiliated and that the other nations of the Continent were hostile toward them.

As a result, the network’s users were also quite belligerent, clamoring to sweep across the Continent and restore the glory of the Empire.

Long Jing had a good guess as to the purpose of this tactic. The living conditions for Loman’s commoners weren’t good, at least not as good as in Sutton. There were significant internal conflicts, and the Lomans believed the Imperial Family’s incompetence had led to the Empire’s decline.

Creating the illusion that the outside world was full of enemies was an effective way to unify the country and redirect hatred.

So, Zog was right. They were indeed preparing for war, and quite actively at that.

The burden of his intelligence-gathering mission felt a bit heavier.

Long Jing’s current plan was to quickly master the game the Duke’s youngest son was obsessed with and use it to get close to the kid.

’What little brat could refuse an older brother figure who could carry him in a game?’

The child himself probably didn’t have much information, but he could be used as a stepping stone to meet more key figures.

Serving as a playmate for the child of a great noble was a time-honored path to advancement, and a very effective one at that.

In order to master the game as quickly as possible within his limited online time, Long Jing began to learn it in a rather unconventional way.

No hands-on practice, just hardcore guide-reading.

On his day off, he went out and found an internet café, frantically looked up guides—text-based ones, at that—jotted down useful URLs, found a print shop to print them out, and then spent all his free time studying them.

’At this rate,’ Long Jing thought, ’if I studied actual books with the same focus after this mission is over, getting into Hogwarts would be a piece of cake.’

*Glorious Battlefield* was a very novel game. Although the character designs looked like they had escaped from an auto-chess game, the gameplay was indeed something the Zog Group had never done.

It was said to be based on an ancient tradition of a Loman city-state.

Captured prisoners of war would be thrown onto a mountain, which was then surrounded by an army, and forced to fight each other inside.

The army’s encirclement would gradually shrink until only one survivor remained. That person would be released and given a hero’s welcome.