Chapter 413: Infiltrating Ironhold

’There is no way I am actually going to run when you tell me to run away. Did you really think I am an idiot? I know exactly how reckless you are, and I do know how overly prepared you can be when it comes to certain things, but I just cannot bring it in me to actually abandon you.’

She exhaled softly.

"So, are we going to fight someone?"

"Maybe," Adrian said. "Maybe not. We’ll see."

He stood up.

"Why don’t we go and eat something?" he smiled.

Aria immediately nodded. "Yes! What are you going to make, Papa?"

The two of them walked out of the room. As they walked, Adrian could not help but think about the possibilities.

’If what the guy said is ends up being true, then Claire can become a mage. She can awaken her mana veins, whether they are real or artificial, which means her overall potential will increase. This is good news no matter how I look at it, but I must first see if the theory is correct or not.’

He smirked to himself as they walked down the stairs.

’If I get my hands on all of this information, along with the so-called liquid that they drink, then I can basically make all of my knights without mana veins into knights who do have mana veins. This is incredible.’

He chuckled inwardly. Then he thought back to what the dragon had said.

The answers that you seek, they will come to you soon.

’So the answers will come to me, huh? I guess it is related to this Magic Tower thing.’

He frowned a little.

’There is one thing that I do know though. The Heroes, especially the reincarnated and transmigrated people, cannot leave this continent. That is the exact reason why the Hero in the original novel could not exactly run after Aria so easily. He had to do a lot of things, reduce his power, and go through a lot of loopholes which basically just did nothing but restrict him.’

Adrian tapped his fingers against the wooden railing.

’After going through all of that, only then could he run after her. But even then, he had only managed to win against her back on this current continent. This was the only place where the Hero would have full strength.’

Adrian took a deep breath and exhaled.

’I cannot take Wang Lei or Leo with me. And I do not even know if I will be nerfed by the world laws or not when I leave this continent. We will just have to go there and check. But the angels and even the dragon did tell me that I am an anomaly. My soul is from Earth, but this body is from this world. So maybe the restriction won’t work on me... there is a high chance that it won’t.’

He shook his head slightly.

’It will be extremely annoying if I do get nerfed, so yeah. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.’

Lorcan walked out of a cubicle and found himself inside a small, empty house.

There was no one inside, but the first thing his senses picked up was the heavy scent of blood. He sniffed the air twice and looked down at the wooden floorboards.

He didn’t think too much of it.

Whoever had died here, it did not matter. Everything was already cleaned up. A regular person wouldn’t be able to sense anything off about this place, but experienced assassins or those with a very specific skill set could easily figure out that a body had been moved from this room and all the blood had been cleaned up.

Lorcan didn’t waste any time. He extended his mana outwards and a thin layer of mist surrounded his body. He walked over to a cracked mirror in the corner, took a small wooden box out of his spatial ring, and grabbed a brush along with a few other tools.

He began to work on his own face.

It took him almost forty minutes. By the end of it, he didn’t look like himself anymore. He looked like a young soldier who had seen a lot of brutal physical training, and he also looked appropriately exhausted. But he didn’t look like a commoner who had become a soldier, not at all. he had this air to him that made him seem like he was someone from a noble house instead.

With a slight nod of approval, Lorcan put the box back into his ring and walked out of the house.

The moment he stepped outside and looked around, he could tell he was in the slums. He already knew how the Ironhold Kingdom did things. Their management was similar to how Adrian managed his territory, but instead of tall apartment buildings, they had a very rigid and structured layout of regular houses.

They made knight manuals available to all soldiers just like Adrian did, gave them a lot of perks, free food and much more.

When it came to the structure of the kingdom itself, they had three different zones.

The outer zone was where most of the commoners resided. The middle zone was where the craftsmen and businesses thrived. It was basically a massive marketplace, but it also acted as a hub for manufacturing. Not all the businesses were storefronts though. A lot of them were more like warehouses and factories, just without any of the heavy machinery like the modern world.

Lorcan calmly walked toward the large stone wall he saw in the distance. That was the wall separating the outer zone from the middle zone. He casually walked over and passed right through the gate while no one bothered to stop him.

The main difficulty of getting into this place lied in the outermost wall of the Ironhold Kingdom. Someone else had already taken care of that for him, so Lorcan didn’t have anything to worry about.

He walked into the middle zone and continued straight toward the inner zone.