"Boss..." Jax held his knees and gasped for air, following behind Lucian the whole time.
They've been going at it for three whole days, without breaks. Tracking down ferals and then trying to tame them.
He communicated with Roland and Fishbone together with their people, coordinating their actions.
"Next..." Lucian muttered under his breath as another feral submitted to him. They've got twelve so far.
The more they caught, the faster Lucian tamed the beasts inside them, and the longer Jax had to run around like a bone that had been thrown for the ferals to chase.
Lucian made them fight each other, run, jump, and climb, training their bodies and minds on the go, and when they collapsed, he would collect them inside the wagon and continue moving.
Lucian had mentioned war to come, so Jax knew they were preparing to take advantage of the situation. He just didn't expect it to be this way.
He thought they would be gathering food, weapons, or anything else, but not ferals.
They had to rush from one place to another to get a hold of them before they were gathered by the Southern Kings and sent to fight at the borders.
Only when Lucian ran out of the drug he had used to knock out the ferals, did he let his underling rest.
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In the middle of the desert, at the bottom of a canyon, a group of fifty men sprawled on the ground.
Jax looked at his boss, who brewed potions in a corner by himself. Lucian said he had learned it from the people he had sold the ingredients to, but who would share their secret trade like this?
But then, it was Lucian, not even Jax knew what Lucian had been doing before he joined him at fifteen.
Lucian's herb collection used to be his main source of income back then.
Jax found it strange from how Roland was reluctant to attack Lucian's wagon when he used to be a bandit, and when Lucian casually mention poison evies and stink bombs, things started to click inside Jax's mind.
Scent sachets were just a coverup to sell the deadly powders in them.
Perfume bottles were just a distraction to sell the dangerous liquid among a few harmless ones.
His dealings with dangerous people like Scythe and Savage, without them looking down on him and taking him for a weakling…
If this truth came to light, his reputation in the Northern Kingdom would plummet, but by that time, Lucian would be too big to be removed from the picture.
Jax tried to look through Lucian's mask, to see his true self.
The fire lit up his face in the darkness, making him look even more terrifying.
The soft features that made him look gentle, and the smile that made everyone think he was harmless, were gone.
When Lucian didn't smile, he looked like the kind of person you would run away from if you ever met him in the streets, alone, at night.
"They know the way now," Lucian said without looking at Jax, feeling his stare on him, "Split them into twenty four groups of two and send them to different locations."
He ordered Jax to use the one to two marked ferals as their force to capture more ferals.
"Bring them here for me, I should have enough of the drug by then," Lucian broke their illusion of a rest, making Jax's eyes tear up. He felt like he would die before the war even started, "Stay low and don't attract too much attention."
Jax passed on the message.
Roland and Fishbone didn't have the energy to protest. They could only blame their weakness, feeling like the failure was on their shoulders.
If Roland or any of them had acquired even a single mark, Lucian's business would have flourished beyond comparison.
They could scare regular citizens with their numbers, but not other hunters.
Lucian lacked strong fighters, but refrained from hiring mercenaries to protect his trading business. His focus was on his secret operations.
Luck and blessings could only take one so far, and the rest was pure planning and execution, so nobody understood why Lucian liked to depend on the Gods so much. Especially around people who had lost their faith in them. They would rather put their faith on him.
He did grow up in the church, so it must have had some kind of impact on him.
The ferals followed Jax's instructions, leaving Lucian to his own devices. He always seemed to have everything under control, even a loss would be cut in his favor.
The biggest one was probably the loss of Varia trading routes through the East Sea, which were now under the Merchant Guild's control.
Lucian was forced to give them up, but something told Jax that Lucian wasn't going to let them go that easily.
Jax could see Lucian monopolizing exports and imports between the North and South in the near future, and the power it would bring to him.
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With multiple hunts running at once, Lucian's personal army was growing rapidly.
The Southern Alliance was a huge region, and ferals were everywhere.
They were kept at bay by hunter kings, outside the territories of their kingdoms, treated like wild animals.
Abandoned ruins were the perfect place to find them, since they often didn't build their own shelters. They didn't attack unless provoked, food or lust being a trigger for most to start rampaging.
More than often, their target would be the closest feral to them, not humans, which was why they couldn't be grouped up with the shackleds and labeled the same.
Roland and Fishbone were familiar with the lands, so they could easily spot the ruins that could possibly hold ferals.
It would take a while for them to bring the captured ferals to Lucian.
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By the end of the month, there were at least a hundred in his possession.
After two months or so, Lucian's personal army had reached three hundred members.
"Boss?! Boss!" Lucian underlings' voices sounded from the distance as his body got flung in the air by an enraged feral's fist to his stomach.
Lucian had failed to increase the feral's fourth mark, which meant losing his control over the beast.
The group of six men jumped in to catch him before he landed on the ground, not wanting to see the aftermath of their boss' body splattering on the ground like a watermelon.
"Fuck! It's running away!" Someone yelled when the rest of the army of ferals went after the one who hit Lucian, chasing it in the opposite direction.
"Leave him be, we need to heal boss first!"
Lucian's silver rank body was strong enough to withstand the blow.
But it was his mind they were worried about, because his eyes looked like he just went through a nightmare and was still in shock.
"Why did nobody stop him from overexerting himself?!" Roland yelled.
"It's boss! He can do whatever he wants!"
"Damn, is there nobody who could talk some sense into him?"
They were all too blinded by the rapid growth of their leader, craving the rush of power that came from following such a man.