The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 59

Unlike Changwoon, who had been confined to the interrogation room for three days, his bodyguard Mooyoung was released unexpectedly quickly.

It was possible because Imae mask had vouched for him, arguing that with a secret royal inspector in custody, Mooyoung would not do anything reckless.

“I’ll give you a simple reconnaissance mission.”

“Reconnaissance… you say?”

Through the translucent glass wall of the visitation room, his master Changwoon.

Hearing those words, Mooyoung tilted his head in puzzlement.

“I’ll put some money in your account, so go take a look around the area. I’m stuck in a cell for three days anyway, so treat it like a casual walk.”

“A casual walk… you say?”

At Changwoon’s composed words, Mooyoung replied in bewilderment.

“Young Master. This is the Northeast Frontier. To leave you here alone in a place like this and just take a walk, that’s….”

“I told you it’ll be fine. Ah, well then.”

Seeing that Mooyoung looked like he would never leave at this rate, Changwoon thought for a moment and spoke.

“Right. Before, it was Mizutani, wasn’t it? You remember the negotiation with that wako fellow?”

“I remember.”

He had read out the lines Changwoon had written for him beforehand and played it with full weight, and that wako had moved like Changwoon’s right hand.

“It’s similar to that. I’ll mark coordinates for you, so go look around those spots and tell me what the streets are like. The atmosphere among the people, the state of the buildings, living standards…. all of it.”

“I understand….”

“And one last thing.”

It meant handling the business the clan had entrusted to him. Mooyoung accepted without argument, and Changwoon added one more condition.

“If the locals try to talk to you, don’t avoid it, go ahead and chat. Day-to-day small talk, greeting people, political arguments…. completely useless things are fine too. Say what you know, say what you want to say, and just let me know afterward. Understood?”

“……Yes. Understood.”

Something feels off.

It felt as though an excuse to send him away had been manufactured on the spot.

But this too was a command from his master, so there was nothing for Mooyoung to do but follow.

Taewoong, his senior, had attended Changwoon for a long time and would be more flexible about these things, but Mooyoung himself couldn’t manage that.

Honestly, even now he wasn’t entirely sure why Changwoon had brought him here instead of Taewoong.

And so Mooyoung went about exploring Iron Tiger Fortress.

He had come outside at Changwoon’s bidding and found himself with nothing particular to do, so he wandered aimlessly through the parts of the city Changwoon had pointed him toward.

Thud, thud!

“A little further forward! That’s it!”

“Isn’t that the 1st Battalion’s multi-angle tank? Why is something that should be at the forward base here?”

“The traveling merchant brought parts today. The tank commander came himself to pick them up because he couldn’t wait for the scheduled supply delivery.”

“Same as ever, those lunatics.”

Armored vehicles and tanks stood here and there along the streets, but the faces of the civilians dealing with the soldiers were not particularly unpleasant.

Some offered food to the young soldiers working hard, and there were soldiers sitting with children on armored vehicles, passing the time at leisure.

Soldiers deep in the middle of romantic pursuits with girls their own age, and a tank commander tinkering with machinery alongside mechanics at a repair shop.

It all looked rather easygoing, which was completely unlike Hanseong, where people would scurry away in fear the moment a military officer or royal guard appeared.

“Haven’t seen your face before. Where are you from?”

“Isn’t today the day the traveling merchant uncle comes in? Aren’t you one of the ones who came with him?”

“Oh really? Then come have some of this before you go! The parts he sent are what’s keeping this thing moving, barely!”

When he stopped to observe a civilian repair center maintaining a tank, a worker came over and handed him jerky made from synthetic meat.

“You’re from Hanseong? Hah! I could tell just by looking! That noble air just oozes right off your face…….”

“You stop talking nonsense and get back inside! Have you eaten? If you haven’t, take some of this with you. We made too much and have leftovers.”

In the next collective residential area he passed through, he was given rice balls made from locally grown rice.

The heating pack tucked in alongside them to keep it warm was not the work of someone who had done this once or twice.

“Hey, handsome young man, when are you heading back to Hanseong? If you’re not seeing anyone, our daughter…….. cough?!”

“Oh! Ahahaha! You must have been startled by our dad! Here, my mom says to take this….”

From a woman who blushed shyly, he received refreshments.

“That medicine you brought before! Nano-machine, whatever it was called. I got one injection and my back healed right up! I was so grateful I put this together for you!”

From an elderly woman who ran a convenience store, he received a container packed full of seasoned vegetables.

One house gave him fish-shaped pastries. Another gave him bulgogi.

After half a day going around Iron Tiger Fortress like that.

“…….”

In front of Mooyoung, who had settled in a quiet open lot, there was a pile of all manner of food filling both his hands.

“When am I going to eat all this.”

He muttered that, but since he couldn’t let food he had been given go to waste, he was picking up the rice balls one by one and eating them.

While doing so.

“Why don’t you come out now.”

As he murmured it almost to himself, a person appeared from behind a tree in the park.

The staff officer who had been standing between the two military officers a short while ago.

Her tension was plain to see, as though she hadn’t expected to be found out.

“……When did you know?”

“From the beginning. That’s why I deliberately led you somewhere with no one around.”

Hearing that, she had gone completely pale.

“I, I, I’ve been found out, and you led me somewhere with no one around… what’s going to happen to me now? Am I going to die?”

“What are you….”

Why on earth would I cause a scene here.

If he killed this woman right now, there was no telling what would happen to the Young Master sitting in a cell.

Mooyoung gazed steadily at the staff officer for a moment, then opened his mouth with a sigh.

“I don’t kill people without an order from my master.”

“In other words, you’re saying you’re ready to kill anyone, as long as that master of yours gives the order?”

“……Is that how it came out?”

That caught him off guard a little.

Drawing unexpected information out of a careless remark.

Since getting anything from interrogating Changwoon hadn’t worked out, she was going to investigate the bodyguard instead as a substitute.

But even so.

“…I’m truly not going to do anything, so please stop trembling. It’s painful to watch.”

“Urk! Ahem! Khem!”

At Mooyoung’s remark, unable to watch any longer, the staff officer began clearing her throat repeatedly.

He handed her the barley tea from his thermos, and she gulped it down, suppressing the coughing.

What is even going on.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, but if you were going to be that frightened, why tail someone in the first place?”

“B, but!”

Embarrassed that all her thoughts had been seen through, the startled staff officer cried out.

“You people are nobles… you were sent by the Andong Kim clan! You were here to do something to our General! So I had to do something!”

“……Hah.”

This showed that even an ordinary staff officer was willing to step forward like this, which meant his standing among his people was quite something.

Mooyoung didn’t think poorly of his own loyalty, but this was truly admirable dedication.

“Whatever the case, don’t try anything funny in front of me! Whatever it may be, I’ll report everything to Iron Tiger Army headquarters!”

“Yes, understood.”

So since she had been caught, she was going to stick around openly, it seemed.

She was no better at interrogation than he was.

‘If it were the Young Master, he would turn the conversation around and draw out the information he wanted…’

He couldn’t manage that himself.

He didn’t have the insight or the perception for it.

Under ordinary circumstances he would have kept his mouth shut to avoid giving away information, but he couldn’t do that either, because.

‘He told me not to avoid conversation.’

Strange as it was, an order was an order.

Cornered on all sides, Mooyoung ultimately decided to engage in conversation with her.

Perhaps the Young Master had anticipated even a situation like this when he gave that instruction.

Right. If it was the Young Master, he surely had.

“By the way, does this place seem pretty strange to someone from uppity Hanseong? Or is it too much of a backwater and boring?”

“…….”

The staff officer said this, settled onto a park bench, and picked up a rice ball.

Well, at least that’s one more mouth to help eat through this.

Eating a well-salted rice ball, Mooyoung looked out at the black wall stretching before him.

“Compared to Hanseong, the scenery here is worn. The city and the weapons alike.”

“Wow, you’re very direct.”

It was fair.

Thinking of the sheer vertical skyscrapers always visible in Hanseong, the lanterns adorning the sky, and the night view of the uppermost level floating above it all like a sun… the city enclosed by these walls looked almost shabby by comparison.

‘The equipment and weapons I had seen here and there were even more so.’

A steel wall sealing off an entire mountain range, and fortress cannons stationed at intervals throughout.

Thousands of self-propelled artillery pieces deployed to the rear, manned multi-angle tanks, fighter aircraft flying off runways….

Every single one of them was a relic of an older era, the kind of thing that would appear only in history books from decades past.

The unmanned combat systems connected to the Administration’s communications network, and the Administration’s officers operating them.

Phase power users of the royal guard who, supported by those systems, dominated the battlefield.

The modern combat Mooyoung had experienced until now was not an era where things as old-fashioned as tanks and fighter aircraft were still running around.

“Even so….”

“Even so what?”

Mooyoung looked at the rice ball in his hand, and at the abundance of seasoned vegetables and all manner of food spread before him.

“The people here seemed far better off.”

Honestly, he had expected not to be welcomed.

He was an outsider, and a Hanseong person on top of that.

Just as Hanseong people looked down on those from the Northeast Frontier, he had assumed they would be equally hostile toward Hanseong people.

But it was the opposite.

“It wasn’t always like this. There used to be plenty of people saying vicious things, that Hanseong people were all wrapped up in themselves, no different from monsters, that they should all be beaten to death. But then… oh, this is what Grandma Suni pickled, isn’t it.”

Chewing on a few pieces of vegetables taken from the container, the staff officer continued.

“But then… things changed a bit after our General came back from Hanseong.”

Iron Tiger General Yoo Sanghyeon.

It was remarkable enough to call the military commander of an entire region so familiarly, but what was truly remarkable came next.

“They say the General told people. That when the nobles were trying to kill him, a Hanseong person saved him. And that’s why he keeps standing here.”

“……!”

“After a few years passed, most of the people who used to curse anyone from Hanseong without exception were gone. I think it was around that time that the relationship with the traveling merchant uncles warmed up too.”

It was something he already knew.

The mission to rescue General Yoo Sanghyeon.

What the Young Master had done years ago had changed the people of the Northeast Frontier.

‘The hatred aimed at Hanseong people faded, and in its place a concrete enemy called the aristocrats appeared. Is that why the Young Master is being kept in that cell.’

If that was the case, the Young Master’s plan had fit together precisely.

Though the Young Master himself was stuck in a cell because of that very plan….

Mm. Let’s not think about that.

The honey cookie is sweet.

Around the time when all the food he had been given was eaten.

Waaailing—

From a distance, a siren sounded.

A peaceful city.

People laughing and chattering.

With the siren, all of it vanished without a trace.

“What is….”

“Go to the nearest emergency shelter. Right now.”

With none of the manner she had shown until a moment ago, the staff officer said it in a rigid voice.

“The monsters are coming.”