Main Character Hides His Strength

a battle, even against the elite Ruteginean Royal army.

Lion of Death brigade.

Sungchul was the commander of that legendary unit.
As with any successful group, this unit also had excellent subordinates working for Sungchul.
The man before him was one of those men.

Sungchul looked upon him with surprise and called out his name.

“Fritz Schnellmerker.”

It was Sungchul’s former lieutenant.
He looked the same as he always did and looked towards Sungchul with a relaxed expression and gave him a respectful salute.

“It’s been a while, Brigade leader.”

[What are you doing down there? Did you die? You didn’t die, right?]

The Communication Stone once again lit up at an inconvenient moment and blessed Stew’s annoying voice, but this couldn’t erase the grin off his face.

“It sure has, Fritz.”

*

Schnellmerker raised his hands, and those that were hiding in the darkness revealed themselves one by one.
They were excellently trained assassins as he had suspected.
They appeared wordlessly at Fritz’s hand signal, and then disappeared again into the forest.

Sungchul did not recognize any of them.
Although Sungchul had not memorized the name of every subordinate that he commanded, but he at least remembered the faces of most of them.
Therefore, this group of assassins were probably hired or trained by Fritz personally.

Sungchul concluded his thoughts and followed the subordinate he didn’t expect to meet into the cave.
Of course, he didn’t forget to say something to the noisy Communication Stone before entering.

“Go back, Stew.
I have a personal business to attend to.”

If Stew was the type of person to understand things quickly, she wouldn’t have been here in the first place.

[Excuse me…? What business? What is it? What?]

Sungchul handed the Communication Stone to Marakia for him to take care of this.
Marakia who was handed the stone flapped his small wings as he shouted into the stone.

“Shut your mouth, human! Before I go and rip out and devour your liver!”

[H…Hiiiie!!]

Sungchul left Baron and Marakia outside together.
The reason why Marakia was left behind was to protect Baron.
Even though he was very small, the number of people in the world who could defeat him was very few.

“You keep watch outside with Baron.”

“Hoh? Is it really ok to unleash the King of the Final Age like this? I might accidentally go wild?”

Sungchul took out the Oom Bruuk to silence Marakia.

“Piiie…”

Once entering the cave, Sungchul saw that the cave had stalactite here and there glistening in the torch light.
And past the rows of stalactite were a large number of paths.
Sungchul felt he now understood why the Imperial Knights were unable to take action despite knowing the Order of Extinction was here.
The cave was a naturally formed maze, one whose depth couldn’t even be estimated.

Schnellmerker made his way through several forks in the path without any hesitation.
It was a path that an ordinary person who knew the path might have difficulty finding their way through because of confusing and indistinguishable splits in the road.
But he did not show one bit of uncertainty.
Seeing this, Sungchul deduced that Fritz was a man possessing an exceptional mind.

10 minutes through the dizzying maze later, Sungchul was finally able to arrive at the base camp of the Order of Extinction near the Tower of Recluse.

The large cavern they arrived at had a few tents, and the members of the Order were grouped up around lights in threes or fives.
There were more of them here than he had expected.
Making a rough estimate with what he could see, it seemed as though there might be almost two hundred people gathered in this cavern.

“This way, sir.”

Schnellmerker entered a particularly large and elegant looking tent at the center of the camp.
The warriors who stood before the tent as guards bowed their head before moving aside to let Schnellmerker pass.
But they did not show any gesture of respect towards Sungchul.

“Please have a seat, Brigade leader.”

Schnellmerker continued to address Sungchul as Brigade leader.
Even though Schnellmerker had still been in the military when Sungchul rose to the position of a general, he was assigned to a different unit as a commander so he had no opportunity to speak to Sungchul and address him by his new title.
Even more so after he had left the military.

Sungchul looked towards a broken sword on display at the center of the tent.

“What is this?”

To this, Schnellmerker replied with a smile.

“It’s the crest of my family.”

“Ah.
This is Count Schnellmerker’s emblem? I apologize for not recognizing it.”

“No, it’s no problem.
I made it upon a whim, and as a countryside noble who rarely if ever visited La Grange, it’s no wonder that you can’t remember it.”

After a brief exchange of greetings, a heavy silence settled in the tent.

It was inevitable, considering Sungchul and Fritz both had their own circumstances and problems to deal with.