Cthulhu Gonfalon

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Syndicate was a robber. He sometimes acted as a thief, sometimes as a pirate, sometimes as a smuggler, and sometimes as a helper who did something unsuitable for important men who didn't want to reveal their identities.

He didn't care what he was doing on earth. As long as he could make money, whatever he was asked to do was acceptable.

In private, he called himself a "Cost-free Gentleman." The former implied his identity, and the latter flaunted his style of doing things.

Among his peers, he was indeed quite a gentleman. Every time he was doing business, as long as the opposite side was willing to surrender, even if they had still been fighting at the last moment, he would constrain his subordinates to let go of the argument the next moment. At the beginning, his subordinates had been very dissatisfied, but as their reputation had spread gradually, fewer and fewer people were willing to fight with them. More than once, other companies took the initiative to give them the money for passage as soon as they saw their logo.

For those who were willing to give money for passage, he also had a standard. As long as the money was enough to let his buddies go eat and drink together, it wasn't worth fighting for more money, because he always believed that money could be earned endlessly, but reliable brothers were not so easy to find.

As a result, his "business" had grown bigger and bigger, gradually becoming the largest group in the border area between the Kingdom of the Blue Moon and the Kingdom of Thousands of Springs. Some people had even begun to call him the Mountain King.

To be honest, Syndicate didn't like this title at all. He'd had the privilege of entering the the Old Fairy Temple in the Ancient Forest, and had received the advice of the undead elder. At that time, the elder had warned him that he shouldn't be greedy, show off, or make a fortune silently. He had been deeply impressed and had always held this as his motto.

His ideal was to be an unnamed robber and earn enough money to find opportunities to clean his reputation. Then, as a small aristocrat in the mainland, he would steadily spend the rest of his life, leaving enough descendants to continue the family from generation to generation. After many, many years, the descendants of future generations who would be keen to study the history of their ancestors would finally find out his origin at that time from the few words of dusty records, and they would be stunned…

Now, it seemed that this ideal would mostly be ruined, so he was depressed.

Recently, he had received news from an old acquaintance who had cooperated with him in the past, saying that in the future, the robber business, especially the business of the big robbers, would be more difficult to do. A sales channel would become a vital part of the business. This made him a bit puzzled, and he didn't understand why it had to be.

Most robbers didn't like to steal physical goods. One reason was that escaping with the goods would be slow, and it was easy to leave too many traces, which made it easy to be caught or found. The second reason was that the goods had to be sold in some way. When they sold them, goods worth a gold coin couldn't be sold for more than a silver coin, which was a loss of money.

In contrast, it was much more convenient to take money directly. Even if it was a precious gem, it wouldn't be more reliable than money.

Of course, if he could grab precious magic items, it would be more cost-effective than grabbing money. Magic items were easier to sell, and often the prices would not be deliberately pressed down when they were sold, making them the best hard currency.

Syndicate, naturally, couldn't be excused from this, since when he had received passage money, the price was calculated according to three times the price of the goods—in other words, if the consumer gave him goods instead of money, they had to give three times the value of the goods, which was equal to the price. If he could have, he would have rather taken money than goods, even though he had a good sales record.

For example, this time.

He had taken a dozen people to an ambush in a pit they had dug on purpose on the hillside, wearing a grass clothes covered with turf that looked like common grasslands. As long as they didn't use magic, no one could find them.

The location he was ambushing was quite spacious, not dangerously steep at all. No spellcaster would go crazy to use detecting magic in such a place.

For this mission, he had prepared for five days in advance. The manpower and material resources that he had used were worth hundreds of gold coins, at least under his estimation.

But it had been worthwhile. As far as he had known, the Dragon Tail Commercial Firm had just shipped a large quantity of goods to Buie City, but it hadn't bought many goods from the city. This meant that they were either carrying a large amount of cash or high-value gems or magic items. Any of these were worth paying attention and even taking action personally.

As time passed, the sun gradually moved west. However, Syndicate and his brothers were still lying on the ground motionlessly, as if they had become piles of weedy earth.

To be a respectable business, he had to be able to hold his breath. This time, he had brought his most reliable older brothers. Every one of them understood this truth, so they could all keep their composure.

About an hour from sunset, two carriages slowly approached. The sign on the carriages showed that they were really a group of bumpkins who had self-proclaimed that their ancestors had picked up the tailbone of a dragon and used it as the mascot.

Each time he thought about the origin of the name of this commercial firm, Syndicate wanted to laugh, but he held back his laughter. On the contrary, he was very serious.

The Dragon Tail Commercial Firm wasn't an easy group to deal with. Their ancestors had also not had the money to do business. The reason why they had been able to make a fortune in the past had not been good luck brought by their sh*t mascot, but several kinds of business that would force them to hell after death, similar to what he was doing.

In the face of such opponents, if he wasn't serious or careful, he would be asking for death.

The carriages weren't big. After a careful look, it was confirmed that there were quite a few goods in them. However, he noticed that the drivers of the two carriages were very stable in temperament, and he had known that they had quite good strength at first glance. As for what was inside the carriages… The latter was a truck. The escort might have been a middle-level warrior who wasn't powerful enough to be afraid. However, he could vaguely feel the fluctuation of magic in the former carriage. He was afraid that a powerful mage was sitting in it, so they couldn't be careless!

The carriages were going to pass by. However, for an unknown reason, a horse leading the former carriage suddenly stumbled. Its whole body was falling to the side of the road, which made the whole carriage start to turn over with it, and the people in the carriages were going to fall to their deaths.

This was a trap designed by Syndicate. He had dug some small pits on the road that weren't big, just a little bigger than the horses' hooves. The pits had been covered with thick paper, and then with floating soil and weeds. They looked like nothing but ordinary ground, but as soon as the hooves of a carriage horse stepped on them, it would fall down immediately, and the entire carriage would fall with it.

The people of the Dragon Tail Commercial Firm had been attacked, so they were a little panicked. Two people walked out of the former carriage. One was a mage wearing a fire-red robe, and the other was a ranger wearing soft gray armor. The two drivers and the warrior in the last carriage also took out their weapons and prepared for battle.

Syndicate nodded, uncovered the turf, and stood up alone.

Instead of rushing to speak, he took out a flag and inserted it on the ground beside him.

In the evening wind, the flag unfolded, and a tiger sitting on the top of a mountain majestically was looking down upon the people below the slope.

"Mountain King?!" The Ranger was shocked, then began to laugh.

"It's not the right time for you to be here." He took out a delicate saint emblem, smiling. "Our commercial firm has indeed made a lot of money this time, but it has already been deposited in the temple of the Royal Crown, the Goddess of Wealth. Even if you kill us, you can't take the money."

A few hours later, at his own secret base, Syndicate fell into meditation.

It seemed that… the world had changed.

This era was no longer an era suitable for the Cost-free Gentleman.

When he thought of this, he made up his mind.

Since then, the famous robber Mountain King, who had been active on the border of the Kingdom of the Blue Moon and the Kingdom of Thousands of Springs, had disappeared without a trace. A few months later, in the northern part of the Federation of Gold Coins, a small aristocrat named Thomas had appeared.