<h4>Chapter 694 Strange report</h4>


    A week passed since that sham of a trial.


    The former General Gardner and several of his loyal subordinates were handed over to the Beirut Kingdom as punishment for their war crimes.


    But knowing that there was the possibility that things could go wrong, we had to take precautions as well.


    So the former General Gardner and his men were all...executed ahead of time and only their heads would be sent to the Beirut Kingdom.


    Although this would cause a bit of displeasure from the other side since they would want to execute these people themselves, there was no other choice. We wouldn''t let anything go wrong, so we couldn''t let the former General Gardner and his men go to the Beirut Kingdom alive.


    As for their families, they were also executed and sent along with them.


    Cutting the roots as well, that was the only way to ensure that it was safe.


    If we didn''t do this, there was no knowing what would have happened.


    Along with this, the nobles that had been summoned as part of the fake jury had also been executed.


    They were nobles that had their corruption found by the fourth prince, so we were using this chance to catch them all in one fell swoop. We wouldn''t let any of them escape from our.


    Just by taking care of all of them, the capital had be much cleaner.


    There were still nobles outside of the capital that weren''t as clean, but it wasn''t as if we could get rid of them all right away. These nobles held important positions outside of the capital, so it was impossible to kill them all right away.


    If that did happen, then it would mean the copse of the kingdom since there would be too many gaps to fill.


    The biggest threat right now was Duke Yuletide, but it wasn''t the time to take him down yet.


    We still had to stabilize the core of the country before taking him down.


    So that was why I had spent the past week in the castle.


    In fact, most of my time had been spent in the king''s study with the king, going over the reports that he received.


    Even if I had the fourth prince taking care of things for me, that didn''t mean that I would be able to escape taking care of certain things. There were things that only the king was able to do after all, so there would be things that I would have to take care of myself and couldn''t leave to the fourth prince.


    I was shadowing the king to learn these things.


    Today was another boring day of going through reports, though if it was anyone else that was here, they definitely wouldn''t be thinking the same thing. After all, these reports were highly ssified reports.


    These were reports that were supposed to be only seen by the king and his trusted ministers, but I was allowed to read them since I was shadowing him.


    These were reports on the important details of our kingdom, such as reports on the economy, the military, and our food supplies. If any of these were to fall in the hands of the enemy kingdoms, there was no doubt that we would suffer a huge loss.


    So of course it was not something that should be shared casually.


    But here I was with ess to all of this with a bored look on my face.


    As I read through the reports, I suddenly found something that caught my attention.


    This wasn''t a very important report, it wasn''t even one that should be considered ssified.


    This was just a report that had been added in because of how strange it was, so someone thought that the king should know about this.


    It was a report about the situation in a country that was further to the north of us.


    This was a small country that wasn''t even considered a kingdom, but rather a dukedom since it was so small. At the same time, it was a country that had three other different countries between them and us.


    So what happened in this country shouldn''t have mattered to us at all.


    But I found it very strange, so I couldn''t help picking up the report to have a closer look at it.


    When the king saw me reading the report so intensely, he couldn''t help feeling strange, so he asked, "What is it? Is something wrong?"


    I shook my head in response as I said, "There''s nothing wrong in particr, but this seems strange."


    "Strange?" The king repeated before reaching his hand out towards me.


    I just passed him one page of the report while keeping the rest of myself.


    That one page was the general summary of the event while the rest of the report went into further detail about it.


    But basically, this was a report about a rumour from this country.


    It was a rumour that seemed to stir the entire country with the way that it spread.


    There was a forest on the edge of that country andtely, there have been animals that have been dying there. These animals would suddenly cough up ck blood and die in the middle of nowhere.


    It seemed like some kind of illness, but the doctors hadn''t been able to find anything.


    Even the magicians that checked these animals weren''t able to find anything wrong with them.


    So they could only conclude that the animals had died of some kind of natural death.


    But the people that lived in the area surrounding the forest insisted that this was the work of a dark god that was sealed deep in the forest. They said that the seal on the dark god was weakening, which was why these creatures were dying.


    It would only be a matter of time before the dark god was unleashed, so they begged the duke to send for someone to seal this dark god again.


    "Isn''t this just a bunch of superstition? Though the fact that these animals are dying these unnatural deaths does seem strange." The king said aloud, but I didn''t react.


    That was because I had been in deep thought this whole time.


    All of this seemed familiar to me…