Leon and his squad were immediately transported to the nearest teleportation station for their first target.
"Greetings, Your Highness, Third Prince!" the guards of the teleportation station greeted with awe.
After acknowledging their greetings, they led Leon and his troops to the Sevila Estate.
The town they transported to was the Sevila Barony.
It was a land exactly located in the southwest border of the Empire. Due to its remote location, the Sevila Barony was already considered a barren state.
Supplies were scarce and their fields were producing little to no yield due to the soil being unsuitable for cultivation of crops. The main source of income for this remote land was the deposits of chromium in their territory.
In this age, the modern uses of chromium were not yet discovered. In Sevila Barony, the actual form of chromium was in the form of an ore called Chromite.
It was used to make pigments, tanning leather and sometimes creating cheap ornaments. Other than that, there were no other use for these large deposits of Chromite.
But even with the little to no value of the Chromite, the whole barony still strive to get by through mining them.
Leon entered a simple estate quietly. As it was in the middle of the night and also a secret operation, Baron Sevila could only welcome Leon inside his small estate in a lowkey manner.
"Greetings, Your Highness, Third Prince!" Baron Sevila, a gentle looking man in his forties respectfully greeted Leon with a grateful expression in his eyes.
With him were his teenage son, the young baron, and his wife. They welcomed Leon with respect and gratefulness in their eyes.
Usually, the noble men would despise Leon for his reputation as the Barbaric Blood Prince, however, not the Sevila family.
Not many knew, but it was through Leon, that the Sevila Barony saw a glimmer of hope for their barren land. However, unbeknownst to them, it was actually Eli who made this all possible.
A few months before this, Eli was working on the water pressure and heating system. One of the most needed components of the system was the stainless steel!
Stainless steel is actually a mixture of iron and more than ten percent of chromium along with other minerals.
Everyone in Prasinos knows that iron is very susceptible to corrosion. It has been a recurring problem to the blacksmiths and inventors on how to avoid this thing from happening in their steel works.
That was not until Eli introduced them the periodic table of elements and the power of Chromium!
Since chromium was an element found in the Chromite crystallines, which was currently considered as a low value ore, this discovery opened a brand new trading opportunity for the Sevila Barony.
Through Leon's status as the Empire's Prince, he acted as the middleman and coordinated with the Sevila territory in engaging a trade with the Forgeworn clan to provide a batch of Chromite crystallines for producing the world's first stainless steel!
Since Eli, Grandpa Andi and Grandpa Ben planned to mass produce this system, they would need more of these Chromite in the future! What's more, Eli had introduced to the Forgeworn blacksmiths and craftsmen the other uses of stainless steel!
Thus towards Leon, the whole of Sevila Barony was grateful for this ray of hope. In just a few months, their monthly yield from Chromite crystalline mining grew by four times!
"Your Highness, I have already prepared my men to assist you in traveling to the northtown. From here it will just be a five hour carriage ride." Baron Sevila reported as he led Leon to his bedroom.
"Uhn, we will commence the operations tomorrow. We must not waste time." Leon nodded and looked at the baron with an approving expression.
"Your Highness, this is your room for the night, please do not hesitate to call our attention if you have anything you need. Also, I wanted to thank you personally for giving us the opportunity to trade with the Faraulds and Forgeworns."
"It's alright. About that, it was not actually my idea. I was just the one who acted as the middleman due to my status." Leon responded with pride in his face.
He felt that Eli's warmth still lingered in his body as fondness flashed in his crystal blue eyes.
"This.. who could that person be? I would like to give my sincerest thanks." Baron Sevila replied with interest. To see the cold blooded prince with a gentle expression, who might the person be?
"You'll know in the future.." Leon gave an ambiguous reply and retired for the night.
Morning came and everyone prepared for their departure.
Leon and the knights were disguised as a merchant company, they rode not through the carriage but wagons prepared by the baron as Leon instructed.
This was the game plan, not only by Leon but the whole clearing operations team. They adopted a uniform strategy.
To fool the enemy, they had to pose as something like a merchant company to be able to mobilize a large number of knights without raising suspicion. Half posed as mercenary corps guarding the wagons while the others posed as merchants and servants.
Upon reaching the northtown, Leon had one of the local knights put on a disguise - a young pregnant woman.
After letting a mage install snooping and recording spells in her body, Leon let her wander around the northtown in a carefree manner. The reason was to catch the attention of the Spectre and investigate the hideout from the inside.
Once the knight was already inside, she would deploy the spells to automatically send information to her allies who were staying in an inn just a block away from the suspected hideout.
After determining the situation inside, Leon will immediately deploy the knights to raid the hideout!
It didn't take long for them until the knight was abducted. Since the operation team arrived in the afternoon, they didn't wait that long to actually receive feedback from the deployed spy.
The hideout was pretty typical. It was a casino which targets not only the rich families in the vicinity but even the poor people. At its facade, it looked extremely enticing, posing as an establishment that offers entertainment that doesn't discriminate between the rich and the poor.
However, people didn't know that directly below this lively casino was an underground dungeon full of abducted young women in cold steel cages.
The knight's eyes became exceedingly ferocious as she saw these young women helplessly sit inside the cage. Their faces were devoid of soul, as they probably had given up waiting for hope.
"Sir, we got another one!" One of the henchmen proudly announced to the warden guarding the room.
"Uhn, prepare to feed these people, in three days we will transport them out of the border!" The warden, a middle aged man with a lecherous look on his face, replied casually to the henchman.
His eyes didn't even pay attention to the one reporting but to the female knight's appearance.
A wave of creeps crawled in her spine as she could clearly see the licentious expression of the warden. Her senses heightened, getting her body ready to defend herself should the man tried to do unspeakable things to her.
Thankfully, a flash of annoyance appeared on the warden's face as he saw the 'bulging stomach' of the female knight.
"Tsk! Next time, bring me someone with a slightly small stomach unlike this! Seeing the bulging stomach destroyed my mood to have fun with her!"
"Throw her to the cage!" The warden finally ordered in disdain.
"Clink!" The female knight's act of being terrified disappeared as soon as she heard the locking of the metal cage.
Ensuring that the guards and the warden were not paying attention, she started to do as instructed. She deployed the snooping spells.
As Leon instructed, she had to deploy the snooping spells in a descending manner. There were five snooping spells in her body for deployment. Each of these spells correspond to a class level.
The snooping spells work pretty simple. One would deploy the highest level first, in the female knight's case, the Class A snooping spell.
The snooping spell would release a wave of mana within an identified radius, only discernible by the people who had the strength comparable to a class A summoner, devourer or caster.
The caster of the snooping spell would detect any fluctuation of mana coming from the alerted individuals. If there were no fluctuations, it means that the people within the set radius have abilities lower than a class A.
The deployment of spells will continue until they could detect a fluctuation, in order to determine how strong their opponents were and also how many are they in the area.
As the female knight deployed the spells, there were no reactions until she deployed the C level, and only one user reacted to such. It was the warden who immediately jolted from doing business on one of the female captives.
Immediately, the female knight deployed the lowest snooping spell, the class E spell to snoop the rest of the people. Since the strongest had been alerted, it was imperative to deploy the lowest snooping spell to count the total number of the remaining hostiles.
On the designated inn where Leon was watching, the mage assigned to monitor anxiously announced, "Your Highness, not good! She was discovered. There's one class C mage, ten class D mages and twenty class E."
As soon as Leon heard the anxious mage, he looked to the rest of the people with a calm expression and said, "Immediately surround the area and wait for my signal."
"Ye-" Without waiting for the knights to respond, Leon's figure immediately disappeared on the spot.
