A Dragonslayer’s Peerless Regression

Chapter 49

Sieg and Manuel's unit approached the main production camp of the Pavela Cartel.

Seeing the smoke rising beyond the jungle, Sieg realized they were close to the camp and spoke to Manuel.

"Wait here."

Manuel was startled.

"W-what? Wait here? What do you mean?"

Having witnessed Sieg single-handedly annihilate the Wolfkin unit in an instant, Manuel had grown significantly more respectful toward him.

Sieg straightened up and said, "I'll handle the infiltration alone."

Then he added, "Your job is simply to report accurately what happened up there."

Leaving just those words, Sieg quickly disappeared into the jungle.

Manuel stood frozen, dumbfounded. The other unit members were equally at a loss.

Moments later, a tremendous explosion echoed from within the camp.

Manuel, startled, looked around at his men.

"What the hell is going on?"

"W-what should we do, squad leader?"

After a moment of hesitation, Manuel gestured to his unit.

"Damn it. Let's head toward the perimeter for now. We need to at least see what's happening if we're going to report it."

* * *

Leaving Manuel's unit behind, Sieg approached the camp, freely using Shadowless Footwork as he moved forward with ease.

'It was suffocating to keep holding back my strength.'

Since he was concealing his identity, he couldn't unleash his full power.

He planned to use Southern martial arts, assassination techniques, and his elemental sword to dismantle the camp while keeping the Dragonslaying Art sealed.

'A mere cartel camp doesn't need more than this.'

Before his regression, he had often attacked camps like this head-on without relying on any advanced techniques.

Back then, every raid had been a gamble with his life.

It was no wonder Kaiser had remarked that Sieg was someone who constantly danced on the edge of death.

Sieg stuck close to the thick palisade of the camp.

From his inventory, he drew an ordinary claymore, then channeled mana to ignite the power of fire.

Whoosh!

The sword became wreathed in flames.

Without hesitation, Sieg swung the flaming sword at the palisade.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The resulting power was far stronger than expected, not only destroying the palisade but also collapsing all the surrounding structures.

'I need to adjust my strength a bit.'

Destroying everything indiscriminately was easy, but he had a specific purpose here, so he needed to be more careful about how he wrecked things.

"An attack! We're under attack!"

"There's a mage! Watch out for magic!"

It seemed they had mistaken Sieg's Blazing Sword for a spell.

Taking advantage of the chaotic situation, Sieg infiltrated deeper into the camp.

He made his way toward the center of the camp, where the Pavela Cartel operatives were stationed. At the heart of the camp was a facility used to refine Soma leaves into powder.

Before he could reach the facility, several people blocked his path.

"Intruder!"

Around a dozen cartel members rushed toward Sieg.

Sieg retrieved a pair of daggers from his inventory.

Swish!

Gripping the daggers in both hands, he hurled them at the oncoming cartel members.

Thud!

The daggers struck precisely, hitting their targets in the forehead, and the members fell lifelessly to the ground.

Since Sieg's inventory was filled with hundreds of cheap daggers, he didn't worry about conserving them. He unleashed a barrage of daggers, targeting the cartel members indiscriminately.

"Guh!"

In a matter of moments, the charging operatives were all dead, daggers embedded in their foreheads or hearts.

Sieg immediately sprinted toward the manufacturing facility.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

A thunderous noise approached Sieg. To his surprise, several magical tanks powered by arcane mechanisms were rolling toward him.

'They've stocked up on these despite their rarity in the Central Continent.'

In the Central Continent, magical weaponry was less favored compared to knights or high-ranking combat mages. Magical weaponry was not only expensive but also came with exorbitant maintenance costs.

However, the cartel faced a shortage of knights and mages while having plenty of wealth to spare. It was no wonder they were the largest clients of the Magic Tower and the Nirvana Household.

Seeing the tanks clad entirely in steel barreling toward him, Sieg drew Bahamut.

In his previous life, he would have had to avoid tanks at all costs, but the situation was different now.

His sword became wreathed in the power of wind.

A technique frequently used by his master, the Hero King Kaiser, unfolded from Sieg's blade.

Elemental Sword - Energy of Wind

Storm Blade

The blade imbued with the will of a raging storm was swung toward the tanks.

Whhoooooosh!

A massive storm erupted around Sieg.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The tanks, which seemed unstoppable, were swept up in the storm and flipped over.

Crash!

Not only were they overturned, but the storm's sheer force tore off their armored exteriors.

"Ahhh! Spare us!"

The cartel members operating the tanks, trembling with fear, crawled out of the wreckage.

Sieg's storm had formed a vortex that engulfed not only the tanks but also the surrounding production facilities, lifting them high into the sky.

"Wow. That's no joke.", Sieg muttered in amazement.

He admired the devastation he had caused, even though he was the one responsible for it.

When practicing, he had never fully realized the sheer power of the technique. But now, having used it directly, the results were astonishing.

In an instant, the camp's entire production facility was reduced to rubble.

The cartel members who had been caught in the storm trembled violently, screaming in terror.

"A-a devil has appeared!"

Sieg silenced one of the shrieking operatives by slicing through his neck, then pulled up his map to verify his location.

"Let's see... Where was the secret passage in this camp again?"

This camp was one of the places Sieg had raided and destroyed in his previous life. Back then, he had captured one of the bosses of the Pavela Cartel here and extracted valuable information.

It was from that boss that he learned the Pavela Cartel had originally been a pirate group.

Studying the map, Sieg recalled the location of the secret passage.

"Right, it was that cave."

He quickly dashed toward a cave at the rear of the camp.

When he arrived, several operatives were standing guard with crossbows aimed at him.

But Sieg's sword was faster.

Before they could even fire, their heads fell to the ground.

"You should've shot the moment you aimed. Your training's a mess."

Taking one of their crossbows, Sieg ventured into the cave.

As expected, more operatives were stationed inside.

"Intru—Guh!"

The first operative he encountered couldn't even finish his sentence before a bolt from Sieg's crossbow pierced his chest.

The bolt was aimed precisely at his lungs, ensuring he couldn't scream before succumbing to a painful death.

Sieg showed mercy by beheading him, granting a quick end.

He continued eliminating every Pavela operative he encountered deeper in the cave, systematically working his way to the secret passage.

Finally, Sieg descended into the passage.

It connected to an old mine tunnel.

Activating his Dragon's Eye skill, Sieg scanned the tunnel's surroundings.

'Was it like this back then?'

For a simple mining tunnel, the walls and floor were unusually well-preserved.

In his previous life, he had been too focused on the mission to notice such details.

Using the map, Sieg identified the location of the fleeing cartel boss and leisurely made his way further into the tunnel.

'The more I look at it, the less this feels like a mine. It's more like some kind of ancient ruin...'

As that thought crossed his mind, something flew toward him.

Shhhk!

Sieg caught the arrow that was aimed squarely at his forehead.

But it wasn't over.

Suddenly, sharp spikes extended from the arrow shaft, stabbing into his palm.

『The venom of the Black Mamba has been detected.』

『The effect of the Immunity to Hundred Poisons constitution negates the venom's influence.』

The venom of the Black Mamba was a lethal poison without an antidote—a method designed to ensure a kill. Infusing such a deadly toxin into an arrow was a technique meant to exploit the habits of knights from the Central Continent.

Knights capable of using aura often didn't bother dodging arrows they could catch, choosing instead to grab them mid-flight to show off their skill.

The Southern-style assassination technique capitalized on that arrogance, killing such knights with poison.

It was a method Sieg himself had used often in his previous life.

After tossing the arrow aside, Sieg watched as a figure emerged from the shadows.

"What's this? I thought you were a knight, but you're just some brat. I wasted expensive poison for nothing."

Had Sieg not neutralized the Black Mamba venom, he would have bled out from every orifice and died within five minutes.

A man with thick, shaggy hair all over his body slowly approached Sieg.

"Who the hell sent you?"

Sieg met the man's gaze and spoke calmly.

"Paulo Santos."

The man flinched in surprise at the sound of his name, retreating a step in wary confusion.

"You... How do you know my name? And why aren't you dead?"

Sieg began to approach Paulo, step by step. Realizing something was off, paulo turned abruptly to flee.

But outrunning Sieg, who had mastered Swift Wind Technique, was impossible.

Swish!

Sieg darted ahead of Paulo and intercepted him, pulling a dagger from his inventory and driving it into Paulo's thigh.

"Arghhh!"

Paulo screamed, clutching at his wounded leg. Sieg tripped him effortlessly, sending Paulo sprawling to the ground. As the man writhed in pain, Sieg spoke.

"Paulo, I've got a few questions for you."

In response, paulo spat at him.

Sieg casually sidestepped the spit and planted his foot firmly on the dagger embedded in Paulo's thigh.

"Arghhhhhh!"

The blade sank deeper into the flesh, eliciting a blood-curdling scream.

Sieg retrieved another dagger and drove it into Paulo's shoulder without hesitation.

"Ghhhk!"

Paulo trembled violently, caught between pain and terror. Sieg regarded him coldly before speaking again.

"Paulo, I know you're a member of the Pavela Cartel's leadership. I also know that the Pavela Cartel is just a bunch of South Sea pirates."

Paulo's head shot up in shock.

"W-what are you talking about?"

"Don't act surprised. If you were an actor, you'd starve to death."

Paulo's fear grew even more palpable.

Sieg pulled out another dagger and pressed it against Paulo's throat as he spoke.

"If you want to live, listen to me. You're coming with me to Mechain. Once there, you'll spill everything about the Pavela Cartel to the boss. Do that, and I'll let you live."

Sieg's words left Paulo stunned.

"M-Mechain? Are you saying Don Juan sent you?"

Sieg pressed the dagger closer to Paulo's neck.

"Watch your mouth. Throwing around someone else's boss's name like that."

"W-We've never messed with the Mechain Cartel! We respected each other's territories!"

"And yet you lot are meddling with the Syndicate's distribution network?"

"T-That's..."

The fact that Sieg spoke so casually about information that only Pavela Cartel executives were privy to left Paulo utterly flustered.

Sieg pressed him further.

"The boss has no intention of letting you live. He's planning a full-scale assault to burn the Pavela Cartel to ashes and wipe out you filthy pirates for good. Got it?"

Paulo's eyes darted around nervously.

Then, in a swift motion, he activated something hidden in his shoe and threw a concealed weapon at Sieg.

"Ugh!"

What Paulo threw was a cloud of poisonous powder, which hit Sieg directly, causing him to fall to the side.

Taking the opportunity, paulo limped away, trying to escape.

Sieg, hit by the poison, clutched his face and rolled on the ground.

"Arghhhh!"

He groaned and writhed until Paulo disappeared into the tunnel.

Once Paulo was completely out of sight, Sieg rose to his feet.

"That should be enough. What a fool. Did he forget I wasn't affected by the Black Mamba venom?"

Sieg had deliberately sought out Paulo to feed him information about the Mechain Cartel. For both the Mechain and Pavela Cartels to collapse, a full-blown war needed to erupt between them.

This was Sieg's objective.

'If Paulo believes Don Juan is planning a full-scale attack, the Pavela Cartel won't sit idly by.'

Sieg intended to exploit the fierce conflict between Mechain and Pavela to his advantage.

Dusting off the poison powder, he turned around.

"Well, let's wrap thi—"

Suddenly, a chilling sensation ran down his spine.

Swish!

Something flew toward Sieg.

Whoosh!

He quickly rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the attack.

'An aura-infused strike.'

This wasn't a Southern-style attack—it was Central Continent swordsmanship.

Turning around, Sieg saw several black-clad figures with swords, surrounding him on all sides.

He gritted his teeth and drew his sword.

They were enemies he knew all too well.

"Come on, you damned Imperial hounds."