Just as Cheese and Leon were rushing to their destination separately, unlike the mage and the knight chief, Lothar's heart could almost be said to be excited. For this Montenegrin count, there is nothing more challenging than taking on an unknown enemy. Observing the enemy in battle and then thinking about how to defeat them is Lothar's favorite pastime. Although the act of war was for almost all commanders as a means of obtaining resources or protecting territory and people, in the case of the Count of Montenegro, such a direct large-scale armed conflict was not merely his obligation to fulfill his noble duties, which was his interest.

An assassination at an early age took a heavy toll on the Montenegrin family, with the previous Count of Montenegro and his wife both dying, while Lothar was spared a short trip invited by a friend. Although she was lucky enough to escape the assassination, and the murderer and the culprit behind it were quickly found out for questioning, the death of her parents left the young Lothar in a state of confusion that she had never felt before. Although the king of the blue lion also expressed concern for the only heir of the Montenegrin family, and took Lothar to the royal capital for education, perhaps because there was no one who could really give him the direction in place of his parents. For Lothar at that time, whether it was the family, the title, or even the kingdom, he had nothing to do with him, he was just an orphan who had lost his direction, and the teachings of the king and his teacher did not allow him to find himself again, and as time passed, Lothar seemed to have been depressed.

In such a situation, depravity is almost a matter of course, and spending time on endless pleasure and enjoyment seems to be the most capable way to numb oneself, but Lothar does not. The way he behaved confused those who wanted to win him over, and as a young man without the restraints of his elders, he was too ascetic. The young count even refused the servants assigned to him by the king, and during the years of the royal capital, Lothar seemed to appear only in two places outside of his residence, the large library of the royal capital and the martial arts arena.

As carriers of knowledge, books are precious and scarce in the secular kingdom, so whether it is the kingdom of the blue lion or other human nations, or even in other intelligent races, books are things that must be carefully kept. The Great Library of the Royal Capital was established by the Kingdom of the Blue Lion in order to preserve books, and the books obtained from the kingdom or outside the kingdom were basically kept in backup. And if you want to enter and leave the Great Library, you must be a nobleman in the kingdom or a scholar with the corresponding proof. As for the common people, the Great Library was not open to them, and of course it was not that the king did not want his people to know more, but as I said before, knowledge was a precious resource in this era.

In this way, Lothar, who often visited the Great Library, must have accumulated a lot of knowledge during that time, which may be his strength, and when he returns to Montenegro to take power as an adult, he will become a good ruler. But in fact, this is not the case, although the young Lothar spent a lot of time reading books in the large library, what he read was not geography and history, nor was it mysterious astrological medicine. The Count had read only one type of book in the Great Library—the Bard's Scrolls. If that weren't clear enough, the so-called troubadour's scrolls are collections of stories told by various bards. In other words, fiction.

But just as the nobles and scholars of the royal capital lamented that there was another ridiculous aristocrat obsessed with knightly biographies or magical weirdness, Lothar did not behave as ridiculously as they had thought he would. On the contrary, the count's demeanor has become more and more deferential, and people will not be frightened by an earl who has brainwashed the knight's biography, but Lothar's performance is really getting more and more incomprehensible, the weird Black Mountain, which was Lothar's nickname when he was in the royal capital.

Compared with these, the exquisite martial arts practiced by Lothar in the martial arts arena make people think that it is much more logical. When Lothar returned to Montenegro the year before to inherit his title and domain, he was able to deal with the three knights of the kingdom alone without armor, and this force made the king unabashedly hope that he would become the military lord of the kingdom. Upon his return to the realm, Lothar quickly reorganized the bear hunters into a well-trained army. And from that time on, Lothar began to actively apply to the king for orders to fight. His Bear Hunter unit became the most frequented unit in the entire Greylion Kingdom. Naturally, many nobles in the kingdom began to look favorably at the young lord, and invitations to dinner and balls were said to be used as fireplace fuel in the Black Mountain Castle. However, in the face of these olive branches, Lothar was unmoved, no matter how others invited, the Count of Montenegro just buried his head in his battle, if it was to show loyalty to the king, but Lothar also refused the marriage given to him by the king to marry the third princess of the kingdom. His style was so strange that no one could figure out what the man was thinking.

Actually, Lothar didn't think about anything. It's just because he never came out of the shadow of his childhood. Back in time, the Count of Montenegro urged his mount and soon came to the outskirts of Turbidity Town, where the bear hunters and the Kingdom Knights fought against the nezumi. The nezumi poured into the streets of Turbidity from outside the town like crazy ghosts, completely untactically and efficiently, and only suicidally assaulting the human soldiers' defenses. An axe flew a rat-man leaping from the rooftop, and he drove his armoured horse to stomp on the monster with its front hooves.

"Watch out overhead! they're on top of the house!" shouted to the soldiers around him, alerting them to be on guard.

This is the case, although the human side has an absolute advantage in equipment, trained and well-dressed soldiers can kill and pounce on the nezumi several times as much as they can in a defensive formation. But these proto-rats have the right to choose the direction of their attack, overhead, underfoot, or in the shadows of the corner. Lothar saw a proto-nezumi burrow through the gravel roads of Turbidity Town, disemboweling a soldier from behind who had not been spotted in time. These crazy monsters follow their instincts and attack the soldiers from their weakest angles.

"Don't be left alone, move in squads!" Lothar gave a second order.

With the presence of Lothar and Grigory, the soldiers, who had been demoralized by the loss of their forward positions, began to gradually regain their form, and after the Count of Montenegro led by charging into the group of nezumi and killing them one by one, these warriors also knew that the enemies they fought against were not the product of nightmares, and they could also be killed. But seeing that the situation on the battlefield was gradually tilting towards the human side, Lothar's face did not look good. It was too easy, as if the nezumi had become vulnerable when he came to the battlefield. Although Lothar thought that his command of battle should be among the best in the kingdom, he would not believe that his two simple commands and a single show of force could defeat these monsters who had taken a large number of positions from his own troops with great speed. Something is wrong.

"Quack!" a foul stench came from his mouth, the earl's golden armor was the most striking sign on the battlefield, and a nezumi suddenly came out of the ground, grabbed the retreat of the earl's warhorse, and tried to knock the warhorse down, causing the earl to fall off the horse. However, its attempts were futile, as Lothar's mount had endured far more battles than ordinary soldiers, and without the Count's orders, a simple kick from the back brought the nezumi out of the ground, and then fell heavily to the ground behind it.

Sitting on the horse, Lothar was not surprised by this little episode, he had long been accustomed to the rapidly changing situation on the battlefield, and he had also developed the ability to keep thinking in this environment. Many people give up thinking after entering a fighting state, and even rely entirely on their own instincts or experiences that they have developed before, which in Lothar's view is no different from suicide. The Count of Montenegro was dealing with the rat men rushing towards him, and at the same time he was looking for what he thought was wrong. Finally, after a hand-to-hand encounter, he discovers what makes these nezumi look so crazy.

"They're on fire?"