Chapter 482: Hero of the Kouto

The negotiation, in the end, left both sides getting exactly what they wanted.

Urbano Pacheco had come clean about everything and no longer needed to worry about the lich coming after him, while also securing a promise from Ambrose that might just turn the tide of the war.

Ambrose, for his part, had also walked away with quite a haul. He'd secured the kouto's secret, found a lead on how to deal with their unstable goddess, and dragged the orcs into the mix as bait to lure out the Dragon Tyrant.

As for whether the emperor of Lyon would actually show up for the duel, that hardly mattered anymore.

All Ambrose needed to do now was to convene the summit using peace talks as a pretext, use Arthur Lyon's message to lure the emperor of Lyon into attending, and then engineer an opportunity for the orc king to provoke Lyon at the summit itself.

Whether it turned into a real duel or not didn't matter. As long as the two sides came to blows, Ambrose's goal would be accomplished.

Everything was coming together so smoothly it felt almost like the Goddess of Fate had personally arranged it.

"Stay sharp. Stay sharp. Stay sharp..."

Important things had to be repeated at least three times. Ambrose knew from experience that good things rarely came one after another without a catch—and if they did, it was probably just setting up a pit for him to fall into later.

This was hard-earned wisdom accumulated over several centuries of getting by.

After leaving orc territory through a teleportation array, Ambrose returned to Coin Island to inspect the progress at this transit hub. Everything was proceeding smoothly.

After multiple rounds of expansion, this little island had become a proper slaughterhou—er, a dragon-material collection site.

To keep the undead's dark magic from contaminating these materials, every worker Ambrose employed on Coin Island was a mercury slime.

After an extended period of cultivation within his private space, the first generation of mercury slimes had developed intelligence approaching that of an average human. Simple alchemical procedures could now be safely delegated to them.

The only catch was that these little creatures didn't eat food. Instead, they consumed metal, so Ambrose had to keep them supplied with large quantities of metal ore.

On balance, it was pricier than human labor, but they were situated on a small, cramped island. Hiring living workers would also mean dealing with all sorts of emotional complications, as well as potential questions about theft or rebellion. Living mercury slimes, which were naturally loyal toward Ambrose, had none of these issues.

Though the slimes might cost more, they were ultimately far more reliable.

The first batch of dragons arriving for their "manicures" had already shown up. The mercury slimes were wielding all manner of tools to carve away at dragon claws, with sparks flying everywhere in a flurry of activity.

The initial raw materials consisted mainly of dragon claw clippings, shed scales, and fur and droppings, all centered around one guiding principle: "it won't hurt." The less pain involved, the less resistance there'd be, and every dragon that came in for a "manicure" received a small reward in turn—sometimes some kind of glittering luxury item, sometimes a delicacy that could only be found on the mainland.

These dragons had gone without luxuries for so long that many of them had never even seen a pig, cow, or sheep their entire lives. The first time they tasted beef, some of them were moved to actual tears.

Ah, that unmistakable taste of home, buried somewhere deep in their inherited memories...

Something along those lines, anyway.

So, the dragons were, by and large, remarkably cooperative.

After all, it was just a manicure, and they got fed plenty here besides. What real use was there in keeping their claws long anyway?

Massive quantities of dragon scales and claws were harvested, then carefully sorted and processed by category.

Isabel, Ambrose's senior disciple, had been specifically reassigned from the dwarven kingdom to Coin Island to oversee the processing of this first batch of materials.

Once the preliminary processing was complete, the materials would be shipped off to the Ragetide Kingdom for the next stage of refinement.

That part was where the real heavy labor began: pulverizing, cutting, and finely processing these extraordinarily durable materials. It wasn't exactly high-end technical work, but it was very grueling.

The labor-intensive post-processing required a large pool of low-skilled laborers to handle.

Once that stage was finished, the remaining materials would either be sent to Ambrose's own underground alchemy workshop or shipped over to the dwarven kingdom, where the final touches would take place.

For a single dragon scale half a meter in diameter, the entire process from extraction to finished product cost roughly three hundred gold.

But the final product could fetch a price of two to three thousand gold, easily.

Countless alchemical formulas circulating across the continent relied on materials harvested from dragons. High-tier magical equipment of every kind invariably required some scrap of dragon material somewhere in its construction.

This tenfold profit margin was the power of a monopoly.

And that was even with Ambrose deliberately giving the Ragetide Kingdom and the Alchemists' Council a cut of the profits. If Ambrose had been willing to be even more ruthless, he could have driven production costs down to under a hundred gold easily.

But business, after all, was about mutual benefit.

Ambrose made sure not to squeeze too hard. Sustainable, ongoing profit was the real money-maker. A one-time cash grab would never amount to much in the long run.

Once he'd confirmed everything was running smoothly, Ambrose retreated into his extradimensional space and adjusted the time flow so that one day outside became a full year within.

Then he pulled the intelligence on the kouto up from the depths of his soul and began studying it in earnest.

Like dragons, mindflayers were born with inherited memories. Mindflayers, in fact, inherited even more memory than dragons, given that psychic power was their entire racial specialty.

The memories Ambrose had received turned out to be enormous in scope, spanning from the very beginning of the mindflayer empire's enslavement of the kouto all the way through to the empire's eventual collapse.

The kouto hadn't actually broken free of mindflayer control through their own strength at all. It was purely because the mindflayer empire had collapsed on its own, torn apart by internal strife and betrayal from the githarks, that the mindflayers had been left with no capacity to spare for the kouto at all.

As a result, for a long stretch of time even after the empire's collapse, the kouto continued to revere the mindflayers as their masters, waiting faithfully for their return.

Throughout all that time, the psychic torment the mindflayers had inflicted on the kouto simply continued unabated.

Mindflayers were not known for mercy. Their cruelty and depravity were, frankly, infamous across the planes. When enslaving servants, they typically imposed a particular kind of psychic curse, one that relentlessly tormented the victim's mind, with only those servants who earned the mindflayers' approval granted brief relief from the punishment.

This curse constantly drove the slaves to actively seek out ways to please their mindflayer masters, not unlike training a dog.

Once the mindflayer empire collapsed and the kouto lost their masters, there was no one left who could help free them from this torment. One could only imagine how unbearable those years must have been for them.

No matter how they prayed, no matter how desperately they begged for mercy the way they always had, in the end, they received no response whatsoever.

The result was inevitable: those who couldn't endure it died, and those who survived were driven completely mad.

Only those kouto whose minds had been thoroughly scrambled by the curse managed to survive at all.

From that point on, the kouto madness became a hereditary affliction, passed down through generations.

The whole process sounded brutal, no doubt, but Ambrose wasn't here to catalogue the mindflayers' crimes. What interested him was this psychic curse itself, and what it meant for the kouto now.

The curse hadn't vanished. It had simply transformed from outright agony into madness.

In simple terms, the earliest kouto possessed normal cognitive function, and understood ordinary things like eating, drinking, and basic spatial orientation.

But if they underperformed, the curse would torment their souls, inflicting unbearable suffering. The curse itself still existed, but in order to coexist with it, the kouto's very perception of pain itself had become warped over generations.

Pain was no longer simply pain. It might manifest as pleasure instead, except even pleasure wasn't necessarily pleasure either; it could just as easily trigger overwhelming grief.

They might want to laugh, yet find themselves crying instead. They might feel hungry, yet experience it as an all-over tingling itch.

This extreme disorientation stemming from a fractured soul was precisely why the kouto's faith ran deeper than that of any other race. Only those kouto with extraordinarily resilient minds could have survived this kind of warped curse at all.

Having pieced together the underlying nature of the kouto's mental chaos, Ambrose's thinking began to crystallize.

The mindflayers had originally used two methods to reward and punish the kouto.

The first, naturally, was the most direct: raw psychic power. A mindflayer could directly grant a kouto the sensation of pleasure through sheer will alone, temporarily pausing the curse's torment. This particular trick wasn't something Ambrose could replicate, since it was a racial trait of the mindflayers.

The second method involved a specialized tool, a bone whistle of sorts that used different tones to stimulate the kouto's mind, achieving a similar effect through sound alone.

Ambrose guessed this whistle had likely been intended for use by juvenile mindflayers within the empire, those whose psychic power wasn't yet strong enough to control others directly and who therefore required a tool like this as a substitute.

The question was, would the kouto who had lost themselves to madness still respond to the whistle at all?

Finding out was remarkably simple. Ambrose simply crafted a bone whistle of his own. Once he understood the underlying principles, the tool itself was simple enough that even an alchemy apprentice could probably manage to make one.

Then he headed out into the depths of the ocean and captured a handful of kouto.

The kouto population was vast, so finding some wasn't difficult with a bit of searching. The ones Ambrose brought back were all dazed and vacant, and were clearly pure-blooded specimens at a glance.

Once he'd properly restrained them, Ambrose blew the whistle following the records he'd acquired.

A wavering, uncertain tone rang out: the soothing tone, meant to relieve the kouto of their suffering.

Only those kouto who'd completed their assigned tasks well and earned approval were meant to enjoy this particular tone.

As the sound reached the ears of the kouto, the dazed creatures froze for a moment, their enormous eyes suddenly locking onto Ambrose with unwavering intensity.

A moment later, one of the kouto let out a roar directed straight at Ambrose. "Damn brain-eating bastards! So you've finally come back! I'll kill you! I'll kill all of you!"

The other kouto let out the same furious roar, as they began to thrash and struggle wildly.

Ambrose, startled, lowered the bone whistle. Had it actually restored these previously vacant, dazed kouto to something resembling normal thought?

But the moment the whistling stopped, the kouto's eyes clouded over once more, their fury vanishing as they slipped right back into that same dazed, vacant state as before.

The whistle could clearly influence the kouto, but the effect of that influence had changed.

"Interesting..."

This time, Ambrose separated the kouto one by one and began systematically testing the whistle's various effects.

The soothing tone restored a kouto's normal cognitive function, but the memories passed down through their lineage left them with a deep-seated hatred for mind flayers. The original punishment tone, on the other hand, produced no fixed effect at all. It simply triggered some intense emotional response at random, sometimes extreme excitement, sometimes overwhelming sorrow.

Finally came the curse-lifting tone.

The first two kouto who heard this particular tone simply settled down, with no extreme emotional reaction nor particularly notable change.

As Ambrose checked their souls, he discovered something very interesting.

With the psychic curse lifted, the chaos afflicting them gradually began to fade. But their minds, warped by such prolonged torment, lay scattered like loose sand, and were unable to produce coherent thought.

In simple terms, the kouto who had once been complete, raving madmen would become severely depressed upon "recovery."

Their souls had gone ashen and cold, stripping away their madness but also their capacity for thought along with it.

"Do they just need time to heal? Or is this permanent?"

Ambrose stroked his chin, unable to judge the situation with any confidence. Still, it clearly wasn't a good outcome. This wasn't the effect he'd been hoping for at all.

He continued the experiment. After turning four kouto severely depressed, the fifth finally exhibited something different.

Upon hearing this particular tone, the kouto in front of Ambrose snapped out of its chaotic state and collapsed to the ground in tears. Just as Ambrose began to suspect this particular tone wasn't doing much of anything either, the kouto suddenly climbed back to its feet, opened its mouth, and gasped to Ambrose, "Thank you. Thank you, great Master Megaman!"

Ambrose asked, "You know who I am?"

The kouto said loudly, "I do. You are the attendant of the Mistress of the Silent Sea. You are the beacon beside a great deity. You are the torch leading us toward freedom."

Ambrose: "..."

This kouto's mind still seemed a little off.

Since when had he become Aige's attendant? And how did this kouto even know about his connection to Aige in the first place? Ambrose thought it over for a moment, then asked, "Have you ever changed your faith before?"

The kouto exclaimed, agitated, "Yes. I once worshipped a false god, and all that brought me was chaos and suffering. But then, one night, I felt the goddess's will. Her voice brought a brief moment of peace to my fractured soul. I would follow this goddess to the very ends of the sea, to every last corner of this world."

Ambrose said, with a note of satisfaction, "Just as I suspected. You must be one of the kouto who was feeding faith into Aige. Looks like Blobdilpulp really did end up shooting herself in the foot after all."

The kouto goddess had tried to use her own immense reserve of faith to warp Aige's very being, forcing her into apotheosis before she was ready. Aige's ultimate countermove had been simple: to accept those worshippers outright. If they were going to worship her anyway, then why not accept her teachings, too?

Aige's divine will had been imprinted directly onto the souls of these kouto. Ambrose, as it turned out, had gotten lucky. One of the kouto he'd happened to capture was among those who'd already received that imprint of free will.

Though it had only lasted a moment, the instant that spark of free will took root in their fractured minds, those particular kouto became something different entirely.

The other kouto, once freed from their chaos, fell into severe depression simply because their past lives held nothing of value to them. Once their minds cleared, they had no idea what to do with themselves.

But every kouto who had received Aige's divine will was different. Having once tasted true free will, that experience became an anchor of its own, allowing their scattered minds to finally cohere once more, restoring their capacity for thought and giving them something to live for.

At the same time, it also turned them into Aige's most devoted believers, the kind who'd sooner die than ever abandon their faith.

No wonder Blobdilpulp had cut off the flow of faith the moment she did. Any slower, and every one of those kouto would have become converts to Aige's faith outright.

It wasn't exactly surprising, honestly. Who in their right mind would actually choose to worship a lunatic like Blobdilpulp?

Ambrose asked, "What's your name?"

The kouto thought for a moment, then said, "We kouto lost the ability to name ourselves long ago. I never had anything resembling a name for the first half of my life. But if you, Master Megaman, would be willing to grant me a new name, I would be endlessly grateful."

Rather than naming him right away, Ambrose handed over the bone whistle in his hand instead. "This whistle needs a bit of mana channeled through it to make a proper sound. Try it yourself."

The kouto stared at the whistle in his hands, taken aback.

His now-restored mind understood perfectly well just how significant this whistle truly was. This was nothing less than an artifact capable of liberating his entire people.

The kouto's hands trembled as he cradled the bone whistle. Overcome with emotion, he exclaimed, "Master Megaman... is this truly meant for me?"

"If you can actually use it, it's yours."

Quavering, the kouto pushed the whistle between his thick lips and attempted to blow on it.

A thin trickle of mana gathered within it as the whistle let out a low, resonant note.

The pitch wasn't quite right, but that was more than good enough.

Ambrose patted the kouto on the shoulder. "From this day onward, I grant you a new name. You shall be called... Bobozile. Bobozile, your task is this: take the bone whistle I've given you, and go free more of your people. Liberate them from the control of that unstable goddess and turn them into true believers of the Goddess of Freedom."

Ambrose fixed his gaze on the kouto. "Can you do this?"

The newly named kouto rose to his feet, overcome with emotion, tears streaming down his face. "I will accomplish this, even if it costs me my life. Praise be to you, merciful Master Megaman. Praise be to the Goddess of Freedom. My people have suffered for countless ages. At last, we shall be free!"

A pure surge of faith flowed into Ambrose, born entirely from this kouto's heartfelt prayer.

This time, the faith carried none of the warped, corrupted taint from before. It was the purest, most precious energy imaginable.

Ambrose taught this kouto the proper way to use the whistle, then said, "Go now, Bobozile. Go free your people. You will become a hero among the kouto! Your name will be remembered forever, and you will enter the Goddess of Freedom's divine realm, to live in eternal glory!"

Bobozile bowed reverently before Ambrose, again and again, until Ambrose finally sent him on his way. Only then did he return to the depths of the sea.

He knew exactly where his people gathered, and he would find a way to free as many of them as he could.

Having freed this one kouto, Ambrose repeated the same process with another, restoring his sanity in turn.

As this second kouto wept with overwhelming emotion, Ambrose produced a second bone whistle and said to him, "From this day forward, your name shall be Bobocheen. Go, become a hero who frees your people!"

This second hero, likewise burning with lofty ambition, dove straight into the sea to seek out his own people.

Looking down at the pouch full of bone whistles in his hands, Ambrose thought to himself that he probably wouldn't even need help from the other gods anymore. The kouto goddess was doomed for sure.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.