Chapter 306: Someone is cheating?

Olivia saw the slight hesitation on Leon’s face.

“.Does this one feel bad?”

She took the lance from Leon in confusion and held it up to feel the tip.

The girl’s brows trembled slightly when she weighed it in her hand. She put the gun close to her cheek, shook it and listened attentively.

At this time, a hurried footstep came running over and shouted behind everyone: “Wait a moment! My Lords.”

Leon turned back.

I saw a fat man dressed as a quartermaster trotting over.

“I’m sorry, sir, these lances have been taken by another group of knights. The money has been paid, and someone will come to take them away tomorrow.” The fat quartermaster apologized with a smile.

The quartermaster who led the way was a little surprised, “This pile was sold too? So quickly? This competition was really intense.”

As he said that, he turned to look at Leon, and couldn’t help but look embarrassed: “Sir, I’ll help you look for it. Don’t worry, in addition to these sent by Farayel, the warehouse also reserves a lot of lances made by the craftsmen of the Royal Territory. The craftsmanship of our Kronian craftsmen is guaranteed to be no worse than that of the western craftsmen.”

The new fat quartermaster nodded repeatedly and pointed to the pile of lances not far away and said, “Yes, look at that batch. It is made by our local Orlandon Artisans Guild. It is made of Quiruin iron pine, with a blunt crown and cap. It is gorgeous and of high quality. I guarantee you will be satisfied.”

Leon felt a little strange in his heart, but he just nodded slightly and didn’t worry about it. It didn’t matter whether it was Levia poplar or Quiruin iron pine, as long as it met the standards and could be used.

I followed the two quartermasters and tried out the local products. I felt that the weight was indeed more balanced and there was no slight heaviness in the hands.

After paying the money and ordering this batch, Leon and his party left the warehouse.

Just as he was about to go back and ask Lohak to arrange someone to pick up the goods, halfway there, he felt Olivia holding his hand and gently pulling it.

“Leon, the lance made of Leviathan poplar wood just now is a bit strange.” The girl raised her eyes and said seriously.

“Strange?” Leon recalled his feelings just now and nodded: “I also feel that it is a bit heavy. The center of gravity of the gun is very forward, and the weight distribution is not balanced.”

Olivia shook her head. “Not only that, I heard a slight friction sound inside. It’s not solid. Although it’s very tight, the sound is like metal being squeezed inside the wood.”

Leon was surprised when he heard this: “You mean the wooden shell of the lance contains a steel core?”

“Yeah, I think I heard it right.” Olivia said confidently.

Leon certainly didn’t doubt her judgment.

“Interesting, is someone trying to cheat in the competition?” Leon looked back at the warehouse.

The lances used for competitions in this world all have wooden barrels, rather than the all-steel barrels used by the Knights of Arms on the battlefield.

This move was intended to reduce the terrible lethality caused by the charging knights on horseback.

The wooden lance also made it more difficult for skilled knights to knock each other off their horses, and created a gorgeous visual effect that stimulated the audience when the lance body exploded due to the clever and correct impact angle.

But if the steel core support is wrapped inside the wooden lance, Leon suspects that this move may be to allow the impact of the knight’s charge to be fully transmitted to the opponent.

As long as you can knock your opponent off his horse, or even injure him, then even if the lance doesn’t have the bonus points of Glory Burst, the points for knocking off the horse alone are enough to win the duel.

However, Leon felt that doing so was quite risky. If the wooden outer shell of the gun body broke, revealing the steel core, there would be no doubt that the knight himself would not only be subject to severe punishment and public humiliation, becoming a laughing stock and being ridiculed by the world, but more seriously he might even be stripped of his knighthood, with very serious consequences.

Thinking about it the other way around, Leon found it strange. That lance, or even the whole pile of lances, were spare competition weapons prepared by the official warehouse of the competition, not cheating tools brought by a knight privately.

Touching his chin, Leon’s thoughts began to wander.

It makes sense. Maybe someone bribed the quartermaster of the tournament to leave a record of the transfer. In order to avoid being accused of cheating if they were exposed during the competition, they would have the record to claim that they bought the spare weapons provided by the tournament officials.

Of course, it is not ruled out that someone deliberately wanted to use these lances to frame a knight and destroy his reputation.

There are too many possibilities.

“Should we go back and check again, or report this matter to the conference officials immediately?” Corvis suggested after hearing the conversation between the two.

After listening to this, Leon shook his head: “No hurry, it’s just a casual guess now. Besides, the attitude of that fat official just now was really coincidental. Let’s go back and make it clear in person. If there is something wrong here, it will alarm the other party.”

Although with his current status and reputation, if he reports this to his superiors, the matter will be immediately investigated thoroughly.

But now there is no evidence, not only it might alert the enemy, the pile of muskets are still lying quietly in the warehouse and no one knows where they will end up.

What’s more, he had only touched one lance just now, so he couldn’t be sure whether the other lances in the pile were normal competition equipment.

After all, maybe it was just that a lance was of substandard quality, so a craftsman secretly stuffed an iron rod in it as support.

Sometimes, some discoveries that make people feel terrified may just be misunderstandings caused by someone doing something outrageous and stupid without thinking.

If it was just a misunderstanding, and the matter became a big deal, a large number of people, including the quartermaster in charge of the warehouse and the craftsmen who supplied spare weapons, would be in trouble for no reason.

“Do you mean that we should ignore this matter for the time being?” Corvis asked tentatively.

Leon thought for a moment and shook his head: “I’ll come over tonight to see if the warehouse is well guarded. If I have a chance, I’ll sneak in and get a lance to take it apart to see if it’s safe. I’ll also find out the truth. With evidence in hand, I won’t wrongly accuse anyone due to misunderstanding.”

Hearing Leon’s plan, Olivia’s eyes suddenly lit up.

Unable to hide her excitement, she tiptoed over and asked in a low voice: “Leon, are you going to play the role of the ‘detective’ in the story you told and investigate this matter?”

Seeing Olivia’s expectant look, Leon raised his eyebrows and couldn’t help but smile, then said: “I guess so, it’s just a piece of cake anyway.”

“Then I want to come too~” Olivia said excitedly: “You play Baron Holmes, and I will play Knight Watson~, how about it”

Leon was amused. It seemed that his little lion was indeed tired of watching the knights’ competitions in the past two days.

I think that compared to the audience who have no martial arts skills, for the girl who has galloped on real battlefields and fought with swords against terrifying demons that mortals cannot imagine, knight competitions are not as attractive as she imagined.

“Let’s tell this story again in Selva. It’s amazing that you still remember it so clearly.” Leon said with a smile.

“Of course, I haven’t forgotten any of the stories you told me. I wrote them all down in a book and kept them all.” Olivia said proudly.

“Let me help too, my lord.” Although Corvis didn’t know what Holmes and Watson the two were talking about, he felt that his magic should be useful to Leon.

The master made rapid progress in magic skills, but the other party focused more on combat magic, such as invisibility, blindness, and illusion, and had not yet dabbled in much. After returning to the base, Leon went back to his room early, hugged Olivia and got into bed, and slept until Corvis knocked on the door in the middle of the night.

After the curfew started in most areas of the royal city, Leon took Olivia and Corvis out and walked along the street towards the armory of the Colosseum in the silent night.

They did not wear night clothes like dogs and move around stealthily like thieves. Instead, they wore regular clothes and walked openly on the street, just like going out for a walk to enjoy the moon.

Even if you encounter patrolling royal guards and night watchmen, no one will care after you say a few words.

Although the city of Orlando has a late-night curfew, the ban basically only applies to civilians.

The kingdom’s senior nobles, officials, doctors and other special professionals have “special licenses” issued by the royal court or the municipal council. As long as they don’t do anything out of the ordinary at night, they can basically travel at night.

Soon, they arrived near the warehouse they had seen during the day. The three of them walked through the narrow alley between the houses. They poked their heads out from the alley entrance one by one from the hidden shadows of the night, and leaned over the wall to look out.

The warehouse door was closed, with oil lamps and torches lit at the entrance. Two guards with spears were on duty, leading a large dog chewing a bone.

“Help us listen, are there other guards inside and outside the warehouse?” Leon asked Olivia.

The girl nodded, crouched down holding the hilt of her sword, and listened attentively.
The night wind, the rustling of insects, the yawns of soldiers, the grinding of hounds gnawing bones on the ground, the footsteps of trainers across the street,
Olivia distinguished every movement in the quiet night.

She opened her eyes and whispered, “There are only the two guards and a hound at the main entrance of the warehouse. There are also two people on the left and right sides and at the back of the building. I heard the sound of fiddling with wooden poles. They should be guards. But there is no one inside the warehouse.”

Leon was surprised. He didn’t expect there were so many guards here.

That’s right, although the competition lances in the warehouse are not worth the risk of stealing for thieves, the spare knight armor stored in it is worth a lot of money. Even though it is much thicker and bulkier than normal knight plate armor, it is still proper knight armor after all.

Leon thought for a moment and told Olivia, “Go to the bushes on the roadside ahead and push a tree onto the road to see if you can attract their attention.”

After hearing the instructions, the girl nodded and immediately stood up. She walked as quietly as a night cat, bypassing the house and reaching the bushes on the side of the warehouse.

Not long after, there was a loud bang, and a pine tree as thick as a jar collapsed and landed heavily on the road. The cracking of the wood and the groaning of the falling tree scared the soldiers who were on guard.

“What’s going on? You scared me. Thunder on a sunny day?”

The guard at the gate felt his back crawling and looked up at the sky which was neither raindrops nor clouds.

The hunting dog on the chain in his hand was so frightened that its fur stood on end and it kept barking at the fallen pine tree not far away.

The guard at the gate held his spear without moving, while two soldiers on the side of the warehouse walked towards there with spears in hand, still in shock.

This is enough.

Leon winked at Corvis, and the two of them avoided the path of the guards who were led away and rushed to the wall.

Leon jumped up easily, grabbed the beam and climbed onto the roof as quietly as possible, then turned back and reached out to pull up Aka’s light body.

There was a slight sound of wind in his ears and the tiles beside him creaked slightly. Leon glanced sideways and saw Olivia holding down her skirt and nimbly leaping directly onto the roof.

Although Leon could also jump onto a roof that was seven or eight meters high, the clanging noise he made could not compare to the silent movement of his wife.

Looking at the girl’s sparkling and excited eyes in the moonlight, Leon smiled secretly, knowing that she was probably enjoying this interesting stealth game like in the story.

While the guards’ attention was drawn to the inexplicably collapsed pine tree, the three of them tiptoed towards the ventilated attic on the roof of the warehouse.

After Olivia stood a little further away, Corvis reached out and pressed on the wooden window that was stuck from the inside. The wooden pole behind it was lifted up by magic. After a slight sound, the boy directly opened the window leaf, his eyes lit up with night vision, and he climbed in with the help of the window frame.

Leon and Olivia followed closely behind.

His footsteps landed lightly on the floor of the second floor of the warehouse, and Leon unscrewed the earth vein spirit lamp hanging around his waist.

The magical lamps far away from the earth’s spiritual veins emitted a hazy green light, illuminating the boxes stacked next to the three people.

Leon wasted no time and quickly walked down the stairs to the first floor of the warehouse.

He remembered that the fat quartermaster said during the day that the Falajel-made muskets that had been ordered would not be shipped until tomorrow and should still be lying in the warehouse.

Sure enough, following my memory, I came to the depths of the warehouse on the first floor, and the Levia poplar lances that I saw during the day were still piled there.

Leon untied the hemp rope and picked up one from the middle to weigh it.

Olivia also selected a lance from a different place than the one she had seen during the day and examined it.

Not surprisingly, the feel is still different from a normal tournament lance.

“Leon, it’s all the same. These lances also have something like a metal core inside.” Olivia whispered.

Leon nodded silently, knowing that this basically ruled out the possibility of accidents and misunderstandings.

The abnormalities of an entire batch of lances were all intentional by their manufacturers.

“Take one open and look inside.” Leon put the lance in his hand back into the pile of weapons and instructed the girl.

Olivia immediately turned the gun around, clamped the gun body with her arm, held the lance with her left hand to block her hand, and clamped the lance handle with her right hand. She twisted the lance gently like twisting a towel, and turned it slowly –

The crackling sound of tiny wood chips and the disintegration of solid wood fibers made one’s teeth ache, and the huge wooden thorns twisted off by the girl were like clusters of blooming flowers.

Olivia used brute force to gently twist open the lance casing, let out a light exclamation, and then put down the broken handle and the counterweight rod at the tail end. She pried open the thick wooden shell of the gun with her right hand, grabbed the “steel core” inside, and pulled it out.

Under the dim green light, Leon looked at what the girl pulled out from the lance and his eyes widened.

Olivia looked at the crossbow arrow in her hand with beautiful carvings in confusion.

The girl murmured, “This one? It looks familiar?”

Corvis was shocked and exclaimed, “—Cambea City-Breaking Magic Arrow! This is the magical weapon of the Atias Legion!!”

Leon pursed his lips unexpectedly, frowning.

It’s a pity that Olivia still feels familiar with this thing now.

This was the thing that Lohak had pinned on his waist as a self-defense weapon when the three of them had just escaped from the Nightmare Forest and arrived at Selva Village.

The magic crossbow bolt that was pulled out from the chest and abdomen of the Deathclaw!
(End of this chapter)