On this day, Thomas Palpapek was once again drinking black tea in his personal room with a bitter look on this face.

It had been around two years since he had resigned from the position of marshal; his daily duties had decreased considerably. As he was an earl who owned no land, his schedules were very free when he wasn’t assigned to an important position, allowing him to peacefully enjoy his black tea as he was doing now.

What he didn’t have was peace of mind.

“Those damned Vampires,” Thomas muttered.

The Vampires of whom he was speaking under his breath in a tone of irritation were the Vampires who worshipped the evil god.

They were allies. Not to Thomas as an individual, nor to the Mirg shield-nation. Thomas was fully aware that he and the Vampires had simply used each other when their interests aligned.

However, there was no way that he could not feel angry after being made to do something that was so clearly disadvantageous for him.

Around a year ago, a certain movement had occurred in the Amid Empire.

An expedition into the Boundary Mountain Range. The Empire was considering ordering the Mirg shield-nation to make such an expedition happen. No, it was already certain that they would make this order.

The Empire was giving the Mirg shield-nation a chance to rid themselves of the dishonour of the failed expedition to Talosheim of two hundred years ago.

It was likely that because the Mirg shield-nation’s power as a country had increased more than expected due to Viscount Balchesse’s reclamation project, so the Amid Empire was intending to shave a moderate amount of that power off.

However, it would normally be impossible for such an expedition to happen even under the orders of the Empire. None of the Empire’s vassal nations would obey the command of, ‘All of you, go out and die meaningless deaths.’

But with the tunnel that had been built a hundred thousand years ago, large enough for an army to march through… One of the Amid Empire’s generals, General Mauvid, had presented proof of the existence of such a tunnel and an ancient document that detailed its location.

The tunnel had yet to be excavated, but once it was repaired, crossing the Boundary Mountain Range would become simple. An army would be able to reach the other side of the tunnel in a matter of days.

They would be able to do so safely, with no fear of monster attacks until they reached the end of the tunnel.

With this, the main reason to oppose to the expedition had disappeared.

And much to Thomas’s dismay, the Mirg shield-nation and its current marshal, Earl Legston, were eager to make this expedition happen.

It was likely that they had received permission to add any land reclaimed inside the mountain Boundary Mountain Range to the nation’s territory, and they would likely receive financial assistance for the reclamation process as well. These conditions had likely been offered to them.

“Those fools.”

The king of his nation and the nobleman who was an earl like Thomas were truly fools.

Thomas could imagine the reasons behind this expedition.

The Dhampir who had led a horde of Ghouls across the Boundary Mountain Range and vanished two years ago.

The Vampire who acted as a contact between Thomas and the other Vampires, the one who had panicked after learning that the Dhampir had been allowed to escape.

And for some reason, a new contact had come and told Thomas that his predecessor had been entrusted with another mission.

A year had passed since then, and the only thing Thomas had heard from the Vampires was, “It would be wise to stay quiet for now.” He hadn’t even been able to tell whether this was an order or advice.

In other words, the purpose of this expedition was to kill that Dhampir and the Vampires were planning to use the Mirg shield-nation’s army to do so.

Without their influence, there was no way that a one-hundred-thousand-year-old tunnel whose existence hadn’t even been confirmed could have been discovered by a general of the Amid Empire who was not even from the Mirg shield-nation adjacent to the tunnel itself.

There was no doubt that the Vampires would get the Dhampir involved with the official reason for the expedition. They would use some pretense such as there being a deposit of precious magical metal in the region the Dhampir was hiding in, or an Artifact that was supposed to have been lost in the battle that had taken place a hundred thousand years ago.

If the Dhampir was living in the ruins of Talosheim, that would be the worst-case scenario. That place was the site of an unforgettable, humiliating victory for the Mirg shield-nation.

They had sacrificed enormous amounts of funds, over ten thousand soldiers, a national hero along with his party and an Artifact, but only gained a small amount of treasure and a meaningless victory.

That was why the Mirg shield-nation had feared the Boundary Mountain Range until now. That place was a demon’s gate, a place to be avoided.

However, now that it was clear that there was a simple method of crossing the mountain range, there was enthusiasm among the nobles of the Mirg shield-nation for committing a second expedition to Talosheim, recovering the fallen hero’s spear that was an Artifact of Yupeon, the god of ice, and wiping the humiliating victory from history.

This was merely what was happening among the nobles; there would be more enthusiastic movements in the nation if its commoners were to learn of the tunnel’s existence.

“I am an earl of the Mirg shield-nation with connections to the Vampires. I had naturally expected that there would be other noblemen within the Amid Empire with connections to the same Vampires, but… to think that there would be one with the position of general.”

A general who knew that the expedition would fail, no less.

Indeed, the expedition that was going to begin shortly would fail. They would dispose of the Dhampir and everything would go well up to that point. But after that, it would definitely come to a halt.

Because the Vampires would never allow humans to step foot south of the Boundary Mountain Range. The ones they feared most were the other Pure-breed Vampires worshipping Vida, who were slumbering in the southern reaches of the continent.

It was particularly likely that the officials of the Church of Alda would announce the beginning of a holy war to purge the Vampires who worshipped Vida. For generations, the Church’s Pope had always been radical about denying Vida. Even if individuals were more moderate before becoming the Pope, once they assumed that position, they would become more extreme.

That had always been the case, so it would likely be the case from now on as well.

And so the Vampires who worshipped the evil gods would stop the expedition.

Probably by collapsing the tunnel or making it unusable in