Draven rubbed his chin.
"He also gave a detailed reasoning for picking every single noble on the list." Draven explained. "And for you, it is just one very simple, greedy reason. There are a lot of rumors spreading around the capital that you have secretly built a massive, elite army of Knights in Oresfall. Due to those rumors, the Emperor feels like your army can be the key to victory here. Though, I don’t think he believes it. He just wants you out there to see you getting crushed."
Draven glanced past Adrian, briefly making eye contact with the three girls sitting quietly on the bed. Then he looked back at Adrian.
"Also, our opponents have an army made entirely of knights." Draven said and rubbed his forehead. "The Avarice army is relatively small, but every single soldier holding a sword is an awakened Knight. Most of them are just F-Rank foot soldiers, but even an F-Rank knight is terrifying compared to a regular human soldier. I heard that you were the one who gave this info to the royals a few months ago. They didn’t really believe it back then, but now..."
Draven shook his head and leaned in closer.
"That aside. Those Avarice guys also wear this heavily enchanted full-plate armor." Draven continued, his voice tight. "The enchantments render all projectile attacks ineffective. Our archers have tried everything. They even tried throwing stones from the trebuchets at them. The stones just bounce right off the armor without doing any damage. "Hell, even the armor piercing arrows from our longbows aren’t enough.
Draven shook his head.
"But weirdly enough," Draven muttered, "the enchantments don’t seem to work on melee weapons. When it comes to close-quarters combat, those enchanted armors just work the exact same as regular steel plates. It just feels like normal steel armor if you hit them with a sword."
Adrian listened to the whole thing in silence and slowly nodded.
He didn’t say a single word back to Draven. He just turned around and walked over to the mattress to sit down right next to Aria. He stared blankly at the floorboards for a bit since his brain was already going on an overdrive.
His brain started connecting the dots.
He thought about the Avarice Kingdom’s army. Specifically, the frontline soldiers who wore full plate armor that magically countered all long-range projectiles. That was exactly the same army that Adrian had fought before out in the woods. And they were the exact same guys he had completely decimated using his custom, armor-piercing sniper rifles. Not particularly the people, but the kingdom itself.
It was a bit too coincidental. The Avarice army just happening to develop a highly specific, magically enchanted armor designed purely to counter fast projectiles right after facing him?
And then he considered the other piece of the puzzle. The so-called summoned ’hero’ of the Avarice Kingdom was the one who allegedly had the broken ability to artificially promote regular peasants into Awakened Knights.
Just the simple fact that this guy was a summoned hero gave Adrian a few solid options to choose from. He had a broad range of theories in the past, but now the list had narrowed down.
The mastermind behind the Avarice army was either a regressor who came back from the past, someone summoned from a completely different magical world, or someone directly from Earth. He hadn’t totally crossed out any of those options back then.
But now? Seeing the specific way this kingdom reacted to his modern weapons by developing projectile-countering armor gave him a massive clue about how things were moving behind the scenes.
’We won against them with the rifles...’ Adrian thought to himself, pacing near the bed. ’But there were definite signs left on the corpses. The massive bullet holes for one. That is the easiest way they could figure out we used guns. And the second reason is that we clearly forgot to clear the forest out. They definitely found the bullets or the empty brass casings.’
He rubbed his chin.
’Those casings or bullets would have easily given them the idea that we had weapons like guns and rifles.’ Adrian deduced. ’But the thing is... the native people of this world wouldn’t have come to that conclusion. They wouldn’t know what a bullet casing even was. The only way they could reverse-engineer the concept of a gun from an empty brass shell is if they were someone from Earth. Or at least someone from a world that has a very similar technological progression as Earth.’
And as he thought about that specific detail, he couldn’t help but let out a dry chuckle.
Everyone in the room immediately turned to look at him, though he didn’t bother explaining himself and just kept his thoughts securely locked in his own head.
’So I am fighting someone from Earth now.’ Adrian thought, highly amused. ’I am officially fighting a transmigrator before I even get the chance to meet the actual protagonist of the original novel. Welp, whatever.’
He let out a long and heavy sigh. But then his brain suddenly latched onto something much more important.
The person he had seen out in the woods right before he went to fight the High Elves.
He immediately got up from the mattress and looked right at Draven.
"What happened to the guy that Sigrid was fighting out in the forest?" Adrian asked.
Draven crossed his arms.
"Well." Draven said. "He is currently chained up down in my underground prison. And he isn’t really talking much at all. He basically just sits down there crying and swearing that someone else brainwashed him, but we obviously don’t know if we can trust a single word he says."
Adrian nodded.
"Okay." Adrian decided. "Take me to him. I want to have a little chat with him right now."
Draven gave a sharp nod before he turned around and walked straight out of the room.
Adrian followed right behind him.
As he walked down the quiet hallway behind the marquis, his mind raced.
’He looked Chinese...’