Boundless Family Upgrades For The Deadbeat Lord

Over the next several days, the northern side of Althoff became increasingly busy as the Blackridge Winter Migration settled into a steady rhythm.

Herd after herd descended from the distant foothills, crossing the snow-covered wasteland along ancient routes that seemed to exist completely independently of the humans who had built their settlements nearby.

Ironhorn Elk continued to appear in large numbers, sometimes only a few dozen at a time and sometimes in herds numbering several hundred, while other herbivorous Magic Beasts occasionally mixed among them.

Raymond quickly learned that the migration possessed a strange kind of order. The animals didn’t simply charge blindly southward.

Older members traveled around the outside, females and younger beasts remained protected near the center, and exhausted stragglers naturally fell behind as the days passed.

Once Raymond understood that structure, he established strict hunting rules instead of allowing his increasingly excited townspeople to treat every passing herd like an open buffet.

Only isolated, injured, elderly, or clearly separated animals were permitted targets, and no hunting party was allowed to approach the center of a herd without direct authorization from Boris.

The result was surprisingly productive.

Every few days another handful of carcasses returned to Althoff, providing fresh meat for the ration program while hides, bones, antlers, blood, and Mana Cores accumulated inside newly designated storage sections.

What had initially looked like another seasonal disaster was rapidly becoming one of the strangest economic opportunities Raymond had discovered since arriving in the Zulor Region.

Naturally, Raymond exploited it with absolutely no shame.

He ordered several of the local hunters to begin documenting which Magic Beast species appeared, what materials could be harvested from them, which organs possessed commercial value, and how frequently particular herds passed near Althoff’s northern boundary.

Marianne established a basic ledger for Magic Beast resources, while the newly arrived leatherworkers among the townspeople were put to work curing hides and experimenting with the thick winter fur of the Ironhorn Elk.

Raymond even ordered several of the Bronze Knights to accompany hunting parties on rotation so the local hunters could learn how to safely exploit higher-value targets without accidentally provoking an entire herd.

His enthusiasm reached such a point that Boris eventually warned him that the mountains were not an infinite warehouse specifically designed for House Althoff’s convenience, to which Raymond had replied that any resource crossing his territory voluntarily had forfeited the right to complain about capitalism.

Boris hadn’t understood what capitalism meant, but judging from the look on Raymond’s face, he had wisely decided not to ask.

For nearly a week, the system worked almost perfectly. The migration routes were monitored, the town received additional meat, and there were no serious attacks on civilians or livestock.

Raymond even began wondering whether the famous dangers of the Blackridge winter had been exaggerated by generations of poorly defended Zulor villagers who simply lacked enough military strength to exploit the seasonal movement safely.

That thought lasted until the seventh morning, when one of the northern scouting teams failed to return at the expected hour.

Raymond was inside the castle’s administrative office reviewing livestock feed projections when the door opened and Captain Boris entered without waiting for the usual permission.

The unusual breach in etiquette immediately made Raymond put down the parchment in his hands.

Boris still had snow across his shoulders and boots, suggesting he had come directly from outside, while his expression carried none of the relaxed confidence he had gradually developed over the previous week.

Raymond leaned back slightly and studied him before speaking. "Judging by your face, I’m guessing you didn’t come here to tell me we found another convenient herd of walking meat."

Boris removed one glove and rested it against the edge of the desk. "The northern scouts returned twenty minutes ago, my Lord. They were delayed because they found something along the old migration trail, about six kilometers beyond the boundary marker. I think you should see it personally."

Raymond’s expression hardened. "People?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Boris hesitated, searching for the correct words. "Dead Magic Beasts. Several of them."

Raymond frowned. "That doesn’t sound particularly unusual. Predators are following the migration, aren’t they? Something kills something else, eats it, life continues. Why do you look like somebody just announced the end of the world?"

"Because they weren’t eaten normally."

That answer was more than enough.

-------

Less than an hour later, Raymond was riding north again with Boris, four Bronze Knights, two Silver Knights, and three local hunters familiar with the migration trails.

The snowfall had strengthened overnight, coating the wilderness beneath a fresh layer of untouched white that made every disturbance painfully easy to see.

Their horses moved carefully through the deeper drifts while the summoned Knights traveled alongside them with effortless stability, and as they approached the location Boris had described, Raymond began noticing signs of violence even before they reached the bodies. Broken branches littered the trail.

Several young trees had been snapped or stripped of bark almost two meters above the ground.

Deep gouges scarred the frozen earth where something enormous had dragged its claws through the snow, and dark patches of blood appeared at irregular intervals along the route.

The first carcass lay beside a cluster of rocks.

It was an Ironhorn Elk.

Or what remained of one.

Raymond dismounted slowly and approached with Boris while the Knights spread around the area. Half of the animal’s torso had been ripped open, exposing broken ribs and frozen tissuebeneath its heavy winter coat.

One antler had snapped near the base, while several long wounds crossed its flank from shoulder to hindquarter.

Raymond had seen the aftermath of hunting during the previous week, but this was completely different.

There was no clean killing wound, no evidence of hunters processing the body, and strangely little meat had actually been eaten.

Raymond crouched beside one of the wounds and looked toward the older hunter. "You said predators follow the migration. What does this?"

The hunter didn’t answer immediately.

He knelt near the carcass and measured the marks with his gloved hand, his expression growing darker as he examined them. "Not anything that should be hunting this close to the southern trails, your Lordship. These aren’t wolf bites, and they aren’t from a mountain cat. Whatever struck this elk had claws longer than my fingers."

Boris pointed farther ahead. "There are more."

They found five additional bodies scattered across less than half a kilometer.

Two were Ironhorn Elk, another belonged to a smaller horned herbivore Raymond hadn’t seen before, and the remaining carcasses had been torn badly enough that even the hunters required time to identify them.

Yet the pattern remained the same. Violent wounds.

Broken bones. Very little feeding. It looked less like predators hunting for food and more like something had simply smashed through the animals and continued moving.