Free Web NovelChapter 639: Chapter 390: Winner Takes All, Loser Eats Dust (Part 3)
In this noble war, the winner takes all, and the loser eats dust.
Step by step he walked toward Patriarch Alben, the blade leaving a dark, deep bloodstain on the expensive wooden floor, the trail stretching all the way to the side of Patriarch Alben’s main seat.
"Lord Alben, why won’t you open your eyes and take a look? You don’t want to see it? Or you don’t dare?" He mocked this old rival, stepping up to the main seat—but in that instant, he froze, then rushed forward like a madman and pressed his hand under the man’s nose.
"Dead? Impossible!" In a heartbeat, it was like falling from Heaven straight into Hell.
The City Lord felt his hands and feet go icy in the blazing heat, his whole body trembling. Something was wrong, something was very wrong—why was Patriarch Alben dead?
Who killed him?
The sudden twist made his exhausted brain short-circuit for a moment. If the City Lord had just a few more minutes to think, he would have realized that this corpse was nothing more than a stand-in.
The real Patriarch Alben had probably escaped long ago.
But someone wasn’t going to give him that time.
"My lord City Lord! The Alben Family’s relief force has arrived! They’ve already made contact with our rear army!"
"Damn it, bastards!" The City Lord only felt that he’d fought this war in suffocating frustration. He didn’t know why, but it was as if some shadowy hand was controlling the entire board from behind the scenes. He even sensed that everything happening now was unfolding inside that puppeteer’s calculations.
But time no longer allowed him to keep thinking. He immediately hoisted up the substitute’s corpse and roared, "Form the defenses! Hold off the Alben Family’s relief troops! We’ve already seized Patriarch Alben—victory will be ours!"
Now, even if it was just a corpse, they had to use it as if it were alive!
"Yes, my lord!"
...
Meanwhile, the real Patriarch Alben had long since fled through a secret tunnel known only to the Alben Family’s core members the moment he sensed something was wrong, and was now hiding outside.
"Damn it! Has that City Lord gone insane? Just for a marriage alliance between the Alben Family and some rising gang power, he’s willing to fight us to the death at any cost?" He truly couldn’t understand the City Lord’s madness.
They were both nobles; though they’d always had some minor friction, it never stopped them from joining hands to squeeze the bottom-rung gang prostitutes dry.
The Alben Family and the City Lord’s Mansion had worked together plenty of times, with many projects carried out quite happily. In many areas they were mutually well-tuned partners.
And yet merely the Alben Family joining with a new rising force was enough to make them jump over the wall like a cornered dog?
Patriarch Alben couldn’t figure it out, because from his vantage point, his side absolutely came out ahead in this affair, and the Xiao Organization simply hadn’t yet included the Alben Family among its active targets.
Because Xue Dili had set his sights on the Alben Family from the beginning, the Xiao Organization never put direct pressure on them, leaving them ignorant of Xiao’s suppressive power and insanity.
As for the City Lord’s Mansion, which took the Xiao Organization’s assault head-on—that was a tragedy. Every gang they’d invested in was wiped out in surprise attacks; of the nearly ten thousand troops they’d raised, the vast majority were slaughtered, their blood and corpses stacked into a grisly mound of heads.
This kind of extreme, Khorne-level bloodletting had already left the people in the City Lord’s Mansion shivering. It was the first time they’d seen the ordinary folk they’d long abused—once they’d gained strength and banded together to fight back—erupt with such terrifying power and hatred.
It was under these circumstances that intel arrived about the Alben Family fully cementing a marriage alliance with the Xiao Organization. The City Lord’s Mansion had a stress reaction, convinced that all of this was the Alben Family’s plot to purge the other nobles.
So, cornered and desperate, they thought up every tactical switch in the book. From the perspective of the City Lord’s Mansion, the Alben Family’s elite main force should have been fully deployed, which meant they absolutely had the capital to raid the Alben Family estate and pull off a base-trade tactic.
That was the fuse that lit this assault!
But people locked in different vantage points can never truly see the situation from the other side—just as Patriarch Alben was completely incapable of empathizing with the lowest-rung prostitutes.
He only found it strange that the City Lord seemed insane, but as for the attack against them, the Alben Family had a complete response plan.
At this moment, he had two choices: first, he could head straight back to the Alben Family’s main force. With a single rallying cry, he’d be able to pull everyone’s hearts together again and completely wipe out the City Lord and his last elites inside the Alben Family estate.
That way, even if the family suffered heavy losses, Roland City would become a one-voice domain ruled by the Alben Family, and conversely, the family would come out of this war smiling, as the final victor.
The second option was to go to the Xiao Organization and seek their help. Of course, that was the inferior plan, one he’d only consider if there was no other way.
In his own conception, even with a marriage alliance with Xiao, the dominant side should still be the Alben Family—it should be the Alben Family absorbing the Xiao Organization as their Vassal, not the Alben Family becoming a Vassal of that gang.
Still, when his own life was on the line, seeking Xiao’s help was a fallback route. An inferior plan was still better than having no plan at all.
He was already far from the Alben Family estate now. From here, he could only vaguely make out the silhouette of the distant family compound.
"Looks like I’m the one laughing last after all." With that thought, he began searching from here for signs of the Patriarch’s main force.
By his timing, the main force should have just returned. At this moment they would either have clashed with the City Lord’s side or be in a standoff.
Either situation favored his next move.
Shedding his ornate garments and changing into plain clothes, he hurried along the main road back toward the Alben Family’s outer lines to rendezvous with the main force.
Seeing the distant masses of people but no fighting, he knew at a glance that this was the main force and the City Guard Army in a standoff, and that the City Lord was very likely using his stand-in’s corpse as a bargaining chip.
At this moment, as long as he got back to the main force, the outcome would be settled.
He’d won!
The corners of his mouth curled up, harder to suppress than the recoil of an AK.
And just then, he suddenly noticed a large host riding up from the rear—and the figure at their head made him pause.
"Belie?" The girl on horseback left even him momentarily stunned.
