Nathan

Porter reined in his horse and immediately noticed the leader among the horse bandits.

The man had a burly build and rode a black-maned horse, a scimitar in his hand gleaming coldly under the sunlight.

But upon seeing the man's face clearly, a trace of surprise and worry welled up within him.

‘How could it be Nathan? Is it really such a coincidence?’

As he watched intently, a sharp intake of breath came from beside him.

Porter turned to look at Matthew, who sat astride his horse beside him. The youth's face was as calm as usual, but his fingers gripping the bow's riser were slightly tensed, and a sharp, arrow-like light condensed in his eyes. This scene had clearly angered him.

Anger was quietly surging in Matthew's chest.

It wasn't that he had never taken a life before.

He had shot and killed demonized beasts attacking the village in the Shadow Forest, and he had fought life-and-death battles against bandits at the Mute Pass.

Blood and death were far from new to him.

But the scene before him was entirely different.

This was not a battle fought out of necessity for survival or protection, but a slaughter carried out purely for the sake of cruelty and plunder.

The sinister grins on the horse bandits' faces, the hopeless wails of the women and children, the slumped drivers, and the mutilated corpses of the guards...

All of this unnecessary cruelty was like a cold needle, catching him off guard and piercing the barrier he had always used to maintain his composure.

Because, in the end, he was a transmigrator.

The peaceful, law-abiding world of his previous life had long since carved an indelible moral baseline deep within his consciousness.

Even though he had lived in this perilous otherworld where strength was respected for a long time now.

Even though he had learned to grip his weapon tightly and decisively take lives when necessary, certain principles remained deeply rooted in his instincts: a hatred for the wanton bullying of the weak, the savagery of treating slaughter as entertainment, and the tragedies manufactured solely for sadistic pleasure.

This kind of evil provoked a deep-seated revulsion and fury from the very depths of his soul.

Beside him, Porter noticed Matthew's expression growing increasingly dark. Fearing the youth might charge down the slope in a fit of impulse, he quickly whispered to soothe him, “This is the West Wasteland Horse Bandits. The leader is Nathan, an established Silver Rank powerhouse.”

Matthew looked in the direction Porter indicated. The leader of the horse bandits was indeed heavily built, riding a black-maned horse with a scimitar in his hand gleaming coldly under the sun. With a ferocious, arrogant smile on his face, he was directing his subordinates to besiege the remaining caravan guards.

Hearing Porter's explanation, a trace of understanding flashed in Matthew's eyes. Forcing down his surging anger, his expression gradually calmed.

Suppressing his turbulent emotions, he asked in a low voice, “Lord Porter, what is the background of this Nathan and his band of horse bandits?”

Porter's gaze remained locked on the tragic scene in the distance as he quickly recounted what he knew. “Nathan used to be a servant of the Fiery Lion family. He was quite skilled and highly valued. But for some reason, he angered the master, was expelled on the spot, and was hunted down that very night.”

He paused, his tone turning grave. “The Fiery Lion family's power is easily among the top three in the county seat. To be able to survive their pursuit and escape to the Sunset Grasslands shows that this man is by no means simple.

“After that ordeal, he actually became famous overnight.

“Relying on his Silver Rank strength and the reputation of surviving that pursuit, he gathered outlaws of all kinds on the Sunset Grasslands. After many rounds of annexation and conflict, he gradually built up the West Wasteland Horse Bandits, a group notorious for its brutality.”

Listening to this, Matthew finally understood why Porter's expression had been so grave earlier.

It turned out that Nathan was not only a powerful horse bandit leader, but also a traitor whom the Fiery Lion family had personally marked for death.

Such a desperate outlaw was already completely incompatible with the Fiery Lion family.

If Nathan were to see the carriage Regg was riding in, or even catch sight of that flag fluttering in the wind...

Matthew's heart tightened.

To ordinary people, the Fiery Lion family's flag was a powerful protective amulet.

But to a traitor like Nathan, who carried a blood feud and was actively being hunted, that flag would have no deterrent effect whatsoever. In fact, it would likely provoke the opposite reaction.

Just as alarm bells were ringing in his mind, a faint, almost imperceptible feeling of being watched suddenly came from afar.

The feeling was extremely faint, but like a thin thread, it quietly wrapped around the edge of his Perception.

—It was almost exactly the same as when he had detected a hidden gaze in the Shadow Forest.

Matthew's heart sank as he realized something was wrong.

This kind of elusive gaze either meant that the observer's strength far exceeded his own, allowing them to completely conceal their presence, or that they were extremely skilled in concealment and scouting.

Either way, it represented a very real danger.

He immediately concentrated. The life energy within his body quietly accelerated its flow, and the 【Eagle Eye Gaze】 combat technique was fully activated, the sharp light in his eyes condensing like needles.

At the same time, he carefully spread a trace of Spirit outward like ripples, sensing the slightest fluctuations and abnormalities in the surrounding air.

However, even as his dual perception of Spirit and combat technique swept over the chaotic horse bandits below the slope, he found nothing out of the ordinary.

The bandits' attention was entirely occupied by the caravan they were hunting, their killing intent and greed chaotically intertwined. There was no hidden observer among them.

Matthew's doubts remained. Although the faint feeling of being watched was elusive, it still lingered.

He held his breath and concentrated, his gaze like the finest sieve, slowly sweeping across every spot in his field of vision—the ground, the grass, the distant mounds...

Finally, he raised his gaze slightly and locked onto the sky above.

An eagle was circling in the sky more than a hundred meters above, its posture leisurely, its wings tracing steady arcs in the air currents.

The elusive feeling of being watched had been coming from it all along.

Because of the distance and the fact that it was a bird in the sky, its gaze carried no explicit hostility or killing intent. Coupled with Matthew's emotional turmoil over Nathan's identity, he had failed to identify the source immediately.

Only now, as his emotions settled and his perception grew completely still, did he connect this almost ignored clue with that subtle feeling of being watched.

Something was wrong.

Even when hunting on the grasslands, ordinary eagles rarely circled in the same spot for so long, and they certainly wouldn't "coincidentally" appear in the sky directly above a horse bandit raid.

This eagle's flight path, rather than a search for prey, looked much more like... surveillance.

A chill quietly climbed up his spine.

Matthew suddenly turned his head and spoke in a hurried whisper to Porter beside him, “My Lord, there's something wrong with that eagle in the sky...”

He then rapidly explained what he had seen and analyzed.

...

...