"Are they back?" Kayal gently pinched the bridge of his nose with his jade-like fingers.
These past few days, he had been staying up late to finalize the division of labor and systems for the slaves.
Of course, the hardest, most tiring, most troublesome, most dangerous, most crippling, and most unfortunate tasks were to be done by the slaves, but how exactly to divide these 'hardest, most tiring, and most troublesome' tasks still required Kayal to draw up a detailed plan.
Staying up late had made Kayal's eyes a bit red.
However, Kayal had even more important things to do.
Standing up, he motioned for the maid beside him to tidy up his parchment, then Kayal walked towards the door.
Kayal disliked a messy office, and although he always made it messy himself, he would always have the maids clean it up.
Seeing Kayal stand up, Priscilla, who had been playing with a toy Kayal invented on the soft wool carpet, quickly dropped her wooden puzzles and toys and followed in Kayal's footsteps.
"Irene, call the others, we're leaving," Kayal said with a smile, holding Priscilla's hand, to Irene.
Although all four Claymores had become Kayal's bodyguards, most of the time only one was with Kayal 24 hours a day.
Even though Kayal had Priscilla, and Priscilla even slept with Kayal, it made the Claymores even more uneasy.
Their role as 'bodyguards' was more about guarding against Priscilla's sudden outburst.
"Hmm," Irene was always the most decisive when it came to getting things done.
Although Teresa was infinitely more powerful than her, as a subordinate, Irene was the most competent.
Compared to Teresa, who was dangerously cunning and whose every word felt like a death sentence or a heart attack waiting to happen, Irene was the perfect subordinate—meticulous, serious, rigid, perfectly executing every task, and most importantly, she was very intelligent!
When Kayal held Priscilla on horseback, the Claymores had already dressed and emerged.
Kayal smiled and nodded, then looked at Atoris, who rode out from the side.
He didn't speak, Kayal seemed to be thinking about something, his brow slightly furrowed, which made him appear very charming—a thinking man is the most charming, even if Kayal was currently only a boy.
Gently leaning into Kayal's embrace, Priscilla's gaze towards Kayal was no longer that raw, greedy, and hungry look, but rather like Teresa's gaze towards Clare—reliance.
"Haha." Kayal relaxed his slightly furrowed brow and playfully pinched Priscilla.
He was now nine years old, and Priscilla was fourteen.
God knows how they developed such a strange and subtle relationship.
At least Priscilla no longer asked him for meat, thanks to those desperate death row inmates—and thanks to the prosperous commercial street, which tirelessly brought in robbers, muggers, and thieves.
The death sentences for these people would no longer be decided by a rope (hanging); their fate was to feed Priscilla.
For five days, Kayal had not found the reason why Priscilla had changed her appetite.
Kayal knew that internal organs contained zinc, iron, and many other microorganisms, but what Priscilla truly needed, he didn't know too much about human body research.
He was interested in political and lifestyle settings.
Regarding human body research, he only knew a general idea—a person obsessed with weapons would definitely have some understanding of the human body—but would never go in-depth.
Kayal knew the range of human exertion, but he didn't know what a demon needed from eating internal organs.
In Kayal's view, no animal was a monophagous.
Humans needed meat and vegetables, fungi and seafood, while cattle and horses needed fodder and soybeans, and even barley and wheat.
The latter two were not enough even for humans, so most horses now ate fodder and soybeans.
Thanks to the underdeveloped technology of this world, soybeans had not yet been developed into oil, soy products, tofu, soy milk, etc. (The development of legumes is generally in China, while Europe, which did not fully utilize legumes, has always used them for horse breeding: raw beans are too hard, and their cuisine is too monotonous, so the application of legumes is truly very scarce.) Therefore, legumes are high-yielding and have always been used as feed for cattle, horses, and sheep.
And it was simply too strange for demons to be monophagous—humans, in any case, seemed to be a kind of food.
Even if there was a difference between internal organs and human flesh, for them to only eat humans was too picky, wasn't it?
The reason humans are picky eaters can be a dislike for texture, but if a demon that has lost its sanity is picky, then there is only one reason: it needs to extract some absolutely essential substance from that kind of food.
Just as a cat eats mice because it needs taurine from the mouse's body, otherwise it will go blind.
Kayal gently shook his head, clearing these thoughts from his mind.
His thoughts had been a bit too scattered lately, was it because there were too many things to do?
Smiling, Kayal pinched Priscilla's face again.
Priscilla's forehead was quite broad, her short hair made her look energetic, and her temperament was very innocent.
She still had a fine layer of down and baby fat on her face, which made Kayal very fond of kneading her cheeks.
Riding beside Kayal, Atoris was very unaccustomed to Kayal treating a "monster" so intimately.
No matter what, he had seen the 'big forehead' in its true form, and the memory of that form still left him with lingering fear.
In Atoris's view, Kayal was simply too reckless—it would be best to let Teresa unleash her demonic power and just cut her down.
He didn't understand Kayal's attitude, but Atoris was a knight-in-training who adhered to chivalry and would never criticize anything his lord did, even if Kayal were to commit * * to all the women in the territory after coming of age, he wouldn't say a word.
He was just that rigid of a person.
If it came to the degree of rigidity, he should be even more so than Irene.
Many commoners were waiting at the main gate to welcome Grand Duke Andrei's arrival, and this was from the heart.
Grand Duke Andrei's ship directly carried slaves, orphans, and knights back from the sea, which was why he was faster than Kayal.
As the Grand Duke's son, Kayal's status was considerably higher than that of his four uncles, so as the second highest-ranking person in all of Red Leaf Ridge, Kayal naturally stood at the very front as the leader.
Grand Duke Andrei, full of enthusiasm, rode at the head of everyone, his large beard quivering with joy.
When the massive procession arrived before Red Leaf Ridge, Grand Duke Andrei looked at Kayal, who was leading, and glared fiercely at him.
Then, the two rode their horses to meet, and Grand Duke Andrei leaned in close to Kayal and whispered, "Son, what are you going to do with these captives?"
Even if they weren't killed, they certainly wouldn't be released unconditionally to continue ravaging Camelot.