Duarno tried calming his emotions down. He would be lying to himself by saying that death didn’t faze him much.

Although it probably was the misery and not death that made him behave this way. Or the helplessness of the situation. Who knows? The only thing he could be sure of was that he was agitated.

Infact, his emotions were quite evident from his flustered breathing and the fact that he was mindlessly searching for a specific group while instead he should be impartial to his populace and try to help everyone equally.

He stopped and thought for a while. He could feed a few dozen children right now or help the Agni tribe, or he could try to solve this problem from its root. Surely, from an objective point of view, the latter seemed to be the right choice.

And so he began searching for an official or a soldier posted around the refugee center to have him meet the one who handled the management of this place.

He soon found one standing on guard.

‘There you are.’

A young soldier, probably just a year or so younger than Duarno himself, caught the ninth prince’s eye as he stopped the useless thoughts he was having and called him out.

“Hey! Call out the person in charge of maintaining this place.” He knew that the poor man was not at fault here and so he made sure to not vent out his frustrations on him and turn full on 'Karen'

The lad shouted a ‘yes sir!’ as he hurriedly left the scene.

The slight commotion caught the eyes of the onlooking refugees as they retreated a bit back. Duarno found it a bit weird for them to be afraid of the soldiers that were supposed to help them.

But he saw that not everyone did the same.

There was a scrawny lady crouching down near the entrance of the tent that was nearest to him, with a baby in her arms.

This was probably the first child ninth prince had seen after he entered the place, aside from Loid who was of course a local.

‘That kid’s around Leah’s age. Must have been tough on the mother to take care of the kid in such horrendous conditions.’ Duarno thought as neared the duo. Helping them out while the soldier returns is probably better than standing and idling around.

She seemed to ignore Duarno’s presence though, as she refused to even glance at the man who was towering in front of her.

Duarno quickly realised something was amiss and upon further inspection, his horrors came out to be true as he realised that both of them were already dead.

The sunken cheeks and the bony limbs didn’t take Duarno by surprise as that was the case with almost three-fourth of the populace there, it was probably the mother-child pair that had him associate them with another such pair that lived extremely close to his heart.

He felt his heart on fire for some reason as he clenched his chest tightly and calmed his anxiety down.

These anxiety attacks had begun ever since he met Jonas back in Buzrok and were almost periodical in nature.

So much so that Duarno even contemplated if he had been cursed or poisoned by Jonas' men when he was in the devilian court. But he couldn't spend much time on this train of thought as the one in duty of managing everything came running towards Duarno.

“Sir Damien! What happened? Is everything alright?” It was the same nerdy looking devil that he met at the entrance.

“It’s a mess in here.” Duarno complained as he asked the younger soldier to grant the mother-son pair a proper burial. “You there! Please properly bury them and send their souls with utmost respect.”

Duarno now completely shifted his focus on the one in charge of this place.

“Explain!”

“Pardon me but.. what, sir?” The man hesitantly asked as he watched the face of the ‘knight Damien’ figuratively morph into that of a demon.

“Everything. Everything that’s wrong in here. Why are my men and women dying such deaths here?” An enraged Duarno authoritatively commanded, not giving a crap about the identity of a knight he was using right now, as he pointed at the dead bodies and the scrawny audience that was surrounding them,

The nerdy man, Sigurd, also felt weird that a knight who only serves their master would say something so controversial, but he didn’t want to piss one off so he let it go.

“Er-This, w-we can’t help it either” Sigurd fumbled as he tried answering, and was greeted by the most threatening glare he had ever seen.

“We have been trying our best but Et’thun has been going through a food shortage these past few months.” He quickly let this thoughts out into words. “All our food came from the north but it’s all gone now. These men and women were the very farmers we procured food from, but now..." Sigurd had a sympathetic look on his face as he continued, "They burnt all of their harvest and now we only have Fyov left that can supply us some food.“

“Fyov's the only reason we aren’t in the same condition as our brothers from the north.” Sigurd said.

Duarno gritted his teeth tightly before letting out a helpless sigh. He was not prepared to deal with such a situation.

Even at the school of Buzrok, the only field he enrolled in was the field of swordsmanship. He had no idea how to solve problems that cannot be talked out of or brute forced through.

And frankly speaking, that was to be expected. Ever since before Jonas came in picture, the structure of Devilian society revolved around power. That’s how the first of their forefathers united devilkind and that’s how their lineage was recognised by the goddess and was granted the status of [Royal Bloodline].

And it made sense, specially after acquiring the [Royal Bloodline].

I mean, if you have the power to influence and dominate those of your kind, would you rather focus on improving that power or waste your time doing other things?

But there were surely some negative sides to being oblivious to other things, and that fact had etched itself in Duarno’s heart that day.

He asked Sigurd if there was a way out, “And is there no other way to help?”

“I have heard some rumors that lady Duchess has been in contact with some dwarves to deal with the matter of food shortage, but Sir Knight might have been more privy to such inside knowledge rather than someone like me.”

‘Is this guy doubting my identity?’

“I am her knight, not her advisor that I would know of such things.”

‘I will have to talk with mother about this matter.’

“What about the children? Why don’t I see them here?” Duarno questioned.

“They have been taken to a safe place under the Duchess’ orders.” Sigurd replied, his doubt on ‘Damien’ growing by the passing second.

Duarno gave up on the cover of ‘Damien’ as he let his aura out wide, to which Nomu's horn suddenly resonated with.

'Weird' He thought as he took out the horn from his spatial pocket as he finally inspected it using the system to identify the cause of this sudden response this horn gave, but the system was equally clueless.

[Nomu’s Horn]

A devil shaman’s horn, infused with the flamboyant flame’s mana.

“Order your men to gather refugees stamped with ‘1’ on their wrists. And feed them enough so that they don’t at least die of starvation. It’s an order of Rokham’s ninth child himself!” He used his own identity this time as he ordered Sigurd to save the Agni tribe.

** **

“So are you finally going to tell me what happened?”

Duarno had been hugging Leona for 5 minutes straight without even uttering a word, and now he was showering kisses on peanut. Leona could sense the worry in Duarno and when she finally decided that the worry in him had subsided enough, she asked for the reason.

“Nothing much to worry about. I just missed both of you.” Duarno did a ‘everything’s fine’ type of wince with a smile on his face as he asked his wife to not worry about him.

“Lies again” Leona retorted.

Duarno sighed. He didn’t want to share the misery he saw with the smiling faces in front of him. But he knew how perceptive of emotions Leona can be, especially when it comes to Duarno and so there was no way to avoid it, especially not by lying his way out.

“It’s a quite a long story” He said, hoping that he could avoid this conversation altogether, to which Leona replied with “and I am all ears.”

Duarno finally gave in as he began reciting the Poligur incident and then talked about the food collection drive by the soldiers and how the refugees from the north were being stuffed in fields with no value given to life and ended it by describing the dead mother-son duo he found at that place. With the major source of his current feelings being the last incident.

Most of the anxiety and worry he had in his heart slowly melted away as he narrated his day to Leona.

‘Being with Leah is a bliss on its own’

He was actually feeling a bit guilty about how he could be at ease when people out there were struggling but… worrying needlessly wouldn’t solve the problem now, would it?

Well, that’s the excuse Duarno gave to himself to subside the guilt he felt.

“Oi, worrywart.” Leona puffed up her lean biceps up as she continued, “Do we look like we would go down without a fight?”

She picked Leah up and curled up her slightly chubby right arm too, “These arms can smack anything into oblivion. Nothing can happen to the one who wields these mighty arms.” Leona declared, and Leah too baby-talked in return, as if she were agreeing on what her Ma just said.

“See? Go on Leah, explain it to your daddy too” Leona said as she slightly pinched Leah’s nose before kissing her and passing her back to Duarno, in reply to which a subconcious smile formed on Duarno's face.

'Mission accomplished' Leona thought

“But jokes aside, things indeed look grim.” A serious expression took over Leona too as she started contemplating what can be done in such a situation.

Her case was the same as Duarno. The only thing she studied in the school of Buzrok was ice magic.

“Have you talked with mother yet?”

“She’s busy with some official work right now.”

“It’s no use talking to father too. He is more of a brute than both of us combined.” She sat down besides Duarno as she started racking her brains for a solution.