Chapter 159
Bad Destiny or Destiny (1)
I took off my helmet.
The unique stormy clime of the north rushed at my face, which had been heated, and it quickly cooled. The wind cooling my face right after I took off the helmet was refreshing, yet it only lasted for a while. By the time the cheers of the soldiers subsided, my face had become so cold that it felt as if it would freeze.
As I contended with my tingling face, a welcome sight approached.
“Your Highness.”
Vincent, my dear Count of Winter Castle, was in front of me.
“Enchga!” I jumped from my horse, and Vincent approached me with open arms.
‘Strkkch,’ those strong arms hugged me, and Vincent didn’t seem to care about the monster blood and viscera on my body. I, too, clenched his shoulders with strength.
“Thank you for coming back safely.”
We were greeting one another properly at last, reuniting, and it was a stiff greeting with both of us half-frozen in the cold. Nevertheless, the embrace was warm, and I laughed heartily and praised Vincent for his hard work.
“You’ve been working hard,” said I.
“You think I’ve expended effort? Or are you talking about all the ceaseless toil I’ve been doing?”
Vincent replied, and he did so light-heartedly.
“Yeah,” he continued, “it was a lot of work. Someone ran away when faced with all that work, so I was struggling to take care of it all. It was more than enough: To listen to the roar of monsters under the walls while looking through a bunch of documents.”
As I listened to Vincent pour out words without halt, I tried to stumble from his grasp, but- ‘Crscht~’ Vincent refused to let go of me.
“Now that you are here, there is a lot of work for you.”
“I just came from a fight,” said I.
“Yeah? I fought like that every day while your Highness was away – against monsters and piles of paper.”
As I watched Vincent holding my shoulders and raising his chin, I could form no suitable response.
“I didn’t know that your Highness would appear and disappear on a wyvern like that.”
“I didn’t disappear that quickly-“
“Oh, that’s right. You didn’t disappear that quickly. You met with the dwarves and then took Bernardo Eli. You stayed for two days and left without seeing all the work I’ve done. And I had been most resourceful,” Vincent grumbled. It seemed that he still resented me for coming here, seeing only to my own business, and then departing for Dotrin.
“It’s rather that you should have told me you’re coming when you came and told me you’re going before you left. Do you know how embarrassed I was when I heard that your Highness has gone?”
“I left you a letter.”
“Ah, you mean that letter? ‘I’m going to the Dotrin Kingdom. It will take about a year.’ It was written exactly like that when I got it.”
I shut my mouth and decided to endure his resentful nagging. But how much can a man endure? Vincent’s nagging was truly endless. No longer able to bear it, I glanced at the one-eyed Quéon and the rangers who stood behind Vincent, silently imploring them for help.
“Hmm, I forgot to check on the condition of my horse,” Quéon awkwardly grumbled and turned around.
“Are you retrieving your arrows, lads? Collect them as soon as possible! You know that arrows don’t fall from the sky around here, right?”
“They can fall from the sky, though. The right way t’say it would be: They don’t grow from the ground.”
“Is that right? That’s what’s important now, lads! I can’t leave you damned cubs alone for a minute – I have to check everything myself to make sure the job gets done proper-like.”
Jordan and his rangers all hustled and bustled before disappearing. The knights had already fled before I even turned to them.
“It seems that the count has long missed his Highness,” said Arwen, becoming the one to save me.
“Since he has gone through difficult times in the Kingdom of Dotrin, and as he ran straight here into battle, his Highness’s fatigue must be great. Count Balahard, can you take this into account and put off the reunion for a while?”
Vincent was dissatisfied by Arwen’s gentle urging, yet he couldn’t refute her words, so he let me go.
“If I had gone straight to the offices of the count, there would’ve been a whole lot of nagging. That is why I left only a letter,” I grumbled, and when Vincent heard this, and his eyes stretched wide, I stepped behind Arwen. Seeming to wonder why I was so excited, Arwen shook her head and sighed.
“Very well, take a break this once. I’ll continue my story later,” said Vincent, inviting me to go and rest. Unfortunately, I could not accept such an offer.
“No. I don’t have time to rest.”
I looked toward the mountain range beyond the wall.
The monsters have retreated, but the presence felt from within those mountains remained unchanged, and that great hostility and anger were constantly scratching at my nerves.
“Please summon all the commanders.”
Vincent looked at me, dissatisfied.
“Right now.”
* * *
The commanders of Winter Castle gathered together, and their faces were all stern.
“First, let’s hear the accounts of the past.”
Vincent glanced at me, and Jordan, the new company commander, stood and began to explain the circumstances.
He told of the sudden eclipse phenomenon, the gathering of the monsters after that, as well as of the subsequent battles. It was no special thing to see monsters go crazy every year at Winter Castle, which was a fortress originally constructed for battling such monsters. The only difference was the omen of the solar eclipse that occurred before this newest riot of monsters, as well as the unprecedented numbers and types of monsters attacking the castle.
“Thirty thousand? It’s really amazing.”
“I didn’t know one who has just pushed through the heart of such an enormous army would be speaking like that,” joked Vincent, and the commanders laughed along with his words. Their faces possessed a solid, ruddy color, and there was no fear of the large army of 30,000 to be seen anywhere.
They were all full of fighting spirit, and they were confident in their ability to fight, rather than succumbing to despair in the face of death.
I muttered my admiration, and Vincent said with a proud face, “Because we have been steadily preparing for war, we have held them off this well.”
I asked Vincent as to the current state of Winter Castle’s military after the recent attack, and instead of explaining it to me verbally, he handed me a sheet of paper that had a whole lot of letters on it.
I quickly scanned through the contents of the document.
1 Ranger Regiment (1,800 strong)
2 Heavy Infantry Companies (400 strong)
1 Artillery Company (200 strong)
Black Lancers (104 strong)
Winter Knights (112 strong)
5 Other Knight Squadrons (484 strong)
In total, the power of Winter Castle and Balahard lay in more than 3,000 troops.
But that wasn’t the end – At the back of the document, there was listed about two legions of soldiers and three knight squadrons sent by the lords of the north.
It all came to a whopping 7,000 troops, and not just any troops, but high-quality soldiers with an abnormally high ratio of knights.
It was a number that was worthy of confidence.
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“Now here are four Sword Master grade knights,” I muttered. This northern fortress had once been as dangerous as a flickering candle – now it has become a great flame that could not be distinguished by the northern storm.
I was so happy with this change that my mouth grew stiff, but I forcibly prevented myself from grinning as I straightened my expression. The situation wasn’t favorable enough to feel only pride. Winter Castle has definitely grown stronger, but the enemies of winter have also become stronger.
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I remembered it so clearly: The energy of the enemy beyond those mountain peaks was familiar to me. It was a damnable monster, a fierce power among the warriors of the greenskin race, and it had certainly used fervor.
It wasn’t a crude, nasty type of fervor; no, rather a terrible form of fervor belonging to those orcish beings who possessed royal spirit.
“It seems that the King of the Orcs has appeared.”
As I said this, Vincent looked at me with a stern face.
“Are you serious? If you’re kidding, it isn’t funny,” he said with fresh anger on that hard face.
“I myself stuffed his head and mounted it upon the castle walls. You must have seen the damned thing when you came here. His head is still hanging above my gate! No way that he’s the monster crouching in those mountains!” Vincent continued to criticize my remarks as careless, asking how that which is dead can live again. His was hasty anger, but I tolerated it for a minute.
Winter Castle suffered a permanent wound under the hand of the King of the Orcs, and Vincent had lost his father. Rangers have lost comrades who have stood with them for years or decades, and knights lost their central pillar of support, having to live with the stigma all their lives of fleeing while their lord was still on the battlefield.
Even Winter Castle itself was captured, with its former denizens forced to wander the north.
The convictions and self-esteem of the Balahards became ephemeral, and the splendid history that their ancestors had built up was buried in a ditch. And the cause of it all was the King of the Orcs. Yet, the commanders did not become angry, for they did not dare let the title of that accursed orc leave their mouths.
And as they have lost so much, so too did I.
“Pease explain,” the commanders asked me, instead of bursting into anger and drawing their knives.
“As there is not only one king of humans, so too there are multiple kings of the orcs.”
Warlord was the name given to a king who led the War Legions among orcs qualified to do so. In addition to the warlords, there were numerous other orcish kings. And this being was definitely one of them; I was so sure of it.
“Are you saying that after you killed the king, a new king appeared?” Vincent asked with a frown. His anger had abated, yet my words still seemed unbelievable to him. That kings of the orcs, beings who had not existed for hundreds of years, have appeared, one after the other, in the span of three years? It was not strange that he did not easily believe me.
I didn’t have to persuade him, though. I just had to wait. I shut my mouth, Vincent remained silent, and in this time, I hoped that the commanders of Winter Castle would accept my words. After a while, Vincent spoke up.
“If someone else has said this, I would have considered them useless at once.”
His was a blasphemous tone, yet the emotions contained therein were ones of obvious trust.
“Fuck. I don’t like this. I want to pack it all up and move south,” said Vincent as he looked at me, speaking his mind bluntly.
“What are you going to do?” he then asked.
“We have to fight it and get rid of it,” I answered without hesitation because this course of action had been decided from the beginning. Vincent nodded, and the other commanders accepted my answer as if it was the natural thing to do. Anger and confusion no longer existed within them. They cared not how many soldiers they had or who they were; all they were determined to do was destroy the enemy and save their land.
My heart was thudding – Their fiery demeanor could not be extinguished even if they were faced by the harsh winter, and it seemed to have been transferred to me.
I struggled to control this burning spirit within me, for my passion should not be burning so. This place was not Dotrin, and no longer was I a mercenary. This was the kingdom I had to protect, and I was here to lead these men. First, the nature of the enemy had to be determined.
If the King of the Greenskins ensconced in the mountains was a Warlord, things would be easy… If he was not, we had to defend ourselves. The question was how was I to determine the nature of the enemy lurking in the mountains, but fortunately, I had a way to find the answer.
The was a being in the north with the power of seeing the truth hidden in a lie, and see the original form of a thing, past the distortion.
White Night Mage Ophelia, with her power of [Shinan], would already have grasped the identity of this being.
While Vincent and his commanders were forming countermeasures against the monsters, I silently stood up and then set off at once to find the High Lich.
Fortunately, she was awaiting me in Winter Castle, not the newly-built tower. The dark shadows under the walls of the fortress halls whispered to me. They urged me to go ahead to their mistress; they whispered and guided me to Ophelia. She was in the highest spire of Winter Castle.
“Ophelia.”
She was looking out over the snowfield but now turned to me. She was in her original state as a skeletal High Lich, not in a human form. I tried to cheerily greet her but stiffened when I saw-
“You… Your hand?”
Her bare fingerbones stuck from her sleeves, yet they were now three where they had always been five.
She was missing her little finger and her ring finger, and they seemed to have disappeared so cleanly that I was as if they had never existed from the beginning.
“It is the way it is. It’s a price I had to pay for glimpsing the truth not allowed for me to see,” Ophelia said. It is said that the power of [Shinan] is by no means the same as omniscience, and sometimes you have to pay the price for the weight of the truth that you are seeking.
I groaned. Fingers were never a trivial thing for a mage to lose, for the magic circles and the language of magic that was drawn in the air were complex and difficult to complete with even a full ten fingers.
Now Ophelia had lost two – the magic circles and words that she can draw could not be the same as before.
Perhaps the rate at which the magic reached completion would be slowed, or maybe some magic that she could use before has now become unusable.
Either way, the damage to her skill could not be small, and I couldn’t figure out what truth it was that she would pay such a heavy price for.
“You seem curious about what I saw,” said Ophelia.
I nodded and asked, “Did you see the past, or the future?”
“The past and future both. Something that has already transpired and something that is yet to transpire. Those are some of the truths that I have seen.”
The moment I heard her say this, I became convinced. The truth she had peeped at for the cost of her fingers has to do with the eclipse that occurred some time ago.
The return of the old beings was an event close to the ancient past, yet at the same time, a sign of changes that will occur in the future.
“Would you like to know more?”
I shook my head. Telling the truth to others was more expensive than peeking at the truth on your own. I was quite curious about any truth concerning the phenomena, but I had no intention of making Ophelia pay even a harsher price. If there had been a need to do so, I believe she would have already informed me.
“It’s better if you don’t tell me. If you force yourself further, you won’t have any talents left after all that suffering.”
Ophelia gave a dry laugh.
“Now your concern is the existence of the king crouching in that mountain range.”
“He had spread his energy all over the world. I figured that you would have figured out what kind of being owns that energy.”
Ophelia stared at me as I said this. I had no way to know what that faceless skull was thinking. After a while, her jaw began rattling, as if she was laughing.
“Your question is, amazingly, the same as the first one.”
“How is it the same?” I asked, not sure what she found so funny.
Her jaw rattled once more, and she said, “My answer is also no different.”
“What?”
“The past and future both. Something that has already existed and something that is yet to be born into existence.”
I frowned at her answer, which was more of a question, yet Ophelia then said something I had never considered.
“Gruhorn, you already know him.”
“I do?”
“You must have met him. Although, at that time, you weren’t as human as you are now.”
The moment I heard that, a cold energy flowed down my back.
“He is a very old entity, like you.”
I groaned. All the monarchs of the greenskin race I have met with were all dead, and I watched them die with my own eyes – All excepting one.
An ill-fated avenger had to fight against the greenskins with flames that eventually scorched his life and thrust him into an unknown wilderness.
And there was a song about this poor knight, unable to complete his quests even after he had burned everything down. The enemy was a being that came to inspire the final verses of [Poetry of Revenge], which has now become [Poetry of Divination].
“Overlord.”
The accursed Overlord was the only king I had never witnessed the end of.