Chapter 562: Who is the Vice Commander?
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 562: Who is the Vice Commander?
Bianca Conti’s expression was clouded with frustration.
Although she had arrived without a formal appointment, she had observed proper etiquette, waiting in the city for days in expectation of a summons. Yet, her counterpart had ignored her entirely, turned his back, and vanished.
It would have been one thing if he had met her and flatly stated his hostility toward the Empire, but this was a first. To simply vanish into thin air without a single word on whether he would grant her an audience?
"My apologies. The Commander is currently away on a request."
"Didn't you say he was here just yesterday?"
The large-eyed, brown-haired man sighed and gave a slight shake of his head.
The gesture was incredibly natural. He wore a smile that seemed to suggest he, too, had no idea things would turn out this way—that he, too, was a victim of circumstance.
As a noble and a high-society matchmaker from the Empire, Bianca Conti had dealt with countless people who wore masks outside of masquerades. However, it had been a long time since she had seen someone conceal their true intentions as flawlessly as the man before her. Judging by his tone alone, one might actually believe he was the aggrieved party.
"Well, he isn't exactly the type to report his whereabouts to anyone. Sigh... as you can probably guess just by hearing his name, he's a bit... unstable up here."
Kreiss tapped his temple with a half-bent index finger.
Kreiss knew there was no way Encrid would sit around flirting and discussing marriage prospects with a matchmaker from the Empire. Thus, he saw no harm in revealing a partial truth—that there was indeed something slightly wrong with his commander's head.
Even so, Bianca did not let the veins bulge on her forehead. Showing one's emotions first in any situation was the mark of an amateur. Though she might not have dominated the imperial high society, Bianca had survived its cutthroat shadows as a matchmaker and broker. She was not about to fall for such cheap tricks.
What a joke.
The attitude and acting of the handsome man who introduced himself as Kreiss were so superb she almost wanted to put him on an imperial theater stage, but she looked past his performance to face the reality of the situation.
He avoided me under the pretext of being busy even after I sent word, and now he's on a request? He just left the city?
He was avoiding her. Why? Because she was from the Empire? Did he find her presence burdensome? If so, she would simply have to take a different approach.
It wasn't as if Bianca had come here on anyone's orders. She merely believed that the protagonist of the rumors spreading all the way to the borders of the Empire would make a fine addition to her list of achievements.
"I shall wait."
Clack.
The sound of her teacup meeting the solid rosewood table was sharp and final.
Bianca believed that as long as she could get him to talk, she could easily win the heart of a man who had done nothing but hold a sword his entire life. Such men might achieve outstanding results in their own field due to their devotion to training and discipline, but they knew nothing of other worlds—especially power, or what they could truly gain.
No bear hated honey. No merchant hated gold coins. And no man hated women.
This was Bianca's philosophy.
Of course, there would always be outliers with entirely different tastes, but she knew all too well that very few people deviated from her fundamental principles. Naturally, she was also aware of the Black Flower and the Gold Witch. However, what she could offer was far more than a simple holy matrimony.
"You are certainly free to do as you wish, but we are currently undergoing interior renovations in the castle, so accommodations are rather tight..."
Kreiss let his voice trail off. With just a slight droop of his eyes, he conveyed that while her stay would be an honor, the logistics were difficult. This man truly possessed extraordinary control over his expressions and gestures.
"Do not worry about that."
Bianca figured she could simply stay at an inn.
Kreiss watched Bianca and her guard depart. Behind him, Nurat and Luagarne stood as his own protection.
The Empire.
It was difficult to gather intelligence on what was happening inside the Empire from here. Although the visiting Countess Bianca Conti belonged to the Empire, she was not someone who resided in the Imperial Capital or the Imperial Palace.
The Gigant Mountains—larger than the Pen-Hanil Mountains and nicknamed the "Wall of God"—lay between the Empire and the Kingdom. The mountain range blocked the wind and clouds, dictating the climate of the entire region. According to myth, after one of the ancient gods sculpted those mountains and placed them on the earth, they allowed rain to drench one side while blocking it on the other, leaving it completely dry. It was a mythical explanation for a natural phenomenon where the mountains acted as a wall, stripping the moisture from the air before it could reach the other side.
Kreiss let his thoughts drift to the myth for a brief moment before snapping back to the present.
"What do you think?" Kreiss asked, looking ahead. He wasn't referring to whether the woman was an imperial envoy or a high-class madam.
"The woman shows no signs of training, but the man acting as her guard is an Associate Knight," Nurat answered.
"I agree," Luagarne added. "They said there are five guards in total, right? I saw them, and they're all similar. Not just in skill, but in temperament as well."
"Temperament?"
"It means they were taught by the same person. They bear the distinct marks of having trained in similar martial arts for a long time."
Kreiss had trained enough to defend himself, but he was nowhere near the level of an Associate Knight. Frankly speaking, looking at the people constantly popping up around Encrid lately, someone like him would have his head lopped off in a single slash. Of course, he had absolutely no intention of letting himself get into such a situation.
Luagarne puffed her cheeks and blinked a few times. She had stepped forward to act as a guard and size up the visitors as requested, but she had caught glimpses of a Will so refined that she almost doubted her own eyes. Of course, it was precisely because of people like this that she had chosen to stay here instead of following Encrid, the object of her curiosity.
"It is only a guess, but..." Luagarne paused to catch her breath. An attendant peeked his head through the doorway, waiting for Kreiss's word, so Kreiss raised a hand to signal him to wait. "If someone has systematized the process of awakening Will and devised a training method for it..."
"Then?" Kreiss prompted.
"It would be possible for people like them to appear in mass."
The Empire was more than just a great power; it was a realm ruled by the sole Emperor of the continent. The reasons for the Empire's strength? There were likely countless. Kreiss felt as though he had just caught a glimpse of one.
The mere fact that she could employ five Associate Knights as guards demonstrated the sheer power of the Empire. And this wasn't even some grand dignitary, but just a single noble visiting on her own whim. Since this wasn't an official visit, they couldn't be Associate Knights directly dispatched by the Empire. In that case, where did they belong?
They couldn't be mere mercenaries, which led to the conclusion that they belonged to a unit stationed in an imperial city near the Kingdom. No matter how powerful the Empire was, warriors of Associate Knight caliber wouldn't be wasted acting as bouncers for a gambling den.
From a single matchmaker, Kreiss was able to glean several pieces of information. Furthermore, as if she had no need to hide it, she openly brought them as her guards, making no effort to conceal their skill or identity. The actual military might of the Empire would be incomparably greater.
For a moment, goosebumps broke out over his skin, his balls shriveled, and cold sweat threatened to run down his spine. Kreiss exhaled a long breath and composed himself.
But I can't let myself be intimidated.
One day, he would build a city on the border of the Empire and the Kingdom, and the spherical devices atop the castle walls would radiate light. With a city of pleasure awaiting him, how could he succumb to fear?
The next visitor was a merchant from the south. The great southern nation of Richenstetten was officially a hostile state to the Kingdom of Naurilia.
Kreiss thought the Kingdom certainly had a lot of enemies. Come to think of it, it made sense. Any nation wishing to expand its territory needed a bridgehead, and this land was fertile, rich in grain, and situated at the very center of the continent. Looking back, it was a miracle this land hadn't collapsed yet, given all the chaos it had endured.
In the distant past, the Demon Realm had run rampant, causing monsters to swarm everywhere; more recently, there had been the rebellion of Count Molsen. Despite the great southern nation crossing the border to wage war multiple times, the Kingdom had miraculously held its ground.
The southern merchant who followed prattled on about this and that, but the bottom line was that if Encrid came to the great southern nation, he could marry a princess.
"Have you seen the Black Flower?"
Kreiss, finding it tedious, gave a vague excuse to reject the offer. He claimed that Encrid was extremely picky about a woman's face, so unless she was more beautiful than the Black Flower, it would be difficult. Since Encrid had dumped all of this on him before leaving, whether it caused a misunderstanding or not, fabricating the excuses for rejection was entirely up to him.
The conversation was brief, but it still caused a minor stir.
"So he's a man after all, huh?"
"I hear he's especially picky about looks."
The southern merchant had a loose tongue, and he wagged it to his heart's content.
At that very moment, Encrid was looking up at the sky, enjoying the autumn weather, lost in thought.
*
If a knight order was to be founded, it had to be filled with members. Was it enough to simply force them to join?
Surely not. Each of them had their own aspirations, their own Will, and things they wished to accomplish. He couldn't just force people to sit in those positions. If someone tried to do that to him, would he accept it? Not a chance. Therefore, the same had to apply to the men under his command.
Although there was an uproar in the capital, Nauril, over whether it was right to make all of them knights...
In the first place, none of them even said they would join the knight order.
It was a classic case of the recipient getting ahead of themselves when the giver hadn't even considered it. Well, he didn't care whether they made a fuss about it or not.
Through this train of thought, Encrid posed a question to all the members under his command.
"Rem, what is it you want to do?"
Before departing for the mission to rescue the Saintess, he had met with the madmen who had been with him all this time for something akin to an interview.
"I'm going to make them run with this in their hands."
A macro-level question had returned a micro-level answer.
"What is that?"
Since it was right in front of his eyes, Encrid couldn't help but ask out of curiosity.
Rem was holding a training axe that resembled a real weapon, but it had no edge and its center of gravity seemed completely off. A lump of iron sat where the blade should have been, and even the handle was solid steel. When Encrid took it and lifted it, the weight was no joke. It seemed like it could be used as a tool to train arm muscles, but the center of gravity was too terrible for even that.
Would running with something like this actually serve as training?
Hmm, actually, it might work.
He recalled Rem's recoil-free axe strikes, the foundation of which lay in controlling the weight entirely with one's own physical strength. While one couldn't perform every strike without recoil, being able to pull it off just once or twice as a trump card could be a life-saving secret technique.
What if all the soldiers learned to swing their axes that way? It would require a combination of talent and effort, but if it succeeded, the unit Rem was raising would be composed of truly terrifying bastards.
"Not bad," Encrid said, reflecting on his own training process and what Rem was trying to achieve. He spoke with a quiet note of admiration.
Rem was more serious about training than expected, and this method would benefit everyone. It didn't seem like something he had come up with overnight; one could feel the care put into this training method. He thought it would be good to try a similar training regimen himself later.
Of course, if Rem's squad members had heard this, they would have cursed him as a conscienceless ghoul of a bastard—regardless of his status as the respected Knight of the Iron Wall—and charged at him with axes raised.
Encrid turned his attention away from the training tool and asked again.
"Is it over once you destroy the Demon Realm?"
In the west, there was a Demon Realm called Silence, and Rem sought to erase it. But was that truly all he wanted? Would it really be over with just that? Was belonging to a knight order truly what Rem desired?
"What are you trying to say?" Rem tilted his head. Encrid occasionally—no, frankly, quite often—spouted strange things. This was no different.
The bottom line was this: I have created a knight order, and there is a place for you in it, but if there is something you truly desire, you are free to leave.
"What kind of bullshit is that? I’m the Vice Commander, aren’t I?" Rem asked back, wondering what kind of nonsense this was.
Encrid pondered for a moment before replying.
"There is no Vice Commander."
There were no positions other than the Commander. It couldn't be helped. He could not establish a position that would undoubtedly spark a conflict far beyond mere discord—one that would surely turn into an apocalyptic blaze.