Chapter 48
Chapter 48
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 48
Chapter Title: Mountain Lord (5)
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Whiiiiiing―
The icicles hanging from the eaves shattered the cold wind into fine pieces.
Due to the historic cold snap, even the northern monsters that usually rampaged around this time of year had holed up in their dens.
......But it was different for humans.
“Hup!”
“Heave-ho!”
“Hyah!”
The Meursault territory was buzzing with energy.
Merchants flooded the streets, fueling heated haggling, while soldiers in the castle's training grounds bared their upper bodies, sweating profusely as they drilled.
It was a scene unfit for the depths of winter under the East General's dominion.
Meanwhile.
In the administrative wing of Meursault Castle, a woman gazed out at the scenery.
“......”
Rorschach.
Large eyes, a sharp nose, flawless white skin without a single blemish.
Her appearance was straight out of a painting of a noble lady.
In a few more years, artists specializing in beautiful women would be dying to capture her on canvas.
Who could imagine this woman had been born and raised in the slums?
“......Boring.”
Rorschach's face was etched with deep worry.
All the policies she had devised had been resounding successes, greatly advancing the territory's military strength and finances.
Yet her expression grew darker by the day.
“Why hasn't he contacted me lately?”
She had made the Meursault territory prosperous, but not out of any special affection for it.
The administrative officials' suspicious glares turning to admiration and respect, the growing number of followers—none of it moved her.
Recognition, respect, loyalty—none of it mattered.
All Rorschach wanted was attention from one person.
“What if something happened to him?”
She murmured softly.
The person she thought of constantly these days.
She recalled their last conversation.
His signature dry tone, his calm voice.
“The reason I can kill criminals so easily is that I empathize far more with the victims than the perpetrators.”
“......”
“People like you and your parents.”
“......”
“Once you empathize with them with all your might, you have no strength left to empathize with the perpetrators.”
After that conversation, she saw him anew.
Until then, she had viewed him merely as a “brilliant man,” a “cold-blooded monster without blood or tears,” the “iron-blooded young master.”
But no.
His blood was iron-hot, like molten metal in a blazing furnace.
So scorching it incinerated the evil and impure, yet endlessly warm and merciful to the weak and good.
Knowing that made work strangely enjoyable.
Whether her subordinates' distrustful gazes turned to loyalty, or her superiors' unease to firm trust, she didn't care.
Even her salary skyrocketing and bonuses pouring in provided no real motivation.
Only his attention and praise moved her.
Sitting across from him amid their busy schedules to review achievements was her sole source of vitality.
Rorschach closed her eyes, recalling his voice.
That low, calm voice laced with chill, formed by his small, pretty lips moving delicately.
“Work diligently until the deadline. If you have time to change your underwear, I recommend reviewing one more document instead.”
“I only change this underwear once a week. I don't even have time to wash— I just wipe down with a wet towel. My body reeks of fermented cheese.”
“I didn't wash once after climbing out of the slums until before a banquet.”
“When did you last change your underwear?”
“Never wore any to begin with.”
“So that's why you dragged me up from the slums?”
“I told you from the start. Didn't I pay you properly?”
“Looking back, passing around beer was too cheap.”
“If you want something, just say it. I'll grant anything within my authority.”
“......I'll remember that.”
He had said he would grant any wish within his power.
And Rorschach wasn't greedy enough to wish for eternal life or world conquest.
“What I want is clear.”
She sighed, staring at the white horizon beyond the window.
“You have to come back alive for me to receive it or not.”
He had left on an expedition.
Destination: the Beauvoir abandoned mine, designated by the Empire as uninhabitable for humanity.
Rorschach recalled their conversation just before he departed.
“If I'm managing the merchant guild, what will you do now, Young Master?”
“Conquer.”
“Conquer? Where?”
“The foothills of Meurso Mountain, the abandoned mine zone. I'll reclaim it.”
“......Isn't that a sealed zone? The Empire designated it uninhabitable for humanity.”
“Whether it's habitable or not isn't up to the Empire.”
“Then who decides?”
“Me.”
......It was so absurd she almost laughed.
The Empire's Emperor was no pushover.
The mad conqueror who planted flags everywhere, claiming the whole world as his territory, had thrown up his hands at Meurso Mountain's Beauvoir Mine.
And he planned to subjugate it with a hundred dying prisoners?
“If anyone else said it, I'd call it insane nonsense.”
But Rorschach didn't think Federback's words were empty.
Even if reclaiming the whole Beauvoir mine zone was too much, she believed he could at least clear a path to the mine.
“Who knows? He might even uncover the identity of the monster that made Beauvoir an uninhabitable zone in the first place.”
That alone would be a monumental achievement.
Humanity still didn't know what had wiped out thousands of local villagers and three hundred knights sent to subdue it.
“......Federback. Please return safely.”
Rorschach murmured, watching her breath fog the window.
Spring was still far off, but her heart itched faintly.
[Kah—hak!]
A massive fountain of blood erupted from Ice Dragon Adara's maw.
The culprit behind turning the Beauvoir abandoned mine zone—nay, all of Meurso Mountain—into a human no-go zone had met its end.
Thud—!
Adara stuck out its tongue and collapsed.
Federback wiped the blood soaking his hair and trickling down his cheek from his face.
Sizzle—
Perhaps due to the extreme cold, the dragon's blood froze rapidly.
Frozen blood would make butchering difficult.
Federback hurriedly began processing the Ice Dragon's corpse.
“First things first...”
Inside Adara's maw, on the palate, protruded a single horn.
Unlike the other shattered and broken teeth, this one was unscratched.
“As expected, the fang.”
A half-breed dragon possessed just one such fang.
Federback stabbed repeatedly at the soft flesh of the palate with the dagger from his belt.
...Rip!
The long fang was extracted.
“Next, the scales.”
Federback crawled out of the dragon's mouth toward the lower jaw.
There, amid the other scales, grew one exceptionally large scale in the opposite direction.
Like the fang, it bore not a single blemish.
Weaving past scales cracked like shattered mirrors, Federback stood before the special scale under the jaw.
The reverse scale.
The single unique scale growing between Ice Dragon Adara's jaw and throat.
“This one rivals pureblood dragon scales.”
Pureblood dragons were covered in such scales, but Adara had only this one, guarding its throat's vital point.
Federback scraped away the surrounding flesh with his dagger and pried out the scale.
...Crunch!
Soon, Adara's fang and reverse scale were in Federback's hands.
He tied them with a leather strap and slung them over his shoulder.
“Forge the fang into a blade and the scale into a shield.”
Nice side income from the Beauvoir expedition.
“Finally...”
Federback slashed open Adara's chest cavity with his dagger.
Squelch— squelch— squelch— squelch—
Slicing into the belly revealed a cavernous interior.
Broken ribs stood like pit props supporting a mine tunnel.
Melted flesh and organs pooled up to his knees, sloshing like a swamp.
Federback followed the bluish glow emanating from the deep darkness.
Soon, a pearl-like orb emerged from the muck.
A small sphere the size of a thumbnail.
Inside the pristine, transparent bead swirled white frost.
“Dragon core. Can't leave this behind.”
The crystal formed from the mountain's essence absorbed over centuries by the Ice Dragon.
Commonly called a dragon heart, though it was far from an actual heart.
More like a gallstone from converting essence to mana.
‘Warriors who consume it gain a body as cold and hard as perennial snow. Mages gain an extra mana ring, priests hear the gods more clearly. Priceless treasure.’
Federback tossed it straight into his mouth.
His stomach burned hot.
Extreme cold was no different from extreme heat.
‘For now, just ingest it. Absorption later.’
Even at 3rd Circle, absorbing a dragon core was risky.
He planned to digest it properly in a safe place with full preparations.
‘Time to head back to the territory. Reporting Adara's death will reclaim the Beauvoir mine.’
An expedition ends with return.
Until successful return, it wasn't over.
Federback wriggled out through Adara's abdominal skin.
With the key parts done, only storage remained.
“Can't let scavengers eat it. Dragon corpses have many uses.”
Federback swept snow and ice chunks over Adara's body, burying it.
As long as it didn't stink, no scavengers would come.
The mountain's snow and ice hid and preserved the corpse.
Later, he'd bring soldiers for proper boning and processing.
Federback descended the mountain, fang and scale on his back.
With the dragon core swallowed too, he'd taken all he could from here.
......
However.
Even the meticulous Federback had overlooked one trivial thing.
That being.
“Y-Young Maaaster!”
A man descending the peak, tears and snot streaming.
“T-Take me too! You have to take me toooooo!”
Sancho, the goat-bearded survivor among the prisoners.