Chapter 101
Chapter 101
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 101
Chapter Title: 33. Army of Defiance Against Heaven (2)
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Crushing several pesky goblins underfoot, Quean turned his gaze toward the rear.
Beyond the horde of monsters in all shapes and sizes loomed the tiresome Blade Mountains.
Nothing special stood out. Even in broad daylight, the only suspicious thing was the unnaturally deep shadow cloaking the mountains.
"The monsters were chased here by those bastards!"
Quean belatedly swept his eyes over the monsters.
A motley assortment of monsters was running nonstop, their usual ferocity gone, replaced by faces pale with terror.
"I don't know what they are, but if they're making these vicious bastards tremble like that, they must be something horrific."
"Tell me about it!"
Quean cut him off. Black Spear Cavalry burst through the monster ranks, forming a gentle arc as they charged into the gates.
No sooner had they passed through than a heavy thud echoed, and the massive iron gates slammed shut.
"Heave!"
Quean hurled the Ilai heir toward the battlements.
"Tell the castellan everything you saw! And everything you went through!"
With that shout, Quean leveled his spear and charged at the pack of monsters that had slipped through the gates in that brief moment, targeting the trolls among them.
Glancing at the scene, the Ilai heir bolted up the stairs to the battlements like the wind.
The Winter Castellan stood right atop the walls.
"There are horrific things inside the mountains!"
As he reported breathlessly,
"If you're talking horrific, I'm looking at them right now."
The castellan silently pointed beyond the walls with a finger.
At the mountain fringes, in the deeply shadowed spots, silent pandemonium stirred in the darkness.
**
While the castle's north gate was locked in fierce combat with the surging monsters, a group of young nobles appeared at the south gate of Winter Castle.
Though they were a mess from battling through the blizzard, their noble bearing wasn't entirely obscured.
"A magic tower really exists in this backwater?"
"How should I know? Father hounded me, so here I am."
They were the scions sent by noble houses after much deliberation.
Bwoooo!
The relentless blare of horns made the young men frown.
"What's with all the racket since earlier?"
"Probably some training or jousting."
As they grumbled dismissively, the south gate soldiers beckoned.
"Gates are closing soon! Get in if you're coming!"
"The nerve of that impudent... Wait! Hold on!"
Seeing the gates begin to close without giving them time to shout, the scions dashed forward in panic.
"What house are you fr..."
Thud!
The thunderous boom of the closing gates startled a young man mid-sentence, and he scowled.
"Even for a frontier fortress, this is too chaotic."
"You're telling me. Feels like war's broken out."
The noble scions grumbled discontentedly but suddenly froze.
Bwoooo!
Amid the ceaseless horns came faint clamor.
Clang!
Kraaaah!
Leave the trolls to the knights! Rangers, clean up the rabble!
And savage roars.
The scions exchanged glances. Seeing each other's stiff faces, they knew exactly what their own looked like.
"What's this mess, and who the hell are these guys?"
Standing frozen like statues, someone addressed them.
Turning, they saw a beggar with matted, disheveled hair staring at them. His face was half-hidden, revealing only a sharp nose and lips.
"Ah, you guys, huh?"
Yet strangely, those lips alone conveyed an air of arrogance. It was uncanny.
"Sent some surprisingly intact ones, so I didn't recognize you at first."
The mysterious man muttered to himself and beckoned them.
"Come on."
"Uh, where to?"
One scion, cowed by his presence, hesitated.
The man pointed. Of all directions, toward the sounds of fighting.
"Follow."
His voice carried an irresistible command, and before they knew it, the scions were trailing him.
Kraaaah!
Pour it on! Douse 'em till they die!
Anyone showing their face gets it!
Can't you see blood on my hands?!
The deeper into the castle, the clearer the source of the uproar.
This was unmistakably the din of soldiers in battle.
Grrraaawr!
Against things emitting grotesque cries they'd never heard before, the soldiers were fighting tooth and nail.
Wandering dazed, they emerged into a wide plaza.
"Urk!"
The scions clutched their mouths, dry-heaving. One foolhardy one actually vomited.
Normally they'd tsk at the ugliness, but now they lacked the presence of mind.
Dozens of corpses littered the plaza, enough to shatter their sanity just looking.
Blue, yellow, black, red, green—all manner of monsters lay mangled, limbs hacked apart.
"Well, well. Quite the variety."
The mysterious man said indifferently.
"Um, over there..."
"Follow."
They tried to declare their status and escape the gruesome scene, but he offered no chance.
Overwhelmed by his eerie pressure, they followed once more.
The man climbed the battlements.
"Fire!"
"Ignore the trolls! Arrows are wasted!"
"Oil! Bring oil!"
"We're low on arrows!"
The sharpening shouts, mingled with foul stench and rancid oil, churned their stomachs.
They swallowed hard and followed him up the stairs.
Finally atop the walls, their breaths caught.
The soldiers' fervor and inexplicable emotions swirled atop the battlements like a storm. Inhaling deeply felt like it would scorch their insides black.
"Total shitshow."
The man clicked his tongue briefly and began berating nearby soldiers.
"You there, hold that oil cauldron steady. Wanna fry our own too?"
"Y-yes! Sorry!"
"And you! Hands idle? Battle over?"
"Firing!"
Growing slightly accustomed to the heat—enough to think—the scions finally wondered about the man's identity.
The Winter Castellan, maybe?
How else could he handle the soldiers so naturally?
But no.
"Huh?"
One officer commanding soldiers gaped at him.
"Your Highness?"
In Winter Castle, only one was called "Your Highness."
The firstborn of House Leonberger, the royal house their fathers had stressed recognizing: 1st Prince Idrian Leonberger, the castellan's maternal cousin.
They'd heard he still had boyish features.
He looked so different from descriptions that they hadn't recognized him.
"Where's Vincent?"
"He was at the east wall earlier."
"Get the situation from Vincent."
As the scions debated bowing, the 1st Prince strolled the walls like on a walk.
"Your Highness."
"Bit late, aren't you?"
The officers greeted him casually upon spotting him.
Unlike the tense soldiers glued to the walls firing arrows, they seemed relaxed.
Only then did the scions realize the wall's occupants divided perfectly into two groups.
The rigid with tension, and the calm bordering on nonchalant.
All who acknowledged the prince were the latter.
"Your Highness, what happened to your hair in just a few days?"
"Beats me. Puberty, I guess. Got any food? Came straight up without eating."
The scions' eyes widened.
While they barely suppressed vomit from the stench of rot, sweat, and blood,
The 1st Prince wolfed down a loaf handed by an unknown officer.
Not just bread.
Everywhere he went, he whined about hunger and scored food.
Jerky, potatoes, bread—he crammed it all in.
Ignoring the pervasive stench and tension.
After walking some distance, the 1st Prince halted.
"Vincent."
"Your Highness?"
The man directing the battle, Winter Castle's castellan, widened his eyes at the prince.
"When did you arrive?"
"Just now. Situation report first."
"They swarmed out of nowhere. Worried at first from the numbers, but as you see, it's less a siege and more mindless clawing at the walls."
The howls from below were so horrific, the scions couldn't even think of peering over.
Yet the prince and castellan chatted about it being perfect for training recruits—nonsense.
They seemed leisurely to the point of boredom.
But contrary to the scions' thoughts, they weren't entirely carefree.
"That's the problem."
"According to Ilai heir, even this monster frenzy is them fleeing those things."
The 1st Prince said from the wall's edge, his tone grave unlike before.
The scions unconsciously turned to follow his gaze.
And froze solid.
At the boundary of pristine snowfields and mountains, black shadows clumped like stains. Beyond them, denser darkness howled silently, straining to burst out.
The monsters' roars below paled in comparison the instant they saw it.
Hundreds, thousands of howls were nothing next to that distant, soundless clamor from the shadows—infinitely more terrifying.
It was something profane and ominous they'd never encountered.
Unversed scions couldn't even guess what it was.
Instinct alone screamed that its escape from the mountains would bring horror.
Magic tower? Mages? Wanna go home.
The shared thought in their minds.
Should we bail? No one knows who we are anyway.
They exchanged glances and began slinking away from the chaotic walls when,
"So who's these guys?"
"Looks like the direct heirs from the houses arrived today."
The prince and castellan, who'd ignored them till now, happened to glance their way.
"Talk about lucky timing. Arriving today of all days."
"No kidding."
The two chuckled.
Dazed by the laughter, the house scions belatedly knelt. Time to introduce themselves properly. But the prince gave no chance.
"While serving in Winter Castle, never utter your house names. You're recruits, treated like any other soldier."
"We came to become magic tower mages. Even if serving here, test our magical aptitude first..."
"Failed. None of you have the aptitude for mage."
After dragging to this hinterland for magic, this bolt from the blue.
Impossible to accept.
So they protested. Squeezing courage before the oppressively intimidating prince.
"I've already confirmed your lack of aptitude."
Absurd. How could a non-mage assess aptitude? Tower Lord's privilege abused.
"We trust Your Highness's insight, but sword to knights, magic to mages. So please, let us meet a mage to check our seeds."
A reasonable retort. But it soon rang hollow.
"You lot have zero aptitude as mages."
A clear voice interjected suddenly. Turning, a woman cloaked head to toe in pristine white mantle.
**
The woman in the white mantle revealed only a slender jawline and delicate lips. Yet I instantly knew who she was.
Her ethereal allure, hiding heavenly beauty beneath, perfectly matched someone from my memory 400 years ago.
"As the magic tower's master, I tell you: your magical talent and potential are inferior even to goblins."
Even her innocent tone spewing vitriol was identical.
"Who even are you to..."
The noble scions, entranced by her mystique, snapped to and protested.
Let us see a mage, test us directly.
I laughed.
"The mage you're seeking is her."
She was whom they desperately wanted to meet,
"She'll be the tower lord of the new northern magic tower."
The magic tower's master.
At my words, the scions went blank.
Even Vincent wore the same expression.
What's with him?
Poking his side snapped him out.
"She's the one Your Highness mentioned..."
"White Night."
"Vincent, lord of Ballerhard and castellan of Winter Castle. Pleased to meet you."
His oddly forceful voice made me frown.
Vincent's flushed face came into view. I'd thought battle heat, but no.
I chuckled dryly.
A man smitten by a 400-year-old sack of bones.
Pitiable or absurd? Hard to say.
Probably pitiable.
Ophelia, uninterested in men 400 years ago, wouldn't suddenly change as a lich.
"Hang in there."
"Yes? Yes!"
I shook my head at Vincent's booming reply.
Even amid screams and death, love blooms. Tragic that it's a fleshless ancient skeleton. Glancing at Vincent, I signaled Ophelia with my eyes.
There must be reason she revealed herself early. If I guessed right, it was due to the darkness huddled at the mountain fringes.
『The wails of the dead and hungry ghosts were too noisy; I had to come out.』
As expected.
Ophelia, hearing what the living cannot—the screams of the departed—had been drawn here.
"What are those things?"
I knew they bordered death, but details eluded me. Beyond death lay realms beyond my power and knowledge.
"Dead yet undying, alive yet not living: revenants that hate the living."
She answered aloud.
"The army of defiance against heaven."
『And we both already know who they are.』
Her telepathic words made me stiffen.
『Those who ascended the Frost Mountains bearing the True Dragon's will, but never descended.』
Staring at me, Ophelia said.
『They're the knights and soldiers of the expedition that climbed Frost Mountains 400 years ago.』