Chapter 159
Chapter 159
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 159
Chapter Title: Either a Bitter Enmity or Fate (1)
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He took off his helmet.
The biting northern gale rushed in as if it had been lying in wait. His face, flushed hot from battle, cooled in an instant.
The wind hitting right after removing the helmet felt that refreshing.
But it was only for a moment.
By the time the soldiers' cheers died down, his face had chilled to the point of freezing.
As he pressed his numb cheeks, a welcome face appeared.
"Your Highness."
Vincent, his dear Winter Castle Lord, stood before him.
"Up we go."
I hopped down from my horse. As if waiting, Vincent opened his arms and approached.
Tight.
His sturdy arms pulled me into an embrace. He paid no mind to the monster fluids and blood staining my body. I too gripped his shoulders firmly in return.
"I'm glad you returned safely."
It was a reunion greeting that came far too late, delivered in an embrace stiff and half-frozen from the bitter cold.
Yet it felt warm all the same.
I smiled pleasantly and praised his hard work over that time.
"You've done well."
"Done well? Ha. Did you just say 'done well'?"
Vincent's reaction to my greeting was anything but ordinary.
"Yes. Worked very hard indeed. All because someone stirred up a huge mess and ran off, leaving me to clean it up—it was pure hell. I even had to sift through paperwork while listening to the monsters' roars from atop the walls."
I took a hesitant step back as Vincent unleashed his words like a dam bursting.
Tight.
But Vincent wouldn't let go.
"Now that you're here, time to get to work."
"I just came straight from the fight."
"Yes. While Your Highness was away, I fought battles like that every single day. Against monsters... and mountains of paperwork."
Gazing at Vincent, who gripped my shoulders tight and worked his jaw, I had nothing to say.
"I never imagined Your Highness would swoop in on a wyvern and then vanish just like that."
"I didn't vanish..."
"Ah, right—you didn't vanish. You met the dwarves, had your sword inspected, even paid a visit to young master Ilai. Stayed all of two days, handled your business, and off you went. Quite efficient."
Vincent trembled with rage.
It seemed he still harbored resentment over my brief stop at Winter Castle before departing for Dotrin—I'd taken care of my errands and slipped away.
"If you're coming, at least say you're coming; if you're going, say you're going. Do you know how bewildered I was when I heard you'd come and gone, long after the fact?"
"I left a letter."
"Ah, that letter? 'Off to the Dotrin Kingdom, should take about a year.' Yes, I got that one loud and clear."
I clamped my mouth shut. Arguing would get me nowhere.
I sealed my lips tight and endured the barrage of resentment and nagging.
But even that has its limits.
Vincent's scolding truly knew no end.
Unable to take it anymore, I shot pleading glances at the one-eyed cavalry captain and the rangers standing quietly behind him.
"Ahem. I forgot to check on the warhorses."
The one-eyed captain muttered awkwardly to himself and turned away.
"You collecting those arrows properly? I said gather every last one, no exceptions! What, you think they fall from the sky?"
"They do fall from the sky. They don't sprout from the ground."
"That's... true, but that's not the point right now! Fine, I'll check myself."
Yorden and the rangers bantered in perfect sync before vanishing.
The knights had already bolted in a line without me even needing to look their way.
"It seems the Lord missed Your Highness dearly in your absence."
Arwen was the one who came to my rescue.
"However, you endured a grueling journey in Dotrin, raced here without rest, and dove straight into battle. Your fatigue must be immense. Lord, it would be wise to show some consideration and postpone the joys of reunion for now."
Vincent's lips twitched in dissatisfaction at her gentle urging, but he couldn't argue and finally released me.
"Become Lord and all you do is nag. That's exactly why I left just a letter."
I muttered under my breath, but Vincent caught it somehow and his eyes flashed. I sidled behind Arwen.
Arwen shook her head with an exasperated sigh at my antics.
"Rest for now. We can continue the rest later."
Vincent belatedly offered me respite.
But sadly, I couldn't accept.
"No. No time for that."
I gazed toward the mountains beyond the walls.
The monsters had retreated, but the presence emanating from deep within those distant peaks lingered unchanged.
A colossal malice and fury scraped relentlessly at my nerves.
"Summon all the commanders."
Vincent shed his displeasure and looked at me.
"Right now."
The commanders of Winter Castle gathered in one place.
Every face was set in grim resolve.
"First, let's hear what happened while I was gone."
At my words, Vincent gave a nod.
Yorden, now a major, rose from his seat and began recounting events.
The sudden celestial anomaly, followed by the monsters' rampage. And the battle.
In Winter Castle, where they clashed with monsters every year, witnessing them go berserk wasn't particularly unusual.
The only differences were the solar eclipse heralding their frenzy and the unprecedented scale and variety of the horde.
"Thirty thousand. That's staggering."
"Not something for the man who just executed a depth charge against that staggering host to say."
The commanders chuckled at Vincent's quip.
Their expressions remained somewhat stern, but there was no trace of fear toward the thirty thousand-strong army.
If anything, they brimmed with fighting spirit.
It felt less like desperate defiance born of despair and more like pure confidence.
As I let out a quiet sigh of admiration, Vincent spoke with evident pride.
"We've been steadily preparing for war all this time."
Seizing the moment, I inquired about Winter Castle's current troop strength.
Instead of explaining verbally, Vincent handed me a single sheet densely packed with writing.
I scanned the contents swiftly.
Ranger Legion (1,800).
Heavy Infantry, 2 companies (400).
Artillery, 1 company (200).
Black Spear Cavalry (104).
Winter Knight Order (112).
Other Knight Orders, 5 (484).
A total force exceeding three thousand—that was Winter Castle and Ballerhard's might.
And that wasn't all.
The reverse side listed roughly two legions from the northern lords, plus three knight orders.
Nearly seven thousand troops, and not just any troops: an elite force with an abnormally high proportion of knights.
They had every reason to be confident.
"Plus four Swordmaster-class knights."
I muttered softly while flipping the page.
The northern bastion, once as precarious as a flickering candle, had transformed into a roaring blaze no winter gale could extinguish.
The change filled me with such joy that my lips kept twitching upward.
I forcibly schooled my expression, clamping down on the grin.
The situation wasn't rosy enough for complacency.
Winter Castle had grown stronger, yes.
But so had its enemies.
I remembered it vividly.
The enemy aura that had dyed an entire mountain peak red—it was familiar.
The savage power wielded by those orc warriors of the dark green-skinned tribe: it was unmistakably fighting spirit.
Not some paltry sort, but the overwhelming fighting spirit of a being that bore a king's majesty, in their terms.
"It seems the orcs' king has appeared."
Vincent turned a rigid face toward me at my words.
"You're serious? If this is a joke, it's not funny."
Anger flickered across his stony features.
"I stuffed that bastard's head myself and hung it from the walls. You must have seen it on your way in. It's still there at the gates. And you're saying that monster hunkered in the mountains is him?"
Vincent lambasted my careless remark—how could a dead man return?
His anger was hasty, but I understood it completely.
Winter Castle had suffered an indelible scar at the hands of the orcs' king.
The lord had lost his father.
The rangers had lost comrades they'd shared years—even decades—with.
The knights had lost their rallying point and lived under the stigma of fleeing the field while abandoning their liege.
The castle itself had fallen, reducing them to rootless wanderers in the north.
Their creed of unyielding resolve and pride had crumbled, their ancestors' glorious history cast into the muck.
For them, the orcs' king was a forbidden name, not to be uttered lightly.
They refrained from erupting only because it was I who had spoken the cursed title.
They had lost much, and so had I.
"Explain."
Thus, rather than seizing swords in fury, they demanded an explanation from me.
"Just as there is more than one human king, there is more than one orc king."
A Warlord was the title of a monarch who led war legions among orcs qualified to rule.
Beyond warlords, orcs had numerous kings.
He was undoubtedly one of them.
I was certain.
"So you're saying we killed their king, and in the meantime, a new one cropped up?"
Vincent shot back, his face creased in a deep scowl.
His anger had ebbed, but skepticism lingered—he clearly struggled to buy it.
Small wonder: orc kings hadn't appeared for centuries, and now two in the span of three years.
I offered no persuasion, simply waiting.
I held my tongue, giving Vincent and the commanders time to digest my words.
After a long pause, Vincent spoke.
"If anyone else had said that, I'd have dismissed it as nonsense on the spot."
His tone bordered on irreverent, but the trust behind it rang clear.
"Damn it. What rotten luck. Maybe we pack up and migrate south."
Vincent grumbled half-heartedly before fixing his gaze on me.
"What will you do?"
I answered without a moment's hesitation.
"Fight and drive it out."
The answer had been set from the beginning.
Vincent nodded. The command staff accepted it as a given.
Anger and confusion had vanished from them.
They cared not how many foes or what manner of beings.
Only iron resolve to shatter the enemy and defend this land filled them.
My heart pounded.
Their fiery war spirit, unquenched even by the harshest winter, had ignited something in me too.
I tamped down the blaze threatening to erupt.
I couldn't afford to get carried away.
This wasn't Dotrin, and I was no longer some lowly mercenary.
This was the kingdom I had to protect; I was the one who had to lead them.
First, grasp the enemy.
If the greenskin king in the mountains was a Warlord, things might resolve easily—but if not, we'd need different preparations.
The issue was identifying the lurker's true nature, but fortunately, I had a way.
A being who pierced truths hidden in deception and saw forms undistorted in their essence happened to be in the north.
The Witch of the White Night.
Ophelia, bearer of the Divine Eye, would surely have already discerned the fiend's identity.
While Vincent and the commanders devised countermeasures against the monsters, I rose quietly from my seat.
And headed straight for the High Lich.
Fortunately, she awaited me in Winter Castle itself, not the newly built magic tower.
The thick shadows beneath the walls, the gloom cloaking the fortress corridors—they whispered to me.
Hurry to their master, they urged.
And so they guided me to her.
Ophelia stood at the castle's tallest spire.
"Ophelia."
She turned from gazing into the distance beyond the snowfields.
Not in human guise, but her true form as a gaunt High Lich, bones laid bare.
I started to greet her warmly but froze mid-motion.
"Your hand..."
Bony fingers protruded from her sleeve.
Five should have been there—only three remained.
No ring or pinky finger. Gone as cleanly as if they'd never existed.
『The price for glimpsing a truth not granted to me.』
She had told me once before.
The power of the Divine Eye was no omniscience.
Sometimes, one paid a price befitting the weight of the truth.
A groan escaped me.
To a mage, fingers were no trifling matter.
The magic circles and incantations they traced in the air were intricate beyond completion even with ten whole digits.
Yet she had lost two.
Her spells and circles could never be the same.
Perhaps their casting slowed; perhaps spells once wieldable now lay beyond her grasp.
Either way, the loss was no small thing.
What truth had exacted such a toll, I could not know.
『You seem curious. About what I saw.』
"Was it the past? Or the future?"
I nodded and asked.
『Past and future alike. Events already transpired, yet to unfold. That is the fragment of truth I glimpsed.』
In that instant, I was certain.
The truth for which she sacrificed her fingers tied to the recent eclipse.
The return of ancient entities—bound to the past, yet harbingers of upheavals to come.
『Do you wish the details?』
I shook my head.
Imparting truth to another exacted a steeper price than witnessing it alone.
I burned with curiosity over the anomalies and their veiled truths, but I wouldn't force further suffering on her.
If it were necessary, she would tell me first—I trusted that.
『Good. I couldn't withstand your stubbornness anyway.』
She let out a remarkably dry laugh.
『Your concern now is surely that king lurking in the mountains.』
"He's scattered his aura far and wide. You must have pinpointed its source."
She stared at me blankly.
Her expressionless skull betrayed no thoughts.
After a long moment, her jaw rattled.
She was laughing.
『How remarkably alike.』
I asked what amused her, what was so alike.
『Your question now is startlingly identical to your first.』
With that, her jaw rattled once more.
『My answer remains unchanged.』
"What?"
『Past and future. An entity that once existed, yet will be born anew.』
I frowned at the cryptic reply, and then she uttered the unforeseen.
『Gruhon. You already know him.』
"I do?"
『You've met him, no doubt. Though not in your current human form, of course.』
A chill raced down my spine at her words.
『He is ancient, just like you.』
I groaned.
The dark green-skinned lords I'd faced had all perished by my hand. I'd witnessed their ends with my own eyes.
All save one.
The nameless knight who fought alone until he faded, battling to his last breath yet failing to complete his verse: the pitiable avenger.
The being destined to cap the finale of the Poem of Revenge, now transformed into the Requiem Verse.
"Overlord."
That cursed grand sovereign alone—the only king whose end I had not beheld.