Our Lord Has Gone Mad (3)
"Hah— hah!"
One year since I reclaimed my sense of self as Kim Ian.
And three days left until the Eclipse arrived.
On the barren clearing of Seorigol, I was using the open ground as a makeshift training yard, drilling my so-called elite forces.
"Come on! Get that stance lower! The spear tip always points at the enemy's solar plexus — what good does stabbing the sky do you?!"
Despite my professional(?) coaching, my one and only infantryman hurled her spear aside, collapsed onto a rock, and started moaning.
"Aigoo… my back's completely shot, completely shot! Where's an old woman like me supposed to find the strength to swing a spear, you brat?!"
Her voice bristled with thorns.
This grandmother — Elara — had been a local resident since the day I first took up my post as lord of Seorigol… though there was something about her that felt more outsider than native. Foul-mouthed, with a twisted streak that loved putting other people to work.
The fact that someone like her had been hauled out to this clearing was, for all practical purposes, the result of my threats.
"If we pretend it isn't coming, we both die! Monsters are going to invade soon, I'm telling you!"
"Monsters, my foot. After getting chewed out that hard by your family, you've gone clean off the deep end! Tsk tsk! You've lost it — you've really lost it!"
Elara clicked her tongue and shook her head.
I'd spent a full year ranting about the Eclipse and coming disasters, but the world had been utterly peaceful. There was no reason for her to believe a word of it.
"Anya! At least you try a little harder! Are you just going to keep hiding behind that tree forever?"
My second unit, and sole scout. Anya had her whole body tucked behind a massive oak, with nothing showing but a pair of eyes full of wariness.
Silver hair and a sharp gaze. Anya, a snow leopard beastkin, was a child Elara had secretly taken in and raised. A creature of pure wild instinct, she listened to no one but Elara — and whenever I tried to approach, she would hiss and pelt me with rocks.
Today was no different. The moment I took a single step toward the tree, Anya bristled her fluffy tail straight up and bared her teeth.
"Grrrr…"
"Haaah…"
I scrubbed my face dry with a long, weary sigh. This was my army. A nagging grandmother and a disobedient little beastkin. In Seorigol — a place with neither knights nor soldiers, not even a proper farmer — this was the fruit of a full year of painstaking "training."
It was a comedy all its own.
"See that? Our lord has completely lost his marbles!"
"That old hag Elara usually doesn't play along — why's she indulging him and spoiling the lord's habits?"
Passing villagers each tossed in their two cents as they went by.
"Hey! 'Lord' is not some neighborhood kid's name!"
Even my scolding only made them snicker as they wandered off.
— Thud.
I thought I heard something hit the ground.
What else could it be?
The sound of a fief administrator's dignity hitting rock bottom.
"…This is just how they treat a backwater administrator, I guess."
They all knew it from the start, of course.
That I was a bastard son — essentially cast out by my family.
Ugh.
This is so frustrating.
It's not like I can just shout that I know the future.
If I did, the Inquisitors would show up and drag me straight to a witch trial.
…Wait.
If they drag me away, doesn't that mean I'd at least survive?
"Ah."
I'd forgotten the part where I'd get roasted to a nice golden brown.
And more importantly — as the administrator, I wasn't about to abandon my own fief.
As I stood there sighing in frustration, Grandmother Elara, still rubbing her knees, shouted at me.
"The sun's going down! Get inside, wash your feet, and go to sleep already!"
At her scolding, I nodded weakly.
There was no point holding them any longer. We weren't making any progress.
The sunset glow was settling over Seorigol's desolate landscape. Evening smoke rose from about fifteen earthen houses, looking almost peaceful.
Seorigol.
Utterly worthless. Running at a constant deficit. And yet the only legitimate property I owned.
If you ranked every fief on the continent, this place would almost certainly take first from the bottom.
No resources. No military.
If this were Teore, a status window like that would definitely have popped up.
I couldn't hire private soldiers. I didn't even have the money to put up a fence around the fief.
And in a situation like this, the Eclipse was coming.
"Does that even make sense? Seriously."
Just thinking about it made my teeth grind.
If this were still a game, I could at least have spent real money.
I almost didn't want to believe it.
Would the Eclipse really come?
It was a question I'd asked myself every day for a full year.
My memories of my past life were vivid beyond measure — but the reality in front of me was oppressively peaceful. What if all of it had been a nightmare, or a delusion? What if I'd simply gone mad?
Effect activated.
No. Always prepare for the worst.
Every time the doubt crept in, I steeled myself. I held myself together. If my memories were wrong, I'd just end up a slightly ridiculous administrator. But if they were right? The price of being unprepared was death. And a thoroughly horrible one at that.
Effect activated.
Effect activated.
After a full year of repeating that process—
Honestly, it took a lot to put so much as a crack in my mental state these days.
Compared to the days before I recovered my past-life memories — living like the discarded bastard son of a frontier family that I was — this was genuine, hard-won progress.
Maybe people really do grow stronger by getting ground down under hardship.
"Can I even clear this?"
In the Teore game, the standard strategy for the Eclipse episode was to gather heroes and hold the line. Heroes with powerful skills and stats, each filling their role, fighting the swarming monsters and sealing the rifts.
But right now, I didn't have a single hero.
Of course I didn't. The abandoned bastard of the Darkest family. A frontier lord at the northernmost edge of the continent that nobody cared about. No money, no renown, no connections — what hero would ever come looking for me?
…Should I run?
The thought flickered through my mind. Abandon this worthless fief and its uncooperative people, and flee south — or somewhere without a name. But I shook my head.
Seorigol was the only foundation I had, the only thing putting food on my table. Throw it away, and I'd be a penniless vagrant.
And if my memories were right, the situation was even more serious. Teore's main scenario often revolved around specific strongholds.
What if Seorigol turned out to be a critical location for the story going forward? The moment I ran, I might fall completely out of the game's flow. That was as good as a one-way ticket to a bad ending.
In the end, there was only one option.
Stay. And somehow hold on.
Click.
I heard the hour hand of a clock turn.
0 : 00
Another day gone. Two days remaining until the Eclipse.
"Goddamn world."
The curse came out on its own.
I almost wished I really had gone mad.
That my past life, the future — all of it — had been hallucinations and phantom voices.
That every look people had given me this past year had been right.
Even if every preparation I'd made turned to foam.
I honestly wished for that.
The Magic Tower, standing at the heart of the Empire.
For all its vast and imposing grandeur, the Tower was in the grip of utter chaos. The hurried footsteps of mages racing through the corridors and the raised voices never stopped.
"Is this data real? Did you actually analyze it properly?"
"I'm telling you it's correct. I ran it a hundred times — no, a thousand times!"
"Ha… ha?"
"Pull yourself together, Chief! This is not a measurement error! Chaos values are fluctuating sharply — across the northern continent, spanning countless regions!"
In the Observatory at the Tower's highest floor, the high-ranking mages gathered there could not hide their shock.
One of them — a young prophecy mage whose extraordinary talent had already made her famous — had precisely foretold a catastrophe that would arrive in two days.
The results of analyzing the flow of mana and reading the movements of the stars were unambiguous. This was no mere astronomical phenomenon. It was the beginning of a vast catastrophe that threatened the world itself.
"Report to the Emperor — report first!"
"We need to dispatch troops immediately!"
"Are we a knight order? Where would we get troops? And this range is completely uncontainable!"
Mages were supposed to be cold, composed beings.
For them to fall into this kind of panic was rare.
At least, not unless a legendary-scale disaster was bearing down on them.
Of course, even in the middle of that chaos, there were always a few who stayed calm.
In one corner of the Observatory, a mage who had been reviewing the data with an expressionless face quietly spoke up.
"What if we simply made it so this never happened?"
Quiet as the voice was, people locked onto his words.
A seasoned elder asked back.
"What do you mean by that?"
"We have a genius mage among us, do we not? One who can manipulate time. There's even a rumor she recently completed some remarkable research."
Cold, and laced with sarcasm.
Even so, there was reason in what he said.
"Linea Judith! Yes — if it's her, she might be able to reverse this observation result as if it never happened!"
Linea Judith. Genius of the Judith family, and a rising star of the Magic Tower who had reached an unmatched height in temporal magic.
If anyone could find a thread to cut through this crisis, it might be her.
Every gaze in the room turned to the wisest person in the Tower.
The Tower Master himself.
"I've already sent someone! However…"
Tower Master Alberto trailed off with a troubled expression.
"Linea's condition… hasn't been normal of late."
For the past year, Linea Judith had shut herself inside her research chamber and refused to come out.
She had already been far from normal since entering the Tower seven years ago — but according to those who had seen her, the past year had made her stranger still.
Witnesses said she had filled her room wall to wall with complex temporal coordinates and strings of characters that looked like the names of unknown people, and that she spent her days staring blankly at the landscape of some desolate land reflected in her crystal orb.
The Tower Master quietly held out a crystal.
A surveillance orb, for checking on Linea's condition.
Inside it, Linea Judith's figure was visible.
"……"
A face without a trace of expression. Linea seemed utterly indifferent to the uproar outside, or to the crisis facing the Tower.
Like someone whose entire mind was consumed by something more important than the end of the world.
While the whole Magic Tower seethed with dread before the omen of catastrophe, Linea Judith alone seemed lost in another time, another space.
And so Linea kept staring into the crystal orb.
Within the orb she watched, the windswept landscape of a barren fief was faintly visible — and standing there, the figure of a single man.