The Sweltering Heat (1)
After finishing the construction of the water channel, Chester and Monia began to live a truly secluded life inside their home. Aside from the very rare excursions to replenish their food supply, they spent almost all of their time indoors. Chester focused entirely on tending to the wound on his palm, while Monia spent her hours practicing under his tutelage. The biggest reason for their self-imposed confinement was, of course, the heat.
Just as Chester had warned before, the dreadful heat that had assaulted them on the sun-exposed plains now penetrated even the dense forest and deep shade. It was the true beginning of the sweltering season. The air grew so hot that even sitting still and breathing felt like a chore.
"If we had gone outside, we would have died," Monia muttered.
"No kidding. It's worse than I expected."
Several plants withered and died in the heat, and beasts that had been too slow to find shelter from the changing weather perished as well. Normally, a heatwave of this intensity would have dried up any river, but fortunately, the Floating Island naturally filtered seawater for its ecosystem, meaning the water supply never ran dry. This was a massive stroke of luck for the two of them. If the water had dried up, or even if the volume had decreased to the point where it couldn't flow into their channel, all the hard work they had put into building it would have been for nothing.
"How is your hand?"
Early in the morning, Monia, who had stepped out to get a drink of water, spotted Chester washing his wound with the water flowing from the channel and asked.
"Yeah. It's gotten a lot better."
Fortunately, the wound hadn't become infected and was healing smoothly. The flesh had filled in, and the skin was in the final stages of closing up. At this rate, as long as he didn't do any rough labor that might reopen it, it would heal completely on its own.
"That's a relief."
Once Chester finished washing his hand, Monia filled a canteen and took a drink. Even though they could now easily obtain water right at their doorstep, Chester didn't repurpose all of their water containers for other tasks. He kept them filled as a backup in case the channel ever got blocked, and also to carry with them when exploring the forest.
"Then I'll be able to climb trees soon too!"
"If you learn properly, that is."
"What do you take me for? I can do it just fine! I can climb up and down the ladder as much as I want now!"
"Oh, really? Impressive."
Chester smirked at Monia's confident declaration.
Climbing a ladder and climbing with your bare hands are two completely different things, though.
"Anyway, come on! Let's go see my archery skills! Today is the day I hit every single target!"
"Alright, alright."
Chester took a thin wooden board split from a log, drilled a hole in it, tied it with a rope, and hung it from a tree branch. Next, he took some charcoal and roughly sketched a target on the board. Once that was done, Monia stood a short distance away from the target, holding her bow with an eager expression.
"Alright! Watch closely, because I'm going to hit them all today!"
"Sure. I'm watching."
Watching Monia raise her bow and take her stance, Chester was reminded of the Duke. The Duke had loved hunting and archery, but his skills had been utterly dreadful.
I wonder what he's up to right now.
Chester knew the Duke's greed all too well. It was because the man possessed eyes like a starved beast newly awakened from hibernation. Though he hid his true nature behind the prestige of his title, his unique charisma, and his superb self-control, Chester could see right through it. They were the exact same eyes he had seen in his childhood—the eyes of a bear devouring a knight, a sight he could never forget.
Now that an opportunity has presented itself, would a man like him wait patiently? Not a chance.
He was probably waging war against the kingdom at this very moment. That was what Chester believed.
Horses galloped, shaking the very earth, and the roars of soldiers echoed thunderously through the sky. Although the Duke's family was based in the royal capital, the Duke had intentionally relocated to his villa for a time, preparing to strike the royal castle from the outskirts. His reason was simple: unless he dismantled the kingdom's forces from the periphery first, he could never defeat the royal army within the capital itself.
The royal army would never unleash its hidden power against a pathetic force like a rebel army, but the moment the Duke launched a coup within the capital, they would not hesitate to use it. It was a secret passed down solely to the royal family and the Duke's family. Naturally, when planning this rebellion, the Duke had revealed this truth to his closest noble allies first. Publicly, however, he blinded and deafened the ignorant nobles with the grand slogan of "Let us write a new founding myth together."
To participate in the creation of a nation once more and leave their own footprints in history—the allure was irresistible. Thus, the Duke's army, which had marched out from his villa, advanced with unstoppable momentum, drawing closer to the capital than any other force. The primary reason for this rapid advance was that the Prince had failed to risk his life on the front lines early on, causing nobles who had lost faith in the royal family to easily defect to the Duke's side. The second reason was even simpler.
"Damn it...! Is that really the same Duke who used to laugh it off after missing prey just five meters away?!"
The Duke was simply too strong. Of course, no matter how powerful a single individual's martial might was, it had its limits. Even the Commander of the Royal Knights would eventually fall if pelted with arrows from afar. The true strength of the Duke lay in the knighthood he commanded.
These were boys handpicked solely for their talent, completely disregarding social status. Back in his youth, before inheriting the title of Duke, he had gathered these young boys and trained them, raising them to be his personal knights. Though they possessed separate bodies, they moved as a single organism under the singular brain of the Duke—molded into a living entity known as a "knighthood."
Along with their training, they were provided with warhorses bred over generations from carefully selected steeds to maximize their aggressive traits and physical capabilities. The ancestors of these horses were the very mounts the Duke had ridden during the founding war—miraculous messenger horses known as the "Bridge of Life" for their swift hooves and tireless muscles, which had crossed vast distances to deliver crucial battlefield intelligence and save endangered allies time and time again.
With handpicked talent, elite mounts, and weaponry forged using the latest foreign techniques, the Duke had established his force. He chose the dragon as their symbol, calling them Dragon Knights, and named this elite order the Sky Knights. Their role was simple: to stand at the absolute vanguard and carve a path forward.
Utilizing their overwhelming breakthrough power and endurance, they pierced through various points of the battlefield throughout the war, crushing the enemy and opening paths for their allies. The places the enemy could least afford to lose. The places the allies absolutely had to breach. They advanced toward the most heavily fortified and perilous locations, utterly obliterating them. Although a besieging force typically required several times the numbers of the defenders, the Sky Knights alone created a disparity in military power that rendered such rules obsolete.
The nobles who had grown close to the Duke through hunting, knowing him as a man who couldn't even catch a single rabbit, were utterly dumbfounded. The knights, who initially wore beautiful blue-silver armor, were drenched in the blood of their enemies in an instant. They were not slow enough to be targeted by cannons, and even when arrows rained down on them like a storm, their armor—made of some unknown material—refused to pierce.
Whenever the enemy tried to devise a strategy to trap them, the Duke anticipated it and turned it against them. When they pitted their own knights against his, the Sky Knights crushed them head-on with overwhelming power. Their advance was unstoppable. No one could stand in the Duke's way.
"T-They've already made it this far?! Damn it, what is everyone else doing?!"
"Your Highness."
And so, the Duke's unstoppable knights eventually arrived before the fortress commanded by the Prince.
"Ah, aaaaah...!"
As Jordy trembled in sheer terror, the Royal Knight—who had been appointed by royal decree to serve as Jordy's military advisor, bodyguard, and instructor in tactics and strategy—placed his hand on the hilt of his sword and spoke.
"Your Highness."
"Eek!"
"Do not show such unsightly weakness. The moment a commander succumbs to fear and displays such a pathetic sight, the morale—the very heart of the army—will crumble."
At that quiet reprimand, the Prince nodded frantically in terror.
"I-I understand. I was wrong!"
"Your Highness."
"I was wrong, I tell you! I'll reflect on it! I'll do this properly!"
"..."
When he had first set out for the battlefield, he had lacked any real sense of reality. He had thought it would just be a minor punishment and that he would soon return to the safety of the royal castle. But things were different now. The love-filled dream he had clung to until recently had vanished, replaced by a grim reality of death and bloodshed staring Jordy right in the face.
"Ah! I missed again! Why does it keep going wide?!"
"You know, your archery skills really do resemble the Duke's."
"Urgh...! No way! How could I possibly resemble a man like him?!"
Chester looked at the target and the arrows that had either flown off in random directions or lay scattered on the ground.
"Oh, but you grazed this one."
"What? Really?"
"Yeah. Look."
Chester picked up one of the targets and pointed. For the record, the targets Chester had drawn featured the faces of the three people Monia despised most: Tiara, Jordy, and the Duke. Unfortunately, she had completely missed the Tiara and Duke targets, but by some stroke of luck, she had managed to graze the Jordy target.
"Wow! It really did!"
Monia beamed, seeing that her arrow had grazed the right arm of the Jordy drawn on the target.
"Alright, come here. I'll help you adjust your stance again."
"Okay!"
As Monia stepped closer, Chester wrapped his arms around her from behind, holding her hands to guide her into the proper archery stance. Enfolded in his embrace, the two spent the rest of their time practicing their shooting.