Chapter 266
Chapter 266
Iron Emperor - Chapter 266
Two figures lay atop the ruined hill, their entire bodies stained crimson.
From the rise and fall of their bellies, both were clearly still alive.
"Dammit."
A low groan slipped from Ryu-hwa's lips. Beside him, Dupyo scowled and grumbled.
"Nngh. We tied."
"Tied, my ass. We'll call it your win. That settles my business here."
Ryu-hwa answered Dupyo curtly and pushed his upper body upright. Using his ink mace as a staff, Dupyo levered himself up, arched an eyebrow, and asked.
"What do you mean, your business?"
"What do you think? I was pissed, and watching you run wild like a damn fool having the time of your life pissed me off even more. I wanted to beat you half to death."
"What?"
Dupyo stared at him, incredulous.
But Ryu-hwa, with the air of a man who didn't care whether Dupyo was watching him or not, kept prattling on.
"Son of a bitch. Some bastards have all the luck. Meeting such a pretty woman, grinning like an idiot. Dammit, if I'd only realized a woman like that existed a little sooner. Goddammit, I should've beaten you worse so you'd have been at least a little deflated, not strutting around with that stupid grin."
"......."
The answer was simple.
'What's he got that I don't!'
That infantile jealousy had ignited, and as if pouring oil on the fire, the ever-grinning sight of Dupyo had simply driven Ryu-hwa to pick a fight. The result of it all was that he'd wanted to invent an excuse and beat him up, since his reason for simply attacking him outright would've been too flimsy.
"Heh heh heh."
"Don't laugh, you big oaf!"
Dupyo, for whatever reason, was grinning and chuckling, and Ryu-hwa spoke to him curtly. Having approached at some point, Dupyo slung an arm over Ryu-hwa's shoulder and spoke with a grin.
"I've been invited to a meal today, so come along with your big brother here."
"Looking like this?"
"We'll just swing by the barracks and change clothes."
"Well then, I suppose I'll go see your lady."
"Keh, she's your sister-in-law."
As if they hadn't just been fighting, Dupyo and Ryu-hwa bickered their way down the hill.
When Samdopyo and Mong Ryu-hwa returned to the barracks, it was Buyeo Gi-yul, impeccably dressed, who greeted them. Giyul still looked at the two of them with wary eyes.
"Have you two been fighting a war?"
"Heh heh heh, go on and play with the kids."
"Keh heh, isn't this the world of men!"
At Giyul's dumbfounded question, the two of them, in perfect sync, started teasing him. But to Giyul's eyes, their behavior seemed even more bizarre.
'Their symptoms have gotten worse....'
A glint of pity flickered in his eyes.
"Now you two are playing around as a pair. Tsk tsk tsk."
As Giyul clicked his tongue and stepped out the door, Dupyo shouted after him at the top of his lungs.
"Hey, fellow trainee! Where are you going?"
"Somewhere without my fellow trainees, so I can eat in peace."
He answered brusquely and walked out without a backward glance. At that sight, the two of them giggled for whatever reason and then, with arms around each other's shoulders, whispered conspiratorially.
"It's just the two of us going. Just the two of us."
"Yeah."
Having reached a consensus, they draped their arms over each other's shoulders and let out bizarre laughter.
The wounds on their faces couldn't be helped, but after healing their bodily injuries and changing into clean clothes, Samdopyo and Mong Ryu-hwa stood before Jeylia's house. A savory aroma drifted out past the front door.
"Woah, isn't that the smell of maekjeok?"
"Heh heh, the woman who'll be your sister-in-law has some skills. Even when I've gotten leftover meals in passing, I thought they were delicious, but the scent in the air today is something else."
"You big oaf, you're bragging about your lady already?"
"Heh heh heh heh!"
Even with Ryu-hwa's scolding, Dupyo burst into booming laughter, whatever being so amusing. His laughter must have been heard inside, because the sound of children rushing out came through.
The door swung wide open, and Jenny was the first to race out and cling to Dupyo.
"Mister Jin-cheon!"
"Oh-ho, our Jenny!"
After deftly scooping up the charging Jenny into his arms, Dupyo entered the yard with Ryu-hwa. Jeylia, coming out of the kitchen carrying dishes, gave him a radiant smile.
"You're here, Jin-cheon."
"Oh my! Let me take that."
With Jenny still perched on his shoulder, Dupyo hastily took the food from Jeylia's hands. At that moment, a voice came from the doorway to greet Dupyo and Ryu-hwa.
"How the hell do you bastards know about this place?"
"Huh?"
"Eh?"
The person emerging through the door was Buyeo Gi-yul, who had left earlier to go eat. Dupyo and Ryu-hwa, perhaps even more shocked than Giyul was, stood there speechless, their mouths hanging open.
"Giyul oppa, this is Jin-cheon, the one who saved Jenny."
"......."
"......Oppa, she said......."
Hearing Jeylia's introduction, Giyul stared at Dupyo with flabbergasted eyes. And Dupyo and Ryu-hwa, completely frozen in place, simply muttered the word "oppa" under their breath.
"Dupyo, did you change your name?"
Giyul shook his head with a baffled expression, sighed, then wrapped an arm around Jeylia's shoulders and stood before the two of them.
"I'd put off telling you two, since you've been acting weird lately, but the timing's good. We're getting married soon."
"KHEU-HUH-UNG!"
"Wh-what the hell!"
No sooner had Giyul finished speaking than Dupyo let out a howl like a huge sobbing bear and bolted out the door.
At Dupyo's sudden outburst, Giyul and Jeylia turned toward Ryu-hwa, their eyes demanding an explanation.
"Kuh-heuk."
Instead of the answer they wanted, thick teardrops fell.
At this point, it had gone beyond the limits of bewilderment. Before Giyul and Jeylia could even ask anything, Ryu-hwa, too, wheeled around.
"Hey, why are you all......."
"Kuh-heueuk! Dupyooo!"
It was Ryu-hwa, sprinting in the direction Dupyo had fled while wailing wretchedly. In the empty yard, Giyul, Jeylia, and the five children simply watched the two men recede into the distance.
"I told you. My fellow trainees have been acting strange lately."
Giyul's voice, laden with complicated feelings, was consoling Jeylia and the children. Beneath the bright autumn sky, Dupyo's first love lay in ruins.
And then.......
Thud.
A lush bouquet tumbled across the ground.
"Dammit. Just today, I'd resolved to finally speak to her......."
The man who had been standing beside the wall of Jeylia's house lowered his head weakly and turned back. Peculiarly, a slightly curved long blade hung from his waist.
That day, amidst Giyul's happiness, Samdopyo, Mong Ryu-hwa, and a certain nameless man all suffered wounds of the heart.
* * *
The sad love story of Samdopyo and Mong Ryu-hwa, who had been hauled in as the main culprits behind the destruction of the hill behind the training grounds, was summed up by Go Jin-cheon in a single word.
"You put on quite a show."
Chapter 86 — That Which Each Protects
People were shouting at the top of their lungs, and what's more, they were even dancing jauntily.......
The wedding ceremony of Buyeo Gi-yul and Jeylia, held at the very end of autumn, was a boisterous affair.
Of course, there were those who shed tears, but relatively many people laughed joyfully. This day, Giyul's marriage was attended by the Yeolje Go Jin-cheon himself, as well as Eulji and even Yunias, all of whom offered their congratulations.
In reality, Giyul's standing could be described as that of a high-ranking noble within Gauri, but the reason Jin-cheon and his whole family had mobilized and celebrated with such exceptional grandeur was to dispel the anxiety over the coming war.
Not only that, but it was also to boost the morale of the soldiers who had toiled so hard.
Still, morale-boosting was one thing; the money that went into preparing the food distributed that day was staggering.
Nearly a hundred thousand soldiers were fed meat. And units whose deployment on the expedition was confirmed were even given alcohol. These were not negligible quantities. Anyone with even a little sense could grasp the scale of it.
For Gauri, material wealth was always what they lacked most, and pulling off such a grand feast without hesitation was more than enough to confuse any spies watching them.
Seeing Jeylia and Giyul's wedding, Dupyo's shoulders had slumped. Ryu-hwa, who had rapidly grown close to him, approached and offered a consoling drink.
"Drink up."
"Keh, fine. Might as well eat and drink before I die."
Dupyo knocked back the drink Ryu-hwa had poured in one gulp, then crammed an entire piece of meat he'd picked up into his mouth.
"Tch, even so. Is eating really how you handle this?"
Perhaps because his mouth was stuffed full of meat, Dupyo didn't answer Ryu-hwa's scolding and merely glanced at him, his jaw working furiously.
"Tch. Tried to stuff too much in at once, huh. Anyway, Ryu-hwa, what money was all this prepared with? Just a few months ago they were agonizing over war funds."
"Well, I don't know the details exactly. Pfft."
When Dupyo, tearing at his meat, asked where all the food had come from, Ryu-hwa pulled the liquor bottle toward himself and snorted.
"Why're you laughing?"
"Nah. I heard they're throwing this feast by selling bottles. Something like that."
At Ryu-hwa's words, Dupyo frowned and focused solely on his food. Ryu-hwa spoke again.
"I don't know the exact details, but it seems the war funds problem has been cleanly solved."
"Mm. Well, that's good."
Full-scale exploration hadn't yet begun, but the Sirens already knew the locations of the vast majority of the shipwrecks resting on the sea floor. A few spots served as lairs for giant sea monsters, but those were an extreme minority.
The Sirens had little reason to venture into the human world and were reluctant to do so, which was why they'd treated the treasures of the shipwrecks like pebbles on the roadside.
To cover the most pressing needs, Go Jin-cheon had Pale collect tableware made of gold, gold bars, and the like. Naturally, they'd also retrieved the empty bottles from the thousand-year-old Palasium wine they had drunk. The empty bottles themselves held great value.
Items of immense value kept emerging, but the reason they preferred gold bars and similar objects was that those could be converted to cash the fastest. They sold them primarily to the Duchies of Hessen and Ssen, located between the Federal Empire and the Maritime Empire.
It was easier for pirate ships disguised as merchant vessels to move, and during such unstable times as these, purchasing necessary supplies from duchies, which were at relatively less risk of war than the Federal Empire, was simpler.
Of course, they were still in the process of accumulating the needed supplies. Purchasing everything at once from one place would easily draw suspicion, and releasing too much wealth at once would also invite suspicion.
Spending money, as it turns out, isn't easy.
"Mister Dupyo!"
"Hm?"
Jenny's voice reached Dupyo's ears just as he was lifting a whole jug of liquor to his lips.
Glomp!
"Oof!"
Before Dupyo could even turn his head, she bolted over and latched onto his neck. Then, as she always did, she scrambled up and perched on his shoulder.
"Heh heh, aren't you adorable."
Even though Dupyo's ruse had been exposed, Jenny's devotion to him hadn't changed. While Buyeo Gi-yul and Jeylia were swarmed by people, the children had been darting around and spotted him, racing over. The children, arriving one after another, grabbed Dupyo and pulled him along by the hand.
"It suits you well."
"Heh heh heh, Jenny. When you're all grown up, you come marry Mister Dupyo."
"Okay!"
"Pff-hahaha!"
At Jenny's huge, vigorous nod, Ryu-hwa burst out laughing, and the children ate happily.
"Whew, finally shook them off."
"You made it?"