Chapter 80: Advent (4)
Chapter 80: Advent (4)
"Miles, taken out in one hit?"
The one who'd been knocked unconscious was among the most skilled fighters in their group. But it wasn't strange.
Homi had never received formal knightly training, but she had trained diligently every day, and her natural physical abilities were exceptional.
She might not have been trained with cold steel, but in unarmed combat Homi had no equal in Eugene's unit.
Sniff, sniff.
Homi's pert nose twitched adorably.
The men before her lacked the smell of iron, maintenance oil, and the distinctive hand-scent that soaked deep into weapon grips.
She signaled that the men were unarmed.
'We'll have to take them alive.'
Eugene gave up on drawing his sword. Before worrying about ransom, there seemed to be plenty of information to extract from them.
"What are you bastards doing here?"
"I am Eugene of House Meyer, a knight attending the celebration at His Grace Duke Ismar's invitation. Who are you?"
Eugene's straightforward introduction only flustered the Emperor's knights further.
"W-we are... uh..."
Their opponent had just introduced himself confidently in a nobleman's accent.
Lying that they were travelers would shame them as knights, but saying, 'We are here on the Emperor's secret orders to commit terrorism,' would be even more humiliating.
"You fools! Just rush them!"
A middle-aged knight clicked his tongue at his hesitant comrades and rushed in.
Rigorous knightly training also included close combat.
The man who had carelessly taken a kick to the face and gone down looked pathetic to him. Surely he could handle one slender woman.
But Homi easily caught the knight's fist and wrenched it backward.
CRACK!
"Aaaagh!"
The back of the middle-aged knight's hand folded until it met his wrist, sending excruciating pain through him.
Homi drove a fist into his exposed jaw and knocked him out in one blow, just like Miles.
"Sir Paulson!"
"Damn it! That bitch is insanely strong!"
Realizing this was no time to be fussing over honor, the knights attacked all at once.
But their unarmed skills amounted to little more than techniques learned to support their swordsmanship.
THUD!
WHAM!
Overwhelmed by the man and woman who dominated them in both technique and sheer strength, everyone toppled like bowling pins.
They were a knight and squire who had trained together for nearly ten years. Covering each other's blind spots as they fought, the pair looked almost as if they were dancing.
"Sir Simon! What are you doing just watching?!"
Simon was not the kind of mage who could instantly bring his magic to bear in a situation like this.
Besides, a man in a monk's habit stood at the doorway with one hand aimed at him.
"Leave that mage to me."
Dangerous power gathered in the man's burned hand, enough to take Simon's life at any moment.
Meanwhile, the others recoiled at the monstrously strong knight who had grabbed one of their comrades by the ankle and was swinging him around like a club.
"You monster!"
The knight barely dodged his airborne comrade, only for Homi to exploit the opening with a low kick. Agony like the back of his knee had been severed robbed the leg of its strength.
SNATCH.
Homi seized both cheeks of the kneeling knight and drove her knee straight into his face.
THUD!
The knight went down spraying blood from his nose. Homi turned away and dusted off her hands.
At the brutal sight, Eugene unconsciously rubbed his own cheek.
Those ruthless hands hardly seemed like the same ones that lovingly stroked his face when she shaved him.
"?"
"No, it's nothing."
Eugene laughed awkwardly at Homi's expression, which plainly asked why he was looking at her like that.
"I surrender."
Simon had simply kept both hands raised from about halfway through the fight.
'Damn it. This wasn't the time to be worrying about that damn summoner.'
The mercenaries Haind had called arrived and tied up Simon and every unconscious knight tightly.
A short while after Eugene had slipped away, the tournament was halted.
"I declare an evacuation in the name of Ismar! Guide anyone in a panic to safety! Anyone who disobeys will be punished severely!"
"Noooo!"
The lower-ranked knights who had not yet gotten a chance to show what they could do wailed at the duke's order.
"His Grace has authorized a reasonable amount of force. If someone refuses to move, beat some sense into him and make him move."
"Move them out slowly! If even a few people go down in a heap, everyone behind them will trample them!"
Knights and soldiers shouted, trying to bring order to the crowd that had fallen into confusion.
Flash!
But it was not easy when the time between lightning strikes kept shrinking and the world flashed white again and again.
Screams erupted from all directions, and plenty of people simply collapsed where they stood or lay flat on the ground.
"Mommyyy!"
Even soldiers authorized to use force could not bring themselves to touch a mother lying over her child protectively.
'I should've acted sooner.'
Duke Ismar regretted ignoring the unease he had felt at the beginning—the warning from his own instincts.
The weather officer near him had gone beyond pale and looked half-dead.
The city guard was thrown into chaos as well.
"Call up everyone who's off-duty, everyone on leave!"
The emergency bell summoning every armed man in the city rang out loudly.
In truth, even without sounding it, most were already dashing to their respective posts of their own accord.
Good pay and working conditions made competition fierce, which in turn maintained excellent discipline.
Several fiefs whose lords had died in the recent Northern Civil War had also fallen into the duke's hands. Mercenary captains hungry for advancement could not help growing restless.
-If I distinguish myself, I could become a lord too!
-If I can just receive even one small village...
They all dreamed of becoming true nobles and kept their subordinates on an extremely tight leash.
"What's going on?"
"Did a large monster appear or something?"
The soldiers who came running in breathlessly wondered what had triggered the emergency muster.
With the Emperor Faction army and the pirates both defeated, they could not think of anything that qualified as a crisis.
But the men already on duty only said, 'You wouldn't believe me if I told you,' or, 'You'll understand when you see it.'
"This is insane..."
The soldiers who climbed the walls were aghast.
"Am I dreaming?"
They all rubbed their eyes and stared out at the plains beyond the city.
A majestic structure that seemed beyond human construction looked down on them arrogantly.
Rostock had some of the tallest walls in all Roman, yet the guards still had to crane their necks far back to look up at it.
"Is that a castle? Or a ship?"
"It definitely looks like it's made of stone, though."
"Look at the top. See the zigzag-patterned battlements, just like ours? That thing is a castle! It's the Wandering Castle from Bonyard!"
A soldier from Bonyard shouted, overcome with excitement.
Its blunt yet pointed rectangular shape resembled a ship, but its texture and overwhelming presence unmistakably belonged to a castle.
The black clouds that had filled the sky receded as quickly as they had come.
HISSSSS.
Warm sunlight poured down, beginning to drive away the void-like cold clinging to its surface.
The soldiers had the illusion that they were watching a single colossal dragon basking in the sun.
"Oooh..."
Heat haze and mist rose from the frozen castle, making it seem as though the structure itself were breathing.
Duke Ismar's meeting room was packed with nobles. Even regional lords had come to the city for the festival and tournament.
Quite apart from the duke's summons, they were all desperate to know what this unprecedented event meant.
"The Wandering Castle?"
"Yes, Your Grace."
Duke Ismar was astonished at Eugene's answer.
"There is no doubt. It is the last legacy left by the ancient kingdom. I saw an identical model in Bonyard."
"What did your mages say?"
"They share my opinion."
The authority of the advisors at Eugene's side was nothing to dismiss.
Varda was the Sage of the Forest, whom every noble longed to meet. Marbas was likewise a great summoner whom countless religious orders wanted as a guest lecturer.
"Well! It sounds absurd, but there it is, looming right in front of us."
"I used to pride myself on roaming the continent in my youth and having all kinds of remarkable experiences. Looking at that makes every one of them seem trivial."
The nobles chuckled hollowly among themselves.
The immense structure that had appeared amid the lightning storm possessed a grandeur that could only be explained as a legacy of the ancient kingdom.
"Who else could have raised so majestic a castle? Even the dwarves could not achieve such a feat."
"Ahem!"
Several dwarven nobles present shifted uncomfortably but could not bring themselves to object.
"Sir Eugene, on behalf of the North, thank you for capturing the Emperor's spies. Without you, we might have dismissed all this as a mere natural disaster."
At Duke Ismar's words, the other nobles also expressed their agreement and paid their respects.
After capturing Simon's group, Eugene reported to the duke and handed the prisoners over to the city guard.
Simon confessed everything from the start. The knights endured brutal torture, cursing and screaming, until they broke one by one.
"Thanks to you, the weather officer's life was saved too."
"That's a relief."
Eugene smiled back at the duke as he clapped him on the shoulder.
The weather officer had reportedly been so consumed by guilt that he had even written a suicide note and planned to hang himself.
"I never imagined the emperor would stoop to such pettiness."
"We knew he had been scouring ancient ruins, but who could have guessed he would get his hands on a magical artifact this powerful?"
The artifact was never supposed to be capable of magic on this scale.
But with the Wandering Castle offering no explanation, no one—not even Eugene—had any way to know why this had happened.
"Your Grace, the scouts sent to reconnoiter around the castle have returned."
The captain of the guard informed him.
The scouts had left looking as grim as men sent on a suicide mission, but they returned as excited as boys who had seen something marvelous.
-We saw no monsters, ghosts, or any other signs of movement.
-There is a large gate at the lower section that appears to be the main entrance, but it is completely sealed.
-Do not touch the castle under any circumstances. It's still unbelievably cold. One of the soldiers nearly got frostbite.
It was a relief that the castle posed no immediate disaster, but they could not simply leave it alone. Quite apart from the danger, it was an overwhelmingly political object.
"Might the emperor not march his army up here?"
"Since it is the relic he sought so obsessively..."
The worried nobles' expressions hardened. The concern was entirely reasonable.
They had thought the North peaceful after eliminating the Emperor Faction early, but now there was a real chance it could be dragged back into war.
Whatever headaches the great nobles faced, ordinary people were thrilled.
Travelers and bards, adventurers and mercenaries, lesser nobles, free knights, scholars of every field — all manner of people drawn by the Wandering Castle flocked in droves.
Politics meant nothing to them. How could they miss a sight that would give them a story to tell over drinks for the rest of their lives?
"Eat before you go! We're selling cheap!"
Merchants and laborers looking to make money from the crowds pitched tents and set up stalls everywhere.
"Unauthorized persons are strictly forbidden from touching the castle. Crossing the cordon will result in arrest without exception."
The troops Duke Ismar had sent to control the area consequently had their hands full.
The castle was so vast that it could not be completely surrounded and sealed off. Doing so would require a force capable of mounting a full-scale siege.
"Anyone who disobeys these orders and is arrested will be treated as challenging His Grace and punished severely."
The guards kept the sightseers in line with murderous glares and threats of harsh punishment.
Eugene's party, having received the duke's permission, was free to investigate the castle.
Haind, who had ridden around the castle on horseback, returned. Rex had gone back to the Black Hand Tribe to report the critical development.
"Every place we might have entered was sealed tight. I couldn't find a gap big enough to slip a dagger into. I have no idea how it was built."
Haind could not stop marveling at the castle's solidity. A born knight, he found a perfect fortress like this more captivating than gold, jewels, or the most beautiful woman.
"There do appear to be things that look like balconies up there."
Both men craned their necks far back.
"No siege tower that exists today could reach that height."
There seemed to be no way to reach it unless one wrapped a man in thick straw matting and hurled him from a catapult.
"That aside, doesn't it strike you as curious?"
"What do you mean?"
"This was built with the Ancient Ones' stonework. What in the world could have damaged the castle this badly?"
Up close, the Wandering Castle's surface was badly scarred—scorched, cracked, and gouged in countless places. Its overall shape remained intact, but it looked as though it had endured something truly terrible.
"Ancient kingdom structures were so sturdy that even an earthquake might topple one, but it wouldn't break apart."
"The mages will be back soon. Ask them when they return."
Varda and Marbas had each taken an escort and were surveying the surroundings.
"Speak of the devil."
No sooner had Haind finished speaking than Marbas returned from the other side.
So excited that he ignored Eugene's 'Good work,' Marbas immediately blurted out a question.
"Do you remember what I told you when we first met? That the Wandering Castle drifted between this world and the Otherworld."
"Yes. That also explains why it remained undiscovered for so long."
"I suspect that castle traveled much, much farther than I ever imagined."
"What do you mean by far?"
"A place full of malice that scorched my body and soul. If I merely tasted the threshold of hell and escaped..."
Marbas approached the Wandering Castle with fear and irresistible curiosity mingled on his face.
"Then this castle must have gone all the way to the end and come back."
Marbas ran his burned palm over the castle's surface.
Unlike the ancient kingdom ruins left in Bonyard, it was scorched and battered.
"It was tempered by alternating heat and cold that cannot exist in this world."
"I wondered what could damage even a legacy of the ancient kingdom. Now I understand."
Hell.
A metaphysical place in the deepest reaches of the Otherworld. The edge of space-time.
A realm of terror that no creature, however mighty—not even a legendary dragon—could reach while retaining both body and soul.
Even the stonework of the Ancient Ones, which had reached the realm of the gods, was still human craft and worldly material.
It was only natural that it would crumble and fade before true horror.
And there was one more thing.
When Eugene placed his palm against the castle, he felt a strange sense of familiarity beyond the rough stone.
The Wandering Castle had reached the end of another world, and apparently it had brought back more than the heat and cold of hell.