Chapter 86: Return of the Castle Lord
Chapter 86: Return of the Castle Lord
Ventilation shafts that circulated fresh air ran throughout the Wandering Castle.
At a single command from Eugene, they became the breathing vents of a fire dragon.
"...?"
"Grrrr!"
"Guu?"
The monsters that had spread throughout the entire castle raised their heads at the blast of heat suddenly bearing down on them.
"Gruuuu!"
The moment the blast of heat seared their faces and eyes, they immediately ducked their heads again.
Even teeth that could tear steel couldn't bite the air, and hides that shrugged off a conscript's spear couldn't stop the heat.
WHOOOOOSH.
The scorching wind bore down even more intensely.
"Kyaoo."
"Karrrrk."
Like petty spirits touched by divine radiance, the monsters scattered in every direction.
Yet no matter which room or corridor they fled to, nothing changed.
It was like the opposite of the great flood of myth: heat was filling the sealed world and sweeping the monsters out.
The next day, after a night of that.
A strange mist drifted around the castle outskirts, caused by the temperature difference between the castle—turned into a steam bath by the heating—and the cool forest outside.
In front of the enormous gate, countless footprints were stamped into the earth, as if an army of hundreds had conducted field drills through the night.
'Good thing I let them loose here.'
The signs left by the monsters that Eugene saw through the window were beyond what he had imagined in both scale and ferocity.
If he'd opened the gate on the Rostock Plains, forget squabbling over shares—there would've been a bloodbath, and Eugene couldn't have escaped responsibility for the dead knights and nobles.
'And to think they even fought among themselves.'
The ground stretching from the castle to the forest was stained with blood as if a red carpet had been rolled out. Unidentifiable scales, claws, and bone fragments lay scattered across it.
Several trees had been toppled and smashed, perhaps because the fighting had driven the monsters into the forest.
Whether they were natural rivals or the heat had driven them mad enough to fight, he didn't know. What mattered was that the operation had been a resounding success.
There was, however, one problem.
Eugene's party was suffering from the heat too.
"Congratulations. Everything went according to plan."
In the audience chamber, Varda greeted him, her entire body drenched in sweat. Her figure was like an ice sculpture slowly melting away.
Her ears, which always rose proudly and elegantly, drooped limply until they were nearly horizontal.
Her golden hair clung damply to her forehead and the nape of her neck; together with her flushed skin, it gave her a strangely sensual air.
"I'm sorry. The heating and cooling system is less flexible than I expected. They could've designed it better."
The system controlled heating floor by floor, so the audience chamber couldn't be excluded from the heating.
"You must be the only person in the world who would criticize such magnificent facilities so harshly."
Of course, 'inflexible' was just Eugene's absurdly high standards talking. Varda stared at him in disbelief instead.
"This is the central area, so we have to heat it thoroughly."
The central floor containing the audience chamber was broad and close to the main gate. It could hold a great many monsters and made it easy to drive them out, so it couldn't be left unheated.
"It is a sensible design. It may be miserable now, but considering you will receive guests and govern from here later, the location is ideal."
Exhausted by the heat, Varda sighed. A silvery bead of sweat trembled at the tip of her chin, then fell.
"Excuse me for a moment."
Eugene gathered her golden hair and tied it into a neat round bun.
'Is it because she's an elf? Or because she's a forest mage?'
The scent of Varda's body rising from her damp neck and shoulders was far from anything animalistic.
She had sweated so much that the scent filled Eugene's nose, like an exotic fruit ripening.
"Where did you learn such a skill?"
"I used to do it often for the village children when I was growing up in the countryside. That's better, isn't it?"
Varda nodded in admiration. It was an oddly cute hairstyle for a fearsome knight's handiwork.
"I've minimized the heat coming in as much as I can. It's only hot enough to make us dizzy in here; outside the audience chamber must be hell on earth."
"I envy you."
Eugene was shirtless, taking advantage of a man's privilege.
"If you're jealous, you're welcome to do the same."
"Don't get cheeky."
Varda lightly chopped Eugene in the chest with the edge of her hand.
Varda herself was showing more skin than ever before. She wore a skirt and crop top Eugene had made by cutting up clothes from the audience chamber.
-Wh-what is this shameless outfit?!
When Eugene first handed it to her, Varda had been appalled. The top exposed both her navel and her shoulders.
-It is common attire in Samur.
-This is Roman, and I am an elf. How could...
Varda swallowed the word 'vulgar' she had been about to say. She could not dishonor the care and consideration Eugene had shown by personally tailoring the clothes for her.
-It is better than getting heatstroke. Look at the floor you are standing on.
-...
A small puddle had formed from the sweat streaming down Varda's torso, thighs, and ankles. Even her ears reddened with embarrassment.
-If you are that embarrassed, should I put on a blindfold?
-There is no need. I will wear it gratefully.
In the end, even an elf mage of noble lineage surrendered before the merciless heat.
"Hnnn..."
Homi, equally drenched, was also slumped over. Her tail, ever lively, did not even twitch.
All three took refuge from the heat in the cultivation chamber attached to the audience hall; the mass of plants absorbed some of the heat.
Rustle, rustle.
Through Varda's magic, the large-leaved crops swayed back and forth, fanning them.
Varda, in turn, watched Eugene curiously as he studied a pumpkin leaf with interest.
"Does this terrible heat not bother you at all?"
"I can handle it."
Eugene smiled with composure.
"As expected, a knight's endurance is something else."
Stories of knights charging with battle cries despite several arrows lodged in them were hardly rare. Thanks to brutal training from childhood, pain was a knight's constant companion.
She felt as though she were seeing a glimpse of that in Eugene now.
'It's pretty cool here overall.'
His body was naturally tough, and Eugene's mind had been tempered by heat waves far worse than this.
"Homi."
When Eugene brought over a wet towel, Homi, who had been lying down, sat up limply.
When Eugene wrapped her face in the cool towel, a pleased little sound escaped her.
He wiped her neck, back, and hard-muscled belly as well. Looking much better, she flopped back down.
"Now Varda-nim."
"...I can do it myself."
Contrary to her words, when Eugene came over with the towel, she meekly let him tend to her.
When he cooled her sculpturally beautiful face, Varda let out a sultry hum through her nose.
"Nngh!"
As he dabbed up the little pool of sweat on her pale collarbone, her breathing quickened further.
When he moved on to wipe both ears, she hunched her shoulders and cried out.
"L-leave my ears alone!"
"Hahaha!"
The heat was awful, but none of them felt irritable.
As long as they were together, even hardship couldn't sour the mood among the three of them.
Twitch.
At that moment, Varda's ears turned toward the audience chamber window.
"There's quite a commotion outside."
"Of course. Cram a pack of savage predators together while they are half-mad from the heat and what else would happen?"
Like a city in the middle of a riot, the surrounding forest rang endlessly with monstrous shrieks and crashing, splintering sounds.
It was so loud and violent that even the audience chamber caught a faint echo of it.
Eugene could barely hear any of it, but Varda's long elf ears kept twitching.
No more creatures were coming out of the gate. It was time to shut off the heat.
RUMMMMMBLE.
After the massive gate closed, cool air began flowing through the vents that had been pouring out the dragon's breath.
Freed at last from the heat, the two young women looked as though they had reached heaven.
After taking turns bathing, they sat around a table enjoying the cool air. A large map of the continent lay spread across it.
"I found stacks of maps in the storeroom."
The Ancient Kingdom, as a unified dynasty, had been able to complete high-quality maps of the continent as a state project.
It was an impossible feat in the present world, divided as it was into dozens of kingdoms and thousands of noble houses.
Even setting the cost aside, if a lord demanded, "Who are you to dare survey my land?" and blocked the work, the surveyors would have no choice but to withdraw.
To Eugene, these maps were worth a fortune beyond measure. Aside from the castle itself, they were the treasure most worthy of being called a king's legacy.
"We've driven out most of the unwanted guests, but dangers will still remain, including undead."
"We'll have to deal with those ourselves, with steel."
"Before that, rejoining the troops comes first."
The castle was enormous and there were too many unknowns. Fighting alone would be foolish.
Eugene's finger stopped at a certain riverside village in the north of Roman.
"Will you return to North Fork at once?"
"The mercenaries I hired should have returned there."
"They may have left after you disappeared. You should not expect loyalty from mercenaries."
"They're not that dishonorable. My contract says that even if I die, the domain will keep paying them for another month."
The treasurer who received Eugene's signed order had looked as though he'd seen something truly bizarre. He'd never heard of a noble giving such an order.
"You are an odd man. Most nobles do not go this far."
"Loyalty is won through valor and maintained with silver."
"A reputation as a generous lord will not hurt, but you do more for them than necessary. All of that costs money."
Varda offered practical advice to keep Eugene from becoming too much of an idealist.
"Simply not culling them is enough to earn their respect."
Culling meant nobles deliberately getting mercenaries killed to save on wages, whether by using them as arrow fodder or sending them on dangerous night reconnaissance.
Varda had once seen drunken nobles at a banquet compete over stories of how they'd culled mercenaries.
"What I want is not a reputation for generosity. I want a reputation as someone who has never once been late paying wages. It will take a good ten years to build, but once I have it, it will be useful."
Nobles valued trust only among fellow nobles, but Eugene's thinking was different.
"It is commoners who truly make the world turn, with blood, sweat, soil, and ink on their hands. They set greater store by this kind of trust than by honor, lineage, or martial prowess."
"So that is what you have been thinking."
Varda was genuinely impressed.
This was the sort of virtue one normally found only among merchants, and it was rare among nobles—especially knights who lived only for today and tomorrow.
All three looked back down at the map.
"Your domain also holds the base of the Black Hand Mercenary Company. If the castle appears there, the entire clan will hear immediately."
They were also expert monster hunters and carried plenty of silver weapons. Since most of the enemies left in the castle were likely nonliving, those weapons would be especially effective.
"Once the castle is cleared, I'll bring supplies from North Fork and formally invite the clan. Give them one grand reception, and their prophecy will be fulfilled."
Eugene's gaze shifted from North Fork to the central region of Roman.
"There is just one thing that concerns me."
"You mean the emperor's wrath?"
"The moment this castle appears in my domain, it will be as good as announcing to the entire world that Eugene Meyer has claimed the Wandering Castle."
By now, he would be watching the entire continent like a hawk.
"Considering the Emperor's obsession, we would become mortal enemies."
"Well, it is something that would become known sooner or later anyway. Besides, even if the emperor's army comes, it doesn't seem especially dangerous."
"Ancient Kingdom stonework, a dark-elf garrison, and an All-Conquering Knight who slew a wendigo and a death knight as commander."
Varda shook her head in disbelief. From a besieger's perspective, it really was a fortress with no good answer.
"I have no intention of hiding from the world. We are returning to North Fork."
Homi snapped her feet together and saluted. Varda bowed, one hand over her chest.
The next morning.
A white bolt of lightning struck a barren wasteland some distance from North Fork, accompanied by a storm.
WHOOOOOSH!
The wind pushed aside by the descent of the colossal castle sent waves of brown sand rippling outward in all directions.
Lizards and rodents scratching through the earth fled underground in alarm.
Eugene's party, fully prepared for battle, stood before the main gate of the audience chamber.
"I'll clear a path. Let's focus on getting out of the castle as fast as possible and back to the domain."
At Eugene's words, Varda and Homi nodded.
It was not far from the audience chamber to the castle gate. They had to pass a few gates along the way, but all the doors were already open and no guards were manning them.
When he released the lock and opened the main gate, a silent corridor revealed itself. Signs of battle were visible everywhere, as if the monsters had fought among themselves.
CLANK.
Two living armors blocked Eugene's party's path. One was missing an arm and had a crushed chest, while the other was riddled with gashes all over its body.
SWISH!
BAM!
Eugene's sword thrust and Homi's war hammer smashed the two apart at the same time.
It was the same trio setting out on a journey, just as when they had left the Emerald Forest. But now everything was different.
If the three of them back then were seeds brimming with potential, now they were great roots.
The group that would come into being the moment they reached North Fork would be without precedent in all of human history.