Chapter 159 - Ill-fated Relationship or Destiny (1)

I took off my helmet.

The North's signature biting wind rushed in as if it had been waiting. My face, flushed with heat, instantly cooled down.

The wind hitting me right after taking off the helmet was incredibly refreshing.

But that only lasted for a moment.

By the time the soldiers' cheers died down, my face had gone beyond cooling and felt so cold it might freeze over.

While I was pressing my numb face, a welcome face appeared.

"Your Highness."

Vincent, the dear lord of Winter Castle, was right in front of me.

"Hup."

I lightly hopped down from my horse. As if he had been waiting, Vincent approached with both arms open.

GRIP.

His strong arms pulled me into a hug. He didn't care about the monster fluids and blood covering my body. I also firmly hugged him by the shoulders.

"I am glad you returned safely."

It was a long-overdue reunion greeting, and a stiff embrace half-frozen by the bitter cold.

Nevertheless, it was warm.

I smiled pleasantly and commended him for his hard work.

"You've worked hard all this time."

"Worked hard? Hah. Did you just say I worked hard?"

Vincent's reaction to my greeting was unusual.

"Yes. I worked very hard. Thanks to a certain someone running away after making a massive mess, cleaning up the aftermath was pure hell. I had to sift through documents while listening to the monsters shrieking from atop the walls."

Seeing Vincent pour out words as if he had been waiting to say them, I flinched and stepped back.

GRIP.

But Vincent did not let go.

"Now that you're here, you need to work."

"I literally just came in from fighting."

"Yes. I fought like that every single day while Your Highness was gone. Against monsters and mountains of paperwork."

Watching Vincent tightly grip my shoulders with a twitching jaw, I had nothing to say.

"I never expected Your Highness to appear on a wyvern and then vanish so suddenly."

"I didn't vanish suddenly..."

"Ah, you're right. You didn't vanish suddenly. You met the Dwarves, had your sword fixed, and even met the young lord of the Eli family. You stayed for two days and left after taking care of all your personal business. You're quite resourceful."

Vincent shuddered with indignation.

It seemed he still resented me for briefly dropping by Winter Castle to take care of my own business before leaving for Dotrin the other day.

"Shouldn't you have at least told me when you arrived and when you were leaving? Do you know how dumbfounded I was when I belatedly heard that Your Highness had visited?"

"I left a letter."

"Ah, that letter? The one that said you were heading to the Dotrin Kingdom and it would take about a year. If that's the letter you mean, I received it well."

I shut my mouth again. Anything I said wouldn't work anyway.

I kept my mouth shut and endured his words of resentment and nagging.

But there had to be a limit.

Vincent's nagging truly had no end.

Unable to bear it any longer, I shot a look pleading for help to the one-eyed cavalry captain and the Rangers standing quietly behind Vincent.

"Ahem. I forgot to check the condition of the warhorses."

The one-eyed cavalry captain awkwardly muttered to himself and turned around.

"Are you retrieving the arrows properly? I told you to collect them no matter what! Do you think arrows fall from the sky!"

"They do fall from the sky, actually. It's not like they sprout from the ground."

"That's tru... Is that what's important right now! Forget it. I have to check it myself to be satisfied."

Yorden and the Rangers bickered as if they had coordinated it, then disappeared.

The knights had already bolted before I even sent them a glance.

"It seems the lord of Winter Castle missed Your Highness greatly all this time."

The one who saved me was Arwen.

"However, since he went through a grueling journey in Dotrin, rushed here without rest, and immediately joined the battle, His Highness must be truly exhausted. I suggest you consider this and postpone catching up for the time being."

At her gentle suggestion, Vincent's lips twitched in dissatisfaction. But unable to argue, he let me go.

"He's only started nagging more since taking the lord's seat. This is why I just left a letter."

As I grumbled quietly, Vincent miraculously heard it and glared at me with wide eyes. I subtly stepped behind Arwen.

Appalled by my behavior, Arwen shook her head and sighed.

"For now, please rest. We can talk about the rest later."

Vincent belatedly offered me a chance to rest.

Unfortunately, I couldn't accept it.

"No. There's no time to rest."

I looked toward the mountains beyond the walls.

The monsters had retreated, but the presence I felt from the distant mountain range beyond the walls remained.

A massive hostility and rage were constantly scraping against my nerves.

"Summon all the commanders."

Vincent dropped his dissatisfied look and stared at me.

"Right now."

* * *

The commanders of Winter Castle gathered in one place.

They all had hardened expressions.

"First, let's hear what has happened in the meantime."

At my words, Vincent gave a signal.

Yorden, now a Ranger Company Commander, stood up and began explaining the situation up to this point.

The sudden strange phenomenon, the ensuing monster rampage. And the battle.

In Winter Castle, which waged war against monsters every year, seeing monsters running wild was nothing special.

The only difference was that there had been the omen of a solar eclipse before the monster rampage, and the number and variety of monsters that swarmed them were unprecedented.

"Thirty thousand. That is truly staggering."

"That doesn't sound like something the person who just forced a deep breakthrough through that staggering massive army should say."

The commanders laughed at Vincent's remark.

Although their complexions were somewhat stiff, there was no sign of fear regarding the 30,000-strong army anywhere.

If anything, they were overflowing with Fighting Spirit.

It was closer to confidence than a death-defying will to fight forced upon them for survival at the edge of despair.

As I let out a small exclamation of awe, Vincent spoke with a face full of pride.

"We've been steadily preparing for war all this time, after all."

While we were on the topic, I asked about Winter Castle's current troop situation.

Instead of explaining with words, Vincent handed me a document densely packed with writing.

I quickly scanned the contents of the document.

1 Ranger legion (1,800 men).

2 heavy infantry companies (400 men).

1 artillery company (200 men).

Black Lancers (104 men).

Knights of Winter (112 men).

5 other knight orders (484 men).

In total, over 3,000 troops made up the military power of Winter Castle and Ballorhard.

That wasn't the end.

On the back of the document, the soldiers of about two legions and three knight orders sent by the Northern lords were listed.

It was a massive force nearing 7,000 troops, and not just any troops, but high-quality forces with an abnormally high ratio of knightly power.

They had every right to be confident.

"Plus four Sword Master-class knights."

I muttered quietly as I flipped the document.

The Northern fortress, which used to be as precarious as a candle in the wind, had somehow become a massive flame that could not be extinguished by mere midwinter gales.

I was so pleased with that change that the corners of my mouth kept twitching upwards.

I forced my twitching lips down and straightened my expression.

The situation was far too dire to just sit around feeling proud.

Winter Castle had definitely grown stronger.

But Winter Castle's enemies had also grown stronger.

I remembered it clearly.

The hostile aura that had dyed one of the mountain peaks red was familiar to me.

The ferocious power wielded by those wretched monsters, the warriors of the dark green clan, was unmistakably Fighting Spirit.

And it wasn't some petty Fighting Spirit, but—in their terms—the overwhelming Fighting Spirit of an entity possessing the spirit of a king.

"It seems the King of Orcs has appeared."

At my words, Vincent looked at me with a stiffened face.

"Are you serious? If it's a joke, it's not funny."

Anger lingered on his rigid face.

"I personally stuffed his head and hung it on the castle. You must have seen it on your way in. His head is still hanging on the castle gates. And yet! You're telling me the monster crouching in that mountain range is him?"

Vincent criticized my careless remark, asking how a dead bastard could possibly come back to life.

It was a hasty anger, but I fully understood it.

Winter Castle had suffered an indelible wound at the hands of the King of Orcs.

The lord of the castle lost his father.

The Rangers lost comrades they had been with for anywhere from a few years to decades.

The knights lost their central pillar and had to live with the stigma of abandoning their lord on the battlefield and fleeing.

Even the castle fell, leaving them wandering the North.

Their conviction of no retreat and their pride became futile, and the glorious history built by their ancestors was thrown into the gutter.

In front of them, the King of Orcs was a taboo word that must not be spoken so lightly.

The only reason they hadn't exploded in rage was because I was the one who uttered that cursed name.

Just as they had lost much, I had lost things as well.

"Explain."

That was why, instead of exploding in rage and standing up with swords in hand, they demanded an explanation from me.

"Just as there isn't only one king of humans, there isn't only one king of orcs."

The Warlord was the title of the monarch who led the war legion, even among qualified orcs.

For the orcs, countless kings existed besides the Warlord.

That bastard was definitely one of them.

I was sure of it.

"Are you saying that since we killed one king, a new king has appeared in the meantime?"

Vincent retorted with a deeply furrowed brow.

His anger had faded, but it was clear he found my words hard to believe.

To be fair, it wasn't strange that he couldn't easily believe it when a King of Orcs, which hadn't existed for hundreds of years, appeared twice within a mere three-year gap.

I didn't bother trying to persuade him. I simply waited.

I kept my mouth shut and gave them time so that Vincent and the commanders of Winter Castle could accept my words.

After a long while, Vincent opened his mouth.

"If anyone else had said that, I would have dismissed it as complete bullshit right away."

It was a disrespectful tone, but the emotion contained within it was clear trust.

"Damn it. This land is cursed. We should just ditch everything and migrate south or something."

Vincent grumbled out half-hearted complaints before looking at me.

"What will you do?"

I answered without hesitation.

"Fight and drive them out."

The answer had been decided from the very beginning.

Vincent nodded. The command staff also accepted my answer as if it were obvious.

For them, anger and confusion no longer existed.

They didn't care how many enemies there were, nor what kind of beings they were.

They were only filled with the resolve to smash the enemy and defend this land at all costs.

My heart pounded.

It seemed their fiery will to fight, which refused to go out even when facing the harsh winter, had spread to me as well.

I forced down the will to fight that threatened to blaze up right that second.

It wouldn't do for me to get heated up too.

This was not Dotrin, and I was no longer a lowly mercenary.

This was the kingdom I had to protect, and I was in a position to lead them.

I had to figure out the enemy first.

If the king of the greenskin race crouching in the mountains was a Warlord, things would be easier to resolve, but if not, we had to prepare differently.

The problem was how to figure out the identity of the bastard crouching in the mountains, but fortunately, I had a way to find the answer.

Someone who could see through the truth hidden within lies,

and possessed the authority to pierce through to a subject's true form without distortion happened to be in the North.

The Mage of the White Night.

Ophelia, who possessed the power of the [Divine Eye], would have already figured out his identity.

While Vincent and the commanders discussed countermeasures against the monsters, I quietly stood up from my seat.

And then I immediately went looking for the High Lich.

Fortunately, she was waiting for me at Winter Castle, not the newly built Magic Tower.

The thick shadows cast under the castle walls and the darkness clinging to the fortress corridors whispered to me.

Urging me to quickly go to their master.

Whispering such things, they guided me to her.

Ophelia was in the highest spire of Winter Castle.

"Ophelia."

She, who had been staring off somewhere beyond the snowfield, turned around.

It was not her human form, but her true form as a High Lich, exposing bare bones.

I was about to greet her gladly, but flinched and froze.

"Your hand..."

The skeletal fingers revealed outside her sleeve.

There should have been five fingers, but there were only three.

Her pinky and ring finger were missing. They were cleanly gone, as if they had never existed in the first place.

『It is the price for peering into a truth that I normally wouldn't be permitted to see.』

She had told me something once before.

That the power of the Divine Eye was by no means the same as omniscience.

That sometimes, one must pay a price fitting the weight of the truth.

I couldn't help but let out a groan.

To a Mage, fingers were by no means trivial.

The magic circles and magical languages they drew in the air were complex things that were difficult to complete even with a full ten fingers.

And yet she had lost two fingers.

The magic circles and words of magic she wove could not possibly be the same as before.

Perhaps her spell completion speed had slowed down, or perhaps there were spells she could cast before but could no longer use.

Either way, the loss could never be considered small.

As for what truth required her to pay such a price, I had no way of knowing.

『You seem curious. About what it is that I saw.』

"Was what you saw the past, or the future?"

I nodded and asked.

『The past and the future. Something that has already happened, yet hasn't happened yet. That is the fragment of the truth I glimpsed.』

The moment I heard those words, I was certain.

That the truth she had peered into at the cost of her fingers was connected to the solar eclipse that occurred a short while ago.

The return of ancient beings was closely tied to the past, but it was also an omen of the changes yet to come.

『Do you wish to know the details?』

I shook my head.

Telling someone else the truth always carried a far greater price than peering into it alone.

I was terribly curious about the truth entangled with the bizarre phenomenon I did not understand, but I had no intention of making her pay an even harsher price.

I believed that if there was a need to do so, she would have told me first.

『What a relief. Because I would have no way to stop you if you insisted.』

She laughed very dryly.

『Right now, your interest is likely the being of the king crouching in that mountain range.』

"He scattered his aura all over the place. I figured you'd have identified who the owner of that aura is."

At my words, she stared at me intently.

I had no way of knowing what an expressionless skeleton was thinking.

After a long time, her jaw clattered.

She was smiling.

『How can you be so exactly the same.』

I asked her what was so funny and what was exactly the same.

『Your question just now was surprisingly identical to your first question.』

Saying that, her jaw clattered again.

『And my answer is no different either.』

"What?"

『The past and the future. A being that already existed, but at the same time, a being that will be born in the future.』

I frowned at her Zen-like riddle of an answer, but then she said something completely unexpected.

『Gruhorn. You already know him.』

"I do?"

『You might have even met him. Though, at the time, you wouldn't have been in a human form like you are now.』

The moment I heard those words, a cold chill ran down my spine.

『Because he is also a very ancient being, just like you.』

I couldn't help but let out a groan.

Every single monarch of the dark green clan that I had personally met was dead. I had watched their deaths with my own two eyes.

Except for exactly one.

An unnamed knight who fought alone and eventually perished, a pitiful avenger who fought until the very moment of his death but ultimately failed to complete his poem.

The being that would decorate the finale of the [Poem of Vengeance], which had now become the [Poem of Requiem].

"Overlord."

That cursed Overlord was the only king whose end I had never witnessed.