Chapter 177 - An Uninvited Guest (1)

It was surrounded entirely by dark gray bricks, but the light shining from the ceiling made the space bright instead.

Looking at the conference hall, decorated everywhere with swords and shields unlike the style of the central region, Alicia could not help thinking it impressive.

Because she realized that the arms, full of nicks and cracks, had not simply been made for decoration.

"You must have had a hard journey. Baroness Alicia."

From the far end of the conference hall, the Iron Duke Timur was smiling at Alicia.

"On a cold winter day like this, it must have been quite uncomfortable coming all the way here."

Though she had arrived the latest, she had come from the farthest away, so it was entirely understandable.

Rather, since Alicia had filled the empty seat left by House Uthman, the six lords now seated there had been waiting for her gladly.

"I hope the seat I prepared is not uncomfortable."

"Thank you for your consideration, Your Grace."

If the other party showed consideration, one ought to answer with courtesy.

Though Alicia had arrived in the capacity of a lord, she quietly bowed her head toward one of the only four dukes in the Empire.

"Then it seems everyone who should be gathered has gathered."

Seven flags.

Seven chairs.

And seven lords.

As Alicia took her seat, Timur looked over the conference hall, only now filled completely, and gave a faint smile.

"Then we shall begin the meeting now."

At the Iron Duke's gesture announcing the start, the doors of the conference hall slowly began to close.

CREEEAK.

Blue grains of snow drifting with the cold wind.

The pure white ice of a lake that would not break no matter how hard one struck it.

The North's cold, so harsh it was almost fierce, was something closer to awe-inspiring.

But the wildness that did not submit even to such cold was surely the identity the Northerners possessed.

An identity so solid that it had never been able to blend in until the end.

Watching the gap between the doors grow narrower and narrower, the Iron Duke's eyes began to deepen.

They had endured even the discrimination the Empire inflicted, wearing it like a medal, for this very moment.

* * *

'It's grand.'

He had visited many noble estates so far, but this was the first time he had seen a corridor this long and wide.

Vlad scratched his cheek as he looked at the great doors of the conference hall visible far in the distance.

'Doesn't look like there's any gap to slip out through.'

Looking around when entering an unfamiliar place was one of Vlad's old habits.

Searching for an escape route could be called the instinct of the weak, but Vlad had never forgotten that he had begun in the mud.

"From now on, we just have to stand guard here."

"I see."

Vlad turned his head at the voice coming from behind him.

When he turned around and looked, Rutiger was there, smiling with a shrug, along with six knights waiting to escort the lords.

"Of course, you're closer to a guest who'll go inside than someone standing guard."

Rutiger dipped his head and made a gesture of drawing a line on the floor with his finger.

As he said, there was a certain distance between Vlad and the escort knights where they stood now.

Having safely escorted Alicia to the conference hall, Vlad was now standing there not as a knight, but in the capacity of an invited guest.

'So everyone over there is one of the lords' closest aides.'

Listening to Rutiger, Vlad checked the faces of the knights standing beside him.

Rutiger of Bayezid, Duncan of Heinal.

And among the knights whose names he did not yet know, someone with a familiar face was looking at Vlad.

"Only now do I get to greet you properly, Sir Vlad."

"I am honored that you remember me, Lord Volkov Baranoff."

The one looking at Vlad from among the knights was Volkov of the Javelin, a renowned knight even in Baranoff.

Seeing Vlad, despite his young age, naturally shake hands with Volkov Baranoff, several knights widened their eyes in surprise.

"In Moshiam, we were both too busy to have time to exchange proper greetings."

"We were."

Though they had merely brushed past each other in Moshiam, Volkov Baranoff remembered the young dragon driver who had charged toward the fastest dragon.

Because the sight of Vlad roaring with a sword that was almost shattered had remained in Volkov Baranoff's mind that day like a vivid painting.

"Congratulations on going from squire to knight, and now to a noble with a surname."

"Thank you."

Hearing Volkov Baranoff's greeting, Vlad felt the heart he had struggled to calm begin beating again.

Because those words made him confirm once again what process he had gone through to stand here.

"Ralph, knight of Maringen."

"Guillermo of Romnie."

"I am Ernst from Fordmills."

"Karoy of Harkita. Well now, it's good to see someone so famous in person!"

Once Volkov Baranoff opened the conversation, the knights began approaching as if they had been waiting.

Some were successors, some were advisers.

And others were their lords' closest aides.

Regardless of their skill, they were people whose names any Northerner would have heard at least once.

"I heard rumors that you even went to the land of the elves."

"That is correct."

"Are you married!"

"Not yet..."

"My father wishes to speak with you."

"I will be sure to make time."

Seeing Vlad suddenly rise to prominence, some of the knights might have found it displeasing.

However, the knights here were all the lords' closest aides, and they were people who had to think of their territories' interests before envy or jealousy toward someone else.

"... Before you leave this place, I would like to ask you for a spar."

But even if they stood in positions that pursued the greater cause, their curiosity about Vlad itself could not be helped.

Meeting Guillermo's burning eyes, Vlad realized that everyone here, though in different forms, wanted something from him.

"Lord Vlad. You must prepare now."

"Understood."

As the heat of the conversation was about to grow stronger and stronger, Vlad, called by the butler, realized it would soon be time for him to enter.

Right now, together with the knights, he was Sir Vlad, but when he stepped into the conference hall, he had to become Aureo.

"Go do well."

Vlad gave a small nod to Rutiger, who was standing with his arms crossed and smiling.

"Yes."

His tension had not yet faded, as much as his heart was beating for no reason, but the fact that Rutiger was behind him seemed to put him a little at ease.

* * *

"... It really is steel. Steel."

While Vlad waited to be summoned by the lords, his mage Nibelun was wandering all over the city, busily indulging his own interests.

"But can steel be made this easily?"

A beastfolk man took a magnifying glass out of the backpack he was carrying, pressed himself close to the castle wall like a cockroach, and muttered to himself.

At a sight suspicious enough no matter who looked at it, the guards' eyes were narrowing, but Nibelun himself did not seem to care much about other people's stares.

"No matter how much of an iron ore region this place is, this isn't a mineral that comes out just because you mine it..."

It would be difficult for anyone to make a mage deeply absorbed in his research subject turn his gaze elsewhere.

For that reason, Nibelun, who had been concentrating hard, did not even hear the voices of the people beginning to murmur.

"Over there...!"

"There's something in the sky...!"

'Is there a volcano nearby or something?'

Steel was, by nature, something made under heat and pressure intense enough to melt pig iron.

Only by burning away all sorts of impurities in heat as hot as a blast furnace should steel of this level come out, and surely they could not have made this much steel entirely in blacksmiths' workshops...

"Huh?"

"I told you to run! What are you doing right now!"

Nibelun, who had been concentrating on the castle wall for a long time, realized that his body was somehow floating up.

It was because the soldier assigned as his guide had urgently slung him over his shoulder.

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why!"

Looking at Nibelun, who was still dazed, the soldier shouted in frustration.

"Over there! Look at the sky!"

"The sky?"

At the soldier's shout, Nibelun naturally looked at the sky through the magnifying glass he was holding, then soon found something there and widened his eyes.

"... What is that?"

Just as the soldier said, there was a glittering silver dot far away, heading toward Bastopol.

At first it had looked like a dot, but the closer it came, the more clearly it revealed its true form.

"It's an attack! An attack!"

"They're coming from the sky! Everyone, ready your arrows!"

Behind the soldiers beginning to nock their arrows, the screams of terrified people began to ring out.

As he headed toward the estate along Bastopol's streets, stained with chaos, Nibelun was finally able to identify the attackers that had arrived through the magnifying glass he was holding.

"Wyverns?"

According to an old legend now being forgotten, Bastopol's walls were said to have first been built from ordinary iron ore.

However, what had allowed that ordinary iron ore to become the hard steel of today was the breath of something fierce and hot that had touched the castle walls.

"The dragons are breathing fire!"

"Everyone, get out of the way!"

The most perfect dragon's Breath.

It was said that the dragon's wrath, which sought to leave behind only what was pure, had melted Bastopol's walls into steel.

"... Open the way, knights of the North."

Together with the dragon's breath that had begun in the sky, there was a man who descended to the ground.

"I have come here now by the order of His rightful Majesty the Emperor."

He was a man who came with radiant blond hair and blue eyes.

And with a flag bearing a dragon with its throat slashed.

"Tell the master of this land that Mircea Dragulia of the Dragon Slaying Knights has come."

No matter how high they were hung, they could not be higher than the sky above.

At the wingbeats of dragons born in the highest place, the seven flags hanging over Bastopol began to sway precariously.

* * *

'There's something I want to ask.'

["Ask."]

Standing before the doors with the knights behind him, Vlad decided to ask one question he had been holding on to all this time.

It was a question he asked while remembering when he had still been a boy standing in the mud before stepping into that lofty world of nobles.

'Why was it me, of all people?'

["Hm?"]

'Why did you come to me, of all people?'

Back when Vlad had been a boy of the back alleys, rolling in the mud, Quijano had come to him with black lightning.

At first, he had thought it an unlucky coincidence, but now that he knew who Quijano was, Vlad knew very well that he was not someone who would approach because of some mere absurd coincidence.

["... Why was it you, of all people?"]

At Vlad's question, Quijano's voice began to grow distant.

If Vlad had closed his left eye just then, he would have been able to see Quijano looking at the setting sun beneath a crimson maple tree.

"Lord Vlad Aureo is entering!"

["When I was watching from the sky."]

With the loudly ringing voice, the doors of the conference hall began to open.

The great doors opened, and the doors behind them opened.

As the doors that had blocked Vlad layer upon layer opened, the figures of the lords seated far away began to come into view.

["Because of all the fragments scattered across the earth, you shone the brightest."]

Hearing Quijano's words, Vlad began to step forward with a faint smile.

He had been born in the mud, but now the place he was heading for was the world of nobles.

However, more than the lords of the North before him, Vlad was simply happier about the acknowledgment of Quijano within him.

Because no matter who might be in the conference hall now, there would be no one who shone more brightly than Quijano within him.