Chapter 215: Fog (2)
Jess’ expression was one of astonishment.
“Didn’t you say you were going to take care of it? The guys who messed with us, they deserved to die, but if there’s a leader of this kind of thug group, I thought you could talk him down.”
Of course, Jess believed that showing them force was the best way to win their favor. Money and honor were both sufficient criteria for persuasion, but fists in front of your face were required. And, as far as Jess knew, Russell possessed plenty of that crucial condition.
Russell shrugged his shoulders.
“I thought so too. But they were more eager than I thought. The other guys were charging at me with knives, so I killed them, and then there was a knight.”
“A knight? If it were a legitimate knight… no, I’m being stupid.”
Jess shakes his head. A proper knight wouldn’t even recruit these thugs or bandits.
“What about the bodies? I was fortunate that the innkeeper assisted me, but……”
Calia, Elenora, and Aellasis emerged from the stairs at that point. As they sat down at the table, the food they had ordered arrived. The plates that had been placed on the tray were elegantly displayed on the table.
“Quickly,”
“Just leave it. They will clean it up themselves.”
“Well……”
“They’ll clean it up if they understand what’s best for them. Don’t you think it’s a bandit’s mentality to expect us to clean up after them?”
“Well, I didn’t think the third village I visited would be like this. The bandits must be running wild. The security is completely broken.”
“Humans aren’t plants.”
“Lexi?”
Jess gazed at Lexi. Lexi was picking at the chicken on her dish and transferring it to her own plate as she talked.
“Do you know how trees change when winter comes?”
It was an unexpected question, but Jess considered it and responded simply as he brought the platter of stew toward him.
“……they become bare. The lush leaves turn scarlet and fall one by one, becoming fallen leaves, and the trees grow skeletal.
“Right. Trees endure the barren season like that. But why don’t they sprout more leaves to get more sunlight? Shouldn’t they be getting more sunlight like that in the cold winter?”
“Hmm, if that’s the case, there could have been trees in the past that were very different from the ones we know. But now there are only bare trees surrounding us.
Lexi, who had carefully separated the flesh from the meat and arranged the bones in a corner of her plate, nodded.
“That’s right. Getting rid of all of your leaves is more beneficial to survival than attempting to generate more leaves. It’s difficult to get additional sunlight in the winter. Morality and ethics are analogous to the fallen leaves that a tree sheds when it becomes winter. People who have lost their houses and have nothing to eat can quickly become violent. There is really little that distinguishes a person as human. Being full is sufficient. There is a saying that you should think after you eat.”
Oh, Jess exclaimed with awe, covering his mouth.
“Really, good words from a wise old━ack!”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
There was a commotion as Jess briefly clutched his throat and coughed, but it was soon forgotten.
Elenora, having finished her lunch, wiped her mouth with a napkin and spoke.
“The security is getting worse and worse, and I’m feeling it in real time. It’s becoming steeper as we go up. We might even come upon a village where the entire population has become bandits. We need to have this resolved immediately.”
“How?”
Elenora responded to Russell’s query with glittering blue eyes.
“The Emperor’s absence is the most serious concern right now. Of course, not all of the world’s issues are solved just because the Emperor is there, but those that emerge when the Emperor is absent can be solved.”
“Hmm.”
“While Russell-nim and Lexi-nim were helping out, I stopped by the village church. Fortunately, the priest was present. The Prince is currently missing, while the Princess headed straight up to combat the undead in the north after recovering from her triumph at Ferger Plains.”
“She’s fast to react. How did they travel such a vast distance?
“It was partly due to the well-kept imperial roads, but it was also because all of the remaining lords and nobles provided supplies and transportation. I’ve heard she’s now holding out at the Keonitra Castle.
“How many undead were there?”
“I’m not sure, but…… “
Elenora trailed off. Calia and Aellasis ate quietly, Lexi scratched her teeth with a broken bone toothpick, and Jess waited for Elenora’s comments with a serious gaze.
“It was not more than 100,000. Given the towns and territories we’ve seen thus far, it may seem weird that it’s not more, but I believe that’s the maximum of what a necromancer can manage. I believe it is impossible to raise it beyond that point, either owing to a lack of magical strength or control. However, as undead, the loss and replenishment of troops and supplies are irrelevant.
The loss and replenishment would occur at the same moment. The dead enemy soldiers would simply rise again. Supplies would be unnecessary. The bodies wouldn’t eat or sleep.
A personification of absurdity, ignoring all of the traits of an army while remaining an army. It was stomping through the Empire’s northern regions before heading south.
“Has it been determined exactly what the undead want?”
“So far, no. They are moving as if they just want to produce death. I’ve heard that only the undead and demons roam the cities they’ve trampled.”
“That’s not a very fun thing to do.”
Jess grabbed the map out of his pocket and placed it on the table. The map laid out under the brilliant lights of the inn’s ceiling was simplified, with distances neglected, yet it was not difficult to determine the distance from their current location to their target.
“Hmm, if we perform a rough calculation, we’ll need to travel for four more days from here. It may take longer if we have to turn back because there are mountains and valleys in the midst.”
“Then we need to hurry.”
🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷🔷
The night of Julia Hyperion was torn into dozens of pieces, and morning seeped through the cracks.
The blinding glare made Julia instinctively cover her eyes and groan.
She sat up, but wasn’t certain. The intense pleas of pain emanating from all over her body were urgent, and the memories of the night’s dream lingered vividly in her thoughts.
She couldn’t remember what the dream was about, or who was in it. The memory was fading by the second. It was incredibly vivid, but she only had the feeling of vividness, not the actual memory of who she met, or where she was.
It wasn’t a good morning. Even more so when she discovered it wasn’t the sun that had pierced her eyes, but rather the magical lights in the chamber that turned on when the time came.
Even with a euphemism, the place where the princess spent the night could not be described as splendid. It would be more appropriate to call it shabby.
A bed, a table with a washbasin on top, a picture frame and a painting on the blank wall, a longsword and scabbard leaning against the wall, and a simple magical breastplate that could convert into full body armor.
Julia, who was looking at it with gloomy eyes, only later discovered that her left hand was bandaged.
She cautiously unwrapped it, and the incision was entirely healed. There was not even a faint scar to be found.
She could have been pleased that her wound had healed and her body was intact. Julia tightened her fist, reconstructing the past.
This was the Keonitra Castle. A place where buildings lined up in a semi-circle, with a high mountain behind them, on a sheer cliff.
Although it was considered a castle, its purpose was more akin to that of a strategic fortification. The peak in front of the Keonitra Castle was simply a ridge of the Efalem Mountains, and the cliff rose like a brother to the mountain range, cutting across the Empire’s northern region.
The quickest route from the north to the middle region was through this pass, where the mountain ranges appeared to be considering merging but chose to leave an indeterminate gap.
The castle, Keonitra, was located at that pass.
Given the castle’s symbolism, it was clear why it was built on such hard terrain. No lord or soldier could ride a horse here; they had to cross on two legs. A testament to the fact that under God, even a king or emperor is just a human being, using the harsh natural features.
The Keonitra Castle, which had created walls that would rival any castle in order to withstand the terrible weather, had a tiny settlement and a towering, cone-shaped tower in the center, with buildings attached.
In the past, it would have created a quiet and beautiful landscape, blending with the mountains, but now there was almost nothing left untouched.
The walls, the roofs that had collapsed, the remnants of the walls that had lost their supports and fallen, were blackened, as if dozens of bolts of lightning had struck from the sky.
The remains were almost gone from a week ago. Rather, it was closer to being well-organized.
Even the remaining ruins were gathered up to build houses again, so that the bricks that weren’t cracked or broken could be re-stacked. So, it could be said that the work was finished.
Indeed, some soldiers were diligently engaged in peaceful and idyllic work, such as climbing ladders with villagers to repair roofs or hauling water from the well to the camp.
But all of that would be reversed in two days, or maybe a day and a half.
Julia got out of bed and placed her hand on the ledge. The wall, constructed of lime and sand bricks, was hard and frigid.
She let the cold that was surrounding her palm do its work. It seemed better than the pounding headache she was experiencing.
The sunlight was brilliant. It was hard to say it wasn’t suitable for winter, but it was rare weather in a place surrounded by snowy mountains.
Snowstorms and blizzards were more regular in the mountains, and the cliffs were brutally showing their bare, wind-shaven skin.
But the scenery beyond that made the emotion of joy feel like a stale joke.
The water vapor rising from the lakes and rivers in the south and central areas, combined with warm breezes, met the cold air flowing down from the snowy mountains, resulting in massive snow clouds.
Clouds were gathering on the opposite side of the mountain range from where she was viewing them. The sky had remained clear thanks to the priests’ tireless prayers over three days.
It takes an absurdly strong holy power to artificially change the weather.
Even if the priests of Keonitra Castle were extremely devout and endowed with heavenly power, they could only hold back the snow clouds falling from the snowy mountains and the dark clouds generated by the necromancer for one week.
Even if they took turns reciting prayers and holy power, humans had a finite amount of stamina and power.
The night before, the head priest of the castle had come to her and told her that he was running out of stamina.
After telling him that she understood and sending him away, she was lost in thought, and only fell asleep after dawn, and then woke up again after three hours.
Julia considered the forces she could rely upon for assistance. It was not going well.
Julia picked up the heaviest of the orders she had been considering since daybreak. The reason she didn’t pick up the lighter one was easy. She did not want to become a walking corpse without a struggle.
And the scheduled day arrived. The snowflakes descending from the snowstorm-f
illed sky were sharp, not soft.
The wind-borne cold was like a thin, cutting thread, slashing the troops’ skin and nose tips. They rapidly turned red.
The soldiers, with their scarlet noses and cheeks, felt as if the rest of the world was also inebriated.
The horizon shook up and down.
The horizon, the unreachable string of the world, was trembling. There was no dust cloud. Instead, fog rose.
The undead army, which numbered in the thousands and tens of thousands, appeared with a thick cloud above their heads. The black cloud seems to have entirely forgotten its history as a white cloud.
Even though their hearts didn’t beat and their lungs didn’t breathe, the corpses took a step. And their legs, pelvises, upper bodies, shoulders, and heads swayed.
Beneath their feet was the cold fog and frost, advancing with the corpses. The corpses, with black clouds above their heads and white fog beneath their feet, did not run. They simply walked with heavy steps.
Even so, there were a lot of them. To observe each leaf in a forest requires a great deal of attention. If you don’t have strong eyesight, you may have to climb a tree and rest your gaze on a branch rather than the forest.
It was similar to the army of corpses of Qualled, the King of Death, and the army of white dead who invoked death. They were plainly distinct undead moving independently, but from a distance, they appeared to be a single mass.
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