Dark Fantasy: Magical Eye Knight – Chapter 43

Chapter 43: The Winter Season

TL: Potato-tan

Proofreader: Asianpotato

Chesdin, the gatekeeper in charge of Calisden’s northern city gate, was bored.

He was fond of his job.

Born a commoner and realizing his talent for martial arts, Chesdin joined the military and has since lived a relatively comfortable life.

His job was to oversee those entering the city through the city gate. The passersby were usually travelers, merchants, or mercenaries.

For Chesdin, who inherently enjoyed people-watching, the city gate was a perfect fit.

The occasional bribes he received from merchants also provided capital for his gambling and drinking habits.

There were a few who caused trouble, and if he could just endure the slight boredom, there was no better job than this one. So Chesdin thought.

However, it was currently the autumn month of October, and Calisden was a city located in the northeast. The north shed its leaves and experienced frost much faster than the lower regions.

In this autumn season, which was considerably colder than usual, the northern merchants reduced their trade, and travelers were scarce.

As a result, Chesdin was more bored than ever. Until noon, not a single person had come to the city gate. So he picked on his subordinate soldiers.

“Hey.”

“Yes!”

“What was your name again?”

The soldier, who looked to be somewhere between a boy and a teenager, responded to Chesdin’s question with a flustered expression.

“Ah, m, my name, sir?”

“Yeah, punk. Why aren’t you answering quickly?”

“I-I’m Zig!”

“Jug?”

“Zig, sir!”

“I see, punk. I was just messing with you. Hey.”

“Yes!”

“You’re good at answering, kid. Don’t you have any funny stories?”

“F, Funny stories, sir?”

“Yeah. Aren’t you bored? I’m bored out of my mind.”

Chesdin yawned ostentatiously. The soldier, Zig, felt like yawning when he saw him, but he clenched his teeth and endured it. If he did the same, he wouldn’t just get off with a scolding.

Zig thought furiously, then spoke with an unnatural smile.

“Then, may I tell you about the Dragon Slayer?”

“Dragon Slayer? Is there a story I don’t know about? I feel like I’ve heard it so many times in the past few weeks that my ears are ringing. It’s even more vivid than our lord, whom we’ve never met.

“Ah, but you may not know this. It’s a story about how he saved me.”

Chesdin’s eyes widened, and he glanced at Zig.

“Did you meet the Dragon Slayer in person? And he saved you?”

“Yes, yes.”

“You little punk!”

“Ack!”

As Chesdin suddenly raised his arm, Zig instinctively covered his face. However, Chesdin was not trying to hit him.

Chesdin placed a hand on Zig’s shoulder and said,

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? Hurry up and tell me. In as much detail as possible.”

“. . .Understood.”

As Zig began his story, Chesdin sat back down in his chair. In truth, he had already heard it.

He just needed some noise to listen to with one ear and ignore with the other, and he also intended to help this guy who still hadn’t adjusted to his position.

Chesdin, who was looking up at the white sky and sniffing, aimed at the horizon to flick his booger far away, and there he spotted faint shadows rising.

White clouds covered the sky, revealing not a single patch of blue. Chesdin, who had been watching the gradually darkening plains, saw that they were riding horses and would arrive soon.

“Hey, hey. That’s enough.”

“And so the Dragon Slayer, he. . . Huh?”

“I said stop. We’ve got guests. You go stand over there too.”

Chesdin, who had flicked his booger, put on the gloves he had taken off and stood up, glaring at his subordinate soldiers who were chattering away.

“Snap out of it, you idiots!”

Watching his subordinate soldiers stand at attention after receiving a blow to their shins and the backs of their heads, Chesdin waited for the travelers.

Chesdin, who had been half-expecting and half-excited to see who would come on horseback in this cold season, gradually hardened his expression.

There were eight of them, riding on glossy black warhorses.

Seven of them carried long swords on their backs and wore thin black chainmail armor, a breastplate, shoulder armor, and a cloak.

Even at a glance, one could tell that these were high-quality items made by an artisan.

Hoods covered their heads, hiding their faces and making it difficult to determine their gender.

The woman whose face was revealed was the remaining one. And Chesdin gulped.

Zeona, the daughter and young lady of the city lord, would undoubtedly come first on his list of the most beautiful women in Calisden, followed by Vanessa from the Red Rose Tavern and Shasha, the waitress at the Breezy Winds of Lanshmoore Inn.

However, the woman before him was on a whole other level.

She was also riding a black horse, but her body was relatively petite.

The boots on her saddle covered her shins, and she wore black leather pants over them. Chesdin dared not look any further down at her breathtaking curves and raised his gaze.

She wore a good-quality black shirt on her upper body, like her pants, a blue vest with bejeweled buttons, and a cloak with a fox fur collar over that.

And her face, with its white and smooth skin, was visible. The fur around her neck resembled a fox, bringing to mind a fox.

Her sharp eyes were slightly upturned, and her straight nose and red lips were symmetrical, showing no bias.

Her eyes were undoubtedly the highlight. Crimson-red pupils.

In a nutshell, she was a beautiful woman with a noble and graceful aura.

“Wow, crazy.”

Behind Chesdin, one of the soldiers exclaimed in a small voice without realizing it, then hurriedly covered his mouth.

However, Chesdin could not scold the soldier. He had uttered similar curses dozens of times in his head.

Chesdin was about to ask what their business was.

However, the woman, who had yet to get off her horse, spoke first, her full lips parting.

“Are you the gatekeeper of this city gate?”

“Yes? Ah, yes!”

Chesdin, who had missed his cue, replied in a panic.

And he instinctively realized that this woman was of very high status, and that the hooded men behind her were her escort.

“Is this city Calisden?”

“Y, Yes! This city—no, this is Calisden! But who might you be. . .?”

“Just keep in mind that we are travelers. You don’t need to know anything else. Do you understand?”

“Understood!”

Chesdin quickly shouted at her sudden demand to leave quietly. The woman nodded.

“Hm.”

The woman looked up at the high city wall in front of her. Her eyes narrowed.

“There are a lot of scratches on the city wall. What happened? It looks like monsters crawled up it.”

Chesdin knew what she was asking about.

Two monster invasions had occurred in Calisden three weeks earlier.

The first time, an evil dragonkin had directly summoned the monsters with a spell, and the second time, the monsters had run amok after the ancient wyrm that had been sleeping beneath the city had awakened.

However, Chesdin did not have the confidence to tell the whole story briefly.

So he simply explained that the monsters had invaded, and the woman nodded.

“I have one question.”

“Yes! Please ask me anything!”

“Did a man come to this city a few days or weeks ago?”

There was no explanation, just the word ‘man’, but somehow, Chesdin felt like he knew what she meant. But even so, Chesdin had to ask.

“If only you could tell me that. . .”

“His name is Russell. He’s very tall. He’s also very muscular. He turned twenty this year. . . .”

The woman paused for a moment. She pressed her lips together for a moment, then spoke again.

“And he has a feature that clearly distinguishes him from other men. His eyes are purple-blue.”

“Huh?”

At that moment, one of the soldiers exclaimed without realizing it. Zig, a boyish soldier still too young to be considered a man, was present. The woman’s crimson eyes turned to the young soldier.

“Do you know anything?”

“Ah, I. T, The Dragon Slayer. . . had eyes like that.”

The woman’s expression broke, and her eyes widened.

“Dragon Slayer? What are you talking about?”

Chesdin rolled his eyes quickly at Zig, but Zig did not understand.

He just wondered why Chesdin was rolling his eyes, then realized that he had not yet answered the woman’s question and spoke.

“A few weeks ago, the person who saved my life had purple-blue eyes. And I later learned that he was the hero who killed the dragon that had jumped out from underground in the city. . . .”

Zig trailed off. The woman had suddenly gotten off her horse and approached him.

Chesdin and the soldiers realized that she was quite tall.

The woman, who had approached in an instant, swinging her well-toned legs, spoke.

“A little more detail, briefly.”

It was a request with conflicting conditions, but Zig swallowed and repeated what he had said to Chesdin, enunciating clearly.

Previously, he embellished his story with various details as instructed, but this time, he eschewed these flowery words and simply enumerated the facts of his experiences.

“. . .That’s it.”

The woman, who had been quietly listening with only her eyes blinking, muttered.

“I see. So he came here.”

The woman reached into her bosom and extracted a gold coin from her pocket. Chesdin’s and the other soldiers’ eyes widened, but perhaps not as much as Zig’s.

“Ah, I, this is. . .?”

“A reward. Take it.”

Zig moved his trembling hands forward. The woman dropped three or four gold coins into his palm. 

The sound of coins clinking was so delightful. Copper and silver coins were on a different level.

The woman also presented Chesdin with a gold coin.

“You too.”

“Ah, yes, yes. Thank you, thank you.”

“I hope you don’t take the child’s away from him.”

“Yes! How could I?”

The woman nodded and turned around to get back on her horse. Until she got off her horse and got back on, the hooded men behind her didn’t say a word and waited.

Chesdin felt an unknown fear from their aligned figures, so he let them pass.

The eight travelers on horseback passed through the northern gate of Calisden.

Chesdin and his subordinate soldiers stood there in a daze, watching them silently as they entered the city and disappeared.

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The eight travelers crossed the city and approached a large manor.

A signboard hung above the manor’s entrance, with the name ‘Rephilia Swordsmanship’ written in large letters.

The guild members guarding the gate were shocked to see eight people suddenly appear, all riding enormous black horses.

They were bound to catch the citizens’ eyes as they crossed the boulevard under the white sky.

However, ignoring the people’s murmurs, the eight of them went straight to the Rephilia Swordsmanship building.

“Everyone, get off your horses.”

The woman spoke and got off her horse first, and the seven behind her also got off their horses in unison. The fluttered cloaks, made of a heavy material to ward off the cold, quickly settled down.

As before, the woman took the lead. The guild member guarding the gate took a step back, intimidated by her beauty and noble aura.

She spoke confidently.

“Call Karen Rephilia.”

The guild member swallowed and spoke cautiously.

“I, who might you be. . .?”

The woman opened her eyes lazily and uttered in a languid voice.

“Hella, Katarina von Vladyka. The second daughter of the Vladyka family, one of the Six Northern Families. Tell her that an old friend is looking for her.”

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The location was the Rephilia Swordsmanship Building, specifically the private office of Guild Master Karen Rephilia. Hella and Karen were there, talking alone.

The room was filled with a solemn silence. No one had touched Karen’s personally brewed tea on the table, and only white steam wafted into the air.

The gazes they exchanged were completely different. Hella was in the master’s seat where Karen should have been sitting, and Karen was in the guest’s seat instead.

However, neither of them seemed to find the arrangement strange.

“. . . So.  Those things happened. You seem to know quite a lot about them.”

Karen spoke; her head bowed.

“I only told you what I heard from the city lord’s daughter, Vladyka Head.”

Hella rejected the title they gave her.

“Not yet. My father and mother still address me formally. Don’t speak nonsense.”

“I understand.”

“Karen, do you have no intention of returning? Don’t you miss it?”

Karen shook her head.

“My older brother and other family members are already filling the seat; I left more than enough. I’m more comfortable where I am now.”

Hella looked at Karen and sighed.

“Sir Sigmund would like to see your face. Come up later, when you have time. Do you really not plan to see your family at all?”

“. . .I’ll try.”

Hella shook her head and spoke.

“Where did Russell go?”

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t heard anything about him either.”

“I thought so. Which way did he go?”

Karen thought for a moment, then replied.

“I heard that he went west.”

“West. When?”

“Three weeks ago.”

Hella clenched her fists. Three weeks. It was too long. By now, Russell would have gone quite far.

It would be difficult to determine whether he had gone further or down.

Russell had left home with almost no trace of himself. Hella had barely managed to gather his tracks, like searching for a needle in a snowfield, and had determined that his last destination was this place, Calisden.

She had arrived as quickly as possible, but it had already been three weeks since he had left.

Karen spoke carefully.

“By any chance, is the man named Russell the person I think he is?”

“Who did you think he was?”

“Your fiancé, isn’t he? He is the eldest son of the Zahard family.

Hella remained silent. However, not denying it was as good as an affirmation.

“Do you intend to pursue him?”

“. . . . . . .”

Karen spoke quietly.

“Hella-nim. Winter is coming.”

If one simply listened to her, it would sound like a warning to be careful of the cold season. However, it was different for Hella.

She was a member of the Six Northern Families, which protected the north. The north was a place where the weather was cold all year round, but even so, the boundaries of the seasons were clear.

There was spring, summer, and autumn. Winter was the time when the north was at its harshest.

Hella gritted her teeth. She heard an unpleasant grinding sound for a moment before it disappeared.

“I know. . . I should go back now.”

She had already invested a significant amount of time in getting this far. Now she had to go back and stop the demon beasts. That was her duty, too.

Hella thought. ‘It seems like it’ll be the longest winter of my life.’

She probably wouldn’t be able to find Russell until spring came. Russell had probably calculated this and left for home.

Hella leaned back in her chair and covered her eyes with her arm. In the darkness, his face appeared.

The face that had smiled at her gradually twisted with anger and eventually became expressionless, with no emotion to be found.

In the violet eyes that Hella had wanted so much, there was no longer any emotion towards her.

Karen watched Hella do that and quietly went outside. Left alone, Hella floated in the darkness for a long time.

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November. The location is somewhere between the northern and central parts of the continent.

The colorful leaves had fallen and were rotting; white snow covered them like a blanket, emitting coldness instead of warmth.

A man on horseback was walking through the winter forest, where the whole world seemed to have vowed to be only black and white.

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