Chapter 98: 97

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Geography of Fishermen (1)

Before accepting Turka’s proposal, I called Vincent to me and explained the situation. No matter what I wanted to do, the lands surrounding Winter Castle were still the lands of the Balahard family, so the decision was not mine alone to make.

“What would dwarves want in a land with orcs as their neighbors?” he asked, but he still gave me his permission, asking me to proceed as I wished, and to ask him if there was anything that he could help with.

“I will gladly accept the renting fees from dwarves,” he joked.

I promised that I would repay his total trust in me in my own way. I then made my preparations for leaving the fortress promptly.

“Jordan, I have a mission.”

“Right now?” Ranger Jordan asked me, enjoying the rest that rangers were entitled to after long-distance patrols or equivalent quests. He was a bit disgusted.

“Everyone else is resting, so why must I-“

I stopped the ranger’s complaining abruptly.

“You ran away in the middle of our negotiations. Wouldn’t you like to make up for it?”

His face turned into a mulish expression, and I cocked my hand into the shape of a cup and drank.

“Now, who the hell said I ran-“

“You telling me that you didn’t?”

He frowned with a groan. If he had a better reason, he wasn’t speaking it.

I chuckled and then laughed as I looked at his face.

“Then, I know you would like to lead the 17th platoon on a mission.”

“No.”

I couldn’t understand where the hell this man’s pride was, and he would probably be drunk, even if he were to die soon.

Jordan then spat out a few toxic invectives.

“You depart the day after tomorrow.”

I left Jordan and once more met up with Turka, who was also told about the schedule.

“It’s nice to get some things done in this cold,” he said. Turka might have been sulking a few days ago, but his ambition was now so clear to me.

Shortly before we left, I gathered all the rangers so that we could schedule our route. Turka pulled a map from his bag and said, “We’re to prospect from this side, first.”

His thick finger pointed to a spot on the map, which was filled with strange symbols. In that manner, our party’s destination was decided. The next day was terribly bright, and I met up with Jordan and his rangers in front of the fortress.

“I’m thinking that we head all along the cliff.”

We did, heading west along the cliff that faced Winter Castle.

We walked for a time, keeping a distance between ourselves and the cliff in case of avalanches or rockfalls.

A blizzard came upon us in the middle of our journey, but Jordan had noticed the change in atmosphere in advance and had guided us into a cave set into the cliff-face so that we would encounter the blizzard on the snowfield.

“Well done, Jordan.”

“When we return, you better give me ten days’ leave.”

After so many many veteran rangers had died, Jordan was the best ranger in Winter Castle. I figured that I could reward him with some rest after forcefully dragging him here.

When dawn broke, we left the cave and continued heading west. After about a week, Turka stated that we had reached the north-westernmost point that he had marked on his map.

“Is it here, then?” Jordan asked. Turka shook his head as he turned to the ranger.

“I don’t sense any energy here.”

Turka asked if we could head a little further west.

“Just a ways away from here is the western border of the kingdom,” Jordan said, looked at me, and asked if we should head further.

“Let’s go as far as we can.”

After I had given permission, Jordan and the rangers guided us with nervous faces. The dwarves followed, stopping from time to time to dig into the snow, sniffing into the holes that they made.

“More west.”

Turka sounded as if he had sensed something, and Jordan gave me another look as he said, “If we head that way for one more day, we will really be outside of the kingdom.”

“What is beyond the border?”

“I do not know,” Jordan said with a stern face, “because none of the rangers who have crossed the border have ever returned.”

“Let’s head to the border at once.”

“If it seems dangerous, will you pull us over it with force?” came the playful words of the rangers, who had become cheerful.

We walked for another day. The rangers who had scouted ahead halted, looking at me as if they had made a discovery.

Over their shoulders I could see tattered and half-torn flags fluttering, their poles stuck at oblique angles into the snow.

These flags were the border markers of the Leonberg Kingdom.

Beyond them stood a forest with snow-capped trees.

“That’s it.”

Turka and Surkara stepped to the front ranks.

“Do you feel it?” Surkara asked.

“Very well,” Turka responded.

They had stopped in front of a flag, exchanging words that I could not make out.

Before I could even ask what was going on, Turka pulled his shovel from his bag and started digging into the snow.

He dug as if possessed.

The snow that had settled there over so many years was removed, and finally, bare earth was revealed.

Turka thrust his head into the pit and stayed like that for a while.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re doing,” I said.

Jordan was gripping his crossbow and mumbled complaints as he guarded the hole beneath the flag. The rangers seemed to want to leave the area as soon as possible, but they also seemed annoyed by the weird actions of the dwarves.

There came a sudden frantic movement from the hole, and Turka started to wriggle like a worm, his feet paddling in the air as if he was having a seizure.

“Gotcha!” Suraka cried as he hugged onto Turka’s short legs and pulled him out like a radish.

Turka’s face flushed brightly, his eyes bloodshot, with his beard covered in snow and dirt.

The old dwarf’s face was almost invisible under all that muck after he had been pulled from his upside-down exploration in the snow.

Inside of that mess, Turka smiled brightly.

“I found it!” he cried.

“The records were correct!” came Sukara’s jubilant exclamation.

The two dwarves grabbed one another’s hands and began to dance in jolly circles and with energized little leaps.

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“Let’s hear what is going on first before we dance,” I said.

Only after he heard me did Turka remember the presence of the humans. He turned to me with a face filled with excitement and exultation.

“The records are correct! A great lava river flows right below us! If it flows strong enough, the Eternal Furnace will last for a thousand years, not five-hundred!” came Turka’s excited explanation. “This is the place that we have been looking for.”

“It isn’t a suitable place for my dungeon,” I told Turka, who seldom considered things that were not to his direct advantage.

“So you know what that means.”

“What do you mean? You want us to re-negotiate terms?” he demanded as he puffed himself up.

“Now come on Turka, what did-“

“Nobody said you could rent our land,” a new voice spoke, and I looked to find its source.

I could see so many brightly shining pupils glittering in the unusually deep darkness of the white forest.

I felt a piercing gaze fall on me, one that did not feel murderous or hostile, which made it feel even eerier.

I knew what beings had eyes like that.

Turka shrugged. “I never said my project wouldn’t include some conflict with the elves.”

Sure, I thought.

The elves appeared without a sound, drifting through the trees like the ghosts of the apocalypse.

And in the midst of them, there stood a thousand-year-old maniac elf.

“I have come to meet my bridegroom,” the Elder High Elf Sigrun said as she smiled with those pure white teeth of hers. Her gaze left me and fell upon the dwarves. They had been overly excited, and now, far too late, had realized their carelessness.

“Still, I don’t know what exactly these gifts are that he brought me, but they sure look fun,” Sigrun said with that bright smile – as if I had indeed given her a great present.

Still, her smile contained the feelings of a predator which territory has been invaded; there was not a lick of genuine joy to be found anywhere.

She looked at me again, and I could see that her eyes demanded an explanation from me. Gone was her pretense – her faux love and favor. I sighed as I met her icy gaze. I had known that there was an elven forest to the northwest of the kingdom. What I did not know was how far this forest had expanded over the past four hundred years, so much so that it now touched the borders of the kingdom.

While I was wrapped in my own thoughts, Sigrun suddenly disappeared from the spot that she had been standing on.

‘Klang!’

At that moment, a sound echoed and I turned to its source. Turka held his ax out, shielding himself, and before him stood Sigrun with a drawn sword.

“I regret your reflexes. I was so hoping to cut off an arm.”

“Hah! You elves have always been a vicious race, now as much as always,” Turka said and spat to the snow as he held his ax fixed before him. There was no sign of an awe-inspiring elf. There just stood a thousand-year-old monster.

Turka’s hatred was natural, for a Prima Meister was never one who would bow down before an Elder High Elf.

Still, things looked bad.

A fully-prepared dwarf could not be touched by the elves, but in a sudden situation like this, Turka’s advantages were relatively inferior.

Moreover, there were dozens of elves along with the Elder High Elf – and only two dwarves.

If we did not intervene, the dwarves would, in all likelihood, be killed by the elves.

This was not the situation that I had been hoping for.

Rangers clenched their teeth as the energy level started to increase dramatically with the elves and dwarves facing off.

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The rangers’ souls had been tempered during battles against the Warlord’s armies. Even if this release of power was only the tip of the iceberg, the rangers managed to resist the power of this transcendental being.

I laughed, overjoyed by their boldness.

At the same time, I channeled the mana that had rested within my own body.

“Fire!” I ordered, and the strings of bows and crossbows twanged as the rangers loosed their missiles.

‘Klang!’

Sigrun’s sword met Turka’s ax as arrows filled the air. A sapphire beam flashed out from Sigrun’s eyes. The elves look just about ready to slaughter the rangers.

“Get back!” I yelled as a flash of energy struck between dwarf and elf, blocking Sigrun’s beam.

I walked in between them, pulling Twilight from the snow where I had thrown it.

I wiped it off.

“You both seem to have forgotten,” I said as I looked at them in turn, “that this is not a land of elves, nor of dwarves.”

They glanced at me.

“This is my kingdom,” I declared as I kept staring at them.

[The Poetry of the Defeated King] rang out in my mind.

‘Isn’t it mine, either those high halls,

Or that dignified throne?

There is nothing that is not my seat.’

It was my land, for I had conquered the occupying Warlord and his greenskin army.

It was only right that I claim it, for I had become the usurper when I had defeated the King of the Orcs.

“Get back,” I ordered with passion welling up from my soul.

‘Sheeek.’

It was Sigrun who sheathed her sword first. She looked at me, her face filled with satisfaction. The way she stared at me was the way in which a bird would look at the ripening fruits on a tree, which was an uncomfortable feeling.

Still, she showed no sign of opposing me.

Turka then withdrew from the stand-off.

He did not lower his ax, but it didn’t seem as if he would rush the elf and start chopping, as he had before.

After I had separated the Prima Meister from the Elder High Elf, I said, “Don’t make war in my kingdom.”

The elf laughed, and the dwarf coughed.

* * *

I had barely diffused a bloody situation wherein ax and sword had already clashed. The atmosphere had in no way changed into a charitable one. Sigrun was a maniac that would draw her sword for no reason at all, and Turka was a stubborn old dwarf that would not hesitate to go all-in if a fight broke out.

It was never easy to mediate between dwarves and elves, but that did not mean that it was impossible.

They had no choice but to listen to my demands.

Sigrun did not plan to oppose me so early in her game, and Turka was not willing to claim the kingdom’s land by force.

“That is the land of elves,” I said as I pointed to the forest of mistletoe-filled trees.

“And from this point lies the lands of the kingdom,” I said as lowered my finger, pointing to the snow upon which I stood.

“And under this land of the kingdom, is the land of the dwarves!” I declared.

“From this day on, these flags mark the border between the three realms.”

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