It is a huge lake located in the northern part of the Kingdom of Cerroa, on the border with the Kingdom of Franz.
The distance from Esia, the capital, is about 90 kilometers, which can be easily traversed in a day by a horse.
A river flows into the northeast side of Lake Asur, which is the border between the Kingdom of Selroa and the Kingdom of Franz, and further upstream, the border between the Kingdom of Klein.
About 20 kilometers upstream from Lake Asur, there is an old fortress.
The fort, which has existed since the time of the Great Magic War, is called .
The town of ...... near the fort, which may be a kind of castle town, is also named after the fort.
The south side of the fort is facing the river, where boats can directly land. A few days ago, a ship of a slightly different type was moored there.
It is an outer-wheel boat with a water wheel on both sides for propulsion.
The name of the man who boarded the ship at Forte de Crau was <>.
"So, you still can't figure it out?"
"Yes, I'm getting close, but..."
"...... got it. I'll see what I can do."
The fort also had a basement, and in the innermost part of the basement, Lord Oranje and the magician were having a conversation.
"If this Fortress of the Magi Fortress is restored, the partisans will have nothing to fear. On the contrary, I may even become the ruler of the world!
Fort Crow was a strategic weapon called the Magi Fortress, built during the Magi Wars.
"But, Your Excellency, what exactly is a "Magi Fortress"?
The magical engineer knew nothing about the Magi Fortress. He was just doing the job he was told to do.
"I don't know much either. But I happened to find some old documents in the Kingdom of Celuloa. I happened to find an old document in the Kingdom of Celuloa that says that three such Magi Fortresses were built during the Magi Wars. One of them is here.
Where are the other two?
One of them was in the kingdom of Leonard. I'm afraid I don't know where the other one is.
I'm sorry to hear that.
Neither of them seemed to be disappointed at all.
"This is probably the only place we'll get any real use out of it. Please, Bocker."
The wizard called Bokker nodded.
"Yes, you can count on me. And there's that Dajur Harvey."
"Dajjur Harvey......, he was a member of the Unification Party, right?"
"Yes. He's a broken man, but he's a good one.
"What we need now is manpower. I don't care about quality.
* * * *
<
Of course, it is no mean feat to control a huge fortress with only one control core.
The that Jin has built also has multiple processors inside.
The structure of the < of this was not as good as that of the old man's. "The chain of command is dendritic," says Jin.
"I know that the chain of command is dendritic, though."
A tree, in other words.
There is a at the top that controls the whole system, and from there, the chain of command grows like the trunk of a tree and the branches of a tree.
Less important tasks and information are processed by the sub-brains or small brains at the end of each branch, thus reducing the load on the < at the top of the tree.
Although the total reaction time as a system is slow, it was considered to be a well-balanced structure at that time.
"Hmmm, if I activate this control core, it will be difficult to activate the control core below it.
The man working with a groan is Dajur Harvey, a rather large man in his early thirties, but very dexterous with his hands.
"Oh, I see. If we make this connection here first, the downstream will not accept our control."
In the case of this system, which has a tree-like control structure, if you don't restart the system from the bottom up, it will stop listening to what <> says.
"It's the last one to activate the that holds the main unit together, otherwise it may consider us as an enemy."
In other words, the minions are attacked in order, and the last one is the last boss, <>.
"I don't want to reboot and be attacked out of the blue..."
He talks to himself a lot, but he's reasonably competent, and more than 70 percent of his work has been repaired in the last five days.
"But I guess I'll just ...... move on for now, ...... it'll be more interesting."
However, unlike Jin, he is not a craftsman and is easily bored. In addition, he is very slow-paced.
"Yeah, I'm a little tired, I think I'll take a break. ...... Lol, tea."
.
He is using Lol, a blue-haired automaton found in this fort. It is the same model as Anne and Tia.
Normally, all these automata should have been destroyed by Elena's will, but there remained a machine in this fortress that escaped destruction.
And now, they are being cared for with pride.
"...... is lukewarm!"
Dajjur splashes a cup of tea on Lol. The ceramic cup shatters as it hits Lol's shoulder. Lol is also covered by the tea.
>
Lol apologizes. Her movements are bad. To begin with, she is barely maintained enough to move, and she is worked over day after day.
Still, it is the fate of an automata who cannot disobey her master, and she takes care of him without a single complaint.
After brewing the tea three times, Dajur is finally satisfied and drinks it down. Then he went back to work.
"Hmmm...maybe we can work on this connection later. This one looks more interesting: ......."
Meanwhile, Bocker Ove was working elsewhere.
"This is amazing. I didn't know there were 10 battle golems left from that time!"
In the past, when Jin and his team investigated the Keowan ruins, even the control cores were extracted from the golems when the fort was abandoned, but here at Fort Kulu, there were many artifacts that remained safe and sound, probably because they had been in service until the end of the war.
They were cleverly hidden in the basement. How did they come to the knowledge of Prince Oranje?
Last year, when the Unification Party was disbanded and replaced by the Nostalgia Party, several defectors fled to the Kingdom of Franz. They were sheltered by Lord Orange, who allowed them to use the remote Fort Crau as a hideout. Last autumn, Dajour Harvey and two other magical craftsmen (magi craftsmen) found a cellar.
Hidden there were many artifacts, some known to the Unifilers and some unknown to them.
Among them, there is a magical device developed by Jin that generates a ward with an effect similar to that of stealth, which Lord Oranje used only for his own benefit.
This is the reason why he was able to avoid the pursuit of the fifth column (Quinta) sent by the old lord.
He also possessed several other artifacts, which gave Duke Oranje more power in the Kingdom of Franz.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Looking out of the window at the setting evening sky, the Duke of Lefort de Orange reflected on the past few days.
"Unnun ...... Jin Nido, he's the source of all this!"
He should have been very careful with his actions since he had gained new power, absolute power, in the form of the fortress and the artifact.
First of all, he set his sights on Alain Demainu, the ruler of the southern part of the Kingdom of Celuloa.
The main reason why he chose Alain was that he was the furthest away from Franz.
"Far and near," was it?
A memorandum left at the fort. It seems to be a memorandum left in the fort, which was written by a commander teaching his subordinates, but it contains various useful information.
Far crossings and short attacks. Even if you win a war against a distant country and gain a territory, it is difficult to maintain it. Therefore, it was written that one should be friendly with distant countries and attack nearby countries.
"The best way to win is to win without fighting. ...... That's not going to happen."
That's one of the things he wrote: "Winning without fighting is better than fighting 10 times and winning 10 times.
"So I took advantage of Richard's love of wine and let him drink as much as he wanted.
The goal was simply to keep him drunk at all hours of the day and to dull his judgment, but fortunately or unfortunately, it was not until this year that he learned that Richard's health was beginning to suffer.
"It's all over!"
It was a good thing until he used the invisibility ward to steal Richard's key in the confusion of the moment.
"Another miscalculation was that he could not read that Alain was that stupid.
The aim of taking the family of Scave Sotheby's, one of the Dauphin Cesar's bodyguards, hostage to get information was good, but it was too blatantly overdone, and even made an attempt on the Dauphin's life in the public eye at the time of King Cesar's ...... It was a bad move of the worst kind to have the life of the then Dauphin threatened in full view of the public.
Many other failures can be recalled. He is a man of only such a capacity, as he is bitter in his heart against them, but he does not think of his lack of power or insight in the slightest.
Nevertheless, the existence of an ancient relic (artifact) that can evade the pursuit of <>, hide itself from the search of <>, and escape the surveillance of <> cannot be overlooked. The presence of an artifact that can hide from the search of <> and escape the surveillance of <> cannot be overlooked.
Unbeknownst to Jin, the old lord, King Cesar, and the representatives of the nations, a new conspiracy is about to be set in motion.