The Army of Yeokcheon (2)
While trampling over some stumbling goblins with his horse, Quéon turned his gaze to the damned Blade’s Edge Mountains.
He didn’t notice anything specific.
It was still midday, so the strange, dark shade falling over the mountain looked very suspicious indeed.
“The monsters have been chased here by them!” came Bernardo’s cry.
Quéon’s eyes then took in the monsters.
A great variety of them was running without faltering. Their usual ferocity was not present – the things were terrified.
“I don’t know what those guys are, but if they scared the monsters so much, they must be terrible.”
“Who is it?” demanded Quéon as he spurred his horse on.
The Black Lancers broke through the swarming ranks of monsters and gained the castle gates, the monsters still on their tails.
With a great thumping sound, the gates slammed shut behind the riders.
“Huh!?” Quéon demanded as he dismounted and threw Bernardo against a wall.
“What did you see? Whatever went on up there, everything! Go tell the lord, go tell the count!”
At the next moment, Quéon turned to face the group of monsters who had managed to pass through the gate.
He stood and readied his lance as he faced the foe, trolls among them.
Bernardo Eli threw a last glance at the figure of the knight and then ran up the stairs as if flying.
Winter Castle stood ever-proudly above its walls.
“There are terrible guys in the mountains!” Bernardo reported urgently.
“Those terrible folk are watching everything from there.”
Vincent merely lifted his finger in silence and pointed out, over the walls.
There was deep darkness at the mouth of the mountain pass, a great mass that screamed in silence in every shade of evil.
* * *
While the north gate of the castle existed in a state of pandemonium after the monsters had gained it, a group of young men arrived at the south gate. Although they looked a right mess after struggling through a blizzard, their noble birth was not completely obfuscated by their haggard appearance.
“Are you really saying that the tower will be built in this secluded place?”
“I know, right? Firstly, I came here just because my father told me to.”
These were the direct descendants that each noble family has sent up.
‘Baawoooo woooo!’
The sons frowned at the sound of a trumpet ringing out ceaselessly.
“But why is it so noisy all of a sudden?”
“It sounds like they’re training or jousting.”
The sons murmured to each other and decided it wasn’t that important. The soldiers from the south gate beckoned them inside.
“Hey, you! This gate is gonna close soon! If you wanna come in, come in now!”
“What a cheeky soldier, to speak like that to-! Hey! Wait, wait!”
The sons watched as the gate slowly started to grind shut and rushed at it without having the breath to shout.
They reached it just in time.
“You what do you think-”
‘DWAAK!!!’
The young man was startled by the sound of the castle gate slamming shut behind him.
“No matter how secluded it is, don’t they seem quite busy?”
“That’s right! It looks like there was a war here.”
The noble sons continued complaining, dissatisfied with their welcome after such a hard journey.
‘Buwoooooo!’
They now heard a faint sound coming over the cry of the horn.
‘Klang, klank, klang!’
‘Aaargh! Aaah!’
The metallic sound of swinging weapons accompanied the ferocious shouts of men.
“Leave the trolls to the knights! Rangers, organize the retreat!”
The sons heard bellowed orders piercing through the tumult.
They looked at each other, and their faces hardened.
The shock of the one was reflected on the face of the other.
“What is this uproar? What are these guys doing?”
As they stood there, stiff, someone spoke to them. They turned their heads and looked at the speaker.
The man looked almost like a beggar – his head slung low and with a hood covering half his face. All they saw was his sharp nose and his stern mouth.
“Ah! You’re those guys,” said the man.
It was strange, now that the sons looked at him, they noticed the arrogance of the man’s bearing. For them, meeting such a man was a novelty.
“I didn’t recognize you all, expecting to see guys finer looking than you. So when I saw you, I thought ‘What?’”
The man did not identify himself, merely gesturing at the young men and saying, “Let’s go.”
“Uh … where are you taking us?” asked one of the noble sons, who felt tired from the journey.
The hooded man extended a finger, and it pointed squarely in the direction from which the fighting could be heard.
“Follow.”
The sons could not find the words to disobey the order, so they followed the man without knowing why.
“Aaah! Hyaaa!”
“Fire! Fire until you or they die! Fire!”
“Who’s seen my little finger? Anyone seen my little finger?”
The deeper they moved into the castle, the greater the chaos became.
“I can’t even see the blood that’s splashing on my hand now! I’m blind!”
It was obvious: This was the sound of soldiers in battle.
‘Kaanghuuu!’
It was also the sound of soldiers bringing their weapons to bear against things that mouthed bizarre cries, cries which the young men have never heard before. As they kept on walking, a wide courtyard appeared.
“Bleugh, ugh!”
The noble sons covered their mouths as they become nauseous and retched.
Some of the boys didn’t even have hair on their chests, and they were disturbed the most.
The hooded man would normally have clucked his tongue and said it was an ugly sight, but he wasn’t of a mind to do so now.
It was the sight of dozens of corpses and carcasses scattered on the open ground that had horrified these young men.
Monsters of red, yellow, blue, and rust-brown colorations were laying all over, dead or dying, their limbs severed.
“Oh, new blood! Ain’t we crowded enough here already?” a stranger groaned as he watched the sons pass on by.
“Well, I think you can all-“
“Follow,” came the hooded man’s order once more as he interrupted the other man.
Once more, the children were filled with a strange feeling of coercion as they unthinkingly obeyed.
The man ascended a flight of stairs leading up the wall.
“Fire!”
“Ignore that troll! You’re just wasting arrows!”
“Oil here! Bring the oil!”
“Our arrows are not enough!”
The sound of shouts became clearer, with many unknown odors mingling with the stench of oil, permeating the air and churning the young men’s insides.
They pressed their hands to their faces and followed the man up the stairs.
When they finally gained the wall, they choked and retched – the stench of death, of men at war and of ravening monsters swirled upon the wall.
If they breathed in too deeply, it felt like their insides were aflame and sure to be scorched to ash.
“Reform your lines completely!”
A man with a sharp tongue was berating the soldiers around him.
“You there, hold that pot of oil up straight! Do you want to fry your allies as well?”
“Yeah, yeah! Sorry sir!”
“And you! Why are your hands empty? Is this battle over?”
“Sorry… I… Sorry!”
The sons had grown more used to the scorching heat upon the wall, so much so that they regained their thoughts.
They began to wonder as to the identity of the man giving out orders.
Was this the Count of Winter Castle? There could be no other man who could so naturally deal with soldiers – the young men knew that much.
And yet, he wasn’t Count Balahard.
“Huh?” gawped one of the commanding officers as he looked at the noble sons with wide eyes.
“Your Highness?”
There was only one man in Winter Castle that would be called by that title.
It was the man who had summoned them here. A son of the Leonberger dynasty, the First Prince Adrian Leonberger, cousin to the Count of Winter Castle.
Some had said that he still looked like a fat little boy, but the young men knew that he had changed.
He had changed so much, though, that they didn’t even recognize him.
“Where’s Vincent?” the first prince asked.
“Up until now, he was on the eastern wall.”
“Go to him for further orders.”
While the young men were considering how polite they should be, the first prince continued to walk along the wall.
“Highness.”
“Aren’t you a bit late, Highness?”
The officers who saw the prince greeted him casually. Unlike the soldiers who fired their bows with hard faces, Prince Adrian looked very relaxed. Only then did the noble sons realize that the soldiers on the walls were divided into two distinct categories: Those who were tense and those who calmly fought on. All those who were friendly with the prince fell into the latter category.
“My Highness, what is it with the hair that you have grown in just a few days?”
“Surely? I guess I mustn’t have noticed. Do you have anything that I can eat here? I came straight to the wall without a meal.”
The young men’s eyes stretched wide.
In that great reeking atmosphere, with the stench of blood, sweat, and many unidentifiable odors, the sons could barely face the evil that was exploding around them. Yet, the first prince ravenously ate the loaf of bread that had been handed to him.
And it wasn’t just bread – wherever he went, he whined that he was hungry and so obtained food.
Jerky, potatoes, bread – the first prince shoved it all into his mouth, amid the stench of battle and the tumult that reigned all over the place.
The first prince had been walking briskly, but now halted.
“Vincent.”
“Your Highness?”
The Count of Winter Castle, a man in the midst of directing the battle, stretched his eyes wide when he saw the first prince.
“When did you leave your room?”
“Just now. Explain the situation to me.”
“They just suddenly rushed in! At first, I was worried about the number of monsters, but as you can see, rather than besieging us, they just seem to be cowering beneath the walls, as if fleeing from a greater evil.”
So terrible were the grotesque screams coming from down below that the young men did not even think of nearing the edge and looking down.
And even in the presence of such monsters, both Count Balahard and Prince Adrian cried out that it was the perfect opportunity to train their recruits. They seemed completely easy-going and laid-back.
Contrary to the young men’s observation, though, they weren’t as casual as they looked.
“What’s their problem, then?”
“According to Bernardo Eli, the monsters were chased here by something in the mountains.”
The first prince stood at the edge of the wall, and his face had become serious.
The noble sons unwittingly followed his gaze, and their faces hardened in turn.
There was an area tainted by black shadows on the border between the pure-white snowfield and the mountains. And there was an even darker darkness than those shadows, attempting to emerge from them.
The moment that the first prince saw that, the monsters beneath the wall became a minor nuisance.
The hundreds, thousands of monsters cried and roared, and the silent menace of the far-away shadows became several times more terrible.
It was a corrupted and sinister presence that none had encountered in this lifetime.
For those lacking the knowledge, they couldn’t even guess as to its nature. There was just a mutual instinct that the moment that that thing left the mountain range, something terrible would happen.
I don’t want to be in a tower. I don’t want to be a wizard. I want to go back.
This shared thought races through the noble sons’ minds.
Should I just leave here? No way that anyone knows who we are.
The young men exchanged glances. They were longing for the moment that they could leave that crazy wall.
“But who are these guys?” asked Vincent.
“It seems that they are the scions sent from each family, arrived only today,” the first prince stated.
Both the count and prince now stared at the young men.
“You guys sure know how to invite ill fortune, arriving on the same day that this happens.”
“That’s right!” exclaimed Prince Adrian, and both of them laughed.
The young men heard this laughter and then knelt. They were about to introduce themselves formally.
However, the first prince did not give them this chance.
“While you serve here in Winter Castle, never use the name of your family. You are just recruits, and you will be treated like any other soldier.”
“We came here to become wizards of the tower, Your Highness! At least check if we have the qualities of wizards before making us serve-“
“Checked you out. None of you are capable of becoming wizards.”
They came to this remote place to become sorcerers, so what was this prince telling them now?
They couldn’t understand, and they couldn’t accept it.
So- they protested. They marshaled their courage and raised their objections, faced with the strangely overbearing presence of the first prince.
“I have already confirmed that you are not qualified.”
The prince’s voice carried over with force. If they were not wizards, what qualities did they need, then? It was a statement that sapped the will from their souls. One of them spoke up.
“I do not doubt the wisdom of Your Highness, but I came here to be either a knight with a sword or a wizard with magic. So, I merely ask that we meet the wizard so that he can see what potential we have.”
The young man’s plea made sense in its own way, but his face soon became pallid.
“You possess no qualities as wizards,” a clear voice suddenly interjected. When the young men turned their heads, they saw a woman with a white cape that obscured her face.
* * *
The woman in a pure-white cloak had revealed herself, and all that was seen were the slim lines of her chin and her delicate lips.
Nonetheless, I quickly recognized her.
The mysterious figure who hid her heavenly beauty under that white cloak resembled someone I had known four-hundred years ago.
“As master of the tower, I tell you now: Your magical talent and potential is inferior to that of goblins.”
Even while pouring out such a scathing rejection, the innocent and pure voice remained unaltered.
“Who the hell are you?”
The noble sons had been captivated by her mysterious aura, but they snapped awake and protested.
They had asked to see the wizard and wanted to prove themselves before him.
I laughed and said, “She is the wizard you are looking for.”
She was the one they had been so eager to meet.
“She is the keeper of the northern spire that will be built.”
I was the master of that tower. The noble sons now turned to me with blank faces.
Even Vincent held the same expression as they.
Why is he doing this again? Vincent seemed to think, but I slapped my sides, and he straightened his face.
“I am what is His Highness said I am. I am the white night mage.”
“I’m Vincent, the Count Balahard and the lord of Winter Castle. Nice to meet you.”
I frowned at the strangely empowered tone of voice that Vincent suddenly had.
His face flushed red, and I had figured that it was due to the heat of battle.
It was not, and I laughed at the vainness of it.
Here was a man who has fallen in love with a centuries-old skeleton.
There was no distinction: It was both pitiful and absurd.
Ophelia had not been interested in men four hundred years ago, and she surely couldn’t have changed her mind since becoming a lich.
“Cheer up, Vincent,” I goaded him.
“Yeah? Yeah!” came his flustered response, and I shook my head at the fact that he knew nothing.
Still, even on a battlefield filled with screaming and death, love can blossom.
It was a tragedy that the other person was a skeleton of many centuries with not a strip of flesh to her bones.
I glanced at Vincent first before casting a questioning glance at Ophelia.
There must be a reason that she had revealed herself before others earlier than expected. If my guess was right, it was because of the darkness that had come to the foot of the mountains.
“The screams of the dead and the demons were so loud that I couldn’t help but come and see.”
It was just as I had guessed.
Ophelia, as a lich, was quite dead, even if she was a person. It seemed that the wailing of the dead, not heard by the living, was what led her to the walls.
“What are those things?” I asked her.
I knew that their essence was in contact with death, but I could not grasp the details. The world beyond life was an unknown one that I could not peer into – even with my levels of power and knowledge.
“They are dead, yet not dead. Alive, but not alive. They are the dead who hate the living,” she explained. “It is the army of Yeokcheon.”
‘And both of us already know what they are,’ her thoughts said as they penetrated my brain, and my face hardened.
“They have climbed the mountain with the will of the true dragon in them but could not descend the mountain after that,” Ophelia said as she stared at me. “They are the knights and soldiers of the expedition who climbed Mount Seori four hundred years ago.”
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