“We did it! We did it! We’ve won!”
Among those who shouted with joy, Logan was undoubtedly the most ecstatic one. Having miraculously survived what he thought would be his second and last end in his returned life, he almost seemed to be flying up to the heavens as he jumped and screamed with excitement, until the awkwardness began to creep into the gazes of the allies who had collapsed from exhaustion and were watching him.
“Young master. Seeing you have so much energy left, it seems we could have won the battle easily even if you had fought.”
“Ah… Hmm, of course! It was a war we were bound to win anyway!”
They all snickered at his nonsense, truly feeling the war was finally over.
“But, young master. Did you anticipate this incident?”
At Heinke’s question, all eyes shifted to Logan.
Did he foresee the king’s death?
It was a question that could be interpreted in a very dangerous way; consequently, Logan immediately shook his head.
“No, that’s not it. Just…”Scanning his surroundings with an exaggerated sigh, Logan smiled bitterly.
“My strategy failed, but it was fortune that helped us. Once more, I apologize to everyone.”
“Ah…”
Heinkel’s stunned expression seemed to spread like an infection to the thousands of people present.
* * * Logan’s honest(?) acknowledgment stirred various reactions.
– Well, the young master is only human after all.
– Mistakes can happen.
– In any case, we won.
While most were still loyal supporters.
– It’s good that it turned out well…
– We nearly ruined the family…
A somewhat negative perception of Logan inevitably formed among a few.
And Logan simply accepted this fact with a smile.
‘It’s a hundred times better than rumors spreading that I was in any way connected to the king’s death.’
If the announcement of the king’s death had come on the same day as in his previous life, he would have claimed he didn’t deploy his prepared strategy because everything went smoothly.
The fact that the incident happened a few days later and was concluded with only this much damage and a few rumors was a true stroke of luck.
Of course, not everyone believed his excuse.
“Did you really not know?”
“Pardon?”
“I mean, did you have the king’s death in mind when you planned this operation?”
When his father spoke up with a scant retinue of guards and most of the army had begun to rest, Logan could not simply gloss over the question.
“…Yes.”
“Could there be some connection to this matter?”
He could clearly see his father’s face turn rigid at his answer.
The conversation was far too heavy, and such suspicions had to be decisively rooted out from the start.
“Absolutely not! I simply received some unfortunate news through ‘top secret’ sources from my master and contemplated how best to utilize that information.”
“Huh… again the Sword Master, huh…”
When his father let out a sigh of recognition, Logan internally apologized to his master once again for using him as an excuse.
But this time his father did not let it go just like that.
“It was still a reckless move. If the dates had been even slightly off, everything could have ended. You are aware of that, aren’t you?”
“…Yes. I deeply regret my mistake.”
“Well, it’s possible to make mistakes when you’re young. Luckily things turned out well this time, but be more careful and considerate in the future. And consult with others.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Good. That’s settled then.”
The conversation between father and son ended with a smile, but as Logan turned away, he couldn’t smile as freely.
That last exchange with his father was truly heartfelt.
No matter how good the opportunity was, he recognized, amidst a bitter sense of despair, that acting based on information from a past life was far too dangerous.
‘Reality has changed a lot because of me, and I have been far too complacent.’
‘The future will change even more. From now on, I’ll only use the information from the past life as a reference. I must not engage in such gambles again.’
Logan firmly etched this thought into his heart.
* * * The news of the king’s demise was also a mandatory summon for all nobility to the capital.
As such, McLean himself, if no one else, must rush to the capital due to his formal title along with Padrick.
However, the lord could not immediately leave the new territory with completely destroyed walls.
“After all, no one would fault a baron from the remote frontiers for arriving a bit late to the national funeral. We don’t belong to any political faction anyway.”
Despite a slightly painful twist to his words, Logan’s point had its merit.
He and Padrick decided to first carry out some basic post-battle recovery efforts.
They hurriedly gathered the remains of the fallen soldiers to send them back with the injured to town.
After requesting the delivery of food and other supplies from town, the remaining forces began to rebuild the walls of the Tomodo Castle.
After all, the villagers nearby couldn’t be mobilized immediately, having lived in terror of war without even stepping out of their homes for nearly a week.
Naturally, the first to be mobilized were the exhausted mages from the golem tower.
“Master, I’m really going to die at this rate.”
Grik, who was pale from fatigue, complained.
Even if they used magic stones to operate the golems, it wasn’t the case that no personal mana was consumed.
The mana of Grik, a mere 3rd circle mage, had already bottomed out a long time ago.
Not to mention that besides the golems, he was also using all sorts of auxiliary magic. At this point, Grik truly seemed to have reached his limit.
These past few days were perhaps the most brutal period of his life as a mage.
From the beginning of the war, he started on tunneling works and then stayed up all night to dig moats and connect them to waterways.
After collapsing from exhaustion, he relied on collapse scrolls and related magics to destroy the walls, working non-stop for five days on magic circles.
Just when there seemed a day to rest, he was immediately tasked with wall construction again.
“Why destroy them if you’re just going to ask me to rebuild them!”
Grik wasn’t spouting nonsense just because he was a mage with nothing in his head; it was simply that much of a grievance.
“I thought training would be comfortable once I became independent with the tower! What is this? It’s even busier!”
While Clayton tried hard to ignore his disciple’s pleading, Grik’s words made him flinch.
Clayton reluctantly turned around to soothe his disciple but then…
“If I had time to train, I would have reached higher realms by now. What kind of hard labor is this… Huh? What?”
“Huh?”
Woom.
As Grik distributed mana to a golem and simultaneously cast an Earth Wall spell, his heart surged with mana.
And just like a lie.
Woong.
Drrrrrrrrrr.
As a ring formed around Grik’s heart, suddenly his golem attracted the surrounding earth and grew larger.
Grik’s golem stood more than 1m taller than the 5m golems Clayton was dispersing mana into.
Caught completely off guard by this sudden turn of events, Grik could only stare on dazedly at his golem.
“I’ve gone up a circle… Ahaha. What’s this?”
It was not a moment of enlightenment fitting a mage, but rather an unexpected promotion amidst continuous hard labor and complaints.
Grik himself was baffled.
However, ‘Master’ Clayton’s eyes sparkled peculiarly as he watched the entire process.
“Oho?”
Sensing something, he swiftly looked over his other disciples.
They were gazing at their fellow Grik with a mixture of surprise and envy as his magical circle ascended.
Yet both Enan, his second disciple, and Truus, the third, seemed on the verge of their own circles growing as well.
Having guided his disciples since they each formed their first mana circles, Clayton could notice signs of ascension they themselves were yet unaware of.
His disciples were growing much faster than he had anticipated.
‘Maybe I had it all wrong…’
As some new understanding took form in Clayton’s mind.
“Look, see! Utilizing magic to the extreme fosters growth. Everyone, assist in the work with all your might! Use your magic to the limit!”
Before he knew it, he was shouting at his disciples.
The rebuilding of Tomodo Castle’s walls.
This would be the starting point for the golem school to proudly walk the path of the engineering corps, though nobody knew this yet.
* * * ‘It’s really over now.’
Aileen’s gaze, still in a daze, was fixed on the rapidly rising walls of the castle.
But what she actually saw was not the scene before her but the fierce battles of the past few days.
It was her first real battle as a knight, her first war.
Killing for the first time, almost dying for the first time—naturally, the latter was the most profound experience.
In this war, how many times had she felt the terror of possibly dying?
The idealized image of a knight she had envisioned in her mind, overcoming all adversity through her own strength and proudly carving her name into the world’s history, had long since shattered to dust.
‘What kind of dreams had I been having?’
Was becoming a knight truly my own wish, or was it simply stubbornness?
The resolve and courage she had once considered her life’s convictions now seemed woefully superficial.
‘Can I really continue?’
As she replayed the battles in her mind, her confidence only waned.
I should’ve done this at that moment—why did I act that way?
Next time, I should’ve done the opposite—why did I repeat the same mistakes?
‘How pathetic.’
Just as she was endlessly delving into such self-deprecation,
A familiar voice lifted her head once more.
“Lady Aileen. How do you feel…”
“Young Master Logan!”
“Uh… Am I that welcome? I thought I might incur your wrath.”
“What? Why would I…?”
“Weren’t you scared? It was your first real battle and you almost died multiple times.”
“Hmm, well. That’s part of what knights have to go through, what’s there to fear?”
She replied proudly, not wanting to appear weak, but her own fingertips betrayed her with a tremor.
‘Surely, he didn’t see that.’
Her pride, unwilling to show any weakness, pulled her crumbling self-esteem back up.
With her hands clasped behind her back to cover the shake, her chin lifted and her pride inflated.
“If you fear real battle, you don’t deserve to be a knight.”
I am Aileen Floyd, a knight who will etch her name into the history of the Grandia Kingdom.
Repeating the mantra in her mind, she bolstered her confidence.
Thankfully, her pretense seemed to work.
“Indeed, remarkable. My first experience in a real battle was barely managing not to flee.”
“What? Nonsense… Ah, no, that’s not an insult…”
“It’s true. People around here don’t know, but my first battle went just like that. I had never before seen someone trying to kill me, and I didn’t know why I should be killing people I had never met. I was just frozen.”
Logan wryly smiled as he remembered his first experiences as a mercenary.
“That’s why I was actually worried about you. However, you performed unexpectedly well. The knights gave you good reviews.”
“Is, is that so?”
“Yes. You’ve proven that your claim of becoming a knight wasn’t just talk. I’m also grateful for protecting me when you almost caught Aslan. It took me a while, but I came to express my thanks.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. You were there first, young master…”
“Lady Aileen, no, Knight Aileen. I look forward to your continued support.”
Maintaining one’s self-esteem isn’t always a matter of willpower.
Sometimes knowing that someone recognizes and counts on you can be enough to boost confidence that wasn’t there before.
And in that moment, Aileen was purely pleased to find herself within the boundaries of that ‘ordinary person.’
“Of course!”
Her face beaming with a radiant smile, the dark thoughts that once clouded it were now nowhere to be found.
* * * The construction of the walls at Tomodo Castle was proceeding much faster than expected.
The mages from the golem tower were building the walls at an astonishing pace, and supplies from town were arriving one after another.
“Make sure the defenses are solid, so we have nothing to worry about even if BiPros attacks again.”
“Yes!”
Observing the new territory steadily coming together, the McLean leadership smiled.
Yet in the back of their minds, a worry they just couldn’t shake remained.
‘Once the national funeral is over, will BiPros stay quiet?’
This question, which began imminently after the battle ended, tormented each of them—the question they dared not voice.
“I’ll go to the capital with Father. There’s a way there.”
Declaring his departure to the capital, Logan, now essentially the heart of the McLean family, assured them with confidence.
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