Chapter 241
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
The end of a bloody war was sweet, no matter how it came about.
Sometimes, people relieved the pent-up feelings of war by taking a castle's treasures as spoils, holding a festival with other people's grain and livestock, and then disbanding.
But this war was different.
Only hardship remained at its end.
“Move, move!”
“There’s no time to rest! You need to move faster if you want to get home even one day sooner!”
The knights barked orders as though they were still in battle.
Ordinarily, half the troops would be sent to handle the postwar cleanup, while the other half would take care of the recovery.
The fact that even such a system could not be properly implemented showed just how great the incident was.
Even the knights who should have been giving orders were participating in the hard labor.
The king was dead.
The king who had bravely charged into enemy lines had died inside the castle.
A king was a symbol of the nation, and his remains had to be recovered.
If not his remains, then at least a finger—even a speck of dust—had to be recovered.
The allied nations, now sharing a common goal, were working together to excavate the ruins.
“L-Look over there!”
In that desperate situation, someone pointed at the ridge.
Someone was coming over it.
There were enough of them to be called a great army.
“Surely they aren’t planning to swoop in and take the feast we prepared for ourselves?”
“They’ve come swarming to the famous banquet hall….”
“It isn’t a banquet hall, but a funeral….”
It was a common occurrence in war.
That unease lasted only briefly; when people saw the emblem on the flag at the end of the ridge, they felt relieved.
That flag shone brilliantly, as though nothing in the world could ever corrupt it, even if the entire world fell into depravity.
It was the flag of the Holy Kingdom of Odograsado.
They had come to the site with a large contingent, and the people in charge gathered to welcome them.
“We are the Odograsado Knights Hospitaller. I am Leora, the commander of the Knights Hospitaller and a copyist. His Holiness Gregorio sent me here to serve you.”
“We were just in need of extra hands. We can only be grateful that the Holy Kingdom has sent us its golden grace.”
The knights welcomed them, but the priests did not look upon them favorably.
There was no way they did not know what their true intentions were.
Charitable evangelism—helping people in hard times while converting soldiers—was a classic method.
But no one dared to refuse or object.
Had they not won the battle only to find themselves unable to go home, stuck clearing stones?
If it had merely been a common soldier who died, they would have left him to rot; if it had been a knight, they might have agonized briefly before abandoning him. But a king had died.
The Arken Empire had lost the beloved Count Rooster, as well as the Second Prince, Ureas Arken.
If they were lying before the entrance to Hell, this was a situation where they had to recover them even at the risk of death.
They were in no position to distinguish between dirty hands and clean ones.
The Holy Kingdom’s Knights Hospitaller treated the wounded, supplied provisions, and filled the shortage of labor.
Leora, the middle-aged man who called himself a copyist and was in overall command of the Knights Hospitaller, headed somewhere.
It was where King Hudret’s army was stationed among the allied forces.
As commander-in-chief of the allied forces, Hudret was directing the excavation of the kings’ bodies from the rubble.
It was hard to believe he was still so energetic after passing through countless fierce battles and sleeping only three hours.
Hudret glanced at the man entering the tent.
His back was straight and his eyes were fierce, giving him the impression of someone incapable of making even a single joke.
Hudret welcomed such a man warmly.
“Welcome, Copyist.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Your Highness, King Hudret.”
“Is His Holiness well?”
“He is the embodiment of miracles, blessed by golden grace, is he not? He remains hale and hearty.”
“It must be difficult, waiting on an old man for several decades.”
“It is all right.”
“I heard about it. I’m deeply moved that the Holy Kingdom would provide such support.”
“Direct support for the battle would go against His Holiness’s wishes—or, more broadly, the will of the great Golden Dragon—but after the battle, it is a different matter.”
“Is that so?”
Hudret did not like it.
But he forced a smile and let it pass.
“I understand. Please do your best.”
“Yes. Before that….”
Leora did not seem to have any intention of leaving right away.
“Would you return it to us?”
“Return what?”
Hudret feigned ignorance.
“The Golden Grace.”
“The Golden Grace?”
“……”
“Ah, you mean Lord Odograsado’s scale.”
Hudret scratched his head awkwardly.
“I lost it.”
“……”
“Things get lost in the course of a battle, don’t they?”
“To use it, you would have had to embed it in your body. Could you really have lost it so easily?”
“Someone might have dug into my hand and pulled it out, you know.”
“His Holiness ordered us to recover it by any means necessary. The Golden Grace is an object even members of the church cannot use. Saying it was lost will not resolve this.”
“How am I supposed to recover it when I don’t have it? You’re being unreasonable.”
Leora demanded that he hand it over, while Hudret flatly refused.
“Commander, you need to come with us for a moment.”
“What is it?”
“There is an issue we need to coordinate with the priests during the healing process, a matter involving ritual protocol. It seems only you, Commander, can handle it somehow….”
What impeccable timing, Leora thought.
He wanted to keep resisting when he saw Hudret’s insolent face, but he could not do so as the person in charge.
“……We’re not finished talking. I’ll come back later.”
“By all means.”
Leora left the tent.
Hudret gave a mischievous smile, wondering whether he should just run away immediately.
After Leora left, another member of the Knights Hospitaller entered the tent.
“I have come to see you, Your Highness, King Hudret.”
“What is it?”
“The delivery you ordered has arrived, and I was going to hand it over. It’s just….”
He checked the order form again before speaking.
“You requested one hundred kilograms of ham delivered in an oak barrel, correct?”
“……Yes, that’s right.”
“Where should I put it?”
“Bring it inside.”
“Understood.”
The soldier rolled the oak barrel over and placed it beside King Hudret.
“Then I shall be going.”
The oak barrel sat before him.
The woody scent and the faint aroma of aged protein stimulated his appetite.
“What delicious-looking ham.”
He tapped the oak barrel with his index finger, then brought a hand to his waist.
“Shall I open it and see?”
Hudret drew his sword and slipped it between the boards of the oak barrel.
The cylinder suddenly jerked, and a bouncy laugh emerged from inside.
-What kind of idiot opens an oak barrel like that?
A nasal little girl’s voice.
Hearing it, Hudret chuckled and replied.
“It must be spoiled ham. It’s talking, after all.”
-What kind of ham would ham from the Holy Kingdom be? It would be nothing short of holy ham. It does not merely fill your belly; it also expounds wisdom. How sacred must it be?
“If it were holy ham, a knife wouldn’t even be able to pierce it, so no one could eat it, could they?”
-Heh-heh, I may look like this, but I’m a delicate thing, dearie. If you give me a good poke with that, I’ll cry ouch and pop right out, you know?
“May I try it?”
-Hah-hah, you impious thing. Go ahead and try.
Hudret released his aura and thrust the sword in with all his strength.
The sword sank in with a deep thrust.
Then the lid of the oak barrel shot into the sky, and something sprang out.
“Ouch~!”
It was the most pathetic scream Hudret had ever heard.
The one who let out that scream was a little girl small enough to hide inside the oak barrel.
She had deep golden-blond hair and a lovely face.
She was absolutely not the sort of person who ought to be wearing a dark robe, reeking of ham from head to toe, and stored in an oak barrel.
No—she was someone who should never have been inside it.
Who in the world would believe that a dragon had been hiding inside ham?
The pair of horns, a darker and deeper gold than the girl’s hair, looked exactly like the emblem on the flag of the Holy Kingdom of Odograsado.
That girl was the Golden Dragon, Odograsado.
“That damnable thing stuck a sword into me, and my side hurts so badly I feel like I’m going to die, hahahah!”
The girl rubbed at her side, but naturally, her body did not even have a scratch on it.
Instead, the sword that had been thrust into her bent and became fixed in the oak barrel.
Hudret frowned and glared at the girl.
“You will have to pay for this sword.”
“Don’t be so stingy. Don’t you have more than enough swords like that in your warehouse?”
“It was the sword I vowed to walk the path of the tyrant with. It is worth that much.”
“Pahahah! It cannot be helped then. Very well, I shall have one of my swords prepared for you.”
Hudret grinned to himself behind her back.
But they say there is always someone who flies above the one who runs.
“Therefore, I must also have you return something to me.”
The girl waved a hand in the air.
The pile of stacked baggage trembled, and something sharp pierced through it before being caught in her hand.
It was a golden scale.
It was the very object they had argued over just minutes ago because he claimed not to have it.
Hudret smacked his lips.
“There are more than tens of thousands of those scales. Can’t you spare me just one?”
“Hahah! You’re only one among countless swords as well. Couldn’t you have handed over just one?”
“I was short-sighted.”
“You should have had better intentions, you fool.”
The girl burst into a nasal laugh, while the middle-aged man gave a helpless chuckle.
Odograsado lightly placed the scale behind her head; its light vanished, and it began to glow faintly atop her head.
“So you secretly came all the way here because you were afraid I might pilfer one of your scales while you were supposed to remain in the Holy Kingdom?”
“Do you think I would go to such trouble? Crouching inside that cramped barrel was no easy task, either. Ow, my whole body aches.”
“Then what is it?”
Leaning back, she answered with a beaming smile.
“I came to see my little one’s fiancé?”
“My son is diligently studying in the castle, though?”
“Hahah, what an amusing thing to say. I’m not talking about your little one.”
The languid-looking girl pointed at herself with her thumb and declared proudly,
“Mine.”
Odograsado’s little one.
Although Hudret and she had a long history, this was the first he had heard that she had a child.
She looked more like a baby herself, so who else could there be?
‘And in a battlefield like this….’
Before Hudret could guess anything, Odograsado flipped up her robe’s hood and pulled it over her head as she walked.
Hudret naturally followed her.
“Where are you going, with all that ham smell coming off you?”
“I’m going alone, so don’t follow me.”
“When the great Golden Dragon is on the move, shouldn’t I serve as her palanquin?”
“Pahahah! Enough, you fool! If a huge man like you carries me, you’ll only draw attention!”
Odograsado walked away, laughing merrily.
After quietly watching her retreating back and thinking it over, Hudret realized where she was headed.
“The little one….”
The woman called that little one might be small to Odograsado, but to Hudret, she was an incomparably immense presence.
* * *
Ferda opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was the tent ceiling.
And Luri.
Sensing something, Luri was poking her head inside.
“Luri….”
“Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“……”
She began to say something, then stopped.
From the way her mouth had begun to form the first syllable, he knew she had meant to ask how he was feeling.
Ferda also knew why she could not even ask such a simple question.
Unable to turn his head, he moved his right hand, just in case.
He could feel nothing there.
It had been tightly wrapped in cloth, and painkillers had left it completely numb.
Hudret could not possibly have been responsible for that emergency treatment.
Ferda quietly looked at her.
Just as he was about to say something,
“Do you know what happened?”
Luri beat him to it.
Ferda ultimately closed his mouth and shook his head.
“The fortress collapsed, and the outer fortress was completely destroyed as well. But we couldn’t even continue celebrating our victory.”
“Yes, all the kings died….”
There had been five kings in the allied army.
Four of them had stabbed one another to death, while one had died at Ureas’s hands.
And Rooster had tried to kill Ureas, but Ureas had killed Rooster in turn, and ultimately died as well.
Regardless of how it had happened, there were no surviving leaders besides Ferda and King Hudret.
Just as the fortress was about to become rubble, King Hudret threw Ferda to Luri, and Luri, catching Ferda’s body, escaped the site at the fastest speed she could manage.
“Sir Zed and Sir Arwen, who had followed in behind me, also escaped safely.”
“What did they do?”
“They helped kill and weaken the monsters in the castle.”
“They did their best.”
Ferda was relieved that none of his close attendants had died.
Luri continued.
“And there was a brief internal conflict.”
“Internal conflict….”
“The kings didn’t all die; some survived and came back. Isn’t that suspicious?”
The high-ranking commanders already knew what sort of plan the kings had devised.
Since everyone who had wanted the book for themselves had died, they would have assumed that either Ferda or Hudret had killed them.
“So what did you do?”
“King Hudret resolved it.”
“How?”
She said he had stated it exactly like this.
-I killed them all.
She said he had declared, with remarkable confidence, that he had murdered the kings.
-They were all led astray by black magic and tried to turn their kingdoms into another Kingdom of Heinkel, so I killed them all on the spot. In the name of God and my conscience, I have not an ounce of shame, and if you doubt my intentions, I can go to war with all of you right here and now.
Ferda could not understand his actions.
‘It would have been easier if he had pinned everything on me….’
Ferda would have been the one in trouble, while Hudret could simply stand back with his hands behind his back and let them hound Ferda.
On the other hand, Ferda thought the decision made sense.
In the end, it would bring about the cleanest conclusion.
No one dared utter a word at the king’s declaration.
They had lost far too many people during the siege of the Kingdom of Heinkel and were exhausted.
Besides, recovering the king’s body was their top priority right now.
Moreover, Hudret, who had admitted to killing the kings, also helped them recover the bodies and showed them at least the bare minimum of respect.
They had thought him merely arrogant, but seeing him offer his assistance without being swayed by emotion overturned everything Ferda had thought of him until then.
That had to be the Emperor’s Vessel Hudret had mentioned.
“That’s what happened.”
“I see….”
“Yes.”
“……”
“……”
Luri swallowed.
Ferda sensed a storm in that dry swallow.
“……I’ll prepare some tea.”
Luri turned away and made tea at the table.
The tea set in her hands rattled and trembled.
Seeing that, Ferda opened his mouth again.
“Luri.”
“Don’t say it.”
“Luri….”
“I don’t want to hear it!”
Luri shrieked.