novelraw Chapter 89 : Chapter 89
Chapter 89 : Chapter 89
Chapter 89
Being accustomed to loss does not mean it doesn't hurt.
The soldiers, who had resolved to bury the scouting party in their hearts when they left, were quietly overcoming their pain in their own ways.
“The former squad leader was right.”
The new soldier, Derku, who let out a small sigh, said while glaring at the forest that had devoured the former squad leader.
“The goblins here use dual swords and throw stones so terrifyingly.
Damn it, I was so scared when the stones came flying over these high castle walls.”
The soldier on night watch with Derku chuckled at his words.
“Hey, you should have also told him you pissed your pants.”
“Ah!
I told you I didn't!”
“Ha, indeed.
Senior Hoodwock, your new recruit is disgracing the fortress and getting angry.
Right!”
“Ah, shut up for a bit!
Let me talk to the one who's gone.”
Sniff!
He blew his nose with one hand, then raised the hard liquor in his other hand and continued.
“Squad leader, I was so curious that I went to see Sir Gondar and asked him.
If there were really goblins that used sword qi.
He gave me this hard liquor and told me not to tell anyone.”
The soldier next to him chuckled once more.
The story of Sir Gondar being defeated by a goblin that used sword qi was as famous as the story of Derku pissing his pants in shock when a slingshot stone put a hole in his helmet.
Looking at Derku, who still hadn't shed his rookie status, the senior said.
“He didn't mean not to tell anyone, he meant to send him off well.”
“Of course he did.
I just, I feel bad for not believing him back then.
I feel bad.”
Derku, whose vision blurred due to the weather, bowed his head, thought for a moment, and said.
“No, senior!
Even if I'm just babbling because I'm on a roll, wasn't it the squad leader's fault in the first place?
I couldn't believe it because he started with a dual-wielding goblin.
How could I believe that?!”
“There are dual-wielding goblins.
They say there are also Orcs that use corpses as shields.”
“Ah, damn it, who do you take me for a fool?
If they use corpses as shields, they're necromancers, not Orcs.
How come this fortress is full of liars……”
Derku's senior looked at him with a bewildered face.
“No, you were just regretting it, and now you can't believe me?”
“Senior, you even said there are squirrels that can catch knights?!
Even if I'm a rookie, that's really not right!”
“No… I didn't say that, the old men of the fortress taught me that……”
“Can't you tell just by looking?
It's a lie!
If a squirrel can fight a knight one-on-one, what's the point of having knights?
We might as well just pick up some acorns and raise squirrels.”
As the senior chuckled again, Derku started laughing too.
The soldiers of the fortress knew well that when they lost someone, they had to release their emotions, even if it meant getting angry for no reason.
“Thanks for listening.
Our former squad leader was a really good person.”
“I know.
I'm not sure, but Hoodwock probably saved me two or three times.”
The senior silently patted the shoulder of Derku, who had his head bowed low, and watched the forest that had devoured his comrade.
Sending off a good person was several times harder.
Just as he was about to say, ‘This is good for a gloomy day, let's have a few sips of liquor,’ a faint light caught his eye.
“Hey, hey.”
“Sob, sob, just… just a moment……”
“Ah, damn it.
Crying is fine, but grab your crossbow and watch the front.
It's the enemy.”
Derku, who raised his head at the senior's words, also spotted a faint torch in the distance.
“Yes?
Uh… a torch?”
“Shit.
Can you see anything?
Are they Orcs or goblins?”
Unfortunately, in the forest of demonic beasts, fire was not a monopoly of humans.
The races that lived in the darkness often used oil-less torches in surprising ways.
“Ah, I can't see.”
“As long as it's not the undead… the only thing that would come out at this time of night is the undead.”
“U-undead?”
“Sometimes, just very, very rarely, if you're unlucky, they come out of the forest, our dead comrades.”
“Are you lying?
Senior, that's really not funny, so tell me you're lying.”
“…….”
“Senior?”
The senior, who was staring at the growing number of lights, made a decision and started running.
“There are too many of them!
I'll go ring the bell!”
“Yes!”
Derku, left alone on the castle wall, gritted his teeth, clutching his crossbow, and whispered as if chanting a spell.
“Please, just not the undead, please just not the undead, please just not the undead……”
After chanting it dozens of times, as the lights got closer, Derku realized that it was humans holding the torches.
Although from the high castle walls, he couldn't tell if those humans were dead or not.
‘Damn it.’
Just as he was hastily fumbling in his pocket to take out a magic sphere for long-distance viewing.
“Huh?
Is that Derku?
Derku!”
A voice he had so longed to hear, yet at this moment, a voice he wanted to hear less than anyone else's, called him.
‘Damn it!
I couldn't trust that human even when he was alive!’
“Holy God of Light, please destroy the evil so that my life may not be tested……”
Derku, who had given up on checking below with the magic sphere, ignored the voice of his former squad leader tempting him and quietly recited the exorcism prayer .
* * *
“That, that bastard!”
Ian looked at Hoodwock with narrowed eyes.
“How on earth did you treat your junior……”
“Yes?
No!
What do you mean?”
The surprised Hoodwock looked around and saw the scouting party looking at him with eyes similar to Ian's.
“No, shit, where is there a better person than me!
Hey!
Derku!
Derku, you bastard!”
However, the junior he had taught with love and affection did not respond to his desperate cries.
“Aaaaah!
Don't look at me like that!
Maybe he can't hear because it's so high up!
No, Sir Vergil, are you going to look at me like that too?
I was a really good squad leader, I tell you!”
“Well, in the knightly order, the ones who think like that are the worst……”
Hoodwock, who had devoted himself to eliminating all sorts of bad practices and absurdities and helping new recruits adapt, looked at Ian with tears welling up in his eyes from the injustice.
“Everyone, stop.
Vergil, raise the banner of return.”
“Yes!”
However, contrary to his expectations, even after confirming the fluttering banner, the castle gates of the fortress did not open.
“Hoodwock……”
“This isn't my fault!”
Ignoring Hoodwock and Vergil who were bickering, Ian was lost in thought for a moment and soon grasped the problem.
“Ah, it seems they think we're dead.”
“Yes?”
“It seems the ones who ran away before told them we were dead.
And since we arrived at night, they can't open the gates.”
Ian's judgment was accurate.
The soldiers and commanders on the castle walls, even after confirming the scouting party, couldn't open the gates because they suspected they might be the undead.
“Tsk.
Should I sing a hymn ?”
It was a misunderstanding that would be cleared up if they waited until morning, but thinking of the tired soldiers, he didn't want to camp out.
“Hmm… ah!”
Ian, who was thinking for a moment, shouted towards the knightly order.
“Knightly order, all draw your swords!
Show your aura!”
Unless it was a Death Knight, there were no undead who could use aura.
If there was at least one person up there with a head on his shoulders instead of a helmet rack, the misunderstanding would be cleared.
Swoosh!
As the knights' blue sword qi pushed back the darkness, the firmly closed castle gates finally opened.
* * *
As soon as he entered the fortress, the secretary-general who had been waiting greeted Ian.
“The commander is looking for you.”
“At this hour?”
After parting with the squirrel, he had been moving at a fast pace for 18 hours without rest, so he honestly wanted to rest, but for the sake of the Count who must have heard the news of his death from those who deserved to be chewed up, he decided to accept the meeting.
“So they were spies after all?”
“Yes.
The swift knights confirmed the battle scars and informed the fortress, but they could not stop the rumors.”
“Rumors tend to spread the more you try to stop them.”
“It seems that finding the traces of the Ogre was a big factor.
The soldiers just assumed that since an Ogre appeared, everyone must have died.”
On the way to the meeting room, I heard a few other pieces of news.
From the fact that Lina was leading Central Hold, to the supplies that came from Central Hold, and stories related to the clerics and elves, it seemed that everyone was doing well.
“You can discuss the details with the Count.”
“Thank you.”
“Don't mention it.”
The secretary-general, who had exchanged greetings in front of the Count's office, hesitated for a moment and said.
“Welcome back to the fortress……”
It was such a low voice that I couldn't hear it clearly, but it seemed that the secretary-general had called me ‘Duke’ at the end.
* * *
“Do you know what time it is?”
As I entered the Count's office, he, who was looking at documents with a tired face, opened his mouth with a sullen voice.
“It's dawn.
I don't know the time since there are no morons in the scouting party who carry expensive watches.”
“It's 2 o'clock, 2 o'clock.
A time when you should be sleeping in your bed unless you're a cursed undead.”
……?
Was he telling me to dig a grave and get in?
Or was he boasting about working until dawn?
When I looked at him as if to ask what he wanted, the Count, who had let out a sigh, continued.
“If you're going to be late, you can camp out and come back instead of waking up the whole fortress.”
In fact, the reason I had moved in a hurry was because I was impatient, but I also thought I could arrive earlier.
Most importantly, I hadn't even thought that the soldiers of the fortress would know that the scouting party had been annihilated.
“I thought the spies would have spread some nonsense, but I didn't think they would report that we were annihilated.
I made a mistake because I was in a hurry.”
“…That's largely my fault.
But what happened to those guys?
It seems they were convinced the scouting party was annihilated.”
“They're the ones who bolted during the battle as soon as they saw the Legion Commander.”
Grit.
The pen the Count was holding crumpled beautifully, and the ink that flowed down the pen stained the document.
“Things to be chewed up.”
The Count's anger was genuine, but it seemed he had broken the pen because he didn't want to look at the document on his desk.
“They will be punished according to military law.
It's a shame, I was thinking of using the ones who helped spread the nonsense as a special forces unit… but since we're suddenly overflowing with soldiers, it doesn't matter if we kill them.”
“Yes?
Overflowing with soldiers?”
“Yes, I don't know what trick you used, but the northern nobles are scrambling to offer their support.”
I quickly racked my brain.
‘I did ask Natasha, but did it work this well?’
Natasha, the Countess of Obsol, wouldn't have been able to formally enter politics due to her status as a concubine's daughter.
There must have been another factor.
“Hmm, it seems something happened that I don't know about……”
When I asked, tilting my head, the Count said as if it was out of the question.
“Ha!
You sly brat, you think I don't know you planned it all?”
Somehow, he was looking at me like a great mastermind, and it seemed he had developed a strange conviction in the past few weeks.
I racked my brain again to see if I had missed anything, but it wasn't something that would move all the northern nobles.
In the first place, if they were the kind of people who would offer support so easily, Moner wouldn't have starved.
“I really don't know……”
When I finally raised my hands and said so, the Count, who had snorted, said he would be fooled just this once and began to explain what had happened in order.
“……”
“……”
“……”
Though there were some things in between that I couldn't understand at all.
“No, what is that madman doing?
Is he really a madman?”
“That looks just like a rebellion, no matter how you look at it……?”
“Ha, indeed.
If I had known this, I would have gone and lain down too……”
My body trembled at the first thought I had since possessing Ian's body.
“You conscienceless brat, I'm the scoundrel in this area……”
I never thought I'd lose in a scoundrel contest.
I clenched my fists with an unknown sense of defeat and resolved to work harder in the future.
I had to do my best to be a scoundrel, as much as I was criticized.