Chapter 17: Drawing the Sword
The snowmelt of the Maitland Mountains gathered into rivers and flowed between the two fortress cities of Alderney and Lovisa on La Rochelle’s border, passing across the Lupuga Plains. Then it met the Northwind Tower upon the Doin Plains, where its name changed to the Doin River, after which it ran endlessly southward.
The weather had not yet turned warm, and it was still not the flood season of the Maitland River. The Doin flowed calmly beyond the walls of the Northwind Tower, and when fortune favored a traveler, fish from the deep mountain springs would leap from the water and land right at the feet of passersby.
“The Northwind Tower sounds like a single tower, but in reality it’s a fortress city built outward around a mage tower at its center. In terms of scale, it ranks among the top three in the Northern Frontier of La Rochelle, and its defenses are no weaker than Alderney’s or Lovisa’s.”
At the city gates, Cyril stood in line among the crowd waiting to enter, speaking quietly to Caroline. Earlier, he had already spent some time explaining various things about La Rochelle to the girl from Tarp, who had never seen much of the world.
For children born in those border towns, unless some unusual opportunity came their way, they could easily spend their entire lives in the place where they were born, growing up, bearing children, and dying just as their forefathers had. The farthest they would ever travel would likely be a few neighboring towns. To leave the Northern Frontier at all was almost an unattainable dream.
What Caroline had suffered in the undead invasion was certainly a misfortune.
And yet, from a certain point of view, it was also a kind of fortune.
The four-ring mage Moum Morris had already left ahead of them before the group entered the city, seemingly on urgent business. Cyril and Caroline were also headed in a different direction from Mia and the others, so they separated and prepared to enter the city on their own—
“Hey, you two little brats. Where are you from?”
At the gate, two opposing soldiers crossed their spears and barred the way before Cyril and Caroline.
The motion made Cyril instinctively want to reach up and tug down a hood, but he immediately remembered that he was no longer the Rogue who spent all his time wrapped in a cloak. He was now a knight who did not even wear a helmet—
So instead, he very smoothly flicked back his bangs and raised his chin toward the soldiers before him.
“Five seconds. Correct your wording, or else.”
“Heh, where’d this little punk come from? You think you dare cause trouble in the Northwind Tower?” one of the soldiers sneered as though hearing the greatest joke in the world. His companion, however, looked uneasy.
“Klinko... I think he might be an elf.”
“An elf? More like a goblin. Do you think creatures like elves would show up in a place so cold your nose is about to freeze off? Damn it, kid, I’ll give you one more chance—”
The soldier called Klinko cut off abruptly.
A flashing streak of swordlight wove a net before his face. A rapid series of metallic clinks followed, and the spear that had been slanting across the air broke into several pieces and fell to the ground.
Klinko still maintained the same posture of gripping the spear, but the expression on his face froze somewhere between arrogance and terror, like a grotesque mask of suffering. His features twisted as he stared ahead—
The tip of the sword responsible rested precisely at his throat, right where the trembling of his Adam’s apple would brush against it. Not a fraction too high, not a fraction too low.
An uproar spread through the crowd. No one had imagined that such a slender and refined-looking boy would strike so ruthlessly, or so quickly that nobody had even seen the movement. The soldier opposite Klinko was completely stunned, as were the reinforcements hurrying over, all of them helpless and at a loss.
“M-my lord— no, sir— if there’s some misunderstanding, we can talk it out. Please lower your sword first...”
“I gave you your chance,” Cyril said coldly. “Is this how the Northwind Tower treats its guests?”
“N-no, please listen, this really is a misunderstanding. We had no idea you were... were such an outstanding knight...”
The poor soldier was clearly terrified senseless. He desperately tried to repair the impression of this young knight standing before him, nearly to the point of wanting to hand over the pitiful few copper gintres in his purse—which would have been enough for a week’s worth of cheap drink.
Meanwhile, Klinko had gone completely rigid, drenched in cold sweat as he pressed against the freezing wall, his face pale.
“Mr. Vey, what happened? Please put your sword away. They’re only ordinary soldiers.”
It was only when a gentle female voice sounded behind him that Cyril finally withdrew the blade. The standard-issue Silverblade Knight sword traced a graceful flourish in his hand, carrying a spray of silver brilliance before returning to its sheath.
Mia Christian stood behind him, holding that staff worth a hundred gintres, the blue sapphire upon it shining so dazzlingly that the soldiers almost wanted to fall to their knees and worship it.
“Let them pass. They’re my friends. They came here with me.”
Mia took only one glance to understand more or less what had happened. She waved her hand, and the soldiers blocking the way immediately stepped aside. None of them dared hold a grudge against the young knight. They merely cast a few more lingering looks at him, as though trying to carve his face into their memories.
In the Northwind Tower, no soldier dared disobey a mage.
It was only after they had gone a good distance beyond the gates that Mia finally let out a long sigh and complained:
“Mr. Vey, we all know you’re extraordinarily strong, but there’s really no need to flaunt your force every time you meet someone, is there?”
“Miss Christian, you don’t understand. This is the dignity of a warrior— no, of a knight. It cannot be insulted,” Tos added at once. “If anyone ever dared call me a little brat, I’d rip him apart with my bare hands!”
“Tos, if there’s really someone who’d call you a little brat, then I believe that person is definitely an ogre,” Barty cut in. Then, pitching his rough voice as high and shrill as possible, he screeched, “I’m an ogre mage!”
“No, I’m not!” the swordsman Lancer immediately followed up, and the soldiers behind them burst into laughter.
If Morris had still been there, they would never have dared joke around like this. Only someone as good-tempered as Mia could allow a group of soldiers to banter so freely in front of her.
Mia’s expression softened considerably, and with some helplessness, she said, “All right then, Mr. Vey. But this is the Northwind Tower. Those soldiers may look ordinary, yet any one of them may have some odd connections behind them. If you’re too high-profile, you’ll attract all sorts of trouble...”
She thought for a moment, then took a badge from her robes and handed it to Cyril.
“I need to go back to the academy to write the report on this mission. If you run into trouble, you can come find me at Northwind Academy. It’s just beneath the tower—”
She pointed into the distance. Cyril followed the line of her hand and saw a broad, straight avenue stretching onward until it ended at a towering spire. Even from where he stood now, the structure rose magnificently at the center of the city, white from top to bottom, like an exquisitely carved ivory monument. Its tip seemed almost to pierce the clouds.
That was the Northwind Tower, the heart of the entire city, the sentinel of La Rochelle’s Northern Frontier.
After parting with Mia and the soldiers, Cyril took Caroline to find an inn where they could stay for the time being. Time was important, yes, but after traveling so long through the wild, Cyril himself could still keep going. Caroline could not.
The girl nearly fell asleep the instant her head touched the soft pillow. Stretching out across the bed, she let out a lazy little murmur before opening her eyes again and asking softly:
“Mr. A— Mr. Vey, why did you draw your sword just now? That man looked badly frightened.”
Cyril made himself a cup of black tea, settled comfortably into the sofa, and answered the girl’s question.
“If I didn’t draw my sword and act a little high-profile, how would the important people of the Northwind Tower know that I’ve arrived?” He flipped his wrist, and the broken sword, polished spotless, appeared in his hand. “As for that soldier, if he ever learns that I may be the one who saves his life in the near future, he’ll probably only feel gratitude toward me.”
A young knight, and perhaps even an elf, strong, highly skilled with the sword—an identity template so excellent that every player would have envied it.
If he failed to make full use of it, then Cyril would hardly deserve to call himself a top player.
The moment he noticed how strange the behavior of the four-ring mage Moum Morris was, Cyril understood that if he simply followed his original plan—stopping only briefly at the Northwind Tower before continuing south to flee—then history would still unfold exactly as it had in the game.
In March of next year, the Northwind Tower would fall first. Then the two fortress cities would fall. La Rochelle would lose all control over the outer frontier of the Northern Lands.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, gazing at the red glow in the fireplace, and his own eyes reflected a similar burning light.
The gears of fate would not stop turning just because he had arrived.
But the path of their rotation would change because of him.
Whether they turned toward good or ill, Cyril Adrien had no wish to see history repeat itself.
Caroline, the future Twilight Shadow, was the first pointer he had moved.
And the Northwind Tower would be the second.