“How do you like it?”
Ignoring the nervous voice of the blacksmith, the party put on the armor that was placed in front of them. Kyle, who was the only one who ordered a plate armor, put it on with the help of the blacksmith’s assistant.
It’s fine.
Ruon brushed his hand over the leather gauntlet that tightly wrapped his shoulders and upper body. The feeling of the scales touching his skin was unfamiliar.
Then the blacksmith quietly approached him.
“I’ve been proud of having touched almost every material in my 40 years of ironwork, but… dragon scales. Haha, I feel like half of my remaining life has flown away. How much I struggled to refine them…”
He sighed heavily. His name was Sanson. He was the person who the lord recommended to the party as the best blacksmith in El Tigre.
“I like it.”
It was a brief compliment, but the blacksmith’s face brightened up as he was dealing with a special person.
“I thought it would be neither here nor there if I refined it poorly, so I made it into a gauntlet that preserves the shape of the scales. Since I was short of materials, I placed more dragon scales on the vital parts.”
He said that and pointed to his chest and armpit alternately. As he said, the gauntlet that Ruon was wearing also had blue-green scales shining faintly in that area.
“If you wear a padded coat over this, you won’t have any problem with warmth. Do you want me to get you one?”
“Thanks.”
Ruon answered with a faint smile and looked at Colin, who was making a nervous expression next to him.
“Do you like it?”
Colin, who was also wearing a scale gauntlet, answered hesitantly.
“…Can I really use such a precious thing?”
“Why not?”
Colin swallowed his saliva at the indifferent answer and spun the sword in his hand. The sharp blade that gleamed with gloss looked like a superior product at a glance. He muttered.
“I have to pass it on to my child someday.”
At that, Kyle jumped in with a pale face.
“You’ll die if you say that!”
“What, what? Fuck, why?”
“Ruon said that before. What was it? Fleur? No, she’s a witch.”
Ruon chuckled and answered.
“Flag.”
“Yeah. That!”
Kyle clapped his hands and started to explain the death flag to Colin, who blinked his eyes as if he didn’t understand. Of course, that was also nonsense.
After giving a small tip to Sanson (the lord promised to pay all the amount), the party moved out of the blacksmith shop.
“Hello!”
“Have you had lunch?”
“Thank you. Always take care of yourself.”
The busy people who were going their own way greeted the party brightly when they saw them. The three people who had been fighting at the front line for a week were already so famous in El Tigre that there was no one who didn’t know them.
Then someone came through the crowd.
She was wearing a gray robe instead of a blue one, probably conscious of the others’ eyes. It was Amela.
“Are you done?”
Ruon shrugged his shoulders at her words.
“As you can see.”
“I just finished preparing too. I bought a horse. Oh, by the way. The kid named Caliban, he’s so nice. He has a lot of charm.”
What?
Ruon frowned without realizing it. It was the most absurd thing he had heard in the last few months.
“I’ve been feeding him sugar and carrots. He doesn’t even treat me like a person… Is he an irresistible male?”
Colin, who was lamenting with a sigh, laughed and said.
“Then we’re all ready. Shall we go?”
As they were about to move, a voice came from behind. Wait a minute! They turned around and saw a man with a bandage wrapped around his chest running towards them.
He arrived and gasped for breath. He was a familiar face to the party. He was Wayne, the lord’s guardian knight.
“I heard you were in critical condition. Why are you here?”
Kyle said that and put his hand on Wayne’s shoulder. A faint light flashed under his palm and Wayne’s complexion brightened up.
“I heard you had packed your luggage in the room and hurried over. Are you leaving already?”
Ruon nodded.
“The barbarians have retreated, and the kingdom’s army will be here soon. There’s no reason for us to stay.”
Wayne seemed to have a lot to say, but he couldn’t get it out of his mouth. He finally organized his thoughts and said.
“I think you have a reason to leave. The lord is still unable to move and couldn’t come out, so I dare to represent him and El Tigre and thank you for this.”
He bowed deeply and showed respect as a knight. The party didn’t say anything. They just scratched their heads as if they were awkward.
It’s different.
Ruon muttered to himself. He had thought so before, but they were a little different from the usual nobles and knights.
***
He had only seen a glimpse of them, but Prince Kemar was not as rigid and inflexible as other nobles, and Wayne was a knight who did not fuss over his rank.
That alone made them likable to Ruon. And he felt a small sense of pride for protecting El Tigre.
He smiled faintly.
“Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”
With a brief farewell, the party left El Tigre. They walked on their own feet to the cold northern land, but strangely, they did not feel cold.
The fire made from dried goat dung crackled and burned. The dung had a decent heat, and thanks to that, the faces that had hardened from the cold began to relax.
Ruon’s eyes sparkled like fireflies as he quietly looked at the fire. He took out some jerky from his backpack, cooked it, and handed one to each of the people sitting next to him. They all chewed on it without a word.
“Hot, hot, hot! So, where is this sacred tree?”
Colin moved his mouth noisily as the jerky was hotter than he expected. Steam came out of his mouth.
Amela answered him.
“Five or six days? I don’t know the exact distance. When I moved, I used the portal that the shamans had set up. Of course, I can’t use it now.”
Colin rounded his mouth and let out a wow.
“Portal. I’ve always been curious about that. How does it feel to close the gap of tens of days in a single step?”
Ruon frowned silently.
He remembered the time he had taken the portal with Tarwen in Belgrade. He had no intention of taking the portal again, no matter what anyone said.
Kyle cut off a piece of ham from the wrapper and cooked it over the fire, as the jerky was not enough to fill his hungry stomach.
“···Frankly, this land we’re sitting on is no longer Aniara’s territory, right? What if we run into hundreds of barbarians by mistake?”
At his words, Amela elbowed Ruon’s arm and said.
“He’ll take care of them all.”
“Hmm. That makes sense.”
“Yeah.”
Huh?
Ruon was about to pass it off as a joke, but he saw Colin and Kyle nodding their heads seriously. He couldn’t help but laugh.
He thought about it again and it wasn’t impossible.
“Thank you.”
Amela bit into the ham that Kyle handed her on a stick and added.
“It’s not necessarily like that. The north is in a lot of chaos right now.”
She smiled sweetly at Kyle, as if the ham was delicious. Ruon chuckled at that, and Colin made a face as if he had eaten shit.
“As I said, the chieftain, Jigor, is a very stubborn person. He joined hands with the great demon to revive the sacred tree, purely out of his own will. Of course, the elders strongly opposed it, but it was useless. Rather, they only lost their heads for being too radical.”
She stretched out her arm toward the fire and rubbed her cold fingers.
“The solid relationship between the tribes was also cracked by a series of events, and it’s gotten pretty serious now. Of course, everyone is holding their breath under the overwhelming power of the chieftain, but there are also many who are tired of the constant fighting. Unless they are radical followers of the chieftain, they probably won’t attack us with their lives on the line.”
Then Ruon shifted his gaze somewhere and asked.
“So which side are they?”
At his words, the party gripped their weapons and straightened their posture. In their eyes, which had quickly prepared for battle, they saw a dozen men and a woman slowly approaching, cutting through the darkness.
“How did you know?”
At the front, the man asked Ruon, who raised his eyebrows.
“I have good night vision.”
Then the woman behind the man stepped forward and said.
“That’s nonsense! We erased our presence and smell, and used shamanism to blend in with nature, and you just saw and recognized us? You’re a coward who uses despicable magic that doesn’t suit your size.”
What are you talking about?
He watched her angrily, and she added.
“There’s no way these are the beings the great mother told us about. Just look at their clothes, they’re clearly dogs of the north. Let’s just kill them.”
At her harsh words, Colin snorted and growled.
“···As soon as we see the barbarians.”
He drew his sword loudly, and the men on the other side also raised their weapons in unison. The atmosphere was tense and explosive.
“Stop-!”
Then the man at the front shouted loudly. His booming voice made the surface of the burning fire tremble.
“Brother, why···”
The woman tried to interrupt, but the man raised his hand to stop her. His squinty eyes looked straight at Ruon.
“May I ask why a foreigner has set foot on this barren land?”
Ruon quietly faced him, feeling no hostility in his question.
“Well, I’m here to kill your chieftain.”
Of course, that was not his ultimate goal, but he said it deliberately. There was no better way to gauge the reaction of his opponent.
Surprisingly, the man and the warriors behind him fell silent. Even though he had openly declared his intention to kill someone who was like a king to them.
Then the man stepped into the circle of light cast by the bonfire. His face, which had been half-hidden in the darkness, was revealed.
He was a striking man, with sharp features and a scruffy beard that covered his lower face. He wore a large bear skin over his head and shoulders. But what caught Ruon’s attention was the blue tattoo that covered his entire face.
“Your name must also start with ‘Ba’.”
Ruon knew from the previous fight that those who had smeared their faces with blue dye were the chieftains of the barbarians. He asked the question he could.
The man nodded briefly.
“Yes. I am Ba-Hengel.”
The man, Hengel, spoke.
“Warrior. Raise your weapon. I have something I want to confirm with you.”
At his words, a woman who looked like Hengel’s sister snapped at him. She was so agitated that she dropped the honorifics.
“Wait! Brother. This is rash. We don’t have any certainty yet!”
Hengel answered without looking back.
“That’s why I want to check, isn’t it?”
They were talking about something only they knew.
In the strange atmosphere, Ruon lifted himself up with his hand on the ground. He slapped his buttocks lightly, showing no sign of tension. The warriors behind Hengel glared at him with sparks in their eyes.
He asked as if he didn’t care.
“What do you want to do? Fight until one of us dies?”
Hengel shook his head.
“No. We’ll stop when one side admits defeat.”
Ruon frowned. That sounded more vague than asking a barber to cut his hair moderately.
But he soon nodded.
“Suit yourself.”
Then Amela poked his back and whispered.
“You’ll go easy on him, right? He seems to be from the tribe that clashed with the Great Chieftain…”
“What if he is?”
Ruon retorted playfully and approached Hengel. The barbarian chieftain quickly drew his double-edged axe from his waist and growled.
His low voice gradually turned into a beast-like roar, and his ferocity became more evident.
A bear?
Ruon saw a huge illusion of a bear wavering behind Hengel. Just like the one who climbed the wall before had a wolf’s illusion, the barbarian in front of him had a bear’s illusion on his back.
“Kroo!”
With a wild howl, Hengel swung his arm down. The axe fell with a satisfying sound, fast and strong enough to split anyone from head to crotch.
But Ruon, who had read his trajectory from his shoulder movement, dodged lightly and punched the empty space.
At that moment, the large axe blade shattered like a glass window hitting a rock.
“Huh!”
Hengel avoided the flying shards with an incredible agility that did not match his large body, but he could not dodge the fist that followed.
He was hit in the chest and flew up, unable to even fall properly. He rolled on the ground without a sense of direction. He barely stopped with the help of the warriors behind him, and blood gushed from his mouth.
“Ugh-”
After spitting out blood for a while, Hengel lifted his head with trembling eyes. There was Ruon, looking down at him with a sullen face.
“I don’t know if that’s enough.”
“Enough… More than enough.”
He bent his knee and looked at the barbarian who admitted defeat eye to eye.
“So what did you want to confirm? What is this being that the Great Mother spoke of?”
Hengel answered, catching his breath.
“The Great Mother is our tribe’s elder, who has the ability to divine the future by looking at the stars… She said… A being that will end this damned war will appear.”
He opened his mouth slowly, trailing off.
“After a long silence, a new name was engraved in the sky. He will drive away the old and stir up the blue in the ancient history.”
“How do you like it?”
Ignoring the nervous voice of the blacksmith, the party put on the armor that was placed in front of them. Kyle, who was the only one who ordered a plate armor, put it on with the help of the blacksmith’s assistant.
It’s fine.
Ruon brushed his hand over the leather gauntlet that tightly wrapped his shoulders and upper body. The feeling of the scales touching his skin was unfamiliar.
Then the blacksmith quietly approached him.
“I’ve been proud of having touched almost every material in my 40 years of ironwork, but… dragon scales. Haha, I feel like half of my remaining life has flown away. How much I struggled to refine them…”
He sighed heavily. His name was Sanson. He was the person who the lord recommended to the party as the best blacksmith in El Tigre.
“I like it.”
It was a brief compliment, but the blacksmith’s face brightened up as he was dealing with a special person.
“I thought it would be neither here nor there if I refined it poorly, so I made it into a gauntlet that preserves the shape of the scales. Since I was short of materials, I placed more dragon scales on the vital parts.”
He said that and pointed to his chest and armpit alternately. As he said, the gauntlet that Ruon was wearing also had blue-green scales shining faintly in that area.
“If you wear a padded coat over this, you won’t have any problem with warmth. Do you want me to get you one?”
“Thanks.”
Ruon answered with a faint smile and looked at Colin, who was making a nervous expression next to him.
“Do you like it?”
Colin, who was also wearing a scale gauntlet, answered hesitantly.
“…Can I really use such a precious thing?”
“Why not?”
Colin swallowed his saliva at the indifferent answer and spun the sword in his hand. The sharp blade that gleamed with gloss looked like a superior product at a glance. He muttered.
“I have to pass it on to my child someday.”
At that, Kyle jumped in with a pale face.
“You’ll die if you say that!”
“What, what? Fuck, why?”
“Ruon said that before. What was it? Fleur? No, she’s a witch.”
Ruon chuckled and answered.
“Flag.”
“Yeah. That!”
Kyle clapped his hands and started to explain the death flag to Colin, who blinked his eyes as if he didn’t understand. Of course, that was also nonsense.
After giving a small tip to Sanson (the lord promised to pay all the amount), the party moved out of the blacksmith shop.
“Hello!”
“Have you had lunch?”
“Thank you. Always take care of yourself.”
The busy people who were going their own way greeted the party brightly when they saw them. The three people who had been fighting at the front line for a week were already so famous in El Tigre that there was no one who didn’t know them.
Then someone came through the crowd.
She was wearing a gray robe instead of a blue one, probably conscious of the others’ eyes. It was Amela.
“Are you done?”
Ruon shrugged his shoulders at her words.
“As you can see.”
“I just finished preparing too. I bought a horse. Oh, by the way. The kid named Caliban, he’s so nice. He has a lot of charm.”
What?
Ruon frowned without realizing it. It was the most absurd thing he had heard in the last few months.
“I’ve been feeding him sugar and carrots. He doesn’t even treat me like a person… Is he an irresistible male?”
Colin, who was lamenting with a sigh, laughed and said.
“Then we’re all ready. Shall we go?”
As they were about to move, a voice came from behind. Wait a minute! They turned around and saw a man with a bandage wrapped around his chest running towards them.
He arrived and gasped for breath. He was a familiar face to the party. He was Wayne, the lord’s guardian knight.
“I heard you were in critical condition. Why are you here?”
Kyle said that and put his hand on Wayne’s shoulder. A faint light flashed under his palm and Wayne’s complexion brightened up.
“I heard you had packed your luggage in the room and hurried over. Are you leaving already?”
Ruon nodded.
“The barbarians have retreated, and the kingdom’s army will be here soon. There’s no reason for us to stay.”
Wayne seemed to have a lot to say, but he couldn’t get it out of his mouth. He finally organized his thoughts and said.
“I think you have a reason to leave. The lord is still unable to move and couldn’t come out, so I dare to represent him and El Tigre and thank you for this.”
He bowed deeply and showed respect as a knight. The party didn’t say anything. They just scratched their heads as if they were awkward.
It’s different.
Ruon muttered to himself. He had thought so before, but they were a little different from the usual nobles and knights.
***
He had only seen a glimpse of them, but Prince Kemar was not as rigid and inflexible as other nobles, and Wayne was a knight who did not fuss over his rank.
That alone made them likable to Ruon. And he felt a small sense of pride for protecting El Tigre.
He smiled faintly.
“Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”
With a brief farewell, the party left El Tigre. They walked on their own feet to the cold northern land, but strangely, they did not feel cold.
The fire made from dried goat dung crackled and burned. The dung had a decent heat, and thanks to that, the faces that had hardened from the cold began to relax.
Ruon’s eyes sparkled like fireflies as he quietly looked at the fire. He took out some jerky from his backpack, cooked it, and handed one to each of the people sitting next to him. They all chewed on it without a word.
“Hot, hot, hot! So, where is this sacred tree?”
Colin moved his mouth noisily as the jerky was hotter than he expected. Steam came out of his mouth.
Amela answered him.
“Five or six days? I don’t know the exact distance. When I moved, I used the portal that the shamans had set up. Of course, I can’t use it now.”
Colin rounded his mouth and let out a wow.
“Portal. I’ve always been curious about that. How does it feel to close the gap of tens of days in a single step?”
Ruon frowned silently.
He remembered the time he had taken the portal with Tarwen in Belgrade. He had no intention of taking the portal again, no matter what anyone said.
Kyle cut off a piece of ham from the wrapper and cooked it over the fire, as the jerky was not enough to fill his hungry stomach.
“···Frankly, this land we’re sitting on is no longer Aniara’s territory, right? What if we run into hundreds of barbarians by mistake?”
At his words, Amela elbowed Ruon’s arm and said.
“He’ll take care of them all.”
“Hmm. That makes sense.”
“Yeah.”
Huh?
Ruon was about to pass it off as a joke, but he saw Colin and Kyle nodding their heads seriously. He couldn’t help but laugh.
He thought about it again and it wasn’t impossible.
“Thank you.”
Amela bit into the ham that Kyle handed her on a stick and added.
“It’s not necessarily like that. The north is in a lot of chaos right now.”
She smiled sweetly at Kyle, as if the ham was delicious. Ruon chuckled at that, and Colin made a face as if he had eaten shit.
“As I said, the chieftain, Jigor, is a very stubborn person. He joined hands with the great demon to revive the sacred tree, purely out of his own will. Of course, the elders strongly opposed it, but it was useless. Rather, they only lost their heads for being too radical.”
She stretched out her arm toward the fire and rubbed her cold fingers.
“The solid relationship between the tribes was also cracked by a series of events, and it’s gotten pretty serious now. Of course, everyone is holding their breath under the overwhelming power of the chieftain, but there are also many who are tired of the constant fighting. Unless they are radical followers of the chieftain, they probably won’t attack us with their lives on the line.”
Then Ruon shifted his gaze somewhere and asked.
“So which side are they?”
At his words, the party gripped their weapons and straightened their posture. In their eyes, which had quickly prepared for battle, they saw a dozen men and a woman slowly approaching, cutting through the darkness.
“How did you know?”
At the front, the man asked Ruon, who raised his eyebrows.
“I have good night vision.”
Then the woman behind the man stepped forward and said.
“That’s nonsense! We erased our presence and smell, and used shamanism to blend in with nature, and you just saw and recognized us? You’re a coward who uses despicable magic that doesn’t suit your size.”
What are you talking about?
He watched her angrily, and she added.
“There’s no way these are the beings the great mother told us about. Just look at their clothes, they’re clearly dogs of the north. Let’s just kill them.”
At her harsh words, Colin snorted and growled.
“···As soon as we see the barbarians.”
He drew his sword loudly, and the men on the other side also raised their weapons in unison. The atmosphere was tense and explosive.
“Stop-!”
Then the man at the front shouted loudly. His booming voice made the surface of the burning fire tremble.
“Brother, why···”
The woman tried to interrupt, but the man raised his hand to stop her. His squinty eyes looked straight at Ruon.
“May I ask why a foreigner has set foot on this barren land?”
Ruon quietly faced him, feeling no hostility in his question.
“Well, I’m here to kill your chieftain.”
Of course, that was not his ultimate goal, but he said it deliberately. There was no better way to gauge the reaction of his opponent.
Surprisingly, the man and the warriors behind him fell silent. Even though he had openly declared his intention to kill someone who was like a king to them.
Then the man stepped into the circle of light cast by the bonfire. His face, which had been half-hidden in the darkness, was revealed.
He was a striking man, with sharp features and a scruffy beard that covered his lower face. He wore a large bear skin over his head and shoulders. But what caught Ruon’s attention was the blue tattoo that covered his entire face.
“Your name must also start with ‘Ba’.”
Ruon knew from the previous fight that those who had smeared their faces with blue dye were the chieftains of the barbarians. He asked the question he could.
The man nodded briefly.
“Yes. I am Ba-Hengel.”
The man, Hengel, spoke.
“Warrior. Raise your weapon. I have something I want to confirm with you.”
At his words, a woman who looked like Hengel’s sister snapped at him. She was so agitated that she dropped the honorifics.
“Wait! Brother. This is rash. We don’t have any certainty yet!”
Hengel answered without looking back.
“That’s why I want to check, isn’t it?”
They were talking about something only they knew.
In the strange atmosphere, Ruon lifted himself up with his hand on the ground. He slapped his buttocks lightly, showing no sign of tension. The warriors behind Hengel glared at him with sparks in their eyes.
He asked as if he didn’t care.
“What do you want to do? Fight until one of us dies?”
Hengel shook his head.
“No. We’ll stop when one side admits defeat.”
Ruon frowned. That sounded more vague than asking a barber to cut his hair moderately.
But he soon nodded.
“Suit yourself.”
Then Amela poked his back and whispered.
“You’ll go easy on him, right? He seems to be from the tribe that clashed with the Great Chieftain…”
“What if he is?”
Ruon retorted playfully and approached Hengel. The barbarian chieftain quickly drew his double-edged axe from his waist and growled.
His low voice gradually turned into a beast-like roar, and his ferocity became more evident.
A bear?
Ruon saw a huge illusion of a bear wavering behind Hengel. Just like the one who climbed the wall before had a wolf’s illusion, the barbarian in front of him had a bear’s illusion on his back.
“Kroo!”
With a wild howl, Hengel swung his arm down. The axe fell with a satisfying sound, fast and strong enough to split anyone from head to crotch.
But Ruon, who had read his trajectory from his shoulder movement, dodged lightly and punched the empty space.
At that moment, the large axe blade shattered like a glass window hitting a rock.
“Huh!”
Hengel avoided the flying shards with an incredible agility that did not match his large body, but he could not dodge the fist that followed.
He was hit in the chest and flew up, unable to even fall properly. He rolled on the ground without a sense of direction. He barely stopped with the help of the warriors behind him, and blood gushed from his mouth.
“Ugh-”
After spitting out blood for a while, Hengel lifted his head with trembling eyes. There was Ruon, looking down at him with a sullen face.
“I don’t know if that’s enough.”
“Enough… More than enough.”
He bent his knee and looked at the barbarian who admitted defeat eye to eye.
“So what did you want to confirm? What is this being that the Great Mother spoke of?”
Hengel answered, catching his breath.
“The Great Mother is our tribe’s elder, who has the ability to divine the future by looking at the stars… She said… A being that will end this damned war will appear.”
He opened his mouth slowly, trailing off.
“After a long silence, a new name was engraved in the sky. He will drive away the old and stir up the blue in the ancient history.”
