Chapter 150. Engagement – Ice Island
“Lena! Stand back!”
The sword wavered under his dizzy intoxication. Leo, clutching onto his fleeting consciousness, shielded Lena.
MalHas.
The Asin, intertwined with two crows, reveled in bloodthirsty battles.
The blood on the victor’s blade turned into the sweetness of triumph, and the red crow eagerly licked it off, while the corpse of the loser left a bitter taste as the black crow tore at it with its beak.
‘They’ were Asin who had existed since ancient times, stirring chaos to secure their sustenance.
“What on earth are you doing?!”
The innkeeper shouted in panic, but Leo didn’t lower his sword. Instead, he pointed it even closer, threatening the man’s throat.
This man was highly likely to be the culprit who turned the Bernauli South Gate market into an altar.
The octagonal divine power he saw there was of very high quality. And if it was the ancient MalHas recorded in the ‘History of Asin,’ he would have had the right to wield such divine power.
However, Leo was puzzled as he scrutinized the terrified innkeeper.
The {Divine Power Insight} detected nothing. If this man were an apostle, MalHas’s divine power should have been visible, but there wasn’t even a grain of it in his body.
He was an ordinary… human.
“What is this madness?!”
The burly warriors who had been drinking with the innkeeper picked up their axes. As they tried to surround Leo with grim faces, Lena waved her arms.
“Wait! Let’s calm down. It looks like there’s been a misunderstanding. Hey! Leo! Put the sword down now!”
As the tension reached a boiling point, a hand pulled at Leo’s waist.
Reluctantly, Leo fell back into his seat. Perhaps he had overreacted.
The atmosphere slightly eased, but the warriors were still reluctant to lower their axe blades, so Leo felt the need to handle the situation.
“…I’m sorry. It seems I mistook you due to being drunk.”
“…”
As the explanation seemed insufficient, he added a half-truth to distract everyone.
“It’s because of that tattoo…”
The warriors shifted their gaze to the innkeeper’s forearm at Leo’s pointing.
A feather tattoo. A warrior who knew its meaning asked.
“Isn’t that just the symbol of the Avviker tribe? What does that tattoo have to do with you drawing your sword?”
“…My enemy had a similar tattoo on his arm.”
Leo kept his explanation short.
Without a way to further clarify, he tried to smooth things over with a lie…
The innkeeper, who had been calming his racing heart while rubbing his neck, drew closer, his eyes wide. He seemed to have forgotten his near-miss, firing off questions.
“Did you see someone with such a tattoo? That person must be from our Avvicar tribe! When and where did you meet him? What did he look like?”
“…I don’t know. It was a long time ago…”
Leo’s lie was cornered by the innkeeper’s specific questions. He was about to feign ignorance when Lena intervened.
“Leo’s mother was killed by a noble’s private soldiers over a decade ago. Perhaps it was one of them.”
This was the first Leo had heard of it.
Leo Dexter stared blankly at Lena as the innkeeper urgently inquired.
“Which noble family?”
“Who knows? It might have been a family that held a grudge against his father.”
“So which noble family? Don’t you know which noble family it was?”
No, he didn’t.
The aristocrats Uncle Noel had killed weren’t just a few. Particularly, those noble houses had all sided with the Aster Kingdom and had long been extinct in this Astin kingdom.
There was no need to reveal that Leo’s father was the famous noble butcher, so Lena diverted the conversation.
“It was so long ago, we really don’t know. But you mentioned the Avviker tribe, right? Do you know an older sister named Lan or Ann Avicara?”
“Lan? Ann?! How do you know those names? Don’t tell me…”
“We met them on our journey. They said they escaped from Ice Island as well.”
“My goodness! They survived! They really did! I wasn’t the only one! So, where are they now? Are the chieftain and priestess still alive?”
The innkeeper exclaimed with joy.
His questions were laden with desperation, and Lena slipped in an apology.
“But first, I’m really sorry. Leo must have drunk too much. Can you forgive him? Hey, apologize properly.”
Lena slapped Leo on the back. As he lowered his head to apologize, the innkeeper waved it off.
“No, no, it’s fine now. I wasn’t stabbed, and… obviously, you’re stronger than me. The strong don’t need to apologize to the weak.”
Lena faintly recalled hearing such words from Lan.
“You really do know Lan and Ann, don’t you?”
“Of course I know. They are the daughters of our chieftain and priestess… could you tell me more? They must have grown up by now… Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to address you so informally.”
The innkeeper righted a fallen chair and seated Lena beside him. Once he sat down as well, the warriors, noticing the odd flow of the situation, also gradually settled back into their seats.
With Leo sitting slightly apart, Lena began to recount the stories she had heard in the village with the hot springs.
“Dear! Continue walking straight ahead. I will catch up soon.”
Lan, a child who could barely be called a girl, was running along, holding her dad’s hand, without knowing why.
The frozen ground.
Even though the ground was always covered in ice throughout the year, the summer made it slightly softer and less slippery.
But one must not be careless.
The ground that repeatedly froze and thawed often had empty spaces beneath it. When a child’s foot fell into one of those spaces, they would get stuck and unable to move.
Lan carefully stepped on solid ground. For the Avviker tribe living on this ice island, distinguishing between land you could step on and land you couldn’t was easy.
Though it seemed the men over there weren’t as skilled.
“Catch them! Don’t let the worshippers of the false god escape!”
The warriors in shining white armor shouted. Choosing only unstable ground, they chased after them very quickly.
“Dear, I can’t leave you behind. I will fight too. MalHas will help me…”
“No! Please, if the children are with me, I can’t fight. So, take the children and run first. I will definitely survive. I swear on the honor of the great warrior.”
Dad grabbed mom’s shoulders. For some reason, mom was sobbing, and Lan’s eyes turned red too.
“Mom. Don’t cry. Did Dad make you cry again? I’ll scold him.”
Lan knew that saying this would make mom and dad smile even when they were fighting. But this was the first time the trick didn’t work.
Dad stroked Lan’s head. He also stroked his younger sibling’s head once and then turned around.
“…Be careful!”
Mom shouted at dad’s back. Dad glanced back with a reassuring smile, then grabbed two axes in each hand and ran.
We also ran with mom.
Soon, we arrived at the frozen white shoreline. We carefully walked on the ice-covered sea that cracked precariously with each step.
Lan, crossing the sea that stretched out endlessly like a plain, looked back. Near the ice island, which had shrunk to the size of a palm, a gigantic ship was anchored.
A sail with a cross pattern. An icebreaker with dark steel on its bow swayed as the sound of ice breaking around it could be heard from where we stood.
Black smoke rose from the ice island, shaking the young hearts with unease.
* * *
“When will mom and dad come?”
Ann was whining.
Lan, holding the hand of the sibling who was just one year younger, reassured them.
“Mom will bring them soon. She said after just two more nights.”
Successfully crossing the frozen sea, we arrived at a village. Mom explained the situation and begged for us to stay for a few days, somehow securing a small storage room.
A few of mom’s bracelets were gone, but just having a place to lie down after days of continuous walking made Lan happy.
Did we spend just one night there?
Mom, nervously biting her nails, eventually said.
“Kids, wait here for five more nights. Mom will bring dad.”
“Five nights?”
“Yes. Lan, you can count, right? Stay hidden here with your sibling. I’ve told the village chief everything, so you must listen to him.”
Contrary to the promise, mom returned after seven nights. And contrary to the promise… dad wasn’t with her.
She only returned with dad’s two large, broad axes.
Mom said nothing. Even when I said, “Where’s dad? You said you would bring dad! I want to see dad!” the young mom in her mid-twenties could only well up with tears.
We left the village.
By the time all the ornaments mom wore as a priestess were gone, we arrived in a vast city.
It was called Bernoullii.
Here, mom was tirelessly running around to find a house. I still remember that. We spent several days sleeping on the cold streets before we could find a house.
I pressed my ear into mom’s right armpit, and my sibling snored softly under mom’s left armpit. Then, I think I heard a small prayer between the warm armpits.
“Dear MalHas. Please help me. I will give this humble body if only my daughters… can grow without any shortages.”
After many twists and turns, mom found a house. It was a small store in a very remote place in the South Gate market that even looked small to Lan.
When my sibling and I lay down, there was no space left, so mom had to hunch under the workbench.
It was a modest shop. But to pay the rent, mom made ‘headbands’ day and night.
They were headbands with many feathers, worn by the women of the Avviker tribe. Starting with those, her clumsy handiwork improved, and she started making elegant bracelets to display by the window.
Was it around that time? My sibling still thinks mom was always like that, but I saw it.
As the days passed, the darkness gathering in mom’s clear eyes.
One night, Mom called us over and picked up an axe. She lightly cut mine and my sister’s thighs, staining the axe blade with blood, and lit eight candles. It was an altar for welcoming new followers.
There were no offerings. Mom, who had even skipped prayers, fell asleep as if she had fainted.
The next day, she suddenly left the house.
“Are you going grocery shopping?”
I hugged Mom from behind, rubbing my sleepy face against her hip…
“Yes. You two are still useless, so just wait quietly.”
“What? What did you say?”
For some reason, I couldn’t hear her voice well. It was too low and emotionless, like a distant voice passing by.
But Mom gently stroked my head and patted my sleepy back, sending me off.
That was the last I saw of her. No matter how long we waited, she never came back. My sister and I asked the merchants in the nearby stores to find our mom, but we became orphans overnight.
“That wretched woman. I didn’t think she was like that, but she turned out to be awful.”
The merchants cursed Mom, assuming she couldn’t bear the hardships and had abandoned us to escape.
“N-No, Mom will come back. She will come back!”
I cried, hugging my sister, among the merchants who crowded around us. My sister quietly sobbed, holding the hair tie Mom had left behind.
The merchants of the South Gate market pondered over what to do with us. Even though we had large tattoos on our backs, we were still young girls. Their conscience didn’t allow them to simply throw us out, so one merchant decided to take us in as daughters-in-law to be raised until we were old enough for marriage.
I was thirteen, and my sister was twelve when we each married the sons of that household.
Though they called it a marriage, there was no ceremony.
We just started sleeping together one day, and that was our marriage. Both I and Ann ended up getting pregnant at a young age.
Fortunately, our husbands were both kind-hearted boys. They were diligent, and… well, diligent. That was enough to make a good husband and a craftsman who made jewelry.
I gave birth to a son. A cute and adorable son. And by the time my sister, who had given birth to a daughter, had her second child, the king died under mysterious circumstances. It was about five years after Mom had disappeared.
A civil war erupted.
Looking back, it was a brutal time. Finding corpses on the streets as we woke up had become the norm. Occasionally, knights would come seeking refuge in the South Gate market, bleeding.
Whenever a knight left, retribution inevitably followed.
Angry noblemen would sweep the market with their private soldiers, killing innocent merchants.
This ordeal repeated for three years.
Unable to endure it any longer, the South Gate market merchants formed a vigilante group. They took up arms to expel any knights who arrived and to fight off the noblemen’s soldiers, warning them to leave us alone.
Lan and Ann also took their father’s axe to protect their beloved husbands and children.
They stood watch every night, often engaging in one-sided battles.
We usually ended up on the losing side.
Even if the knights were wounded, they were terrifying monsters. When we refused to hide them, they would slash us and flee.
Moreover, the noble houses that had amassed wealth to hire soldiers during the civil war were overwhelmingly powerful. Even though the South Gate market merchants banded together, once marked, many merchants and their families were massacred.
Lan and Ann, who had spent their days amid such bloodshed, eventually became the strongest warriors in the vigilante group… The civil war that seemed never-ending came to an anticlimactic end.
The two claimants to the throne were killed by their respective sons.
The sons, who emerged as leaders of their factions, declared themselves kings and made a pact.
The Kingdom of Aslan was split in two. The Kingdom of Astin was established in the west, and the Kingdom of Aster in the east.
Bernoullii fell under the Kingdom of Astin’s control. Irrespective of our wishes, we all became citizens of the Kingdom of Astin.
Peace returned after three years.
Lan and Ann went back to their original lives, raising children and supporting their husbands… However, they felt a sense of emptiness.
Their father’s axe lingered in their minds. For some reason, this peace wasn’t entirely welcome.
As they spent their days in monotony, occasionally sparring, they heard one day that their friendly merchant, Vernon, was planning to set up his merchants’ guild “again.”
He went around asking if anyone from the former vigilante group could accompany him, as he had only been able to hire two mercenaries due to a lack of funds.
But most members of the former vigilante group were now merchants, so unless they accompanied him as merchants themselves, it was a difficult request to fulfill.
After much deliberation, Lan and Ann volunteered. They felt sorry for their husbands and children, but the warrior’s blood flowing in their veins wouldn’t let them remain still.
Vernon was delighted, and soon after, they set off on a trade expedition.
“Hey, look at that. That’s a spirit beast.”
During their journey, they encountered a snow-horned deer in a forest.
The imposing appearance of the stag with its massive white antlers seemed to beckon them.
At that moment, Lan realized.
The destiny as a warrior, the great trial was out there. It had been waiting for us.
“…We need more people. I heard the Trial of the Great Warrior requires five people.”
Although he omitted the word ‘catch’, his younger sibling instantly understood.
“Alright. Let’s find some people.”
Vernon’s caravan slowly proceeded towards their next destination, Avril Castle, and Lan and Ann’s hearts pounded vigorously- pumping life and meaning into their existence.
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