Chapter 85 – Chapter 85 ― Road to the West (2)
Episode 85 ― Road to the West (2)
In dry Basel, snow rarely falls in winter. That’s not to say that winter travel is easy.
That’s why Evirgio uses magical beasts instead of horses. No matter how strong a horse is, Evirgio’s winter is harsh enough to knock it down. On the other hand, the Witchbeast can move without hesitation even in the blizzard of deep winter.
Among them, four especially strong witches were pulling the wagon, emitting steam from their bodies.
The knights are escorting Emperor Roan.
Accompanying them are Grünent, Helen, and Lauca.
‘I’m glad I didn’t insist on riding a beast.’
He had never traveled long distances while riding a Witchbeast. When I was going out of Basel to find a waypoint, I was expecting to be able to ride the beast, but Grunent informed me of my desire to accompany him.
— You never know when your majesty will fall.
Even though I’m not a sickly patient, and I’m diligently working at night now, it still seems uneasy in Grunent’s eyes.
It seems that the sight of me, who was considered stronger than anyone else, collapsed in front of me was quite a shock.
— Go to the wagon for use in case of emergency, Your Majesty.
Grünent, who doesn’t normally beg or cling to anything, asked while crying. Please, I ask you to move with me. Carriages are taken for sex at all costs.
A sex-only wagon.
I was thinking of simply riding the beast and going back with the knights, but things got bigger.
However, in the end, it seems that it was a wise idea to accept Grunent’s offer.
If you look out the window, all you see is the knights riding on the beast with frozen tears hanging on them.
The knights who escort the wagon in four directions are wearing all kinds of cold protection equipment, but there is no business in the wind.
Roan shuddered when he thought of the people around him who suffered while riding his bike in the middle of winter.
“It is cold, Your Majesty.”
Roan, who was looking out the window, was urged by Grunent to come inside.
As Roan fell from the window, Grunent closed the shutters with his own hands and served hot tea.
“You must have cooled down. Your majesty.”
Who cares about who she is, her human being.
However, Grunent’s expression is too sincere to pass lightly. Roan took his cup without saying anything.
“Grunent, you are very worried.”
Is Helen overprotective?
“Master, I can restore you anytime, don’t you believe me?”
… There is nothing to do until I recover!
They are the same.
“They are both the same.”
I look at her in amazement at her Lauca’s scolding, as if I read her inside her mind.
Lauca’s eyes met hers, her eyes widened for a moment, then she turned her head away. Is it an illusion that the slight blush is reflected on her cheeks?
Her affinity is currently +15.
She drinks in the garden on the New Year’s Eve banquet and runs away while her level rises by 5.
Anyway, Grunent has been in overprotective mode for months.
As Grunent, she can’t accurately know the condition of my body, and since she saw it, it’s not that she couldn’t understand my surprise…
Still, I hope she stops thinking of herself as her power bank.
As her likability is different in her mid-80s, there is a slight hint of obsession. According to the favorability guidebook of the legend of Castle Hero, it was said that full-fledged obsession and addiction start at +90 favorability.
I don’t raise the favorability more or…
Should I drop it…
As Roan seems lost in thought, Grunent and Helen wait in silence.
Then someone knocked on the wagon outside.
Soon the carriage stopped and a loud sound followed.
“Im here! Your majesty.”
“… Is it already?”
Grünent rounds her eyes.
Less than 10 minutes after leaving the gates surrounding downtown Basel.
“Hmm. It’s close. Didn’t you say you don’t have to worry?”
“But, Your Majesty, what surprised me earlier was not that you happened to be like that somewhere far away. Please understand the heart of the concubine.”
Roan laughed bitterly and got off the carriage.
I see. Back then, it was even 3 minutes away from the castle.
The moment I step outside, it feels like my lungs will freeze from the air I inhaled.
“Stay there.”
Leave the concerned women in the wagon and leave the door open. The wagon is enchanted for heating. As long as you don’t come out the door, you’ll be fine.
Roan looked around at the bare forest.
A view outside Basel that is seen for the first time with the naked eye.
“… There is nothing.”
10 minutes by carriage from the castle.
In the winter forest outside the castle, which is about 30 to 40 minutes away on foot, there are only skinny branches.
Overall, it is desolate and quiet.
“Because it is deep winter, there are few passers-by. Your majesty.”
One article explained it as if it were an excuse.
Roan shook his head as if he understood.
It’s not just people, it’s a forest of dead trees with almost no trace of life.
Unlike Basel and its vicinity on the other side of which the river flows, there is really nothing here. Originally, if it was near a castle, there should have been a village, farm, or market, but there is nothing like a lie.
When I saw it in the game, I liked the place because it was quiet, but it hurts my heart to think that people don’t get any crops here.
‘So please stay.’
As if praying, Roan raised his ‘will’ and moved his steps.
This was a familiar place to Roan.
In the middle of a dead forest, an old tree that stands alone on a flat land is also half decayed and dying. A 1-meter high tombstone placed under it.
“The River of Basel is the source of life. The power to care for the land to embrace and nurture fresh life.
Countless beings will live here, feeding on life and raising their next offspring.
Where the traces of generous life remain, the goddess has left her footprints.”
With the knowledge of the ancient language studied with Helen, the tombstone can now be read more and more.
Roan frowned.
The word “Fresh life” Doesn’t go well with the surroundings. Basel’s river, the source of life, doesn’t even flow here.
Was it different in the past?
More than that, there are no waypoints in sight.
Roan’s face darkened.
‘It should be right here.’
Was it really an element in the game?
Then, how far is it in this world?
It’s not like there aren’t even crystal mines.
Roan gritted it.
A situation that seems to break my heart more than ever before. However, the continuing ‘will’ was barely supporting his heart.
The shock is so great.
As the emperor looked over the tombstone and stood there without saying anything, the expressions of the knights and women watching him darkened as well.
First, look back at what Lauca said.
— Only after the lanterns are lit, will future generations be able to find the goddess’ love.
Did she say that the lantern the goddess has is a combination of starlight and moonlight?
After that, she looked through her materials in the library, but she couldn’t find any magic related to moonlight.
There is no need to use obscure moonlight to light a fire. There is light magic.
Or, in divine magic, there is also a ‘sunlight’ sun light that purifies evil things such as ghosts and dark magic—though from the perspective of the human who was a warrior at the time, the evil is on my side.
It is in a similar context that I was dumbfounded by the starlight at first. I’m walking down the street at night, and someone will turn on the light while leaving my phone’s flash on.
It’s moonlight It’s magic that doesn’t even need common sense.
‘But there is starlight.’
Magic that is thought to no longer exist in this world. ‘Starlight’. For some mysterious reason, that ‘starlight’ was created inside me.
With the feeling of grabbing at least a straw, Roan gathered his holy power. Recently, as he trained with Helen, his holy power was gradually increasing.
So, the light that grew at the fingertips of the emperor has now grown out of a small light bulb and grown to the size of an incandescent light bulb.
And.
“… Your Majesty, what did you just do?”
A sharp sound coming from inside the wagon.
Soon after, Lauca jumped out.
She could have hesitated in the cold wind, but Lauca came straight to Roan as if nothing was wrong. Her knights began to watch her, frowning.
“Did you feel something?”
“… It looks like His Majesty didn’t do it himself.”
With her eyes narrowed, Lauca took one look at Roan, then began to stare at her land.
“What you just did, one more time.”
Roan turned on ‘Starlight’.
And she focused her consciousness to find out what Lauca was talking about.
The moment the ‘starlight’ brightened, Lauca picked up a fallen tree branch and began to draw a line on the ground.
‘Painting… ?’
While the ‘starlight’ was on, Lauca was frantically drawing her figure. And when Roan saw the form Lauca created, he was astonished.
The appearance of complicated letters and patterns overlapping in a circle large enough to accommodate a couple of wagons is very familiar to Roan.
“Lauka, how did you… ?”
“… Is this the ruin Your Majesty was talking about?”
“… Yes.”
Drawing the shape of the waypoint with tree branches, Lauca crouched down and tried sweeping and digging the ground.
“There’s nothing. Lauca. The Templars and Guards have already completed their investigation.”
“So, what is this?”
“…”
Ron’s face brightened even more.
‘There is. Surely.’
Traces of waypoints reacting to ‘starlight’.
The location and shape of the pattern drawn by Lauca perfectly matches the shape of the waypoint seen in the game.
‘But it’s not visible.’
What does it mean to bind starlight and moonlight?
If you use ‘Starlight’ on a night when the moonlight is revealed…
Roan recalled the scene where the hero found the waypoint.
Dawn, the time just before dawn. The rescue team that rescued Grünent and Lauca succeeded in escaping the castle, but they started to be chased by the tracking party without completely leaving the city of Basel.
After all, did a hero have the temperament of a hero before he was marked as a hero? Since he is still a mercenary, the hero, who must have had no sense of loyalty, escapes Basel by focusing the attention of the tracking party on himself in order to escape Helen, Grunent, and Lauca.
Maybe it was to protect Helen, who mixed her flesh before meeting Grünent.
For whatever reason, the hero flees to the other side with his men on his tail as the rescue party escapes up the river. He ran in that direction for a long time. Where he finally reached.
‘This forest.’
Deep dawn.
The day of Grünent’s rescue operation was the Harvest Festival, when all of Basel was buzzing.
A seasonal harvest festival here where the full moon rises on a full moon and the crescent moon rises when the moon begins, and the moon around September 9th is a half moon. It is a full moon.
“When does the Sanghyeon moon set?”
The knights frowned at the emperor’s sudden question. The one who answered promptly without needing time to calculate was, of course, the forest fairy Lauca.
“Midnight.”
Just answering, Lauca waited without asking the emperor for an explanation.
Everyone in the room could see that he was thinking deeply about something.
‘That’s it. There was no moonlight at that time.’
It was a moonless night, so even the hero couldn’t see in front of him. After hiding for a long time and running repeatedly, when he thought he had evaded the tracking team, it was that tombstone that stumbled and fell.
The hero, who rolled on the floor in splendor, finally realized that the torch of the tracking party was out of sight, and he admitted that it would be difficult to move further without fire.
Unexpectedly, the hero activates the ‘shield’ obtained as a reward for Helen’s attack and carefully turns on the light magic.
‘I can’t use ‘Star Cloud Shield’ and ‘Starlight’ together.’
The silent Roan finally opened his mouth.
“Whatever you see in the future.”
He concentrated his holy power.
“Keep quiet.”
And unfolded divine magic.
Lauca and his knights widened their eyes in amazement, and Helen smiled brightly.
‘Star Cloud Shield’.
The mysterious ancient miracle that transferred the beauty of the nebula to the shield was reproduced.
Seeing the glint of the cloud-like shield, Lauca let out a sigh without even realizing it.
“This… A beautiful magic…”
And Roan cast another spell on the other hand. One of the few magics that the (former) demon lord learned before obtaining divine magic.
‘Light.’
In an instant, tremendous magic power suddenly surged up following the shape Lauca had drawn.
Fearing that the figure drawn on the ground would be distorted, Lauca, who was standing outside the figure and examining the painting, was startled by the momentum and involuntarily backtracked.
“Your majesty!!!”
A scream rang out.
