Chapter 38 - Now That I Have Finally Found Where I Belong (2)

A biting northern wind raged, and snowflakes fluttered in the air. Every time I exhaled, a pure white breath flowed out.

From a certain point on, winter had surrounded me.

I couldn't tell whether winter had come because time had passed, or if the climate had changed because I had traveled north. If there was one thing I did know, it was that—

"Ugh, I'm freezing to death."

It wasn't just cold; it was obscenely cold.

"If you can't stand it that much, why don't you go inside the carriage?"

I shook my head at my maternal uncle's words.

It was weather I had to get used to anyway. I wasn't going to travel in a carriage every time, so I had to adapt to the cold. Besides, the carriage was too suffocating.

"It seems this old man has needlessly intruded and caused a nuisance to Your Highness."

Just then, the carriage window opened, and the culprit who forced me out of the carriage appeared. It was Nicolo.

"If you know that, then get off."

"Wouldn't it be an even greater nuisance if my old body suddenly fell ill on the way?"

"Then why did you follow me in the first place?"

"Stopping halfway through learning is worse than not learning at all. Half-baked knowledge will be poison to Your Highness, so how could I just sit back and watch?"

Nicolo chattered on, asking if there would ever be another chance for his wretched, dying body to dare experience the rugged North if not now.

His words flowed like water.

"Furthermore, the book I am writing this time will definitely be of help to Your Highness."

"I'm sure it will."

"Now, now, instead of that, why don't you come inside and have a discussion with me? The more knowledgeable a commander is in strategy and tactics, the less weary the soldiers will be. The book I am writing this time is exactly about the benefits of tactics and strategy..."

If I let him be, I would have to listen to that long-winded speech until we reached the campsite, so I pretended not to hear and cut him off.

When I went to the front of the formation, Arwen was there.

Draped in gray fur over the red coat exclusive to royal knights, she rode atop a pure white warhorse with a red cape fluttering behind her.

The sight was like a painting.

I could see the cavalrymen at the front stealing glances at her even as they drove their horses. They seemed quite impressed by her beauty.

Even though the person in question was suffering terribly from the extreme cold.

"Arwen. Are you okay?"

"I am fine!"

Her slurred pronunciation, as if her mouth had frozen from the cold, was quite funny. I couldn't tell if her flushed red face was due to the cold or her own clumsy speech.

"If it's too hard, switch out at any time."

"As a knight, how could I seek personal comfort?"

With a voice full of drive, she had been overflowing with vitality like this ever since we left The Capital. The thought that she might soon experience actual combat must have boosted her motivation.

However, not everyone was as motivated as she was.

I looked back.

I saw people walking some distance away from the soldiers of the Ballorhard family. It was the thirty infantrymen and ten cavalrymen dispatched by the royal family. Their expressions were unusually dark. They looked exactly like cows being dragged to a slaughterhouse.

The soldiers and cavalrymen who met my eyes lowered their heads. In that brief moment, I could read the emotion that surfaced in their eyes.

Resentment.

They had been eating well and living comfortably in The Capital, only to be suddenly dragged to the cold and brutal North, so it was no wonder they blamed me.

If Karl and the other Royal Knights were here, they would have comforted them well even in my absence.

Unfortunately, Karl and the Royal Knights were not present here.

The King had given me permission to head to the North, but he did not give me his knights.

["Do you not have your own knights as well?"]

He had merely scoffed, criticizing my behavior of only picking women to accept as my knights. He only supported me with thirty infantrymen and ten cavalrymen as a mere formality.

"Petty old man."

I grumbled as I recalled the situation back then, and my maternal uncle spoke up.

"His Majesty likely could not rule out the possibility that the Royal Knights might be won over by House Ballorhard."

My maternal uncle was right.

The King was blatantly keeping my maternal uncle in check—or more accurately, he was keeping me in check.

It was truly strange.

No matter how many scoundrel acts the original owner of this body had committed, wasn't I still his own flesh and blood? Considering that I had shown a somewhat diligent side since entering this guy's body, the King's hatred was a bit excessive.

There was definitely an inside story I didn't know about.

Lost in thought, I suddenly looked at my maternal uncle's face.

Jokes aside, my maternal uncle's face was a mess. His once vibrant eyes were hollow, and his strong jaw looked so sharp it seemed gaunt.

His Inner Demon seemed to have worsened.

Even as I saw that, I pretended not to know.

I planned to let it fester a little longer. I intended to watch him for a while more until the pus tore through the skin and flowed out on its own.

"Just wait a little bit."

My maternal uncle frowned at my words. He looked as if he was wondering why I was suddenly spouting nonsense.

"Good things come to those who wait."

"Did you drink during the march or something?"

I neatly ignored my maternal uncle's scolding.

We traveled for a long while more.

We moved during the day and rested after finding a suitable campsite at night. Facing the swirling blizzards, we headed further and further north.

About two weeks had passed like that.

A massive mountain range revealed itself at the edge of the horizon.

"It's the Blade Mountains. The border our family has protected our entire lives."

Saying so, my maternal uncle drastically increased the group's marching speed.

"Ballorhard is a place with wildly unpredictable weather. If we don't hurry, we'll get trapped in a blizzard and won't be able to move forward or back."

He was right.

When we arrived at a place where the Ballorhard family's castle was finally visible after walking non-stop for two days, a blizzard suddenly began to rage.

If it hadn't been for the soldiers who came out from the castle to meet us right on time, we really would have been left stranded, unable to move anywhere, just as my maternal uncle said.

The soldiers and my maternal uncle conversed about something, using a mix of hand gestures and body language.

"...!"

"...!"

Buried by the sound of the wind, I couldn't hear a thing they were saying.

"We'll recover the carriages later; take only the horses and move on foot!"

Only after my maternal uncle eventually used his mana to shout did the group start moving again.

I got off my horse, handed the reins to one of the soldiers, and immediately went to the carriage to open the door.

"Take my hand!"

Adelia, who had fully prepared herself, took my hand as if deeply honored. Nicolo sent an unpleasant glare from behind, but I ignored it.

Terrified by the fierce blizzard, Adelia stuck closely to my side. She didn't look at all like a woman who had already surpassed a Sword Learner and was approaching a Sword Expert.

But what could I do? She had a faint-hearted nature to begin with. At least it was better than a blood-crazed warmonger.

While I was taking care of Adelia, Nicolo revealed himself from the carriage a step late.

He spread his arms wide and shouted something, his expression clearly filled with deep emotion. No doubt he was blabbering about Mother Nature or whatever, spilling his sentiments over the majesty of this fierce blizzard.

I looked around.

Horses panicking and acting wildly from the blizzard, the soldiers of House Ballorhard struggling to calm them down, and the royal soldiers moving about frantically—it was a complete and utter mess.

Among them, the ones who caught my eye were the royal soldiers.

Putting the name of the Royal Family's elites to shame, they were truly running around like headless chickens. Perhaps because the soldiers of House Ballorhard were moving so in sync, their messy display stood out even more.

'Good grief.'

Tripping over themselves, getting pushed by the wind, and tumbling down tangled up in twos and threes. It was an incredibly pathetic sight.

And yet, those soldiers were the guys I was supposed to lead from now on.

A sigh escaped me naturally.

"Arwen!"

"Your Highness!"

Arwen, who had somehow managed to hear my voice amidst the uproar, came running over. Whether she had drawn upon her mana, her steps were completely unhindered.

"Take care of Adelia!"

"I shall do so!"

Leaving Adelia to Arwen, I ran straight toward the soldiers.

I grabbed a soldier by the scruff of his neck and hauled him up as he kept falling backward, pushed by the wind.

"Y-Your Highness?"

I roared at the soldier, who was still out of it.

"You idiot! Take off your shield!"

No wonder he was being pushed around by the wind like that when he was carrying a wide shield.

Hearing my mana-infused shout, the soldiers finally began moving swiftly.

Though they had shown a pathetic display due to the sudden chaos, it seemed they weren't entirely useless.

The scrambling soldiers unequipped their shields and buried them under the carriages.

"You there! Yeah! You, the big guy! You're in front! Everyone, stick behind this guy! No, no! I didn't say huddle up! Stand in a single-file line! You idiots!"

* * *

"Throw away everything cumbersome except for your swords! We can come back for them later! What? It's a royal gift? I'm the prince! You idiots! If we can't find it, I'll give you a new one, so just throw it away!"

The soldiers of House Ballorhard looked back at the shouting that pierced through the strong wind.

The young prince who had come with the Commander was screaming his lungs out.

His build wasn't large, and he looked like a pretty boy, making him seem completely unreliable, but the way he scolded the soldiers was exactly like a veteran commander who had rolled through the battlefields.

Overwhelmed by his intensity, the softies from The Capital began to move with all their might.

"Looks like we don't need to step in."

In truth, the soldiers of House Ballorhard had planned to let them suffer moderately and then step in to clean things up when the time was right.

It was their own kind of hazing. If they didn't want to see them putting on airs just because they were royal soldiers, they needed to crush their spirits in this manner at least. But because of the young prince, the hazing was rendered pointless.

The soldiers of House Ballorhard exchanged glances as they looked at the prince, who stood with his back straight despite the swirling wind.

'He's different from what we heard.'

'Does he have actual combat experience?'

They parted their lips and uttered light exclamations of admiration. But that was only for a moment.

Even so, he was just a greenhorn prince who had never experienced a harsh winter.

The soldiers thought that his imposing figure wouldn't last long either.

Because forging ahead through a blizzard was a grueling task that even a decent knight would find hard to endure.

But they were wrong.

One of the softies fell behind. The prince hoisted that softie over his shoulder.

An arrogant noble, an even more arrogant royal, and the First Prince known as a Scoundrel on top of that—to sling a mere soldier over his shoulder? The soldiers were astonished. But there was something even more surprising.

The snowfields that grabbed at your ankles drained stamina severely, and the vision obscured by the blizzard ate away at your mind. Looking out for someone else in such a blizzard was by no means an easy task.

Even strong knights often dropped out when facing such a blizzard for the first time. Yet, that young prince was following the formation perfectly well with a soldier slung over his shoulder.

That wasn't something you could do just by accumulating a bit of mana in your body.

They themselves had prepared for the blizzard in advance by wearing snowshoes and dressing heavily, but that prince had barely even prepared for the cold.

The soldiers looked at the Commander.

'Just what did he do in The Capital before coming here?'

'What exactly did you pick up from The Capital?'

At those gazes that were beyond cheeky and bordered on disrespectful, the Commander parted his lips.

'Experience it for yourselves.'

The fierce, swirling blizzard stopped like a lie.

It was right around the time we arrived at the castle of House Ballorhard.

"Damn it, if it was going to stop, it should have stopped sooner."

It was to the point of feeling hollow that we had suffered through every hardship to push through the blizzard.

"Y-Your Highness."

While I was cursing internally at the bright, clear sky, someone approached and spoke to me.

"Th-Thank you so much."

I wondered who it was, and it turned out to be the soldier who had insolently hitched a ride on a royal's shoulder.

I waved my hand. The soldier bowed deeply several times before quietly disappearing into the formation.

"Prepare a place for the royal soldiers to rest."

Receiving the order, the soldiers of House Ballorhard took the royal soldiers and disappeared somewhere.

"Was there a need to make such a fuss?"

As I was brushing off the thick layer of snow piled on my shoulders and eyes, my maternal uncle approached.

I could have left him to someone else, or at least just supporting him would have been enough. Why did I go that far? The one who answered my maternal uncle's question was Nicolo, who was completely exhausted but still had a lively mouth.

"What Your Highness has done will soon be widely known through His Excellency the Count's soldiers and the royal soldiers. If lending a shoulder for half a day wins the hearts of the soldiers, isn't that a highly profitable trade?"

I frowned at Nicolo's words.

Hearing him put it like that made me sound like some calculating merchant.

I *was* being calculating, though.

My maternal uncle looked at me. His eyes asked if that was really true.

"Let's just say it served multiple purposes. Besides, isn't this the appeal of rolling through the battlefield together?"

Saying so, I lifted my head.

I saw a structure that was closer to a fortress than a castle, and behind it, a wall that stretched endlessly. Countless eyes atop the wall were looking down at me.

They were the soldiers of House Ballorhard.

The immense military discipline they exuded poured down on me.

A brutal discipline built from surviving actual combat to the point where one could even smell blood—my heart began to pound at that nostalgic and welcome aura.

It felt as if I had returned to 400 years ago.

If there was one difference, it was just that 400 years ago, that aura wasn't directed at me, but now it was.

That fact infinitely elevated my mood.

With his back to the soldiers, my maternal uncle turned to look at me.

It was the face of a soldier, not a knight.

"As the legitimate ruler of Ballorhard and the Commander of the 3rd Legion, I welcome the First Prince's visit!"

The Commander of the 3rd Legion had welcomed my visit.

"I sincerely welcome you to Winter Castle."

In tune with that, the discipline of the soldiers atop the wall surged.

My heart pounded.

It felt like I had finally found where I belonged.