Chapter 55 - No Younger Brother Is as Good as His Elder Brother (1)

The next day's meeting began with questions about the Warlord.

"Does this King of Orcs truly exist? Isn't it simply a fiercer, more cunning Orc? Has anyone actually seen him?"

The leaders of Winter Castle all looked at me at once.

The commander of the reinforcements who had asked the question followed their gazes and turned his head toward me.

"There's a huge pillar-like thing outside. It came flying from the mountains."

When I drove my sword into the noble Orc's heart, the Warlord had thrown that spear as a warning, and it was still being kept in the castle's open ground.

"That's the spear he uses."

The leaders of the reinforcements, including the Second Prince, all filed out of the meeting hall.

When they reappeared after a short while, their faces were completely hardened.

It seemed they had been shocked by the Warlord's letter of warning, which was closer to an iron pillar than a spear.

"How far is it from the mountain range to the castle, and you're saying a mere Orc threw that?"

"Maybe if it were a ballista."

They voiced their disbelief.

"A mere monster operates siege weapons. A mere monster threw a spear fit for a ballista from the mountains all the way here."

Looking at them, I asked in return.

"Which one do you want to believe?"

A single unprecedentedly powerful monster, or a monster legion that operated siege weapons.

Whichever was true, it was proof enough that the Orcs in the mountains were beings on an entirely different level from ordinary monsters.

Perhaps the commanders of the reinforcements understood my question, because they closed their mouths.

"If you don't intend to believe it, then you'd be better off going back. What we need are reinforcements to fight alongside us, not a squawking interrogation team."

At my words, which were almost violent, the mood in the meeting hall sank.

"We did not mean to doubt you. It was simply such an astonishing story that we wanted to confirm it. I apologize."

One of the commanders of the reinforcements rose and bowed at the waist.

He was a man I remembered.

I had no idea why he was dressed as a mercenary, but if my memory was right, that man was certainly a knight of the Iron Lion Knights.

Was his name Erhim Kilinger?

Even after he sat back down, no one spoke for a long while.

"A short break."

My uncle rose from his seat.

"We will discuss the rest in an hour."

The leaders of Winter Castle filed out of the meeting hall after my uncle.

The commanders of the reinforcements who remained also rose from their seats.

I was about to leave the meeting hall as well when the Second Prince stopped me.

"Brother."

I put my backside, which I had lifted, back onto the chair.

The Second Prince sat across from me.

"What exactly is this King of Orcs?"

"He is exactly what the name says. The king of the Orcs, who united the Orcs that had been split into tribes and founded a kingdom."

At my words, the Second Prince frowned.

"He's also a filthy brutal and filthy strong monster."

I added that he was a monster even a knight of four circuits would have difficulty handling, but it did not seem to sink in for him.

I had expected as much.

Only after hearing the Warlord's roar and experiencing the Knight Slayer did my words become truth.

Before that, even the people of Winter Castle had not believed me.

Would things be any different for others?

I had never thought they would accept the existence of the Warlord and the Orc kingdom from the beginning.

Nor did I think they would deny it until the end.

They would learn soon enough anyway.

Once they encountered even a corner of that enormous being, they would believe it whether they wanted to or not.

They would learn that there were inexplicable mysteries in this world, and that one of them existed inside those mountains.

And that day was not far off.

"Hmm."

The Second Prince asked me with a hardened face.

What was this Knight Slayer, what was the current state of the war, and so on; seeing him bring up matters that had already been mentioned once during the meeting, it seemed he was trying to verify things in his own way.

I exercised the greatest patience I could and explained everything that had happened until now.

And after hearing all of my story, the Second Prince sank into thought.

"I heard that you were the first to notice the changes in the Orcs and the existence of the king, Brother."

After a long while, the Second Prince opened his mouth and asked.

How on earth had I known?

Where had I learned about a Warlord no one else knew?

"I've always been interested in old stories."

When I answered roughly, the Second Prince nodded.

He seemed to believe my words completely.

It was only natural.

There was no one in the kingdom who did not know of the incident where that scoundrel stole the precious sword used by the Founding King, ran around with it, and ended up stabbing himself.

Soon after, rumors spread that I had refined a Mana Heart, and thanks to that, I had become a half-wit who had gone beyond being obsessed with the Founding King's legend and gone mad over it.

There was nothing strange about me knowing a few old stories well.

"You must have read ancient texts."

The Second Prince, who made his own assumption, had a deep look in his eyes.

It was a look that seemed full of thoughts.

"I understand."

The Second Prince bowed his head politely, then rose from his seat.

I also followed and left the meeting hall.

When I went outside, my uncle was waiting for me.

"Are you going to keep doing this?"

"What do you mean?"

When I challenged him right away, my uncle played innocent.

I could see perfectly well that he kept deliberately pushing the mood of the meeting toward me, so watching him pretend not to know was almost absurd.

"You keep doing pointless things."

When I pressed him, my uncle laughed heartily and answered.

"Thanks to what you call pointless things, they must have realized how important your position is in Ballorhard."

He added that since I was also the one who knew the most about the King of Orcs, the Warlord, it was only right that I lead the meeting.

In its own way, it had a point.

But I knew that was not all.

My uncle's actions had been too blatant.

Vincent was handling most of Winter Castle's affairs, great and small, and dealing with the reinforcements from the Capital had been almost entirely pushed onto me.

My uncle was acting as if he were about to step down from his position.

When I pointed that out, my uncle spoke gently.

"I thought I would be able to go no further, but a path has begun to appear. So I grew greedy."

A gentle yet powerful tone.

"I will fight the Warlord not as the Commander, but as a knight."

My uncle joked that since he had devoted his whole life to guarding the North, surely it would be all right for him to live as the knight Vale in his later years.

"You talked so big, then couldn't even take down the Knight Slayer alone. And now you talk about the Warlord?"

At my rebuke, my uncle smiled.

"What? What's with that smile? You're acting like you could have caught him but deliberately didn't."

"It is thanks to you. Finding the path, and realizing what I must do in my later years."

Instead of answering, my uncle said something entirely different.

Vincent still had many shortcomings, but it was fortunate that you were here.

That was what my uncle said.

"Why is this man suddenly doing something he's never done before?"

I was scratching at my forearm at that unexpected expression of gratitude when I felt someone's gaze from somewhere.

Why is he still here instead of leaving?

At the far end of the corridor connected to the meeting hall, the Second Prince was looking this way.

"Your brother seems to be quite interested in you."

My uncle tapped my shoulder and disappeared around the corridor.

* * *

The meeting proceeded smoothly.

Perhaps the Second Prince had warned them in advance, because the commanders from the Capital no longer raised objections.

They only expressed dissatisfaction with the deployment of troops.

"If we split the corps this finely, we cannot expect the corps to maintain cohesion."

"I have no doubt that the soldiers of the Capital are elites, but it is an undeniable fact that they lack real combat experience against monsters. I cannot think of a better deployment than this."

At Erhim Kilinger's words, Vincent stepped forward to refute him.

He phrased it indirectly and politely, but the point was that they could not entrust an entire wall to soldiers who had never properly fought monsters.

"But if we do that, it will make the reason we came all the way here meaningless."

The meeting once again showed signs of turning into an argument.

I let out a sigh.

The leaders of Winter Castle were certainly competent.

If they had been incompetent, the kingdom would have been turned into a monster-ravaged wasteland long ago.

But even they had a flaw.

It was the fact that they were not used to fighting alongside others.

Also, they were not political.

They had not even thought of the concerns of those from the Capital, the worry that the command authority of their corps would become meaningless.

Because inside their heads, there was only one thing: how to fight the Orcs efficiently.

"When you first face monsters."

So I stepped forward.

"Your limbs freeze at their eyes, and their stench makes you dizzy. On a plain, you will simply die, and on a wall, it will be breached at once. There are no exceptions."

At my firm declaration, Erhim Kilinger tried to step forward again.

But the Second Prince was faster.

"We will do that."

The Second Prince accepted our opinion plainly.

It was a very desirable attitude.

Once the battle began, command authority and everything else would vanish cleanly from their heads anyway, so there was no meaning in fighting until our heads split now.

"However."

The Second Prince added his own opinion.

"Let us split one corps finely as you said and station them on the walls to assist the soldiers of Winter Castle, and leave the remaining corps intact as a reserve force. Should we not have at least some troops prepared for contingencies?"

The walls were narrow anyway, so even the one corps we had decided to disperse would have to be divided in two and sent up to the walls in shifts.

It was not a bad proposal.

If it had been a commander from the Capital, at this point he probably would have spent a long time going on about how His Highness's insight had struck him with awe, how he had been moved by that excellent decision.

But there was none of that at Winter Castle.

"We will do that."

Vincent answered calmly.

The commanders from the Capital looked awkward at that dry response.

The commanders from the Capital looked awkward at that plain reaction.

"That will be all for today's meeting."

My uncle declared the meeting over.

The Second Prince and the others were flustered by the meeting ending without any discussion of the battle afterward or what to do about the Orcs' main force.

"Should we not discuss what comes next as well?"

"We will discuss that again after the battle is over."

My uncle was firm.

It was the manifestation of his will that there was no meaning in discussing major operations with people who had never even properly seen an Orc.

The faces of those from the Capital hardened.

But no one showed their displeasure.

They only showed firm resolve to prove themselves in battle.

Some of them clearly seemed to be waiting for that moment to come quickly.

And their wish came true.

After the meeting ended, while the reinforcements from the Capital were busily reorganizing their troops, a horn rang out.

BWOOOOO!

I had been squatting as I watched the troops from the Capital, and I sprang to my feet.

The Second Prince looked at me.

"It's an enemy attack."

When I answered quietly, that handsome face hardened at once.

I grinned and climbed the stairs of the wall.

The Second Prince and the commanders of the reinforcements followed behind me.

"Shouldn't we hurry?"

Perhaps frustrated by my leisurely pace, the Second Prince asked.

"I need to save my strength so I can use it later."

This time, Erhim Kilinger asked.

"It is far too quiet."

It seemed he could not understand the sight of Winter Castle, where nothing had changed except for the long sound of the horn ringing out.

When we finally reached the top of the wall, exclamations and groans followed one after another behind my back.

"It isn't quiet."

Hundreds of Rangers were lined up atop the wall.

The Rangers, each clutching crossbows and bows as they glared at the snowy field, were already in perfect battle readiness.

The leaders of Winter Castle who had been in the meeting hall were also with them.

"They were waiting."

No sooner had my words ended than shouts erupted from all over the wall.

"Rangers! Raise bows!"

"Nock!"

CLACK!

The hundreds of Rangers moved as one body.

GRAAAAAH!

And from far away, a dark green invader came charging with a monstrous roar.

"This is the real Winter Castle."

My heart began to pound.