As much as Kamil wanted to march toward Elsos at once, there were urgent matters to be settled beforehand. Either Egra or Egria had to be taken care of because, at the moment, Ceres was sandwiched between the two petty kingdoms, and there was a real risk of being attacked from both sides at once if he simply left for Elsos, leaving his territory largely defenseless.
“Constant and Leonhard collaborating together is virtually impossible,” Cezary explained. “However, they don’t need to be working together. If you move most of your troops to Elsos, they will attack because they will see it as a chance.”
He explained further that Constant had too much seniority to even listen to Leonhard who was just a young man with no accomplishment to his name. Additionally, he was no longer a true king because his kingdom had literally crumbled apart. They were just too different in rank, experiences, and circumstances to be able to work together. Kamil suggested that Noah and Tobias be left behind as a defense force. However, both Aaron and Cezary rejected his idea.
“They can protect the land from one force. If they both attack at the same time, it will be catastrophic,” Aaron argued.
Frustrated, Kamil growled in dissatisfaction. This was the last thing he wanted: bureaucracy shackling him. Elsos was currently under siege. Nobody knew how long they’d hang on. If the keep collapsed, the hordes of monsters would become free to invade a wider front. Both Aaron and Cezary agreed beforehand that it would be best if they kept the monsters at Elsos.
“Then it comes down to making a choice,” he declared. “Should we tackle Egra or Egria?”
“Egria would be easier obviously. In fact, we may not need to fight if we can make a certain person defect,” Cezary suggested ominously.
“I assume you are talking about Lord Knell,” Kamil said.
“Yes,” he replied with a nod. “He is the brain.”
Damn it.
Kamil did not want to fight Isaac and possibly end him. He knew him too well personally. More importantly, he did not want to repeat Theo's event which could have been avoided if he showed more composure. Even more importantly, he knew that Isaac was a family man. They were similar in many ways. From the bottom of his heart, he did not want to end a man like him.
“Tell me. Be honest. What is our chance of convincing him to defect?”
Isaac was oath-bound to assist Leonhard. It wasn’t because he was a vassal but it was due to the fact that Karsten asked him personally to look after his son. If he was just a vassal, he might have simply chosen to defect when he received the letter from Cezary.
“Highly unlikely,” Cezary replied. “He has received my brilliantly and logically written letter and yet he refused. The man has to be oath-bound.”
“Aren’t all vassals oath-bound anyway?”
“Not that kind of artificial oath. Lord Karsten may have asked him to look after his son personally which is perfectly plausible given the fact that he was his advisor.”
Kamil folded his arms. “Sir Waszak, that means he will only kneel if we can get Leonhard to submit.”
“That would be the easiest way,” Aaron chimed in. “But we don’t know much about the petty king.”
“His inability to act is clear, though,” Cezary said.
“How old is he?”
“Early 20s and has three wives and five mistresses,” Cezary answered with a snort as if showing displeasure in what was generally considered as a corrupt noble.
“Holy.” Kamil was rather shocked.
“Lord Karsten is a womanizer as well but at least he is capable,” Aaron said.
“So, we may be dealing with a spoiled child, am I right?”
“Well, bold of you to call someone older than you ‘a spoiled child’, but you are a betrayer of the wheel,” Cezary said with a chuckle. Aaron grinned as well. “My king, I present to you two paths to this. One is a peaceful solution. The other is through swords.”
“I assume your peaceful solution takes time.”
“Negative. It will be faster. However, letting Leonhard live is not a good idea. He will become a seed of chaos. In fact, I dare say that we need to get rid of the whole Egra bloodline.”
“Including Constant Egra’s?” Aaron asked to which he nodded back.
“The whole Egra bloodline needs to be gone,” he insisted.
“What about Karsten Egra?” Kamil asked. He swore to kill him only to save him in the end.
“Let him perish with Elsos. No need to get our hands dirty on him.”
“There is another way,” Aaron spoke up. “We can deal with Constant Egra instead. If his petty kingdom falls, Leonhard will have no choice but to surrender.”
For Kamil, it just didn’t feel right to have saved Karsten and then go on to exterminate the whole bloodline. He also did not want to kill Isaac, either. Therefore, Aaron’s alternative idea piqued his interest immediately.
Cezary said, “Lord Weber’s idea is also valid, but Constant cannot be persuaded in the current situation. It will be a war. However, should Leonhard submit, we won’t have a justification to finish him. He will become a seed of chaos later on.”
Constant was a former king who was forced to surrender to Karsten during the reunification war. He wasn’t probably going back to being a mere lord as things stood. Cezary wanted both Egra to be gone from this world. Essentially, he wanted to wage wars on both Egra and Egria for a clean restart.
“We will tackle Egra first. Sir Waszak, we will discuss Leonhard later.”
Kamil’s concern was different from Cezary's. He wanted to tackle the dragons ASAP before anything else. If Constant wasn’t up for diplomacy, then there was only one answer.
“As you wish. More possibilities may show up once Constant Egra is taken care of.”
He didn’t object, for Kamil wasn’t wrong, either. There were priorities, and ensuring that the world they live in remained intact was higher than the other.
“Send word to Lux immediately. I want Lord Edmund to halt. We need him.”
“Understood.”
“Also send word to Dido. I want Lord Flissing to act freely and keep an eye on Elsos from a safe distance. Tell him not to engage unless necessary.”
And with this, the meeting was soon adjourned.
“I am dying…” Heiga barely made her words out on her bed. She had been throwing out anything she had been eating for the past few days. She could only keep liquids down. Flora was sitting next to her bed with worried eyes. Both women were pregnant, yet the contrast they showed was amazing and amusing at the same time to Kamil. Flora was perfectly fine. In fact, no one would guess that she was pregnant whereas Heiga was showing every negative symptom that she was pregnant.
“I am really worried. She hasn’t been able to digest any solids for two days now,” Flora said, holding Heiga’s hand next to her bed.
I don’t know what to do, either. Fionara didn’t show much symptoms, either… All she had was mood swings. I thought that was bad, but this is much worse.
Mood swings didn’t harm the mother physically at least. Heiga was pale as a ghost, and her cheeks were sunken slightly.
“Soup perhaps?” He suggested.
“It didn’t work,” she replied. “Right now she can take only pure liquid, like water and Macomaco tea.”
That does sound severe.
“For how long? She has to be able to eat for the baby.”
“Avina told me that this is … normal.”
“Normal?”
“Just a phase, I was told. Once she gets past this, she will have a monstrous appetite, Avina said to me.”
He beckoned over a maid to bring an additional chair and sat next to her bed. Then he placed his hand on top of Flora's, who was holding Heiga’s hand.
“Well, the whole family is here. Yes, I do admit that this is a bit of an awkward setup.”
Flora grinned in response, and Heiga looked over the two. A husband and two wives, both of whom were years older than him. It was a clearly uncommon match at the least.
“We will get through this and we will have a big happy family. Why don’t we have dinner together at the table once it’s all over.”
The future was far from certain. He was trying to beat the Age of Darkness, and there was no guarantee that he would survive through the ordeal. But this wasn’t the time to think negatively. People would perish; there was no way around that. He had to ensure that those who survive had a future to look forward to.
At least, I don’t hate these women.
He recalled Theo who loathed his life so much to a point that he felt like he was itching to die just to get away from everything. He provoked him, and Kamil fell for it, resulting in his demise. He was certain that Theo didn’t exactly mean to push himself into such a situation, but perhaps it was plausible that he was getting sick of his dull life with a woman he could not love. He was full of anger, and so was Kamil. Both exploded on the site.
Why does a divorce have to be so hard?
Even though he asked himself, he knew the answer. The consequences and whatever might happen afterward were simply too much of a headache to even consider. If he were to divorce Flora, which he wouldn’t, he would need to inform the Flissing first and then negotiate a possible break-away package since a married woman, no longer a virgin, would have an impossible task of acquiring an ideal marriage. She would be considered as a widow and would be lucky to get married to an old man desperate for company. And that scenario was for an ideal divorce. He was certain that blames and accusations would be thrown around. It was clear to see why Lillian’s divorce was such a mess which dragged on for years.
Nah, she would be murdered by her father outright.
He knew that her father was not a bad man. It was just that his idea of parental love was so twisted that he’d rather see his daughter die than swim in disgrace. In some cases, instead of divorces, some noble wives were sent into an early retirement and would be sent elsewhere, remaining married on paper but effectively separated. That would have been the case for Flora if she had failed to produce any heir. With Cecilia, the chance of such was zero although Edmund would have disagreed. He wanted a male heir and fought tooth and nail to eventually get one. In contrast, Kamil couldn’t care less about gender. This was in part due to him having two sons in his former life. He sort of wanted a daughter more than a son. So, it all worked out for him in the end.
“I won’t be back for a bit. Do take care of yourself, ladies.”
Just as he lifted his hand, Flora grabbed his hand back down. “Do come back,” she said subtly but firmly. Heiga observed the couple’s communication from a distance from her bed.
“Wasn’t your marriage an arranged one?” she asked them aloud. She knew it was inappropriate to ask but grew an irresistible urge to ask because she had always been against such a marriage even though she ended up in one ultimately. Of course, her sexual orientation played a part in her despising marriage itself.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Nobles never marry those they want,” Kamil replied and quickly added not to cause a misunderstanding, “Not that I had my time to find a woman of my taste. It was decided before I hit puberty.”
Flora smiled in return. “You never acted like a child when we met for the first time.”
“When did you two first meet?”
“I was nine years old, I think.”
Her opened wide. For the moment, she completely forgot that she was having a hellish time. “Flora, aren’t you four years older than him?”
She nodded.
“Nine and thirteen … That … must have been awkward.”
When Heiga was thirteen years old, she was busy training her spear. She never acted lady-like in her youth. Her maids had a tough time teaching her lady’s etiquette as well.
“He may have been younger but he was the mature one,” Flora replied, looking up and beaming a smile at him who smiled back. “Before I met him, I never left the Flissing manor. He showed me around Lux on the first day. It was a fun experience which I haven’t forgotten to this day.”
Heiga was pretty amused. She had been under the impression that arranged marriages never worked out. Before long, her nausea returned to haunt her once more, and she was back down on her bed, groaning. Patting Flora’s shoulder gently, Kamil left.
As he walked toward the West gate, he found Raem and Lara with a thousand men. The soldiers were wearing reinforced leather armors with a sword and a shield. An interesting piece of their equipment was kettle helmets made of iron. Apparently, it was Cezary’s idea where he claimed that heads must be protected well no matter what.
That wouldn’t have been cheap.
Iron was not a rare metal but sourcing them in a large quantity wasn’t an easy task. He looked up to find six war airships levitating in the air. War airships had the shape of a fish for a streamline design. They were equipped with two ballistas on their front. Separated from the main group, he spotted Wiara and her all-women squadron. He approached them at once and asked her.
“Are you coming along as well?”
“Of course, Duke. We are soldiers, and they fight in wars,” Wiara responded with a determined voice. He could tell that their number increased substantially to about fifty overall. The female soldiers were wearing the exact same armor as the others, reinforced leather. Instead of a sword and a shield, however, they had foldable spears on their backs.
“Alright, I will not stop you. Good luck.”
Wiara leaned forward with her palm on her chest at once. Then he moved onto Raem and Lara.
“Duke, the men are ready to depart. We’ve also received a message from the Fenchel. They are on the move to Altzell, six thousand strong.”
Noah and Tobias were on the move as well. In total, about an army of 10,000 was expected to circle around Altzell. Cezary warned them to expect an interference, however. There was going to be a ground battle most likely.
“We’ve got no siege weapons, Duke,” Lara pointed out, and Kamil pointed upwards at the war airships.
He was not officially a king and was still indeed a duke.
“Sir Waszak says those will be enough. He says he has a plan.”
“Okay, if the crook says he has got a plan, I guess he does,” she replied casually.
“You are calling him a crook now?”
“Is he not a crook?” She cocked her head.
You know what. She may be right. The dude has a silver tongue and exploits every possible rule.
“Well, I am not going to argue with you. Captain, move out!”
Raem turned around at once and barked at his men. He was in full plate armor while Lara was the same as usual. As an extremely agile fighter, she didn’t need armor to begin with. “Move out!” Then Kamil flew to one of the war airships where he found Cezary within. He was tagging along apparently. Aaron and Nestor were left behind in case the need to defend the city arose. There were only a few hundreds left in the city, but that was a sufficient number to defend the walls for a considerable amount of time.
“This looks like a five star tavern to me,” he remarked as soon as he went aboard. The floor was covered with velvet carpet, and exquisite furniture was spotted here and there. There was even a maid in a corner who had her hands on front and her eyes closed as if she had shut down.
“My king, make yourself comfortable please,” said Cezary behind his equally antique desk in the back.
“We are going to war, you know. You should be more alert.”
He waved his hands away dismissively. “The outcome of this conflict is already set in stone. Constant is an aged fool and too proud to realize that his time has long passed.”
“He is pretty old, isn’t he? Why hasn’t he passed his seat to his son?”
“Nobody knows for certain, but I reckon it is due to him having too many sons.”
Kamil blinked his eyes a few times in confusion. “I beg your pardon?”
“He has sixteen sons.”
He took a step back. “Holy mother of -”
Cezary added, “What’s even more interesting is that he has sixteen sons from just a wife and a mistress.”
“HOLY MOTHER OF -”
“An internal strife is almost guaranteed once he passes his seat to any of his sons who now have sons of their own who by the way have sons of their own who have their own children by now.”
“Fucking hell, that family tree of his is giving me a headache by just thinking about it.”
“Indeed. Sons are good but only in small numbers. He has too many. The only way for him to solve his problem is by reuniting the kingdom under his banner and granting lands to his sons.”
“Even that won’t solve. The kingdom doesn’t have that many settlements unless he plans that all settlements would be granted to his sons.”
“That would be a horrible idea since that would result in inbreeding between families.”
If all settlements within the Kingdom of Egra were granted to his sons, the sons would have a very hard time finding women of appropriate status to marry their children. They would be forced to wed women from landless nobles or choose to wed women from their own bloodline but distant enough to make it work.
That reminds me… I almost married Esther.
Edmund was so desperate that he was willing to inbreed to get a son he wanted. Even worse, he was going along with the idea because he did find her attractive. In fact, she was the only girl he had become attracted to. Needless to say, it was all in the past at this point. He married someone else, and so did she.
Sighing, he chose to change the subject. “So, Sir Waszak, what are your plans? We don’t have siege weapons, and 10,000 is not enough to lay siege on Altzell.”
Altzell was a former capital and was quite similar to Keviel. In other words, it was a fortress city. If properly defended, 10,000 was nowhere enough. At least 30,000 was required to break the city, and that was with siege weapons.
“Do you recall the high flammable substance we’ve managed to discover with water crystals?”
“I vaguely recall. From ale, yes?”
“Yes, I’ve turned it into a sort of bomb.”
“A bomb?”
“It’s a thing that explodes on impact. Imagine a fireball except that we’ve turned it into a physical object which we can use to trigger at will without any magic.”
Folding arms, Kamil scratched his chin slowly. “Interesting.”
“But it does not have the same kind of exploding power to damage stone walls. It will, however, create absolute havoc on wooden structures.”
He frowned immediately. “Why does it sound like you want to throw them down to civilian homes?”
“Because that is the plan.”
“Do we have to do this? We don’t need to harm civilians.”
Cezary shrugged off his concern. “I am sure they will evacuate. We just need the distraction.”
“I could use my magic to -”
He was interjected. “That may work but, my king, for a more stable future, it’d be best if you restrain yourself from using too much magic against humans, us. Against monsters, it is perfectly fine.”
“May I ask why?”
“It’s for a more stable future. You need to remain clean. Let them blame and villainize me instead.”
“Enlighten me, Sir Waszak. I don’t quite understand.”
Cezary beckoned a maid over to bring a chair for Kamil to sit down in front of the desk. He did exactly that.
“If it becomes widespread that you used your magic to win wars, those who suffered from the conflict will blame you. Just like how you blamed Lord Karsten for the demise of your family.”
Kamil narrowed his eyes at once.
“In order to avoid that scenario, I plan to become a villain for your sake. The bombs are my own invention, and the people will blame me instead. Well, some might still target you, but it will be far less.”
“Why do you go so far? Is it because you wish to become a landed noble?”
“My king, oftentimes sacrifices are required for advances. No path will ever be squeaky clean. Only those idiot idealists will pursue such impossible paths and go down in flames trying. Someone has to sacrifice to make gears move along in the time of need. But, yes, I do want to become a landed noble. I am just too good to die childless.”
Man…, this guy is really hard to understand… What are gears anyway?
“Having said that, I want you to grant me Altzell. Fadin should go to Captain Raem.”
He was surprised by the sudden change of the topic.
“Sir Waszak, I feel Sir Vogel needs to be rewarded.”
“I am not disputing that he be landed. It’s just that it should be somewhere else.”
“Which city should I grant him then?”
“Keviel,” he declared.
…… I think I am starting to understand the logic.
Either way, Cezary continued, “This is the same situation as with the Fenchel and the Flissing situation. You want your most loyal subjects to be powerful. Fadin is a relatively small city. While I don’t doubt Captain Raem’s loyalty, his capacity as a governor is unknown. Sir Vogel will do extremely well, however. Grant me and him the two most powerful cities, and you will have two powerful backers.”
Kamil nodded along in understanding and he understood something else as well.
“You really are intent on removing the Egra bloodline, aren’t you.”
“I am. It’s for a more stable future. Your kingdom will eventually face turmoil. Our job as the founders would be such that we must do whatever we can to maximize the length of peace before that happens. We won’t be alive by then. It’s up to whoever is alive then to deal with what happens afterwards.”
Grinning, Kamil replied, “Politics give me a headache.”
He smiled back. “But it’s predictable.”
Déjà vu.
The army from Ceres eventually met up with Edmund’s army along the way. Noah and Tobias’ armies joined as well. Since this was Tobias Sprengen’s first time meeting Kamil as his new liege, he got down on one knee at once and swore his oath once more in front of him. He had
broad shoulders and a very sturdy build. He was cleanly shaven with very short brown hair. Kamil did recall meeting him before in the royal party where he proposed a marriage with his daughter.
“Welcome to the fold, Lord Sprengen. I hereby guarantee that Larok will remain your fief.”
Under normal circumstances, Noah Harga should have done the same, but they were close enough for the formality to be skipped. Edmund was looking up in the sky, to be more precise he was looking at the airships.
“Those look very different,” he remarked.
“They are war airships,” Kamil replied, also looking up. “And they are our siege weapons for this campaign.” Other lords looked up as well. A major downside of bringing siege equipment was that it would slow an army’s movement because they were heavy and bulky, not to mention a maintenance nightmare.
Edmund replied, “Interesting. I was wondering how we were going to besiege Altzell.”
“We do not have the number to besiege the city,” Noah added. At this point, something dropped from one of the airships. It looked to be a small wooden bottle that was sealed with a cork. Wiara grabbed it at once, opening it, and pulled out a scrolled paper. It looked like it wasn’t her first time receiving it. She dashed toward the group of Lords.
“Duke, Sir Waszak wishes to inform you that he has spotted the enemy army further ahead. 12,000 strong,” she declared while presenting the paper to him. The men looked at each other with no one looking surprised. They expected this development.
“Well, first thing first, let us crush the enemy,” Kamil declared.
Raem stood in front of the 10,000 army. Lara was alongside him.
“We are becoming nobles, we are becoming nobles,” she hummed gleefully, no fear at all in her voice and behavior.
He readied his shield and raised his sword. “CHARGE!” he bellowed as he ran forward with Lara following right behind him. The enemy soldiers ahead were rather poorly equipped. Some of them weren’t even wearing proper armor. Those that did, theirs weren’t in good condition, either. Even years after their troops were wiped out, they weren’t able to properly replace the men they had lost when the Siwen invaded.
“Easy, easy, easy!” Lara’s spear flashed here and there, piercing the throats of enemy soldiers whenever it did. She alone had taken down more than fifty enemy soldiers only minutes after the fight broke out. Raem, meanwhile, was powerfully slashing down one enemy after another. He was far slower than Lara, but that didn’t matter because both of them were looking for an enemy general. Until they located one, their job was to survive.
“Woohoo!” She jumped high using her spear as a launch stick and then rained her spears down as she made a landing, after which she swung her spear around to topple those around her. She was pretty deep within the battle and assumed that everyone around her was enemies.
“Someone get that bitch!” One of the enemy soldiers shouted his lungs out with his eyes bloodshot.
“No, I got you!” She pointed her spear at his throat and went for it, making him choke on his own blood and eventually die. She’d go on a murder run right afterwards, swinging and thrusting her spear in every direction. Because she aimed either right at faces or necks, armor didn’t matter at all, and soldiers were collapsing like pieces of dominoes.
“Lara the mad cat indeed…,” Kamil remarked from the sky. She alone had killed more than a hundred at this point. “Anyway…” Looking over the battlefield, it was clear that Constant’s army was already in disarray. The 12,000 strong army was already split into two groups after Raem and his team barged into them. Separated and divided, the enemy armies, now divided into two groups, were slowly being surrounded.
“This is it then. They stand no chance. Surely, he saw this outcome as well?”
Or is he an aged fool as Waszak claimed?
It remained to be seen. The Western settlements of the kingdom were never really known for military prowess due to the fact that the vast mountain ranges had shielded them from any invasions. There was never any direct fear of being invaded, and perhaps rightfully so the lords didn’t pay much attention to keeping their armies in shape. They cared about the numbers obviously. An army of 12,000 strong was a decent number, but those men were clearly not adequately trained.
“..........”
Kamil recalled Raem keeping fitness levels up for soldiers every single day. Every morning, the soldiers jogged for at least an hour before being allowed freedom for the rest of the day. Stamina was the basis of any physical labor, and those enemy soldiers did not appear to have the stamina to go on after being surrounded. Having a lack of breath clouded judgment, and all they could do while panting hard was swing their swords recklessly, an action which his soldiers dodged easily. For some, it looked so easy that their faces looked relaxed.
“Yep, this battle is done.”
Having observed enough, he flew back to Cezary’s airship.