Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 168. Dissatisfied.
“Whew,” Casimir breathed out and sat down on the furs Laien had taken out a moment ago. He was still feeling lightheaded and his whole body was hurting all over, so once the important parts were taken care of, he no longer bothered himself with the unfitting mood. As long as he could somewhat recover, he wouldn’t mind sitting on these unfittingly comfortable furs in the middle of this death field. “I must say though, you two are much stronger than I thought,” he said with a smile while looking at Laien Yin. Had he known that the two of them were so monstrously powerful, he would have added a few additional demands instead of focusing on the broad political picture.
“We’re still weak,” Laien replied with a smile, which soon turned into a slight smirk when he was met with Casimir’s disbelieving expression. “We indeed are quite strong for our age, but just look how we ended up against one man. We did all we could, but we still barely did anything to him and almost got ourselves killed, again,” he added humorously, though also with a hint of dejection hidden in his voice. He knew that without fighting he wouldn’t get stronger and he definitely wasn’t planning to stray away from all the dangers. He would be a hypocrite if he suddenly decided that he’d had enough of taking risks and would avoid death-or-life battled from now on. Yet…
He couldn’t help but wonder just a little bit if a day when their luck ran out would come. He wasn’t really that scared of dying, but the thought of causing pain to all his loved ones by leaving them forever made his blood to turn cold. Similarly, if he one day lost one of those he treasured, he wouldn’t know if he would be able to retain his sanity. Perhaps he would become obsessed with taking revenge… but so what if he succeeded in taking it? The grudge would go away, but all the pain, resentment and loneliness would remain, if not be amplified by the lack of a clear goal.
With such dark thoughts going through his mind, Laien sighed quietly. To protect those he cared about he needed great strength, but in order to obtain it, he needed to risk his own life and often, the lives of those he cared about. Truly, what a laughable contradiction. However, he still thought that it was better to struggle and pave his own path in life instead of giving himself up to the flow of the currents of the river of fate and hoping that he wouldn’t crash into any rocks along the way.
“Are you pouting?” Casimir asked gently. “You two resisted a martial master of the seventh rank, even if briefly when both of you are yet to step into the Realm of Heroes. That’s something worth being called a heroic feat,” he added, though admittedly, his sense for reading the thoughts of other people seemed to have taken a hit along with his head. Had he been in his usual state, he would have easily noticed that Laien wasn’t worrying over something as shallow as that.
“I’m not pouting,” Laien said simply and smiled at Casimir. “I have a headache though, so I’m going to rest. You should do the same,” he mentioned, feeling that Casimir wasn’t his usual self. He didn’t want Casimir to prolong this conversation too much, so he mixed in a little lie into his words. After all, he had no headache and he wasn’t hurting in any way as he had received no wounds and he hadn’t been forced to use huge amounts of energy all at once.
“Fine.” Casimir, as Laien guessed, didn’t appear to notice that little lie as he nodded with an amiable smile on his face. “As long as the intelligence units do their job well, we can leave making the rest of the decisions for when we’re of a fresh mind,” he said in a surprisingly rational manner. By the looks of it, his mind was still sharp despite the confusion and only his senses were somewhat dulled.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” Laien agreed straightforwardly. He exchanged a quick glance with Julien in order to confirm if that would be fine and received a nod in response. He then gave an apologetic look to Johan, who in turn smiled at him in understanding. Talking could wait for later, there was no hurry, or so Johan’s eyes seemed to be telling him. Satisfied, he relaxed and closed his eyes. Twenty minutes wasn’t much, but he released the essence of the Aspect of Awareness alongside a minuscule amount of his aura, then quickly sank into a meditative trance. He wasn’t exactly in the mood to train, but just emptying his mind of any thoughts in this manner would allow him to relax nicely.
In fact, resting his mind proved to be so comfortable that he barely remembered when he had gotten on his horse and moved to a new area with everyone. Thus, when he woke up for good, he was quite startled when he discovered that three hours had passed. He hadn’t considered it, but the mental strain he had been under for the last day must have been quite bad. Had it not been so serious, there was no way that his body would prompt him to take such a long rest out of the blue.
“Well, at least I feel refreshed now,” he told himself and smiled slightly. Thanks to his slowly spreading aura, he could more or less tell what was going on around him without opening his eyes. As the matters stood, the majority of the two thousand people they group now consisted of was sleeping on top of carpets and furs, likely having had eaten a meal some time ago. Their camp was fairly quiet, too, as even the eight hundred remaining kids who had lost their family and friends merely hours ago were napping peacefully, likely too exhausted to be making a fuss of any kind.
To be honest, the peaceful atmosphere was making Laien consider taking a proper nap too if only for two hours. However, before he had a chance to lay down and doze off, the White Guard, Zaban, came over and started delivering the news to the higher-ups that were resting at the spot. The man appeared to have taken charge of the White Guard’s main information network now that he had returned from the northern parts of the Guode Yimarate alongside their reinforcements. As far as Laien’s opinion was considered, Zaban was a reliable person, so he welcomed this development.
“So Abdain is resting too, huh,” Laien said aloud once Zaban finished his report. He had been a bit worried that Abdain would try to pull some tricks, but from what the White Guards and the men sent out by Anna had learned, Abdain had simply gathered his men and the remaining mercenaries into one group and proceeded to meditate in one spot ever since three hours ago. On the side note, out of the forty plus thousands of mercenaries, only four thousand or so stuck with Abdain. After the Tempest Riders had brutally slaughtered over ten thousand of them in a matter of two minutes, the sell-swords probably realized that the risk was no longer worth the gold and bailed out.
“You’re awake,” Julien said with a laugh. Laien made this comment just now with his eyes closed and just like Yin, he had been sitting cross-legged and motionless for the past three hours. They had all assumed the boys needed more time to rest and so they didn’t disturb them, but they all agreed that they wanted those two to have a part in making the final decision as to what they should do. “Are you up for talking some or do you need more time?” he asked casually and smiled at Laien once the boy opened his eyes. Truly, if he didn’t know any better, then judging by Laien’s calm and relaxed expression he would dare claim that the boy had been listening to them for those past three hours.
“Mm, it would be nice to be filled in,” Laien responded in a relaxed manner. With the worst behind them, he wasn’t planning to keep acting all grim and serious the whole time. Rather, acting in such a stifling manner when he didn’t feel like it would only cause him to grow exhausted for no reason.
“Say.” Julien decided to bring one more thing beforehand. “Do you think he will wake up soon too?” he asked Laien, his gaze moving towards Yin for a second. There wasn’t much of a point to having a discussion if they would need to repeat everything for the second time an hour later, so it would be great if both of those youths could join the talk at once.
“Hm,” Laien raised his eyebrows slightly and looked at Yin. Then, he thought the same question he was given a little more attentively, only to smile after a second. “I think he’s gained some new insights, so he won’t be getting up before we are leaving in two hours,” he said with a smile. When he inquired, Yin’s reply was that he didn’t want to be disturbed, but also that it wasn’t anything too important, so he would get up once the five-hour-mark arrived.
“Oh, did he?” Julien said rather curiously and looked at Yin. Just from the boy’s aura and his outward appearance, he couldn’t tell if he was merely resting, meditating or if he was in the middle of digesting a flash of insights. However, he could understand if Laien, who was Yin’s close friend, was able to somehow spot the difference. “Should we delay our departure then? We aren’t in much of danger anymore unless something went very wrong with Mustafa’s battle to the south-west. A few hours shouldn’t matter much,” he proposed but was met with Laien’s gentle smile.
“Thanks for the offer, but there’s no need,” Laien said after shaking his head slightly. “It doesn’t feel like it was a sudden flash of insight or anything like that. It’s more like he’s gotten an idea how to develop something else?” he wondered aloud, though he did keep the details to himself. Everybody was already looking at him with curious eyes, so if he told them that Yin was developing a new martial technique, they would surely start to have their own annoying guesses even if they didn’t mention them. It was much better to leave it as a solid guess coming from knowing Yin well.
“Are you sure about that?” This time, Casimir was the one to ask. He wasn’t entirely convinced when Laien nodded his head confidently in reply, but he decided that they could as well go through the hassle of explaining everything twice if Yin was angry with them after waking up. “Fine then. Would you like the long version, the normal version or the short version?” he asked with an unexpectedly playful smile, one which startled Laien a little. Did Casimir grow fonder of him and of the company he was in since he was behaving in a more relaxed way? Or was this Casimir’s original way of acting and he had only been strict and serious before because of the circumstances?
“The short version please,” Laien said with a laugh and while Casimir and Anna smiled in amusement as a result, the likes of Julien or the three White Guards were surprised. This latter four had for sure thought that Laien would want to be thoroughly involved in making the final decision. He had been, for all intents and purposes, a part of every major decision their group had made in the past month.
Yet, the four of them were in somewhat of a misunderstanding. Arslan, for example, wasn’t surprised at all and neither was Johan or Albert. Those who knew Laien better knew that it wasn’t like Laien wanted to be a part of everything relatively important, but instead, he wanted to be a part of everything he was interested in or worried about. At this moment, Laien didn’t appear overly concerned with the near future, so he naturally approached the subject in a casual manner.
“As you wish,” Casimir said with a quiet laugh, this time earning an intrigued glance from Anna. Acting in a relaxed manner was one thing, but it wasn’t like Casimir to act this way in front of people other than her and his little brother. “I’ll start with the conclusion and then briefly explain the reasoning,” Casimir began saying and continued once he received a nod from Laien.
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“We’re planning to get those eight hundred kids and some of those nobles who want to leave into carriages and then send them north by the easternmost route. As for the rest of us, once everyone’s recovered we will rush to the Yali Kingdom as fast as possible,” Casimir stated and right afterward, got into explaining the reasoning behind this choice. “We considered trying to draw Abdain with us so we can surprise and kill him later on, but we decided against it as it would be too obvious of a move. We decided against trying to join up with Mustafa for the same reason. Similarly, we don’t want to go to the Ruishi Federation for twofold reasons.”
“For once, it would be inconvenient for young master Arslan to once again be stuck there. Second, we want to be as far away from Arakar as possible. While we can hold Abdain off thanks to General Julien’s breakthrough, we can’t say the same about Arakar,” he explained and before saying more, for a little bit, shifted his gaze away from Laien and towards Yin. “That’s why I’m glad we won’t be interrupting a flash of sudden insight for him. I wouldn’t recommend staying here longer than five hours. We’re about four thousand kilometers away from the second battlefield, so the fastest flying beasts should be able to deliver the news one way in just about five hours. We need a buffer of distance in case Arakar decided to do something drastic as for example, chasing us down personally.”
“That makes sense,” Laien said contentedly. He doubted that Abdain would bother to commit his forces to chase down those kids and apparently, only a few of the nobles who were leaving. Judging from the fact that the four high-ranked nobles he was familiar with, being Duke Diego, Prince Ludwig, Chancellor Meinhard, and Duke Ayer, were seated nearby, he could guess that the core of the nobles’ forces would stay with them. He expected Duke Diego to tag along given the chance, but he was kind of surprised by the change of heart of the other three. Did experiencing a bloody battle shake their worldviews a bit? That or they were hoping for other benefits by staying with them.
“Any suggestions, ideas?” Casimir asked, making Laien lower his gaze for a bit as he gave the matter some thought.
He agreed with the proposed course of actions, so there wasn’t anything in this field. So, the main thing was whether he had any additional ideas to implement. He considered some possibilities, but in the end, he didn’t come up with anything noteworthy. He did stop for longer at the thought of sending some men the Prophet’s way, as his millions of followers were undoubtedly soon to be slaughtered by the regular guards and armies of the Guode Yimarate, but he decided against it. The Prophet had caused them a fair share of trouble and their deal never included helping him directly, so he saw no reason to request Casimir and Anna to put their men under risk for no gain.
“I think I’m good,” Laien said with a smile. For a second he considered taking out some of that great wine he had bought in the Ruishi Federation, but then he realized that it would be awkward if he didn’t share it with the others. So, he took out some of the other high-quality wine he had in form of the grape wine from the Sarkcente Kingdom. He poured some of it for himself and then took a sip, only to tilt his head soon afterward. Why were all those people so flabbergasted? He was glad none of them seemed to be exasperated, but was there really a need to act startled at this point?
Thankfully, the weird atmosphere was soon broken by Casimir’s hearty laugh, which was joined by Julien right the next second. The rest of the younger and older adults present also revealed either helpless or wry smiles, after what Casimir took the liberty of speaking everyone’s mind. “You are so young, yet you fought such a dangerous battle and you are perfectly calm when many of us were stressed this entire time. It’s quite amazing in itself.”
“He’s just used to it,” Reian mentioned and for the first time since learning of Jasmine’s death, smiled warmly. “I don’t know about before meeting us, but he’s been through more than a fair share of trouble as we traveled. I’d be more worried if I saw him sulking silently instead of drinking wine,” he said with a laugh, his gaze turning somewhat absentminded. If Jasmine was still with them, then she would be the one teasing those two about being way too easygoing and lighthearted.
“One day, I’ll kill Abdain,” he promised himself once again at this very moment. However, he also added something else to this first claim. “Then, I will see that Arslan grows into an exceptional ruler. Once I present Abdain’s head in the Catacombs, I will find a wife and live happily,” he decided and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He didn’t want everyone to see his eyes turning watery, so he had little choice than to take a moment in order to calm himself down.
“A child used to bloody battles,” Anna said with a mixture of awe and disbelief sounding in the tone of her voice. “I don’t know if I should congratulate you or if to feel sorry for you,” she said bluntly, without minding what Laien or anyone else would say about her opinion. This resulted in Casimir shaking his head on the side, but the young man knew that Anna always said what she liked. She wouldn’t commit any faux pas during diplomatic meetings, but in all other circumstance, she would say what was on her mind without a second thought. Undeniably, although it wasn’t something he would do himself, he liked this part about her character very much.
“Huuh,” Laien chuckled in amusement, though his reaction and his smile only served to confuse Anna. Little did she know that he was at peace with how his life looked and in fact, was considering whether he should poke at her for that comment about him being a child. However, in the end, he opted to leave it for a more fitting time. The plan was for them to stay in the Holy Union for around three months, so he was sure he would find some opportunities to tease this beautiful older sister. He was also convinced of the fact that it would be more amusing if he did so in Casimir’s presence, so he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to have a good laugh if one presented itself in the future.
“Should we all have a little drink?” Casimir suggested and looked around. After seeing that everyone approved, he produced over a dozen bottles of wine from his interspatial ring along with glasses for all those who could drink in their group. As for Arslan and that boy, Johan, he took out some juice for them to enjoy. He was of the mind that those below the age of twelve shouldn’t drink even low-percentage alcohols and so were the rules in their household, so he intended to uphold them.
“Nice,” Laien said merrily and quickly emptied his glass of grape wine, then gave it to Casimir to fill with something from his collection.
Casimir couldn’t help himself and laughed at Laien’s actions, though he said nothing and filled the youth’s glass to the brim with apple wine. Strong martial practitioners could effortlessly get rid of the alcohol in their body with a little bit of Qi, so even if Laien go himself drunk, there would be no issue. Laien was of age to drink things like wine too, so he had no objections to speak of.
In this manner, the group around Laien proceeded to sip wine or juice while talking about unrelated subjects. Not one of them felt the need to keep discussing the matters of war, so they all talked about their lives or their hobbies, about the things they enjoyed and hated. With Casimir and Anna taking a vigorous part in the conversation, their little group slowly came to know one another better.
It didn’t take long for two hours to pass. While the recent report was yet to arrive at Arslan’s party, the flying beasts sent out towards Mustafa reached their destination at this very moment. Similarly, the newest information reached Arakar and Yimar Maar at about the same time as both sides had been robbed of their top-class flying magical beasts just about two weeks ago. And naturally, the kind of response this piece of news elicited in the three camps was very distinctly different.
“Hah…” Mustafa, as he was reading the little piece of paper the bird had brought, couldn’t resist smiling and laughing quietly. By the point he finished the few sentences, he looked at the clear blue sky above him and laughed out loud. “Good! Good! Great job!” he shouted merrily and passed the piece of paper to Kasim, The Lieutenant took it and quickly read through the coded text, then smiled in relief. The human-made miracle their Lord had been praying for, it really happened, didn’t it?
“Hah,” Kasim let out a quiet sigh as the stress he had been under for the past days lessened considerably. “We’ll need to repay those two young royals for saving young master. We’ll also need to find a way to thank those two friends of young master’s. To think they really didn’t die in the Forbidden Lands and even brought help from the north,” he said happily, having already passed the piece of paper with the news to his direct subordinates. The news would soon spread throughout all of the White Guards and undoubtedly, it would considerably raise their morale.
“Yeah,” Mustafa said quietly, very much in agreement with Kasim. “I’ll make sure to reward them properly while I still can,” he added in a relaxed manner. As long as he could assure that Arslan’s future was safe and sound, he would be happy. Good friends, reliable allies and a stable foundation to build upon, that was what he wished to leave his only son with once he left this world.
“He seems angry,” Mustafa mentioned with a laugh. About a kilometer away, in the frontlines of his army, Yimar Maar was stomping at the ground and moving restlessly. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but as the originally haughty and confident atmosphere about Yimar Maar’s central army shifted to a shocked, baffled and even somewhat terrified one, he could guess that Yimar Maar had given vent to his frustrations in a very vocal way. Ha, after feeling so anxious all because of him and Abdain, seeing Yimar Maar kick up a ruckus was immensely satisfying.
Moreover, just imagining Yimar Maar curse ‘those damned brats!’ aloud was constantly causing Mustafa to feel like chuckling.
Meanwhile, on Arakar’s western side of the battlefield, the same piece of news was received in a fairly neutral manner both by Arakar himself and by his subordinates.
“So he did screw up.” A few kilometers away, Arakar commented with a laugh. He had hoped that Abdain could capture Arslan as throwing Makarash into a state of chaos would be beneficial to them in the long run, but their side had more plans prepared. He had accomplished the most important part and removed Mustafa from the picture, so whatever came next in the following decades would be manageable. Admittedly though, he was a little dissatisfied with this outcome.
“Prepare to retreat,” Arakar delivered the order to his close aides. Since Abdain failed to capture Arslan, they had nothing more to seek in this place. Instead of sacrificing more of his men and endangering his own life, he would rather leave Yimar Maar to the White Guard. He had never had any great expectations of the man anyway. Though, it would be perfect if Abdain survived and then became his subordinate. Perhaps he should stick around for a bit longer and try to achieve that?
Just as Arakar was weighing the benefits of his idea against the potential trouble, his entire body stiffened at once and his face grew extremely pale. He raised his head and looked at the spot about two kilometers away, at the empty field between the two western and the two central armies. Alongside the aura so powerful that it horrified even him, a great mass of water-like shadows was converging into one point at this empty field at this exact moment. The feeling of fear he was getting from this suffocating aura was far greater than even when he had faced the Great Prophet all those years ago, before yielding to him and becoming his Sword of Rala.
The rest of the top-tier experts on the battlefield were having similar reactions to Arakar, Mustafa included, Even the fighting on the easternmost wing stopped momentarily as everyone’s attention was pulled by the appearance of this flood-like aura that seemed to rob everyone of their breath. Yet, it was only those top-tier experts on the level of Lieutenants of the White Guard and above who were able to fully comprehend the degree of terror that befell this area.
“Martial master of the ninth rank…” Both Mustafa and Arakar murmured to themselves, both of them equally shaken. Where did this monster crawl out from and what did he intend to do? The awareness that no matter what they did, they wouldn’t be able to stop this person instilled them with a primal sense of fear, which proved to be much worse in Arakar’s case. Mustafa had come to terms with his own death so his worries were elsewhere, but for Arakar, it was a rare time during which he genuinely feared for his own life and yet, his legs wouldn’t move to let him flee.
“I’m really sorry.” The resigned voice of the black-cloaked and black-masked figure rang out throughout the entire battlefield, the powerful Qi easily carrying it over the large distance. “I’m not fond of the idea, but since my master isn’t quite satisfied yet, I have no other choice,” he said with a sigh, the great mass of shadows still flowing all around him, giving him a truly demonic appearance.