Empire of Ice

by Hyougetsu

  Master, do you really have to say these kinds of things in front of everyone? You’re the Demon Lord, not some old granny. While I was happy she was worried about me, this probably wasn’t the best way to show it. Trying my best to look dignified, I respectfully bowed my head.

  “I appreciate your concern. I swear to complete my mission and return safely to your side.”

  “Mmm, good. Oh, also...”

  Please just stop. Melaine hurriedly slapped Master on the back, interrupting her. Before Master could resume her litany of warnings, Airia stepped forward. She seemed to be in pretty good sync with Melaine.

  “Lord Veight, I shall be praying for your success.”

  “You have my thanks, Lady Airia. But fear not, this mission is no harder than any of the others I’ve undertaken. I’ll return before you know it.”

  That sounded a bit like a death flag, but I’d raised plenty of death flags before, and smashed my way through all of them. Airia gave me a worried look.

  “Be careful, Lord Veight. To my knowledge, no one from Meraldia has ever attempted to visit Rolmund.”

  Of course I was a little worried about visiting an unknown land, but when I’d first been reincarnated, everything had been unknown. Naturally, I couldn’t tell Airia I’d been reincarnated, but I still smiled reassuringly.

  “Don’t worry, I’m a werewolf. The borders of humans mean nothing to me.”

  To my surprise though, Airia didn’t back down, which was unusual for her.

  “I suppose not. However... please make sure to return safely.”

  “Don’t worry, I will. As fast as I can, too.” As I said that, I realized something interesting. “How strange that both you and I seem to believe that Ryunheit is now the home I return to.”

  “Fufu, I don’t think it’s strange at all.”

  Airia smiled, and I smiled back. I’d left plenty of capable people to take care of Ryunheit in my absence. Baltze, commander of the Azure Knights, and Shure, commander of the Crimson Scales, would be in charge of the demon army. Wengen, the garrison captain, and Grizz were here to ensure that the streets of Ryunheit remained safe. And Airia and the other councilors were more than capable of handling all political affairs. They’d be able to negotiate with the north, no problem. Since all of Meraldia’s viceroys already had connections to each other, it made more sense to leave the entirety of negotiations up to them while having the demon army remain quietly stationed in the south.

  On the technological front, Ryucco and Kurtz would continue analyzing and improving upon Eleora’s Blast Canes. Hopefully they’d be able to start mass-producing Blast Rifles soon, in case we needed them to fight a full-scale war against Rolmund. If I was lucky, they’d be standard army equipment by the time I returned. After making sure I had everything, I remounted my horse. Firnir and Airia had been giving me horsemanship lessons recently. If it was just leading a horse along at a walk, I could do it. Once I’d remounted, I turned to my party and said, “In accordance with the council’s decision, we ride to assist Princess Eleora in taking the throne of Rolmund. Move out!”

  After setting out from Ryunheit, we made our way to Krauhen, a city located in the most northeastern point of Meraldia.

  “You’re late.”

  Mao was waiting for us as we approached Krauhen’s gates. He grumbled to himself for a few seconds, then said, “I’ve secured the assistance of the mage corps stationed here. Convincing them was a simple task. Though they did say they wouldn’t wholeheartedly commit to the cause until they met with the princess.”

  I smiled knowingly.

  “By the sound of it, convincing them wasn’t easy at all. Did any of them try to commit suicide?”

  “Personally, I don’t see why we have to save those who wish to die. But yes, some did, and yes, I succeeded in keeping them all safe.”

  Mao shrugged his shoulders dismissively, but I knew it couldn’t have been an easy task. However, this proved to me that Mao’s negotiation skills were good enough to work on even Rolmund citizens.

  “Sorry for making you go through all the trouble. More importantly though, did you get what I asked for?”

  “But of course. I even procured a few spares. Though I am unsure whether or not they will be suited for Rolmund’s climate, so please let me take care of them.”

  Mao could easily let someone else handle this, but his personality meant that he always had to do things himself.

  “Thanks. If you’re in charge I can be sure nothing will go wrong at least. But...”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re really addicted to work, huh?”

  “You’re the last person I want to hear that from.”

  What’s that supposed to mean? We passed underneath Krauhen’s gates and found ourselves face to face with Belken, the city’s viceroy.

  “Well met, Lord Veight.”

  Belken had been the only viceroy to remain loyal to Rolmund. It had taken all the other viceroys to persuade him to surrender to the Commonwealth. I understood the situation he was in though, so I’d told the councilors to not punish him for his stubbornness. Naturally, no one had objected. It was for that reason that he treated me with such deference. I smiled at him and said, “Today I’ve come to visit not through your window, but rather your front door. Though I suppose I’ll be leaving through your secret back door.”

  Belken, who was known for being strait-laced, smiled awkwardly at my bad attempt at a joke.

  “Y-Yes, I suppose you will. I’ve made sure the tunnel is maintained and will post soldiers to defend it.”

  His serious nature was probably part of the reason why he’d gotten along so well with Rolmund’s men. Meanwhile, the temperament of the southern residents must have rubbed off on me, since I was now making bad jokes. As Belken walked away, I heard my werewolves start whispering behind me.

  “What would you rate the boss’ joke at?”

  “Hmm... I’m feeling a light to decent seven maybe?”

  “I’d give it a strong six.”

  How rude. I’ll have you know I’m much better at making jokes now than I was in my old life.

  We made our way into the tunnel and began trekking toward Rolmund. The tunnel was quite long and had taken Rolmund’s engineers many years to dig. And they’d had the help of a magic-powered excavator.

  According to the reports I’d received, Rolmund’s level of engineering technology was quite high, with a focus on safety. It was obvious Rolmund had a great deal of skilled researchers and workmen. This would be a tough empire to beat.

  The tunnel exited right into the middle of a mountain range. Though it was still summer, the air outside was cold. Naturally, Rolmund was at a higher latitude and elevation than Meraldia, but the biggest factor contributing to the temperature difference was the mountains. There were many of them, and they served to trap cold air in the valleys. In fact, all of Rolmund seemed to be surrounded by mountains. Down below, I could see settlements and cities huddled in the valley. The landscape reminded me somewhat of Japan. Eleora pointed toward a far-off peak.

  “Up there lies Rolmund’s frontier fort, Novesk. That fort belongs to me.”

  I pulled out my telescope and peered through it. A formidable-looking castle sat atop the mountain peak. It reminded me of the castles they had in amusement parks and looked very similar to that one famous German castle. I wasn’t really an expert on castles though, so if there was a better comparison, I wasn’t aware of it. Unlike the fantasy castles in amusement parks though, Novesk had been built with functionality in mind.

  “I’m surprised a princess only gets such a plain-looking castle.”

  “Upon reaching adulthood, I’d asked the emperor for a quiet place to conduct my research, and he granted me that castle.”

  Sounds like he just wanted to get you out of his hair.

  Eleora smiled bitterly, “At the time I’d been happy because I thought being sent this far away would get me out of the court’s political squabbles. I had no idea t
he emperor was planning an invasion of the south. Thinking back on it now, I should have been more cautious. At least now I’ve learned my lesson.”

  I see, so this is what caused her to have such a twisted personality. As a remote border fort, Novesk likely wasn’t luxurious, but it at least possessed enough supplies to comfortably house 150 soldiers.

  “Right now there are only thirty or so men guarding the fort. Including them, that’s everyone in the 209th Imperial Mage Corps.”

  While that was a reasonable number of personal bodyguards for a low-ranking princess to have, it was too small a force for conducting military operations.

  “Are there any other troops nearby that you could muster?”

  “My father’s uncle, Lord Kastoniev, is the lord of this area. He’s been given three thousand troops from the emperor to defend our southern borders.”

  “Are they professional soldiers?”

  “Yes, they’re not militia. Though they do spend part of the year farming, they have all received proper military training. Most of the difficult farmwork is done by serfs and tenant farmers, so they have enough free time to train.”

  It appeared that unlike in Meraldia, anyone in Rolmund who possessed wealth used it to receive military training. The lower ranks of Rolmund’s nobility were basically like old-style Japanese samurai. And it seemed even a lord had enough power to command 3,000 soldiers. Meanwhile Meraldia as a whole could maybe field 10,000 regular troops, max.

  “He’s your ally, right?”

  Eleora shrugged in response.

  “Who knows.”

  I hate this place already. Fortunately, Rolmund was in no position to send any significantly large force into Meraldia. Most of their troops were needed to combat bandits and rebellion. Even if their forces were free, sending a large force through the mountains was a challenging prospect, especially since any army they sent couldn’t be reinforced or resupplied during the winter. That was the reason Rolmund had avoided invading Meraldia for so long. But now the situation had changed. Thanks to the newly built tunnel, it took only half a day to reach Eleora’s castle from Krauhen. I doubted she would betray us, but it still felt like we were walking into enemy territory. Even if my werewolves were strong enough to escape any traps, Kite, Lacy, and Mao weren’t. I turned to Parker.

  “Parker.”

  “Yes?”

  “If anything happens, can you protect the humans for me?”

  He manipulated his illusion to make it smile and said casually, “Of course. As a fellow human, I shall put my life on the line for them.”

  “A fellow... human?”

  “You seem to forget this frightfully often, but I was originally a human, remember? Just because I’ve died doesn’t mean I reincarnated into a different race!”

  Yeah, I’m the one who did that.

  “Seeing as you’re already dead, I wouldn’t really call you human either. If anything, you’re more like a zombie.”

  “Why are all you strengthening mages so focused on the body aspect of things!? A human’s true essence lies with their mind and soul, not their body!”

  Except the mind was just a cocktail of chemicals that could easily be altered. In fact, since I had a human’s soul with the brain of a werewolf, I often ran into issues. No one apart from me understood the fear of letting a werewolf’s instincts take over my human rationality. Whenever I thought about how much carnage I caused every time I went on a rampage, chills ran down my spine. However now that I thought about it, Parker was an even more mysterious existence. He somehow still had thoughts and a personality despite having no brain at all. I should probably be nicer to him considering how hard he has it. Unfortunately, the moment I thought that—

  “Oh, are you one of the evil spirits who has taken residence in this castle? I am Parker, a necromancer! I see, you were executed for breaking the rules. Ah, if you would like, I can send you on to the afterlife.”

  “Oi, stop helping evil spirits.”

  Never mind, I’ve gotta be strict with him.

  Once we reached Fort Novesk, I began training for what was to come.

  “That’s not how you say it, Mister Veight.” Warrant Officer Natalia shook her head. “You don’t pronounce it like ‘Feh.’ It’s a ‘Fuh’ sound. ‘Fuh.’”

  “I see.”

  I looked back down at the Sonnenlicht scripture in front of me and resumed reading it aloud.

  “Neit, Ivawfeh...”

  I glanced back up at Natalia and saw her frowning.

  “That’s not quite it either. Ah, I know what the problem is. Your inflection is off.”

  Natalia read the scripture in a perfect Rolmund accent. Using her voice as a reference, I once again tried to read it aloud. Rolmund and Meraldia shared a language. It made sense, considering Meraldia’s northern citizens had once been part of Rolmund. And it was the north who had won the Meraldian Unification War. But because Rolmund and Meraldia had been isolated from each other for so long, and because North Meraldia had borrowed words from the southern languages, there were slight differences in pronunciation and grammar. Furthermore, because the environments of Meraldia and Rolmund were so different, they had different phrases, and the few phrases they shared often meant different things.

  For example, “like snow” had two separate meanings in Rolmund and Meraldia. In Meraldia, things were “white as snow,” but in Rolmund, things were “harsh as snow.” I needed to be careful of what I said. While I could make conversation with the people of Rolmund easily enough, I needed to understand the nuances of their dialect if I wanted to avoid making any blunders while negotiating. This was something Eleora had taught me. Before, she’d said, “I am well aware of my shortcomings. My biggest weakness is my inability to win enemies over. So I’ll be relying on you for that.”

  When she was in Meraldia, Eleora had always made sure to use Meraldia’s style of speech to avoid being misunderstood. Likewise, to someone of Rolmund, Meraldia’s dialect sounded something like this: “Didja know? I ‘ready figured out why ahm bad. Da ting I suck at most’s persuadin’ folk, ya hear. Y’all er better at that den me, so take care of it for me, luv.”

  I’d mixed a bunch of dialects in there together, but that was basically how Meraldian speech sounded to people of Rolmund. Naturally, there was no way I could negotiate sounding like that. Eleora’s mage corps was made up of elites who’d all mastered Meraldian dialects for the upcoming invasion. So it was both fair and completely possible for me to learn Rolmund’s dialect in exchange.

  There did exist magic to translate languages, but since my mother tongue was Japanese, all the translations came out reading like garbled machine translations. The one time I’d tested it out, the sentence it produced caused Natalia to blush and run out of the room.

  The people who were currently participating in Natalia’s Rolmundese lecture were me, Kite, Mao, and Fahn. Lacy had given up on the first day, while Parker had mastered the language in just a few sessions. Though he looked like a moron, my fellow disciple was quite the genius. There was a reason he was the only one of Master’s disciples to have crossed the final threshold. He definitely looked like a moron, though.

  At the moment, Natalia was correcting Fahn’s vocabulary.

  “Fahn, you can’t use words like slaughter. Nobles tend to be disgusted by words like that.”

  That seems more like a human reaction than a noble reaction. Slaughter wasn’t a word that saw much everyday use in Meraldia either. It was about time to tame Fahn’s wilder side.

  Language wasn’t the only difference between Meraldia and Rolmund. Rolmund had different customs as well. For example, Rolmund had different table manners. Eleora was personally teaching us how to integrate into Rolmund’s culture.

  “Rolmund’s court etiquette is similar to Meraldia’s but is needlessly more complicated.”

  Needlessly, huh? Eleora snorted derisively and deftly picked up a knife and fork.

  “In order to reinforce social hierarchy, court et
iquette has become subdivided by class. Furthermore, the more complex rites you know, the more dignity you’re perceived to have.”

  Even simple things like where you placed your knife was different depending on whether you were a priest or a knight. And the direction it faced when you put it down depended on your rank and the rank of those around you. If you placed your knife in the same way as someone with higher status, you’d be mocked. Depending on the situation, you could even be executed.

  God, this country sucks. Fortunately, I was claiming to be a Meraldian noble, so people couldn’t complain too much about what I did. All of these customs and gestures were for reinforcing hierarchy within Rolmund, so foreign nobility was mostly exempt.

  “Sure would be nice if you could at least relax when eating dinner.”

  Upon hearing my grumbling, Eleora put a hand to her chin.

  “Well, you’re not required to follow the proper rules during a banquet. I suppose that’s why nobles hold so many banquets.”

  In that case, the only meals I’m showing up for are banquets. However, Eleora’s next words dampened my enthusiasm.

  “Alas, I wouldn’t recommend eating at banquets. Though rare, people have been poisoned at them before.”

  God I hate this country.

  “So are most dinners also meetings?”

  “You could say they are just meetings. It’s standard practice to hand your plate over to a server and get a new one. Likewise with your glass. But even then, most people don’t risk eating at a formal event and take their meals beforehand.”

  So you guys are just wasting all the food your serfs slave away to grow. How utterly pointless. However, the Rolmund social event I was most dreading was the ball.

  “Rolmund nobles do not dance at balls. They consider it improper and uncouth.”

  These guys are a real stick in the mud. However, it seemed commoners always danced at festivals, as they had no other form of entertainment available to them. The real reason nobles didn’t dance was to differentiate them from commoners. Either way, I was relieved to learn I wouldn’t actually have to dance at any Rolmund balls.