Chapter 499

The rain was too thin to be called autumn rain. It was still more accurate to call it late summer.

Even that drizzle stopped abruptly.

It wasn’t raining, and yet it wasn’t not raining. It was ambiguous. The ground hadn’t even gotten wet yet. The sky was darkening again, and it looked like the rain might return.

“Who goes there?”

With only three of them stepping into the territory, a group of soldiers blocked their path.

Clearly, Kraiss hadn’t been slacking.

The soldiers blocking the road had a disciplined air to them.

There are those soldiers who look like they’d let you pass for a few coins, and those who radiate strict discipline—and these were clearly the latter.

Just the way they held their spears showed it.

The muscles of their forearms, exposed beneath short linen sleeves, hinted at Audin’s influence.

Even their sub-weapons, like short swords at their hips, were properly equipped.

Enkrid perceived all of that with a single glance.

He’d definitely gotten sharper and quicker in his observations.

“What the—Enki?”

Among them, a lightly dressed woman greeted him familiarly. Beads of sweat clung to her forehead, and she held something like parchment in her hand.

It was Leona, the head of the Lockfried Caravan.

“…What are you doing?”

Enkrid couldn’t help but ask back.

“Work.”

Leona smiled as she answered.

It looked like they were building a new city.

When he said he had returned and was heading in, Leona nodded—and just then, Rem popped his face out from behind Enkrid, brimming with joy.

With a smile full of anticipation.

“I see. I wonder how the knuckleheads under my command are doing.”

When someone’s excited, the words flow freely. As Rem spoke, Leona wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve and looked straight at Enkrid as she replied.

Though she said “under my command,” Rem didn’t have any subordinates, so she probably meant the rest of the unit.

“I haven’t gone over to the Border Guard in quite some time, so I’m not really up to date.”

Which made sense. Just here alone, there was a mountain of work to be done.

It looked like they were expanding the city starting from the Border Guard—but that was no easy task.

To settle here, they’d have had to clear out the surrounding monsters and haul in stone to build up the area.

When building a frontier city, the first step was to erect palisades as boundary markers while driving off nearby monsters to test the area.

Why? Because if you try to build a city and monsters keep swarming in like mad, there’s no point.

And if the rain poured but the land was swampy and retained water, that would be a huge problem too.

Plus, farmland was needed nearby so people living in the city could actually eat and survive.

“Trade city” sounded nice and all—but how many cities on the continent actually survived on trade alone?

The kingdom ran under a feudal system combined with central authority, so royal territories did exist, and the crown would pour resources into them, but still—

‘In practical terms, if a city can’t sustain itself, it’s meaningless.’

That must be why this city was built with self-sufficiency in mind.

But this wasn’t farmland, and there had been a forest nearby once occupied by centaurs.

A forest might be a treasure trove of resources to some—but for monsters, it was also a great place to live.

Still, it looked like they’d decided to deal with that forest to some extent, even if they hadn’t cleared it completely.

A massive pile of logs sat beside the stone heaps.

This wasn’t the work of just a day or two.

Enkrid looked around.

There were clear signs of deliberate effort.

He couldn’t help wondering what was going through Kraiss’s head.

“This city’s name is Lockfried.”

Leona said with a smile. It was why she was here, personally sweating and giving orders.

A trade city directly operated by the caravan.

Something like that.

Behind her, Matis nodded in greeting.

“You’ve finally come back, huh?”

He didn’t seem that way before, but now he had a few more wrinkles on his face. Beside him stood a young swordsman Enkrid hadn’t seen before.

Seeing how closely the young man stuck to Matis, he seemed to be his disciple.

There were more capable fighters in the Lockfried Caravan than expected.

Still, not quite on the level of the Border Guard.

Enkrid thought nothing of it, but to outsiders, the Border Guard looked like an overwhelming battle group packed with elite soldiers.

“Ah, it was you, General.”

Thanks to Leona, the group of soldiers recognized Enkrid and offered a formal military salute.

“Right. Good work. You’ve all been well, I hope?”

Rem smiled amiably and patted the soldiers on the shoulder.

The soldiers kept their proper posture and said nothing.

Someone had definitely told them about Rem.

Probably warned them to ignore the axe-wielding bastard with the gray hair.

Or maybe something like, “Whatever that gray-haired bastard does, just endure it.”

Enkrid sensed it intuitively, though he wasn’t fully certain.

He’d been wrong before, assuming Rem had mixed continental blood. He learned his lesson then.

Verification is always necessary.

And while he’d always been cautious, he’d learned something new as well.

‘Everyone has openings.’

That was something he’d come to accept.

He’d flown off into the desert and barely survived—more precisely, he lived through countless repeated days while out of his mind and somehow made it back. That experience taught him something unforgettable.

‘Anyone can let their guard down.’

So he’d accepted that, and decided that even if a gap formed and his defenses were breached, he had to move immediately afterward. In other words, what mattered was what he did after the opening.

Anyone can fall—but not everyone gets up right away.

But is getting up right away always the answer?

‘Keep your options open, assess the situation, and act accordingly.’

The ability to foresee the future—a knight’s first lesson in using Will—had to come with that kind of judgment.

Enkrid looked for meaning even in small things.

It was a good habit.

An old habit, really, but only now was it beginning to shine—a kind of talent he possessed.

The habit of insight and self-reflection had always been a personal trait of his.

Even back when he wandered the continent and got stabbed in the stomach by a kid, he’d reflected the same way.

‘Do I really have any talent?’

And he’d also learned how to find the answer.

If you throw your body into it, you’ll find out.

He still lived that way. He’d set out to test whether his insight was accurate.

“Did someone tell you to be careful?”

As Rem patted the soldiers’ shoulders and walked past, Enkrid followed and whispered quietly.

One of the soldiers darted his eyes and replied.

“Sir Rophod, the drill instructor.”

They’d added “Sir” to the instructor’s name. Maybe because they knew he was a squire, ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) or maybe just out of respect.

The title “Sir” usually implied respect.

“See you later.”

Enkrid said to the soldier, then waved at Leona.

To that, Leona suddenly asked,

“Wanna marry me?”

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

When Enkrid blinked and came to a halt, Leona—expressionless, without batting an eye—added,

“Just kidding.”

Had she been spending time with Shinar lately?

Enkrid wondered as he passed through the city construction site and headed toward the Border Guard.

After walking a while longer, the outer wall finally came into view in the distance.

It was a short distance by horse, but on foot, it would take a bit longer.

At his own pace, Enkrid figured he’d reach it by mid-morning, well before noon.

Maybe within three hours?

That was a pretty short distance for two cities.

There must’ve been a reason Kraiss chose to build the new city so close by.

The rain started again—pattering down as he approached the wall.

“General?”

It was Venzance, formerly a platoon commander—no, a company commander now, wasn’t he?

He stood atop the wall. He called out, recognizing them from a distance. It was impressive he spotted them from so far, but then again, Venzance had always had good eyes.

Enkrid scanned the soldiers manning the wall. He recognized some faces, but there were quite a few unfamiliar ones too.

Things looked a bit crowded at the wall.

There was a line of people trying to pass through, and others had pitched tents nearby and were living beside them.

Here and there were fairies, and even a few dwarves. The number of people was considerable.

Some tents had steam rising beneath them—people had fully settled in and were cooking meals on-site.

Just a glance was enough to see they weren’t beggars or anything.

“Come in.”

Venzance was polite. Personally, Enkrid had saved his life. Officially, Enkrid was the highest-ranking officer over his company.

As Enkrid stepped forward, people craned their necks to look at him.

Who is that, just walking right in?

But no one tried to stop him or cause trouble.

It helped that Venzance had personally come down to escort him, and with Rem and Frokk following behind, no one dared approach carelessly.

Even the man walking in front—black hair, unfamiliar face—stood out with his intimidating presence.

His Will now naturally radiated around him. That was the difference.

As Enkrid walked the familiar path inside, it was clear that much had changed in just a few months.

First off, there were far more merchants.

The Border Guard had always been a hub for traders, so that wasn’t surprising. And the barracks had expanded.

The walls had widened, and several new buildings now rose toward the sky.

“Did they just slap this together?”

Even Rem, a little surprised, said it out loud.

How long had it even been? How had it grown so fast?

Someone might’ve called Kraiss a mage if they saw it.

But if you knew the details, it wasn’t so magical.

Kraiss had cut out all the unnecessary steps when building or managing projects. He dealt directly with the Mason Guilds and Artisan Guilds.

Normally, when a noble started a project, they’d delegate to a subordinate, who would then contact the guilds—middlemen would pop up to skim fees off the top.

That obviously slowed everything down and increased the krona needed.

“Have the guilds settle in the city.”

That’s what Kraiss told Greyham, the lord in charge of the Border Guard, like it was a given, then immediately got to work.

There was no one to stop him, and no reason to try.

And Enkrid’s growing reputation helped draw people in.

“Isn’t that the general who stopped Azpen and swallowed up Markaai and the former Molsen territory?”

That’s what most guild leaders would ask.

Whether Masons or Artisans, of course people gathered around.

At first, it was fighters trying to test Enkrid’s strength. Then came the petty nobles looking to invest in his future. Then the merchants seeking access to the trade routes. Now, it was the craftsmen and engineers.

Kraiss gathered those craftsmen and got them to work.

Of course, that wasn’t all he did.

“The person in charge will take full responsibility. I give you the right to choose five subordinates. Use them as you see fit. I’ll pay you half the sum in advance.”

He’d pick one highly capable person, have them choose five more capable ones, and the operation would start moving. He even set up an inspection unit.

Not to nitpick and harass others.

They were meant to step in and fix things when something went wrong.

The inspection unit functioned like a union of guild leaders—an alliance that made the impossible possible.

“What’s stopping this from getting done?”

“We need glue, but the Hunters’ Guild is charging a fortune for the leather.”

“That’s just fair price. You think it’s easy getting monster leather?”

Whenever problems like that came up, Kraiss didn’t hesitate to mobilize the army.

He’d lead a monster hunt himself, then instead of dumping the leather on the market, he’d sell it through the Hunters’ Guild.

That stabilized prices, solved problems quickly, and naturally sped everything up.

That was why a brand-new military camp now stood in front of Enkrid.

Rem made a comment about it, then immediately stepped inside.

The large training yard was the first thing that came into view.

At least twenty soldiers were sweating and training there.

Despite the rain, they had stripped off their upper garments and were immersed in training.

To Enkrid, Rem, and Lua Gharne, it looked like proper training.

To the ones actually rolling on the ground, crawling, and running—it probably felt like torture.

What kind of training involved stripping off shirts and crawling around in the mud?

Most of the soldiers out there probably felt the same way.

“Captain!”

Up front, on a raised platform, the only one standing under shelter from the rain—Rophod—shouted out.

He called to Enkrid with genuine warmth.

Enkrid waved, and Rem strode forward first.

“Where’s that directionless bastard?”

Rem was already in battle mode.

His right hand was at his waist, already gripping the axe handle.

If Ragna showed up, he looked ready to hurl it without hesitation.

They’d sparred multiple times on the way here.

Enkrid had no idea who would win between Ragna and Rem.

Rem, infused with sorcery, was definitely at knight level. He even used his magic to project something like intimidation.

A fear-inducing aura, perhaps?

At Rem’s eager question, Rophod laughed awkwardly.

“Something wrong?”

Enkrid asked. The soldiers didn’t stop rolling and training, even at the sudden appearance of visitors.

Their discipline was impressive.

It was likely they’d been subjected to repeated demonstrations of strength to get that way.

“Well…”

Rophod scratched the back of his head.

“He went out for a stroll, and it’s been four days since we last saw him.”

Ah.

“Is he out of his damn mind?”

Rem couldn’t hide his disbelief.

That directionless idiot went out for a stroll?

“Where to?”

Enkrid asked calmly.

“He said he’d have a quick look inside the mountains.”

“Why’d you let him go alone?”

“He said he’d kill anyone who followed him.”

He must’ve been being stubborn. No need to even see it to know.

But would Ragna die just from getting lost? Not likely.

Still, was he really in the mountains?

If he’d left from the barracks, maybe he’d reached the eastern lands by now.

Ah—no, four days isn’t quite enough for that.

Enkrid let go of the worry.

He wasn’t the kind to die just like that.

“What about the alley cat?”

“She left for another city. There was some trouble there.”

“Fucking hell.”

Rem grumbled.

Two others were also missing.

That was probably why Squire Rophod was currently in charge here.

“Kraiss is in Greenperl,” he added.

Apparently, they’d turned Greenperl’s forward base into a full fortress city, and named it accordingly.

“Sir Audin and Lady Teresa have gone to the mountains for a fasting prayer.”

Enkrid wasn’t surprised.

They were always unpredictable.

They’d come back when they felt like it.

That was his conclusion.

What drew Enkrid’s attention more was how much Squire Rophod had changed.

Compared to last time, the aura he gave off was entirely different. From what Enkrid could see, his skills had grown significantly.

Naturally, his eyes were drawn to him.