Chapter 71
As Ruan turned his head, he saw Julia, fully armed, approaching him.
“Mother?”
As Ruan called out, a faint warmth appeared on Julia’s usually calm face.
Julia was one of the most skilled knights in Reinke, second only to the Grand Duke, and served as the captain of the Frost Blade Knights.
The Grand Duke, Reinke’s premier knight, boasted overwhelming military might that could boost allies’ morale with his mere presence, and was an excellent strategist who had built a meticulous defense system with his outstanding tactics… But he was a ruler with whom communication couldn’t be expected.
The Grand Duke was an object of awe but unapproachable – Ruan had once thought that the Grand Duke was like a kind of mascot, a thought that would have shocked the people of Reinke. In his place, it was Julia Daen who communicated with and cared for the knights and soldiers, effectively managing Reinke’s military forces.
She had also taken on the role of Reinke’s commander in the Grand Duke’s absence, so Ruan had been seeing her face more often than the Grand Duke’s recently.
“Are you heading to the inner castle?” Julia asked, matching her pace with Ruan’s.
“Yes. Are you going there too, Mother?”
“Yes. One of the rangers who went out with His Grace has returned.”
Ruan turned his head abruptly to look at Julia as she continued in a calm voice.
The Grand Duke had been able to leave his post in this situation, with the monster invasion so close, thanks to Reinke’s systematic and thorough reconnaissance system. Rangers specialized in reconnaissance had been monitoring the movements of monsters approaching Reinke, and based on the compiled results, it was concluded that it would still be some time before the monster wave officially began.
Thus, the Grand Duke judged that it would be more efficient for him, as the greatest fighting force, to lead an elite few to reduce the threat of the monster wave in advance, rather than staying idle waiting for the monsters. So he had ventured outside the castle walls.
‘Of course, he’s been constantly receiving reports from rangers and monitoring the situation from outside. So he’s only been moving within a radius that allows him to return to Reinke immediately if the situation changes.’
So, news from the Grand Duke’s side meant…
“His Grace is returning, they say. It’s been detected that a large number of monsters have started moving towards Reinke.”
It meant that the start of the monster wave had been sensed.
The monster wave.
Creatures with bodies so hard that blades barely cut them, with inhuman strength, and a ferocity that didn’t stop even when stabbed with blades.
The monster wave was a disaster where these monsters, which an ordinary human could never hope to face, came flooding in like a tsunami.
Despite constantly preparing for this, now that the disaster was imminent, a fear of a different level than what had been felt before came rushing in.
The situation was completely different from the minor battles so far. The scale of the enemy to be faced, the duration of the battle, everything.
It was a matter of enemies that couldn’t be let out of sight for even a moment, endlessly surging like waves no matter how many were struck down. Even when tired and barely able to move, one had to force oneself to move with eyes wide open and nerves on edge, continuing to face enemies several times the size of a human to survive. All this while knowing that this terrible situation would continue for a long time to come.
And in a moment of fatigue-induced mistake, even the strongest knight could lose their life.
This was what Reinke was facing now.
‘And that means…’
Ruan’s eyes sank as he looked at Julia walking beside him with a calm face.
Julia was the captain of the knights. It meant she was the one who had to coordinate this horrific scene without leaving the castle walls.
Joachim and Magda were knights with outstanding skills despite their young age. They would always be the first to stand in the most dangerous moments, in the most dangerous places.
And others like Konrad, Kata, Olaf, Hedy, Irma, Benno…
Many people Ruan knew would be there, and of course.
Dietrich Reinke, Reinke’s best knight, would be there too.
His cat, who gets stressed even by small changes in daily life,
Would be in that dangerous place.
Ruan suddenly felt acutely aware that most of the dear ones he had formed relationships with and exchanged affection with in this world would soon be standing where the line between life and death was thinnest, continuing a precarious tightrope walk for a long time.
The fact that some of them might never be seen again when this terrible tightrope walk, where one misstep could send them tumbling to one side, ended, and that during all this, Ruan himself, without any special combat ability or anything else, would be able to do nothing.
Ruan suddenly felt terribly powerless.
If only he had special abilities like the possessed characters in numerous media. If only he were incredibly strong so he could fight against this threatening disaster ahead of these people, or had extraordinary knowledge to come up with a solution to all these problems.
He would be of no help while those he cared about gritted their teeth cheek-to-cheek with death.
‘It would have been better for Reinke and the Grand Duke if someone special had been possessed instead of someone like me.’
As he was feeling bitter with such thoughts, a calm voice pulled Ruan back to reality.
“You don’t look well.”
Reading the streak of worry in that even voice, Ruan smiled slightly and said lightly,
“Just… I was thinking how it would have been if I were skilled in martial arts like my brother or sister.”
To this, Julia, who had been staring at Ruan, opened her mouth.
“Ruan. Have I ever told you why I married your father?”
“Huh? No, I haven’t heard about it.”
As Ruan shook his head at the unexpected topic, Julia said,
“Your father cries a lot even now, but when he was young, he cried even more than he does now.”
At these words, Ruan thought of Hans, who still cries at the drop of a hat. He cried more than now? Is that possible?
“More than now…?”
As Ruan asked cautiously, Julia answered firmly.
“I particularly liked that about him.”
“Oh.”
As Ruan was questioning Julia’s taste, she continued.
“As you know, Reinke is a land where everything easily dies. It’s a perfect place for people to become numb to everything. But in such a land, I liked that there was someone who mourned everything and cared about everything, crying with all his might every time. When I was with someone who looked at the world with such kind eyes, even for someone as numb as me, the world became a place with many kind things.”
A faint warmth lingered on Julia’s face as she said this. Ruan suddenly felt like he was glimpsing Julia’s face, not as a mother or a knight captain.
“That’s why it had to be him. Some might just say he’s a crybaby, but to me, he was special.”
Julia’s eyes turned to Ruan after saying this.
“You probably don’t remember, but since you were young, you took after your father and weren’t talented in physical tasks. You were also weak, so I was very worried when we sent you to be His Grace’s assistant.”
No wonder his body often hurt and he often fell. It seemed that ‘Ruan Daen’s’ body had indeed been frail from the beginning.
‘Right. When it was my original body, it wasn’t this bad.’
“But you’ve done really well. You comfortably assist His Grace, whom everyone finds difficult, from close by. You’ve built friendships with the dwarves, facilitating exchanges with them, and you’ve started various things that will benefit Reinke.”
Ruan awkwardly smiled and replied to Julia’s praise.
“They’re not much…”
Then Julia, with the face of a cool and objective knight captain, said,
“You don’t know the significance of what you’ve done. What you’ve done has shown the people of Reinke the possibility of change. They’ve gained hope that they’ll have more sufficient food, and you’ve turned the monsters, who were hateful enemies, into a means of earning money. You’ve given hope to the people here, who were only thinking about how to endure, that they can live better.”
Julia’s hand, covered in thick leather gloves, rested on Ruan’s shoulder.
“It was all possible because it was you.”
Ruan realized as he looked at Julia, who was gazing at him with serious yet warm eyes. She seems to have read my concerns again. That’s why she wanted to comfort me.
His whole body had been tense from the cold wind, but now it felt as if warm water had trickled into a corner of his heart. His chest tingled at the sudden warm feeling after being cold.
Ruan finally smiled, his eyes curving, and said,
“Thank you, Mother.”
Julia slightly curved her eyes in return and squeezed Ruan’s shoulder before letting go. Shifting her gaze back to the front, she changed the topic.
“By the way, those protruding structures the dwarves built on top of the castle walls are more effective than I thought. It’s convenient because there are holes at the bottom where we can drop stones or boiling water directly. It also reduces the areas where monsters can climb up the walls.”
“Ah, that. Greta said they only made those for now because of time constraints, but next year they’ll increase the number and also add stonework to the lower part of the walls to create a slope. She said that way, stones dropped vertically could bounce off it for additional impact, and it would also make it harder to climb the walls with ladders.”
And so, mother and son headed towards the inner castle, discussing the changes made to the castle walls.
* * *
The Grand Duke returned to Reinke in the middle of the night.
