“But being limited to just one woman.…”
“Isn’t for me.” The ladies’ man known all over the prefecture agreed. “She stood in front of him, solid as stone, and shouted to the army: “Get ready”. Two million soldiers hit their shields with their swords all at once. The bang was as loud as if the universe were crashing down. I'd never heard or seen anything like it.”
Hadjar imagined it and regretted that he had lost consciousness too early.
“Well, Larvie raged and promised terrible retribution, hinted at Ax clan assassins and so on, but the General just ordered the army to, “Prepare for action!”. And the bang of swords on shields rang out again and people began to line up in attack formation. I’d never thought such a fragile girl could give orders so loudly.”
“It's probably some kind of Technique that lets her be heard across the whole battlefield.”
“Well, maybe. But I was almost deafened by it.”
It was an interesting thing to consider. How was the communication between different divisions in the army carried out? Hadjar wasn’t particularly well versed in medieval technology, and it was unlikely that they used the sort of tech his world had used. After all, they had some kind of magic at their disposal here.
“He finally went away, cursing. However, he was allowed to carry the body of his son with him. He carried Colin’s head away, and the old servant carried the rest of the carcass.”
Despite the fact that the scene Nero had just described was somewhat sentimental, Hadjar... did not feel any remorse. They’d all deserved their fate.
The question was whether karma had carried out its will using Hadjar’s hand or had Hadjar carried out the karma on his own? And was there a difference between the former and the latter?
It was a foolish thought, but something made it very important to Hadjar.
“Why were you yelling like that?” Nero sat down on a nearby bale.
He took an apple from his pocket, cleaned it on his pants, and took a bite, licking the greenish juice from it.
“I’d imagined how I would have to listen to your сhewing all the way to the camp and cried.”
They looked at each other and laughed. Hadjar felt like the laughter was hurting him. His whole body ached. Azrea, after waking up, snorted, clearly dissatisfied, and got under the ‘blanket’ to be closer to Hadjar. Sticking out only her face, she curled up once again and fall asleep peacefully.
“If only I could do that,” Nero sighed, “Just sleep the whole day away with somebody at my side, warming me up.”
“I knew it,” Hadjar exclaimed. “You still have feelings for me!”
“Go to... sir officer... go in a well-known direction. You’d better tell me how it was to make up for being so cruel.”
“What are you talking about?” Hadjar didn't take the hint.
“Well,” Nero waved his hand somewhat vaguely. “How was it, being ‘One with the World’? There are fewer than a thousand soldiers in the army with such abilities and all of them belong to the elite. They’re way out of our reach.”
Oh, right. The level that he’d demonstrated through the enlightenment he’d gained really had resembled ‘One with the World’, but it only resembled it. Uncountable hours of training, endless sparring, battles with monsters, and other adventures had been enough to simulate it in a moment insight, but nothing more.
Hadjar felt that he had still not reached the second stage of sword mastery. But still, he was already close to it.
He explained this to his friend.
“Really? What a pity! You really looked as impressive as a master at some of the tournaments in the Empire. They can do such unbelievable things!” Nero never took a bite of the apple. He blinked a couple of times and smiled. “My father took me with him once, when he went on business with the merchant fleet. It was the thrill of a lifetime for me.”
The Empire…
“What’s it like?” Hadjar asked.
“How do I even begin to answer you? I can't describe it in two words.”
“We've got a whole week.”
“Four days,” Nero corrected. “You’ve been sleeping here for three days and I'm mentally exhausted, you know. I can't run with my fellow soldiers because I'm lying in a damned cart with a friend. I also had to endure the humiliation when officer Dogar sent me here.”
The joker and womanizer managed to utter all of this in a pathetic, miserable tone of voice.
“Tell me about the Empire and its tournaments already.”
“Well, okay, listen up,” Nero made himself comfortable. “Everyone is obsessed with their cultivation in the Empire.”
“So are we.”
“If you're going to interrupt me, you may as well tell the story yourself.”
“Excuse me.”
“Now, they are so fanatical about it that the parents try to send their five-year-old children somewhere, depending on their abilities and income. Usually, children are sent to the sects or to the Academy. People who aren’t relatives won’t be accepted into the clans, except maybe as servants. But no one wants such a fate for their child. Tournaments are often organized there—something like competitions between different art schools, let's say. The winners get the honor, praise, and various prizes, sometimes even a personal apprenticeship from some famous master.”
“And the winners’ organizations become well-known and have a great influx of new students.”
“What did I say about interrupting me?”
Hadjar only muttered something inaudible in response.
“I was at a local tournament in a border town. But the performance was amazing. Especially in the final match, where two girls faced off. One was from the Moonlight clan, and another was from the Military Academy. I can’t forget their breasts and thighs. You can’t even imagine how supple they were. Well, also, both were already at the stage of Transformation of mortal form at fifteen.”
Hadjar was so astonished that he almost choked on air.
“Fifteen?”
“Yeah,” Nero nodded a little sadly. “It’s no wonder they consider us to be savages. And this was only a local tournament. There is also the main one. It’s held every twenty years. It's called ‘The Tournament of Thirteen Branches.’ Even the Imperial Palace takes part in it; it’s something akin to an unofficial, fourteenth branch. And every year, the top ten contenders at this tournament are given prizes so valuable that by selling one of them you could buy our entire Kingdom, and you’d still have enough money left to purchase a neighboring kingdom as well.”
“And what is their level?”
“I don’t know much regarding their levels, but last time, a guy won. He was eighteen years old and was at the initial stage of the Spirit Knight.”
Now Hadjar really was choking on air.
“I had the same reaction,” Nero nodded. “Humans don’t live there, man. Only monsters.”
Was Hadjar really going to seek out such monsters? He wasn’t just an ‘ordinary’ practitioner when compared to them, he was an untalented pig.
“How huge this world is…” Hadjar sighed.
“You’re right about that, my friend.”
They rode on in absolute silence until nightfall. The creaking of the wheels and the planks, as well as the clanging of metal, were the only sounds that accompanied the march of the huge army. A war was coming.
Chapter 56
Hadjar was able to get back on his feet, but it took two more days. All that time Azrea and Nero were with him in the wagon. It seemed like the latter had decided to compensate for the fact that the kitten was always sleeping. When Azrea had been driven away from her bale, she, scratching herself, angrily climbed up to Hadjar’s hair and fell asleep there.
Hadjar didn’t want to try and take the kitten off his head, worrying about the safety of his scalp.
“Assistant,” someone knocked on the wagon from outside.
Hadjar leaned on his crutch and climbed out. Only a few tents had been set up in th
e boundless prairie. The soldiers were so tired from a whole day of continuous running that they’d fallen asleep directly on the grass. Some of them had put sleeping bags on the ground, but the majority had just thrown bales on top of their removed armor and used that as a makeshift bed.
It was mostly the cavalrymen that had set up tents. Perhaps that was why they weren’t all that loved and were also envied at the same time.
A large, full moon was in the sky—a silver disc, bathing the ground in white light.
“Commander, sir,” Hadjar greeted his superior.
Dogar, even while exhausted, could still stand on his feet. Recently, Hadjar had begun to suspect that the soldiers at a certain level of cultivation were recruited into the army not because of their strength, but because of their endurance and speed when running.
Was there another way to transport an army numbering two million someplace that was more than 6213 miles away?
The sight of two million people running anywhere was somewhat absurd, but only to the conceptions of an Earthling. Hadjar could hardly remember his home world anymore and didn’t consider this to be something surreal.
“I want to talk,” Dogar sat down wearily.
“About Larvie?”
Dogar nodded. He leaned against the cold planks and looked up at the sky. His breathing was already evener.
“You killed his son, Hadjar.”
“In a fair fight, according to army law, there's nothing to prosecute me for.”
“I doubt any of them,” Dogar emphasized the last word, “Is interested in the law. King Primus and his Palace are far away, and we are so close. Larvie has destroyed other people’s lives for less grievous sins. I heard his dog once bit the son of some merchant during a walk. So, he publicly skinned the merchant, and then cut off his son’s…”
Dogar flinched and winced.
Hadjar felt somewhat uncomfortable.
“Do you think the royal investigators came after him? Not even close. I don't think he even had to pay a fine. They simply paid no attention to it.”
“I'm an army officer,” Hadjar reminded him.
“One of ten thousand. Do you think General Leen will always be there to protect you? I assure you, she didn't let Larvie kill you simply because she could have lost her credibility.” Dogar took a piece of dried meat from his pocket and offered it to Hadjar. He refused. “He won't let you rest, Hadjar. He won’t stop until he’s tortured you in his dungeons and driven you completely insane…”
Hadjar also looked up at the sky.
Distant, indifferent stars shone there.
“What are you trying to say, commander?”
Dogar turned to his assistant. A heavy hand fell on Hadjar’s shoulder.
“I know a merchant in the Fort,” the huge man handed him a small, iron seal that had the image of a camel on it. “He will surely leave with the caravan on an expedition before the siege starts.”
“I don't know what you're talking about…”
“You're a good guy, Hadjar,” Bear smiled. “One of the best I've met in my life. My old friend always needs reliable people to guard his deeds. He will take you with him. Go with the caravan, Hadjar. You can see the world, make some money, maybe you’ll find a place where you want to stay or you will find another merchant later, one of those that cross the Sea of Sand to get to the Empire…”
Is he telling me to take a trip around the world?
Sometimes, Hadjar had dreamed about doing just that while sitting in his room in the Palace. The windows had faced a huge garden and lake with a mountain behind it. His father had told him that there was a family castle on that mountain and that he would take him there one day.
Everyone’s probably dreamed about that—traveling around the boundless world full of amazing and beautiful places, seeing all that it had to offer…
“I cannot desert the army, commander,” Hadjar shook his head, pushing the medallion aside.
“What are you risking your life for, Hadjar?” Dogar asked suddenly. “I understand most of the other soldiers. They want money, power… Well, the illusion of power anyway, and women, of course. But what do you want?”
What did Hadjar want?
Not much— to find his sister and chop off Primus’ head.
“Let's go to sleep, sir,” Hadjar got up and stroked the sleeping Azrea. “Will we get to the Fort soon?”
Dogar straightened too. He was enormous, unapproachable, but looked as if he’d aged a bit just now.
“I respect you, officer Hadjar. Even though you are a fool, I respect you,” he held out a hand. Hadjar shook his head ruefully as they clasped hands.
When he got back to the cart, he noticed Nero staring at him while also dozing on his bales.
“I agree with him,” his friend said. “You're a fool.”
“In my village, they say that it’s better to be a dead lion than alive but a jackal.”
“That’s a beautiful sentiment,” Nero nodded and turned around. “But it’s stupid. A jackal that stays alive could turn into an Azure Wolf one day. But the dead lion could turn into nothing except fertilizer for the trees.”
Hadjar lay back and wrapped himself in a blanket. Azrea squeaked, got off the bale she’d been napping on and went straight to Hadjar. She climbed up on his cheek and curled up. Her hair tickled Hadjar’s nostrils slightly, but not enough to keep him awake.
“Would you run?” Hadjar asked.
“No,” Nero answered. “I must be a fool, too.”
Everyone pretended to fall asleep, but for a long time, they looked at the distant sky through the holes in the roof.
All sorts of unwelcome thoughts and memories assaulted Hadjar. He didn’t know what Nero was thinking. He recalled how his mother had brushed his long hair with a comb in the evenings. She would sing to him and smile as she did it, and sometimes his father would be there as well. He’d seemed large and invulnerable back then, just like the mountain that Hadjar had seen from his window while waiting for the army to return from the war.
War... he’d never thought that he would get to fight in one, but now... With each new dawn, he literally heard the approaching war drums of the nomads, the clang of steel, the screams of the crows and the groans of the dying people.
When Hadjar went outside to talk to Dogar, he saw an ocean of sleeping soldiers. In fact, most of them were lying there, just like he had been. They looked at the faceless stars and remembered their homes, their mothers and fathers, the people they wanted to be with when they got back...
How many of them won't come back? And even among the ones that do, how many won’t want to have their own children? And those who already have them are probably praying that this will be the last war. Though they know that wars will never stop and never change, they desperately want to live in a world where their children don’t have to take up arms.
Perhaps, at that moment, Hadjar finally began to understand the last words of his mother.
“Sorry,” Hadjar whispered to the distant star that Queen Elizabeth had used to tell him stories about. “I can't. Forgive me…”
He slept firmly that night, without any dreams.
In the morning, feeling the cart begin to move again, he began to meditate. He needed to strengthen the foundation of his future path of cultivation as soon as possible.
The neuronet responded quickly and showed his statistics,
Name
Hadjar
Level of Cultivation
Formation stage (Seed)
Strength
2
Dexterity
2.3
Physique
2.05
Energy points
3.8
After he’d transitioned to a new level of cultivation, all his parameters had increased greatly. Not as much as the parameters of talented people would have, but enough to feel it even without confirmation from the system.
Most importantly, his energy had changed. The figures were, of course, good,
but they didn’t reflect the main change— the quality of it. His energy had increased in quality with each new level, with each new leap up the ladder toward the pinnacle of cultivation.
Hadjar mentally probed ‘inside’ himself.
If he’d previously had to draw energy from the ‘nodes’, then from the ‘rivers’, everything had changed now. Now, the power that he received from the outside world came into his nodes first, then spread through the meridians, nourishing and strengthening his body, and then accumulated in the center located somewhere in his abdomen.
There, within the endless darkness, a small crystal was now burning. Its size was no greater than a grain of wheat, however, it was much brighter than the nodes and meridians.
It was the ‘Seed’ of his power. The seed that he had to break into a few pieces. Only by doing so would it be possible to move on to the ‘Fragment stage’.
Those who could break it, but failed to stabilize it, lost the opportunity to move to the next stage forever. And, if his Master had been right, only one out of forty thousand people would be able to break the ‘Grain’ and create ‘Fragments.’
“It’s the Fort!” The cries of the soldiers who were traveling ahead spread among the other warriors...
Nero and Hadjar leaned out of the cart.
A real fortress city towered above the sea of grass in front of them. It was no surprise that a fort with a garrison of 170,000 soldiers was enormous.
It looked like a small, circularly built town, and was situated on a hill. It was a town with high walls surrounding the central castle like two rings. The tiled roofs of all the houses, the trees in the gardens, as well as the massive divider walls connected the first and second ring of the fortress walls and formed something like sections.
If the nomads were to break through, they would get caught up in the close range fighting in the streets, where even a tenth of General Leen’s soldiers could make bloody mincemeat out of them.
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