< Chapter 16 - Winter Flowers (Revised) >
Chapter 16 – Winter Flowers
About 300 years ago, there was a king who was later nicknamed the King of Civil Engineering.
He built a great wall across the entire northern border to prevent invasions by northern barbarians.
It was a huge undertaking.
The construction, which began in the fifth year of King Civil Engineering’s reign, continued for over 30 years and was finally completed in the third year after King Civil Engineering’s death.
The northern wall and the crows that guard it.
But neither the barriers nor the crows were perfect.
Because it covered the entire border, the wall was not of uniform height, thickness, or defensive power.
Since the number of crows was limited, it was impossible to tightly guard the entire border.
The inevitable gap that arises as a result.
A land whose defense is left solely to the walls.
“This way.”
That was the place where the red wind crossed the border.
Uther followed Red Wind’s lead without a word, and Cordelia, who was even riding a horse with him, dozed off with her head buried in Red Wind’s back.
That’s how it went for another half hour or so.
In a place that was so deserted that it had almost completely disappeared, Uder decided to take a short break.
“It’ll be obvious as soon as I go on patrol.”
Because the footprints were clear on the snowfield.
But there was nothing that could be done.
Uther swept the snow away from under a suitable tree and made a place to sit.
“Cordelia, please.”
“Huh? Huh.”
Cordelia, still half-asleep with a sleepy face, nodded slowly and turned on the heat in the water jug to make the cold water lukewarm.
Even if it was a place with few people, it was within the surveillance zone of crows.
There was a risk of being caught if you lit a fire and made smoke.
“Okay, beef jerky.”
“The jerky is hard.”
Cordelia grumbled, but she knew that there was nothing she could do, so she gave some to Red Wind and began chewing on the jerky.
How long had it been since we continued eating in silence like that?
Suddenly a red wind tugged at Cordelia’s sleeve.
“Huh? Why?”
When Cordelia asked with a smile, Red Wind hesitated for a moment as if choosing his words, then opened his mouth again.
“Cordelia, I have a question.”
“Yeah, yeah, what is it?”
“What the heck? What the fuck? What is that?”
“···uh?”
When Cordelia asked with a blank expression, the Red Wind spoke again.
“Cordelia, often, when you share secrets with Uther, words of love.”
Something that is not even a continental language.
A love secret that only two people can use.
If you listen closely, there is a pronunciation that comes up particularly often, and that is fuck.
“Oh, no. Wait, wait.”
Cordelia was embarrassed. So embarrassed that she didn’t even think about words of love.
‘What, how do I explain it?’
It’s just that I’ve fallen back into old habits since I’ve been speaking Korean for a long time.
Cordelia, who was groaning, looked back at Uther, and Uther answered with his eyes.
‘It’s karma, karma. Who would curse like that?’
‘It’s not a curse word. It’s an exclamation.’
But it was a pointless argument.
Cordelia looked back at the Red Wind instead of the unhelpful Yuder, and spoke as calmly as she could.
“That… the fuck.”
“Yeah, fuck.”
When Red Wind spoke with a smile, Cordelia flinched. It felt like Red Wind, whom she loved so much, was cursing at her.
“Ah… anyway, that. That… is an exclamation.”
“interjection?”
“Wow… exclamations. So cool! Awesome! Amazing! What… something like that?”
It may have been an impossible task, but if you think about it, Cordelia herself actually used it for that purpose.
After hearing Cordelia’s desperate explanation, Red Wind’s eyes sparkled and he soon smiled brightly and said.
“Fuck Cordelia. Fuck Jude. Fuck you both!”
The red wind, which shouted brightly, sent a ticklish gaze to Cordelia.
It was like a look in his eyes demanding an answer.
“Yeah, yeah… fuck the red wind too.”
“Fuck Cordelia, it’s so fucking good, fuck!”
As the red wind hugged Cordelia and repeated curses – no, exclamations – Uther eventually couldn’t hold back his laughter.
“Keuheu··· Heu··· Haa, haa··· Is this karma?”
Although the Red Wind’s bright swear words were shocking, I thought they would be helpful in one way or another.
If this is the case, Cordelia will also reduce her use of exclamations, at least for educational reasons.
And in fact, Cordelia, who was about to reflexively let out an exclamation of admiration, kept her mouth shut and looked distressed.
“Oh, this is so much fun. I’m so happy.”
“Are you having fun, Yuder?”
“Oh, I’m happy that you two get along so well.”
After roughly brushing it off, Uder looked at Cordelia, who was glaring, and spoke to Red Wind again.
“Red Wind, are you going into the valley like this?”
“That’s right, but the valley is rough. It’s narrow. A horse can’t go through it.”
Cordelia opened her eyes wide in surprise at Red Wind’s words, but Uther nodded.
Because it was something I had already roughly guessed.
‘That’s only natural, since it’s a place where the crows’ surveillance is lax.’
“Uder, what about the horses?”
At the same time as my thoughts, Cordelia’s voice was heard.
Uder shrugged his shoulders as if he had no choice but to answer.
“We have to release it.”
“You’re releasing it?”
“Oh, it’ll either turn into a wild horse or… someone lucky will pick it up.”
Cordelia looked extremely disgusted at Uther’s answer, but there was really nothing she could do.
“Let’s release them here. If we take them too deep into the valley, it’ll be hard for them to come out.”
“···okay.”
Cordelia answered in a gloomy voice, stood up, and unsaddled the horse she had ridden here. She must have grown attached to it over the years, because every touch of her hand was filled with regret.
‘Anyway, I feel very affectionate towards him.’
Yuder, who had been looking on happily, also got up from his seat, unsaddled his horse, and gathered up his small luggage.
And finally, the time of parting has arrived.
Without a word, Uther and Cordelia struck the rump of their respective horses, sending them galloping forward.
Two horses running on a white snow field.
“Goodbye, Yuder.”
“Goodbye, Cordelia.”
The two people who spoke at the same time looked at each other and spoke again.
“Cordelia? You named your horse Cordelia?”
“Then you are Yuder?”
“No, it was a number.”
“If you put it that way, then I too. I was a mare.”
The red wind laughed loudly at the two people’s words.
“You two are so compatible. You two are fucking fantastic.”
A bright, clear and pretty smile.
‘You really need to do something about him.’
‘No, I’ll try.’
After finishing their eye contact, Uder and Cordelia hurried on again, trying to stop Red Wind from using his newly learned vocabulary.
&
Time passed.
As the afternoon came, the group made their way through the blizzard that had begun to fall and were able to reach the entrance of the valley.
“It gets wider once you pass here. You just have to struggle a little.”
The red wind spoke as they passed through a narrow path that could barely accommodate one person, and Yuder pondered whether he should camp out tonight or travel through the night.
And then Cordelia stopped.
“Cordelia?”
Uder, who discovered it late, turned around and asked, but Cordelia did not answer right away. She looked back with a frown.
“Hey, this is a bit of a strange story… I don’t feel good about it.”
I’ve had an ominous feeling since a while ago. It felt like someone was stabbing me with a spear from behind.
If it had been someone else’s words, I would have just let it go.
But those were Cordelia’s words.
‘Cordelia’s feelings are special.’
It wasn’t a story that ended at the level of simply having a good feeling.
In the Pleiades, the world of the Heroes Chronicles, various supernatural powers exist.
In fact, it’s because he didn’t tell Cordelia, but even before he opened the Nine Heavens and Nine Gates and awakened the Five Stars, Uther’s own memory and calculation skills were already stronger than when he was on Earth.
Cordelia’s sensitivity might be the same.
Isn’t it a power that is close to foresight, belonging to a supernatural ability?
In fact, Cordelia’s senses had become much more accurate since she acquired witchcraft.
“I can’t see anything.”
The red wind said.
Being of Winter Elf blood, she had superior vision than humans, so being invisible to her meant there were no enemies nearby.
But Uther trusted Cordelia’s intuition.
“Let’s hurry.”
Uther started walking almost like he was running, and Cordelia also increased her speed. Since the two of them were doing this, Red Wind had no choice but to run along with them.
The narrow road ended and a wide road appeared. It was a basin terrain surrounded by cliffs.
There was still no one there. It was as quiet as if it were just the three of them.
But Cordelia kept looking back.
The ominous feeling was growing stronger. The stabbing sensation in my back was also growing stronger.
“Keuhng!”
At that very moment, the roar of a beast came from above.
Above the valley.
Three large dogs came down the steep wall. Their dark red fur and glowing yellow eyes were not those of ordinary wild animals.
“Hellhound!”
Devil dog.
The three weren’t the end. More demon dogs appeared across the valley.
“Run!”
Yuder, who had shouted, immediately threw down the load he was carrying and carried the Red Wind on his back. Cordelia also immediately activated her witching and cast Haste on herself and Yuder.
“Keuhng!”
“Boom!”
More than a dozen hellhounds came rushing down the wall.
Uther gritted his teeth and focused solely on running. Intercepting multiple enemies was Cordelia’s specialty, not his own.
“Get out of here!”
Cordelia unleashed her magic, her crimson hair flying. More than ten magic missiles struck the hellhounds between the eyes as if they were guided missiles.
It was truly a mysterious feat. There are only a handful of people in the entire Kingdom of Seilun who can show that level of control while running with Haste.
The hellhounds who had been hit between the eyebrows fell down. Cordelia continued to spread out Greece widely and then caught up with Uther, who had gone ahead. And then she spouted out a strange story even to herself.
“I feel something, something more!”
A feeling that is difficult to explain even to myself.
Uther looked back as he ran. Thanks to the Greek terrain, the hellhounds’ feet were tied down, and there was quite a distance between them.
‘Those are the advance party.’
Even though it was a place with few people, it was unlikely that they would have brought ten hellhounds from the beginning, so it was clear that they had been summoned from nearby.
And what it meant was one thing.
Soluzia moved.
She, the branch manager, came up to the tip of the chin.
What happened? This is something that should not normally happen.
Even if they had realized that their goal was to cross the border, it would have been impossible for them to attack us as if they had been ambushed in such a deserted place.
Unlike the case of the Sunflower, there was no specific location or clues to infer its purpose.
There is something. Something that Yuder himself does not know.
Uther stopped thinking there.
The first thing that was important was that Soluzia existed nearby.
Uder kept running and thinking.
Cordelia’s feelings.
Another thing she felt.
It wasn’t Soluzia.
Because Soluzia could be considered one pack with the hellhounds.
It was an ambiguous feeling from the beginning, but it wasn’t chaos itself.
Another one.
What Cordelia felt.
“Caw!”
Uther and Cordelia looked at the sky at the same time.
A crow was seen.
And at that moment, Uther understood. Cordelia also felt it.
That was it.
Another thing Cordelia felt.
To get out of this crisis, I had to follow that crow.
“jackdaw?!”
Red Wind, who discovered the crow late, let out a voice mixed with fear.
For her, a northern barbarian, the raven was the worst of bad omens.
But it wasn’t.
That bird, completely pitch black without a single speck of feather, was different from a crow.
Pure crow.
That’s what it means.
“Keuhng!”
The hellhounds, who had barely escaped the Greek zone, began barking again, accelerating their pace.
Instead of looking at the guys, Yuder looked at the sky. The number of crows was increasing. They seemed to be increasing one by one, and before he knew it, they were covering the sky. It seemed as if the sound of their wings would tear the sky apart.
The frightened Red Wind shrank back. Moreover, her eyes could see the end of the direction she was currently heading.
“It’s a cliff!”
It was a cliff. But Uther didn’t stop. Instead, he ran faster. The howls of the hellhounds were loud behind him.
“Keuh-heung!”
“Boom!”
Uther looked at Cordelia. Cordelia did the same, nodded, and smiled coolly.
There are only a handful of characters in the entire biographies who have such a splendid appearance scene.
No, from the beginning, the crow symbolized only one person!
“Hug me!”
Uther reached out. Cordelia threw herself at Uther, and Uther, with the Red Wind on his back, embraced Cordelia. They threw themselves over the cliff together.
“Whoa!”
The red wind screamed, but it was short.
The sound of dozens and hundreds of birds flapping their wings drowned out all other sounds around them.
A flock of crows swarmed Uther and Cordelia. Cordelia closed her eyes, hugging Uther’s neck tightly, and Uther did the same.
And time passed.
The sound of wings flapping, which seemed like it would never end, gradually died down.
Solid ground.
A place to stand.
Yuder stumbled for a moment, but soon regained his balance. He slowly opened his eyes, confirming the presence of Cordelia, who was hugging him tightly with both arms.
It was still a place covered in white snow. The crows that had flown into the sky scattered and disappeared in all directions.
And the front.
One looks at Uther and Cordelia, leaning on each other, breathing heavily.
He was a man with pure white hair, a white face, and deep blue eyes, but otherwise everything was pitch black.
Yuder knew him, wearing a long black robe pulled down to his head. That was why he spoke his name first.
“Juder Bayer meets Kamael.”
The Sword Demon Kamael.
One of the six commanders of the Order of the Holy Cross.
The protagonist of the first volume of Heroes Chronicles, on par with Landius.
“Landius’ disciple.”
Kamael spoke softly as if responding to the call. He took steps towards Uther and Cordelia.
&
< Chapter 16 - Winter Flowers (Revised) > End
