Chapter 62: The Hunger of a Young Dragon
Augustus looked at him deeply.
Within those ice-blue eyes, thoughts flashed past like winter lightning.
From reaching the heavens in a single step and laying hands on the “authority” of an Earth Knight—
To retreating instead to building up the foundation of a force of Grand Knights who would fight and die for him—
This young man’s concession seemed enormous, like a savage bull that had finally smashed itself into a wall hard enough to learn pain.
And yet, it landed at exactly the most delicate point possible.
Grand Knight techniques were certainly valuable, but to a behemoth like the Church—one with a thousand years of inheritance behind it, one that had seen the rise and fall of who knew how many kingdoms—they were not secrets so absolute that they could never be allowed to leak.
In fact, many of the lesser and middling noble houses within the Empire that clung to the Church cultivated exactly these kinds of techniques—versions bestowed by the Church, revised, cut down, and restricted into “Holy Grace” standardized editions.
They could make you stronger. They could make you a local power. They could give you the strength to protect your wealth and your land.
But the endpoint of those techniques was nailed firmly in place at Grand Knight.
You would never be able to touch the true peak.
You would forever need to look up to the Church’s “grace.”
Forever remain a hunting hound beneath the Father God’s radiance, waiting to be tossed a bone.
To trade two incomplete, second-rate techniques for the wholehearted cooperation of an Earth Knight on the front lines…
Perhaps even to give this proud and unyielding young man the illusion that the Church had been “fairly sincere,” planting the perfect nail for his eventual total absorption into its ranks…
This deal was all profit and no loss.
More importantly, it would make Caesar’s army stronger.
And a stronger army, when facing the undead, could chew through more hard bones. It could expend more cannon fodder before the undead main force ever arrived.
Whether Caesar ultimately won or lost, whether he became a hero or a heap of bones, the Church would be the final victor reaping all the benefits.
In that instant, hundreds of calculations flashed through Augustus’s mind, every last one leading to the outcome most favorable to the Church.
At last, he reached his conclusion.
“Agreed.”
He nodded almost without hesitation.
That answer made Barrett—who had spent the entire time with his heart hanging in his throat, feeling as though one foot was already inside a coffin—let out a long breath of relief. He nearly collapsed on the spot.
He felt as though he had just walked through the gates of the underworld and somehow returned alive.
“Tomorrow morning, I will have a copied version of the complete techniques delivered.”
That flawless, ceremonial smile reappeared on Augustus’s face, as though the edge-of-death confrontation from moments ago had never happened.
“But the techniques will be the Church’s purified versions. I assume Lord Valerius understands.”
He added the last line as both a reminder and a warning.
Caesar understood at once. So they really were eunuch-cut versions.
But that did not matter. A foundation was enough, and free things were never to be refused.
“Of course. To receive the Father God’s grace at all is already more than I could ask.”
Caesar immediately put on the expression of a man overwhelmed by favor.
“Excellent.”
Augustus was very satisfied with his attitude.
“As payment, I require you to launch a probing attack on the undead forward base at Grayrock Town within three days.”
“I need to know exactly what grade of undead is stationed there.”
“Done.”
At last, Caesar’s face showed the smile of a thoroughly satisfied man, like a child who had just gotten the better end of a bargain.
He raised his bowl toward Augustus from afar.
“To our… pleasant cooperation.”
“To a pleasant cooperation.”
Augustus also raised his bowl and touched it against Caesar’s through the air.
The crisp sound of ceramic striking ceramic announced the temporary end of that murderous, step-by-step negotiation.
The atmosphere inside the hall seemed to ease again.
The two of them casually spoke for a while longer about the wasteland climate and the distribution of magical beasts.
Caesar played the role of a young lord full of curiosity about everything and worry for the future, while Augustus acted the generous and kindly elder, answering every question and occasionally even “advising” Caesar on how to govern a territory and defend against bandits.
The scene was harmonious to the point that even Barrett found it deeply unnatural, enough to make his skin crawl.
He could not shake the feeling that every smile and every raised cup between those two concealed a knife ready to slide into the other’s kidney.
Just as Augustus was about to rise and take his leave, ending the late-night visit, Caesar suddenly seemed to remember something. He slapped his forehead and asked in an offhand tone:
“Oh, right, Lord Inquisitor.”
“On my way to the wasteland, when I passed the edge of the Eastern Reaches, I heard an interesting little tale.”
“The beloved daughter of Grand Duke Sebastian—the lion of the Eastern Reaches—that Miss Anneliya, whose beauty and wisdom are said to outshine the entire Empire… it seems her convoy was attacked somewhere near the edge of the Wailing Wastes, and she herself has vanished without a trace.”
He looked at Augustus, his expression carrying exactly the sort of pure curiosity a minor backwater noble might have upon hearing a scandal so huge it could shake the highest circles.
“The Church’s eyes and ears stretch across the world. Has it uncovered any clues?”
For the third time, the air froze.
Wind slipped in through the gaps of the battlements, making a low moaning sound like the whisper of the dead.
Augustus had just begun to rise.
Now, his movement stopped.
A pause so small it would have escaped the naked eye. One ten-thousandth of a second.
Yet he did not immediately sit back down. Instead, still half-risen, he slowly turned his head, inch by inch.
At that moment, his ice-blue eyes became like bottomless pools of frozen water—utterly still, swallowing every trace of light.
He looked at Caesar. The curve of his lips remained, but the smile there no longer held the slightest warmth.
“Lord Valerius… you seem unusually interested in this matter.”
His voice was light, as soft as a snowflake touching the ground, yet it carried a weight great enough to crush mountains.
“Of course.”
Caesar spread his hands, wearing an expression of perfectly innocent and utterly natural curiosity.
“That is the apple of Grand Duke Sebastian’s eye, a woman who might one day become the mistress of the entire Eastern Reaches.”
“Her disappearance is enough to shake not only the East, but the whole Empire.”
“I am only a small lord trying to survive in this godforsaken place. Naturally, I need to know which way the wind is blowing, lest one day I be carried off by it without even understanding why.”
It was a flawless explanation.
For a remote noble to care about the movements of the highest figures in the land and use them to read the political winds was the most natural thing in the world.
And yet the smile on Augustus’s face only deepened—and grew colder.
He sat back down again, picked up the empty clay bowl from the table, and slowly turned it between his fingers, as though admiring a rare work of art.
Or stroking the still-warm severed head of a man he had only just claimed.
“A lion’s cub vanished in the hunting grounds of the wolves.”
His voice was very soft, as though chanting an ancient song or telling a bloody fable.
“Some say the wolves that nest here coveted the cub’s splendid pelt, and so reached out with their claws.”
He meant the undead.
“Others say a different band of hunters, wishing to provoke war between lion and wolf, secretly abducted the cub and then cast the blame upon the wolves.”
He meant the Grand Duke’s political enemies within the Empire.
His gaze seemed to rest on the bowl turning between his fingers, but the corner of his eye scraped over Caesar’s face like the sharpest scalpel, searching for even the slightest shift in expression that might reveal a flaw.
Caesar understood perfectly.
The old fox was testing him.
And more than that, he seemed to know something—or at the very least suspect something.
There had always been too many suspicious points surrounding the attack on Anneliya’s convoy.
Bringing it up now was his way of muddying the waters completely.
“But, Lord Valerius…”
Augustus paused, then finally lifted his eyes.
Under the flickering firelight, those ice-blue pupils seemed to burn with ghostly blue flames as they stared straight into Caesar’s, as though trying to see through his very soul, to pierce down into the deepest secret within him—that otherworldly truth no one in this world could ever imagine.
“Is there not another possibility…?”
His voice dropped very low, full of temptation and danger, like the whisper of a devil.
“That upon this barren land, a young dragon that has only just awakened from slumber…”
“…simply felt hungry?”