Chapter 63: The Birth of an Actor
For one ten-thousandth of a second, Caesar’s expression went blank.
Deep down, he was almost laughing.
So the old fox had finally shown his hand? He was done pretending already?
But on his face, it was as though he had just heard the most absurd nonsense in the world. First came a moment of stunned disbelief. Then he looked at Augustus with the kind of gaze one reserved for a fool.
And finally, he burst out laughing.
“A young dragon?”
Caesar shook his head and laughed so hard that his whole body shook, tears practically coming out, as though he had just heard the funniest joke of both his lives put together.
“Lord Inquisitor, you truly are… too good at joking!”
He waved a hand as he laughed, speaking in broken gasps.
“In a place like this, I’d be lucky to count as a groundhog that’s only just learned how to dig. The moment I see an eagle in the sky, I have to dive straight back into my hole.”
“A dragon? That’s the sort of thing only bards talk about, the kind of story used to fool little girls!”
He stopped laughing at just the right moment, then scratched the back of his head awkwardly. On his face was the particular embarrassment of a small fry who had been teased by someone far above him.
“I suppose I said too much. I should never have asked about the affairs of giants.”
The performance was worthy of an emperor of actors.
From shock, to absurdity, to self-mockery and unease, the emotional shifts were seamless. He perfectly played the role of a minor lord from the bottom rung who had accidentally glimpsed the secrets of the upper world and was now desperately trying to wash his hands of them.
Augustus’s ice-blue eyes remained fixed on Caesar.
The ghostfire in them had not dimmed. If anything, it burned hotter, as though trying to burn Caesar’s soul straight out from under his skin and see what truly lay within.
But Caesar’s gaze remained clear and open, even carrying that faint stupidity of someone frightened out of his wits.
Only after a long while did the scrutiny in Augustus’s eyes slowly fade into something bottomless and unreadable.
He rose slowly to his feet. In the firelight, his crimson priestly robe flowed like blood.
“Lord Valerius, you are a clever man.”
He walked over to Caesar’s side and, in a gesture almost intimate, reached out to straighten the collar Caesar had left slightly crooked from laughing so hard.
“And clever men usually live longer.”
His voice was soft, yet carried the absolute force of command.
“Remember this. The winds of the Wailing Wastes are fierce.”
“Sometimes, if a little groundhog stays quietly in its hole and watches the lions and wolves in the sky tear at each other, it can live to see spring.”
“But if it insists on poking its head out and trying to steal a piece of meat that does not belong to it…”
Augustus’s fingers lightly patted Caesar’s shoulder.
The gesture was gentle, but to Caesar it felt as though it carried the weight of a thousand tons.
“…then both lion and wolf will be more than happy to crush it first.”
With that, he did not spare Caesar another glance. He turned and strode out of the hall with the four Silent Guards who moved like wraiths at his back.
Caesar remained standing where he was.
The respect and awkwardness on his face ebbed away like the tide.
What remained was a depthless calm, and a trace of cold mockery almost too faint to see.
Bang!
The doors of the main hall were slammed shut heavily from outside by the guards, cutting off the cold wind and the killing intent beyond.
“Hah… hah… hah…”
Barrett collapsed onto the ground like a fish thrown ashore, both legs giving way beneath him. He gulped in huge breaths of air.
His back was already soaked through with cold sweat, as though he had just been fished out of water.
“Damn it… damn it…”
He cursed incoherently, his single eye still full of the lingering terror of having survived disaster.
“My lord… you… you nearly scared my soul right out of me just now! I really thought he was about to make his move!”
Roland still stood ramrod straight, but the hand clenched around his sword hilt, its knuckles gone white, betrayed the turmoil inside him.
Looking at Caesar’s back, he spoke in a hoarse voice.
“My lord… he has become suspicious.”
“Not suspicious.”
Caesar turned around and walked slowly back to his seat of lordship, then sat down once more.
He picked up the bowl of ale that had long since gone cold and drained it in a single swallow. The rough liquid scraped down his throat, bringing with it a thread of icy clarity.
“He is certain.”
A cold curve rose at Caesar’s lips.
“He is certain that Anneliya’s disappearance is connected to me.”
“But he has no proof, and he is not sure whether I am hiding her… or whether I already killed her.”
“That is why he tested me that way. And why he warned me.”
Caesar set the empty clay bowl down hard upon the table with a dull thud.
“He wants to turn me into a blade in his hand.”
“A double-edged blade to deal with the undead—and at the same time, to pressure Grand Duke Sebastian.”
Roland’s face grew extremely grave.
“Then what shall we…”
“We go along with it.”
A sharp light flashed in Caesar’s eyes, like that of a chess player about to place a decisive piece.
“He wants me to be a blade, then I’ll be one for him to see.”
“Whether that blade ends up cutting its master’s hand instead is no longer his decision.”
He rose and walked to the great sand table in the center of the hall. His gaze moved back and forth between three points: the City of Miracles, Grayrock Town, and the main camp of the Temple Knight Order, as though he could already see the blood and fire to come.
“Roland.”
“Your subordinate is here!”
“From this moment on, raise the alert level on the eastern wall to the highest state.”
“The scout teams are to watch their camp twenty-four hours a day without interruption.”
“I want to know whether every raven that flies out of there is going to shit or to deliver a message.”
“Yes, my lord!”
Roland’s answer was iron-hard and brimming with killing intent.
“Barrett.”
“My lord! Your orders!”
Barrett jerked upright from the floor and stood straight at once.
“Tomorrow morning, go and receive the Church’s batch of ‘aid’ techniques.”
“As soon as you have them, make a hundred copies.”
Caesar’s voice held not a trace of warmth. It was cold as iron.
“From among those new recruits you gathered, choose three hundred of the ones who fear death the least, are the most ruthless, and are the most desperate to climb upward.”
“Tell them that if they want meat, women, and a chance to rise, then they had better stop fearing death!”
“I don’t care what methods you use. Within three days, I want at least ten of those three hundred to condense Battle Energy and be capable of forming the most basic battle formation. Anyone who cannot manage it is trash.”
Barrett’s single eye widened, and his breathing turned heavy with excitement. His face glowed with fanatical fervor.
He knew this was a chance from heaven.
“Don’t worry, boss! Forget three hundred—even if you gave me three thousand, I could squeeze oil out of their bones for you!”
“I’ve already picked a name for this unit.”
Caesar turned around. In the firelight, his violet eyes shone with an eerie brilliance.
“Black Dragon’s Wing.”
“These techniques will be their food, and also their shackles. They will become the kindling that carries us into the sky.”
“Understood, boss! Guaranteed!”
Barrett puffed out his chest and roared the words loud enough to shake the hall.
Caesar waved a hand, dismissing them.
When the hall was empty and only he remained, every expression vanished from his face.
He walked to the window, pushed open the heavy shutters, and let the freezing night wind pour in at once. It stirred the black hair across his forehead and exposed those deep violet eyes, profound as a star-filled sky.
He looked out toward the Temple Knight Order’s camp beyond the city, where it crouched in the night like some immense beast lying in wait.
“The game is only just beginning.”
He muttered the words softly, then turned away. Instead of taking the main door, he pushed open an inconspicuous hidden door at the side of the hall, and his figure vanished swiftly into the dark secret passageways in the depths of the castle.
At midnight, beneath a moon as cool as water, a black shadow passed soundlessly over the outermost wall of the City of Miracles like a wisp of smoke with no weight at all.
He did not alarm a single sentry. His movements were so light it was as though he were strolling through moonlight.
Caesar had removed the fine clothes that marked his rank as lord and changed into a fitted suit of black leather armor. Two refined steel short swords were strapped across his back.
He was like a blade still hidden in its sheath, perfectly fused with the night.
He brought no one with him.
Alone, he slipped south toward the undead territory.
The authority of an Earth Knight gave him a mysterious connection to the land beneath his feet.
He could feel the breathing of the earth. He could hear every insect crawling within a hundred meters.
He moved with incredible speed, crossing the wasteland while making almost no sound at all.
An hour later, he reached his destination.
It was a monastery abandoned for longer than anyone could remember.
Under the moonlight, its ruined bell tower looked like a twisted finger pointing toward the sky.
Black thorns that radiated an ominous aura had grown thick among the broken walls and shattered stones.
The air was filled with a cold scent mingled from decay, dust, and death.
Caesar stopped outside the ruins and stood there like a patient hunter’s statue.
Suddenly, he lifted his head and looked toward the depths of the monastery, toward the prayer hall that had already collapsed by more than half.
A dense, almost tangible wave of death energy spread soundlessly from within it, like a drop of black ink dissolving in clear water.
The temperature plunged.
A thin layer of frost began to form and spread over the ground at a speed visible to the naked eye, reaching all the way to Caesar’s feet.
A figure slowly emerged from the shadows of the prayer hall.
She was barefoot, walking across the frost-covered stone slabs without making a single sound.
Her archaic black dress made her skin seem even paler, like ivory long deprived of sunlight.
It was the undead saint, Elizabeth.
Behind her stood two enormous black masses, each like a small hill.
They were two Abominations, stitched together from countless corpses. Their bodies were covered in savage seams. In their hands they carried rusted chains and gigantic butcher’s hooks. Within their hollow eye sockets burned ghostly green flames.
Elizabeth stopped ten paces in front of Caesar.
A cold, hollow voice with a trace of sharp mockery echoed directly inside Caesar’s mind.
“The great lord of the City of Miracles. The King of the Wasteland before whom even the Temple Knight Order bent the knee.”
“I truly did not expect that in the dead of night, you would come here alone, prowling about in my garden of the dead like some lost rat.”
Her spiritual transmission was like countless icy steel needles, probing at Caesar’s thoughts.
“Speak, then. What wind has blown so noble a lord as you—who disdains the company of the undead—all the way here?”
Caesar ignored the mental provocation. He merely looked at her calmly and answered aloud, his voice carrying clearly through the deathly still ruins of the monastery.
“Drop the petty tricks, Elizabeth.”
“Your spiritual power is useless against me.”
He took one step forward.
Boom!
A Domain heavy as a mountain and solid as iron exploded outward from him!
The deathly chill filling the air seemed to slam into an invisible wall and was forced back at once.
The frost beneath Elizabeth’s feet hissed the instant it touched the Domain’s edge and melted away.
The two towering Abominations behind her gave low uneasy growls. Under the crushing pressure, their huge bodies were forced half a step backward, cracking the stone slabs beneath their feet inch by inch.
For the first time, real surprise flashed through the depths of Elizabeth’s pitch-black eyes.
“An Earth Knight…”
Her spiritual transmission was no longer so airy and detached. It carried a thread of gravity now.
“So you truly have stepped into that realm.”
“How interesting. Truly interesting.”
Caesar withdrew the Domain as though nothing had happened.
“I did not come here to flaunt my strength before you.”
He got straight to the point.
“I came to talk business.”
“Business?”
Elizabeth laughed. In Caesar’s mind, the sound became a silver-bell laugh, but one as cold as ice.
“With me? An undead? Have you forgotten how you humiliated my messenger and declared that your city had no need for the ‘mercy’ of the dead, Lord Valerius?”
“I remember every word.”
Caesar’s expression did not change.
“But times have changed.”
He pointed east, toward the camp of the Temple Knight Order.
“We now share a far more troublesome neighbor.”
“Cardinal Inquisitor Augustus.”
“I imagine that name is not unfamiliar to you.”
A brief pause rippled through Elizabeth’s spiritual transmission.
“He wants to purify this land.”
“First you, then me.”
“Or first me, then you. The order does not matter. The outcome is the same.”
Caesar’s tone was cold and brutally practical.
“In his script, we are both heretics that must be erased.”
“And so you came to me for protection?”
The mockery in Elizabeth’s voice deepened.
“No.”
Caesar shook his head.
“I did not come to seek protection. I came to offer a choice.”
He looked straight into Elizabeth’s eyes and said, word by word,
“A choice that allows both you and me to survive—and to watch those holy lunatics make fools of themselves.”
“Augustus has given me a task. In three days, he wants me to lead my forces in a probing attack against your nest at Grayrock Town.”
“He wants to see what I’m worth. And he wants to see what kind of strength you have.”
Elizabeth’s spiritual waves turned cold.
“So you plan to use my children to curry favor with your new master?”
“On the contrary.”
A playful curve touched Caesar’s lips.
“I came to invite you to help me put on a show.”
“A show custom-made for that lofty Lord Inquisitor.”
The same calculating light that Augustus had shown glimmered now in Caesar’s eyes.
“I want him to see a brutal battle of attack and defense.”
“I want him to see how terrible a price I, this backwater lord, must pay just to take one section of your wall.”
“I want him to see how fearless your undead legion is, how difficult it is to deal with.”
“In short, I want him to see everything he wants to see.”
“I want him to believe that my strength is no more than this, that I still need to rely on his power.”
“And I want him to believe that you are a tough bone to chew, one that requires him to devote far more strength to dealing with.”
Elizabeth fell silent.
Her black eyes gleamed beneath the moonlight, clearly weighing the gains and losses of the proposal at great speed.
“And what do I gain from this?”
Her spiritual transmission came again after a long pause.
“What do you gain?”
Caesar smiled.
“You gain not having to truly face the siege of an Earth Knight and two thousand Temple Knights.”
“You gain the most precious thing of all—time.”
“Time to transform more corpses and strengthen your legion.”
“Time for me to train my soldiers and reinforce my walls.”
“There is no trust between us, Elizabeth, nor will there ever be.”
“There are only interests.”
His tone was filled with undeniable realism.
“And right now, our greatest common interest is making that self-important mad dog Augustus take his eyes off us—or smash himself headfirst against the wall.”
“It is a win-win.”
“You lose nothing. All you have to do is help me perform this play.”
Another long silence followed.
Only the mournful wind blowing through the broken ruins of the monastery could be heard.
“A play…”
Elizabeth’s voice echoed in his mind once more, carrying an odd excitement.
“I like plays. Especially when the audience is a self-important fool.”
She had agreed.
“Tell me your plan, Caesar Valerius.”
For the first time, her voice carried the faintest trace of something like an ally.
“My children will become the finest actors.”
Caesar nodded and began to lay out his plan in detail.
Beneath the heavy night, an alliance born of survival and deception was quietly forged between the rulers of the living and the dead.
When Caesar turned and melted back into the darkness, ready to return to the City of Miracles, Elizabeth’s cold voice sounded in his mind one last time.
“Play your role well, little lord.”
“If I detect even the slightest trace of betrayal, my undead legion will put an end to all performance.”
“They will drown your city and gnaw every living bone clean.”
Caesar did not pause in his steps. He merely left behind an equally cold answer.
“The feeling is mutual.”
“If your skeletons grow too lost in the part, I assure you that the swords in my soldiers’ hands are harder than your bones.”
His figure vanished completely into the night of the wasteland.
Elizabeth remained standing in place for a long time.
At last, one of the Abominations behind her spoke in a grinding, millstone-like voice.
“Master… trust… him?”
“Trust?”
Elizabeth laughed, and the sound was especially eerie in the empty ruins.
“I trust no one.”
“I trust only this—that when two beasts are both being watched by the same hunter, temporary cooperation is better than being hunted down alone.”
She turned around, her bare feet treading over frost as she slowly disappeared back into the endless dark.
“Go, Marcus.”
“Pass down my order. Tell the children to prepare to take the stage.”
“Our first grand play is about to begin.”