Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 154

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 154.
Two Blades, Four Names (38)

November’s sky hung heavy with the promise of snow.
Two weathered carriages and several mounted men came to a halt before an inn.
From one carriage descended a middle-aged man wrapped in a black coat, accompanied by his secretary. From the other emerged two figures who bore the unmistakable bearing of mercenaries, along with a countryman.
As the party entered the inn, the proprietor, evidently forewarned, merely bowed in silence. They ascended to the upper floor without exchanging a word.
The finest room in the establishment awaited them, its table laden with an evening meal. A fire crackled in the hearth.
Once the middle-aged man took his seat at the center of the table, the two mercenaries joined him, while the others exchanged brief pleasantries before retiring to an adjoining room.
“Let us first celebrate our success. Raise your glasses.”
The secretary poured wine into three goblets. They clinked them together.
“Thank you. It took longer than expected—far more difficult than we anticipated. We did our utmost, so now it falls to you to verify matters directly.”
The female mercenary spoke with a bright smile, sipping her wine while her eyes constantly searched her employer’s expression. The middle-aged man merely nodded absently, his thoughts clearly elsewhere.
After a moment, he stirred from his reverie and spoke.
“Eat.”
The fare, while respectable, was hardly extravagant—save for the wine, which had been brought from Arajon and represented the finest vintage, a rarity in the rural reaches of Trabaches.
Once the meal concluded without further conversation, the middle-aged man spoke again.
“We shall rest here tonight and verify everything at first light tomorrow. I will settle the remainder of your payment then.”
“We won’t be accompanying you?”
“There’s no need. Rest here at the inn and await my return.”
“Ah… yes, understood.”
The two mercenaries, reading the atmosphere, rose promptly from their seats. Once they had taken their leave, the secretary spoke.
“Still untrustworthy fellows.”
“It’s all finished now. Let it be.”
“Even so, I would recommend leaving a few knights at the inn tomorrow, sir.”
Count Belnoir, the middle-aged man, replied with a bitter expression.
“Have my recent failures shaken even your faith in me?”
“Surely not, sir. That situation was beyond your control.”
“Yes, I never anticipated Duke Fontina possessed such cunning. It was my error.”
Count Belnoir lowered his head and rubbed his eyes. Since that chance encounter at Silverskull last summer, when he had squandered an opportunity that seemed heaven-sent, his spirits had remained deeply dampened. He did not understand why Duke Fontina had aided Boris. This uncertainty led him to suspect that Boris had already surrendered the Winterer to the Duke.
Yet he possessed no means to verify the truth. Should the Winterer have fallen into Duke Fontina’s hands, it would have passed beyond the reach of his own power.
After pursuing it for so long…
News had arrived only as winter’s threshold approached, and with it, the Count had recovered some measure of his former resolve.
Yanika Gos, a mercenary he had once employed and equipped with a mage capable of detecting rare metals, had finally located where Snowguard lay buried.
The moment he received word from the knight he had stationed to watch, he departed at once, exchanging his carriage for a worn one at the border before racing here.
Snow fell outside. While the weather suited the search for winter’s armor, excavating in the dead of night through falling snow proved impractical, so he had postponed the dig until morning.
As winter deepened, foul weather had become relentless. Count Belnoir, a native of the temperate Belcruze region, found Trabaches’s dreary climate most disagreeable.
The thought that he need not return here for some time once this matter concluded brought him modest comfort.
“Go and rest yourself.”
“Very well.”
Soon after, the Count retired to bed and the lights went out. Yet in the adjacent room, there were those who remained awake.
They waited several more hours. When it approached two in the morning, they began their operation.
A window opened, and two shadows leaped into the snow-covered expanse. The snow continued to fall, already burying them up to their ankles.
“Hurry, move quickly.”
Yanika and Romaback swiftly slipped through the Inn’s rear courtyard, threaded between the eaves of the scattered dwellings, and made their way to the great tree at the Village Entrance.
The snow fell so heavily that there was no need to concern themselves with footprints. Already waiting there were some dozen Mercenaries with horses prepared.
Upon spotting them, Yanika waved her hand.
“Hey there! It’s been ages!”
“Yanika, you promised us a cut of the profit, but did it have to be on such a miserable night?”
“If you want a cut, you have to endure the hardship that comes with it. Is everyone ready?”
Once mounted, they departed at once. They rode across the snow-blanketed plains for quite some time. Midway, they joined up with several more men. After another dozen minutes or so, they finally halted.
“Douse the lamps. Move carefully now.”
At their destination, the Count’s subordinates would surely be standing guard. They had to overwhelm them in one swift stroke.
The snow gradually thinned, but the wind grew fiercer. In the pitch darkness of night, one might doubt whether they could find their destination at all, yet Yanika was supremely confident.
She had combed this entire region meticulously over the past several months. A little snow would not obscure her knowledge of it.
At last, a distant light appeared.
These were men accustomed to ambush. The subjugation was accomplished in an instant.
In a place where no one would come to answer their cries, the sentries the Count had posted and two Knights were cleanly slain. It was a night when the red blood seeping into the snow gleamed with peculiar beauty beneath the lamplight.
Without bothering to dispose of the bodies, they seized shovels and pickaxes.
The ground was frozen solid; it would have been better to build a fire first and then dig, but they had no time for such measures.
The moment the Inn discovered Yanika and Romaback were missing, the Knights would follow without delay, and then the matter would become troublesome.
It took a full hour to excavate even a small pit. It seemed there was still much more to go when suddenly the earth gave way with a soft crunch, and something was revealed.
Holding the lamp closer, they saw that beneath the soil lay an empty space—like a burial vault.
They exchanged glances with one another.
“What in the world is this?”
“I don’t know. Just keep digging. Is the surrounding area like this too?”
“Roughly… the width must be more than two paces?”
“It’s an elongated rectangular shape. Or is it elliptical?”
Once they had beaten and broken away the surrounding soil, a truly elongated, empty space came into view. And beneath it….
“Look, there. It’s there.”
“What in the world is that?”
“Hey, Yanika… you said it was a corpse, right? But is that a corpse?”
“I don’t know either! If it’s not a corpse, then what is it!”
The man holding the lamp tied a rope to its handle and lowered it below. All could see clearly. What lay within.
A young man, asleep. Or rather, a young man who appeared to have been buried while sleeping.
Whether he slept or was truly dead, none dared to say. Cheeks pale as wax, eyelids gently closed, brown hair matted with soil, two hands loosely clasped….
His clothes, lying on the earthen floor, had decayed and faded, and his boots were completely worn through. Yet his body remained intact. As if he had fallen asleep yesterday, or perhaps a thousand years ago—utterly unmarred.
And yet this was a corpse that had died years ago?
“I… I… haven’t we made some terrible mistake here?”
“I want to pull my hands back. Yanika, this has some kind of frightening magic cast upon it.”
“You said he died years ago. Bodies decompose within four days, so what is all this?”
“Could he still be alive?”
Yanika pressed her thin lips together, then they trembled. She felt the fear too.
But I hadn’t come all this way to face such a disaster. After all the effort, all the careful planning to get here!
Romaback gently tugged at Yanika’s wrist and spoke.
“Yanika… let’s go. We should turn back. Something feels wrong. I have a bad feeling about this.”
Yanika suddenly felt rage surge up and let out a sharp cry.
“What kind of nonsense is that! Even if we bury him again, we’ve already killed those men. Do you think we’ll get paid a single coin if we go back empty-handed? If we back down now, we leave with nothing! After all the trouble I went through to find this place! I can’t do it. I won’t do it!”
The white armor worn by the young man—that was what I came here for.
Years ago, I’d foolishly let slip the ones who possessed the Winterer, and by the time I’d nearly forgotten about it, I met the Count.
After receiving his proposal and gathering information from various sources, I discovered that this armor alone would provide enough wealth to live comfortably for the rest of my life. Since then, I’ve wagered everything on this single venture.
Looking at the young man’s face again, I recalled the humiliation I’d suffered at his hands before the old mercenary captain Deraki. The memory rekindled my fury, and my resolve hardened.
Yes, whether he’s alive or dead, what is there to hesitate about! If he’s alive, I’ll just kill him again!
Yanika rose to her feet and quickly leaped into the tomb. The naturally formed ossuary wasn’t pleasant, but I couldn’t afford to back down now.
The mercenaries muttered nervously in fear but didn’t leave their posts. Yanika knelt down and tried to remove the armor from Yefnen’s body.
That’s when something shocking happened.
“Ah!”
The moment Yanika’s hands made contact, the young man’s body that had seemed so lifelike crumbled into dust. Like a shell made of powder, it disintegrated in an instant, scattering on the wind and vanishing without a trace.
Yanika’s face turned pale for an entirely different reason. What had disappeared wasn’t just the corpse. The white armor I had sought so desperately had vanished with it.
Yanika stood frozen with wide eyes, then suddenly stretched out both hands and frantically clawed at the ground.
After doing this several times, she sprang to her feet and began hurling curses into the empty air.
“Damn it, damn it all, this cursed… this wretched…”
But the mercenaries outside the tomb sensed something else.
A droning hum surrounded them from all sides. The wind mixed with snow began to howl like something possessed. The lamp flickered and died.
As the light vanished from their eyes, darkness consumed everything.
They couldn’t see each other’s faces, nor could they even locate the gaping mouth of the tomb entrance.
The blizzard wailed like a beast. As horses thrashed and cried out, the sound of things breaking, snapping, and being torn to shreds echoed through the darkness.
They stood frozen in place, unable to move. Their hearts turned to stone and their feet felt cemented to the ground. They could do nothing but await death without understanding what was happening.
Soon, the first scream tore through the air.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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