Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 622

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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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Someday, when someone finally
pierces my heart,
I shall remember you as you are today.
My young enemy,
my first foe born anew.
And on that day, if a heart dwells within me,
the hardest shard among them,
the one cradling black flame,
shall be yours.
Do not doubt that I have reserved the finest for you.
Episode 74.
The Actors of the Mystery Theater (1)
Part 5.
1. The Trials of Lord Castile
Laurent Castille gazed down at the unidentifiable orange paste clinging to both his feet and wondered whether coming to such a place had truly been the right decision. The paste emanated a stench like spoiled whiskey floating atop rotten eggs.
Had he possessed a choice? Yes, though one would need to reach far back into the past to find it.
Without the resolve he had made four years prior, he would never have journeyed to the perilous Wasteland on the far side of the Continent—a place that had served only as the backdrop for countless childhood tales of horror. Laurent had long considered himself fundamentally different from his countrymen, who refused to venture beyond the borders of their native Territory, yet he had never been curious enough to wonder whether the Land of Mortals itself truly existed.
This grotesque fortress erected in such a place was simply called the Keep. No one knew who had built it; they merely discovered it existing and made use of it, so no one had bothered to bestow upon it any proper name.
Imagining that it had stood in this very form since the days of Ganapoli sent a chill down his spine. Nearly a thousand years had passed, yet it bore no trace of ruin or decay.
The large-scale emergence of “Metamorphic Pshiki”—colloquially known as mutant Pshiki—which rapidly devastated regions adjacent to the Land of Mortals, had begun roughly three years ago. Several Mages had approached in secret, but Pshiki could not be resolved through magic, and it was not long before each nation began dispatching investigators to the borderlands, forcing the Mages to reconsider their approach.
If left unchecked, kings ignorant of both magic and the Land of Mortals might undertake misguided measures in the name of countermeasures, only worsening the crisis. It would be far better to share information and have them follow counsel.
The Mages of each nation were not ordinarily cooperative with one another, but faced with such a grave threat, they formed a united front centered on Symbolion for the first time, selecting these ruins as their internal stronghold.
Yet the nations, unable to rely solely on the Mages and fearing they might lose control if they remained idle, stepped forward to dispatch armies to assist. The Mages had never possessed great loyalty to their home nations, and the kings knew this well.
As such massive numbers of personnel began to move, the Mages installed several teleportation gates. The Orlanne gate was located on a mountain called Epalante in Trevizo.
The journey from Epalante to the Keep, which would normally require four days of travel, was crossed in the span of a few blinks. The convenience was incomparable to traversing the perilous Wasteland directly.
Though he enjoyed such extraordinary convenience that even kings had never experienced, it was hardly an experience worth boasting of. While he acknowledged the convenience, the experience itself bordered on unpleasantness.
Perhaps it was because those untrained in magic were indirectly experiencing it. During the brief passage through the gate, his very personality felt as though it had been unraveled into thousands of threads before being miraculously rewoven, yet he had to maintain his original composure as though nothing were amiss—all while fearing that a single snip would reduce him to a tangled knot. His entire body would tense involuntarily, as if the elements composing his being might crumble to dust.
The destination of such a passage was this “Waiting Room.” This place, resembling a food storage chamber with failed temperature control, was sweltering and perpetually reeked of decay. The source of the stench was precisely this paste. For reasons unknown, the orange paste invariably clung to one’s feet upon passing through the gate.
He had pressed several Mages about the paste’s true nature, but they all wore that patronizing expression adults use when concealing secrets from children, offering only vague replies like “You would find little joy in knowing.”
One had to wait roughly ten minutes in such a place before venturing outside, supposedly following the Mages’ recommendations, though no one understood the reason why.
Yet no one disobeyed. Within the Keep, the sole safe haven in this perilous land, the Mages were enigmatic and frustrating, yet simultaneously absolute. One had to believe there was a special reason behind everything they declined to explain in detail.
Whether that was genuinely true, whether they were simply being difficult, or whether they had merely forgotten—there was no way to tell.
But if he had returned to twenty-two and chosen a different path, he would have served as an ordinary Etoile until roughly forty or fifty, suffered some injury, retired to his native Territory, spent his remaining years supporting a wastrel, and by then the wastrel himself might have contracted gout or syphilis, inadvertently leading a pious life—but….
Damn it, this was a hundred times better.
“Welcome back, Lord Castile.”
Before him stood Vivienne Armandieu, a second-year Etoile, maintaining perfect posture and even smiling calmly in this foul-smelling barn.
It was hardly surprising. Vivienne’s smile had earned a reputation among the Etoile that merely witnessing it sent chills down one’s spine. The worse the situation, the grimmer the prospects, and the more hopeless the circumstances, the higher the probability of seeing it.
No one had ever seen Vivienne burst into genuine laughter, and the prevailing opinion—accepted with disturbing credibility—was that all who had witnessed it were dead.
Though both were Etoile, they no longer addressed each other with the casual familiarity of old. This was entirely due to the Grand Duchy’s military reorganization. Mingling with soldiers from other regiments and taking orders required maintaining a certain bearing; they could not conduct themselves like enlisted men.
As Laurent looked at Vivienne’s face, questioning the meaning of her smile, the corners of her mouth rose slightly higher. Laurent exhaled a short breath and spoke.
“Thank you for your efforts, Madame Armandieu. Please convey to Her Majesty Queen Ingesbichi’s advisor that they have safely joined the escort party that came out to meet them at the border.”
It was more a diplomatic goodwill gesture than an escort operation. Officials from a nation with infrequent formal exchanges, having met at the Keep, apparently wanted to win each other’s favor—and someone had proposed the unusual idea of having Etoile from Orlanne escort Her Majesty Hyacan’s advisor. The advisor who had come turned out to be a relative of the queen as well.
The chatter about “Etoile coming all the way to the Keep—isn’t this the most useful role they could play?” and “If we’re going to do this, let’s send someone young and handsome” grated on me, but I reasoned that since Etoile’s fame had spread to other nations, it could only benefit Orlanne. So I had gone through with it.
“Yes, you’ve worked hard. While you were away, there was good news regarding Lord Castile.”
Good news? I watched Vivienne’s smile never falter and swallowed once, waiting for what came next.
“To resolve the problem that arose in the regiment under his command….”
Though they called it “the regiment under his command,” I wasn’t actually directing it. I had been summoned merely to offer tiresome advice, after all.
“Effective today, you are being promoted to Colonel.”
They had granted me a rank equal to the commanding officer of the target regiment so I could offer my unwelcome interference more smoothly, but even that was temporary. What meaning could such a title hold when it would vanish once the Grand Duchy’s military reorganization was complete?
This was hardly good news, so I furrowed my brow slightly and looked at Vivienne. At that, her smile faded from her face.
I asked directly.
“So what problem am I supposed to solve?”
“A command vacuum. It’s been decided that Lord Castile will assume command of the Princess Alice Regiment until a new commander arrives.”
“Wait—why did this happen?”
“Six soldiers went missing yesterday.”
Her calm tone made it sound like a trivial incident at first, but it couldn’t be. The only place people could go missing from here was outside the Keep.
With no major operation underway yet, the gates were sealed. Only one person in all of Orlanne’s military could order them opened—Leon. Even then, the Captain would need to consult with the commanders of the other nations.
“Are you saying Baron Nouaye was among those six?”
“Yes. The reason he left hasn’t been determined, but it appears he took reckless action because there was something he needed to hide.”
The Orlanne military garrison at the Keep consisted of one brigade made up of four regiments—the Count Kerne Regiment, the Grey Fox Regiment, the Green Banner Regiment, and the Princess Alice Regiment—plus auxiliary units.
Two Etoile and two or three trainee soldiers were assigned to each regiment to serve as so-called tiresome advisors. Someone had apparently judged that if the targets were willing to listen, and given that they were Etoile, such a force could accomplish something like reform—but the reality was far different, making it fundamentally an exercise in futility.
Baron Nouaye, commander of the Princess Alice Regiment, was nicknamed “the Frilled Lizard.” He was a man who completed inspections with merely a chin gesture, enjoyed afternoon naps without fail, and devoted himself so thoroughly to grooming that he maintained an attendant for each of his uniform, cap, and sword. The nickname had stuck before I even arrived at the Keep, and when I first saw the creature that supposedly lived in this region, I burst out laughing at how perfectly it matched him.
Yet I had never confirmed from my perspective whether he even knew how to wield a sword—so what possessed him to venture outside the Keep with merely a handful of soldiers? Had he forgotten that while the Wasteland was usually quiet, dangerous creatures appeared there periodically?
Then Vivienne added:
“The reorganization work will proceed more smoothly now.”
Vivienne was right. The greatest obstacle to the Grand Duchy’s military reorganization had always been the commanders themselves. Subduing ordinary soldiers was hardly difficult for Etoile.
They might grumble and complain, but they readily concede once they feel the difference in ability. But commanders—those creatures were slippery as greased eels, and if their interests were entangled, they wouldn’t hesitate at the most transparent excuses.
Once Baron Nouaye realized that I, who had taken charge of reorganizing his regiment, was not someone he could move with a chin gesture or a glance, he had progressed through orders, jokes, false friendliness, and feigned hearing loss—recently resorting to selective amnesia, forgetting only what I said. Yet even so, I had never wished for his death tomorrow.
Outside the Keep, disappearance was synonymous with death. There was something chilling about Vivienne’s coldness in calling such a thing “good news,” but I showed no sign of it. It wasn’t as though I were encountering Vivienne for the first or second time.
“Understood.”

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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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