→ Rest (3)←
The war of snow soon came to an end. Although it had begun some distance away from the main roads, there was still snow everywhere including the main streets due to the immense scale it had reached.
“Everyone! Let’s clean up now that we’re done playing!”
I called out after bringing broomsticks from the barracks. It snowed very often in this area so the people in the city had a few broomsticks they could lend.
“Hehe~. It’s my first time cleaning snow,” said Marie while gathering snow into a pile with magic. Next to her was Doggo raking the snow with a broom.
“I won’t get in trouble for making the esteemed princess of the Potato Empire clean snow, right?”
“Hmm…! I, I’m telling you I was raised normally. I’m just an average countryside farm girl!”
“…”
“…”
“……”
“……Maybe not average.”
“We don’t call a countryside girl with 2 million hectares of farmland ‘average’.”
It would be nothing but blatant deception to put the word ‘average’ in front of her name.
“…You’re always teasing me about how well off my family is.”
…Did she not like it? I guessed I had been overusing the term ‘potato princess’, but when I looked at her, I realized she was gazing up at me with a smile.
This chapter is updated by freēwēbnovel.com.
“Why don’t you think about it this way? All of that will be yours if we get married.”
“Kuhup…”
It was obvious what she was trying to insinuate, and frankly speaking, it was quite tempting. Endless stream of money of the Dunareff and a beautiful wife. How could anyone not be tempted?
Slowly, Marie brought herself closer with a face of expectation.
“Stop flirting like that.”
In the end, I defeated the temptation and gave her a flick to the forehead.
“Ahuk…! So mean…”
“Let’s just enjoy the moment for now. When it all comes to an end… I will come up with an answer.”
“…I will be waiting.”
Saying that, she quickly shook off her dejection and returned to having a smile.
“But it was fun. It’s been so long since I made a snowman.”
“You’ve been busy these past few years after all.”
“Yes. But this year should be the last, right?”
“It will be. I will make this the last,” I replied while patting her head.
Until the very end, I vowed to be responsible for Marie, this poor girl who had met a pitiful end both in the original storyline and the last iteration.
“You too, Doggo.”
“Woof?”
“Make sure you keep your mom safe. You have to protect her when daddy is not there.”
“Woof!”
It was such a relief that I had been able to save her.
****
At the end of the big commotion, the boys and girls decided to use the newly built hot spring to wash away their sweat.
They were all tired after sweating heavily in the snow, and quickly agreed with the idea. As a result, Marie, Alicia, Hua Ran… as well as everyone within Korin Guardians headed straight to the hot spring.
“Wow~. Marie-hoobae-nim. This looks like a proper hot spring,” said Estelle, showing her admiration at how legitimate the hot spring appeared.
After looking around, she continued.
“We have to give a prize to the people that built this place. Tell me the names.”
“It’s the mage slaves of the Tower,” Marie replied.
“Uwek.”
Estelle immediately retrieved her thoughts about giving them a prize, because she fervently hated the mages of the Tower.
“Let’s hurry up.”
They all carefully entered the hot spring with nothing but a long towel covering their bodies and sat down on the rock beneath. Although they weren’t unfriendly to the point of being awkward, there was still a fair bit of distance between where they were sitting.
“Hmm…”
“Fuaah…”
“…”
Hua Ran was splashing the surface of the water mindlessly while Alicia was stealing glances at the wall.
Whereas Marie and Estelle were observing one another without letting go of their nerves.
It’s not like they were enemies.
They weren’t, but…
For a long time, the two of them had understood that they were rivals – love rivals.
“……Haah.”
Feeling the obvious tension in the air, Josephine looked around at all the girls that were related to ‘him’.
Marie Dunareff.
The future duchess of the Dunareff Dukedom, the Potato Empire of the south.
Their endless fortunes were enough to put her as one of the most valuable people in the continent, and yet even apart from that, she was a great mage herself.
Alicia Arden.
One of the successor candidates of the Arden Household – one who had so much talent in swords, that the Sword Emperor had personally labeled her as a successor despite being an illegitimate child.
She seemed to have less confidence than her sister, Lunia Arden, but… these sisters were oddly proactive when it came to love affairs.
Estelle Hadassa El Rath.
Marie and the others were famous and well-known, but Estelle had a peerless position.
The child of god who received their endless affection. The only one with unparalleled religious authority after ending the long religious conflict and bringing the religions back to one.
She was pretty much the pope so she might not be able to become the queen on top of that, but technically, she was the first in line to the throne.
There was no doubt that she was the most prestigious lady in the entire continent.
‘And besides…’
Josephine recalled the confrontation that had hit the headlines last winter back in the royal capital. It was such big news that even Kranel was in a rush to share.
King David’s shocking offer was to marry both Princess Estelle and Princess Miruam to Korin. Even for the Dunareff with their unlimited wealth, making a deal like that was nothing easy.
“Haa…”
It was weird.
In just 3 years, Korin Lork had made the top ladies of the kingdom with the most influence and talents into his people.
What was going on?
Was this truly by coincidence?
Korin Lork.
He definitely was a good person with great talents himself… but for some reason, Josephine couldn’t help but think that his martial talents were not where his true gifts were in.
‘No matter how I see it, it feels like it would result in a bloodthirsty battle.’
Even aside from those three girls, there were several other women around him who were each powerful and strong. It was concerning because a civil war breaking out between these women could put the world at risk yet again.
“Haa…”
It was truly a big concern. Josephine thought while sighing.
“Is something wrong?” asked Alicia, after hearing her sigh and coming closer.
“N, no. Nothing.” Josephine replied.
Josephine tried her best to hide the secret that could break their relationships all at once.
‘How could I… tell them that Hua Ran has Korin’s baby?’
She had shared it with Erin so that she could be mentally prepared for it, but things were different for them.
These girls were only tied together by one connecting figure, that is Korin Lork, and Josephine couldn’t dare break that apart by sharing the secret.
“Oh right, Hua Ran-ssi. How are you feeling? I heard you vomit and feel more fatigued when you’re pregnant.”
“Huh?”
“Hnn?”
“???”
Alicia suddenly dropped a bomb that gathered the eyes of everyone nearby.
“Pregnant?”
“What?”
Marie and Estelle showed the biggest reactions, as they stared at Hua Ran with trembling eyes, wondering if they heard something wrong.
There had been a tacit agreement to step up ‘once everything was over’. Was there really someone who not only jumped the queue, but also had the winner’s card with them?
‘I, I thought I was hearing things!’
Marie, who had been denying it and trying her best to think of it as her hearing things, was shaking, and so was the water in the hot spring.
“……Me?”
And the one at the center of this uproar, Hua Ran, simply tilted her head and asked back at Alicia, wondering what she was talking about.
“I heard you have to take care of your body even when you are early in pregnancy. You have to be careful.”
“W, w, w, w, waittt…! Wait, Alicia-hoobae-nim? W, w, w, what do you mean?!”
Estelle was not only flustered and was screaming. Pregnant? Hua Ran? With whose baby? There could only be one person!
“H, Hua Ran…! Is this true?”
She just couldn’t believe it and asked Hua Ran to confirm it, but Hua Ran simply blinked her eyes and looked back, before asking as if she was lost.
“What’s pregnant?”
“Huh?”
“Hmm?”
“Umm… Hua Ran-ssi,” said Alicia. “You were like… buying baby goods, right?”
“Yeah.”
“With Professor Josephine.”
“And?”
Alicia was also lost for words because of the unexpected response from Hua Ran.
Why was she buying that now if she wasn’t pregnant, and why was she preparing for a baby so far ahead of time?
“So uhh… wasn’t that because you had a baby?”
“I don’t have one ‘yet’ though.”
“???”
The girls couldn’t understand what was going on and were starting to feel frustrated when Hua Ran suddenly threw in the keyword.
“The storks aren’t coming because of the snow. So I will have a baby when it stops snowing.”
“???”
“???”
“???”
Hold hands with a man overnight and a stork will come carrying a baby.
It didn’t take long for Alicia to see through what Hua Ran was saying, and realize she was lacking in health education.
After some hesitation, Alicia started explaining about the process of love.
“So… when a man and a woman— they have— where they— and through ejaculation—”
It was a rather explicit lesson on reproduction.
“……Huh?”
‘……Huh?’
Like a middle-schooler being taught about sex for the first time at school, Hua Ran’s face was turning bright red with her usual indifference nowhere to be seen.
“That’s how you give birth to a baby. Okay?”
“…”
The rest of the girls, who were suddenly made to hear about health education, appeared rather awkward but none of them were as flustered as Hua Ran.
And only after looking at their reactions did Hua Ran realize that everyone else was aware of this shocking truth except for herself.
“Im…”
“Im?”
“Immoral…”
The first ever health education was a great shock to the 4-year-old jiangshi and the 15-year-old girl.
****
Combining several armies into one was no easy feat.
150,000 northerners and 70,000 from the kingdom. There were more than 10,000 in knights and mages alone, and breaking them down into battalions was tremendously difficult.
Who would be the commanders? What would be the line of commands and why did everyone have to be a part of this war?
Well, although things were difficult, the reason and rationale behind taking part in this war was clear for both the northerners and the kingdom’s military.
The sacred expedition was grouped into one due to the fake prophecy from the Saintess, and the northerners were also being commanded by skjaldmaers, the demigods whom they served. They would probably appreciate the cooperation of the southern kingdom’s expedition army, because that could allow them to defeat Tates Valtazar.
‘They were fighting against each other in the last iteration though.’
According to the original storyline, there was a conflict between the kingdom and the northerners, coming down after breaking the northern border city in one fell swoop. That as a result slowed down the preparation against Valtazar, but things were different this time around.
All those northerners were on our side. As long as we could persuade the valkyries, it meant that their entire military would be coming with us.
“Anyone inside?”
That was why I was here, forming connections with valkyries.
“You have come, Sir Korin Lork.”
“Please drop the ‘sir’ part.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Skuld the Valkyrie was a beautiful lady with golden eyes and long black hair reaching her waist.
Even though I had met several valkyries, Skuld was different from them in many ways. Rather than a warrior, she was more like a scholar and gave off a mysterious atmosphere that made her appear omniscient.
“Could you share the reason behind your visit?”
“I would like to ask you to see the future for us.”
“Aha~” she smiled.
Another reason how she was different from the other valkyries was in that she was one of the norns who could foretell the future. The norns prophesied about the world’s destiny, and out of them, Skuld was one who could tell the future.
“Sir Korin, your destiny is so obvious in plain sight, that I wonder if there even is a point in me foretelling it.”
“…”
I wanted to ask her. Could I really defeat him and save the world? Was it a happy ending waiting for us at the end of the tunnel?
As if she could see through my intention, Skuld continued with a smile.
“If what awaited you was a destined defeat, would that make you give up?”
“…Probably not.”
“Exactly, so there is no point in foretelling this destiny. Because you won’t give up no matter the outcome.”
Perhaps it was a roundabout way of telling me that fighting without thinking about destiny could yield better results, and she had a point.
“Well then… can you tell me anything else about my future?”
“…Even if I tell you certain aspects of the future, it doesn’t mean they will be predestined.”
What she meant was that the future I saw here would be meaningless if I lost to Valtazar.
“Right.”
“Foreseeing the future is fundamentally about seeing a fragment about the future. We cannot twist or distort it by any means.”
“Can I think of it as something with a high probability?”
“That is correct. Think of it as one of the ‘possibilities’.”
‘Very ambiguous and obscure I know,’ she added with a smile.
“But if you are okay with that,” Skuld continued. “I can have a look into your future.”
“I, if that’s okay.”
It was a bit nerve-wracking, because there was a chance that it wouldn’t be positive.
If this was modern Earth, I would have ignored it, thinking to myself that nothing good comes out of believing in fortune-tellers. I still remembered how an old man claiming to be a physiognomist, my PT client from the gym, was talking about some nonsense. I had the ‘Destiny of Dilemma,’ or something like that apparently. Hahahaha.
But this was a world with gods, magic and real mythologies. They wouldn’t be pure nonsense right?
“If you could give me your hand…”
“Ah. Sorry.”
Skuld opened my hand and began reading through the lines of my palm. Then, she closed her eyes in silence.
Breaking her long silence, she said.
“…I can see a woman with a bulging belly. You seem happy with your ear next to her belly.”
W, was this about relationships? A woman with a bulging belly… who was it? I wondered.
Was it Marie? Alicia? Hua Ran? Estelle? Miruam? Master Erin?
Damn it. Now that I thought about it, I was one hell of a son of a bitch, wasn’t I?
“Aaah. Sir Korin you are… surrounded by a lot of women. Oh no…”
“W, what’s wrong?”
“There’s no need to worry. You will… overcome the pain and bear fruit in the midst of it.”
“How can I not be worried!?”
“I can see you, Sir Korin… vomiting blood in your last breath.”
There’s plenty to be worried about!
“Sir Korin. Your fate is that of someone who will die due to women. Ahh, what a happy ending for a man it is.”
………… What?