Chapter 249: Military Parade (Part 1 of 2)
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
The celebration began quite early; the sky hadn’t even brightened yet. With its main magical light, the Borealis illuminated the ground, dispelling the loneliness of the dark night. The hubbub of people caused this city to wake up earlier than usual from its nightly dream.
When the first ceremonial cannons were fired, eagles, which were painted white to represent peace, were released (all the doves purchased from the south had frozen to death in Diffindor), and they started flying in circles above the city. The celebrations for the Day of Peace had now commenced for the entire city and were to last for one week.
In every street and alleyway, both real undead and people dressed as undead could be seen roaming around, dressed in pumpkin heads and monster masks. They performed their own programs and held their own events, adding a festive air to the celebration. Bards performed together in bands, and various street stalls and stores wouldn’t miss this great opportunity to make money, either.
In the plaza in front of the Royal Palace—yep, it should currently be called the Day of Peace Plaza—citizens wrapped in thick clothing were anxiously waiting. It was fairly cold outside as the sun hadn’t even arisen, and people’s breaths were clearly visible as they exhaled. Although their faces were all red from the cold, not a single one of them complained because the most important program of the festival was about to begin.
“Day of Peace, Military Parade—begin!”
The magical announcement caused this sleeping city to no longer remain silent. With a fierce aura about them, the newly born military squads had finished their arrangements, while the invited guests waiting in the temporarily constructed observation towers were filled with expectations for the upcoming performance. After all, it was possible to gain concrete benefits here, and this was their goal to begin with.
As for me? I was filled with various emotions. All of this was what I had accumulated after so long and so much work, as well as my hope for the future. It sure wasn’t easy to reach this step.
When the utterly silent snow-white soul knights entered the field in an orderly formation, everyone inhaled the cold air in exclamation.
On top of their snow-white soul combat steeds, the Frigid Nightmares, were snow-covered knights wearing the most antique style of royal knight armor, with the familiar combat flag of the Mist behind them.
Their Frigid Nightmares chose the form of flying unicorns, and their armor crafted from cold ice was incredibly sturdy, not to mention that they were also equipped with incredibly sharp ice swords, ice javelins, and ice dragonspears.
Just like how the records stated, the Aurora Knights were the most well-rounded knights of all. They were a knight order termed as “unstoppable” whenever they exceeded one hundred in number. However, what appeared in front of everyone was more than five hundred Aurora Knights!
This legendary knight order that had once vanished in the pages of history had now reappeared. When they waved their Aurora Knights flag in the air above the plaza, everyone was already boiling with excitement.
And, when they approached the main podium, they all spread out, revealing fifty-four knights among them. These knights had sturdy ice armor and sharp ice spears like all the others, but their physical bodies and families had all vanished in the long pages of history, not leaving even their names behind.
Yet even if they had nothing more than their bones and souls left, as long as the People of the Mist still required their assistance, these old soldiers wouldn’t retire. At the current moment, their snow-white soul steeds still carried them into the battlefield once more.
“Everyone! Bow!”
The Aurora Knights held their swords horizontally, which was a knight gesture that signified humility and justice. They drummed on their shields, which signified protection and courage. They wielded their battle flags, which was a knight gesture that signified loyalty and justice. The scene before me seemed to have passed through the long rivers of time; it was a familiar scene that had finally appeared before me once again, after the passage of countless years.
“Aurora!”
“Forever!”
Only they had the right to walk at the very forefront, and only these old soldiers who had protected the Mist for more than three hundred years had the right to be the representative guardians of this ancient kingdom in accepting the citizens’ cheers and trust.
However, this time, they were no longer a lonesome small knight order surrounded by enemy forces that outnumbered them by hundreds of times their number. This time, they were surrounded by several hundred younger Aurora Knights, who were looking at their teachers with reverence and trust.
My planted seeds had already sprouted, and each seed received ten seeds’ worth of harvest. These newly-born Aurora Knights not only received their seniors’ armor and weapons; the countless years of military souls and traditions had never been broken. The Northlands’ strongest and most glorious knight order was still alive. This most trusted guardian group of the Mist Kingdom still existed.
The cheers in the plaza shook the skies, and the spectators from all the other countries were filled with shock. The Aurora Knights were all Gold-ranked or higher and had been famous for the past thousands of years in Eich. Now that this legendary knight order, which was rumored to never be able to surpass one hundred members, actually had five hundred and four members appearing in front of them, how could they easily accept this shocking event?
“Milord, will you sell them? As long as you name the price… Ah!”
It was obvious that these strong knights caused Earl Habo from the Rhodes Kingdom to be moved, but the moment he spoke, he discovered that he was no longer able to move, as if he was a frog being stared at by a snake.
A silver sword tip was already at his neck, and his breath was freezing into ice as he exhaled. His guards didn’t even have the time to react.
Then, although the sword vanished, Earl Habo discovered that his over one-hundred-kilogram body was suddenly lifted up. Before him was a pair of angry eyes that burned with cold flames, along with a deathly cold grip on his neck.
“…If there’s a next time, I’ll treat it as an insult to the entirety of East Mist. Only war and death shall greet you.”
And then, I casually tossed him aside, took out a handkerchief, and patiently wiped my hands clean, as if I had accidentally touched a piece of filthy garbage.
Earl Habo gasped for air while at the same time, the other Northlands royals and nobles discussed this scene amongst themselves.
“How foolish! Why did the Rhodes Kingdom send someone so stupid? Hasn’t he ever read a single history book? Doesn’t he know what the Aurora Knights mean to East Mist? He actually dared to ask whether he could buy one? This is basically no different from asking someone to his face how much he would sell his own children for.”
“…Haha! Habo, will you sell your own head? With how suicidal you are, does your king who sent you know about it?”
Apart from the person himself, who laid there collapsed on the ground for quite a while without being able to stand up, such a small matter was quickly forgotten because the military squad that gave people an even deeper impression arrived.
They wore plain and ordinary old armor, with a mixture of wooden and steel swords. Even their horses were mostly on the small and weak side, and they didn’t have the obvious pressure and magic power that the Aurora Knights did, nor did they have extravagant looking armor and weapons. However, when these poor-seeming knights arrived, they received an even warmer welcome from the audience.
“Royal knights! East Mist, forever!”
“East Mist royal knights, our knights, banzai!”
Yep, those weak-seeming knights before everyone were the knights under the royalty’s direct command, the royal knights. They were the newly established royal knights modeled on Diffindor’s royal knights that had perished already.
In every country, the royal knights would forever be the most elite knights, as well as the royalty’s personal army. They would receive the best treatment, the best equipment, and they would also naturally possess the strongest combat strength in the country. They would be required to undertake the most important and dangerous tasks. Just their existence and reputation alone would constitute the pride and honor of any country.
In most countries, each military personnel would treat being able to join the royal knights as the greatest honor. All the at the minimum silver-ranked members of the White Wolf squadron in the Auland Empire was a perfect example of this. This was also true of the Mist Kingdom in the past.
Yet even though the Mist Kingdom had revived, things were different now. East Mist’s royalty was quite poor, and the royal knights were even poorer. The royal knights’ payment wasn’t even as good as what some domain lords’ private armies would receive. Their tasks also wouldn’t be anything like taking part in glorious battles or protecting the royalty; instead, they would be spending most of their time in the poorest and most undeveloped areas, performing small tasks that even mercenaries would deem unprofitable such as disaster relief and getting rid of local dangerous beasts.
Perhaps their military skills weren’t all that high, and their equipment was nothing but hand-me-downs from their ancestors’ ancestors; in fact, the domain lords’ private soldiers would often laugh at them for being good-for-nothings. However, compared to other countries’ royal knights, there was one thing in common.
“For glory and loyalty!”
“We fight for the royalty, we fight for the citizens!”
Yep, after so many years, they never betrayed their own oaths. They had always been protecting the royalty that they swore fealty to and acted as the royalty’s most trusted arms.
When winter arrived, and wild beasts spread everywhere in search of food, they would rush to the forefront. When facing against foreign invaders, they would always sacrifice themselves for the sake of the country, and they had never failed to live up to the emblems of “Fortress of the Mist” on their shoulders.
Two years ago, when the beastmen armies were invading, this ancient royal knight order that was long since outdated and fatigued transformed into the sharpest sword of all under Reyne’s command. Although they were able to beat back the strong enemy, the royal knights lost seventy percent of their members, which was almost no different from having perished entirely. Even if many commoners joined in again as knights and warriors, there was no way for them to recover their combat strength in a short period of time, so they could only helplessly become a backline army and a disaster relief squad.
Reyne was vigorously waving her hand at those knights that had pledged loyalty to her; she hadn’t forgotten about her loyal knights. Nor would I forget about them.
However, the next military squad that appeared caused everyone to fall silent.
“…”
This was a squad of knights that was even more tattered than the royal knights of moments ago. Their swords were blunt, their dragonspears were bent, and their battle flags were already nothing more than tattered cloth. They walked along silently without making a single sound, while the audience all inhaled breaths of cold air and instinctively retreated. That was the instinctive fear that the living would have of the undead.
The silent black-clothed knights walked together without a single command or any hesitation. They had no fear and even no hatred. They merely walked forward silently, as if nothing in the world mattered, which made people think about a procession of shinigamis. [1] 1
They were similarly glorious knights comparable to the royal knights, and when they walked across the podium, they only silently glanced over at me. They had long since stopped needing any commands, and their stubbornness and loyalty had already been proved by the heavens and earth. They didn’t need to care about what others thought of them at all… For the past three hundred plus years, I believed in them, and they swore loyalty to me—and that was enough.
“You don’t like us?”
“Come at us!”
Alright, my description was obviously a tad too premature. Judging by the two signs that the undead knights had suddenly put up, and their expressions, which were filled with distaste towards certain people, it was evident that they weren’t so uncaring after all.
“Damned undead!”
“Bastards!”
They were targeting the members of the Holy Church, who were cursing them from behind me. When I turned around and saw that the young female Holy Knight Aivla was angered to the point that she was jumping up and down, I smiled in satisfaction.
There was a reason for these two royal knight groups from different generations to have come together.
East Mist’s royal knight order had lost its chain of succession and its core combat strength and future prospects. And, although the Mist Kingdom’s undead royal knight order was powerful, it lacked the ability to add fresh blood. Without this as the foundation, both royal knight orders were lacking in a different area, which was why I decided to put them together.
They could finally put down the heavy responsibilities that they shouldn’t have been bearing. Tasks such as city defense and disaster relief would be given over to my future Town Security knights, while the future royal knight order would be led and taught by the Great Sword Saint Fayde and other such veteran royal knights in its reorganization.
The total number after reorganization was projected to be approximately five thousand, and all of them were the Mist Kingdom’s ace soldiers and elite knights. Perhaps it would take a while longer for them to mature, but they would eventually become just like other countries’ royal knights—the guardians of the royalty as well as the top-class soldiers who would be able to determine the combat situation on the battlefield.
“May the Holy Light cleanse all those damned undead!”
“I’ve lived for so long, and it’s the first time seeing so many undead daring to come out into the open.”
I glanced over at all the Holy Church members who were filled with righteous anger, and I shrugged my shoulders uncaringly. It was their fault for always looking for trouble these days, and it was already quite a lot of self-restraint on my knights’ part to not go looking for them for trouble.
Perhaps this royal knight order composed of both the living and the dead would attract unnecessary attention and controversy, and perhaps it would cause that title of Saint of Holy Light to disappear from my hands before I even received it, but I one hundred percent agreed with yet another sign that my undead knights raised.
“The bald monk likes the nun, but what does that have to do with the Daoist? We’re right here in front of you, but what the hell does it have to do with the Holy Church? You don’t like us? Go ahead and come fight us!”
Note:
1. According to Wikipedia, Shinigami (死神, “god of death” or “death spirit”) are gods or supernatural spirits that invite humans toward death, and can be seen to be present or interpreted to be present in certain aspects of Japanese religion and culture.