Chapter 106: Chapter 106

Instead of heading straight south toward Beshalia, the army that set out from Hasra moved as if sweeping through the entire southern region.

Since there was no particular need to be pressed for time, it was to display that the entire Kingdom of Pendia had come under Cheryn’s influence.

“They’re here!”

“Open the gates! Hurry!”

Just as in the west, everywhere they went in the south, they received an enthusiastic welcome.

To be precise, however, it would be more accurate to say that out of fear that the army might commit atrocities, the people opened the gates and cheered in advance terror.

The southern lords who had rejected Elvin and surrendered to Cheryn shed tears as they each returned to their respective territories.

“You have returned, My Lord!”

“How much you must have missed your family…”

Others thought they wept simply because they were happy to return to their native soil, but in truth, it was because they remembered the rights and privileges they had surrendered to Cheryn.

Even so, they could not break their promise now.

Doing so would mean that Shan Barendil and the two thousand soldiers following him would trample their territories to dust.

Those who had come out to greet their lord gasped as they looked at the young man standing at the head of the thousands of soldiers.

“Is that person over there the famous Lord Thousand-Slayer?”

“Not the big guy, the one next to him.”

“Wow…”

The southerners could not help but admire the strongest knight in Pendia, whom they had only heard about in rumors.

A full suit of plate armor in a faint golden hue wrapped around his tall stature.

Even down to the Horais warhorse with a metallic sheen, half a size larger than other horses.

He looked truly like a great warrior stepped straight out of myth.

Moreover, since his physical Altoan traits were not prominent, there was no great racial aversion toward him either.

His large green eyes, with slightly drooping outer corners, looked somewhat gentle for a knight, but given his formidable skill, it emanated a dual charm instead.

After all, didn’t someone who didn’t look particularly strong but was actually powerful seem more mysterious than someone who looked overtly strong?

In this way, the value of Shan’s existence had now become something that surpassed even the racial limitations of being an Altoan.

The kingdom’s strongest knight, and the successor of Count of Shedil.

Young, unmarried, and while his appearance was not wildly handsome, he was decently good-looking.

In the eyes of young ladies in their prime, he was quite a full package of attractive qualities.

On a dark night, Shan, who was lying in the guest room provided by the lord trying to sleep, stood up at the sound of knocking on the door.

“Excuse me.”

Soon, the one who entered inside was a girl who looked roughly around his age.

Was she the daughter of some viscount, the lord of this place?

Her long reddish-brown hair, a characteristic of the Ruman Kingdom, seemed to burn as it reflected the lamp light.

“What brings you here?”

“I-I have admired Young Master Shan’s fame for a long time. But today, after seeing you in person, I simply could not hold back… You may think of me as a lewd woman if you wish. Please, if only for tonight, allow me to warm your bed.”

Looking up at him with teary blue eyes, the girl rubbed her body against Shan while wearing a translucent outfit that showed everything underneath.

Words followed about how her heart had been pounding uncontrollably from the moment she saw him, and how his glowing green eyes looked like starlight.

Shan looked down at the girl without any change in expression and spoke in a calm voice.

“Please return to your room.”

“Young Master…”

“I am grateful for your affection, but I have no interest in you, My Lady.”

Not that he could not love her, but that he had no interest.

At the words that completely shattered a woman’s pride, the girl wore a shocked expression.

Even though it was a seduction technique that had never failed once when tried on several men, including young knights of the fief!

The girl, who had been glaring with a venomous look while bowing her head, soon nodded with a sorrowful smile.

“…I understand, it cannot be helped. I only hope you will remember my heart.”

Inside, rage boiled up, but she did not betray it on her face.

If he were a mere commoner, she would have slapped his cheek, but the young knight before her was someone even her father watched warily and bowed servilely to.

He was a renowned knight with quite a cute face and a great body, so she had made a move, only for him to humiliate her like this!

She felt that she would only be satisfied later if she slandered him at noble ladies’ tea parties or social gatherings as a man with functional problems.

No, that was probably the truth.

Otherwise, there was no way he would decline when an attractive woman like her requested a one-night fling.

After sending away the woman who harbored resentment in her heart, Shan closed the door, lay down on the bed, and fell into thought while staring at the ceiling.

‘Is there really something wrong with me after all?’

Though he was now a fully grown man with secondary sexual characteristics developed, he had not felt even a shred of interest in that direction yet.

Even when an attractive woman like the one just now asked for intimacy and acted suggestively, far from feeling excited, he only felt a strange sense of aversion.

He had never even felt the desire for masturbation, which was said to develop naturally.

Since this was different in many ways from the knowledge he had learned before, he had consulted Roden about it, but Roden had said he didn’t know well because he had just felt it naturally.

Because Roden had been bewildered, saying he didn’t know what or how to teach in such matters, Shan had not asked further after that.

He was aware that he was slightly out of step with ordinary people.

He did not know whether his unusual upbringing was the cause, or if it was simply a physical trait or some kind of illness.

‘I’ll have to get married and have children later, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to.’

Still, strictly speaking, there were a few cases where he didn’t feel ‘aversion,’ even if it wasn’t that kind of contact.

Like when he held Cheryn tightly in his arms, or when he held Cheryn’s hand every night before she fell asleep.

Rather than excitement, should he say he felt comfort as their warmth touched? Perhaps that was how he experienced affection.

*

Going through various events while ‘liberating’ city after city in the south for half a month.

Finally, Shan’s army arrived at the coast at the southern edge of Pendia.

The vast horizon, white sea foam, and sandy beach embedded with shells here and there welcomed them.

“Indeed, so this is what it’s like. The sea…”

Shan’s green eyes caught the sight of rolling waves, his nose caught the salty smell, and his ears caught the sound of crashing waves.

His curious, amazed expression was not that of a great knight famed throughout Pendia, but utterly innocent like that of a country boy.

Beside him, Roden crossed his arms and spoke boastfully.

“Come to think of it, this must be your first time seeing it. How is it? It can’t even compare to the Tesen River, right?”

“Indeed. Have you seen the sea before, Roden?”

“Once when I was young. I went to Beshalia with my parents. Back then, I never imagined that my second visit would be as a conqueror.”

Hadn’t Roden’s mother passed away from illness when he was young?

Since that was when he was six or ten years old, it was certainly a very long time ago.

Not only Shan, but there were also many among the other soldiers and knights experiencing the sea for the first time and finding it fascinating.

In particular, most of those who had served in Cheryn’s army from early on were born and raised near Hasra, Shedil, or Palles, so they were far removed from the seaside.

“Whoa, it’s so refreshing!”

“Take this!”

“Pah, sand got in my mouth, you bastard!”

They played on the shore with sand or splashed in the water, excitedly enjoying themselves like people who had come on vacation.

At times, someone who drank a mouthful of seawater grimaced, saying it was salty and bitter.

“Ugh. What is this? Salty and bitter…”

“In the deep ocean, there’s a wooden barrel overflowing with salt that the Goddess placed there Herself. You didn’t even know that?”

An older soldier giggled as he recited lines from an old folk song.

Of course, playing was nice, but an army had to maintain a certain level of discipline.

Here, Roden took on the role of the harsh instructor.

“Hey there! Where do you think I picked up this spear just now! Do I need to shove this up your ass before you come to your senses-?!”

“We’re sorry-y-y!”

At the return of the hellish drill sergeant after a long time, those who had been lax immediately snapped to military discipline.

The southern soldiers already accustomed to the sea felt a strange sensation as they watched that scene.

“Well now…”

“Right?”

To think that those who rejoiced like young children at mere ocean waves were the warriors who reigned as objects of fear throughout Pendia.

Truly, even seeing it with their own eyes, they could hardly believe it.

While they were enjoying themselves so thoroughly, a faint singing voice began to echo from afar.

Hearing it, the southern soldiers freaked out and covered their ears.

“Everyone cover your ears! It’s sirens!”

“What? What’s that?”

After wearing puzzled expressions for only a short moment, the faces of several soldiers turned dazed.

Blankly staring toward where the song was coming from, they tilted their heads left and right.

Seeing this, one of the soldiers covering his ears shouted toward Shan.

“If you listen to their voices, you’ll be dragged into the sea!”

“Predictable bastards. Let’s go catch them!”

At Shan’s proposal, the knights shouted “Oh!” and mounted their horses.

The horses also staggered as if falling under the sirens’ hypnosis, but thanks to the priests quickly casting blessings of mental protection, the effect was neutralized.

The knights, protecting their minds with firm Fighting Spirit and divine blessings, spurred their horses toward where the sound was coming from.

“Over there! They’re on top of that reef!”

[♩♬♪, ♪♩♬♪♬♬♪!]

A dozen or so women with wings on their backs and lower bodies like fish were singing atop the reef.

A bizarre voice that sounded like language if listened to casually, and sounded like mere humming when heard differently.

Judging by volume, it shouldn’t reach a distance hundreds of meters away, but as it was a magical voice, it seemed perceivable even from afar.

“Ugh…”

“I’m… feeling a bit dizzy.”

Despite receiving the blessings, several knights with relatively weak Fighting Spirit subtly grimaced.

In contrast, Shan, standing at the front, listened to the voices from the closest position without shaking in the slightest.

No, he didn’t even feel like he was under a mental attack at all.

It seemed to be thanks to the ring newly worn on his left ring finger, which granted resistance against mental attacks.

“We can’t walk there. Does anyone know how to swim?”

“I can’t…”

“Anyone who lived in the Tesen River basin obviously knows how to swim.”

While the knights who couldn’t swim guarded the horses, the knights who could swim invoked the magic on their plate armor, folding it into a cuirass form, threw it onto the sand, and dived into the sea.

Seeing the knights swimming toward them, the group of sirens was startled and sang even louder, but the knights grimaced heavily and endured it with the power of Fighting Spirit and divine blessings.

Shan, whose swimming skills were the most outstanding, leaped onto the reef first and swung his sword toward a siren.

[Kkiaak!]

Unlike its beautiful singing voice, the siren let out a screech like a raspy bird as it was split in half.

What Shan was using was not Guardian of the East which he usually wielded, but a sword with a blade dark red like blood.

Red Pledge.

A treasure boasted of by the Pendian royal family, and a trophy obtained after slaying Marquis Abel.

This sword, considered one of the finest artifacts of ancient Alto, possessed the power to prevent bleeding from stopping on any thrust or cut it inflicted.

Naturally, its functionality as a sword was also equal to that of Guardian of the East.

If forced to pick a drawback, it would be that because it contained no True Iron, its durability was slightly inferior.

Thanks to that, blood poured continuously without stopping from the dead siren’s corpse.

[Kkiaaaak-!]

As their song failed to work, the sirens hideously distorted their beautiful faces and brandished their sharp claws.

But even so, how nimbly could creatures with fish-like lower bodies possibly move?

While Shan dispatched the second one, the knights who had swum over breathed heavily and engaged the sirens.

*

Before long, having slain all fourteen sirens, they carried the dead sirens on their shoulders and returned to the coast where the soldiers waited.

Among the southern soldiers, those with experience handling sirens butchered them and extracted the usable parts.

Perhaps because they only possessed a fairly strong hypnosis ability and nothing more, no mana stones came out.

“I heard before that the siren’s air bladder, fins, and the tip feathers hold magical power. Merchants from foreign lands even bought them for quite a high price.”

A dark-skinned middle-aged soldier, who said he had lived as a fisherman his whole life, shrugged and spoke.

Shan nodded and pointed at the lower body of a siren.

“By the way, why do these bastards fight on land when they have fish-like lower bodies?”

“I don’t know well, but I heard they aren’t very good at swimming. Maybe it’s because they have wings.”

Indeed, hearing that, it didn’t seem likely that creatures with such large, cumbersome wings would be good at swimming.

If so, it would be nice if they could at least fly, but looking at their state, that didn’t seem to be the case either.

While monsters in general were like that, these creatures were a race whose very anatomy was exceptionally weirdly formed.

“Do creatures like this appear often around here?”

“They don’t show up that often, but when they occasionally appear, several villagers become fish food just like that. Even when riding a boat, if you hear the sound, you have to cover your ears quickly. Fortunately, you don’t lose consciousness immediately, so as long as you’re quick-witted, you can survive.”

Monsters like sirens were hard to find anywhere except on the southern coast.

Monsters came from beyond the Demonic Realm, but the eastern and northeastern parts of Pendia were filled with nothing but mountains and fields.

Creatures living in rivers, like water ghosts, lizardmen, or kelpies, could still move through places like swamps, but even that would be impossible for these bastards.

“Still, I thought it would be somewhat fine since it’s far from the Demonic Realm, but the southern coast doesn’t seem entirely comfortable to live in either.”

After acquiring knowledge through this encounter with new monsters, Shan led the army and moved west.

Before long, Beshalia (the largest city in southern Pendia and the biggest, most bustling port city in Pendia) began to come into view.

Setting up camp on a hill overlooking Beshalia, Shan and Roden looked around the surroundings and exchanged opinions.

“It certainly looks difficult to attack from land. The walls are insanely thick and high, too.”

“Well, it’s a town with an absurd amount of money, after all.”

Beshalia was a city shaped like a long rod bent twice with its open side facing outward.

The river flowing down from the north of the city ran along the walls and exited to the west, acting as a natural moat, while quite rugged hills on the east hindered the deployment of large military forces.

The north gate area, which was the only plausible direction to attack, possessed double walls, meaning that even if one crossed the first, they would be exposed to attacks pouring from all directions while trying to cross the second.

Normally, it seemed to be wide open to receive merchants and travelers coming from the north, but now it was tightly closed, perhaps having detected the approach of Shan’s army.

“Hmm, do you want to scale the walls once more?”

“Not while they are so thoroughly prepared like that.”

At Roden’s playful question, Shan shook his head back and forth.

Whatever else happened, he wished to refrain from having boiling oil poured over him.

While he was deliberating whether he should approach and threaten them to open it, the tightly shut gate of Beshalia opened.

A cavalryman, presumed to be a messenger, rode up the hill on his horse.

Passing with a tense expression through the soldiers who now wore solemn expressions (the playful demeanor from the beach earlier nowhere to be found) he bowed his head before Shan.

“I-I greet the great knight, Sir Shan. I have brought a message from His Excellency, the Marquis of Beshalia.”

“Show me.”

Receiving and unfolding the letter presented by the messenger, Shan unconsciously burst into a dry laugh at the familiar scent of perfume wafting from it immediately.

Was this not an attitude that didn’t even bother to conceal that she was controlling the marquis like a puppet?

The content of the letter was also written such that one could tell its speaker was Yure, the former leader of the Brotherhood and the marquis’s favored concubine.

It seemed she had no intention whatsoever of hiding that she was openly controlling the Marquis of Beshalia.

[I write this on the premise that you have received this letter.]

As promised, I intend to hand over Elvin into your custody.

When you come, I shall open the gates as agreed.

With boundless respect, from Beshalia Castle, Yure.]

An extraordinarily short and concise letter.

Passing it to Roden, Shan asked.

“What should we do? She says she’ll just open the gates if we come.”

“Mmm…”

Though she was giving off all kinds of suspicious vibes, turning back here would also look strange.

Attempting a siege against someone who was offering to surrender properly… to anyone looking, wouldn’t that be the action of a lunatic?

“Honestly, I thought she would pull some strange trick. Like instructing you to come alone to a mansion west of Beshalia if you wanted to take Elvin.”

“If she did that, would you have gone?”

“I would have.”

Since she surely couldn’t have hidden thousands of soldiers inside a mansion, Shan’s thought was that if there was a trap, he could just beat them all up and escape.

Reading his mind, Roden shook his head with an incredulous laugh.

“Well, either way, we have no choice but to play along for now. Let me go.”

In chess terms, it was a move like openly serving up the queen to be taken.

To avoid taking it and take a detour would be pointless, since the opponent had nothing left besides the queen and the king.

*

Shan’s army descended the hill and moved leisurely toward the north gate of Beshalia.

The soldiers wore tense expressions, wondering if stones or boiling oil might drop from atop the wall at any moment.

“Are they really surrendering?”

“They probably are… After all, we have Sir Shan on our side. Unless those bastards want to die.”

Amid everyone being tense, the inside of the city gate gradually began to come into view.

Lined up on the inside were the soldiers of Beshalia.

“Ah!”

The soldiers at the front braced themselves and aimed their weapons, but upon closer inspection, not a single soldier on Beshalia’s side held a weapon.

As they entered inside the gate, Beshalia’s soldiers showed their bare hands, approached, and requested to become prisoners.

“Please bind us.”

“Uh, what is…”

“Do so.”

“Understood.”

At Shan’s order, the soldiers hurriedly pulled out ropes from the supplies and began binding the wrists of Beshalia’s soldiers.

Before long, over seven hundred disarmed and bound soldiers were lined up along the side.

Coming inside the gate and looking up, there was no one atop the walls.

“…What is this? Is it a real surrender?”

“We don’t know yet. Let’s not lower our guard. You guys! Reconnoiter the interior of the city!”

“Understood!”

Cautioning Shan who was puzzled, Roden instructed the semi-horse archers to scout various places around the city.

This was to figure out if there were any tricks such as piling up easily flammable goods soaked in oil.

However, after waiting for nearly an hour at the gate, the semi-horse archers who returned reported that there was no such sign whatsoever.

Since the citizens of Beshalia were also fearful of Shan’s army and hiding in their homes, checking didn’t take very long.

“Mmm… what is it really?”

At this level, it was to the point where those who worried were overreacting.

While Roden was being puzzled, Shan quietly stared at the distant lord’s castle and spoke.

“Roden.”

“Huh? What is it?”

“There were knights among the people captured earlier, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Then I’ll head over to the marquis’s castle first.”

“What? You’re going alone?”

“I have a bad feeling about something.”

If Yure cast magic that controlled people, taking multiple people along might mean they would have to fight their own comrades instead.

If so, Shan’s thought was that it would be better for him to go alone, as he was strong against mental resistance.

At most, she had probably prepared a few high vampires or something.

Of course, he could not disclose this fact to others, including Roden.

Because the fact that the Pendian royal family was ruined due to a venereal disease was one of the secrets that must never be revealed.

Politically of course, but also due to Cheryn’s personal feelings of not wanting to reveal that her mother had died of such a filthy disease.

“No, that’s a bit…”

“It’s fine. Wait here for a moment.”

Roden advised him to take a few people along out of concern that Shan might be ambushed if he moved alone, but the commander was Shan after all, and he was merely an adjutant and advisor.

He could not break Shan’s stubbornness.

Leaving Roden and the rest behind in the city square, Shan walked alone toward the lord’s castle.