Chapter 22 - News From The North

Like most evenings, Andric was sitting in the tavern, enjoying a meal and eavesdropping on the conversations around him. It had been a few weeks since he first heard about the planned war between Hochland and Hilzland, and now, finally, there was some news trickling into Radegart.

“Recruitment notices are in! Five silver sign-up bonus with one silver for each month served! Better yet, they’re teaching all recruits the Severing Slash Technique!” a man from the town announced, instantly grabbing the attention of nearly everyone inside.

“This is for the war against Hilzland?” an aged patron asked.

“That’s right. The army has already destroyed all of Hilzland’s ports, and now they’re assembling troops for a full invasion! Hilzland is starving without their food imports, so it’s only a matter of time before they invade us or seek help from a stronger kingdom. We need to sign up quickly and win this war before anyone else gets involved,” the man replied, downing a cup of wine and ordering another.

The consensus in the tavern was that Hochland had the upper hand in the war. Without food, Hilzland's opportunities for growth were limited. Their army would struggle to keep soldiers energized, especially in the harsh winter. Meanwhile, Hochland's winters were milder, and importing food was easier. Logistically, Hochland seemed to have already won.

What puzzled Andric was why Hochland had stopped their invasion of Baugland after several years and switched targets to the economically weaker Hilzland. There weren’t any resources in Hilzland that weren’t more plentiful in Baugland. It was curious why they’d abandon three years of progress for this.

“Uncle, did you hear that?” Farvald, sitting with his uncle, perked up at the news.

Farvald’s uncle slapped his head. “Of course I did! I’m right here!”

“I have to sign up. We could do so much with five silver, and they’re even teaching a martial technique!” Farvald said. Besides the martial technique his parents had taught him, he knew no others. His martial realm wasn’t high, but he knew that a second martial technique would help him bridge the gap between himself and stronger opponents.

Andric thought the name ‘Severing Slash Technique’ sounded familiar. He reached into his storage bag and found several copies of it. Andric hadn’t chosen it for training because the Boulder Crushing Sword Technique and the Bone Splitting Sword Technique were both more powerful and had better secondary effects.

Martial techniques could be designed in many different ways. The Severing Slash Technique could be used with any bladed weapon, but the Boulder Crushing Sword Technique and the Bone Splitting Sword Technique were more specialized, allowing for harder-hitting strikes. The Bone Splitting Sword Technique was very similar to the Severing Slash Technique, except it applied much more force to the opponent's bones, which were typically the hardest thing to cut through.

Thinking about those martial techniques, Andric realized he hadn’t studied them beyond a brief look and decided to spend the next few weeks mastering them.

“Definitely not. Not until you reach the Novice realm,” Farvald’s uncle declined. As Farvald’s closest relative, his job was to keep him alive. If Farvald died in battle, his uncle wouldn’t be able to face his brother in the afterlife.

The man delivering the news had more to say. “This war needs to be over before summer. If recruitment targets aren’t met by spring, conscription will begin!”

The tavern turned quieter, but whispers filled the room. Even Farvald’s uncle muttered something Andric couldn’t hear.

Conscription was a hot topic. In the war against Baugland, conscription hadn’t been necessary because Hochland could offer various gains to reward martialists. But Hilzland offered no such benefits. The Severing Slash Technique might attract a few youngsters, but it wouldn’t be enough to draw in experienced martialists.

Andric knew a little about conscription, but it didn’t bother him. He wasn’t living in Einburg or Mahtzig, and there were no records of him in Radegart. If he left the town that night, no one would know more about him than that he spent several weeks at the tavern, enjoying expensive food and wine. Hiding in the wilderness would make it unlikely for a recruiter to find him.

He didn’t have anyone he particularly wanted to avoid conscription. If the youths from Einburg got caught up in it, Andric was fine leaving it to fate. No humans he’d met so far deserved to be spared from the horrors of war. In his opinion, every man should experience it at least once in their life. He even supported Farvald joining the war, though he wanted him to be practical about it.

“Why are we invading Hilzland?” someone finally asked the question everyone was wondering. Few would admit it, but no one knew what Hochland had to gain from invading the Frozen North.

The messenger seemed reluctant to answer. Instead, he drank the rest of his wine.

“We wanna know!” someone else shouted.

Then, a woman across the tavern whispered loudly to her tablemate, “I heard an enchanted castle was found in Hilzland.”

“What?!”

The reactions in the tavern were immediate. The messenger’s face paled as someone asked the woman, “Where did you hear that from? Why haven’t you told anyone else?”

“I didn’t think it was true. I heard it from one of the caravans at the beginning of winter. I thought it was just a guard trying to impress me,” she defended herself, scooting closer to the wall.

‘What’s an enchanted castle?’ Andric wanted to ask but stayed silent.

“If it really is an enchanted castle, won’t the Chaotic East get involved? The martialists from those high-realm places are always the first ones to explore ancient ruins.”

“Leifgard won’t stand by and let a southern kingdom attack their neighbor if it has an enchanted castle inside it. No, the entire Frozen North might make a move!”

“It’s no wonder Hochland pulled out of Baugland. The difference between a few gem mines and an enchanted castle is like the difference between the lowliest slave and the mightiest emperor!”

The tavern quickly agreed: if there really was an enchanted castle in Hilzland, the sudden war was justified. Many wanted the war to speed up, to seize control of the castle before other kingdoms could. If they were slow, a high-realm martialist from the Chaotic East would swoop in and take all the good loot.

“Uncle, what is an enchanted castle?” Farvald asked.

“It’s normal for you not to know. Some people say enchanted castles are just myths. I’ve never seen one, and your parents weren’t so lucky, either. Apparently, enchanted castles hold items that transcend the martial way. My grandfather used to say the royal family in Mahtzig owns a bowl that’s always filled with water. Even if you turned it upside down, it would pour out water until you flipped it back upright, and it would still be full,” Farvald’s uncle explained with a strange look. He wasn’t sure if he believed the tales, but it was hard to ignore the change in the messenger’s expression when the woman mentioned the enchanted castle.

If enchanted castles were real, whatever could be taken from them would undoubtedly be worth several times what the entire kingdom of Hochland could produce in a year.

‘A bottomless bowl? Sounds like an enchantment. Indeed, the names are a match,’ Andric thought. In the age of magicians, the most prestigious ones could enchant objects. Few had the skill, but all were famous. Unfortunately, Andric hadn’t learned the art of enchanting in his previous lifetime, despite hundreds of years of practice and countless wasted resources.

Enchantments were powerful against ordinary humans or low-realm martialists but useless against high-realm martialists. Most had complicated activation sequences or limited uses before the mana inside ran out. They could gather mana from the atmosphere, but it was slow. Enchanted objects were far less efficient than magicians for the same amount of power.

Andric would’ve been uninterested in the enchanted castle if it only had enchanted objects, but he hoped to find a wand.

Magicians needed open hands to use spells, except when using a wand. With a wand, a magician could fire off spells much faster, but the material had to endure the intense pressure from the spells. If a magician’s skill was too high for their wand, it would break. In the heat of battle, it was easy to forget a wand’s limits and end up wandless.

In his previous life, Andric’s wand came from a powerful magician he killed in his youth. Part of his success was owed to the superior wand he’d had, and it wasn’t an exaggeration to say he’d have died multiple times without it. Now, he was wandless. He could make a wand if he had the right materials, but he didn’t know where to find ones that would increase his spell casting speed. Using an inferior wand would slow him down.

A strong wand could be used by a weak magician, but a weak wand couldn’t be used by a strong magician. The chances of finding a superior wand in the enchanted castle were low, if it even existed, but a chance was still a chance. Unless a better opportunity came up, Andric needed to see what he could gain.