Chapter 769: Announcements To The Girls Of Blessed Land [II / Bonus - ]

Chapter 769: Announcements To The Girls Of Blessed Land [II / Bonus Chapter]

A soft murmur of understanding rippled through the crowd, and several of the older squad leaders nodded.

"So here’s where things stand," Silas went on, tapping his fingers on the stone. "I’m staying right here in Blessed Land for the rest of this week, until Aki’s Novice Trial ends... Once it does, she has to head back to the Human World, and I’ll be going back too, for my sister and Martha."

A collective disappointed sigh swept through the crowd, and a lot of shoulders sagged at once.

It was the sound of a hundred and fifty women who’d just been told dessert was cancelled.

"Leaving again so soon...?" someone muttered in the third row.

"He only just got back..." another complained.

Even Eluned looked a little crestfallen, and she already knew the plan.

Silas held up his hand, a broad grin breaking across his face as he leaned over the railing.

"Hold on, let me finish," Silas laughed, his eyes gleaming. "Because after that, things change... Once that trip’s done, I’m going to spend a lot of time with all of you."

He raised his hand high so the entire courtyard could see.

"At least two to three months without any Human World activities!" Silas announced, his voice booming over the snow. "Just Blessed Land, our gear, the dens out on the border and all of you!"

The courtyard exploded.

"WAAAAAAAHHHH!"

The roar that tore out of a hundred and fifty throats was so loud that Silas physically flinched.

His shoulders shot up toward his ears, and he winced like someone had set off a cannon right next to his head.

Women threw their fur hats into the air, banged the flats of their swords against their shields and stomped their boots into the frozen mud.

STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

Somewhere in the back, a dwarf fired a celebratory crossbow bolt straight into the sky, and somewhere slightly closer, an archer screamed at her for it.

’Good god...’ Silas thought, his ears ringing as he rubbed the back of his neck with a stunned smirk. ’With the way they’re cheering, you’d think they hate Earth or something.’

Up on the platform, Eluned was cheering louder than anyone in the courtyard.

Morwenna had given up glaring at her and was grinning too, though she’d deny it later while Lupina was howling... Actually howling with her head tipped back and everything.

The shouting only got louder as the girls pushed toward the front steps, flushed and beaming.

"We missed you, Lord Silas!" an archer screamed from the side.

"Stay here forever, my Lord!" someone else shouted, waving her bow.

"Take us on the raids with you!" a vanguard warrior yelled, pounding her chest.

Silas laughed and waved at them with both hands, then pressed his palms downward for quiet.

It took a while... It took a long while as a few of the girls had to be physically sat down by their squad leaders.

Slowly, the cheering died down into an eager murmur.

Boots shuffled in the snow as everyone leaned forward, because they all knew the real reason they’d been called out here.

Up on the platform, Lupina’s tail was still going even after she’d stopped howling.

Eluned had sat down on the railing while Aurelia had quietly pressed her hands together like she was giving thanks.

Silas’s expression settled into something calmer as he looked over the front rows where the mining squads were standing.

"Now," Silas said, and his voice cut cleanly through the last of the noise. "The real reason we’re all standing out here in the snow... That night in the barracks, before I went to free Rika, I made a promise to everyone who’d swung a pickaxe... Whoever brought back the most would get to move into the Keep for good."

The whole courtyard went silent.

It got so quiet that the soft hiss of snowflakes landing on leather was the only sound left in the valley.

Across the front ranks, several of the newer recruits stood with their hands clasped tight against their jerkins, their eyes wide.

One of them was Brenda, the freckled former border-wall soldier, who was staring up at the landing like she’d just watched a bird recite poetry.

’Our Lord was actually keeping his promise...?’ Brenda thought, her chest tight.

Where she came from, a commander’s promise was worth about as much as dirty bathwater.

Commanders promised promotions, rations and real beds to get their soldiers moving, then forgot every word the moment the fighting was over.

...And yet here was the Lord of Blessed Land, Number 1 on the entire Leaderboard, calling the whole territory out into the snow to keep a promise he’d made in a barracks.

Brenda couldn’t hold it in. She threw both hands in the air and let out a shrill excited cheer that broke the silence.

"YEAAAAH!"

The other recruits joined in at once, clapping their mittens together with genuine joy.

Most of them knew perfectly well they hadn’t mined enough to win... They’d seen the glowing crates the top teams had hauled back, and their own tallies weren’t anywhere close but it didn’t matter.

One of their sisters was about to get a chance to live under the same roof as their Lord and be closer to him, and to them, that was a win for everyone.

Silas smiled at their excitement and waited for the applause to settle before raising a finger.

"And I want to make one thing clear," Silas added, his eyes sweeping across the crowd. "Mining isn’t the only way into the Keep... Anyone who makes big contributions to Blessed Land, whether you’re forging armor, mapping out new resource nodes, killing big beasts out on the border or keeping our supply lines running, can earn a room in there too. The door’s open to all of you..."

He paused, and his eyes drifted toward the terrace, where a certain short red-faced dwarf was still hugging a fistful of silver fox fur.

A wicked smirk spread across his face.

"...unless your name is Thora," Silas finished smoothly and the courtyard burst into laughter.

"HAHAHAHAHA!"

Even the stone-faced border guards cracked up, and Solenne let out a musical giggle so hard that her tails shook, and Thora went with them.

Thora’s face went from soot-gray to volcanic red in half a second.

She let go of Solenne’s tail so fast that the fur sprang back like a coiled spring, and she stomped her iron-toed boot onto the terrace.

CLANG!

"What in the bloody seven hells is that supposed to mean, you ungrateful wretch?!" Thora roared, shaking a soot-covered fist straight at him. "I’ve been hammering ingots over the Titan’s Anvil until my eyebrows are singed off! I forged your armor! I brewed your Blessed Drink! I’ve made every spearhead and shield in this whole valley! If anyone’s earned a fluffy bed in that drafty pile of rocks, it’s the smith who keeps your soldiers from getting skewered! You’re a tyrant, Lord Silas! A miserable teasing tyrant!"

The crowd laughed even harder.

Up on the platform, Morwenna laughed so hard she had to grab the railing, and even Morrighan’s tail gave a small amused twitch.

A few of the dwarven apprentices in the back whistled through their teeth at their master’s temper, then went very quiet when she turned around to see who it was.

Silas waved a hand at her furious scowl.

"We’ll see how the next batch of cannon barrels turns out, Thora then maybe we’ll talk about a closet on the ground floor."

"A closet?!" Thora sputtered, crossing her thick arms over her apron with an outraged huff that made her braids bounce.

Solenne gently offered her tail back, and Thora took it without a word and hugged it like a lifeline.

Yet as the laughter died down and everyone turned back to Silas, the scowl slowly slid off Thora’s face and turned into a tight anxious grimace.

Under her heavy apron, her chest felt uncomfortably tight, and her pulse was thumping hard and uneven.

She wasn’t actually upset about the joke... Silas was just giving her grief, the same way they always bickered everyday.

Her real worry was standing ten paces away, quietly watching the stairs with her hands folded over her belt.

’Come on...’ Thora thought, her nails digging into her calloused palms as she stared at the back of his black robes. ’Come on, you thick-skulled human... say what I want. Say the right name.’

Rowenna had poured everything she had into this territory.

Every weapon Thora hammered out, every set of armor and every golem walking out of the Forgeworks had Rowenna’s runes carved into it, and she’d held her own in the Lord War against Lord Sky too.

She never complained, she never asked for anything, and she spent her evenings quietly carving glyphs into weapon hafts while everyone else was busy drinking.

Thora had watched her work through more nights than she could count, hunched over a bench with a candle burned down to a stub, carving the same rune over and over until it was perfect.

She’d watched her fall asleep on a pile of blueprints and wake up with the ink printed backward on her cheek... She’d brought her food, and she’d yelled at her for forgetting to eat it.

She deserved this... More than anybody in this valley, Rowenna deserved to walk through those doors and sleep under the same roof as their Lord.

’He has to say Rowenna,’ Thora fumed, grinding her teeth so hard her jaw ached. ’He has to say Rowenna right now, or so help me, I’ll sneak into his room tonight and bite him in the dick!’

Up on the landing, completely unaware of the very specific threat being made against him, Silas straightened up.

He stepped back from the railing and stood tall at the top of the stairs, and the gold ring in his dark blue eyes caught the pale light and he raised his hand.

"Okay..."

The courtyard snapped to attention as every breath was held, and a hundred and fifty pairs of eyes locked onto his face.

Thora stopped breathing entirely while Solenne glanced down at her, mildly concerned.

Rowenna, standing by her pillar, didn’t even seem to notice.

She was just watching the snow and smiling, like she’d already decided whatever happened next was going to be fine.

Silas looked out over the silent crowd, and his deep voice cut through the frosty air.

"The first person joining the Keep, and the final winner of the mining competition, is—"

The silence hanging over the courtyard was so thick that the faint hiss of snowflakes landing on the stairs seemed loud.

A hundred and fifty pairs of eyes stayed glued to Silas, every breath caught and held.

Up on the landing, framed by the dark timber of the Keep’s front doors, Silas let his gaze sweep slowly across the crowd. The corner of his mouth twitched.

...He was enjoying this a little too much, and everyone could tell.

Somebody near the back was quietly begging him under her breath, loud enough that half the courtyard heard, and Silas’s smirk only got bigger.

"Gunnhild," Silas announced.

Down in the front row of the mining squads, a tall broad-shouldered woman froze.

Her ashwood spear was planted in the slush beside her boots, its steel tip pointing at the gray sky.

A thick gray wool cloak hung over her leather armor, dusted with fresh snow, and under her hood her weathered face went completely blank.

Her red eyes blinked once then twice... She stared up at the landing like the mountain had suddenly started talking to her in a language she didn’t know.

’Eh?’ Gunnhild thought.

That was it... That was the whole thought.

She’d been standing in the cold since first light, fully ready to clap her mittens together and cheer for whoever won.

She’d been one of Silas’s very first vassals, back when Blessed Land was a handful of girls huddled around a dead bonfire, killing Umbral Hounds for a single UP each.

She’d hauled stone until her palms cracked and swung a pickaxe underground until her shoulders burned but she was a foot soldier at heart.

She couldn’t call down starlight, she couldn’t turn into a wolf, and she definitely didn’t swagger around like a pirate captain... well she had wind... however Gunnhild had never once imagined her name would be called from that landing.

She’d honestly come out here mostly hoping to see Tasmin and Brida lose their minds when one of them got picked over the other.

Before it could sink in, the courtyard went off like a bomb around her.

"GUNNHILD! GUNNHILD! GUNNHILD!"

The mining squads exploded into a roar.

Dozens of rough-handed women in leather aprons and padded tunics slammed their fists against their chests and surged around her, hollering at the top of their lungs.

A few of the younger girls grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her so hard her hood fell back, while the recruits in the middle clapped until their gloves stung.

"Go on, Gunnhild!" someone shouted.

"Get up those stairs!" another yelled, giving her cloak an encouraging shove that almost sent her face first into the steps.

Behind her, her whole mining crew was screaming.

Freya was screaming. Sigrun had climbed onto someone’s shoulders and was screaming from up there... These were women who had spent a lot of time with her and every single one of them was yelling her name like they’d won it themselves.