Kingdom Of Styria - Chapter 13

Chapter 13

As the two camps of Revra and Parthenos begin to move in on Castor, the crown prince is hiding in a mountainous area.

Surrounded by dense trees, Castor is sitting on a fallen tree trunk as a chair.

“………..”

Castor was dressed in the common clothes worn by commoners, his serious face turned to the ground and his hands moving.

In his right hand he held a stone the size of a fist. He was using the stone to scrape and break up the dead grass on the ground.

“Alright……that’s about as good as it gets”

He nodded his head in satisfaction when he saw that the grass had been reduced to a powder.

He then covered the ground grass with another piece of dead grass. He then placed a pine branch on top of the dead grass and rubbed it together with another branch.

As he continued his work, the pine branches became blackened by the friction, and a small cloud of white smoke rose from them.

“Now wrap this up and breathe on it…..”

Castor wraps the sparks in a bundle of dead grass. With a ‘Fu-Fu-’ of air, the sparks ignite the crushed grass and create a flame.

The rest is easy. Castor put branches into the flame, starting with the thinnest ones, to make the flame grow.

Having succeeded in building a fire without the use of flint or other tools, Castor looked down at the flames he had fostered and nodded in satisfaction.

“Well, well, I’ve got the fire going quicker than yesterday.”

“Oh, you’ve improved a lot, that you have. My Lord!”

“Ah, you’re back. Yukimura.”

When Castor turned to look at the voice behind him, he saw the figure of Yukimura Sanada, a samurai in red armour. Yukimura lowered the large boar he was carrying on his shoulders to the ground.

“We have a harvest too, that we do! You must be pleased!”

Yukimura says proudly, slapping the body of the fat boar with his palm.

The boar is very fat and weighs well over 200 kg. Yukimura’s physical strength was such that he was able to lift it easily without feeling its weight.Once again, Castor sighed.

“That’s a big one. I don’t think we’ll have any food problems for a while.”

“It is a gift from the mountain gods, that it is. The blood has already been drained from this one, so it will be ready soon. Please wait a moment.”

Yukimura laughed vivaciously and plunged the tip of his spear into the boar’s body.

The blood did not gush out of the beast’s body after it was drained, but it was still a living body. The black blood dripped out and spread slowly on the ground.

Yukimura expertly dismantles the boar, separating the meat from the bones. Not so long ago, this would have been a nauseating sight, but Castor was already used to it and felt nothing.

“I’m getting adaptable by the minute. If the environment changes, so do the people…..”

It’s an unbelievable change when he considers that he used to live in a castle as a Prince.

With the help of two heroes, Castor escaped from the enemy’s clutches and fled eastwards, dodging the chase of the Revra soldiers. He is now hiding in the mountains, sleeping in a cave he found in the mountains.

The cave is far from the road and hidden by the surrounding mountains, making it difficult to find even if you build a fire. It is also close to a stream, which makes it easy to get drinking water, and the deer and wild boar that live in the mountains make it easy to get food.

It was a perfect place for hiding – a hiding place that the ninja Fūma Kotarō had given his seal of approval.

“I’m sorry that you have to do such a lowly job as building a fire. Normally, it should be for us, your vassal, to do this…….”

“I don’t care. I’m just glad there’s something I can do, no matter how trivial it may seem.”

Castor waved his hand from side to side at Yukimura, who looked apologetic.

“I’ve put you all in a dangerous job. Let me at least do this.””

At the moment, the two summoned spirits have different tasks to perform.

Yukimura’s role is to keep a watchful eye on the area around the base. He is in charge of procuring food such as meat and wild vegetables. And Fūma Kotarō, who is not present here, has gone down to the village to gather information.

The movement of Revra, the remnants of Styria, the Leohart Empire and the Parthenos Republic. There were so many things that Castor wanted to know and needed to know.

“We need to be vigilant about the movements of the enemy….. I’m also curious about the remnants of the kingdom of Styria. In order to regain the kingdom, we must join with the knights and nobles who are resisting.”

It is very difficult to overturn the situation of the war by itself, no matter how much divine blessing the summoning of the heroic spirit has.

For example, Sanada Yukimura is a peerless warrior. He has the power to turn the tide of battle, knocking down a hundred or two hundred soldiers with a single spear. But if one were to ask Castor if he could win against ……one thousand or two thousand soldiers, the answer is no.

No matter how heroic or heroic a spirit is, he is still a mere human being. There is no way that he can win just because he has the power of God.

“We will join with the remnants of Styria and create an army with the combined strength of the heroes. Then we will fight and drive Lebla out of this country. ……!”

“By the way, my lord…….You look much better, but how much of your ‘strength’ has returned?”

As Castor was thinking about his next move, Yukimura suddenly asked a question.

He questions in a chit-chat-like tone while he stabs the wild boar meat with a stick and puts it on the fire.

“Mm…..?Oh, yes. I seem to be close to full recovery. Maybe now I can summon at least one more.”

Castor thinks for a moment and answers.

It’s been a week since they have escaped the castle. In the meantime, some new facts about the summoning of the heroic spirits have been discovered.

For one thing, summoning the spirits of the dead drains Castor’s energy and stamina to a great extent. Lost ‘power’ cannot be recovered over time. It is not a matter of resting to heal, but the exhausted strength is to remain exhausted.

So how do Castor get his power back?……By killing living things.

When Castor, or a summoned spirit, kills a creature, the creature’s “power” – a kind of soul energy – flows into Castor’s body. By consuming that power, Castor is able to activate the blessings of the [Heroic Spirit Summoning].

When he summoned Fūma Kotarō and Yukimura Sanada, he had not killed any living creature and had used his blessing without accumulating any ‘soul power’,thus he fainted.

But now, Yukimura has killed beasts and thieves in the mountains, and Castor’s soul power has recovered considerably. Now, he could summon another spirit.

“That is good, that it is! It was worth a while to hunt these bears and the wild boars, that it was!”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, because even if you are a heroic spirit, when you die, that is the end.”

Another thing Castor found out was that once he summons a spirit, it will never disappear, but it continues to exist.

In this world, there existed mystical powers such as “magic” and “witchcraft”. There are people who have received blessings from the gods of the Twelve, not just the goddess who gave Castor his powers.

It is a miracle to summon spirits and demons, but it is common knowledge that beings summoned by normal summoning magic disappear with the passage of time.

Kotarō and Yukimura don’t seem to disappear, and they can continue to exist in this world like normal human beings.

“Same as a normal human …..which is probably also the case when they die”

And, although this is intuitive information that he has never tried, it is not possible to summon a dead heroic spirit ever again.

Castor can only give life to an otherworldly hero once. If he dies, he will never be able to see him again.

“I’m not gonna give you both up. And the other spirits that I will summon later. I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me, but please be careful with your lives.”

What comes to Castor’s mind is the tragedy at his wedding. It was the scene when his father was stabbed to death in front of him.

For the first time in his eighteen years of life, he realises how much of a loss it is to have someone close to him taken.

“I didn’t know anything, did I? I didn’t know anything about the war, about Revra, nothing…….”

“Aaa, what a waste of words, that it is!　I am convinced that my pledge of allegiance to you, Yukimura, was not a mistake!　I will continue to serve you with all my life, that I will!”

Unaware of Castor’s inner thoughts, Yukimura raises his voice in a cheerful manner.

His cheerful words blow away anxiety and depression. Is this also the result of the energy of a hero?

“I told you not to die, didn’t I? Do you really know what you’re doing?”

With a wry smile, Castor broke off a branch and threw it into the fire.