Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 501 Rebuilding the Nation (Seventeen)

In Oak, Vaughan County, timber merchant Mikhail was known to everyone for his outgoing personality and boastfulness.

However, in front of the blonde mercenary's musician companion, this round-faced fat man appeared as shy as a young girl traveling far from home for the first time.

"Oh, you who drink heartily!" The musician played a light glissando as she danced and sang with abandon towards the blond mercenary's tablemate.
"Could we also give some to visitors from the ends of the earth?"

"The author of heroic epics,

"The color most favored by the Muses"

"The most beautiful long song between the mountains and the sea,"

"You poor old friends"
"A glass of wine?"
"Because his throat had long since dried up."

As the melody came to an end and the lyrics finished, the pianist completed a high-difficulty jump followed by a squatting motion, ending the performance and maintaining the contorted posture from the end of the dance, waiting for the audience's applause.

Gilard, Majya and his son, and Mikhail looked at each other, at a loss for what to do.

Seeing that some audience members had forgotten to applaud, the pianist played the ending again, urging everyone on with a slightly reproachful look.

Siegfried covered his face and turned his head to the other side, not wanting to look at his companion any longer. His originally handsome and dashing features were twitching and deformed from pain.

"The people you're talking about..." Little Ma Jiya craned his neck and looked around. He swallowed hard and cautiously asked the musician, "Where are they all?"

“Right in front of you,” the pianist replied proudly. “It’s all me.”

After saying that, the pianist returned to a normal standing posture from the difficult ending move of the dance.

He leaned on the table, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and very naturally reached for his companion's wine glass.

Siegfried ruthlessly slapped his friend's hand away: "This old gentleman only said he'd buy me a drink, he never said he'd buy you one."

Upon hearing this, the lute player immediately looked at the old Dussac sitting opposite his friend with pleading eyes, picked up his lute, and was about to start singing again.

"No, no, no, no..." Gerard quickly stopped the pianist—old Mr. Mitchell was, after all, too old to bear seeing anything too horrific.

“Even if the people of Dusa don’t drink themselves, they can’t let their guests get sober and leave the table. Tonight it’s my treat, so drink as much as you want.”

"What a generous man! How can I ever repay him?" The musician's eyes welled up with tears, his zither held across his chest: "How about I..."

“Just have a drink with me.” Girard firmly pressed the pianist down: “Take a break, young man.”

"Alright!" the musician laughed.

Without saying a word, he shoved the lute into his companion's hands, turned around, and disappeared into the noisy crowd of drinkers.

Before the others could react, the pianist had already returned to the group with a stool in his hand, and an oversized wine glass that he had somehow gotten his hands on was dangling from his mouth.

He placed the stool between his companion and the gullible man who was treating him, plopped down on it, quickly wiped the wine glass with his clothes, and then solemnly placed the wine glass in front of his companion with both hands, looking at the latter expectantly.

Siegfried sighed, and after asking old Dussac for permission with his eyes, he picked up the bottle and poured wine for his friend.

"What did the shop owner say about exchanging performances for food and lodging?" Siegfried asked casually.

"What else can I say? He went back on his word." The musician shrugged and pointed to the patrons around him. "Look, the guests were clearly very satisfied, but he insisted it wasn't good enough—he's refusing to admit it!"

Siegfried glanced at his friend: "I can understand."

"However, if the back door is blocked, we can still try the front door," the musician coaxed. "As long as you're willing to make a small sacrifice, the landlady will agree to lend us the best room upstairs—a room with a large bathtub, and meals will be provided..."

"Don't even think about it." Siegfried refused outright: "You'd have to sacrifice yourself."

“I would like to offer myself,” the pianist said with a smile, taking off his hat and smoothing his thinning hair. “But they look down on me.”

"Enough." Siegfried stopped pouring the wine and said coldly, "That's enough."

"Alright, alright, I won't say anymore." The musician coaxed Siegfried to continue pouring him more wine, his face showing sadness: "Then we'll have to sleep in the stables tonight."

Hearing this, everyone else at the table couldn't help but laugh.

Girard had a sudden thought and tentatively asked the blond man, "Young man, I know a place that needs a skilled fighter like you. What do you think?"

The blond mercenary, who called himself "Siegfried," paused for a moment while pouring the wine, but quickly resumed his normal actions.

“I’m sorry,” the blond mercenary replied without looking up, “I have no intention of getting involved in yet another war.”

Girard wasn't disappointed; on the contrary, he was quite pleased. He smiled and asked, "So you have someone you're thinking about?"

Siegfried did not answer.

“No, the more I think about it, the angrier I get. I can’t just sleep in this stable for nothing.” The musician interrupted the conversation, defusing the awkwardness.

With a wicked grin, he urged his companion, "If you ask me, the shop owner is just jealous of you, that's why he went back on his word and even tried to withhold tonight's performance fee. Why don't you go beat him up, and then we'll run away, treating it as if we've collected tonight's performance fee? What do you say?"

"Let's just leave it at that," Siegfried said casually, handing his friend a full glass of wine. "Don't cause any more trouble."

"Listen, everyone." The musician took the wine glass as if it were a rare treasure, and before the wine spilled, he brought his lips to the rim and took a small, delightful sip.

Then, he looked at the other people at the table, pointed at his companion with his thumb, and said sarcastically, "If he had done this earlier, the two of us wouldn't have ended up performing on the streets."

Gerard, Mikhail, and Maja all smiled good-naturedly—although the musician in the flamboyant hat was a bit odd, he had a certain charm that made him hard to dislike.

Siegfried, standing to the side, was both annoyed and amused: "What? So it was me who's been flirting and causing trouble all this time?"

“Oh? How about we let everyone judge this?” The musician deliberately put on a stern face and started counting on his fingers: “Who was swindled out of all their valuables before they even left Varne? Who acted rashly in Hongchuan to uphold justice and ended up losing all their money? And who revealed their accent in Zhuwangbao, forcing us to flee overnight and even sell our horses…”

Siegfried was defeated.

At the other end of the table, young Maja was completely stunned, and even old Maja and Gerard looked astonished.

“Van? You came from such a faraway place to reclaim this land?” Little Maja exclaimed in surprise, “‘A visitor from the ends of the earth’, it’s really true?”

"And which of these is false?" Mawei seemed to have been greatly humiliated. He put down his wine glass, picked up his lute, and started playing again: "Young friend, you may not listen to the lark's voice, but you should not doubt the lark's eyes."

"I don't believe you, my foot!" Siegfried, unable to contain himself any longer, took the lute from his friend and placed it at his feet: "Stop singing."

“Van is quite far away,” Girard asked with considerable skepticism. “What brings you two all this way to this newly reclaimed land?”

"To flee," Siegfried answered without hesitation.

"To gather material," the musician answered without hesitation.

The two, who answered almost simultaneously, glared at each other.

After a brief standoff, Siegfried reluctantly changed his mind: "To gather materials."

At the same time, the musician repeated with a smile, "Find material."

“From Varne to the new settlements,” Girard chuckled, “didn’t you guys ever go over your ‘testimonies’?”

"Because we don't need to," the pianist replied proudly.

Unlike his friend, Siegfried wasn't nonchalant. Although it was just a chance encounter, the old Dussac soldier before him felt a strange sense of familiarity during their brief time together. So, Siegfried unusually offered a few more words of explanation.

“I know ‘fleeing’ and ‘gathering information’ sound absurd, but believe it or not, neither my friends nor I have lied,” Siegfried said earnestly, looking at old Dussac.
"Our arrival in this new settlement was by chance and a series of unexpected events. For various reasons, we cannot explain everything to others. But I can assure you that we are just a few unlucky travelers who have ended up in this new settlement, and we have no ill intentions or ulterior motives. We hope you can understand."

To Siegfried's surprise, old Dussac neither became angry nor more suspicious.

The latter simply nodded and said, "I believe you. I won't pry into your private affairs anymore."

Siegfried nodded gratefully in thanks.

"Old sir, you're too trusting." The violinist suddenly burst into laughter, moved his stool next to old Dussac, crossed his arms, and, feigning seriousness, began to analyze his companion:
"This guy seems to have said a lot, but he hasn't actually said anything at all! Look at his appearance, his manner of speaking, his physique—he's no ordinary person. If I were you, I would lock him in the dungeon, hang him up, and interrogate him for three days and three nights. If I find out something, I'll send him to the gallows; if I don't, I'll keep him as my son-in-law. That would be perfect!"

"That's enough, Maverick." The blond mercenary frowned, calling his friend by his full name, and seemed genuinely a little angry.

"Oh, don't be nervous." Although the pianist was quick to defend himself verbally, he still moved the stool back to its original position and said with a smile, "I don't know why, but this old gentleman trusts you a lot. Even if I were to expose you, he wouldn't care—that's why I'm curious!"

The pianist gestured invitingly to the three people on the other side of the table and asked, "Aren't you curious?"

Upon hearing this, Majiya and his son, along with timber merchant Mikhail, also turned their attention to old Dusak.

Girard, who became the focus of the dinner table, did not make any special moves.

He looked at the young man in front of him and said bluntly, "Because you are too proud."

The blond mercenary raised an eyebrow, while Mave, who was watching the commotion from the side, also looked puzzled.

Gilard earnestly reminded me: "Perhaps you yourself don't realize how proud you are. You're so proud that you wouldn't even bother to tell the smallest lie. Several times, you could have easily gotten away with a simple lie, but you chose to answer with the truth, which only got you into trouble."

"So I don't think you're lying to me. Since you say you came to the new reclamation area by chance, I'm willing to believe that you ended up here by coincidence."

Siegfried's expression was a mixture of emotions after hearing old Dussac's words. He didn't know whether he should make a self-deprecating remark or thank old Dussac for his understanding.

The pianist sitting next to her reacted more intensely than his companion.

Upon hearing Old Dussac's insightful assessment, the violinist paused for a moment, then hurriedly pulled a small notebook and half a quill pen from his trousers.

Without ink, the musician dipped his finger in the wine in his cup and quickly wrote down old Dussac's words.

"A lone hero wouldn't even stoop to telling the smallest lie. Yet, at the end of the story, will he also meet his demise because of it?" The pianist murmured to himself as he wrote with lightning speed, "So classically beautiful!"

Girard scrutinized the blond young man, as if he had remembered something.

He unconsciously curled the corners of his mouth and sighed, "The last time I saw someone so 'proud' was two years ago, and now that person is already..."

Old Dussac stopped abruptly halfway through his sentence, rubbing his chin and saying nothing more.

The musician, however, refused to give up and asked impatiently, "What has happened to that person now?"

“It’s nothing.” Girard smiled and raised his glass to the blond young man: “To the proud man—a monk once told me that the arrogant are courageous and enterprising, while the proud are refraining from certain things.”

"'The arrogant are courageous and enterprising, the proud are refraining from doing certain things'? That's brilliantly said!" The musician grabbed old Dussac's arm and asked expectantly, "Where is the monk who said that now?"

Gerard was somewhat surprised by the pianist's rash behavior. He pulled his arm away from the other man and sighed, "You won't see him."

“Just tell me where he is?” The musician swore, “I will travel thousands of miles to visit him.”

“Brother Reid has been called by the Lord.” Girard pointed to the sky: “He has gone up there to keep that person company.”

The pianist was extremely disappointed and lost all his energy. He grabbed his oversized wine glass and took a big gulp: "That's the only place I can't go."

But soon, something else caught the pianist's attention.

"Young sir," the musician greeted Ma Jia across the table, "you were the one who requested the piece, weren't you?"

Little Ma Jia had just embarrassed the musician, and now, sitting at the same table with him, she felt quite apologetic: "It was me."

The musician wasn't embarrassed at all; instead, he asked curiously, "What is 'The Battle of the Styx'? What is 'The Battle of Blood and Mud'? And what is 'Escape from the Tiger's Mouth'? Are they songbooks? Why have I never heard them before?"

“It’s not a songbook, it’s…” Upon hearing someone ask about something he liked, Xiao Majiya immediately became excited, but he stammered for a while, unable to say what the subject matter should be called—he had never thought about this question before: “It’s…it’s…”

“It was originally a battle report issued by His Excellency Montagne,” old Matthias answered for his son, explaining simply, “but it was adapted into a songbook by some lyric poets.”

"This!" Little Ma Jia handed the single-print copy of "Escape from the Tiger's Mouth" directly to the pianist and enthusiastically recommended it: "Although 'Escape from the Tiger's Mouth' is not a battle report, but a record of Councilor Kai Morland's escape from Kings' Castle, it is still very good!"

"Thank you!" The pianist took the booklet and, using the last rays of the setting sun streaming in through the window and the dim lights of the tavern, buried himself in reading it right there in the noisy hall.

Xiao Majiya, who had wanted to say something more, found herself in an awkward situation.

“Hey!” Mikhail, the timber merchant who hadn’t gotten a chance to speak yet, waved his hand dismissively: “What’s so interesting about that thing? It’s all made up by Blood Wolf.”

The chubby timber merchant, slightly drunk, said in a boisterous manner:

"Escaped from the jaws of death? Who was the tiger? The government officials! Who escaped? Kai Morland!"
"So the officials of the Fortress of Kings are the bad guys? And that Kai... Kai Morland is the good guy?"

"To put it bluntly, isn't this all Blood Wolf's way of making everyone believe him? So that he can then instruct us to do things with the officials of the Kings' Fortress!"

Mikhail, reeking of alcohol, hugged the little Majiya tightly beside him, as if imparting some profound life experience, and spoke in a very heavy tone—though his words were very unclear: "Let me tell you, they are all the same thing!"

Maja Raul tried to push the timber merchant away with disdain: "Lord Montagne is not the same as the traitors of the Castle of Kings."

But the more Majiya refused to listen, the more excited Mikhail became, waving his arms and shouting:

"What the hell is the difference? They're all the same pair of pants, just with the crotch facing backwards!"

"This wolf, that wolf, this fortress, that fortress, this legion, that legion, to us, they're all the same thing."

"Before, it was the New Reclamation Army that rode on our heads and shit on us! Now it will be Blood Wolf leading that bunch of Iron Peak County people to ride on our heads and shit on us!"

Anyway—we—are—the ones being ridden on the bottom!

“Those bastards from Tiefeng County, they used to be the ones who were ridden on the bottom!”

"But now—it's their turn to ride on!"

"Stop talking." Old Majiya grabbed the timber merchant with his iron-like hands: "Mr. Mikhail."

"Okay, okay." Mikhail, like a child who had made a mistake, hunched his shoulders, bent over, and looked dazed. He nodded ingratiatingly to Old Majiya and repeated, "I won't say anymore, I won't say anymore."

Old Majiya sighed and pressed Mikhail back into his seat.

However, the timber merchant, still not satisfied, caused trouble again the next second.

"That's right! Buddy!" The round-faced fat man, half-drunk and half-awake, laughed and greeted his tablemate across from him: "You're a 'free man,' and so are we. We're 'free men' from Vaughan County, and we don't even know which county you're from?"

On the other side of the table, Gerard Mitchell put down his glass.

“Me?” Old Dusak grinned, revealing two sharp teeth. “I’m a bastard from Iron Peak County.”

[Victory is certain!]
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