The City of Marronligar

As we all know, for sailors who have been floating at sea all year round, the wharf is half their home besides the ship.No matter how bad the wine and bread were, they could not do without before sailing and after returning.

Most businessmen have some savings and do not live and eat with civilians, while small traders who need to go to sea to find a living, and ordinary passengers who travel long distances on a boat with the wind are not so particular, and they are a step higher than sailors who go with the flow.All in all, the taverns in the harbor area will open their doors to everyone, and embrace the day and night of Marenliga with that rough intimacy.

——Miscellaneous Notes of Silver Bay Tower: The Diet and Recreation of Commoners in the Harbor District

After Swooro left with the Kurmans, the camp of Boyce's army was nearly a quarter empty.

Within a few days, the army also began to retreat to the original border line against the route of the attack.The elite soldiers and supplies cleared the way, and the main force of the army walked in the middle with the supplies and people looted from Winter Valley City. The ones who were cut off were naturally the stragglers who had not made meritorious service or were pushed out due to their lack of power in the army.

Contrary to the overwhelming momentum during the westward advance, due to the cold weather and difficult roads, the retreat speed of the army was very slow, and the supply line and camp were stretched narrow and long by the deep snow-covered valley.When the vanguard walked out of the valley, those who were queued last could still see the arrow towers of the Winter Valley Fortress that had been bombarded by artillery.I'm afraid that by the time the Kurmans return to the grassland, the broken stragglers have not yet retreated from the valley leading to the eastern plain.

Compared with other sergeants, these people naturally received less military rations, and could not get oil and water from the trophies, and the corpses of enemies and friendly soldiers had already been searched several times, and at most they could peel off another layer of worn clothes .The cold nights in the north are frighteningly cold. If they want to avoid freezing to death, they have to find a corner out of the wind, collect some firewood and make a fire, and survive the night.

Even if they are a member of the "Victors", they may not be able to enjoy the treatment commensurate with this status.

The same is true for Chu De, who was reduced to serving as a scout for the Boyce Army, and his situation was worse than that of ordinary soldiers.

Every cold night is hard.Without the supplies organized by the main force and the support of fellow countrymen, Chu De, who was deliberately forgotten at the edge of the camp every time he camped overnight, could only collect firewood by himself. fish".

After Shiuluo left, no one took the initiative to talk to him and asked him where he planned to spend the winter.After contracting a disease due to acclimatization and great mental pressure, Chu De was not sure whether he could survive this winter.

It's not just that the spirit is listless, the footsteps are sloppy, the combat power and observation ability have declined sharply, and the gradually defeated will can no longer support the habitual vigilance. Chu De always feels that the boundary between reality and nightmare is becoming more and more blurred.Every step of walking is not only stepping on the snow, but also like stepping into a piece of mud mixed with blood and soil.

Unlike the relatively tolerant (although implicitly arrogant) urban character of Marun Liga, people in the northern countries have always had an instinctive prejudice against unidentified outsiders, not to mention that what Chu De did was despised by the northern soldiers Dirty work.

They almost pedantically insisted on fighting frontally, so that their own side could plunder everything the enemy had with peace of mind after winning the hard battle.As for methods such as assassinating enemy commanders with cold arrows, and sneaking into the city to poison water sources under the cover of night, they have always disdained them.

But in fact, the army of the Boyce Kingdom hired the desperate Chu De to do things alone that others would not and would not do.Ben was a guy of unknown origin, even if he died in the hands of the enemy, he would not lose much.

Because the "glorious" victory could not be stained with vicious tricks, Chu De will never be able to be credited to the Boyce Kingdom, and his actions will not be recognized, but he has no other choice.

When he arrived in the capital, he would gain a relationship with the aristocrats, and maybe he would have new opportunities—Chu De relied on this idea to support himself in escaping to the north.But the farther one goes deep into the battlefield, the weaker this spiritual pillar becomes.

When being looked down upon by others, Chu De remembered what the old president said casually many years ago: There is no place for bounty hunters in the north, and even the Torresso family with deep roots is not happy.

This evening, the wind blew harder.In order to let the elite of the first army settle down in a sheltered place, the horn for camping was blown later than usual.Chu De, who was on the verge of being left behind, could not find a sheltered, warm and comfortable tent, so he could only follow the example of other wounded soldiers who were dying, and find a simple camp built when they came here to temporarily shelter.

The "bivouac" chosen by Chu De was separated from the main force by some distance.Three dilapidated low walls and half of the roof barely blocked most of the incoming wind. In the "brazier" built with stone bricks a few months ago, apart from ashes, there were still a few pieces of firewood that had been frozen like a rock.

Although he was wrapped in several layers of bloated clothes, Chu De still felt chills, his hands and feet were a little out of control, and the boundaries of his vision began to turn black, and he couldn't care less about sensing whether someone was staring at him.He took out the flint and lighted the few pieces of firewood with great difficulty, and a ball of burning orange was born.

If there is not enough fire when camping, it is likely that we will not last until midnight here.Trud had to go out to find more firewood.

Walking along the wall for a while, Chu De found some firewood in the corner of the old camp.He held those thin dead branches in his arms like a box of gold.Here and now, the fire that can last is probably much more valuable than the gold that can't be used.

It was also at this time that Chu De felt that someone was looking at him, but that line of sight obviously did not belong to Boyce soldiers or the civilians of Winter Valley who had escaped from the disaster and hid in the mountains.

He understands that this is a harbinger of danger—the body is about to fail, but the head can still turn—but now he has no room for countermeasures.

When he returned to the campfire with firewood, Chu De could hear another series of footsteps that did not belong to him.But before he pulled out the dagger from his waist, a chill parasitic on the sword pierced into his body, and the thin and hard blade was so sharp that it could hardly catch blood.

The dagger was not aimed at the throat and heart, but pierced into Chu De's abdominal cavity from the side, and blood gushed out like a spring, but it did not kill Chu De with one blow.

I don't know if it was because the sword was too fast, or because the wind and snow had numb his perception of the body. Except for the piercing pain at the beginning, Chu De soon didn't feel much pain.

The firewood with icicles hanging in his arms was scattered all over the ground, only half a step away from the pile of fire that was getting weaker and weaker.

Chu De staggered up to the nearest wall, but failed to stand firmly, and his body slid down involuntarily.The clothes on his body were too thick, the cloth and fur sucked most of the blood gushing out of the wound, and the outermost layer of leather armor was frozen like a shell, "pocketing" the blood that hadn't solidified in the shell. It was difficult to find that Chu De was injured.

Trembling, Chu De took a deep breath, raised his head, and finally saw the face of the person who drew the sword clearly.

"Yes, it's you..."

In Chu De's shaky vision, Adrian was slowly retracting the dagger into its sheath.

A young man of the Torresso bloodline, the "young master" of the Flying Lion Mansion, a student of bounty hunter Luis Cormac—and maybe not just a student.

In a trance, Chu De thought that the "old man" in front of him was his hallucination, and that the god of death had borrowed Adrian's face.The pain spreading in his body was so real, it dragged him out of his boundless imagination.

Chu De soon realized that Adrian had chased him all the way to the north from Marunliga just to claim his life, and saw him die miserably in the wind and snow in a foreign land with his own eyes.

"You came to me to settle accounts for...for Louis." Chu De clutched the wound on his side, knowing that his life was not long.

Adrian looked down at his enemy from above, but his face was as calm as snow, like a newly made stone sculpture.He squatted down opposite the fire, added two pieces of firewood to it, and responded to Chu De in a flat tone: "Yes."

Chu De sneered shortly, as if mocking himself: "That day on the execution ground, it really was you..."

Adrian nodded slightly.

Now, there is no need to hide from a dying person.

Alone, he crossed the Kuno continent, went to the ice-covered and war-torn Northland, and sneaked into the camp of Boyce Kingdom. Adrian's purpose was simple.

Across the dancing flames, Adrian's quiet eyes were full of snowstorm: "Chu De, I'm here to kill you."

Chu De clutched the wound tightly, warm blood stuck between his fingers: "...I know."

"Not just for Master Cormac. General Lucien, Lady Linka, and those you killed."

"But what drives you to act, ahem... is still Louis, right?"

Adrian admitted frankly: "That's right."

First suffering from the war in a foreign country, and then being pierced by Adrian's revenge, Chu De felt great irony: "Even if you don't kill me... I won't live long."

Adrian didn't waver: "But I have to kill you with my own hands."

"After finishing revenge...are you happy?"

Adrian was silent for a long time.

Perhaps he should be happy, but now, Adrian only feels as if he has fulfilled an obligation: "No. Even if you kill you, the master will not be able to return to Marenliga."

"It's a pity, I won't confess to him until I die." Chu De laughed mockingly again - if he doesn't laugh, there will be no chance. "It's just that now... ha... I don't have the right to laugh at Louis anymore."

Adrian frowned: "Why do you insist on targeting Master Cormac?" This is the truth he has always wanted to know.

Too much blood was lost, and Chu De didn't have much energy left to speak, but the fact that he was dying instead aroused his long-sleeping desire to confide: "We bounty hunters... obviously started from the same place, so we should Going to the same end...Louis jumps overboard - it makes me question my choices. So, I can only hate him."

"..."

"I will never forget the humiliation of the past. I curled up in the corner of Marunliga like a dog, and I would give up my life for half a piece of bread, let alone my dignity. I am obviously not a slave, but I can only live in the cracks like a slave. Do you know what that feels like? No, how could you know..."

Trud may have had more misfortunes than Master Cormac, but at least I won't forgive him—Adrian thought.

"I know who took away everything I should have had. So... so I'm going to climb up anyway, to be one of 'them', because that's the only way I can really get rid of who I used to be. That city is rotten, and so are we who live in it. Don't you... think it's ironic?"

Adrian's gaze moved down from Chu De, whose consciousness was gradually becoming drowsy, and another emotion different from indifference flashed in his deep blue eyes.

"I can't get rid of my stains without getting myself dirty, but they can stand cleanly on the highest point of Maren Riga... You can see what Winterdale looks like now, and sooner or later Marer Riga will have A day of destruction, but who exactly caused all of this...Even without my existence, that fellow Louis would still..."

Chu De's voice became smaller and smaller, and the half-sentence he hadn't finished speaking was also swallowed by the wind outside the wall.

Adrian raised his head belatedly, and found that Chu De had died.

In the second half of the night, two soldiers patrolling with torches found the extinguished fire at the edge of the camp and the silent people leaning against the wall.

Soldier A stretched his legs while rubbing his hands, and tentatively kicked the man a few times. Seeing that the man still didn't move, he thought he was probably dead.

The dead man's cloudy eyes were half open, not fully closed.Because of the bone-deep cold, his body was already stiff, and he was almost connected to the wall.There wasn't much blood on the ground, and the two of them didn't bother to check the condition of the corpse carefully, thinking that this lonely and unlucky ghost had been frozen to death.

Soldier B squatted down, carefully looked at the face that was completely frozen and lifeless, and covered with a layer of ice crystals, and then asked his companions: "Do you know him?"

Soldier A shook his head: "I don't know. What about you?"

"I don't know him either, so leave him alone." Soldier B shrugged, threw two pieces of dry wood into the wreckage of the campfire, and lit it again with a torch. "I'm almost exhausted, shall we rest here for a while?"

"Okay."

It's bad luck to warm up with a dead person, so the two discussed removing the corpse.It happened that there was a newly dug corpse pit nearby, which was used to "bury" the slaves who died during the withdrawal.Two soldiers rolled up the strange dead man with a worn-out blanket, and threw him into the pit that had been half-filled with other corpses.

Accompanied by a muffled sound, Chu De's icy body fell on the pile of corpses, his empty eyes that could not be closed were facing the sky, and were slowly buried by the falling snowflakes.

The soldier rubbed his frozen hands and murmured in a low voice: "It's so miserable, there was almost a fire."

After all, the two walked towards the rekindled campfire without looking back, waiting for the cold wind at the bottom of the valley to subside in the limited warmth.When they left, they took away the firewood that Chu De hadn't had time to light.

A few days later, Adrian stood on the pier of a coastal city in Boyce Kingdom.In a little less than half a day, after the supplies are transported, the merchant ship he took to the south will set sail and return to the "prosperous and peaceful" Marenliga.

The snow sweeping across the entire northern part of the continent still hasn't stopped, as if as long as it keeps falling, the flames of war interrupted by the cold winter won't ignite again.

But after all, this is just the wish of the romantics.

This small northern city is far less wealthy than Marenliga, partly because of the lack of a good port with stable sea conditions, and partly because of frequent wars—the Kingdom of Boyce once lost it in a war with its neighbors, and a few years later snatched it back.

After changing hands several times, many civilians were killed and injured, and most of the bungalows were destroyed, so that it still looks extremely bleak now, and even the shadows of the sails on the sea are a bit more desolate.

"Young man, you're not from us, are you?" The old man who smuggled bootleg wine was sitting under the eaves, and the wooden stool with half of its leg missing was crumbling. "It's not from the sea either—as long as I show my face at the pier, I basically remember it."

Adrian turned around, showing a reserved polite smile, and spoke the northern language strangely: "I'm from Marenliga, but I'm traveling by land."

The old man looked happy: "Malenliga? That place is not bad."

As he recalled, a heroic laugh came out of his old throat: "Don't believe me, I went there when I was a sailor. The wine is delicious, and the girl is also beautiful. I remember that there are a pair of statues in the square that are as tall as seven or eight people. , the man is the first governor, and the other side is the goddess who blesses the city-state, and as a result, the number of people looking at the statue of the goddess is three times that of the governor.”

Adrian had no words—there was no such pair of statues as the old man mentioned on the square in the city of Marunliga.Either he hadn't been to Marenliga at all, or he had confused what he had seen elsewhere.

"Oh, I really envy you." Halfway through speaking, the old man shook his head helplessly. "We are rich and stable, unlike us, who have been fighting endlessly for these years."

Adrian smiled bitterly: "It's not always as good as you said. It just looks magnificent, but there are also countless bitterness underneath."

The old man's eyes widened: "How is that possible! That's Maren Liga."

He shook his head in disbelief, muttered under his breath, and staggered off to go about his business again.

Snow is still falling.

On an autumn night a year ago, at the corner of the pier in Marunliga, he met that decadent bounty hunter.

A year later, at the pier of Boyce Kingdom, he had completed his revenge but he didn't know where the bounty hunter was.

Just like sitting side by side with Louis on the Silver Bay Lighthouse, Adrian stretched out his left hand unconsciously.This time, he finally held a few flakes of snow firmly with the palm of his hand.

Then, Adrian gently placed his right hand on top of the thin layer of snow in his palm, leaving less than an inch away from his left palm, as if holding Louis' hand in the void.

——This world is catastrophe.

"...but you are an exception." Adrian closed his eyes slightly, trying to hear a familiar voice in the exotic cold sea breeze.

The author has something to say: Writing bgmTheVagabond - MarcinPrzybylowicz

The end of the main plot, but not the whole story

The truth of the catastrophe, the death of Chu De, and the world structure outside Macheng were extremely brief in the earliest outline (I didn’t even think about who was the villain at the beginning...), but the more I wrote it later, the social situation as the background board , The more historical events are imagined, the more details are unconsciously added to the characters and plots.It may not be logical and self-consistent, in short, it is to save an artistic conception