While Roel was still in university in his previous life, the stress of failing his end-of-semester examinations would usually prompt him to become a regular at the library, where he found himself becoming yet another victim of the vicious ‘library dates’.
The three killer moves of library dates—hand holding, back leaning, and secret whispers—these had once left the single Roel in utter despair, crumbling weakly to the floor in defeat.
Yet, who could have known that he would one day become one of these people too?
Feeling the soft and tender sensation in his grasp, Roel couldn’t help but lament that the working world sure was tough. In order to ensure that they didn’t miss any information that could possibly lead to a vision, the two of them had been holding their hands while reading all this while.
Unfortunately, there hadn’t been much progress so far.
After several attempts at physical contact failed, Roel and Charlotte turned their attention elsewhere and decided to investigate the letter and its message instead.
The content of the letter was fairly short. No matter how they looked at it, there were only two leads they could use for their investigation.
First and foremost was the location mentioned in the letter, Twohorn Port.
Roel personally wasn’t too familiar with the place. In fact, the only thing he knew about it was that it wasn’t located within the Ascart Fiefdom. It was not as if he hadn’t tried looking up the records to see if he could find anything about ‘Twohorn Port’, but there were no maps in the manor that mentioned anything about it.
Initially, Roel thought that the maps were simply incomplete.
He was no longer in a world where maps were accurate and commonplace; in this world, maps were strategic intelligence that had a consequential impact in war, making them highly valued. On top of that, there were no advanced technologies in this world to get overhead imagery of terrain, and no tools to help draw out the map. Everything had to be done manually.
Cartography was an occupation that was highly demanding in terms of skill. They had to head down to the region being mapped themselves and survey the area, conducting measurements and making estimates, before detailing the information down on a piece of paper.
On top of how tiring and tough the job was, it was highly dangerous too. Exploring treacherous regions was difficult enough by itself, but they were often made unwelcome on top of that. There were no fief lords who would be willing to have their own territory exposed to others. If someone were to be caught secretly creating a map of a fief, that person would be arrested and grilled.
The line of thought was that if someone was trying to draw a map of your fiefdom, someone was probably coveting your land.
Even legitimate cartographers, authorized by the royal family, faced difficulties trying to carry out their work in other fiefs. The fief lords would usually resort to all kinds of tactics to sabotage their work.
Even if they didn’t, just the danger of the wilds was a struggle to deal with. Here in Sia, old mountains weren’t just filled with wild beasts. There were mutated beasts lingering in the depths of forests and mountains which even high-level transcendents would struggle to cope with. If a cartographer were to encounter one of those, it would spell certain doom.
That’s why it was often said that the greatest accomplishment of a cartographer was to complete a single map in their lifetime.
In any case, all of these reasons made it highly difficult to acquire maps in Sia, and this was only the very first step of the problem. There was a greater challenge awaiting after acquiring a map—verifying its authenticity.
If there was one thing Roel learned after reading through so many old records, it would be that cartographers weren’t exactly the most honest of people. There were some cartographers who simply followed their imagination, occasionally fabricating places for the sole purpose of fame. It would be hard for others to disprove that the pieces they fabricated didn’t exist anyway.
All of these led to an interesting phenomenon in Sia.
Many fief lords had invested great resources to map out their own territories, only to find that the maps were of different shapes and sizes.
They could have very well started a new variety show on it, ‘Guess Which Map is the Real One’.
This sort of ridiculous situation happened in pretty much every single new fief. Fortunately, the Ascart Fiefdom had a thousand years of history behind it, so they still had a fairly accurate map on their own territory. However, the same couldn’t be said about the maps they had on other regions.
Regardless of whether it was the ‘Hundredth Year of the Theocracy’s Establishment: Full Map’ or ‘The Third Deviant Internal War Strategic Map’, there was not a single place that was called Twohorn Port.
Unexpectedly, Charlotte provided an answer to this question.
“Ah, Twohorn Port actually refers to the Cursed Bay. You don’t know it?”
“Like hell I would know that! They don’t even sound similar in terms of name!”
Realizing that he had researched in vain all this while, Roel stared at the auburn-haired girl before him speechlessly. After enquiring a little deeper into it, he learned that Twohorn Port was simply a name that the locals used for referring to the Cursed Bay.
The name, Cursed Bay, was much more famous than the darned Twohorn Port. At the very least, there were quite a few people in the Ascart Fiefdom who had heard about it. The reason was quite simple too—it was close.
It was simply an undeveloped area just east of the Worun Mountain Range. Of course, the reason why it was undeveloped wasn’t because the Ascarts or Rosa were lazy. It was because the Cursed Bay, as the name suggested, was cursed.
Eternal frost.
No one could find an explanation for it, but the area around the Cursed Bay was extremely cold. It was a little similar to Antarctica in Roel’s previous life. Ironically, its location would actually make a decent seaport, but unfortunately, this seaport was always frozen.
The weather of the Cursed Bay was unnatural, as could be seen by the temperate climate of its neighboring regions. This piqued the interest of adventurers. Many of them attempted to conquer the world of ice, only to never be seen again. Those who eventually managed to come back only numbered a few, and the term, Cursed Bay, came from the mouths of these survivors.
Adventurers weren’t an entirely foolish bunch either. In the first place, the Cursed Bay wasn’t the remnant of an ancient civilization, so it was unlikely to harbor anything significant. As the casualties rose, people soon lost interest in the region.
This was basically what Roel knew about that remote area.
As for Charlotte, that place was known as one of the most difficult projects that the Sorofyas had embarked on over the past few decades.
“Rosa is founded on its commercial power, and ports are extremely important for commerce. Twohorn Port is a natural port, and the ancestors of the Sorofyas once considered developing it to become the central trading hub of the Sia Continent. However, they weren’t able to resolve the problem of the extremely low temperatures, which become unbelievably harsh when winter sets in. Even horses would find it hard to survive in that weather…”
Charlotte swiftly explained the Sorofyas’ interest and gripes regarding the Cursed Bay. Putting together what they knew about the place, they began reanalyzing the letter once more, and soon, they stumbled upon a clue.
Based on the information conveyed in the letter, as well as what they saw during the vision, the ‘Queen’ was leading the Golden Fleet toward Twohorn Port, and was estimated to arrive around April. If the Golden Fleet was able to dock there, it would mean that it was still a functional harbor back then, which was at odds with the current situation of the port.
At the same time, considering that the recipient was the Ascart House, which was not located too far away from the port, Roel and Charlotte stipulated three possibilities.
1: The receiver, ‘Fief Lord’, headed forth to receive ‘Queen’ at the Twohorn Port, and the two of them met with one another.
2: The receiver, ‘Fief Lord’, waited in the Ascart Fiefdom till around April or May for the arrival of ‘Queen’.
3: Due to certain circumstances, ‘Queen’ was unable to arrive at the Twohorn Port, so the two of them canceled their appointment and lost contact with one another.
The third possibility hardly contributed to their investigation, so Roel and Charlotte decided to focus on the first two. Theoretically speaking, there should be some traces of their meeting that could still be found somewhere.
Whether it be that the patriarch of the Ascart House headed out or the queen of the Sofya Kingdom paid the Ascart Fiefdom a visit, both were monumental events that were likely to have been recorded down. If so, the next thing they had to do became clear.
They should investigate when the weather of Twohorn Port first showed signs of irregularities, and using that as the upper limit, they would investigate every single record of the Ascart House’s preceding patriarchs before then. From there, they would first narrow down the identity of ‘Fief Lord’ and search for another clue through him.
The Sofya Kingdom had already vanished several hundred years ago, and the Golden Fleet had probably disappeared into some crevasse in the middle of the sea. If they wished to trigger another vision, they would have to work on it from the Ascart House’s side.
And this was exactly what Roel and Charlotte had been working on over the past few days. To their chagrin, however, they hadn’t even managed to find the date when the region’s weather first showed signs of irregularities.
They continued flipping through the records for another hour, and the stress of having to read continuously was starting to build up a frown on Roel’s face. He shot a glance at the girl sitting beside him and found that Charlotte was still concentrating on the documents.
Wow… She would have been a straight A student back in my old world.
Roel looked at Charlotte in envy for a moment before stretching his neck and back to loosen the tension in them. Then, he started to ponder over how he should get Charlotte to pause her work to grab some breakfast.
It was already time for them to eat, and usually, the servants would knock on their door to inform them. However, as the two of them didn’t want to be interrupted in the midst of their work, they ended up calling off that service.
But, what Roel didn’t expect was that trying to drag Charlotte away from her work was almost like talking to a boulder.
“Hey, stop reading. It’s time to have breakfast.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t just move your mouth. Move your body too!”
“Mm.”
“…”
It was not the first time this had happened, and Roel was left completely exasperated by her.
Fortunately, Roel was a flexible person. If method A didn’t work, he would try method B. If method B didn’t work, he would try method C, so on and so forth. Eventually, he managed to find an effective trick to deal with her bad habit.
So, he leisurely turned to the girl he was holding hands with and remarked calmly.
“Speaking of which, I told the chef yesterday to sprinkle some salt on the grilled eggs today.”
“Mm… Ah?”
Too absorbed in her books, Charlotte gave her usual perfunctory response before realization struck her, and her pupils began dilating. She turned to look at Roel with disbelief reflected in the depths of her emerald eyes.
“You mentioned salt, not sugar? How am I to eat that?”
“Hm, I imagine we should have five minutes before the chef starts sprinkling salt on the eggs. I still think eggs go much better with salt, don’t you think so?”
“I absolutely do not think so.”
The auburn-haired girl sharply rejected Roel’s opinion before swiftly releasing his hand and rising to her feet. Looking at her cheeks puffed up like a chipmunk in indignance, Roel couldn’t resist bursting into laughter.
“Threatening me with condiments, are you a child?!”
“Says the one who only eats sweet food. That’s an awfully childish food preference there, Miss Charlotte.”
“You… Hmph! I shan’t argue with the likes of you!”
Having her weakness brought right out to the open, Charlotte’s cheeks acquired a hint of blush as she marched her pouty face out the door. Seeing this, Roel also got up and followed her.
This lass can be adorable at times too, he thought.
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