Edgar glared at Blanco. The underling was roughly three times bigger than him, but he didn’t look afraid at all.
“May we take the carriage?”
Blanco glanced at the carriage.
“It’s not that far, so leave it here.”
“It might be a short distance to you, but it could be far for humans. Our duchess is an ordinary woman, so she must go with the carriage.”
“Then we’ll let you take our sleigh.”
“But…!”
“Carl.”
Edgar calmed down the butler by calling his name. They had prepared the carriage for a battle, so he was right to be nervous about leaving it. However, objecting further could arouse suspicion.
“Just wait here.”
“Your Grace.”
Carl’s eyes shook, but his master was telling him to wait and he couldn’t disobey him. He took the order, although extremely reluctantly. Then, Edgar turned to Minos.
“Minos.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Thank you for taking us here. You don’t have to follow us further. Just go to find a lizard.”
Minos immediately knew he was talking about Ios.
Things were going quite suspiciously, so Minos thought it would be better to bring Ios, even if it would end the negotiation.
“Minos, you like lizards? Then I’ll get some dried lizards for your next visit.”
Shasha chimed in, entirely ignorant of the true meaning implied by the word. What Minos really wanted to say to that was, ‘Dried lizards? We goblins might live underground, but we don’t live on such hideous things. We may look ugly, but what we like are cherries rinsed in clear spring water!’ However, he just tried to reply with a wide smile.
“Thank you, Shasha. Well then, as I’ve done my work here by arranging this meeting, I must go back now.”
Minos left after that, leaving Rubica and Edgar with no one to rely on in the cold land.
“This way.”
Rubica held his hand tightly as they followed Iber’s underlings. They had invited them into their mistress’s territory as guests, so they were not going to break rules and kill them. But did that really mean they were safe? There were many other things the underlings could do to them, like locking them up or making them get lost and freeze to death.
“It’s alright.”
Edgar noticed her anxiety and whispered to her, which made her feel a little strange. In what was her past but was actually a distant future, she had often guided the blind Edgar by holding his hand.
-It’s alright.
That was what she would say when they had to go in unfamiliar paths or had to run away from the bombing.
Then, his steps would immediately lose their fear. He walked and ran as she led, without even a bit of hesitation. However, what they were doing now was the opposite. It made her feel happy and sad at the same time, for only she remembered it.
He had said he wanted to be loved by her for who he was, not because he was Arman, but it didn’t blow away all of her memories. It had been a hard time full of suffering, but there also had been moments that shined like gems. And the man who had given her power to live on through any pain now couldn’t remember any of it.
‘It would be even stranger if he remembered it, those are the things of the future he hasn’t been through.’
They said there was no end to human greed…
Rubica decided to get rid of her disappointment and focus on the fact that they might be able to break his curse soon. However, that ‘not far away’ turned out to be in the underling’s standard, just like Carl had said. Rubica’s hands started to turn cold and Edgar had to try hard not to swear.
“I should have brought the carriage.”
“A carriage cannot move in so much snow. Snow, where’s the sleigh?”
“Here it is.”
Edgar openly made a remark for them to hear, but it looked like they couldn’t even guess what he was unhappy about. Snow dug up three giant sleighs out of the snow, and Blanco let them get on her sleigh.
“I hope Minos will quickly find a lizard…”
They couldn’t see any light from the villages. The quiet land of snow felt even wider and scarier than the starry sky. The sleighs started to run through the land without any road signs. It seemed like the underlings had a way only they could see.
“This is ‘not far’?”
They went across a wide field and went over a few mountains to reach a valley of ice. At that point, Edgar couldn’t take it anymore and protested to Blanco.
His wristwatch said it was already one in the morning. They were exposed to the cold night’s wind in the sleigh. Rubica snuffled, despite the fact that she was wrapped in fur like a polar bear.
“It’s not far away.”
“You’ve been saying that for hours.”
“It’s really not far away now.”
However, they could get off the sleigh only after another hour of going by a small road around a mountain, with a dangerous cliff at their right side.
“Oh my, look at that!”
When Rubica finally got off from the sleigh, she exclaimed. Lights of brilliant colors, that flowed out from the land’s bottom, harmonized with the beautiful northern lights that were seen beyond a giant canyon of ice.
It was dangerous but so unrealistically beautiful. Snow came up to her knees, but she couldn’t feel any cold. Edgar looked around and frowned. It seemed like they were surrounded by cliffs.
“Those lights seem to be… coming from mana quartz.”
“You can notice it instantly? Well, of course, you do, after so many years of stealing what belongs to us.”
“If you Claymores hadn’t obstructed us, we would have filled this until the end of that cliff years ago.”
Edgar didn’t reply to that and checked the shape of the land. The ice canyon somehow resembled a dragon. There was an empty round space that probably had been made artificially, and it was filled with mana quartz, which looked quite ominous.
‘Are we… at the heart of their territory?’
Did they trust them so easily? Should they run? Or, would it be better to threaten them, now that he knew where they stored all their mana quartz?
“Hey, this way.”
While Edgar was wondering what to do, Snow found something under a pile of snow. It was some kind of pillar. She wiped the snow from it and put Edgar’s ring in the hole it had. Then, a huge roar came from under the cliff.
The entire land started to shake, and Rubica managed not to fall only because Blanco quickly stood in front of her to protect her from the snowstorm. Of course, no underling did that for Edgar.
“Edgar, are you alright?”
As soon as the land went still again, Rubica went to Edgar and offered a hand to him, as he was on the ground after rolling in the snow.
“I’m fine.”
Edgar had hit a jagged stone while he was rolling in the snow and frowned, but he stood up, trying to look fine, but it just saddened Rubica even more.
“Just hold my hand.”
If something happened to them, the underlings were going to save her, but they were probably going to ignore Edgar. She held his hand tightly and looked around.
A huge tube of glass had soared up at the end of the land. Did it come up from under the cliff? That had to be why the land had shaken.
Inside it was a huge diamond in the size of Blanco gleaming beautifully in the moonlight.
The light was beautiful, even beyond comparison with the mana quartz’ light, and Rubica stared at it, totally amazed.
The grand scenery of the ice canyon, northern light, giant land of snow and moonlight almost made her cry. It made her feel so small.
Nature could make such beautiful scenery with nothing but water, but humans built constructions which were nothing compared to nature’s work and bragged about how much gold and silver they had used on them.
“Is there a supporting beam in it? It seems too heavy to depend on strings…”
While Rubica was amazed by the beauty created by the giant diamond and moonlight, Edgar was curious about completely different things.
“A supporting beam? There isn’t such a thing.”
“Then it’s just floating in there? Hmm, it doesn’t seem to be in a vacuum, have you filled the tube with some kind of liquid?”
Blanco blinked at the series of questions.
“It’s just frozen…”
“Frozen?”
Had it been frozen full of water? Judging from the weather, it didn’t seem impossible. However, Edgar wondered how it had been frozen so cleanly without even a single air bubble in it.
“Then…”
“Enough! That’s not what matters now.”
Edgar wanted to ask more questions, but Snow stopped him. Blanco, who meant to answer his questions, quickly shut her mouth and looked away.
He had been told Blanco was their chief, so why was Snow in control?
For now, Edgar decided to watch how each of them behaved.
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