Damn Reincarnation

an emotionless expression as he paid the fee for the warp gate.

“Our journey from the capital of Ruhr to Lehain won’t be easy.
At best, it will take a month, and the snowfields on the Ruhr frontier are infested with monsters.
They may have received constant training to be knights, but isn’t it a rare opportunity to build up the bond between siblings by overcoming such rough terrain together? Especially since, as well as being their brother, I’ve also reached a high level in the White Flame Formula, so by asking me to accompany them across the snowfields together, they must be hoping to be positively stimulated and influenced by me.”

Now that Eugene had said all this, Kristina couldn’t say anything back to him.
Instead, she felt like what Eugene said was correct, and she felt ashamed of herself for having such pointless thoughts.

As such, while feeling a need for self-reflection, she took a moment to recite a prayer for repentance.

Only for Anise to snort, [What positive stimulation? I don’t know about that young master Cyan, but that cunning bitch, Ciel’s insistence on traveling together with Hamel, must definitely be full of her own greedy desires.]

Kristina was too stunned to respond.

[Kristina, if you ’re having trouble dealing with that chick, then just leave it to me, your Sister,] Anise offered.
[I’ll fix those bad habits of hers so that she won’t think to do anything so cunning again.]

‘…It’s alright, you don’t need to do that…,’ Kristina hesitantly declined.

A quick look at bit.ly/3iBfjkV will leave you more fulfilled.

Although Kristina couldn’t help but feel tempted, she still didn’t want to make such a request of Anise.

“Don’t we need to change clothes before we go?” Mer stuck her head out from under Eugene’s cloak and asked.
“The Kingdom of Ruhr is a place where it’s winter all year round.
I didn’t ask, but Lady Ancilla sent me some new winter clothes.
Do you want to see them, Sir Eugene? I’ve already changed into them.”

“What’s there to even look at that?” Eugene scoffed.
“You showed them to me as soon as you received them and also once yesterday.”

“Truthfully speaking, even I have to admit that I look cute in my fur-lined coat.
Don’t you think it’s cute no matter how often you’ve seen it?” Mer argued.

Kristina couldn’t deny those words, but the way Mer’s face looked back up at her with a smug and challenging smile was really annoying.
Eugene shook his head as he pulled on Mer’s cheeks.

“Don’t pinch my cheeks,” Mer complained.
“So, Sir Eugene, are you going to change clothes?”

Eugene rejected her persuasion, “I’m fine.
After all, this cloak is meant to be worn in winter.”

Mer turned to Kristina, “How about you, Lady Kristina?”

Kristina also waved her off, “My robes also have a function to protect from the cold.”

“Really now!” Mer huffed.
“How can you all be like this? Do you really only wear clothes to keep yourself from getting cold? It’s also a lot of fun to wear new clothes you’ve never worn before!”

“As long as they’re warm when it ’s cold and cool and easy to move around in when it ’s hot, any clothes are fine,” Eugene grumbled.

Anise also agreed, [This little familiar is so spoiled because she’s never had to wander around Helmuth.]

However, Kristina could somewhat agree with Mer, and she felt a slight impulse to try Mer’s idea.
Come to think of it, until now, she had yet to wear anything other than a nun’s habit or a priest’s robes.

“…Ahem… this robe will keep out the cold, but it won’t be able to protect me from the flying snow.
So I think it should be alright for me to buy at least one set of coats,” as Kristina finished convincing herself like this, she walked through the warp gate.

While following behind Krisitna, Eugene recalled his memories of Molon.

This wasn’t Eugene’s first time in the northern snowfields.
To enter Helmuth, one needed to cross these snowfields.
At that time, because most of the northern land had been occupied by demonfolk and demonic beasts, while not as much as Helmuth, these frozen lands had been filled with a hellish amount of demonic beasts and demonfolk.

Molon had been enraged by the state of these snowfields.
Although he and the Bayar tribe that he had been born and raised in had never once been to these northernmost snowfields where the ancestors of their tribe were once based, the Bayar tribe had always called themselves the Children of the North, Children of the Snowfields.
Even if the snowfields that Hamel and the others had walked across three hundred years ago weren’t the territory of the Bayar Tribe, that land was still the snowfields of the constant blizzards.

Molon used a great hammer and an ax as his weapons.

Whenever Molon struck with his hammer, an avalanche was raised, and when he swung his ax, even a blizzard could be split in two.

Whenever such ferociously barbaric attacks were directed at the demonfolk and demonic beasts, none of Molon’s enemies were left with intact corpses, either being crushed or exploded, staining the snowfields with their various colors of blood.

The blizzards never stopped.
The snow poured down in a perpetual shower.
So even if these mangled corpses were strewn about and the entire snowfield was stained in blood, after a while, all the corpses and the blood-stained land would return to a pure-white state once more.

Molon had loved these snowfields.

‘There’s also the heated river,’ Eugene recalled.

A heated river flowed near the territory of the Bayar tribe.
When Anise had first told them about the Fount of Light three hundred years ago, Molon had also spoken about that heated river.

At that, Hamel and Sienna hadn’t believed Molon’s claims and had just laughed at them.
How could there be an entire river that was steaming hot? Especially since the Bayar tribe lived in the northernmost part of the continent, where it snowed heavily.
They had thought that it was ridiculous for there to be a heated river in a land where it was so cold that even a normal river would have frozen over and stopped flowing.

But Eugene now knew, ‘It was actually a hot spring.’

Molon hadn’t been lying.
For a kingdom founded in the middle of these snowfields, the hot springs had become a famous tourist attraction for the Kingdom of Ruhr.

—Once this war is over, we can all go there together.
At that time, I will be the Chieftain of the Bayar Tribe.
If I ask them to keep the river empty for my friends, our tribe members will gladly give up the opportunity for us.

Back then, Molon had said this with a broad smile.

However, that promise hadn’t come true.
The war came to an unsatisfactory conclusion, and Hamel had died.
So it was impossible for everyone to go to the heated river together.

But Molon had still become the Chieftain of the Bayar Tribe, and he had founded a kingdom that now bore his name.

“So Molon ended up being the most successful of all of us,” Eugene marveled with a wry smile as he passed through the warp gate.

Sienna may have received a lot of acclaim while serving as a Tower Master in Aroth, but she was still fatally wounded when Vermouth had attacked her for unknown reasons.
After that, she was crushed by Raizakia’s attack and had to be sealed within the World Tree.

Anise had tried to retire by going on a pilgrimage, but in her very final moments, she was overtaken by a whim and took her own life.
Her body was unable to receive its eternal rest and was instead used as a sacrifice so that Yuras could raise the next candidate for Sainthood.

Vermouth had served as an Archduke of Kiehl and founded the Lionheart clan, one of the most prestigious lineages on the continent.
However, Vermouth also couldn’t find a place to rest in his later years and instead disappeared after faking his death.

However, Molon had lived happily for a very, very long time.
This was a widely known fact.

He had founded the Kingdom of Ruhr in the snow fields that had once been stomped on by Helmuth.
He rallied the countess refugees who had lost their own countries and took them in as subjects of his kingdom.
In the three hundred years since its founding, the Kingdom of Ruhr had become the most powerful country in the north.
It alone exerted more influence than the entire Anti-Demon Alliance, a coalition of the small and medium-sized countries near Helmuth.

The Kingdom of Ruhr had been able to show such drastic growth because the Brave Molon that stood behind Ruhr had last been seen one hundred years ago.
After founding the kingdom and serving as its king for the next fifty years, he had passed the throne to his son, but Molon hadn’t chosen to live in seclusion and had kept a watch over the Kingdom of Ruhr as its former king.

However, even Molon had suddenly disappeared about a hundred years ago.

Eugene cursed, ‘These bastards are really all the same.
Molon went into seclusion, Sienna also went into seclusion, and Anise went on a pilgrimage.
Everyone just disappeared suddenly without properly revealing where they were going.
Then there’s that bastard Vermouth, who’s pretending to be dead.’

Eugene raised his hand to look at the scene in front of him.
He had already passed through the warp gate, but the temperature hadn’t changed drastically.
Instead, the air actually felt quite warm.

The capital of the Kingdom of Ruhr was called….

“Hamelon!” Mer cried out cheerfully as she looked up at Eugene from inside his cloak.
“You knew that as well, right, Sir Eugene? That the reason why this city is called Hamelon is that it was meant to commemorate the deceased comrade of Molon Ruhr, the first king of Ruhr.”

“I knew that,” Eugene reluctantly acknowledged.

“In the square in front of the palace are statues depicting Sir Molon and Sir Hamel together.
We’re definitely going to see them, right?” Mer chirped excitedly.

Eugene refused, “Don’t want to.”

“Why don’t you want to go?” Mer complained.
“It’s said that they’re so well-made that they look magnificent.”

“I think it would feel weird seeing them,” Eugene admitted.

Kristina hesitantly spoke up, “I really want to see them, but….”

Inside her head, Anise giggled and said, [I’ve seen them once, but I recommend not looking at them too closely.]

‘Why is that, Sister?’ Kristina asked her silently.

Anise explained, [Molon was a bit too aggrieved about his deceased comrade.
How should I describe the statue of Hamel that’s stood there…? It might be a statue of Hamel, but it doesn’t really look like Hamel.
They made it a lot more… noble-looking.
Just like my statues in Yuras.]

‘More noble-looking, you say….
I’m not sure I get what you mean by that.’

[Molon commissioned and erected a statue of the moment when Hamel died.
He intended for the people of Ruhr to mourn Hamel’s noble sacrifice….
So the statue depicts Hamel collapsed with a hole through his chest, and Molon is holding his corpse.
I can remember it clearly.
After retrieving Hamel’s corpse from the Demon King of Incarceration, Molon’s appearance as he carried Hamel’s body in his arms….]

While recalling the distant past, Anise let out a sad laugh.

Eugene might not be able to hear the conversation between Kristina and Anise, but he meant it when he said that he didn’t want to go and take a look at the statue in that square.

The reason for it was simple.
If he saw it, he might end up feeling depressed and unable to hold back his tears, and Eugene didn’t want to show such an appearance to Anise.

“Still, Sir Eugene, wouldn’t it be better to look at it at least once?” Kristina cautiously suggested to Eugene.

But at the moment when Eugene was about to open his mouth and reply—

“Eugene!”

Someone called out to Eugene in a loud voice.

When Eugene turned his head, he spotted Ciel running at him from somewhere nearby and throwing herself at him in a hug without losing any of her momentum.

“It’s been so long!” Ciel cried out.

Since it had been almost half a year since they last saw each other, saying it had been so long wasn’t inaccurate.
Ciel threw back the hood of her coat, which was bristling with fur, and smiled at Eugene.

“Didn’t you miss me?” Ciel asked.

Eugene asked in return, “Were you waiting for us here?”

“You’re the one who said that you’d be arriving today.
That’s why brother and I came out early to meet you,” Ciel explained with a bright smile while also exchanging a side glance with Kristina.

[Kristina, wouldn’t it be better for you to change places with me?] Anise whispered to her like a demon on her shoulder.

Kristina’s lips just twitched silently.