Although Ranni was as easily flustered as ever, Nolan's shameless, relentless questioning finally left her with no choice. In a fit of embarrassment and irritation, she admitted that giving him the ring had not been without purpose. She did have ulterior motives.
And the person she had set her sights on was Nolan himself.
Once Ranni admitted it with her own mouth, Nolan happily accepted the Lunar Princess's gift and watched Her Highness, her little blue face flushed red, leave.
After the little princess departed, Nolan could finally turn to his own affairs.
From the people who remained, he carefully selected ten Fire Knights and ordered them to lead ten thousand soldiers out with him.
By now, his Fire Knights Corps had expanded to thirty-eight members, most of them Tarnished.
The Fire Knights Corps followed the same elite route as those top knight orders, though it was not as extreme as the Crucible Knights. Becoming a champion was enough to qualify for entry.
The Fire Knights Corps used a seat system. After joining, members were ranked according to strength.
The current Chief Knight was Vyke, followed by veteran knights like Nepheli, Dolores, and Eleonora.
Those four were the strongest champions in the Fire Knights Corps. The rest were somewhat weaker by comparison.
The ten people Nolan chose this time were of average strength, all second- or third-rate champions.
However, since their main task was to assist Asimi, Nolan judged from the intelligence provided by Caria that this formation would be enough.
And even if it was not, there was no need to panic. After all, he could now truly be called well-armed and well-manned.
That was the benefit of having people under him. If he had to conquer the Lands Between alone, how long would he have to keep fighting?
In fact, without others helping him, he might not even be able to manage a single Limgrave properly.
Unless someone possessed omniscience, omnipotence, and the power to make all things change at will, a Lord truly could not rule alone. A world this vast could not be governed by one person either.
Back to the matter at hand, Nolan and his Firelink Army were already prepared. And now that there were fewer people, he could finally show off a little.
A journey of ten thousand began as soon as he decided to leave. Accompanied by the familiar moan of the Goddess, he brought ten thousand soldiers to the eastern shore of Liurnia of the Lakes, near the coast, in the blink of an eye.
Nolan casually swept his gaze around and spotted the exit shaft connecting the surface of Liurnia of the Lakes to the underground.
The exit shaft was enormous, far larger in reality than it appeared in the game.
Its design was clearly meant to allow more than a hundred people to use it at once.
But for the ten thousand soldiers Nolan had brought, that was still far from enough.
Transporting a hundred people at a time would still take a hundred trips, and that did not even count the time needed for the elevator to go up and down.
So the first time, Nolan rode the elevator down alone. After confirming the position, he used the power of The Formless Mother a second time to bring the others down.
Not far from the exit at the bottom of the elevator shaft was a tributary of the Ainsel River.
In truth, this was not the only way to reach the Ainsel River. Besides this exit shaft, there were two other routes.
One was to take a stone sarcophagus from the Nameless Eternal City, but since Nolan had directly collapsed the Deeproot Depths, that method was no longer usable.
The other was through the teleportation gate at Renna's Tower.
But that gate could only send a single-digit number of people at a time. For a Firelink Army of this size, it was not even as efficient as using the elevator.
The tributary of the Ainsel River was extremely shallow, so shallow that the water barely covered their ankles. At that depth, using boats would be completely unnecessary.
Nolan stood by the riverbank with the map in hand, carefully studying the surrounding terrain.
There was no need to think too hard. Before coming here, he had already planned to split his forces into two routes.
He summoned Asimi and asked, "Do you remember what I taught you?"
Asimi's round head bobbed up and down. "I remember. Three steps in total: treat them to a feast, behead them, and take them in as dogs!"
Nolan nodded in satisfaction, then said, "Good. Now tell me what you should do once you reach the Eternal City."
"First, negotiate with them. Tell them the benefits of surrendering, and ideally make them surrender willingly..."
Asimi described it with great feeling, like the supporting actor in the skit The Lead and the Supporting Role, his delivery of "The Lord asked me to pass along a message" practically coming alive.
"What if they refuse to surrender?"
"Then we fight!"
"And after the battle?"
"Accept the ones willing to surrender, and kill the ones who refuse!"
After hearing this, Nolan smiled with relief. He patted Asimi on the shoulder and said,
"Very good. You've learned well. If there's anything you don't understand afterward, ask the Fire Knights, got it?"
Asimi nodded obediently. "Got it."
"I'll leave a clone with you too. This clone doesn't have much power, but if you run into an enemy you can't handle, you can tell him."
The moment he finished speaking, a clone about the size of the petite Ranni separated from Nolan's body.
This clone, however, did not have the slightest combat ability, much less any powerful attacks like Dark Moon stored inside it. It was simply a messenger.
Nolan had Asimi take on his appearance. After that, he parted ways with the Firelink Army.
Asimi would lead the Firelink Army along the upper river channel until they reached the Eternal City of Nokstella.
Nolan, meanwhile, followed the map's directions and continued down the lower river channel.
The map in his hand had been drawn by Rellana herself. It clearly marked the possible dangers along the route, such as where Nox patrols might appear and where they might run into underground-dwelling creatures.
He had to admit, Rellana really was a careful and capable daughter-in-law.
But Nolan vaguely remembered that there seemed to be two Bastard's Stars blocking the path along the Ainsel River.
They were Astel, beasts from the stars. That mysterious and powerful race had been the chief culprit behind the destruction of the Nox Dynasty.
Perhaps it was precisely because such terrifying creatures blocked the way that those Nox people did not dare venture out and cause trouble as they pleased.
Nolan's goal was to find the Lake of Rot, so it was only natural that the Astel, the Naturalborn of the Void that destroyed the Eternal City, was not marked on this map.
But on Rellana's hand-drawn map, even the two Bastard's Stars, Astel, were nowhere to be seen.
Nolan certainly did not think this good daughter-in-law of his had deliberately hidden information to harm him. After all, he had supported her marriage to Messmer with both hands.
Then there was only one possibility. When they explored the underground, they truly had not discovered any Astel.
Had those giant insects hidden themselves, or had they run away? The Naturalborn of the Void could not have run off too, could it?
Nolan had originally been hoping to gain another major boost in this underground world.
He manipulated Gravitas to lift himself into the air, then flew along the Ainsel River channel until he reached the great dam blocking the Lake of Rot's erosion, yet he still did not see those two insect-like Starry Beasts.
Did they really run? Where could giant insects like that even go? Leyndell?
Nolan stood on the dam, his brow slightly furrowed as he gazed at the Ainsel River pool behind him.
He faintly felt that the disappearance of those giant insects had something to do with him, but as he looked down at the scarlet lake water below, he could only set the matter aside for now.
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