The bronze bell atop the town hall rang three times in succession, sending out a deep metallic vibration that cut through the chaotic murmur of nearly two thousand people crammed into the central square of Border Town.
Standing on the wooden platform—the same stage where Anna's gallows had been erected just weeks earlier—Assistant Minister Barov clutched a scroll of parchment in both hands. The old bureaucrat swallowed nervously, his face pale and sweaty as he gazed down at the sea of miners, farmers, and hunters gathered in the mud below.
The tension in the square was almost palpable.
That morning, the first thin flakes of frost had appeared on the thatched rooftops, bringing with them the age-old dread that haunted the frontier every year: the Months of the Demons were about to begin.
Away from the central commotion, strategically positioned on slightly higher ground beside the stone pillars of a warehouse on the outskirts of the square, Arthur and William surveyed the crowd like two hawks.
— "Look at the faces of those miners in the third row," William murmured out of the corner of his mouth, keeping his arms crossed over his navy-blue doublet as his eyes swept across the rooftops and side alleys. — "Half of them have already brought bundles of clothes strapped to their backs. They're all waiting for the Prince to order the march so they can go beg for scraps of bread at the gates of Longsong Fortress."
— "That's what decades of fear have conditioned them to do," Arthur replied quietly, adjusting the collar of his dark gray tunic as he analyzed the people's reactions with surgical precision. — "But don't just look at the frightened farmers, Will. Pay attention to those three men in clean traveling cloaks standing near the well, twenty paces from Carter's guards."
William's eyes narrowed immediately.
— "Duke Ryan's spies?" William asked, feeling the muscles in his shoulders tense. — "Or rats sent by Timothy from the capital?"
— "Probably scouts from the Six Great Families of Longsong who remained in the city after Ambassador Petrov's hasty departure," Arthur surmised without taking his eyes off them. — "They've come to see whether today's announcement will spark a riot. Duke Ryan is still betting that once the people discover there won't be an evacuation this year, the residents themselves will panic and abandon the mines."
Up on the platform, with Chief Knight Carter Lannis standing close by in his imposing presence, Prince Roland Wimbledon stepped forward.
Roland did not let Barov read the bureaucratic, roundabout speech the minister had spent the entire night writing. Instead, the young prince made a brief gesture for the old man to step back, placed both hands on the wooden railing of the platform, and looked directly at his people.
— "Citizens of Border Town!" Roland's voice rang out clearly and firmly across the square, silencing the hubbub within seconds. — "I know why so many of you have come here today with bags on your backs! You felt the northern wind change this morning! You know the Months of the Demons are at our doorstep!"
A collective shiver ran through the crowd. Women pulled their young children closer against their patched wool coats, and several men lowered their heads, remembering the family members who had frozen to death or been torn apart during previous winters.
— "For generations, whenever the first snow fell on the mountainside, the order issued from this castle was always the same!" Roland continued, raising his voice. — "You were told to lock up your shacks, abandon your work, and walk for days through freezing mud to Longsong Fortress! And what did you receive in return for all your hard work?! You slept crammed together in cold stables outside the inner walls, paid outrageous prices for moldy flour, and two years ago, nearly half your families starved and froze to death in that camp while the nobles drank hot wine!"
An angry murmur, tinged with pain, rose from the front rows. That wound remained fresh in the memory of every local resident.
— "Well, I've summoned you here today to declare, under my royal seal, that the days of fleeing like beggars are over for good!" Roland declared, slamming his clenched fist against the wooden railing. — "This winter, Border Town will not retreat a single step!"
The shock was immediate.
— "We're not evacuating?!" a blacksmith shouted from the middle of the crowd, his voice trembling with terror. — "Your Highness, the demonic beasts will devour us alive if we stay here!"
— "Look south, beyond the last rooftops of the town!" Roland pointed firmly, cutting off the beginnings of panic before the scouts near the well could spread fear among the crowd. — "Many of you have worked there over the past three weeks and seen it with your own eyes! Between the cliffs of the Northern Slope and the waters of the Redwater River, a continuous wall of fused stone now stands nearly four meters high, harder than the mountain's granite!"
Roland gestured toward the side of the platform.
In a perfectly synchronized maneuver that William and Iron Axe had rehearsed at dawn, eighty soldiers from the First Army marched to the front of the platform in four immaculate columns. Dressed in their new leather doublets and carrying flintlock muskets on their shoulders, the former miners and hunters stamped their boots against the ground in a single thunderous impact that silenced the entire square.
— "We have an impenetrable wall, a trained army equipped with weapons that spit fire and pierce any shell, and castle granaries packed with wheat and salted meat purchased directly from Willow Town!" Roland announced, his voice charged with a magnetic confidence that swept through the crowd. — "My government guarantees here and now that every citizen who remains in Border Town and works maintaining the furnaces, transporting coal, or supporting the militia will receive two hot meals a day, firewood and coal to heat their homes, and payment in copper coins every week!"
The silence that followed lasted only three heartbeats.
For a population that had spent its entire life being treated like disposable livestock, the firm promise of royal protection, guaranteed hot meals, and resistance against the commercial tyranny of Longsong Fortress was more than just empty rhetoric. These were tangible benefits they could already see in the coins in their pockets and in the gray wall rising in the south.
— "Long live Prince Roland!" foreman Krag roared from within the militia formation, raising his musket into the air.
— "Long live His Highness! We're staying in town!" hundreds of miners who had helped Karl van Bate pour cement into the trenches answered in unison.
In less than ten seconds, the fear hanging over the muddy square was swept away by a deafening explosion of shouts, applause, and hats thrown into the air. It was a direct injection of adrenaline and hope into a town that had once been paralyzed by despair.
On the outskirts of the square, as he watched the people's trust in the crown finally become a solid, tangible reality, Arthur felt a familiar electric sensation pulse deep inside his mind.
Ding!
Beside him, William gave a small start, his eyes widening as he stared at the empty air in front of him.
— "Art... did you hear that?!" William whispered, an enormous grin beginning to spread across his face amid the uproar in the square. — "That gray icon... it finally unlocked!"
— "I saw it. Wipe that look off your face, and don't stare at the screen out here in the middle of the street," Arthur cut in quickly under his breath, maintaining his cool, detached expression amid the public festivities. — "Go to the castle training ground and take over the morning drill with the recruits as if nothing happened. I'll check the catalog somewhere safe and meet you afterward."
.
.
.
Twenty minutes later, while the crowd outside was still celebrating the new winter measures, Arthur walked alone through the castle's silent corridors until he reached his favorite strategic retreat: the lord's private library.
Arthur had never been a man who enjoyed sweaty crowds, battle cries, or heroic speeches in public squares. His true battlefield had always been the silence where numbers and plans took shape.
Pushing open the heavy wooden door, he entered the cold, rectangular room.
The space had an incredibly high vaulted ceiling, with narrow windows that allowed pale shafts of autumn sunlight to filter through. The air inside carried the ever-present smell of accumulated dust, damp stone, and centuries of ancient parchment bound in goatskin.
Walking to the darkest, most secluded corner of the library, far from the window slits and the door, Arthur sat on an oak bench. He closed his eyes for a second to check for any strange distortions in the air around him, then summoned the translucent blue interface that had become his constant companion and greatest asset in this backward world.
His eyes immediately settled on the bottom corner of the spectral screen.
For weeks, that second rectangular icon had remained dull, gray, and inaccessible, marked with the label "Locked" ever since the exact moment they had landed in the mud of this world.
Now, however, everything had changed.
The [SHOP] button pulsed with a soft, rhythmic, deeply inviting golden glow.
As Arthur focused his mind on the glowing icon, the window expanded, opening an extensive and complex list of items that materialized in his peripheral vision, all neatly divided into categories with the impeccable efficiency of a modern survival RPG system.
For the first time in days, Arthur felt his pulse quicken beneath the collar of his wool tunic as his eyes raced across the miraculous inventory:
[ DIMENSIONAL SHOP — UNLOCKED ]
Available Balance: 300 Credits
...
Reinforced Wooden Bucket (4 credits)
Tempered Steel Hammer (7 credits)
Heavy-Duty IndustrialSewing Kit (11 credits)
Thick Wool Thermal Blanket (9 credits)
...
[ CATEGORY: KNOWLEDGE — INSTANT ABSORPTION BY HOST ]
Survival Cooking Techniques (50 credits)
Basic European Swordsmanship (100 credits)
Applied Basic Chemistry (120 credits)
Principles of Construction and Engineering (150 credits)
...
[ CATEGORY: FOOD AND SUPPLIES ]
Fortified Fresh Bread (1 credit)
Hearty Canned Vegetable Soup (3 credits)
Homemade Meat Stew (5 credits)
High-Calorie Cured and Dried Meat Ration (4 credits)
...
Leaning against a wooden bookshelf in the dim library, Arthur examined every line of the list with cold, unwavering, surgical precision.
To an ordinary adventurer, an initial balance of three hundred credits would seem like a generous fortune to spend on anything that caught their eye at the start of a game. But with his intelligence and years of management experience, Arthur knew better than anyone how quickly precious, finite resources could disappear during a crisis on an urban scale.
More importantly, he noticed that no modern firearms or ballistic vests were available at the current catalog level. The System clearly scaled its products according to the territory's level of civilizational development.
Even so, the strategic value of what lay before him was absurdly high.
Arthur did not look at the food category through the eyes of a starving man longing for modern cuisine. He saw pure tactical utility. Where a peasant would see "fortified fresh bread" for one credit or "canned vegetable soup" for three, Arthur's mind read "Morale Boosters" and "Riot Mitigators" capable of feeding three hundred workers on a day when the river barges became trapped in the ice.
Where a blacksmith would see "tempered steel hammers" for seven credits, Arthur saw "Construction Multipliers" ready to be delivered to Karl van Bate's teams to speed up the breaking of limestone and the assembly of the wall before the first blizzard.
And that Instant Knowledge Absorption tab...
If I buy 'Applied Basic Chemistry' for one hundred and twenty credits at the right time, Arthur thought, his eyes gleaming in the dim light, we won't have to wait months for a chemistry witch to show up before we can start synthesizing acids, medicinal soap, and purer compounds for our ammunition!
After considering dozens of possible future scenarios in his brilliant mind, Arthur decided not to spend a single credit on impulse that morning. He closed the blue interface in the blink of an eye, already formulating a strict budget plan that prioritized long-term infrastructure and an emergency reserve for the winter above any immediate personal comforts.
There was, however, a far more urgent detail that the shop's unlocking had just confirmed in his mind.
Rising from the bench, Arthur straightened the sleeves of his tunic and left the library.
.
.
.
Walking calmly through the stone corridors, Arthur descended the stairs and headed for the castle's inner training yard.
As soon as he crossed the entrance arch into the open courtyard, the dusty silence of the library was replaced by a brutal cacophony: grunts of exertion and pain, the heavy sound of dozens of boots pounding the mud without pause, and the ragged breathing of men whose exhalations formed dense clouds of white vapor in the cold morning air.
Right in the center of the muddy courtyard, William looked like the very embodiment of an ancient god of war.
The commander of the First Army was in the middle of an exhausting physical endurance drill, personally leading a handpicked elite group of twenty recruits who were already completely spent. Those twenty men—the strongest, fastest, and most disciplined of the original eighty—had been selected by William and Iron Axe to form the hard-hitting core of Roland's newly armed militia.
Sweat streamed freely down William's face, soaking his linen shirt beneath his lightweight training armor, yet he wore a broad, sadistic, predatory grin—the expression of a man born for combat and frontline leadership.
Even without using a single drop of magic, the speed granted to him by the System allowed him to dart between the ranks over short distances almost like a blur to the exhausted recruits.
Smack! Smack!
Walking behind the line, William aggressively corrected firing positions and imaginary sight alignments, delivering loud, forceful slaps to the backs and shoulders of any former farmer or miner who lowered his weapon's barrel even an inch out of formation.
As he reached the edge of the courtyard, Arthur slowed his pace.
Feigning the relaxed, slightly bored posture of an academic lord who had merely come out for some fresh air, he stopped near a stone pillar supporting the roof, lowering his eyes to calmly adjust the silver-embroidered cuffs of his noble gray tunic.
He waited patiently in the shadow of the eaves until William finally glanced at the sun, took pity on the soldiers' lungs, and raised a metal whistle to his lips. He blew a sharp shrill note, granting them a two-minute break to drink water.
At once, the twenty recruits collapsed into the cold mud like sacks of potatoes, coughing, panting, and thanking the heavens for the respite as they passed around buckets of water with wooden ladles.
Taking advantage of the break, William grabbed a leather canteen hanging from the fence, wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand, and strode toward the edge of the courtyard, where his friend was waiting.
When William stopped beside him, Arthur positioned himself half a step away. Instead of turning his head to face his friend as he normally would, the strategist kept his face pointed forward, his eyes fixed on the distant gray line of the concrete wall to the south—a calculated stance intended to avoid attracting even the slightest attention from any guard on the walls or any nosy observer watching the two outsiders from afar.
Leaning his heavy shoulder against the stone pillar, William took a generous swig from his leather canteen, wiped his mouth, and tilted his head slightly toward Arthur.
— "Man, you were absolutely right last night!" William whispered, his voice low but vibrating with barely contained excitement, his eyes shining with the adrenaline of the training session. — "That witch with the power of invisibility... the one called Nightingale. She really did appear in the Prince's room at midnight last night! Exactly as you predicted in the plan when you sent me to fetch Anna!"
Beside him, Arthur did not move a single facial muscle.
He kept his gaze fixed on the gray horizon without blinking, although his jaw tightened slightly for a fraction of a second.
— "I know she appeared in his room, Will," Arthur murmured, keeping his voice so low and level that it was almost inaudible above the wind howling through the courtyard. — "My System Shop unlocked automatically this morning during the speech, confirming that the final trigger for the side quest—her contact with Roland and Anna's decision—was successfully completed. But listen to me very carefully, William: avoid talking to me about her. In fact, from today onward, avoid discussing anything sensitive with me out loud unless we're behind four locked walls—and even then, be careful."
William's excited grin vanished. He stopped with the leather canteen halfway to his mouth, furrowing his brow in confusion at the strategist's sudden paranoia.
— "Why all the drama now, Art?" William muttered out of the corner of his mouth. — "Relax, man. With my Speed and Agility attributes, my spatial awareness is sharp. We're in an open training yard full of mud, and she's not here right now."
— "Don't be so arrogant, Will," Arthur hissed through clenched teeth, his eyes finally narrowing into a dark warning without turning his neck. — "I hate admitting this just as much as you do, but there's one variable here that we can't measure: Nightingale doesn't occupy the same physical plane as we do when she activates her magic."
Arthur clasped his hands behind his back, feeling a chill run down his spine as he remembered how she had watched them in the dining hall the previous day.
— "Inside that Mist World, she can remain completely invisible, without a scent, without a sound, and undetectable to any normal physical sense," Arthur continued in an icy whisper. — "Neither you, nor Iron Axe, nor Carter can sense her if she doesn't want to be detected. Who knows? Maybe she's breathing down your neck right now, standing behind this very stone pillar, listening to every word we say without us ever realizing it?"
By sheer human reflex, William instinctively glanced over his shoulder at the empty shadow behind the stone pillar.
A slight shiver ran down the fighter's neck, even though he rationally knew Arthur was probably being excessively cautious. At that very moment that morning, Nightingale was not in the courtyard. Having stayed awake all night keeping watch over the castle, she was now sleeping soundly in an empty room on the top floor that Roland himself had given her as a temporary hideout.
But in a game of life and death, the rules of survival demanded absolute caution twenty-four hours a day.
— "You need to understand the true gravity of our situation from this day forward," Arthur added, his firm, pragmatic voice leaving no room for jokes. — "Our only real defense inside this castle is the facade that we're two scholarly foreign nobles from the Kingdom of Dawn who possess considerable intelligence and traditional physical training. If an extremely suspicious assassin like Nightingale, who acts solely on her own instincts to protect witches, hears even a single word from us about 'Systems,' 'credits,' or 'transmigration'... or worse, if she sees a man using magic before we're powerful enough to stand against the entire world... our usefulness ends right there. She'll see us as an unknown threat to Roland and her sisters. So don't use your Teleportation, not even for a fraction of a second, and don't discuss our future plans out loud. Understood?"
William swallowed the rest of his water, capped the leather canteen, and nodded once, slowly.
His sadistic instructor's grin disappeared completely, replaced by a cold, lethal, focused intensity deep in his dark eyes.
As much as he enjoyed provoking people and acting like the hero of the story, William was no fool. He had just realized that with an invisible witch living under the same roof, the game's difficulty had silently shifted from "Hard Mode Survival" to "Nightmare Mode: Conceal the Truth."
Without another word, Arthur lightly tapped his own wrist and stepped away from the stone pillar, walking calmly toward the other side of the inner courtyard to join Roland and Anna at the furnaces, where the month's most important project awaited them.
Left behind in the mud, William turned toward the twenty soldiers sitting on the ground.
All the paranoia and necessary tension Arthur had just instilled in his mind immediately transformed into pure fuel coursing through his veins.
— "Recess is over, you lazy bastards! Get up right now!" William barked in a terrifyingly commanding voice, driving the men out of the mud with a frightening new burst of energy as he pushed them once again to the absolute limits of their bodies.
He desperately needed those twenty men to be ready, battle-hardened, and indestructible for the bloody age of iron and gunpowder that was about to emerge from Anna's fire. Because if even the shadows of the castle could kill them over a slip of the tongue, then the army under William's command needed to be far tougher than stone itself.