The rain was too light to call autumn rain. Late summer was still the more fitting description. Even that light drizzle abruptly stopped.

It was hard to say whether it had rained at all. The ground had yet to get wet. Still, the darkening sky suggested more rain was coming.

"Who goes there?"

A group of soldiers blocked the three of them as they crossed into the territory.

Clearly, Krais hadn't been idling away his time. There was discipline in the bearing of the soldiers barring their path. Some soldiers looked as though a few copper coins would get anyone past them. Others stood ramrod straight and exuded military discipline. These men were plainly the latter.

He could tell from the way they held their short spears. The forearm muscles exposed beneath their short linen sleeves also bore traces of Audin's influence. They were well supplied with secondary weapons, too, including shortswords at their waists.

Encrid took all that in with a glance. His eye for detail and speed of thought certainly seemed to have improved.

"What? Enkie?"

A lightly dressed woman among them greeted him in recognition. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead, and she held what looked like parchment.

It was Leona, head of the Roquefried trading company.

"... What are you doing?"

The state she was in prompted a question from Encrid instead.

"Working."

Leona smiled as she answered. It looked as though she was building a new city.

Encrid explained that they had returned and were on their way in. As Leona nodded, Rem poked his delighted face out from behind him, wearing a smile brimming with anticipation.

"Right, then. Wonder how those blockheads under my command are doing."

Excitement naturally made a man talkative. At Rem's words, Leona wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve and looked Encrid straight in the eye to answer. Rem had said they were under his command, but he had no such subordinates. Presumably he meant their fellow unit members.

"I haven't been to Border Guard in a while, so I haven't heard much."

That made sense. There seemed to be plenty to do here alone.

It looked as though they were expanding outward from Border Guard with another city. That was hardly easy work. Establishing a settlement meant driving off the surrounding monsters while hauling in and laying stone.

When founding a frontier city, the first step was to put up a palisade and test the waters by fighting off nearby monsters, as though marking out territory. Why? Because there was no answer if the monster bastards came swarming in while you were trying to build. It would also be a problem if heavy rain revealed that the ground collected water instead of draining it. And there had to be farmland nearby if the city's inhabitants were going to feed themselves.

Calling somewhere a trading city was all well and good. But how many cities on the continent could actually live on trade alone? The kingdom combined feudal rule with centralized government, so royal domains existed, and food and supplies could be poured into them. Even so...

'In practical terms, a city is pointless unless it can sustain itself.'

This city must have been founded with self-sufficiency in mind, too.

Yet there was no farmland around, and nearby stood the forest where the centaurs had once settled. A forest could be a treasure trove of resources, but it also made an ideal home for monsters.

They seemed determined to clear at least part of that forest, even if they weren't going to flatten the whole thing. To one side lay piles of logs as plentiful as the heaps of stone. This was far more than a day or two's work.

Encrid looked around. The signs of a concerted effort were unmistakable. He could only wonder what Krais had in mind.

"This city's name is Roquefried."

Leona smiled as she spoke. That explained why she was here sweating as she personally directed the work. A trading city operated by the trading company itself. Something along those lines.

Behind her, Mattis nodded in greeting.

"Back at last?"

Encrid didn't remember his face looking that way before, but it had acquired a few more wrinkles. Beside him stood a young swordsman Encrid had never seen. Judging by how closely he stuck to Mattis, he seemed to be his pupil.

The Roquefried trading company had more capable fighters than one might expect. Still, it was no Border Guard. Encrid took it for granted, but to outsiders, Border Guard was a fighting organization that had amassed a staggering military force.

"Ah, General, sir."

Having recognized Encrid thanks to Leona, the soldiers saluted.

"Right, keep up the good work. Everyone been well?"

Rem smiled affably and patted the soldiers on their shoulders. They stood straight and said nothing.

Someone had clearly told them about Rem. Ignore the gray-haired bastard with the axe. They must have been warned to endure whatever that gray-headed bastard did.

Encrid sensed it instinctively, but he wasn't certain. He had once assumed Rem had continental blood in him and been wrong. That had taught him a lesson. Verification was always necessary.

Besides, he rarely let his guard down to begin with, but hadn't he recently learned something else?

'Everyone has an opening.'

That experience had forced him to acknowledge it.

He had been flung into the desert and come back from the brink of death. More precisely, he had returned alive after repeating today in a state of delirium. He couldn't forget what that experience had taught him.

'Anyone can let their guard down.'

He had to accept that and be ready to act immediately even if an opening appeared and his defenses were breached. In other words, what mattered was what he did after exposing that opening.

Anyone could fall, but not everyone got straight back up. Yet was getting straight back up necessarily the answer?

'Keep the possibilities open, assess, and act.'

Foresight, the first use of Will a knight learned, would need to be accompanied by that kind of judgment.

Encrid sought and found his path in small things. It was a good habit. An old habit, something akin to a talent that was only now coming into its own. Insight and self-reflection had always been part of his nature.

He had engaged in similar reflection when he first wandered the continent and a child stabbed a hole in his belly.

'Do I really have any talent?'

He had learned how to find the answer back then, too. Put himself through it, and he would know. He did the same now, setting out to verify whether his insight was accurate.

"Who told you to watch out for him?"

Rem passed by, patting the soldiers' shoulders, and Encrid followed to ask in a low voice. One soldier glanced around before replying.

"Our training instructor, Sir Roford."

They called their instructor "Sir." Perhaps they knew he was a squire, or perhaps it was simply a mark of respect. The title could carry that meaning.

"See you later."

Encrid spoke to the soldier and waved to Leona. Then she abruptly asked him a question.

"Any interest in marrying me?"

Encrid stopped, blinking. Leona continued without batting an eye, her expression perfectly blank.

"Joking."

Had she been spending time with Sinar lately? Encrid wondered as he passed through the construction site and headed toward Border Guard.

After walking a good while longer, he began to see the walls in the distance. The journey would be quick on horseback, but on foot it would take some time. Encrid judged that, at his pace, he could set out at dawn and arrive before noon. About three hours, perhaps?

That was close for the distance between two cities. Krais must have had a reason for building a new city so nearby.

Rain began to patter down again. As they reached the walls under the falling rain, someone called out.

"General?"

It was Platoon Commander Vengeance. Or was he a company commander now? He greeted them from atop the wall. Recognizing Encrid from that far away was impressive, but Platoon Commander Vengeance had always had good eyes.

Encrid looked over the soldiers standing guard on the walls. Some faces were familiar. Quite a few were not.

The area outside the walls looked rather crowded. There were people lined up to enter, as well as people living in tents beside them. Here and there he spotted Fairies, and even dwarves. There were quite a lot of people.

Steam rose from beneath some of the tents. They had settled in enough to cook their own meals. He had only glanced over them, but they didn't look like paupers.

"Please, come in."

Vengeance was impeccably respectful. Personally, Encrid was the man who had saved his life. Officially, he was the highest-ranking superior in his unit.

People craned their necks as Encrid entered. Who was he to get straight through? Still, no one tried to stop him or pick a fight.

Partly that was because Vengeance had come down to escort him in person. The sight of Rem and the Frog following behind also made them hesitate to speak. The black-haired man in front was unusually handsome, too, and there was something different about his presence. His Will had now reached the point where it naturally spread into his surroundings.

Once inside, Encrid followed the familiar streets. A great deal seemed to have changed in just a few months. For one thing, there were more people selling things. Border Guard had always been a strategic hub frequented by merchants, so that was plausible enough. The barracks had also grown.

The perimeter walls enclosed a larger area, and several newly built structures thrust their heads toward the sky.

"They didn't just slap all this together, did they?"

Rem sounded a little surprised, too. How had it grown so much in such a short time? Someone might have called Krais a mage.

Knowing the circumstances, it wasn't quite so extraordinary. In construction and other work, Krais cut out every unnecessary step and dealt directly with the stonemasons' guild and craftsmen's guild.

Normally, when a noble initiated a project, they delegated to a subordinate, who then sought out a guild, with people taking commissions along the way. Naturally, that slowed the work and increased the cost in Krona.

["Let's have the guilds settle in the city."]

Krais had said that to Graham, the lord responsible for Border Guard, as though simply informing him, and put the plan into action. There was no one to stop him, nor any reason to.

Encrid's considerable reputation also made it easy to attract people.

["Isn't your General the one who stopped Aspen and swallowed up Martai and the former Molsen domain?"]

Most of the guild leaders asked questions along those lines.

It was only natural that people from the stonemasons' guild and craftsmen's guild would gather here. First had come fighters wanting to test Encrid's skills, then petty nobles coveting his future, followed by merchants coveting the trade routes. Now the skilled workers were gathering. Krais brought them together and put them to work.

Of course, that wasn't all he did.

["The person in charge will take full responsibility. I'll give you the authority to choose five people. Put those five to work as you see fit, and I'll pay half the fee in advance."]

He chose one capable worker and had that person choose five more capable workers to get things moving. He also established an inspection corps. Its purpose wasn't to find fault with others and pick them apart. Its members went wherever work had gone wrong and sorted things out.

He organized the inspection corps like a joint guild made up of the individual guild leaders, making things possible that otherwise wouldn't have been.

["Why isn't this getting done?"]

["We need animal glue, but the hunters' guild is charging so much for hides that we can't get anywhere."]

["We're charging a fair price. You think demonic beast hides are easy to come by?"]

When problems like that arose, Krais would even mobilize the army on the spot. He sent it on an unscheduled demonic beast hunt, then negotiated to hand the hides over to the hunters' guild rather than dumping them on the market for next to nothing.

With him working to stabilize prices and swiftly resolving problems as they arose, everything was bound to move faster. That was why these new barracks now stood before Encrid.

After his comment about the new barracks, Rem headed straight inside. A broad training ground came into view first. More than twenty soldiers were sweating away there. Despite the rain, they were all shirtless and wholly occupied with training.

That is, it looked like training to Encrid, Rem, and Luagarne. To the men being put through it, it looked more like torture. What kind of training consisted of stripping to the waist and rolling, crawling, and running all over the place? Most of the soldiers on the training ground were indeed thinking much the same thing.

"Captain!"

Roford called out from the platform in front of them, where he alone sheltered from the rain beneath a roof. He greeted Encrid warmly.

Encrid waved, and Rem stepped forward first.

"Where's that directionless bastard?"

Rem was already ready for battle. His right hand rested at his waist, already gripping his axe haft. He looked ready to throw it the instant Ragna appeared.

They had sparred many times on the journey back. Encrid couldn't tell who would win if Rem and Ragna fought. With his spells restored, Rem was unquestionably knight-level. He had even demonstrated something similar to intimidation through a spell. Had he called it Fear Infusion?

Roford answered Rem's eager question with a laugh. It sounded rather awkward.

"Is something wrong?"

Encrid asked. Even after noticing the group's sudden arrival, the soldiers hadn't stopped rolling.

Their attitude toward training was exemplary, at least. There had probably been repeated demonstrations of force to ensure it, though.

"Well..."

Roford scratched the back of his head as he answered.

"He went out for a walk, and we haven't seen him in four days."

Ah.

"Is that bastard out of his mind?"

Rem made no attempt to hide his disbelief. Why would a bastard who couldn't find his way anywhere go out for a walk?

"Where to?"

Encrid calmly asked another question.

"He said he was going to take a quick look around in the mountains."

"Why did you let him go alone?"

"He said he'd kill us if we followed."

He must have dug his heels in. That was obvious without having been there. Would Ragna have died just because he was lost? Of course not. But had he actually gone to the mountains? Starting from the barracks, he might have reached the East by now. No, four days was too little time for that.

Encrid set aside his worries. Ragna wasn't the sort to die out in the wilderness.

"What about the alley cat?"

"There was a problem in another city, so he left for a while."

"Ah, fuck."

Rem voiced his displeasure.

Two others were also nowhere to be seen. That was probably why Roford was standing here.

"Krais is in the city of Green Pearl."

Roford added that they had turned the Green Pearl outpost into a fortress city and named it Green Pearl.

"Sir Audin and Dame Teresa went into the mountains to fast and pray."

Encrid wasn't fazed. They had always been unpredictable. They would come back on their own, wouldn't they? He left it at that.

What caught his attention instead was the change in Roford the squire. His presence was different from the last time they had met. To Encrid, it seemed his skills had improved considerably. Naturally, that drew his eye.