I climbed the steep stone stairs leading to the top of the outer barrier.
The harshly cold wind instantly bit into my exposed skin. Just the freezing temperature alone made this place a torturous deploynt. Having to fend off waves of monsters on top of it? It was no wonder the soldiers treated this place like a living hell.
I sighed, pulling my coat tighter, and walked to the edge of the battlents to check the state of the barrier.
It wasn’t good.
The physical wall looked like a beggar’s patchwork coat. There were hasty repairs everywhere. Where the original reinforced stone had been smashed, they had used regular rocks; if not rocks, then hastily chopped wood; in a pinch, they had even jamd frozen scraps of tal, broken carts, and hardened trash into the breaches.
But the physical wall wasn’t the real problem.
...The mana barrier is fading.
I narrowed my eyes, looking at the faint, shimring blue do that arched over the fortress. It was flickering weakly.
Of course, the monsters wouldn’t wait politely for the Empire to fix it. Until the barrier completely failed, the soldiers were forced to fight with this highly unstable shield protecting their backs.
"...Normally, it would completely collapse right about now," I muttered to myself.
In fact, according to the ga’s lore, Winterguard was historically breached during the Academy’s holiday period. If you played the ga ordinarily, you wouldn’t be here to see it. You would just read the horrific news in the Capital’s newspapers. The barrier would fall, Winterguard would be utterly devastated, and only the ergency dispatch of Platinum-Rank Knights and Imperial Archmages would barely manage to pull the front line back before the monsters reached the inner Empire.
Although the Empire wouldn’t fall, the massacre at Winterguard was inevitable.
The reason for the collapse was simple. The Frostward Core—the ancient artifact powering the mana barrier—was finally wearing out. It would completely shatter within a week, and they wouldn’t be able to secure a replacent in ti from the Capital. A catastrophic monster outbreak would imdiately follow.
However.
"..."
I reached into my spatial pouch. My fingers brushed against a large, pulsing, crystallized organ that radiated a massive amount of dense mana.
The Titan’s Heart. It was the core I had ripped out of the corrupted Treant Boss back in the Root of Decay dungeon. Because it was the core of an A-Rank boss monster, its mana capacity was staggering. rle had spent the last several weeks painstakingly purifying it, ticulously stripping away the demonic corruption until it was a flawless, hyper-dense mana battery.
It was the perfect alternative to the failing Frostward Core. Because I was here, the tiline was going to change.
I looked out beyond the patched barrier.
Beyond the frozen adows and fields that had been violently trampled by hordes of monsters, there was a stark, jarring anomaly in the landscape.
A pristine, snow-dusted forest. It was a sacred sanctuary that even the feral monsters of the Wilderness dared not defile. It was perfectly visible to the naked eye, standing less than a kiloter away from the fortress walls.
...Sowhere deep in that forest lies the holy artifact. The Pilgrim’s Goblet. It was the entire reason I had risked my father’s wrath to co to this frozen wasteland.
Long before the Northern Frontier beca a cursed land of monsters and political exile, it was a holy passage. Pilgrims from the southern sanctuaries would journey north into the snow—not for military conquest, but for spreading their teachings, healing the sick, and offering solace to the isolated northern tribes.
Among them was a naless wanderer, rembered in the church’s deepest archives only as ’The First Pilgrim.’
He carried no weapon. He carried no grand holy relics. Only a simple, battered tal goblet.
According to the lore hidden in the ga’s library: He walked barefoot through blinding snowstorms.He shared his last drop of water with strangers and sworn enemies alike.He never once prayed for his own salvation.
On the final night of his journey, deep in the frozen wilderness, he finally collapsed from exhaustion. But when he awoke, the empty tal goblet in his hand was filled—not with lted snow, but with sothing completely clear... sothing luminous.
A voice, soft as the wind over the snow, spoke to him: "Let this vessel carry not water... but rcy."
From that day forward, the tal cup beca known as The Pilgrim’s Goblet. It was never adorned with jewels. It was never glorified in grand cathedrals. It was just a plain cup, passed down quietly among the truly faithful.
Its power was incredibly simple, yet absolute: Any water poured into it could instantly heal fatal wounds and perfectly purify demonic corruption.But the magic only activated when the water was given freely to another, without any expectation of reward.
If the bearer harbored greed, fear, or arrogant pride, the water would remain entirely mundane.
Years later, when the frontier permanently fell to the monster outbreaks, the last known bearer of the Goblet—a young, terrified acolyte—fled north to protect it from being destroyed.
He never returned.
So historians said he died freezing in the snow, still clutching the cup to his chest. Others believed he intentionally chose to hide it in a place where only the truly worthy would ever find it.
Over ti, the Central Church officially declared the relic lost to history.
But the whispers remained in the hidden texts: "In the far north, where no path remains, a cup waits beside the bones of a pilgrim."
I stared at the pristine treeline of the sacred forest.
I wasn’t exactly a saint. I didn’t walk barefoot, and I certainly didn’t harbor endless rcy. But I had the Rosary of the Weeping Saintess wrapped around my neck, and I had the Divine Force required to claim it.
"Not right now, though," I muttered, my breath misting in the freezing air.
I would reach that forest and claim the Pilgrim’s Goblet before this vacation was over. But jumping the wall right now, while the fortress barrier was on the verge of collapsing, would only lead to a future where I returned to find Winterguard slaughtered and my escape route overrun by monsters. I needed to stabilize the defense first.
Crunch. Crunch.
The sound of heavy, armored boots treading through the snow broke my train of thought. It was a asured step, keeping a gentle yet precise military rhythm.
I didn’t need to turn around to guess who it was. The aura felt entirely different from the crude rcenaries I had just left behind.
"You’re here," I said, leaning against the frozen parapet.
Turning around, I saw Jas, the Vice Commander of the Winterguard garrison.
"Lord Lucien," Jas nodded respectfully, stopping a polite distance away. "What brings you to Winterguard at a ti like this?"
It was a question I had heard nurous tis in the past twenty-four hours, but the way Jas asked it—with genuine curiosity rather than mocking disdain—made laugh softly.
"Well. Think of it as extre vacation howork."
"Coming to Winterguard for vacation howork?" Jas offered a faint, dry smile. "Does the Imperial Academy actively want to assassinate its students these days?"
The Academy was being scolded instead of for once.
"What about the other knights in the waiting room?" I asked, looking back toward the barracks.
"Still on standby. And still chattering away, I imagine," Jas replied, his tone carrying a hint of exhaustion.
They must still be mocking . After all, if I had heard a seventeen-year-old kid boldly declare that no one would die in Winterguard for a month, I might have laughed in his face, too.
"Sir Jas, you are surprisingly polite," I noted, studying his posture. "You’ve used formal honorifics with ever since I arrived."
This was unusual. The knights who served under Arthur Whitmore were infamous for being unrefined wild beasts. Respect was earned through spilled blood, not noble titles.
"I learned it from my forr superior in the Capital," Jas explained, his expression softening slightly. "Since she always uses strict honorifics, regardless of the situation or the person’s rank, I seem to have picked it up as a habit."
A female superior with flawless etiquette? I wondered exactly who he had trained under before being transferred to this frozen hell, but I didn’t pry.
’Maybe he is talking about his wife.’ I thought as I rembered father’s docile behaviour around mother.
"Why did you co out here to the wall, Sir Jas?"
"I am a knight, Lord Lucien. I simply follow orders."
"You follow orders without knowing the reason behind them?"
"By faithfully following orders, the broader strategic reason naturally reveals itself in ti," Jas answered without a hint of hesitation.
Truly loyal. I could fully understand why Arthur trusted him as the Vice Commander of Winterguard.
I smiled bitterly. "It would be nice if the other knights in the barracks shared your discipline."
"They and I are not so different," Jas said humbly, looking out at the wasteland. "It’s just that this place is too harsh. The cold chips away at a man’s sanity."
I half-agreed with Jas’s words. As I’ve noted before, in a suicidal environnt like Winterguard, it might actually be a survival chanism to go moderately mad. However, a harsh environnt also peels back the layers of a person to reveal their true nature. Not all knights possess Jas’s stoic composure.
"Let’s head back inside," Jas suggested, gesturing toward the stairs. "The wind on the barrier is too brutal when there is no active battle. Besides, there has been a sudden change in the schedule today."
"A schedule?" I furrowed my brow.
That reminded —I hadn’t seen Commander Arthur since he dismissed to the barracks. I assud he had gathered the knights in the waiting room to prepare for a scouting mission or a monster wave. But if it wasn’t because of the monsters, why centralize the forces?
"Didn’t you know?" Jas paused, looking at . "The Eldest Princess is arriving today for an official inspection."
"...The Princess?"
"Yes, Princess Rumina," Jas confird. "As you may have noticed, the mana barrier is rapidly weakening. The Capital has taken notice."
"...You don’t an her," I whispered, rubbing my temples as a headache began to form.
"Pardon?"
"Nothing. I was just talking to myself."
A chill that had nothing to do with the northern wind ran down my spine. Why do I keep running into her? I had already accidentally caught Princess Rumina’s intense attention during the Dungeon Competition a few months ago. I thought laying low and coming to the frozen edge of the world would keep off the royal family’s radar.
Now, I was hearing her na again. Right here. Right before a catastrophic monster outbreak.
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