Chương 32: 13-2.Cooperation, Elves, and New Gear

By noon the next day, I led the group straight back to the main command tent. Compared to the previous night, the camp's atmosphere had stabilized dramatically. The wounded were still there, and the metallic stench of blood still permeated everything, but at least the people moving through the grounds no longer resembled headless flies in a panic.

Tents had been re-erected in orderly formations, guard rotations were clearly established, and even the footsteps of passing soldiers carried an unsettling sense of mechanical efficiency that made my skin crawl. This was what a proper military looked like. Chaotic hell when breaking apart. Organized hell when reassembling. Either way, it bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the underworld—just with better administrative procedures. The messenger soldier didn't leave us waiting outside this time.

He lifted the tent flap and immediately stepped aside, gesturing for us to enter. I'd fully expected to walk into a space packed with adjutants, scribes, and high-ranking officers whose faces all read "What are you copper-rank peasants doing breathing our air?" —but the large tent contained only one person. Valdorin von Eberswalde stood alone behind the table, head bowed over an unrolled map. She looked up only when our footsteps reached her ears.

Those eyes—one ice-cold, the other carrying something that had moved far beyond cold into an entirely different and more unsettling territory—locked onto us, and I felt my spine stiffen involuntarily.

"Well?" Straight to the point, as sharp and direct as an executioner's blade. There were no pleasantries. No cautious circling or probing for weakness. It was as if Valdorin von Eberswalde had made a lifelong vow not to waste so much as a single syllable on anything that wasn't strictly necessary. I took a slow breath, deciding to match her approach.

"We accept," I said.

"But my party members have concerns. There are a few ugly truths I need to lay out before we go any further." Valdorin nodded once, not a shred of impatience in her eyes.

"Go ahead." I held her gaze and threw my most important condition onto the table up front.

"We are not your subordinates," I said, voice clear.

"You can make requests. You can assign collaborative tasks. But you do not get to command us." A beat of silence fell over the tent. Valdorin didn't answer immediately. She simply fixed her gaze on me—and the way she did it was uniquely troublesome. Not angry, not hostile, just... piercing. Like she could look straight through your ribs and count exactly how much backbone you actually had to spend. Then she spoke.

"Agreed." Her reply was crisp, almost surgical.

"I never intended to issue you orders in the first place." That was so much more straightforward than I'd braced for, it actually threw me off-balance for a second. But since she'd taken the pitch, I wasn't about to waste the momentum.

"Second." I glanced sideways at Lucas Ponti.

"When we reach the capital, the map copies you promised—those get delivered. No conveniently discovering reasons to delay or withhold them after the fact." Lucas nearly bolted upright, like someone had jabbed a lightning rod into his spine. Clearly, in his mental priority list, this was even more important than shiny new weapons or survival. The corner of Valdorin's mouth twitched—almost a smile.

"Agreed," she said.

"Would you like me to sign and seal it right now?" For a second I couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or genuinely offering to produce a contract on the spot. Jessi, of course, had no such confusion.

"If you have the paper, that would be perfect," she said, every syllable dripping with lazy smugness.

"Our young master has recently learned, through painful experience, that pretty words can't be exchanged for maps."

"Is that supposed to help me or insult me?" I muttered.

"Fifty-fifty." She beamed, utterly shameless.

"That's only fair." I let it go and dropped the last condition.

"One more thing." I nodded toward Matthews Raven standing behind me.

"This man's greatest fear is getting dragged to his doom by a bad leader. So he insists—absolutely non-negotiable—that we retain the right to walk away at any time." This time, Valdorin paused. Her fingertips tapped a thoughtful rhythm on the tabletop as she recalibrated whatever plans she'd made for us.

"Whether you descend into the lower levels or participate in exploration is entirely your decision," she said at last.

"Your standard duties will be basic. Advance with the scouts, check and report on the route, flag any problems early. If something clearly exceeds your capacity, you are not required to engage." She looked up, meeting my eyes.

"You're right, Cedric. I didn't think this through carefully enough before." I blinked, caught off guard by the blunt admission. Valdorin continued, calm as ever:"You're bronze-rank. Expecting you to consistently perform at silver or higher was an oversight. That's on me." I honestly had no idea how to respond to that. She wasn't conceding out of weakness—just matter-of-factly updating her internal calculations and moving forward. People like her are the worst kind of trouble.

Not just strong—dangerously competent, too. Behind me, Matthews let out a low grunt that translated, in his personal dialect, to: "Barely acceptable, but I'll allow it." By this point, everything that needed saying had landed squarely on the table—no more of last night's three-layered subtext. That, at least, made me feel like I could finally see where the floor was. But as I was about to wrap things up, Valdorin stopped me.

"One more thing." I turned. She glanced toward the shadowed rear corner of the tent—the spot where the lamplight failed to reach.

"If I'm unavailable, bring any issues to my vice-commander." As her words settled, a figure detached from the shadow, moving with the uncanny silence of something not entirely bound by human rules. Up until that moment, I'd assumed Valdorin's second-in-command would be some towering brute—a walking slab of muscle who could crack skulls with one hand. Instead, a woman stepped out. She was shorter than me, slender almost to the point of fragility. Her hair was short and cold silver, like moonlight hammered into wire.

But the most striking feature wasn't her hair. It was the pair of long, pointed ears poking through her hair, sweeping back at a predatory angle.... An elf. In that instant, I finally understood how she'd managed to stand in the shadow, presence erased to nothing. She was like an arrow, nocked and drawn—utterly still, but impossible to ignore once you spotted her. Her armor was close-fitted leather, designed for speed and silence.

Two bows crossed over her back—one nearly as tall as she was, the other compact for tight quarters. Nobody carried a setup like that for show. This woman didn't just wield bows. She was the bow. She lifted her eyes, and a chill ran down my spine. Those green eyes—cold as deep forest ice—held zero warmth. Her features were elegant and tense, her expression as unforgiving as a frostbitten blade. She studied me in silence, as if I'd racked up a debt across every lifetime that no amount of groveling could ever pay off.

This wasn't ordinary hostility. It was the look of someone who'd already picked out the most convenient spot to bury me and was just waiting for the right moment. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"..." She said nothing, conducting a thorough visual audit as if I were a suspicious specimen in need of immediate quarantine. Honestly, I'd have preferred a verbal attack to this silent execution. But all it took was a tiny, almost imperceptible gesture from Valdorin, and the elf's lethal aura vanished. She slipped half a step behind her commander with perfect, frictionless obedience. That wasn't just following an order. That was absolute military instinct—deep, unthinking, and complete.

The message was crystal clear: Valdorin's authority in this legion was absolute.

"Cedric," Valdorin said, "this is my chief deputy commander, Alvira von Rosenberg." Alvira nodded—a textbook gesture, so perfunctory it bordered on satire. I couldn't shake the feeling she wasn't greeting me so much as reminding herself, "Commander hasn't given the kill order yet. Hold."

"Alvira isn't much for small talk," Valdorin added, voice calm.

"But she's one of the best archers in the unit, and a practitioner of elven magic." She gave me a look as flat as a sword's edge.

"So don't underestimate her because of her size. If she decides to kill you, you probably won't even get a second blink." I had zero desire to test that statement. None. Of course, the professional disaster at my side—Blackstreet Fox Jessi—had to chime in.

"My, my, young master," she purred, a wicked smile spreading.

"Last night you were mesmerized by the Commander, and today you can't take your eyes off the elf? Your tastes really do run broad." A vein throbbed in my temple.

"I was not."

"You absolutely were." She grinned, utterly certain.

"You literally stopped breathing for a moment."

"That's because she looked like she was about to pin me to the wall with an arrow!"

"Ah, so you're into the type who can kill you now? Interesting development." I genuinely considered throttling her. Alvira's already arctic face dropped another few degrees. Fantastic. At this rate, I'd be lucky to survive the trip to the capital without getting murdered in my sleep by a certain elf. Valdorin, unfazed, steered us back on course.

"Move your things into camp tonight," she said.

"We'll need to take measurements for your armor and rework your weapons. If you genuinely plan to reach the capital alive, you'd better ditch that collection of tragic rags you're wearing. Looks like you lost a bet with fate." I glanced at my battered sword and ancient armor.... Harsh, but not wrong. Jessi let out a low whistle, clearly already mapping out supply lines to plunder. Lucas looked like he'd been told he'd be sleeping next to the restricted archives.

Matthews's brow resembled a mountain range—probably plotting which corner of the tent would make for the best midnight escape. As for me— I looked at Valdorin, then at Alvira, who had clearly filed me under "recyclable waste," and realized: We'd stepped all the way into this now. And the odds of any day being peaceful were, generously, zero.

That same night, the Legion's people half-dragged, half-invited us to move our meager belongings from the shabby inn to a row of temporary tents wedged between the supply depot and the armory. The accommodations were objectively better—not a single rotten plank, and the canvas was thick enough to keep the wind from boring straight into your bones. In exchange, we got something else—order. Every tent, every crate, every lantern—even the water buckets and iron hooks—looked like they'd been measured with a ruler.

Standing in a place like this, I felt like even breathing too loudly might be considered a breach of military protocol. And the one responsible for transforming our ragtag disaster of a party into something resembling soldiers was none other than the elf deputy who, judging by her expression, had been personally wronged by my ancestors—Alvira von Rosenberg. She stood in the center of the equipment tent, silver hair catching the lamplight like a knife's edge, clipboard in hand, face dark as thunder.

"Take it off," she ordered. I froze.

"... What?" She lifted those glacial green eyes.

"The old armor," she clarified.

"Unless you expect me to take measurements through that pile of rags?" Jessi burst out laughing.

"Come on, young master. The vice-commander herself is asking. Don't tell me you're shy about changing armor in front of a non-human?"

"Shut up."

"Oh, look, your ears are red."

"They are not."

"They are." I didn't even bother glancing at her. If I saw that fox grin, I'd probably stuff her in a supply crate. The refitting process was brutally efficient. So efficient I suspected Alvira was sorting us the way you'd sort livestock before auction. Matthews Raven was first. His beloved crossbow was confiscated on sight. No negotiation, just a flat, "This isn't suitable for you." When he protested, she shot back, "Which is why you're still alive. But it's too slow, and it doesn't endure. You're up front.

In tight corridors, a crossbow will just give you a more dignified reason to die." Then she dropped a round shield and warhammer at his feet.

"Use these." He stared at the new gear with a look that said he was calculating whether he could use them to knock Alvira out and run for it. His signature battered leather armor was stripped, replaced with reinforced leather and metal plates over the chest, abdomen, shoulders, and flanks. Not pretty, but suddenly he looked less like a fugitive and more like a professional. I was next. When Alvira reached for my sword, my hand tightened on the hilt for a moment.

"Problem?"

"This sword—""Is crap. I know. The hilt can stay." She'd already diagnosed it at a glance. I surrendered it, and she swapped the blade for a new, balanced steel one, keeping the Rosa crest on the hilt. When I drew it, it felt... dignified, almost like I didn't deserve it. Armor-wise, I kept leather, but gained a fitted chain shirt and metal bracers. A huge upgrade from my "blocks wind if you're lucky" setup. Jessi circled me, nodding with fake seriousness.

"Not bad, young master. You finally look like someone worth stripping and selling."

"Why do you always come back to selling me?"

"Because it's your most reliable market value right now."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome." When it was Jessi's turn, she acted like it was a fashion show, asking me which armor looked better on her. Alvira's patience wore thin, but in the end equipped her with military-grade, metal-reinforced leather—mobile, stealthy, but actually protective. Her daggers were replaced with a short sword, which she promptly complained was "too straight." Alvira shot back, "You're twisted enough. The weapon doesn't need to be." The real showstopper: a short, heavy flintlock. Jessi's eyes lit up.

"You understand me, vice-commander."

"It's not about understanding," Alvira replied coldly.

"Before you get close, make sure they can't stand."

"That's so thoughtful!"

"I'm not here to care about your feelings." Lucas's case was, in its own way, the most spectacular. Alvira stared at his staff.

"What is that?"

"A staff."

"That's a branch."

"It's been treated!"

"By whom? Did you just pick it up off the roadside?" Lucas froze. Jessi started shaking with silent laughter. Alvira grabbed it and snapped it in half with a crisp crack. Lucas looked like he'd just watched his academic dignity executed in public. She handed him a solid iron staff, etched with simple conduction runes and capped with a metal ring—built for channeling magic and bashing heads.

"Use this," she said with military finality. Lucas Ponti clutched the iron staff like a man holding his own death certificate, his expression still trapped somewhere in the five stages of grief over his beloved departed branch.

"But... but its magical conductivity... the mana retention efficiency..." Alvira stared at him with the kind of blank patience usually reserved for watching paint dry in slow motion.

"At least when you inevitably run out of magic, you can still bash people's skulls in with it." An absolutely degenerate explosion of laughter detonated inside the equipment tent. No prizes for guessing the culprit. Jessi had folded nearly in half, shaking against my shoulder like she was having some kind of comedic seizure, barely managing to wheeze out between gasps:"Academy boy, I told you—I told you ages ago that precious twig of yours would meet this exact fate—""SHUT UP!" Lucas finally snapped.

That was probably the first and only time today his voice had successfully overpowered Jessi's. As for Erina Eckhaus, she was the sole member of our party who required virtually no equipment changes whatsoever. Alvira gave her a single, comprehensive visual assessment—taking in the meticulously organized medicinal herbs, perfectly rolled bandages, and polished holy seals at her belt—then simply nodded with something approaching professional respect.

"She stays exactly as she is." For reasons I couldn't quite articulate, that sounded like the highest tier of military commendation possible. Even so, every single one of us was issued a complete set of extreme cold-weather survival gear.

Thick thermal underlayers, heavy fur mantles, wind-resistant outer cloaks, insulated inner gloves, waterproof high boots, and a wool neck guard so aggressively ugly it should have been classified as a war crime—yet so immediately, violently warm that putting it on nearly brought tears to my eyes. The moment I had the full kit on, a chilling realization hit me: what we'd been doing during those previous days on the northern borderlands wasn't "taking precautions against the cold."

It was more accurately described as "making a series of deeply personal wagers with winter using nothing but sheer survival instinct and calling it a strategy." Lucas was still muttering complaints while pulling on his new gear.

"This is conscription. This is literally just conscription. They've conscripted us, haven't they..."

"If it were actual conscription," I said, buckling my new bracers, "you wouldn't have gotten an iron staff. You'd have gotten a shovel."

"Not necessarily," Jessi cut in immediately, her tone thoughtful.

"With his physique, they'd probably skip the shovel entirely and just use him to fill the trenches directly."

"ARE YOU PEOPLE ACTUALLY PLANNING TO LET ME SURVIVE TO THE CAPITAL?!"

"Of course we are," Jessi replied with devastating sincerity.

"Who else is going to read the maps for us?" I stopped listening to their increasingly ridiculous argument and looked down at my newly rebladed sword. Under the flickering lamplight, the Rosa family crest sat quietly on the old hilt, gleaming with the cold, stubborn luster of aged metal that had witnessed too much history. A new blade carrying an old, heavy name. I couldn't explain why, but in that moment, I felt like this sword was looking back at me.

Across the tent, Matthews Raven was still staring at the round shield and warhammer in his hands, saying absolutely nothing. It wasn't dissatisfaction. It looked more like he was holding a moment of silence for some past version of himself that had just quietly died. I watched him for a moment before I couldn't help myself.

"Something wrong, old man? Doesn't feel right in your hands?" Matthews hefted the hammer slowly, letting its weight settle into his palm with the practiced instinct of someone who'd held many weapons over many years. After a long pause, he said:"Right or wrong... I won't know until I've put it through someone." Then he strapped the shield onto his forearm. And just like that, his entire presence shifted. Gone was the cynical fugitive veteran who always kept one eye on the nearest exit.

In his place stood something harder, heavier, and infinitely more permanent—like a slab of battle-tested iron that had decided, without fanfare, to be the first thing between the people behind it and whatever hell was coming. I looked around at our newly armed, completely mismatched collection of disasters, and felt a wave of something between absurdity and grim amusement wash over me. A shield-and-hammer veteran with the eyes of a man who'd buried too many things.

A young lord with a reforged blade and a family crest that wouldn't let him forget his obligations. A fox-eyed thief now packing a flintlock pistol and wearing a smile that belonged on a wanted poster. A broke scholar who had finally, finally been separated from his beloved piece of shrubbery. And a cleric who somehow looked more composed and professional than all of us combined without changing a single thing about herself.

And this ridiculous lineup was really going to follow Commander Valdorin von Eberswalde—a woman whose face looked half-carved from ice and half-forged in battlefield fire—all the way to the royal capital. No matter how I arranged the pieces in my head, "peaceful journey" was simply not a combination that emerged from this equation.

While I was still processing that cheerful thought, Jessi finished tucking her new flintlock smoothly into the small of her back and drifted over with that particular smile that never, ever meant anything good for my continued wellbeing.

"Young master."

"What now?" She looked me up and down with the practiced eye of an appraiser evaluating a recently restored antique, then gave a deeply satisfied nod.

"You finally look like a man someone would actually want to rob." I stared at her in complete silence for two full seconds.

"... I genuinely cannot tell if that's supposed to be a compliment."

"It absolutely is," she said, her voice dripping with honey-sweet venom.

"Because I only rob things I like." This woman definitely needs to be locked up for the safety of civilized society.