Free Web NovelThe faint morning light streamed through the high windows of Red Tide City, gently falling upon the carved long table and silver-rimmed plates, as if whispering softly in the tranquil morning.
This was Louis’s first time having breakfast with Duke Edmund’s family.
It was also his first time sitting at the table of the most powerful Duke in the North as both the Red Tide Lord and a son-in-law.
He wore a neat black suit, his manners impeccable, neither servile nor arrogant.
The Duke sat at the head of the table, his expression calm, his eyes as deep as the snow plains.
To his left was Lady Elena, still in a mist-blue gown, gentle and elegant.
To Louis’s right was Emily, her posture reserved, but her gaze secretly lingered on his profile for a long time.
The long table was laden with an exquisite breakfast: steaming hot oatcakes and cheese on silver platters, warm mead in delicate porcelain pots, and thinly sliced smoked salmon, golden-orange and fragrant.
But the strongest scent in the air was not the aroma of food, but a subtle, not yet fully relaxed family atmosphere.
“This fish is quite good,” Edmund said first, picking up a slice of smoked salmon, his eyebrows slightly raised.
“It’s a specialty of Red Tide,” Louis replied calmly.
“It’s specially smoked in the workshops; if you like it, I can prepare some for you to take back to Frost Halberd City.”
“Hmm,” the Duke responded blandly, his tone unchanged.
Emily picked up her teacup and took a small sip, her gaze sweeping across the table, falling between her father and husband, her expression slightly tense.
She knew this meal was not just breakfast, but also a test.
“How are you two getting along?” the Duke asked.
Emily’s small face flushed, wondering what she was thinking.
Louis did not evade, but calmly replied, “Very well. Emily is a perfect wife; it is my good fortune to have married her.”
“Hmph,” Edmund nodded, but his nasal sound contained a hint of scrutiny.
Elena, on the side, chuckled softly and said gently, “Emily does have a stubborn temper. She has never easily let others see her weaknesses since she was little. You’ll need to be more tolerant.”
“Mother,” Emily protested in a low voice, her face slightly red.
Elena gently patted her hand, a mischievous smile playing on her lips.
Edmund, however, did not smile. He stared at Louis, his voice dropping a tone.
“This girl is hard-mouthed but soft-hearted. On the surface, she seems unperturbed, but in reality, she cares more than anyone. She is my most beloved daughter, the one I most wish for happiness in this world.”
He looked directly at Louis, his tone calm, yet heavier than a blade’s edge.
“While marrying her to you certainly has the intention of allying with the Calvin Family, it’s not just for the alliance. I want her to live well. So I hope you don’t treat this marriage as a mere political exchange.”
The air suddenly grew quiet.
Emily’s eyelashes trembled slightly as she looked up at her husband.
Louis was silent for a breath, then put down his knife and fork, turned to Duke Edmund, and said steadily, “I won’t. Whatever the initial reasons were, now and in the future, I will treat her with sincerity and will not let her suffer any grievance.”
Emily held her breath for a moment.
She could tell it wasn’t sweet talk, but a well-considered promise.
Just like his gentle words to her last night, “I will never hurt you.”
The Duke looked at Louis, remaining silent for a long time.
Elena, however, slowly smiled first: “Enough, Edmund, don’t turn breakfast into an interrogation. Emily is almost squirming.”
“I am not,” Emily retorted ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) softly, her lips pursed, but her ears were still red.
Edmund finally nodded, said nothing more, picked up his wine glass, and slowly took a sip.
The topic gently shifted in the silence.
“Speaking of which,” the Duke put down his cup, his gaze turning to the gradually rising morning mist outside the window, “I had only heard that your territory was well-developed.”
His tone was calm, as if casually discussing someone else’s recent situation.
“But after a tour yesterday,” he paused, his eyes narrowing slightly, as if still recalling everything he had seen, “your territory still surprised me.”
Louis was slightly taken aback; just as he was about to speak, the Duke continued on his own.
“The streets are clean, the people look well, granaries, workshops, markets—I didn’t expect you to transform a war-torn border into a prosperous land in just one year.”
His tone carried a hint of emotion, even a touch of helplessness.
“I did similar things when I was young, but you took less time and did it more steadily than I did.”
As he said this, his gaze unconsciously avoided Louis.
He knew very well in his heart that he was indeed inferior to this young man in governing the common people.
Despite years of commanding military and political affairs, the stability, fullness, and hope spoken of by the people had never been as concrete as in Red Tide Territory.
In less than two years, from a ruined battlefield to the current city walls, markets, and order.
If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed that a twenty-something young man had accomplished this.
He was simply a genius, far better than himself, and even surpassed him in terms of people’s livelihood.
And it only took him one year. He was unwilling to admit it, but he could not deny it.
Perhaps... this young man truly had the potential to bring about a transformation to the entire North that no one could imagine.
Emily sat quietly, her fingers lightly caressing the rim of her teacup.
As soon as her father finished speaking, she couldn’t help but subtly straighten her back, a faint curve secretly appearing at the corners of her lips.
It was a silent pride.
She remembered the genuine smiles of the people when they spoke of Louis, even calling him the sun of the North.
She had witnessed it firsthand, and it was as her father had said, though her father had dismissed her as exaggerating at the time.
And now, her father had finally seen it for himself.
Then Duke Edmund’s tone shifted, taking on a hint of playful teasing: “Even this castle has impressed me.”
“Its structure is solid, the towers are well-distributed, and the grain routes, guard posts, and inner hall defenses are all accounted for. And its appearance is magnificent, quite to my taste—
Louis’s eyes widened slightly.
He was accustomed to others describing the castle as practical and durable, with a warm interior.
But when it came to its appearance, the comments were either “ugly” or “strange.”
This was the first time someone had complimented the castle’s exterior to his face.
And it was Duke Edmund.
He instinctively glanced at Emily, only to find her looking out the window as if nothing was amiss, but the corners of her lips were slightly upturned, as if she was trying hard to suppress something.
“I would have thought you’d find it too unlike a noble castle,” he said softly.
“But this is the style of the North, isn’t it?” The Duke gave him a meaningful look, then picked up his cup again and took a slow sip of wine.
“However,” Duke Edmund’s gaze returned to the window.
Beneath the morning mist, the streets of Red Tide City were already awakening, and the sounds of hammering iron and horse hooves drifted from afar.
“Although things look calm here, the situation throughout the North is not very good,” Duke Edmund’s tone shifted, as if shedding his earlier admiration and adopting the familiar gravity of a commander.
“This year, many areas have suffered from famine, resources are scarce, and conflicts involving rebels, bandits, and supply routes are constant. The unrest has not subsided, and logistics are critical.
Although last year’s purge severely weakened the Snowsworn, the final battle was originally planned for autumn—but now, I intend to postpone it until next spring.”
He spoke calmly, without probing or discussing, as if updating an already established order.
Louis did not respond immediately, merely lowering his eyes, staring at the pale golden liquid in his cup, his gaze flickering slightly.
Postponement was indeed a reasonable decision for the current North.
Prudent, cautious, gradual.
But for him, it was not good news.
What flashed through Louis’s mind was the vague and oppressive warning from the Daily Intelligence System.
That unverifiable text, that warning from the future.
【The evil nurtured by the Snowsworn is stirring. This crisis will sweep across the entire North this winter, no less severe than the Great Rebellion two years ago.】
He tightened his grip on the cup handle but couldn’t voice these thoughts.
The Duke didn’t know, at least not yet.
After all, Louis still couldn’t convince anyone with “intelligence from a mysterious system.”
Moreover, his own intelligence was limited, and speaking out might very well mislead the Duke’s judgment.
He could only wait, wait for more clues to emerge, wait for the outline of that winter crisis to truly become clear. Louis had a hunch, perhaps—the hive hidden in the dark valley was the “evil nurtured” mentioned in the warning.
He secretly noted this down.
But on the surface, he merely nodded slightly, his expression normal, as if he were just a subordinate receiving orders from a general.
Just then, urgent footsteps were heard from outside the main door.
A soldier strode in, knelt on one knee, and urgently said, “Your Grace, Knight Karl of Vik’s squad—has returned wounded and requests an audience.”
“Wounded?” Louis’s expression became grave; he slowly stood up, his gaze fixed on the distant archway, as if trying to control his emotions.
But he wasn’t surprised by Karl’s return, nor that he was wounded.
After all, the Daily Intelligence System had already informed him of Karl’s return and the information he brought back that morning.
The Duke frowned, almost without hesitation: “Let him in immediately.”
Iron boots struck the stone floor, making heavy, sticky sounds, as if each step emerged from a pool of blood.
Karl was covered in dried and still congealing blood, one hand tightly clutching the wound on his shoulder, the other desperately gripping a guard’s arm, as if holding onto the last piece of driftwood before sinking.
He knelt and slid into the hall, his ankle bones seemingly unable to bear his body weight, his knees almost scraping the ground as he came into view.
Louis quickly stepped forward, half-crouching, and helped the disheveled knight to his feet.
Duke Edmund remained still, merely slowly raising his eyes, a shadow falling across those eyes that seemed never to waver.
No need for further questions; just by this sight, Edmund understood—Vik was likely in grave danger.
He merely rested his fingers on the armrest of his chair, his rhythm slow, almost cold, as if pressing some kind of compassion in his heart, inch by inch, into his bones.
Karl lifted his head, saw the familiar figure, and a faint smile appeared on his blood-stained lips.
“Your Grace—” His voice was hoarse, like a knife scraping through sand. “You—you’re here—”
He broke free from the guards’ support, gritted his teeth, and half-knelt, maintaining the dignity of a Knight, even if he might faint the next second.
“Report the situation,” Edmund said in a low tone.
Karl nodded, his chest heaving several times, finally managing to squeeze out his thoughts from his throat, intermittently. freёwebnovel.com
“We found that place, the Worm-Eaten Household’s Mother Nest.”
He suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood, but seemed not to notice, only raising a trembling hand to point in a distant direction outside the window.
“Within 20 kilometers of the southwestern entrance to the Dark Mountain Forest, where they are located—no, it’s a nest built by some living thing.”
He closed his eyes, as if the terrifying sight was still firmly imprinted on his retina.
“It—it’s breathing.” His voice was as light as the wind. “That’s not stone, that’s flesh. Grayish-white, covered in mucus—with holes on it, constantly opening and closing, just like—just like it’s gasping.”
Louis said nothing, only gripping his shoulder, feeling the body still trembling slightly.
Karl’s expression solidified in the shadows. He slowly raised his other hand, gesturing a certain shape.
“Above the nest, something was suspended—like a person, or some kind of fetus—a mass of flesh, with countless tentacles.
We saw it—using those tentacles, pulling corpses bit by bit into its body... then—”
He paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Tens of seconds later—new Worm-Eaten Household corpses, slid out of the nest wall—like peeled fruit.”
The council hall was dead silent, only the faint crackle of the fire in the fireplace.
“They were still wearing armor, still using weapons. I saw an Worm-Eaten Household wearing a blue-gold armband; that was—that was someone from our legion.” Karl’s voice was lowered, with an almost inaudible tremor. “They can still fight, just like when they were alive.”
Edmund slowly sat back in his chair, hands clasped on his lap, his gaze calm and cold.
He said nothing, but the air seemed to grow several degrees colder.
“And then—we were discovered.”
Karl continued, as if expending his entire willpower.
“Vik at the time—told us to retreat.” He clenched his fist.
“They quickly caught up, hundreds of them—maybe more.”
He struggled to suppress his trembling, but fear seeped from his eyes inch by inch.
“They felt no pain, no fear, made no sound. We broke their legs, and they crawled with their hands; broke their hands, and they bit with their jaws. Their movements—like beasts, but with human combat skills.”
Karl gasped for breath, as if using all his strength to squeeze out the next sentence:
“And they’re contagious. I personally saw Benito get hit by an Worm-Eaten Household sac—a few seconds later, his eyes changed, as if hollowed out. He drew his sword, without warning, and pierced Sevil’s chest.”
At this point, Karl paused for a moment: “They died one after another. I’m sorry, I—the only thing I could do was bring this intelligence back.”
He lowered his head, as if apologizing to all his fallen comrades, his fingernails digging deep into his palms, blood flowing again from the wounds.
Throughout the explanation, Karl’s lips trembled, and he looked as if he had been pulled from icy water, even his breathing was broken.
His eyes were unfocused, and his speech became incoherent, sentences broken and illogical, yet he still managed to say everything that needed to be said.
The Mother Nest’s location, its eerie, twisted form.
The number and types of Worm-Eaten Household corpses, and—their combat methods.
Every word seemed to be the last drop of blood squeezed from his spirit.
The Duke stood before him, his face solemn, his gaze noticeably shaking at the moment he heard “Worm-Eaten Household corpses can spread rapidly.”
When Karl finished the last detail, he looked completely drained, as if he would collapse from his half-kneeling position, but Louis managed to support him.
The Duke was silent for several seconds, as if a shadow slowly spread over his heart, but he stepped forward and gently placed a hand on Karl’s shoulder.
“You did very well, Karl.” His voice was gentle, yet filled with suppressed sorrow. “Go rest. The rest is up to us.”
After Karl withdrew, the council hall fell into a long silence.
The air seemed frozen, even the trajectories of falling dust became clearly visible.
In that suffocating silence, Emily, sitting to the side, clasped her hands tightly.
Her posture remained gracefully upright, but her slightly trembling eyelashes betrayed the turmoil within her.
Emily was not a fragile girl.
She had witnessed corpses strewn across battlefields in war and had once ridden a horse with a sword as an Elite Knight.
But Karl’s description was too horrifying, and the fact that so many Elite Knights and one Transcendent Knight had only one survivor further emphasized the Mother Nest’s terror.
And that thing was hidden near the Red Tide Territory, and Louis would face this horror directly.
Duchess Elena, meanwhile, sat quietly, her expression as dignified as ever.
She had seen too many such things; she believed her man could resolve it.
And Duke Edmund slowly sat back in his high-backed chair. He said nothing, his entire being seemed to sink beneath a cold abyss.
He was not a timid man.
On the contrary, he was a man who had fought for over a dozen days and nights on the Snowpeak wilderness in the North, a Peak Knight who had crawled out of a pile of dead bodies in an avalanche and grimly fought back.
It was precisely because of this that he understood that caution was far more important than passion when facing a truly unpredictable enemy.
After a few breaths, he finally spoke, his voice deep like an approaching blizzard.
“Frost Halberd is too far from there. Even if I order the troops to assemble and depart at the fastest speed now, it will take at least ten days for reinforcements to reach that valley.
Can that thing—wait?”
No one answered.
Not out of fear, but out of helplessness.
Snowpeak County had not yet recovered its vitality. While the Red Tide Territory’s forces were present, other territories had been severely weakened by repeated struggles with the Snowsworn last year.
To hastily assemble a force capable of confronting the Mother Nest was almost a fool’s dream.
But in the silence, Louis’s voice suddenly rang out, exceptionally firm: “It cannot wait.”
Everyone’s gaze instantly focused on the young Viscount.
“Karl made it very clear. They have tactics, division of labor, and even understand encirclement and counter-ambush. That’s not an ordinary monster nest; that’s an evolving intelligence. Now it has been alerted. If we don’t act now, they might act first.”
Louis’s speaking pace was extremely steady, but every word was like a nail: “At that time, it won’t be us going to crusade it, but it actively crossing the dense forest to devour us.”
“We must destroy it before it fully expands and actively shifts to the offensive.”
Duke Edmund’s brows were deeply furrowed: “You want to lead people to raid the Mother Nest?”
“Yes.” Louis did not hesitate. “We have elites, we understand coordination, and I will personally oversee it. We are not going to die, but to intercept and kill. Once it spreads out its Worm-Eaten Household, that will be a true, uncontrollable tide of corpses.”
Listening to these words, Emily’s heart couldn’t help but quicken.
She was proud of him, admiring his calm, steady, clear, and decisive judgment.
But she was also worried by his willingness to personally venture into danger.
“You are too hasty, Louis.” Edmund said slowly, without anger in his tone. “It’s not that I underestimate you, but you heard it—twenty Elite Knights were completely wiped out. Is your small force enough to gamble?”
“I am not gambling.” Louis’s voice remained firm. “I will lead a light-armored unit to first observe the periphery and confirm if eradication is possible.
If it is, we’ll strike to kill. If not, we’ll come back alive and bring back more specific intelligence.”
He paused, his gaze steady: “And you can also begin mobilizing troops. We are proceeding on two fronts, not staking everything on one gamble.”
The council hall fell silent again.
After a few breaths, Edmund finally nodded slowly, his voice deep: “Good. You go, but only take people you trust.”
He stood up, his cloak subtly shifting, his eyes darkening.
“I will go with you.”
A subtle tremor went through the council hall.
Louis paused, his brow slightly furrowed: “Your Grace, you—”
“I’m not crazy.” Edmund said lightly. “I don’t believe there’s a man who would willingly let his daughter become a widow right after her marriage.”
Emily’s small face flushed at his words.
“With me there, even in the worst scenario—we can save a life.”
Edmund’s tone remained stern, but carried a hint of appreciation.
His gaze lingered on Louis for half a second, as if evaluating, or perhaps as a warning, before slowly moving away. “And I also want to see how much strength you truly possess.”
With that, he slightly tilted his head and instructed the adjutant guard behind him: “The thirty Elite Knights I brought are also entirely under his command.”
Louis’s face showed joy, and he said: “Thank you, Your Grace.”
The Duke ignored him and continued speaking to the guard: “You immediately ride with all haste to notify Gibson, tell him to assemble a legion on the spot and stand by. If there’s any change, they are to reinforce at any time.”
The adjutant responded and withdrew, but Edmund did not look at Louis, merely leaning back slightly in his chair, the rhythm of his knuckles tapping the armrest never ceasing.
He didn’t truly believe Louis could resolve this matter.
No matter how sharp a small Lord was, it was impossible to easily clear out such a bizarre Mother Nest.
But he admitted that the analysis was indeed irrefutable.
Sending people to probe and scout was indeed a valid move.
It could clarify the situation and suppress it in time.
But Louis stood quietly at this moment, a rapid succession of judgments flashing through his mind:
Thirty Elite Knights under the Duke, plus the thirty men I can mobilize from my own forces—I have a total of sixty Elite Knights at hand.
Adding eighty regular Knights, they can also operate on the periphery.
Not to mention having the Duke, a Peak Knight, holding the line.
And the Red Soul Magic Bomb, that’s a killing method specifically for large creatures like the Mother Nest. Even for the Mother Nest, it has a ninety percent chance of eradication.
