Erwin nodded.
Using a piece of charcoal, he wrote “Calradia” in the blank space beside the map, then drew a question mark after it.
“Does your country…
have magic?
Sorcerers?
Mages?”
Karl frowned.
“No.”
“No?” Erwin blinked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said.
No.” Karl replied.
“We have witches and charlatans who put on tricks to fool people, but aside from old legends, we’ve never seen real magic.”
Erwin fell silent.
He turned to glance at Rhoen in the back of the hall.
Leaning against a pillar with his arms crossed, Rhoen’s expression didn’t change in the slightest.
Erwin slowly turned back, his eyes drifting across the map.
“What about monsters?
Drowners, trolls, ghouls, werewolves, vampires?”
Karl thought for a moment.
“We have wolves, bears…
and…” He paused.
“Pirates.”
“No monsters?”
“No.”
Erwin remained silent for a long while.
The hall grew so quiet that the crackling of the torches could be heard.
“Then how did you get here?” he finally asked.
“A storm?
Your ship swallowed by a whirlpool?
And when you woke up, you were here?”
“Yes,” Karl answered.
Erwin tapped the wooden board twice with the stick in his hand, as though urging his own mind to work faster.
He began pacing back and forth, muttering to himself.
“A continent without magic…
no monsters…
another continent…
a storm…
a whirlpool…”
Then he suddenly stopped.
“The Conjunction of the Spheres.”
Karl frowned.
“What?”
“The Conjunction of the Spheres,” Erwin repeated, louder this time.
“It’s an academic theory on our side of the world.
Long ago, multiple worlds converged, and creatures from different worlds were left behind in ours.
Humans, monsters, magic…
they all came into this world during the Conjunction of the Spheres.”
He looked at Karl, then at the other soldiers, before finally turning his gaze toward Rhoen.
“If you truly come from a world without magic or monsters…
then you didn’t sail from Calradia to Velen.”
“You came from another world…
into ours.”
Silence settled over the hall for several seconds.
The soldiers exchanged glances.
Some frowned, others remained expressionless, but no one spoke.
Erwin’s eyes rested on Rhoen.
Standing quietly in the back, Rhoen showed neither surprise nor confusion, nor any intention of arguing.
He simply looked back at Erwin with the same calm expression, his gaze utterly unchanged.
Erwin opened his mouth as if he wanted to ask something, but in the end he said nothing.
He lowered his head, staring at the word “Calradia” with its question mark still marked beside it, then slowly set the wooden stick down.
The firelight cast wavering shadows across the hall.
Uncertainty and unease lingered on the soldiers’ faces.
Another world.
The Conjunction of the Spheres.
An unfamiliar continent.
Monsters and magic…
Just as unrest began to spread through everyone’s hearts, Rhoen spoke.
His voice rang out with unmistakable clarity, dropping into the hall like a block of iron.
“What’s there to panic about?”
Rhoen rose to his feet, his gaze sweeping slowly across every face.
“This world has magic.
It has sorcerers.
It has scholars who study the Conjunction of the Spheres.
What you’ve just heard isn’t the rambling of a madman—it’s simply how this continent works.”
He paused, his tone utterly free of uncertainty.
“We really did come from another land.
So what?”
“We survived in Calradia.”
“We can survive here too.”
The soldiers raised their heads and looked toward their general.
“Right now, what matters isn’t obsessing over how we got here.”
“It’s putting down roots.
Rebuilding the manor.
Training our troops.
Protecting the land that will keep us alive.”
“And when we’ve grown strong enough—strong enough to gather those sorcerers and scholars—I will personally lead you in finding the way home.”
Rhoen’s voice fell, clear and unwavering, without the slightest trace of hesitation.
“This is my promise to you.”
“I, Rhoen Pethros, Prince of the Calradic Empire and your general, give you my word.”
The hall remained silent for several breaths.
Someone quietly answered first, and soon more voices joined in until they became one.
“Yes, General!”
Karl lowered his head slightly.
In the flickering firelight, Rhoen’s expression remained calm.
Only he knew that the promise of “going home” was nothing more than a lie to steady the men’s hearts.
What he truly intended was to carve out a place in this age of chaos—a land where both he and the veterans who had crossed into this world alongside him could truly survive.
After Rhoen finished speaking, the soldiers slowly relaxed their shoulders, though traces of uncertainty still lingered in their eyes.
Erwin had remained by the doorway the entire time instead of leaving.
Adjusting his glasses, he stepped forward.
“There’s one more thing I’d like to add.”
His voice lacked Rhoen’s weight, but it carried the calm rationality unique to a scholar, as though he were correcting a student’s misunderstanding during a lecture.
“When you heard about the Conjunction of the Spheres just now, you thought it was something extraordinary, didn’t you?”
His gaze swept across the soldiers’ faces.
“It isn’t.
Because you, me, and every other human on this continent are no different.”
“Humans are not native to this continent.
The elves had already lived here for thousands of years before humanity arrived.”
“So where did humans come from?”
“From the Conjunction of the Spheres.”
“Just like you, they came from another world.”
Several people in the hall frowned.
Erwin continued, enunciating every word with perfect clarity.
“The earliest human ancestors arrived by ship—ordinary ships.
They were caught in a storm, swept into a rift created by the Conjunction of the Spheres, and emerged along the shores of this continent.”
“Like you, they came from a world without magic or monsters.
When they first saw the elves’ longships and griffins soaring through the sky, their legs went weak with fear.”
“But they survived.”
“They put down roots on this land.
They built villages, then cities, then kingdoms.”
“A few hundred years later, their descendants had forgotten that history altogether, believing they had always belonged to this land.”
He paused before looking at Karl.
“The library of the Oxenfurt Academy contains records of our ancestors arriving on this continent through the Conjunction of the Spheres.”
“I’m not telling you a myth.”
“I’m telling you history.”
“I am Erwin von Herlde, Professor of History at the Oxenfurt Academy, and this is the very history I study.”
He tucked the wooden pointer beneath his arm and spread both hands.
“So listen carefully.”
“You are not outsiders.”
“You are no different from every other human on this continent.”
“The only difference is that our ancestors arrived earlier…
while you arrived later.
That’s all.”
The soldiers looked at one another.
Some parted their lips slightly, while others slowly unclenched the fists they hadn’t even realized they were making.
Erwin took a step back, returning the center of the hall to Rhoen.
“That’s all I wanted to say.”
Rhoen looked at the loyal men standing before him, and not the slightest ripple stirred within his heart.
Go home?
Once they had truly established themselves here, these veterans who had followed him across worlds would become the pillars of his future kingdom—military lords, hereditary nobles, holders of noble titles, founders of great houses, the beginning of lasting bloodlines…
They would have everything.
By remaining in this world, they would become men of the highest standing.
When that day came, they would make their own choice.
But he would never reveal the truth, nor was there any need to.
As long as those words could give them the will to survive and keep fighting, then they were worthy of being spoken as a solemn promise.