Chapter 1002 — Winter in a Foreign Land

"Maybe next spring they'll have to compensate the academy head for all that wood and iron plate, and maybe face Mr. Magnan's furious roar," Carrie said with a shrug. "I suspect the academy head and the teachers already know what we've been doing in the dormitory—Ruslan said yesterday that when he passed through the corridor at night, he saw Mr. Magnan's spirit floating along it, as if inspecting our last dormitory building with anyone still living in it."

Perhaps imagining the dreadful scene of Mr. Magnan's furious roar, Dana instinctively shrank her neck, but soon she was laughing again. The scene Carrie described finally brought her a touch of long-missed relaxation on this cold, tense winter day. She laughed, and then laughed aloud, and suddenly the sound of bagpipes came through the corridor outside into the room, making both her and Carrie fall silent instinctively.

The broken, unpolished tune gradually became clear and connected, mixed with the sound of several people singing. Dana instinctively focused her attention and listened carefully to the melody coming from several rooms away, while Carrie, after a few seconds, suddenly whispered, "That's the melody of Enchihok County... Is the second son of the Ulea family playing..."

"Ulea..." Dana listened to the bagpipes from the corridor, as if recalling something. "I heard his elder brother died at Paramel Heights..."

Carrie did not answer, only nodded slightly. Leaning by the desk, she tapped her fingers slowly on its surface, her lips moving silently, as if humming along with the faint bagpipe music in the air. Dana slowly raised her head, her gaze passing through the dormitory's crystal glass window. Outside, the wind and snow showed no sign of stopping; scattered flakes kept forming hazy curtains in the wind, and the whole world seemed to be disappearing bit by bit into their depths.

...

Wind and snow howled outside the window. Such foul weather was clearly unfit for any outdoor activity, but for people who already disliked running about outside, such weather might actually be better.

Meryl Baizhi, small as a child, sat behind the desk. She raised her head, glanced at the snowstorm outside, and her pointed ears twitched once. Then she lowered her head again, her pen flying across the letter paper—beside her on the desk lay a thick stack of written pages, but clearly she still had a great deal to write.

"...Mother, I actually miss Mosswood Forest a little... Winters in Mosswood are cold too, but at least there isn't such wind, and there isn't such snow. Of course, the snow scenery here is quite pretty, and friends invite me out to play when the snow lets up a little, but I'm afraid I might accidentally fall into a deep snow pit... You can't imagine how heavy this snow is..."

"...Cecil and Typhon are at war; you must be following that news too, aren't you? You don't need to worry about that—it's very safe here, as if the war at the border hasn't affected the interior at all... Of course, if you insist there is some effect, there is: the newspapers and broadcasts have war news every day, and many people talk about it..."

"In the past two days food prices in the city rose a little, but they soon fell back. According to my friend, cloth prices rose a bit too, but the Supreme Administrative Council called the merchants to a meeting, and afterward all the prices stabilized again. You don't need to worry at all about my life here; in fact, I don't want to rely on the conveniences that come with being the clan chief's daughter... My friend is the daughter of the Admiral, and she even has to work during the holiday..."

"Ah, of course, I don't have only one friend. I have several..."

Meryl's flying pen tip suddenly stopped. She frowned, her delicate, childlike features almost scrunching together, and a few seconds later the gray elf still raised a finger and brushed it lightly over the letter paper. The last sentence, which seemed to expose her, was silently erased.

She set down her pen for the moment and stretched hard, her gaze casually sweeping to one side. A newspaper delivered today lay quietly on the table, and on the front-page headline one could see clear, sharp, large letters—

"Reinforcements Again—Brave Imperial Soldiers Have Firmly Secured Their Footing at Winterwolf Fortress."

"Steadfast in Belief, Ready at Any Time to Face a Higher Level of War and a Broader Scope of Conflict!"

In this large report on the war, clear frontline pictures could also be seen. The Magic Web terminal faithfully recorded the scenes on the battlefield—war machines, soldiers in formation, positions plowed by artillery fire, and spoils and body bags...

Though all of it was "fringe information" carrying no secrecy classification and cleared for public release, the scenes presented on those pages were still sights that ordinary people far behind the lines could scarcely come into contact with or even imagine in their daily lives; and to Merry, the very act of spreading the true face of war so swiftly and so widely through such reports was in itself an inconceivable thing.

What were the people who sent these images back called again? War... war correspondents?

In any case, they seemed to be rather remarkable people.

Merry shook her head. She knew these newspapers were not printed for Cecil eyes alone; with the pulse of commerce flowing through its veins, the information they carried would spread to ever more distant places at a speed once unimaginable, reaching the Mosswold, reaching the dwarven kingdom, and even reaching the far south of the continent... The war that had broken out between Typhon and Cecil would likely have an impact of staggering scope.

Was this a situation Emperor Gawain Cecil had deliberately set in motion? Was it his intention to "display" this war to the entire civilized world?

Merry could not help but grow curious about it.