The Villainess Lives Twice

Proofreader: somnium

From Karam’s point of view, where meat-eating is the staple, farming was a job for young people and old people who couldn’t keep up with hunting.

Apua was the son of a great chieftain, and once spearheaded the warriors running the snowfields.

He was an excellent hunter. When he went out hunting, he never returned empty-handed. He once captured a young reindeer alive and offered the milk to his father.

So he started making food with his own hands while living with the old man.

To preserve meat, salt and smoke it, or freeze it by burying it in snow is also a method used by Karam.

But in the old days, Apua always only took the game and threw it to the trimmers.

It was the first time he knew that such a job was as difficult as hunting. It required much more complex skills than he had vaguely thought.

The old man often cursed at him. His hands are not delicate, but his strength is strong, and he often breaks farm equipment or wastes salt.

The first time he dug up crops from the ground, he was moved to tears.

Hunger and cold were inevitable even for the ruling class of Karam. During the harshest times of the year, and sometimes during the regular inhibiting seasons, there have been times when they ate extremely poorly and fought starvation with neighboring tribes.

But making food with his own hands and piling it up in the warehouse felt completely different.

It was no different than when he was discussing food at a tribal meeting or when he shared his father’s concerns.

Food was no longer prepared when ordering the working class, but was prepared with constant care and attention.

Apua lived alone with the old man for 15 years. But his world has expanded beyond imagination.

The old man was not an educated man. He didn’t even know how to write, and he didn’t know how the human world works now.

However, Apua knew that he could live alongside humans as he was a warrior.

The old objects and techniques used by the old man always surprised him.

The candles that the traders sometimes bring, the scentless lamps made from plant-derived oil, were as shocking as the steel plows or wheel axles.

The old man gave him a picture book and colored pencils. The old man did not know how to write. He said he had bought it to give to his grandchildren.

On a day when work was over, the old man opened the picture in the picture book and said the name of the object drawn on it. The words were written under the picture.

That’s how Apua learned to write.

He knew that merchants were carrying things like wooden boards and displaying their own transaction details. There was also a way to convey the history of the tribe orally by assisting the memory with pictures.

However, he did not know that these words were left on paper as they were. There must have been some things that mixed races had learned from their human parents, but most Karam were not interested in such things.

So did the ruling class. Merchants were despised in Karam, and mixed races seldom became the upper classes.

Being a warrior was the most valuable thing, and in order not to be defeated, he had to constantly polish his body. Humans were not objects of exchange, but opponents to be plundered and trampled upon.

Apua was the ruling class of the fallen Karam, and he could understand the meaning of the characters.

History remains and technology is passed on.

Organize his failures and remember how to succeed.

Human skills that look like magic to Karam are developed in this way.

What they really had to learn wasn’t the smelting of steel or how to make cannons that Karam always wanted.

Apua realized, but there was nothing he could do. He had already been pushed back. When he returned, he would only be killed.

It was after the old man died that he came back into the wide world.

At that time, Apua was already over forty. It was an unusually long age for Karam.

Most of the peers who could be hostile to Apua would be dead and gone, so he decided to return to the Ironmaker tribe.

They will not welcome an elderly person with a disability, but they will not expel them either. So he wanted to go back and pass on to the children what he had learned.

He didn’t know because he lived in the mountains, but at that point, Karam had already entered the North.

Artizea took the paper, read it slowly, and put it in the furnace.

Apua’s expression was different from what Artizea knew. She thought the Thold Gate was breached and the northern defense collapsed. And that it was Karam who conquered Evron.

You are wrong. It was the monarch himself who opened the gates of the fortress.

“What?”

Artizea, who was looking at the sentence Apua was writing upside down, involuntarily asked, surprised.

After the death of the king, the tribes continued to quarrel, forming a federation into nine factions. And the monarch took the place of one of those factions as the power of Evron.

Artizea was so surprised that she looked at the sentence blankly, looked at Apua, and looked down at the sentence again.

You didn’t know at all. Perhaps no one on the mainland would have known.

She thought that Cedric was still maintaining the Knights safely. She knew the Northerners were helping, but she thought, ‘Is that enough?’

He had already lost his base and thought he would be getting help informally. Since Karam had nothing to call a nation, it was possible for him to lead the knights through the empty land.

However, according to Apua’s words, he had never been the monarch of Evron.

Artizea rolled her eyes and recalled her memories of that time.

Her information was lacking. Initially, Artizea had failed to create a usable intelligence organization within Evron, at which point she was even disbanding it.

In the course of the negotiations with Apua, it seemed like the North was fighting Karam. It seemed possible enough to make it known that they were defeated.

So, does that mean that the Thold Gate was not penetrated?

Artizea asked. Apua really had a slightly bewildered face to know that she knew nothing, but he did not hesitate to write down the answer.

I did not experience it firsthand, but I was right that it was a risk. The humans resented the fact that if the woman who embraced the light was not taken away, so many would not have died.

Karam broke through the Thold Gate.

It was a cold season that could only come once in several decades. Karam was also desperate, and the situation in the North, which had been isolated without supplies, was already at its worst.

First, the supplies ran out, and then the gunpowder was used up. The diminished army had no prospect of being replenished. The fortress walls that could not be repaired collapsed.

At that time, Karam did not have the same focal point as the current king, and they came down only to live.

Even then, Cedric could only rely on his own skills.

He opened the door of the Thold Gate and went out. And after fighting with Karam’s great warrior alone and winning, he offered to negotiate.

Karam respects great warriors. In fact, the warrior who killed the king would have already become a legend.

For Karam, a generation had already passed.

When Apua went out into the world, the Karam were enthusiastic about the fact that the legend of the previous generation survived and had defeated the great warrior again.

So the negotiation was concluded. After all, Karam also made a huge sacrifice.

It would be better if they could go south without any more bloodshed and take up suitable land and get food.

One of the nine factions that made up the confederacy was human.

According to Karam’s custom, he was unable to completely prevent looting. Cedric’s influence was only 1/9.

But human did not become slaves.

Coexistence began for the first time, and large-scale transactions occurred. They exchanged groceries they had encountered for the first time. Karam learned how to fertilize and make a chimney.

The northern part was a rich and warm land for Karam. There was less looting and less infighting. There were also lands that were cultivated on a large scale by the working class.

As a result, their lifespan increased. Few old people lived when Apua was young.

But now he could see not just a few of the working-class elders participating in the cultivation in good health.

Even while he was living in hiding, Apua used to think about how he could coexist and accept human culture.

It was useless to think about it. He’ll never be the warrior of the Ironmaker clan again.

Still, what he continued to worry about was that he still had the heart of when he was the chieftain’s son of the Ironmaker clan.

But what he was worried about had already been done.

He spent the end of his life exploring the changes in the North. No one thought that the trader carrying a bag of soap and candles was Karam, the son of a once great warrior and himself a great warrior.

So he must have closed his eyes that way, but when he opened his eyes one day, he was back in his youthful moment.

He now knew which way Karam had to go.

He couldn’t figure out a way. In any case, change would not have begun unless they crossed the Thold Gate and made direct contact with humans.

“So, war…….”

While the king was alive, Karam had crossed the Thold Gate.

Now that Apua is there, it would be possible not to lose their focal point this time.

However, unilateral victory and conquest was meaningless. When plundered and enslaved to rule, humans cannot interact as equals as when they were one of the nine factions.

Accepting their culture will be even more difficult.

So Apua decided to knock on the door first.

The siege weapon made with the clumsy knowledge obtained from the book was poor, and it was even more difficult to understand the concept of guerrilla warfare.

But if there is someone out there who has experienced a future like Apua, there will definitely be a reaction.

Grand Duke Evron must have been thinking about exchanges much longer than Apua.

I thought that if we met, the way would somehow open.

I thought it was an adventure.

There was a smile on Apua’s face, who handed her the last piece of paper.

Artizea’s mind was complicated by many thoughts. Most of it was meaningless to think about now, but he wanted to see Cedric’s face anyway.

She put the last piece of paper in the brazier, and scattered the ashes. Artizea smashed up to the last shard and then bowed her head to Apua.

“Thank you for telling me. You must already know who I am.”

〘I don’t know you. I’ve heard rumors, but I haven’t experienced it. And there are many things in the world that you don’t know unless you check it yourself.〙

Apua spoke like an old man.

Kesa looked at the two curiously. She could speak but did not know how to write, so she did not know what was going on in the writing while sitting next to Apua.

“The rumors you’ve heard aren’t all there is to it. Come to think of it, rather than all of that…….”

Artizea muttered as if trying to make an excuse.

It was then.

“Your Majesty, the Archbishop has arrived.”

A knight waiting outside the fence came in and reported.