CHAPTER 298: SURROUNDED BY FAMILY

This was the Sunstoian people Irene wanted to know.

As her head turned left and right and her eyes never seemed to stop in one place for very long, she took in the sights of such amazing weaponry that put the Duke’s Tower armory to shame. It was especially shameful after facing the war and losing a lot of their armament to the monsters that sieged the tower and left them for ruin. While they had been cleaning up the weapons picked off the corpses of some of the monsters, there were many more left to ruin or lost altogether.

A tinge of sadness found its way forward despite all the glee to be in a place like that. She was reminded of how she wished she could take each knight there and inspire them to keep going. The Sunstoian people were amazing warriors but they didn’t persist through time. Despite all the Knights of Chemois had faced, those left standing were still strong and they hadn’t run away.

She knew a few in particular who would love to see the weapons. There were bows carved in ways she had never seen for Sir Sven, ambidextrous swords for Felix, and large sweeping claymores for anyone who could possibly lift such a massive weapon with ease.

Seeing large items like the claymores and axes made her realize just how strong and large the Sunstoian people must have been. While she had her father for reference, he had told her before that he wasn’t the tallest growing up. Her uncle was taller and supposedly her grandfather was even taller than that.

Her grandfather... she realized.

This must have been her grandfather’s armory.

Irene felt a bit dizzy at the realization that the place she had wandered into was his. Considering how long ago he had passed away, there was little she knew about the man.

What she did know was the story of his death. There were swarms of monsters that he had accidentally drawn out while going out for a major hunt. When they found him, half of his body had been eaten away yet he still fought with what was left of the top half of himself. Until his dying breath, he was a warrior through and through.

From Irene’s understanding, he passed a mere couple of years before the rest of his family was forced to move south. She always had an underlying suspicion that perhaps without him there, the monsters became more unruly and frightening for her grandmother to deal with on her own. What a powerful man to have been lost in such a way.

Irene looked a lot like Kara and her mother more than she did her father, but she heard that her father was a carbon copy of his father. No matter what happened, it seemed that he lived on through Arthur. Just as if something happened to Arthur, he would certainly live on through Arne.

The realization that this was her grandfather’s armory made Irene realize she needed to go and visit the place in which he was buried with his sharpest sword at his side. It was typical Sunstoian to arm a corpse with their most meaningful weapon so that they could fight of spirits in the afterlife and secure their place in heaven.

Those who went to hell would need the weapons to fight and earn their way back to heaven so that they could finally rest peacefully for eternity.

However, even though her grandfather’s corpse remained in the north, his gravestone had been taken south and placed with a few others in the Litharion’s family graveyard. It was something her father found most meaningful to build into his lands. If he couldn’t live in the north, he would at least bring the important memories with him.

After all, a person could never be forgotten if they lived on through other people.

While Irene could have easily taken all of the weapons off of the walls and gotten more greedy, she opted to only take a few arrows to see if they shot as well as the ones she already had. She even sought more oil so that she could clean up her sword a bit better than she had been. Since she hadn’t been using it, she hadn’t been cleaning it either. She knew if her father or Sir Gunnar saw her neglecting her blade, they would both be disappointed.

Everything she had taken from that place could be carried easily so she didn’t bother returning to her home base for the time being.

When Irene moved on to the next, she knew she was walking towards what was supposed to be a storehouse, and she hoped that there would be unspoiled food. It seemed every place had something for Sammy, but she was becoming harder to find food for and she hadn’t seen any grouse in the area.

While she had a couple of days worth of frozen meat that she could cook into a broth, she preferred not to cut it so closely. She would soon need to find a way to have food that would last over the mountains going into Chemois once more since she no longer had jerky to eat.

With determination, she set forth, crunching through the snow with each step. As she occasionally unfolded the map and matched it to her surroundings, the lumps in the snow were starting to make more sense.

There was a building that was tall enough to poke through the snow to the east, which was how she determined the storehouse was sharply to the west.

"It doesn’t come free out here, does it?" she muttered as she tossed her bag onto the snow and pulled her gloves more tightly over her hands.

There was not a bit of the storehouse uncovered and it caused her to wonder how her family used to manage it in the winter. Since Chemois didn’t have such insurmountable amounts of snow, they didnt’ have to worry about things being covered like that outside of the mountains.

However, it also caused her to realize that this was probably why her grandmother preferred to live close to them. Only her region of the Litharion’s lands ever had drifts high enough to cover her house. Did she prefer this blanketed scenery? Did it remind her grandmother of a home she couldn’t return to?

Whatever the reason, Irene still needed to get food so she began unburying one edge of the building, only to find that it wasn’t the door when she met the wood that had somehow stood the test of time.

It was the wider side of the storehouse, it turned out, so she could infer that it was the other side that contained the door. It would make it much easier to dig through the snow.

The girl was working up enough of a sweat that she opened the front of her outer coat underneath her layer of armor. She was determined not to freeze her clothing and get into trouble so early on in the day.

Irene’s life became much easier when her hand met a post that was leaning against the wooden storehouse, and she lifted it forward with great force, considering it was practically plastered there because of the weight of the snow.

A gasp fell from her lips when she got it free and realized it was a flat shovel for pushing snow. It must have been someone’s job to make sure this part was cleared of snow periodically. That way, they wouldn’t have so much trouble getting into this place.

Without meaning to, she kept learning more and more about this place. She found the habits of those who came before her somewhat charming and so very human. It made her feel the presence of others even if she was all alone.

At these comforting thoughts, she moved with a bit more gusto, determined to see the organization that lay inside of this place. The larger township further south showed such great care in the way people took care of things even in their food storage. She knew that her family must have been the same way.

Living a life with purpose was something she had certainly gotten from her Sunstoian blood.

Soon enough, the door to the storehouse was completely devoid of snow and she slid the corner of the shovel along all sides of the door.

Since she had been working hard for a long while to get this door unburied, she slumped for a moment before she would try to force the door open. With a short sigh, she placed her hands on the ring doorknob and pulled as hard as she could, knowing that it was going to be difficult.

The thing with storehouses was that the doors always came out rather than going in because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to store as many things. She had learned that while going through the townships and villages in Chemois.

To her shock, with the door came something heavy and she was practically tackled to the ground.

She pushed whatever it was off of her quickly and righted herself onto her feet.

Expecting it to be a bag of food, a gasp escaped her lips when she saw that it was in fact a body.