Chapter 37 – Arrival at the Destination
"I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Cranston," said the clerk behind the counter with a stiff smile. "President Seth, who oversees noble investiture ceremonies, is currently away from Pita City. You'll have to wait a while longer."
"How long?" Charles asked flatly.
"We're… uncertain when the president will return."
"And there's no one else who can perform the ceremony in his place?"
"I'm afraid not. According to royal law, a noble inheritance must be officiated personally by the President of the Nobility Welfare and Administration Council."
…
That same reply—word for word—was what Charles heard for more than ten days straight.
At first, he'd suspected that this so-called Dulin Nobility Welfare and Management Association, the government body responsible for such procedures, was deliberately delaying his title confirmation. After all, bureaucracy was an art form in itself, and stalling a minor noble was hardly unusual.
But upon further inquiry, he learned that President Seth truly had left Pita City.
The man was attending the Seventh National Conference on Institutional Reform and Governance, a grand assembly hosted by the Dulin Kingdom. Every influential noble and municipal leader in the nation was required to participate.
Naturally, that excluded Charles—who, for now, was still only a baron in name.
His formal inheritance, like everything else in this kingdom, would have to wait.
The great royal conference, as rumor had it, was focused on a particularly controversial topic — the reauthorization of private noble armies.
The entire city had been buzzing with debate. Ordinary citizens, predictably, were vehemently opposed. The noble class, though Charles hadn't mingled among them recently, would no doubt be on the opposite side of the argument.
After all, where one sits determines how one thinks. It was an eternal truth of politics.
The commoners feared a return to the old days — the magnification of power for a class already drenched in privilege. The nobles, on the other hand, had their own reasoning: this was not a peaceful world. Private armies, they claimed, were necessary to ensure the safety of their families and their people.
"Their people," huh? Charles thought dryly. They mean themselves.
This wasn't the Middle Ages. Nobles no longer ruled vast fiefs — at least, not officially.
"So then, what do they even need the police for?" he muttered, shaking his head.
It wasn't his problem. Politics bored him to death. Better to spend that time studying spells than listening to nobles argue about who deserved more power.
———
One moment he was in a city reminiscent of early 19th-century Europe; the next, he found himself once more in a world that smelled of iron, salt, and medieval superstition.
He blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the dim room around him. Everything was exactly as he'd left it — dark furniture, scattered papers, the faint scent of seawater seeping through the walls. Outside the porthole windows, a rolling mist cloaked the endless ocean.
Judging by the faint orange hue of the sky, it was around six in the evening — dinnertime for most, the start of night for sailors and merchants alike.
But Charles neither needed sleep nor food. Having rested in the "front world," he felt alert and refreshed. With no entertainment aboard the ship, he sat down at the small desk, drew out a stack of blank paper and ink he'd brought with him, and began practicing arcane sigils — the secret scripts of magic.
Paper here was a luxury. True paper-making hadn't been developed in this world. Scholars used parchment or coarse toilet-grade pulp, and every book was handwritten — unique, precious, and rare.
Knowledge here was literally bound in skin.
And parchment, made from treated animal hide, was expensive. Every page mattered.
So Charles had taken to bringing reams of paper from the modern world whenever he crossed over. Even then, it was a hassle.
He pushed aside those thoughts and began sketching again, lines of strange angular script forming on the page — like a fusion of runes and oracle bone carvings. His pen strokes were surer now, his characters neater than when he first started.
Tonight's focus was a spell called Touch of Fatigue.
Unlike the Curse of Pain, it required no alchemical reagents or ritual components — only the correct sequence of sigils and a brief incantation. Once written and memorized, it could be cast freely.
From his earlier conversation with the old clockmaker, Charles had learned that these symbols — arcane scripts, or secret texts — were the foundation of all true magic. Every spellcaster had to learn them, and many higher-tier spells simply couldn't function without them.
The old man hadn't explained much else, but one thing had been clear: the more complex the magic, the more inevitable the script.
———
Time slipped by.
Darkness swallowed the sea. The waves, once roaring, now murmured softly against the hull, their rhythm like a lullaby.
Charles's quill scratched on, the pile of completed sheets growing steadily. Crumpled failures littered the floor, paper balls tossed carelessly into corners. The once-tidy cabin had turned into a scholar's battlefield.
By the time he drew the final line, his hand trembled and his eyes burned. He leaned back, exhaling, blinking away the faint golden stars that danced across his vision.
"Maybe a walk will help," he muttered.
Through the foggy window, the night looked calm and enticing. He stood, stretched, and left the cabin — known among the sailors, half-jokingly and half-fearfully, as the Ghost Room.
The night air was cold and briny, biting against his skin. But it was refreshing. Leaning against the railing, he felt the exhaustion begin to ebb. His mind cleared.
Soon, his thoughts drifted back to plans for the future.
His goals were clear: grow stronger. Hunt monsters, gain combat experience, and harvest souls to master the three Disguise Spells. Then, finish learning the remaining four spells in his notebook.
A battlefield would be perfect for that… if only it weren't so suicidal.
And there was, of course, the tag-along.
Polite, deferential, almost flattering — but Charles trusted her about as far as he could throw her.
She claimed to be a messenger of the "King of Light," descended from heaven to guide him.
Only an idiot would buy that.
And Charles did not consider himself an idiot.
He was still lost in thought when a lively female voice piped up behind him. He didn't need to turn around to know who it was.
"Hey, can you teach me that little doll-stabbing trick of yours?"
"You're too stupid to learn it," he said without looking back.
"I'm not stupid! I made all your dolls, remember?"
"They're hideous. You have no right to brag."
"You said the looks didn't matter!"
"They do when they burn my retinas."
"Hmph! You're just stingy."
The girl — Arya — huffed, then leaned on the railing beside him, mimicking his posture without an ounce of grace.
"Still," she mused aloud, "when I master the Water Dance techniques that Master Syrio taught me — silent as shadow, swift as a deer — you won't even see me coming. I'll tug your hair before you can react!"
"With your sickly little body? I'll believe it when I see it," Charles said, feigning disdain.
"I am not sickly!" Arya snapped. "It's Sansa's fault! She made me eat oranges on the ship, and you know I'm allergic!"
"Then why did you eat them?"
"I… forgot."
Charles couldn't help a faint smirk.
Their banter passed the time easily, and before long, the black horizon began to change.
Faint lights flickered in the distance — the outline of a coastline coming into view.
As the ship drew nearer, those lights grew brighter, until a bustling port emerged from the mist, shimmering under lantern glow.
Arya gasped in excitement, pointing ahead.
"Look! We're here! That's White Harbour City! The Manderly's domain!"
Charles followed her gaze, watching the harbor grow larger, clearer.
After half a month at sea, they had finally arrived at their destination — the White Harbour Castle, seat of the Manderly family, along the northern coast of the Seven Kingdoms' northern frontier.
Their long voyage had come to an end.