275 Dragon Knight Archduke (1/2)
Nightrain City was formerly the capital of the Seventeen Nation New Moon Alliance, but it was now only a small border town in the Bardi Empire. However, the person in charge here was the Archduke Dragon Knight, Halent Winston, of the Bardi Empire.
Pretty much all mega-empires would have their very own ace military squadrons that had amassed countless years of history and service. The most famous military squadron of the Bardi Empire would be its dragon knight squadron.
The massive dragons were forever at the top of the food chain. They were also one of the few Gold-ranked species that existed in this world. A matured adult dragon, even at its weakest, would be the equivalent of any human at the Gold rank. Once a dragon learned some basic hunting techniques and magic spells, even the average Legend-ranked warrior would be helpless against these flying beasts.
After all, dragons knew how to fly, while ordinary warriors would be stuck on the ground, unable to do anything.
Dragon knight contracts were typically contracts between some strong warrior and a dragon as either master and servant or as equal status companions. Basically, the dragons would only give recognition to the strong, but that created an obvious paradox. The weak that needed the power of dragons were unable to obtain their recognition, while the strong that obtained the dragons' recognition didn't need the dragons' power to begin with. Dragon knights hence became legends in their own right quite easily.
That was why even if once in a while, one or two weak humans managed to gain a dragon's recognition through some coincidental fate or lucky occurrence, they were only exceptions to the norm. With the decrease in humanity's average combat strength, dragon knights, which were considered the strongest of all aerial knights, grew fewer and fewer as well. It was already quite difficult for a strong country to maintain more than one or two dragon knights, and it was common for the dragons in question to be young, immature dragons hired with large amounts of money. The dragons' actual power and will to fight would be questionable.
However, there was one country that had always remained an exception. In the Bardi Empire, the number of dragon knights had never fallen before fifty. Even the weakest dragon knight would be at the Gold rank. Yet it was incomprehensible why they were able to so easily obtain the dragons' recognition.
Some people said that the Bardi Empire obtained a secret artifact from the Dragon Gods, while others said that they had a long-lasting contract with the dragon species. But no matter what the truth was, due to the existence of a large number of dragon knights, the skies would never belong to any of the Bardi Empire's enemies. This was also one of the main reasons why the Auland Empire put so much into the development of floating combat airships—they treated the dragon knights as a potential enemy and threat.
Halent Winston was the subcommander of the dragon knight squadron (as the commander would always be a member of the royalty, so the current commander was Emperor Orloss). He was a famous warrior who was ranked in the top ten in all of Bardi as well as sixty-seventh in the ”Eich's Famous Warrior Rankings,” as the ”Archduke Dragon Knight.”
In this current generation, the Bardi Empire possessed a total of seventy-two dragon knights. Only sixty out of the seventy-two would be sent out on campaigns, and these sixty were split up into twelve small teams of five each. Halent personally commanded five small teams, a total of twenty-five dragon knights.
Setting his personal status aside, his personal combat strength was similarly astonishing. And his dragon steed was the adult Blue Dragon, ”Dark and Cloudy Windstorms” Sishusler, and was quite renowned amongst the dragons.
Halent reached the Legend rank as a warrior ten years ago and possessed a legendary artifact called the Thunder Horn. He had the astonishing military achievement of single-handedly slaying over one hundred griffin knights in a single battle, and he was a famed fierce warrior throughout all the lands.
One year ago, he quietly left the capital of the Bardi Empire and took all the dragon knights under his command to Nightrain City, which caused quite a commotion at the time.
As a former capital, Nightrain City was a classic example of a well-fortified city. But ever since Archduke Halent started living here, not only did he bring a large number of military personnel with him but he even personally invested a great amount of money and resources into the city's fortifications. Numerous cannons and towers were constructed, while the city's walls were reinforced many times over. At first, everyone here found it quite strange. After all, constructing a well-defended fort meant that there would be some type of enemy to defend against.
There were no other countries even close to Nightrain City. Halent's actions seemed rather meaningless. However, after the ”Port Victoria incident” occurred, since Nightrain City was close to Port Victoria as well as located on the only road to Port Victoria, everyone learned just what Archduke Halent had been on guard against—the undead.
While the Bardi nobles were still shocked at Archduke Halent's decision to leave the capital and come here, he managed to completely eradicate all traces of bandits in the nearby vicinity in just the short time of less than one year. And due to the fact that huge dragons could constantly be seen in the skies above the city, Nightrain City received a new name—Dragonrain City.
The moment we arrived in Dragonrain City a sudden rainstorm blotted out the skies, making it more convenient for us to enter. Since that Archduke Halent was also from the capital, I was worried that we would run into him and he might see through Lilith's disguise, so I had Carolyn and Lilith switch identities with each other, with Carolyn being herself and Lilith being the maid.
Now that Carolyn was playing the part of herself again, there was no more worry about authenticity. But if at all possible I didn't want to have to meet this famous Archduke dragon knight. So, my plan was to enter Dragonrain City as inconspicuously as possible and obtain information first before deciding whether or not I should try meeting with this Archduke.
In fact, if it weren't for the fact that it was on the only road to Port Victoria, I wouldn't have even passed by this city if I could help it.
”Carolyn, what do you know about that Halent? Have you ever met him?”
”He… he's… a bit scary.”
Carolyn, who was busy hugging her maid Lilith, took quite a while to answer my question, and her tone of voice contained an inexplicable amount of fear and anxiety. It was as if she was recalling something terrifying.
After finally hearing everything from her through all that stuttering, I learned the basic view that Bardi nobles had of Archduke Halent. He never participated in any noble parties, nor did he ever hold any social events. If he absolutely had to participate in some formal event, he would always join while wearing military attire. He was even daring to the point of wearing his sword in the presence of Emperor Orloss.
With losses were gains to be made elsewhere. Although he antagonized many nobles, he was deeply approved by the military leadership and civilian military officers. He was a powerful figure and representative of the military faction.
As for why Carolyn was so scared of him, it turned out to be because her father, who was a Duke equivalent to Duke Halent in rank at a time when he hadn't been promoted to Archduke yet, had requested the then Duke Halent to teach swordsmanship to his daughter and son.
This was obviously supposed to be a way for nobles to establish closer relationships and friendly ties with each other. However, Halent took it at face value and strictly trained Carolyn and her younger brother as seriously as possible. He forced full military standards for their training, and the two siblings that were used to an idle lifestyle suffered terribly. Later, even when Carolyn's father requested that Halent go easy on them, Halent still maintained his way of thinking.
”Go easy on them? Since they're currently my subordinates, I can't possibly allow them to be insufficient as military personnel. Even if Emperor Orloss himself requests me, my answer is still the same. You two, you only have two choices—complete the training tasks, or die!”
Halent had a seemingly soft and gentle voice that reverberated throughout the garden, but for some unknown reason, nobody in Carolyn's family dared look at him directly. There was an invisible might about him that seemed like a huge dragon was surveilling its own territory.
”There's no mistaking it—that's draconic might.”
I came to a simple conclusion after hearing this description from Carolyn.
While the Bardi Empire's dragon knights might be considered a mystery in the eyes of the general populace, there were plenty of things that were revealed about them after all these years if you knew where to look.
First of all, their dragon knights were basically hereditary in position, passed down between family members. Not only that, it could be learned from fighting with them that most of these dragon knights weren't pure humans. Most of them had dragons' blood in them, and they were the descendants of dragons.
Unlike the magically created dracons, dragon descendants were far stronger from the time of their birth. Most of them had a true dragon as an ancestor, and they were typically able to inherit part of dragons' strength and natural talents, which made them quite difficult to deal with.