Abner's Speculation

Abner pondered for a while, then turned his attention back to Miss Emma's excerpts about the Second Baron Ramde's campaigns—the part she had called rather "legendary."

At first glance, there was nothing unusual about them. These classic campaigns merely made Baron Ramde and Baron Kholger seem remarkable. They had successfully completed many nearly impossible missions. Legendary, indeed...

But on closer inspection, something was very wrong! How could the conditions of every mission have been so harsh? On several occasions, their survival could almost be chalked up to luck...

Those missions sounded more like tests designed by someone. The king had probably been training them for a specific purpose!

That raised the question: what was so special about them that the ruler of a nation would put so much effort into their training?

I don't know about Kholger, but Ramde's most distinctive trait was that he was a descendant of the God of Death—the son of the Death Archon.

That could hardly have escaped the notice of William I, the "founder of the nation" and "Protector" who had observed him up close. After all, William I was a Sequence 1 Hand of Order.

So a reasonable guess was that the king had tailored those so-called missions to train Ramde because he wanted a descendant of the God of Death to retrieve something from somewhere. Much like Queen Mystic was nurturing Jane.

The king of Loen clearly wasn't as kind as Queen Mystic, though. He had probably intended to dispose of Ramde once he was no longer useful and silence him for good. Ramde must have discovered something during that so-called secret mission. He might even have tried to draw the Church's attention to it to protect himself, which was why the king had used his friend to poison him. Otherwise, an