"What exactly are you so angry about?"
Nolan looked at Sellen with a puzzled expression, though he knew perfectly well what she was upset about.
After a thoroughly satisfying night of drinking, Sellen had asked him to help her change bodies, and in the end, she had switched into one almost identical to her original one.
Ever since they came out of the Magic Workshop, Sellen had kept a dark look on her face. She would not say a word, and when he called to her, she did not respond either...
Nolan knew what his teacher wanted.
Now that they had returned from the Land of Shadow, having eight or ten big, healthy boys would not be a problem, but this was not the right time for it.
"I didn't tell you about Trina in advance because I was worried you'd worry..." Nolan said, sounding a little aggrieved.
Mohg was strong, and the Land of Shadow was extremely dangerous. What was wrong with him being a little more careful?
Of course, that did not mean Sellen had given up on exploring the stars. With their strength, they still had a long future ahead of them.
Besides, she still had not worked out how to create star seeds. There was no need to rush. Pushing it back a little and taking it slowly was fine.
After coaxing her for what felt like forever, speaking until his mouth nearly dried out, the only response Nolan got was Sellen's stormy expression and her silent stare fixed on him.
Faced with this, he felt utterly helpless. He could only complain to himself. Why was this woman so stubborn?
"Hmph, whatever! I'm going to Limgrave anyway!"
After enduring Nolan's long, relentless stream of persuasion, Sellen finally spoke for the first time since leaving the Magic Workshop.
But when she did, the words came out through gritted teeth, carrying a faint trace of embarrassment turned to anger.
To be fair, it was hard to blame her for being upset. No one would have expected Nolan, her foolish apprentice, to suddenly become overflowing with responsibility at a moment like this...
Passing wisdom down to future generations and laying a solid foundation for humanity's exploration of the vast starry sky was a grand ideal that even the academy fully supported.
So in truth, Sellen did not have much aversion to having children itself.
What she truly despised was people becoming excessively addicted to that sort of thing.
"Master, please rest assured. This is a promise I made, and I will keep it," Nolan said firmly.
Nolan's plan was simple. The Cuckoo camp was right below the Divine Tower. He would go down there and crush the Cuckoos. Among that pack of bandits, there was almost certainly no one who could match him.
Once the Divine Tower's defenses fell into chaos, Adula would use those huge wings to fly up to the tower, find Ranni's body, bring it back, deliver it to Ranni so she could take out the Great Rune inside, and then hand the Great Rune over to him.
It was a simple and brutally direct plan, but precisely because it was simple, it left almost no room for mistakes. The only real concern was the difference in strength between the two sides.
For a Carian Knight, retrieving the Lunar Princess's body was perfectly justified.
And by doing it this way, Nolan would not need to come face-to-face with the Two Fingers at close range, completely eliminating the risk of being seen through at a glance.
To the Cuckoo, it would look just like the Liurnia war all over again. From their point of view, it was simply that terrifying Dark Moon Knight returning once more.
If there was anything suspicious about it, then it was probably just this... this Dark Moon Knight had changed into an entirely new set of armor.
The iconic Carian Knight armor was gone, replaced by a ghostly blue suit of knight armor named for the Dark Moon.
The armor itself was beautifully designed, and its broad cloak billowed in the wind, studded with countless glittering gemstones. From a distance, he looked dazzlingly magnificent.
Nolan felt he could easily run for the title of Caria's next richest man.
Looking at it this way, even if the Queen of the Full Moon were to recover her senses, it seemed Ranni had never intended to make Nolan an official Carian Knight.
The crucial problem of insufficient troop numbers still had not been fundamentally solved. So Nolan had never placed his hopes on using Caria's military strength to crush the Cuckoo.
He only wanted to charge into their camp with the strength of a legendary hero and see how far the Cuckoo had come over the years.
As for whether this trip might bring any unexpected gains, that would have to wait until he had actually fought his way into the enemy camp.
As the heavy gate of Gatefront Town slowly opened, Nolan rode his beloved Torrent onto the great bridge.
The sound of hooves striking the ground rang out like stirring war drums, echoing through the air without end.
He turned his head slightly. Not far behind him, hundreds of armored Carian soldiers stood in neat formation along the shore.
Their hearts surged as they watched his departing figure, as though they were witnessing the opening of a great battle, ready to see Nolan continue the legend of a hero.
Ahead of him stretched a sea of tents, so vast it seemed endless.
The Cuckoo's sphere of influence lay mainly in the eastern and southern parts of Liurnia of the Lakes.
To the south, their boundary was marked by the highlands south of the Village of the Albinaurics. To the east, they faced Gatefront Town across the lake, separated only by a single great bridge.
Simply put, the Cuckoo controlled the vital route from the Grand Lift of Dectus to Stormveil Castle.
The news that the Gatefront Town bridge had been cleared could not be kept from anyone. Everyone knew Caria was about to make a major move.
The Cuckoo sentries were already on high alert, and now they stood even more vigilantly on guard, as though a great enemy were approaching.
Before long, they spotted a man and horse slowly making their way onto the bridge.
In an instant, a shrill alarm bell tore through the quiet morning air and rang across the entire camp.
Through a gently swaying flap of canvas, strands of soft morning light slipped into the room.
The knights, who had not slept all night, exchanged glances when they heard the alarm, their faces a mix of shock and exhaustion.
The fierce argument from the night before had dragged on until late, and even then, no clear conclusion had been reached.
Now they were in an extremely awkward position.
They had become the nominal rulers of this land, but the blood feud between them and the Carian people was not something that could be erased in a mere three years.
What was more, their commander had now taken in the Tarnished. They knew very well what kind of people that bunch was. Some of them were even worse than the bandits they themselves had once been.
The moment any news came that Caria was making a move, the common people below immediately flew into a righteous fury.
The sentiment spread like wildfire, and countless people responded.
For a time, chaos broke out across all the lands under the Cuckoo's rule.