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-VB-

Isabella von Fluelaberg nee Gorizia

Isabella looked up from the last of her embroidery of the three-peaked mountain that symbolized the barony and sighed as she looked out of her room\'s window and at the rest of the city below.

While she didn\'t mind spending her time designing new embroidery as a hobby, she also felt a little empty doing something so … pointless. Even though she didn\'t like listening to yammering whines of the peasants, merchants, and nobles, there was a point to it that actually did something to solve problems.

However, her duties were such that she couldn\'t act as the judge and ruler while her husband was actively taking those roles.

The duties of a noblewoman, especially the wife of a lord, were such that they had to be ready to assume any duties that fell onto them immediately. If the noblemen were such that they were steadfast pillars that held their positions for those above and below their station, then a noblewoman was someone ready to take the duty should something happen to see the nobleman leave the position. While instances of the reverse did happen, it was not the norm anywhere on God\'s Earth.

Men were physically stronger and hardier and more aggressive and confrontational if those traits were what men needed. Women … simply weren\'t. They were softer and kinder, which were traits more suited to supporting roles. Put a man in a supporting role and everyone will see how much harder such roles were for them. They struggled with understanding the delicate nature of the mind. Not always and not all men but most. What women took to like fish to the ocean, men needed to learn and train.

This was why noble boys were made to train with books and swords and noble girls learned with sewing needles and coins for it was more often that noblewomen who managed the finances of their husband\'s lands rather than vice versa.

And once adulthood set in, their lot in life was set.

So what was she to do, as Isabella the wife of Hans, when he went out to do … odd things.

Normally, both men and women did odd things when they went past their prime. She remembered how her father suddenly developed an interest in sculpting some six years ago and spent exorbitant sums to learn how to sculpt and to import quality materials.

Her husband probably thought he was being subtle about it, but there was nothing about a six foot man bound in muscles in these lands, no matter what he did. Oh, his attempt at "dyeing" was rather ingenious but making his hair a few shades lighter did nothing for how easily he was recognized by his people.

He was, after all, their hero and leader.

To the merchants, he was the man of the accounting books. To the few scholars in the barony (an amazing feat in and of itself), he was the father of natural sciences. To the artisans, he was their goal. To the commoners, he was the guarantor of safety and prosperity. To the soldiers, he was their general. To the outcasts, he was a warm embrace who accepted and provided shelter.

So did he really think that no one recognized him when he went out to babysit children of all things?

Isabella initially thought that her husband was sneaking out to meet … other women. As much as she loved him, she also knew that she didn\'t know everything about her husband. There simply was too much to learn and a lot of his life that stood out like silk dress among wool shirts.

What mercenary-peasant turned lord studied natural sciences and made pottery and porcelain who also turned over a profitable jewelry mine to the commoners?!

So … he … might have had lovers before she came along. Though she was sure that he felt affection for her, it didn\'t mean that he couldn\'t for other women, too.

So imagine her surprise when he was babysitting of all things… for the outcasts.

Getting rocks and sticks thrown at him while playing with children who didn\'t know him was very far from visiting lovers.

… So why? Why was Hans suddenly interested in disguising himself, taking care of children, digging up and moving shit from the latrines, building and repairing hom-.

Actually, when she thought about his recent excursion along with what he normally did, they weren\'t too far off from what he did.

It was Hans being Hans.

But why sneak out?

Worse, his sneaking and disguises grew alarmingly better with each day he spent outside. No one in the castle managed to see him leave on his last day working among the commoners, and she almost didn\'t recognize him when she saw him after he returned.

It … also highlighted how he seemed to be doing something, improving new abilities, and finding new things to do while she remained in place after telling him that she would be by his side.

Hans was a master artisan, veteran warrior, benevolent if firm baron, accomplished battlefield tactician, ruthless strategist, devilish persuader, able orator, terrifying alchemist, multi-field scholar, the strongest swordsman in all of the empire, one of the richest men, the Compact\'s protector of the east, and now … some kind of … stealthy babysitter.

Thieves and assassins would weep. Or ask to study under him.

She, on the other hand, was a noblewoman. That was all she was.

… Isabella couldn\'t allow herself to fall behind, could she? If she wanted to stay by his side and keep up with her promise, she needed to get better. Be better. But how was she going to be better than who and how she was?

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

"You want to do something more?" I asked her in surprise, to which she nodded.

Isabella, who sat across from me on the dinner table, nodded before closing her lips around another piece of the steak we were eating tonight.

When I made dinner tonight, I didn\'t expect to get this kind of conversation.

"Well, I\'m not going to say no to that," I replied. "But why are you asking me? You know that I\'m not going to tell you what you can do and what you can\'t."

"I know," she replied. "But I do want your help. I want to know what I can do where I will be able to excel."

\'Stats,\' I thought to myself and focused my Gamer\'s observation onto Isabella.

[Character Status]

Name: Isabella von Fluelaberg nee Gorizia

Age: 19

Title: Baroness

LvL: 10

HP: 480

MP: --

ST: 8

STR: 9

END: 11

AGI: 10

DEX: 9

INT: 13

CHA: 13

Her stats weren\'t anything interesting. Her average of 12 per stat was higher than the average person\'s, but it wasn\'t unique at all, so any advice and suggestion I give her based on her stat would be … not meaningless but negligible. This left her personality, desires, and needs. Essentially, the who, what, where, why, and how\'s of her request except applied to each of her personality, desires, and needs.

… But would she appreciate that? Appreciate me telling her what was best for her?

"Okay," I said with a nod. "Do you have something in mind?" If she didn\'t have anything in mind, then I can help her look for something she wanted to do. It\'s … I guessed that that\'s how married couples carried on with life, right? Or were supposed to. Be there and support them. Ask her what\'s wrong.

Isabella looked at me with a firm gaze but with searching eyes that looked more into herself than at me. After a while, she straightened her back and her eyes grew determined.

"I want to do two things."

"Alright."

"First thing I want to do… is to set up a business outside of my role as the baroness."

"I can certainly help with that."

She shook her head. "I want it to be my endeavor. That\'s not what I need your help with. What I need your help with is the next one."

"... And that would be?"

She took a deep breath in and let it out.

And then she hesitated.

"... Teach me how to fight."

-VB-

Chapter 87

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

If my wife wanted to learn how to fight to protect herself, then was I going to refuse? No, I wouldn\'t. Certain other men might take offense and tell their wives no because they would incorrectly infer that their wives considered their protection to be lacking, but Isabella and I didn\'t have any misunderstanding about that.

If words failed, then the displays at the front of the castle of the ruined plate armors I cleaved with my ridiculous sword made my own strength abundantly clear.

But I wasn\'t sure if I was the right person for the job, mostly because I didn\'t know how to fight gracefully or with a dagger. I was the definition of brute force made manifest, and the kind of skills someone wielding a dagger would need was not a skill I had nor was I good at teaching.

Ping!

I jolted in place, which made me bump around the cramped corridors of the mines underneath my castle.

I had been in the process of digging out another chunk of rock into my inventory (something I was still wary about revealing) when the ping alert stopped me on top of creating a translucent screen that only I could see.

I blinked and read it.

[Quest: The Way of the Blade

Your wife wants to learn how to fight herself! This is a good thing, and you will support her all the way.

Pre-requisite:

*Isabella von Fluelaberg (IVF) must take up a blade as her weapon.

*IVF must learn how to use her weapon with at least intermediate (LvL.10) skill.

*IVF must reach this level before the birth of your child.

*IVF must live to the end of the quest.

*IVF must not leave you before the end of the quest.

Reward:

*Skill: Teaching + 10 Teaching Skill LvL

*Increased relationship with Isabella (obviously)

Failure:

*Potential "Accident"

Y/N?]

I stared at the bottom of the quest screen and at the ominous word marked with quotation marks.

"I don\'t like that," I grumbled as I closed the quest screen because what else was I going to do? Not help my wife? And the "accident" might be anything and everything, so there was no reason to even worry about it. It might just mean an injury with whatever other weapon she chooses.

It\'s also been a while since I got a quest, and it was related to Isabella. I wondered if that meant that the Gamer that I had considered her to be significant enough to him (or both it and him) to warrant quests and if there would be more in the future.

Probably.

---

"A dagger?" Isabella asked me as we stood in our training courtyard. Normally, my Rangers would be here on days they weren\'t patrolling or training out in the valley, but today, I cleared it out for Isabella. I didn\'t want her to feel pressured or judged because she couldn\'t do something she never trained for.

Sure, there were people who did great under pressure and actually needed it to keep going, but I also knew - not for certain but almost - that Isabella wasn\'t that kind of a person. She needed to set her own pace, even if that pace might be brisk by most people\'s standard.

"Yup," I told her as I pulled out a dagger. The entire dagger, from the tip of the blade to the butt of the handle, was about the length of my forearm. For her, it looked like a shortsword. However, it was certainly a dagger for self-protection because it wasn\'t made for utility in mind but the ability to kill.

See, I thought long and hard about what Isabella needed to learn for her sword skill. A spear wasn\'t going to work because she wasn\'t supposed to be in the frontline or out in the open when she needed to defend herself. It couldn\'t be a sword because she lacked the upper body strength not because she was a woman but because she simply didn\'t train herself.

So if she was going to start with a blade, it would have to be something made to kill as quickly as possible on the assumption that the enemies were already close to her.

And as such, I smithed out her very own dagger.

Or rather, a stiletto. With a fine tip and a narrow blade, she wouldn\'t be using this to parry but to strike quickly and efficiently as possible to ensure a kill.

I handed her the stiletto and she frowned.

I blinked. Did I not give her the right gift for what she wanted?

"This is not like any knightly dagger that I have seen," she hummed appreciatively.

"Ah, knightly daggers," I let out a sigh of relief. Knightly daggers were just that: daggers used by knights. Unlike the stiletto, knights used their knightly daggers in close quarter combat not only to kill but also to parry. Of course, people other than knights also used it for both combat and civilian uses like butchering or cutting meat. The stiletto, however, didn\'t have the blade required to cut meat. It could do one and one thing only: stab.

"How will I be using this dagger?" she asked me as she got into what she assumed was a fighting stance, and I\'m gonna be honest. She wasn\'t half bad. She did grow up as a count\'s daughter, so she must have come into contact with many knights and seen them train, never mind how many times she\'s seen my rangers, militiamen, and myself train.

"You will move your body a lot," I replied. "Where the knights are immovable and unstoppable fortresses on the battlefield, men-at-arms the flexible blade needed to cut down enemies, and my rangers the unseen blade even upon a battlefield, you will be like water, flowing around the enemy attacks until you find the right time. And then -." I slammed my hands together in a thunderous clap. "You will strike to kill."

"So a killing art, not a knightly art."

I snorted. "Do I need to remind you just how many knights I\'ve killed? You might have to forgive me for not having the highest regard for them."

"They still train for more than a decade in the service of their liege lord. You should respect that."

I nodded. "I do respect that, and I do it by putting them six feet under."

"You can be oft cruel and crass, husband," she hummed. "Now, show me how to use this."

"Now, you won\'t be training with a real blade," I told her as I gingerly took the blade away. "Like everyone on the training grounds, you train with wooden versions until you need to actually test out the blade."

And handed her a wooden version of it with an iron core to simulate the weight of the steel stiletto.

She hefted it up and down and even swung her arms around to get used to it.

"Ready?" I asked her.

She nodded. "Ready."

It was our first couple\'s special training session.

-VB-

Chapter 88

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

Christmas came and went. It was honestly the biggest celebration, even bigger than the feast I hosted. With my people\'s still growing wealth, they wanted to celebrate Christmas in a more boisterous manner, and we just … did. We filled the entire valley with laughter, food, and warmth and even dragged Davos to our celebration.

New Year came and went. Unlike Christmas, it was a much more sedate and homey celebration.

During all of this, Isabella and I planned on how our tour would go. I also sent mails to all of the relevant towns and villages that we would be passing by. It would be extremely rude to visit those towns as the baron of Fluelaberg when those towns were their own independent states - as far as the Compact was concerned - without any notice.

It would be like the emperor visiting the Duchy of Saxony without making any announcement, sniffing around, and then leaving. It would be highly suspect from the viewpoint of the local powers that be. Sure, such a thing might not be a concern for small time villages but it would still be rude, so the least I could do was send a letter and asking if I could stay.

And from the letters I got back (thanks to the roads that connected most of the member villages, towns, and cities), they were happy to host me.

All except one.

Deep inside the mountain valley to the west of Davos and east of Chur, there were two small members of the Compact: St. Peter and Langweis. St. Peter was the village closer to Chur, and Langweis was a lot deeper and higher in the valley. So high, in fact, they only needed to walk for three hours eastward to reach the white-capped mountains, cross over, and walk down to Davos, which might take them half the day. And unlike St. Peter, they were happy to host me.

St. Peter, on the other hand…

They have been belligerent since Day 1 of the Compact\'s founding. Never agreed with anything anyone else said, often ignored my calls for arms, and just generally acted like someone who didn\'t want to be there.

I suspected that the only reason why they even joined up with the Compact was because they feared getting swallowed up by the Chur or something stupid like that.

Excuse me, brothers and sisters. Your village has nothing worth spending the time to attack or take over! Y\'all probably don\'t even pay that much tax!

St. Peter had a total of 200 people, according to their own village mayor. This included people in the surrounding villages who weren\'t part of St. Peter but nonetheless counted due to them "sharing" the membership. Langweis had less than that at only 57 but all of their people were in a single village. But that one village offered up 20 able men (all but four of their able men) during the forewarned invasion by the Duke of Upper Bavaria while St. Peter offered a measly 30 (which was less than a fifth of their able men).

It was getting to a point where I was starting to regret allowing St. Peter into the Compact, and wanted to discuss their continued membership with the rest of the Compact.

And considering that there was a clause that allowed members to be kicked during certain conditions…

Well, it would depend on what their reaction was when I passed by. God forbid, if some of them started throwing rocks at me or Isabella…

But they wouldn\'t be that stupid, right?

Right.

As for the tour…

"So are we all ready now?" I asked my steward, one of the rangers who needed to retire once we learned that he had received too big of an ankle wound; the most he could do was walk. Rocco, no surname, was someone in his late thirties and one of the immigrants who made their way to my city. He was one of the better shots, but, well, being a good shot couldn\'t do much for a major ankle injury and more minor stab and slash wounds along his arms.

"Yes, milord," he replied with ease, making his full, short, and well-trimmed beard and mustache tremble a little from speaking.

"Thank you," I told the shorter and older man. "You will be fine with the management of the estate?"

"You left me with plenty of help, sir. I will manage perfectly, and if not, then at the very least, I will leave the day-to-day administration to the helpers while I focus on the defense and patrols."

"Good," I replied with a smile before turning to my convoy of ten carriages. Three held people; the first one was a luxurious carriage (for this era) was for me and my wife, and the other two were omre economical passenger carriages meant to carry merchants and peddlers who would pay to join the convoy. We already had five such merchants who wanted the warmth of other bodies to the chill of late January winter travel. The other seven carriages were for supplies, my soldiers and rangers, and gifts that I intended to give to the other mayors and rulers of the Compact.

As the richest ruler among the Compact, I couldn\'t just go around without gifts as, according to Isabella, that would indicate that I was not rich enough to give even a miserly gift was either miserly or not rich. While not being known as a rich man wouldn\'t hurt me personally, it would affect my city as rumors would go around saying that if the lord wasn\'t rich, then the city couldn\'t be rich and thus there weren\'t a lot of trade to be had there.

Yes, everything I did had some kind of economic or political implication and consequence. Or in this case, going around giftless because of how "rich" I was would have both political and economic results.

Troublesome? Yes, but it also meant that the things I have been doing have resulted in a lot of good that there were bad things open to happening. After all, rumors about less than rich nature of my city meant that my city was richer than a village or even a town!

"Are we good here?" I asked Isabella, and she gave me an awkward thumbs-up. She was adopting some of my handsigns that I just did out of habit, but there were some that still made her feel awkward about doing. Like the thumbs-up. Something about thumbs-up usually referring to how construction workers and architects measured things and thus not the gesture of a lady.

"Yes, we are, husband," she replied as she quickly pulled her hand down after that.

"Good. Let\'s set off!"

---

Less than two hours after we left Fluelaberg, we were at Davos.

"Chief Kraft!" I greeted the man who\'d come out to greet me.

"Baron Flualaberg," he replied.

"It\'s Hans as always. At least until we are among other nobles who are counts or higher," I replied as I took his hands into a clasp, preventing him from bowing.

Yes, it was not what a baron was supposed to do, but Kraft and his family had been some of my first supporters and friends. Alvia and Albert still lived in Fluelaberg, and Alvia was still my best … student? Disciple? She was also Isabella\'s supporter in the castle and the town. I could even go so far as to say that Kraft and his family might have had a bigger impact on the founding of the Compact than others might give them credit for.

Kraft grinned, making his grey beard smirk up.

"Well, it\'s good that you\'re here," he told me. "We have a problem."

… Troublesome.

-VB-

Chapter 89

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

Klosters was arguably the town that benefitted the third most within the Compact from the increase in traffic and trade. The first would obviously be the Davos-Fluelaberg (the shortest distance between Kraft\'s village and my town was no more than a kilometer) and the second was the most populous and the other end of the Compact, Chur under Prince-Bishop Siegfried.

The reason for this was rather simple.

The valley south of Davos was treacherously dangerous with cliffs that were, on average, around 50 degrees to 80 degrees. On top of that, there was no easily passable riverside land. In comparison, the valley that Davos was in had a river that was 10 meters to 20 meters wide with the entire valley itself was around 500 meters even at the narrowest. In comparison, the southern valley\'s river was less than 10 meters wide and there were barely a meter of space for people to walk next to the rushing river.

This wasn\'t just dangerous for most people; it was outright fatal.

What travel that did happen in the southern valley was through winding mountainside that didn\'t even have enough room for a small cart. In comparison, the Fluela Pass was wide, just a straight walk up and down, and not even snowy during spring and fall.

So trade never went through the southern valley from the east, leaving the only way to the west through the north and Klosters. And as a member of the Compact, I sold them some of my personally made goods without tax, which gave them even higher profit margins when they sold to peddlers passing through.

Klosters also saw an increase in population, though unlike Davos and Fluelaberg, their people were all locals, some of whom had come from further north through the Schlappiner Joch (or the Shaky Yoke) Pass. It was not much of a pass compared to Fluela Pass, but it was still passable enough for individuals like peddlers.

If those peddlers could climb with packs weighing several stones, that was.

The point was that Klosters was my most happy ally within the Compact and even more so than Chur. While Chur saw me as a shield against any hostile outsiders, I was Klosters\'s lifeline to a new generation of prosperity.

"It\'s wonderful to meet you again, baron!" Mayor Daniel of Kloster greeted me with a wide, beaming smile as he shook my head heartily. After Kraft and John (the Count of Toggenburg), he was perhaps the leader of the Compact member that I met the most, and it showed in how familiar he was with me.

After all, I was still a baron, so a commoner would never dare to shake hands with me unless prior permission had been given and the man was familiar with the baron.

"I\'m happy to see that you are doing well, Daniel," I smiled and the people of the village and my guards watched with warmth as their leaders reaffirmed their friendship. "While I would have liked to stay for some time to see what I could help you with …"

"You don\'t need to, baron," he replied with a grin. The middle-aged man then slapped his belly. "I mean, look at this! I\'ve never been this jolly in my life!"

People laughed and I chuckled, too.

"Ah well, I hope you remember my wife, Isabella? You were there at our wedding," I said as I pulled my hand back and openly gestured to my wife, who stepped up with a smile of her own.

Now faced with a noblewoman, Daniel fumbled before one of my ranger guards stepped forward and whispered a few instructions into his ear. He hurried down to a knee and kissed the ring on Isabella\'s ring finger.

"I-I, Daniel of Kloster, greet Baroness von Fluelaberg," he stuttered out, and Isabella giggled.

"Thank you, mayor. I\'ve heard good things about you from my husband. Please, rise."

He did and then cleared his throat before breaking out into a smile.

"Well… there was something that we can use your expertise, Hans," Daniel spoke up after tittering for a moment. "There has been a problem…"

"What kind of problem?" I asked him as I narrowed my eyes. I swear, if there were more knights masquerading as bandits, then I was going to go apeshi-.

"It\'s the ice."

"... Ice?"

-VB-

I stared at the ice.

Yeah, that was a problem.

Klosters had three valleys that it had access to because it sat in the center of those four\'s convergence. Prattigau was where it sat in the upper middle of, and it was connected to the Landwasser valley that Davos was in. The third valley was a smaller canyon that split off the Prattigau toward the north right where Klosters was. That northern canyon was what allowed few people to come and go from the not-yet-Austria\'s-Voralberg Montafon Valley.

The problem, or two problems, was that there were now ice in those higher-elevation valleys.

Not snow. Ice.

I stared at the huge ice boulder just sitting and blocking the entire valley.

Something like this should not exist, yet there were two of them.

Fluelaberg didn\'t have ice… but that could be because of the constant warmth that my city\'s been pumping out with our industry.

… Something about this situation tickled the back of my mind.

This was also something I couldn\'t solve. Not really. I did think that this spring was a little colder than any previous years but was it this cold?

I stiffened while people behind me yelped and screamed when a dull rumble echoed through the valley. The ice trembled and then ground its way forward.

Right toward Klosters.

I stood in place, waiting to see just how much the ice moved.

"H-Hans?" Isabella called to me from far behind me, but I stood in place and waited as the literal giant ice wall moved forward.

As the ice moved closer to me, people began to back away, and then the ice came to a crawling stop with a final rumble.

I hummed before reaching out and wrapping my knuckles against the ice wall.

It was a disaster, yeah. If the ice kept on moving without melting, then it might start grinding up against the farms around the village and then on the village itself.

But it was late spring and it would soon become winter.

I turned to look at the unnerved mayor.

"This is not something I can solve as easily as roads."

Isabella, despite her own nerves, raised an eyebrow at my statement. Yeah, I knew that roads weren\'t something that people just solved, but I did it once so I got to say it.

"I-I see. I guess it was stupid of me to ask you to solve a mystery of the world," Daniel laughed weakly.

This wasn\'t something a small village like Klosters, which only had several hundred people, could solve even if they deployed all of their able-bodied men and women. We\'re talking about hundreds of tons of glaciers, maybe even over a thousand tons because there were two such glaciers. Breaking it alone required iron or steel tools. And even if we succeeded in breaking it up, where would we dump the broken ice? This wasn\'t the modern age where we could pack it with wood shavings and sell it to someone across the ocean.

Yeah.

This was a problem.

… Why were these glaciers still niggling at the back of my head?!

-VB-

Eventually, after two days of rest and talk, we moved on from Klosters and traveled to Schiers, which was to the west of Klosters and down the Prattigau Valley.

The next village-member we stayed at was Schiers.

And they had exactly the same problem if on a smaller scale and more village-centric. A lot of the snow and ice that were supposed to have melted by now hadn\'t melted and the seeds planted last year and were supposed to sprout now hadn\'t.

When we left Schiers another two days later, I decided to slow down the caravan and check all of the valleys. It was a tedious process that nearly doubled the travel time, but after discovering half a dozen more slow-moving glaciers and not yet melted snow in late spring just between Schiers and Maienfeld, I realized that my town had just been abnormally warm for one reason or another. I passed by Davos\'s fields. Their crops were all germinating.

Then I reached Chur.

And problems only compounded from there.

Prince-Bishop Siegfried had fallen ill and hadn\'t woken up in the past three days.

My plans got thrown out of the window when, a mere week after I arrived at Chur, the prince-bishop passed away in his sleep, and the Diocese of Chur called upon its cathedral cardinals* to select a new prince-bishop.

-VB-

A/N: cathedral cardinals refer to members of the cathedral chapter, which is a group of advisors (usually clergy) to the prince-bishop in charge of a Roman Catholic Diocese.

A/N 2:At this point in time, the local cathedral chapter chose the bishop according to the imperial church system (Reichskirchensystem) but it was also around this time that the the pope started to wrangle some of that power away from the HRE. You know what this means, boys and girls~! Shenanigans time!

A/N 3: our prince-bishop was a real person who should have ruled up to 1321. I killed him off 18 years earlier. Oh, and look who was supposed to take over the position after him. A noble priest from the Counts of Montfort. Our former enemy.

A/N 4: the glaciers are important. (2024 Feb 20)

A/N 4.5: glaciers are important but not in the immediate future. (16 May)