After a brief farewell, Aaron took Ustan and a dozen of the guards and knights to the forest with the leader-like barbarian of the Misty Mountains. As for the thousands of Misty Mountain troops, they left people's sight and hid into the forest after the slightest threat.

Despite its ruggedness, the path deliberately carved out of the forest was barely wide enough for Aaron and his party to pass through. Except for a few Misty Mountain warriors who followed that person at the beginning, the number of Misty Mountain barbarians who accompanied him reached more than a hundred, surrounding this small cavalry team in the center.

From their eyes, Aaron could see that except for the guy who took the lead at the beginning, these Misty Mountain barbarians did not have the slightest so-called "good feeling" towards themselves, but were full of hostility, and their cold eyes always looked at their group from time to time, holding weapons tightly in their hands, as if they were about to pounce in the next second!

But Aaron didn't mean to be scared - although there were more than a hundred of them, he had full confidence in his knights. As long as they want to break through, they can't stop it at all.

Ustan at the head of the cavalry, holding the Roman flag, was not as laid-back as the duke. Always on the highest alert, the aftermath of his gaze was always on the woods on both sides of the road. He was Konstantin's nephew, and had also served as the captain of the auxiliary wing, and had participated in the advance team of the Silent Forest and the Battle of New Gar, and in his eyes, such a forest was simply the best place for ambush.

As he thought, Ustan tightened the heavy crossbow he was carrying behind his back - it was not a standard weapon issued by the Auxiliary Wing, but a good thing that his father had specially made for him from the collection room of Caesarea Academy.

This heavy crossbow was the first product when Theodore ordered the Academy to research a new type of weapon, with two bows and the latest type of filler-type crate, with a deterrent distance of 200 meters, enough to shoot through iron armor. In the current Roman Empire, there is no more powerful heavy crossbow than it!

The only drawback. It was this weapon that required superhuman arm and wrist strength to be able to use continuously, so it was abandoned by Mehimus. But this was not a problem for Ustan . The Constantine family's inherited strength has been proven in him, allowing him to wield this inhuman superweapon.

With a pair of cold eyes on his stiff face, Ustan was sure to remove the heavy crossbow from his back at the same time as anyone dared to come closer, and pull the trigger before the other could react - a crossbow bolt enough to crush the iron armor and tear the chest of a misty mountain man into a ball of meat sauce without any difficulty!

It took about half a day of walking before I left the forest completely. Once again, the leader of the Misty Mountain samurai had one of his men raise the werewolf banner with bat wings. According to him, the places that passed before and from time to time the territory of their masters. So the flag cannot be raised.

As for the "Lord Wimpal", he will "entertain" Duke Aaron Brennus and his retinue in the castle of his domain. It is said that when he heard that the man who had come was the duke of the noble family of Brenus, he had ordered a great feast to be prepared for Aaron's arrival.

At this point, Aaron was convinced that the other party must have a large number of spies or spies in the Ryan tribe, or some of the small tribes under Gado's command - otherwise it would be impossible to explain how the other party knew who he was. As for why the other party will have spies, this kind of question is actually not to be thought about at all.

After walking for a while, Aaron and his party actually saw the people—or rather, the shacks. Large and small huts made of thatch, firewood and grass. With its crumbling fences and uneven earthen walls, it looks like a village. Naked children and old men, with no clothes on them, walked barefoot in the snow without paying attention. There are also some slightly larger ones. He has dark blue patterns tattooed all over his body, and has a weapon such as a stone spear or an iron sword in his hand.

But without exception, when they saw Aaron and his party riding a war horse and being fully armed, their originally normal faces all turned into anger. Cold and hateful. There were even quite a few people who wanted to rush up, but they were all pushed away by the warriors of the Misty Mountain who were surrounding them, and they didn't even care about kicking them. The thin, half-sized Misty Mountain boy flew upside down and fell into the snow, and no one walked over to ask.

The Roman veterans who had followed Ustan were slightly wrinkled, even the most cold-blooded people would not behave like this to their own children, but Aaron's knights were expressionless and accustomed to it—they had seen too much. The barbarians of the Misty Mountains are always fighting, for food, for leadership, for looted goods, and even for whoever first disembowels the captive. These guys will fight each other when they exceed a certain number, and it is a miracle that they can now "live in peace" like this.

There weren't too many young men in sight in the whole "village and town", and Aaron guessed that it was probably a group of guys who had been sent to surround him, and they probably hadn't come back yet. The dilapidated villages and towns are crowded to the extreme, and the black ground is also covered with sewage, and it is clear that there is ice and snow, but you can still smell the strange stench.

Around the village and town, there are still several places that have obviously been cut down, and only the wooden stakes of tree trunks remain. These things were also used as gallows by the barbarians of the Misty Mountains here, and the corpses were hung with bark ropes. On almost every trunk of a tree hung three or four dead bodies that had become withered and rotten.

Savage, barren, bloody, cruel............ Although Aaron still remained calm, his heart was completely tense, and he knew that the other party was also observing him, and as the Duke of Brenus, no matter what, he must maintain absolute dignity, arrogance and bearing at this time.

But Aaron was thinking more than that at the moment—indeed, the Barbarians of the Misty Mountains were still as savage, bloody, and backward as they had been in the past. But they already have villages and towns. What does this mean? It means that the scattered barbarians of the past have begun to move towards civilization, and although they are still barbaric, this is a threat to Rome!

He's been thinking about how to get along with that so-called "Wimpal", whether he should kill him, or how to ...... Negotiate like an aristocrat?

Just as in the past when the northern lords first started to create their own realms, Lord "Vimpal" has a castle in the center of his domain. This so-called town was built around his castle. In Aaron's mind, the so-called "castle" was probably a barracks made of wood and large stones, or at most a two-story tower made of wood.

But when they arrived, everyone couldn't help but exclaim, looking at the jaw-dropping building in front of them in disbelief, even Aaron couldn't help but twitch his throat.

It's a real castle – a stone wall about three or four meters high, and a few towers for lookouts. The gate facing is a standard Empire double door instead of a hanging door. In the center is a werewolf with bat wings, split in half by two gates. From the outside of the wall, you can see the inner castle inside, which is not very luxurious, it is decent, and it is similar to the family's manor castle that Aaron has seen.

But the problem is that this is the Far North Ice Field! Where did the owner of this castle, Lord Wimpal, get enough craftsmen to build the mined rubble into stones? And where did he get the people to help him design this rather large castle? Even if he found it, in such weather, the barbarians of the Misty Mountains without iron tools, how could they help him mine stone and timber and build the tower wall?!

Aaron couldn't imagine how many people had died to build the castle. There are not enough tools, there are no iron tools, and it is completely built by hand little by little, which is simply disgusting!

The knights who accompanied him were not as imaginative as the duke. All they saw was the elaborate castle, and the villages and towns outside, which were even more dilapidated than the refugee camps, with large and small shacks. A little heavy snow at a time would be enough to turn such a shack camp into ruins, and their owners, naturally, could enjoy the snow outside in this castle unharmed.

How much cruel and extravagant master would have to drive such a group of fellows to build such a castle for themselves, in such a desolate place, while watching their servants and people barely survive in their shacks?

And when the warriors of the Misty Mountain who came with them looked at the castle, there was no resentment in their eyes, but they were full of admiration and admiration...... It was the same kind of worship that you had when you saw a deity. A kind of inferiority complex and timidity that feels small about oneself.

"Ustan . Aaron didn't say much, there was no expression on his face, he just shouted softly: "Don't think too much, raise my flag!"

"Do with your wishes, Lord Duke Brenus!" Ustin's stiff face sank as he raised his right arm, and the banner of the eagle and white cross, symbolizing the Holy Roman Empire, was raised in the air.

With the sound of heavy axles creaking, the gates of the castle slowly opened. Holding the flag high, Ustan walked to the front, escorting Aaron Brennus behind him, into the castle deep in the forests of the Far Arctic Ice Field.

(Thanks to zzzzzzzz (so much, right?) children's shoes commuter pass!(To be continued......)