Opava’s Secrets and Noren’s Blushing Retreat

“奥帕瓦，这就是奥帕瓦！”

A towering castle keep stood in the distance, encircled by a ring-shaped outer bailey beyond its walls.

Opava boasted no ancient Roman military fort; decades ago, it was merely a simple wooden stockade perched atop a steep incline. The lord’s wooden stronghold in the center was little more than a timber fort on a hill, meant solely to flaunt status, while beyond the hill lay the villagers’ thatched cottages, protected by a palisade of wooden stakes some dozen feet high.

By today, Opava had been built into a respectable stronghold, with a formidable castle keep rising majestically at the heart of two concentric defensive rings. The inner ring comprised a stone wall, four hundred feet long, five feet thick, and twenty feet high, commanding the highest ground atop the hill. The outer perimeter featured a simpler bailey wall, a basket-weave construction of earth enclosed by a double-layered wooden palisade, stretching two thousand feet long and fifteen feet high. A single wooden gatehouse offered the only entry into the town, beyond which lay a sloping embankment and a defensive moat.

The central castle keep served as the lord’s residence. Between the two rings of walls, the eastern sector was primarily inhabited by wealthy estate owners, artisans, and soldiers, their dwellings mostly two-story structures of wood and stone. Taverns, blacksmiths’ forges, and an unfinished church were all located here. The western sector, in contrast, housed ordinary freemen, their buildings consisting of low-slung thatched huts, simple wooden cabins, and precarious shacks fashioned from stacked stones.

This marked Noren’s first time bringing Tolke to Opava. They had traveled by merchant’s carriage, disembarking as they neared Opava to slip into the forest outside the domain. Their purpose was to allow Tolke a clear view of Opava’s layout.

“Look closely,” Noren said, pointing into the distance from her perch on a tree branch, “the central structure is the keep, our target for tonight.”

“Huh? How are we going to get in?” Tolke scratched his head, gazing at the towering stone walls surrounding the keep and castle courtyard.

“Not ‘we’,” Noren corrected, “it’s ‘I.’ I’m going in alone.” With a few agile movements, she darted back and forth before lightly leaping back to the ground.

Tolke, clambering down the tree like a lumbering bear, stumbled and landed with a thud on the ground, then brushed off the leaves and weeds clinging to his backside before standing.

“Those walls look incredibly high,” he remarked, scrutinizing the fortifications.

“I’ll ascend from the northeast side; there are fewer traps there,” Noren explained, shedding her outer armor and kicking off her boots until only her black undergarments remained. “You’ll wait beneath the wooden wall.”

She meticulously wrapped black cloth strips around her palms, wrists, and ankles, then pulled on a dark hooded cloak.

“What are you staring at?” the girl instinctively demanded, covering herself.

The boy’s gaze darted away. “N-nothing, I s-saw nothing at all.”

‘You’d only see something if ghosts were real,’ she thought, ‘I’d need to get a boner (TL Note: A Japanese slang term referring to an erection) myself just to see any cleavage.’

Glancing up at the sky, she noted that the time was nigh. Noren handed her armor to Tolke, and a thin membrane, coalesced from a bloodstone, slowly slid down her torso, encasing the soles of her feet.

After a brief warm-up, Noren mentally rehearsed all potential scenarios, ensuring she was prepared for anything.

It was time to go!

Tolke watched the girl disappear into the hazy twilight, feeling not a trace of worry. He had always placed immense trust in Noren.

****

“Ugh!”

Noren abruptly lunged forward, stepping over something. ‘Who the hell took a dump right here!’

A wave of discomfort shot from the soles of her feet straight to the crown of her head.

‘Please don’t tell me the walls are covered in excrement too…’ she thought, gazing at the faintly yellowed stone. For the first time in a long while, Noren offered a silent prayer, appealing to the sun, moon, mountains, rivers, heaven, and earth, and all deities, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t grab a handful of… *that*.

Her prayer concluded, she launched herself upward, adhering to the wall like a gecko. Her fingers found purchase on a protrusion, her feet slotted into a depression, and with a swift maneuver, she swung herself onto the battlements.

The outer wall and the main keep were not connected, necessitating another descent.

Before that, however, she needed to ascertain the number of guards on duty tonight. Aside from the sentries posted at the wooden gate, only a few scattered torchlights indicated patrols along the outer wall. With perhaps only a dozen patrolling soldiers throughout the domain, she suspected the main defense had consolidated within the central castle. Yet, the reality still defied her expectations.

‘What in the world? Where are all the guards?’ Noren mused, having scouted the perimeter. She found only two thoroughly inebriated guards slumped in the recessed corner where the stone gatehouse met the wall.

The guards snored thunderously. Noren pinched one’s nose, but his breathing remained utterly unobstructed; he simply opened his mouth and continued to snore softly.

‘They’ve had quite a bit to drink…’ she mused, thoroughly emptying the two drunkards’ pockets. A dozen or so silver coins, along with a leather pouch, she tied to her waist—a welcome windfall.

Instead of descending directly from the gatehouse, she retreated to a spot beyond the torchlight’s reach. In the shadows, she deftly lowered herself down the wall, her toes barely brushing the ground.

The entire castle grounds were neither vast nor cramped, but the few torches mounted on the walls certainly couldn’t illuminate every corner.

Noren crouched low, tiptoeing to the side of the main keep. She pressed her back against its stone face, simultaneously craning her neck to gauge the castle’s height.

From a distance, she hadn’t perceived it as particularly tall, but now, looming darkly, the castle’s edges seemed to converge towards the center, as if reaching for the heavens themselves.

A tremor of apprehension ran through her.

Her palm pressed against the stone wall, the icy touch of the masonry confirming that the keep had indeed been constructed with far greater care than the dilapidated outer walls.

Finding a suitable starting point for her climb, she pondered for a moment before deciding to leave the coin purse at her feet.

Noren sprang upward, adhering to the castle keep. Behind her, the cool night wind whispered; beneath her, the dry, hard ground waited. From a narrow window, an orange-red glow spilled forth.

Accompanied by these sensations, Noren swiftly reached the summit.

‘No one,’ she confirmed, cautiously peeking over the edge. Her eyes scanned for any potential sentries, though she knew it was highly improbable anyone would be posted here on such a pitch-black night.

Having located the rooftop entrance, she slipped inside the castle.

A faint creak emanated from the wooden floorboards as she stepped, seeming to grate on her already frayed nerves. Her heart hammered relentlessly, terrified that at any moment, someone might let out a startling scream, followed by a torrent of soldiers pouring from every nook and cranny of the castle to surround her.

Pushing open every door on the top floor, she found them all empty. Only one room, containing the largest bed, was lit by a candle, yet it too was vacant. Inside, she discovered a storage chest. Tearing off its iron lock, she rummaged through the box, extracting several metal fittings. On a nearby table lay the ink, paper, and pens she had so longed for.

Descending the spiral staircase to the second floor, she found only a single corridor with a wooden door. From within, the sounds of a banquet seemed to spill forth, while outside, scattered linen garments and discarded plates and dishes lay strewn about.

Pressing her ear to the door, she discerned a cacophony of thuds, the coquettish laughter of women, and the deep, guttural groans of men.

Fortunately, it was the dead of night, sparing any hypothetical readers the sight of her flushed face and tangled feet.

‘Is the Grand Shaman really that potent?’ she wondered. It had never occurred to her that God’s turncoat (TL Note: A slang term for a traitor or double-crosser) possessed such immense power, capable of sustaining such an “impart” for so long in Opava.

‘I’m almost jealous; I wish I could be everyone’s favorite weapon,’ a rather suggestive thought drifted from the depths of her dantian.

But in the next instant, the blood in her veins seemed to freeze, and her rebellious, sacrilegious thoughts vanished like smoke.

“Ugh, f***, just a little, a… little more…” came the unwilling murmur, as if from a drowning ghost beneath the surface of the water.

As if plunged into an ice-cold abyss, she instantly snapped back to full consciousness, soaked to the bone. Sweat plastered the already thin fabric tightly against her body.

Noren — Stress +50

‘How bizarre,’ she mused, ‘it was as if my “little brother” (TL Note: A slang term referring to the penis) had usurped the throne just now, and my entire being was hypnotized and brainwashed.’

‘No, I can’t stay here any longer. I must leave!’

Knowing when to quit was a virtue. She swiftly retreated to the floor above, hastily wrapped her valuables in a piece of cloth, climbed down the main keep, scaled the outer wall, descended the castle hill, evaded the patrolling guards, and finally leapt over the wooden palisade, fleeing all the way back to their rendezvous point.

Noren grabbed Tolke’s hand, pulling him urgently away from that cursed place. They continued until the encroaching night swallowed the castle whole, and Opava’s silhouette vanished as if carried away by the swirling skirts of darkness.

Only when Noren could no longer feel her spirit being provoked did she gradually begin to relax.

“N-Noren,” Tolke stammered, still panting, “did they discover you?”

She paused, casting a lingering, trepidatious glance back towards the castle, a lingering apprehension in her heart.

Seeing Tolke’s bewildered expression, she recounted her discoveries to the boy.

“You mean they were…” The boy’s expression was a curious mix of tension and bewilderment. Though still a fledgling, his feathers had grown long and stiff, and he knew that hair could have a flattened cross-section. He might not have eaten pork, but he had certainly seen pigs run, and he was no stranger to the mating of livestock.

He supposed… it wouldn’t be too dissimilar.

“So that s*ave,” Noren declared, “he definitely has more secrets!” She pulled off her hood, letting her golden hair cascade down with a rustle, then shook off some sweat. Untying the cuffs, trouser legs, and waist sash, she flapped the hem of her top to air herself dry.

Within her mind, a fierce debate raged among sages and philosophers. The strange phenomena within the castle earlier had filled her with unbearable shame. This mortification felt akin to her younger, pure-hearted sister opening her computer, pointing to the browser history, and asking, “Brother, ‘My sister is the best side dish’ this ‘side dish’ what does it mean?”

The boy took the cloth strips and handed her the boots, but his eyes merely flickered towards her before quickly darting away. Simultaneously, his knees bent slightly, and he hunched his body forward.

“S-so, what do we do now?”

“First, we’ll go back to sleep. Tomorrow, you’ll come with me to interrogate him.” Noren leaned forward, hooking one calf, and used her index finger to coax her heel into a boot. Then, her eyebrow arched slightly as she looked at the boy with a puzzled expression.

‘Why is he stammering, and why are his eyes darting around?’ she wondered. ‘Ohhh! Tsk! Never mind, it’s flat anyway, he can’t see anything.’

Noren snatched the padded, long-hemmed soft armor, gesturing for the boy to turn his back. She intended to shed her soaked night-suit and return wearing only the outer armor.

Grabbing the back of her collar, she gave a forceful tug, stripping off the night-suit. She then deliberately retracted the bloodstone’s qi membrane, allowing the sweat to evaporate.

Thus, her two companions were revealed to the light of day, fully recovered!

The athletic girl’s pale pink skin glowed, unmistakably radiating youthful vitality. They (her breasts) collectively cheered, “Hi, Noren!”

“Hi, my ass!” A flush of cherry-pink climbed Noren’s neck, surged to her hairline, and utterly engulfed her entire face.

She finally understood the boy’s strange behavior. Her experience in the castle, with its shifting contours, had gone unnoticed by her, leading to this utterly mortifying exposure.

*Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle! The water’s boiling!