Chapter 61 – The Yggdrasil Jarl (Yara and Edward) (2)
The thing about faith is this:
It doesn't care what you call it.
Edward could have called me "god". Yara could have called me "lord". The new thralls could have chanted my name in the halls and carved it into the walls, and the result would've been the same: people kneeling to something that bleeds.
I told them no.
So they didn't.
For Edward, "boss" was already too small for what he carried in his chest when he looked at me. For Yara, calling me "Brother" was the only way she could stand it—putting me beside her instead of above her, so she wouldn't drown in the gap.
They bowed like zealots and spoke like family.
Messy. Contradictory.
Human.
***
I let them up.
Edward straightened first, rolling his shoulders, slipping back into his role as if the forest memory could be folded neatly away.
"How are the new ones?" I asked. "Thralls, Skarl. Anyone who isn't fainting when they hear the word 'Awaken' yet."
Edward's face shifted into the look he wore when training—half-drill sergeant, half-worried older brother.
"Rough blocks, most of them," he said. "Some swing like they're trying to kill the air. Some flinch whenever someone shouts. But they're learning. The first batch has the basics down—footing, stance, when to run instead of be a hero."
His gaze slid briefly to the rows of watching thralls, then back to me.
"At this pace," he went on, "we'll have enough trained hands to cover every wing of this place and still have some to rotate out. Give us another year, and we start seeding them further. Other cities. Other corners of the Argent Crown."
He hesitated, then added, almost offhand, "At this rate we could be everywhere, one day."
Everywhere.
That was the danger and the point.
I nodded once.
"Don't rush it," I said. "I'd rather have ten people who understand why we exist than a thousand who just follow orders until they break at the first real horror."
Edward's lips twitched.
"Yes, boss," he said. "I'll make sure they know what they're training for. Not just how to swing."
"Good," I said. "Do your job. Keep their feet under them."
He dipped his head—half-bow, half-kowtow he didn't let fully drop this time—and stepped back, already barking corrections at a thrall whose stance had shifted the wrong way just from watching us.
Yara took that as her cue.
She moved in beside me, easy and comfortable despite the way the others gave her a wide berth. Where Edward's presence was a wall, solid and steady, Yara was a hook—eyes, voice, posture, all built to catch and hold people without them noticing until later.
"How are things on top?" I asked. "Guilds. Merchants. Minor lords who think they're major ones."
Her mouth curved.
"Busy," she said. "Which is good. If we were quiet, it would mean someone noticed us."
She folded her arms loosely, leaning one hip against a nearby column as if we were just gossiping in some city square.
"The guilds like us," she went on. "We pay on time, we don't cheat weights, and we don't stab people in alleys unless they really deserve it. The merchants are… wary. You can see them trying to fit us into a box they understand—thieves' guild, noble-backed syndicate, charitable front for something uglier."
"And the minor lords?" I asked.
"They see profit and leverage," Yara said. "They always do. We've got discreet contracts moving through three of the Ducal territories already. Food here, ore there, a few 'lost' shipments that happen to end up in hands that aren't fond of certain cults."
She smiled, sharp and proud.
"Give it a little more time, Brother," she said. "And we'll be able to move goods and people around the whole Argent Crown without anyone realising there's one root system running under all of it."
Our plan, spoken back to me in her words.
"The eight ducal kingdoms?" I asked. "How many seeds have you planted?"
"Officially?" she said. "Two. Unofficially… every conversation I have at a party is a seed, isn't it?" She waved a hand. "We're focusing on routes first. Once the trade lines feel normal, the bases follow."
"Good," I said again.
Her eyes flickered—satisfied at the praise, but also restless, a question already forming.
She didn't sit on it for long.
"If we keep expanding like this," Yara said, "how do we stay one thing? It's easy now. One city. One hidden base. But when we're stretched across all eight dukedoms, different laws, different customs, different people trying to pull us into their wars…"
She looked at me, serious now.
"How do we stay a central organisation?" she asked. "How do we make sure the roots all still answer to the same tree?"
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julia stiffen.
Her fingers twitched, just once, like she wanted to slam her hand on the nearest table and declare blasphemy. Her jaw tightened. The look on her face said, very plainly: How dare she ask him that. As if he hasn't already thought ten steps ahead. As if he doesn't know.
I raised a hand slightly.
"Easy," I said quietly, not to Yara. "Let them ask."
Julia blinked, caught.
I met her eyes.
"If they don't ask," I went on, "they're not thinking. If they're not thinking, they're useless. Questions are not an insult."
She swallowed, eyes dropping.
"…Understood, my Lord," she murmured.
The "my" was quieter than before, but it was still there.
I turned back to Yara.
"It's not a bad question," I said. "It's the right one."
Yara relaxed a fraction, shoulders easing. She'd seen Julia's reaction. Of course she had. She saw everything. But she kept her eyes on me now, waiting.
"It's simple," I said.
Which was a lie. Nothing about this was simple.
"But simple enough to explain."
I let my gaze drift across the hall, over the rows of thralls, the pillars, the ceiling. All of it underground. All of it hidden.
"Right now," I said, "we're a single tree pretending to be a village. An orphanage. A town. People walk over us and don't notice the roots."
Yara nodded slowly.
Julia listened like she was taking dictation for a new scripture.
"If we spread by sending copies," I continued, "we get what everyone else gets—branches that forget the trunk, nodes that answer to money instead of purpose. That's how the Abyssal Pact grows. That's how the Orders spread."
I thought of maps from my last run, red pins and black dots and lines that meant nothing by the time the world started collapsing.
"So we don't do that," I said. "We don't build scattered towers. We build veins."
"Veins," Yara repeated.
"Underground," I said. "Literally."
I tilted my head toward the concrete floor under our feet.
"We're going to connect every base we build," I said, "with tunnels. Deep enough no one stumbles into them. Strong enough to carry people, goods, information."
Yara's brow furrowed faintly.
"Tunnels are slow," she said. "Digging is louder than you think. People notice when the ground shifts under them."
"Normally," I said. "Yes."
This was where the advantage of being a cheat came in.
"We're not doing this with picks and shovels," I went on. "We're making a boring machine."
The term meant nothing here.
Julia's eyes gleamed anyway. She loved that—words that meant nothing, yet.
"Imagine," I said, "a device that eats stone. A ring of blades or drills at the front, spinning and chewing through dirt and rock. Behind it, a body that supports and braces. As it moves, it leaves a hole."
I held up a hand.
"And as soon as that hole exists, it fills it. Not with random rubble. With concrete. Controlled, shaped. A tunnel that looks like it's been there for decades, smooth, reinforced, no signs of fresh digging."
Yara's eyes widened a little, despite herself.
"So while it moves," she said slowly, "it digs and builds at the same time."
"Exactly," I said. "No piles of dirt on the surface. No sinking houses. No 'suddenly the ground feels hollow when you walk.' The machine breaks the earth, mixes it with binding agents, pours it back where it needs to be and hardens it on the spot. Anything it can't use, thralls haul out in secret batches and sell as gravel. No waste."
She considered that.
"And Ethan can build this?" she asked.
"If insanity had a face, it would be his," I said. "Give him a problem and a room and he'll stay in there until the rest of us are old."
Julia huffed a tiny laugh, unable to stop herself.
"We've already sketched the circuits," I added. "Mana drawn from the ambient, not from cores—slow, but constant. Runes to stabilise the pressure. The whole thing will crawl through the earth like a metal worm that eats its own tunnel and leaves order behind."
Yara's lips parted.
"This will… take time," she said.
"Yes," I said. "But we're not in a race. Once the veins are in place, all the bases can talk without couriers that disappear. All the branches can get supplies we don't want on public ledgers. And if the world above catches fire, we have paths under their feet."
Yara's gaze dropped briefly to the floor, as if she could already see the map spreading under it.
She nodded.
"And once the tunnel is there," she said, "how do we move? People can walk. But food rots. Horses can't run underground. Wagons need space."
Julia tensed again, a beat ahead of the question, then visibly forced herself to breathe and stay silent.
"This is rude," her eyes said.
"This is useful," mine answered.
"Good question," I said out loud.
Yara's shoulders eased again.
"Once the first veins are stable," I said, "we build something the world hasn't seen yet."
I let the word roll in my mind for a second.
In my old world, it had been mundane. Common. Here, it was still a myth I hadn't told them.
"We make horses," I said, "that don't eat."
Yara blinked.
"Go on," she said, tone hovering between sceptical and hungry.
"Metal frames," I said. "Wheels instead of legs. Linked together in a line. They run on rails—fixed paths—so they don't need to steer. Power comes from mana, not grain. A core at the front pulls the rest along. If Ethan can make the boring machine, he can make this in stages."
"A carriage," Julia murmured. "Without horses."
"A caravan that doesn't get tired," I said. "Once it's moving, it keeps moving with far less energy than it would take to drag the same weight over mud. Underground, there's no weather. No bandits. No witnesses."
Yara's eyes were shining now.
"That's…" She shook her head, laughing once. "That's beyond anything, Brother. I can't even pretend I fully understand it. But the picture is clear enough. You're talking about… lines of moving metal carrying food, tools, people, secrets, all under the mountains and plains. While everyone above argues about tariffs and road tolls."
"Exactly," I said.
Julia was practically glowing.
She didn't get all the details yet—no one here understood the full web of engineering behind trains, boring machines, pressure stabilisation. But the pattern… they could feel the pattern.
"For now," I added, "we don't talk about any of that outside the Jarls. Above ground, we're a generous orphanage, a good employer, a quiet trading house. Underground, the roots grow. When the day comes that the world realises there's a tree attached, it'll already be wrapped around their foundations."
Yara gave a low whistle.
"Remind me never to play chess with you," she said.
"You already do," I said.
She laughed again.
The sound eased the hall.
"Until then," Julia cut in, voice smooth, slipping back into administrator-mode, "you keep doing what you do best, Yara. You smile at guildmasters, you drink with merchants, you let minor lords think they're very clever for being our friends. And you do it all from the shadows. The roots go deep before anyone knows there's a forest under their feet."
Yara inclined her head, a faint smirk tugging at her lips.
"Yes, yes," she said. "I'll be good. Out of sight, in their hearts, isn't that how it goes?"
"Something like that," I said.
Yara's gaze flicked to the mask, then to my eyes again.
"When do you leave?" she asked quietly.
"Soon," I said. "There's still work above ground. I need to check on a few threads before they tangle."
She nodded once.
"Then I'll make sure things are dull when you get back," she said. "Boring. Predictable. Just how we like it."
I didn't bother lying.
"I appreciate you cleaning up my messes," I said.
She smiled, and this time it was small and honest.
"That's what family is for," she said.
***
We left the training hall to the sound of Edward barking at thralls and Yara lecturing a Skarl on how not to terrify merchants with bloodstains.
Julia fell into step beside me as we headed for the lift.
"She asked too many questions," she muttered under her breath.
"She asked the right number," I said. "You just didn't like that they weren't yours."
Her cheeks coloured, just a little.
"…Perhaps," she conceded. "It is just… when they look at you, they should see—"
"Someone they can talk to," I interrupted. "If they start seeing something else, we're done."
She pressed her lips together, swallowing whatever argument wanted to follow.
The lift doors slid open.
We stepped inside.
As the platform shuddered and began to rise toward the ground floor, the concrete walls slid past, layers of our hidden world stacked on top of each other—shadow room, labs, barracks, storerooms. Every level a risk. Every level a seed.
Julia glanced at me sidelong.
"My Lord," she said quietly. "Do you ever… doubt?"
"Constantly," I said.
Her eyes widened. She hadn't expected that.
"But doubt doesn't stop me moving," I added. "It just makes me double-check where I'm stepping."
She looked away, thinking.
The lift climbed.
By the time it opened onto the ground floor—our "normal" orphanage, our harmless village, the face we showed the capital—Julia's expression had smoothed back into calm efficiency.
She stepped out first, back straight, ready to play administrator, head Jarl, devoted fanatic in a nice, tidy dress.
I followed, the mask warm on my face, roots stretching unseen under my feet.