Even though these titan giants were absurdly massive, routinely a hundred fifty or sixty meters tall, their movements were nimble and light, without a trace of the sluggishness or bulkiness one would expect from something so enormous.
Even the simplest gesture from them stirred up little more than a faint breeze, barely a ripple in the air.
Who knew what kind of high technology was behind that. Ah, the older the relic, the more formidable it seemed.
Selena tilted her lovely face upward, gazing at the towering titans, and got straight to the point.
"Frost Walkers. I've come to seek your allegiance."
The vertical lines of fluorescent light on the titan's faceplate flickered for a moment before it answered.
"We do not involve ourselves in conflicts within the kingdom. That is a matter among humans. We Frost Walkers exist solely to defend this land and to build the tower. That is our mission."
Selena's fine brows knit slightly. "You once swore allegiance to the Princess of Wintertide of old. Surely, then, you can swear allegiance to the royal house once again."
"Not once swore allegiance..."
The titan's steady voice paused abruptly, and then a thunderous sound rolled out.
"We have remained loyal to our master, without fail, without change."
"We are loyal to the Princess of Wintertide. We are loyal to her bloodline. That covenant has never changed."
Snow White let out an unexpected "hm" of surprise, then crossed her arms and said, "Well then, shouldn't that mean you owe your allegiance to me all the more? Am I not descended from that very Princess of Wintertide's bloodline?"
Once her words fell, the seven titan Frost Walkers went quiet for a moment before speaking.
"You are not our master's descendant. Absolutely not. But neither are you our master."
"When our master once led us into battle against the dragon, the other fifty three Tower Builders were permanently destroyed. Only we survived, but our cognitive modules sustained irreversible damage in the process. The Dragon's Curse has left us unable to truly discern who the real master is."
"Though your bloodline is nearly identical to our master's, though your face is nearly the same as hers, so too is the one who now sits upon the throne. For all these years, the two of you have done nothing but slaughter and devour one another, again and again. Such a twisted, pathological form of existence makes it all the more impossible for us to determine which of you holds true identity."
The Frost Walker's blunt words left an ugly expression on Selena's face. These alchemical constructs showed not the slightest courtesy, laying bare the most unspeakable aspect of the curse without hesitation.
The black-haired girl's lovely face went expressionless, a lingering shadow settling over her brow and eyes.
"It is precisely for this reason... that we withdrew to this place. Until the true master is confirmed, we have chosen to keep our distance from you humans."
"But should Her Highness the Princess and her retinue wish it, you are welcome at any time... to rest within our home."
With that, the Frost Walker rose to its feet, apparently intending to turn and take its leave.
Seeing that Selena had no response ready, Faust stepped forward on his own initiative and said, "Even so, you can't be certain that Selena isn't your master either. How exactly do you make that judgment? Don't tell me even you've forgotten your own standard."
"...It's a feeling."
The titan Frost Walkers halted their steps and said, "Our memory of our master remains clear. Should our master ever stand before us, we would recognize her without fail."
Wait, hold on, even constructs were running on feelings now?!
Faust had been about to make some smart remark about that, but then reconsidered: in a fairy tale world like this one, how could he possibly assume a shell of metal had no heart to speak of?!
Even an alchemical construct, it seemed, defied easy definition.
Having answered the Prince of Aurum's question, the Frost Walkers turned and made their way toward the open brass gates. With every step they took, streams of shimmering light rose upward from beneath their feet, branching and extending further and further into the air.
"Creak, creak, creak..."
The light kept extending upward until it reached its highest point, where it finally solidified. The titan Frost Walkers, each easily over a hundred meters tall, shrank down within the span of a few breaths to a mere twenty or thirty meters, small enough to pass smoothly through the gates.
"...It seems winning over the Frost Walkers won't be so simple after all."
Only once every last titan Frost Walker had vanished from sight did Snow White finally speak, waving a hand.
"Well, never mind. I never expected to charm them into submission on our very first meeting. If it were that easy, the Frost Walkers would have been brought fully under our command centuries ago."
Faust nodded thoughtfully. "Actually, I might have an idea... though I couldn't say whether it's right or not."
"Oh?"
Selena's fine brows arched slightly as she glanced at Faust with curiosity.
By all rights, this was clearly the Prince of Aurum's first encounter with the Frost Walker leaders. There was no possible way he could know the inner workings of the situation, and whatever idea he'd come up with was most likely nonsense.
And yet the black-haired girl seemed rather intrigued all the same, her silver eyes studying Faust.
"Well, my knight? What thoughts do you have?"
"Let's talk once we're inside."
Faust shook his head, declining to voice his idea on the spot, and instead gestured for Selena to go on ahead into the Mountain Father.
He'd already had his suspicions while observing from outside, and once they stepped within, his guess was confirmed: the mountain's interior had been almost entirely hollowed out, filled with all manner of mining machinery, metalworking plants, and towering blast furnaces threaded through with dense networks of pale blue pipelines.
Frost Walker after Frost Walker moved busily throughout this magnificent structure, working solely to process and smelt the raw materials they'd gathered, then ship them off to be stockpiled in the storehouses.
"I've read about this in books before, but seeing it with my own eyes is still hard to believe. They're truly still stockpiling materials to build the tower."
Selena gazed at the scene before her, her clear silver eyes reflecting the roaring firelight, murmuring softly to herself.
As a princess of the Wintertide royal house, the black-haired girl naturally knew the origins of her nation and the ancient relics left behind by it. The Frost Walkers were autonomous constructs once used to build the ancient tower that reached toward the heavens, but that history was long since old news. Even within the Kingdom of Wintertide itself, no one truly intended to carry on their ancestors' unfinished legacy anymore.
The production line that had once built the Frost Walkers had been destroyed in the dragon's assault, with no possibility of ever being rebuilt. The Frost Walkers themselves dwindled in number, one by one, as they were destroyed. And yet, even so, the alchemical constructs that remained continued carrying out their duty, stockpiling resources day after day without fail.
Faust offered his own remark. "I suppose that's just how their core code was written. Loyalty beyond words, really."
Led by one of the Frost Walkers, the two of them made their way through the smelting district and arrived before a small villa.
Indeed, though these alchemical constructs had no need for rest themselves, they hadn't forgotten to build suitable dwellings for human visitors, carving out a section of the base with comfortable temperatures and good natural light.
Furniture and daily necessities of every kind were fully stocked within, and beyond that, there was even a richly stocked library, which appeared to have been converted from what was once a records room.
"All right, Faust. That idea you mentioned earlier, why don't you share it with me now."
The moment Selena stepped through the door, she settled languidly onto the sofa, drawing her knees up and resting her cheek against them, and asked her guardian knight.
Faust leaned against the wall and said, "To get those seven high-ranking Frost Walkers to recognize you as their master, we need them to confirm that you are the Princess of Wintertide of old. Given that, if you behave in ways that align with how the first princess would have acted, that might be enough to let the titans confirm your identity."
"Not bad. We were thinking along the same lines."
Selena swayed her shapely little legs and tilted her head. "But the problem is, how would I possibly know what the first princess would have done? If that's as far as your idea goes, then it's completely useless."
Faust gazed deeply at Snow White for a moment, then suddenly said, "How about you try being their babysitter?"