After breakfast, Luke returned to his room and took out the True Silk Satin.
The True Silk Satin came in a rich variety of colors and patterns. Luke reached out and ran a hand over it, feeling how smooth and supple it was.
Then he picked it up, gripped both ends, and gave it a firm tug, testing how much stretch the fabric had.
The elasticity was excellent too. Even when Luke pulled hard, it showed no sign of tearing, and the moment he let go, it returned to its original state.
Clearly, this was no ordinary material.
Luke fell into thought, considering what kind of clothing to make from the silk.
The system had given him quite a lot this time, enough for several pieces of clothing, but deciding what type to make was a problem in itself.
It would probably look great as a body-hugging cocktail dress.
But if he made something like that, it would only ever be worn around the courtyard for his eyes alone.
Right now, practicality mattered more.
And if he was going for practical, then close-fitting underlayers were the best choice.
At that moment, the words bustier somehow drifted into Luke's mind...
But giving someone a bustier as a present would probably get him labeled a pervert on the spot.
Luke shook his head and pushed the idea aside for now.
That matter could wait until another day.
After that, he narrowed the design down to a close-fitting inner layer—something more substantial than a bustier, but not quite outerwear. Ideally, it would be made as a kind of protective bodysuit.
That way it could be worn anytime, while also offering the broadest possible protection.
After all, Luke fully intended to make one for himself too.
Once the decision was made, Luke put the silk away and headed downstairs.
"Yurna, get the carriage ready."
After giving the order, he prepared to head out.
Lux sat up curiously and asked, "What are you going to do?"
"Not going out to have fun, that's for sure," Luke replied casually.
"Oh. Then have a safe trip."
Satisfied, Lux lay back down in the chair and even waved him off.
As long as he was not sneaking out to have fun without her, everything was fine.
Luke climbed into the carriage and rode all the way to the royal tailor shop used by the court.
The luxurious outfit he had worn during his last appearance in the Dawn Hall had been made there, and it had felt excellent at the time.
He trusted the royal tailors' craftsmanship.
When he stepped down from the carriage, he already had a large stack of True Silk Satin in his hands.
"Greetings, Your Highness."
A woman came out from the tailor shop and bowed respectfully to Luke.
"Mhm. At ease."
Luke glanced at her and walked inside.
The interior walls were covered in fine fabrics and garments of every kind.
"What sort of clothing would Your Highness like to order?" the tailor asked as she followed behind him.
"Turn these into protective bodysuits. Make as many as the material allows."
As he spoke, Luke handed the True Silk Satin to the woman.
Protective bodysuits were actually a common sight in Demacia.
Because the country placed such emphasis on high-quality equipment, many soldiers would first wear a tight protective inner layer before putting on armor.
That layer made it easier to gear up, relaxed the muscles, and helped prevent strains and other injuries.
Miss Crownguard, for example, often wore a thick fitted layer beneath her light armor.
So the request was not strange at all.
Looking at the silk Luke handed over, the tailor had originally wanted to say that the shop already stocked the finest fabric available.
But the moment she touched the True Silk Satin, the words died in her throat.
With nothing more than her years of experience as a tailor, she could already tell that this silk was better than anything in the shop.
Even she found it hard to put down.
The tailor then asked, "Do you want all of it made into bodysuits? And should all the measurements be the same?"
"One set for a man. The measurements are..."
Luke stepped over to the table and wrote down his own measurements.
"The rest can be made within this general range," he said as he wrote another range onto the paper. Then, thinking of Yurna outside, he added, "Make two in the larger size."
Since they were bodysuits, the measurements did not need to be perfectly exact.
As long as they were close enough to fit, that was fine, and the smooth pliability of the True Silk Satin meant there was no need to worry much about that.
As for the girls' measurements...
By now, Luke's eyes were basically measuring tape. He already had a pretty concrete sense of the numbers in his head.
"I understand," the tailor said with a nod.
Luke then asked, "About how long will it take?"
The tailor replied, "If all goes quickly, one week. If it runs a little slower, perhaps two."
Around half a month.
Not too time-consuming.
Once everything was arranged, Luke left the tailor shop.
Then he returned home.
At that hour, the morning sunlight was still warm, softening the cooler autumn temperature by a few degrees. The gentle light fell across people's faces and made them feel a little lazier without even noticing.
A light breeze drifted through the courtyard.
Luke lay down on the rocking chair.
Beside him, Lux lay curled on her side, her fair little face full of sweet sleepiness.
Luke glanced at her once, then looked away, closed his eyes comfortably, and settled into the peaceful ease of the morning.
But before long, the arrival of a letter broke that quiet.
A guard rode up on horseback, stopped at Luke's gate, dismounted, and reported from outside, "Your Highness, the palace has received a letter addressed to you."
"Hm?"
Hearing that, Luke opened his eyes, got up from the chair, and walked over to the guard.
He was already wondering who would be writing him a letter.
He accepted it from the guard. The outside looked plain enough, but when Luke noticed an engraved L on the seal and the words To Be Opened Personally by Luke Lightshield—
a name flashed through his mind at once.
"Thanks for bringing it."
Luke smiled at the guard.
"It's my duty."
The guard straightened, bowed once more, mounted his horse again, and rode away.
The guard's arrival had not disturbed Lux's sleep.
Luke lay back down in the rocking chair, opened the letter, took out the sheet of white paper inside, and began reading.
"Your Highness,
I do not know whether you still remember someone like me. First, let me thank you for the medicine you sent me. It helped me a great deal and allowed me to survive a serious crisis.
At this point, I have already reached the far side of the continent—Shurima. The sandstorms here are fierce, and things are not as stable as they are in Demacia. In short, trouble is everywhere.
I am not especially good at writing letters, nor do I know what sort of pleasantries I should begin with, so I may as well get straight to the point.
I am writing this letter because I hope to receive your help.
At this very moment, my friend Lamins is trapped in a crisis, and that crisis may spread to Demacia's coastal border waters.
I hope Your Highness will read the following carefully.
Lamins is a Sentinel of Light stationed in Demacia's border seas, and his duty is to detect and prevent the arrival of a terrible Black Mist ahead of time.
That Black Mist can no longer be described as merely terrible. It is an omen of calamity.
And the Sentinels of Light have been fighting it in secret for many years.
I simply did not expect the reach of this Black Mist to have grown so vast. By now, it may already have appeared in the waters surrounding Demacia.
In previous years, around this time, the Black Mist always became unusually active for a period.
I call this the Harrowing.
If no one stops the Harrowing, it will continue to spread, sweeping toward wherever people live and devouring every soul it finds, until the Harrowing passes.
The Sentinel of Light responsible for guarding Demacia's waters against the Harrowing is Lamins.
But for reasons I do not know, he is now trapped within the Black Mist and has sent me a letter asking for aid.
Yet I am already in Shurima. From this distance, there is no way I can arrive in time, so I thought of you, Your Highness.
I hope you can help him, for the sake of all the silent years he has spent protecting Demacia's borderlands.
If Your Highness chooses to refuse, you may stop reading here. But if you trust me, please send a well-equipped force of soldiers to guard the coastal frontier.
If you are willing to help, please continue reading, and I will tell you everything I know about the Harrowing.
The Harrowing comes from a disaster many years ago. If one wishes to trace it back, it would probably be about a thousand years.
What I must tell you is this: the Harrowing is extremely dangerous.
It moves while carrying the dead with it. Like a plague of locusts, it devours all living souls it sees and absorbs them.
So if you ever face it, be careful. Those undead are even stronger than the lesser wraiths we encountered before.
And the one responsible for all of this is a skeletal phantom creature carrying chains and a lantern.
If you see him, forget about my friend and run by any means necessary.
Once the Harrowing passes, the Black Mist will retreat, and the danger will naturally be over.
Seeking your help, Your Highness, is the only method I can think of now.
There are fewer and fewer Sentinels of Light left in this world. I do not wish to see another comrade fall.
Still, I will not force this burden on you. Facing the danger of the Harrowing, I can understand if you refuse.
That is all I wished to say.
And one more thing—I hope Your Highness will keep the matter of the Sentinels of Light secret. It concerns magic and many other secrets, and is not something that should be exposed to the public.
Do you still remember the token I gave you? Place it on the letter.
Demacian Year 679, September 2.
Sentinel, Lucian."
By the time he reached the end of the letter, Luke's expression had grown heavier and heavier. He had even sat upright.
As he finished it, he was just thinking that Lucian had not actually said where he was supposed to go rescue that Sentinel of Light.
Then he saw the final line.
Luke rose to his feet, returned to his room upstairs, and picked up the shell-like light token that had been sitting on his desk the whole time.
He placed it on top of the letter.
The shell immediately began to glow faintly—so faintly that you would miss it if you were not looking carefully.
Then, as the light spread, the words on the letter began to shift, gradually forming the image of a map, apparently one corner of some region.
He could vaguely make out that it was the western border waters of Demacia.
And on the map, a small point marked the place where Lamins had sent his distress signal.
This was probably one of the internal methods used by the Sentinels of Light.
Luke did not spend long studying it. Instead, he frowned and began thinking.
The letter had been written on September 1—that was yesterday—and it had only taken one day to travel from Shurima to the capital.
Judging by that speed, Lamins had probably sent his own distress message two days earlier.
This letter naturally had to be taken seriously.
Even if Lucian had not explained it, Luke already knew what the Harrowing was.
This thing came from the Shadow Isles.
And before the Shadow Isles had become what they were now, they had another name:
the Blessed Isles.
A whole chain of causes behind that name ultimately traced back to a lovesick fool from a thousand years ago. In any case, that had been the starting point of everything.
Because of that disaster, Runeterra had suffered no shortage of problems afterward.
The Harrowing was one of them.
Each year, for a period of time, the Black Mist from the Shadow Isles spread with the Harrowing, and naturally the undead on the island could move with it.
As for why this thing had made its way all the way to Demacia's western border waters—
the answer was simple.
As everyone knew, the world was round.
Behind Demacia, to the west, lay an endless ocean, and deep within that sea there was an island.
That place was the Shadow Isles.
Normally, the distance between the two was still considerable. The Black Mist from the Shadow Isles should not have been able to drift all the way to Demacia's backside.
And yet now, it had.
There was only one explanation.
That lovesick fool was about to wake up.
Exactly when he would wake was hard to say. That part would depend on what Lucian had to say later.
But that was not the question Luke needed to consider right now.
The issue before him was the Harrowing at the border.
There were plenty of sea-folk living along Demacia's western coastal frontier. If the Harrowing spread there, the consequences would be severe.
Lucian had also said it in the letter: this Harrowing would most likely reach the border.
This time, even if it were not for the Sentinel of Light whose life or death was unknown, Luke would still have to move.
After carefully putting the letter away, Luke called downstairs, "Yurna, get the carriage ready."
He went back down at once, leaving Sona and the other girls in the living room rather confused.
Had he not just gone out and come back? Why was he heading out again?
There was no time to explain.
Luke climbed into the carriage and headed straight for the palace.
Lucian did not want him revealing anything about the Sentinels of Light, and the reason was simple.
The last time Luke had used Lucian's gun, he had already realized that the thing probably had some connection to magic.
In other words, Luke himself might actually have some talent for using magic.
And the Sentinels of Light were clearly not the kind of organization that could be exposed to public view. Otherwise, their methods for fighting wraiths, along with all the history they had accumulated over the years, would inevitably attract greedy eyes.
With that in mind, Luke naturally would not mention the Sentinels of Light.
But he still needed a proper understanding of the situation in the border waters.
Half an hour later, the carriage stopped outside the palace gates.
Luke stepped down and made his way straight to Tianna's office. He pushed at the door, but it did not open.
Only then did he knock.
"Auntie, you in there?"
Less than two seconds later, there was a click and the door opened.
The one who opened it was Lev.
"You've got the door locked in broad daylight? What exactly were you two up to?"
As he stepped inside, Luke's gaze flicked meaningfully between Lev and Tianna. Then he paused and said, "Wait, did I interrupt something?"
Lev only smiled.
Tianna, on the other hand, directly grabbed a book off the desk and threw it at him, accompanied by a cold warning.
"If you don't start acting your age, I'll make sure your backside remembers it."
"..."
Luke immediately wiped the look from his face and replaced it with a dead-serious expression. Then he noticed someone else sitting on the sofa to the left.
"Oh, hey, Garen's here too."
Garen: "..."
So I'm this big and you only noticed me now?
Tianna sat behind her desk, rubbing her forehead helplessly. "What are you here for, brat?"
Luke replied, "Nothing much. I just suddenly felt like seeing the ocean. I've lived this long and still never seen what the sea looks like."
Tianna looked him over after hearing that, then said, "Perfect timing. Garen is about to head out on a mission to the coast. You can go with him."
Luke looked curious. "What mission?"
Lev closed the door behind him and answered without hiding anything. "Recently, in the waters around Dawnhold, two fishing boats have gone missing over the course of the last month. The number of missing people has already reached eighty.
And the Dauntless Vanguard team sent to investigate recently has also gone completely silent. Some fishermen who went out to sea reported seeing a massive bank of black clouds at dusk. We suspect something may have gone wrong there, so we were preparing to send Garen to investigate."
While listening, Luke walked over to Tianna's desk.
His eyes settled on the map spread out there.
Dawnhold lay exactly on Demacia's western side, close to the sea.
His brows knit slightly.
Two fishing boats and one Dauntless Vanguard investigation team had all disappeared without a trace.
There was a strong chance they had already been caught by the Black Mist.
That also confirmed what Lucian had written in his letter. This Harrowing would very likely affect Demacia's border waters.
Tianna noticed him studying the map with a frown and asked, "So? Still want to go? That place is not peaceful."
Luke kept his eyes on the map and replied casually, "Of course. With Garen there, what do I have to be afraid of?"
That answer made even Tianna pause for a moment.
This little brat was unusually proactive today.
Something was off.
Very off.
Luke then added, "How many troops were you planning to send?"
Tianna replied, "One company."
One company meant sixteen shield squads, a total of one hundred twenty-eight men.
Luke felt that was not quite enough, so he looked up and said, "Shouldn't you send two more companies? Losing two fishing boats isn't some small matter."
"One Dauntless Vanguard company isn't enough to solve the problem?"
Tianna shot him a glance.
He needed to remember that it was not every day they could casually mobilize three Dauntless Vanguard companies like last time.
Luke blinked. "Add two more."
This time Tianna frowned. "What exactly are you trying to pull?"
Luke thought for a moment, then said, "As far as I know, those black clouds aren't clouds. They're a Black Mist."
Since he was saying it so confidently, Tianna only frowned more. "And how do you know that?"
Luke replied, "Many years ago, a traveler from outside the kingdom told me about it."
Tianna gave him a look that practically said, I'd love to hear where this is going, and waited patiently.
"He said he once encountered a Black Mist like a storm front of dark clouds pressing down on the land. It came from nowhere, was extremely dangerous, and devoured everything in its path. I think there's an eighty percent chance the fishing boats and the Dauntless team were swallowed up by it."
After hearing that, Tianna smiled. "That little town of yours, if nothing else, sure does get a lot of travelers. Maybe this is just another story."
Those travelers never seemed to have anything better to do. Every so often they would tell this boy a story or teach him something.
Luke smiled too. "But someone already saw it, didn't they? In any case, I think this is one of those times when it's better to believe it might be true."
Tianna studied him, thought seriously for a moment, then agreed. "Fine. I'll add one more full Dauntless Vanguard company and one reserve company."
Luke, getting greedy, said, "How about a few more?"
Tianna snapped, "Do you ever quit? Do you think the Dauntless Vanguard is your family business?"
Luke blinked. "Isn't it?"
Tianna paused, then sighed helplessly.
It really was his family business.
At that point, Lev explained, "It's not that we don't want to send more. It's that there simply aren't that many troops in the capital who can move right now."
Tianna added, "Normally, only six to eight Dauntless Vanguard companies remain stationed in the capital. The rest are usually out on missions. Since next month's eleventh day is National Day, more teams than usual have been sent out.
A lot of them have gone beyond the kingdom's borders.
Right now, only five Dauntless Vanguard companies remain in the capital. If all of them go with you, what happens if something goes wrong here?"
Ordinarily, what kind of mission—short of war—would ever justify sending out two Dauntless Vanguard companies at once?
The fact that she was willing to listen to Luke and add one full company plus a reserve company was already saying a lot.
Luke knew he could not push for more, so he nodded. "Then that'll do."
Tianna glanced at him and said, "Garen is preparing to leave immediately. Since you're going with him, go back and get ready as fast as you can."
Luke nodded, looked at Garen, and grinned. "Wait for me, Garen."
Then he left the office.
The moment he stepped outside, the smile disappeared from his face, replaced by a slight frown.
The reason he had come to see the old woman in the first place was to borrow some Dauntless Vanguard soldiers and head for the coast.
After all, just hearing the name Harrowing was creepy enough.
He had not expected to arrive right when Garen also happened to be taking a mission to the seaside.
That saved him some trouble.
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