Chapter 431: Can You Handle the Truth?
The silence inside the room stretched out for what felt like an eternity.
Ragnar sat still behind his desk. He stared at the southern scholar standing before him.
The man looked like he was ready to be dragged out to the courtyard and executed, yet he refused to take a step back. He wanted his answer.
"Heh..." Ragnar suddenly let out a low breath that was half-sigh, half-chuckle. He leaned back in his chair.
Richard blinked, thrown off by the reaction. He had expected the Iron King to roar in anger, or call for his guards. He hadn’t expected a tired smirk.
"How many times is that now, Richard?" Ragnar asked quietly, crossing his arms over his chest.
"My King...?" Richard stammered, his brow furrowing in confusion.
"How many times have you asked me that exact same question?" Ragnar mused. "Three? Maybe three or so since you abandoned your southern lords and joined my camp. You always try to sneak it in when the war councils end. ’Where did you learn this, King Ragnar?’ or ’Who taught you to cast this steel, my Lord?’"
Richard swallowed hard, his cheeks flushing slightly... He didn’t realize the King had been keeping a count of his inquiries.
Ragnar didn’t look angry in the slightest. A sense of appreciation washed over the Iron King’s exhausted face.
He loved that Richard had an asking brain.
In a brutal world filled with proud men who just wanted to swing axes and drink themselves into a stupor, finding someone who actually wanted to understand the mechanics of the universe was rare.
Ragnar needed men who asked ’why’ and ’how’.
He needed scholars and tacticians who didn’t just blindly worship the repeating rifles, but wanted to know how the internal springs caught the firing pins.
However, the problem was that Ragnar himself simply didn’t have the energy to answer the question tonight.
His bones ached with a fatigue that no amount of sleep could fix. He was fighting the Frankish Empire, trying to outmaneuver the Pope, managing an industrial supply line across the ocean, and preparing to send thousands of his people to dig sulfur on a barren rock.
He looked down at the ink-stained parchments scattered across his desk.
They were complex blueprints for a multi-stage steam turbine... a mechanical beast that wouldn’t naturally exist for another thousand years.
How was he supposed to explain thermodynamics to a man who still believed diseases were caused by bad air and angry spirits?
He didn’t know what to say.
Though he had actually dealt with this exact situation before.
Ragnar’s mind drifted back to the early days of his rise to power.
Back when he was starting to forge the primitive muskets.
Gyda had asked him. The shieldmaiden had stared at the black powder exploding in his hands and asked him the exact same question Richard was asking right now.
Where did you learn this madness, Ragnar?
But the strange thing was... Gyda and the more observant people in his inner circle had asked him that question early on, but they didn’t ask once more after seeing the new inventions.
When the muskets turned into repeating rifles, and the wooden carts turned into trains that hauled tons of steel, they just stopped asking.
It was simply too much for their 9th-century minds to properly process.
Instead of breaking their brains trying to find a logical supply line for his knowledge, they just chose to blindly believe in him.
They looked at Ragnar not as an engineer, but as a mythical savior touched directly by the old gods.
It was easier for them to just accept the magic...
"You really won’t stop digging until you hit the bottom of the hole, will you, Richard?" Ragnar muttered, rubbing his tired eyes with his fingers.
"I cannot help it, King Ragnar," Richard answered, his voice steadying slightly. "I look at these blueprints on your desk. I look at the ironclads in the bay. It is possible that you are just the greatest genius to ever walk the earth. But... even a genius needs a foundation to build upon. A man doesn’t just invent a ship that moves without wind by guessing."
Richard took a slow step closer to the desk, his eyes pleading for a crumb of truth.
"I have read every ancient text from Rome to Cordoba," Richard continued, his tone desperate.
"...No one has this. There is no hidden library containing these secrets. So where did the blueprint come from, my King? Did an angel hand it to you in a dream? Because if that is the truth, I will accept it. But please... just tell me."
Ragnar stared at the flickering candle on his desk.
Truthfully, he wanted to answer that question more than anything else in the world.
The loneliness of his existence was slowly eating him alive from the inside out.
He was surrounded by tens of thousands of loyal men who would gladly die for him, yet he had never felt more alone.
He was a man out of time, a ghost from a distant, advanced future trapped in a brutal, muddy past. He had no one to talk to about his old life.
No one to complain to about the lack of simple modern comforts.
No one who actually understood the burden of ripping the timeline to shreds just to survive.
He desperately wanted to look at Richard and say, I am from a time where men fly in the sky and cities are lit by invisible lightning. I know all this because I read it in a book a thousand years from now.
But he feared the consequences of those words...
If he told the truth, how would Richard react?
Would the brilliant tactician lose his mind?
Would he look at Ragnar not as a King, but as a monster?
Or worse, a madman who was suffering from severe delusions?
"..."
"My King?" Richard asked softly, unsure if he had finally pushed the Iron King too far.
Ragnar slowly stood up from his creaking chair.
He walked around the oak desk, his tall, broad frame towering over the slim scholar.
He walked over to a side table and picked up a clay jug. He poured two iron cups full of strong, dark mead. He turned around and held one of the cups out to Richard.
"Drink," Ragnar ordered quietly.
Richard hesitantly took the cup, his fingers brushing against Ragnar’s hand.
"You want to know the truth, Richard?" Ragnar asked, taking a slow sip of his own mead.
"Yes," Richard nodded firmly, gripping his cup tightly with both hands. "More than anything."
"Even if the truth is so insane that it shatters your understanding of the world?" Ragnar challenged, a sad smile touching his lips. "Even if the answer makes you wish you had never asked the question in the first place?"
"I am a scholar, King Ragnar," Richard said proudly, standing up a bit straighter. "Ignorance is a far worse torture than madness. I can handle the truth, no matter how heavy it is."
Ragnar looked at the man’s face.
If Ragnar just offered him another vague half-truth about old gods or hidden Roman vaults, the scholar would eventually see right through it.
Maybe, just maybe, it was finally time to crack the iron door open. Just a little bit.
To see if a 9th-century mind could actually handle the terrifying weight of the future.
"Alright, Richard," Ragnar finally breathed out, setting his iron cup down on the desk. "You win. You have bothered me enough for one lifetime."
Richard’s eyes went wide. He stopped breathing for a second, his heart hammering violently against his ribs.
Ragnar slowly walked back to his chair and sat down heavily. He rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward and staring directly into Richard’s eyes.
The mocking Iron King vanished, replaced by a man who looked like he was about to confess a terrible murder.
"You asked me where I found the blueprint for the engines, the rifles, and the ironclads," Ragnar said.
"Yes," Richard whispered back, leaning in to catch every syllable.
Ragnar closed his eyes for a brief second, gathering the courage to say the words out loud.
He had kept this secret buried in the darkest, deepest corner of his soul since the second he woke up in this world.
He opened his dark eyes, fixing them intensely on the southern scholar.
"I didn’t find the blueprints in a hidden vault, Richard," Ragnar stated, his voice steady and devoid of any deception. "And no fairy or god handed them to me in a magical dream."
The southern tactician actually held his breath.
He was finally going to hear it... the absolute truth.
The key that would unlock the impossible mystery of the repeating rifles, the steam engines, and the massive iron ships.
Ragnar took a deep breath. "I didn’t find the blueprints... because..."
He opened his mouth to say the final words.
However, the words never actually came out...