Chapter 433: Pathetic Insight
Thus, the room quickly became crowded.
The door flew inward, bouncing against the wall. The three marshals burst inside, their faces pale with panic. Commander Sigurd was right behind them, his frame blocking the doorway.
"What the happened to him?!" Domnall roared. The Scotsman pushed past a servant, his hand resting on the hilt of his claymore.
"Keep your voice down!" King Erik hissed from the corner, his furs stained with mead. "He just collapsed..."
The three marshals froze, exchanging glances.
The Iron King, the man who handed them repeating rifles and commanded iron fleets, brought down by an invisible strike?
Standing near the bed were Helgi and two healers who had traveled from the Iron Kingdom on Ragnar’s flagship.
They had brought vials and kits filled with bandages and medicines. They were working frantically, placing cloths over Ragnar’s forehead and checking his pulse.
"Is it poison?" Eadberht asked, stepping closer to the bed. "Did a Frankish spy slip something into his cup?"
"No..." the lead healer muttered, shaking his head. "His breathing is steady. There are no signs of poison or fever in his blood. By all accounts, the King is asleep."
Richard stood in the corner of the room, his arms crossed over his coat. He watched the healers, baffled by the King’s condition.
Richard knew it wasn’t poison...
He knew what triggered the collapse. The second Ragnar tried to speak the truth about his knowledge, his brain had shut him down.
Though Ragnar looked peaceful on the bed, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm, the reality was different.
However, beneath that sleeping exterior, Ragnar’s consciousness was drowning in a nightmare.
He wasn’t in the longhouse anymore. He was standing alone in an expanse of smoke.
"Move... keep pushing the line!" a voice echoed through the fog.
Ragnar looked down. He wasn’t standing on a floor; he was standing in mud.
He looked out across the landscape, and his eyes widened in horror.
He saw millions of people dying...
Trenches cut through the earth like scars.
Thousands of cannons roared in unison, tearing forests and mountains to pieces.
Men wearing unfamiliar uniforms charged into storms of lead, their bodies ripped apart by machine guns that fired too fast.
"Is this..." Ragnar whispered, his voice lost in the thunder of the artillery.
The scene shifted.
The artillery fire faded into silence. Ragnar found himself standing inside a hall made of marble. Windows let the sunlight pour over rows of bookshelves.
He saw scholars. Hundreds of them, wearing clothes that didn’t belong in the 9th century.
They were sitting at desks, writing with fountain pens, studying books.
Ragnar walked down the aisle, invisible to the men and women.
He stopped behind a scholar and looked down at the book resting on the desk.
The title was stamped in gold lettering: The Man Who Reconstructed the World.
"They are writing about me?" Ragnar muttered, staring at the pages filled with sketches of his steam engines and the muskets he had forged in his blacksmith shop.
The scene shifted once again...
Now, he was standing in a room lit by a fireplace.
Sitting around the fire were people he knew. People he loved.
He saw Gyda, her eyes softened by age, holding a child on her lap. He saw Torstein, his beard white, holding a cup of ale.
They were telling stories about him.
"Aye," Torstein chuckled, taking a sip of his ale. "Though he was a stubborn bastard most of the time, we wouldn’t be sitting here in a house without him."
Ragnar stood frozen in his mind.
The weight of the visions was overwhelming.
Millions dead in the mud.
His loved ones remembering him as the savior of the human race.
Is this the truth? Ragnar thought, his mind spinning. Or am I hallucinating?
Normally, a man would brush these visions off as a fever dream.
But Ragnar wasn’t a normal man.
The fact that he had been transmigrated... that his soul had crossed through time and space to land in this era made him think it was the truth.
If a soul could jump across a thousand years, then seeing the future wasn’t just a fairy tale.
He was going to cause an apocalypse of steel, but he was also going to drag humanity out of the dark ages by the collar.
The moment was shattered.
The room, Gyda, Torstein, and the fire vanished, plunging Ragnar into darkness.
He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t move his hands or his legs. He was trapped in a void.
Then, a voice echoed through the darkness.
It was calm, and dripping with condescension.
You’re a dreamer... the voice whispered, filling Ragnar’s mind, echoing off the inside of his skull like a blade scraping against stone.
Your insight is pathetic.
Ragnar’s eyes snapped open.
He shot up from the bed, gasping for air like a man who had just been held underwater.
"He’s awake!" Helgi shouted, jumping back in shock.
Ragnar ignored the healers, the marshals, and the King of Iceland rushing toward the bed.
His chest heaved, and sweat poured down his face.
"Eh...?" Richard whispered, stepping slowly out of the deep shadows of the corner. He couldn’t believe his own eyes.
"He is awake... by the gods, he is awake!"
The sudden shout from the southern scholar shattered the silence of the room.
Helgi and the elite healers scrambled back from the bed.
Erik, who had been kneeling in the spilled mead with a grim expression, jumped to his feet.
Ragnar sat up, his broad chest heaving as he gasped for air.
He gripped the edge of the mattress with his hands.
The private room was packed... there were at least a dozen heavily armed men and frantic healers crammed into the tiny space.
Domnall the Scot was gripping his claymore, looking like he was ready to cut the head off anyone who breathed wrong.
Eadberht and Wulfhere were standing near the doorway. Commander Sigurd was trying to push two servants out into the hallway.
Ragnar let out a low groan. The sheer body heat and the nervous, panting breath of all these men were sucking the fresh air out of the room.
"....."
Ragnar swatted away Helgi’s wrinkled hand as the healer tried to check his forehead again.
"Don’t touch me."
"King Ragnar!" Erik roared in relief, ignoring the King’s foul mood. "We thought you were crossing over to the long halls! You were screaming like a stuck pig!"
Ragnar rubbed his face, squinting in annoyance.
He looked around at the crowded room, feeling a wave of irritation wash over him.
These stupid people... did they honestly lack any basic common sense?
They couldn’t just fill the entire room while a man was sick and expect him to properly recover.
"Get the fuck out..." Ragnar growled, closing his eyes as a throb pulsed right behind his temples.
"My King?" Domnall asked, blinking in confusion. "We just wanted to ensure you were entirely safe from poison or—"
"I am not poisoned, you idiot!" Ragnar barked. "I need air! I need space! Get out of my room right now! All of you, except Erik and Richard. Get out!"
The foreign marshals didn’t dare argue with the Iron King when he was in a mood like this. They quickly bowed their heads and backed out of the doors, dragging the nervous Commander Sigurd with them.
Helgi and the elite healers scrambled to gather their glass vials and dried leaves, falling over each other to escape into the corridor.
Within seconds, the door slammed shut, leaving only Ragnar, Erik, and the southern scholar in the suddenly quiet room.
Ragnar slowly slumped forward, resting his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his large hands.
He breathed heavily, trying to calm the hammering of his own heart.
Though the blindin agony had entirely faded, the ghost of the pain was still there.
He could feel it lingering deep in his skull... a hot pressure wrapping around his brain like a band of heated iron.
Why did that happen?
Was it because of the words he was saying to Richard?
He had been sitting right at that desk. He was about to tell the scholar that he didn’t find the blueprints in a cave, but that he was a man from a highly advanced future.
The very second he tried to confess the truth of his transmigration, his brain had tried to destroy itself.
Or was it because of him?
He remembered the mocking voice echoing in the darkness.
You’re a dreamer... your insight is truly pathetic.
A shiver ran down Ragnar’s spine.
Who was that? It wasn’t the voice of his old enemies, and it certainly wasn’t the voice of his past self.
It felt alien, separate from his own soul.
He didn’t know for sure, but obviously, this was something related to his transmigration.
The universe, the old gods, or whatever unseen system had pulled his soul entirely across a thousand years of time had placed a brutal lock on his tongue.
The laws of this world simply wouldn’t let him speak about the future.
"King Ragnar..." Richard whispered, taking a slow step forward.
The scholar’s face was drained of color, his hands shaking as he looked at the exhausted King.
Ragnar slowly lifted his head.
"I am so sorry, my King." Richard stammered, bowing his head. "This is my fault. I pushed too far. I asked too many arrogant questions. I must have triggered a terrible stress in your mind. I swear to you, I will never ask about the blueprints or your knowledge ever again."
However, Ragnar just stared at him.
"It wasn’t your fault, Richard." Ragnar finally said.
"But you collapsed the second I demanded the truth..." Richard argued nervously.
"And I intended to tell you the truth," Ragnar sighed heavily, leaning back against the headboard of the bed.
"But it seems... the world itself disagrees with my decision."
Erik crossed his arms, confused by the conversation.
"What are you two talking about?" Erik grunted. "Did you eat some bad fish, Ragnar?"
"Maybe I did, Erik," Ragnar muttered bitterly, rubbing his temples. "Maybe I did."
Ragnar clenched his hands into tight fists.
"Richard," Ragnar commanded sharply.
"Yes, my King?" Richard straightened up instantly.