“Even if you don’t feel like doing it for yerself, do it for others who care about ya. Birthdays are celebrated because someone cares, and that’s what makes it so worthwhile.” - Karl-Heinz von Rodstadt, dwarven philosopher from Knallzog.

After the duels were over and done with, Estelle kept her word, as within the same week, former Viscount Leonid de Kars had been removed from his post as a councilor. The disgraced man had angrily left the city and headed back to his former territory, only to find a welcome that was most definitely less than warm when he arrived there.

It turned out that the council had sent a messenger ahead of him to inform the people of his former territory regarding his removal as councilor, and those same people had seen the writing on the wall. They immediately chose a different representative and sent her to Levain with a proclamation that the city wished to remain as part of the Free City’s territory.

Given that the majority of the man’s most loyal personal retainers and the knight order he sponsored was dead, courtesy of the Free Lances, former Viscount de Kars suddenly found himself no longer welcome in his own former territory. He had effectively been disowned by his own people, who made it clear that he was unwelcome with pointed arms.

The man was last seen leaving to the north with his few remaining loyalists while swearing payback, never to be seen again.

Unbeknownst to everyone but a few people – namely Estelle, Bernd, and a couple other trusted councilors in their faction – Reinhardt had sent out several chosen members of Fatimah’s platoon to waylay the former noble after he left his former territory. Leonid de Kars and his loyalists were murdered where nobody was around to witness the deed, and their bodies were dumped in the woods, where the wild animals soon devoured all that remained of them.

After de Kars was removed from his position, his faction seemed to be cowed, and were mostly silent instead of being their usual confrontative selves in the council meetings. It was thus that the Free City of Levain and the mercenaries they hired welcomed the new year.

While Reinhardt generally didn’t particularly consider his birthday worth celebrating that much – since he was adopted by his parents who didn’t know his actual birthday and he was too young to know it either at the time, they used the date they found him on instead – that year his family thought otherwise. He walked into his tent that evening to find his adopted father, wife, and daughter waiting for him alongside a feast set on a table inside.

At first he thought that it was just a whim of his father’s – he knew Elfriede was less interested in such celebrations than him, while Ery was unlikely to have proposed it – but after they feasted and drank to their heart’s content, he was surprised that Elfriede and Erycea presented him with a birthday gift. One that was all nicely wrapped up, even.

“Aww, you shouldn’t have,” muttered Reinhardt in half-hearted protest at the gift, though he felt quite touched by the sentiment. When he opened the package, however, he was left uncomprehending at the form of the gift his family had prepared for him. Inside the package was what seemed to be an eyepatch, albeit one made entirely out of clear crystal. “What’s this, then?”

“Ey, that’s something lil’ Ery here’s been working on with my help for a couple years now,” explained Hogarth with a wide, proud smile on his bearded face. “The crystal you see is mostly a casing of sorts. It’s highly durable, and mostly there to protect what’s inside. Take a close look at the center of the eye piece and you’ll see what I mean.”

“Huh… curious…” noted Reinhardt as he brought the crystal eye piece close to his face and looked closely into it. Around the center of the piece he noticed that there seemed to be hundreds, if not thousands of fine lines contained inside. Lines that after a close inspection, he noticed looked similar to the sort of runes typically used for enchantments. “So it’s enchanted, huh? What sort? And I take it Ery made all the runes I see inside?”

“Took her a lot of practice before she could shape glass that finely, yeah. All the enchantments you see there are Ery’s work,” said Hogarth proudly. “The whole piece is enchanted to do three things. One is that it functioned as a spyglass. You should be able to adjust that function to different degrees of magnification easily enough.”

“Neat,” commented Reinhardt after he put on the eye piece – it rested comfortably over his right eye – and channeled a wisp of mana into it. The function Hogarth mentioned was easy enough to find, and he discovered that it was easily adjustable to his whim. “You mentioned that it had three functions, pops. What else does it have?”

“You’ll need this for the second function. Sal helped with the enchantment for this one,” said Hogarth as he handed what looked like a choker with a circular piece of crystal set on it. “It will basically allow you to see through that piece on the choker there, within a range of a couple kilometers or so. I think you should already have an idea where to use it, no?”

“... With this we could get a real-time relay on the battlefield situation as seen from high above as long as Hannah or one of her folks wore the choker,” said Reinhardt as he immediately caught on to the use of the enchanted artifact. “Damn, this is near-priceless for commanders, pops.”

“I know, and I bet you’ll be even more thrilled by the third function it got,” said Hogarth with a laugh as he brought out a box that contained twenty earrings within it. “These earrings are receivers for the eye piece. With it, you can transfer a message within a kilometer towards the chosen receiver, or all of them at once, up to you. We had difficulty getting this one to work since we didn’t have any wind mage specializing in voice transfer to help us with, until Miss Ze’phane gave us a hand.”

“Many thanks… pops… Friede… Ery…” said Reinhardt as he gathered his family into a warm embrace, which they reciprocated. “I’ll make good use of this gift, so again… thank you all.”