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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“Appointing one of the two rebel leaders as a knight… Is that… allowed?”
As soon as we left the group of prisoners, Pelaine voiced her concern. She seemed worried that I would get in trouble with the Emperor for acting on my own.
But there was no problem.
I had made the decision to posthumously appoint Darius as a knight after careful consideration.
“He wasn’t one of the two rebel leaders. There’s only one leader: Duke Lorraine.”
“But Darius led the slave rebellion… Ah!”
Pelaine gasped and her eyes widened as she understood my intentions.
“You’re trying to win over the beastmen.”
“That’s right.”
The slave rebellion in the South…
…and Lorraine’s Southern Garrison joining their cause had led to this civil war.
Technically, the Southern Republic was a nation founded by two forces, the beastman slaves and Lorraine’s warlord army. But separating the two wouldn’t be difficult.
They could simply claim that Lorraine’s tyranny and abuse of slaves had sparked the rebellion, and that he had exploited the rebellion to seek independence from the Empire.
That way, the beastmen would be seen as victims, deserving of liberation, and Lorraine would be the sole target of their animosity.
That was why I had hailed Darius as the hero of the slave rebellion.
Besides, they didn’t have the resources to properly monitor and control two hundred prisoners.
It was easier to crush their will to resist than to waste time on such inefficient measures.
“The enemy is currently strengthening their military to fight against the Empire. They’ll have to squeeze the residents dry. They might be willing to sacrifice everything for freedom now, but what if they hear that they’ll be guaranteed freedom and their taxes will be reduced even under the rule of the suppression force?”
“Ah… They’ll become pro-suppression force.”
The residents wouldn’t openly side with the suppression force while the enemy was still stronger.
But once the tide truly turned…
…or when they believed the two sides were evenly matched…
…public sentiment would shift completely in our favor.
The suppression force had hired a large number of merchants to handle their supplies, so they didn’t need to requisition anything from the villages.
They could lower the tax rates significantly to gain the support of the residents.
Of course, setting such a precedent would be a burden for the future Duke who would rule this land…
But that wasn’t my concern.
Winning the war was our top priority.
“But there’s a problem, Mr. Schlus.”
“A problem?”
“Yes. The suppression force’s reputation among the residents is already tarnished.”
“We can gradually improve that.”
“The suppression force has been raiding villages, looting, capturing free beastmen, enslaving them, raping them, and killing them.”
“….”
Uh… Shit.
They had been looting villages even though they had plenty of supplies?
Why?
Why were they doing everything they could to alienate the residents?
It seemed like the Imperial Knights were terrible at waging war.
How could they make such foolish decisions, even worse than me, someone who had spent all their time typing away at home…?
“Damn it. That’s going to be a problem.”
“But as you said, Mr. Schlus, if we implement those policies, we might be able to win back their hearts.”
“I hope so…”
They had been raiding and killing without reason, and now, after losing ninety percent of their forces, they suddenly wanted to implement pro-resident policies?
Even I could see how insincere it seemed.
I was going crazy.
The mess the suppression force had created was too big.
Only time could heal it… But the residents’ resentment was too deep.
We had no choice but to rely on Iris.
Saintess Iris, who treated everyone equally, could surely sway the hearts of the residents.
‘Is that wishful thinking?’
No, she wouldn’t openly side with the suppression force.
She had followed me here to treat the wounded, not to participate in the war as a member of the suppression force.
But I hoped she would help us…
“Listen up! We’re collecting all the weapons and armor the enemy left behind! Everyone, start searching!”
“Excuse me?”
Complaints erupted from the knights as Pelaine gave the order.
They were probably eager to celebrate our victory with wine, but there was still a lot of work to be done.
Iris, if she were here, would have said that it was our duty to recover and bury the enemy’s bodies.
But she wasn’t here, so we wouldn’t go that far.
“We’re stripping the bodies of their equipment as well?”
“Yes, every single piece. Don’t miss a single dagger.”
“Ha…”
The knights who had been bravely charging towards the Crane Wing Formation just a moment ago were now rummaging through corpses, collecting armor and weapons.
Some were gathering the equipment, while others were loading it onto horses and transporting it back to the fortress.
It took a long time to collect everything, since we had killed or captured over five hundred enemies.
Of course, it was a necessary task.
The rebels, blockaded by the Empire, had no way of producing more equipment.
No matter how many soldiers they had, they couldn’t function properly without equipment.
Sending soldiers into battle without proper weapons or armor would only lower their morale.
Therefore, depleting the enemy’s resources was as important as reducing their manpower.
“Oh! Commander-in-Chief! Look at this!”
“…?”
One of the knights found something interesting.
The knights and soldiers gathered around him.
It was the body of a beastman soldier, pierced through the chest by a spear.
At first glance, he seemed to be wearing full plate armor…
“Hm?”
Upon closer inspection, and after touching it with his hand, he realized it wasn’t plate armor.
It was leather armor, painted silver to resemble metal.
“Are there any more of these? Gather them all separately.”
“Yes, sir.”
The silver-painted leather armor started piling up.
Pelaine’s expression grew serious.
Thirty percent of the armor we had collected was leather, not metal.
“Vice-Commander, how many heavy cavalry did the enemy have on the day the suppression force was annihilated?”
“We estimated… around five thousand…”
“That’s right, Commander. I saw them. I’m certain there were between four and six thousand.”
“…”
Five thousand heavy cavalry…
Something wasn’t right.
How could the rebels, who had only captured four castles and a portion of the southern plains, possess five thousand heavy cavalry?
Horses were plentiful in the southern plains, but armor was a different story.
Even the Empire, the dominant power on the continent, couldn’t afford to equip more than twenty thousand heavy cavalry in its standing army.
The Great Forest, which didn’t produce steel, couldn’t have supplied them with that much armor.
Perhaps it was all a bluff.
“Were they… illusions…?”
It seemed like Pelaine was thinking the same thing.
It was highly likely that they had inflated their heavy cavalry numbers by at least fifty percent, perhaps even a hundred percent.
“A reversal… Is it really possible…?”
“It’s worth a shot.”
The knights and soldiers’ expressions brightened.
They had just defeated a thousand-strong cavalry unit, and they were still reeling from the victory, but they were starting to see it.
The path to victory.
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“So Vice-Commander Darius is… dead…”
“Yes…”
Rebel Army Camp.
Lorraine remained silent, his hand covering his mouth.
The soldiers who had delivered the report stood before him, their heads lowered, trembling in fear.
“Are you certain he’s dead?”
“Yes, sir. I saw him get hit by the fire magic with my own eyes.”
“Ha… Haha… Damn it. He led a thousand men into battle, lost half of them, and didn’t even come back?”
Lorraine gritted his teeth and chuckled.
Darius had been bustling about since dawn…
He hadn’t realized that he had led the cavalry into battle without even reporting to him.
He had trusted him, assuming it was an urgent matter, but to think he would suffer such a crushing defeat…
“What happened? What did they do to lose five hundred cavalrymen?”
“They charged in a dense formation and… their formation was instantly broken by the fire magic… And then…”
“That’s enough.”
Lorraine massaged his temples, his head pounding.
He didn’t need to hear any more.
“There’s been a rune deployed above Fort Four since last night. Why did they charge in a dense formation, without even considering the possibility of enemy mages?”
“Well, sir… The Vice-Commander seemed to believe that even if the enemy had any mages left, they would have used up all their mana on the rune above Fort Four.”
“Does that even make sense? To assume that they would have exhausted all their mana on a rune that would barely scratch the castle walls, even if they had mages? Was Darius drunk?”
“Commander-in-Chief, with all due respect, I must correct you.”
“…?”
The mage mercenary, who had been listening silently, stepped forward.
“It wasn’t a rune that would barely scratch the castle walls.”
“Then what? Was it strong enough to create a hole in the walls? Do they have at least twenty mages left…?”
“No, sir. It was a rune powerful enough to engulf the entire castle in flames.”
“What?”
Lorraine gaped at him.
Powerful enough to burn down the entire castle?
They would need at least sixty mages to generate that much mana.
Did such a massive rune even exist?
He had heard of siege runes that could destroy a single fortress, but he had never heard of a rune that could destroy an entire castle.
“We were played…”
He would have made the same decision as Darius if he had been there.
He would have assumed that the enemy had no mana left and launched an attack to kill the caster.
Darius had made a rational decision, but he had been defeated and killed.
Lorraine placed his hand on his forehead, feeling a chill run down his spine.
It felt like everything was unfolding according to someone’s meticulous plan.
“How many reinforcements did the suppression force receive?”
“Five, including the Saintess.”
“…”
He had assumed that the other four were attendants of the Saintess.
But one of them, or perhaps all four of them, were responsible for this.
“What about Darius’s body?”
“We couldn’t recover it, sir. We believe it was completely incinerated…”
“Damn it. This isn’t the time for that. We need to figure out how to counter the magic above Fort Four.”
Losing Darius was a huge blow.
It was as if they had lost the heart and soul of the beastman army.
But it wouldn’t immediately lead to the collapse of the Republic.
As long as the suppression force continued to oppress the beastmen, and the Republic offered them freedom, they would have no choice but to side with them.
It would be difficult to lead the beastmen without Darius, but that wasn’t the most pressing issue.
“They still have time to complete the rune. Should we gather our forces and attack again?”
“No.”
That would be foolish.
The enemy had already mercilessly crushed a thousand elite cavalrymen.
Sending infantry would only result in their deaths at the hands of that monstrous mage.
“Then we should evacuate the residents.”
“…”
That was the best option.
It was the right thing to do.
Morally.
“Who knows about the large-scale rune?”
“No one outside of this room, sir.”
“Then keep it a secret. We won’t evacuate the residents.”
“Prime Minister?!”
Where would they house tens of thousands of evacuees?
It would be a disaster if chaos erupted during the evacuation, or if it created a sense of defeatism.
He had to choose the lesser of two evils.
The option that would give them a chance to win the war.
And that meant watching Fort Four burn.
He had to make sure everyone in the South witnessed it.
That was the only way to ensure that the beastmen would shed tears of blood, hating the suppression force and resisting the Empire.
“Secretly evacuate only the main forces from the castle. We’ll sacrifice Fort Four for the greater good.”
“Prime Minister! Are you serious?!”
“Prime Minister!”
Lorraine ignored their cries and closed his eyes.
He didn’t want to do this.
But sacrifices were unavoidable in war.
The best-case scenario would be if the rune was an illusion…
But he didn’t think things would work out so favorably.
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