Chapter 201: Post-Combat Dealings
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: imperfectluck
A battle would never have true victors. Unlike in those legends and epics, war would only leave behind ruins, hatred, and endless generations of revenge cycles.
The majority of ordinary people do not enjoy war, but why, then, does war still exist? Perhaps it is because of personal interests—as long as there is no effective or better method of mediating disagreements and clashes, and as long as ambitious individuals secretly manipulate and incite matters behind the scenes, war will never cease to exist.
In this battle that involved the entire Northlands, the beastmen fought for their ancestral homeland, while the elves had participated in the hope of returning to their former glory. In their perspective, they hadn’t done anything wrong.
From the viewpoint of history, factions that start the battles would typically be the biggest losers in the end. Moreover, this battle was no different from any other battle in history, with every species fighting for their own race to have more space to live in.
However, some things couldn’t simply be measured by right and wrong. No matter what the reason was for starting this battle, it wouldn’t change the fact that the icy Northlands was now soaked in so much blood, with countless souls having cursed the Gods and the invaders before their deaths. The relationships between the various species, which had just begun to thaw, were now at rock bottom once again.
“Someone needs to pay the price!”
A post-combat reckoning was basically now the norm. Those who lost the battle would be dragged into a court to receive an absolutely unfair judgement. During such times, even the fairest of judges would selectively go blind and hand out numerous death sentences by virtue of the surviving victims’ crying tears and angry shouts.
Alright, I knew that it was all rather meaningless, but it was indeed a way to vent.
Not only was it a sacrifice to help appease the spirits of the dead who died despite doing nothing wrong, but it could help the survivors vent their anger and pain. Punishing the guilty was also the fastest way to aid the survivors in clearing their grudges and returning to a normal way of life.
After this particular battle, however, we ran into some problems with the typical post-combat reckoning.
If we compared those who had the most serious losses, perhaps even the pitiful Sleuweir Kingdom couldn’t compare to the beastmen who started this war. In this bloody battle, the plateau beastmen had lost most of their accumulated tribes that had developed over the past few centuries. It was obvious that they wouldn’t recover for a significantly long period of time after this battle, and because of the beastmen’s tradition, where their tribe leaders personally led from the front, the large majority of well-known beastmen tribe leaders had all died in this battle.
“Kill those beastmen bastards; we want revenge! Why are their children and females innocent? Weren’t those beastmen killing our children and females for their sake? They can kill our children and women, so why can’t we kill theirs!?”
After the glow of victory faded from the fortune of survival, the survivors looked at the hole-riddled world before them, and they angrily shouted to counterattack the plateaus and kill all the beastmen and exterminate their entire species.
The citizens’ grudges were quite difficult to deal with, especially since they suffered so much from the war. It was impossible to use logic and reason on some things. I could talk an entire day about “non-aggression” and “not starting a new war,” and wax philosophical about the endless vicious cycle of warfare, and all the citizens would simply reply, “So we can’t take revenge? Why is it that only they can come kill us?” and all my efforts would be for naught.
“…Even without the ‘non-aggression’ premise, our country can’t afford another war right now, not to mention that the remaining plateau beastmen would never allow the humans to slaughter them in revenge as we pleased.”
Leaving the plateau beastmen alone would evidently be a future source of trouble for later generations, and I already had a plan for dealing with them, but now was definitely not the time to pick a new fight.
“Let’s find some scapegoats, then. Perfect—there are still a few who escaped and they’re causing trouble; let’s kill them off to scare the rest of the beastmen.”
Perhaps I should “celebrate” the fact that in the chilly winter night of the final battle, not all the beastmen perished. Even among the beastmen, there were some afraid of death. Several tribe leaders chose to not bring their tribes into the meat grinder of death and instead secretly escaped under the cover of night.
After their path of return became impossible for them, they would naturally transform into dangerous guerilla bands for the sake of their own survival. That was why after the situation had slightly steadied, I sent out the entire squad of Aurora Knights to hunt these beastmen down.
So, even if their numbers weren’t all that many, their wanted posters were put up everywhere, spreading the various impressions I created for them; some of my wanted posters called them Camel Baba and the 40 Wolf Thieves[1] 1 , and some the 3 Tigresses and the 105 male Beastmen. They were hence quickly captured and held in prison carts, which would parade about every city so that the survivors could spit on them and toss rocks at them. Finally, they would receive judgement for their crimes, and pretty much all of them would end up being hanged.
History possessed plenty of evidence that invaders who failed in their invasion would end up the most pitiful group of all from the war. Their territory would be seized, they would definitely have revenge taken upon them, and a reckoning awaited them—nobody would take pity on them for their losses, as they deserved what they got. They were both the victims of war as well as the murderers who started the battle.
Apart from these tangible and intangible conditions, the victors would also never give the losers another chance to rise up again out of consideration for the future. There would definitely be numerous strict restrictions forced upon the losers, and the invaders, who had been so proud of themselves when they started the war, would have to accept even the most stringent of conditions in order to live on and survive, no matter how humiliated they felt.
And these stringent conditions and humiliating restrictions would always intensify the conflict between them and sow the seeds for a new, future war.
This was why I was especially careful with the treatment of the beastmen after the war. Even though I had already prepared a plan beforehand, I still invited multiple advisers and held detailed discussions regarding this topic.
With my encouragement, each adviser gave their own opinions, but they were all nothing more than common ideas, what with trade restrictions, cutting off their food supplies, forcing the beastmen to give us hostages, and reparation fees. I almost wanted to fall asleep as I listened to these boring, standard ideas.
“Humph. Trade restrictions? Even if they wanted to trade, are there still any merchants trading with the beastmen? Any human merchants that would dare to do so would probably be killed off as spies. Cut their food supplies? Let’s first finish remapping the area since Emordilorcan randomly changed all the topography. Force the beastmen to give us hostages and reparation fees? You should at least do your homework first; there are so many beastmen tribes, just which ones do you want to give you hostages and reparations? If you force them too much, then it’ll just be another battle.”
But when an adviser named Pierobs gave his idea, I woke up immediately in fright.
“The archaic system of tribe leaders needs to be eliminated; only communism can save the world! In order to completely eradicate inequality and conflict from the world, we need a complete revolution to pull out the old dictatorship systems by the roots…”
The previous non-creative ideas made me drowsy, but this adviser was too creative; he wanted to eliminate the foundation of this world’s ruling feudal system that was based on nobles and royalty? He was quite daring. More than 70% of the countries in this world were monarchy-based, so he could be executed as a heretic just for his beliefs.
“…Cut off the heads of those selfish tribe leaders who only care about themselves and create a brand-new society, making the foolish beastmen create a new high-efficiency communist society, which will…”
I couldn’t help but take another look at this guy who typically appeared to be peaceful and quiet. This youngster was animated to the point that his saliva was flying everywhere, his fists were clenched tightly, and his eyebrows were jumping up and down. It seemed like he had endless amounts of rage within him, similar to that legendary revolutionary from my previous world. To spout such an unrealistic concept in a feudal age, I was even beginning to suspect if he was actually a transmigrator.
“…allow us to demand reparations and hostages from them!”
Okay, I retract my previous thoughts; it was just an insane man. After coming around full circle, he was still focused on obtaining combat reparations and hostages?
“Milord, my apologies; Pierobs[2] 2 is in a bad shape these days. He is affected emotionally because he was dumped by his girlfriend, and he recently hit his head on a rock, so he’s been a little…”
Another adviser wiggled his finger and pointed at Pierobs’ head, indicating that Pierobs was a little funny in the head. Right after, Pierobs seemed to become even more animated, while his fellow advisers hurriedly began dragging him away, worried that he would spout something even more ridiculous.
“…You rotten bastards left over from the useless feudal age will never be able to defeat the farmer warrior saints. Those foolish kings will all have their heads chopped off, and the mighty rise of communism is foreordained. This will be a blizzard, a mighty blizzard that nobody will be able to avoid. You incompetent…”
Okay, his companions finally succeeded in gagging his mouth and matters finally quieted down. He was, however, still struggling violently while being dragged away.
“Shut up! Ahhh! Don’t bite me! I’m helping you; stop biting me!”
“Cough, it seems that some of our advisers are under too much pressure and need some time to recuperate. Go ahead and give him half a year of vacation, and if he still needs more rest, give him another additional half a year.”
Although I said this, the conference room remained silent. I knew that if this continued, there wouldn’t be any result, so I could only toss out my own prepared plan.
“Didn’t Centaur Anya say her tribe also wanted to come aboveground? Actually, the plateau is a nice place, and it’s definitely much better than the dark Underground, so let’s have them come. Our participation will only increase the conflict, and the beastmen have their own rules, so in order to deal with the beastmen, we should leave it to other beastmen…”
After chattering on for several hours, I was finally able to resolve this issue, but the second issue was even more of a headache.
“The elves? They’re truly such trouble.”
If I tried my hardest to find who was the unluckiest in this battle, the elves would probably be my number one choice. Their Guardian God ended perishing, the four major elven kingdoms’ main armies were completely wiped out, and while only Tassel Kingdom among them possessed some remaining combat forces, all of Tassel Kingdom’s royalty was dead, and it was difficult to say if their remaining forces even counted as elves.
From a certain standpoint, the Tassel Royalty was also one of the main perpetrators of the war, but their previous King Adrian died in body and soul together with Felix, and punishing the banshee Suana, who had always been against war to begin with, wouldn’t be the right thing to do either.
But this wasn’t even the greatest trouble. The biggest problem was how their environment ended up suddenly changing. After their unnatural bending of nature for several thousand years was finally broken, the life-threatening climate had become the strictest challenge for their lives, and most of the remaining elves were still fighting against the weather just in order to survive.
“Forget it. Let’s stop considering these things and save them from their disaster first. Otherwise, with all of them dead, this will be nothing but an empty discussion.”
The Borealis had already completed its preparations. After it finished unloading the mined metals obtained from the barbarian tribes, it was to be used by the second disaster relief squad in order to arrive before the first relief squad. And I was a member of this second disaster relief squad.
Note:
1. This is a reference to the folk tale Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
2. This may be a reference to Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, who was a French lawyer, politician, and one of the best known and most influential figures associated with the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.