Prince Paelus and pretty much all the troops under his command have surrendered to the Empire.
A grand army of nearly 40,000, including the injured, had vanished in one fell swoop.
“What?! Surrender?! This is a disgrace to the Deo people!!”
“You fool! We must immediately secure the traitor’s family members!”
At Dedolant’s command post, the room was a cacophony of shouts and curses from all sides.
All of it was condemnation for Commander Paelus.
And they weren’t stopping there—they were calling for revenge against everyone who had surrendered.
Madness. Pure madness. That’s what filled the room.
Maybe it was only natural. After all, they were all people who had ridden the wave of this madness. Now, pretending to be rational or awake would only lead to their own demise. To maintain the status quo, to survive—there was no other option for them.
“…”
But their uproar wouldn’t last long.
The one person who needed to make a decision had been silent ever since all this started. The very person who began and reached the peak of all this chaos chose to keep quiet.
“Your Highness, the Third Prince?”
Gruber, standing nearby, cautiously addressed Prince Georg.
But the prince remained lost in a daze, his thoughts elsewhere.
Just as the expressions of Dedolant’s command staff began to harden, Gruber leaned in and quietly whispered into Prince Georg’s ear.
“Your Highness, you must act quickly. If you continue to remain silent, even they will start to waver.”
With a tone full of urgency, Gruber managed to stir Prince Georg into action. Prince Georg slowly looked around the room, sizing up each individual before finally speaking.
“All of you gathered here should remember this clearly. When I rose to power, who supported me? And how much glory and reward they reaped by standing by my side.”
“To doubt Dedolant’s victory is to doubt the Deo people. That is to doubt me—and to doubt all of you. This is not a betrayal that can be tolerated.”
“If anyone wishes to surrender to the Empire right now, step forward. Don’t come crawling back if you change your mind later. I will forgive you now, so if you wish to leave, go ahead. I won’t stop you.”
At this, the Dedolant command staff began glancing nervously at one another.
Surely, in their hearts, some of them felt an intense desire to surrender. The Imperial Army was closing in from all sides, aided by collaborators. The feeling of their breathing space shrinking was undeniable. How could they not feel fear?
But no one dared to speak up first. It was impossible.
As Prince Georg had pointed out, they were not mere bystanders but collaborators. Switching sides at this point wouldn’t guarantee a better future. Moreover, there was serious doubt whether anyone here would survive such a betrayal.
“Your Highness, General Leonite has returned!”
Just then, Leonite, who had somehow managed to survive, entered the command post.
The troops under his command had all been lost while breaking through the enemy’s encirclement. Only Leonite remained, having sacrificed the lives of his men as a bl**d offering to make it back alive.
“Your Highness!!”
Upon seeing Prince Georg, Leonite immediately knelt down. Bursting into uncontrollable sobs, he began recounting the events.
“We’ve been betrayed! Paelus—he betrayed Dedolant, our people, Your Highness, and everyone here. Punish me for not preventing this tragedy!”
“Paelus betrayed us?”
“Paelus fell for the Empire’s bait. He shamelessly agreed to an unauthorized ceasefire—accepting food and alcohol—and even began fostering a close relationship with the enemy. What else could this be but betrayal?”
The perspective of the fighters on the front lines can’t help but differ from those observing from afar.
Leonite cleverly twisted Paelus’s circumstances to serve his own narrative.
“The truth is, our troops inside the encirclement were struggling, but we could have held out. Our Dedolant army’s morale was still alive. But Paelus—he ultimately shattered even that, reducing us to an army incapable of fighting. Aaargh!!”
If Paelus had been there, he likely would’ve cursed Leonite for spouting pure nonsense.
But he wasn’t. Having surrendered to the Empire, he was now with their camp.
Now, no one but the man himself knew of Leonite’s mistakes and failures. Naturally, Paelus was made to shoulder all the blame while Leonite’s faults vanished into thin air.
The problem was, Dedolant’s command staff were already bloodthirsty in their search for scapegoats.
Dedolant—and the Deo people—could not, under any circumstances, acknowledge fault.
It was their justification, the very power that allowed them to maintain authority. If it faltered, not only their prestige but also their lives would be at risk.
“It’s clear now! Paelus was the problem!”
“Your Highness, we must immediately detain the families of everyone who surrendered!”
“He’s right. We can’t let the bloodline of traitors stab us in the back again!”
An external shock was considered one of the factors that threatened internal stability.
Yet, every now and then, such shocks also unite people in extreme ways.
Unfortunately, Dedolant wasn’t following the former scenario—it was firmly in the latter.
—
After Commander Paelus had surrendered, Dedolant had changed.
More specifically, their approach to the conquered territories of Artria and Dugal had changed.
Whereas before, Dedolant had somewhat played it fair, asking for cooperation, that line was now gone. All that remained were threats and coercion.
“Recruit new able-bodied soldiers from Artria for the army.”
“Ten thousand? Are you kidding? We’ll need at least fifty thousand. Prepare accordingly.”
Artria, upon hearing this, was left dumbfounded.
Until now, Artria had fewer than 100,000 troops. Almost all of them had already joined Dedolant’s army, and over half had perished.
Artria thought they’d done their part. They believed they had sacrificed plenty as fellow members of the Deo people. With Dedolant being the one to start this war, Artria figured there was no reason to meddle further.
But they were wrong. Dedolant seemed to bark orders as if they were just getting started.
“Fifty thousand impossible, you say? Are you sure it’s truly impossible? Should we send Dedolant to handle things ourselves?”
“And if we take direct action, fifty thousand might become a hundred thousand.”
“Feel free to say no if you don’t want to comply. What do you think will happen then?”
Dedolant kept suffering defeats, with Paelus’s surrender being the final nail in the coffin. They had gone completely berserk.
Artria was now completely overpowered by Dedolant. At this point, breaking away wasn’t an option.
And domestically, opinions were still tilted toward Dedolant rather than the Empire. It was Dedolant they shared bl**d with. The ones knocking on their borders were Nobogorod. And Nobogorod was being supported by the Empire, so naturally, the Empire wasn’t popular.
With the royal family gone, all that remained were the nobles of Artria. Technically, Artria wasn’t much more than a region absorbed by Dedolant, leaving them without any justifiable reason to rebel.
In the end, Artria had no choice but to show willingness to cooperate.
But Artria wasn’t entirely filled with fools—they could read the currents. They were starting to feel something unsettling creep up their spines. The world they’d imagined as belonging to the Deo people seemed very different from the reality they now faced.
As for the Dugal territories, things were even worse. Resistance had broken out everywhere, and Dedolant’s response escalated.
“All wealth must be confiscated, and every man taken.”
“Even if we treat them kindly, it’s futile. We might as well deport them all. These are the ones we offered the chance to join the honorable Deo people but they refused—why should we treat them as humans?”
Despite having shown mercy initially, Dedolant was now sick of the ongoing organized resistance. So they decided to take everything.
If they did this, they believed it would at least give the resistance forces something to think about.
Finally, it was Benito’s turn—a supposed ally that Dedolant had spared so far.
“Oh great King of Benito, though we’ve granted you our favor until now, we can no longer do so. On behalf of Dedolant’s continued triumph, we strongly urge you to increase Benito’s military forces.”
“We won’t take back our Fifth Army, but we do expect you to supply an equivalent number of troops.”
Artria, Dugal, and now Benito—once all the forces were gathered from these places, the numbers soared beyond 100,000 in no time.
They armed these many recruits with the spoils they had plundered and the weapons crafted with clenched teeth. It was as if they’d created a horde destined to d*e in place of Dedolant’s elite soldiers.
“The imperial bastards will soon arrive. We’ll throw these suckers in as bait and when the perfect moment arrives, our elite forces will emerge to turn the tide.”
“We can do it! The Deo people are still strong! We’ve only lost because of incompetent commanders and cowardly leaders!”
Dedolant’s command staff went even further in this situation.
“All of this is due to the Third Prince not ascending the throne yet.”
“Although His Majesty is still alive, for the sake of Dedolant’s victory, the prince must now become king.”
“Even God would support the rule of one of His agents becoming king!”
Though it may sound utterly absurd, Dedolant’s mood was different.
They all shouted in agreement, and in the end, the current king was pushed aside to abdicate in favor of his son.
“Long live! Long live!! Long live King Cassius the Second!”
He was the first king of the Deo people—King Cassius the First. Out of respect, Dedolant hadn’t used that name since. But now they broke this unspoken rule, crowning Cassius the Second as if heralding a new beginning for Dedolant’s glory.
Upon hearing the news, the Imperial Chief of Staff had but one thing to say:
“…Did they all take some kind of mass drugs?”
