249. The Emperor’s Eyes (8)
Even without the screams, the mountain engulfed in flames was chaotic enough. The noise of ancient trees burning, the sound of wet leaves and moss charring, and the death throes of wild animals driven mad by the heat of the flames.
“Kyaaaah!!”
“Don’t stop!! If you stop, you die!”
The deputies shouted, foaming at the mouth. Being in a deep forest without a path meant that every visible space was filled with kindling. Soldiers struggled forward, hacking down trees that fell in the flames.
The soldiers were exhausted. For troops worn out by days of marching and the tension of battle, walking through a burning forest all night was no different from a death sentence.
The choking smoke and dwindling oxygen made their heads spin. The intense heat, the blinding light of the fire, and the suffocating moments of running back and forth amidst the chaos of their comrades.
The boundary between life and death. That dizzying moment. The Duke’s soldiers were now no different from beasts. Driven by the madness born of fear and chaos intertwined with survival instincts, the soldiers ran and collapsed like animals.
“Wait!! Don’t go that way!”
The heavy cavalry had to walk alongside the soldiers because their horses had fled in fear earlier. Their situation was worse than the regular soldiers. Metal heats up quickly, and the flesh beneath it burns in an instant. The knights trembled as they tore off their armor, gasping for breath.
The cavalry fell. The knights, who had been leading the charge with a sense of duty, collapsed, leaving only chaos behind.
“Don’t scatter!!”
No soldier listened to the deputy’s last words before death. The soldiers, soaked in fear and madness, sprinted in all directions.
-Kyaaaah!!
The sound of burning wood splitting. The screams of soldiers spitting out their last breaths in the flames. The loud friction of collapsing armor. To summarize the sounds coming from this mountain more objectively—
It was the sound of 15,320 soldiers of the Principality of Bülrang falling. Among them, 1,574 cavalry, including 300 semi-nobles and high-ranking officers. Eleven noble lords. And one Elector Duke.
Fernandez thought the burning mountain looked like a torch. Beside him, the Cavalry Captain, pale-faced, stammered.
“That fire… did you start it?”
“Yes.”
“How? Fire attacks aren’t supposed to be this easy…”
One couldn’t help but worry about fire attacks in the mountains. But a fire attack isn’t just about setting a big fire.
Fire is a weapon that’s incredibly difficult to control. Setting a fire doesn’t guarantee it will burn in a way favorable to your troops, and in a mountain this large, starting a massive fire without alerting the enemy requires meticulous preparation.
Yet Fernandez had entered the mountain just a day before the enemy forces, and the Cavalry Captain beside him had never seen any preparations for a fire attack.
Fernandez smirked at the Cavalry Captain.
“Knowing might hurt you.”
“Then I won’t ask. But it’s brutal. Hell must be unfolding in there.”
Fifteen thousand soldiers are trapped in that mountain. Even if they break through the flames, they’ll suffer immense casualties, and the survivors will no longer be recognizable as ‘soldiers.’
-Huuu…
Then, a group of people staggered out toward the edge of the forest. Their hair singed, faces blackened, and bodies covered in burns. They had abandoned all their weapons and ran with empty hands and bare bodies.
One by one, about a hundred soldiers trembled and stumbled out. When they realized there were no more flames around them, they collapsed.
“…Damn it. Do we really have to do this?”
“Is there any nobility in the death of war?”
“What?”
“Is there a difference between a meaningless death and a noble one? If they fall on the battlefield, taking a spear or blade, is that an honorable death? And if they fall miserably and helplessly, is that a meaningless death?”
“Of course. This isn’t a battle or a hunt. It’s slaughter!”
“Right. It’s slaughter. And at the end of battle, the end of the hunt, the end of slaughter. Everyone dies equally on the other side of the blade.”
Fernandez clicked his tongue and snatched the longsword from the Cavalry Captain’s hand. The cold, sliding sound made the Cavalry Captain flinch as if his own head was about to fall.
“Honor is the most beautifully crafted nonsense by those who have no business in war. Death is neither noble nor meaningless. It’s just natural. And I have the duty to keep you alive, to win this battle, and to crush those who will inevitably become enemies of the Beastmen and King Carvelier.”
Fernandez urged his horse forward. The soldiers of the Principality of Bülrang, collapsed from burns and exhaustion, were still trapped in the trauma of the flames, trembling uncontrollably.
Fernandez’s shadow loomed over their heads. With the burning mountain at his back, Fernandez looked at the Cavalry Captain with icy eyes.
“Honor and pride are merely privileges. Victory and survival are my duties. If you oppose me, raise your sword and fight. If you would forsake victory for honor, I’ll give you one last chance to argue.”
-Kiiing.
Fernandez pointed his sword straight at the Cavalry Captain. The Cavalry Captain stared back with a stiff face. Under that piercing gaze, he could say nothing more.
For the soldiers, justice is victory. There is no such thing as an honorable defeat. All that remains for the defeated is their own death, the bleak future of their families, and their burning homeland.
For the Beastman Nobility, defeat in tribal warfare meant the entire tribe would be enslaved. For them, war was more than just survival. Having lived among such people, the Cavalry Captain couldn’t dare refute Fernandez’s words.
-Kwa.
