Religious War - Empty House Raid (4)
Helen was still drained from putting down the rebellion in Sidon when a messenger came sprinting in from Troy, one of Greece's major cities, with news she could barely believe.
"Hah… hahh… Lady Helen! The Spartan army has taken Troy!"
"What? The scouts said the Hannam forces were marching on Nazca—"
"—No, not Hannamguk—the Spartans…! Sparta of the Greek League has occupied Troy!"
Even after hearing the report, Helen couldn't make sense of it for a long while.
Rivals or not, Athens and Sparta were still on the same side… how could they team-kill like this?
If Sparta had simply struck the enemy capital first to claim a greater share of the glory than Athens, Helen might have accepted it. She already knew Sparta coveted the seat of league hegemony.
Which made this coup all the more incomprehensible.
"That insane bitch!! What the hell does Nike think she gains by betraying Greece?"
In a Greece where democracy had sunk deep roots, military might alone could never make you league hegemon. Without legitimacy recognized by every city in the alliance, any claim to supremacy would collapse under a mass uprising before long.
What on earth is going through Nike's head…
Helen had always thought of Nike as little more than "the daughter of the previous queen, Ayra."
She had no idea that Ayra's husband was Han Min-guk—or that Nike was the daughter born after that Hannam man had done unspeakable things to Ayra.
If I earn the greatest merit in this war, Daddy will start pampering my pussy more often than Kim Hyo-jung's or Kira's, right? I'll be the daughter who's amazing at both war and getting pregnant!
Helen's blind spot was that she knew nothing of the relationship between Sparta's queen and Han Min-guk. She completely misread Nike's true motives, and so she kept sending letters that never landed.
Queen of Sparta—if you do not turn your army around at once, I shall strike you down in the name of the goddess Athena.
Hmph! Why should I suck up to that bitch Athena? I'd rather spend the time fawning over Daddy and getting another load of his cock-juice.
On to the next city, warriors of Sparta!
When her carefully written letter was left on read, Helen tried softening her tone. She simply did not have the luxury of splitting her forces.
Nike, at the next assembly I will nominate Sparta as hegemon of Greece. Please come to your senses and fight for your homeland—not the enemy.
This… fucking… who does this yellow-pussy-hair bitch think she is, ordering me around?! The only one I serve on my knees is my daddy. Homeland? I was born from the seed Daddy pumped into that dairy-cow Ayra, so the Lord Cock hanging off Daddy is my real homeland!!
And so Helen's second letter was left on read as well. The third and the fourth met the same fate.
A few days later she finally received a message—but it was not in Nike's hand.
Lady Helen, the Spartan army has encamped outside the walls of Athens!
"Impossible…! This can't be happening—"
"—Heeheeheeheeheet! Serves you right, you big-titty bitch! You dragged every fighting bitch in your whole country out with you, and now your home base gets cleaned out and you're a war orphan— euhhng?!"
Helen pinched the suddenly noisy "chair" right on the pussy. It was hardly the treatment due a woman who called herself Queen of Sidon—but being a naked human seat was still getting off lightly.
"Just because I keep taking it you think I'm easy?! W-when our lord comes later I'll tattle on everything—"
Kira had a lot stored up after being used day and night since Sidon's fall. Serving Helen drinks naked was the least of it. On days when the rebels got especially rowdy, a wine bottle would get jammed into Kira's back door on the excuse that "this is all because you ran the politics so badly."
"Hnnngh ♥ Making me look like this after I was forced into a political marriage with the lord of Hannamguk… you're going to regret it!"
"'Forced' into marriage? Have all these beatings lately scrambled your brains?"
"You can't even put down a handful of rebel trash and you think you can beat the husband I s-serve? When this war is over… hngh! That thing you've got stuck in my ass-hole right now is going straight into your p-pussy, so get ready!!"
Coming from a woman currently drinking wine through her rear, the threat left Helen unmoved.
But… Kira wasn't entirely wrong. The Greek army could conquer Sidon; it could not control it.
Happiness in the city-state of Sidon has reached its lowest point.
The enraged populace rises in revolt!
In sheer scale and quality of troops, of course, the Greek army was far stronger. With the combat bonus from the belief Goddess of War granting Helen's forces a (+50%) combat strength modifier for the duration of this war, there was no way they would fall to a mere popular uprising.
The enraged populace rises in revolt!
The problem was how often those crazy bitches kept rising up.
Helen crushed every rebellion soon enough, but if the population kept bleeding away like this, annexing Sidon would gain her nothing. No laborers, no clergy, no soldiers… a city-state that produced nothing and no one was just an empty shell.
So the Greek army spent itself fighting commoners and never once set foot on Hannamguk's actual soil.
Chest tight with frustration, Helen took it out on the nearest target—Kira.
"Kira! Tell your people to stop this pointless resistance!! You don't want to rule a city nobody lives in either, do you?"
"Hmm? What's wrong with that? Population can just be grown back, can't it? Hnnngh ♥"
Helen was speechless.
Endless uprisings had driven Sidon's population nearly to zero, and the woman calling herself queen was fine with it because once the war ended she could "just pop out babies nice and easy"…
At that point Helen decided to change the plan.
Sidon was a city without a future from the start, Lady Athena.
She had no more time to waste on this worthless place. Striking Hanseong before the Macedonian army joined up already looked impossible—and meanwhile Nike was stripping bare the empty house that was Sparta.
First I have to protect the Parthenon… Athens… Greece!
A true sovereign learns even from failure. Losing Sidon stung, but Helen resolved to defend Greece before she conquered Hannamguk.
"……"
Regrettable, but there was no other way.
The next morning, the Greek army pulled out of Sidon at first light.
"Hey, Helen!! At least untie me before you go… ngh? If you don't want my master—no. M-my husband to take revenge later— hhk!"
Even on the day her city was liberated, Kira suffered the humiliation of having her arms and legs bound with rope. Dumping a naked queen in the village square was rather cruel… but Helen couldn't vent her rage any other way.
"If that pillar-husband of yours truly cares for you, he won't forgive me for leaving Kira in this state, will he?"
Kira hurled curses until Helen's retreating back was out of sight. The little brat had always had a foul mouth, so Helen didn't particularly care… but someone else was giving her a headache.
"I hope you don't get cocky just because you won once with a cheap trick."
Her voice was calm, but contempt filled every word.
Too gutless to face the Greek army head-on, so he resorted to this petty scheme.
Helen did not regard Hannamguk as a man at all.
"Listen up! From today on, every last one of you is Daddy's property—his bitches!!"
Delphi—Greece's religious heart, the city that would have housed an Oracle if the game had been faithful to history.
Nike, Queen of Sparta, treated the women living in that great city as nothing more than Han Min-guk's pussy-slaves.
Daddy's obsessed with sex, so he'll definitely be happy if there's a pile of disposable bitches to use and throw away, right? Well… as long as I lock down the official wife seat!
From the perspective of a daughter who wanted to sleep in the same bed as her daddy every night, it wasn't a bad strategy. Offer up one-use pussy-girls as tribute, leapfrog rivals like Kim Hyo-jung, and become his favorite breeding slave—she could already picture it.
From the perspective of an occupying force, though, it was an insanely dangerous choice.
Forcibly annexing a city was already enough to make people furious. Openly threatening to turn them into sex slaves? Why would the citizens welcome that?
Nike still hadn't heard the rumor that Helen had ultimately failed to hold Sidon. She had no chance to learn from that failure.
"Um… Lady Nike? But we already worship 'Hannam,' you know."
"Huh? So you already know how great Daddy's cock is!"
Delphi, however, was not Sidon.
Caught up long ago in the Martyr incident Hannamguk had staged, Delphi had been a city that served "Hannam" since before the war even began.
"Ah! What a magnificent cock—just like Daddy's… heeungh ♥"
"Yes, Your Majesty. We've only heard the rumors, of course, but it's a phallic idol carved to resemble Lord Hannam's cock as closely as possible!"
Where statues of the Olympian gods had once stood throughout the temple, erect-cock idols of Han Min-guk now stood instead. And more than a few female devotees were twerking in front of them in nothing but panties.
"So a truly great religion spreads no matter how far away it is…"
Nike clicked her tongue as she watched Delphi's bitches gathered in little clusters studying the Hannam Scripture.
It was admirable that these virgin-pussy girls were holding group study sessions so they could at least get fucked before they died—but as a daughter who had been impregnated by Daddy herself, she pitied the Delphi girls stuck grinding theory alone.
But… Daddy really was right, wasn't he?
The letter Han Min-guk had sent to Sparta had laid out several instructions Nike was to follow. Having learned through the status window that Delphi had already been swallowed by Hannamgyo, he intended to use the place as a "religion factory."
Once you take Delphi, order the entire population to produce Faith.
Good daughter Nike did exactly as Daddy said, no questions asked.
And so everyone in Delphi—from farmers to blacksmiths—stopped what they were doing, went to the temple, twerked, or chanted prayers like "I submit to Lord Cock," mass-producing Faith—
Then reclass the entire population as Missionaries.
In the end Delphi became a religious megacity fielding thirty units of missionaries alone. Every last one of them a fanatic who worshipped Hannam and his cock without exception.
Greece's native faith hadn't been completely uprooted, but at least in Delphi—where Hannamgyo was the majority religion—every missionary trained there carried the Hannam Scripture.
"Your Majesty! Helen's army is marching on Delphi!!"
That was when a scout reported the crisis to Nike.
From what she heard, this Greek force was sizable—and strangely full of fighting spirit.
Nike wasn't particularly rattled.
"…Daddy predicted even this? Seriously?"
Before the war began, Han Min-guk had tipped Nike off: "This time the Greek bitches have a god's blessing too." There was a reason those defeated troops who'd accomplished nothing in Sidon still looked so fresh.
◊ Until the war that was started ends, Greek combat units gain increased Combat Strength (+50%).
◊ Consumes all Faith held by the civilization.
Nike was a Great General herself, but with a force disparity this large, winning would be hard.
So she should listen to Daddy again this time, right? Thinking that, Nike read the next instruction.
Send every missionary bitch you brainwashed in Delphi to Athens and have them spread Hannamgyo!
A chill ran down Nike's spine; the papyrus slipped from her hands.
Her daddy was a madman in bed and out of it. The real core of the empty-house raid had never been Sparta's hoplites—it was Delphi's missionaries.
When Helen attacks, just hold the line, Nike.
Nike would stall for as long as she could, then hand over the ghost town Delphi had become and put on a show of meekly withdrawing to Sparta.
In the meantime, the Delphi missionaries would be spreading Hannamgyo in Athens.
"We are priests from Delphi, guardsman."
"Ah…! Don't tell me you've come all the way to Athens to deliver an oracle of Apollo? Welcome!"
Fellow Greeks—there was nothing to suspect. And this wasn't just any city; it was Delphi, practically the mouthpiece of the Olympian gods.
Missionary 1 spreads Hannamgyo in Athens!
Missionary 2 spreads Hannamgyo in Athens!
Missionary 3 spreads Hannamgyo in Athens…
Helen's army only received the Goddess of War combat modifier while "Greece still had a religion."
Naturally, once the gods departed, so did their grace.
The capital of Civilization Greece, Athens, has converted to Hannamgyo!
Athena—goddess of war and wisdom.
However much she loved the city that bore her name… she was rather reluctant to keep pouring her grace upon a Parthenon main temple that now housed a giant phallic idol.