Chapter 170: The Final War of the Northern Continent
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 170: The Final War of the Northern Continent
“We must hurry.”
The Holy Land was farther from the royal capital of Aran than the Duke's capital, Foesterheim. He had marched to the capital when I left for the Holy Land, so he must have arrived long ago.
This meant the Duke was likely facing the Pope's forces, estimated at four thousand strong, with only five hundred of his own men.
Of course, the Pope would be busy trying to control the pandemonium in Aran, and the Duke would avoid battle until I arrived, but no one could predict the future.
Just as I had never imagined the Pope would burn and plunder the capital.
‘If they're hit by a surprise attack, they won't be able to handle it.’
That was why I needed to join the Duke as quickly as possible. Conversely, there were also those trying to get as far away from Aran as possible.
“My lord Baron! Refugees ahead!”
Shortly after the scout's report, a group of people appeared on the horizon.
An old man with stark white hair and two children rode in a cart pulled by a single mule, while a middle-aged man holding the reins had a bandage wrapped around his head.
The bandage was stained with dark red blood, and his face was covered in scratches. The scout stood beside the man, guiding him toward us.
“He says they’re coming from the capital!”
I patted the scout on the shoulder in praise, then rode forward to meet the middle-aged man.
“I-I don't know anything! I'm just... just going back to my hometown! That's all!”
The man was clearly terrified. When he saw the standard-bearer with the cross flag, he trembled in fear and hastily bowed his head.
Just before he did, I saw a small flicker in the center of his pupils. It was a fragment of an emotion hot enough to burn the entire world.
It was unmistakable rage.
“Grandpa…!”
The man wasn't the only one showing extreme emotion. The children began to convulse, burying their faces in the old man's embrace.
“Oh, my little ones. Grandpa's right here.”
The old man in the cart used his own body to shield the children from our view, hiding them in his arms. The middle-aged man subtly blocked my line of sight to the children.
“Don't be afraid, I don't mean you any harm. I only stopped you because I'm curious about the situation in the capital. I won't take much of your time.”
I took a purse from my coat and offered it to the man. His eyes trembled slightly after confirming the considerable amount of money inside.
He quickly squeezed his eyes shut, bowed his head again, and offered the purse back to me with both hands.
“I am but a simple city dweller. Whatever you ask, I won't be able to meet your expectations, my lord.”
“That is for me to judge.”
The man's wariness didn't disappear even after I told him we were the Church's army, sent to punish the Pope.
“How can I believe that?”
Fortunately, I had a way to soften his distrustful gaze. I took out the letter of excommunication Archbishop Raceni had given me and showed it to him.
“Haven't you heard? The famously devout Archbishop Raceni has become the new Pope. His first act was to excommunicate the former Pope. I am here on behalf of the Church to punish him.”
“This is the Pope's seal…?”
His eyes were glued to the Pope's seal stamped at the bottom of the letter, though he had only skimmed the written part.
“It seems you can't read, but you recognize the Pope's seal?”
“…I was in the city guard. When I worked as a gatekeeper, I had to memorize the seals of the noble houses.”
“Then you must know the situation in the capital quite well.”
Who would know the capital's affairs better than a city guard? The man, who had been staring at the letter with a complex expression, looked up.
“The Pope… is mad.”
And he unleashed his suppressed rage. His trembling voice hinted at the magnitude of his fury. There was no need to press him further.
“The Pope's dogs looted everything and set fires for fun. Even with people still alive inside!”
This loss of humanity meant drugs were being abused. That was what I found strange.
It was better than Holy Water, but there shouldn't have been enough drugs for such widespread abuse. The secret drugs from the East were imported and quite expensive.
‘Pope. What are you planning?’
While I was trying to guess the Pope's scheme, the man's voice grew louder.
“That's not all! They raped and killed my wife in front of our children! When the children started convulsing, they just held their stomachs and laughed!”
I realized then that the children's mother was not with them. The old man on the cart had his eyes squeezed shut. The children trembled in his arms.
This was the man's own story.
“And! And…! The Pope, who should have stopped it, just stood by! How could the highest of all priests do such a thing!?”
“Calm down. The children are listening.”
The man’s eyes, trembling slightly, turned to the children. He squeezed his eyes shut and finished his story in a deeply suppressed voice.
“Every day was hell… I thought I might lose my children too if we stayed, so I abandoned everything and fled the capital.”
“You must want revenge.”
“…My children come first.”
The man flinched, his gaze falling on his children. He was a father who knew his priorities.
“Still, you could provide information that would help punish the Pope and his dogs, couldn't you?”
The city guard also served as police. And the only way to perform that duty was through investigation. Naturally, all sorts of information gathered within the city guard.
“That… I can do.”
I was able to get a lot of information from the man. Among the things he told me was that some of Dresden's forces had fled on the night the chaos broke out in the capital.
“So there are about three thousand left.”
Their forces were still double ours, but good news was good news. It also confirmed that something had happened to Erik.
“It seems there's been no fighting.”
In Duke Signir's army, camped on the plains before Aran, there were no signs of battle. Instead, the atmosphere was as light as if they were on a picnic.
For me, who had rushed here anticipating a possible battle, the scene was anticlimactic.
“I find it strange as well. Shouldn't they at least be probing our strength to gauge our capabilities? But there's been no reaction at all. It was the same even when I sent a messenger. It's as if the entire city is dead.”
The Duke's face was grim as he spoke. I knew what he was worried about.
“There won't be a siege.”
The atrocities committed by the Pope's soldiers had gone too far. The citizens of Aran had reached the limit of their patience. If even a man whose family had lived in the capital for three generations was fleeing, that said it all.
If the Pope chose a siege, they would quickly become an enemy within and rise up, even without us reaching out to them.
Even after I added the story of the refugee family I met on the way, the Duke's expression remained dark.
“Then why do you think the Pope has closed the gates and won't even show his face?”
“I'm no god, so how would I know? But I do have a way to find out.”
The Duke said the city gates hadn't opened once since his arrival. Then how did the refugees I met escape the capital?
The answer lay in the river that ran through Aran.
The river flowing out of the capital served as a sewer, so it was filthy and smelled terrible, a place people avoided.
Smugglers took advantage of this. They had created a gap in the iron bars installed to prevent outside intrusion, using it to evade high tariffs.
The refugee, who had been a guard, knew about it because he had taken bribes to look the other way.
‘You can't live in the capital on a guard's salary.’
It was common for guards to extort money from citizens for one reason or another, so I let it slide. It wasn't my city, after all. Not yet, anyway.
“Are you really planning to use this place?”
Horrified by the sight of the yellowish sewage, the Duke pinched his nose.
“The Pope will have prepared for us at the main gate.”
The reason we hadn't been spotted even as we drew near wasn't because we were stealthy. It was because there wasn't a single guard on the walls.
It was too undefended. So much so that one couldn't help but suspect a trap.
That's why we needed to proceed in a way the Pope wouldn't expect.
“You're not thinking of taking the Pope's head, are you?”
“Even I'm not invincible.”
The terrifying thing about an immortal army was its fearlessness. In other words, if the Pope commanded it, they would fight to the last man to kill me, heedless of their own deaths.
‘If I could kill the Pope before that, they would scatter like sand, but that's too much of a gamble.’
Even I couldn't face an immortal army of thousands alone.
The goal of the infiltration was simple: find out what the Pope was plotting in his silence and, if possible, open the city gates.
“Hmm. I'll give you some of my knights.”
At the Duke's words, the knights' faces darkened. It felt like only yesterday that they had barely survived Erik's ambush, and now they were being told to jump into sewage?
Even I would have been appalled. The problem was that the task was too important to refuse.
“W-We obey your command.”
The knights replied, their faces grimacing. The Duke deliberately avoided their gazes.
When I entered first, the knights had no choice but to follow, their faces twisted in disgust.
The Aran we infiltrated was ruled by silence. Every door on every house was shut, and there was no one on the streets.
However, we were near the river that served as a sewer, so I couldn't rule out the possibility that it was just this area.
‘Maintain silence.’
I signaled to the five knights and advanced without a sound. Our target was the city gate.
The gate was on the opposite side of our entry point. The fastest route was through the central plaza. Of course, the risk of being spotted was high, so I ruled that out.
I also ruled out circling along the wall, as the soldiers' barracks were there.
So we crossed from alley to alley, avoiding the main roads. When we were about halfway to our target, the gate, the horrors of Aran began to reveal themselves one by one.
“…!”
A house burned down to its frame was the least of it. The main road was strewn with the corpses of women who had clearly been raped and murdered. And there wasn't just one or two.
Some even had all sorts of foreign objects stuck in their genitals. One of them was a spear.
“Ugh.”
Even a trained knight couldn't hold it in and had to grab a wall to retch. The problem was that a corpse, hidden in the shadow of the wall, was right in front of him.
It was a corpse with black holes gaping where its eyes should have been. The vomiting knight fell on his backside, oblivious to the vomit staining his clothes.
“Ugh…!”
The only reason he didn't scream was likely due to his knightly training.
It wasn't just the eyeless corpse. The main road was lined with bodies that had been toyed with.
Yes, it was clearly ‘toying.’
Women were used as tools of pleasure and then killed; men were played with like toys and then killed.
“My lord Baron…”
Children were no exception. A longsword pierced a mother and child at the same time. It looked as though she had died trying to protect her child.
It was hell on earth.
“We move forward.”
With hardened faces, we started forward again, only to be forced to a halt almost immediately.
“Mommy!”
This time, we saw not the result, but the process.
Two soldiers were raping a mother in front of her child. Another soldier held the crying child with a knife to its throat.
“Sob. I-It's okay. Mommy's okay…”
Even in that situation, the mother was desperately trying to calm her child.
“What? Am I just supposed to watch?” the soldier holding the child grumbled. The other two soldiers grinned and replied.
“What are you talking about? We're letting you have a turn.”
“A turn? Ah…!”
The soldier followed the other two's gaze, looked at the child in his hands, and grinned.
“N-No! Please, just take me…!”
The mother, sensing the terrible danger, begged them, but the soldier's eyes remained fixed on the child.
“My lord Baron…!”
One of the knights called out to me urgently. His voice was quite loud. I shook my head.
“Now is not the time. If we fail our mission, many more will suffer.”
The soldiers were armed. That meant they were still under the Pope's control.
“But…!”
This time, another knight protested. The other knights wore the same expression.
They were ready to intervene even without my permission. In truth, my own patience was wearing thin, and I could only click my tongue.
“The mission will become more difficult.”
“We are prepared for that.”
“Does everyone feel the same?”
All five knights nodded.
‘Sometimes, you have to do something even when you know it's the wrong choice. Perhaps this is one of those times.’
Even a scoundrel like me has lines I won't cross. My instincts warned me that if I ignored this moment, that line would be shattered beyond repair.
‘It's just moving the schedule up a bit.’
I made that excuse to myself as I drew my sword.
“Don't regret this. It was your choice.”
Those words were for myself as well.