The Last Supper
The Last Supper
The 1st Army had collapsed, and the knights' families were scattered, their fates unknown.
The knights had no place to return to.
They would be hunted down as deserters and executed, or put to death for failing to hold the front line.
That was the weight of responsibility that came with knighthood.
The knights were not surprised that they would be fighting a new battle.
However....
"Why are we going to the capital! Shouldn't we be crushing those fat rear-echelon nobles like Count Anbelrum's territory?"
"His Majesty has been emptying the royal treasury to support us and somehow maintain the front line, and you speak of committing treason!"
"No matter Commander Luna-nim's decision, this is something we cannot follow!"
They agreed on overturning the situation, but they could not accept that the target was the King.
"It is not treason! For His Majesty the King and for this kingdom! We must go to the capital!"
Luna's eyes blazed fiercely.
The knights recalled her usual extraordinary loyalty to the King and grew puzzled.
"If we ravage the territories of the rear-echelon nobles? They will cry about the damage to their lands and cling even tighter to what they've hoarded, refusing to let go. His Majesty the King would be even more powerless before those pigs."
"...!"
Everyone's eyes wavered with the look of sudden realization.
Luna drove the point home like a wedge.
"But if we raise hell in the capital, the story changes! His Majesty will gain the authority to pressure and crush those rear-echelon noble bastards!"
"Understood! So that is why you said we must go to the capital!"
"But if we cause a riot and end up branded as traitors...."
"Even if we are processed as deserters as we are now, or take revenge on the rear territory bastards, we will be branded as traitors anyway. Better to gamble our last desperate struggle on giving His Majesty the King even a little bit of strength. It is the final gamble to save this kingdom."
Luna looked around at the knights with a pale, strengthless smile.
"The 1st and 2nd Armies, our optimal defensive lines, have collapsed. Before long, the Elf Legions will pour in freely, as if taking a stroll in their own backyard."
"...."
"Will we cowardly abandon the kingdom and flee to prolong our wretched lives just a little longer? Or will we burn ourselves out one last time for the kingdom, for His Majesty to whom we swore loyalty?"
"We will burn! With everything we have left!"
"We've already lost our families and homes anyway!"
"Let's just do it, damn it!"
"Good! Then first, we fill our bellies here! After we recover our strength, we will run to the capital without rest!"
"Understood!"
Luna shut her eyes tightly.
It was truly a choice she hated to make, but....
'It is to prepare the kingdom's final struggle. I am sorry to all the territory inhabitants living here.'
"I permit looting."
"...Understood."
The knights nodded with stiff, heavy expressions.
To stage their final resistance, they first had to recover their strength, and there was only one method left to them.
Luna poured every pouch of gold coins from her subspace bracelet onto the ground.
"Take the food, and leave this in its place."
"...Understood."
She knew. That this was hypocrisy for self-satisfaction.
In a situation where people were starving to death with nothing to eat immediately, what use were glittering gold coins?
The territory inhabitants here would suffer tremendous damage.
'Count Balckenhardt will try to kill me.'
Now that the front line had collapsed, this place too would be scorched earth before long.
Luna deceived herself, calling it a process of leaving behind even a little meaning.
And so the knights scattered with the gold coins and began looting, but....
"Sir Knight, here you are."
"This is bread made from the finest white flour. Take as much as you please."
"We don't have much else, but we have plenty of flour and bread."
"Take all you want, just please spare our lives."
The knights gathered bread and flour, threw down gold coins, and were thrown into confusion.
The territory inhabitants neither fled nor resisted.
As if they had been waiting, they meekly handed over every bit of food.
"...What in the world is going on? Has Count Balckenhardt's territory always been this abundant with food?"
"Who knows. Let's report to the commander first."
"Mere farmers eating this kind of white bread, with no bran or rye mixed in?"
Luna, receiving the report from the returning knights, was also bewildered.
But there was no time to waste.
"Hurry and recover your calories, then advance quickly to the capital."
"Yes, Commander-nim!"
The deserter unit devoured every bit of the thoroughly looted food, took a brief rest, and then immediately moved swiftly toward the capital.
Before leaving, Luna looked back at the territory and sorted out her thoughts for a moment.
'Come to think of it, I vaguely heard a rumor that Count Anbelrum had a son who came to the 3rd Army....'
Count Anbelrum's territory.
The place with the most abundant food in the kingdom.
'Hildea was a great beauty, wasn't she.'
Perhaps the count's son had eagerly tried to curry favor early in his commission to impress the commander-in-chief.
Since rumors circulated that even ownerless stray dogs in Count Anbelrum's territory got meat to eat every day, as it had the best food situation in the kingdom.
***
In the count's territory lived 1,475 farm soldiers who commuted to the reclaimed land near the 3rd Army barracks.
They received wages of over 2kg of flour daily, so food was abundant.
Their commander, Major Piel, gave the farm soldiers mental education morning and evening.
'If a looting unit appears targeting the flour, do not resist, and meekly hand everything over. The most important thing is to avoid loss of life. I will fully compensate for any looted food.'
Piel had issued such a measure because the budget coming in per soldier was far more important.
The budget spent on flour wages was 60 per person per month.
But the budget coming in per person was 4,000 per month.
If looters came to rob an empty house, meekly giving them everything was the profitable move.
Of course, in the eyes of the territory inhabitants who could not know this, he appeared only as a noble young man of endless wealth and benevolence.
"Hanson, Major Piel-nim will surely compensate us for the flour we lost, right?"
"Of course! Major Piel-nim is not someone who would ever trifle with matters of food!"
Hanson, the farm soldiers, and the combat soldiers glared wide-eyed and kept their neighbors in check.
"Gather all the gold coins the deserters threw down in one place! That is not ours! It must be offered to Major Piel-nim!"
"If you try to secretly pocket it, we'll all be in trouble! What if Major Piel-nim, disappointed in us, disbands the farm unit? We'll all starve to death!"
"Take out every last one, don't miss a single coin! Wretched weed-like lives like ours won't live long if we hold onto things like gold coins!"
***
The 2nd Army was empty, with only the dead remaining, so no one knew what had become of its troops.
But the situation of the 1st Army could be ascertained.
It was thanks to the wounded left behind in the barracks.
"The Commander-in-Chief has died, and Vice-commander Luna, who received the transfer of command, declared the unit annihilated and then took the knights and left the unit."
I glanced at Hildea, who was trembling as if in disbelief.
"She took the knights and left? What about the soldiers?"
"Most died in the fighting or deserted. Honestly, there was no time to figure out what was going on."
The wounded soldier who looked relatively better off was still gripped by fear and panic.
"While we were fighting over the distribution of the wild buffalo... an enormous number of Ancient Tree Monster Legions and wyverns surrounded us from all sides at once...."
"Could it have been a trap by the Elf bastards?"
"I don't know. We were waiting in the rear to transport the buffalo, so we barely survived and returned to the unit.... But before the vice-commander could do anything, the Ancient Tree Monster Legion overran the barracks...."
To summarize, the 2nd Army was entirely dead or missing.
For the 1st Army, some soldiers survived, but the new commander had taken all the knights and left the unit.
Rebecca spoke with a dark face.
"I know Vice-commander Luna's personality well."
"She is a woman always filled with rage inside. But just as much, her sense of justice and loyalty is strong."
At Hildea's reply, Rebecca offered no denial.
"Luna has said this before. That the problem is us desperately clinging to and holding the front line by any means. That it needs to be breached once so the rear gets completely screwed."
"I still cannot agree. If it is breached even once, the kingdom will be annihilated immediately."
"Luna thought that the less the rear properly recognizes the severity of the front-line situation, the faster our downfall approaches."
I added a word.
"I think I understand what she means by that."
I too was dragged here directly and got screwed over, which made me realize just how comfortably I had been living in the rear, ignorant of the world....
The selfishness of the rear-echelon nobles is obvious.
Since the front is blocking well, their mindset is probably, 'Let's just live while discreetly grabbing whatever we can.'
Without ever knowing how desperate it was before the honorary US military supply officer arrived.
"If it weren't for Piel, our 3rd and 4th Armies would have ended up like this first."
"I agree with the Commander-in-Chief. We absolutely could not have withstood that last Ancient Tree Legion night raid."
Hildea stationed only minimal sentries on the outskirts of the 1st and 2nd Army areas.
"We repelled that many Ancient Tree Legions and even Elf archer units with very few casualties. They now know we are not to be taken lightly, so they won't rashly come again."
Rebecca also spoke up quickly.
"I landed a solid blow on that Elf mage bastard, so he'll be scared stiff and won't even think of coming for a while."
"Carlton Marquis, still, we must not let our guard down."
"I know."
Rebecca smiled and massaged my shoulder.
"Still, thanks to Piel's magical device, I can't tell you how reassuring it is. Really, when they came at dawn, we could see everything brightly even from far away."
"Thanks to the magical device, the Elves won't attack again right away. But Major Piel, have you really decided to entrust that magical device to Lord Deville?"
"Yes, he fires the projectiles accurately. Lord Deville is perfect for it."
I planned to give him the shells each time as needed.
Ammunition management must be thorough.
"Good. Then I will entrust Lord Deville to you. Do not hesitate and use him as you see fit."
"Understood."
Here stands a major who tells a colonel to carry a mortar and follow him around. That's me, of course.
***
Lord Deville was diligently playing by himself with the mortar that had no shells.
He practiced quickly planting it in the ground and swiftly turning the angle this way and that.
He was so serious that even I felt a sense of solemnity.
"Major Piel, may I shave down this sharp part under the baseplate?"
"That serves to dig into the ground well and keep it from moving."
"I am aware. But no matter how much mana I wrap around it, with it sticking out this sharply, I feel like it will pierce my stomach."
"...Did I mishear you?"
"I've been thinking. In a pinch, I could brace the baseplate against my stomach and fire it near horizontally."
He's saying if he shaves the bottom of the baseplate flat, he thinks he can withstand it?
No matter how much of a biological tank he is running on mana, I think he'd at least be thrown backward?
"...It is a precious magical device. Do not do it. You must always fix it to the ground for use. Violation of this will result in it being transferred to another knight."
"Hng, fine."
'He's only seen the 800-meter range zero-charge illumination rounds, so he's underestimating it. If he plants the recoil of a 2, 3-kilometer explosive shell into his gut, even a biological mana tank won't be able to take it.'
Suddenly, I felt the gazes of other knights looking our way.
Everyone was watching Lord Deville with envious eyes, and Lord Deville was strutting around carrying the mortar like a gym rat showing off his muscles.
"Uhaha! Everyone make way! The dedicated archer of the magical device most trusted by Major Piel is passing!"
"...."
I'll just pretend I don't see it.
***
When evening came, I entrusted the night vision goggles to Hildea.
Rather than me, who is useless in combat, it's more beneficial for Hildea to wear them and guard against night raids.
"Commander Hildea-nim, for this evening's meal...."
"No. In such an emergency, the commander alone cannot eat good things. I will eat the same food as the regular soldiers, Major Piel."
Rebecca gauged the mood and added a word.
"Major Piel, I'll eat the same as the regular soldiers too."
'What should I give them for dinner?'
At dawn after the battle ended, I had given each person five jumbo cup ramen, each serving 4-5 portions.
Lunch was corn soup.
'If I spoil even the regular soldiers' palates, it won't be good in the long run.'
Right now, they go crazy for cup ramen, calling it the food of the gods, but later they could become indifferent to it.
Such a future is dreadful.
That's why I deliberately don't distribute good food recklessly and maintain a low meal level.
The budget a major receives isn't as much as you'd think.
"Tonight's dinner is the noodle dish we had at dawn."
"Really? You're giving us that again? Wow, that'll be delicious."
"The soldiers will be very happy. To be able to eat that precious noodle dish again."
So tonight's dinner is ramen too.
Since the number of cooks is woefully insufficient, feeding over 30,000 people daily in the ruined barracks isn't easy either.
***
The royal capital, midnight.
Luna and the knights, having finished their last meal, were steeling their final resolve.
"Our objective is strictly to cause a disturbance. Killing people is forbidden. Attacks on major military and production facilities are also forbidden."
Luna continued with an emotionless face.
"The property of the rear-echelon nobles who own luxury villas in the capital is the primary target. Destroying the outer walls of the royal palace to some extent is permissible."
Since the goal was a clear disturbance, they would cause thoroughly calculated chaos.
"If we are lucky and not branded as traitors, we may meet again alive."
The knights smiled with haggard faces.
A flame spell flickered to life on the magic staff Luna held.
"Let's go. Let us prove that it was not our weakness, but the selfishness of fat pigs that collapsed the front line."
"Yes! Commander-nim!"
In the place they left behind.
Traces of raw flour, spilled little by little as they ate, were scattered everywhere.