Chapter 78
Chapter 78
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 78
Chapter Title: 26. Only Revealed After the Collapse (1)
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The orcs hadn't rampaged through the North for long. It had only been a little over two months, and even that was curtailed when Ballerhard's cavalry stepped in before the damage could spread widely, herding the orcs this way and that to divert them from many cities' paths.
Even so, the North had suffered no small losses.
Nine cities lay in ruins. The nine armies that had defended them were swept away by the orcs. Countless territory folk who hadn't evacuated in time were slain.
The human and material toll on the North was beyond words.
But the true devastation was the shattering of the Northerners' spirit.
What kind of place was the North?
Countless lives had been poured into this land to raise the Winter Fortress tall and proud. Beneath the pristine snow, every inch of earth was stained red.
To protect it from monsters, that many people had thrown away their lives like mere kindling.
Only then did the fortress finally stand firm, and only then did this frozen wasteland truly become human territory.
Dedication and sacrifice.
To Northerners, that history was a proud legacy of their ancestors, a spirit to hold as their banner.
Yet the lords had tossed that proud history and spirit into the trash.
The descendants of heroes, duty-bound to protect and care for their people, had fled before the war even began.
The Northerners preparing to stand against the orcs' southward advance were left dazed and despondent.
As they debated whether to stay and fight themselves, Ballerhard's messengers appeared, urging them to abandon their territories.
Many cast aside their weapons and turned their backs on the lands their ancestors had defended.
But not all who left took the path to evacuation.
Rumors spread: The Ballerhard lord was gathering an army. Winter Castle's survivors were preparing to fight again.
Nearly two thousand men, clinging to faint hopes, sought out the Ballerhard banner.
When they finally stood beneath the triple-shield flag, they learned the truth.
How long the Ballerhard family had fought alone, and how the North's other lords had ignored their cries.
They heard every detail of the fates met by those cowardly lords who had fled.
They were outraged, and relieved in equal measure.
At least one house had held the line.
They paid their respects to the noble blood of that family, who had fought countless winters in obscurity, and offered condolences to the previous lord and his soldiers who had fought to the last.
They gathered under the Ballerhard banner and vowed to fight together.
Of course, they weren't soldiers. None had proper training, let alone experience battling fierce monsters.
Asking them to wield swords against monsters was too much, even for men resolved to risk their lives.
But bows and axes were another story.
Northerners were inherently skilled with bows and axes. Hunting beasts with a bow on barren land was daily life for them, and chopping wood with an axe to survive brutal cold was an essential skill.
Setting traps and tracking game weren't extraordinary talents either.
And those everyday skills weren't far from the basics every ranger needed.
Winter Castle's rangers trained them as rangers.
Of course, the brief, harsh training before reaching the central defenses couldn't make them perfect rangers—let alone match Winter Castle's elite.
But they already met the essential requirements. All that remained was to absorb the Ballerhard rangers' indomitable spirit through real combat.
And real combat came. Not just any skirmish, but a battle against thousands of orcs led by a monster called the Orc King, something they'd never even heard of.
Many died in the fighting. More survived.
And those survivors refused to return to their homes and hearths.
Every one volunteered to enlist, and the new Count Ballerhard accepted them all, forming a ranger legion the size of an entire army corps.
Under normal circumstances, it would have been impossible.
Mobilizing so many troops at once would invite suspicion, even for a border count, and bring down trouble. The other lords, robbed of their own folk, would have revolted first.
And what of the massive military funds?
But the lords who might protest were mostly dead, their heirs unable to fully inherit authority.
The funds came from the 2nd Prince Maximilian's base.
The 2nd Prince demanded vast sums in exchange for overlooking the crimes of central nobles who fled to the defensive lines. Houses like the Branburt Count family agreed.
They needed to recover war losses, and knew that pursuing their guilt to the end would leave them branded merely as deserters.
Even non-combatants bore the war's burden.
Of the thirty-six houses in the center, twenty-three paid enormous sums. Half went to the Ballerhard family.
The war was over, but the North's atmosphere remained wartime grim.
Major cities were rubble. Heirs of fallen lords fought bloodily over succession.
Noble-blooded heirs died quietly one after another.
Then the new Count Ballerhard's messenger stepped forward—no, precisely, it was the 1st Prince's messenger.
The 1st Prince summoned all Northern nobles with succession rights to Winter Castle.
There, he personally chose who would inherit each house.
It was outrageous. Normally, they would have raged that the royals were infringing on noble rights and traditions.
But no one could object.
The Ballerhard family, which had stared at the mountains beyond the fortress for centuries, had finally exercised a border count's authority over the North's lords, backing the prince. And the 1st Prince's fame from the recent orc battles was no small thing.
When noble lords fled and died miserably, the kingdom's firstborn—the noblest of all—had fought at the forefront.
Rumors of him as an irredeemable wastrel, the royal family's shame, held no sway in the North at least.
Thousands of Northerners had witnessed his desperate battle with the Warlord. The horrific scars covering his body proved it.
The Ballerhard family, guardians of the North, and the 1st Prince, hailed as the North's savior.
Even the folk distrusted and abandoned the lords who fled, refusing to follow them. Normally, that would be crushed, but now it was impossible.
War-hardened folk were no longer docile sheep.
No family lacked a veteran ancestor after generations, no home without old swords and shields in the storeroom.
They no longer trusted lords and armed themselves.
The lords, meanwhile, were powerless. Their forces absorbed by the 1st Prince, they had fewer than a hundred retainers left. If the folk rose up, succession would be the least worry—their houses might vanish entirely.
In the end, the lords had to watch tearfully as the 1st Prince's chosen successors took over.
And those chosen heirs rushed to pledge loyalty to the 1st Prince. Substantial shares of the central nobles' war reparations were their reward for loyalty.
With that money, they solidified their authority.
Dispossessed nobles had no hope of trying again.
It was infuriating.
They sent smoke signals south, reporting the North's events. They hoped to rally other nobles' armies to reclaim their seats.
Some cunning ones exaggerated to exploit the rift between the king and his eldest son.
But it was futile.
Noble houses found the 1st Prince's power—backed by twenty-odd families like Ballerhard—burdensome. The royals, whom they trusted, sent messengers to resolve it but lacked justification.
The kingdom and royals' decisions in the war amounted to abandoning the North.
All they could do was order the Leonberger clan head to return as family patriarch.
And the 1st Prince ignored even that.
"Tell them he'll return when the time comes, and not to nag."
The new Count Ballerhard and his knights, fully enamored with the 1st Prince, found the report immensely satisfying.
In effect, the North had slipped from kingdom control.
A few scheming nobles contacted the imperial envoy. The Empire wouldn't ignore such massive conscription in the North.
But no matter how long they waited, the envoy stayed silent.
He had no choice. Imperial envoy Marquis Montpellier was too busy extinguishing fires at his own feet.
"You reported to the homeland as I instructed?"
"Word for word, exactly as you said."
"The response?"
"They said to monitor the situation and, if needed to prevent the kingdom from reinforcing its northern defenses, spare no financial support."
Marquis Montpellier sighed in relief.
The Northern uproar threatened his position gravely.
His mission as envoy had two parts.
Suppressing the disloyal holdouts who resisted the Empire to the end, ensuring they couldn't rise again. Ensuring the kingdom remained a bulwark blocking monster hordes that might descend from the far north.
Neither was light.
Yet the kingdom had nearly collapsed this time—due to his misjudgment.
He hadn't taken the Northern unrest seriously and sabotaged the Leonberger royals' response, fearing it might let those holdouts rearm.
He separately pressured Northern nobles not to aid Ballerhard. Weakening that overtly anti-Empire house seemed a gain.
It was a miscalculation.
Far from profit, he'd nearly lost everything.
The Northern crisis exceeded his imagination; Ballerhard's fortress fell, the entire North razed.
They barely held in the center, but reporting truthfully could bring brutal imperial reprisals on his house. So he quashed rumors and minimized the kingdom's damage in his report.
To preserve his position.
"Damn it all."
Marquis Montpellier spat curses.
Just a few years ago, the kingdom's lord had been caught recruiting knights secretly. Insider betrayal let him clean it up and weaken royal authority, but the memory still chilled him.
The Leonberg Kingdom was small but had the longest history of resisting the Empire.
He had to ensure they never fought again.
So he'd suspected royal scheming and interfered—just to fulfill his duty more thoroughly.
That judgment now endangered his career.
"That 1st Prince is a lucky bastard, then and now."
After muttering curses alone for a while, Marquis Montpellier grinned.
The wretch who'd sold out his own knights to aid the marquis's self-preservation had now saved his kingdom—and the marquis's seat.
"I thought him too incompetent to be useful, but he's surprisingly helpful."
The prince he'd discarded, deeming him unable to maintain the kingdom as the Empire's shield, had shown unexpected talent.
A prince with that much ability would make a fine imperial puppet.
He could forgive the banquet slight—after all, the drunkard couldn't tell heaven from earth sober. And he'd already sold his knights; no point expecting change now.
"Time to lend a hand."
He planned to hoist the sidelined prince back onto the succession stage.
At that moment, the 1st Prince the marquis eyed as puppet let out an incredulous chuckle.
"I thought it was completely ruined."
He laughed at his visitors.
"But it's not."
His face lit up like treasure unearthed from trash.