The Plum Blossom Swordsman Reincarnated into a Count's Family
I walked with Starlight toward the place where the slave soldiers who had risen in rebellion were gathered.
For me, slave rebellions were nothing unusual. Whenever a large batch of slaves arrived all at once, it never took more than a few days for them to band together and revolt. They put their faith in numbers.
They believed that if there were enough of them, no one would dare treat them carelessly.
The way to handle it was simple.
Crush them with raw power.
There was no negotiation. Give in even once and they would forget their place and start demanding more.
Ordinarily I would have gathered them all without a word and burned them alive, but this was wartime. I needed the slave soldiers. In war, numbers were a factor that could not be ignored.
I looked over the rebelling slave soldiers. They stood tightly packed together, clutching the weapons I myself had issued them. Corpses of regular soldiers lay scattered about. Roughly fifty seemed to have been killed by the slaves.
Our troops had already surrounded the rebels. The gazes they fixed on the slave soldiers were murderous. The instant I gave the order, they would slaughter every last one without hesitation.
The shouts that had been ringing out from every direction fell silent the moment I appeared. The slave soldiers tensed at the sight of me, and even the rough soldiers who lived for plunder carefully watched my expression.
“Count Frucus…!”
One of the slave soldiers spat my name as if chewing it. Hatred and murderous intent filled the word. I drew the sword from my waist.
Sword energy wreathed in lightning streaked toward the slave soldiers and cut them down.
The blade of energy did not stop after felling a single man; it stretched onward. Only after more than thirty slave soldiers had been slain did it finally vanish into empty air.
“Count Frucus!!”
“Aaaaaaaaah!”
“Die!!”
The slave soldiers charged at me. Courage born of a desire for freedom? Absolutely not. Rage and terror were driving them forward.
This will be settled easily enough.
I swung my sword with complete indifference, cutting down every slave soldier who rushed me. Even those who merely stood nearby were killed.
After roughly three hundred had fallen, silence suddenly settled over the entire area. The remaining slave soldiers watched me warily. None of them wanted to charge in only to die like dogs.
Cleaned up faster than I expected.
The atmosphere had shifted entirely in my favor. Next came the task of finding the ringleader. It was not difficult. All I had to do was locate the center of the group. And a man bold enough to lead a rebellion always carried an aura different from ordinary humans.
That one.
A white-haired man gripping a greatsword stood there. He was lean, yet every inch of his body was corded with muscle. He looked to be in his thirties and wore a white mustache.
Not an ordinary fellow. Judging by the air around him, a former mercenary?
I walked straight toward the center where he stood. Slave soldiers tried to bar my path, but after I cut down dozens of them with casual swings of my blade they recoiled in terror. The crowd parted like the miracle of Moses.
At last I closed to a distance where our voices could reach each other. Slave soldiers still surrounded Starlight and me, yet I felt not the slightest fear.
The ringleader let out a sigh of regret.
“I misjudged you…. Count Frucus. You possess not even the smallest scrap of mercy. You are a man who can slaughter us without batting an eye. Now I understand why the existing slave soldiers obey you so absolutely. I should have listened to them instead of ignoring their warnings….”
“What made you think you could pull this tiresome stunt?”
“A tiresome stunt…. I expected as much, but was our desperate rebellion truly nothing more than that to you?”
He glanced around. The slave soldiers had already lost nearly all will to fight. They were terrified. Though they surrounded me, they themselves were surrounded by my knights and soldiers.
They could not even use my life as a bargaining chip. No matter how many slave soldiers threw themselves at me, they could do nothing against an Aura Master.
“Count Frucus. We do not ask for much. We have already accepted our status as slaves.”
“And yet you still rebelled?”
“We wanted the bare minimum. The barest minimum of treatment. At the very least we hoped our families would not be violated by the soldiers, and that we would not be killed for their amusement.”
“For slaves, you want a great many things.”
“As expected, words are useless. Do you intend to kill every last one of us?”
“If necessary, yes. But this time I have decided to leave you in the hands of Goddess Serion.”
“What?”
The ringleader failed to understand and asked again. I had no reason to kindly explain my thoughts to him. I took a die from my pocket and tossed it to him. His brow furrowed even deeper as he caught it.
“A die? You want to play a game?”
“That die decides your fate. Throw it on the ground. If it lands on an odd number, you will burn to death.”
“…And if it’s even?”
“I will show mercy and pretend this rebellion never happened. Be grateful to Goddess Serion.”
“You crazy bastard….”
The ringleader looked back and forth between the die and his greatsword. He was weighing whether to fight me to the end. After long hesitation he finally dropped the die onto the ground. It clattered and rolled, then stopped. The number showing was four.
I looked at him and gave a short snort of laughter.
“Goddess Serion is smiling upon you. Give thanks to the goddess. And give thanks for my piety as well.”
“I don’t need it…! If I have to live like livestock, I’d rather die fighting!”
The ringleader gripped his greatsword tightly. I curled the corner of my mouth upward and mocked him.
“Do you think you can defy me and still die comfortably? Drop the greatsword while I’m still speaking nicely. It’s not too late.”
“Uwaaaaaaah! Count Frucus!!”
He ignored my warning and charged. Faint blue aura flickered along the blade of his greatsword. The level of a beginner Aura Expert.
I leisurely avoided every one of his attacks. There was no need to use Charna or even Noecheonryu. His movements were completely transparent to me.
For five full minutes I did nothing but dodge, never once counterattacking. He was soon gasping for breath and exhausted. The faint blue aura that had clung to his blade vanished, and his entire body was soaked in sweat. That pitiful, desperate sight only drove the morale of the surrounding slave soldiers lower and lower.
Well, there’s hardly any morale left to drop anyway.
I decided to end this tiresome business. I swung my sword lightly. He could not even block, let alone dodge. His limbs were severed and his torso alone dropped to the ground.
Having lost all four limbs, he immediately tried to kill himself by biting through his tongue. I struck the appropriate pressure point and stopped him.
“Starlight. Take special care of this one. He will serve as an example, so do not let him die. Does he have any family?”
“I will need to look into it.”
“If he does have family… make them look exactly the same. Collect the arms and legs you cut off and feed them to him at every meal. They’re his own limbs, so he should eat them well.”
“Understood. As for the rest… I will handle them by having them throw dice, just as you ordered earlier.”
I nodded and stepped back. Starlight would take care of everything properly.
And so, on that day, of the five thousand slave soldiers who had risen in rebellion, three thousand died and two thousand survived. Even though the dice had come up even, the soldiers still killed some of the slaves for sport. It was not so many that I felt the need to make an issue of it, so I let the matter slide.
I narrowed my eyes and stared straight ahead. Using the Heavenly Eye, I gazed across the mountain at the plain beyond.
A great army that easily numbered a hundred thousand blocked our path. I checked the banners they carried. One bore the golden shield of the Daycurd family. The problem was that another banner displayed a red dragon and a sword.
That’s the flag of the Cobalt Kingdom. Now I understand. The Cobalt Kingdom has sent troops to support Marquess Daycurd. …No, slave soldiers, most likely?
The Cobalt Kingdom had conquered many nations. Mobilizing tens of thousands of slave soldiers was nothing strange.
“This is strange.”
Starlight, who had been examining the enemy through a telescope, spoke.
“What is?”
“The presence of Cobalt Kingdom forces is strange. For an army of that size to march all the way here from the Colbart Kingdom would require a considerable amount of time.”
They might have used teleportation or warp gates. The Cobalt Kingdom had a dragon, after all. It was entirely possible. But if that were the case, they would have sent elite soldiers and knights rather than slave troops.
“Finding out after we win wouldn’t be so bad either. What they want… is to fight us on open ground.”
“Abandoning a defensive position means they are that confident in this war. They have almost certainly prepared some trump card we know nothing about.”
“Most likely.”
“We lack far too much information. It would be better to avoid this battle. Fortunately the distance is still considerable; we need only pull the army back.”
Under normal circumstances I would have listened to Starlight.
But I had already seen her—Leona Daycurd, the Marquess known as the Sun of Solfmed.
She was beautiful and imposing. She sat astride a pure white horse, clad in armor like a knight. Whenever the wind blew, her golden hair streamed behind her. Her skin was as white as milk. Most captivating of all were her golden eyes.
Though Marquess Leona Daycurd wore full armor, it was not difficult to imagine the body beneath. The chest plate jutted out prominently, making the size of her breasts obvious. Her hips were likewise full, and she was tall.
Around her clustered female knights. The Daycurd Marquess was one of the great nobles of the continent who maintained an entire order of female knights.
The mere thought of capturing Marquess Daycurd made my cock throb hard.
“Starlight. Give the order to advance. We will be victorious.”
“I shall obey my lord’s command.”
Starlight relayed the order to a nearby officer. The officer scrambled off somewhere. Moments later a great horn blast rolled out from the rear in every direction.
Bwooooooooooooo!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The soldiers advanced straight ahead in time with the beat of the war drums. The very ground trembled.
Before long we crossed the mountain and reached the plain. Marquess Daycurd’s army was now visible to the naked eye.
“Starlight. There will be no single combat. Push the slave soldiers forward and advance.”
“Without any particular strategy? Tens of thousands will die today.”
“Do you dislike my order?”
“No. I enjoy a blazing full-frontal battle as well. A full-frontal battle is true war, after all.”
Starlight smiled coldly. She ordered the charge. The slave soldiers sprinted toward the enemy as if their lives depended on it.
Boom boom boom boom boom!
The ground erupted and the bodies of charging slave soldiers were hurled into the air.
“Landmine magic?”
“Yes. We should have swept the ground with magic once before ordering the charge.”
“Doesn’t matter. Keep sending them. We’ve captured more than enough slave soldiers on the way here.”
“Heh…. Roughly two thousand have already been annihilated the moment the war began. At this rate… the enemy will think me an incompetent commander.”
“You look rather pleased about that.”
“If they think me incompetent, they will lower their guard that much more. Being underestimated is better than being overestimated. What matters to me is not honor—only victory.”
“An excellent mindset.”
Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom!
Even while we spoke, our slave soldiers continued to be blown apart.