Do Not Mock Our Resolve
The sturdy muscles exposed through the tears in her tattered uniform bore horrific scars. They told the story of a hellish battlefield beyond anything the culprit could possibly imagine. Her voluminous white hair, falling all the way to her waist, was completely untamed—wild and rough like a beast’s. One golden eye was covered by an eyepatch, suggesting it was no longer whole. Her appearance was startlingly similar to Jeanne’s own, yet the aura she radiated was on a level Jeanne could never hope to approach. It pierced like a crossbow bolt aimed straight at the skin. Jeanne had no difficulty realizing this woman was the Empire’s war hero, Wolfgang Leonhardt.
Even so, that fact alone could not explain why the Saintess was so shaken.
Every living person harbors desire. No matter how good someone is, that truth cannot be escaped. But if asked whether desire itself is evil, Jeanne would boldly declare that it is not. Desire is the force that drives life forward. It is the path that leads to a better tomorrow. Without desire there can be no progress, and without progress there is only decline. Therefore Jeanne did not reject desire in principle.
At the same time, she had observed countless human hearts and read just as many desires within them. Yet astonishingly, she could sense no desire at all from the person standing before her.
A living being with no desire? How can something like that even be possible…!!
Not the slightest trace of desire. Only a profound, suffocating emptiness remained in her eyes. This was the first unknown Jeanne had ever encountered, and the unknown swiftly curdled into terror. Still, her cold intellect barely held back the wave of fear. She already knew from experience that no living thing could exist without desire.
To resolve the contradiction, Jeanne constructed a single hypothesis. Was it possible that her inability to read the desire meant none existed? Of course not.
She’s either hiding her desires perfectly, or… Either way, neither option is particularly welcome.
Desire is the engine that drives one toward a better future, but it is also a person’s greatest weakness. If you know what someone wants, you can easily predict their actions and respond accordingly. But if it was the former case, it meant she had no weaknesses at all. If it was the latter, it meant her desires were nearly impossible to read—making her equally difficult to counter.
The first possibility was something Jeanne did not even want to imagine. For someone who had grown accustomed to reading desires and handling them with precision, it came close to a transcendental horror.
Naturally, Wolfgang was still human. She had to possess desires. The reason Jeanne could not read them was singular.
Ha. Fuck. Did I really just slap her?
Right now, Wolfgang was drowning in crushing futility.
Calling it futility was polite. In plain terms, she was suffering a brutal case of reality crashing down on her. Of course, there was no law saying a man couldn’t slap someone. The method hardly mattered; violence was violence. But the real problem was how embarrassingly girlish the entire situation had been.
Wolfgang was, after all, a soldier of the Empire—a hardened veteran who had survived ten brutal years of the Winter War. She had witnessed every horror war could offer. In fierce combat like the one that had just occurred, torn clothing was practically routine. Yet she had reacted without thinking and delivered a slap.
Ha. Was that really the right call?
Should I seriously consider turning back into a man?
In truth, she had tried once before. The female body had felt so alien that it created a painful sense of disconnection. For whatever reason, however, every attempt had ended in failure. The cost had also been absurdly high. After growing somewhat accustomed to her current form over time, she had stopped thinking about changing back. But an incident like this changed the equation entirely.
It was precisely while she was seriously contemplating her own identity that familiar faces approached. The gray-haired girl, Natasha, in particular, came running with a bright smile.
“As expected, I knew Unni would win!!”
“Captain. Magnificent. Strong.”
“I didn’t think you’d knock the warchief down in a single strike.”
“……”
Ah, right. This is why I went through all that trouble.
Wolfgang smiled and raised her fist.
As a result, Wolfgang did not strike her subordinates. She was not some beast who could casually lay hands on her own men. She had simply given them a loving pat, nothing more.
In the first place, this incident had clearly been the Empire’s fault. Still, as an official envoy representing the Empire, openly employing undead left them with no defense even if they were expelled. Wolfgang had encountered undead through various creative works during her time in modern society, so her personal aversion was surprisingly mild. For the people living in this world, however, the story was entirely different.
This was a world where gods and demons truly existed. Even in a modern society with advanced science, moving corpses would become objects of terror. Here the reaction would be far more severe. Moreover, the Blood Alliance was a tribal society where shamanism still held powerful sway. In such a place, undead that rejected the natural cycle of life and death could only be met with rejection.
“I do not believe this matter can simply be overlooked,” Jeanne declared.
In the carefully prepared negotiation hall that had been filled with nothing but silence, the first to speak was none other than Jeanne. Even if the sky were to fall, a hole to crawl through would always appear. Naturally, the Saintess of the Kingdom—which stood in opposition to the Empire—had no intention of letting this slide.
No matter how one looked at it, the Empire’s use of undead was an undeniable fact. It was not a welcome development, but with two groups of guests having arrived at the Blood Alliance, they could not simply let time pass. In the end, the negotiations began.
Once talks commenced, Jeanne read the desires swirling within the orcs: anxiety and restlessness over their warchief’s defeat, along with deep revulsion toward the undead. Yet none of them voiced it first. The warchief was both the pride of the Blood Alliance and the wall that protected it. For that same warchief to be defeated in a single strike meant both pride and protection had crumbled at once.
But orcs were still orcs. The pride, competitive spirit, and dissatisfaction in their hearts had not vanished. Jeanne, having read those emotions clearly, began to exploit them thoroughly. The result was a resounding success.
Was it anxiety over the warchief’s defeat? Wariness toward a suddenly appearing powerhouse? Or perhaps an attempt to preserve the shattered pride of the orcs? The exact reason hardly mattered. What mattered was that the spark Jeanne had first ignited was now burning fiercely, fueled exactly as she intended by the orcs’ own emotions.
“It seems the Saintess is correct this time.”
“To use such wicked sorcery to command the dead… tsk tsk.”
“We cannot give a definite answer until the warchief awakens… but do not expect us to capture that vicious criminal for you.”
What the hell? They’re going for the throat right from the start?
She had expected some degree of political attack, but she had not anticipated such a fierce reaction. The girl clinging to Wolfgang’s side, however—Natasha—had already predicted it. The Empire had been forced to use every possible means during the brutal Winter War, including undead and even more unsavory things. In any land, necromancers and undead were bound to face rejection.
At the same time, she knew a solution. Natasha whispered it directly into Wolfgang’s ear.
“Captain, responsibility is important no matter where you go, right?”
“That’s true, but why bring it up so suddenly?”
“Since this is all my fault anyway, tell them you will punish me—the root cause of this entire incident.”
“…What?”
“It’s fine. I can come back to life as many times as it takes.”
Natasha smiled brightly and spoke the horrifying words as if they were nothing at all. Yet it was also an undeniable truth. Other nations might differ, but the orcs followed a tribal system. Their underdeveloped politics also meant that barbaric customs still lingered. It was not uncommon for someone who spoke out of turn to be dragged outside and stoned to death.
If blood was shed in the end, the majority would be satisfied. Even if not, it would at least be enough to shift the current atmosphere of one-sided aggression. That was the conclusion reached by Natasha Hellflame, No. 6 of the Vendetta Legion.
But was that truly the only answer? Did they really have to see blood no matter what?
At least, Wolfgang did not think so. She pulled out a cigarette and placed it between her lips.
“Was it eight years ago? It must have been around then. The time when my soldiers and I were isolated inside a certain fortress.”
“What are you suddenly talking about?”
“The snowstorm that blew especially fiercely that day served as a curtain to hide them. It became a vast army of ten million that completely surrounded the fortress.”
The orcs looked puzzled by the seemingly unrelated tale, but Wolfgang paid them no mind. She calmly recounted the experience she had lived through.
“Our already insufficient food supplies ran out in merely fifteen days, yet the blizzard encircling the fortress showed no sign of stopping.”
In truth, the Winter War had begun under overwhelmingly unfavorable conditions. The Emperor’s faction and the nobles’ faction were divided, locked in internal strife. The army fighting at the front bore the full consequences.
“Unable to endure the harsh environment and starvation, they began dying one by one. Do you know what they said in their final moments?”
“Did they leave behind last words?”
“They asked us to eat them.”
Cannibalism. There was no one present who failed to understand the heavy weight carried by that single word. The orcs who had been voicing dissatisfaction now listened in complete silence.
I was complacent. Arrogant. I believed my own strength could overcome anything. But the Wendigos were far more cunning and malevolent than I had imagined. They deliberately lured us deep into the fortress before surrounding it. After that, they attacked without regard for time—day or night, it made no difference.
In reality, dozens of soldiers standing guard were taken by the Wendigos. Wolfgang still remembered with painful clarity the sense of utter helplessness and defeat she had felt then.
“Do you know why they left such words? It is because humans are the Wendigo’s favorite prey.”
Rather than be devoured by the hated Wendigos, they preferred to become strength for their comrades. That was the choice they had made. Those who starved became food for those who remained. The meat was bloody, tough, and revolting. Yet Wolfgang had clenched her teeth and swallowed it. By forcibly replenishing their strength that way, they mobilized every last ounce of power and broke through the encirclement.
Some might never understand. Some might point fingers and ask how anyone could eat another human being. But there was a reason they had no other choice.
“Do you know why we went that far? Because defeat would have meant losing everything.”
By the time Wolfgang finished speaking, the cigarette in her hand had burned all the way to the filter. She crushed the spent remains in her fist and looked at them. Her message was clear. The Winter War had been so horrific that no means or methods could be ruled out, and the use of undead was naturally no exception. Because everyone had agreed to it. Because even in death they would fight for their families. Wolfgang condensed their collective will into a single sentence.
“Do not mock the resolve we forged to achieve victory in that terrible and cruel war.”