Chapter 249
Chapter 249
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 249
Chapter Title: The Emperor's Eye (8)
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Even without the screams, the mountain engulfed in flames was chaotic enough. The crackling of ancient trees burning, the sizzle of wet fallen leaves and moss charring away, the death cries of wild beasts thrashing in the fiery heat.
“Gaaahhh!!”
“Don’t stop!! If you stop, you die!”
The adjutants foamed at the mouth as they shouted. A pathless deep forest meant every visible space was fuel waiting to burn. Hacking at trees collapsing in the flames with their swords, the soldiers pressed forward with great difficulty.
The soldiers were exhausted. For troops already worn out from days of long marches and the tension of battle, trudging through a burning forest all night was no different from a death sentence.
Acrid smoke and dwindling oxygen made their heads spin. The stifling heat of the flames, the blinding light they cast, the suffocating moments darting amid panicked comrades.
The boundary between life and death. In that dizzying instant, the duke’s soldiers were no different from beasts. Driven mad by primal fear and confusion intertwined with survival instincts, they ran like animals—or collapsed, burning away.
“Wait!! Don’t go that way!”
The heavy cavalry had fled on their horses in the early evening out of terror, forcing them to march on foot with the infantry. Their situation was even worse than the regular soldiers’. Iron heated up quickly, and the flesh beneath it blistered in moments. The knights panted as they tore off their armor with trembling hands.
The cavalry fell. As the knights at the forefront—who had cleaved a path with the greatest sense of duty—collapsed, nothing remained but chaos. Chaos alone.
“Don’t scatter!!”
No soldier nearing death heeded the adjutant’s final words. Drenched in fear and madness, they bolted in every direction.
—Kwaaaah!!
The ripping of burning wood. The agonized screams of soldiers bursting from the flames. The harsh clatter of crumpling armor. To sum up the sounds echoing across this wild mountain more objectively—
It was the fall of the Vulran Principality’s 15,320 souls. Including 1,574 cavalrymen, over 300 quasi-nobles among the high officers, eleven territorial nobles, and one elector.
* * *
Fernandez thought the scene of the burning mountain resembled a massive torch. Beside him, the cavalry commander—his face drained pale—stammered.
“That fire…… Did you set it?”
“Yeah.”
“How in the world? Fire attacks aren’t supposed to be this easy…….”
No one could ignore the risk of fire in a mountain. But a fire attack wasn’t just about igniting a blaze. Fire was a weapon notoriously hard to direct. There was no guarantee it would burn in a formation favorable to your side, and for a mountain that size, pulling off a large-scale arson without the enemy noticing required meticulous preparation.
Yet Fernandez had entered the mountain just one day before the enemy forces. The cavalry commander, who had been with him the whole time, had never seen any preparations for a fire attack.
Fernandez chuckled dryly at the cavalry commander.
“You’d regret knowing.”
“Then I won’t ask. Still, it’s brutal. Hell must be unfolding in there.”
Fifteen thousand soldiers were trapped in that mountain. Even if they broke through the flames, the casualties would be immense—and the survivors wouldn’t be fit to call soldiers anymore.
—Huuuh……
At that moment, a group of people staggered out toward the forest’s edge. Singed hair, blackened faces, burns clinging to their entire bodies. Having discarded all their iron gear in their flight, they were empty-handed and bare.
One by one, about a hundred soldiers emerged, trembling violently. Realizing there were no more flames around, they collapsed on the spot.
“……Damn it. Do we really have to do this?”
“Is there nobility in a death on the battlefield?”
“What?”
“I’m asking if there’s a difference between a petty death and a noble one. If they fall on the field staking their lives against spear and sword, is it honorable? If they drop helplessly in misery, is it petty?”
“Of course. This isn’t battle or a hunt. It’s a slaughter!”
“Exactly. A slaughter. And at the end of battle, the end of a hunt, the end of a slaughter—everyone on the wrong side of the blade dies equally.”
Fernandez clicked his tongue and snatched the longsword from the cavalry commander’s hand. At the cold ring of steel, the commander flinched as if his own head were about to roll.
“Honor is the most pompous nonsense invented by armchair enthusiasts who’ve never seen war. Death is neither noble nor petty. It’s just natural. And I have a duty to keep you alive, a duty to win this battle, and a duty to decisively break these people who will inevitably become enemies alongside the beastkin tribes and the Karvelier Grand Duke later on.”
Fernandez spurred his horse forward. The Vulran duke’s soldiers, broken by burns and exhaustion, still trembled, trapped in the trauma of the flames.
Fernandez’s shadow stretched long over their heads. With the burning mountain at his back, he fixed his icy blue-glowing eyes on the cavalry commander.
“Honor and pride are mere privileges. Victory and survival are my duties. If you oppose me, take up your sword gladly. If you’d forsake victory for honor, I’ll grant you one last chance to argue.”
—Kiiing.
Fernandez thrust his sword straight at the cavalry commander. The man stared back, face rigid. Under that piercing gaze, he could say nothing more.
Victory defined the soldiers. Honorable defeat had no place in this world. For the losers, only their own deaths remained—along with their families’ grim futures and hometowns set ablaze.
For the beastkin tiger tribes, defeat in intertribal war meant the entire tribe enslaved. War was more than survival for them. Having lived among such people, the cavalry commander couldn’t dare contradict Fernandez.
—Kwachik!
The blade fell, severing a soldier’s spine. It was no more, no less than the snap of dry kindling.
And no more, no less than handling dry kindling. Such dispassionate acts unfolded across the beastkin sentries’ entire perimeter centered on this mountain.
Of the Vulran duke’s forces, survivors numbered less than half—and of those, fewer than half returned successfully to their territories.
The day one pillar of the empire’s foundation—one of the eight electors—crumbled.
* * *
Levr fell into beastkin hands. Kirhas Hearttaker’s great steppe horde entered every territory in the Vulran region without resistance.
Vast farmlands and pastures came under beastkin control. The beastkin bandits who had been plundering all of Levr up to then fled at Kirhas’s arrival. Her legion reorganized garrisons under the pretext of maintaining order in the Levr region.
The only city resisting was the domain’s capital: Vulran City.
“Hear us, Young Lord Sephor! Your resistance is meaningless. We seek only peace. We did not come to invade!”
The beastkin army had surrounded Vulran City. Antoine’s sole heir, Jean Réman de Sephor, was still just a boy—and no one expected him to wield his father’s authority.
The scant soldiers left in Vulran City, and the remaining administrative nobles, trembled in unease. It had been a week since contact with the main force was cut off, and five days since the beastkin horde arrived.
In just five days, the vast Levr territories had all surrendered. Even if they’d spent those days solely marching, that speed was irrational.
A cool-headed commander could have reverse-engineered the enemy strategy from such intel. Levr had no forces left, and plunder-ravaged cities threw open their gates and surrendered at the sight of beastkin banners.
Kirhas’s forces were scattered everywhere now. A desperate bid to swallow every castle at once and uproot rebellion. A seasoned commander might have exploited those gaps to find an escape.
But such officers had all gone to the front with Antoine. Only administrative nobles and a young boy remained to face the beastkin horde.
“We must surrender!”
“What nonsense! Surrender means the end! We hold out until the other electors intervene!”
“Those beasts claim it’s for protecting the domain! You think they’d dare kill us outright?”
“And if not? We’d be slaves, exploited! No rights as electors, no prestige as nobles, no imperial aid!”
“Who’s helping us now anyway?!”
Shouts filled the nobles’ council chamber. Surrender. Hold a few days until the duke’s army arrives. Can we last those days? Vulran’s outer walls are impregnable.
Amid the back-and-forth, one emotion bound them all: cloying despair. From the beastkin bandits’ raids to rejected aid requests from neighboring electors—who would save this domain?
“Father…… will come back.”
“Young lord. It’s late. Rest now.”
“No. While Father’s away, I’m the master here. He didn’t raise me to flee. I stay.”
Jean Réman de Sephor was a boy, but no foolhardy noble scion. He was sharp, holding his ground among old, cunning administrators despite his pallid face.
Then, the council chamber door burst open as a servant rushed in.
—Bang!!
“What indecency! This is a war council!”
“Disaster, disaster, disaster!!”
“What is it?!”
The servant stammered, then collapsed in tears, face ashen.
“His Grace the Grand Duke…… They…… They demand entry to bring His Grace’s…… coffin…… through the gates…….”
“……What?”
“They claim…… that His Grace fell to bandit raiders…… and they seek to enter the city to mourn and hold his funeral.”
“Lies!!”
One administrative noble cried out, face drained white.
“An army of over fifteen thousand crumbled to mere bandits, and the Grand Duke fell in the process? Does that even make sense?!”
“But…… I…… *sob*. I…… saw it. With my own eyes, Your Grace.”
Before the servant finished, Jean Réman spoke urgently.
“They truly said that? That Father…… died fighting bandits?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Young lord, it’s a lie! They assassinated the Grand Duke and spun this tale!”
“How……? The Karvelier Grand Duke’s troops are garrisoned in the imperial capital, and the beastkin horde only marched from the west five days ago. Father’s forces came from the east…… How could they annihilate fifteen thousand and behead Father?!”
The boy’s voice trembled. At his words, the nobles fell silent. Exactly. Impossible. Physically impossible.
If fifteen thousand had clashed in open battle, word would have reached them. Especially since the horde arrived only five days prior.
The boy pressed on haltingly.
“If they officially claim…… Father’s death…… the death of fifteen thousand…… truly due to bandits. Then…….”
And if those bandits surrendered and scattered the moment the great chieftain advanced.
“Our house will go down in history as the first elector felled by mere bandits.”
“……Young lord…….”
“Our house…… House Sephor’s pride…… our great renown…… crumbled in bandits’ hands…… in just five days.”
With that, the boy collapsed. Overwhelmed by shock and despair, he fainted. The nobles tending him, the servant—none could say more.
They shared only that cloying despair.
At dawn the next morning, Vulran City’s gates opened.
House Sephor officially entrusted defense of the domain and all military administration to Great Chieftain Kirhas Hearttaker.
Kirhas swore on her honor and faith to protect House Sephor, and proxy Grand Duke Jean Réman de Sephor named her the house’s foremost knight.
Never before in the empire’s thousand-year history had an elector become a puppet of a foreign power.
Rumors swirled in imperial politics:
A ghostly field commander who crushed fifteen thousand with three hundred lurked among Kirhas’s subordinates.