Chapter 165
Chapter 165
Iron Emperor — Chapter 165
Rippling muscles!
Overflowing energy!
Soldiers driving monsters forward and lashing them were ceaselessly busy. All of them were rare(?) monsters like Twinhead Ogres bound from head to toe. Naturally, the beaten monsters screamed even louder cries.
"Heh heh heh. Kitty, herd those ones over there!"
"Mraow!"
Samdopyo's pet(?), the saber-tooth tiger, was also frantically running around everywhere, snarling with purpose.
Naturally, monsters lower on the food chain rampaged to survive, and the dwarf hunters who happened(?) to be at the center were slaughtered almost to the last—barely one in ten managed to flee.
"Nearly all are dead, and a few escaped."
"Is that so? Heh heh heh. Finish off any survivors, and begin making preparations to withdraw. And there may still be other hunters around, so the search teams are to remain on high alert."
Dupyo stroked Kitty's mane while issuing orders to his deputy, then slowly walked away. Behind him, the soldiers' voices rang out.
"Understood, General."
"Kitty, let's be off."
"Mraowrr."
Dupyo headed back humming to himself as if he were out on a stroll.
Just as Go Jin-cheon had anticipated, dwarf hunters appeared, following the traces of the dwarves. Of course, it had been foreseen, so using Yeon Hwi-garam's stratagem, they had scattered the dwarves' household items and strewn about animal carcasses, torn to shreds.
On top of that, they had suitably damaged orc bones beyond recognition and merely left them as traces.
It wasn't that the ruse would hold up under close scrutiny, but they had never so much as placed orc skulls there, nor was there any need to commit the folly of giving anyone the time to examine them.
Since the hunters would inevitably follow the dwarves' trail, lying in wait along the routes and herding monsters was a familiar task for the Gauri army. Goblins were not a significant problem—they could simply coerce(?) the Hobgoblin into moving.
Once such incidents repeated, rumors spread among the hunters, and it naturally came to be believed that the dwarves had been annihilated. Moreover, fear of the Reganza Mountains' monsters grew even greater, leaving them unavoidably free from prying eyes.
Through this, Gauri became liberated from outside pressures, and they entered a period of comfortable peace, embarking on the path of full-scale development.
* * *
The sight of Gauri children running through the alleys and playing came naturally. They kicked around a ball made from an orc's bladder—something children yearned for—covered with leather, procured from who-knew-where.
At that moment, a fairly older child ran over and shouted.
"Hakashu! Haelan! Harailla! Your mom says to come eat!"
"Okay! Brother Hasen, just a minute!"
It was the hour when the sun was setting, and an older brother had come out to call them to supper. But Yeon Hwi-garam, who happened to be passing by and overheard the children's names, could not help but stop walking.
"What sort of names...?"
The children's appearance clearly marked them as locals. The mingled figures of a red-haired child, a brown-haired child, and others plainly showed that.
Yet the names somehow felt unnatural.
Hwi-garam quietly followed the children.
A house two or three times larger than other commoners' dwellings came into view. The children ran inside, where more than twenty of them in the yard were setting out tables and preparing supper.
'What is this place?'
From the fact that the children's hair colors were all different, it was easy to tell they had not come from the same womb. And from inside the house, a distinctly familiar voice rang loudly.
"You rascal, Hamyullen! I told you not to put your little brother on the dinner table!"
"Wahhh! Brother Howl hit me."
Amid the din, the voice was unmistakably Hailon's.
Though his rank was not high, it was impossible not to know him—the soldier originally from the slash-and-burn farmers who had been promoted more than any other. And when they had faced down a dragon, he had been the only one to step forward even with tears and snot streaming down his face. He truly knew how to fight, and Gauri's commanders regarded him as one of the promising officers.
As if he had found something interesting, Hwi-garam walked into the house.
"Daddy, some man's here!"
The moment he stepped through the gate, a little one playing in the dirt called out for Hailon.
At the child's voice, Hailon—who had been putting down one of his children from rolling around on the table—saw Hwi-garam, was deeply startled, came running out, and rendered a military salute.
"Salute! Balwisaja Hailon reports to Taedaehyeong Yeon!"
Once Hailon gave his salute, even the rambunctious children seemed to sense something: they stared with bright, alert eyes, then in alarm all threw themselves to the ground.
Thanks to Hwi-garam's silver-white hair, even the children could recognize who he was to some extent.
The smallest ones who did not know simply copied their older brothers and sisters when they saw them prostrate themselves on the ground.
Finally, even Hailon's wife, who had been preparing the meal, came running and fell to her knees beside her husband. Hwi-garam smiled awkwardly and gave the order.
"All of you, rise."
"Aye! We shall obey."
Hailon, having spent long years in military service, had discipline ingrained in his every movement.
He yielded the seat of honor to Hwi-garam and stood respectfully. The children watched, gauging the situation.
"Mommy, who's that pretty man?"
Still, a child is a child. A girl of about three or four, too young to read the mood, tugged at her mother's skirt and asked.
At the sight, Hwi-garam smiled and approached her, lifting her into his arms.
"I'm a general who guards the nation alongside your father."
"Wow!"
The little girl beamed broadly at Hwi-garam's smile and touched his hair with fascination.
Hailon's wife was flustered and at a loss, but Hailon, knowing Hwi-garam's character well, signaled her with his eyes to stay calm.
Hwi-garam, holding the girl who was toying with his hair, quietly asked.
"Do not be troubled by this. I was hoping I might share a meal here this evening..."
"No, General! How could you eat alongside people like us? I shall prepare a separate meal."
When Hailon sprang up, waving his hands in protest, Hwi-garam smiled and shook his head.
"No. That would only make me feel sorry. I am nothing but an uninvited guest today, so pay it no mind."
Once Hwi-garam spoke to that extent, Hailon gave an awkward laugh and told his wife to bring food to Hwi-garam as well.
A short while later, the meal began. The children, their tension somewhat eased by Hwi-garam's smile, started eating comfortably with a clatter. Hailon, who had hushed them several times, now only glanced at Hwi-garam and smiled sheepishly.
When the meal was over, Hailon took the girl, who had finished eating, from Hwi-garam's arms and said,
"Hasera, go play with your brothers over there."
"Ehh, but I don't wanna."
She whined a little, but the girl toddled off toward the other children as Hailon had told her.
"By the way, the children's names are rather unusual."
When Hwi-garam spoke as if in passing, Hailon's body visibly stiffened. Hwi-garam also noticed that Hailon's wife, just like Hailon, did not know what to do.
A moment later, Hailon knelt and cried out.
"General, I have committed a sin worthy of death."
"What is this? Get up. The children are watching."
Even though Hwi-garam gestured toward the children as he said it, Hailon only remained prostrate like a criminal.
"It is all right. Stand up and tell me what this is about."
"Yes. The truth is, I..."
The problem had started once Hailon's children exceeded twenty.
Commoners had no family names. Naturally, children had given names but never conceived of a surname. Yet there were limits to how lower-class folk named their children. Their children's names increasingly overlapped with those of other families.
Had there been only one or two it would have been no problem, but were Hailon's children merely one or two?
What came to mind then was the format of names and surnames used by generals like Gye Ung-sam. Gauri Black Armored Ghost Cavalry members who had married local women here also gave their own surnames to their children when they were born.
Not all did, but once the majority began doing so, Hailon took inspiration from it.
It was not that the continent lacked surnames, but those somehow felt burdensome and stood out, so he had created a Gauri-style surname.
Thus, since his own name was Hailon, he had made the surname "Ha" and attached it to all his children. At the same time, because such a thing was utterly unthinkable for commoners, they always attached the surname Ha and used what nobles commonly call a full name.
Of course, mixed into this was his own desire to resemble the strong Gauri people whom he admired.
Having explained this far, Hailon simply awaited punishment. For a commoner to presume to use a surname was a serious crime.
"An excellent notion."
"Sob... that is correct! This lowly one's sin— Pardon?"
Hailon, who had been speaking while bracing for a thunderous reprimand, snapped his head up like lightning. Before his eyes, Hwi-garam was smiling with a look that said, is this what you were making such a fuss about?
"I merely inquired because the name format seemed a little unfamiliar. Worry not. And teach the other commoners as well. I shall obtain permission from His Majesty the Yeolje, so do not fret."
"Then—!"
As Hailon's eyes sparkled as if he had received a revelation, Hwi-garam burst into a hearty laugh and said loudly enough for the children to hear.
"Besides, are you not a general of Gauri! Should the vanguard commander of the Great Gauri, who has rendered great feats many times over, go about kneeling anywhere like this! Now, rise at once."
"Th-thank you!"
"Speak freely from now on. And tonight's supper was truly excellent, Madam Hailon."
Hwi-garam left through the gate with a broad laugh. Only then did Hailon burst into tears as if overcome with emotion.
The difference between having a surname and not having one was enormous to commoners.
And with this event as the catalyst, even ordinary people began attaching family names. This gave the commoners another source of pride.
No commoner anywhere on the continent used a surname. Because of this, a sense of superiority grew, as if they themselves had become nobles, and naturally, confidence arose in everything they did.
Moreover, small as it was, it became a reason to feel they owed a great debt to the state.
What was distinctive, however, was that in creating surnames, they did not follow the continental method but began to follow the Gauri style.
For these people, the Gauri leadership had become figures of respect whom they wished to emulate.
In later times, Hailon's Ha clan came to be passed down as the Reganza Ha clan, a surname of a prestigious Gauri family.
Water flows from above to below.
The image of a respected leadership inevitably becomes the object of commoners' admiration, and that becomes the driving force of national development.
What the people of Gauri showed was not merely a formidable refusal to retreat from war. One of the things they had keenly felt before crossing over into this other world was the life of the lower classes. Of course, even in any prosperous nation, beggars and the lower class exist.
Such a stratum had not yet formed in Gauri, but Go Jin-cheon and the rest of Gauri's leadership had been those who had observed the lower class more closely than anyone.
Gauri itself had originally grown into an empire by absorbing foreign peoples, so its policies for assimilating foreign peoples contained many systematic and efficient elements. If there was one distinguishing factor, it was that they had applied those areas by directly following precedent.
Because they were people who had raged most fiercely against a corrupt high class, the people's lives gradually grew more prosperous even amid hardship.
The vast basin surrounding the Central Lake of Reganza boasted soil so fertile that it was no wonder ancient peoples had once made their livelihoods there. This directly led to advances in agriculture, and based on the abundant food supply, the growing population enabled commerce to develop, achieving complete self-sufficiency.
One of the reasons commerce developed lay in the planned construction of cities.
If one examined the cities of former Gauri, every single one had well-paved roads. They built cities in regular blocks and developed road networks. This had been to increase the movement speed of armies and military supplies in former Gauri's expansion policy.
Naturally, rapid movement of logistics also became possible. That policy also became the foundation for Gauri's construction in the Reganza Central Mountains.
Another reason commerce developed was the increase in wagons.
The people of Gauri used wagons so closely in their daily lives that they virtually worshiped the wagon wheel. The developed roads led to a rise in means of mass transit, and wagons became part of everyday life for the commoners as well.
These were things they could not even dream of while living as slash-and-burn farmers, or when they lived in other nations before that.
The cities of Gauri encircled the central lake. The place where they first settled naturally became the capital, where the Yeolje Palace stands, and it took its name directly from Gauri's first capital: Jolbon Fortress.
Centered on the capital, Jolbon Fortress, they adopted the organic fortress form of former Gauri, with smaller fortresses wrapping around it.
It was a structure designed so that, should an enemy invade, ignoring any one of them to pass by would guarantee a blow to the back of the head.
Conversely, they established a systematic defensive posture allowing the main fortress to support the smaller fortresses at any time. This was part of keeping their defenses steadfast, as the nation was in its early stages.
Furthermore, they drove monsters into the more outlying areas and built mountain fortresses at strategic points in the surrounding mountain ranges. Naturally, the heightened density of monsters became a natural defensive barrier, and any enemy army charging into this place would have to factor in a war not only against the Gauri army but also against the monsters.