Chapter 246
Chapter 246
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 246
Chapter 79 — The Empire's Scheme
The spark began in the northern reaches of what remained of North Roselin. In that small patch of land, no fewer than five men rose up, each seeking to become king.
One claimed to be protecting King Cadel, who had long since rotted in his grave. Another claimed to have the First Prince...
And still another rose purely to sate his own ambition. The five petty realms swelled to seven, and the wars of conquest began.
The clashes between such feeble states should have been beneath notice, yet they were anything but. Each sent tribute and envoys to the Holy Empire, clinging to it desperately.
They protested their undying loyalty.
Emperor Shau Hwan Millior granted them his answer.
The answer was “continental stability”...
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The thunder of massive shields pounding the earth shook the ground.
"Th-the Holy Empire!"
The vast Imperial army, a black tide that swallowed the plain, was an overwhelming force against which a paltry state controlling barely one-seventh of the Northern Region could pose no obstacle at all.
"In the name of the Lord God!"
"Waaagh!"
"Leave not a single ant alive!"
Two hundred thousand elite soldiers.
Against a petty realm whose military numbered barely ten thousand, the figure was so excessive it bordered on madness.
The Holy Empire's forces attacked, all but encircling the foe completely, and beneath their spears and blades the force of ten thousand could mount no meaningful resistance and was annihilated.
Annihilation was too mild a word.
Obliteration.
As if ten thousand lives' worth of blood were not enough, they scoured every corner of the petty state and cut down anything that moved.
If it was human, they cut it down and left it in the fields. If it was a beast, they shoved it into their bellies.
Plunder?
To the finder went the spoils.
When you killed the masters of a house and carried off their goods, the plunder itself counted as the soldiers' military merit.
To fill the stomachs of two hundred thousand troops, one petty realm was far too small.
A petty state with an estimated population of some fifty thousand—save for a lucky few who escaped—was erased completely from the face of the world.
This war that was no war ended with the obliteration of a second chosen petty realm.
For the five remaining petty states vied with one another to be the first to offer up their kingdoms to the Holy Emperor.
Outrage at Emperor Millior's madness—the madness that had ignited this atrocity—rang out from every empire. But the Holy Empire merely repeated that it was unavoidable collateral damage.
The two hundred thousand soldiers who had already tasted blood began to scan their surroundings with glittering eyes, hungry for fresh spoils. This was the Holy Empire's method of conditioning its soldiers.
'Better one real kill than a hundred drills.'
So ran the edict Emperor Millior had issued to every front-line unit.
It was officially a top-secret edict, but in practice it hardly remained secret. The peoples of the five northern nations that had surrendered and offered up their states were branded with fabricated crimes and turned into instruments for the efficient training of the soldiery.
"Truly, how efficient this training is. Is it not, Schung?"
"It is, Your Majesty."
Schung echoed Emperor Millior's words.
"Kill them, and they will spawn more brats. Kill them again, and they will spawn more brats... Hmm. Train the soldiers this way, and they will display tremendous might in the war that comes before long."
To Emperor Millior, the lives of the occupied populations had already ceased to be human lives.
"Wait. If casualties outpace population growth, that will become troublesome. I shall order the soldiers to increase the population of the occupied territories."
It was a conclusion reached after some deliberation. Ordering the soldiers to increase the population meant authorizing indiscriminate rape. It was madness.
"Schung, do I seem mad to you?"
"Your Majesty, how can you say such a thing..."
"Were I in my right mind, I could not do this."
Emperor Millior, red wine lingering in his mouth, looked at Duke Schung.
"Your Majesty."
"But what can be done? This is the shortest path. In any case, when the war to come begins, I mean to hurl those blood-drunk wretches straight into the vanguard. I must keep them steeped in blood until then... Through their sacrifice the continent will be unified. Heh-heh."
Gazing upon the Emperor's ice-cold yet searing madness, Duke Schung sensed that the continental war was drawing near. By then, perhaps every human in the occupied territories would have been erased. Or perhaps the Emperor would simply act on another whim.
This course of action had begun in earnest the moment Gauri expelled the Holy Empire's envoys.
What remained incomprehensible was this: those northern petty states had already been seeking shelter under the Holy Empire's shadow even without such drastic measures.
If the goal was to secure the rear, then assailing the Kingdom of Roselin would have been the obvious move. Yet after fully annexing the north, there had been no further military movement. Only slaughter continued in secret.
* * *
The first to react to the Holy Empire's rapid moves was the Federal Empire.
"This is not normal."
"Mm."
Emperor Amelie de Can Vish listened to the intelligence chief's report, lost in thought. The matter was weighty enough that even the Federal Council members had convened together.
"This behavior simply does not add up. In terms of timing, the moment their envoys were expelled from Gauri is clear, yet their actions have taken an entirely different direction. If this were fury directed at Gauri, the logical move would have been to strike the Kingdom of Haian, which would open a path to advance on either Roselin—which threatens their rear—or Gauri itself. The fact that they have instead struck the northern petty realms, which had been begging to be taken under their wing, may well mean that we too are no longer safe."
"Are you suggesting they may have struck a secret pact with Gauri?"
One of the Federal Councilors posed a skeptical question.
"That has not been definitely confirmed. However, there is a point we must watch carefully. Though it is true that their envoys were expelled from Gauri, the expulsion was not so much a unilateral move by Gauri as something the Holy Empire brought upon itself."
The councilors had already been briefed on that affair, so they easily nodded along with the intelligence chief's explanation.
"Would the Holy Empire, in a place that is effectively enemy territory—not even a vassal state—deliberately court such humiliation? What our intelligence branch has concluded is that this may have been staged, deliberately shown to the other kingdoms and to our spies."
"Mm."
As the mood in the Federal Assembly chamber grew increasingly grave, low troubled murmurs rippled from every quarter.
"To summarize: before the watching eyes of envoys from every nation, the Holy Empire pretends to suffer humiliation in Gauri, and then gives vent to its resulting fury. The target, however, is the northern region of former North Roselin—completely irrelevant to the continent's political landscape. When you follow that logic, the answer presents itself. All of this has been a feint."
The councilors put their heads together and talked among themselves. Their expressions grew grimmer by the moment. The intelligence chief, taking note of their reaction, glanced briefly at Emperor Bishu before continuing.
"The question then becomes: what is the feint meant to conceal? The answer is that there is another prize, one so compelling that it was worth swallowing such a humiliation to pursue it."
"As I thought..."
"That prize is none other than our Federal Empire."
"Hah."
In the past, when the Holy Empire had launched provocations against the continent, it had always begun with the Federal Empire. The Maritime Empire had come next. For the Federal Empire, which had weathered so many provocations, the Holy Empire's current moves left it no choice but to brace itself.
"One more item. We have received intelligence that lends support to this conviction. It concerns the movement of troops."
"Troop movements!"
That was the decisive piece.
The intelligence chief continued his explanation with pronounced confidence.
"The movement was so covert we could not detect it directly, but according to an agent, the agent had learned it entirely by chance."
"Where are they moving?"
"The location is the central and northern coasts."
At his words, a stir ran through the councilors. The pattern matched the Holy Empire's previous surprise offensives. What silenced the clamor of the Federal Assembly, a din of raised voices, was the crack of Emperor Bishu's wooden gavel.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"In the name of the Emperor of the Federal Empire, I move that this matter be met with an emergency mobilization of forces. Are there any objections?"
"Hmm."
After several rounds of argument, the councilors—lacking any better alternative—put the matter to a vote without another proposal on the table. And in the end, as Emperor Bishu had intended, the forces scattered across the various member states were consolidated under a single command.
'At the very least, we must build a force that can respond swiftly to the Holy Empire's provocations.'
In truth, this was perhaps as much a pretext as it was a justification.
Strengthening the ordinarily weak position of the Federal Emperor was something that absolutely had to be done.
From a certain angle, the Holy Empire's military action had, in effect, handed Emperor Bishu of the Federal Empire a convincing cause.