Chapter 254
Chapter 254
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 254
"We should have pushed harder...."
He trailed off, making a remark that seemed to obliquely criticize Duke Schung's actions. Only then did Duke Schung find his voice.
"Your point is not entirely wrong."
"Then why did you act as you did?"
"Do you not know what His Majesty the Emperor is thinking?"
"......."
As Duke Schung let a smile touch his lips, Viscount Skara tilted his head. Then his face gradually hardened.
"Not only did they defend against North Roselin's seventy thousand troops, they recovered Roselin and even captured the North Roselin capital. But the reason they did not fully occupy North Roselin — surely that was because they lacked the strength, was it not?"
"That is so."
Viscount Skara nodded, and Duke Schung continued.
"Be that as it may, set Roselin aside — they have drawn Haian and even Malin into the fold. In that situation, if we strike directly now, they will all come at us together, united. How troublesome would that be? Would it not be better to simply extend a hand, just a little? If they lack strength in the end, treaties between nations become nothing more than scraps of paper."
"Mm."
A groan escaped Viscount Skara's lips.
"Now we have at least laid out a pretext on the surface. All we need do is let word of our movements slip at the appropriate time."
At Duke Schung's words, Viscount Skara's eyes flew wide open.
"What do you mean? After we have moved in absolute secrecy until now?"
Viscount Skara's voice rose a little at Duke Schung's incomprehensible remark. Duke Schung shot him a reproving look.
"Judging by Gauri's conduct thus far, saying they will consider it is effectively a refusal. The reason our envoy group came here in the first place was to prevent them from uniting. It was to ease, even indirectly, the hostility created by the Roselin War and prevent Gauri from forming an alliance with another empire."
"In that case...."
Viscount Skara's face brightened. Duke Schung smiled, satisfied with the change, and concluded.
"If we quietly leak our movements to the other empires, they may conclude that our Holy Empire and the four-nation alliance centered on Gauri have struck a secret pact. Then we need not worry about Gauri allying with the other empires, and in the end they will have to accept my proposal to avoid war with us."
"R-remarkable."
For the first time, Viscount Skara addressed Duke Schung with genuine admiration. It was sincere, not the formal deference he had shown before.
"In the end, what I can do is use my head like this and weave schemes. Is this not all a trifling thing made possible only because we trust in the might of our Holy Empire?"
"Not at all. It is truly remarkable."
Warrior though he was, Viscount Skara was not so dull as to miss the significance of what Duke Schung had accomplished. Whether or not the proposals were accepted, the Holy Empire could now advance at its leisure.
For whatever form the Holy Empire's actions might take, could the other empires possibly afford to ignore the nations gathered around Gauri?
Averting his gaze from Viscount Skara's admiring eyes, Duke Schung looked back at the receding capital of Gauri.
'But... if from the very beginning they never had us or the other empires in mind — then what will come to pass....'
Duke Schung had no doubt about what the Holy Empire would do to Gauri, but the man called Jin-cheon troubled his thoughts for some reason.
That man who had exuded the presence of a sovereign....
* * *
Yunias's face was darker than it had ever been. It was the expression she had worn, perhaps, when her kingdom had briefly faced ruin.
"Sister."
"What are we to do...."
Eulji called to her, but the reply was pure emptiness. An emptiness with no answer.
Gauri had already taken up the sword for Roselin time and again. And later, not only had they recovered her kingdom, they had even achieved — if not completely — the long-cherished goal of reclaiming North Roselin.
All of it had been made possible by Gauri's power.
The sky reflected in Yunias's eyes suddenly blurred and distorted. It must have been because of the droplets gathering in her large eyes. Another war had blown into Roselin....
With the damage from the last war still unrecovered, the winds of war were blowing in once more. On top of that, the Holy Empire had made a practical proposal, and Jin-cheon was preparing to tacitly refuse it.
"That is the misery of having no power."
"Your Majesty."
At the sound of Jin-cheon's composed voice, Yunias hastily wiped her tears and turned around. She did not know when he had entered, but Jin-cheon was walking toward her with his hands clasped behind his back.
"Power is something others recognize only after you prove it."
"But...."
Jin-cheon had just said he meant to go to war to prove that power. But Yunias, as a princess of a nation, had long since grasped Gauri's strengths and weaknesses.
A staggering imbalance.
That was the most accurate way to describe Gauri.
Sixty thousand unbeaten elite soldiers, already proven through the wars they had fought. The mobilization capacity to field up to one hundred fifty thousand troops in an emergency. Gauri, possessing the continent's mightiest warriors....
In Roselin's case, the forces they could draw upon under the current system amounted to only about fifty thousand, including their elite troops. And for the Kingdom of Haian, the elite force recently organized numbered thirty thousand. Of course, if they scraped together every available man, Haian could certainly produce a hundred thousand, and the Kingdom of Malin could manage a hundred fifty thousand, including its elites.
But there was one decisive difference.
Gauri's entire population did not even reach a million. In short, one could say that nearly every adult male had taken up a weapon. Defeat, therefore, led directly to annihilation. Their situation was utterly unlike that of any other nation.
Knowing this, Yunias was all the more anxious. Moreover, their opponent was the Holy Empire. The Holy Empire was a great power boasting four hundred thousand elite soldiers alone, and in an emergency, it could mobilize forces beyond imagination.
"What will you do?"
Jin-cheon was in a position where abandoning Roselin would not matter in the slightest. Knowing that, Yunias could only ask in a voice tinged with tears. It was the place where she had been born and raised, where her younger brother was — but she could not bring herself to beg him to protect it. And yet, he was trying to protect it.
"If only we had more time...."
For the first time, regret colored his words.
Looking into Yunias's wavering eyes, Jin-cheon drew a quiet smile. On occasion, this smile of Jin-cheon's was happiness and solace to Eulji and Yunias.
The problem was that the present situation was utterly unsuited to smiles.
"A war we cannot avoid. A war we cannot lose. A war we must fight."
"Your Majesty...."
At Jin-cheon's words, Yunias called out to him, her voice catching. But neither her unease nor her sorrowful tone had any effect on Jin-cheon.
"Then we must win."
Quietly, Jin-cheon repeated words that might have been meant for Yunias or for himself.
"We must win, without fail."
Behind his back, where neither woman could see, Jin-cheon's clasped fists were tightening with strength.
* * *
Samdopyo was stalking among the soldiers sprawled across the ground, his eyes blazing with ferocity.
"Nngh, can you not get up at once!"
"Gurgh!"
A foul stench hung over every corner of the training grounds where the soldiers drilled. It came from the vomit they had spewed during their exercises.
"Any man whose ass is still stuck to the ground — I count him dead!"
A merciless roar burst out again. At the same instant, the leather clubs in the hands of Dupyo and the drill instructors came crashing down on the soldiers' bodies.
Thwack!
"Urgh!"
"Fuck's sake! What kind of corpse screams?!"
Crack! Thud!
"Aagh!"
"Shut your damned mouth and just take it till you die!"
The swinging clubs held neither mercy nor pity.
The training up to now had clearly been brutal, but its intensity had been cranked up even higher — to the point where the soldiers could barely keep up. Yet Dupyo's eyes plainly said that even this was not enough.
"Nngh, I said get up!"
Dupyo's shout rang out again.
From the eyes of the soldiers struggling to their feet under the beatings came a venomous resentment. Dupyo could tell that the resentment, the killing intent, the venom — all of it was aimed at him.
"Heh-heh-heh. Good. That's it...."
Dupyo chuckled as if savoring their glares. And then he swung his club again. Because he knew all too well that he had to become a demon for even one more of them to survive....
* * *
War had not been declared, but the drastically intensified training was sowing unease little by little among the soldiers. Given Gauri's reality — where roughly one in every two or three households had a soldier — that unease could not help but spread quickly.
The heavy atmosphere that had settled over Gauri was unmistakably different from before.
"As I thought...."
Dae Mu-deok's face darkened as he reviewed the reports arriving from across the land. The correspondence all carried word of this growing weight in the air.
Ever since Gauri had been established here, war had been continuous, and they had swept from victory to victory with virtually no losses.
Never before, no matter the war, had the mood grown this heavy.
"Is the name 'Holy Empire' truly so enormous...?"
Mu-deok's quiet, lonely monologue echoed softly.
The opponent had not yet been decided, but in the marketplaces a rumor was already spreading, bit by bit, that there would be war with the Holy Empire.
The reason the opposing nation was already named, based on mere rumor, was simple.
The Kingdom of Roselin, the cause of so many long wars, could hardly be the enemy now. In the Kingdom of Haian, where merchants came and went freely, Gauri's standing rivaled that of Roselin. And had not the Kingdom of Malin likewise become a firm ally only a short time ago?
Beyond such simple reasoning, when people considered the relationship between North Roselin and the Holy Empire, or the earlier incident in which Priest Palo had been driven out, the common people's judgment was bound to be startlingly accurate.
Such talk had begun to spread primarily through those who had lived in North Roselin or who had migrated from South Roselin.
Who knew the Holy Empire's influence better than they?
"Huu."
Putting down the letters, Mu-deok slowly walked outside, feeling nothing but a tightness in his chest. If such a mood took hold even before the war began, it was as good as losing from the start. Unease was already this bad before anything had been announced — what would happen if it became reality?
"We must devise a plan, and quickly."
As if he could not bear even thinking about it, Mu-deok shook his head from side to side and trudged on with leaden steps.
"What thoughts are weighing on you so heavily?"
"Hm?"
At the lovely voice that reached him without warning, Mu-deok turned his head absently — then gave a start of feigned surprise and bent his waist.
"Oh my, I greet the Yeolhu."
"Tch."
Unlike a moment ago, Mu-deok was wearing a gentle smile, and at the sight of it Eulji pouted her lips.
"But why is the Yeolhu so out of sorts?"
"Do you always see me as a child?"
"Oh my, how could you say such a thing? Heh-heh-heh."
At Mu-deok's hearty laugh, a smile spread across the pouting lips Eulji had stuck out.
The two of them laughing together might well have been taken for an affectionate grandfather and granddaughter.
In truth, had she not spent more time with Mu-deok than with Jin-cheon, who was always away at war?
Mu-deok, for his part, could not help but show affection toward Eulji — because the last order he had ever received from the previous Yeolje had been to escape with her, and because she was his sole remaining comfort.
"His Majesty is in the middle of training, so I was just on my way to bring him a change of clothes in advance."