Chapter 258
Chapter 258
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 258
"Which bastard is gossiping over there! Is training a joke to you!"
"Eek! Nothing, sir!"
At the training instructor's roar, the soldiers stopped their chatter and focused intently on their weapons.
Avilrun had been given an exile order.
It wasn't just an ordinary banishment; they were giving him the leeway to settle his household affairs and properly relocate. For a man who could easily have been beheaded for what he had done, it was an extraordinarily lenient outcome, but the intent hidden behind it was entirely different.
Staining Gauri soldiers' weapons with Avilrun's blood was a disgrace, and the mere fact that he would be buried in this land upon his death was an insult to the soldiers who guard Gauri.
Even after hearing this, his family could not stop crying until well into the night. The next day, Avilrun sought out the training instructor.
Please don't banish me....
Please, I'll accept any training, just give me one more chance....
But all he received in return was cold indifference and neglect. Even his comrades, who had comforted him up until the day before, turned their backs on him coldly once they heard the rumors.
Thus, every day during the period ordered for his exile, he would go to the training ground, only to be dragged away by the instructors, over and over.
On a day when the rain poured down like a waterfall.
Training was given a rare day of rest. Yet Avilrun remained kneeling, slumped in front of the training ground.
Woooosh.
In Avilrun's eyes as he stared at the empty training ground, there was nothing but emptiness.
Boom!
Suddenly, the sky brightened, followed by a clap of thunder that shook heaven and earth. Avilrun flinched at the same moment. The thunder he heard was the sound of the Hwandudaedo being swung by Go Jin-cheon, a sound that remained in his memory. He resented his own foolishness, but it was too late now. He knew it was too late, but he could only cling on.
His wife's voice rang in his ears: even if she had to die, she would rather die here as a human being. She was a woman he had met here. Unlike him, she came from slash-and-burn farmers and had lived here since the earliest days of Gauri.
"Well, I suppose just being allowed to live at all is something...."
Avilrun muttered hollowly.
"But...."
He wanted to know.
Why the soldiers who had waged war against Jin-cheon were now approaching this war, one that seemed hopeless, without fear....
Why his wife, who had built a life alongside Gauri, said it was better to die here as a human being....
Why the Yeolje of a nation trained until he was covered in blood and refused to bow to the Holy Empire with its colossal power....
He truly wanted to know.
A figure entirely different from the nobles he had witnessed.
A figure entirely different from the kings he had heard about.
At first, when the nation held a festival called a feast and its Yeolje strolled through the streets clinking glasses with the common folk, he had sneered, believing it was all a pretense. But now, it felt different.
"They should just kill me...."
The emptiness that welled up when he was actually told to leave now overwhelmed him.
"Finally, I can leave this country as I wished... heh heh heh."
Finding his own current actions pathetic, he burst out in eerie laughter.
"Is that him?"
"It is, Your Highness."
Avilrun, who had instinctively turned his head at the voices coming from behind, opened his eyes wide.
Women in splendid attire stood around a young lady clad in white armor, holding umbrellas over her while bowing their heads.
Panicked, Avilrun lowered his head and prostrated himself on the ground.
"Pay your respects. She is the Yeolhu."
A stern voice reached Avilrun.
"Ah, greetings, Your Highness. This humble commoner pays his respects."
What met Avilrun's flustered courtesy was a cold voice.
"There is no need for you to pay respects. As I understand it, you are not a citizen of Gauri."
Avilrun felt utterly wretched as he listened to Eulji's rebuke. Just as his vision darkened, Eulji's voice reached his ears once more.
"Leave as soon as possible. Even simply standing on this land is an insult. Let us go."
"Yes, Your Highness."
As Eulji turned to leave after those cold words, Avilrun blurted out without thinking.
"A chance...."
His voice was not loud, but Eulji's retreating footsteps came to a halt.
"Please... let me exchange my life for a chance...."
In contrast to his trembling, his voice was filled with sincerity.
Eulji, who had stopped walking, remained silent for a moment before giving an order to the escort warrior standing behind her. Then she moved on as if nothing had happened.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
He could hear someone approaching, but Avilrun could not lift his head. When the footsteps stopped beside his head, a cold voice spoke.
"Do you know the nature of what you've done?"
"......."
Avilrun could give no answer to the warrior's flat voice.
"Her Highness said that if you want a chance, you must become a slave. However, your family's status shall remain as it is. But your family must relocate to a place designated by the state and perform labor for the nation."
"A s... a slave, do you mean...."
Avilrun asked in a trembling voice in a trembling voice.
"A slave soldier, naturally."
A slave soldier.
Although rare, there were slave soldiers in Gauri.
They could regain their status as commoners by surviving wars, but until then they were treated more harshly than ordinary soldiers.
Avilrun did not think for long.
"I am grateful for your mercy."
A slave soldier.
That miserable state awaited him, but somehow his heart felt at peace. Still, his family members weren't slaves, were they? Besides, they couldn't have continued living where they were anyway, if only because of the cold stares from those around them.
The problem was....
"Gaaah!"
Crash!
Avilrun froze solid.
This was a sight he had seen once before, and it was familiar. He was now standing right at the Yeolje's training ground.
"Thish brat's the brat, ain't he?"
"Yes, he is!"
A thick, rustic dialect.
Eyes glistening as they swept over Avilrun from head to toe, Eulji Buru delivered a line that led him into the darkness.
"Better steel your guts."
"Huh?"
Even before Avilrun could wonder why Buru was talking about his guts, the next words plunged him into despair.
"Yer better off bitin' yer tongue and dyin'."
The place where Avilrun was ordered to make a new start.
That place was the training ground of the Yeolje and the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry. And naturally, what awaited him was indirect murder disguised as sparring with the reapers of hell known as the Black Armored Ghost Cavalry.
* * *
Jin-cheon's face was as impassive as ever, but the fatigue etched into it was obvious. Battling through real, war-like combat every single day only to return to the main hall and process piled-up documents—there was no way Jin-cheon wouldn't be exhausted.
"What's the status of the training?"
At Jin-cheon's question, Mong Ryu-hwa stepped slightly forward and began to speak.
"Thanks to the recent inspection, not only has the soldiers' morale risen, but rumors have spread amongst the common people as well, restoring stability. Perhaps because the mindset of the soldiers undergoing training has changed, they can now handle the higher training intensity without issue."
"Hmm."
A very faint, but bright expression flickered across Jin-cheon's face, perhaps because this was an area he had secretly been worried about as well.
"How is the production of the equipment we previously prepared coming along?"
At Jin-cheon's question, Eulji Uru stepped forward with an expression that looked as if he had been waiting.
"Elder Jang has taken the dwarves and nearly completed the manufacturing, sir. All that's left is to acquire the necessary beasts and spears and attach them, and it'll be finished."
"Hmm. Then prepare for a hunt."
"Understood, sir."
When the exchange between Jin-cheon and Uru concluded, Yeon Hwi-garam stepped forward with a slightly worried look.
"The very nature of this war is different from those we've fought until now. Therefore, supply is even more crucial. However, if we operate a supply unit, the actual number of combat troops we can field will decrease, and at the same time, our operational mobility will be halved. I believe we need a more thorough discussion on this matter."
"Indeed...."
At Hwi-garam's words, the expressions of Jin-cheon, the other generals, and the ministers noticeably darkened.
Before the Roselin restoration and unification wars, their campaigns had focused less on conquest than on seizing manpower and wealth.
To put it harshly, they were essentially a bandit gang merely wearing the mask of a nation. However, starting with the Southern Roselin reconquest and the unification war, the nature of things began to change.
The number of troops being mobilized began to increase by the tens of thousands.
Until then they had managed with minimal supplies, but a war against the Holy Empire could not be sustained that way. The problem was not the supplies themselves, but the troops that had to be diverted to move them.
During the Northern Roselin war, even a small supply unit could be maintained because both sides had roughly similar troop numbers. But the Holy Empire was different. It had troops to spare even without concentrating its forces, and could easily detach some of them simply to cut Gauri's supply lines.
"There's a limit to how much we can lug around, after all...."
Jin-cheon spoke with concern.
If they moved with the maximum amount of supplies, they could reduce worries about supply lines being cut, but conversely, Gauri's advantage of speed in troop operations would disappear. If a relatively smaller force also lost its advantage of speed, the war would become even more difficult.
"Tch, still, there's no other way, is there. We have to choose one or the other, don't we."
At Jin-cheon's anxious tone, Eulji Buru clicked his tongue. After Buru's lament, no one at the council meeting could open their mouths. There was no clear solution.
"Everyone knows that this is a precaution since we don't yet know what form the Holy Empire's provocation will take, and that geographically, we must inevitably pass through the surrounding kingdoms. Consequently, in terms of unit composition, our supply must be planned with long-distance movement in mind."
Hwi-garam explained the aspects the generals had to consider in the current situation. To be precise, it was something everyone already knew, but it was a way of summarizing it, so to speak.
"If war breaks out, what are the expected troop numbers of the Holy Empire?"
When Gye Ung-sam asked carefully in a cautious voice, Gowin, who was well-versed in the continent's political situation, rubbed his chin. He too had been finding it hard to speak rashly.
"To be honest, it is difficult to predict. The last war the Holy Empire directly participated in was the conquest of the Duchy of Dalua to the north of the continent about a hundred years ago, and at that time, they mobilized fifty thousand troops. Of course, the Duchy of Dalua itself was a nation formed by gathering territories that Maritime Empire nobles held on the continent, so its foundation was weak... But in the imperial power struggles that have occurred every one or two decades since then, the numbers raised have consistently reached three or four hundred thousand."
"Hmm."
At Gowin's words, the Gauri generals cocked their heads. Regardless of their reaction, Gowin continued his explanation.
"During the recent annexation of Northern Roselin, we estimate they mobilized between one hundred and one hundred fifty thousand troops. It was excessive for simply occupying the northern region, but it's more accurate to see it as a battle to accumulate experience ahead of other wars. In any case, based on these precedents, I believe they will mobilize around three hundred thousand. And as was already mentioned during Duke Schung's visit, the first target is also likely to be Roselin. To be honest, even two or three hundred thousand is an excessive prediction, but considering the combined forces of Roselin and allies such as Haian, I judge that number appropriate."