Leashed Dogs Bark the Loudest
At that moment, Edwin lounged on the throne in a languid sprawl, watching the inevitable dogfight unfold once again.
The topic of today’s brawl was the renegotiation of Bellot’s reparations.
The moment the decision jointly reached by the Emperor and the Crown Princess was announced, the nobles had immediately begun squabbling among themselves over what was right and what was wrong.
The opening salvo came from Count Harkan, a relative of Duke Camelot.
“Reducing the reparations by half over a mere bit of humiliation? Bellot was the vanguard of the kingdom alliance. How many imperial soldiers died on the blades of the Bellot army!”
Count Harkan had spent the war cowering in his western territory, offering every excuse imaginable, only dispatching troops after the imperial forces had already seized the advantage.
Yet here he was, orating with the fervor of a righteous knight who had spent his youth on the battlefield. Marquis Ismail of the East responded with open disbelief.
“Who said we support this because we like Bellot? They say hundreds are already dying of starvation in the capital alone. Rummage through the palace warehouses and you’ll find a mere handful of wheat sacks. When there’s nothing left, what clever method do you propose for extracting something that doesn’t exist?”
“Even those few sacks must be claimed. It is the victor’s rightful compensation.”
Count Harkan refused to yield, and the clash between the two nobles steadily grew more heated.
“Rightful compensation—fine. But tell me, how are soldiers who cannot even obtain a single piece of black bread supposed to hold back a Monster Wave? If Bellot fails to stop the wave, the entire burden falls on the Empire. Winter is only a few months away!”
In the end, it was Marquis Ismail who seized the logical high ground.
“That is…”
The moment the Monster Wave was mentioned, Count Harkan’s mouth snapped shut.
For more than a century, every winter without fail, monsters would periodically lose their minds, abandon their habitats, and swarm into human settlements.
During this period known as the Monster Wave, the creatures became terrifyingly stronger.
Even monsters famed for their lack of intelligence and solitary nature would form groups in winter, making them far more difficult to exterminate.
Mages and monster scholars had investigated the cause for years, yet no one had ever uncovered a clear reason. All they could do was prepare temporary defenses and try to endure.
This wretched, recurring Monster Wave was the greatest headache shared by every nation on the continent.
The Empire was comparatively fortunate. It possessed few rugged mountains capable of serving as monster habitats, and regular subjugation campaigns had greatly reduced their numbers.
The true problem lay with countries like Bellot, which bordered the Tudik Mountains—the largest and most dangerous monster habitat of all.
High-ranking monsters had thrived in the Tudik Mountains long before the waves began. In the end, the nations near those mountains exhausted their strength against the waves and fell one after another.
Bellot was now the only kingdom still clinging to its name, a testament to how exceptionally powerful the monsters of the Tudik Mountains truly were.
Even after absorbing refugees from fallen countries and building up its defenses, Bellot still lost thousands of its people to the Monster Wave each year.
Because Bellot served as a breakwater, the nobles were sharply divided into two factions according to their own interests regarding the outcome of the negotiations.
Eastern nobles, whose lands would suffer the most if Bellot collapsed, argued passionately for renegotiation, veins bulging in their necks.
Western nobles, safely removed from the Monster Wave’s reach and especially those in the far west, opposed it under the banner of imperial dignity.
The eastern faction’s momentum was fierce, but the western nobles—hiding dark ambitions behind lofty principles—were no less formidable.
With fewer eastern nobles seated in the central power structure, they were outnumbered, yet neither side would yield. The atmosphere in the assembly hall grew only more volatile.
Both factions shouted their own claims at full volume until their words dissolved into an incomprehensible roar of noise.
“Enough.”
Unable to tolerate it any longer, Edwin intervened.
The grand hall fell silent in an instant, as though their frenzied shouting had all been part of some rehearsed performance.
They say leashed dogs bark the loudest.
Edwin narrowed his eyes and let out a soft sigh.
In any case, the side he would support had been decided from the very start of the meeting.
He turned a frigid gaze toward the cluster of western nobles.
“If this negotiation collapses, I will conscript western soldiers and station them along the eastern border. Should the western forces prove insufficient, the South and North will be expected to contribute as well.”
Even outside of winter, the areas near the Tudik Mountains were plagued by monsters driven from their territories by stronger beasts. With Bellot in ruins from defeat and drought, creatures were already slipping through its borders and entering imperial lands even now in summer.
And their numbers were steadily increasing.
Once full-scale winter arrived and the Monster Wave began in earnest, the situation would only worsen.
A single frenzied high-ranking monster required twenty seasoned knights to subdue.
Even for the wealthy West, the loss of twenty knights would be a serious blow.
“If you agree to provide military support, I may be willing to reconsider the negotiation terms.”
The western nobles, who had been loudly opining while safely watching from the sidelines, suddenly found their mouths clamped shut.
Though they had not known the returned Emperor long, they were quickly learning that Edwin never spoke empty words.
If they continued to oppose him, he might truly tear up the nearly ratified agreement and dispatch their troops to the dangerous eastern front.
The potential losses far outweighed any benefit.
The southern and northern nobles, who had been subtly backing the West, promptly withdrew as if they had never spoken at all.
“Then I will take it that this agenda has been unanimously approved.”
Before any further complaints could surface, Edwin shot a sharp warning glare at Count Harkan—the most vocal opponent of renegotiation—and brought the matter to a close.
Standing in for the absent Duke Camelot as the linchpin of the western faction, Count Harkan was momentarily silenced beneath the weight of Edwin’s aura.
Realizing that prolonging the discussion now would gain them nothing, the western nobles hastily moved on to the next topic.
“I understand the Bellot special envoy’s visit has been delayed.”
“They say the Crown Princess’s annulment proceedings are taking longer than expected.”
“We must conclude the national marriage before winter freezes the roads.”
“To do that, shouldn’t we first decide on the consort?”
“Exactly. No matter how splendidly the wedding hall is prepared, there must be a groom before a wedding can take place.”
This time the subject was the national marriage between Bellot and the Empire.
Though the topic had shifted abruptly, the smooth exchange of lines made it obvious they had coordinated beforehand.
This will drag on as well.
Edwin glanced out the window and tapped his fingers in irritation.
Bellot’s lands were barren and possessed few valuable natural resources, yet the monster byproducts harvested there were genuinely useful.
In the Empire, where monster numbers were lower than elsewhere, high-quality byproducts commanded slightly higher prices.
Even though Bellot’s current condition was poor, quite a few nobles wanted to secure a foothold now in preparation for future improvement.
With the reduced reparations meaning fewer monster byproducts flowing into the Empire, their greed must have grown even sharper.
Each faction hoped the candidate they supported would become Bellot’s royal consort.
They pretended to fret over the delayed national marriage while praising their own candidates and tearing down the others.
It seemed the meeting itself would drag on longer than the marriage negotiations.
Are they all running a side business as matchmakers?
They were so fervent one might think they cared more about this than their own children’s marriages.
The western nobles behaved as if Bellot’s reparations were gold bars of equal weight rather than monster materials.
Count Harkan in particular defended the western candidate as fiercely as though the man were his own son.
This was the same man whose only son was such a hopeless wastrel that even Duke Camelot’s backing could not save him—so he had donated heavily to the temple and shoved the boy in as a priest.
Even considering the West’s scarcity of monster habitats, which made byproducts more valuable there, their behavior was excessive.
It was almost as if they had a specific, pressing reason for needing vast quantities of monster byproducts.