Chapter 373
(Kyle Calendar Year 515: Age 22)
Northern Front ⑩ – The Battle of
the Nameless
Translator : PolterGlast
Asura, one of
the primary regional cities within the mandate territory of Count Astray
with a population of roughly 10,000 souls, was currently undergoing a massive,
tragic transformation at the hands of foreign invaders. The bustling markets
that had thrived until just recently were entirely devoid of commodities and
food, and the houses of the original residents living in the city were
unlawfully commandeered by squatted vagrants who had illegally settled there,
their private wealth ruthlessly and unjustly plundered.
「 Look at this! It's silver
tableware! Man, I always wanted to try eating with something like this just
once in my life! 」
「 This bed, it actually has cotton
inside! It's like a dream for us who spent our entire lives sleeping on beds of
raw straw. 」
「 Mother, because we marched all this
way praising God, we get to eat until our stomachs are completely full, right?
I went and found this earlier…… will it serve as a worthy offering to God? 」
This family group, frantically exploring their newly
acquired dwelling with sheer, unbridled excitement, was acting as though they
were enjoying the beautiful warmth of a domestic family harmony they had
previously only dreamed of.
「 Hahaha! We do not bear weapons, and
we channel the divine teachings of God as our sole strength. A trinket like
that won't serve as a proper offering to His name. There are many other
treasures in this house. We already have plenty of cargo to cover tonight's
mandatory alms, so you can just leave it. Surely, tonight shall bring a
monumental bounty of divine blessings to our household too! 」
Told this by the man, the young boy made a deceptive motion,
acting as though he were politely returning the dagger he held to its original
coordinate. No, accurately speaking, he merely pretended to return it, secretly
slipping it straight into his pocket.
In stark reality, the warm term 'family' used by the man at
this time was completely incorrect. A broken man who had lost both his wife and
daughter to severe starvation while living in an impoverished village. A woman
who had lost her husband to a brutal war several years prior, and had lost her
children in the frantic process of fleeing unable to pay a suffocating cascade
of heavy taxes. A young boy who had watched his parents get slaughtered when
bandits ruthlessly attacked his village, became an isolated orphan, left the impoverished
village, and became a destitute refugee.
The young boy in particular, deeply retaining the horrific
memory of losing his parents to an evil blade while unable to do absolutely
anything, was physically and psychologically incapable of letting go of the
dagger as a singular, absolute mechanism to protect this newly forged 'family'.
Even if executing that choice meant committing a direct act contrary to the
sacred teachings of the God they claimed to believe in……
When they had originally drifted to Tria, they were
each independently selected (assigned) to the grand procession marching to
praise God, and had absolutely no connection to each other until then. It was
just that during the agonizingly long, grueling journey to a foreign land,
these broken souls with emotional scars in their pasts had instinctively
snuggled close to each other before they knew it, and had come to act together
as a temporary, makeshift family.
Actually, the vast majority of those assigned to serve as
the Apostles of God, other than the isolated single men, consisted
entirely of such dependent outcasts with no relatives or ability to live on
their own; so to speak, they were nothing more than a monumental social burden,
troublesome to deal with from a ruling elite's perspective, and it wouldn't
matter a shred if they were treated as disposable human debris.
Even so, to these very people who had lost much while
gasping under a suffocating yoke of harsh heavy taxes, become destitute
refugees, abandoned their hometowns, and sought divine 'salvation', this
nightmare truly seemed exactly like miraculous salvation bestowed upon them
directly by the grace of God. Even if it mattered not that the bounty was the
direct result of their unvarnished plundering and unjustly seizing it, and something
funneled down to them through the greedy machinery of the local church…… They,
who purely believed in God and had come this far following the doctrine, were maneuvered
into willingly participating in the systematic looting under the delusion of
obtaining 'Sacred Offerings for God'.
Embedded deep among such swarming people were Reim
and his specialized group, who had infiltrated claiming to be fellow refugees,
and their hearts burned with intense, bleeding sorrow at the depraved behavior
of their own compatriots.
As usual, when the sun slipped beneath the horizon and the
twilight shadows approached, their comrades scattered across various places
began to move secretly. Slipping through the main streets which must have once
been splendidly gorgeous, they gathered inconspicuously in a derelict house
tucked deep within a back alley where the city's poorest people were thought to
have resided previously.
「 So the commanding officers of each
unit are successfully gathered here? And…… how is the tactical state of our
compatriots? 」
「 It's absolutely terrible, Boss.
Exactly as you feared, Reim-boss, those bastards are running rampant, doing whatever lawless
atrocities their black hearts desire. 」
Although their features couldn't be seen in the suffocating
darkness of the room, the raw, bleeding bitterness dripping from the tone of
voice was enough to understand that the face of the one
who answered must be filled with agony thinking of their fallen compatriots.
「 And…… what of the local clergy?
What are the church officials doing? 」
「 I was sticking to their parish
lines, but…… forget about enforcing a single shred of restraint, the corrupt
clergy bastards are actively, aggressively inciting them instead of stopping
them. They keep howling: 『 Show
your absolute gratitude to God who brings divine blessings! 』
What a disgusting joke! What blessings! 」
「 Indeed…… since when did our
beautiful Goddess Ishtar transform into a patron deity who extends her
sacred mantle to protect glorified bandits? Is there not a single sane, moral
soul left among the entire clergy! 」
「 No…… if I may offer a deduction, I
think there must be those who harbor deep-seated doubts and psychological
friction, at least to some extent. But trapped deep within hostile territory,
they can't survive if abandoned by the church hierarchy in a place like this. I
think they are merely locking their lips and keeping their mouths shut because
they have zero alternative. 」
「 Right…… as long as the high clergy
holds an ironclad monopoly over the food supplies, our compatriots probably
can't defy the executive intentions of the church. We don't mind doing it
little by little, but continue to systematically sow the seeds of doubt so our
compatriots will feel the psychological fractures widening from here on out. 」
「「「 Understood, Boss. 」」」
「 So, Captain Reim, when exactly do we make our active move? What is the
latest tactical state of the wider war situation? 」
「 The intelligence dispatches
detailing that have not yet arrived. Has any operative caught the sound of our
synchronized signal bell? 」
No one answered Reim's sharp challenge. The tactical
reality of what that heavy silence meant was to maintain their current
parameters, strictly standing by in the current situation for now to preserve
the operation.
「 If
only I possessed the capability to dynamically slip past the borders and go in
and out freely exactly like our Chief, Raphael. But if I, who am an
un-gifted baseline and not a Darkness Mage, make a clumsy, poor move and get
caught, it'd be too tragic to look at. For the time being, we have zero choice
but to grit our teeth and endure. 」
「 Just like being forced to go
without a drop of booze…… huh. Truly, a torturous burden. 」
「 You absolute fools! Even I, the man
who regularly competes with the Chief for the top rank across the realm when it
comes to heavy drinking, am completely maintaining my total abstinence! It's
not a story you bastards can't do. The absolute second this sweeping operation
concludes, I swear to God I'll personally extort as much high-quality booze as
possible straight from the Chief's vaults and let you drown and drink like
taking a bath, so shut up and endure for now! 」
「 That is an ironclad, binding
promise, Captain! You all heard him, right, men?! 」
At his bold guarantee, the remaining operatives other than Reim
also nodded their heads with massive, eager grins.
『 Good
grief. Since when did my intelligence agents transform into a specialized gathering of nothing but
unhinged alcoholics? 』 Thinking so to himself, Reim could only let out a
silent, weary wry chuckle. Of course, completely and conveniently putting on
the shelf the fact that the prime example of that notorious reputation is
himself……
「 Who do you think you are talking
to, you bastards?! There's absolutely no way I'd deliver a single deceptive lie
about booze! 」
The exact second he snapped back at his subordinates, a
heavy, resonant bell announcing the precise 'Time' to them rang from the
absolute center of the city. Is it time to execute that thoroughly nauseating,
unpleasant display again? Reim's features twisted, frowning slightly
into a disgusted grimace.
「 Unfortunately, our window is up. We
must force ourselves to consume their rations and eat too; otherwise, if our
physical vessels power-fail, we won't be useful when the critical moment
detonates. Shall we go receive what they call the grateful "Divine Alms of
the Heavens"? Do not forget to bring the mandatory offerings each of you
hoarded across the day. 」
At Reim's sharp signal, the gathered people each stood tall, slipped out of the rearmost back alleys,
and smoothly dissolved into the massive, swarming sea of common citizens who
were systematically converging toward the absolute center of the city.
※
Across the sprawling central square and the primary avenues
leading directly into the heart of the city, towering bonfires had been lit,
casting a blinding, brilliant illumination over the centralized distribution
arrays at its core. There, provisions labeled loudly as "blessings from
God" were prepared daily, and people obtained food in exchange for surrendering
their daily fruits, mandatory "alms", as a transaction. They began to
systematically align and form a torturously long line to present the plundered
vessels they brought (stolen from the city's homes) and alms, and receive the
distribution of blessings (food) as compensation.
「 Now, step forward in an organized
line to sequentially present your sacred offerings to God, and offer your
deepest prayers! Receive the life-giving provisions as compensation for your
absolute faith, and let your gratitude be forged anew! Depending on the sheer
weight and value of your deeds, even greater monumental blessings will be
brought to your households! 」
Standing tall at the absolute center of the grand altar, a
Bishop said to be contract-dispensed directly from the High Church bellowed his
directives, aggressively manipulating and inciting the crowd. As fruits of
ransacking the city during the daylight hours, specially luxurious, opulent
feasts were divided and prominently distributed only to those individuals who
offered exceptionally expensive items to the church.
『 Tch!
Holding food supplies hostage as a literal lever to aggressively drive and
incite looting, intentionally weaponizing their basic competitive spirit to
collect it efficiently. 』 Seeing that sickening state, Reim
and the others couldn't help but click their tongues as a regular
occurrence since infiltrating this city.
Regarding the meager morning breakfast, everyone is strictly
the same and there is absolutely no shred of differentiation in the
distribution. But during the evening dinner, they clearly create a massive
discrepancy in quality, and intentionally display the luxurious feasts
flamboyantly right in front of everyone. Craving a larger allocation of food
and seeking more luxurious items, the common outcasts willingly transformed
themselves into lawless bandits during the day, aggressively seeking the
residual wealth of the original people who once lived there, and systematically
scavenged the commercial shops and houses that had become vacant. Through this
psychological matrix, the high clergy was systematically paralyzing the
baseline conscience of the refugees, smoothly shaping and maneuvering them into
an efficient tools to willingly engage in aggressive looting……
To navigate this structure, Reim and his operatives
had meticulously and secretly stitched the substantial hoard of gold and silver
coins—disbursed to them previously as high command operational funds—into the
hidden folds of their garments. Every single day, with this, they managed to
flawlessly masquerade as highly efficient looters to present their 'alms' and
securely obtain their daily provisions without committing a single sin against
the innocent.
「 Listen to me carefully, my
children! Today there is a magnificent, joyful herald for everyone's ears! You
are permitted to continue consuming your meals, but lock your hearts onto my
words! Commencing tomorrow morning, our grand procession shall officially
depart these city walls, pushing forward toward our next horizon to spread the
sacred teachings of God across brand-new lands! 」
「 !!! 」
Hearing the declaration, Reim and several comrades
secretly exchanged glances, their eyes locking with an intense spark of alarm.
The strategic meaning of the Bishop's words was absolute: commencing tomorrow
morning, the massive invading columns were officially resuming their frontal
breach and advance.
「 Everyone's tireless labor and deeds
must have successfully reached the ears of God as well! For those fanatical
disciples with deep faith, God has personally prepared an even more remarkably
prosperous, richer land for your taking! To celebrate this holy milestone, a specialized
allocation of extra behavior (food) is also prepared for tonight's feast, so
consume your fill, rest your weary bones well, and prepare your souls for the
march! 」
「「「「 OHHHーーー!!! 」」」」
A thunderous, deafening roar of pure jubilation erupted from
the throats of the deluded refugees, the massive square exploding into a frenzy
as they cheered and were greatly seething in ecstasy. Entirely oblivious to the
terrifying reality that for them, the path lying before their feet would become
nothing short of an absolute, one-way march to their own deaths……
「 Damn
it…… so those bastards are finally initiating their frontal advance and
starting to move…… It can't be helped, infiltrate the darkness and dispatch an
emergency tactical liaison messenger out of the city gates right away tonight! 」
Hidden by the roaring cheers of the crowd, Reim
issued the sharp operational adjustment to his subordinate in a low voice.
「 I don't mind if you don't risk
coming back here by making a clumsy, poor move; your singular directive is to
convey this intelligence straight into the hands of the General Commander, Lord
Alexis! 」
「 Our attempts to execute a
psychological alienation to permanently sever them from the church haven't
progressed yet. Ensure the messenger explicitly delivers my personal
recommendation: 『
If the jaws of the trap snap shut
and push comes to shove, you must resolutely treat these columns as lawless
bandits and ruthlessly suppress them without a single shred of hesitation. 』
Do not dare forget to convey that I explicitly said that phrase. 」
At this critical juncture, Reim finalized his
ultimate, ironclad resolve. Embedded deep within these deluded ranks are
massive clusters of intact families who are participating in the 'Apostles
of God' together. Therefore, defenseless women, fragile children, and frail
elders are included, but looking at the immutable laws of the battlefield and
the terrifying gravity of the current situation, saving
every single soul among them will probably be an impossibility.
『 I
am sorry…… please, forgive my weakness.
』
Offering a silent, bleeding apology in his heart to the innocent souls dancing across the square, Reim closed his eyes alone. He finalized his absolute choice with the resolve to devote himself to remaining at the absolute front of the line, completely committed to acting as their hidden guardian shield to the end, fully prepared to share whatever grim destiny awaited his fallen compatriots.
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