Ch.104Victim

Ten years have passed since Fahrenheit’s defeat.

Ten years ago, defeated in war, Fahrenheit had all its intellectual property seized by Amurtat, while the Allied Nations took the rest of its human and material assets.

Over the past decade, Fahrenheit’s 10 million citizens grew increasingly furious as they heard news of Amurtat’s exponential growth and the gradual prosperity of other Allied Nations.

They were enraged that it was other nations, not Fahrenheit, that were thriving with their property and knowledge.

“We created it… We conceived it…!”

“Damn invaders..! Those wicked bastards!”

However, their anger changed nothing.

They had to recover from the damage suffered in the last war, and for ten years, all of Fahrenheit’s surplus production was used to comfort its people who had suffered extreme damage from looting and arson.

Naturally, during these ten years, collapsed buildings were restored and burned streets rebuilt, but that was all.

With its reputation as a defeated nation, adventurers no longer visited Fahrenheit, and its economy, which had heavily depended on adventurers, was literally hitting rock bottom in every indicator.

Without by-products extracted from dungeons, the revenue that magic towers and alchemist guilds could generate plummeted. With no alchemical solutions or artifacts circulating in the market, related businesses withered.

Thanks to various business owners who fled overnight before the war, the business sector was riddled with holes, and the talent needed to fill those holes had become a thing of the past during the war.

The Grand Duke tried to prevent this economic downturn by venturing into agriculture and livestock farming, areas Fahrenheit had previously neglected, but even that yielded unimpressive results.

Agriculture and livestock farming in name only. Fahrenheit had barely maintained enough of these industries for self-sufficiency, so it was impossible to develop the expertise needed to produce crops and livestock with enough quantity or export value in such a short time. The economy continued to crawl along the bottom.

“What medicine should I use for blight disease?”

“What was that thing added when making cheese? Was it E. coli?!”

And if nothing else, in primary industries, experience was knowledge, so Fahrenheit, which had long disregarded primary industries, was paying the price dearly.

Nevertheless, Fahrenheit did not collapse.

There’s an old saying that a wealthy household can sustain itself for three generations even after its decline.

This proverb means that once a household becomes wealthy enough to be called rich, its fortunes won’t decline precipitously even when they start to fall.

True to this saying, Fahrenheit was slowly regaining its former strength, as if proving that nothing is impossible with determination and grit, despite the nation’s economy withering away.

They repaired broken walls, buried the dead with proper funerals, and scribes worked tirelessly, cutting back on sleep to copy and gradually refill the library shelves that had been completely emptied.

“Professor, isn’t there anything you can do?”

“I’m sorry, but… you’re not the only one who lost their graduation thesis… I don’t think I can help.”

“But…! All the reference papers are gone too!”

“Ahem! Ahem! Well, you should have submitted it earlier…”

Stolen graduation theses were being rewritten, and artisans began recreating the artwork that other countries had taken.

Yet, despite all efforts, they could not recover the crystallization of knowledge and art accumulated over 300 years.

The library shelves remained largely empty, and dust gathered in museums where art pieces once were displayed.

With a single defeat, they had lost everything.

Their pride as the hegemon of the North, their dignity as a nation of 10 million, and their self-respect as a country with 300 years of rich history.

And that wasn’t all. During the last war, Fahrenheit’s citizens had to taste extreme humiliation.

A humiliation that was both deeply human and profoundly inhumane.

“Donations! We’re collecting donations! The orphans are starving! Please spare even a penny!”

“Orphanage? Which orphanage?”

“St. Jurgen’s Orphanage.”

“What? St. Jurgen’s Orphanage?”

Crash!

“No! The donation box! What are you doing?!”

“What am I doing? Protecting our country. Do you think nobody knows you’re feeding those bastard children born during the last war with no proper lineage?!”

Indeed.

The fact that children are born even during wartime was not exactly a humanistic axiom.

Women who were deliberately raped without love, and in some cases without even pleasure, just to insult and taint a nation’s bloodline. The children born from them received care from no one.

The mothers who gave birth to these children abandoned them at churches or orphanages, calling them evidence of shame. The children who barely survived on the cold streets had to endure sins they never committed, miserably sustaining their lives on thin gruel in orphanages.

Though some good people tried to protect these little lambs, the conversation above shows how they were treated.

“What’s the point of saving these mongrel bastards with unknown origins? Why doesn’t His Majesty just kill all those abominations?”

“I know someone in the court, and apparently the Church is preventing it.”

“What? These fucking priests…! They’re quick to extort money with tithes and donations, but then they side with the invaders…?”

When a society suffers a massive shock, reactions divide into two types.

One is clinging to the existing order, and the other is complete renewal.

And most societies tend to choose the former.

“Destroy the churches! Those who harbor the children of invaders don’t deserve the angels’ call!”

Crash!

Whoosh!

“Kyaaah! Fire!”

Eventually, Fahrenheit’s churches and orphanages began to burn, and the police who should have stopped this merely stood by.

Whether they feared the mob consumed by madness, or whether they too found the burning churches and orphanages beautiful, is unknown.

“Help us! Please help us!”

And inside the burning, collapsing buildings, the silhouettes of children no older than ten could be seen.

“Cough! Cough!”

“Help… he… he……..”

But no one saved them.

It’s not that they couldn’t save them.

They chose not to save them.

Because they were not Fahrenheit people.

Thus, the children died in the flames.

Suffocating from smoke, crushed by collapsing buildings, or burning to death in terrible agony.

Those who set the fires applauded and cheered at the sight, and those watching smiled, rejoicing in the deaths of young lives.

“No!!!! What sin have these little ones committed!! You monsters!! Do you not fear the angels’ court!? The Archangel of Justice will cast you into the deepest valley of hell!”

Only priests, intellectuals, and a few people with living consciences wailed in the rising flames.

Their curses were buried in cheers, their tears obscured by smoke, and their lamentations buried in ashes.

“With this, our bloodline is pure again!”

“Long live Fahrenheit! Revenge against the Allied Nations!”

“Blood revenge against those who tried to erase our blood!”

“War! War! War!”

And atop the collapsed ruins, over the graves of innocent children who died without sin, agitators waved Fahrenheit’s flag, calling for war once more.

Last time, they lost because they were careless.

They lost because they relied too heavily on the Master as their military strength.

So now they must prepare thoroughly. Gather soldiers again, gather military funds, gather provisions.

As the hegemon and native power of the North, no nation should oppose Fahrenheit’s will in this northern region.

No, there must be none.

“Just as the ground hardens after rain! We too have grown stronger through defeat! This time, we will never lose!”

“One more war! Revenge for our fallen brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers!”

Defeat created anger.

Humiliation and disgrace brewed hatred.

And when anger and hatred met, they forged madness, and those who tasted this madness no longer needed anything else.

The end of madness was always fanaticism, and the end of fanaticism was always destruction.

Whether the purpose was revenge, purification, or the realization of justice didn’t matter.

Just as the end doesn’t justify the means, their fate was sealed from the moment they rejected all criticism and burned to death war orphans and vagrants who had done them no harm.