Ch.1270Difficult but Inevitable

Negotiations between those who distrust and despise each other inevitably end with victory for the one holding the sword.

It was truly disgusting and unpleasant, but in this case, the one holding the sword wasn’t me but Feyrus.

I couldn’t abandon Faelrun and Ophelia, and Feyrus firmly believed I wouldn’t.

If his actual body had appeared before me, I could have used some time-tested and effective “negotiation methods,” but unfortunately it was just his projection, so slaughtering it would have been meaningless.

So what could I do? I had no choice but to take a step back. At least I could be satisfied knowing I’d irritated him as much as he’d humiliated me.

“—So you’re saying we need to advance on the Undead Duke’s fortress?”

“Well, yeah. I asked several times if we could change opponents, but they wouldn’t listen. They said they have no intention of wasting resources on enemies they can’t defeat, and if we want a Second Great Collapse, then go ahead and try.”

He also claimed that during the First Great Collapse, they had intervened to minimize the scale and casualties. That sounded like bullshit, so I let it go in one ear and out the other.

“…This is troublesome.”

“Indeed, a difficult problem…”

After smashing Feyrus’s head and gathering my companions for discussion, everyone expressed reluctance after hearing the details.

“A full-scale war while we’re still busy reorganizing our forces, and against an undead army whose scale we can’t even estimate?”

“Miss, you know this is a scheme to make us perish together with the undead, right?”

“Not only are our chances of victory low, but even if we win, our losses will be severe.”

Attacking the Undead Duke with our current forces would be reckless and would ultimately result in extreme losses.

Regardless of their depth of knowledge, everyone with strategic insight unanimously warned against this.

They insisted it would be madness to wage war with an army that had lost key strongholds, couldn’t even replenish its forces, and had inadequate supplies.

“Yes, you’re right, but…”

They were making valid points. In fact, I thought the same.

“But we have no other option. If the undead really cause a Second Great Collapse, at least tens of thousands will die.”

However, I couldn’t follow their sound advice.

Feyrus had taken hostage not only the residents of Faelrun and Ophelia, but also all those who would lose their lives in the aftermath of a Second Great Collapse.

“Even if our entire army is annihilated, that’s still a loss of tens of thousands…”

“True, but compared to the lives of tens of thousands of civilians, the weight is somewhat lighter, isn’t it? After all, they’re prepared to die in battle.”

Whether by choice or circumstance, all soldiers who weren’t deserters were individuals who had contemplated their own deaths.

That’s why their lives were inevitably lighter. As light as corpses rotted to bare bones.

Their lives weighed differently from those who would be sacrificed through our neglect or misjudgment. Conscripted soldiers would never agree, but that was the truth.

That’s why they were compensated with adequate food, shelter, social standing, opportunities for advancement, and permission to plunder under the name of “victor’s rights.”

In my old world, that compensation part was somewhat ambiguous, but in this world, they were more reliable about providing such things.

Military meals couldn’t be that good, but here there were plenty of poor people who starved to death without even tasting such mediocre meals, or who had to beg.

Anyway, for that reason, if I had to place the lives of ten thousand soldiers and ten thousand civilians on a scale and choose one side, I would choose the ten thousand civilians.

Of course, if those soldiers were the last available forces, and their annihilation would lead to the massacre of hundreds of times more civilians, that would be different…

But that wouldn’t be ten thousand soldiers versus ten thousand civilians—it would be ten thousand civilians versus a million civilians.

The premise would be wrong from the start, making it an invalid comparison. So there’s nothing to discuss.

Simply put, I was willing to accept even the annihilation of the allied forces if it meant preventing a Second Great Collapse and the destruction of Faelrun.

…Am I saying I can so easily sacrifice them because they’re not people of my country but just various races hastily gathered within Naraka?

No, even if those ten thousand were Holy Knights from the Holy State, Imperial troops, or the Hestella Kingdom’s army, it would be the same.

I would try to preserve those who absolutely couldn’t be lost in such losses—in other words, Hero-class personnel—but that’s only because they’re irreplaceable forces.

In summary, attacking Garmerlic’s fortress was a settled matter unless there was a better alternative.

I had gathered my remaining companions in one place to see if such an alternative might exist.

“…At least nominally, don’t we have allies? Caliburn and his Werebeasts, and the ancient dragons he allied with—if we could somehow utilize them—”

Nigel, understanding that war itself was inevitable and only the method of fighting was in question, sighed lightly and made a suggestion.

The reason this war was madness was because we weren’t prepared to wage it, so if we could mobilize our allies to buy time or reinforce our strength, wouldn’t that increase our chances of victory?

He had a point.

“That’s unlikely. Those guys were crushed by Garmerlic and then hit by the disaster of the Great Collapse on top of that. That’s probably why communication has been cut off.”

…It wasn’t realistic.

The Werebeasts and ancient dragons had achieved a technical victory against their original targets, the giants, but they fled after suffering massive damage from the Undead Duke’s air raid that followed.

They had sent messengers even after that devastating defeat, but there had been no news since the Great Collapse.

“If they’re still alive and willing to maintain the alliance, they would at least send a messenger to Bergelmir’s fortress. Until then, we have to assume they’re not available.”

How much damage they suffered from the disaster, whether they managed to regroup their survivors, what they’re doing and where they are now, whether they’re even still alive.

With communication cut off, we couldn’t know anything, so we couldn’t place any further expectations on them. Not until they contacted us again.

“Haa… those beasts are really useless. They have big ambitions but can’t even handle a single full-scale battle. They ended up being no help at all.”

“Can’t be helped. Who could have predicted the sky would suddenly collapse?”

The reason the Werebeasts became useless was that their battle with the giants turned out to be more intense than expected, leaving them with insufficient strength to face the undead army that intervened afterward.

In other words, it was because I had instructed Ophelia to interfere with their strategy. It wasn’t entirely my fault, but I was probably responsible for about 40% of it.

Of course, at the time, it was the best decision.

If Garmerlic had targeted us instead of the Werebeasts, we would have suffered massive damage, and since the Werebeasts were also potential enemies, it would have been beneficial if they had mutually destroyed each other with the giants.

However, there were two reasons why this turned out to be a miscalculation in the end.

First, most of the giants who perished were resurrected as undead and joined the Undead Duke’s forces.

I had assumed Garmerlic wouldn’t resurrect them as undead because it would require him to expend enormous power, but the reality was quite the opposite.

“The Undead Duke Garmerlic has grown closer to the Goddess of Death, and thereby awakened one of her inherent powers.”

“What power?”

“The Throne of Naglfar. A power that amplifies the strength of its possessor as the army of the dead under their command grows stronger.”

“What? He gets stronger the more he uses his power? Isn’t that cheating?”

“Divine powers typically transcend common sense and rationality. You should know that better than anyone.”

According to the information Feyrus gave me, the current Garmerlic could grow stronger simply by raising the dead.

Not just in the quantitative aspect of his army, but also in the qualitative aspect of his own might.

It really seemed like an absurdly overpowered ability, but considering it was a primordial god’s power, I suppose that level of ability was to be expected.

Anyway, with such power in his hands, Garmerlic had no reason not to resurrect the giants as undead, and so he slaughtered the giants and then revived them.

I heard he couldn’t resurrect all of them, but the giant undead that were revived became his main force.

While Garmerlic’s allies—the giants—were mostly resurrected and fell into his hands, my allies, the Werebeasts, couldn’t recover their lost strength.

If I had known things would turn out this way, I wouldn’t have interfered with Caliburn’s strategy, but now that things had already gone wrong, there was nothing I could do.

Anyway, that was the first reason.

The second reason was the Great Collapse that Garmerlic himself caused.

The First Great Collapse had blown away 30% of Naraka’s ceiling, and we couldn’t even estimate the scale of damage a second attempt would cause—a true catastrophe.

If you think about it, that was the biggest reason why my scheme to make the giants and Werebeasts destroy each other turned out to be a miscalculation.

If not for that, there would have been no reason to miss Caliburn’s forces now.

According to the original plan, after defeating Erzsebet, we would have taken sufficient time to reorganize before attacking Agnita Fortress.

But Garmerlic caused the Great Collapse, making that reorganization much more difficult, and by threatening a Second Great Collapse, he even took away the time we needed for reorganization.

By making time his ally, he fundamentally disrupted our grand strategy of preparing fully before engaging in an all-out war that would determine our fates.

So now the only option we had was to take a gamble in an obviously unprepared state to prevent a second catastrophe.

“…So we really have to attack Agnita Fortress with just our forces? Turankai will absolutely oppose that, not to mention Hjalbaer.”

“Yeah, I guess they would… I would too if I were them.”

Of course, in our current state, even before considering the odds of winning this gamble, placing the bet itself was no easy task.

It was a headache-inducing problem. Like all problems in the world.