Ch.146With overwhelming power.

Three months.

Another expression for 90 days.

Considering that quarters typically change every three months, the weight that a period of three months carries could be considered quite heavy.

Someone might need to repay a debt, someone might start a business, and for someone else, it might be the final time of their life.

However, even though it’s a unit for counting quarters, since a year consists of four consecutive three-month periods, depending on one’s perspective, three months could also be a short time.

If this is true among mortals, it goes without saying for immortal elves.

That’s why the fact that the war ended in just three months astonished every nation in the north.

In a world where siege warfare and defense battles around castles were the norm, it became known that enemies were unilaterally slaughtered outside the barriers.

Attacks by demons and beasts were all pulverized by cannons, and fleeing stragglers were turned into chunks of meat with musket bullets.

And all that remained were corpses, bloodstains, and the heavy settling smoke of black gunpowder.

The army of Amurtat, which reduced everything in its path to ashes, spent one month coming, one month fighting, and one month returning, ending a brief three-month war, resulting in the salvation of three countries.

“Don’t forget the contract. You must send 10% of your annual revenue to our Amurtat for the next 100 years.”

“O-Of course.”

Naturally, Amurtat’s salvation wasn’t free.

For the next 100 years, 10% of their revenue would belong to Amurtat, and if they objected, Amurtat’s overwhelming military force would burn their nations to the ground.

And this wasn’t an empty threat.

One volley of their coordinated fire would instantly rout their weakened armies, and their tattered castles would crumble to dust before the sound of cannon fire even reached them. Before the power of gunpowder and lead, spear shafts would break and arrows would snap.

Even if they all died, Amurtat would honor their sacrifice by sending the remaining 140,000 troops to their homeland.

Thus dawned the new year of 46 in the Amurtat calendar, and the north became a slightly more terrifying place.

*

“Three months…?”

“Y-Yes… they say the actual fighting time was just over a month…”

“How absurd…”

Grand Duke Marcus muttered in disbelief.

Three months would normally be when preliminary skirmishes were just beginning, or when troops hadn’t even moved to the front lines yet.

But they crushed and annihilated the enemy in just one month?

“I can’t believe it… Are gunpowder weapons really that powerful?”

“We did introduce a few as a trial in the past… but records show they were withdrawn due to their exorbitant cost.”

“Haa… So it all comes down to money in the end?”

Marcus didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t believe it.

But the news coming from all directions told him this was the grim reality.

Amurtat simply had a lot of money.

Originally, Fahrenheit could have overwhelmed them with economies of scale, but after being severely defeated in the war with the Allied Nations, having all intellectual property rights stripped away, having industrial foundations torn apart by the money-obsessed Allied armies, the damage to the people was immeasurable.

All that remained in Fahrenheit now were industrial foundations that had barely removed their oxygen respirators, empty libraries and magic tower cabinets, and graduate students who had become bandits out of despair.

“I was too complacent…”

“…Your Majesty?”

“For 300 years, we stood still. Now we’re paying the price… Who can we blame? In 300 years, a thousand nations could rise and ten thousand could fall…”

Marcus said this as he quietly shed tears on his throne.

They had 300 years.

300 years of lofty and lonely reign in the north.

But not anymore. The long peace had been shattered by sudden war, and eventually, Fahrenheit had plunged into the abyss due to a calamity of its own making.

And now, he thought they were somehow crawling out of that abyss.

Perhaps that might be true, but one must not forget that even if one crawls out of the abyss, one emerges not at the mountain peak but at the bottom of the lowest place in the world.

After all, when you leave the basement, you arrive at the first floor, not the tenth.

Now, even if Fahrenheit were rebuilt, it could never overwhelm Amurtat.

No, perhaps it was impossible from the beginning, since they had already been defeated once.

Fahrenheit has no Sword Masters, but Amurtat does.

Fahrenheit’s standing army is weak, but Amurtat’s is strong.

Fahrenheit’s economy was a hollow balloon, but Amurtat’s economy was as solid as a massive structure supported by a sturdy framework.

“…Ha…hahaha!”

Only bitter laughter came out.

It’s a country that was established just 46 years ago. How small must Fahrenheit become before a country with less than 50 years of history?

As Amurtat grew, the space for Fahrenheit to stand gradually diminished.

Perhaps Fahrenheit is now entering the twilight of its nationhood.

Just as it’s brightest before the sun sets, no matter how brightly Fahrenheit shines, the fear that it would ultimately be nothing more than a final flare before darkness tightened around Marcus’s throat.

Amurtat wants to become the ruling nation of the north.

Tiberius wants the Grand Duke’s throne.

And currently, Fahrenheit was the ruling nation of the north, and Marcus sat on the Grand Duke’s throne.

Seated on his throne, Marcus pondered how much longer the nations of the north could enjoy peace.

Ten years? Twenty years?

No, Amurtat could declare war on Fahrenheit at any moment.

Only, they had not yet earned the qualification.

*

Power can solve everything.

Of course, the definition of power differs from person to person, so this might not be true.

Then let’s rephrase it.

Great military might can solve everything.

Reason shatters before violence, and rationality crumbles before fear.

When death stands before them, all living beings will scream their last breath and see their lives flash before their eyes; this is a primal respect for death, which guides living beings into nothingness.

And humans have been killing their own kind since the beginning of time.

Sometimes for pleasure, sometimes for conquest, sometimes for wealth.

The reason a wife follows her husband is not because she loves him but because she doesn’t want to be beaten to death by him, and the reason children don’t talk back to adults is because adults are stronger than children.

How could one think that cats and dogs submit to humanity?

They too are predators in the ecosystem, beasts ready to harm humans at any time.

But the reason they wear collars and obediently follow their masters’ commands is only one:

The difference in power.

No matter how sharply they grind their teeth, they will be duller than a blade; no matter how much they toughen their hide, it will be weaker than iron armor; no matter how much they change their fur, it will be colder than a brazier. Humanity created tools through intellect, civilization through tools, and dominated the world through civilization.

And in that process, things that bothered humanity either went extinct or disappeared into the back pages of history.

Elves became trapped in forests, unable to come out, and dwarves became trapped in mountains, unable to emerge.

Even demons, magical beasts, animals, and monsters were driven back to where they came from, screaming their death throes before the might that humanity had achieved, because humans were the strongest species.

Power can solve everything.

One can become king even without legitimacy, and one can embrace a woman even without love.

If one has no crown, one simply takes it, and if one has no woman, one simply takes another’s; the history of humanity has been a repetitive process of striving to destroy the great civilizations it has built.

And now, that process is about to repeat itself in the north.

Amurtat and Fahrenheit.

The two nations have crossed a river of no return, and now one of them must exit the stage of history.

But it is not yet time.

It is still the time to forge swords and guns, to cast armor and horse armor in the midst of peace…

And someday, when the armories are full and young people willing to die for their country fill the borders and beyond, the north will once again be drenched in blood.

A fierce and majestic war for the Grand Duke’s throne, one that hasn’t occurred in 300 years.