Ch.202202. The Royal Palace (1)

Although there were various incidents, after Khagan El-Temur fell by our hands.

The first thing that happened was, naturally, the subjugation of the warband he had led.

Those creatures, who had been driven mad and fought each other due to the wide-area mental confusion spell cast by Sophia and me, had barely a quarter of their original fighting strength left by the time the battle ended.

Thanks to that, without requiring us—exhausted from the difficult battle—to step in, the guerrilla forces and the somewhat reorganized Slovakin soldiers were more than enough to eliminate the warband’s remnants.

Especially the dwarf warriors, who hadn’t had much opportunity to shine during El-Temur’s subjugation, became almost like madmen at the news of this opportunity and swept through the enemies.

The hammers and axes of the brave dwarf warriors were exceptionally effective at crushing orc bodies, and their hand cannons and mortars easily disposed of and pulverized the confused orc stragglers.

Additionally, the Slovakin Margrave’s army, which had temporarily retreated to the rear due to the enormous casualties suffered during the defense, returned to the front lines after filling the vacancies left by the fallen warriors and completing other recovery measures.

As a result, with Slovakin’s front lines entering a recovery phase, I personally set out to eliminate the last remaining fragments of El-Temur’s warband to finish things off.

Of course, one might wonder why I needed to handle this personally, but the truth is that the warband was so large that even these remnant forces were far from insignificant in size.

The warband had barely been held together by El-Temur’s abilities alone, so when El-Temur died, it ultimately shattered into pieces, but….

The problem is that even in this collapsed state, they still boasted forces comparable to other warbands.

Particularly, while many of the warband’s common soldiers had destroyed themselves fighting each other due to Sophia’s and my wide-area mental attack spell, the situation changes when mid-tier orcs who survived that mental magic-induced slaughter lead the warband’s remnants.

Though they’ve split apart without clear leadership from above, mid-tier is still mid-tier.

Especially as high-tier orcs leading countless mid-tier orcs, these so-called “remnants” were each like small warbands themselves, and subduing them without casualties required high-tier individuals like myself.

With Sophia, King Louis VII who had recovered from his injuries at some point, and the Royal Frankish Knights who accompanied Louis VII joining the effort, the cleanup of the remnants was now almost complete.

And as the invaders who had invaded Slovakin’s lands were gradually eliminated one by one.

With news of the death of the Khagan who led the orcs of the Great Steppe spreading in all directions, the Great Invasion was now entering its final phase.

The two remaining Khans (high-tier) began returning to their homeland in the Great Steppe to compete for becoming the new Khagan, causing warbands to flee en masse.

Of course, from our perspective, it might seem both understandable and incomprehensible that a war would end with the death of a leader, but this can be explained through the ecology of the orc race and the cycle of their Great Invasions.

Orcs are said to be aggressive and barbaric, but more precisely, they have a “war desire” as a fourth basic need in addition to the three primary desires of hunger, sleep, and sex.

For this race called orcs, war and fighting are not optional forms of entertainment but essential elements.

Understanding that fighting is considered normal and not fighting is seen as abnormal for this race is necessary to explain anything about them.

Basically, the cycle of the Great Invasion begins with the birth of an orc hero.

A powerful individual capable of bringing all the orcs of the Great Steppe under his control, directly or indirectly, emerges and unifies the orcs into a single force according to his own conquest desires.

Of course, once unified as a single force, they can no longer fight among themselves, but due to the nature of the orc race, a leader who fails to provide sufficient opportunities for fighting faces rebellion regardless of who they are.

Therefore, for smoother governance, the Khagan of the orcs must continuously wage war regardless of his personal wishes, and these orcs naturally invade the eastern part of the Holy Empire, which is the most accessible from the Great Steppe.

It’s easy to mistake orcs for Mongols due to their overall resemblance, but the Great Steppe is geographically closer to the Western Continent than the Eastern Continent, which is why they target the Holy Empire rather than the Wu Empire.

During such invasions, the orcs, typically unable to handle the entire Western Continent, are either pushed back, or conversely, they gain ground against a reduced alliance force due to internal political circumstances within the Western Continent.

But ultimately, the reason these orcs, these numerous small forces, move with a single goal is because of the orcs’ Khagan.

If the Khagan who binds them together falls in any way, the orc forces inevitably collapse immediately.

And… thus, amid the collapse of the orc forces.

Naturally, what followed was the exciting counter-invasion plans carried out by the various alliance forces to expand their military achievements.

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First, there’s something important to understand.

Despite orcs being natural plunderers, targeting orcs for plunder is a foolish act.

The vast majority of orcs value weapons and immediate food more than gold, so they don’t possess the valuable loot that most people imagine.

To them, gold coins and jewels are merely shiny objects to be exchanged for weapons or food, and the value of food and weapons is incomparably higher than in conventional society.

Bluntly put, there are orcs everywhere who would gladly trade gold coins for a well-made axe, so orcs normally live by engaging in trade that benefits (?) both sides.

Because orcs have different ideas about money, most orcs, unless they’re particularly clever, convert most of their wealth into food (livestock), weapons, or even slaves.

Weapons are essential items for the orcs’ core business (plundering), food (livestock) is a precious asset necessary for survival, and slaves are… tools for managing their property (mainly livestock) and emergency food.

And the value of these elements is, of course, high.

No matter how relatively common metals might be compared to the real Middle Ages, iron is still precious, and there’s no shortage of demand for processed equipment in this harsh world.

Additionally, even if the breeds differ from those raised in the Western Continent, livestock is inevitably valuable.

Naturally, there’s considerable demand for meat that tastes good and is nutritious, as well as for internal organs as affordable meat or delicacies for gourmets.

There’s also sufficient demand for leather, which is tough enough to be valuable as winter clothing, and bones, which have multiple uses.

Even human slaves can be used to improve relations with their societies through liberation, or to increase one’s own population by rescuing them.

The most problematic are slaves who don’t fall into the human category, but even these slaves have their own demand, so they’re not completely worthless.

However, all these assets are burdensome for the alliance’s expeditionary forces who have come this far to collect.

Bluntly put, no matter how much they plunder here, when calculating the cost of bringing it back to their homeland, it’s often a loss, so unless it’s exceptionally valuable, most plundered property is sold cheaply to the local authorities (Margrave, Duchy).

Therefore, rather than engaging in unprofitable plunder, the various armies of the alliance focus on killing orcs to gain practical experience for their troops, or pursue honor and glory that are difficult to obtain in an era where wars between nations rarely occur.

This might be a difficult perspective for modern people to understand, but accumulating military achievements and killing powerful enemies to leave one’s name in history is extremely important for knights, and by extension, for nobles who are fundamentally knights.

It’s considered a “just cause” to wage war proudly for the reason that someone has tarnished the honor of a leader, or even their ancestors.

Anyway, nobles were frantically fighting orcs to build achievements to list as accomplishments in the future, or sometimes underestimating them and getting wiped out instead.

And in the midst of this situation….

“…This is burdensome.”

“Yeah, I feel the same….”

Sophia and I, having somehow been directly invited to the royal palace of the Frankish Kingdom, had left the battlefield and returned to the kingdom.