Ch.247How to Control Thousands of People at Will

“We must retreat immediately!”

A nobleman in elaborate ceremonial attire shouted while dripping with cold sweat.

Ernst’s command post was nothing short of a cauldron of panic and confusion.

For them, Margrave Valenstein’s death was an unimaginable catastrophe, like the sky falling.

Of course, they had heard before that Margrave Valenstein had been defeated by Aishan-Gioro.

However, that defeat was merely a performance to create a pretext for civil war; they had heard it was actually Aishan-Gioro who had been driven to the brink of death.

The nobles gathered here were close enough to Isabella to know such confidential information.

That’s why they had been at ease.

Even if that woman was as skilled as Margrave Valenstein, the Ghost Blade couldn’t possibly lose.

Especially not after facing ten Masters.

But they were wrong.

The man-eating demon Aishan-Gioro who remained unscathed after killing ten Masters.

That devil of a woman was an entity that couldn’t be defeated by human power.

In the middle of Zeren Plains.

The legendary duel that had continued for dozens of minutes, overturning the earth, ended all too suddenly.

A battle whose trajectory they couldn’t follow, whose developments they couldn’t comprehend.

What broke was the Empire’s Greatest Sword.

The once-in-a-century genius who, not even twenty years old, had defeated the Empire’s strongest swordsman, stood wounded and tired but still very much alive.

With ghostly blue eyes blazing.

“Retreating without even fighting because of a single enemy! How dare you utter such nonsense!”

“We can’t possibly win! The army’s morale has completely collapsed!”

Six thousand infantry and three thousand archers all stared at the enemy lines with ashen faces.

The exuberance they had felt when first setting up camp on the plains had long vanished.

Unable to hide their anxiety, they kept looking around, as if searching for an opportunity to flee.

It was only natural. After all, they were professional soldiers who served for pay.

They were men who had never known loyalty or honor from the beginning.

For them, what mattered most wasn’t loyalty to their master, but collecting their wages and returning to their families.

They weren’t the type to risk their lives in a battle that clearly seemed lost, though they might fight in one they could win.

“Damn it… I can’t die. I can’t die in a place like this…!”

“But we can’t run either! We have to fight somehow…!”

Ironically, the conscripts seemed more willing to fight. Well, they had no other choice to begin with.

Only a handful of nobles knew why the conscripts were still willing to fight.

Isabella’s method of driving the conscripts was too cruel even in their eyes.

If the truth were known, even knights who had numbed their conscience with self-indoctrination of loyalty would turn their swords around.

—-

When forcibly conscripting all able-bodied men, no one expected them to fight properly.

That’s why Isabella came up with three ideas.

Using parasitic monsters was inefficient.

A single monster was more valuable than one conscript.

She could have used drugs that drove humans into a frenzy.

In fact, this was the most stable and reliable method.

But Isabella chose the final option.

“Mother, Father… That cursed witch…!”

A conscript clutching a crude spear recalled his family and wept.

A young man whose beard hadn’t even grown yet. Despair and anger were etched on his youthful face.

Twenty-four thousand conscripts.

Isabella had taken all their families hostage.

She showed them what would happen if they rebelled or tried to escape, displaying the families of those who had attempted desertion.

Elderly people being eaten alive by insects. Women becoming playthings for monsters, giving birth to more monsters.

It was a scene straight from hell.

That image was still branded in the conscripts’ minds like a hot iron.

So much so that they wouldn’t put down their weapons even when facing almost certain death.

Of course, there were those who prioritized their own lives over their families’ gruesome deaths.

Where were such people now?

The answer lies in how the conscript numbers had dwindled from thirty-five thousand to twenty-four thousand by the time of deployment.

Trying to escape alone was impossible—one couldn’t evade the witch’s sight.

That’s why they had no choice but to march to this battlefield, to take up spears.

Abandon their families and surrender, or die here.

These were the only choices left to them.

—-

The reason Isabella chose the third method was simple.

When Valenstein asked her about it, she smiled with an expression of utter delight and left just one sentence.

‘Because it’s more fun.’

That was all.

—-

“…Perhaps we should consider surrendering. The First Prince has declared he won’t punish us…”

Some nobles cautiously discussed surrender. Not loudly, though.

Surrendering meant betraying Empress Isabella and Prince Ernst.

If Ernst heard this, their heads would roll before they could even attempt to surrender.

Lowering his voice was a prudent decision, but he should have been even more cautious.

If he had been careful enough to look behind him once more before speaking, he might have saved his life.

“Surrender… an interesting proposition, Count Fontaine.”

“Huk…!”

A low, mocking tone.

As the startled nobleman tried to turn around, Ernst’s hand landed on his head.

The nobleman, seized by his hair, trembled like an aspen.

“Yes, I suppose that makes sense. You betrayed your country for pleasure, so betraying me to save your own skin wouldn’t be difficult.”

The other hand gripped his shoulder, fixing him firmly in place.

An incredibly strong grip. Something resembling tendons writhed across the back of his hand.

“Y-Your Highness! It was a slip of the tongue! Please, just this once, forgive me…!”

“I think not.”

Ernst raised his right hand without hesitation.

“GUEEEREEEEK!”

With a horrific shriek, Fontaine’s eyes rolled back as his head was ripped off like a weed from a field.

A ghastly sight—beneath the distorted head, white spine and pieces of flesh were tangled like roots.

Nauseated nobles covered their mouths and hurriedly turned away.

“Be grateful for my mercy even in death. It’s an easier end than being interrogated and executed by Leopold’s subordinates.”

Tossing the head behind him, Ernst stared expressionlessly at the pale-faced nobles.

“Do you think surrendering will save your lives? Leopold declared he wouldn’t punish the crime of rebellion. Only ‘the crime of rebellion.’ Were your sins limited to just that?”

Indeed. The nobles gathered here had all fallen for Isabella’s seduction and lived in corruption and depravity for over a decade.

Even without the crime of rebellion, they were already deserving of capital punishment.

“But then, what should we do…?”

“I never expected you to fight to the end anyway. Send out all the infantry with the conscripts at the front. Shoot anyone who disobeys. Even if two thousand die, over thirty thousand will remain. When the melee begins, the knights will have no choice but to fight… we can buy some time. Meanwhile, we’ll retreat to Benes territory. You can manage that much, can’t you?”

It was Ernst’s order—no, Isabella’s order through Ernst’s mouth.

The nobles nodded. Though it essentially meant sacrificing tens of thousands as cannon fodder, they didn’t care as long as they themselves survived.

The forces gathered here were practically all of Ernst’s army, so even if they retreated to Benes territory, they would have no forces left to fight… but they believed in Isabella.

Not in her personally, but in the fact that Isabella Benes wouldn’t simply wait for death without a plan.

They didn’t know what she had prepared in Benes territory, but she must have arranged at least one way to stop their enemies.

Soon, the order to advance the infantry echoed throughout the camp.

—-

“They want us to charge against those monsters?! They’re telling us to die!”

As expected, the soldiers strongly resisted.

Their reaction contrasted sharply with the conscripts who, though trembling, advanced silently. But the conscripts’ behavior was abnormal—any person with common sense would naturally rebel.

The heavy cavalry approaching like a celestial army, emitting pure white light, and the monster glaring at them from the center like God’s messenger.

Ordering them to advance against such forces was even more absurd than telling them to walk into a fire pit.

The nobles’ answer came in the form of arrows.

Three thousand steel raindrops obscured the sky as they flew—not toward the enemy, but toward the rear of their own infantry.

“A-Arrows! Those bastards really shot at us!”

“AAAAGH!”

“Those crazy archers!”

The protesting infantry fell like dominoes, screaming.

A rain of arrows shot in straight lines from behind. The rearmost soldiers died helplessly, unable even to defend themselves.

In the Battle of Zeren Plains, expected to decide the civil war’s outcome,

the first casualties were a thousand infantry with arrows in their backs.

They had no choice but to move forward. There wasn’t even time to turn around.

The infantry formation was becoming so densely packed that movement was difficult, as soldiers retreated forward trying to avoid the arrows.

“Don’t push! Stop pushing! Ugh…!”

“Shut up and move forward! Stop and you die!”

Soldiers in the middle of the formation groaned as they were compressed from both sides.

However, they should have considered themselves fortunate to have no space to move.

Those who fell through the gaps were trampled like burst dough, never to rise again.

“You damn bastards! If we’re going to die anyway, I’ll kill those archer sons of—!”

The head of a man trying to incite the infantry to charge in the opposite direction was torn off.

An arrow with power unlike that of ordinary archers—a strike from a Royal Guard standing beside the archers.

“…The 7th Thousand-Man Unit, direct fire. The 8th, arcing fire. The rest, target anyone who turns around. When the melee begins, use all remaining arrows and retreat.”

Since the noble in charge of the archers had already withdrawn, a Master of the Royal Guard was commanding them.

The archers had no choice but to follow his orders and shoot at their own troops. Those who had objected were already cut to pieces.

It felt like they were shooting their conscience rather than arrows with each pull of the bowstring, but they had no other option.

At least this Royal Guard had assured them that the archers could retreat once the infantry engaged in battle.

Though the deaths of their comrades were regrettable, the archers also prioritized their own lives.

Given how things had turned out, the further the infantry advanced and fought, the more time they would have to escape.

Survival instinct numbed their guilt, and the stench of dismembered corpses covered any courage to resist with fear.

To control a thousand men at will, it’s enough to kill the ten bravest in a horrific manner. Isabella knew this well.

In the end, Ernst’s infantry advanced toward death in fear and confusion.

“YOU GODDAMN BASTARDS!”

From across the battlefield, a woman’s roar of rage tore through the sky like a savage beast.