Chapter 165: Feast of the Traitors
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
On the boundless ice field, the scenery appeared stagnant, and when the sun rose, the black horizon turned out to be an assembly of cavalry and warriors.
“The beastmen are here!”
After the simple announcement, the first wave of catapults and tactical magic started to perform their duties, the huge rocks soared through the sky, following a dreadful noise. Every time they landed, dozens of lives were taken away.
Originally, the Maple City was just a normal double layered wall city, but after countless investments from the other countries, it had been upgraded to a four layered wall fortress.
Earth wizards may not have the strength and magnificence in attacking magic compared with other elemental wizards, but in civil engineering tasks, they would show advantage that other elemental wizards cannot compare with.
One by one, high walls were rose in a blink of an eye, followed by the chanting of “Turn soil to mud” the city moat was widened by seven to eight meters, and the alchemical venom that flowed within may not be lethal, but could slow the foe down.[1]
At least the city walls were more than three times taller, on the towering high walls, it was full with ballistics and heavy artillery. Griffin cavalries were patrolling in the skies, searching for spots that might be missed.
On each platform on the city wall, countless catapults were built up, such historical siege and defence weapons, as long as there are enough scholars and craftsmans, it will bring sufficient power. What difference is a huge stone falling from the sky and the meteor spell, when it would kill anything it hits anyway.
Simple, violent, effective, low cost, were the reasons that catapults were essential in wars.
But this time, the enemy had just entered the shooting range of the largest catapult, the distance was very far, it was impossible to hit precisely and pose a threat, but mostly it was just a type of deterrent.
“On the battlefield, there is no safe spot.”
Not to be outdone, the beastmen fought back. Mobile catapults had limited range, even the largest ones can barely scratch the city walls. Their projectiles raised some dust and rubble, and made the guards laughed.
Not long ago, the rocks and boulders were already being cleared, and the usable stones were stored in the city storage as ammo. To find suitable ones for themselves, the beastmen had no choice but to bring in their own ammo from afar.
And meanwhile, at the west city gate, the East Mist army was assigned there for defensive purposes, and as a temporary leader, Reyne’s palms were full of sweat, this was only the second time she encountered war, but is her first time being involved as a militant.
“Hold on, hold on, Reyne. You can do it, in those years when brother Roland went to the battlefield, he was younger than you are now.””
What she did not know was that as she encouraged herself silently, a few persons were keeping their eyes on her, while some kept on searching for the mysteries of the world through her eyes.
———-
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, this is something common, but there is also something called doing good with bad intentions, rare as it is.
“The Coward” Feimer Carson’s surrender, brought Sleuweir Kingdom great disgrace. He was the first of the descendants of Mist to surrender (Nominally). At the same time, he was labelled as the clown of history, it was a very strange but important influence on the war.
Firstly, due to the fall of the kingdom and the surrender of the royals, Sleuweir was turned into the subordinate of beastman tribe, Suddenly, the castellan and lords of other cities and towns were lost. However, the beastmen army got to bypass the city-states, directly reaching Maple City, the core of it all.
“Why fight when we have already surrendered?”
The second influence had a deeper impact, that was the declaration of war against the beastmen from the elves.
Yes, they declared war. That silent alliance only lasted for less than half a month, and suddenly changed to a hostile relation immediately.
This time, the elven king of Tassel did not show mercy, the human bast*rd chosen as the tipping point was a San Antonian, moreover, he was a noble of the Karsomi Communal Country. He was also the one pulling the strings behind and a slave trader.
Therefore, they changed their targets to Sleuweir and the Karsomi Communal Country suddenly. After that, San Antonio which was next by default, was not able to get off of this situation.
His plans were good, and as long as the war went well, he could use the tipping point and escalate it to stimulate the grievance of people, letting the war continue spreading. Since it was all for the revenge of Princess Suana who was the anti war faction, the peace faction and anti war faction could not disagree on this.
But if the targeted chief culprit Sleuweir surrendered to the beastmen, and in the end was protected by the beastmen instead, from which side should they get their revenge from?
General “Black Bear” Ainro was quite sharp at times, and also quite courageous. When he knew about “Peace Dove’s Death”, immediately he discovered the conspiracy. Right away, he removed the family of that bast*rd noble’s name from Karsomi, captured his brothers and gave it to the elves, and added a genuine and sincere apology letter.
“… Hearing of that tragedy, at the same time we grieved, we deeply regretted. We will never let the murderer run free, as he himself had already died, we hereby present his brothers and wife as an offering, to propitiate Princess Suana’s soul in the heavens…”
Well, this was actually not very appropriate, and also shameless, but in a sense, it worked for the elves who were famously stubborn, the human kings also fathomed that these elves had proud nature and do not yield to strength but can be persuaded by reason.
“We offer a few unworthy descendants of a family, and we apologize sincerely, for the Karsomi Communal Country had already done a great job. By using a sinner’s wife as an offering is no different from the barbaric beastman, if the news spread, it will affect the reputation of Tassel Kingdom and the elven tribes.”
When this kind of news spread out, the war-pursuing faction of Tassel Kingdom noticed that there were something wrong.
In fact, the elven kingdom was the home to the administrative system and congress system. In the eyes of the world, it represented equality, a symbol of peace, and the elven states with different regimes were regarded as the Kingdom of Freedom, but the throne was comparatively weak.
In the eyes of the emissary of the war-pursuing faction, if most of the elves had fulfilled their revenge, and wanted a truce with the “alliance”, then wouldn’t Suana’s “sacrifice” be wasted? How could this nonsensical ending be accepted, how could they face the elven gods who wanted to intensify the contradiction.
While the elves were very particular about reputation and fame, wouldn’t a war without a righteous cause make them evil invaders? How would the kind and peace loving elves become sinful invaders, we needed to be on the side of justice, our targets must be the wicked villains.
Therefore, a report with completely solid intelligence was dug out. Within it was the proof of elf trafficking of recent years, and surprisingly those elf traffickers and slavers had official backgrounds, the arch-criminals or the one behind these directly pointed fingers at Sleuweir, and their nobility and royalty.
The truth was that when slavery exists in this nation, the officials actually turned a blind eye on it, when the bloody chain of benefits exists, how can the upper strata be clean?
Well, then it would all be the fault of King Feimer, but speaking of the truth, from the fact that he kept hundreds of elven dancers in his palace. It surely seemed that he was not wronged falsely.
In the eyes of the elves, they were not invading and instead, they were exacting revenge and bringing justice, the evil Kingdom of Sleuweir must pay the price. The evil humans shall be expelled from the land of elves.
But then, the elves met some trouble. Sleuweir had surrendered. The people of Mist who were stubborn mules actually surrendered? To these longevity tribe, it was beyond imagination – as if the elves had turned cheerful and magnanimous, the dwarfs turned clean and tidy, the beasts had turned educated and reasonable.
The surrender of Sleuweir aside, the elves had to ask themselves if they wanted to continue with this idea of revenge.
If they do not exact revenge, they just cannot let it go, and it would feel like they cannot face certain existence.If they chose on revenge, wouldn’t it be an act of aggression towards Feimer, which was under the dominion of beastmen? Would the beastmen willingly give up their hard earned trophy of victory?
“Dumb savage beasts, hand us Feimer and his filthy minions, we still can talk… wait, why are you holding me back. Ah!”
The elven envoys were as arrogant as usual, causing a weak negotiation attempt to end up in failure. But this was also the outcome that some elven kings needed.
“To all high priests, please inform “him” that “his” will be carried through.
Anzolo Seustad Adelband, this tediously long name that was an abbreviation of itself. A lot could be said about his life, and he had a handful of names, but there was one adjective that could describe him well – Elven God.
The Gods of Order was composed of a mixture of various divine systems, and among the god level existences, there were only seven of them, proving how formidable he was. By the way, it was he who exiled Lorci, caused the falling of dark elves, and the target list of Harloys’ vow of revenge was also headed by him.
As Elven God and the guardian god of the whole elven tribe, how could the will of Anzolo be violated, and therefore the elves declared war upon the beastmen, they declared war towards the beastmen who “attempted” to protect Feimer.
“As expected, the thought patterns of elves… I’m afraid that our elf study needs to be revised again. Hmph, the more intense the battle is the better it is, it will be best if they slay each other.”
As the human militarists were raising their eyebrows, they were also looking forward to the comedy, but very soon they were to find that this declaration of war was just a pretence.
When the beastmen gave up on other cities and focused on the final battle, suddenly the elves began the slaughter, but of course, in the dictionary of these arrogant elves there is no such filthy word, they prefer the term, ‘purge’.
The overflowing hatred was infectious, the blood-lusting madness spread with no end, and quickly, judgement was out of control, any proof of nobles whose ancestors took part in slavery was enough for the whole family to be hanged.
“What? Your grandfather served as a mercenary before? And you weren’t clear of where he made his living? I’m sorry then if you can not prove that he was innocent, that means he was guilty, and if he was guilty, you are guilty.”
The elven pastors served as judges also fell into an inexplicable fever, in their discernment of guilt and in the trial of implicated offenders, rarely anyone escaped unscathed. The only merit compared to the beastmen was that they had not yet acted upon the commoners for now, or in their terms, they had not started punishing them.
How is it possible for a war to have no casualties, facing their losses, with the so-called elven gracefulness, to let the city defence soldiers choose a not too embarrassing death.
Therefore, all around the fallen city hung human heads, the commoners who survived by luck stared at these long ears with their eyes full of hatred.
“They are truly some frenzied warlords, I’m afraid that the northern elves will never return to what they once were, maybe after this havoc, elves would be no more.”
But I saw sadness from the elves’ frenzy. The only one who can lead the pastor’s will was the gods, and since the gods did not care about dignity anymore, they themselves had already fallen into despair and madness due to the loss of their dignity.
By choosing to betray the Gods of Order, by acting as the vanguard of the War God, in an era where vanguard is almost the synonym of cannon fodder, soon the collective fall of the elven gods will come.
“This truly is the feast of traitors.”
Even while saying such words, I was repeatedly reading the letter written to another betrayer, considering on whether or not to reconsider their stance that would directly affect the outcome of this war.
“Dear lady Lorci, good day, I am your loyal fan Roland Mist, you may have heard of me, I have always been intrigued by your art of interrogation, and would like to find a chance to learn from you (omitting the flattery of 5000 words)… You should have heard of the recent happenings, and here, I have a little suggestion…”