Chapter 247

“We must retreat immediately!”

A nobleman in splendid attire, dripping with cold sweat, shouted.

The command of Ernst’s army was in a state of utter panic and chaos. The death of Marquis Valenstein was an event akin to the sky falling—something they could never have anticipated.

Of course, they had heard rumors before that Marquis Valenstein had been defeated by Ai-shan Gi-or. But that defeat was merely a staged act to create a pretext for civil war. In reality, it was Ai-shan Gi-or who had been pushed to the brink of death.

Only the nobles gathered here, who were closely tied to Isabella, knew such secrets. That’s why they had been at ease. Even if that woman was as skilled as Marquis Valenstein, they believed the Ghost Sword couldn’t lose—especially after facing ten masters.

But they were wrong.

Ai-shan Gi-or, the Carnivorous Beast, had killed ten masters and still stood strong. That demonic woman was an existence beyond human strength.

In the heart of the Zeren Plains, a legendary duel that had overturned the earth for dozens of minutes came to an abrupt end. It was a fight they couldn’t comprehend or follow. What broke was the Empire’s greatest sword.

The unparalleled genius, not even twenty years old, who had brought down the Empire’s strongest swordsman, stood wounded but unyielding. His blue eyes flickered like ghostly flames.

“Retreat without even fighting because of one enemy? How can you utter such nonsense!”

“There’s no way we can win! The morale of the troops has completely collapsed!”

Six thousand infantry and three thousand archers all stared at the enemy with pale faces. The confidence they had when they first set up camp on the plains had long vanished. Their anxious glances around betrayed their desire to flee.

It was only natural. They were, after all, professional soldiers hired for money. Loyalty and honor were foreign concepts to them. What mattered most was not loyalty to their masters but returning home with their pay to their families. They weren’t the type to risk their lives in a battle they were clearly losing.

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

“But we can’t just run away! If we don’t fight somehow…!”

Ironically, it was the conscripted soldiers who still had some will to fight. Though, for them, there was no other path.

Only a handful of nobles knew why the conscripts were still willing to fight. The method Isabella used to drive them was excessively cruel, even by their standards.

If the truth were known, even knights who had numbed their consciences with self-delusions of loyalty would turn their swords against her.

—

When all able-bodied men were forcibly conscripted, no one expected them to fight effectively. So, Isabella came up with three ideas.

Using monsters as parasites was inefficient. A monster was more valuable than a single conscript.

She could have used drugs to drive them into a frenzy. In fact, that would have been the most stable and reliable method.

But Isabella chose the third option.

“Mother, Father… that cursed witch…!”

A conscript clutching a crude spear wept as he thought of his family. A young man without even a beard, his youthful face etched with despair and anger.

Isabella had taken all forty thousand conscripts’ families hostage.

She showed them what would happen if they resisted or tried to flee—elders being devoured alive by insects, women becoming prey for monsters and giving birth to more monsters. It was a scene straight out of hell.

That image was seared into the conscripts’ minds. Even in a situation where death seemed certain, they couldn’t drop their weapons.

Of course, some prioritized their own lives over their families’ gruesome deaths. Where were they now? The forty thousand conscripts had dwindled to twenty-four thousand by the time of deployment.

Escaping alone was impossible under the witch’s watch. That’s why they had no choice but to march to this battlefield and raise their spears.

Abandon their families and surrender, or die here. Those 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 a face that looked like she could die of happiness and said only one thing:

“Because it’s more fun.”

That was all.

—

“…What if we surrender? Prince Ernst has declared he won’t punish us…”

Among the nobles, someone cautiously suggested surrender. It wasn’t a loud voice.

Surrendering meant betraying Empress Isabella and Prince Ernst. If Ernst heard such a suggestion, they’d be beheaded before they could even attempt it.

Lowering his voice was a cautious move, but he should have been even more cautious. If he had looked behind him just once before speaking, he might have saved his life.

“Surrender, you say? What an interesting story, Count Fontaine.”

“Gasp…!”

A low, mocking laugh.

As the startled noble turned to look, Ernst’s hand rested on his head. The noble, his hair gripped tightly, trembled like a leaf.

“Yes, that’s possible. You betrayed the nation for pleasure, so betraying me to save your own life wouldn’t be too difficult, would it?”

The other hand gripped his shoulder firmly. The strength in that arm was unyielding, tendons bulging like something alive.

“Your Highness! It was a slip of the tongue! Just once, please spare me!”

“Please forgive me…!”

“Will you be able to?”

Ernst raised his right hand without hesitation.

“Gwaaaaaah!”

With a horrifying scream, Fontaine’s head, with his eyes rolled back, was yanked out like a weed from a rice field.

The gruesome sight of a twisted head, with a pure white spine and chunks of flesh tangled like roots, made the nobles nauseous. They covered their mouths and quickly turned their heads away.

“Even in death, be grateful for my mercy. It’s a more comfortable death than being interrogated and executed by Leopold’s men.”

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

“Do you think surrendering will save your lives? Leopold only promised not to charge you with rebellion. Just rebellion. But do you really think that’s the only crime you’ve committed?”

Indeed. The nobles gathered here had all fallen under Isabella’s influence, living in decadence and corruption for over a decade. Even without the charge of rebellion, their other crimes alone warranted the death penalty.

“But then, what should we do…?”

“I don’t expect you to fight to the end. Send out the conscripted soldiers first, followed by all the infantry. If they disobey, shoot them. Even if two thousand die, there are still over thirty thousand left. Once the chaos begins, the knights will have no choice but to fight… That should buy us some time. In the meantime, we’ll retreat to the Venes territory. Can you handle that?”

Ernst—or rather, Isabella speaking through Ernst—gave the order.

The nobles nodded.

In essence, the order was to sacrifice tens of thousands as pawns, but as long as they themselves survived, it didn’t matter to them.

The forces gathered here were practically Ernst’s entire army, so even if they retreated to Venes, they would have no fighting strength left… But they trusted Isabella. Not that they believed in her personally, but they knew Isabella Venes wouldn’t just sit back and wait for death without a plan.

They had no idea what she had prepared in the Venes territory, but they were sure she had some way to stop the enemy.

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

—

“Charge toward them?! Are they telling us to die?!”

As expected, the soldiers fiercely resisted.

While the conscripted soldiers trembled but silently advanced, the regular soldiers, who still had some sense of judgment, naturally rebelled.

The heavily armored cavalry, glowing with a divine light, and the monstrous figure at their center glaring at them like a messenger of God—charging toward them was even more absurd than walking into a pit of fire.

The nobles’ response was arrows.

Three thousand steel arrows darkened the sky as they rained down—not on the enemy, but on the rear of their own infantry.

“Arrows! Those bastards really shot at us!”

“Ahhh!”

“Those crazy archers!”

The rebelling soldiers screamed and fell like dominoes. The arrows, shot straight into their backs, left the soldiers at the rear defenseless and helplessly dying.

The first casualties of the civil war, which was expected to decide the fate of the empire, were a thousand infantrymen with arrows in their backs.

The only path left for them was to move forward. There was no room to turn back.

The soldiers, trying to dodge the arrows, pushed forward, causing the infantry formation to become so densely packed that it was difficult to move.

“Don’t push! Stop pushing! Ugh…!”

“Shut up and move forward! If you stop, you die!”

The soldiers in the middle of the formation were crushed from both sides, letting out desperate cries. But they should have considered themselves lucky to even have space to move.

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

“Those damn bastards! If we’re going to die anyway, let’s kill those archers first—!”

The head of a man trying to rally the infantry to charge backward was torn off. An arrow, far more powerful than those of ordinary archers, struck him. It was a shot from the Royal Guard standing beside the archers.

“…The 7th Battalion, continue direct fire. The 8th Battalion, keep up the volley. The rest, snipe anyone who turns around. Once the melee begins, fire all remaining arrows and retreat.”

The noble in charge of the archers had already retreated, so the Royal Guard’s expert was now commanding them. The archers had no choice but to follow his orders and shoot at their own comrades. Those who resisted had already been cut to pieces.

With each draw of the bowstring, it felt like they were shooting their conscience instead of arrows, but they had no other choice. At least this Royal Guard had assured them that once the infantry began fighting, the archers could retreat.

Though they pitied the deaths of their allies, the archers’ own survival was their top priority. The longer the infantry fought, the more time they had to escape.

Instinct for survival numbed their guilt, and the stench of the mutilated corpses drowned any remaining courage in fear.

To control a thousand, it’s enough to brutally kill the bravest ten. Isabella knew this well. In the end, Ernst’s infantry advanced toward death, driven by fear and chaos.

“You damn bastards!!!”

From the other side of the battlefield, a woman’s furious roar tore through the sky like a raging storm.