Chapter 3 – Story 91: Poisonous Snake
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A weird fervor was enveloping Romania’s royal army after it had invaded into Holmea under the command of King Doldea. After all, they had not only accomplished their long-standing desire of ravaging the land of their arch enemy Holmea, but they also took Barrier Fortress Masalkar and the fort of Loylops, both defense structures which had given Romania a hard time in the past, while going south through Laphrae.
And because they had been exposing the towns and villages, including the major city Getzen, along the road towards the royal capital Holmenia to terrible acts of brutality and degeneracy ever since then, it was only natural for the soldiers to be in some sort of delirium.
While they were camping, the soldiers showed off their loot to each other and you could spot several circles where they’d boast about their own barbaric behavior to their peers. You could even see some of the officers with their conspicuous helmet decorations among those soldiers.
The whole army of Romania was affected by an abnormal craze as if they all were feverish.
Meanwhile the young ruler of the small country Buljeboa, King Cesar, was calmly walking amidst that crazed army. Engulfed by a chilly air that isolated him alone from the soldiers’ fervor, King Cesar headed to a camp where people dressed in Holmean uniforms had gathered, smack down in the middle of Romania’s army camp.
It was the place assigned to those who had betrayed Holmea as nominal royal guards of the new Holmean King Vulitas. As if to flee the ridicule by the Romanian soldiers, who were calling them lowly traitors who had turned their backs on their motherland, they were silently huddled up inside their own camp, almost looking as if they were holding their breaths. King Cesar stepped into the sole remarkably luxurious tent inside that camp, called out to a soldier guarding that place, and asked him to lead the way.
Once he was taken inside the tent under the guidance of a servant, who called himself Grand Chamberlain, he hit upon a vile banquet.
Smoke rising from incense burners was forming a faint shroud within the dim tent. The figures of many people were lolling mysteriously. Most of them were women, who were hiding their private parts with strings and small pieces of cloth, which didn’t really cover anything.
In the middle of those women, who were cooing coquettishly, Vulitas sat, as if buried in piles of cloths and pillows, while exposing his extremely fat belly. Even though his motherland was being invaded at this very moment, resulting in its people suffering from violence and plundering, Vulitas’s face was dyed red from alcohol and shone from the grease pushing out of the skin’s pores.
Without even noticing King Cesar’s arrival, he was kicking up a fuss while sucking on the breast of a woman like a baby.
As scorn surfaced within King Cesar’s mind as he was confronted with this sight so ugly that it was comical instead, Vulitas finally took notice of his visitor after being informed of his arrival by the chamberlain, and called out to him in panic.
“Oh, King Cesar. What a pleasure for you to come visit me. Forgive me for showing you something so embarrassing.”
King Cesar felt genuinely surprised.
Holy cow, this pig seems to know the term embarrassing. Then again, it looks like he only knows the word but not the meaning behind it.
While feeling thrilled to see what sort of reaction the pig would show to the piece of news he had brought, King Cesar said, “Sir Vulitas, I hear that blasted Warius raised an army.”
“W-What was that!?”
Vulitas tried to stand up in a hurry out of sheer surprise, but he immediately staggered and his waist flopped down. This wasn’t just owed to the alcohol circulating through his body. His legs and loins had weakened thanks to his sloth life and fat body.
While still sitting on his bum, Vulitas asked with his flabby chin trembling, “My brother hasn’t surrendered? Don’t tell me…it’s going to turn into a battle!?”
Apparently he’s expected King Warius to capitulate from just seeing the big Romanian army. Even though they’re brothers, it’s funny how he hasn’t realized that King Warius never had such a laudable character in the first place.
Firmly suppressing his urge to laugh out loud, King Cesar persuaded the frightened Vulitas with a gentle voice, “But, you don’t have to worry about anything, King Vulitas.”
King Cesar had deliberately stressed the “King” part.
“Your friend King Doldea is leading a big army of 20,000 soldiers. Compared to that, Warius hasn’t even half that, I hear. King Doldea’s victory is set in stone and as such your official coronation in Holmenia is not far off.”
Vulitas asked, “Really?” as if clinging onto King Cesar’s word with his eyes swaying in fear and greed. King Cesar reassuringly nodded at that with a broad grin.
Thereupon, Vulitas repeatedly muttered, “I see,” almost as if he was trying to convince himself. Meanwhile King Cesar looked down at him with a derisive smile that looked like that of a reptile.
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As King Cesar was inclining a cup full of wine by himself after having returned to his own tent, the tent curtain behind his simple throne was faintly turned over from outside. Following that, a figure slipped into the tent through that gap.
“Your Majesty, I have returned just now.”
Vulitas might have been horrified if he had seen the woman who was lurking in the shadow of the throne’s backrest. After all, it was the same woman who had engaged in indecent and disgraceful activities with Vulitas until just a little while ago.
“Good work, Delilah.”
She used to act as a star dancer of a traveling troupe of entertainers who had come to Laphrae from Buljeboa to alleviate the boredom of Vulitas who had been basically sentenced to exile. The dancers of traveling entertainers in this era didn’t just perform dances, but also worked as prostitutes. She was no exception to that rule. After being quickly spotted by Vulitas for her beauty, she was summoned to his bedroom and served him there.
As a result of that, Vulitas had fully indulged in her flexible, trained body and her in-born, natural beauty. Nowadays he was so smitten by her that he’d even bring her to official occasions.
However, in reality Delilah was a female spy belonging to 「Root」, the secret intelligence organization of Buljeboa. 「Root」 originally used to be a benefit society for Buljeboan who were working abroad.
Buljeboa was a poor country with little farmland because of its location in the mountains. For this reason, it wasn’t unusual for the people who were troubled to put food on the table, to leave the country and earn some money as entertainers in order to support their families back home.
But, because they were strangers, the Buljeboan people couldn’t obtain the protection by the rulers of the land they went to, leading to them constantly being exposed to persecution and discrimination. In order to protect themselves from those, they naturally formed the benefit society to exchange information and occasionally form a united front.
It was King Cesar who eventually detected another value hidden in that benefit society. Entertainers such as troubadours were given the special privilege to freely enter towns and fiefs as a source of information about what was going on in the world and as entertainment providers for the masses to relieve the peoples’ anxieties.
The Buljeboan royal family turned those Buljeboan entertainers into spies and had them probe for all sorts of information about various countries. Those spies then mixed secret messages among the letters addressed to their families back home. This network slowly and quietly started to spread underground like roots. These days it was an extensive network spanning across the entire West.
This was 「Root」, the secret information organization of Buljeboa.
“Let me praise you: you did well to rile that coward Vulitas up so much that he’d decide to usurp the throne,” King Cesar said with the corners of his mouth raised into a smile.
Delilah straightened herself in response, “No, I only obeyed your orders, Your Majesty.”
What she had actually done was merely telling Vulitas that the general, who had been assigned to him when he was exiled to Laphrae, was ordered by King Warius to kill Vulitas if anything happened. When he learned of this, Vulitas wasn’t acting shamefully. But, afterwards he became even more frightened than a pig which knew that it’d be soon roasted as the main dish of a party.
All she had to do from then on was to gently embrace him and whisper into his ears, “At this rate you will be killed by your kingly brother. It’s a lucky coincidence, but I have had the honor to become acquainted with His Majesty Cesar of Buljeboa. How about consulting with His Majesty about this, if you like? Remember, if you don’t hurry, you might lose your life any day.”
Things developed rapidly from there.
Once King Cesar poisoned the general through a spy under the pretext of helping, Vulitas had no other path left but to rise in rebellion. Moreover, he was lucky as with Kuffner a new collaborator was exiled to Laphrae just as he was secretly preparing his uprising.
“What was the state of that idiot after I left?”
Delilah formed a scornful smile with her sensual, thick lips due to the king’s question.
“He hasn’t a sliver of doubt about himself becoming the king of Holmea. Not only is he already making plans for his own coronation, but he was even babbling about making me his queen.”
King Cesar couldn’t help but to giggle due to the unexpected foolishness.
“Let him keep dreaming that sweet dream for a while. He’s fated to be quickly used and discarded anyway.”
At this point, Holmea’s west has already been cut off by the Divine Son of Destruction and the east will likely be taken by King Doldea. So even if Vulitas becomes the king of the small part of Holmea, his fate is pretty much sealed. King Doldea will definitely demand from Vulitas to send out soldiers under the pretext of retaking the west.
A weak man like Vulitas doesn’t have any backbone allowing him to reject that. And if he continues fighting the Divine Son of Destruction as he’s told, the little land remaining for him will become impoverished from all the tax increases and recruitments to fuel those repeated troop dispatches.
And as Holmea and the Divine Son of Destruction violently clash, King Doldea probably plans to choose an opportune time when both sides are exhausted to make Vulitas abdicate for some reason, annex Holmea’s territory, and even destroy the weakened Divine Son of Destruction.
It’s a very cunning way of thinking, befitting that old wolf.
“Choose a suitable time to withdraw so that you won’t be dragged in as the pig is turned into meat. I leave the judgment up to you――now, go!”
Delilah curtly answered, “At your will,” and slipped out of the tent as smoothly and silently as she had entered it.
Right afterwards, a chamberlain brought a secret message. Opening it and scanning its contents, King Cesar quietly leaked a “Hoh!”
“That foolish Warius. He’s still being obstinate despite having the old lion at his side,” King Cesar sneered after discovering the name of Darius in the rear of Holmea’s army in the message that leaked the entire Holmean battle formation. “Although he had the option to escape northwards with Princess Warina, he didn’t abandon King Warius albeit his imbecility, and plans to die together with him, huh?”
Just for caution’s sake, King Cesar had prepared everything to make members of Root infiltrate the core of the new Holmea in case Darius escaped to Holmea’s north together with Princess Warina, but that seemed to have proven to be in vain.
“Darius and Ponpius appear to have gallantly chosen the path of a ruined country, I guess,” the king said, his voice brimming with ridicule.
Even if the horns are shattered, the claws are broken, both legs and arms are torn out so that one has to crawl across the ground, it’s fine as long as you haven’t lost the fangs to fight. And as long as you have the resolve to use any means, regardless of you being called a coward or a brute as a result of that, even a small person, who has to crawl across the ground, can become a poisonous snake. They can become a snake feared by anyone.
If you resign yourself and accept your defeat despite that, you’re no more than a sore loser, even if you decorate it with words such as gallantry.
King Cesar used the flame of a candle to ignite the secret message and called out to the chamberlain, who had been quietly standing at the side all this time.
“What are the movements of the lords in Holmea’s north?”
“When we spread rumors that Princess Warina might appear to seek refuge, as ordered by Your Majesty, Marquis Apius started to wait, watching King Warius’ next actions. The other northern lords have taken the same action.”
All the northern lords, including Marquis Apius, possess around 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers in total. If they had joined King Warius’s army in response to his appeal, Holmea’s army would have probably exceeded 10,000 soldiers. If Darius, the man referred to as strongest general of Holmea, had taken command of such a force, it might have led to Holmea not losing against Romania, even if they wouldn’t have been able to win either.
On the other hand, had Darius and Ponpius fled to the north together with Princess Warina, the new Holmea would have immediately fallen apart, if the north had no military forces left to found a country, no matter how small it might have been.
As such King Cesar had spread rumors that having the northern lords around Marquis Apius make a move would put them in a bind, and they apparently completely fell for it.
“Is the information lockout for the north in effect?”
King Cesar checked back.
The chamberlain answered, “Without any problems.”
Just as the chamberlain said, the messengers, which King Warius sent out upon departing the capital, telling the northern lords to urgently join up with him, were all killed and buried without a trace. Moreover, the bridges on the roads leading from the capital to the north were destroyed all over, the roads themselves were blocked with fallen trees and rocks, leading to all travelers becoming unable to go there, unless they made a huge detour.
With this the northern lords will likely only learn about Darius having embarked into battle together with King Warius after the battle between Holmea and Romania has ended. At that point, it’ll be too late for them to do anything about the outcome. I’m sure even Marquis Apius, who has been dreaming of him wielding authority in the center of a new Holmea under Princess Warina, will turn ghastly pale.
This will settle the tendency of the West for the most past.
After deciding so, only one worry was left to bug King Cesar.
“Now then, the remaining question is how the Divine Son of Destruction is going to move, I guess…”
I can’t believe that he’ll just watch Romania swallow Holmea just like that. He’s definitely going to intervene at some point.
King Cesar suspected it’d happen immediately after Holmea’s army under King Warius’ command fell or after Holmenia surrendered.
“But, it’s the Divine Son of Destruction we’re talking about here. Even I can’t fully predict what that man is going to do next,” King Cesar stated while looking somewhat happy.
In the first place, King Cesar, who had always pretended to be neutral, had deliberately contacted Romania because of the Divine Son of Destruction. Ever since the Divine Son of Destruction had suddenly appeared like a new star five years ago, astonishing would be the only way to describe what that man had accomplished in this short time. If someone simply listed the achievements of the Divine Son of Destruction, even King Cesar would only be able to say that this had to be some fantastic tale.
The Divine Son of Destruction truly possessed superpowers.
And compared to that, Holmea’s King Warius was the peak of stupidity. Not only did he dismiss his precious, famous general Darius, but he only appointed incompetent military commanders, who couldn’t think of anything but flattering their king, to important positions, resulting in the royal army slowly but steadily falling apart.
Thanks to that, it was clear to anyone that Holmea would be fully stolen by the Divine Son of Destruction in the near future.
King Cesar didn’t really mind the destruction of Holmea. But, if the Divine Son of Destruction, with the backing of Bolnis’s industry and the Solbiant Plains’ grain production, were to obtain all of Holmea, even Romania wouldn’t be able to resist him for long. And once Romania fell apart as well, it’d likely spell the West’s first supreme ruler.
“But that would be a problem,” smiled King Cesar.
So, before that can happen, I’ll let Romania steal half of Holmea. Thanks to this, the balance through rivalry in the West would switch from the two poles Holmea and Romania to the new two poles Romania and the Divine Son of Destruction.
That was King Cesar’s new plan.
After losing Holmea as a buffer zone and thus sharing a direct border, the Divine Son of Destruction and Romania will likely clash directly with each other, leading to both wearing down each other. The territory of the former Holmea will become the battlefield and consequently fall into ruin. This will transform the land into a lawless zone of chaos where people will act like barbarians.
At this point, the era of the lion and wolf biting at each other in the grasslands has ended. The coming era will be one of a quagmire dominated by a poisonous snake.
Imagining that new era, the poisonous snake chuckled to himself.
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