“All right, now it’s time to put our tricks aside and squash them.”
Frantz’s zealous inquisitors had been too confident in their army’s meager equipment upgrades. They would suffer the consequences at the hands of the Arachnea, which continually built up its strength.
There was no one to save them now.
After that battle, the allied army completely collapsed. All its surviving soldiers fled back to their countries, and the rest of Frantz’s own men were forced to retreat. It would go down in history as one of the fastest, most cowardly and unsightly retreats by any army on the continent.
♱
At this moment, the Popedom’s remaining soldiers were running away from the border, the Swarm hot on their trail. There was only one problem left for me to deal with: the refugees. Those who’d managed to flee the Dukedom in the midst of our conquest were now huddled in camps near the border between Frantz and Schtraut.
“What do we do about these guys...?” I wondered aloud, gazing at them from a little ways off.
“Perhaps we could reduce them to mincemeat? The Arachnea is always in need of it,” Sérignan suggested.
“We could, but indiscriminately killing refugees doesn’t sit well with me.”
Those people had only fled Schtraut because of the needless fight that idiot Leopold had picked with us. They didn’t have a home to go back to... And admittedly, it was mostly my fault. Killing them and turning them into meatballs might’ve been the Swarm-y thing to do, but I didn’t like the idea one bit.
Or rather, it didn’t suit me because of the kind of people I’d associated with thus far. Linnet, the people of Marine, Isabelle... They wouldn’t have approved of slaughtering homeless refugees. It would just be another case of the strong tormenting and killing the weak—the same way they’d met their own ends.
“Roland, I want you to make them an offer. If they want to go back to Schtraut, would they be willing to live under the Arachnea’s rule?”
“By your will, Your Majesty.”
I decided to leave this matter to Roland, since he was originally one of Schtraut’s citizens. Roland approached the frightened refugees cowering nearby and called out to them.
“Men and women of Schtraut! Her Majesty, our benevolent Queen of the Arachnea, says she is willing to accept you into the Dukedom with open arms! Any who wish to return to their former homeland, raise your hands! We promise to do you no harm!”
The people of Schtraut had suffered enough already, and there was no need to torment them further. I decided to let them return to their homeland, where they might live out the rest of their lives and die in peace.
“I want to go back!”
“Me too!”
Schtraut’s refugees raised their hands one after another.
“Very well. Welcome home,” I said, stepping forward. “Let us put the deaths of the war behind us and start a new relationship. A new future, where the Dukedom of Schtraut and the Arachnea work together.”
I gestured toward the opening in the walls made by the battering rams. I’d had the remains of the dead Swarms and soldiers removed, so with the exception of some blood on the grass, it led to a peaceful expanse of grassland beyond. It was a view of their homeland.
“Can we really live alongside these creatures...?”
“Better that than get executed by Frantz’s inquisition, I suppose...”
The fact that Frantz’s heretic hunt was driving the refugees to side with us seemed awfully ironic to me.
“Roland, please take care of the refugees who want to immigrate. We can’t let anything happen to them.”
“As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Recklessly accepting anyone and everyone could cause an assortment of problems, and so I left Roland to take care of the matter and filter the influx of refugees. The new Schtraut had no place for thieves or people with a grudge against the Arachnea.
“Well, that’s one problem solved. Let’s continue our march. We have a Popedom to cover with corpses and a capital to wash with blood.”
At my order, the Swarms resumed their pursuit of Frantz’s fleeing soldiers. For now, we would ignore the allied army and whoever else; they could be trampled later. Right now, we had our eyes fixed on Frantz.
Crush the Popedom of Frantz. Crush it, crush it, crush it.
The only forces Frantz had who were any threat were the crossbowmen and heavy infantry, and apparently we’d done away with every last one of them. Now all that was left were the lightly armored troops.
I began to firmly believe that this war would be an easy one. But, as my luck would have it, an intruder would soon step in to interfere with our plans.
♱
We continued our advance into Frantz, taking over half the Popedom’s territory in the process. After slaughtering anyone we came across, we reduced our victims to meatballs, which were sent to the flesh depositories and Fertilization Furnaces in the FOB in order to add more troops to our ranks. Ripper Swarms served as scouts while the Toxic and Genocide Swarms made up the bulk of our forces.
I had assigned most of our units to our campaign against the Popedom as it was our primary objective at present.
“Our next obstacle is passing through the mountains.”
A vast mountain range spread out before us. These mountains divided Frantz into northern and southern regions, and the only way through was via a single paved road. Predictably, the Popedom’s army was blocking that road to impede our progress.
“We have no choice but to force our way through. We could ask the pirates to ferry us across the sea, but that would take too long and give our opponents too much time to prepare. And besides, if something were to happen to the ships, all the Swarms on board would drown.”
If the enemy realized we were using the pirate ships and decided to sink them, the Swarms would be lost to the depths in the blink of an eye. I couldn’t afford to lose my army of Genocide and Toxic Swarms this way after spending so much of our precious meat stores to create them.
That said, if we simply decided to charge in headfirst, we’d lose these units just the same. We needed a strategy.
“Maybe we don’t necessarily have to take the mountain road.”
Yes... If I recall correctly, during the Korean War...