Building A Human Empire By Creating A Clan [EN]: Chapter 172

Creating Retinue to Build a Human Empire 174

This is where you’ll go.

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Karkas didn’t answer my question. He simply stood there like a stone statue. The dragon’s head, held high, looked down on me and the three monsters as if contemplating the world.

“Kar, Karkas!”

Aleon shouted.

“Kill him! Capture that monkey and kill him!”

Karkas didn’t react to his roar.

“What are you doing! Karkas!”

A roar of anger erupted. He still believed he controlled the old god, so he mistook Karkas’s disregard as defiance. If he had any sense, he should have felt something was wrong.

“Karkas!”

But he was short-sighted. Just as his appearance had changed hideously, his mind had become monstrous, devoid of reason and wisdom. He was merely an animal reacting to the events before him.

“How dare you ignore my words!”

Slap!

Aleon struck Karkas. The sound made it seem like he was slapping a cheek, but he was hitting a leg. He swung the two arms that sprouted from his back like whips, lashing at the leg.

“You bastard! You bastard!”

Slap! Slap!

It was like a child throwing a tantrum. Karkas’s body was originally that of Lord Isletrione, so he was far too tall. Even when Aleon stretched his arm out, he couldn’t reach past the knee.

Slap—

Karkas moved his eyes. He kept his head held high but lowered his gaze.

Aleon froze, flinching. Being short-sighted also meant being swayed by instinct. What did his instinct whisper to him? Didn’t it whisper danger?

Thump!

But it was too late. Just as he felt a chill and stopped his hand, the dragon raised its foot and stomped on him.

“Uh, huh…!”

There was no time to dodge. Karkas’s massive forefoot crushed him, leaving only his face barely sticking out between two toes. Even that was swollen from the pressure.

“What are you doing!”

Gotava demanded in an angry voice, but he flinched when Karkas turned his gaze to him.

– I am disciplining an impudent slave.

“Slave, you say…?”

– Slave.

Crunch…

Karkas’s foot pressed down on Aleon even harder.

– What else could this be if not a slave?

Aleon opened his mouth. His mouth, torn in four diagonal directions, opened wide, letting out a scream. But his breath couldn’t escape properly, so it was a small sound for a scream.

“———!”

Glug!

More blood flowed from his mouth than screams. Crunch, bones shattered. It was clearly a fatal wound, but Karkas didn’t release his strength.

– Wake up from your dream. You are slaves.

Crack, snap, Aleon’s head fell to the side. It was the futile end of a sinner who betrayed the Lord and released the old gods. But when Karkas lifted his foot and exhaled, that breath settled on the corpse and stirred life.

– Arise, Aleon.

The crushed corpse, unrecognizable in its form, was restored to its original state. Aleon staggered to his feet, moving his eyes this way and that. And he happened to meet my gaze.

“……”

For a moment, I read reason in him. I couldn’t say all of it, but enough for him to realize the situation he was in.

“Ah—“

He tried to say something, opening his torn mouth, but no sound came out. He tried to touch his neck with his hand, but at that moment, four hands gripped his neck tightly.

“Keuh, guh…!”

He was about to suffocate again right after being resurrected.

– Enough.

The hands released their grip.

– Aleon.

Aleon’s eyes trembled greatly. But the trembling didn’t last long. Karkas’s magic settled on his body, stealing away the reason he had briefly regained, turning him into a monster.

– Know your place.

The monster lowered his head. I couldn’t tell what the expression on his grotesque face meant. At least there would be no sense of humiliation. He wouldn’t have any pride left as a guardian of the World Tree.

Would a monster who lost his reason even remember his name properly?

The monster was once called Aleon, but now he was just a slave.

– Isn’t it amusing?

Karkas added a sneer to his telepathy.

– You fought for freedom, and now you volunteer to be a slave? Isn’t the sight ridiculous? What do you think, Lord’s successor?

I didn’t answer.

– Neither the desire to become the Lord’s successor nor the selection as the Lord’s successor turned out right. One became a slave, and the other was corrupted. In that sense, the Lord failed twice. You are the third one who appeared after them.

Karkas lowered his head and brought it close to me.

– What about you?

Sizzle—

The Lizardman’s Avatar, Sumontema, who was trampled under my feet, melted away. And his soul was absorbed into my soul, mingling with Koahmic and the Naga Queen who had entered earlier.

Karkas’s head tilted slightly. He seemed intrigued by the sight of Sumontema’s soul being eaten by me.

Eating souls wasn’t an uncommon sight, but Gwendolyn and Sumontema weren’t small souls. He must have wondered if they could be eaten so easily.

“What’s next?”

– Next?

“I asked you. How long are you going to just watch?”

A haze flickered around Karkas. It was magic moving artificially. He was raising his magic power.

– Hmm.

The flow of magic stopped abruptly. The haze also disappeared in an instant. Karkas took his eyes off me and raised his head high. I felt a huge flow of magic, but it wasn’t coming from him.

– Were you waiting for her?

Instead of answering, I looked behind me.

– Indeed.

Karkas spread his wings wide and soared into the sky.

– Time is fair. Just as we have finished our preparations, she must have finished hers. With this, all of the Lord’s achievements have ended in failure. In the end, he failed to finish anything and only postponed it.

“Well, it would be if it ended like this.”

– You don’t think it’s over?

The dragon’s gaze turned to Aleon.

– That one said the same thing. But look at the result. Will you be any different?

Aleon didn’t react to the mockery. He just drooled and looked at me.

– I’ll give you what’s left as a gift. We don’t need it anymore.

Karkas disappeared. The old gods also stopped observing and disappeared after him.

What remained on the battlefield were Aleon and Gotava, and the hordes of other races who had become monsters just like them.

Grrr…

The monsters who were once Aleon and Gotava completely lost their reason and bared their teeth. The magic of the old gods dwelling within them erased their reason and wisdom, only stirring their instincts.

“Edar, Lundringgen!”

Gotava charged. I moved Calliope behind me and stretched out my left hand to the side. Tiamar’s sword, which I had thrown far away a moment ago, flew into my hand.

Swish!

One slash was enough. Gotava’s head was severed, and fire ignited at the cut, spreading throughout his body and turning him to ashes. Not even the magic of the old gods could revive him.

“Kill! Kill! Kill!”

Aleon stomped his feet, repeating the same words.

Kieeeek—!

The monsters he summoned rushed at me.

“Where do you think you’re going!”

Then my retinue intervened. Pasimea, Skadi, Mersephone, those who had been watching me in the midst of the chaos hunted the monsters.

“Get—out—of—here—!”

The monsters were helplessly swept away by the retinue, but some of them pushed through the retinue and rushed at me. One of them was a monster with a human lower body but an upper body that had grown so grotesquely large that it was unrecognizable.

That monster was Laeragon. She was an elf who had lost her beautiful appearance due to the tumors that had grown on her face, causing her skin to sag. She charged at me, swatting away the retinue members who blocked her path with her bare hands.

“Lord Edar.”

I nodded.

Calliope stood in front of me, blocking Laeragon.

“You—!”

Laeragon remembered her. Well, how could she forget? It was the first defeat she had ever experienced in her life. She wouldn’t admit it, but even because of her injuries, she was overwhelmed by her.

Even if she lost her reason by becoming a monster, that memory would have remained vivid. The monster who was once Laeragon reached out her hand to her.

Whoosh!

Calliope swung her sword. The magic I had imbued in her sword dwelled within it, and flames with her hair color, a deep blue, wrapped around the blade and blazed.

The hand with peeling skin tried to grab the sword. The swords of the retinue members who had tried to cut him earlier hadn’t even made a scratch. Would it be any different just because the sword was on fire, she must have thought.

Clang.

The monster’s upper body fell to the floor.

“……”

Calliope’s sword cut off the monster’s hand and diagonally severed her right above the navel. It was a cut without any obstruction, as if cutting through the air.

“Kuaaaaaa!”

Aleon howled and rushed at her. The monster’s movements were so fast that she almost missed it, and a moment of tension flashed across her face.

Thud.

I reached out and grabbed the monster. The monster, bound by magic, stopped in the same posture as when he was running, as if time had stopped. Calliope didn’t miss the opportunity and slashed the monster.

Swoosh—

And intense light poured down from the sky. Mersephone burned the severed monsters, Aleon and Laeragon, with light, giving them no chance to recover.

Laeragon melted down beyond recognition. Aleon’s form remained, but the magic of the old gods was leaving him, and he was facing death.

“……”

I took my eyes off them and scanned the battlefield. The battle continued even after the old gods had left and the leaders of the four races had fallen. It was because the monsters had no reason.

There were still countless monsters who would fight until their lives ended.

“Stop.”

The battle stopped.

“Slaves of the false gods. Go where you need to go.”

I scanned the stopped battlefield once and looked at the sky.

The rain stopped, the dark clouds cleared, and light poured down. Light so bright that it was hard to open my eyes fell on various parts of the battlefield, healing humans and crushing monsters into small pieces.

——!

—! ——!

The monsters screamed silently and spat out their souls. There were so many of them that the magic flowing through the battlefield surged. A strong wind blew. It was the flow of magic caused by the movement of souls.

“This is where you’ll go.”

The souls tried to fly towards the old gods but stopped. As if being dragged by an invisible chain to repay a debt, the souls were sucked into me, as if their ankles had been caught.

And they passed through Tiamar’s body and became one with my soul. Gotava, Gwendolyn, and the two Avatars, four souls and three monsters, were swept away by the tide of souls.

“……”

I suppressed the chaos swirling within me and turned my back.

“…The Lord, was right.”

Aleon said. He was the only non-human race alive on the battlefield where the monsters had disappeared. The monster’s form cracked as if its shell had been peeled off, and an old elf was revealed from within.

Indeed, you could say the level was different.

His soul was also being pulled into me, but he stubbornly resisted.

“I can feel their souls inside you. But I can’t hear their voices. Weren’t you supposed to seal them? Did you not seal them but devour them?”

He must have noticed because he had a foot in my soul.

That the old gods, who he believed were sealed, had become one with me.

“How can you do that? Their souls are different from ours. They don’t die unless they want to die themselves. Even if you contain them within you, you’ll only be eaten in reverse.”

Aleon chuckled weakly.

“Did the Lord know?”

Well, I’m not sure either.

What was the reason the Lord chose me as his successor?

A reasonable guess would be because of my strong mental fortitude.

But could he really not have known about my ability to kill the old gods?

“It was always like that. The Lord did things we couldn’t understand, and we just followed him, only to realize in the end that he was right.”

“……”

“Is it my fault again? Should I have trusted him this time too?”

He wasn’t asking me. He was asking himself.

“Human, Edar… do you know? The Lord isn’t clean. He always made the right choices, but the right actions aren’t always good. When it comes to morality, the Lord was the dirtiest and most greedy being in the world.”

He laughed emptily.

“How wonderful would it be if the world could be ruled by virtue alone? But no matter what you do, dirt accumulates, and you have to wipe it away. That was my role.”

The laughter quickly faded, and anger boiled over.

“But you’re going to wash your hands of it and leave? Pretending to be pure on the outside, leaving me behind, and handing it over to an innocent girl? Asking me to continue to help you in the future? How long will I have to serve a father and daughter who don’t even die of old age until my soul melts away?”

As he fell back into a vortex of rage, I asked him.

“So, do you think your actions were right?”

“……”

“Look at the consequences of your actions. You and your race, all races except humans, have become slaves. No, they’ve become monsters worse than slaves. Whatever your intentions, do you have anything more to say even with these results?”

Aleon closed his mouth.

“If you’re going to show such an ugly 모습 [Korean: appearance] even at the end, then stop.”

He relaxed his distorted expression and took a long breath. With each breath that flowed out, his soul was sucked into me. He was no longer resisting.

“Just… tell him not to make excuses.”

“Yes. It’s just an excuse. You had many other choices.”

“Those are very painful words.”

The old elf’s life said as his last flame flickered out.

“Tell Tiamar I’m sorry. She was truly pure.”

Aleon’s head fell back.

His soul was decomposed without resistance and remained as magic power.

– Idiot.

Tiamar let out a thought.

The Lord’s only flesh and blood.

– Regret is always too late, no matter how early it comes.

Various emotions were mixed up in Tiamar’s thoughts. Anger was the most distinct, but there was also ridicule and resentment.

– You shouldn’t have done anything you would regret in the first place.

And there was also a faint sense of pity.

Aleon was a traitor, so he earned her resentment, but until right before that, he was someone she and the Lord trusted. He was also a colleague who had spent a long time with them.

It was only natural to feel sorry for him, wondering why he had done such a foolish thing.

– Not that I’m any different.

She let out a self-deprecating laugh.

Aleon’s corpse turned into crystals and crumbled. A gentle breeze stole away his remains. The foolish man who sought to evolve his race and dominate the world met his end.

– Release me!

Gotava’s cry echoed within me. The souls that had not yet been decomposed followed him and rampaged. Aleon wasn’t among them. He had done foolish things until now, but his end was clean.

“Is it over now?”

Pasimea approached me and asked.

I surveyed the battlefield. The battlefield was silent after the battle had ended. A group of nearly 300,000 from both sides had fought chaotically, but now only humans remained.

There were no survivors from other races. Aleon was the last, and all the other races had died. The other races, who had numbered over 200,000 before the battle, had become monsters like Aleon, and like Aleon, they had turned to ashes.

Just as sandstorms blew in the desert, ash storms blew in the plains.

“No, it’s not over yet.”

I looked at Gerhard and declared.

“Send those among the retinue who are at full strength to the Dwarven Peaks. Go and occupy them if you can, and if you can’t, keep them in check so they can’t communicate with the old gods.”

“Understood.”

The four races—Elves, Dwarves, Nagas, and Lizardmen—had lost their leaders and elites. Except for the Elven lands, which the old gods had made their base, they were practically no man’s land. Even if I left them alone, they wouldn’t dare to resist me.

“Won’t you mobilize the Imperial Army?”

Gerhard shook his head at the question from Raimondo, the royal guard.

“The Peaks are a terrain where it’s difficult to deploy a large army. It’s rugged and the weather is terrible. If you drive ordinary humans into such a place, many will die.”

Moreover, the Dwarves’ strongholds are close to the mines. If the mines are deep underground, the strongholds are also deep. A complex maze like an anthill, the retinue is the best to sweep through such a place.

“There’s also a high possibility that the Dwarves have become monsters.”

Look at how Aleon and his group turned into monsters in an instant. Even strong people like them couldn’t resist the magic of the old gods, so could those who remained endure it?

“Humans can’t do it. At least not yet. We have to finish the job.”

Gerhard moved to reorganize the retinue legions.

“What about us?”

Pasimea asked.

“Collect the spoils of war and distribute them to Gerhard first.”

“And the remaining items will be taken to Olympus?”

The enemies had disappeared, but their traces remained. All sorts of spoils of war were scattered around, from the armor and spears they were wearing to the supplies piled up in the rear.

Each of the spoils of war was valuable. They were weapons and equipment used by the elites of the other races, so many were made of orichalcum or mithril [Mythical metals].

“We’ll get more from here than what we’ve made so far.”

Pasimea chuckled as she checked the spoils of war. Soldiers gathered the items scattered on the dirt floor and gathered them in one place. There were so many of them because they were the belongings of 200,000 enemies.

“Wow, the level is different. There are so many things that would have been worth the price of one territory in the past? Their equipment alone is better than our guys’?”

As she said, it was the last battle against the other races, but the equipment of the main force, the retinue, wasn’t that good. Only the 1st Legion, which was at the forefront, and a few other legions were covered in orichalcum and mithril, while the rest were covered in steel.

On the other hand, the other races had several times as many troops covered in rare metals, and the rest wore weapons and equipment with at least one magic enchantment.

It was a difference in power accumulated over ten thousand years.

It was a difference in power that they wouldn’t have been able to win if they had fought normally.

“Come to think of it.”

Pasimea said, checking the magic on her necklace.

“This is the first time we’ve profited from a war, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

Skadi gave a bitter smile at those words.

“It is the first time.”

The wars they had experienced since establishing the Empire had been deficits. Whether it was when they conquered the Republic or when they went on an expedition to the Lizardman Kingdom, it was all deficits in terms of economy alone.

It was a rational action because there were purposes other than the economy, such as saving their fellow humans and disrupting the other races. But Skadi, who oversaw the administration, must have had a series of hardships.

As the Imperial Treasurer, she must have always seen only red, which indicated a deficit. It was her role to solve this, and the fact that she hadn’t said anything until now was because she was that good.

“It’s making me uneasy because things are going so well. You know, there’s that thing.”

Skadi touched her lips.

“The reward you get after the work is done and you’re told you did a good job, and the reward you get suddenly while the work is in full swing, are different, right?”

“It feels like they’re giving it to you to cheer you on because there’s more work to come?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

The two retinue members stared at me blankly. Without answering, I turned my body back to Tiamar. She shrugged her shoulders for me.