Night of the Soulless Heathens – 446



#447. Second Winter 3

The messenger clan says.

Emperor Yaeslat’s reign was said to have been a time of peace.

In the era when the new kings of the eight kingdoms were competing for their hegemony it was common for grain to rot in places with good harvests and for parents to eat their children to survive in places with bad harvests.

The emperor united these eight kingdoms transporting grain from the granary regions and ore from the mine regions and laid the foundation for prosperity.

But even under such emperors the people often starved to death.

The emperor loved only his own cause. Of course his cause included the people but it was like the affection he showered on livestock and he was of a nature that could shed tears and slaughter them whenever necessary.

But what about Azadin?

“To be honest the food situation actually improved after the attack on Naisandokhar. Otherwise we wouldn’t have made it through the year.”

Medium said so coldly.

Naisandokhar is the rear area where Azadin trains refugee soldiers. It is a place where refugees who have just gathered from various places are trained and their families go to work in logging and clearing land and receive wages.

Azadin gave his people jobs as soldiers and hired them to cut down trees clear land and build and maintain roads so that they would not feel useless to the people.

They started large-scale civil engineering projects and employed people but the value of the grain they consumed was greater than the wealth the kingdom earned from them.

Why else would people have appeared who smuggled grains?

Originally land transport could result in losses even for luxury goods.

Smuggling goods like grains by land which are cheap but heavy and bulky and difficult to transport cannot be profitable without organizing a large-scale transport convoy.

However since the price of grain in the area ruled by Azadin was much cheaper than in other places smugglers went out of their way to come to Azadin’s kingdom to smuggle food.

These were killed by the Chitai Kingdom.

They massacred new recruits and kidnapped and took away local residents which resulted in many of the refugees who had gathered in Naisandhokar being dispersed which in turn improved the food situation in the kingdom.

“To be honest it was a waste to hire refugees and give them work.”

“Anyway there were mouths that had to be fed. Of course if you work you’ll eat more but that doesn’t mean people will lie down like corpses and eat only the bare minimum to survive in order to save food.”

“Yes. Since we’ve accepted them we’ll have to give them food anyway. But the problem is humility.”

Medium said coldly.

“Refugees don’t show gratitude when they receive food. They think they are receiving their rightful rights so when even the slightest bad rumor spreads they immediately start saying things like “That guy has no soul.” I can laugh it off when they curse at me. But Your Majesty I can’t stand hearing them call you ungrateful.”

As queen Midiam worked hard on the internal affairs of the kingdom and often heard rumors about the government.

Every time he heard how the townspeople recklessly criticized Azadin and himself he felt his blood run cold.

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Azadin’s state administration is a gamble.

He somehow manages to scrape together food from here and there and feed it to the people but the people are not grateful to Azadin.

Because they are doing all kinds of work including logging clearing land civil engineering and war.

They have no humility in saying that in the current situation it is a completely useless thing to do but they are doing it only to encourage the people’s will to live.

What is even more infuriating and unfair is that these are cowards who couldn’t even open their mouths when other Yaegasu god kings ruled.

They keep swearing because they are not punished so shamefully.

“That’s just how humans are.”

Azadin smiled bitterly.

“When you show mercy you shouldn’t expect the other person to feel sorry for you or to be grateful to you.”

“So are you saying I should just tolerate them insulting me? Those ungrateful people?”

“No what else is there to do? Medium. Let’s not fight emotionally against the people. Just let it go. If you were to openly act rudely in front of us I wouldn’t stay still but that’s not the case. It’s wrong to expect people to truly admire me and love me from the inside. People can curse even the king if they’re not in their proper place.”

“But I want you to be loved by everyone! Why do you love them so much and they don’t know it? Every time I organize the accounts there is no income and the expenses are going up like a tree uprooting itself but I am saving every grain I can without any worries so why should you be treated like this?”

“ha ha ha.”

Azadin burst into laughter as he watched Medium who was tearfully dismantling the scene for him.

It’s so adorable how she breaks things down for herself.

That alone made Azadin feel like all his hard work up to that point had been worth it.

But to Medium Azadin’s laughter seemed meaningless.

“No but I don’t love everyone that much either so it would be difficult for me to be truly loved by everyone. I don’t even dare to want that.”

“Is that so? But if we continue like this we will perish from lack of food. And when that happens people will blame us without even thinking about the fact that we have fed them all this time.”

“There is a solution for everything.”

“You’re lying to me to make me feel safe even if the sky is torn apart. If you believe in Seonwoo’s sun it won’t be of much help in growing food. The clan has tried it and it’s only good enough to warm up a castle. Of course that can also be used to run a farm quite a bit.”

It’s quite useful for heating to survive in the cold.

However the clan’s own investigation found that this was unsuitable for farming and growing plants.

In order for people to drive away the cold and survive they need to spread heat in a crowded place but in order to farm they need to spread light and heat over a much wider area.

It seems that the research results of the messenger tribe show that Seonwoo’s sun cannot cover such a wide area.

“You didn’t tell me but you managed to figure it out?”

“That’s because your clan is afraid of your Majesty. They have been tormenting you since childhood and in fact they have been in league with the Naga Empire and other cults. If we now ally with your Majesty I don’t know what your Majesty is thinking and if he thinks that the Sunwoo’s Sun is nothing special it will be problematic.”

“No that’s more than enough. Because this winter is going to be even harsher.”

Azadin looked up at the sky and sighed.

*********

Even Azadin who controlled the famous granary region known as the Knights Templar was suffering from food shortages so it goes without saying that the other kingdoms especially the Northern Kingdoms were even more so.

Cohen Lionaire the king of Assander foresaw this end of times and built many granaries long ago to store grain.

But it was never enough to feed all the people.

No matter how much you foresaw the future if you store grain in a warehouse for a long time it will inevitably attract bugs and rats. If you invest such a huge amount of wealth in stockpiling it will naturally be a serious burden on the kingdom’s finances.

However the reason that the Northern Qi boasted of having stored up seven years of grain was because the consumption he estimated was based solely on cities and towns.

The majority of the population living outside of cities and towns gave up farming abandoned their homes and tried to somehow escape to the cities where they starved and froze to death.

Unable to bear the hunger those who began to eat the flesh of such corpses became corrupted and the Kurt cult spread.

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To become a wererat and easily feast on corpses.

In order to fill their stomachs by eating rotten flesh people had no choice but to entrust their souls and bodies to the Kurt gods and those who became corrupt and cultists were personally punished by the King of Kings the Northern Emperor.

The king the nobles and the city chosen by them were living a life that was not much different from before the tribulation except that it was a little colder but the rest of the world was turning into hell.

“Our Majesty’s choice may be a bit crazy but looking at this it’s easy to understand.”

As a member of the Chamber of Commerce Sion Etar who was spying on the North stood in the old city of Ascendar the capital of the splendid and beautiful kingdom of Asander and looked around.

Outside a blizzard was raging but the ancient elven city nestled in this sunken basin was warm from the geothermal heat with hot springs gushing out everywhere.

The roots of the lotus that grow in warm water were also a favorite food of the elves and everything about them was rich and beautiful.

This is a contrast to the Abigail I saw on my way to this city.

Northern Qi abandoned its people and stored up seven years’ worth of food while Azadin who had left all of its people behind was facing a famine.

As he watched the two kings’ different actions Zion Etar became deep in thought.

‘If you think about it from the best of conscience King Azadin is right but isn’t it more important for some to survive than for everyone to die equally? However this is only possible because the Northern Emperor is powerful. The cultists are now active even within the city. Even for the Northern Emperor who has the strange title of King of Kings the cultists active within the city must be burdensome.’

But then the images of foreigners came into view before his eyes.

The delegation of Tarasar and Karasar came to Asander.

“Ah. This is the beginning.”

Zion Etar looked at the scene carefully.

As they were envoys of the kingdom security was tight but the current residence of Zion Etar was located on the main street in front of the castle that nobles heading to the royal palace had to pass through so the movements of the official envoys were clearly visible.

It was also close to the embassy and formal accommodations where the kingdom’s envoys could stay so it was a good location to see at a glance the movements of the envoys and their attendants traveling to and from the kingdom.

Here they would watch the envoys move and use their attendant servants to extract information.

The information we found out was as follows:

Assander is prepared for Fimbulbert but Tarasar and Karasar are not.

Chitai was also completely unprepared but thanks to the loot they had acquired while fighting the Azadin forces and the supplies they had received from Assander they were somehow preparing for the winter.

The problem was the other two kingdoms.

They do not share a territory with Azadin so they cannot prove their loyalty through war and in the case of Karasar the king suddenly died causing internal strife.

Of course the Northern Qi with the title of ‘King of Kings’ provided some aid to the other two kingdoms but it was all just a drop in the bucket.

So the other two kingdoms came to the Asander throne to discuss additional aid and future plans.

“That’s right. There’s no way you guys would be okay.”

Zion Etar was secretly pleased.

With Azadin’s Banling Kingdom struggling to feed its people while fighting off ever-approaching threats these northern kingdoms could not possibly be normal.