Chapter 67: A Banquet for the Defeated, A Strike That Reached the Heart
The afterglow of the setting sun clung to the horizon of the Wailing Wastes like a dried scab of blood.
At the gates of the City of Miracles, all was silent.
The returning army looked like a giant serpent with its spine shattered, dragging its broken body through the dust, leaving behind a trail of humiliation as it slowly crawled back into the city.
The air was thick with the smell of rust-like blood, the stench of rotting wounds, and something even heavier than both—a poison called defeat, so dense it left one scarcely able to breathe.
The survivors of Black Dragon’s Wing had been arranged at the front.
What should have been the honor of a victorious return had become instead a parade of disgrace for the defeated.
One hundred and fifty fierce wolves had departed.
Now, fewer than thirty tailless, broken curs limped back upright.
Every one of them was wounded, and the sight of missing arms and broken legs was especially striking.
Beneath their torn leather armor, their wounds were still bleeding.
That wild, mad-dog arrogance they had once carried had long since been smashed to pieces by the iron hooks and fists of the Abominations, leaving behind only the numbness of survival and a fear etched so deeply into their eyes that it would not leave.
Behind them marched Roland’s Black Dragon Guard.
The steel formation was still orderly, and the dents and arrow holes in the shields told their own silent story of the battle’s brutality.
But every soldier wore a shadow on his face, along with that lingering fear he could not quite suppress.
They had won. They had dragged their allies out of the sea of undead.
And yet there was not the slightest joy in them.
That hellish scene had branded itself just as deeply into their own hearts.
On the city walls, the garrison soldiers and the townsfolk who had hurried over upon hearing the news looked at one another, their expressions changing from hope, to shock, and finally into a vast stillness.
That stillness was like an invisible slab of lead, pressing down heavily on every heart.
Caesar stood atop the makeshift platform erected on the training ground and watched his army return with a blank expression.
His gaze was calm, his deep violet eyes betraying not the slightest ripple, as though this broken, ragged army before him had nothing at all to do with him.
Roland walked to the foot of the platform, his massive body casting a long shadow in the sunset.
He removed his helmet, revealing that scarred face, and dropped to one knee.
“My lord, your subordinate has failed. I was unable to take Grayrock Town.”
“The vanguard force… suffered grievous losses.”
Every word was like a hammer, striking the heart of every person present.
All eyes turned instinctively toward the platform, toward that far-too-young lord.
They were waiting.
Waiting for the storm of rage everyone assumed would come.
The surviving members of Black Dragon’s Wing in particular had gone pale as sheets, trembling like leaves in the autumn wind.
They had once been thugs, bandits, drifters—but more than anyone, they understood the rules of failure.
Lose a battle—especially lose so badly in the very first battle—and there was usually only one ending.
They could already picture their cold corpses hanging from the walls, left for the vultures of the wasteland to peck their guts out.
Fear spread silently through the crowd.
Then, suddenly, a huge figure stumbled out from among the defeated survivors, lurched forward several steps, and dropped to his knees with a heavy thud before Caesar’s platform.
It was Barrett.
He was drenched in blood. The armor over his chest had been shattered, revealing bandages wrapped around him in haste.
He looked like a bear with its teeth torn out, but in that clouded single eye there was not much fear—only blood-red shame, unwillingness, and grim resolve.
“My lord!”
Barrett roared with every bit of strength he had left, his voice so ruined it sounded like a cracked gong, with a taste of blood in it.
“It was my fault! I, Barrett, was the useless one! I failed to lead the brothers well!”
Like a bull gone mad, he slammed his forehead into the ground with a heavy bang. Blood sprang from his brow at once.
“The brothers are all good men! None of them were afraid to die! It was me! I was the one who gave the wrong orders, the one who got greedy for merit and charged in too deep, the one who fell for the undead’s trap and got everybody… got everybody almost killed!”
“My lord! If you mean to kill or flay someone, do it to me alone!”
“Do not make things hard for the brothers who survived! They… they are all good men!”
The moment he said that, every member of Black Dragon’s Wing froze.
They stared stupidly at Barrett kneeling there. This one-eyed bastard, usually the greediest and slickest of them all, who swaggered about cursing with every other word—he was actually taking every bit of the blame onto himself at a time like this?
For a moment, the resentment they had held toward their commander, along with their terror of what came next, was suddenly washed thin by a hot, nameless emotion.
At the very least, this bastard was still a man.
Roland stood to one side, watching Barrett kneel there with his performance played to the very end, his expression complicated.
The entire training ground had gone silent enough for a pin drop to be heard.
Every last person held their breath, waiting for Caesar’s judgment.
And yet Caesar… smiled.
It was a very light smile, a very faint one, but like sunlight tearing through storm clouds, it instantly seized everyone’s eyes.
He stepped down from the platform slowly, without haste. His boots struck the ground with calm, steady sounds.
Step by step, he walked up to Barrett.
But he did not look at him.
Instead, he looked past him, his gaze slowly passing over one terrified, blood-stained, dust-covered face after another.
“You.”
At last Caesar spoke. His voice was not loud, yet it was startlingly clear, as though it carried some kind of magic that pierced through even the pounding of every heart.
“You think you failed?”
No one answered.
But their trembling bodies answered for them.
Caesar shook his head slowly, with a force that allowed no argument.
“No.”
“You did not fail.”
He bent down, and before the stunned eyes of those shattered survivors, he personally reached out and pulled that one-eyed man, covered in dust and blood, up from the ground.
“You only saw, for the first time, the ugly face of war.”
He patted Barrett on the shoulder. The force was not heavy, but it made the big man’s whole body shudder.
“You used your own blood and your own lives to smash yourselves against a city occupied by death.”
“You faced monsters that knew no fear, no fatigue, not even pain.”
Caesar’s voice remained steady, like a man stating a fact.
“Some of you were shot until you looked like hedgehogs. Some of you were torn into pieces.”
“The messenger told me that at the final moment, you were pinned inside the breach by the Abominations.”
He paused, and his gaze sharpened.
“But not one of you turned and ran.”
“You charged those monsters of steel and rotten flesh like lunatics, with nothing but your own bodies and blood.”
Suddenly, Caesar’s voice rose like a blade leaping from its sheath.
“And you tell me that this is failure?”
“Bullshit!”
That single curse left everyone dumbstruck.
Not in their wildest dreams had they imagined this refined-looking young noble lord would speak so crudely.
But that one “Bullshit!” struck far harder than any elegant phrase ever could into hearts already overflowing with fear and despair.
“In my army, as long as you dared to draw steel against the enemy and fight until the final moment, then you did not fucking fail!”
His gaze was like two brands of red-hot iron, searing itself into the soul of every member of Black Dragon’s Wing.
“The brothers who died were not cowards!”
“They died for gold, for land, for the chance that their families might eat their fill and stay warm! They were warriors!”
“They died with ten thousand times more honor than if they had starved to death as drifters in some forgotten corner!”
The entire field fell silent.
Every mind there had been struck numb by Caesar’s words.
No punishment? No curses? Instead… praise? Approval?
This had nothing whatsoever to do with the script they had imagined.
“And as for you, Barrett.”
Caesar turned to him, a curve lifting at the corner of his lips.
“You say you made mistakes in command?”
“Yes, you were indeed stupid.”
“Stupid as a wild boar that knows only how to ram its head into walls, taking the most expensive thing I own and using it to smash into the hardest wall around.”
Barrett’s heart dropped in an instant.
“But…”
Caesar’s tone shifted, and the smile on his face deepened.
“I like your stupidity.”
“I like that reckless madness in you.”
“I did not spend good money raising you so you could wag your tails in front of the enemy. I raised you so you could bite out their throats—even if you shattered every tooth in your mouths doing it!”
Then he threw out his hand and gave an order to the guards behind him, one so shocking that jaws almost dropped straight to the ground.
“Pass down my order!”
“Bring out every last barrel of the best ale in the cellar! Not one is to be left behind!”
“Bring out every bit of roast meat from the kitchens! Let the cooks slaughter more right now!”
“Today, I will reward the entire army!”
“We will hold a banquet for the warriors who have returned!”
He paused, and his voice dropped, becoming solemn and heavy.
“And we will send off our fallen heroes as well.”
Boom.
The entire training ground erupted as though thunder had been dropped directly into it.
The surviving members of Black Dragon’s Wing all stood there with mouths hanging open, unable to believe what they had just heard.
Reward them? Hold a banquet?
But we lost! We nearly got ourselves killed to the last man! Instead of punishment, there were rewards? And the rewards were the best ale and meat?
Was this real?
Was this a dream?
Very quickly, barrels of strong ale rich with the scent of grain were hauled out by the guards and thumped down onto the ground.
Whole roasted sheep and roasted magical boars, sizzling with grease and rich aroma, were carried into the center of the field.
The rich scent of meat, mixed with the deep fragrance of ale, was like an invisible hand that instantly flooded everyone’s mouths with saliva and ignited the desires they had been crushing down to the limit.
“What are you idiots still standing there for?”
Caesar kicked the stopper out of a cask with one boot, and amber ale burst out in frothing streams.
He seized a horn cup, filled it to the brim, and shoved it roughly into Barrett’s hands while the man still stood there in a daze.
“Drink!”
Barrett took the cup numbly. His one eye was already filled with tears.
This time, it was not an act. He was genuinely moved.
He threw his head back and poured the whole cup of strong liquor down his throat in one savage gulp. The burning liquid scorched his gullet like fire—and lit the wildness in his heart as well.
“Hrrk…”
He let out an enormous drunken belch.
“Long live the lord—!!!”
“ROAR—!!!”
The surviving members of Black Dragon’s Wing could not hold back any longer. Like wolves starved for ten days, they threw themselves at the roast meat and strong drink.
They tore at the scalding, grease-dripping hunks of meat with their bare hands, baring their teeth in pain as it burned them, but never caring, cramming it down as though they could swallow every last trace of fear and humiliation together with it.
They hugged the barrels and drank wildly, letting the ale spill all over their clothes.
They cried, laughed, shouted, and roared.
One soldier who had lost his left arm raised his cup with his right, poured a splash of liquor onto the empty ground beside him, and screamed out a name—that of the brother who had died.
Then he laughed and drained the rest in one gulp, tears streaming from his eyes no matter how hard he tried to stop them.
All the fear, despair, and lingering terror they had suppressed on the journey back had, at this moment, been ignited completely by the meat and the alcohol, turning into the most primal, most frenzied kind of release.
Caesar stood among the crowd and did not even push away the drunken fool who slung a greasy hand across his shoulder.
He simply watched these beastlike soldiers in silence, and deep within those violet eyes there flickered a cold, exact calculation.
A slap followed by a sweet reward? Too crude.
No—first, he had to let them smash themselves headfirst into the hardest wall they could find, had to let them split their heads open and drown in despair, had to let them reach the point where they thought they would be abandoned.
Only then, at the moment of greatest pain and hopelessness, could he hand them a reward sweeter than honey, one that seemed to heal everything.
Only then would they forget the pain.
Only then would they revere the hand that offered the sweetness, thanking it with all their hearts, worshiping it like a god.
He raised his cup high, and his voice boomed across the field, drowning out all the noise.
“All of you, listen well!”
Every movement stopped. All eyes turned toward him at once.
“Today, you saw the Abominations.”
“I tell you this now—they are nothing more than the lowest-grade cannon fodder in the undead legion!”
Those words struck the soldiers, who had just been terrified out of their minds, like a hammer to the chest.
“The fact that you cannot beat them now does not mean you never will!”
“Starting tomorrow, I will outfit you all in full suits of chainmail!”
“I will feed you so much meat and ale that you’ll turn into monsters of muscle!”
He spread his arms, like a king embracing the whole world, and his voice carried endless temptation.
“I promise you—one day, you will tear those Abominations apart as easily as ripping up rotten paper!”
“You will ride warhorses and trample the cities of the undead flat!”
“You will use their bones as your chamber pots!”
“The gold, the women, the land, the titles you desire—I, Caesar Valerius, will give them all to you!”
“So long as you dare to follow me and stake your lives to take them!”
“AAOOOAAOOOAAOOO—!!!”
The frenzied howls joined into a world-shaking wave of sound that shot into the heavens, as though it meant to rip apart even the blood-red setting sun on the horizon!
At that moment, the surviving members of Black Dragon’s Wing no longer looked at Caesar with mere awe.
The look in their eyes was that of zealots gazing upon the one true god walking the mortal world.
Roland stood in the distance, silently watching it all.
He watched the soldiers’ faces twist with a fervor close to madness. He watched their near-insane devotion to Caesar. And once again he could not help marveling inwardly.
This young lord’s grasp of the human heart was monstrous.
He was not winning people over.
He was forging faith.
Using despair as the furnace, death as the hammer, and the most primitive desires as fuel, he was taking a heap of scrap iron and beating it into the wildest, most loyal blade imaginable—one that would belong to him alone.