Torn Asunder by War, A Sword Saint for Tomorrow X The Knight Wizards!! – Chapter 140

Chapter 140: Human Relations and Karmic Retribution
  While the soldiers of the Knight Kingdom, hiding their identities with the hoods of their coats, returned to their camp under the moonlight peeking through the clouds and fell asleep, and while others were still indulging in a late slumber…
  
  The residents of the city of Leipzig, who had gathered in the central plaza seeking food, which was temporarily being rationed, were making a fuss without end, venting their criticism and dissatisfaction towards the ruling class.
  
  “We don’t need nobles in the rear who can’t protect the lives and livelihoods of their people!”
  “What is the duty of the nobility? Don’t be ridiculous!!”
  
  “We do not recognize the rule of the Ballenstein family!”
  “Let Brigade Commander Baron Ramsey, who saved the city, be the next lord!!”
  
  As a small number of loud instigators shouted out guiding words, those influenced in each location successively raised cheers, becoming a chaotic whole as the surrounding atmosphere heated up.
  
  The company commander of the security forces, stationed at the border with the plaza to prevent the crowd from surging into the castle where Duke Prime Minister Cristophe was staying, watched the scene unfold with his riflemen, sighing with a disgusted expression.
  
  “Those guys, they just complain and take the wheat and salt, don’t they?”
  “But if we don’t distribute it properly, it will be a disaster.”
  
  Following the disaster in which the capital city was half-destroyed by the “Hour of Ruin” invasion and suffered a large number of casualties, the Rigsia territorial army had been forcibly collecting food from the area, including this city. If they hoarded it internally, there was a risk of riots that could involve the surrounding areas.
  
  However, since it was being handed out in person, it was necessary to designate a time and call people to a spacious area, resulting in the military effectively hosting a protest against the current Marquis family.
  
  “…This is outrageous no matter how you look at it.”
  “Well, it’s still better than having no food on hand, isn’t it?”
  
  “In that respect, we should be grateful to Nina Valer, who popularized the ‘Devil’s Root’ that the church demonized and put it on the tables of the common people.”
  
  If the New World crop, which had a long shelf life, had not been cultivated for food in the Empire, or if this incident had coincided with the autumn harvest season, it was thought that a considerable number of deaths from starvation, a secondary disaster, would have occurred.
  
  It was said that the number of elderly and children who would not survive the winter would increase compared to previous years, but if the relief supplies from the imperial capital and the joint estimates of the transport corps and the Finance Bureau, which took into account the population decline, were correct, it should be possible to somehow manage to feed the people of the city.
  
  “Personally, I’ve started to think that Lady White Fox could be the next lord.”
  “A talented and beautiful young lady is certainly welcome, but that’s impossible, Company Commander.”
  
  “No, we wouldn’t have to pay the reparations for the war that Lord Heisel started.”
  “Haha, that would mean we were completely defeated.”
  
  In a sense, it was no different from selling the territory by municipality to repay the debt, and the pride of the Rigsia soldiers would be shaken, and so on… Aside from the noisy crowd, the soldiers also exchanged their opinions vigorously, considering the difficult future of their own territory.
  
  While people from various social strata were worried about the future of their homeland, Prime Minister Cristophe, who was at the Rigsia territorial army headquarters near the plaza, frowned at the noise reaching the inside of the large tent and grumbled aimlessly.
  
  “It is regrettable that they are subjects of His Majesty the Emperor, yet they cannot understand that their foolish ideas will strangle them.”
  
  As is often the case, a cause that a large number of people with different knowledge and experiences can agree on is like a deceptive picture that has been stripped of its essential parts and simplified to make it easy to understand, and it can be said that it does more harm than good.
  
  If they were to be caught up in immediate concerns and make a mistake in their judgment, the Empire’s power would fall into the hands of the unknown White Fox from another world, and the policies favoring Rare Humans that were rampant in the Zephyrus Domain special zone would spread throughout the country.
  
  “If she were at least from a Western country, I could have forgiven her…”
  
  Picking up Cristophe’s repeated muttering, filled with respect for his political enemy who had brought innovative giant knight technology and saved many imperial citizens, and regret for their incompatibility, Baron Ramsey, who was standing by, spoke up, thinking that Cristophe was a difficult person, yet still in the midst of it all.
  
  “Your Excellency… do you think that I would be swayed by Lady White Fox?”
  
  “You can say anything here, but the Empire’s soldiers are infatuated with the ‘Maiden of Salvation’ who developed the giant knights, so I can’t trust you.”
  
  Back when the fallen nation of Iglad, separated from the Western Continent by a strait, was still thriving, the defeated soldiers who first encountered the large-type monsters on the expedition remembered the bravery of the then-Margrave of Zephyrus, who, with only a few knights, served as the rearguard and fought to the death alongside his accompanying infantry.
  
  The trust in Lady Nina, his beautiful adopted daughter who inherited his will and contributed to stopping the monstrous Aberrations in the eastern part of the former Francia Kingdom by generously providing advanced technology to various countries and mass-producing the first-generation Clawsolas giant knights, was deep.
  
  The same was true for the honest Baron Ramsey, so he did not deny the Duke Prime Minister’s point and remained silent, waiting for the judgment of the man who had been agonizing over the past two days.
  
  “No matter how foolish they may seem, it is even more foolish to cause rebellion by going against the will of the people… I would not hesitate to promote you and make Rigsia a county. However, there is one thing that bothered me in your background check.”
  
  With a dignified gesture, Cristophe placed a copy of the birth records, which the priest had brought out during the evacuation, on the table and pointed to the unnatural blank space where the grandfather’s name should have been written.
  
  Considering the Baron’s lineage, which had been rooted in the area near the imperial capital for a long time and had produced generations of military personnel, the sudden lack of information was undeniably strange.
  
  “Was your daughter perhaps snatched up by some nobleman?”
  “…No, I heard that my grandfather was an eminent scholar from the Horst territory.”
  
  “Is that so…”
  
  Although confirmation was needed, upon hearing the name that he had heard at least once at a banquet from the lecherous previous generation, a name familiar to those close to the old man Aldabert, the Duke Prime Minister closed his eyes quietly and fell silent.
  
  It was he himself who, after failing to hunt the fox, had asked the old man of the Imperial Faction to mediate between the Rigsia forces and the Zephyrus territorial army and to make peace with the neighboring Knight King as a witness, and ended up getting him killed for no reason.
  
  Unaware that the old man’s granddaughter was leading the kidnapping incident, he briefly thought of her and braced himself to make a drastic change of course.
  
  “I shall petition His Majesty the Emperor to make you Count of Rigsia. You wouldn’t refuse, would you?”
  “If it is Your Excellency’s order, I shall humbly accept it.”
  
  With a military-like attitude and a touch of humor, Baron Ramsey returned a dignified salute.
  
  With this exchange, the next lord was decided, a formal peace treaty between the two warring territories was concluded at the meeting, and the protracted internal conflict was finally brought to a political end.