Lorist felt helpless. This was war. He had saved these residents from physical harm and death, but he could not soothe the pain and resentment of losing everything they owned. On top of that, he had to arrange food and lodging for the entire journey north and provide carts for the elderly, women, and children. He was running himself ragged until Baron Kamora arrived in a hurry, at which point Lorist finally shed the burden of these miscellaneous affairs, traveled light, and set out on the road.
Along the way, soldiers and conscripts serving under various nobles occasionally passed by, carrying crude weapons and their spoils of war. When they spotted the Norton Family's banner, they cheered respectfully and moved to the side of the road to let them pass. Lorist kept a dark expression and had no desire to deal with this rabble. In his eyes, these so-called allies were actually more hateful than the enemy.
He had safeguarded the lives of one hundred thousand residents of Meishan Castle, only to watch these men pillage the entire place. They had dug up the ground and torn apart homes searching for the residents' hidden valuables, stopping at nothing. After they finished scavenging, they even prepared to set fire to the buildings. If Lorist hadn't stopped them in time, all of Meishan Castle might have been reduced to ashes. And they had the audacity to argue that it was their right, since they had drawn that district by lot, and how they disposed of it was their own business.
Bastards. In a fury, Lorist had over a dozen old soldiers—who fancied themselves in the right—hanged in one go, which finally put a stop to this foul trend. It was simple: if you set fire in your district, the flames would spread across the whole area, and there were still many people inside who hadn't gotten out. Did these bastards want to burn their own people alive? In truth, many of these conscripts were veterans who had survived the imperial civil war, long accustomed to such behavior. Some wanted to vent their frustration because the loot from their assigned districts was meager, while others simply did it out of habit.
While Lorist was busy migrating the residents of Meishan Castle, the allied noble forces had been running rampant throughout Meishan Province. Though Meishan Castle had fallen, the province still held many fiefdoms, towns, and villages belonging to the Sabaji Duchy. The allied forces, unsatisfied with what they had taken from Meishan Castle, turned their gaze to the entirety of Meishan Province. And so, the catastrophe of Meishan Province began.
Compared to the historically disciplined Norton Family forces, these allied nobles were nothing short of bandits—killing, committing arson, and pillaging without restraint. They even captured villagers and tried to sell them to Lorist, knowing the Norton Family needed manpower. Lorist had initially intended to buy these unfortunate villagers, but Baron Kamora stopped him.
Baron Kamora told Lorist gravely that he must not buy them. Purchasing captives would only give these allied nobles an excuse to continue plundering the population. If slave trading became associated with our family, we would be no different from those slave owners. It would violate our family's promise to never engage in the slave trade. Once the allied nobles learned that we did not buy people, they would simply resort to looting goods and women instead. We could take in those villagers whose homes had been destroyed—they would be grateful to the Norton Family for it.
Lorist knew Baron Kamora was absolutely right. Despite his deep sympathy for the suffering villagers, he had to steel his heart and turn a blind eye. Even with the Norton Family's formidable military power capable of sweeping away the entire allied force, Lorist was powerless to stop what was happening before him. He could not give such an order. This was war—the kind of war fought on the Galentea Continent for ages. The allied nobles' behavior was commonplace; to them, it was perfectly normal. On the contrary, the Norton Family's forces, bound by discipline, were the odd ones out.
Out of sight, out of mind. Lorist could only comfort himself with that thought. No matter what, the allied nobles were still his allies. Turning against them over atrocities committed against enemy civilians would be the act of a fool. Lorist could only pretend he hadn't seen anything and hurried on toward Qiksex Province.
Two days ago, Fierce Tiger Ross had sent a messenger reporting that Duke Sabaji had successfully fled with his family to the Fakerl Duchy. However, because Duke Sabaji had employed his signature tactic of cutting off his own tail to save his life each time, although he escaped, only four or five thousand men from his duchy's First Corps survived. The rest of his forces had been virtually annihilated trying to hold back the Flying Tiger Corps and the two light cavalry regiments led by Count Shahin.
It could be said that the entire Sabaji Duchy had now fallen. Aside from a few castle fortresses in Qiksex Province and towns with sufficient garrison forces, nothing remained capable of resisting the Northland Four-Family Alliance and the Fisablen Family's military forces. Even Duke Sabaji himself had fled to Fakerl Duchy—the Sabaji Duchy was a duchy in name only. Those remaining castle fortresses and towns would have only two choices once the Flying Tiger Corps arrived: surrender or destruction.
With the addition of three corps originally intended to reinforce Sabaji, the Fakerl Duchy had finally stabilized the situation at the border of Samola Province, establishing a reasonably complete defensive line that held back the Flying Horse Corps, the Reserve Corps, and the Third Border Patrol Corps—three light cavalry corps in total. But the Forlundo Duchy had it far worse. Not only had Fuliwode Province become a thoroughfare for the invaders, but even Perolina Province, where the capital city of Pedro was located, was engulfed in flames and subjected to frequent light cavalry raids.
The duchies' combined forces were split—one contingent heading to shore up the defensive line, another directly to Pedro City for reinforcement—which finally gave Duke Forlundo a much-needed shot in the arm. Combined with the two additional corps the duke had newly conscripted, nearly two hundred thousand troops across five corps established a defensive line in Fuliwode Province, finally stemming the devastating situation of light cavalry threatening the capital three times in a single night. The two sides entered a stalemate.
Lorist was quite satisfied with this situation. The initiative in the war was now firmly in his hands. The four central duchies—or rather, now three central duchies—suffered from one critical weakness: they lacked a powerful cavalry force and could not withstand the offensive and harassment of highly mobile light cavalry, suffering defeat after defeat. Although the Fakerl Duchy and Forlundo Duchy had both established defensive lines with nearly three hundred thousand troops committed, these forces were spread across two directions. Meanwhile, the Northland Four-Family Alliance and the Fisablen Family's forces occupied Qiksex Province, able to mass their troops and strike in any direction at will. The Fakerl and Forlundo Duchies could only passively mount defensive counterattacks.
Lorist decided to rest. There was no need to send light cavalry to assault well-fortified defensive positions while the situation was so favorable. They could simply wait for the
To be honest, in the conquest of the Sabaji Duchy, neither the Northland Four-Family Alliance nor the Fisablen Family had gained much in terms of material wealth. Count Shahin had done relatively well, seizing valuables worth approximately three hundred thousand gold Forde. The Norton Family, having single-handedly captured several towns and castle fortresses, had收获ed between one hundred and two hundred thousand gold Forde worth of goods. Count Feilimu and the Fisablen Grand Duke收获ed similar amounts, less than one hundred thousand gold Forde worth. Ironically, it was the coalition of over a hundred minor nobles who had fared best—pillaging and looding everywhere, each bringing in anywhere from several thousand to ten thousand gold Forde.
The true gains from conquering the Sabaji Duchy lay in manpower and grain. Besides the Norton Family's need for people to populate the Northland, the Feilimu Family also required laborers to develop the Southern Provinces. Even Count Shahin had gathered over three thousand families of three or four people, intending to bring them back to his family's territory. They had all been influenced by Lorist, paying particular attention to migrating entire families together rather than separating them. Only in this way could the new settlers adapt to their new environment more quickly and become loyal subjects under each family's rule.
What put Lorist in a dilemma was that the Fisablen Grand Duke had the same idea, though his methods were considerably more cruel. He only wanted young and able-bodied men and women, discarding all the elderly and weak. As a result, his prisoner camp was ringed by white-haired old people begging for their families to be reunited, their cries and pleas filling the air without end.
When the Fisablen Grand Duke approached Lorist requesting that he order the Bastion Corps—which was guarding the border of the Southern Provinces—to open the road so the Fisablen Family could escort their war spoils back, Lorist sighed deeply. He told the Fisablen Grand Duke that he was extremely reluctant to allow these able-bodied captives to be taken to the Fisablen Family's territory, as it would only strengthen the duke's family. But since he had sworn to treat everyone fairly and justly, he would order the Bastion Corps to open the border. He had only one condition: let those captives reunite with their families, and even in migration, do not break apart their families.
The Fisablen Grand Duke nodded and left. Lorist then saw the gates of the Fisablen Family's prisoner camp swing open, and the elderly gathered outside surged in. The sound of weeping began to give way to voices of gratitude. Lorist then wrote an order and sent
Clearly, those scenes of families being torn apart had been deliberately staged for his benefit. The old fox had worried that Lorist wouldn't open the border to let them through, so he had put on this little performance. Otherwise, he would have driven away those elderly people gathered outside the camp long ago, instead of allowing them to make a racket outside. If he truly intended to abandon these old people, then even the able-bodied captives he brought to his territory would deeply hate the Fisablen Family—and that old fox certainly could not have been ignorant of such a simple truth. Deliberately separating the able-bodied from the elderly was a ploy to gain sympathy and get Lorist to let them through…
Lorist smiled bitterly. Never mind. There was no point in sparring with that old fox. No matter how much the Fisablen Grand Duke tried to strengthen the Fisablen Family, it could not match the Norton Family's rapid development. He already held every advantage—timing, terrain, and popular support. If that old fox could still turn the tables on him, he might as well find a flagpole to run into. Compared to his own wariness of the Fisablen Grand Duke, it was clear that the old fox was even more wary of him—and that much could be seen from the fact that before the campaign, the duke had made him swear an oath not to set traps or sabotage the Fisablen Family's forces.
Qiksex Province had originally been the hereditary territory of the Sabaji Family and was an agricultural province. Its flat and vast terrain made it the ideal battlefield for cavalry to发挥 their capabilities. With news arriving of the Flying Tiger Corps capturing the remaining castle fortresses and towns, and Ail leading a Hunter Corps to force the surrender of the twelve-thousand-strong Sabaji garrison at White Egret Lake Marsh, the Sabaji Duchy could be said to have been utterly destroyed, save for the duke's escape.
The residents had been migrated to the territories of the Northland Four-Family Alliance and the Fisablen Family. As a result, the economies and development of these three provinces would stagnate for a full twenty years after the war.
On September 7th, the belated Second Prince finally arrived in Qiksex Province with the White Lion Corps and the Kenmes Family's two heavy armor regiments, entering their station.
After three days of rest, the Second Prince convened a military conference to discuss how to attack Fakerl Duchy and Forlundo Duchy. The battlefield situation was now crystal clear: the Fakerl and Forlundo Duchies were locked in a desperate defense, while the Andinak Kingdom held the offensive initiative, controlling the tempo of the war—striking wherever it pleased. Whether it was the Fakerl Duchy's Samola Province border defenses or the Forlundo Duchy's defensive positions in Fuliwode Province, breaching just one defensive line would lead to the fall of the other duchy as well.
If they destroyed the eight garrison corps deployed at these two defensive positions, then not only the Fakerl and Forlundo Duchies, but even the Handla Duchy would teeter on the brink of collapse. For these three central duchies, this crisis was far more dangerous than the invasion led by First Prince Redilis a decade ago. With the Sabaji Duchy all but destroyed and the Andinak Kingdom's forces penetrating deep into its heartland, the three duchies were at a disadvantage in both terrain and military strength.
The Second Prince proposed leaving just one light cavalry corps to pin down the Fakerl Duchy's three garrison corps, then concentrating all their forces to break through the Forlundo Duchy's defensive line in Fuliwode Province. Although this line was defended by five garrison corps, it stretched across a longer front with flatter terrain, better suited for a cavalry assault.
The Second Prince planned to use the White Lion Corps and the Kenmes Family's two heavy armor regiments to break through a point in the defensive line and punch open a gap. Then the Fisablen Family's Reserve Corps, the Third Border Patrol Corps, the Feilimu Family's Flying Horse Corps, Count Shahin's two light cavalry regiments, and Lorist's Flying Tiger Corps would all pour through that breach deep into Forlundo Duchy, encircling the Fakerl and Handla Duchies from behind to settle the matter in one decisive battle.
The Second Prince declared, "Right now, these three duchies are like eggs. The only hard part is the shell—these two defensive lines in front of us. Once we crack a hole in them, we can feast on the delicious yolk inside. I have absolute faith that our forces and every family's military forces possess unparalleled offensive power, capable of breaking through any defense. Invincible in every battle, unstoppable in every assault—I trust the four central duchies will soon become history. I wish you all victory in every direction, and may you make outstanding contributions toward the unification of the Empire."
……