I never imagined post-war cleanup would be this exhausting.
Once I finished the bulk of the work, I collapsed into my chair, completely spent.
Thanks to my Status and Skills, the physical fatigue wasn't all that bad.
But the mental exhaustion was crushing.
The reason was simple — the work I'd been doing involved verifying casualty lists and preparing compensation payments for the bereaved families.
The Eighth Army I'd led had suffered enormous losses.
More than half of them had died because I'd essentially sicced them on the enemy and sent them on what amounted to suicide charges.
Every time I looked at another name on that list, I felt like I could almost hear their voices cursing me.
And then there were the families, clinging to the recovered bodies of their loved ones.
I had to offer them empty words of condolence — and they had to be empty.
I wasn't allowed to mean them.
I had no right to do so. I was the heartless commander who'd forced these people to their deaths.
Technically, I shouldn't even have been permitted to wallow in sentiment like this.
So I kept my mind blank and ground through the post-war work without pause.
The fortress where we'd fought had been destroyed by my own hand, which meant it no longer had any strategic value worth occupying.
There was no point in claiming a pile of rubble.
But we still had to recover the bodies of the fallen from both sides, abandoned on the battlefield, along with any supplies left inside the fortress.
If we left them, battlefield scavengers would strip everything clean.
The supplies inside the fortress were mostly wrecked when I'd demolished the place, but we managed to salvage whatever had survived the collapse unscathed.
More troublesome than all of that, though, was recovering the bodies.
The recovery teams were, naturally, the surviving members of the Eighth Army and newly conscripted personnel.
Almost all of them had known the dead personally.
Time and again, someone would discover the body of a friend or acquaintance, break down sobbing, and stop working entirely.
This was the scene I'd created.
I nearly lost the ability to speak.
Even so, I couldn't afford to stay silent.
To the weeping workers, I threw out harsh words: "Stop crying and get moving."
To those who glared at me with hatred in their eyes, I stared them down with an even more intimidating gaze.
Under that forceful stare, they had no choice but to avert their eyes and submit.
The Eighth Army was, from the start, nothing more than a ragtag collection I'd gathered together — no connection to me whatsoever.
They'd never had any loyalty to me to begin with.
But being forced into a death march and losing so many comrades had twisted that into a volatile mix of enmity and fear.
Hatred over an unjust death.
And yet — they couldn't defy me.
I could feel their brooding resentment like a physical force.
I really was just an evil general who ruled through terror.
There wasn't a shred of justice in any of this.
But this was the path I'd chosen.
It was too late to turn back now.
With a long sigh, I pushed myself up from the chair in my private quarters.
Later today, there was a meeting to be held with all the corps commanders.
I left my quarters and headed for the conference room.
Along the way, I ran into
"Oh."
"Oh."
We exchanged the bare minimum of greetings.
Merazophis was
On top of that, ever since I'd been appointed corps commander, he'd looked after me in all sorts of ways as a senior commander.
He was a quiet man, not one for idle chatter, but today his mood felt heavier than usual.
He was probably feeling down for reasons similar to mine.
His complexion was always on the pale side, but today it looked downright ghostly.
Without a word between us, we continued on to the conference room.
When I opened the door, Corps Commander Dalad was already seated inside, wearing the same heavy atmosphere.
That said, Dalad's fatigue seemed far more physical than mental.
Unlike me and Merazophis, Dalad was an ordinary member of the Demon race.
His Status was lower to match.
Between the strain of the war and the burden of post-war cleanup, he'd probably accumulated even more exhaustion.
"Oh. Merazophis and Lars, is it."
Even his voice lacked its usual vigor.
He was clearly exhausted.
"You've been working hard."
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
"Hmph. So I really do look tired?"
"Yes, quite a bit."
There was no point in sugarcoating it, so I gave him an honest answer.
"How embarrassing. To lose on such a grand stage and then present this pathetic spectacle during the aftermath — this whole affair has done nothing but chip away at my confidence."
Corps Commander Dalad let out a weak laugh.
Just then, Corps Commander
The massive commander seemed to sense the mood in the air, looked around uncertainly, and took his seat in a fluster.
Kogou's face was also lacking color.
It seemed every last corps commander had been pushed to their limit, one way or another.
I took my own seat and waited for the meeting to begin.
After a short wait, Shiro walked in.
When she entered, I might have been imagining it, but she seemed to be looking directly at Kogou.
Shiro's eyes were closed, as always, so it was hard to tell exactly where she was looking.
"Hey. Everyone's here, right?"
While I was distracted by Shiro,
Not all the corps commanders were present — the rest must have been excused.
But more pressing than that was the sight of Balt standing next to Ariel. His face looked terrible.
He was deathly pale, like he could keel over at any moment. Was he going to be okay?
"Good work on the post-war cleanup, everyone. Sorry to pile more on when you're already worn out, but I'm going to need you to keep pushing. We need to accelerate military reorganization in preparation for the next battle."
Nobody showed it on their faces, but I'm sure every single one of them was thinking the same thing: Give us a break.