Chapter 96 - The Fate of the Defeated Soldiers
"How awful..."
It was the leader of the First Shooter Squad who muttered those words.
Even for a sharpshooter in a guerilla unit, this was not something anyone should have to see. I had no intention of sugarcoating it. Death was a constant companion for us, the ones who commanded the guerilla forces and hunted down monsters and magical beasts. And during this campaign, we had “educated” the Empire.
If one chose to step into a death trap, one had to be prepared to die.
And yet... the carnage before my eyes had far surpassed anything I had imagined. The soldiers who had been crushed to death when the Forest Striders toppled over and crushed their transport baskets had been the lucky ones. Not long after, when our guerilla forces arrived to deal with the remains, we had buried as many as we could. But those who survived... their fate had been different.
We had no grudge against them once they had lost their means of advancing. We simply regarded them as defeated remnants. And we could not take them prisoner—the difference in our forces had been far too great. The best we could do was rescue the Estarians who had been treated as Imperial captives.
As for the rest, we could only let them loose. We had adopted a method that, depending on how one looked at it, might be called an abandonment of battle—leaving their fate to the Demonic Forest. We had even harbored a hope: that their commanders would rally them, and during that “golden window” before the monsters and magical beasts returned, they would organize themselves and flee back to Imperial territory.
The Imperial soldiers had been well aware of their own atrocities on the battlefield. That was why the thought of fleeing into Kingdom territory had never even crossed their minds. The Empire was the worst of all nations in its treatment of defeated soldiers. For those men, it would have been only natural to think that their own deeds would now be repaid in kind.
They had lost many comrades, and those who survived had likely been ordered by their superiors to return to the Empire.
―――
Corpses upon corpses, piled together, mauled by magical beasts. Not a single one remained whole. Not one. Along the endless road back to the Empire, such remains had been cast aside in heaps, like makeshift burial mounds. The sight of unknown insects crawling from those rotting bodies was not something anyone could stomach.
They, too, had been born into this world. Without doubt, they had loved ones, people they cherished.
I was the very person who had decided to leave their fate to the Demonic Forest, because the gap in strength between us had been too great. But I had never expected the aftermath to be this horrific. I had thought that at the very least, a competent commander would gather as many men as possible, keep watch in all directions, and search for a route home. That was what a commander ought to do—the “duty” of one entrusted with the lives of his soldiers. I had believed that while it was impossible for all of them to survive, some could still reach the Empire’s heartland during the golden window...
But this?
The soldiers’ lives had been thrown away, used as the “meat shields” of their higher-ranking officers, their corpses scattered along the treacherous paths of the deep forest. It was obvious from the equipment left with the dead—they were all from common soldiers and military auxiliaries. There was no sign of heavy infantry gear anywhere. Which meant only one thing: the surviving upper ranks had sacrificed the lower ranks as “walls of flesh,” as bait for the magical beasts, and fled on their own. In short... the so-called “elite Imperial soldiers” were nothing more than a group where those in power used their authority to force sacrifices upon their men.
That way of thinking could never align with that of the Kingdom.
The Kingdom valued its people. It cherished talent, nurtured it, and sought it out. I, too, had been mistaken. Even if the odds were slim, I had believed that, if they tried hard enough, the Imperial soldiers could still make it back to Imperial-held territory within the “golden window,” led by their commanders. But what had I found instead...? Before me lay mound after mound of corpses. The lower ranks had been forced to remain as “walls of flesh” for the higher ranks until the very end, left with no means of escape, and had simply fallen to their deaths. Even if the surviving commanders had lacked the luxury of time, the very fact that we had refrained from a pursuit had been rendered meaningless. It hadn’t even become... a “lesson” to be learned from.
What escaped my lips then was an offering of words for those pitiful Imperial soldiers.
“...We’ll bury them. Like this, they’ll never reach the place where the distant wheel of time touches.”
“Yes.”
“Those who can use earth magic, step forward. We’ll perform a mass burial. Do not collect their belongings. Absolutely no one is to lay a hand on anything they carried.”
““Understood.””
On the forest road that “led toward the Empire,” where scenes of carnage dotted the way, we dug silently into the earth, set fire where needed, and buried the remains, saying nothing. We returned mound after mound of corpses to the soil of the forest, and we prayed—that their souls might be reborn through the cycle of reincarnation, and that in their next lives they might know peace, safety, and the happiness to live their days to the fullest. War made human life cheap—especially the lives of those at the bottom.
Anyone living in the frontier understood, painfully well, the potential held in a single life. One might open the forest, claim a few feet of land, till the soil, and bring forth golden harvests. One might hunt beasts, magical beasts, even monsters, becoming a masterful hunter. One might become a priest who brought joy and comfort, a merchant who enriched lives, or an artisan who created useful tools.
And yet to lose a life full of such possibilities to something so meaningless... it was intolerable. Truly intolerable. In that moment, I understood— from the depths of my soul—why My Friend despised crafting magitech tools designed to kill. Had he seen this very sight before? Or had he grasped the truth through some other means?
Though I lived my life on the battlefield, I swore, from the bottom of my heart, that I would avoid—at any cost—the struggle of man against man.
The sun set, and the surroundings began to darken. We could go no further. The “golden window” had already passed. From the scouts, I kept hearing repeated warnings—nocturnal magical beasts were showing up within the detection range of our scouting magitech devices. There was no way to move forward now. With so many burials, the distance we had covered was not great. It was time to decide.
“All units, return to Pontis. Any further night exploration would be needlessly dangerous. We’re turning back! Return at once!”
The telepathic device built into my Metia helm carried my orders to every member of the unit. They moved immediately, and perhaps out of grief for the grim sights we had witnessed, not a single one cracked a joke. We retraced the day’s march at remarkable speed.
In the pitch-black forest, we kept our silence, making as little noise as possible...
...and followed the path that led us back toward Pontis.
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