Chapter 323: Our Path

The news Solderin brought was crucial.

Anyone with half a brain could see how it would impact the tense situation between Typhon and Ansu.

For Gawain, it was both bad news and good news. The bad news was obvious—ever since he clawed his way out of the coffin and saw the vast swathes of aberrations outside (all his efforts in the last version wasted), he’d been worried. Worried about the Great Wall’s gradual decay, worried about more and more aberrations breaking free from the wasteland to attack the human world. The recent attacks on the Typhon border meant the last aberration assault was far worse than anyone imagined. The thousands of monsters facing Lord Cecil were just a fraction of those breaching the Great Wall. But on the flip side, the emergence of this monstrous enemy might actually delay the war…

Delay the war between Ansu and Typhon.

Rebecca, slow to catch on, only realized the significance after Hetty pointed it out. She blinked curiously at Gawain. “Ancestor, if the king and the emperor of Typhon both realize the threat of the aberrations, wouldn’t they just avoid war?”

But Gawain had to shatter her hopeful notion. “Ansu and Typhon will fight. It’s only a matter of time.”

This was the conclusion Gawain reached after analyzing the current state of human nations.

Rebecca clearly couldn’t grasp how he arrived at that conclusion. Even Amber, the most cunning of the group, looked utterly baffled. Only Hetty furrowed her brow thoughtfully. Seeing this, Gawain decided not to keep them in suspense and took the opportunity to give them a lesson:

“Typhon has developed rapidly and is now very powerful, but it’s at a critical turning point—a bottleneck. This is the most dangerous moment for them. Through multiple successful domestic reforms, Typhon’s population, economy, and military have all grown tremendously. But rapid growth also brings hidden dangers. On one hand, increased productivity means higher resource consumption; this giant beast needs to devour vast resources to complete its societal transformation. On the other hand, Typhon’s population is growing too fast, but its officials and nobles lack effective new management methods. The huge population is becoming a heavy burden on the empire.

“Whether to ‘feed’ itself or to relieve pressure, Typhon must find an external outlet.

“More importantly, Emperor Rosetta Augustus’s reforms have deeply threatened noble interests. Whether it’s reclaiming legislative power for the crown or reassessing the land holdings of nobles nationwide, these moves have struck a nerve with the traditional aristocracy. Although Emperor Rosetta used a firm hand and personal authority to suppress backlash and push reforms through, the pressure hasn’t been released.

“Economic growth has indeed brought benefits to Typhon’s land-owning nobles, but these gains haven’t satisfied those greedy lords who lost many privileges in the reforms. Rosetta still needs to find more dividends—more proof of his grand vision’s correctness—to appease the disgruntled vassals. Or he needs to use the process of gaining these dividends to ‘naturally and reasonably eliminate those who can’t keep up with the times.’

“An external war is the best choice—it can solve almost all the problems Typhon faces after its reforms.

“Typhon already controls all the lands in the eastern continent. Its expansion can only go in two directions. To the south lies the Gaoling Kingdom, which is clearly off-limits. Gaoling has the closest ties with the Silver Empire, and the Silver Elves’ Star Sanctuary floats above the southern straits, monitoring the vast ancestral forests along Gaoling’s border. Do you think the Silver Elves would just stand by if Typhon tried to invade other countries through the ancestral forests?

“So Typhon’s only real choice is northward—using Ansu as a scapegoat. Among the four human nations, only Ansu suffered the deadly Mistmoon civil war and has the most severe decline in national strength. How could the Typhon people resist the temptation?”

Rebecca listened, wide-eyed, barely blinking. Though she couldn’t come up with these insights herself, she understood them well enough. Her brow furrowed deeply. “So… even if the two countries don’t fight now, in a few years—assuming the aberrations don’t cause any major trouble—Ansu and Typhon will still go to war?”

“It’s inevitable,” Gawain nodded. “And even if the aberrations appear a few more times, as long as the Great Wall itself doesn’t collapse, the two countries will still fight at any cost. Typhon can’t wait much longer. Rosetta Augustus is already middle-aged and seems to have no strong heir. If he can’t resolve the hidden dangers of the reforms during his lifetime, or even during his prime, then Typhon’s golden age will turn into disaster as the emperor ages. Rosetta himself understands this, and so does our king.”

“…There are such complicated reasons behind this war…” Rebecca said, stunned. “Ancestor, how do you understand all this? You just came back to life, but you seem to see things clearer than all of us.”

Experience comes from seeing a lot. Once you spot a clue, you can piece together the whole story with near certainty. That’s the strength of a satellite elf…

Gawain shook his head. “There’s nothing new under the sun. This world hasn’t changed in thousands of years.”

No one would understand if he said “satellite elf,” but saying it like this… well, no one understood, but it sounded way cooler.

“Old friend, if I didn’t know your history, I’d wonder how you came up with all this,” Solderin said with a strange expression, shaking his head. “Back in the day, you wouldn’t bother thinking about these things. If you didn’t like something, you just chopped it down.”

Gawain sighed. “That was because back then we were dirt poor, surrounded only by monsters and barbarians. Diplomacy was useless. When problems came up, you just charged through. Now we’re civilized people. Who wouldn’t want to think things through?”

“Civilized people…” Solderin’s face showed a trace of melancholy at the word, then turned into a long sigh.

Just as Gawain was about to ask why, the elven ranger asked a sudden question: “Old friend, why did we lead those millions of refugees across the wasteland to build a kingdom in this barren land?”

The question caught Gawain off guard. Hetty, Rebecca, Amber, and even Pittman all looked on with curious expressions, eager for his answer.

After a brief silence, Gawain smiled faintly. “To put it grandly, it was to lead our people out of hardship, to protect and preserve our civilization. To put it simply, we just wanted to survive—to let everyone live.”

“Yeah, even the simplest wish is to let everyone live,” Solderin said bitterly, memories of that cold night in the Eastern Lands flashing through his mind. “But you know what? On the very land we fought for back then, many people can no longer survive.

“Have you heard of something called the Tenancy Amnesty Act?

“That’s in the southern lands, in the domain of Count Beryl…”

The elven ranger couldn’t hold back and poured out everything he’d seen and heard that night. In his seven centuries of wandering, he’d seen the dark side of society many times—worse, more tragic things—but as a high-level transcendent, he always viewed it from a lofty, detached perspective. Only that night in the Eastern Lands did he witness and hear firsthand the dark details he’d never noticed before. Ansu’s current decline shocked him deeply, and he couldn’t help but share it all.

Some in the room fell silent, others deep in thought, and some were more shocked than anything.

Rebecca could hardly believe what she’d heard. “How can they do this? That Count Beryl, and the knights collecting rent… how can they just seize the farmers’ land like that?!”

“There are many such cases, my lady,” Pittman said softly after a long silence. “Why do you think the land held by so many nobles keeps growing? Why do you think the kingdom keeps reclaiming new land every year, yet the number of landless farmers grows year by year, and serfs increase? Even if you can’t see outside, look at this domain—where do most of the people here come from? They’re serfs, slaves, homeless refugees who lost their land. Were they born to have nothing?”

Rebecca’s eyes widened, her knuckles whitening as she clenched her fists. “But… aren’t nobles supposed to protect their people? That’s what my father and aunt taught me since I was little. The ancestors’ edicts say so too…”

“If ancestral edicts worked, there wouldn’t have been that Bastard War a hundred years ago,” Amber rolled her eyes at Rebecca. “You think every noble is as naive and easy to fool as you?”

Normally, Rebecca would have swung her staff in a sweeping attack at Amber’s teasing, but this time she was caught in a tangle of confusion. “But… didn’t those farmers realize it was a trap?”

Gawain gently stroked Rebecca’s hair. “Rebecca, you forget one thing: most commoners don’t know what a third or two-thirds of a taka of grain means. They can’t calculate how much rent they’ll owe in five years. In fact, they can’t even read a single word of the Tenancy Amnesty Act issued by the lord. The lord’s soldiers read the decree, but they never explain anything. So the reality is: the lord issues a law, but most commoners don’t understand it. They only know that when the lord says he’s collecting rent ‘according to the law,’ they can’t resist. Whether the lord is truly lawful or not—if the lord says so, that’s the law.”

“But surely some people understand…”

“Of course, a few do. Some can even recite the law after the soldiers read it. But what good does that do?” Hetty shook her head sadly. “Do they have the power to fight the lord? To find loopholes in the law? To make other commoners aware of those loopholes? If not, all they can do is memorize the law and, after losing their land, tell their story to a stranger.”

Rebecca looked at Gawain. “Isn’t there any way to change this situation?”

“Of course there is,” Gawain smiled at the naïve girl who still faithfully believed in the ‘noble code of self-discipline’ but was now lost. “We’re already walking that path.”

Though… this is only the first step.

(End of chapter)