Gavin Ward had already seen the system's summary and the reward notice; Luo's reminder had only confirmed what he already knew. The battlefield had been measured and tallied — every fallen foe counted, every death reduced to points and cold numbers. The screen still hovered in Gavin's mind like a ledger:
[This battle has been won, and the killing value is being integrated.]
[Kill points obtained — Griffin Cavalry: 463,250; Orc Wizard: 27,900; Corrupted Giant Wolf Knight: 425,050; Orc Heavy Infantry: 781,740.]
[Total kill points obtained: 1,697,940.]
[Reward: one five-star lucky draw.]
He had already worked out how the system valued those enemies. A griffin cavalry counted for ten points each, while an orc wizard—astonishingly—was only worth a hundred, far lower than the price a human magician commanded. That told Gavin something sharp and useful: orc magic, while vicious on the field, was not particularly refined. The corrupted giant wolf knights were as costly as human knights — ten points a piece — and the orc heavy infantry, elite among their kind, fetched five points each, five times what a common human soldier was worth. Small details, but they mattered: every point could be spent, every draw might change a life.
Adding the dozen or so thousand points he'd already saved from earlier skirmishes, Gavin's total rose to an imposing 1,821,597 kill points — enough for three lottery draws, and plenty of leverage in a continent of shifting loyalties.
He watched the broken and bound figure of the Orc Emperor in front of him. Lordan Gore — the once-fearsome ruler of the Orc Empire — lay cuffed, filthy and defeated. Gavin stepped forward with neither strut nor swagger, only cold business. The orc's great head turned, sullen and raw; the proud lines of his face had collapsed into animal panic. Gavin's voice was quiet but clear.
"If you refuse, Halma dies," he said. "We can slaughter orcs the way you slaughter humans. If you still resist, we will kill you and set your son on the throne. Perhaps he will be more willing to sign a treaty."
Every sentence was a measured strike against the proud beast. Lordan's eyes flashed — fury and wounded dignity wrestling inside him — but the rope and metal had already won. He roared and then, with the slow collapse of an emperor losing all masks, he agreed.
"Enough!" Lordan's voice broke on the word. For him, this was not a true surrender — only a shameful, temporary defeat. He vowed inwardly that his fury, stored and cold, would be paid back later. A ruler's pride was not so easily killed. But for now, he could not afford insubordination. He swallowed, nodded, and gave in.
Gavin didn't let him rest in that false calm. He had no wish to leave a single unspent threat in the man's chest. Rotis, Gavin's chief scribe and envoy, stepped forward with a thick, patterned parchment. The terms were laid out in large, uncompromising letters. Gavin had written them with the clarity of someone who knew war costs and the language of humiliation.
Rotis set the document in front of Lordan. The orc saw the title and the clauses and a fresh, ragged sound escaped him, almost like a sob.
Compensation Agreement for the Beast Empire's Defeat
1. The Orc Empire permanently cedes the four provinces of Salander, Sultan, Qi Noel, and Longgeran to the Kingdom of Los.
2. The Orc Empire compensates the Kingdom of Ross with 110 million gold coins as war reparations, payable in installments.
3. The Kingdom of Ross's armies are granted permanent military access through Orc territories.
4. The Orc Empire permits the Kingdom of Ross to establish factories and trade operations within its lands.
Lordan Gore's heavy, chained hand trembled. He forced a nod — not out of acceptance, but because the leather and iron at his wrists left no alternative. Rotis pressed the stylus into the orc's bleeding palm and guided it down: one signature, one mark of humiliation. The agreement was tripartite; one copy to Ross, one copy returned to Orc administration, and a third to be sealed with the supervision of the Central Arcane Empire — the neutral authority tasked to witness such treaties. Once signatures were confirmed, a herald would spread the news across the continent; the treaty would be public and irreversible.
Gavin watched each of the three parts stamped and finger-printed. A small smile crossed his face — a smile less of joy than of satisfaction. He had taken a nation's dignity and turned it into a durable advantage for his own. Then, softly, almost as an afterthought, he said:
"Very well. Lordan, you may leave."
At his words, Lordan's eyes — full of an unspent, monstrous threat — brightened momentarily with a dangerous light. He imagined revenge, reprisals, a future in which the human's gesture would be riposted a hundredfold. But the chains were real, and he had signed his emperor's consent.
Gavin's hand moved slow for those watching; he fished a small pistol from his belt and leveled it at Lordan's forehead without drama. The gathered officers — humans and allies who had trailed Gavin across the battlefield — felt the temperature drop.
"Boom!"
The shot was a punctuation mark. Lordan's blood sprayed, and a single, crimson hole opened between his brows. The orc's gaze fixed and froze. In the silence that followed, Gavin's voice cut through again, steady and final.
"I said go. You are free to leave this world."
It was a cold, practical execution — legal only in the law of victory. Gavin had no illusions about mercy. He had seen what rulers like Lordan became when left alive to plot. The orc emperor's death was not vengeance; it was policy: a bloody reset to prevent a later, more dangerous war of attrition. He wanted not just a capitulation but a transformation of the enemy's structure. A single, centralized power could rally vengeance. A scattered one could not.
That was the core of Gavin's design. Lordan had seven sons, each ambitious and resentful of their father's century-long hold on power. Gavin had learned, through intelligence and careful observation, that the orc system of succession — cruel, ritualized, and family-oriented — favored infighting. So he proposed a radical, constructive cruelty: split the Orc Empire into seven separate orc kingdoms, each ruled by one of Lordan's sons.
A united Orc Empire had been a single, powerful unit — dangerous and efficient. A divided set of petty kingdoms would still be orcish in blood and temperament, but they would be weak, quarrelsome, and forever beholden to outside powers for trade, security, and infrastructure. This fragmentation would protect human realms for decades.
Gavin imagined the map being redrawn afterward: smaller flags, more borders, more checkpoints. He pictured merchants from Ross and Los traveling under new charters, building factories in former orc strongholds. He pictured the Central Arcane Empire overseeing the transition, ensuring each new orc crown could be held down by diplomacy, economic dependency, and occasional shows of force.
"Take care of his body," Gavin ordered Rotis. "We march on Halma." There was no hesitation in the command. Halma, the orcish capital and the site of many of the Empire's darkest experiments, must be occupied. It must be purged of the arcane installations Lordan had used to sustain his rule. The expedition would be surgical and decisive, and it would need the new political structure to be in place so that later reprisals could be handled through local puppet kings rather than through a single united front.
As the men moved to obey, Gavin tucked the agreement into his pouch and glanced at the horizon. The sun was beginning to set, and the air smelled of smoke and spent magic. Around him, soldiers who had bled through the day looked tired and wary, but there was a new sense of order: the enemy had been broken and reshaped into something manageable. The orc problem would remain, but it would no longer be existential.
Rotis lingered for a moment, eyes on the signed parchment. He had done the work of binding the former emperor to his fate. Later, he would send envoys to each of the seven sons, offering them crowns with cords attached: protection, trade deals, and strict, humiliating terms. He would ensure that each ruler owed favors to Ross, to Los, and to the Central Arcane Empire. He would ensure that the orc kingdoms would always need outside weapons, outside steel, and outside coin.
Gavin thought of the lottery draws and the kill points again. The mechanical rewards of the system mattered: the five-star lucky draw might yield a boon that would shift an army's edge. But far more valuable was the political leverage he'd carved that day: territory, reparations, trade rights, and permanent military access. The numerical points were tools; the treaty was strategy.
He also knew there would be backlash. The clans and tribes that supported Lordan would not vanish overnight. Some sons might refuse to cooperate, and some local warlords might rise in a savage reaction. That was why the Central Arcane Empire's oversight clause had been essential; their neutral seal made the agreement credible in foreign courts. It also bought time: while the orc nations argued among themselves, Gavin's allies could entrench factories, roads, and garrisons.
As night fell and the camp prepared to move, Gavin allowed himself one private thought: victory is not only taking land or killing an emperor — sometimes the greatest victory is changing the structure of your enemy so that they can never harm you the same way again. He had done that. He had split an empire.
The last rumble of the night was the sound of war wagons rolling toward Halma. The newly signed treaty lay folded and heavy in Rotis's satchel, and the continent already began to whisper the news. Soldiers marched. Merchants counted the potential of new routes. Kings in distant courts readied proclamations.
And somewhere in the dark, the seven sons of Lordan — newly heirs to contested crowns — woke to a world in which the old unity was gone. Their ambitions would now set them against one another, and that was exactly the point.
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