"I-I heard..."
A disheveled young man weakly raised his arm, and the gazes of the people around him turned towards him.
"I heard the tribe isn't very strict about faith. Many Beastmen worship the Four Mothers but also worship 'Karnos'. They don't really care about this. If... if we seek the tribe's protection, we should still be able to continue our faith in the Goddess, right?"
In the Southern Realms, some deities of the Old World have different names.
For example, the brother of the White Wolf God Ulric, Taal the God of Nature, is called "Karnos" by the Estalians and Tileans.
Of course, what the Beastmen worshipped was the "All-Father of All Things," but the Estalians couldn't be bothered to differentiate, mostly considering it the Beastman version of Taal-Karnos.
Thus, the sorrowful and angry emotions in the crowd receded slightly. People began to think about a way out for their future, noisily discussing the possibility of converting to the Four Mothers and joining the tribe for protection.
The young man on the stage was also speechless. He wept, his face a mix of anger and sorrow, seemingly still grieving the fate of himself and his compatriots.
Then he assumed a thoughtful look, appearing to also consider such a possibility.
More than half of the supply officer's guards had already dispersed and joined the crowd. Because according to the conscription standards, most of them were also in the ranks of those drafted. Following the supply officer allowed them to eat their fill and act tyrannically, but they also had to consider their own little lives and not dying at the hands of the Greenskins.
The only one present who still stood firmly on the Kingdom's side was the panicked supply officer.
Taking the last few guards and petty officials still following him, he shoved and chased the young man off the stage, taking his place on the high platform.
"Enough! That's enough! Listen to me, hey! Listen to me!"
He waved his hands, trying to attract people's attention, but few paid him any mind. This made the supply officer feel he was losing face. He turned his head and angrily demanded the guards to immediately suppress the crowd so they would quietly listen to the supply officer speak.
The guards looked at the dark, noisy mass of refugees, spread their hands, indicating they were also powerless. However, they still had to earn the pay the supply officer had been giving them; they couldn't let him feel they took that food for nothing.
So they started shoving and shouting at the crowd around the platform, trying to quiet them down.
A baby in swaddling clothes began to cry. His mother hurriedly unfastened her bodice and put her breast into his mouth. He suckled for a while, but no milk flowed out.
His mother's hair was reddish, her face gaunt. Looking at her child crying louder and louder, she was anxious and at a loss, standing frozen in place.
The guard only cared about suppressing the crowd, not giving a damn about anything else. Holding his spear horizontally to push away the surrounding crowd, he shoved the woman holding the child to the ground. The surrounding crowd did back away.
The woman had been hungry for a long time and was utterly exhausted. From this fall, her vision went black and she fainted, still tightly clutching the baby in her arms.
Suddenly, the area went quiet. The guard froze for a few seconds before realizing that the gazes of the people around him were fixed on him, shifting back and forth between him and the supply officer. His heart suddenly skipped a beat, but after days of acting tyrannically, his overbearing attitude had become a habit. Bracing himself, he scolded: "Where is her husband? Hurry up and take her away, His Lordship wants to speak!"
"Her husband is dead. The supply officer wanted to hunt a monster, and her husband died that time, his stomach ripped open by a Tuskgor Boss."
This answer came from the crowd.
The guard's face stiffened. Before he could say anything, someone on the other side shouted:
"The supply officer promised to hunt the monster for him and guaranteed his family's food! But after her husband died, the supply officer not only didn't give them any food, he even cut
her family's quota!"
"Where did that food go?" someone wondered.
"Where did our food go!" someone questioned.
The supply officer's face turned livid. Looking at the crowd that seemed to be aiming their spearheads at him again, his legs trembled slightly. But he gritted his teeth, knowing he had to handle this before the situation spiraled out of control.
"Enough!"
"Disperse immediately, everyone return to your own houses! Today, two days' worth of extra supplies will be distributed. All of you, go home and stay quiet!"
He still knew how to use food to buy them off and divide the crowd, but he couldn't let those few key people go. So, before the crowd could respond, he pointed at two people: the young man who had spoken on stage earlier, and the man who killed the herald.
"Keep those two here! Everyone else, disperse immediately, otherwise you will all be punished as rebels!"
"Disperse immediately, and I will explain to the Kingdom that the herald's death was the act of a single murderer and will not implicate others."
The supply officer thought that by doing this—using food to tempt and buy off the long-starving refugees, while threatening them to understand what was at stake—as long as someone took the lead to leave, the rest would scatter to avoid being implicated in the crime.
The crowd did indeed show some commotion, but soon someone stepped forward and shouted: "Don't listen to him! Even if we go back, the men will still be forcibly conscripted to the battlefield!"
The supply officer's face flushed with anger. Just as he was about to shout and order the guards to seize that person as well, someone else stepped forward, pointing directly at the supply officer himself: "He embezzled our food! Used food to tempt women into becoming prostitutes, and now he's using our own food to buy us off!"
"Death to the thief!"
The supply officer immediately enjoyed the treatment the herald received earlier, getting hit in the jaw by a rock. He instantly let out a scream, a tooth flying from his mouth.
A guard suddenly stepped forward trembling, took off his helmet, shouted loudly to attract the surrounding people's attention, and then stammered: "H-He's telling the truth! The supply officer has been embezzling your food all along!"
"The tribesmen said they were handing the supplies over for us to distribute ourselves, and then handed all the food to the supply officer chosen by the council representatives—but he embezzled the food! He hid the embezzled food in an outpost in the wilderness!"
"He also used precious food to trade for alcohol with the merchant guild! He hid a whole cabinet full of liquor right in that outpost!"
The supply officer's eyes practically burst with rage, roaring: "Lucius!"
But he was scared by the wolf-like gazes of the refugees and shrank back. Ignoring the pain in his mouth, he stammered: "D-Don't listen to his nonsense! All the food was distributed accurately. The lack of food is b-because the Beastmen only gave us that much..."
Suddenly, a piercing screech came from the sky.
The ground trembled as if ten thousand troops were thundering forward.
A behemoth streaked across the sky above the camp and descended from the heavens.
Tall, ferocious Khorngor Vanguards galloped in, and the crowd hurriedly scattered.
Al rode on the Griffon's back, an iron mask on his face, no one able to see the expression behind it.
Swift werewolves flooded in, disarming the dumbfounded guards and then taking them into custody. The supply officer was dragged off the high platform. A Khorngor Vanguard grabbed his fat body and threw him onto the herald's corpse.
Al took off his mask, frowning as he looked at the herald's long-dead corpse. Looking around, he found that as far as the eye could see, not a single refugee could be said to be doing okay; widespread malnutrition was apparent.
Sorrow, grief, fear, anger...
Al had already prepared a script to kick off the climax of this grand play he had plotted for so long at this remote settlement, but suddenly he didn't know what to say.
He didn't dismount from the Griffon's back. With a cold face and visible anger, he pointed a single finger at the supply officer, who was shivering on top of his superior's corpse like a quivering lump of fat.
"Delegations from over ten settlements have petitioned me, saying their food was embezzled, everyone is going hungry, and in severe cases, people have even starved to death!"
"I questioned your council about this matter. Previously, they said absolutely no such thing happened, telling me that you are cowardly and timid, and will definitely resist conscription, asking me to send elites to assist the Northern Council in drafting soldiers."
"Fucking bullshit! We can't even get enough to eat—let the well-fed elites go die!"
"That's right!"
Al kept a cold face, waiting for the crowd's commotion to die down before continuing:
"I sent my people to investigate personally, and it turns out such depravity, such, such sinful atrocities truly exist! These parasites! They used the food the tribe aided the Estalians with! To fill the never-satisfied greed of these pigs and dogs!"
A Vanguard stepped forward, grabbed the supply officer by the neck, and hoisted him up.
Harold's face turned red as he kicked his legs in the air, reaching out his arms to the crowd, constantly waving and gesturing.
How he wished the subjects of the Kingdom of Harold could muster their courage and rescue their King from the hands of the savage tribesmen!
He was met only with hateful gazes, pairs of eyes that wished they could eat his flesh raw!
"You deceived the tribe, exploited our goodwill, bullied your subjects, and also bullied the tribe's former compatriots..."
Al coldly declared. Playing this scene made him very uncomfortable because he was constantly aware that he was the most hypocritical one on this stage.
He was responsible for at least half the darkness pressing down on the refugees' heads.
"I will execute you, in front of everyone. The Four Goddesses teach us to be strong, to strive upwards, to be tolerant, to be united; we will not abandon
a single compatriot. But you, for the sake of depraved pleasure, sat by and watched your subjects starve to death."
"Confess clearly: where did you hide the embezzled food, what did you use it for, and who colluded with you."
The detained guards shivered under the werewolves' sharp claws, praying they would escape disaster.
"In the outskirts, the outskirts! They have a cellar in their outpost in the outskirts! There's only a small portion in the warehouse; most of the food is there!"
The first guard to step forward, the man named Lucius, hurriedly spoke up, pointing out the supply officer's hiding spot.
"He traded food for liquor with the Tulip Merchant Guild! He also offered food to the councilors to get them to recognize his authority here!"
"Fuck your mother Harold! You are a pig, a dog of the elites!"
Al sighed and shook his head. "He is an Estalian after all. Who will execute him? If no one will, then I will do it for you."
"I will!"
The man who had been pinned down by the guards earlier and only freed after Al arrived stood up. Staring with bloodshot eyes, he pulled the short knife he had used to kill the herald from the corpse, and crossed the distance in a few strides.