Chapter 149: Lucian's Explanation
The same approach was applied to the beastman villages that followed.
The cavalry unit's soldiers had grown practiced enough that it ran like a set procedure.
Scout, charge, clear the adult males, hold the trial, pen the women and children, deliver the special meal.
Lucian no longer personally involved himself in every step.
More often he simply stood at a high point, watching the village below with its shroud of dust and crying, and waited for the adjutant's report.
By now the beastman leadership would have received word of what was happening in their rear.
The beastman women and children who had been penned were eventually all released by Lucian. Their accounts — firsthand, delivered in their own words — would be considerably more credible than any scout's report.
At the same time, these villages would not practice cannibalism again. That pattern would carry forward through the generations.
That was exactly what Lucian wanted.
That evening, the unit made camp in a valley between rolling hills.
The dusk had stained the horizon a deep bruised purple-red. Somewhere in the distance, a few vultures were circling low — probably waiting for the bodies left outside one of the villages to finish rotting.
Lucian stood at the edge of the camp, his gaze passing over the layered hills and settling on the grey smear of the horizon deeper in beastman territory.
"Lord Lucian."
Sebas's voice came from behind him.
"Sebas." Lucian turned and looked at him, a slight smile. "What brings you to the front line today? I thought I asked you to look after the rear perimeter."
He saw the steadiness in Sebas's eyes.
Lucian understood. Sebas had found out what had been happening.
That was no surprise. He hadn't made any particular effort to keep his soldiers quiet, so Sebas learning eventually had been a matter of when, not if.
Up to now, Lucian had been using the threat of the beastman king as the reason to keep Sebas at the rear — conserving his strength, guarding the perimeter, watching their back.
But Sebas had broken from that pattern and come forward this time. Which meant he already knew something.
Sebas moved to his side and stood beside him. After a moment of silence, he spoke.
"Lord Lucian, I have a question I would like to ask you."
"Go ahead." Lucian's expression was untroubled.
"Your approach to the beastman villages..." Sebas chose his words carefully. "I have come to understand what it involves."
Lucian didn't rush to deny anything.
Sebas continued. "Forcing them to consume their own... Lord Lucian, in my view, this method is excessively cruel."
From someone with a justice value of three hundred, that was a weighty assessment.
"Even when the other party is a people who eat humans," Sebas added, "meeting violence with violence only breeds more hatred. Is this truly necessary?"
Lucian looked at Sebas's serious face, and let his own expression match it.
"Sebas. Are you here to argue me out of this?"
"I simply want to understand," Sebas's gaze didn't waver, "why Lord Lucian is doing this."
Lucian turned back to the hills in the gathering dusk. The wind carried a faint trace of blood.
"This is for humans and beastmen to be able to live in peace."
Sebas's brow drew in slightly.
"Lord Lucian, I cannot follow that." A thread of genuine confusion entered his voice. "The 'peace' you're describing — is it achieved by making beastmen hate humans?"
"Hate?" Lucian repeated the word. The corner of his mouth held something bitter. "Sebas. Do you know the Casanas City-State Union?"
Sebas paused slightly.
"And the Argland Council State." Lucian continued. "Both countries are examples of humans and demi-humans coexisting in peace. Demi-humans, humans, different peoples living together, supporting each other."
"Why don't the beastmen in those nations eat humans?"
Sebas was quiet for a moment. His knowledge of this world was still incomplete. He didn't have an answer.
"Education. And bonds." Lucian said it for him. "Beastmen are not inherently unreasonable creatures. Like humans, they can form emotional connections. They can understand friendship and trust. When genuine bonds exist between beastmen and humans, the desire to eat humans gets pushed down."
Sebas gave a slight nod. This fit with what he understood a functioning society to look like.
"But," Lucian's tone shifted, and his voice dropped, "the beastman nation doesn't have that foundation."
He looked at Sebas steadily.
"In the beastman nation, humans are food. From birth to death, the humans these beastmen have encountered are the ones kept in pens — naked, shivering, two-legged livestock. They don't talk to humans. They don't shake a human's hand. They don't laugh alongside a human."
The weight of what he was saying came down in the air between them.
"They only eat humans."
Sebas's lips moved slightly. He had nothing to say.
"So," Lucian drew a breath, "there is something I need to do first. Get humans out of the category of 'food' in the beastman nation's understanding."
He raised his hand and gestured toward the village they had just taken.
"Those beastman women and children — today they retched, they cried, they will have nightmares. But from now on, whenever they smell something similar, everything that happened today will come back to them. Fear. Guilt. Rage. All of it will be bound tightly to the smell of humans."
Lucian's voice returned to its level register.
"They'll hate me. But they won't want to eat humans anymore."
Sebas was quiet.
Wind came through the hills, pulling at both their coats. In the camp behind them the fire had been lit, the orange glow flickering in the dusk, the sound of soldiers' conversation drifting across faintly.
After a long moment, Sebas spoke.
"Even so, Lord Lucian." His voice was quieter than before, some of its certainty gone. "This will only make beastmen hate humans more. And hatred... cannot bring peace."
Lucian kept his eyes on the horizon.
"You're right. Hatred cannot bring peace."
He conceded it plainly, without any attempt at argument.
"But —"
He paused.
"Sebas. Do you think a beastman can hate food?"
Sebas went still.
"Humans eat pork. Do they hate pigs?" Lucian continued. "No. A person doesn't hate a wild boar just because it injured them during a hunt."
A slight coldness entered his voice.
"In the beastman nation, the beastmen don't hate us. Because to them, we're simply prey."
Sebas's expression shifted slightly.
"Only when beastmen stop seeing humans as 'food' — even if it happens through hatred — does peace become possible."
Sebas stood where he was, and said nothing for a long time.