Chapter 159: The Threat
Sebas's brow drew in slightly at those words.
The warmth drained from that lined face, and his gaze turned sharp.
"'Limited activities.'" Sebas gave the envoy no room to be vague. "What exactly does that mean?"
The envoy cleared his throat. His yellow-green slit pupils watched Sebas's reaction through the crystal lenses.
"Well..." He deliberately drew out the pause, buying time to find a phrasing that would let both sides keep their dignity. "It simply means that within a certain period each year, the beastman nation's warriors would be permitted to enter Dragon Kingdom territory and engage in some... free-range hunting."
The envoy dropped his voice slightly on the word "hunting," hoping to slide past it.
Sebas's brow drew deeper.
"Hunting?" His voice had gone quiet, and the last trace of warmth in his eyes was gone entirely. "You mean continuing to slaughter humans?"
The envoy felt Sebas's gaze on him and shrank slightly without meaning to.
He started to stammer: "This... how could you call it slaughter? This is... this is a tradition of the beastman nation."
"A tradition?"
Sebas's eyes settled on him in cold silence, and whatever justification the envoy had been building died in his throat.
A layer of cold sweat broke across the envoy's back.
He remembered the description from the bear-beastman survivors. This lean old man in front of him had killed Urgov — that giant — with a single punch.
Which meant standing this close to him, he almost certainly wouldn't survive one either.
The envoy's lips trembled — but then he remembered what His Majesty had told him before he left.
That one isn't certain he can win against the entire beastman army.
He steadied himself in his own mind and straightened his back again.
"Sir," the envoy's voice leveled out slightly, "this represents His Majesty's fullest sincerity. The beastman nation is prepared to give up its plan to destroy the Dragon Kingdom. But—"
"That is not necessary."
Sebas cut him off, and stated his terms in a tone that left no room for negotiation.
Sebas held up three fingers.
"My conditions are simple."
"First: the beastman nation withdraws from all Dragon Kingdom territory it currently occupies."
"Second: all humans being kept within the beastman nation are released."
"Third: the beastman nation passes a law permanently prohibiting the consumption of humans. And that law must be genuinely enforced."
The envoy froze.
On that lean fox face, the expression moved from deference to disbelief and then into fury.
His eyes went wide. His nostrils flared hard. The grey-white whiskers along his jaw trembled faintly.
"Sir!" The envoy's voice cracked upward, nearly breaking. "This is not a negotiation!"
The intensity of his outrage gave him a kind of courage. The beastman envoy stepped half a pace forward and looked Sebas in the eye.
"These are the terms of a defeated nation! This is an insult to the beastman nation!"
He gripped the parchment roll in his arms.
"His Majesty sent me here to negotiate out of respect for your strength, sir. But the conditions you have put forward—"
His chest was heaving.
"Withdraw from our territory? Release all humans? Pass a law against eating people? Do you know what you are saying!"
Sebas looked at him without speaking.
The envoy's fury had found an outlet, and the more he said, the more worked up he became.
"The beastman nation has stood for a hundred years. This land has always been ours — there is no basis for withdrawal. Those humans are property we have raised. Telling me to release all of them is no different from seizing everything we own!"
"Pass a law against eating people? Ha!" The envoy let out a sharp, contemptuous laugh. "You might as well tell us to start eating grass!"
Sebas listened in silence until the envoy had finished.
He was completely unmoved by the outburst.
"Those are my full conditions. I hope you will convey them to the beastman king."
The envoy blinked.
He had expected the other side to haggle — to lower the demands, to give him somewhere to stand. He had assumed the outrageous opening terms were just an opening position, a way to squeeze the beastman nation's hunting time down during negotiations.
But the eyes of the old man in front of him said the conditions were not a position. They were the answer.
The envoy's lips trembled.
"You..." His voice wavered, but anger quickly pushed it back down. "His Majesty will never agree to terms this humiliating!"
Sebas let out a faint sigh.
He lowered his eyes, and something Lucian had said came back to him.
"Lord Lucian was right," he murmured, the words barely above a whisper, as though he were talking to himself. "It really does require defeating the beastman nation's army head-on."
The envoy hadn't caught what he said, but he had seen something flicker in Sebas's expression.
"Then I ask you to return," Sebas said.
The envoy's body flinched slightly.
He stared at Sebas's face, searching for any crack in it.
He found none.
He pressed his teeth together. The muscles of that fox face pulled tight.
"You'll regret this." The words came out with grinding, restrained hatred. "Do you think you can stand against the entire beastman nation?"
The envoy stepped back two paces, pulled his lean frame upright, and spoke with bitter indignation:
"The beastman nation has an ancient proverb — 'however hard a dragon's scales, they cannot withstand the axes of beastman warriors.'"
He watched Sebas's reaction carefully.
Something moved in Sebas's eyes — a flicker of... surprise?
The envoy saw it.
There it is.
A surge of triumph in his chest.
The other side really is a dragon!
And what's more — this dragon is somewhat afraid of the beastman nation.
The envoy stood straighter. His chin came up. That self-satisfied expression was back.
"Your strength may be considerable, sir. But the beastman nation's one hundred thousand fighters are assembled here, and the most powerful chiefs of every tribe are present. Even if you are a dragon—"
"You cannot come out of this unscathed."
Sebas looked at him and said nothing.
The envoy read the silence as confirmation.
A broad, thoroughly pleased smile spread across his face.
"His Majesty and the tribal chiefs will show you the wrath of the beastman nation!"
He waved a hand at the attendants behind him.
"We're leaving!"
With that, he turned and walked back the way he had come at a brisk pace — his step light and full of purpose, his grey-white tail held high behind him.
Sebas stood where he was and watched the small group grow smaller until they disappeared around the bend of a hill.
The wind moved his grey-white hair. The hem of his black tailcoat shifted in the breeze.
He let out a soft sigh.
"What a shame," he murmured.
"More beastmen could have seen peace."
The envoy's figure had vanished into the hills.
Sebas looked in the direction of the beastman nation's main front lines.
"Then—"
He began to walk.
"It will have to be by force."
Somewhere in the distance, a few crows startled off a dead tree and beat their wings up into the sky.
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