"Calm down, Charles. Think. Think about what you're going to do next, instead of standing here like some hysterical person screaming at the wind."

After venting his fury in a fit of curses, Charles forced himself to breathe slowly and evenly until reason clawed its way back through the haze of anger. Then, leaning against the desk, he began to think.

"Sarybin... what in the hell do those bastards think they're doing declaring war on us? We're neighbors, sure, but we've never had the kind of irreconcilable conflict Selwyn did. There hasn't been any struggle over resources vital for survival. This declaration makes no damned sense."

Thoughts flickered through his mind as he sifted through every memory and record concerning the Sarybin Empire, searching for anything that could explain its sudden madness.

The Sarybin Empire shared borders with both Selwyn and Aleisterre. But with Selwyn, the connection was little more than a mountain path so narrow and treacherous that trade or travel was virtually nonexistent. There was no meaningful contact between them.

Now, however, with Selwyn's lands under Aleisterre's control, Sarybin's western frontier met Aleisterre's northern territories directly. Roads now linked the two nations—lines of contact, or conflict.

"When we fought Selwyn, all our neighboring states were watching from the sidelines. They wanted to see who would fall and were waiting to swoop in to profit from the ruins. After the war, the royal court was too busy reclaiming its power and digesting Selwyn's territory to deal with anything beyond its own borders..."

He sighed, twirling a pen idly in his fingers. "And when we overthrew the royal house ourselves, it was the same story. Rebuilding the Assembly, rewriting those rotten laws, reclaiming authority from the overreaching nobles, calling up the new armies... we didn't give a damn about our neighbors. Not really."

He tapped the pen against the table, brow furrowed. "So... are those Sarybin bastards taking advantage of our recovery? Do they think Aleisterre's revival makes us an easy mark?"

The pen danced in the air, tracing meaningless symbols above the parchment as he muttered to himself. But then he stopped.

"No. That's too simple. War costs far more than any victory would bring. Even with our so-called ‘brilliant triumph' over Selwyn, a war we won with hardly any major losses, it'll take years to rebuild the resources that we depleted. No, this reasoning doesn't hold."

He slammed the pen down on the desk and leaned forward, scowling.

No matter in Wang Yu's Earth or this one, war wasn't a joke. Regardless of the scale, soldiers would die. Armor would shatter. Supplies would burn. And that was only the beginning.

As long as the war stayed within manageable limits, fought by trained soldiers, mercenaries, and adventurers willing to gamble their lives for gold, the damage could still be contained.

But once the fighting grew so fierce that conscription swept up ordinary citizens like farmers, craftsmen, and clerks, the countdown to ruin would begin. A nation would be burning its own lifeblood for victory.

Every dead man might mean a family shattered. Every family lost meant less labor, less production, less consumption. When enough of these fractures spread, the kingdom's structure—its economy, its culture, its very soul—would crumble to dust.

The people were the foundation of a nation's future and strength. They were not goblins that could be reaped and regrown with each passing season. It took fifteen years for a child to become a soldier, and it was those very soldiers who would one day form the spine of the kingdom's extraordinary might.

A war of attrition, then, was a blade drawn against a nation's own throat. Even a great victory carved two empty decades into history, years that lesser kingdoms could never hope to survive.

"No matter how I look at it, it makes no sense. Sarybin isn't a top-tier power. They can't possibly afford a full-scale war like this." Charles's tone turned bitter as he continued, half to himself, half to the shadows. "And there's the Church of Light to consider. A war this unjustified, this baseless... There's no way they'd ignore it. The Church would side against whoever started it. Is Sarybin really ready to defy them too?"

Charles's expression twisted with puzzlement. "It doesn't add up. None of it adds up, unless..."

"Unless they've gone mad," whispered a voice in his mind. It was One.

Charles froze.

"If you analyze Sarybin rationally," the devil murmured, "nothing holds together. But look at them through the eyes of a lunatic, and the pieces begin to fit."

"You mean..."

Charles frowned, following the thought to its conclusion.

"Think back to Selwyn's final days," the devil continued. "Hadn't they gone mad by the very end? And that woman, Selene. You believed she was unique to Aleisterre, but what if she wasn't?"

Charles's pen stilled. "That... makes sense. Wait. From your tone, it sounds like you've already confirmed something. And since you can read my thoughts—hell, you're cheating again, aren't you?"

"Guilty as charged," One said, amused. "Those Sarybin soldiers destroyed their own souls with those self-detonation seals, but even so, I could still sense that their wills were twisted. Something had warped their minds beyond repair."

Charles's face darkened. "Damn it all. I hate that kind of power, the kind that bends the mind until nothing human is left. If that's true, then all those ‘ancient ruins' appearing lately... maybe they're not so harmless after all. We thought the human realms were the safest place left, but maybe every warning was simply buried. A utopia, was it? Hah. Quite the grand design indeed."

Charles pressed a hand against his face, the corners of his mouth twisting into a grim smile. Some things had finally fallen into place in his mind. If events were truly unfolding along this trajectory, then Sarybin would not be the only one moving against Aleisterre.

He knew the strength and clarity of his own mind. And if he was certain he hadn't gone mad, then those who dared strike at him must have.

"See? What did I tell you?"

Charles glanced at the message that had just arrived from the Grand Duke of the West. A faint look of relief crossed his face. Troops of the kingdom were massing along Aleisterre's border. If only the Sarybin Empire had declared war, it would have given Charles a terrible headache—but now, the nature of the affair had changed entirely.

"We can't afford this fight," he muttered to himself. "Aleisterre's soldiers can't afford to be thrown away. So what do we do? We bare our fangs, that's what. We show these bastards just how sharp Aleisterre's blade can be. Let them learn that we are no easy foe."

The plan took form in his mind as he spoke. He would gather every ounce of power he could borrow—every ally, every secret resource—and strike a blow fierce enough to make the human kingdoms hesitate. Then, while that threat still loomed over them, he would use the breathing space to strengthen Aleisterre's might by every possible means.

It was far from a perfect plan. But in the present chaos, it was the only road left to the kingdom. And as the continent spiraled deeper into madness, all that remained was to see how the others intended to face what was coming.

Meanwhile, within the orcish kingdoms, war had reached fever pitch. On both sides of the Talban River, orc armies clashed in a frenzy beyond retreat or reason. The river ran red. Its current was unable to wash away the mingled blood in a dozen hues, and its bends were choked by bodies wedged together so tightly that even the water could scarcely move.

Other orcs charged across bridges made of corpses, roaring, hacking, and howling, clad in crude armor and wielding chipped weapons. Their shamans' magic flared among them from time to time, a brief glimmer of color in a world drowned in gore.

An orcish battlefield was simpler and crueler than any human one. Each warrior would seize his weapon, fall into a frenzy, and hurl himself at the foe.

Either he smashed the enemy into pulp, or was himself reduced to one.

Kill, then be killed. Then another orc would trample the fallen and continue the charge. There were no tactics, no morale to speak of. In the face of the orcs' innate berserk state, such notions were meaningless.

If there was any strategy at all, it lay in the shamans' timing: when to command their warriors to enter a berserk state, and where. Everything else was a test of brute strength, a meat grinder churning endlessly until one side had no orcs left standing. Whoever remained upright at the end would win.

A mountain of corpses, a sea of blood—that was the truest description of the largest orcish war in a century. There was to be no sudden-born hero rose from the ranks, no chosen orc to defy death time after time. There would only be endless battle and endless death.

Life itself had become a meaningless number, dwindling by the second as the machine of war turned. Garesh, the mighty orc who only days ago had aided his tribe's shaman in "reviving" an ancient being, did not last even a full minute after entering his berserk fury.

He was torn apart, just another lump of flesh in the mire.

Strength meant little now. The powerful were slain by enemies as strong as themselves who appeared from nowhere; the weak died to the stray shockwaves of battle. The stench of blood hung so thick in the air it seemed to form a tangible mist, a faint red haze drifting above the field, even though orcish blood was most often green.

Within that fog, only the sounds of madness remained: the howling of berserkers, the wet crack of blades striking flesh, the squelch of boots trampling meat. The red haze veiled the field in dreamlike horror, and the orcs, reduced to shadows in the mist, seemed like a host of demons dancing in frenzy. The air itself grew heavy with something nameless: an atmosphere of pure rage.

And as that frenzy spread, the chaos engulfing the continent deepened faster than any race could have foreseen. Among all nations, it was the orcish kingdoms, already fractured by rebellion, that first descended into total, uncontrollable war.