Chapter 254 : Chapter 254
Chapter 254. The Purge
The Magitech weapons, which had begun to suffer from dwindling firepower due to energy depletion, now seemed like drunks force-fed strong liquor. The runes along their barrels glowed so red they looked ready to burn through the metal itself, greedily drinking in the high-purity energy taken from the Second Prince’s private stores.
BOOM—! BOOM—! BOOM—!
With the violet-black poisonous mist dispersing, the fortress defenders, freed at last from both the toxins eating at their bodies and the blindness shrouding their sight, felt the burning in their lungs vanish. Strength returned to limbs that had moments ago been sluggish and numb.
Their vision cleared. Their condition recovered.
And then came the Northern Territory’s saturation bombardment.
Crimson beams tore through the night sky like brands of fire.
The beast tide, stripped of the mist that had hidden it and still struggling to regroup, was blown apart the instant it came into contact with that violent storm of energy. Their fragile formations were obliterated along with them, reduced to ash in the same blast.
There was no tactic that unlimited firepower could not solve.
And if there was, then all you had to do was add another round of charging.
Listening to the unbroken chain of explosions in the distance, Logaris nodded in satisfaction. Then he turned and walked toward the parade ground, where the atmosphere was the complete opposite of the battlefield behind him—cold, tense, and heavy with the air of slaughter.
Several hundred fortress officers had been forced to their knees in the snow, their faces blue with cold as they shivered uncontrollably.
Their uniforms were still relatively neat, even carrying the lingering warmth of heated rooms. The contrast between them and the ordinary soldiers beside them—men covered in blood and grime, who had only just crawled back out of heaps of corpses—was almost mocking.
Logaris sat in a chair, two files of unequal thickness in his hands.
In his left hand was the private ledger of material transfers they had just pulled from the hidden compartment in the Second Prince’s armory.
In his right was the Mana operation log extracted after Logaris had violently cracked open the fortress’s Magitech Central Hub.
As long as he held those two things, killing people became nothing more than a matter of procedure.
Logaris pushed up his glasses, his gaze cold behind the lenses as it swept across the men kneeling in the front row. They were the framework of Carlisle’s faction inside the fortress. Once those few bones were broken, the rest would crumble into loose sand.
As for charges?
In a bloated system like this, once you compared the real ledger to the official logs, every man might as well have had the words death sentence written across his forehead.
“Drag that fat one out,” Logaris said mildly.
Two special operations soldiers rushed forward like wolves and hauled the fat officer kneeling in the center of the first row into the open.
“Balon. Logistics Officer. The Second Prince’s moneybag.”
“According to the testimony voluntarily provided by Deputy Officer Eric at Carlisle’s side in order to ‘prove his innocence,’ as well as the records in this private ledger...”
The moment he heard the words “Eric” and “private ledger,” the fat officer’s already terrified face went sheet-white.
A special operations soldier coldly read out the preselected charge.
“During wartime, you embezzled three thousand front-line magic crystals and transferred them into your personal stores, resulting in two hundred casualties in that battle. The numbers have been verified. No discrepancy.”
The soldier’s voice was not loud, but in the deathly silent parade ground it sounded especially harsh.
The fat officer suddenly began struggling wildly, snot and tears smeared across his face.
“I’m a noble! I have a title! I was acting under His Highness’s orders! That was His Highness’s money—mmph!!”
A heavy alloy combat boot came down hard on his face, crushing the rest of his words back into his mouth along with several broken teeth.
“Under Article Seven of the Wartime Regulations, embezzlement in the midst of battle is punishable by death.”
Logaris kept his attention on the documents in his hand, as if what was about to take place before him was not an execution, but merely the deletion of a line of unwanted data.
Bang.
A dull gunshot rang out.
Balon’s bloated head exploded like a rotten watermelon. Red and white matter sprayed across the ground, painting a horrifying abstract tableau over the clean white snow.
The headless corpse twitched twice, then collapsed limply into the snow, steam rising from the stump of its neck.
The officers kneeling nearby were terrified out of their wits. Some wet themselves on the spot. The stench of urine mingled with the smell of blood and drifted through the cold wind, making the air nauseating.
“Next.”
Logaris put his glasses back on, and his gaze fell with perfect accuracy on the second man.
“Major Jeffrey.” Logaris looked at the glaring red curve on the tablet in his hand, a mocking smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “The Magitech Central Hub log shows that the Mana response in your command post vanished five minutes before the beast tide ever made contact with the defensive line. The technical division has already confirmed it. It was not a malfunction. It was manually cut off.”
“That means that before the enemy even arrived, you had already shut down the surveillance in order to conceal your escape route.”
The officer’s whole body shook.
“Abandoning your post, causing the line to collapse, and leading to the deaths of hundreds of soldiers. Death.”
“Wait! I demand a military tribunal! I am a major formally invested by the kingdom—this is an abuse of private punish—”
Bang.
“Next.”
The shots rang out with a kind of rhythm, each one marking the end of another life.
Logaris gave them no chance to argue and staged no grand public trial.
He had already decided who was going to die.
This so-called judgment was nothing more than a layer of military law draped over a purge of Carlisle’s core subordinates, using the evidence they themselves had left behind.
On a chaotic night like this, efficiency was worth more than anything else.
In just ten minutes, more than twenty corpses lay scattered across the parade ground. Those twenty men covered every crucial node of finance, command, and personnel transfer. The core backbone of the Second Prince’s faction within the fortress had been ripped out with surgical precision.
The remaining fence-sitting officers buried their heads in the snow, wishing they could turn into ostriches.
Some of them were probably corrupt too. Some were probably just as afraid of death. This time, Logaris had not called their names—but only for now.
There would be time enough later.
“Drag the bodies away. Don’t stain the ground.”
Logaris rose to his feet and casually handed the blood-spattered list to the personal guard behind him.
“The rest of you, return to your posts. If I discover anyone playing tricks behind my back again, the consequences will be your own responsibility.”
After dealing with that batch of parasites, Logaris turned and walked toward the wounded camp, not the slightest ripple stirring in his heart.
The sight there was entirely different.
The heavily wounded soldiers who had originally been left with nothing to do but lie on the ground and wait for death were now staring in disbelief at the potion bottles in their hands.
Inside was a pale green liquid that gave off a pleasant herbal fragrance.
Even the most illiterate grunt knew that alchemical potions of that quality were normally reserved for officers of major rank and above.
“Drink it.”
The Northern Territory medics worked quickly, almost roughly, pouring the potion straight into the mouth of a soldier with a shattered leg.
“H-how much would something like this cost?” The soldier coughed once, then felt a stream of warmth spread through his body from his throat downward. The agony from his broken leg instantly eased by more than half.
“Quit talking. It’s Lord Logaris’s order,” the medic muttered while bandaging him. “Lucky bastard.”
And it was not just the potions.
Several huge food carts had been pushed in, and portions of emergency rations were being handed to every soldier. There was no feast, but to these men—who had spent months inside the fortress living on black bread and watery porridge—they might as well have been a miracle.
“The Northern Territory boys say that as long as you fight under Lord Logaris, you’ll be fed, you’ll be treated, and if you die, the pension goes straight into your family’s hands.”
“Seriously?”
“Just look at the equipment on those Northern Territory soldiers, then look at the junk we’re holding. Do you really think they’re lying?”
The hearts of the people were a strange thing.
Sometimes they were complicated. Sometimes they were so simple it was almost obscene.
Give them a hot meal. Give them a road to survive.
And they would sell you their lives.
...
As the last magical beast retreated back into the depths of the Great Howling Rift, sunlight once more spilled across the weathered walls of Scream Fortress.
But that light brought little warmth.
A thousand miles away, in Silverglow City, the Royal Capital of the Astrelia Kingdom, the bells of Saint George Cathedral tolled twelve times.
Golden Rose Palace.
Privy Council Chamber.
The seat at the head of the long table stood empty. The old king was not in attendance.
That gilded high-backed chair, symbolizing supreme authority, now resembled a silent black hole, swallowing away every last shred of security in the room.