Chapter 36: Submit or Die
"Hah! I expected a lot from you, Valon, but this is even more than I imagined!" Vargan chuckled gruffly as he stepped into my large throne room, limping lightly but looking much better than before.
He glanced appreciatively at the two women kneeling in front of my throne - that being the Succubus and Fairy Queen.
It had been roughly half a day since the war ended, with just a singular night passing as the war had ended towards the end of the previous day.
The remaining surviving forces were being treated in my territory - which was blatantly a worse position for injured people compared to the Land of Iron's actual houses and structures, but I wanted them here. There was still a chance Vargan would refuse what I was about to offer him, and if he did I wanted the homefield advantage.
It wasn't like any of the dwarves, cyclops, succubi, or fairies could complain about me demanding that they take refuge in my territory. I was the sole King standing, and I was also the one walking around using [Light Heal] to save their lives.
Of course, first I had gone and made sure Raya was truly safe, and then brought her back to take official note of how many we had lost. Of my once roughly 25,000-strong dire wolf army, only a little over a thousand remained.
Granted, those thousand were all decently strong - consisting of largely commanders and pack leaders - so it wasn't a completely unsalvageable situation. Direwolves mated far more often than humans, so that number would climb up pretty quickly, and I assumed that only having powerful direwolves left to mate meant that their children should be pretty strong too, right?
So, instead of a massive army, I was now left with a small but elite force. It would take many years for the population to climb back to the number it had been at before, but the average dire wolf would also likely be stronger.
As for the subordinates that I actually considered very useful, those being ones with names, both Ragno and Ragnot had died in the war. Ragnat was still alive and would live after I used [Light Heal] on him, but he hadn't woken up yet. Podo was also alive, but he had only ever been close to the battlefield at the start and had retreated when the actual fighting broke out.
Raya had been noticeably upset at the death of two of her three brothers but had kept her composure - something I was impressed by. The war might've been over, but it wasn't time to relax yet. I still had to either convince Vargan to submit to my rule or kill him, along with helping my forces recover from the deadly battles.
As for the dwarves - Vargan's men had faired a bit better than my own, with almost 2,000 of the starting 15,000 dwarven and cyclop soldiers staying alive. One of his generals, Rurik, had died, but besides that the other three had survived.