On the other side of the southern border, it was Gi Gi Orudo’s monster army who would be facing the Holy Shushunu Kingdom. Zailduk’s monster army specialized in saturation attacks, but they were mercilessly beaten at the southern region of the Holy Shushunu Kingdom.
The mana guards who could use magic to overturn vast areas of the battlefield were not only masters of horse riding but also proficient in working together.
Their spells left the monsters with no place to run, and the forces of Blanche the War Princess and the coalition of the various countries took down nearly 30% of Zailduk’s monsters. With that Zailduk had no choice but to retreat. Pale didn’t actually think that they could win with that monster attack. She’d only really intended for them to buy them time, but the unexpected losses caused her to knit her brows.
Now they needed to wait for the reinforcements from Gi Ji Arsil to arrive and then fix their formation at the southern border.
To make things worse, word of Blanche the War Princess’ sweeping victory spurred the anti-goblin sentiments of the humans under the Goblin King’s rule. The rebellions were particularly frequent in the territory of the late Germion Kingdom. Since its defeat, Germion Kingdom has been renamed to Germion State and is currently a gathering of small sections.
But just as that name implied, the people living there still held within them the pride of being citizens to a kingdom of knights. Although the rebellions would be suppressed each time they occurred, a seed of suspicion would also be planted in both the goblins and the humans.
The Goblin King also had to station a certain number of soldiers at Germion State, so he could not focus all of his forces onto the Holy Shushunu Kingdom.
The fact that the old method of ruling over the people was not working greatly worried the Goblin King. Try as he might to think of a way to solve things peacefully, in the face of the rebellions, he could not help but want to unleash violence upon the people.
Yet every time his violent impulses would shake him, he would rebuke himself and keep quiet with his arms folded.
If the goblins were to show their savageness here and wipe out the Germion people, the integrity that the Goblin King has shown until now will end up as nothing more than a lie.
Success could be found only by stacking one victory atop another, but just one failure was all it would take to knock all that down. The Goblin King knew that well.
All the more so when it concerned something intangible like integrity or faith.
The tension and impatience that ever pestered the king found their way into his thick chest and made a home for themselves.
Within that kingly loneliness akin to standing before a dangerous cliff, the Goblin King found himself looking eastward.
Fortunately, Fatina – which has become a territory of the Kushain Believers – had a great harvest, so they wouldn’t have any problems supplying the soldiers.
“Make it so that there are enough soldiers escorting.”
They were already at a point where they couldn’t say that a place was safe just because it was within their territory. To be doubly safe, the Goblin King even wanted Gi Zu Ruo to take his brawler faction with him and escort the food.
Pale and the others criticized the king’s decision, saying that he was being overly cautious, but there was no overturning the Goblin King’s decision. If they were to lose their food now, the goblins in the Forest of Darkness will suffer, and they might just be forced to take the food of the humans.
The Goblin King’s rule promised peace and security.
That’s why the people were so accepting of him. The Goblin King understood that the people wanted a life where they did not have to worry about tomorrow’s meal.
It was for the same reason that the rulers of the plains, the humans, accepted him. If he were to change his policy and try to rule tyrannically, maintaining their current territories will become impossible.
Already the Goblin King possessed a fifth of the whole world. He was no longer in a position where he could afford to be foolish. No. His position now demanded one thing and one thing alone from him – a wise ruler.
That was the toll he had to pay, and every day its pressure bore heavily unto him, but the king grit his teeth and endured.
The one thing keeping him from breaking was his pride.
“I am the king that rules over the goblins. If I can’t even endure this much, then what right do I have to name myself king?”
That was a confidence so great it was a hair’s breadth away from becoming hubris, but it was precisely that that held down the impatience burning in his heart and tamed the monster struggling to break free. With steel-like self-restraint, the Goblin King diligently attended to his government.
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As the Goblin King continued to endure with steel-like self-restraint, the bad news kept on coming. The War Princess was gradually increasing her strength within the Holy Shushunu Kingdom. According to Pale’s intel, the king of the Holy Shushunu Kingdom enacted a special law due to the war, allowing Blanche the War Princess to gradually gather her forces.
Now, she had not only the mana guards with her, but also a part of the arch knights and the lance knights. Perhaps it was her two victories against the goblins which heightened her authority within the imperial court and allowed her to take a step ahead over the other great nobles.
As the situation steadily turned for the worse, the first to break was not the Goblin King but his goblin subordinates.
“Your Majesty, if it pleases you, please give us the opportunity to fight once more.”
Gi Ga Rax knelt down and pleaded to the king. Even Gi Jii Yubu who often kept quiet stepped forward and begged the king to dispatch them.
“Your Majesty, if it pleases you, please send us to battle.”
The Baron and Duke class goblins were much smarter than their lower classed normal goblins. It was because of that that they could tell that the kingdom was not in a good situation.
The normal and rare class goblins would simply do whatever the king told them. They had no way of knowing why the king refused to attack.
