I, the prince in distress, send money

Chapter 467 Luck and Regret

The Kingdom of Minicia surrendered because Charles died, and his young son was unable to support the entire kingdom and clean up the mess. Just then, the Holy Expeditionary Army was advancing towards the island.

Left with no other choice, Charles Jr., on the advice of the few remaining loyal guards officers and ministers, surrendered to Diurnal.

Of course, besides surrendering, Charles Jr. had other options, such as running away.

The Royalist Army only approached the island, not surrounded it. If Charles wanted to escape, it would be easy for him to flee to other territories still under royal control, under the protection of the Royal Guard.

Charles could even choose to travel by boat, sail out to sea via the canal, and then flee to other countries.

However, the guards and ministers still chose to advise their young prince to surrender. The reasons were simple: Chris was his relative, and His Majesty Chris had a good reputation and credibility. The prince's surrender would benefit everyone.

As for the benefits, I won't go into too much detail; it wouldn't be good to say too much.

After all, some things are easier to do than to say.

However, this choice was correct, but it made things even more complicated for Rem, the recipient of the vote... The mess in Treasure Island City was truly appalling.

The city looked as if it had been ravaged by the Mongols; it was filled with smoke, fire, and corpses.

No one knows what Charles was thinking when he was still alive. He ordered the Royal Guard to quell the rebellion in the city, but things got out of control. Soldiers burned, killed, and looted everywhere, so much so that when the young prince led his army out of the city to surrender, he only had half of his soldiers left.

Where are the other half?
They were still burning, killing, and looting in the city.

It was obvious that the Minesian Guard had gone out of control. Even without the Holy Crusade, this army was already crippled. In the process of such a massacre, these soldiers, whose blades were stained with the blood of civilians, were no longer the guardians of the kingdom, but rather the festering sore of the kingdom.

When young Charles left the city, none of the guardsmen who were still looting in the streets noticed that their prince had surrendered.

When the vanguard of the Holy Expeditionary Army stepped into the city, what they saw was not a procession of soldiers lining the streets to welcome them in surrender, but rather a motley crew of fleeing soldiers, their eyes bloodshot, charging through the thick smoke, scrambling for the last bag of silver coins.

There's no other way but to quell the rebellion.

The only thing Rem could do was send out the Holy Expeditionary Army players to enter the city and wipe out these routs... The remaining Royal Guard soldiers had already been gathered up by the officers and taken out of the city. Those left in the city were hopeless trash, the kind who would be a waste of food to go to prison.

……

The players of the Holy Expeditionary Army flooded into the streets and alleys of the island like a tide, their armor gleaming coldly in the thick smoke.

These warriors from another world had no expression on their faces at this moment, only their eyes flashing with a kind of almost mechanical killing intent... No one could laugh, simply because they had all seen the video shared by Dorok.

Therefore, their suppression of the fleeing soldiers was nothing short of cruel.

A rout of the Imperial Guard, who had just burst out of a civilian house with his arms stuffed with looted silver, was pierced through the chest by a halberd before he could even see who it was.

The player wielding the halberd didn't even glance at him, stepping on his chest to pull out the halberd tip, letting the blood splatter onto the mottled wall.

His movements were clean and efficient, as if he were not killing someone, but performing a tedious assembly line task.

At a crossroads shrouded in thick smoke, several fleeing soldiers, their eyes bloodshot with rage, attempted to form a defensive line.

However, they were met with even more brutal violence. The attacking players didn't even use any tactics; they simply stood together, raised their flintlock pistols, and responded to their foolishness with a volley of fire.

After the gunshots, this place became the execution ground.

Players entering the city silently slaughtered, their efficiency breathtaking, like the most precise lawnmowers ruthlessly clearing away rotting crops in the fields.

The fleeing soldiers were horrified to discover that these enemies were more like demons than they were... There were no roars, no maniacal laughter, only deadly silence and extremely precise slaughter.

However, when a ragged civilian woman ran out of the ruins crying and nearly ran into the blades of a player team, their killing spree immediately came to a halt.

A blood-stained sword that had nearly struck the woman on the head was retrieved by its owner without hesitation.

The leading player even slightly stepped aside to make way for the terrified woman, his action displaying an abrupt, gentlemanly restraint.

"Civilians, avoid the main street and evacuate towards the west gate."

A cold but harmless voice came from under the helmet. The voice was devoid of emotion but also lacked threat, which relieved the civilians.

The player continues to progress, but the art style suddenly changes.

When they encountered civilians huddled in a corner shivering, they would toss them a small bag of hard bread or a sack of water. Although their actions were rough and their attitude was cold, what they threw out was real.

As the team walks into the burning street, children are trapped in houses that are about to collapse. Two players will rush into the fire without hesitation, use their bodies to hold up the creaking beams, and snatch the children out.

Players did not harm civilians.

robbery?

They were dismissive.

Humiliation?

This has never happened before.

In the midst of the carnage, players might even set aside some individuals to guide the terrified survivors to safety.

This extremely contradictory quality blends so naturally into the player.

They could carelessly hurl Molotov cocktails at a fleeing soldier hiding in a house, turning the entire house and the soldier inside into charred remains, completely disregarding the treasure that might be stolen inside.

But on the next street, the player will carefully pick up an old woman who has been choked by thick smoke from the street and call on the medics accompanying the army to lay her on a stretcher for treatment, completely ignoring the fact that precious medical resources are being occupied by NPCs.

The player's behavior is contradictory, yet logically consistent.

When facing enemies, whether they are routed soldiers or other thugs who dare to take advantage of the chaos, players employ brutal methods from another world, beyond the imagination of this era—efficient, ruthless, and leaving no survivors.

As for innocent civilian victims, they strictly adhere to a higher, unquestionable code of conduct, ensuring that no accidental harm occurs and that their reputation does not decline.

This is not mercy; it's more like a paranoid, procedural maintenance of order.

Players may not be exercising justice, but they are certainly carrying out orders to clean up and protect.

This terrifying quality, which combines extreme violence with absolute discipline, is more chilling and perplexing to onlookers than mere brutality or mercy.

……

Lydia stood atop the once magnificent but now half-collapsed gate tower of the island city, the tattered emblem of the goddess of agriculture swaying slightly on her soot-stained robe.

She was watching from here as this dying city... and its new owners cleaned it up.

Lydia knew the brutality of the King's Guard, so she was not surprised by their merciless cruelty towards the fleeing soldiers.

Like a defeated guard who had just rushed out of a jewelry store at the foot of the city wall, his arms stuffed with dazzling loot, his face still bearing a maniacal joy.

The next second, a figure swept past with inhuman speed. With a flash of sword light, the head of the fleeing soldier was already flying into the air, the joy on his face not even having time to turn into astonishment.

The headless corpse took two steps forward before collapsing to the ground with a thud, scattering gems and gold coins everywhere, stained with blood.

The man who killed the fleeing soldier continued running forward without looking back, not even glancing at the wealth on the ground.

This scene made Lydia feel physically uncomfortable. The king's guards were not killing for money; it seemed they were simply killing for the sake of killing.

Such things were commonplace in Treasure Island City at this very moment, making Lydia almost close her eyes and pray for the city's suffering and the even more horrific carnage that was about to unfold. However, the next moment, her prayer caught in her throat, replaced by an even stronger sense of shock.

A group of players had just finished clearing out the fleeing soldiers at the street corner. Before the blood had even dried, they noticed a dilapidated house on the side of the street, from which came the desperate cries of a baby and the suppressed sobs of a woman.

The warriors who had just been like demons stopped. Instead of kicking the door violently, they gently tapped the door frame with their sword sheaths and shouted something Lydia couldn't hear.

No one inside the house opened the door.

Just when Lydia thought they would break down the door, the royal guards simply left a backpack they were carrying at the door and then left.

They turned around expressionlessly and continued advancing towards the next area where there might be fleeing soldiers. Their steps were firm and their discipline strict, a stark contrast to their earlier frenzied killing.

Lydia was completely stunned. She leaned against the charred wall, her fingers icy cold.

This...how is this possible?

How can the same group of people combine extreme cruelty in killing with almost paladin-like mercy and discipline?
They treated the fleeing soldiers of Miniscia like insects that could be wiped away at will, their methods so cruel that even she, who had witnessed the death of famine, felt chilled to the bone.

Yet they showed such restraint towards civilians, even gentle protection, adhering to the strictest military regulations...no harassment, no looting, and even voluntarily sharing their precious supplies.

This internal conflict clashed intensely within her, almost bringing her to a standstill.

Lydia pondered for a long time, and suddenly an answer came to her mind... Paladin!!!

How is this possible?! How could the King's Guard be paladins?!

……

The defeated soldiers were scattered all over the island, but it was not difficult for the players to clear them out. They only spent one day to clear out all the defeated soldiers in the city.

As the setting sun painted the charred outline of the island with a blood-red hue, the shouts and gunfire in the city had largely subsided, replaced by an even more eerie, blood-stained silence.

Dorok stepped over the mess, the sticky feeling on the soles of his boots making him frown.

What he stepped on wasn't blood; the blood had already soaked into the soil and solidified into a dark brown lump. It was some kind of spilled porridge, mixed with ashes and indescribable filth, emitting a slightly sour smell in the cool evening air.

Taiwan has been pacified.

At least on the surface, the shouts of battle and the flames had disappeared, but wherever his gaze fell, there was no cheering, no celebration, only scattered weeping, and fearful figures moving about in the shadows.

Dorok looked around.

The afterglow of the setting sun was like a huge, dirty orange-red rag, haphazardly smeared on the broken walls and ruins.

The smoke had not completely dissipated, rising from all parts of the city like the still-warm wounds of the earth after it had been torn apart, still steaming with blood.

The air here smelled nauseatingly complex: burnt, bloody, the sweet, cloying odor of rotting corpses, and a hint of the pungent smell of cheap disinfectant splashed by the players. All of this mingled together, pressing heavily on my chest.

This is the city they saved, but compared to human settlements, the island now resembles a huge, rotting viscera that has just been dissected.

The once bustling shops on both sides of the street are now just dark, empty windows, like skulls with their eyes gouged out.

Some of the building ruins were still emitting wisps of smoke, and occasionally a collapsed beam would crackle and send dust flying.

Some sappers moved silently among the ruins, like ghosts with pre-programmed routines. They dragged out a half-charred corpse of a defeated soldier like a dead dog and threw it onto a cart nearby with a dull thud.

The cart was already piled with seven or eight such corpses, like a pile of broken dolls.

On the other side, several emaciated civilians with vacant eyes mechanically followed a player's instructions, using wooden buckets to fetch water from a makeshift irrigation ditch and wash away the large patches of blackened bloodstains on the street.

Water mixed with blood flowed into the sewers, leaving a trail of filth.

The player stood to one side with his arms crossed, his eyes scanning the surroundings from under his helmet, seemingly wary of any non-existent threat. He didn't even glance at the efforts of the civilians, as if they were part of the cleanup operation as well.

Dorok kicked open an empty money bag at his feet, and a few cheap copper coins rolled out.

More wealth—silverware, jewelry, and silk—was scattered among the ruins, stained with filth, yet no one cared.

For players, these items are less valuable than a piece of edible black bread.

This utter, undisguised indifference terrifies and bewilders the world more than greedy plunder.

Dorok could sense the furtive glances cast at him by the civilians, filled with the bewilderment of those who had survived the ordeal, and a deeper, incomprehensible awe and fear.

They feared these silent "heavenly soldiers" far more than the routed soldiers who burned, killed, and looted.

Dorothy walked to the city's small square.

This place became a temporary refugee camp and supply distribution point. Players set up bright lights here, and the cold white light illuminated every terrified or numb face clearly, as well as magnifying every wound and stain.

A group of players are distributing food, standard supplies provided by the system: rock-hard compressed biscuits and water that has been treated at high temperatures.

The process was eerily quiet.

There was no fighting, no pleading. The common people lined up in an oddly shaped queue, silently stepped forward, took their share, and then quietly retreated to find a corner to curl up in, taking small, precious bites of their food.

The player distributors were expressionless, their movements as fast as robotic arms on an assembly line, ensuring everyone received exactly one serving. They didn't care who was hungrier or who needed it more; they only cared about distribution efficiency.

Dorok saw a player medic applying ointment to the arm of a crying child, while the child's mother knelt beside her, kowtowing repeatedly and murmuring words of thanks to the gods.

But the medic's face remained expressionless. He quickly bandaged the wound, then patted the child's head with his gloved hand, his kindness carrying the cold scent of disinfectant.

Players have gotten used to this: ignorant NPCs always kowtow to the gods in gratitude when they are rescued, but never think of thanking the players who saved them.

Dorothy's gaze swept across the square and landed in the distance.

Some player squads are carrying out cleanup work, breaking into the mansions of wealthy merchants or nobles who were once locked up but are now powerless to resist. Their aim is not to plunder, but to hide cellars, secret rooms, or any place where remnants of soldiers or weapons might be concealed.

The process was brutal and direct; the door lock was smashed open with an axe, and obstacles were cleared away by brute force.

Occasionally, a hiding servant would be discovered, letting out a terrified scream. The player would simply point their weapon at them, order them to gather in the square in a cold voice, and then ignore them, continuing to advance deeper into the building.

Their goals are clear, their efficiency is extremely high, and the collateral damage they cause is completely disregarded.

A century-old luxury mansion can be turned into a mess within half an hour, as if it had been swept away by a storm.

On another street, a group of local Imperial Guard soldiers stared in disbelief at the players' work.

They watched as the mountains of defeated soldiers' corpses were burned in one place, as the players quickly cleared the streets with strange tools, and as the trembling yet well-placed civilians were taken care of.

A sergeant major in the Imperial Guard couldn't help but sigh to the player officer walking by.

"...You all are truly decisive and efficient."

Nobody paid him any attention. Apart from Dorok, who was injured and unable to work, everyone else was too busy to chat.

Dorothy remembered his festering wound and knew he should get it re-bandaged. Before leaving, he took one last look at the square.

The child being treated was still sobbing from the pain, and the mother remained kneeling on the ground, murmuring prayers as the player medic walked away. Under the cold white light, this scene seemed both incredibly absurd and incredibly real.

(End of this chapter)