After being forced to step down, the once-annoying nun eloped with me.

Isn't this the life they've been longing for?

Yang Hao was overjoyed. "You're all living the lives you wanted, so why are you still expecting me to come back?"

You expect me to come back and kill you all?

He turned and left.

The nobleman was left lying on the muddy ground, dumbfounded and at a loss for what to do.

...........

Soon, the colonial army of Isugard appeared in the south of the town. They first sent men into the town, and then the commander of the colonial army came over, saluting Yang Hao and thanking the United Nations for their kindness.

“Thank you for sending troops to solve this most important problem for us.” The commander introduced himself as Piss, an ordinary human commander in Isgard. “I am even more grateful that you are willing to transfer control of the city to us; this has truly been a great help.”

"Perhaps. But more importantly, I want to remind you that the situation in that city is very bad because of our shelling."

“I can see that, but what we need is a town to secure supply routes, not facilities within the town.” Piss nodded. “We will ensure the safety of this place. However, I would like to ask… about those metal giants. Would the United Nations be willing to sell us some? Having them in our upcoming war might alleviate the pressure on the front lines.”

Piss pointed to the howitzer Golem not far away, seemingly wanting to buy it.

Yang Hao did not immediately refuse, but instead said tactfully, "Your diplomats have been extremely busy lately."

"It's alright, Lady Nia is definitely enjoying herself—after all, the industrial technology of the United Nations is incredibly valuable to her, and being able to stay in the United Nations for a longer period of time is actually a happy thing for Lady Nia."

"She might already want to tear you apart."

“I won’t deny these things, but after all… haha, Your Majesty, you understand, as long as we can achieve our strategic goals, Lady Nia’s anger will turn into mildness—that’s just the kind of person she is.”

“I think the Romans would be quite envious of your unity,” Yang Hao shrugged. “But it’s too early to say that now—I’ll consider it. Now you can go ahead. We need to go back too.”

Thank you again for your help!

The Isgardians successfully occupied the city. After surveying the intact buildings and confirming that the warehouses and granaries had been completely destroyed in the siege, they began to conscript the populace to gather resources for any eventuality.

As Yang Hao and the others left, Piss's smile vanished, and he murmured in an extremely serious tone:

"The United Nations' weapons are at least forty years more advanced than ours... They didn't even leave a single corpse in the siege; the towers and the city are riddled with craters from small-caliber artillery shells... Lieutenant, my lieutenant! Tell me, what are the casualties in the city?"

"About 200 Romans died, and all the defensive structures facing the United Nations were destroyed."

"That makes sense—it wasn't a carpet bombing, but a precise bombardment... We can't even do precise bombardment of city walls, towers, and important facilities, so how did they manage it?"

The people of Isgard murmured to themselves, looking back at the city ravaged by the attack of the United Nations.

Piss frowned as he looked at the corpses of the nobles who had hanged themselves on the city gate.

He knew that Yang Hao had deliberately destroyed the camp and warehouse to make his attack uncomfortable, but after communicating with the Roman scholars and doctors, Piss had already come up with a plan to deal with these Romans.

The Romans in Drake Port were allowed to stay because their overall cultural level was relatively high.

But the Romans in other places...

"...Let the local Romans do all the labor. They are a bunch of beasts, a bunch of shameless traitors, so let's not treat them like humans—after all, this is a colonial war, and even if all the Romans are wiped out, we can still draw people from our own country to immigrate here. That's all."

Pis casually made it clear that he was prepared to kill the Romans at any time, but if they were willing to obey, the Romans would still have a place in the pasture.

In the distance, after Yang Hao officially embarked on his return journey, he suddenly spoke to Naruja behind him:

“That Piss is also a smart man. He wants to buy our Golem and try to create the blueprints directly on-site using military methods—that is, weapons that are ‘usable’—and then further replicate them.”

"Huh? Is this... even possible?" Naruja asked, puzzled. "That's a weapon that only Golems can use, you know?"

"They probably plan to disassemble the howitzer Golem's weapon and fix it to the ground for use... That way, they won't have to worry about whether people or carriages can withstand the recoil—but if a commander who shouldn't know much about industrial science is this clever, and the other soldiers also seem to know what to do... the intelligence and education of the Isgard people far exceed my imagination."

"So, Yang Hao, what do you plan to do?"

"Let's see if we can make Isugard a true ally across the sea. After all, we don't have the capability to conquer the country across the ocean... but becoming an inseparable ally must be on the agenda this year."

As he spoke, he knew in his heart that he was unlikely to be able to rest.

Meanwhile, in the north, as Khuttod Khan was diligently training his soldiers, they received news that the port of Polan had been invaded by pirates.

"Pirates?" Hutot Khan was greatly puzzled. "Why would pirates attack the port of Polan? Don't they know that Polan is a barren land?"

Polan has two port towns, but the most valuable things in those ports are actually just the catch and the furs from the grasslands, nothing more.

So now pirates are ignoring the Roman ports and coming to plunder ours? Have you guys lost your minds?

Hutto Khan ordered his Kheshig to handle the problem. Moments later, the situation at the port was resolved: the pirates had landed and were attempting to burn down the Khan's warehouses storing strategic supplies, but before they could even get the fire going, they were met by the arriving troll sentries.

...Anyway, the pirates didn't leave many behind, but their clothes really intrigued the local garrison—because the clothes didn't look like Roman or Elven at all; they were completely foreign.

But that alone wouldn't be so bad. More importantly, they found some things commonly used by the Romans under those clothes.

"So, those were Romans?" Hutot Khan personally summoned a priest to use wind magic to receive communications from the port. "Those were Romans disguised as pirates? That actually makes sense now."

"Perhaps, Father Khan. We don't yet know their true identities, but—we roughly know that even if these pirates aren't Romans, they must have lived in Roman ports for a long time."

"Then let's pretend we're Romans. After all, our destination in the south is the Romans."

"Yes! Besides that... Father Khan, the northern ice plains... seem to be expanding outwards."

"...What did you say?"

Is the ice sheet in the north beginning to expand?

The Khan's expression turned serious. If the appearance of pirates was merely a harmless louse, then the northern ice plains were a plague capable of directly annihilating the Khuttod Khanate.

There's no other reason than that at the heart of the perpetually snowy ice plains of the north lies a colossal demon.

The ice field spreads out from the demon's core; generally, as long as that demon doesn't move, the ice field won't move...

Once the ice sheet begins to move, does it mean that the demons of the north have begun to awaken...?

It seems we need to move our southward journey forward sooner rather than later.

The Great Khan gritted his teeth.

In the north.

The Aleseans, dragging the statue of the Ice Calamity, have become the ice sculpture that awakens the Ice Calamity.

The demon is slowly awakening.

In the southern capital of Roman Kingdom, the demon servant, upon sensing the presence of his own kind, merely uttered a casual remark:

"He's hungry. But it will take him a while to fully wake up."

"What did you say?" the head maid asked.

"I just said Prince Garsen was taking a nap. I need to go and prepare some snacks."

He left the small lounge.

The awakening of his kin from thousands of years ago filled him with immense joy. He felt that the great undertaking of assimilating Romans was now as secure as it could possibly be.

Chapter 1: Roman's Summoning of the Gods, His Premature Journey South, and His Encounter with the 8K Cloud Continent

Before April, once the colonial army of Isgard received a stable supply of ammunition from the land, they immediately launched a swift and decisive attack on the neighboring Roman Empire region, and after easily capturing several cities, they chose to rest and recuperate on the spot.

This wasn't because they didn't want to continue fighting; quite the opposite, they desperately wanted to—but the problem was that the colonial army's force of less than 3 men was far too small compared to the entire Roman Empire. Unable to occupy too much territory with such a severe shortage of troops, Piss was forced to order his troops to remain stationed, allowing the Romans to build a defensive line for them, and thus the offensive in Isugard temporarily ceased.

"Although the supplies are sufficient, the total number of soldiers has become a major problem. The United Nations also has to deal with the attacks from the north. They have already helped us enough—in order to prevent Lord Black Dragon from actually sending himself up there, we still have to rely on ourselves from now on."

At this point, Piss took a swig of wine from Romain Rolls, let out a satisfied burp, and then said to his adjutant with considerable surprise:

"I really didn't expect that these rich people would still have so much wine stored up in their homes during a famine... Seriously, wine that's been cooled and processed with magic? And it has to go through several rounds of brewing and pressing... The cost must be equivalent to half the yield of a vineyard, right? They could have fed many people by drying the grapes into raisins, but instead they made wine for me?"

“Pies, you must understand that this is Roman. They are not like us. They haven’t even developed a concept of protecting their people, and they treat their people as tools rather than as human beings... In this situation, how many nobles or bureaucrats would consider their people to be of value?”

"But the problem is, isn't the foundation of [rule] someone to rule? If you don't have anyone under your nose, what are you ruling?"

"Have you ever seen a human being rule over a hammer or a saw? Although we usually clean and maintain our tools when they break, the Romans clearly preferred to just throw away the broken tools and were too lazy to find new ones."

“Isn’t this just squandering the family fortune?” Piss clicked his tongue in amazement. “I thought people who could become nobles wouldn’t be so stupid as to not even know how to protect their family fortune.”

"But obviously, they really are that stupid—and stop the fuck drinking, I haven't even had a drink yet, and you've already drunk two bottles."

"Here are plenty of wines that the noble gentlemen like; you can have a glass anytime—but sure enough, under this kind of aristocratic rule, even though the regent was supposed to be their savior, these [tools] chose not to destroy their master, but rather to destroy their savior..."

While I can understand that it might be because their people were not yet enlightened, and I can also understand that they needed decades of education to become civilized—but thinking about it carefully, given that we could have invaded at any time, it seems that no one could have done better than the Regent, right? Anyone with a brain would have chosen to follow him. I was very puzzled at the time as to why no one spoke up for the Regent when he was exiled...

But now it seems the Romans were too short-sighted, not the Regent too advanced—though he was indeed very advanced, but we Isgard and those Alesers, more disgusting than canned herring, were willing to accept it... rather than just opposing it like these Roman barbarians.”

"Someone once said that the law does not punish the masses, and that the people are innocent. Some might say that they have simply been deprived of the ability to see the world clearly by those in power."

"But the problem is that in Isgard's definition of 'the people are innocent,' the premise is that you have to be a people, not a bunch of beasts. In Isgard, no one will forgive a bunch of animals. Even if these animals know nothing, if they hurt someone, would we use 'they don't understand the law' as an excuse to exonerate them?"

Although it's not "he" but "they" now, guilt is guilt. If all the evidence can be offset by numbers, then why not just let those people forgive those ignorant wild beasts of the mountains on behalf of the girls who were trafficked there, and see how the girls' families beat them to death then?

Pius has always scoffed at the idea of ​​"the people are innocent." Uncivilized is uncivilized; if people want to remain ignorant, they certainly have the freedom to be ignorant.

However, this does not mean that these people can be pardoned for their mistakes by using "ignorance" as an excuse.

During an unstable period 70 years after the founding of Isgard, there were many cases of trafficking plains women for marriage in the villages of Isgard's only mountain range at the time.

At the time, Pies's own sister was one of the victims. As a relative of a victim, Pies understood best the helplessness and anger of having a loved one trafficked—fortunately, the president was very open-minded. When dealing with the group of seemingly honest and simple mountain people who kept saying, "We don't understand this," and "Anyway, we're already married and have families, so let's just live like this," the president simply said this:

“My soldiers don’t know whether killing a group of apes violates national laws. If those women think it’s okay, then so be it.”

Piss's sister and other trafficked women escaped the mountain village under the protection of soldiers. They ignored the children kneeling on the ground begging their mothers to stay, ignored their husbands' pleas that "the children cannot be without their mothers," ignored their mothers-in-law's scolding, and chose to embrace their families outside, embrace their lives as they were entitled to, and chose to weep bitterly in front of the president.

The honest and kind mountain people even tried to use force as villagers in the end—they believed that the soldiers of Isugard would not kill them, and they felt that they could take advantage of the situation. They thought it would be even better if they could drive the enemy away and leave the women behind.

And then? That was it. Isgard has never sheltered a hungry tiger that had attacked people, let alone a group of scoundrels who knowingly committed crimes.

The village that bore witness to the suffering of so many trafficked women is now history. More than 8000 people have become wisps of smoke in the book-burning pits.

The president said that they claimed to be "ignorant and innocent," and she also admitted that it was indeed difficult to convict 8000 people—so what she had to do was let God judge.

But before the trial, as the president of the human world, she must personally deliver these 8000 self-proclaimed innocent but guilty people to God—after all, what's that saying again?

"The one who condemns you, the ignorant and innocent, is the god you speak of. But since you have committed crimes that are visible to the naked eye, the earthly kingdom can no longer tolerate you. So what we need to do is bring you before the god so that your god can judge you."

From that moment on, a concept was firmly planted in Piss's mind.

No group can justify its crimes by claiming ignorance.

If there is.

The soldiers of Isjugard will send them to heaven, and then let the gods judge them.

This is Pis's firm belief, and it is also Pis's most steadfast motto after he became a soldier of Issugard.

In fact, in Isgard, this decisiveness has indeed yielded very significant results. Human traffickers, once caught, will be executed without any regard for sentimentality or "unavoidable circumstances," and anyone who violates the criminal law will receive the most efficient punishment.