Chapter 374: The Result of the War is?

TL NOTE : I'm sorry for not updating last week because I need to be at the Hospital......

As we finished explaining everything to everyone of the Black Cat tribe, the knights came over. Apparently, he heard the collective cry of the Black Cat tribe.

"We just received a report of a disturbance in the area......"

"What happened?"

"Who is in charge?"

Apparently, the other refugees had notified the knights. Well, they must have wondered what happened.

After the village chief explained to the knights what was going on, their eyes turned to Fran. However, their gaze didn't seem to be irritated from looking at the source of the commotion. Instead, they looked at Fran with a twinkle in their eyes.

"You are the Black Thunder Princess, right!"

"I've heard of you."

I heard that Marmano, the lord of Gringott, and Mea, who visited the city shortly before we returned, had told them many stories of Fran's heroic deeds.

Fran was asked by the knights to join them by all means to visit the city lord's house. I was a bit troubled by the many beastmen, who froze and kneeled when they saw Fran walking by. They even worshipped her on the spot.

It appears the rumors of the Black Thunder Princess were widely known among the beastmen of Gringott. Apparently, the Black Cat tribe had also been going around preaching the splendor of the Black Thunder Princess like missionaries.

Furthermore, from the news brought by Mea, it became known that the Black Thunder Princess took the lead in the annihilation of the demonic beasts and risked her life to defend the beast kingdom. In such a situation, it was only natural that if an evolved black cat that was said to be impossible was walking around, their identity would be discovered in a matter of seconds.

Thus, the inhabitants of Gringott saw us off as we reached the lord's mansion, and as soon as we arrived, we were ushered into the reception room, where we were able to meet the lord, Marmano.

As they were still in a state of war, he struck a brave figure in his heavy armor. It gave off a completely different aura compared to the negligee I saw him wear when I visited him the night of the demonic beast attack.

"Welcome, Black Thunder Princess!"

"Hmm."

"I have heard about Her Highness' great service! Thank you for saving Gringott."

"I just wanted to protect my friends."

"Still, our city has undeniably been saved as well. I even heard that you kicked out more than 10,000 packs of demonic beasts and destroyed the evildoers!"

Apparently, Mea exaggerated when she told him of the details. It's true that we defeated 10,000 hordes of demonic beasts, but the stories Marmano heard seem to have been greatly embellished and beautified.

With a twinkle in his eye, Marmano recounted the story of Fran's defense that Mea told him. Slaying a thousand demonic beasts with a single swing, and defeating ten thousand demonic beasts with a single magical strike... Who is this hero? Isn't it hard to possess a divine sword?

"Well, in front of the power of the mighty demon beasts, the dainty appearance of the Black Thunder Princess who stood tall made her compatriots shed tears! I wish I could have seen it happen in person!"

Who are you talking about? The story isn't exactly wrong, but I feel like it wasn't about Fran? Well, Mea did intensely love Fran, after all. She must have been a bit too excited.

Then, Marmano bowed deeply.

"Thanks to your hard work, it's not just Gringott. Our country too has been saved. Once again, let me thank you."

"Like I have said before, I didn't do anything special."

"Fuhahaha. I cannot reward my men if you said your help is not something special. It's fine. You did a great thing. I'm not saying you should show off and become arrogant. However, you should take credit where credit is due. Otherwise, you might end up making some unnecessary enemies."

Marmano, suddenly with a straight face, advises us in a serious tone of voice. Well, he does have a point.

'Fran didn't do anything special'. If we kept insisting on saying we only did the obvious thing and declined compliments and rewards, wouldn't it be hard for the other soldiers and knights to be proud of their achievements?

Also, it was okay now because Marmano is a good man, but some of the nobles might be offended by Fran's attitude. It may be easier to take a little pride in our accomplishments than to be humble to such a person, just so that they won't hate your guts.

These people have their own ways to measure others. Therefore, a reputation as a naive adventurer of a young age who gets carried away when praised would be less alarming to the nobility than an uncanny and noble warrior girl with no greed and no weaknesses to be exploited.

"Mhm, I Understand."

"Is that so! Well, forgive me. I started preaching to you all of a sudden."

"No. Thank you for your concern."

"Apparently, the Black Thunder Princess really is such a generous person as described! Well, I'm impressed!"

"Too much compliment."

"Gahahaha. If we had been pinned down from the north too, our country would have been in a crisis. Preventing one of them, destroying the dungeon and annihilating the demonic beast was an unparalleled achievement in this war. It's no wonder that Black Thunder Princess, Your Highness Nemea and Kiara-sama are dubbed the heroes and the country's salvation. The only people who could match them would be the two lion generals on the southern front line."

Southern Front line... I'm curious as to what happened on that side of the war. I also can't deny that I'm worried about the two generals, who played important roles in this war.... Wait. Before that, what happened to the war? Did we lose? Did we achieve victory? Marmano's face wasn't clouded or moody, so I don't think we lost.....

"What happened to the southern battle?"

"It was a great victory for our country!"

"Is it over?"

Wasn't it only about a week since the war started? Moreover, they must have deployed large armies to each other. If they can't achieve victory with that they will deploy more soldiers or use different tactics, therefore I don't think it would be surprising if the war went on for months, or even years.

"There is also the fact that the difference in strength of the forces was too vast. The Beast Kingdom was overwhelmingly superior in terms of number of mobilized troops and quality of soldiers."

"Still, I heard that the Bashar Kingdom is very good at magic."

"Well, yes. In terms of magic, the quality of sorcerers and the ability to develop magical tools of ours are both outclassed by Bashar Kingdom."

The magic tools for long-distance calls were made by the Magician's Guild of the Bashar Kingdom, I believe. Perhaps, they developed a lot of other useful tools as well. If that was the case, then it could be said that even if we won in terms of the number of soldiers, we couldn't have won by simply overwhelming them.

At least, that was what I thought, but then I was made to know that regular soldiers were too weak to utilize their magical advantage at all.

"What can I say... There's the racial difference. But really, even more importantly, there is a bigger difference between our senses."

"Senses?"

"Yes"

Of course... If we compared beastmen and humans, beastmen were more powerful in combat. However, it was not only that, as there is also a big difference in the senses of the soldiers from the two countries.

"They definitely have a substantial number of outstanding soldiers. Just, in war, soldiers are also recruited from farmers, amongst many other layman workers."

Well, that was normal in this world. Rather, the army and knights were mainly responsible for maintaining security in peacetime and defeating demonic beasts. They would definitely be overwhelmingly short of manpower to fight a war on their own.

"On top of that, there were already notable differences between our country and the Kingdom of Bashar from the time of the conscription."

"What difference?"

"The Bashar Kingdom dispatched an officer called a conscript officer to each village and forcibly gathered soldiers. In each village, although people were reluctant to betray their homeland, they also weren't exactly willing to volunteer to become soldiers."

That was also not surprising. No one wants to send their family to a dangerous war zone.

"However, in the case of the Beastmen Nation, there was no need to do that. Most of the time, volunteers come from the surrounding villages on their own. Some of them even come to us as if they were going hunting. In fact, it was harder for us as there were too many volunteers wanting to sign up!"

As expected of the fighting race. Even ordinary people were fierce.

"In both countries, although most soldiers were originally farmers, the soldiers of Bashar Kingdom were just peasants, while ours are semi-farmers. Also, I think theirs were forced into a war that they didn't want to be in, whereas our soldiers— in particular those in the frontier villages- were soldiers by profession, and they usually feel that by farming they are making supplies for the logistics."

I see, so the soldiers' will to fight was overwhelmingly different. Moreover, the soldiers of Beastman Nation do training on a regular basis. Only, the Black Cats were thought to be particularly weak, so they weren't associated with that kind of atmosphere.......

However, the other races were probably trained to be soldiers, even if they were civilians.

"It's true that the magical tools of the Bashar Kingdom are excellent. But in the end, the difference in soldiers come from the difference in their battle experience. Well, sometimes, as in this case, they can outsmart you......"

I guess that means there are no certainties in battle.

"Regardless, to put it another way, you can't do anything about the gap in strength without a good plan. As soon as word got out that the northern invasion had failed, the Bashar Kingdom's army collapsed."

"It seems that the people who played an active role in the battle were the famous earth magician and the current chief of the White Rhinoceros tribe in the Beastman Nation. In a fierce battle until the reinforcements arrived, they held the border line with their small army force, and struck a painful blow against the retreating Bashar Kingdom's Army."

I guess that meant they did not only have good warriors, but good commanders as well.

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