Extinguished Fireseed

"Another noble lord?" "Huh? A marchioness?" "Who's higher rank, a marchioness or the earl we just killed?" "She's not going to make us dig in the mines too, is she?" Hearing these words, the serfs erupted into frantic murmurs, and the surrounding crowd turned into a wall of chatter. Spark, meanwhile, broke out in a cold sweat. The elite hobgoblin infantry gathered before them possessed more than enough strength to butcher everyone in sight, and he had no wish to see the companions who had bled beside him throw their lives away for nothing. Bracing himself, Spark stepped forward. "Lady Delenna, may I ask what brings you here?" Delenna replied, "To bring the kingdom's goodwill, of course. You all have done remarkably well." "Uh... goodwill?" Spark was momentarily bewildered. Delenna covered her mouth with a light chuckle and continued, "Of course. You are the vanguard against the decadent rule of the Northlands; even Lord Trump has heard of you. He personally brought you up in a council meeting and commended your efforts, speaking very highly of your campaign." Puzzled, Spark asked uneasily, "Then... does the kingdom have any arrangements for us?" Under the dual pressure of an elite army and her noble title, he had unconsciously adopted a subordinate posture. Deep in Delenna's eyes, a flicker of smug satisfaction surfaced. "The kingdom has already prepared arrangements." The main event had finally arrived! Spark held his breath. As if sensing his unease, Delenna offered a reassuring smile. "Do not worry. The kingdom does not mistreat anyone." She drew a document from her robes and spoke with poised ease. "Warriors of Fireseed, you shall all receive citizenship in the kingdom, and you will be assigned to factories across our cities, where you will have stable, fulfilling jobs." "Then—will we be able to eat?" a serf plucked up the courage to ask, raising a hand. "Of course." "Within our Kingdom of Cinders, everyone receives an ample supply of food. Not a single person will ever starve to death. That is not even an issue worth questioning." Delenna replied in a relaxed tone, even nodding slightly toward the serf. "How is that possible?" "Even freemen don't always get their fill!" "Nobody starves to death? Heavens, does a place like that really exist?" The serfs erupted into a commotion once more. Having enough to eat for every single person was an unbelievable notion to those who had endured hunger and starvation since childhood, something that belonged only in heaven and dreams. "Will we have clothes to wear?" "Will we freeze to death in winter?" "Can we avoid being beaten?" "Will we have a place to live?" The floodgates had opened, and the serfs scrambled over one another to ask questions, imagining the "wonderful life" of their future survival. To an ordinary person from the modern world, these inquiries would seem laughably basic, yet to them, the answers painted an Eden. "The kingdom's clothing is both high quality and affordable." "The kingdom's spellcasters ensure that the cities remain perpetually warm." "Assault is an illegal offense. Even a duke cannot violate the Kingdom Code." Faced with their flood of questions, Delenna showed no impatience. Instead, she answered each with graceful patience, making the serfs feel as though a gentle spring breeze had brushed past them. "Explaining it with words might not be vivid enough. Let us have a clearer demonstration, then." *Clap.* She lightly clapped her hands. A guard beside her stepped forward at once and presented a wooden box containing a magic crystal. Delenna pressed the crystal, and a translucent projection immediately floated into the air. The serfs looked up in astonishment, letting out gasps of wonder. In the image, a worker bearing a serf's brand upon his neck was working along an assembly line. His surroundings were clean and orderly—especially when compared to the squalid, filthy hovels they knew. His task was nothing more than checking product quality and stamping an approval label with a machine. It looked remarkably easy, requiring hardly any physical exertion. "That's our future work?" "Th-that counts as work?" "He gets to eat that much food for just that little effort?" The serfs gasped in disbelief. For as long as they could remember, they had been treated like beasts of burden, pulling plows and digging ore as part of daily life. They had never seen such effortless "work." Observing the astonished expressions on their faces, Delenna continued to entice them. "These are the workers of the kingdom. They enjoy generous treatment and need only perform the lightest labor." Naturally, she deliberately omitted the clause about working "at least fifteen hours a day." "This marchioness lord is a good person!" "Yeah, to actually arrange work like that for us!" "Such amazing terms!" "She even answered my questions herself! She's completely different from those noble lords in the Northlands!" The serfs discussed it enthusiastically, their hearts already won over by the marchioness. Yet none of them noticed, nor cared, that this was the exact outcome she had steered them toward. "I... I want to be a kingdom worker," Kindling stammered out, his face filled with yearning and reverence. Spark looked around him. Listening to the serfs' bright hopes for the future, hearing them slip back into calling nobles "my lord," and witnessing their deep reverence for Marchioness Delenna, he felt a bitter ache in his chest. *The world shouldn't be like this,* Spark thought to himself. He had just led these serfs in shattering the rotten, antiquated shackles of the old regime, only for them to willingly slip on an invisible, heavier chain. Yet did he have any right to stop them from pursuing a "better life"? Did he have the power to lead them toward building a world free of oppression in Anzeta? The answer was no. This was an open, undeniable scheme. The members of Fireseed would be dispersed across various cities to become ordinary workers of the kingdom, and the name "Fireseed" would fade away with the passage of time. Fireseed... had perhaps already been extinguished. After a long silence, Spark asked them, "Everyone—do you all feel this way?" "Of course!" "Eating our fill every day and never getting beaten—how could it get better than that?" "Yeah, it feels like a dream." "I'm sick of all the killing anyway." The serfs answered in a clamor of overlapping voices, eagerly chatting about their future lives, raising not a single objection to the kingdom's arrangements. Delenna maintained her benevolent smile and gave Spark a slight nod, seemingly in greeting. *Once these serfs are scattered across the Northlands, my prestige among humanity will rise another step.* *I must maintain this political image and disguise myself as the champion of human interests in the kingdom. Only then can I climb to higher positions,* the yuan-ti pureblood, who had always worn the guise of a human, thought to herself. The serfs were thoroughly swayed by the kingdom's propaganda. Laying down the resistance they had maintained for months, they began following Marchioness Delenna's directives and cooperated with the hobgoblin army to take over the City of Dena. Spark drifted away from the ecstatic crowd, lost in silent thought, his mind an unreadable knot. Nick, the first one who had followed him, stepped up, patted him on the shoulder, and murmured softly, "The south... There are still many oppressed people in the south. Slavery might not even be abolished there yet. We can rekindle the Fireseed there." Spark clenched his fists tight, looked toward the distant horizon, and spoke with firm resolve. "All right. Then we head south." "The Fireseed will never go out." What he did not know was that just a moment ago, Marchioness Delenna had spoken with Nick, intentionally telling the core members who refused to abandon Fireseed to go south—to the Fadlan region. There, they could give free rein to their ambitions and let the fire of their seed blaze fiercely.