551 Scheme (1/2)
An individual's scheme would never match up to the heavens' schemes. A scheme's success or failure depended more upon the heavens than the individual. Such cliché phrases had likely been said countless times already. But, in most typical stories, those who said death flag sentences would always die quickly.
No matter how wondrous the plan or scheme was, it would be quite easy for everything to fail for one simple reason: bad luck. For instance, if you met with a youth who just left his village… What, you're saying that an inexperienced youth who left his village for the first time wouldn't be scary at all? Ha, just watch the gears of fate turn. Perhaps that youth who had just worked as a tavern server recently would soon become the next main character of a legend.
After many years of experience, I came up with three maxims about why schemes would fail. First, if the schemer killed the main character's parents, teacher, or some other respected elder. Second, if the schemer kidnapped or stole the main character's girlfriend or love interest. Third, if the schemer tried to renege on a marriage agreement. What these three maxims had in common was one thing: you antagonized the main character.
…Cough, cough, it seemed that no matter what world I was in, the stories would always be quite cliché.
Yep, I was referring to schemes in stories only.
Although sometimes reality would be even more fantastical than stories, most of the time, stories were only stories, and reality was reality.
The success rate of schemes in real life was always much higher. That was because the schemer and his subordinates wouldn't be such idiots like in the stories. Someone capable of planning a grand overarching scheme and being in the midst of carrying it out probably also had a more than ninety percent success rate guarantee to be willing to start it in the first place.
A certain earl's family waited patiently for a hundred years for the ruling royalty to have a generation with no descendants. Then, that earl's family assassinated four royal relatives that might succeed the throne, thus ensuring that the earl's family succeeded the throne in the end… Yep, I was actually referring to the current San Antonio. The history behind how the current ruling family obtained their crown wasn't glorious at all.
Did the major nobles in San Antonio not know about how this crown was obtained? Was the previous royalty not on guard at all? In fact, the royalty had long since known that Earl Misset had grand ambitions. The royalty even knew exactly why those distantly related princes had died. However, Earl Misset from that generation had the most powerful army, and the loyalty of one-third of all the major nobles. So, the San Antonio royalty from back then could only watch on aggrievedly as they were destroyed.
I had often heard stories about inexperienced youths saving the princess in distress and finally reviving a kingdom and becoming the ruler of an entire country. However, I had never seen such things happen in reality. Instead, the ugly and old ”villains” from the story would always win in the end, along with marrying the princess, having several children, and usurping the throne. This was actually quite commonplace.
The reasons were quite simple. The schemers were typically quite powerful. Their ambitions stemmed from having a sufficient amount of factional support and actual power. If a noble family was even stronger than the royalty, it was only natural that this noble family would have ambitions to replace the royalty. Only an incredible few would adhere to their ancient contracts to the royalty and remain loyal. The end result was that the schemes were basically almost open for everyone to see, and that today's traitor would be the glorious king of tomorrow.
The internal war in the Sala Dukedom was just one such example, but there were plenty others ongoing in the world right now. In this current generation, there were so many betrayals, uprisings, assassinations, and civil wars that such news no longer made the headlines. Even though the human mega empires were still able to keep such chaos suppressed, the smaller countries were now in a state of utter chaos.
It would be too naïve to think of all this chaos as only natural during the Holy War. Judging from the information I received from the fairies and the Mist Alliance, much of this chaos actually had to do with the involvement of other species or outside factions.
Perhaps a certain noble would mysteriously receive powerful God Equipment. Perhaps a certain domain lord would suddenly have a few non-human archmages join his cause. Perhaps a certain dukedom would find several beastman tribes offering their support. Perhaps a genius strategist would suddenly appear, greatly strengthening a certain faction's military strength… This type of abnormal news was actually considered normal in this day and age. What happened next was even more common. Either the domain lord who felt like it was his ”destiny” to be the ruler would start plotting to overthrow his current ruler, or the ruler would feel threatened and begin to preemptively clean house.
The ”Vultures of War” catastrophe from the game's history had now appeared in front of us in a different form—civil wars and internal unrest from nobles.
For most countries, seeing your neighbor having a civil war would be the most annoying thing possible. If you didn't intervene, the civil war would end up affecting you as well. But if you intervened, you would immediately be accused of interfering in another country's internal affairs or invasion.
Of course, some ambitious kings and archdukes actually treated this as a great chance to expand their territories. And so, the fires of war kept burning even greater as the civil wars were upgraded into international world wars.
To my knowledge, many mega empires, including Bardi, Xiluo, and San Antonio, had secretly gained much from the current chaotic civil wars raging in the world. Not to mention, since this was all about other countries' internal affairs, it was impossible for outsiders to intervene.
This was destructive for any small country, but was it only a small issue for the mega empires? No, this was a tremendous issue for everyone.
The mega empires only won and never lost whenever they conquered other smaller countries. Expanding their territories not only solidified the royalty's position, but it also benefited the country's markets, the major nobles, and military. That made the mega empires' citizens desire even more wars, so their citizens' wishes forced the king and the nobles to start even more wars… That was the biggest trouble of all.
If all of this was due to the Chaos Faction's scheme, then I must say that it was wonderfully done.
A few random powerful individuals joining up, or a few nonhuman outsiders offering their support, or a few dark cultists, or a single powerful weapon, or some new technology, or a few sacks of gold coins. As long as they were used well, such tiny pieces in the grand scheme of things could cause an entire country to sink into utter chaos. This would decrease the entire overall strength of humanity.
The Sala Dukedom was an obvious example of this. The civil war here was between the ruling archduke's family and the domain lords. This was no social class revolution. And, in the end, no matter who won or lost, the Sala Dukedom's power as a country would definitely be greatly diminished, with a large reduction in population. There would be no true victor in the end. Looking at the overall situation and the long-term future, everyone would be a loser.
Limit the scale of the wars? It wouldn't be so easy after the wars began.
Something like stopping wars before they started was especially hard to do. Those with ambition were plentiful everywhere. It just depended on if the ambitious had actual power backing them up or not. Were we supposed to investigate every single one of each domain lord's subordinates? Were we supposed to ban the nobles and domain lords from trying to improve their own power? Considering how this world currently had a feudal society where domain lords ruled like kings in their own domains, even their countries' royalty would be unable to stop the domain lords.
This scheme didn't seem like it came from the demons, as demons were simple-minded and would directly declare war against you. This seemed far more like a vicious scheme from the devils that loved to torment humans. While such a scheme wouldn't see results anytime soon, a sufficient amount of time passing would mean the significant weakening of all of humanity.
Perhaps it was because several of the Devil Lords betrayed the Chaos Faction and joined the Hell Faction. Perhaps it was because Cynthia, the will of the Chaos Abyss, had disappeared. The remaining Devil Lords were no longer remaining neutral as they typically would in previous Holy Wars. The other Devil Lords were showing off their abilities and support for the Chaos Faction.