Chương 110: The Recruit Desertion Incident

"My daughter! Oh heavens, my daughter!!" Within a ramshackle, rotting hovel nestled deep in the squalor of Poloia's lower slums, a middle-aged human man held the limp body of a young girl, weeping in unmitigated agony. The girl was completely motionless, a dark, spreading pool of crimson saturating the dirt floor beneath her.

A massive, dense crowd of destitute slum-dwellers choked the narrow alleyways around the hovel, straining their necks to peer inside while whispering frantically amongst themselves, their expressions twisted with profound rage and grief. A detachment of the domestic militia struggled mightily to maintain a perimeter around the scene.

Fully ninety percent of these auxiliary guards had been recruited directly from these very slums; facing extreme poverty and a total lack of livelihoods, they had eagerly enlisted for the promise of state rations. Furthermore, following Li Qinwu's previous emergency deployment to combat the catastrophic fires, these impoverished men had experienced virtually zero moral or psychological burden when integrating into the Union's security apparatus.

Yet, the horrific spectacle unfolding before their eyes left the militia completely paralyzed with fear. A ten-man squad of raw Goblin recruits had somehow managed to slip past their barracks, utilizing the cover of darkness to breach the margins of the slum district and violate a local civilian household. Although a local company of the militia stationed nearby had been alerted by the neighbors and scrambled to the scene, they arrived far too late. The atrocities had already been committed.

Left with no clear protocol, the hundred-plus militia guards had done nothing more than herd the ten Goblin recruits into a tight stone corner, cutting off their escape vectors. Beyond that, not a single human guard dared to take definitive action. To put it bluntly, their status was nothing more than a puppet auxiliary force; how could they possibly possess the systemic courage to lay violent hands upon the kin of their monstrous conquerors? Thus, a standoff ensued.

Over a hundred armed human guards boxed the ten Goblins against the wall, yet not a single spear was thrust. For their part, the ten recruits were equally terrified, shrinking into the masonry, trembling as they stared at the flashing eyes around them. The surrounding civilians had reached an absolute boiling point. The sheer depravity of the crime was a direct assault on the fragile peace, and voices within the crowd began roaring for their immediate execution, demanding they be stoned to death on the spot.

The militia guards stood frozen. Their sociopolitical position was profoundly awkward and terrifying. If they gave in to the crowd's fury and slaughtered these ten Goblins, would the primary monster host deploy their heavy infantry to liquidate the entire militia structure in retaliation? Even though the monster army's administrative conduct since occupying Poloia had been characterized by a degree of benevolence that surpassed even the most legendary human lords, a monster was still a monster.

For thousands of years, the collective human consciousness had been hardwired to view these creatures as the literal embodiment of cruelty, savagery, and chaotic malice. Consequently, the militia did not dare strike. Ironically, by encircling the cornered recruits to prevent a riot, the human guards had effectively transformed into a protective shield, preserving the lives of the ten criminals who would have otherwise been violently torn to pieces by the vengeful populace.

Just as the volatile friction threatened to detonate into an all-out civilian uprising, a sudden wave of frantic commotion rippled through the rear of the crowded alleys.

"The main host! The monster army is here!" a crier screamed. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Like a drop of oil hitting water, the immense crowd violently parted, scrambling backward to clear a sweeping path down the avenue. Li Qinwu strode into the center of the slum, leading a grim phalanx of veteran heavy infantry.

Shoving past the trembling line of militia guards, his massive frame loomed over the cornered recruits, exposing them completely to the dim light. The ten Goblins were completely naked, having cast their standard-issue leather doublets and iron spears into the labyrinthine alleys during their flight. At a glance, they looked entirely indistinguishable from the feral, primitive beasts of the wild forests. Li Qinwu's voice dropped into a register of absolute, freezing ice.

"Where are your issues of plate armor and standard spears?" The ten recruits shook so violently that their joints clicked against the stone wall, entirely incapable of uttering a coherent syllable. The sheer, suffocating aura of lethal intent radiating from Li Qinwu's towering physique triggered the ancient, primal instinctual dread embedded within a Goblin's very bloodline. For the first time in their short lives, they grasped the catastrophic gravity of their actions.

Li Qinwu turned his gaze toward the grieving father who continued to rock the motionless girl within the hovel. He looked at Miss Hana.

"Examine the child. See if there is any spark left to salvage." Miss Hana rushed forward, dropping to her knees to conduct a frantic medical assessment before slowly rising, her face pale as she shook her head.

"The child has bled out, Your Grace. She is gone." Li Qinwu slowly spun on his heel, his sweeping gaze taking in the thousands of flashing human eyes pinning him from every rooftop, window, and alleyway. Virtually the entire population of the lower slums had converged on the sector—a sea of seven to eight thousand desperate souls. Their collective gaze was laced with a delicate, desperate thread of hope.

They were waiting to see exactly how this supreme chieftain of monsters would adjudicate an atrocity committed by his own blood kin. These impoverished slum-dwellers constituted the absolute bedrock of Li Qinwu's domestic civilian foundation within Poloia.

His previous calculated benevolence during the city fires had successfully secured an immense amount of political goodwill among the lower classes; he had not the slightest intention of squandering that strategic foundation simply to shield a handful of worthless, undisciplined conscripts. Furthermore—military law was absolute and merciless! Gobu Bow trotted quickly to Li Qinwu's side, leaning in to deliver a low, urgent briefing.

"Boss, the internal investigation is complete..." The root cause of the incident was painfully straightforward. When Li Qinwu had mobilized his primary strike host for the light-speed northern expedition, he had drawn every single seasoned veteran from the original ten companies of the Punisher Army to anchor the vanguard. This comprehensive deployment had left the domestic recruit barracks under the administrative oversight of a severely depleted, loose guard detail.

Furthermore, the makeshift wooden palisades Li Qinwu had ordered constructed around the barracks were fundamentally structurally insecure. Over the preceding weeks, the restless recruits had spent their idle hours peering through the wide gaps in the timber, watching the endless stream of human civilian life drifting past their gates. They were Goblins, after all. The fundamental, base drivers of their biology were well-documented.

As the weeks of rigid military confinement dragged on, that underlying, primal restlessness began to warp, accumulating within their psychology like pressurized steam. Eventually, the volatile tension reached a critical flashpoint, triggering a sudden, mass desertion attempt across an entire infantry company. The defectors had fractured into multiple escape vectors to slip past the perimeter.

While the patrolling Hobgoblin NCOs had successfully intercepted and subdued the vast majority of the fleeing columns along the palisades, this particular ten-man squad had managed to navigate the blind spots of the wall, descending upon the defenseless slum like ravenous beasts to commit their heinous crime. Li Qinwu harbored an absolute, consuming hatred for a Goblin's inability to master its own base desires.

This brand of primal behavioral volatility was fundamentally destructive to the very architecture of a civilized, lawful society. If allowed to fester even once, it would completely shatter the structural integrity of the order he was building. Therefore, every single manifestation of this systemic weakness would be met with an unyielding, terrifyingly absolute retribution.

Li Qinwu locked his eyes onto Gobu Spear, his voice booming across the silent slums like a clap of thunder:"Erect ten execution posts in the center of this square immediately. Bind these ten criminals to the stakes, and let them be subjected to the Death by Fists!"

"Furthermore, march every single recruit currently stationed within the city barracks directly to this plaza. Force them to stand at absolute attention at the vanguard of the crowd. They shall witness, line by line, exactly what manner of absolute horror awaits any creature who dares to violate the military law of this Union!"