Munitions Empire

KIng Taren the Tenth, after all, was unable to await the arrival of his loyal artillery commander; nor did reinforcements come from the direction of the artillery.

Pacing restlessly throughout his own Royal Palace, until darkness fell once again, he could not come up with a satisfactory solution.

The whole King City had, in fact, completely spiraled out of control, and Taren the Tenth was utterly unable to restore order, nor could he return it to its usual functioning.

Even though the cannonade had ceased several days prior, and attacks from the seas had long since dissipated, the entire King City still couldn't revert to its original state.

The commoners, having seen red, or rather left with no way out, and the disorganized troops, continued to wreak havoc within the city, showing no intention of stopping.

Various rumors and tales filled the air, many strange legends, leaving the already scared populace wholly unable to discern the truth.

Some rumors claimed that the King had died, killed by the artillery fire a few days ago; the Ministers kept it secret, only to maintain their grip on power.

In normal times, King Taren the Tenth need only make a few public appearances to dispel such rumors immediately without a trace.

But now, with the chaos outside, and with no means of media such as televisions, King Taren the Tenth's appearance became a significant problem.

He had no choice; King Taren the Tenth was neither a capable ruler nor a sage, and he didn't have the courage to risk being attacked and step out of the Royal Palace to prove he was still breathing...

As a result, such rumors found an even larger audience, with many people vehemently believing the tales recounted by their wives' aunts' cousins' second uncles' seventh brothers' sons' friends... who allegedly witnessed, on that very day, King Taren the Tenth having half his head blown off by a cannonball, a sight terrifying enough to kill a person.

Of course, there were others who said that it was the lower half of his body that had been hit, and that his... capabilities were gone, so the concubines in the harem were in for a hard time now.

There was also a legend that the enemy had landed!

Yes, this legend too was spread with conviction, with many pounding their chests to guarantee that they saw the enemy Troops landing.

Yet, these witnesses could never clearly describe the enemy's attire, the exact numbers, or articulate the invaders' purpose, but they would still assert to anyone who inquired about it that the enemy had landed! That they were rampaging through the city, killing, and setting fires!

Honestly, by then, those with discernment understood that the rumors of the enemy landing were deliberately being spread with an agenda.

The people who disseminated these rumors had a simple objective; they were capitalizing on the chaos for profit and naturally needed the chaos to persist.

Since the enemy was no longer bombarding them, they had to create new anxieties, to facilitate their actions more conveniently, and artificially, to craft a scapegoat villain!

The principle was simple; these people committed heinous crimes without restraint, and once their deeds were done, they'd conveniently blame the invading forces. The losses would be covered by others.

And themselves? They reaped all the benefits and, by hiding and waiting out the storm, would no longer be held accountable for their sins.

Against such a chaotic backdrop, the King City of the Taren Kingdom had become a living hell on earth.

A city with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, upon losing order and effective governance, quickly became a quagmire that consumed lives.

Any city requires countless officials and workers, toiling tirelessly night and day. Should their efforts be disrupted or halted, everything would consequently collapse.

Modern cities are fragile, and so are the people living within them. They lack the capacity to confront destabilizing situations and are devoid of the basic experience to survive on their own.

In reality, a mere disruption of the water supply could collapse a metropolis of millions in just a few weeks.

Forty-eight hours without electricity, and the foundations of modern civilization would crumble, smartphones would become useless, the internet would disrupt, and panic would ensue.

The lack of water and electricity alone is enough to turn the inhabitants of a city into beasts, irritable and hostile toward one another, spawning tragedy in the form of looting, riots, and killings.

In a large city with millions of people, stockpiled food would be depleted within weeks. By then, the gates of hell would swing open, true despair would spread, and all suffering and sin would have only just begun.

Though the era of this otherworldly city had yet to see such extreme growth and complexity, the city itself remained inherently vulnerable.

Take King City of Taren as an example, where it had been seven or eight days since anyone had come to collect the residents' excrement—which was normally taken out of the city to be sold as fertilizer to farmers.

But who would collect these foul-smelling wastes now? Therefore, these nauseating excrements piled up amidst the rubble and buildings, becoming increasingly visible on the streets and alleys.

This filled the air throughout the city with a rotten, stench-filled odor, with sewage ponds already overflowing, swarms of insects had formed, and, in fact, infectious diseases had already begun to spread.

Because of the previous days' frenzy of grabbing goods for free, bodies were visible everywhere in the yards and streets of the city.

Some corpses began to rot due to the weather, and most of the bodies inside rooms or buildings were undiscovered or left unattended.

They were carriers of plague, and also breeding grounds for harmful animals and insects, such as flies and rats.

These bodies should have been organized and incinerated immediately, but now no one cared about these matters.
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The few teams that could be organized were almost always near the outer city walls or around the Royal Palace.

In the remaining areas of the city, you could hardly see a person, let alone patrol teams cleaning up bodies.

Kind-hearted civilians had mostly fled to the outskirts by now, and wealthy magnates and bureaucrats protected by guards had escaped to their country estates.

Those who stayed were either too old, weak, ill, and attached to their homes, or opportunists with ulterior motives; naturally, they wouldn't concern themselves with any laws or regulations.

So, from any perspective, King City of Taren could now be considered a city of the dead.

"Where are the people I sent to gather information? Where are they?" King Taren the Tenth hysterically glared at the Prime Minister and several Ministers, and shouted loudly.

He had previously allowed the Ministers to go home overnight, but each subsequent day, fewer would return to the Royal Palace for the council, so Taren the Tenth simply detained them all within his own palace.

He even sent for the detained Ministers' families, turning the entire Royal Palace into a congested, smoke-filled place overcrowded with people.

That was a few days ago, when his commands still carried some weight—now, he dared not easily dispatch his confidants or troops outside the palace.

Because the two trusted guards he had sent to the batteries had left and never returned, and most of those he had dispersed to gather information in the last few days had also vanished without a trace.

Clearly, these men were armed when they left, so the likelihood of them being intercepted was actually very low—it was more plausible that they had simply fled as soon as they left the palace, without attempting to carry out the tasks assigned by the King.

"Your Majesty! I don't know either..." the Prime Minister quickly deflected, having lost hope for the Kingdom.

In the past few days, he hadn't even dared to send envoys to the commanders of the enemy warships lying at sea, because those envoys too had gone and not returned, not bringing back even a hint of progress.

And the current state of King City, already nearly consumed by internal strife, was beyond salvation—without being able to even find those sent out, how could one manage and control the entire city?

Moreover, the food stored in the city was rapidly depleting, and famine would soon ensue. When the hungry rioters descended upon the Royal Palace to seek food, what was to be done?

At that thought, the Prime Minister couldn't help but smirk bitterly to himself—his tenure as Prime Minister of Taren Kingdom seemed to have reached its end.

"You don't know! You don't know anything! Do you?" King Taren the Tenth bellowed in frustration and anger, his voice rising to a screeching pitch.

"Useless rubbish! All of you, rubbish! Traitors!" he yelled helplessly, venting his dissatisfaction and fear.

Then, he grabbed a water cup and hurled it at the feet of the Prime Minister and other Ministers detained in the palace, screaming, "Get out! All of you, get out!"

The Ministers and Prime Minister, as if granted a reprieve, quickly exited the hall, while the already enraged King Taren the Tenth turned his attention to a trembling servant standing by.

"You... come here!" he gestured to the servant, his face darkening.

Seeing the king summon him, the servant wore an expression uglier than crying and reluctantly moved his frail body towards His Majesty.

Witnessing such reluctance and fear, King Taren the Tenth grew even more irritable. He strode toward the servant and, with a swing of his arm, delivered a loud slap across the servant's face.

The servant was spun in place by the strike, taking several stumbling steps before barely regaining his foothold. But before he could straighten up, the King's fists, like a violent storm, struck once again.

Minutes later, King Tarran, panting heavily, stood over the bloodied, lifeless servant, scanning the remaining silent maids and servants: "What are you afraid of? What? Why are you afraid?" he demanded.

As he spoke, he kicked the battered body on the ground twice more: "What are you afraid I'll do? Huh? Speak! Why are you so afraid of me? Say it!"

...

Only after the guards, shaken with fear, removed the servant's corpse and the maids mustered the courage to wash the blood-stained floor did the assembly hall fall into eerie silence, broken only by the sound of rags wiping the ground.

It was a strange, frightening, quiet.