Victory in Battle

The officers' reactions to the order to surrender varied widely.

Some raised white flags and disarmed as though they had been waiting for the order, while others tried to resist to the very end.

It was not because they had any particularly strong loyalty to the Empire. After a century of corruption, few people remained who could offer the Empire genuine loyalty.

The reason the noble-born officers resisted to the end was... the worldview they had believed in all this time.

In the nobles' worldview, nobles were exalted beings whom commoners dared not even look straight in the eye.

They themselves were chosen humans who could use magic—a superior race that commoners could not presume to approach, and therefore entitled to special privileges.

For noble houses that had held these beliefs for a thousand years and hundreds of generations, giving up that authority in an instant was impossible.

"The proud nobles of our glorious Empire do not kneel to commoners!"

Shouting that, they ignored the headquarters' order to surrender.

A noble must not kneel before a commoner. The extremists who had been taught that lesson until it was drilled into them from childhood could not accept this situation...