He Died and Receive an Overpowered Tyrant System

The War Begins

Poeta.

That was the name of the mountain range that cut between the southern domains and the domains in the north and boasted an elevation of sixteen thousand feet above sea level.

Between its precipitous high-altitude terrain, the wind and the water spirit ley lines crisscrossing the area, and the constant blizzards that buffeted the region throughout the winter, it was one of the most perilous places in all the northern lands.

In fact, up until about a hundred years ago, when the then-current king ordered that a road be built through it as part of his plan to develop the south, Poeta was so secluded that the people of Brachride used it to store and preserve their food.

Even now, with the mountain pass established, hardly anybody dared traverse the range during winter.

As a blizzard swept over the frigid mountains, a black serpent slithered along its route.

This winding asp was not one creature but rather was made up of many marching people. It was a long line of men and horses. Clad in furs. They are huddled together as they made their way up the mountain road.

They were the joint punitive force that the two of the northern domains in the western region, Leonhard and Brachride, had formed to put down the rebellious group, the United National Socialist Party that had taken over Eighbury and the southern cities.

All told, the coalition's forces numbered five thousand strong.

However, the group traveling up the peak was only a third of that total sum.

It took infantry a day and a half to traverse Poeta in the winter.

In other words, they needed somewhere to stay the night in order to make that trip.

That was where the Poeta checkpoint came in, but even packed to the gills it could only house a thousand men at a time.

If they tried sending all five thousand soldiers through Poeta at once, two and a half thousand of them would've ended up having to make camp outside. Sleeping outside during the colder Poeta months was a death sentence.

Their commander, Marquis Brachride, had chosen to split the army into five groups just small enough for the checkpoint to support, then led the first one toward the rebel-occupied Eighbury domain.

However, having a road to support their march did little to change the windy, snowy mountain's brutal terrain.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

Sudden screams erupted from the sections of their procession.

An avalanche had started.

Untimely gusts of wind had brought a cascade of snow thundering down from atop a cliff.

Some soldiers hadn't reacted quickly enough, their frightful cries echoing as their last words before being fatally crushed. Others twisted their ankles as those who fled shoved them over in their haste to escape the avalanche. Some of the shrieks came from that group. Different pained exclamations came from those who suffered cracked or broken bones when the soldiers with twisted ankles crashed into them.

While there were a few unfortunate who perished under the wave of heavy snow, far more had been wounded by the domino effect it had caused.

That was hardly surprising, however. The cavalcade was moving so slowly that even avoidable avalanches had become lethal threats.

Merely trying to pass through Poeta during the winter was a suicide mission. Everyone knew that, yet these poor folks were still being made to march.

The fault for that lay exclusively in the hands of the i***t who refused to wait for the snow to thaw and instead obstinately forced the army to move out while it was still winter, Duke Elm Gustave.

After the fifth avalanche, the soldiers finally started to let slip their frustrations.

"Fuckin's Gustave, sitting pretty in the capital, not knowing a thing about winter in the mountains…"

"Why do we gotta put up with this s**t? Is it because the king just chose him to become the duke? And the rest of us schmucks just have to accept that?"

"Yeah, why does one man get to decide the fate of everyone in the western domain? This whole system is dumb! Somebody should do something."

"It's cold...and scary...I can't take this anymore."

Eventually, the murmurs reached the ears of Marquis Brachride, who rode at the rear of the vanguard.

"...Shall I shut them up?" Offered Leinzo, his adjutant riding beside him.

Brachride shook his head.

"Let them yammer. I feel the same way they do."

Brachride turned and looked at the faces of the soldiers huddling behind him. All of them were freezing, and they were clearly exhausted after having been forced to march through the ice and snow. Even the sheer absurdity of traveling through Poeta during the most dangerous time of the year seemed to look fearful that they would be the next ones to fall prey to a larger icicle avalanche.

The fighting hadn't even begun yet, and their morale was already at rock bottom. Brachride sensed the same things in himself but was cautious not to let it show. He was cursing Elm Gustave just as hard as his charges were.

None doubted Gustave's strength. No other man in the kingdom is worthy enough to be compared to him. Everyone knew that. But individual strength and leadership ability were two wholly separate skills, though. Gustave had ordered the army to cross Poeta no matter what the cost and had set a domestic policy that prioritized gold statues and picturesque views so highly it drove his people to starvation. It would've been disingenuous to describe Gustave's statesmanship as anything but utterly incompetent.

Knowing that Brachride had exaggerated his reports to avoid giving Gustave any cause to micromanage the subjugating army, telling him that through wartime conscription, he and Leonhard would raise an army a hundred thousand strong. That alone would have violated the treaty of Eisberg that prohibits the Kingdom of Crentis from raising the army above 100,000.

Unfortunately, the situation had taken the worst turn imaginable. Brachride had underestimated exactly how impatient the duke was.

'His Majesty chose a poor man to grant authority to.'

Brachride's thoughts turned toward the enemy waiting for them.

The United National Socialist Party or UNSP. He had little information about them other than being able to subjugate the city and possibly the southern cities the domain doesn't have much influence to and neutralizing the Divine Spear of Fiery Heavens. With just that small information, Brachride knew that they are an enemy that shouldn't be taken lightly.

'Damn it all...if we could've just waited for spring…'

The "hundred thousand" member Brachride had reported Gustave's may have been an exaggeration, but if they'd gone by his original plan and waited until spring, he and Leonhard could've certainly had fifty thousand soldiers mobilized and ready to stream ceaselessly into the Eighbury domain.

Not knowing the scope of the opposing forces meant it was crucial to hit them with the greatest force they could muster. Thanks to Gustave, however, they had to bring their troops through midwinter Poeta, where they could only deploy a thousand men a day.

His plan to overwhelm the enemy with numbers was in shambles. Now they had no choice but to act with the utmost caution. Their opponent was an organization large enough to govern a domain, after all.

It would've been one thing if they had a proper army, but there was no sense in asking a scant five thousand exhausted men who had just been forced to trudge through the snow to do the impossible.

In other words, the best course of action was to retake a village near the border. That way, Brachride's forces would have a strategic location from which they could send out scouting parties and gather intel. During that time, Brachride was going to get his hands on as much booze, meat, and pleasurable company as he could to boost the soldiers' morale.

Gustave was sure to be livid if he found out they were taking such tepid-sounding measures, but trying to assault an unknown enemy encamped in city walls with only three thousand men was suicide.

It wouldn't even be a fight.

If they wanted to wage an actual war, they needed to at least wait for Gustave's troops to join up with them. The Gustave domain's standing reserves came to roughly ten thousand. Given the duke's temperament, odds were that he'd bring all of them. Setting the insanity of doing so aside, wartime conscription was likely to bolster that number up to a hundred thousand. With those figures, Brachride was confident the kingdom stood a chance against the upstart group of powerful rebels.

'Until we convene with Gustave's army, we should focus on gathering as much information as possible. It's all that we should do and all that we can do.'

The situation was both unreasonable and unclear, so Brachride knew that he needed to identify what was and wasn't within his power and order his men accordingly. Brachride was a shrewd man when it came to war tactics, so much so that he was hailed as the greatest general in the northern domains.

This time, though he was outmatched.

What he and his troops faced was already far worse than he could've ever anticipated. Brachride himself realized as much when he reached the Poeta checkpoint.

As his men braced themselves against the blizzard and trembled in fear of sudden avalanches, they finally arrived at what would've normally been a place of rest. By all accounts, the checkpoint should've provided the weary soldiers with places to put up their feet by the hearths and warm their numbed bodies with meat and drink.

When they reached the checkpoints' thirty-foot-tall gate, however, what greeted them was neither the heat of a fireplace nor the aroma of steaming food.

The UNSP has been waiting for them to arrive, waiting to the point they prepared a grand reception for them.

In the battlement, M2 Browning was mounted in intervals, men clad in black uniforms unheard in the country equipped with G36 Heckler and Koch assault rifles.

"Open fire!!!"

Instead, they were met with rows of gun muzzles spanning the entire width of the gate. A maelstrom of light, sound, and metal surged for