The proposal to send reinforcements had barely surfaced before it was rejected within the command headquarters. It never even got the chance to be reported to the Kingdom.
From beginning to end, Hudson had not voiced an opinion. He understood the situation in the Near East Region all too well.
The unlucky noble houses that had just been wiped out were hardly lone wolves. Without backers behind them, they would never have been so active.
The current situation was this: the nobles of the border counties had joined forces to expand outward, touched the Beastfolk's bottom line, and suffered fierce retaliation from nearby Beastfolk tribes.
There was nothing wrong with expansion, but if their own strength was lacking and they insisted on copying others, taking too big a step and pulling their balls in the process, then they had only themselves to blame.
It was impossible to expect the Kingdom to endorse this.
Once such a precedent was set, it would become: win, and the profits were theirs; lose, and the Kingdom covered the bill.
Hudson dared say that once such a political signal was released, the flames of war would never be extinguished.
Letting his subordinates raise these issues at the meeting was already a favor in consideration of everyone's lobbying. Hudson had never promised that they would receive the Kingdom's support.
"Count Ebert, if things were really that simple, then this tragedy could only be blamed on our own overestimation of ourselves.
"However, after a thorough investigation, we discovered that someone had been deliberately steering these incidents from behind the scenes, attempting to provoke a war.
"The investigative teams in the counties repeatedly found Beastfolk corpses appearing in our settlements, but we were not the ones who killed them.
"The dead Beastfolk were no ordinary fodder. They were