While the people of Zelandia were busy clearing the battlefield and treating the wounded, in the dense forests of the Eternal Wasteland across the Surbrin River—
Orc Neriao, who could in some sense be considered the spark that had ignited this war, had been stripped of the last scraps of tattered fur he possessed for warmth and bound hand and foot to a bare tree trunk.
The blizzard had blanketed heaven and earth, making it nearly impossible to tell east from west, north from south.
Amid the biting wind, Neriao, covered in wounds and wracked by hunger and cold, was whipped again and again by his own people under Chieftain Onarom's gaze, which seemed ready to devour people, and the hateful stares of his companions. His body could only twitch and convulse futilely.
He could no longer even cry out in agony.
He could even feel the little life force he had left gradually draining away beneath his wounds and the cold.
"I'll ask you one more time! Why did you betray your own clan?! Why did you join forces with the Silvermoon Federation to harm your own tribe members?! What other schemes do you have?"
Less than four feet away, Shadowmoon Clan Chieftain Onarom was likewise deathly pale from excessive blood loss. Yet at this moment, like a wounded beast that had lost everything, he roared at Neriao with bloodshot eyes.
Neriao did not try to beg for mercy, because he knew it would be pointless.
Even these absurd questions were pointless.
His chieftain was not particularly clever, but neither was he utterly stupid. Neriao knew that a chieftain who had lost everything desperately needed some unlucky bastard to share the blame.
And no Orc was more suitable than him.
After all, this war had begun because of him.