Makelele looked at Serilef seriously and said, word by word, "That would not only fail to help those civilians, it would also lead to Athkatla's complete destruction!"
"Why?" Serilef asked, utterly unconvinced.
"Because we are the bottom line! At that time, our neutrality was the best way to protect this city! Think about it—what would happen if we appeared among the civilians? No one would sit back and wait to die, especially those who had enjoyed power. When we stood among the rioting masses, it would mean they had lost their last legal basis. Once they failed, they would be completely finished! Faced with that situation, they would have no choice but to fight back to the death."
"At that point, they would lose their final restraints. To survive, they would turn the entire city into a real battlefield!"
"Wasn't Athkatla a battlefield that day?" Serilef still refused to accept it. In her view, as long as the Order of the Radiant Heart stood firmly with the civilians, they could quickly end the conflict and minimize the harm.
Makelele looked at Serilef for a long while before slowly asking, "Have you ever seen a real battlefield?"
Serilef wanted to say that she had. After all, the chaos caused in Beauclair, Toussaint's capital, by Alfred, Xianna, and later Digla had absolutely counted as a real war. The whole of Beauclair had nearly been wiped out.
But on second thought, Serilef could not say it. She had not participated in the Battle of Beauclair at all. She had still been outside the city at the time, and her father had never given her a chance to join that battle.
"When people completely lose their restraints, they become more terrifying than demons. And it wasn't only the noble faction—the civilians were no different.