Return to Coral Island (Second Update)

As the Sapphire Grand Duchy had risen through the slave trade, aside from that original group of followers, most of the commoners in the country—and the knights born from commoners—actually descended from slaves seized or purchased back then.

After generations of living there, the descendants of those slaves had come to identify themselves as part of the Sapphire Grand Duchy.

Yet in order to further consolidate that sense of identity, every Grand Duke had refused to accept prisoners of war—captured knights posed obstacles in terms of loyalty and identity. Moreover, the nobles within the country lacked knights. Once the gates were opened, great numbers of prisoners of war would flood into the country, causing the nation's shared identity to vanish.

Without that sense of identity, a nation would cease to be a nation, and noble rebellions could break out at any time.

Take Coral Island, where Liszt had grown up. There were probably only a little over a thousand Earth Knights in total, and every time an Order for Exploration mobilized Earth Knights, it could only gather five or six hundred at most.

In the campaign to encircle Iron Hoof Island, seven hundred Earth Knights had been mobilized, already the limit. Yet two hundred Earth Knights had been lost in battle, especially among the Gray Knights led by Viscount Yunus, where casualties exceeded half their number—fortunately, Earth Knights possessed formidable vitality, and even the severely wounded could survive. Otherwise, the losses would have been even greater.

Once the door was opened to accepting captives, one could easily imagine how many foreign Earth Knights the Count would recruit to replenish his forces.

The treatment of foreign Earth Knights would certainly be far inferior to that of local Earth Knights. So long as it could be ensured that they would not rebel,