Recommended: A tiny difference could bring earth-shaking changes to a battle. The Land of Water soldiers who had desperately held the line discovered that reinforcements from behind were nowhere to be seen. Instead, the black smoke rising from the island had grown even thicker.
With death spreading through the ranks, it became the last straw that broke the camel's back.
Do not assume these soldiers possessed unwavering resolve. They were not shinobi, after all. Most had only been recruited temporarily; before that, they had merely been villagers. Simple military training could not turn them into battle-hardened veterans who had never known defeat.
When the first soldier threw down his weapon, the rest followed him into the sea, becoming deserters from the front lines.
Once an army collapsed, it fell like a mountain. Soldiers abandoned their armor and weapons in droves, and the chaos they caused was no less than the rebellion in the rear—if anything, it was even worse.
"Run! Our warships are all finished! I don't want to die here!"
"My arm is broken! Someone save me!"
"Damn it, this is a war meant to send us to our deaths! Those nobles sent us here, but not a single promise they made has come true!"
The peasants of the feudal era might have been ignorant, but that did not make them fools. Without reinforcements, staying meant certain death. They might as well flee the battlefield while the chaos lasted.
Haku had just frozen those warships. Watching the fleeing soldiers, he did not pursue them.
Following Muzan's orders, these people would be citizens of the Land of Waves in the future. Postwar reconstruction would require the support of the Land of Water's original population.
When two nations went to war, massacres of ordinary civilians were rare. Some even deliberately protected