"Father, stop hitting me! I know I was wrong!"
"Aaagh!!!"
In the courtyard before the main house of Beyat Manor, Lieutenant General Doran, who had hurried back to the family only yesterday, hung from a thick oak tree. Instead of receiving his elderly father's usual affection, he had been tied up and hoisted into the branches without a shred of dignity.
Marquis Arias, the current head of the Beyat Family, raised the leather whip in his hand, his face dark.
Fueled by the power of a former Crown Tier fighter, he swung it so fast that countless afterimages appeared. It hurtled toward Doran with a shrill whistle.
In barely a second, he lashed out dozens of times.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Under his stern father's whipping, Lieutenant General Doran let out one bloodcurdling squeal after another.
Pain had long since reduced him to a mess of tears and snot. He looked utterly wretched.
Yet compared with the mild sting of his father's all-show-and-little-substance whipping, Doran's feelings were far more complicated.
When he told his father at noon about how he had been "attacked," he learned that John's Second Army Group had not been wiped out at all. It had fought its way back from the brink.
John himself had risen from commoner to Viscount Maslow and been promoted to an Empire lieutenant general, the same rank as Doran, while also becoming governor of Faoken.
And Siegfried, who had supposedly "covered his retreat" and died, had been promoted straight from corporal to captain for carrying out a city-breaching tactic.
Doran had been dumbstruck by the news.
Once he recovered, though, he immediately realized the truth behind Fang City's supposed fall and his own forced withdrawal.
So I was tricked?!
*Seriously, Siegfried Fafner? I trusted you like a brother, and you played me