Crazy Britain:They’re All Raising Me

"Finally, we can leave…" Gawain thought as he turned away from the last fairy sent to the guillotine. After signaling his troops to finish cleaning up, he rose and left the central square at once. He wanted nothing more than to get out of this nightmare. Although it was called the "central square," it had long since become a hellscape: two-thirds of Oxford's population lay dead, piled into dozens of corpses-stacks five to ten meters high. Blood flooded the plaza, forming a near-kilometer-wide ocean of red. It was literally mountains of bodies—no, mountains of fairies, and seas of blood.

Even Gawain himself, the architect of this carnage, found it almost unbearable. Ordering tens of thousands killed had been an abstract number—until he saw the reality with his own eyes. He was no stranger to battle or to taking lives; a few bodies didn't shock him. But the scale made it different. He'd conducted mass slaughters before, yet those had often been indirect: in Salisbury, he'd collapsed the defenses then let the "Beast Calamity" finish the purge, or unleashed Mores magic and cleared them out after a few days. The city would swallow up traces of the fairy corpses. In Norich, the "Norich Calamity" killed thousands by fire, but most were incinerated or scattered among ruins.

This time was different: a genuine slaughter right here, bodies heaped in one place, no concealment by fire or ruin—pure mass execution. Even as he passed a seven- or eight-meter-high mound of bodies, he averted his gaze, pinching his nose. The visual shock he had somewhat grown used to over these days, but the stench of blood still turned his stomach. He even found himself longing for his demon form, where his altered nature made him indifferent—or even obsessed with—carnage and gore. In human form, he recoiled. He recalled how once, after mindlessly enjoying a gore-laden zombie game while eating hearty food, he'd seen real accident photos in a chat and felt a visceral disgust. That was a fleeting glimpse of the "sublime of death" that thrill-seekers spoke of—but he felt only nausea.

He met the eyes of a nearby corpse and looked away. The faint disgust remained: no matter how many killings he'd committed, he still hadn't adapted—and perhaps shouldn't. As long as he retained any humanity, he couldn't become numb to such horror. His human conscience told him life-taking was abhorrent, yet that same conscience compelled him to eliminate creatures he judged unworthy of existence. As long as he had work to do—ordering executions, managing the aftermath—he had no time for self-reproach. "Better to stay busy," he told himself.

He glanced at the fairy soldiers trailing him, seemingly unaffected by the carnage. Perhaps fairies, by their nature, lacked the same regard for death; it was Gawain's own lingering humanity that made him recoil. In a way, that confirmed he still possessed a measure of compassion, however faint. That thought eased his internal guilt somewhat. The rest of the disgust no longer mattered—he could not allow these fairies to continue living.

Just then, news arrived: Artoria and her group had escaped. Gawain's blood pressure spiked anew.

A few hours earlier, in Oxford's dungeon…

Oberon looked up at the small vent above his cell and caught sight of shifting shadows outside.

"Something's happening out there?" Gareth asked from the adjacent cell.

"Look for yourself," Oberon replied lazily. "Why ask me?"

"I'm not tall enough to see," Gareth grumbled.

"Neither am I—my wings are decorative only; I can't fly," Oberon answered, yawning.

"Useless, Oberon," Gareth muttered.

"Ungrateful. While you slept, I was scouting everywhere," Oberon retorted. Artoria's voice then hushed them both.

"How are things, Artoria?" Oberon whispered.

"According to the hostility radar, the guards have withdrawn most of their forces, as if they relaxed their watch on us. But they've gathered en masse in the plaza—there are many fairies there. I can't tell how many exactly."

Artoria's crude hostility-detection device covered only a few dozen meters, but it showed a vast red cluster. She frowned. "Oberon, do you know what they're doing?"

"I have my suspicions but you won't grasp the reality until we see it. Better confirm after we escape."

"Always secrets…" Artoria sighed. "Let's get ready to leave."

Gareth fretted over their mana-sealing shackles. Artoria knocked her shackle against the iron bars repeatedly, bending and finally snapping them apart. Then, with the reinforced bars kicked aside, she freed them all. Gareth stared, baffled by her raw strength. Oberon merely observed with calm amusement.

Artoria then picked the lock with a simple hairpin. Gareth stared in disbelief. Oberon explained: "Magic need not be cumbersome; if Artoria calls it magic, it works."

Next, Artoria produced a metal ring, which she used to phase through walls and escape. Before leaving, driven by curiosity, she ventured to the area the radar marked: there she witnessed hell on earth—the plaza piled with bodies, blood pooling everywhere, fairy prisoners bound in shackles marched to execution, their hearts cut out, corpses hurled onto growing pyres, then fire incinerating them. The stench and cries nearly made her vomit.

At the center of this horror sat Gawain, surveying his work in cold silence. Though rumors had prepared her, only seeing it in person revealed the depth of his transformation. She staggered, nearly falling as the shock washed over her. Gareth and Oberon steadied her; the three fled, determined to warn their allies and find a way to defeat him.

Now Gawain left the execution site, only to learn Artoria had broken free. Slapping aside the report, he summoned a water-mirror conference with Bawanshi.

"So Artoria and the others slipped the shackles by brute force?" he said.

"Reports confirm they forced them open," his subordinate stammered.

Gawain pinched his brow. He had dismissed Artoria's unusual strength—but now he recalled their duel. "My fault," he sighed. "No blame on you."

He had no time to ponder deeper. He opened the mirror to report to Bawanshi.

"Does that mean Beril got away?" she asked, clearly upset.

"Unfortunately, once Woodworth fell, Beril escaped Oxford immediately."

"So after we slaughtered seventy or eighty thousand fairies, the result is… nothing?" Bawanshi's voice trembled with frustration.

Woodworth erupted via the mirror: "You dared kill so many fairies without results? I allowed you freedom, not a wholesale massacre! Thirty thousand Tooth Clan fairies! Do you grasp how vital they are to resisting calamities?"

"They deserved punishment," Gawain said coolly. "Woodworth's bans were his own; I only executed those who broke them. As for the rest—those who failed the test had no excuse to live."

"That's absurd! The law cannot punish a whole people this way! You could have split them: kill some, co-opt others, suppress yet recruit a few. Why wipe them out now, in wartime?"

"Because they deserved it," Gawain replied firmly. "If I know their crimes, I cannot let them live."

Woodworth sneered: "Then you'd exterminate all fairies? You don't care for sustaining your realm, only your killing spree."

Gawain shrugged: "As long as our strength is absolute, their resentment means nothing. With your and my might, we can rule Britain against any fairy force."

"You—" Woodworth bristled but paused, glancing at Riko behind Bawanshi. He quelled his anger, reminding himself this was the trial granted by Morgan's trust.

Bawanshi interjected: "Enough. Gawain has always proven his capabilities—New Darlington rose under him. Woodworth, you may object, but I back Gawain: death penalty for those born fairies!"

Woodworth clenched his teeth but fell silent at Riko's disapproving look.

Then a messenger arrived: "My lords, urgent news: North's Queen Nocnarei's forces and the allied army under Oberon have mobilized toward Oxford! South's Round Table army under Percival heads for Norich!"

Gawain frowned, checking the system updates: Nocnarei, Miuren, Lancelot, and Artoria's alliance advancing on Oxford from the north; Percival striking Norich from the south. A pincer move.

He turned to Woodworth: "Your wounds should be healed—Oxford needs you. I will lead the defense north. As for the Round Table in the south…" he paused, then added, "Apart from endless criticism in high council, you can render other services, can't you?"

Woodworth nodded grimly, steeling himself for the next trials. The war would only intensify.