"Attention! All villagers are to assemble in the square immediately!"
"By the Duke's decree! Lowly subjects, kneel and prepare to receive his command!"
The final spark that would detonate the powder keg of Terra was struck in the year 1016, in a small backwater village within the Columbian colonies.
At approximately two o'clock in the morning, a detachment of soldiers, escorting a tax collector from the ducal estates, descended upon the town square.
Once they had gathered, a Feline collector with an imposing goat-beard barked out the orders, his words echoed by the rhythmic chanting of the armored infantry standing behind him.
Roused by the midnight commotion, the village elder—a man appearing well into his eighties—stumbled into the square, his clothes disheveled from sleep and his fragile frame trembling in the biting night air.
Representing the desperate souls of the village, he addressed the Feline collector.
"What is the meaning of this, your excellency? Bringing an armed host at such an hour?"
The collector's lip curled in disdain as he answered.
"Since you colonials have seen fit to organize traitorous 'militias' to resist the Duke's sacred, just, and merciful rule, His Grace has declared a state of corrective discipline. To restore the legal order of this colony, a tax hike has been proclaimed. As of this hour, your levy will be increased by an additional ten percent of your annual harvest!"
The old man's eyes widened in horror.
His memory surged back two years—to the heavy taxes that had already thinned their stores, and the 'supplementary requisitions' that had snatched away the last grains, leaving his son and daughter-in-law to starve to death.
They had died so their only daughter might live. Their sacrifice remained the most jagged wound in his heart.
While the previous year had been blessed with a bountiful harvest, the elder knew with terrifying certainty that if a lean year arrived, the disaster would repeat itself. He understood the cold calculus of colonial hunger.
And so, despite knowing it would likely yield nothing, he collapsed to his knees, his voice cracking into a desperate wail.
"Another increase? Look at what you already wring from us! You leave us nothing but the seeds for next year's planting to barely survive on, and now you take even that? What are we to do? Please, I beg you, ask the Duke for mercy—just once more! This old man begs you on his life!"
He remained bowed, his forehead touching the cold earth. Gradually, the villagers followed suit, kneeling in the dirt, their collective sobbing filling the silent square.
However, the display did not evoke pity in the collector. Instead, his features twisted into a mask of irritation.
Though he was neither Duke nor Count, he was the eldest son of a minor noble house. To him, the pleas of these colonials were no more significant than the chirping of insects beneath a boot.
In fact, insects were perhaps more tolerable.
To his eyes, these ragged paupers looked like a swarm of cockroaches surrounding him, their poverty a stain on his noble sensibilities.
Moreover, he was a man in need of a vent for his frustrations. Only days ago, the Duke had practically kicked him, accusing him of subpar performance. He hungered for someone lower than himself to crush, someone to remind him of his own relative power.
He looked down at the kneeling figures. They were humble farmers with no connections to the central government—mere serfs with dirt under their fingernails.
"Insignificant dregs... so much to say for people who contribute so little. You are nothing but pebbles on the roadside," he muttered under his breath, a sickening smile blooming as he decided their fate.
He stepped slowly toward the elder.
His voice dripped with a terrifying, hypocritical sweetness. "Oh, my dear Village Chief. I see now how hard you've all worked. I truly appreciate your toil. Therefore, I shall offer a drop of mercy. If you do exactly as I say, I might be 'persuaded' to put in a good word with the Duke. Are you willing?"
The elder looked up, his weary body gathering what little strength remained to meet the collector's gaze.
With a firm, desperate resolve, he spoke. "Whatever you ask! I will do anything!"
The collector smirked and pulled off one of his leather riding boots.
He tossed it onto the ground in front of the old man.
"Th-this...?" The elder stammered, confused.
He truly did not understand what was being asked of him.
The collector let out a sharp burst of laughter, shaking his head in feigned exasperation. "Pffft! Honestly... You don't even understand this? How can you possibly be fit for the title of Chief? I suppose I must explain it simply for you."
His laughter grew louder, more jagged. "I want you to lick that boot clean. Do you realize the sacrifice I've made? This boot has worked very hard to bring me all the way to this gods-forsaken village; surely it deserves a bath? And for a lowly, filthy commoner like you to have your tongue touch my noble leather—is that not an act of supreme mercy on my part? Don't you agree?"
The Victorian guards standing behind the collector burst into raucous laughter.
"Bwahaha! Well said!"
"Indeed! To grant a peasant the noble task of cleaning your boots... you are too kind, sir!"
The elder's eyes trembled.
The sole of the boot was caked in mud, horse manure, and grime. It was a level of filth that would turn the stomach of the strongest man.
But the old man steeled his heart. He thought of the seeds. He thought of his granddaughter.
His tongue moved slowly toward the boot.
The stench of stale sweat and stagnant mud filled his nostrils, threatening to make him retch.
"Urgh... Ghk..."
Despite the gag reflex, he did not stop. He obeyed the petty tyrant's command to the letter.
"Ch-Chief...!"
"Those animals... how can they do this to a human being...!"
As the elder humiliated himself, the laughter of the Victorians grew deafening. Among the Columbian villagers, a different sound brewed—the sound of stifled weeping, of hands striking chests in grief, and the heavy, dangerous silence of those harboring unquenchable rage.
After five excruciating minutes, the elder finally ceased his movements.
"It... it is done. Please... show us mercy now!" he begged, tears streaming down his face.
The Victorian collector picked up the boot, examining it critically. "Hmm... Not bad. Most of it is acceptable. However..."
He stepped closer to the trembling old man.
The elder shivered with dread as the collector looked down with a mocking sneer.
"You didn't clean the laces, you old bastard!"
He lashed out with his other booted foot, kicking the elder squarely in the chest.
"Gah! Urk! Agh!"
"Worthless piece of shit! You think a colonial dog gets to ask for mercy? Mercy my ass!"
With every kick, the elder let out a wet, wheezing sound of agony. The sickening crack of ribs and the dull thud of heavy leather meeting soft tissue echoed through the square. The beating only stopped when blood began to spill from the elder's mouth and his breath rattled into silence.
The scene from before repeated, but amplified. The laughter of the Victorians rang out against the backdrop of colonial despair—the wailing, the frantic beating of hearts, and the simmering, murderous quiet.
Satisfied, the collector prepared to leave the village.
"The tax increase stands! Blame your incompetent chief for this—though I suppose he's your 'former' chief now. Hahahaha!"
He rode away, leaving behind a wake of carnage.
Observing this tragedy from a small distance were the village's prisoners.
**********************************
"Those subhuman bastards!"
"Victorian scum without a shred of conscience!"
To be precise, these were not violent criminals, but 'ideological offenders.'
They were young men who had been caught plotting independence movements, temporarily confined in the local holding cells by Victorian soldiers. They were the radical vanguard of the village, and their rapid radicalization had been met with swift imprisonment.
For these young men, watching this atrocity was like having their own hearts ground into the dirt.
Next to them was another group.
"Chief! Grandfather!"
"No... god, no!"
These were the petty offenders—men arrested for crimes of survival, such as theft out of necessity or accidental property damage.
As both groups seethed in their cells, a figure approached them.
It was a young woman, perhaps in her early twenties.
"Wh-who are you?"
"It's me."
"You're—?"
"I'm letting you out. In exchange, I want you to avenge my grandfather."
The woman was Elizabeth, the granddaughter of the slain Village Chief.
When she threw open the iron bars, the prisoners were divided.
"I—I can't! I'm the only one in my family who can work. If I die, who will take care of them?"
"I'm too weak... I'll just end up dying for nothing."
Roughly sixty percent of them refused to move. It was the natural response of men whose instinct for survival outweighed their thirst for vengeance.
"Can you give us weapons?" one asked.
"I have no family anyway. No land, no property. That's why I was caught stealing in the first place. If I'm going to die, I'd rather die doing one good thing in my life."
But those with nothing left to lose—and the true ideologues—felt differently.
"Do you think a girl like me would have weapons?" Elizabeth asked hollowly.
"True enough."
"We will avenge the Chief. You have our word, Elizabeth."
The 'fugitives' fanned out through the village, seizing anything that could be used as a weapon—farming tools, sharpened stakes, heavy cudgels. Then, they moved.
A full day passed.
"When does this valley ever end?" the collector grumbled as he rode.
"I'm not sure, sir. Perhaps the map those villagers gave us was intentionally misleading?"
"Hmm... Is that so? I can't tell."
The tax collector and his guards moved sluggishly along the trail. Suddenly—
Thwip!
"Gah! Ack!"
"Ambush! It's an ambush!!"
An arrow tore through the throat of one of the guards.
"Damn it! I told them to send a Caster with decent Arts! Why didn't they assign a Caster for my escort!" the collector screamed.
"Form a line! Form a—"
"The Captain is down!"
"Eek!!"
A throwing knife, flung from the shadows, buried itself between the Captain's eyes. As the guards fell into a panic, dozens of men erupted from the dense underbrush.
"Wh-who are you!"
"Who do you think? We're the people who've come to kill you."
"How can you do this to an upright man like me?!" the collector replied with staggering audacity.
His answer only fueled the burning rage of the fugitives.
"Ha... this one is beyond redemption, isn't he?"
"Just kill them. Kill all these sons of bitches."
They swarmed the remaining handful of guards. Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, the Victorian soldiers were dragged down and slaughtered like cattle.
"Agh! Stop! Stop it!"
"You laughed yesterday, didn't you? You were laughing, you bastard!"
"Gurglle..."
"Hey! Don't stab the throat yet! He'll die too fast if you do that!!"
"Oops! My mistake! Sorry about that!"
It was a scene of unbridled carnage. The collector witnessed sights he never thought possible in his pampered life.
"I—I want to live!! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please! I'll give you money, titles, everything! Just spare my life!!!" the collector shrieked, his pants soaked in his own urine.
But the blades did not stop.
"If you're so sorry... maybe you shouldn't have done something you'd need to apologize for?"
"Just die, you rat. Every breath you take is a waste of good air."
"D-don't! Stay away from me!!!!"
After an hour of suffering that bordered on ritualistic torture, the tax collector finally found release in death through excessive blood loss.
However, spending that hour on their venting had unforeseen consequences.
"Wait... one body is missing?"
"Huh?"
One of the guards had managed to crawl away during the chaos. He returned to the Governor-General's office to report the 'atrocity' in the village (carefully omitting their own crimes) and the subsequent ambush.
"These colonial nobodies, these filth from the sticks... they dare raise their hand against my rule again?"
Duke Tibalt was incandescent with rage. A few days later, a formal notice arrived at the village.
"It says that if we don't send the assassins to the Governor's office immediately, they will burn the entire village to the ground," reported a villager.
Elizabeth, newly appointed as the village chief, sent a simple, one-line reply.
"Fuck off."
This event, which might have been a minor, suppressed footnote in history, began to spiral out of control.
Because the Communist Party had scented blood.
[We Are Not Slaves – Arm Yourselves!]
[What Truly Happened in the Valley That Night?]
[The Time of Revolution is Here! Sons of Columbia, To Arms!]
The Columbian branch of the International Communist Party began its armed uprising.
Maylander's militia launched a massive offensive alongside additional localized revolts.
Duke Tibalt declared a state of emergency across the colonies.
King Frederick III of Victoria granted Duke Tibalt full authority to suppress the rebellion with any means necessary.
The powder keg had detonated, and the explosion was spreading with terrifying speed.
********************************
"That is the current situation in Columbia, Comrade General Secretary."
"Heh... I never imagined it would start so soon. This has completely derailed our timeline. Good grief..."
"Is this a bad thing?"
"Alya, I think it's definitely a bad thing. Just look at Uncle Vladimir's face."
As I said, even we didn't expect this.
Why did the uprising have to trigger now*?
I thought we had at least a year left!