“Most stories and tales typically only focus on the battles. They never touch what goes on after the fighting is done.” - Bunore Ival-Esqia, Support staff for the Horst’s Hellraisers mercenary company.

After the confirmation of the High Lord’s – and all the other officers of the Southern Coalition army, for that matter – death, Estelle and Reinhardt had a short meeting. Their contract granted the Free Lances full salvage based on their contribution in defensive battles they participated in. While there was no fighting in this case, the trap was planned, set, and executed by Reinhardt’s people, and as such the whole victory was arguably all due to the Free Lances.

That said, most of the salvage in this case came in the form of heat-damaged equipment, other than those belonging to the thousand or so corpses inside the dome. Estelle knew that the Free Lances themselves did not lack for equipment, so after some quick negotiation, she directly purchased the bulk of the salvage from Reinhardt, primarily the heat-damaged equipment.

Hardened steel would be damaged by excessive heat, like the conflagration they had been subjected to, but all was not lost, as they could be reforged or otherwise used as base material for new items. In essence, what Estelle bought was the massive quantity of metal that would be re-used and reforged to make new equipment for the militia, who were still relatively lacking in that area.

As for the pieces of equipment from the corpses in the dome, she left it to Reinhardt’s discretion on whether he would claim them for his own use or otherwise. One key point to their negotiation was that Reinhardt’s people would be the ones who collected the salvage from the corpses, as the militia was less well-suited to that task.

People tend to be superstitious, and those from the Clangeddin Empire had a belief that the dead should not be disrespected or otherwise bothered, lest they haunt the living. As such, the militia had been particularly timid while they walked through the field of burnt corpses, and took care not to step on them, unlike Reinhardt’s people.

The mercenaries naturally could care less about such beliefs, and would just crudely shake skulls out of helmets without a care, stepping on the charred bones of the dead as if they were stepping on grass. Since Reinhardt had brought the vast majority of his company to the battle, it wasn’t even that much work. Each of them only needed to collect the spoils from thirty or so corpses.

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Reinhardt took some pity on the young ones and assigned Alycea’s platoon to that task, as dealing with charred skeletons was at least much cleaner and easier than dealing with the thousand corpses in the dome.

Due to the way those people died, many of them had their flesh merged into their clothing and armor, which made the extraction process not only more difficult, but naturally also far more gruesome. Of course, some of the older mercenaries took care of it without even blinking an eye. For them, it was a small price to have to scrape off skin and flesh from the good items that they could make use for themselves.

There was naturally more good stuff for them to salvage out of the thousand bloated and cooked corpses inside the dome, as they were the high-ranked officers and elites of the enemy army. In addition, due to the lower heat they were subjected to, the items they used did not suffer from heat damage, unlike the ones that were directly engulfed by the conflagration.

Good weapons that were ready to use, armor that needed a refitting at most, and several storage rings of larger sizes pried off the bloated, sausage-like fingers of the dead officers accounted for most of the spoils collected. The storage rings in particular were valuable, as they contained the rations and other equipment the army brought with them. Things the Free Lances had no need of themselves, but would still fetch a good price when sold to their employers.

By the time night fell, the salvaging was pretty much done as well, and the army only rested while waiting for the cavalry to return before they would disembark on the return trip to Levain. Said cavalry returned just as dinner was about to be served – although many of the militiamen had little appetite after what they saw that day – and brought their report, which painted a picture on just how devastating the blaze was.

A part of the Southern Coalition army, roughly one-fifth of their total number, had attempted to escape when they saw that they were surrounded by fire. Out of these, those that attempted to run towards the north had the worst luck, with only a handful of survivors that were caught by the Levain military. Those that tried to escape to the east and west barely bared any better, and many likely perished to wild animals even after they escaped the flames with their lives.

From the tracks, however, a larger group had chosen to run southwards, and by coincidence, a northern wind was blowing around the time the wall of fire reached their vicinity. That meant that they faced a thinner and less intense blaze. The cavalry estimated that roughly half of that group – around three thousand men – likely survived to run back towards the southern coalition.

Their escape did little to change the results, however. Fact remained that out of the Southern Coalition’s army of sixty-five thousand or so men, over nine out of ten perished in the conflagration, including the High Lord of Sebaque and the majority of his state’s elites. It was a blow that pretty much crippled the Southern Coalition’s military power and rendered them unable to even think about getting adventurous with their neighbors.

They barely have enough to defend their own lands, as it was.

Whether that blow would cause the Coalition’s other neighbors to take advantage of them or not, the people of Levain couldn’t care less. They only breathed a sigh of relief as a threat to their own sovereignty had been eliminated, in a spectacular way that sent a message to everyone else that they were willing to do what it takes to defend it, too.