Time passed, and before nightfall, the soldiers in the camp began to mobilize following the plan that had been indicated to them. The first phase of the plan required the soldiers to alert all the families in the village that a major investigation would be conducted due to the fire that had appeared in the forest surrounding the village. To carry out the investigation, all the people in the village had to go to specific points scattered throughout the village and then wait for an officer to ask them questions about their daily routine. In the event that someone did not attend the investigation, they would be considered an accomplice to intentionally causing a fire in the nearby forest, endangering the integrity of the entire village.
The harsh reality was that the plan was working quite well because the soldiers were ordered not to "force" anyone to go to the location of the investigation. Instead, the soldiers only arbitrarily alerted people to where they had to go to spread the news. Once the first people began to leave their homes to go to the site indicated by the soldiers, the rest of the neighbors observed them and, remembering the soldiers' warnings, imitated their behavior. Ultimately, all the inhabitants of the village knew they were innocent, so from their perspective, they only had to go and tell the soldiers about their daily routine. Therefore, no one had a real reason not to go to the location of the investigation.
However, this system also resulted in several fortunate families not going to the designated site. But that didn't matter much in the eyes of the authorities, as long as the town lost most of its workforce, it would be difficult for the capital to recover, which could jeopardize their dominance in the region. So, the soldiers didn't have to be precise, but they had to be abundant with the number of casualties, so that the survivors of this massacre would voluntarily flee the region.
As more and more people headed to the points indicated by the soldiers, more citizens persuaded themselves that it was best to follow the crowd. In a few hours, the points indicated by the soldiers began to fill up. These points generally consisted of large urban spaces scattered throughout the village, such as a large house, a silo, a large barn, the church, or the house of the former baron who ruled this city.
At each of these gathering points, there were always four soldiers stationed at the entrances, giving instructions to the families that arrived, the same soldiers who had recently walked the nearby streets giving warnings. As time passed, more and more people filled the meeting points until finally, the vast majority of the village had attended the "inspection".
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However, a large number of people had escaped the cruel fate awaiting them at the inspection thanks to their own fortune or due to the mercy arbitrarily shown by the soldiers. Of course, this entire plan depended on the goodwill of the soldiers on duty, so it was not unusual for soldiers, upon seeing someone too young arriving or a particularly adorable family, to tell them to go to another random building in the city, saving their lives with a lie. In the end, it was people killing people, and not all soldiers could strictly follow this ruthless order, especially when many of them were not truly soldiers but rather trusted guards whose real mission was to ensure that the representative of the family they obeyed would emerge from this "skirmish" alive.
When the meeting point was filled to capacity, the soldiers closed the doors of the place and began to make sure that all the exits of the building were sealed. The truth was that some of these structures had been modified too conspicuously to avoid suspicion. For example, all the windows of the church had been covered with wooden planks in a hasty manner. However, one had to be very distrustful to suspect that they were actually heading into a trap. And even if you were distrustful enough, it was most likely that you wouldn't seek to leave the building, as the mass of people inside the structure was calm, and you would be tempted to imitate their behavior. Probably a single person or an entire family could notice and act based on these clues, but multiple strangers tended to check with each other that everything was in order, and seeing that nothing happened to the other strangers, they assumed that their families were safe as well, and this effect repeated itself until the place was full.
Despite this detailed explanation given by an author inspired by seeing his work reach its final pages, the harsh reality was that Apolo, Tea, and Cristobal were not witnessing all of this. So the fantastic trio didn't know exactly whether the soldiers were following orders or not. Instead, they focused on ensuring that everything in the building in front of them went as planned.
The building in front of the colossi happened to be the largest in the city, a silo used to store food for the winter. Despite its utility, the food in the silo had long been emptied, and instead, the silo was now packed with people looking at each other, wondering when they would finally be attended to.