Chapter 70：Rose

"Oi! It actually happened! The Alliance were able to achieve a heroic victory against the Confederation"

"Oh really?! How so?!"

"From what I heard, a few months ago we were able to hold the Drussians at the Elgonic Pass after a battle of epic proportions. The battle ended in a stalemate and no land was gained nor lost."

"Wait a minute! Hold the Drussians? I thought we were the ones on the offensive. How the hell is holding the Drussians off a victory in any sense of the word?"

"I didn't really think about that..."

"More false Panish propaganda ehhh? What else is new? Hey did you know that the sky is the colour blue?"

Even within the confines of the inn's private room, the loud gossip and chatter of the tavern's patrons still found its way to a certain person's ears.

In the highest floor where the rooms could only be afforded by the richest and most elite of society, that person lay in her plump, comfortable bed as the noise from downstairs leaked its way into her room. Her brown-black hair, sprawled onto the pillow while her eyelids remained glued together as she silently thought to herself.

Her name was Rose Phlorear Finaflor and she was just another young noble lady.

Although she typically didn't mind the loud racket downstairs, after all it was her main method of staying aware of the current situation, this time, she just couldn't stomach what they were talking about.

War.

War.

War.

That's all that the gossip in the past three years have ever been about.

The war that has been the largest conflict in terms of scale that has ever occurred in the history of this earth.

The war between the 'Alliance' which consisted of virtually every Katholic nation and the 'Confederation' which consisted of the Protestent nations of the north.

In specific the major factions of the Confederation were the Unified Kingdoms of Great Breeton, the Kingdom of Shweden and the Imperium of Drussia while the major factions of the Alliance were the Kingdom of Hongary, the Kingdom of Ostria, the Republic of Benice and the Panish Empire.

Of course, Rose's own nation, the Kingdom of Portegol were participants of the war as well. They had no choice. As a vassal kingdom under the Panish Empire, the Portegeese had no choice but to support their Panish lords whenever possible.

Although this support was initially limited to the Portegeese being forced to supply the Paniards with foodstuffs, weapons and equipment, ever since the miserable defeat of the crusade and subsequent fall of Demark, the Paniards had to resort to forcing the Portegeese into providing true military aid.

As one would expect, Rose did not take the Paniards abuse and mistreatment of the Portegeese kindly. In fact, she despised the Paniards for it. However, she also despised the fact there was even a rather ridiculous conflict to begin with.

What would even be left for either side to gain once the war is over and the dust settled?

Charred earth?

The Confederation and the Alliance weren't even formalised during the 'start' of the war but in all honesty, no one really knew when the war truly began. The only thing agreed upon was that the original conflict was the Panish-Drussian war which somehow escalated into the state it is today.

The first signs of escalation was when the Drussians invaded Porrand in the so-called 'Drussian Conquest of the East' which only escalated when the Porrish Princess; Stefanie attempted to retaliate by calling a crusade against the Drussians only to repelled in a rather pathetic manner.

Since only a scattered few crusaders returned home to live another day, all the nations who participated in the crusade were forced to reconsolidate and lick their wounds. The Panish Empire even tried to shift blame away from themselves by proclaiming that the Panish crusaders were a faction of rogue nobles yet no one believed them.

However, these actions of reconsolidating quickly proved to be a big mistake, when in a combined effort, the Drussians, Breetish and Shwedish invaded the Katholic Kingdom of Demark in a three pronged attack. With the Drussians attacking from the south, the Breetish to the sea of the west and the Shwedish to the north, the Dames quickly capitulated.

It was only after the annexed Demark was split evenly across the three nations did they officially announce the formation of the 'Confederation;' a union of the sovereign Protestent nations of the north that swore a pact of mutual defence and a general agreement to aid each other in military conflicts.

Of course, the other nations which weren't part of the Confederation quickly grew uncomfortable with the threat of three powerful Kingdoms who 'threatened their sovereignty' and soon the 'Alliance' was formed in other to counteract the Confederation.

What happened next was a rather monotonous lull in conflicts with the borders of the two factions always remaining under tense surveillance and protection with some occasional skirmishes both on the land and in the sea.

The statements that the Alliance was 'advancing on the offence' was nothing more than a mere fabrication.

The sheer scale and turn of events of the conflict was so ridiculous that even the Turkmen invasions from the southeast have slowed done due to fear of being caught up in this conflict. In fact, some of the Katholic nations even agreed to start paying tribute to the Turkmen Empire in exchange for guaranteed peace.

While Rose admitted that keeping up to date with the war is rather important, it would still be nice for the main topic of gossip to be about something else for once.

Perhaps something like how this isn't even the Portegeese people's war.

It was because of how Rose disagreed with the majority of Portegeese nobles, including her own family when it came to the war that she chose to stay in a luxurious private room of a relatively well respected inn than her own mansion.

After all, these was no one to stop her. All the men in her family were either dead or alive and currently participating in the war. Her mother was still in mourning after the death of their father while her sisters continued to ignorantly follow the foolish king's idiotic will.

Although it may seem pointless in the grand scheme of things, Rose rather liked this peace and tranquility provided by skipping out on her duties. Why would she attend parties and banquets and remain in the same mansion with people she can't fundamentally agree with?

Doing so would put her at odds which virtually everyone else present and Rose would rather disappear and be gossiped about than risk a one way trip to the gallows after pissing off an extreme loyalist of the king.

But if Rose actually had her way, she would have had the Kingdom of Portegol break off relations with the Paniards since their strength should have been drained by the war. What were the Paniards going to do? Divert a portion of their already weakened forces onto the Portegeese?

But her wish was impossible. She was nothing more than a mere third daughter of some noble family who swore fealty to their king.

There was literally nothing that she could possibly do.

In Rose's honest opinion, this was all nothing more than frustrating.

At this very moment, the Portegeese could be attempting to remove their status as a vassal nation and yet they chose to continue being the Paniards lapdogs, either out of misplaced loyalty, simple ignorance or a combination of both.

Either way, Rose was still irritated by the current state of Portegol.

However, her thoughts were soon interrupted by a repetitive knocking on the door which was soon followed by a voice.

"Lady Finaflor? There is a message for you"

"Slip it under the door."

Rose didn't even bother to raise her head or even open her eyes when she heard that she had message.

Why should she?

More likely than not, it was just another message from one of her sisters, probably her younger sister Lily, that is asking her to return to 'home' in the mansion.

Rose knew that she would probably throw the letter away before even reading it the moment she got out of her bed.

"As you wish my lady."

However, Rose was quickly surprised by the response of the messenger.

Typically the messenger was always a direct subordinate of the Finaflor house, whether he was a knight or just a simple servant. In Rose's past experiences, these messengers would have urged her to come out or at least question her well being.

Evidently, the current sequence of events was something that Rose has never experienced before.

Was it a new tactic?

Or did they really lose all hope and give up?

If it was the former, then Rose had to admit that it worked.

She wasn't a completely heartless being after all.

Within moments, Rose dragged herself out of the bed before slowly making her way towards the door and picking up the envelop that carried the message.

However, her expectations were once again proved to be wrong as the envelop didn't seem to belong to her family.

Or any noble Portegeese family for that matter.

For the back of this envelop was just a blank space.

"That's... weird..."

Envelops always had the sigil of whatever noble house it belonged to on its back.

That was standard protocol for the nobility of this world.

How else would a noble family portray an envelop as their own?

Showing off the quality ones paper with an insignia on the back of their envelops was just another way for the nobles to flaunt their wealth to each other.

Without even knowing it, Rose felt that she needed to know contents of the message, whatever it may be.

She didn't know why but she had a 'good feeling' about this message.

When Rose finally opened the envelop she found a rather peculiar message inside.

After subconsciously brushing her hair aside, Rose read the letter out loud to herself.

"Are you dissatisfied with how your Kingdom is being treated by the Panish? Do you want this conflict to end? Do you want to bring peace to your people? If the answers to all of the above is yes, meet us at the co-ordinates below."

Even though she doubted whoever wrote this letter, she still wanted to see it through to the very end.

Soon, she felt the sudden urge to turn to the back of the letter just to see if there were anything else.

On the back of the letter, Rose found a pair of two different insignias that she has never seen before.

As such, whichever group or organisation these two insignias belonged to, Rose knew that they must not be from Portegol or Espain.

The insignias were a golden hawk that appeared to be swooping down on its prey and a silver snake that appeared to be eating itself.