"What are you planning?" Laself asked me as we left for the outskirts of Flotol. "I don't think that Flotol's leaders will appreciate what you have done just now, don't you think we should end this once and for all?"

  "Laself." I stop walking and faced her, she looked at me, eyes shaking with confusion.

  How do I explain this to her without sounding so condescending? I get that she's frustrated about the whole situation and wants me to quickly resolve everything by threatening Folsan and the others to stop doing what they're doing but that's not the solution for the long term.

  No, I needed to make sure that my family doesn't just come out of this intact, but also gets enough respect for people to think twice before messing with them like this again.

  As things stand, there's no way in hell I'll have a peace of mind when working with Ifira or worse, going to the capital in the future.

  "Ending everything quickly will only make people want to do it again in the future." After all, if they see me as some kind of tyrant then they'd want to escape my grasp as soon as they can.

  Questions like: won't the villagers be wary of your family so much that they'll ask any passing adventurers for help? What happens if that adventurer is as powerful as me? What about their treatment from here on out? Will my family be alienated? Will word spread past Flotol? Ghorise? Any neighboring villages and towns?

  "If we're gonna stop this once and for all, then the only solution is to make sure that what happened here never repeats itself." And to do that, I need to demonize my enemies, make them the bad guys and us the good guys.

  This isn't some historical war where 200 years from now, Folsan and the others will be recorded as the enemy, nor is this modern day earth where a bunch of ads and paid media can easily convince the masses on which stance to take.

  This is a primitive war where the only way information can be passed on is through word of mouth, and the only perception that matters is personal opinion.

  And right now? The personal opinion of everyone else revolves around the fact that they have seen me destroy houses and massacre a large group of people.

  So not exactly a saint's actions, which means the only path forward is for me to fully demonize my enemies.

  "How do we do that?" Wardcruncha's question made me turn to him.

  "Simple." I smiled. "We make Folsan and Nogjaf make verbal mistakes they could never take back, right now they should be frustrated, I mean, their resources are being eaten up and winter won't be leaving anytime soon, it won't be long before they ask the people to start rationing in hopes that their stocks last for a few more weeks."

  "They'll blame you for that won't they?" Wardcruncha pointed out.

  "I can already hear them saying things like "it's her fault for destroying your homes!" Or "survive, if not for yourself or this village, then survive just to show her that her destruction has no power over you!" And the people will eat that up won't they?"

  The old man has a point, the enemy can both use my actions as a way to take blame off themselves and make the citizens more resilient.

  But that's only if the people they're talking to lacked the capacity to feel fear, which they don't, and so they're scared of actually blaming me. Even if they do, I still have one more gambit I can do: and that's to beat up any of the two leaders in front of everyone.

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  Feeling helpless against someone would make people no longer want to fight that person and achieve some kind of peaceful outcome to the entire thing, which I won't provide, and Folsan can't force me to concede either, and he himself doesn't want to give up.

  Losing? Him? I'm guessing that the head priest would rather die than admit weakness.

  Or at least this is the impression that I got from interacting with that particular snake. I'm not really sure what he's thinking though.

  "Mostly? Yes. Yes they will." I admit, Wardcruncha raised an eyebrow in response. "But Folsan and Nogjaf are in a time crunch, even if they change the way people look at the scraps of food they give as a blessing—"

  Which is a possibility that can happen, if people start blaming me for their starved state, then they'll see the rations the church gives— no matter how small. — as a silver lining to the otherwise hellish situation I "created".

  And no, they will never blame themselves nor the church. It is my fault for defending my family, it is my fault for attacking them, and it's my fault for being the devil that they all believed I was.

  Screw the fact that they attacked me first.

  "— it doesn't change the fact that they are feeding an entire village." I emphasized. "And their stocks can only last for so long, it will only take a few days before they start starving, and by that point, I'm guessing they'll call on us again."

  "That, or they start hunting winter animals for food."

  I snapped my fingers towards Laself. "Bingo. Good job Laself."

  "W-what do you mean?" Laself stammered, she covered her face with her hands, the thick gloves barely stopped the hot mist spewing out her mouth. "I did a good job? I— I was being negative? I said that they will hunt for food so that you stop thinking your plan will work."

  "What? No." Was that her thought process? That I'm starving Flotol? I knew damn well that people like us find ways to survive even in the harshest of days, so waiting for them to starve is counter productive.

  "Then what were you thinking?"

  "I take down everything that they will hunt." My smile was vicious as I began explaining my plan. "We all have the same hunting grounds here, yes? They know it, I know it, everyone knows it."

  Having the same hunting grounds means that someone powerful enough can literally remove all the prey animals in the local field and that will cause us to starve, that or we become desperate enough to hunt things that we shouldn't.

  "The annual Furbeast migration is still happening, I won't be touching that particular herd but what if someone does? Say, what if a group from a starving village decides that hunting a young furbeast is better than dying from the harsh winter season?"

  "Are you saying that you'll pull the herd towards Flotol?" Laself said in horror, her face paling. "But that's..."

  "Me? No. They'll all do it in my place." I wave her off. "I'm simply hunting animals to prepare our own group in case we go to war with them, don't you want that Laself? For our people to be healthy and strong while theirs are starved and malnourished? Desperate?"

  "I..."

  "Yes?" Why is she hesitating? This is the plan that will take down the village once and for all, to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again!

  "They're our friends."

  "Well, they definitely didn't think that when they attacked and left you all for dead." I murmur, hoping Laself didn't catch it. Unfortunately, she did.

  "But that isn't right! Just because they attacked us first doesn't mean that we should make them suffer like this!"

  The argument falls to deaf ears, this is the same mindset that made her stay with her family in the past and how would that have turned out if I wasn't there to help her? Why the hell would I listen to the kind of advice that actively hurts me?

  What's next? I should shoot myself in the foot?

  "And we aren't." I admit. "We don't know for certain that my plans are conclusive, there's no way in hell they're a guarantee, I can't predict the future."

  Of course, I personally don't believe this, the variables listed out are so limited and so easy to predict that any calculation related to them is more or less guaranteed to happen. When it comes to the church's food stock, what else is gonna happen if not the people who depend on it will begin to slowly eat away at its vastness?

  What? Will the church suddenly gain an artifact that lets them grow food in the blink of an eye? There's no way in hell that can happen!

  And so, the only reasonable outcome is Flotol sending out hunters, them realizing that the prey animals here have been driven out by me, and then them coming to the conclusion that they have no other choice but to hunt the furbeasts.

  Which will lead them to their death of course, because furbeasts are smart enough to recognize faces, they are also the kind of pack animal who will take revenge for their fallen brethren.

  Flotol's time on this map will be short lived, and so is Folsan's influence on people.