Afterword - Book 2 - Chapter 15 (Patreon)

Chapter 15: Old Enemies

(Original Chapter Title: Old Enemies)

Don't worry Swarm, Ranthia'll learn your name someday. Probably.

Ranthia wasn't going to return to Remus without revisiting Sardonia. This was an event I had set up back during her second round with Ranger Team 6—Ranthia had learned that the war goblins were back, but the city had brokered an uneasy peace with them.

Unfortunately, the war goblins weren't civilized in any shape, fashion, or form. The conflict was inevitable.

Behind the scenes, I actually don't know who violated the fragile peace first. As Ranthia noted, it really doesn't matter. For all Ranthia's progressiveness about coexistence with the other peoples of Pallos, she still sees goblins as nothing but monsters. Unfortunately, they continually prove her right.

But what follows is butchery. IMO, this lands differently than the shimagu war did. Ranthia killed there, often in comparable numbers, but she was fighting for survival. Here... it's hard to honestly say she was in danger here. Sure, a few people might have been, but it wouldn't have been that much harder for Ranthia to get the survivors out of Sardonia without killing the goblins.

But Ranthia chose carnage.

Yes, of course there's justifications. She was trying to save (what was left) of her first true home. The goblins were just as brutal as she was, I'm not trying to paint them as a victim. But this is the first time we really see Ranthia just openly choose to punch down on a massive scale without being backed into a corner.

At least she's pretty sure she's done with her nightmares about war goblins? (Next up, another few thousand levels so she can rampage through some krakens!)

But when she finishes the fight, she isn't hailed as a hero. Ranthia kind of callously blames a lack of external factors, i.e., no [Bards] were there to sing her praises. But, she also didn't make a real effort to try to convince people to relax around her. Their wariness kind of just felt like a slap to the face, and she sort of retreated from them.

Ranthia allowed a distance to form, and once one was established... overcoming it became far more challenging.