Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

Chapter 269: The last warning

"It's about time," Madam spoke in a soft voice.

"It is indeed," I muttered in response, lazily opening up my eyes and raising my head from Fay's lap.

It's been a grand total of seventy-nine hours since I last used my portal. In other words, in just a single hour, I will be able to use it again, finally establishing the permanent gate I needed so much.

But as if fate didn't want me to have it easy, this single hour left might be the hardest one to buy out of all the time I stalled so far.

"Thanks for letting me rest a bit," I said as I turned around and offered Fay my hand, helping her get up in one, graceful motion.

"No biggie," Fay grinned before rushing a step forward and, as usual, wrapping herself around my right arm.

From the outside, we likely looked like a couple right in the middle of their honeymoon.

'Here we are, acting all cuddly, despite what's about to happen,' I thought, enjoying Fay's warmth and affection equally as much as I was conflicted about it.

We weren't going out to have fun, but to wrestle this single hour of wait more from the prying hands of fate! And the way of doing it was the reason why I was torn over Fay's usual attitude.

I moved forth just a few steps. By the time I reached the edge of the forest just a few meters away, all sorts of divines, celestials, and earth-born humans crowded my surroundings.

"It's time," I spat out in a low voice before taking one more step and moving beyond the protective barrier of the trees, right into an open plain where two massive piles grew from the ground high into the sky.

One of the piles consisted of nothing but all sorts of scrap wood. From the fallen branches gathered in the forest, through broken furniture from the mercenary camp at some personal, wooden artifacts ending, the pile of wood grew as high as three, four times my height.

The only unusual part of this pile consisted of a simple table and a closed chest sitting atop it.

A few meters to the side of the wooden pile lay its more grotesque cousin.

Even with all of the corpses left within the forest falling prey to its unnatural hunger, the survivors of the imperial army still managed to gather quite a bit of the corpses from just the wetland alone.

And only now that their fallen companions stacked up roughly twice as high as myself, they could witness the true scale of devastation brought forth by a mere few guns.

"It's high time to burn them off," Chris muttered as he appeared by my side. And for the very first time, I saw him make a face. He kept his hand by his nose, warding off the stench of death and shit from the nearby pile of mangled flesh. "If we wait any longer, this would turn into an actual problem."

I turned my eyes to the side and gave the man a short look. Then, without uttering a word, I simply nodded my head.

According to Madam's plan for the moment, some of the celestials more attuned to the fire element were to take the task of setting fires to the two piles on themselves.

For but a moment, all stood in silence, watching how the flames rose higher and higher, before covering the entire pile of corpses and mangled body parts.

Along with the heat, the air filled with the awful stench of burnt meat.

I reached out and used my sleeve to cover Fay's nose, hoping to shield her from as much of this disgustingly sweet aroma as I could.

Still, as soon as the fire reached the greatest size I could expect it to grow to, I moved up and then to the very edge of the crowd of the forest folk.

The imperial survivors were the audience of the speech I prepared, not my own allies.

"On the first pyre, we are burying those who lived out their lives as soldiers and met an unfortunate end. On the other pyre, though..."

I steeled up the look in my eyes before allowing a hint of anger to flash on my face.

"In the coffer on the altar within the wooden pile, there's the rotting head of your duke!"

The princess never revealed or openly admitted whose head was in the chest she brought as per the terms of our agreement.

The crowd of the imperials moved a little. The commotion, although of a much lesser scale, appeared within Etaria's army too.

"He's the man responsible for the deaths of all those brave souls that the fires are liberating as we speak!" I shouted out, even going as far as to point my hand at the still-not-burning wooden pile.

Then, I slowly closed my eyes and lowered my hand, simply looking at the crowd ahead. And as the silence grew longer and longer... I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

"Where I'm from, people who throw the lives of their soldiers away are punished, not glorified. And I believe people like that don't deserve to join the fallen soldiers in the burial rite."

After playing around with it for a bit, I finally figured out how to use the aura to make my voice as loud as if I were using the loudspeaker. Noticeably, though, using aura came without the cost of making my voice sound mechanical and outright unnatural, a flaw of the loudspeaker even modern technology couldn't get rid of.

"We are at war. And it's only natural for us to kill each other," I continued, although slowly decreasing the amount of aura I infused my voice with, turning it fainter and fainter, all the way to the point I used no aura at all. "So let me give you one last warning."

I raised my eyes and prepared to infuse my voice with all the aura I could cram in it.

"If you want to live, leave and let the head of this abhorrent duke rot away. For if his head goes up in flames..."

Once again, I turned silent. But after throwing a sweeping look at the survivors nearby and the imperial army standing in all its glory just a few hundred meters behind them...

"If his head goes up in flames, I will kill you all."