Too Lazy to be a Villainess novel Chapter 320

Chapter 320: The Riot Strategy

[Lavinia’s POV — Eastern Forest Road—Nightfall After the Ambush]

The forest still smelled like smoke.

Embers snapped in the underbrush, hissing as if the earth itself were angry. My soldiers were clearing debris, checking wounds, steadying horses—but beneath it all...

Silence.

A sharp, waiting silence. Not peace. The kind of silence that belongs to predators hiding in the trees.

The kind that meant danger hadn’t left—It was watching.

Haldor hadn’t calmed. Not even a little. He stood near the center of camp like a storm trapped in human form—jaw clenched, eyes burning, every muscle coiled as if ready to kill anything that breathed the wrong way.

Then—

"Your Highness..." Colonel Zerith stepped forward, helmet tucked under his arm, face tight. "We’ve... captured the villagers who caused this riot."

I flicked my gaze toward the bound figures being dragged forward through the smoke.

"Arrest them," I said coldly. "I will interrogate them myself. Do not harm them—they are civilians, not soldiers."

Zerith bowed swiftly. "As you command, Your Highness."

He signaled sharply.

Guards pressed the captured villagers to their knees in front of me—heads lowered, bodies trembling. Old men. Young men. Some are a little older than boys. Dirt clung to their faces, their clothes torn from running through the forest.

General Arwin, Osric, and Haldor moved to flank me instinctively—silent, rigid, and coiled like drawn steel.

The villagers dropped to their knees under the sheer weight of their killing aura; even the air felt strangled, as if afraid to move.

I stepped forward.

The moment I did, their shoulders jerked violently. Panic cracked through them.

"A-Aaahhh... f-forgive us—please, show us mercy!" one man screamed, voice breaking.

Haldor snapped, voice colder than iron dipped in winter frost. "YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT MERCY BEFORE YOU ATTACKED US!"

"We—we were forced!"

"We had no choice!"

They banged their heads against the muddy, stone-strewn ground, blood smearing across the earth. "Show mercy, Your Highness... please... please..."

"SILENCE." My voice cut through the chaos like a blade.

"You throw a fire bomb at our marching columns... attempt to murder soldiers from Eloria... and NOW you whimper for mercy?" I stepped closer. "How did you imagine you would escape punishment? Did fear abandon you—or did reason?"

"PLEASE SPARE US!" they cried, voices hoarse. "WE WERE FORCED, YOUR HIGHNESS! WE HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO ATTACK YOU!"

Arwin’s jaw clenched. Osric leaned forward, eyes narrowing.

Osric asked quietly—the quiet that only comes before storms—"What do you mean... you were forced?"

One of the older men trembled harder, his forehead splitting open as it struck the stones again.

"O-our territory... has been starving for years, Your Highness. Commander Luke told us... if we attacked you, w-we would receive a bag of grain."

A pulse of outrage burned through the generals.

Arwin erupted, voice booming. "So you thought killing an entire marching army was worth a bag of grain!?"

The old man sobbed. "When a man is starving... truly starving... h-he will crawl through filth, he will betray gods, he will go to any length... just to feed his children for a day..."

Silence collapsed over us—heavy, suffocating, absolute.

Even the rage paused... replaced, for a heartbeat, by something darker.

I exhaled—slowly. Dangerously.

This wasn’t a simple attack. This was poverty weaponized. This was hunger hammered into a blade... and Meren had guided the hand that wielded it.

And that blade had been pointed at us.

My fist clenched, knuckles whitening.

"First they fail to feed their own people," I murmured, voice tight with disgust. "And now they use starving civilians as weapons. I have never seen a kingdom sink this low."

Haldor growled, eyes burning.

"The imperial officials here are feeding themselves, Your Highness. The king rots at the top—corrupt to his bones."

I nodded once, stepping closer to the trembling villagers.

"You did all this," I said softly, "for a single bag of grain... that would feed you for one day."

Shame rippled through them. They nodded, trembling, hands clasped as if praying to something long dead.

"But..." I let the word linger, sharp and deliberate, "what if I tell you ...You can have far more than a day’s worth of grain?"

Their heads snapped up. "H-how... Your Highness?"

A slow, dangerous smirk tugged at my lips.

"It’s simple," I said. "We take over this kingdom."

A gasp tore through the crowd. Some villagers recoiled; others froze, stunned.

"If I become Empress," I declared, voice ringing like steel drawn from a sheath, "I swear you will eat every single day. You will work—and you will be paid. No child will starve under my rule."

"So choose." My voice dropped to a deadly whisper: "A single bag of grain for a day... or a bag of grain—every day."

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