Bonus Chapter: Some useless lore on the history of Lareen and why they don't have live soldiers

In very long winded and excited words, Mr. Belna basically says explains some recent history in his world.

As it turns out, ever since war golems became cheap enough to mass produce and powerful enough, human soldiers were inevitably phased out of conflict entirely.

Well, this is basically how it happened…

Due to the fact that these golems are mass produced in factories, a few wealthy business owners came to control this military power, rather than a few powerful mages and influential nobles.

For a while, the golem factory owners competed with the more traditional generals. If the nations took more golems than soldiers, then the wealthy tycoons would basically be taking military power away from the nobles.

This sparked decades of conflict. The nobles tried everything they could to stamp out the golem factories, while the merchants fought to expand their wealth and build enough golems to compete with the traditional armies of flesh and steel.

Eventually, the merchants began to make this a more public, political issue. Lareen at this time was already an aristocratic republic at this time, so appealing to public opinion was actually effective.

(Aristrocratic republic is basically a form of government where the leaders are elected by the population from a pool of high status people. Basically, some people don't get to run for office, due to their low station.)

Basically, the merchants began to make this conflict political by harping on and on about how having "live soldiers slaughter each other" is so very, VERY inhumane.

(I mean, they're not wrong… but DO remember that these merchants are doing it for the money, not for humanitarian reasons.)

They'd say this, while simultaneously preaching about how soldiers AREN'T noble, and how you have to be a savage to actually kill someone.

This was a… rather radical way of thinking at the time. For countless years, cultures had to prop up soldiers on a pedestal. Wars were glorious, and soldiers were brave. How else could you motivate a bunch of young men to throw themselves on spears if you didn't first convince them of the nobility of the cause?

People don't just follow you to war because you tell them to; they follow because something moved their soul. There's a reason why morale was always AS IMPORTANT AN ISSUE for the generals to think about as, let's say, the size of your army and how neat your logistics is. An army with low morale WILL NOT fight.

Hence, most cultures propped soldiers up as glorious superheroes of some sort. That belief was a product of necessity, since a nation with no willing soldiers won't be a nation for long…

Anyway, so these merchants preaching about how "soldiers are barbaric" was utterly unthinkable at the time.

Long story short, the aristocracy focused on currying favor with foreign nations, while the merchants focused on getting the local populace to support them.

Even though the merchants actually lost the war (due to insufficient funds), their impact on Lareen culture never went away.

With the biggest merchants killed, the aristocracy took their inventions and factories. They could've just shut them down, but it would be silly to throw away such a powerful weapon when your rivals might keep it.

So, the nobles got to producing their own golems – this time without any outsiders controlling their military power.

Over time, the cultural idea that "kill of any kind is evil" began to germinate in the land. This time, the nobles saw no problem with this. In fact, many of them began to believe this as well.

So, by the time the golems became cheaper to make and maintain than traditional soldiers, as well as more powerful than them, live soldiers were gradually phased out. Plus, the whole profession was looked down by society at this point, so no recruits were showing up anyway.

From then on, all wars were conducted with lifeless constructs alone.

In fact, other than the occasional criminal, it's fair to say that nobody has been killed in centuries.

All of these cultural changes took a more… drastic turn, when the God-King of Lareen manifested in this world.

Of course, a "god-king" is a special type of god who gets his/her Divine Mantle from a specific belief of the people. Basically, they're born from a creed or a law – something that many people believe zealously in.

… And the specific creed that this new god was born from was the belief in Pacifism. Essentially, the god of this world hates bloodshed and promotes peace at all cost!

As it turned out, the god of Lareen had been around for several thousand years now. He'd been the first to push for the invention of war golems. After all, he had a vision for this world – a world that doesn't require people to actually die in wars.

As more and more of the world came to believe in his creed, his Divine Power grew larger and larger. Eventually, he became strong enough to manifest himself personally to the people…

… and he's been openly worshipped by the world ever since.

With his newfound authority in this world, the god of Lareen began to mediate between countries. He never stopped the nations from warring with each other, so long as they kept their fighting away from the cities, and so long as they didn't involve any live soldiers on the front lines.

… Anyone who dared to disobey his creed would be personally removed from power by their god…