Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of racism, rape, death by suicide, graphic violence, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.

“Khudla wasn’t their town, but this was their province, and everyone in Monkey Province had suffered the same way under Mugenese occupation. Displacement, looting, rape, murder, mass executions. A thousand Golyn Niis-level massacres had played out over the land, and no one had cared, because no one in the Republic or the Empire had ever cared much about the south.”

This quotation shows The Dehumanizing Effects of War. Governments find the South expendable, causing mass death on a catastrophic level, setting the stage for a Southern revolution that brings still more death.

“This wasn’t her first kill. But this was her first deliberate, premeditated murder. This was the first person she’d killed not out of desperation but with cool, malicious intent.

It felt—

It felt good.”

This quotation marks a turning point in Rin’s character, as The Corrupting Influence of Power starts to change her approach to violence. Rather than regretting her violent acts, she revels in them because they amass more power.

“‘You’re like ants swarming an injured rat. You whittle it down with little bites. You never engage in a full-fledged battlefield encounter, you just fucking exhaust them. Sinegard’s problem was that it was teaching you to fight an ancient enemy. They saw everything through the Red Emperor’s eyes. But that method of warfare doesn’t work anymore.’”

Souji coaches Rin on the difference between the traditional wars she was trained to fight and the type of strategic warfare needed now. She uses a simile, comparing the Southerners to “ants swarming an injured rat,” to emphasize that the South relies on numbers to make up for what they lack in strategy and military technology. The idea that Nikara strategies are old-fashioned or outdated crops up multiple times in the novel, though usually in the context of Hesperia and The Multifaceted Nature of Empire and Colonialism.