@jayrandomized,
I dont know what the original argument was so I may be putting my opinion at the wrong time, and I am only judging from your replies. I don't think MC has what you call "pacifist" philosophy. If anything, he recognizes that the two most powerful countries are in fact against him and turtle first then fight. I don't think choosing to hide before striking is qhat you'd call pacifism. Je knows he will eventually fight but now is not the right time so he is laying low. This is from someone who also thinks pacifism is naive thinking because humans sadly...
The reason I call him a pacifist is because the author called him pacifist through the Dark Elf Captain in chapter 4. In earlier chapters, the MC and Atou both agree that war is barbaric and repeat this to the Dark Elf in that scene after the Dark Elf pledges his loyalty to the point that he'd be willing to kill babies. When that got turned down the Dark Elf Captain was willing to go to war for him. Atou replied for the MC, "No, War is so barbaric. The King likes peace, remember that from now on." I call it contradictory because they both want to rule the world while holding this naive philosophy.
@Shnebs,
The MC's plan is that because they are an evil faction the good factions will attack them, as shown in this chapter and then get crushed under their defensive might, if they don't attack him he keeps expanding until they do and then once they lose because of their home field advantage they get conquered as they exhausted their army. a peaceful nation can fight back seeing as they are only technically peaceful because they don't have the capacity to attack anyone
also im pretty sure he said that to stop him from becoming over zealous?
Yes, he can build up but MC acted like war would never be an option, or it's implied while also admitting it will be an option. Again, when the Dark Elf was willing to fight both MC and Atou shut him down with their philosophy, see above. I get he wanted to kill the captain's rising zealotry which also seemed to be a product of them switching alignment from the previous chapter when the entire village's hate rose. But even the Dark Elf captain interpreted their philosophy as pacifism and was confused by their stance. I also get that the general point of the MC is that he is not evil despite having an evil alignment.
My point has nothing to do with MC's strategy, again it has to do with MC's contradictory philosophy. My point, again, is if MC knows that war will inevitably happen, why take a quasi-pacifist position on anything. I get be peaceful until we're attacked. That's all he had to say, but the whole "War is so barbaric thing" is silly given the situation he's in and the situation they're in, and their goals.
I would argue technically once MC learned they were sandwiched between two hostile nations and that small dark forest is their only refuge that they never truly had the home field advantage. Both MC and Atou admitted in the early chapters that this "mode" if you want to liken it to a game like they did is beyond the hardest difficulty in the game MC ever played. The fact the kingdom came at them so early in their development stage proves this. Still, my point here is that MC should have been on his "A" game from that moment on and not catering to naive philosophies about being too peaceful and no this doesn't mean he had to run out and turn murder hobo and wildly attack people. It also didn't mean he had to deflate the person he just put in charge of the Dark Elf army nor walk around spouting contradictory nonsense confusing people like I showed above.
I also admitted that I get that MC practically grew up in a hospital and doesn't have real-life experience and is likely a child mentally.
I'll add that I just revisited the tags and see this has the "Comedy" tag so maybe I need to stop putting so much thought into this since I doubt this will be as serious as everyone is expecting it to be after this current scene with the holy knights.
@545, I just want to say that Werdell/Verdell was likely going to return to Malka, report to the Saint and they would've came back with a larger force to wipe out naive MC, Atou, and the Dark Elves so MC and Atou contradictory strategy and viewpoints would've done them in. Everyone is praising Werdell/Verdell here and I get it, but are forgetting his main job was to find out what was going on. Everyone seems to be forgetting he likened Atou to two witches the kingdom fought to the death with previously in the north, so he would've went back and reported there was a witch at that caliber hiding in the forest.
So while Werdell/Verdell was level headed in this situation to try to get his group out of danger because he assessed Atou as a high level threat despite his words, he was going to take that information back to the kingdom and the kingdom would've likely responded with hostilities.
The kingdom is still likely to respond with hostilities when their scout team fails to return.
That, in general, goes back to my point about MC's viewpoint on all of this and his silly "be peaceful, war is barbaric" declaration to his citizens. It proves my point that at some point he would've been attacked. Again, let me stress, I'm not arguing he should've geared up right now and went out and attacked the kingdom.
Edited: Let me clarify because everyone will interpret this as me saying he should've attacked. I'm saying he should've properly prepared, but he didn't because of his naive viewpoint. I get building infrastructure, but he should've had the Dark Elf captain running drills or something or building up his defenses better. No, he's been lollygagging around talking about wanting to be peaceful while at the same time wanting to conquer the world. No one else sees the contradiction?
This is nothing new in manga with these types of characters who take these types of "be peaceful" positions in stories that will obviously have conflict.