See, Hildegard and her people have been a real pain in Reiner's side. Expected when she had over triple the support than the Bastard did. In any case, he had shown no signs of backing out any time soon and wanted to take at least one thorn out from his side. Though there was another competitor, he was actually on good terms with them and didn't want to soil their relationship with underhanded politics. And, because politics are complicated and rarely ever make sense, the next logical step to him was to get Hanabi out there and hinder his opponent by slaughtering animals. The animals have the opportunity to fight back, but first Hanabi would have to hunt them down.
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