Interlude
Year 165 of the Lyferian calendar, 24th day of the second month...
The kingdom’s army of 110,000 soldiers clashed with the Empire of Gelmed’s forces. The engagement took place in the Grutalia plains, located halfway between the capital, Seven Wall, and the eastern citadel city of Kenstone.
It was known as an old battlefield, where countless battles had taken place some 300 years ago. Rusted equipment and crumbled skeletons littered the ground. The empty eye sockets of their cracked skulls seemed to beckon the new arrivals to become their new companions. It was an eerie place, enough to strike even the most experienced of warriors silent.
If Diablo was here, his impression of the place would have been different. “This battlefield was featured in Cross Reverie. It was for some limited-time ranking event... It was meant for entire parties, so it was pretty challenging for a solo player... I cleared it, though.”
The ones to start the fighting were Lyferia’s army.
“Fire!”
With the commander’s order, their large summons roared. The improved version of the ?Salamander? summons, ?Gore Salamanders?, as well as ?Red Hydras? and ?Devil Eyes? were all present — all over level 60 and optimized for high firepower bombardment.
They fired a volley capable of reducing even armored infantry to dust. However, the Gelmed Empire’s soldiers simply raised their large shields, advancing through the flames. Lyferia’s mages were dumbstruck.
“I-Impossible!”
“Charge!”
The Gelmed Empire’s army rushed toward them.
“Ooooooh!”
“Don’t let them push you back!”
Lyferia’s commanding officers barked orders at their soldiers, but the difference in their equipment was too vast. The Empire’s soldiers employed magimatic weapons, after all. They had spears that could tear enemies apart with a mere graze, and shields capable of rendering attacks useless. Lyferia’s soldiers had some unique equipment, but it was all precious and rare. Only a select handful of soldiers had them.
Bad news was flooding into Lyferia’s military headquarters.
“Your Majesty! Our forces are being routed!”
“It can’t be...”
How could they be overwhelmed so thoroughly? Lyferia’s king, Delouche Xandros, felt his field of vision contort softly. If he weren’t sitting on a chair at the time, he’d have crumbled to his feet.
“Ugh... Someone! Anyone! Push them back! Claim the head of one of the enemy’s commanders and turn this battle around... Don’t we have that kind of hero on our side?!”
Delouche looked around his staff officers, but they all cast down their eyes, refusing to meet his gaze.
“Ugh...”
“Why?! Answer me!” He cornered one of the officers. “Our Kingdom of Lyferia has fought off the Demon Lord so many times! The Empire might be powerful, but they’re not stronger than the Fallen!”
“...If I may humbly speak, Your Majesty... The Fallen are limited in numbers. They’re not organized in formations, either. Compared to us, the Empire’s army is far more organized.”
“Are you calling our soldiers a disorderly mob?!”
“A-A hero might be able to...” he stammered, when Delouche suddenly jolted.
“That’s right! Alan, the hero! What about the Palace Knights?! Where’s Noah?!”
“Duke Gibun already went to the front lines with the Order of Palace Knights.”
“What...?”
“The enemy has Magimatic Sols, and normal weapons can’t do any damage to them. Without warriors with equipment capable of penetrating their barriers, fighting them is just sending our men to be killed. With that in mind, Duke Gibun said the Palace Knights should strike the first blow.”
“...He did mention something like that...”
“The operation went as you ordered, Your Majesty.”
The staff officers looked at each other, unable to say anything. What was this long war council for? He only raised his voice, but he didn’t have any idea about the strategy they were employing — Delouche was well aware that his status as king was entirely nominal. That was fine in peacetime, but during times of war, he wasn’t dependable.
“So you’re saying... This is our situation after we’ve sent in our trump cards?” Delouche hung his head. “Is the Kingdom of Lyferia really that weak?”
They had over twice the enemy’s numbers, but they were still being overwhelmed. The staff officers exchanged gazes. Now wasn’t the time to wallow in regret. The front lines had collapsed, and they had no play that would change the situation. Their only remaining option was to retreat.
If they didn’t run in time, their headquarters might end up being attacked by the enemy. The awful idea that the Empire’s soldiers might be attacking them sent shivers down their spines... Still, the sounds of fighting were still far off.
“...What’s going to happen?” one of the staff officers asked.
“I-I’m sure the Empire’s soldiers are getting fatigued by now,” another said, smiling bitterly. “We do have over twice their number in soldiers.”
“So the Kingdom’s soldiers are hanging on. Good! If we take advantage of our numbers and surround them, we might still turn this around.”
“Reorganize our forces at once!”
But as the staff officers were speaking in an animated fashion, a scream tore into their ears, along with a heavy, unfamiliar metallic sound.
“What’s going on?!” Delouche called out.
The next moment... the heavy infantry surrounding the headquarters were thrown into the air like dry leaves.
“Gaaah?!”
A massive suit of metallic armor appeared beyond the crowd of soldiers. Its exterior was a sleek, yellowish color, and it carried swords in opposite ways.
“Ahahaha!” The high-pitched voice of a child echoed around them. “I~ found~ the king~!”
The pilot of this Magimatic Sol was Toaha — the Lamia girl who was said to be the unit’s ace. The knights surrounded Delouche.
“Stay away from His Majesty!” one of them said, brandishing a spear.
The yellow Magimatic Sol crossed its blades in both its hands.
“It’s all point~less! You can’t stop my Elrenoss with those things. It’s check and mate~ ?”
She swung her massive blades, and the knights’ blood gushed through the air.
“How dare you treat me with such insolence?!” Delouche screamed at her. “I’m the king of Lyferia! Ruler of the raceeeeeeeeees!”
“Uh, sure?”
Toaha imagined swinging a blade into his head without so much as a sliver of hesitation. The thin, minute terminals, coiled all over and into her body, reaching as far as her brain, transmitted those thoughts to her unit faster than her nerve pulses traveled. The magimatic armor instantaneously, faithfully, and accurately executed its pilot’s orders. The two blades swung down toward Delouche’s shoulders...
And slammed into the earth.
In a single moment, which passed by in an instant... Lyferia’s crown clattered to the ground and into a spreading puddle of red.
Delouche Xandros was reduced to a splatter of gore. Just blood and flesh.
The yellowish Magimatic Sol, Elrenoss, wiped its blades.
“Aaaaaand, done. ?”
“Uuu... Aaah...”
The staff officers, who could only watch from the sidelines, were splashed with their king’s blood. Their gazes were fixed on Toaha.
“Right, so what was I supposed to do aside from off the king? Hmm... Aira, do you reeeead? I’m done here, so what’s next?”
They could hear some voice, muffled and crackling with noise. She was speaking to someone. They could clearly hear Toaha’s responses, though.
“What, Saya’s in danger?! What is she thinkiiiing~? Fiiine, I’ll go back!”
She seemed to be ignoring the surrounding staff officers. The Magimatic Sol turned its back and began to leave. Officers burning with a desire to avenge their king stood in its way, but...
“Damn you!”
“Out of my way!”
She easily beat them down. Watching the Magimatic Sol leave, one of the staff officers fell to his knees. His sword slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground.
“It’s all over... The Kingdom of Lyferia... is done for...”
The king was crushed to bits. Magimatic Sols marched through casually, even with the kingdom’s most skilled heavy infantry standing in their way.
“Uuu... Aaaah...” The staff officer wept openly. “This is even more one-sided than when we fought the Demon Lord...”
†
Without a king to protect, the Lyferian army was being routed. The Gelmed Empire’s army launched a pursuit, and the battlefield became an echo chamber of screams of agony.
But one group was retreating rather composedly. A large dragon carriage — a carriage towed by an earth dragon — was moving along faster than a messenger on horseback, despite its size. Sitting at its driver’s seat and holding the reins was a large man with black-rimmed glasses, his hair parted to the side. His features were intellectual, but his body was a large lump of muscles.
This was Maximum Abrams, the captain of the Order of Palace Knights.
“Sir Noah, it seems the king has died in battle.”
Sitting next to him was a beautiful person of androgynous appearance — Duke Noah Gibun, who also doubled as a high-ranking general.
“So it seems... Coupled with how poor the situation is, this must be why the soldiers’ morale is so crippled.”
News of the king’s demise had likely spread among the army. A boy peeked his head out of the window leading into the carriage’s compartment. He was a Dwarf with golden, spiky hair, and this generation’s Alan the hero.
“Are you sure that was alright? Isn’t protecting the king kind of our job? I could have kept fighting, you know.”
A brown-haired woman then poked her face out beside him. She had a mark extending from her forehead down to her cheek. She was a Demon girl, and carried a magi gun on her shoulder.
“Sir Noah doesn’t make mistakes, blockhead. It’s not like his name is Alan or something!”
Someone was sitting behind her in the wagon, his arms crossed. An Elf man, dressed in a red trenchcoat with a black longsword dangling from his waist: Thanatos the Undying.
“...And yet, we are in need of explanation. The captain may be satisfied without one, but I am not exactly fine with running away when I was not even defeated.”
Sitting opposite him was a child — or rather, a Grasswalker girl who looked like one.
“Ohoh?” she said, dangling her feet in a bored gesture. “So our good friend Thanatos here will disobey Sir Noah’s orders unless he gets an explanation, huh? There’s that rebellious spirit for you. So cool~”
“Tch... I said nothing of the sort.”
“Then you don’t need a reason now, do you?”
“It would change my intro line, don’t you see?! If I don’t know my position or objective, it could create discrepancies later on. That would force me to go with something more generic and vague. Do you think a generic intro line would make my soul burn bright?”
“Sorry, buddy, my soul is noncombustible, so I don’t really follow... “
“Right!” Alan exclaimed with a clenched fist. “You get it, Thanatos! If we don’t know what’s going on, we just can’t get into the right mood, you know?!”
A Pantherian girl sitting at the back of the carriage quipped at him, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you ‘not in the right mood’ when it comes to battles, Alan. If anything, you keep fighting even when people tell you to stop.”
“Ahahaha!” Alan turned red with a smug face. “Keep giving me compliments and you’ll make me blush!”
“He’s a moron,” the Grasswalker girl poked at him. “Moron detector going off the charts.”
Back at the driver’s seat, Maximum Abrams knitted his brows.
“Their words have truth to them. If we don’t know what position we’re in, it could cause problems. In Alan’s case, he’d pick unnecessary fights with people.”
“I suppose that would be troublesome...” Noah smiled wryly. “The situation is somewhat complicated. Your orders were changed suddenly, so it makes sense you’d be confused.”
“So this wasn’t according to plan?”
“Yes... I suppose now would be the right time to talk. It will take us a few days to reach our destination even with an earth dragon’s speed.”
“Then please speak,” Maximum said, turning his gaze forward as he waited for Noah to begin.
“Due to certain circumstances, I possess knowledge of a civilization far more advanced than Lyferia.”
“Yes.”
“I call it the ?Godsent Gift?. Using this higher-order knowledge, I climbed up to the rank of duke, and gained effective power over the Kingdom of Lyferia... I might have even been made royalty in the future.”
“I thought that might eventually happen.”
“However, after all of this, I’ve come to realize something. I am powerless.”
“You have power matching the King of Lyferia and command the Order of Palace Knights, and you’re still powerless?” Maximum tilted his head. “Do you perhaps mean that in comparison to the Empire’s Magimatic Sols?”
“No... I didn’t account for them, but... they were just the trigger.”
“In which case?”
“A community of people can be a troublesome thing. Even a despotic king can’t control everything freely. For example, if one wants to change taxation, they need the nobles’ approval. The same holds true for the justice system, the education system, the currency, social status, logistics, medicine, the military’s composition! Every single thing you might try to change has multiple layers, protected by the vested interests of the church and nobles.”
“Even for the king, eh...”
“I’ve tried so many things...”
“The church’s takeover looked like it might be successful.”
“The Cardinal Authority’s self-interests went too far. I should have taken measures against them sooner... Still, I never expected the High Priest to return alive.”
“The end result was fine though, was it not? The current High Priest is an upright, upstanding person, skilled at performing miracles.”
“And thanks to that, the church’s structure was made more solid, and now we can’t interfere with them. Looking at it in the long run, it pushed the reform back by 50 years.”
“...This is a complicated matter.”
“Whatever the case, I’ve realized something. One can’t change the feudal system from above. The change has to come from either the outside or the bottom up. And so, I thought I would give the commoners power.”
“I see.”
“But, this world has magic. There’s too much of a gap between an untrained commoner and a high-level soldier.”
“Naturally. I’m confident I’d be able to win even if a whole city were to challenge me.”
“Yes...” Noah nodded at Maximum’s calm analysis.
“But I have one question. Is it truly that necessary to change the country’s systems?”
“If you didn’t know better, you might think this is the obvious, natural course of things, yes... The discrimination and poverty are quite severe here. Only a small fraction of nobles live in wealth, while commoners die like dogs. It’s unforgivable.”
“I thought you were of a noble family.”
“...I guess there’s little point to keeping it a secret...” Noah gave a thin smile. “I’m actually of common birth. I merely used my knowledge to acquire riches as a merchant. I then bought the position of a poor regional noble family’s deceased eldest son. I assumed the identity of a man who hardly ever went outside.”
Selling noble titles was outlawed in Lyferia, and a commoner couldn’t join the nobility even through adoption. Assuming a noble’s name was absolutely a criminal act.
Not that there was a king left alive to judge one for it now...
“Quite the surprise,” Maximum said plainly, his gaze fixed forward.
“You don’t look surprised to me.”
“To be fair, I had my slight doubts... You look nothing like your parents, milord.”
“Heheh... Then I think this one will really catch you off-guard. My true father was a bandit who was beaten to death by a regional knight. My mother was a prostitute that died from illness by the wayside. As an infant, I couldn’t save either of them.”
“It... certainly doesn’t seem like you’re jesting, milord,” Maximum said, his eyes wide with surprise.
Smirking in satisfaction at his response, Noah continued.
“I thought... I could change this country by gaining power and authority. But now I know that I could become king, yet that would still be impossible.”
Abrams responded with contemplative silence. “If a reform from above is impossible, and a revolution from the bottom up won’t happen either, it must come from the outside. If an enemy powerful enough to deprive the nobles of their military appears, it could create a hole large enough to change the country’s national policy.”
Maximum then gasped in realization.
“The Demon Overlord?!”
“Even I can’t control that thing’s revival so freely... All I did was direct His Majesty to focus on fortifying the capital.”
“I did think it strange we didn’t send reinforcements to the west... So that was your motive for that.”
By the time the Demon Overlord Modinaram would attack, Noah wanted to be ready, or at least close to ready, to subvert the State. Things didn’t go as planned, however.
“I never thought it would be defeated in Faltra.”
“Diablo.”
“What is that man thinking?!” Noah grimaced. “He has so much power, but he’s completely and utterly trackless! Just when I thought he’d press the High Priest for gratitude, he goes off to become king of a small country like Greenwood. And when I thought that was his angle, he saves Faltra.”
“And reports say he recently fought the forces of Caliture’s governor for some Kobolds... Gewalt was seriously injured by that.”
“I don’t understand him!”
“But he’s strong. A dangerous man, certainly.”
“Yes, I saw that perfectly well during our audience with him. He’s not someone to needlessly meddle with, and we can’t make him obey us, either. I doubt it’s possible for me to even have a discussion with him.”
“So he’s not like us, in that regard.”
It hadn’t even been a year since the Order of Palace Knights was assembled, but it already felt nostalgic. A faraway look played over Noah’s features.
“The imperial knights are all nobles, or the children of nobles. That’s why I instigated His Majesty to limit their authority and organize the Palace Knights... I gathered all of you, who were shunned for being demis, and gave you legendary gear to use.”
“Yes... Though our being shunned wasn’t entirely due to our races.”
Alan was a combat junkie, while Thanatos spoke in peculiar ways. The others all had quirks that made them incompatible with acting in a group. Maximum realized they only functioned together because Noah had gathered them.
“I’ve always had the Devil’s luck...” Noah smiled. “When my parents passed away, I was picked up by merchants. When my business flourished, a family of poor nobles became my clients, and their son, who just happened to be the same age as me, passed away. And this time, just as my reform was coming to a stalemate, the Empire invades.”
“Was Lyferia losing the war part of your calculations?”
“Didn’t I just say that? If something can’t be changed from the top down or from the bottom up, something from outside must be what shakes things.”
“True... But are you sure this is a good idea? The Empire of Gelmed is one to enslave the people of the territories it conquers.”
It seemed to clash with Noah’s ideals of a country without discrimination or poverty.
“Of course, I don’t intend to let them have their way.” Noah nodded.
It seemed he’d already decided on what he had to do. Maximum was convinced, at that moment, that this person could see far further ahead than he and his comrades.
“I will follow you wherever you go, milord. I will be your blade.”
“Heheh... Reliable words. Oh, right, right. Might as well share one more secret with you, while we’re in the mood for shocking revelations.”
“Yes?”
Noah removed his white mantle and undid the front of his uniform’s top.
“The real me is neither innocent, nor a duke... Nor even a man.”
Noah’s chest was visibly plump.
“Ah...?!”
Maximum averted his gaze in shock, nearly driving the dragon carriage off the road. Out of everyone listening in on the pair’s conversation in silence from inside the compartment, the Demon girl raised her voice in a scream.
“No waaaaay!”
“Are you for real? What about your balls?! Where’re your balls?!”
Alan reached his hand for Noah’s crotch, only for the Grasswalker girl to slap it away. Noah, meanwhile, was laughing so hard she had to hold onto her stomach.
The Palace Knights’ carriage made its way to the west.
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