(WWW - Asianovel.com) - Gate 8211 Jietai Kare No Chi Nite Kaku Tatakeri Vol. 1 Chapter 0 Prologue - Vol. 7 Chapter 3 PDF

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Gate – Jietai Kare no Chi

nite, Kaku Tatakeri
ゲート―自衛隊彼の地にて、斯く戦えり Gate -
Synopsis:
In August of 20XX, a portal to a parallel world, known as the “Gate”,
suddenly appeared in Ginza, Tokyo. Monsters and troops poured out of
the portal, turning the shopping district into a bloody inferno. The Japan
Ground-Self Defence Force immediately took action and pushed the
fantasy creatures back to the “Gate”. To facilitate negotiations and
prepare for future fights, the JGSDF dispatched the Third
Reconnaissance Team to the “Special Region” at the other side of the
Gate. Youji Itami, a JSDF officer as well as a 33-year-old otaku, was
appointed as the leader of the Team. Amid attacks from enemy troops
the team visited a variety of places and learnt a lot about the local
culture and geography. Thanks to their efforts in humanitarian relief,
although with some difficulties they were gradually able to reach out to
the locals. They even had a cute elf, a sorceress and a demigoddess in
their circle of new friends. On the other hand, the major powers outside
the Gate such as the United States,China and Russia were extremely
interested in the abundant resources available in the Special Region.
They began to exert diplomatic pressure over Japan. A suddenly
appearing portal to an unknown world – to the major powers it may be
no more than a mere asset for toppling the international order. But to
our protagonists it is an invaluable opportunity to broaden knowledge,
friendship, and ultimately their perspective towards the world.
Author(s): Yanai Takumi
Artist(s): Izuka Daisuke
Year: 2006
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Country: Japan
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Harem, Romance,

Seinen, Supernatural,
Tags: Nudity, Older Female Younger Male, Otaku, Parallel Dimension,

Politics Involving Royalty, Popular Male Lead, Princesses, Rape,
Regeneration, World Travel,
Translator: N/A
E-Book Maker: http://www.asianovel.com
Download the next book in the series for free:

http://www.asianovel.com/series/gate-jietai-kare-no-chi-nite-kaku-tataker
i/
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Table of Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................... i
Vol. 1 : Chapter 0: Prologue ............................................................. 2
Vol. 1 : Chapter 1 ............................................................................. 22
Vol. 1 : Chapter 2 ............................................................................. 55
Vol. 1 : Chapter 3 ............................................................................. 91
Vol. 1 : Chapter 4 ........................................................................... 123
Vol. 1 : Chapter 5 ........................................................................... 145
Vol. 1 : Chapter 6 ........................................................................... 180
Vol. 1 : Chapter 7 ........................................................................... 212
Vol. 1 : Chapter 8 ........................................................................... 241
Vol. 1 : Chapter 9 ........................................................................... 278
Vol. 1 : Chapter 10 ......................................................................... 305
Vol. 1 : Chapter 11 ......................................................................... 324
Vol. 1 : Chapter 12 ......................................................................... 366
Vol. 2 : Chapter 13 ......................................................................... 396
Vol. 2 : Chapter 14 ......................................................................... 438
Vol. 2 : Chapter 15 ......................................................................... 464
Vol. 2 : Chapter 16 ......................................................................... 497
Vol. 2 : Chapter 17 ......................................................................... 547
Vol. 2 : Chapter 18 ......................................................................... 586
Vol. 2 : Chapter 19 ......................................................................... 618
Vol. 2 : Chapter 20 ......................................................................... 649
Vol. 2 : Chapter 21 ......................................................................... 671
Vol. 2 : Chapter 22 ......................................................................... 695
Vol. 2 : Chapter 23 ......................................................................... 712
Vol. 3 : Chapter 1 ........................................................................... 738
Vol. 3 : Chapter 2 ........................................................................... 781
Vol. 3 : Chapter 3 ........................................................................... 818
Vol. 3 : Chapter 4 ........................................................................... 850
Vol. 3 : Chapter 5 ........................................................................... 876
Vol. 3 : Chapter 6 ........................................................................... 921
Vol. 3 : Chapter 7 ........................................................................... 956
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Vol. 3 : Chapter 8 ......................................................................... 1021

Vol. 4 : Chapter 9 ......................................................................... 1066
Vol. 4 : Chapter 10 ....................................................................... 1119
Vol. 4 : Chapter 11 ....................................................................... 1158
Vol. 4 : Chapter 12 ....................................................................... 1192
Vol. 4 : Chapter 13 ....................................................................... 1238
Vol. 4 : Chapter 14 ....................................................................... 1282
Vol. 4 : Chapter 15 ....................................................................... 1333
Vol. 4 : Chapter 16 ....................................................................... 1377
Vol. 4 : Chapter 17 ....................................................................... 1405
Vol. 5 : Chapter 1 ......................................................................... 1446
Vol. 5 : Chapter 2 ......................................................................... 1478
Vol. 5 : Chapter 3 ......................................................................... 1542
Vol. 5 : Chapter 4 ......................................................................... 1590
Vol. 5 : Chapter 5 ......................................................................... 1644
Vol. 5 : Chapter 6 ......................................................................... 1701
Vol. 7 : Chapter 1 ......................................................................... 1765
Vol. 7 : Chapter 2 ......................................................................... 1884
Vol. 7 : Chapter 3 ......................................................................... 1951
Disclaimer ...................................................................................... 2075
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 0: Prologue
Year 20XX, Summer
It was recorded as one of the warmest days in history.
With the high level of humidity in the city coupled with temperatures of
over 30 degree Celsius, it felt like it was hell. However, it was a
Saturday, many people still crowded the shopping mall to shop or to just
stroll around.
11:15 A.M.
When the sun was high up in the sky and the temperature was reaching
its highest point, a ‘Gate to the Other World’ opened up in the middle of
Ginza district.
From it emerged numerous cavalry and infantry donned with armor from
medieval Europe. Accompanying them were fantasy monsters such as
orcs, goblins, and even giants.
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They assaulted the people who happened to be there.
Regardless of age or nationality, their objective was massacring the

people. Due to it being an era of peace, the people lack means of self
defense and could only scream in terror as they collapsed under the
attack.
The shoppers, parents, and even foreign tourists. Not one was spared
from the hooves of the horses, the sharp spears of the soldiers, or the
swords that brought death. The whole area was dyed black and red from
pools of blood. If one were to describe the gruesome scene, it would be
‘Hell’.
This army from the other world planted a black army flag on a mountain
of corpses and loudly declared without any audience that this land had
been conquered by them in their own language.
‘Ginza Incident.’
It was the name of the incident to this first contact of the otherworldly
people by historians.
The Prime Minister of Japan that time----Houjou Shinegori, declared in

the National Congress that “the place beyond the Gate did not exist on
any map.”
“What is the situation beyond the Gate? What kind of natural

environments, human lifestyles and animal species would be discovered
beyond the Gate? How advanced is their culture? What level is their
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technology at? Their religion? What kind of governmental structure do

the people beyond the Gate use?”
“During that period of time, many criminals were arrested.”
“However, using the word ‘arrested’ would be displeasing. Prisoners of

war were out of the expectations of the law. Based on Japan’s current
law, there were no such thing as prisoners of war. According to the
judiciary system, they were simply criminals that broke the law.”
“Even if Japan is accused of using such flimsy argument, they would still
consider the land beyond the Gate a part of Japan.”
“As one would expect, the land beyond the Gate consisted of things that
the government did not know of; such as land, human population, or
even the existence of a government.”
“Even if a government exist there, without confirming the borders of the

country or even establishing diplomatic relations with it, it could not be
recognized as an independent country.”
At this stage, they are just“ armed terrorists who slaughtered people
mercilessly.”
“Although there had been suggestions to conduct peaceful dialogue with

them, the other party had to be willing to sit down with us at the
negotiation table. But how do we do that? Practically speaking, there
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was no way to communicate with them.”
“We will make the other party meet with us in peaceful dialogue, even if
we had to use brute force. We will do all we can, even if we have to grab
them by their heads.”
In order to gain the favorable side in a discussion, one must know about
his enemy first.
We arrested those criminals… despite the language barrier, we still

managed to glean some information from them. But that alone is not
enough. We need to send someone to investigate, and see with our own
eyes and ears.”
“Thus, people must be sent to the other side of the Gate. However, they
were not allowed to harm innocent civilians while at the same time
harboring a sense of awareness against danger as they traverse the
barbaric lands.”
“Also, going in unarmed would not do. Based on initial reports, there was
a chance we will need to fight. In these uncharted lands, the judgement
of who is friend and who is foe would be left to the on-site personnels.”
“Although some of our colleagues in the senate pointed out there was no
need to venture into such a dangerous place, why not render the Gate
unworkable and just demolish it once and for all. However, would it be
safe to simply close it?”
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“Many citizens harboured feelings of unease as to where the Gate would

appear next. Who knows, it may just materialise in front of your homes
or family. Also, there was also the problem of justice and compensation
for the family of the victims.”
“Should a government exist beyond the Gate, Japan would not hesitate
to extradite the leader and request his sincere apologies and
compensation for this incident.”
“Should the other party refuse to oblige, then Japan would flex its
muscles and apprehend the one responsible for the incident sentence
him through our justice system. Should the one responsible hold any
properties, it would all be used to compensate the family members of
the victims of the Ginza incident. From the perspective of the family of
victims, this was only natural.”
“Thus, the government of Japan had decided to deploy its Self-Defense

Force beyond the Gate. The objectives are to investigate, apprehend,
and demand compensations from the one responsible.”
Although there had been some objections from the opposition party, the
decision to deploy the JSDF into the Gate proceeded without a hitch. On
the other hand, the government of the United State of America had
declared that it ‘will not hesitate to aid the investigation of the land
beyond the Gate with its utmost strength’ while Prime Minister Houjou
had replied that ‘it is currently unneeded’ and ‘will request for it should
the situation calls for it’.
The Chinese government released a statement that ‘the Gate is an
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unnatural phenomenon’ and ‘should be investigated with joint

international effort’. Declaring that although the Gate had appeared in
Japan’s territory, it should not be under the control of a sole country so
that it alone can reap its benefits.
♦♦♦
“Please pardon me from being blunt, but this is way out of control. There
is an unprecedented troop loss in the history of this empire. Does your
Majesty have a plan to curb this problem?”
As a senator as well as a noble, Marquis Casel did not minced his words
as he addressed the Emperor Molt Sol Augustus who was sitting on the
throne.
With all the senators present in the hall, even if one of them speak with
such disrespect towards the Emperor, he will be forgiven. They believed
such attitude was required of them..
In the dim hall.
The main design theme of the senate hall was sombre, forsaking elegant
decorations for sturdy and serene masonry. There were around three
hundred serious looking men sitting in a circle on benches around the
centre of the hall. These said men were all senators of the Empire.
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Should one desire to be a senator, there were several paths. One such
path was to be born in an influential family. No matter which country it
is, nobles make up a small portion of the people, but it was not the same
for the capital of the Empire. If one were to throw a stone out of a
random window in the capital, there was a great chance that it will hit a
noble.
Thus, if you desire the role of a senator, it was useless even if you were
born of nobility. Only the nobles among nobles and the best of the best
could be granted such position.
Does this mean that if you were not born of nobility, then you don’t have
a chance to become a senator? It was not so. Should one hold the
position of a minister or a position of general in the army or higher, he
would have a shot at becoming a senator.
In order to process the confusing and heavy work of managing a

country, the existence of bureaucracy was necessary. If one of the
common people possess the talents and abilities of a senator, with some
luck, hard work and achievements he may be granted the position of a
senator.
There were many types of Ministers; Prime Minister,Internal Affairs,

Finance, Agriculture, Foreign Affairs. The ones taking the path of working
up from a minister of an army general, once they retire, they would be
bestowed with a seat in the senate. Commoners were allowed to hold
the position of an army general as well. Being commissioned as an
officer in the army meant gaining knighthood, so it was possible for
them to rise further and become a noble.
Marquis Casel was born in a Baron family that only ranked moderate in
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the hierarchy. It was only through his past achievements and his service
as a minister that he was granted the seat of a senator. He was the
hardworking type of person that tried his best to fulfill his role and
responsibility. In other words, the oppressive dominant type.
Thus, he was feared for his bold attitude and sharp tongue that was said
to be able to drive a grownup to tears.
"It was a grave mistake to dismiss the enemy as weak and spineless
after capturing just a handful of them"
"What should have been done was to scout and investigate the
opponent's power to determine their strength. Then, conclude whether it
was more beneficial to take them as friends or foe." continued the
Marquis.
It was not wrong to say that the situation now was dire.
This expedition had cost the empire 60 percent of its army. Although it
was possible to replenish them, enormous costs and time would be
needed.
With only less than half of its military power, how was the Empire going
to maintain its dominant position?
In the thirty years of Emperor Molt’s reign, he had been pushing for a
militaristic governance. The conflict with the neighbouring countries
outside borders and the vassal states and tribes within was resolved by
the intimidation of force, granting peace and stability to the empire.
Before their overwhelming armies, all other nations had no choice but to
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submit. Those who opposed the empire had all been wiped out.
No matter how strongly the vassals felt about the empire, in the face of
the powerful Empire armies, they had no other options other than
concealing their displeasure.
However, now that the armies of the Empire had been reduced to less
than half its strength, what actions will the vassals and foreign countries
that had been enduring the oppression take?
As Marquis Casel, the leader of Liberalism group waved his toga, he

asked the Emperor:
“Your Majesty! How are you planning to lead this country!?”
After Marquis Casel finished his speech, he returned to his seat. Staring
at the one who criticised him, the emperor shifted his body slow and
steadily, leaning forward and opened his mouth.
“Marquis… I have considered this situation. After this loss, the

superiority of the Empire’s army would be weakened for a time,however,
it is useless to cry over spilt milk. Would the foreign nations and our
vassal states who had long hidden their detest for us, form a coup d’etat
and march their army into the capital? Ahh, just thinking about that
makes you lose sleep at night, correct? How heartbreaking.”
After hearing playful words of the emperor, the tense atmosphere in the
hall had been shaken by the quiet laughter.
"Do you remember the Battle of Akuteku 250 years ago, my dear
senators? How did our great predecessors react to the news of the
army's total defeat? Did they lament their lost valour and pride, and
negotiate for peace, which was as good as admitting defeat?"
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"Is the memory of how the females of the Empire reacted to the
situation still in your minds?"
"They said: "So what if we lost 60 thousand men?! We will birth that
number in no time!"while rolling up their skirts for others to see!"
"These stories of the heroines of this country, I hope that there is

nothing to be said anymore."
"Dire situations like this had been experienced by the Empire countless
of times ever since its establishment. The Emperor of our Empire has
always worked together with the senate and citizens as one to face
these trials, that’s how the empire grew so strong."
All of what the Emperor had said the history of the Empire.
For the senators, these were all stories they were familiar with.
"There is no such thing as a sure victory in a war. Should the general

take responsibility for every loss in the war, then there will be no such
thing as potential commander. Should we be playing the blaming game
while the enemy surrounds the Capital?”
The senators shook their head in disagreement with such a course of

action.
If no one was seeking the one to blame for the loss, then the emperor
will naturally be exempted from responsibility. Realising that the
Emperor had evaded his responsibility without a hitch, Marquis Casel
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clicked his tongue in annoyance.
Thus, the emperor continued his speech.
This expedition’s army had consisted of veteran soldiers, wise and

powerful mages, as well as carefully selected fierce orcs and goblins.
With sufficient supplies and intense training, coupled with an excellent

commander, this was a great formation.
The general took on the duties of a commander, centurions perform the

task of centurions and the rank and files did their part as well.
Despite all that, it took only seven days.
It’s been only seven days since the opening of the Gate. Counting from
the day the enemy counter-attacked seriously, it took them only two
days to devastate the Empire’s army.
The soldiers were either dead or taken prisoner. They could only assume
the ones making it back alive would just be a handful.
Now that the Gate had been taken over by the enemy, it was impossible
to close it with the enemy turtling around the Gate on the Arnus hill.
In order gain back the possession of the Gate, thousands of cavalry was
committed in a charge. But that only resulted in the foot of Arnus hill
being littered by the corpse of men and horses.
“Are you aware of the enemy’s weapon’s strength? It went Bang Bang
Bang!!! The moment the enemy from afar made these noises, the army
collapsed in a pool of blood. Never in this old one’s life have seen such
powerful magic before!”
Godasen, a member of the senators as well as a mage explained the

engagement with the enemies excitedly.
The unit he led were blown away like leaves in a storm, unable to even
go past the feet of the hill. When he realized it, the surrounding was
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quiet and he was the only one who could move. All he could see were
bodies of men and horses littering the blood-pooled ground.
Closing his eyes, the emperor said: “The enemies have infiltrated the
land here. Although it seems that they are now building a fort around
the Gate, they will one day start their real invasion. We need to face the
other-worldly enemy on Arnus hill as well as the hostile vassal
countries.”
“Let’s just wage a war with’em!”
A bald knight, Marquis Podawan stood up, made a respectful gesture

towards the emperor and suggested the idea of war.
“If cornered, the best way to fight back is to fight back with courage.
Let’s gather the troops scattered around the Empire and quell those
vassal countries and rebels who dare stand against the Empire. Then,
we will turn around and destroy the other-worldly people on the Arnus
hill. To put it simply, attack the Gate!”
The senators only shrugged their shoulders when they heard his brutish
opinion, implying that ‘if that was possible we wouldn’t need to go
through this trouble’. If they gather all their remaining force, the defense
and peace around the Empire would fail.
With everyone giving their own opinion, the hall soon became a scene of
chaos.
Podawan replied with shocking words that by killing all the rebels and
enslaving the women and children, the cities would be deserted and
worries about another uprising... Although it may seem an unrealistic
way to deal with the problem, but there was such cases in the history of
the Empire.
Back in the days when the Empire was still a small country surrounded
on all sides by enemies, when they invaded the enemy countries, the
Empire enslaved the people, destroyed the cities, burn down the forests,
and scattered salt in the fields to render it infertile. By rendering the
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area uninhabitable through scorched earth tactics, the Empire was kept
safe from threats.
“Even if we can do that, how are we going to defeat the enemies at

Arnus? If we use brute force, wouldn’t it just be a repeat of the Battle of
Godasen?”
As the voice in hall reached his ears, Podawan gritted his teeth and
responded.
“Argh…...just recruit all the troops from the vassal countries without
telling them the reason. This way we can muster up an army of a
hundred thousand! Even if they are weak, they can still be meat shields
for us when we charge!”
“Would they be so obedient?”
“Then what reason should we use to make them muster their troops?
Tell them honestly that we lost more than half of our own troops? If we
do that, we would only get humiliated.”
Marquis Casel is having a headache from Marquis Podawan’s irrational

and useless suggestions.
The friction between the War Faction and Peace Faction caused the
whole hall to be filled with static electricity from their growing conflict.
“So whaddaya suggest we do, huh!?!?”
“You war maniac!”
The senators had lost their cool and was on the verge of communicating
with their fists.
Only time was wasted. Those few still with rational minds thought
fervently for a plan but couldn’t stop the squabbles in the hall.
Amidst this chaotic scene, Emperor Molt stood up from his throne.
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Sensing the emperor had something to say, the arguing senators

quieten down.
“Although it seems a little rough,Marquis Podawan’s words was

inspiring.”
Hearing these words, Podawan bowed respectfully towards the emperor.
Before the regal Emperor, the senators calmed down and listened to
what the emperor had to say.
“Now, the problem is what do we do? Do we watch helplessly as the

situation become worse? That is one way, but I do not wish to do so. If
not, all that’s left is war. Let’s go with the proposition made by Marquis
Podawan and muster troops from all the vassal countries. Send a
messenger to each country and request aid from the leaders to repel the
other-worldly invaders of the Falmat Continent. An alliance army
between the countries shall be formed to attack Arnus hill.
“An alliance army?”
The words of the emperor caused the senators to be in chaos.
Around 200 years ago, in order to repel the tribe of cavalry from the
north from invading the Empire’s land, many countries banded together
in battle. These countries who were constantly at war with each other
had united under the cause of “an invading unfamiliar force is coming,
there’s no time to bicker about our past conflicts”.
The kings and knights who were once enemies. stood together and
fought off the invading forces. This story had been passed down as a
chapter in the story of heroes to be talked about for generations to
come.
“If you put it that way, then it seems to be a just cause.”
“But,it’s kind of……”
He was right. Wasn’t the Empire the one who started the invasion? The
emperor twisted the roles of the two parties around. Covering up the
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fact that the Empire started the aggression, and telling the vassal
countries to send troops under the cause of ‘repelling the other-worldly
invaders’. This was shameless… And of course, no one said it out loud.
That might be so, the Empire only had to tell the vassal countries that
the ‘other-worldly invaders would not stop after invading the Empire,but
the whole Falmat Continent’, they would probably send reinforcement.
Simply put, the truth didn’t matter, it was the way you said it that was
important.
“Your-Your Highness?!?! The feet of Arnus hill would be littered with

corpses?!”
In response to Marquis Casel’s words, Emperor Molt replied loudly.
“I wish for victory, but there are no certain victories in war. Thus, the
fate of an alliance army is unknown. It is unfortunate should they fall. If
that happens, the Empire shall lead the coalition army in battle against
the invaders.”
If the surrounding nations lose their forces at the same time, the
Empire’s advantage over them shall remain.
“This is thou’s plan for facing this situation. Any objections, Marquis
Casel?”
The emperor made his decision.
Marquis Casel stared at the emperor with a dumbfounded expression on

his face after thinking about the fates of the alliance army.
The Peace Faction could only bow their heads towards the emperor and
started picking envoys to be dispatched.
♦♦♦
The dark night sky was lit brightly by flares.
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The Kodou Rino Guwaban (Alliance army) started their attack.
The bright artificial lights and flares shone on the advancing army at the
feet of the hill.
In the front was heavy cavalry, ogre, goblins, giants, with other
fantastical creatures right behind as they covered the entire land in their
massed. They were followed by human troops holding kite shields in
formation.
In the sky were people riding on some sort of birds.
Their force numbered in the hundred thousands, impossible to count.
The forward observer screamed into his radio.
“Three tenths in reserved, seven tenths attacking. Three tenths in

reserved, seven tenths attacking!”
Hearing the words from the outpost, the 5th combat squad of the 502nd
Division of the JSDF rushed through the trenches towards the their given
post and ready their guns to covered their assigned arc of fire.
The staff officer of the JSDF put a lot of effort in organizing this
expedition force. They were facing enemies with great civilization
difference after all. None of the JSDF members had fought with armor-
donned enemies, fantasy creatures and magic that was an even bigger
unknown to them.
Thus, they looked for ideas from fantasy novels and movies.
Inside the PX(Post Exchange) there were fantasy novels,manga and

even movies on JSDF members who travelled back into the Warring Era.
There were even cases of JSDF members lining up in book stores in

Akihabara just to purchase fantasy-related movies and anime.
The works of Director and author whose name started with M and T were
gathered in order to find inspiration.
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Thus, they made a decision to muster the force of three divisions from
the units across the country.
The ranks of the commanders ranged from Captains to Second

lieutenants, as well as non-commissioned officers above the rank of
Corporal.
The reasons explained by the Prime Minister was ‘in the unchartered
land beyond the Gate, judging who is friend or foe needed to be
ascertained by the on site commander. But,everybody knew it wasn’t so
simple.
The equipment of the troops deployed beyond the Gate was old. Firstly,
the troops were equipped with the classic Type 64 Howa rifles. Next, the
army vehicles they were assigned with were Terrain Type 74 tanks.
These equipments were retired from the frontlines after it was made
obsolete by newer models.
“Let’s just clear the storage space while we are at it.”
These sarcastic words were once said by a former master sergeant.

Although that was one of the reason, there were more to this.
Type 64 rifles were chosen because the Type 89 assault rifle’s 5.56mm
rounds couldn’t stop the heavyweight ogres. If one were to charge the
enemy with bayonets, the jagged edge would be stuck to the enemies
armor when used to stab them.
Thus, after considering the possibility of abandoning the equipments

during an emergency retreat, it was better to use these old-school
weapons who had been gathering dust in the storage compared to the
newer generation of weapons which cost a fortune to produce.
Type 64’s had standing bipods, and was aimed by using iron sights. It
uses normal ammunition and was classified as ‘small arms’.
Some of them propped up the 5.56mm machine guns and loaded the
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ammunition belt from its clip.
The sergeant majors and commanders objected vehemently to bringing

Type 62 machine gun along, questioning with pale faces whether high
command was intending to kill them. It was not brought into the special
region as it malfunctions frequently.
Countermeasures against the bird riders were Type 87 self-propelled AA

guns ,Oerlikon 35 mm twin cannon AA system, M42 40mm AA guns
(Duster), and other types of old-school AA weapons. Mechanical whirring
noises sounded out as they aimed their sights at the birds.
Another flare lit up the dark sky as the enemies advanced towards the
hill with quick steps.
They thumbed the safety switch on their rifle from ‘safe’ to ‘semi’.
From the head sets in their ear, they could hear the voice of their
commander.
“Don’t panic...hold your fire…”
Although they were still not used to it, but it was still not their first time
doing this.
The JSDF held their breaths and waited for the order as the enemy
closed in on them.
It was the 3rd time the enemies attacked the place named by the locals
as Arnus hill.
They had lost twice already, annihilated would be an adequate

description.
This standard weapon in this world were swords, spears, bows and
armor. Their strategy was to formed up in ranks and charged together.
They will some time use flames or explosion as means of attack (not
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magical in nature), but their range was limited and quantity pitifully low,
and wasn’t much of a threat.
Hence, no matter how many of them they was, they were no match for
the JSDF who were equipped with modern age firearms
In the movie [Kagemusha] by Director Kurosawa, there was a gruesome

scene where General Takeda’s cavalry had faced off General
Tokugawa’s musketeers in a battlefield.
The scene in front of them was just like the movie, where numerous
corpses of men and horses littered the feet of the hill.
However, the enemy still advanced, determined to recapture this hill.
The JSDF held their ground and defended Arnus hill.
This is because due to the Gate was the only way their world had access
to this. They won’t allow the Gate to be taken in order to prevent the
tragedy of the Ginza incident from happening again.
With one side’s motive to take back while the other side to defend, their
clash of opinions caused the third battle.
Maybe they learned from their previous two attempts, they did a night
raid this time. Without the shine of the moonlight, vision would be
obscured by night. People were prone to be careless and off guard at
night too… That was the thinking in this world, and the idea wasn’t bad
too.
However, with the flare showing their every move to the enemy, their
carefully laid plan had gone to waste.
“Fire!!!”
In Tokyo and the rest of Japan, 24-hours stores were a given. With the
night as bright as day, the muzzles of the guns and cannons served as a
greeting from them to the other world.
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 1
First Lieutenant Itami Youji, 33 years old. He was an Otaku now, and
would be an Otaku in the future.
Although he was an Otaku, he was not the type of Otaku that could write
his own fantasy novels, draw his own manga, make his own figurines or
even mess with Vocaloids. He didn’t even comment on the works of
other people in the online.
Itami Youji was the customer-type Otaku that only read the works of
other people.
He had attended each Summer and Winter Comiket in Nakano or

Akihabara during his holidays, but not once to his local shrine. The wall
of his room in the dormitory still had the autograph of Rumiko Takahashi
from his high school days on it.
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Instead of army-related books that should be on his bookshelves, it was

filled by doujinshis that took up all of the space on it, causing him to just
stuff all his brand new work related books into his closet.
Due to his favouritism of interests over work, he had little passion for
anything work-related. For example, should there be a scheduled
exercise, he would purposely apply for a holiday on the excuse of “I
have stuff to do on that day…” and escape from his responsibility.
He once said:
“I only work for my interests, so if someone asked me whether I chose

my interests or work I would choose the former.”
It was hard to imagine someone like him being in the Self-defence force,
but he somehow enlisted successfully.
His motto in life was “Eat, sleep, play, repeat. And the life in between.”
The phrase in one of his favourite manga was ‘The only time you are
alive is when you are resting’, suiting a person such as him the most.
Thus, he had chosen a public high school that had low competition and
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had been admitted despite not studying much at all. From there, his
grades only got worse as he only watched anime and read manga in the
Anime and Manga Research Club in his school while occasionally lining
up at the cinema on the premier of a movie.
His 3 years of high school life had only amounted to this.
In college, he had majored in a newly-established course that had little

or no competition and had passed without much effort.
Although he had spent most of his college life with anime, manga, and
light novels; he had never skipped or was late to classes and courses.
Thus, the lecturer’s comments for him here “Itami? Hmm, he’s an okay
guy.” and gave him the grade of ‘Good’ after his 4 years in college.
“What career are you pursuing?”
When this question started to emerge among the graduating students,

Itami had muttered quietly “I don’t feel like stepping into the society like
those riajuu…” As, he knocked on the door of a local branch of the JSDF
office one day
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Anyone would exclaim “How the hell did he get commissioned as an

officer?”
Because he lacked the mentality for national defence and passion for his
job, his boss told him to ‘redo your training’, and sent him to a training
unit famous for its tough training regimen.
Unsurprisingly, he contacted his boss and told him that he ‘wants to

quit’.
His boss was also troubled. There was no point encouraging him
verbally, because he wouldn’t have needed to go through all that trouble
if it could work.
Left without a choice, he resorted to using the ultimate skill against

Itami.
“If you quit now, I won’t approve your year-end leave.”(29th, 30th and
31st of December)
“Huh? Then I’ll try my best.”
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Itami’s boss, till this day still has no idea why his words were so effective
against Itami.
Thus, on a certain day in summer, when Itami was hurrying towards a

doujinshi event, held in a corner of the city by riding the Shimbashi Line,
something unbelievable had happened.
A massive ‘Gate’ appeared suddenly.
From it emerged an army of fantasy monsters.
The area beyond the Gate had been named as the Special Region by the
government. However, it only took Itami seconds to understand that the
land beyond the Gate was an entirely different world.
Then, he remembered.
“Ugh! If this continues, the Summer Comiket will be cancelled!”
His quick-witted thinking and actions would later be published in all the
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major news outlets.
When Kasumigaseki and Nagata city was attacked, all the politicians and
government officials ran for their lives without even understanding the
situation happening around them. Because there was nobody ordering
them, the JSDF troops stationed there couldn’t be deployed. The south
gate of Sakurada had been destroyed by the attack. With the chain of
command of the police force absent, the police were unable to take
effective actions.
Amidst that situation, Itami calmly grabbed a panicking policeman

nearby and pointed towards the west.
“Lead the civilians towards the Imperial Palace for refuge!”
But he was answered with an “impossible!” After all, for a mere police
officer’s thinking, the idea of seeking refuge in the Imperial Palace was
not an option he could consider.
That might be so, but the Imperial Palace was originally the Edo castle, a
place built as a military structure that could hold tens of thousands of
people. When defending against the cavalries of the Middle Age, there
was no better place than this.
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No, they were not being sieged, so they need not hold down the fort and
just let the civilians escape to the west through Hanzou gate.
Itami and the police force who lost contact with the command structure
but still wanted to protect the civilians, barricaded themselves in the
imperial palace with the cooperation of the refugees.
Although the security guards of the palace protested, an order from a

certain ‘Important Person’ in the Palace was all that took to appease
them.
The Edo Castle that was built by Tokugawa had never experienced a
battle before. Ironically, after hundreds of years of peace, the palace
finally showed its value as a fort.
After that, the first riot squad that was made up of guards of the Imperial
Palace and the fourth riot squad deployed from Ichigaya autonomously
started what would be known later as ‘The Defensive battle of the Two
Bridges’.
However, nobody would object to Itami’s accomplishment that saved

thousands of people a few hours prior to that. Thus, not only did Itami
receive a commendation from the Minister of Defense, he was also
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promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant.
And thus, he won the day.
Sometime later, in the special region dispatch force camp.
It was the dawn after the third attack.
The bright sky shone on the land filled with numerous amounts of
humans and fantasy beast’s carcass that covered the earth.
There were even wyverns that were shot down by the AA gun's 40mm
rounds.
It was said in the legends that the scales of a dragon were harder than
steel itself. It seemed that the legend was true, but it couldn’t withstand
40mm armour-piercing rounds raining on it.
“So a city worth of people is gone just like that?”
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Itami thought while taking in the sight in front of him.
The number of enemies that attacked Ginza was around sixty thousand.
Excluding the fantasy creatures such as ogres, the number of casualties

from the first attack to the third attack last night had amounted to sixty
thousand. After losing a total of one hundred and twenty thousand
troops, what would the enemy plan to do next?
There was no way to determine the population of this world. After all,
their mission was to secure the Gate and the area surrounding it, so they
didn’t perform any reconnaissance yet.
Using common sense, a country or tribe losing tens of thousands of

soldiers would suffer a heavy blow. There were people that looked like
children. No, they really were children, or could it be a certain race that
has such characteristics?
It wasn’t certain yet, but for a country to send children out into the
battlefield, it was proof of their despair.
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If Itami has thoughts that far, the other commanders definitely would
have the same thoughts.
That there was a need to start an investigation on this world.
In order to secure a sizeable amount of territory, defend the land around

the gate, and negotiate with the enemy, there was a need to gather
intelligence to formulate future plans. Luckily, using the Kawasaki OH.1
helicopter, they could take aerial pictures of the land around the Gate to
make a map. If a runway was built, unmanned reconnaissance drones
could be deployed.
After that, investigation on human cities, population, races, industry,

religion, political landscape and the culture of the people could be
initiated.
How were they going to investigate?
By going there directly, of course.
“Would it really work?”
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“Don’t mind whether it would work or not! You’re going!’
Major Higaki replied with a tired voice to his subordinate who was slow
to react.
Itami tilted his head bafflingly at the words of his new boss.
He was an officer serving under the 5th combat unit, a First Lieutenant
that was sort of like a burden. He wasn’t that dense to not understand
his reconnaissance mission, but he had no subordinates.
“Could it be that I have to go alone?”
There was no way he would be fine with that.
“I don’t believe I ever said that. I’m organising six deep investigation
teams. Your mission is to lead the third one to contact the residents
inside your assigned zone and understand their situation. It may be
important for the future actions of the JSDF, so try to get on their good
side if possible.”
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“Hmm...If you say so…”
Thus, Itami scratched his head and became the platoon commander of
the third reconnaissance platoon.
United States of America, White House
“Mr. President, here’s the 6th report regarding the Gate in Tokyo.”
After spreading jam and butter on a piece of toast, President Dirrell ate it
before receiving the papers placed in a binder from his capable aide.
After glancing through the few pieces of papers, he placed the report on
the table.
“Mr. Crealon. According to this report, the Japanese Army went through
much trouble to go through the Gate, only to shut themselves behind
walls around the Gate like turtles?”
“It’s as you say, Sir. The only action the JSDF has done recently is
strengthening their defence, nothing more.”
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The aide didn't use the term Army, but Self-Defence Force. However, the
President didn’t mind his aide’s nonchalant correction and continued by
saying.
“Hmph… an overwhelming technology gap. Superb soldiers who have

undergone strict training. Just what the hell are they hesitating for? Tell
me what you think.”
“Mr. President, please allow my blunt statement. Japan has learned from
the World War. Although they have an overwhelming fighting power, to
completely gain control over those vast areas of land, just using
weapons isn’t enough. What they can do now is, after completely
grasping the political situations of the Special Region, and adopt the
strategy of suppressing key targets.”
That could be seen if one considers the unusual number of mid-level

commanders in the force deployed beyond the Gate. After completing
the phase of securing the Gate, they are now deploying small squads for
intelligence gathering and pacification work.
After dabbing the grease at his lips, the president glanced at his
subordinate.
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“In other words, the Japanese Army is investigating the situation in the
Special Region right now?”
“It is as you say, Mr. President. Prime Minister Houjou seems to be a

cautious man and by not rushing things, he is now taking things step by
step.”
President Dirrell took a sip of his coffee.
After taking a tough stance against the Ginza Incident with an unyielding
attitude, Prime Minister Houjou had gained an unexpected boost in his
support and is now politically stable. Thus, there was no need to rush
things as it is.
On the other hand, President Dirrell’s support has been going down the
drain. He had to show significant results to his people soon, that’s how
the situation was for him.
“My dear aide, the Gate is a new uncharted land.”
“So it is, Mr. President.”
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“There must be countless possibilities beyond the Gate. Just imagine it.”
Untouched resources, overwhelming technological advantage,

unpolluted nature. For an economy that was made up of capitalism, it
was like a pot of gold.
The presence of resources was confirmed.
After analysing the equipments of the attackers of Ginza, they were all
made of mineral resources similar to Earth. Not only that, it seems that
the Special Region could be rich in rare minerals such as gold and
diamonds.
The difference in technologies could be determined from the design and

types of weapons.
Although the equipment looked like works of art at a glance, it was only
at the level of handmade items. The material and built wasn’t uniform,
and there wasn’t any set design.
After considering the equipment of the cavalries and their attack
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strategies, one could easily predict the society and productivity of their
civilization.
On top of that was the existence of fantasy creatures, beast and demi-
humans on the other side of the Gate. Their genes could be said as a
revolutionary mountain of treasure for the biological researchers.
This was the Gate’s worth.
This unnatural phenomenon had attracted the interests of scientists

around the world.
“Don’t worry, Mr. President. America is allies with Japan. With our similar
values and our strong economic ties, the benefits reaped from the
Special Region should be open to America. It’s about time we work
towards that.”
“It isn’t enough.”
Speaking of actions, the European Union had started to react.
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China, Russia, as well as other rising countries have already started to

act behind the scenes for the benefits granted from the Gate.
“The problem is, to what extent we can secure our interests.”
This was the result President Dirrell wanted to show to his people.
“Therefore, I think our country can participate in the action more.

Considering the alliance between Japan and America, how about
deploying our own army into the Gate?”
However, the aide shook his head regretfully.
“Our hands are currently full with the situation in the Middle East and we
can’t spare the effort.”
Also, the possibilities of the Gate may not all be benefits. To tame the
uneducated barbarians in the Special Region, large amounts of budget,
talents and time were needed. Just like during the time the British
colonized other nations, just using force was not enough.
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The president sighed deeply at the annoying reality that prevented him
from getting his way.
“Based on the report, the battles in the Special Region seem to be

intense?”
“The number of ammunition consumption was alarming. But it seemed

to be tapering down. The JSDF must have secured the Gate. After all, the
difference in equipment and training is just too vast.”
“Hmph...So what shall we do?”
“It’s fine to just supply Japan with weapons and ammunition. We just
need to give a heads up to the weapons’ industry. Next would be the
signing an agreement to send our people in for scientific research. After
that will be dependent on the situation.”
If they supported Japan too much, they may be dragged into a bad
situation.
Many countries agreed that the JSDF being sent into the Special Region
was for a just cause. But for a few countries such as China and South
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Korea criticised that Japan’s militarism had reared its head again and it
is now invading others again.
No matter what Japan does, these countries would criticise its actions
anyway, but he couldn’t ignore it since their denouncement was public.
Should Japan decide to monopolise the profits from the Special Region,
more countries with similar stance would emerge. Should such a
situation emerges, America would not be safe from being called an
accomplice to Japan.
“Let Japan pick the chestnut out of the fire.”
“Then execute an adequate plan when the situation calls for it.” said the
aide.
However, President Dirrell still wasn’t satisfied.
For now, Japan had been moving all the right pieces, not allowing
America to get involved.
President Dirrell had to show some significant results for his people.
However, he couldn’t just ignore his aide’s warnings. Clicking his tongue
in annoyance, he agreed to his aide’s advice and move on to the next
topic requiring his attention.
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The appearance of the Gate had the second largest impact in history
ever since Columbus’s discovery of America.
Just like the discovery of America had caused Spain to development into
an empire, the appearance of the Gate will affect the world’s structure
greatly. Thus, every government in the world was now keeping a close
eye on what actions Japan would take regarding the Gate.
Ula Pianca (Imperial Castle)
Each day, hundreds of lords and nobles would visit the castle.
Senators, nobles, and courtiers would gather in meetings, treating

politics just like any other chores.
In the meetings, they would enjoy delicious foods, graceful dancers,

gambling, courting before engaging in dialogues... That was the general
feel of it. The nobles might even decide the deployment of armies based
on the number of games they hunted.
However, with the recent defeats haunting their minds, each of them
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had a grim look on their face.
The beautiful pieces of art now looked like pebbles on the road while the
graceful music sounded hollow to them.
What caused the Empire to hold its dominant position among the
countries when it was under the reign of Emperor Molt Sol Augustus was
the overwhelming military force and immense wealth.
Even a child would know that these were the reasons that the Empire
was feared by many countries.
Now, the Empire could be said to have lost an arm.
As the generals and nobles in the court were part of the expedition,
there was a huge amount of casualties.
With such an outstanding amount of dead people, the nobles had to

spend their day rushing around from one funeral to another.
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The emperor himself hosted the ceremony with mourning clothes and
the lazy days of the castle continued.
“Your Majesty, the Alliance Army has suffered a major defeat. The dead
and missing have reached sixty thousand. If we include the ones who
were wounded, but are still able to resume their duties, it is around a
hundred thousand. The survivors of the Alliance Army have each
returned to their respective countries.”
These numbers had not included the ogres, goblins and giants. The
demi-humans which had inferior intelligence were treated like
warhorses.
Hearing Domestic Minister Marquis Marcus’s report, the emperor nodded

his head tiredly.
“Just as planned. The cowardly senators who were afraid after we

suffered some losses have nothing to worry about anymore.”
“But, the movement of the enemies from beyond the Gate is a concern.”
“Hmm, are you getting paranoid?”
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“I was born with this paranoia of mine. I will never attain such
magnanimity as Your Majesty.”
"So be it. In that case, I shall act as to relieve the worries of my trusted
retainer. This is not such a difficult problem. The distance from Alnus Hill
to here is far. It will be fine to use the Empire's extensive territory as a
rampart."
The emperor continued.
If the enemies started moving their pieces, all the cities and villages
leading up to the Empire shall be burned down, the wells poisoned and
the food seized till the last grain of wheat. Therefore, amidst the
scorched earth, no army could obtain supplies and thus stop their
advancement. With this, no matter how strong their army and their
mages might be, a chance for them to show their weakness would arise.
If there was no way to forage supplies locally, supplies would have to be

sent from their own country. It would be a heavy burden on their horses.
This way, the enemy's fighting potential would be lower the closer they
get to the capital, giving the Empire’s army the advantage when fighting
near the capital.
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If they built strongholds at various locations and forced the enemies to

bleed, the enemies would gradually crumble under the pressure. Such
was the basis of this world’s military science.
Make the enemies advance deep into the enemy's territory and hit them
when they are tired. Without doubt it was an easily understandable and
effective tactic in any world. However, scorched earth tactics would turn
their own lands into crisp, and it would be hard to undo the damage.
Such tactics disregarded the livelihoods of the people by robbing their
food and water, and the support of the people would be lost. Thus, the
people would have resentment towards the government that would last
for generations. Considering all these cons, it was hard to issue such
orders politically. However...
“But...the tax revenue would decrease.”
Marquis Marcus used a reserved manner to articulate the damage that

would be done to the people.
The emperor only said “Hmph. Just cancel a few planned parades and
postpone the plans for the imperial villa.” For the powerful Empire, the
suffering of the people and the approval of the citizens were such trivial
things.
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“There was talk of Marquis Casel, making a fuss.”
“Why do I have to care about what Marquis Casel's sanity?”
“It seems like he and some of the senators are conspiring to declare a
state of emergency counsel.”
The Senate’s counsel could veto the orders from the emperor. The
Senate even has the power to dismiss the emperor.
In the history of the Empire, the number of cases where the thrones of
emperors were threatened due to the counsel from the Senate was not
low.
“Hmph, how interesting. Just let them do what they want. Who knows,
this may be a chance to round up all those conspirators at the same
time. Order the Privy Council to look into this matter.”
Marcus had an astonished expression on his face for a second, but he

still bowed respectfully towards the emperor.
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The emperor’s weapon against the Senate was the crime of treason. It
required the Privy Council to present evidence in order to sentence
them.
“It seems like many have taken the privilege of being a Senator for
granted. Looks like it's time to remove the weeds.”
Marquis Marcus bowed his head respectfully.
Suddenly, a voice that was clear as a bell cut through the quiet air in the
palace.
“Your Majesty!”
The disrespectful person appearing before the emperor was the

princess. In other words, one of the emperor’s daughters.
She had flame-like vermillion hair and white porcelain skin that was
accentuated by her white silk garment. Kneeling on one knee, she
displayed flawless court etiquettes.
“What’s the matter?”
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“The Empire is now having an emergency. What has Your Majesty did to
curb this problem? Is Your Majesty getting senile?”
Such sharp words emerged from her beautiful face.
Realising that there was another one who mistook privilege for authority,
Emperor Molt smiled bitterly.
The princess’s tongue was sharp as usual.
“Your Highness, what urgent matters do you have to barge into the
chambers of His Majesty?”
If the emperor’s third daughter, Piña Co Lada just sat still with a smile on
her face, she would look just like a peerless work of art. However, her
sharp tongue have been said to have made weak men faint, which was
infamous in Empire.
“Obviously, it’s about the bandits occupying Arnus Hill. It seems that till
this day Arnus Hill is still under their control. I couldn’t imagine that your
Majesty would still sit with such a relaxed posture after hearing what
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happened to the Allied Army. Marquis, have you reported the facts to his
Majesty?”
"Your Highness, I certainly did give the report. The Alliance Army did
suffer heavy losses, but they defended bravely against the enemy's
invasion of the Falmat Continent. Thanks to the courageous Alliance
Army who sacrificed their lives in the battle, the enemy who received
both physical and psychological damage and are shivering in fear as
they built strong forts in panic, hiding within like hibernating bears. Such
enemies are no threat to us at all."
After hearing Marquis Marcus’s words, Piña replied with a ‘hmph’.
“I’m not a kid anymore, I know that how things are put across matters.
But to turn an army’s complete defeat into victory is unheard of for me.”
“It’s the truth.”
“So you are going to sacrifice the truth and paint the history books with
your lies?”
“Even if you put it like that, I cannot answer.”
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“You sly courtier! Isn’t the Holy Hill of Arnus still under the enemy’s
complete control? They defended successfully? The truth is that the foot
of the hill is filled with corpses.”
“It’s true that we took some losses…”
“Then, what are we going to do from now on?”
Marquis Marcus played dumb while explaining to her the projects such
as recruitment of new troops and their training. Piña clicked her tongue
annoyingly at Marcus’s words that anyone who was army related would
know of.
“How many years do you think it will take? Could you ensure that the
enemies of Arnus Hill would sit quietly and wait?”
“Your Highness. I am aware of that. But currently, all we can do is to

follow the steps of recruiting, training and rebuilding of the army. Even
the vassal states have lost their troops. Even if another Alliance Army
was formed, the time needed for it to become reality would be
proportional to the national strength. Even if the other countries
reconstructed their armies later than us, they will catch up sooner or
later.”
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Hearing this, Piña exclaimed astonishingly:
“It would be impossible to defend against the invaders if we wait that

long!”
Sighing, Emperor Molt held up his hand to stop their bickering.
Based on his observations, Piña had the tendency to cause unrest. Those
without responsibilities were like this; always criticising but had no
constructive suggestions. Even if they had made suggestions, it was all a
wishful thinking that disrespected the tradition and social status of
others. If someone voiced objections against them, they would counter
by asking “What would you do then!”
For example, the only solution now is to follow the steps Marquis Marcus
had said. Buying time for that would be dependent on diplomacy. To
achieve that, the emperor’s plan to gather the vassal country’s troops
and eliminate them in one go was successful.
The resigned emperor shrugged and said to his daughter.
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“If you put it this way Piña, I have something to say.”
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“Regarding the enemies of Arnus hill, what information we have on our

hands now is very limited. Why don’t you go check it out?”
“Me?”
“Yes. We are still rebuilding of the Empire’s army, so we are lacking

scouts and can’t draw them from our standing army. The enlisting and
training of new recruits will need time as Marquis Marcus said. The only
troops that are free and is adequately trained would be your Order of
Knights. If the knights are not your playmates for pretend games, that
is…”
Under the provoking gaze of the Emperor, Piña shut her lips.
The time needed to travel to Arnus Hill was ten days on horseback.
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It was the dangerous frontlines, where tens of thousands of troops had

perished. Now she and her Order of Knights had to rush to there by
themselves...
Furthermore, it wasn’t for a magnificent battle, but a simple scouting

trip.
For knights, who were mocked to be playing a game of pretend,

although they took pride for being assigned missions, the contents of
the mission were dissatisfying.
Also, she and her order of knights had zero experience in a real battle.
Could she and her knights successfully complete this dangerous
mission?
The emperor’s gaze carried the meaning of ‘if you don’t want to then
shut the hell up’.
“Well then. Do you accept this order?”
Gritting her teeth, Piña raised her head with a determined look and...
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“I have received it.”
After she said those proud words Emperor Molt responded

ceremoniously.
“Umu, then I shall look forward towards your achievements.”
“Well then, Father. I shall be on my way.”
With that, Piña Co Lada turned her back to the throne as she left the
hall.
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 2
“The sky is so blue, as expected of a different world.”
Itami muttered to himself. Huge lumps of clouds floated in the sky, with
no utility and telephone poles obscuring the view. The sky was clear no
matter where he looked.
“You can see the same scenery in Hokkaido too.”
Sergeant Kurata replied from his driver’s seat. He came from the
garrison in Hokkaido.
“As for me, I was hoping a place where giant trees roam, huge dragons
fly, and fairies buzz around. But the Humans we saw in the village so far
are all Humans and the livestock are just cattle and sheep, such a
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disappointment.”
Kurata had just finished his Sergeant training course and was only
twenty one years old. After getting to know Itami and his casual
approach to hierarchy relationships, Kurata spoke without reservations.
With the blue sky as the background, a green coloured military convoy
drove through the plains in single file.
Leading the way was a Type 73 light truck, with a High Mobility Vehicle
(HMV) behind it, and a Light Armour Vehicle (LAV) at the very back.
In simple words, the two in front were jeeps and the one behind was an
armoured vehicle.
Itami was seated in the HMV in the middle of the convoy.
Behind him were the members of the Third Recon Platoon, under his
command. Three vehicles and twelve members, that was the full
strength of this platoon.
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Sergeant Major Kuwahara Soichiro who was in the back seat with his
map laid out leaned his face towards the driver seat.
“Hey Kurata, you should be able to see a small stream soon. Turn right
and go along it, and we will hit a forest soon. That would be the forest
the chief of Coda Village mentioned.”
Orientating himself by using a compass and a map made via aerial

photography, Sergeant Major Kuwahara who was giving directions
worked all the way up through the rank from private, and was fifty years
old. He had vast experience as a trainer in the training department, and
was respected and feared by recruits who addressed him as ‘Oyatsu-
san’. Kurata completed his basic military training as a recruit in
Sobuyama under the tutelage of Sergeant Major Kuwahara.
There were no satellites in this world, so GPS could not be used. Hence,
they could only rely on maps and compasses. Only those who were
experienced could handle this task, so Itami pushed the operation of the
platoon onto Kuwahara.
“Lieutenant Itami, I have a suggestion. Let’s stop before the forest and
set up camp there.”
Itami looked behind him to express his agreement when he heard what
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Kuwahara said. Kuwahara nodded in reply and picked up the handset of

the radio.
Kurata checked his distance from the LAV behind him through the rear
view mirror.
“Hmm, Lieutenant Itami, we are not going to drive all the way there in
one shot?”
“If we go into the forest now, we will need to spend the night there
right? Spending a night in a forest with who knows what creatures in it?
I’ll pass on that. Even if there is a village as indicated by the intel, we
would alarm them if we reached at night correct? We are the JSDF who
loves peace and the citizens, how could we make such threatening
moves?”
“That’s why only a small group will enter the forest.” Itami said.
The objective of the reconnaissance was to communicate with the locals

and find out more about the people. It would be more convenient to
travel in a helicopter, but they purposely chose to travel by land in order
to interact with the natives there.
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Oppressing them with violence was not their goal. They had to do what
they could to avoid earning the ire of the locals. That was the directive
for this operation.
They had visited three settlements so far and attempted to converse

with the natives of this land. All of them said the war was the business of
the lords and had nothing to do with them, and didn’t seem to express
dislike or hate for Itami and the others. In that case, Itami’s group didn’t
need to do unnecessary things to complicate their work.
“Eh—”
Itami took out a black cover note book from his chest pocket and flipped
to the page that detailed common phrases in the local languages and
started practicing. These were written by language specialists after they
questioned the prisoners from the Ginza incident.
“Sabaru, haru, ugutu—? (Hello, how do you do?)”
“Utterly monotonous, shouldn’t you attend a language school first?”
<TL: line from a commercial>
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“Shut up!”
Itami knocked Kurata’s helmet.
And so, the Third Recon Platoon reached the plain before the forest. The
first thing that caught their eyes were raising columns of black smoke.
“Shit’s on fire yo.”
Itami kept his eyes on the smoke in the sky and replied to Kurata “Yup,
it’s all burning.” Flickers of fire could be seen in the forest.
“So this is the power of nature.”
“You mean a monster movie?”
Kuwahara handed his binoculars to Itami as he said that, and pointed

slightly to the right.
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Itami looked at the place Kuwahara was pointing at.
“That’s!”
A giant creature that looked like a T-rex with wings was scorching the
ground with flames.
“Single headed King Ghidorah?”
Kurata retorted: “You’re outdated old pops, that’s a dragon.”
Kuwahara was from a generation who would think of Ri Sho Ryu (Bruce
Lee) when he hears the term Ryu (Dragon).That was why their dialogue
was out of sync.
A petite Woman Army Corps (WAC) personnel alighted from the Type 73
truck in front and jogged over.
Two WACs were assigned to this recon platoon. When interacting with
the natives, it would be better for females to be present, hence their
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deployment. For example, in Islamic nations that were full of taboos, it

would be better for women to converse with the women.
“Lieutenant Itami, what’s the matter? We can’t just stay here.”
This was Staff Sergeant Kuribayashi.
Most male JSDF would ask her if her equipment was too heavy after
having seen her. She was covered in so much gear that it looked like it
was moving her. However, anyone who tried to bully her because of her
small stature would meet with a terrible fate. She was a warrior who
held a close quarters combat badge after all.
“Do dragons have a habit of breathing fire into deserted forests?”
Even though she was queried, there was no way Kuribayashi would know
the answer. But she didn’t answer “I don’t know” directly and adopted a
sassy attitude.
“Lieutenant, if you are curious about the behaviour of dragons, why not
have a closer look at what it is attacking?”
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She asked instead.
“Kuribayashi-chan, I am scared of going alone, can you go with me?”
“I absolutely don’t want to.”
“Ah, is that so?”
Itami scratched his head hard, and then said:
“Find a suitable position to take cover and see how it goes. After the
dragon leaves, we will enter the forest and render aid to any survivors.”
They had intel indicating that there was a village in the forest. That was
probably what the dragon was attacking, Itami thought.
In the end, Itami’s group only entered the forest the following morning.
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The fire burned through the night, spewing forth smog that would hinder
any reconnaissance. Thanks to the rain that fell at midnight, the forest
fire finally died down and they could enter the forest.
The view inside the forest was completely clear.
The leaves were burned and the trunks of the trees were reduced to
charcoal.
Wisps of smoke rose from the blackened ground.
Residual heat still remained in the ground, and they could feel the heat
from the soles of their feet.
“It would be a miracle if there were any survivors.”
Itami agreed with Kurata, but he still headed for the village anyway.
After a two hour hike, they finally made it to a clearing without any
trees.
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If the forest wasn’t burned down, it would have taken at least half a day
to make it here.
Surveying the area, Itami could see signs of several buildings. If he

looked closely… No, he didn’t need to, he could see several blackened
Human-shaped objects. Instead of Human-shaped objects, it would be
more appropriate to call them burned mummies.
“Lieutenant, these are…”
“Don’t say it, Kurata…”
“Bleh, I’m going to throw up.”
Kurata rubbed his abdomen as he looked around him.
Watching out for attacks, they slowly walked around the remains of the
village.
All the buildings were burned. Everything above the stone floor was
destroyed, reducing all of it into piles of rubbles. Blackened corpses lay
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under these structures.
“Master Sergeant Nishina, take Katsumoto and Tozu and search the
east. Kurata, Kuribayashi; we will take the west.”
“Search? For what?”
In response to Kuribayashi’s question, Itami shrugged and answered:

“Erm~ Survivors?”
After searching about an hour, they confirmed that there were probably
no survivors in this village.
Itami wiped away his sweat as he sat beside a well. The other members
were still searching through the things used by the villagers here and
were wandering about.
Immediately, Kuribayashi jogged over to him with a clipboard.
“Lieutenant, there are three large buildings and twenty-nine mid-sized to

small buildings in this village. We confirmed twenty seven bodies, that’s
too few. Some might have been crushed by the debris when the
buildings were burning.”
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“Let’s say there are three people per building, there should be ninety
people in this village. Including larger families, there should be about a
hundred here. Were they wiped out, or hiding somewhere?”
“How brutal.”
“Yeah. I will need to report the existence of huge dragons that attack
villages back to base.”
“During the Gate defensive battles there were enemy riding wyverns
too. Those were much smaller than what we saw yesterday, but their
scales could withstand the impact of 7.62mm rounds. We barely pierced
their soft bellies with 12.7mm rounds.”
The breadth of Kuribayashi’s knowledge made Itami widen his eyes.
He had heard rumours about the collection of wyvern carcasses and the
hardness tests performed on their scales, but he didn’t know about the
results. Under normal conditions, 7.62mm rounds could pierce 10mm
steel plates. Which meant the scales of wyverns were harder than that.
“Just like an APC.”
“That’s right.”
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Itami realized he was running low on water after placing his mouth onto
his bottle. After swirling it around for a moment, he looked around and
realized there was a well behind him. Grabbing the bucket beside him,
he prepared to lower it into the well and pull it up with the rope.
“Looks like we need to investigate where the dragon’s nest is, and its
area of activity.”
Saying that, he dropped the bucket into the well.
When he did that, he heard a sharp ‘donk’.
“Hmmm?”
Normally, they should be the sound of something dropping into the

water.
He was expecting a splashing sound instead, so Itami looked into the

well in surprise. Kuribayashi lean forward and looked down curiously too
as she mumbled “What is that?”
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And then…
There was a young girl with long golden hair and a bump on her head
floating in the water like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Tuka, get up quick.”
The young girl was awakened by her father from her dreams.
“Father, what is it? I was sleeping well.”
She got up and said while rubbing her eyes.
Looking around, she saw the brilliant sunlight shining into her room.
Being stirred from her afternoon nap made her dizzy. But she still
noticed that the expression of her father who woke her was strange.
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She could hear noise of people scampering and shouting, the village was
in chaos. She understood from such an atmosphere that something big
was happening.
“What is happening?”
Tuka found the answer by herself. Outside the window, the figure of a
giant dragon could be seen in the sky. There weren’t any dragons
nesting around here, so this was the first time she had ever seen one. Of
course, Tuka learned about them from her father’s general lessons when
she was young.
“Is that a Flame Dragon?”
Her father was holding a bow, the common weapon of the Elves. And he
was taking out the valuable arrows from the drawer, ones with mithril
arrow head and feathers.
Is father going to fight?
Tuka reached for her trusted bow on reflex.
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“Please don’t.”
However, her father stopped her verbally.
“Why?”
“You need to escape.”
“I want to fight too.”
“No, if anything happens to you, your mother will tell me off.”
Her father will only mention her departed mother when he absolutely
needed her to listen. But the daughter who was already matured
mentally rejected him with a smile.
“If the opponent is a Flame Dragon, it doesn’t matter where I run to. And
it is better to have one more soldier right?”
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It was said that the favourite food of the carnivorous Flame Dragons
were the meat of Elves and Humans. If they don’t defeat the Flame
Dragon here, it would pursue them by smell no matter where they ran.
No matter how hard the earthbound Elves or Humans run, they won’t be
able to escape the dragon flying in the sky.
Outside the window, the warriors were shooting their arrows into the air
or summoning wind and water spirits to attack the Flame Dragon.
However, they were basically ineffective.
Instead, the fire spewed by the Flame Dragon burned the people,
making them scream. Women and children trying to escape were caught
in the flame and reduced to a crisp.
Their death throes shot into Tuka’s ears, making her furrow her brows.
“It’s dangerous in here, let’s move outside!”
The father grabbed Tuka’s hand, while Tuka held on to her bow and
arrows tightly.
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Harrowing screams filled the air.
When Tuka came out from her house, she saw the girl she grew up with
torn apart by the fangs of the Flame Dragon.
“Yuno!”
Her dear friend was eaten. Coming into terms with that fact, Tuka
readied her bow swiftly. She might be young, but she was an Elf who
was great with bow since birth, and wasn’t weak.
She pulled the string with all her strength and released, but her arrow
was deflected.
Aside from Tuka, the other Elven warriors fired countless arrows at the
Flame Dragons, but they were all blocked by the heavy dragon scales
without doing any damage.
After chewing and swallowing the Elven girl, the Flame Dragon turned its
giant eyes, picking its next prey.
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“Yu, Yuno she, Yuno…”
The moment the Flame Dragon looked at her, Tuka was overwhelmed
with terror.
She couldn’t move even though she wanted to escape, couldn’t speak
even though she wanted to scream. Just locking eyes with the dragon
made her freeze in fear. Tuka looked as if she had lost her soul, even her
will to escape was gone without a trace.
“Tuka, No!”
Her father shot his arrow as he summoned the spirits.
“Ainu, uur nya pilin o poldore varyar ilya”
With the aid of the wind spirit, the glowing arrow flew towards the eye of
the Flame Dragon.
That instant, the howl of the Flame Dragon shook the air. It made all of
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them wonder whether the shockwave would tear all the living creatures
in the surrounding apart.
“The eye! Aim for the eye!”
The warriors concentrated their arrows towards the head of the Flame
Dragon. Shooting the grounded dragon was fine, but aiming for the eye
of a flying dragon was difficult even for Elves who were master archers.
The Flame Dragon switched its target to the elf that hurt it.
Using giant pillars of flame, it burned the village and tore the warriors to
shreds with its claws and fangs. It swiped, it stomped and it swallowed.
“Tuka, you must run!”
The father roared at his daughter. But his daughter just stood there
motionlessly.
Her gentle father had never spoken so loudly before, he was just a good
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and meek father normally. However, during such moments of crisis…

When he needed to be courageous and violent, he could do so as well.
Before his daughter was caught between the jaws of the dragon, the
father tackled her away. He then picked her up and sprinted.
“Incoming!!”
Voices of the warrior mixed together just like a choir.
Some of the many arrows hit the gaps of the dragon scale, mouth and
the base of the claws.
However, the dragon was fearless as its huge body descended.
The father said to his daughter.
“You must hide in here, alright?”
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He then threw his daughter into the well.
The last thing she saw before she was thrown in was a giant maw and
sharp claws closing onto her father’s back.
She spent a long time in the well.
The burning village and forest could be heard clearly. The ash drifted
into the well along with the roars and screams of warriors.
Being submerged waist deep in the cold water made her shiver. She was
afraid, tense, uneasy and her tears kept flowing out.
Before she realized it, the noise stopped.
What she could hear was her breathing and heart beating, as well as the
rippling of the water. The blue sky had turned black before she knew it.
But somehow, the area around the well was still brightly lit. The fire
burning the village shone into the well.
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She didn’t know how much time had passed when it started to rain.
Her entire body was soaked, the water drenched her face and got into
her eyes. But she couldn’t move her gaze away from the sky.
“Ah Tuka, are you okay?”
Her father showed his face while saying this. She had already seen this
hallucinations several times.
However, she didn’t hear anyone no matter how long she waited.
The disgusting idea that everyone was already dead appeared in her
mind, crushing her heart.
“Father… Save me.”
The well water was cold. The chill, fatigue and hunger siphoned Tuka’s
strength to stand away. Despair robbed her will away.
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“At this rate, I guess I am going to die?”
Tuka thought. It was unfathomable, but she wasn’t afraid of death. Or

maybe, it was better if she just died like this. She would be liberated
from fear and unease if she died. Solitude and sadness would dissipate
too. Death was the only way she would be free from all this suffering,
that’s how she felt.
Suddenly, she seemed to hear the voice of someone above the well.
She looked up despite her murky consciousness. Her vision was then
covered completely by something that was like a wooden bucket.
A ‘donk’ sound.
Sharp pain similar to breathing in spice deeply through her nose filled
her sight with stars.
Her consciousness drifted far away.
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“Oiawmjeiofjpo aiojaioejf”
She felt her cheeks being slapped, and heard quizzing voices.
From her blurred vision, she saw someone watching at her, he looked
very much like her father.
“Fa… ther…”
“It’s an elf, Lieutenant.”
Sergeant Kurata said and Itami replied “Looks like it.”
“And a blonde elf too. Ku~~~ there is hope!”
“Kurata, you find Elves moe?”
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“No. If I have to pick one, I will prefer the sexy type. If there are Elves,
there must be lusty witches, pure succubus, passionate vampire girls
and elegant monster girls right? By the way, a naughty cute werewolf
girl is fine too.”
Images of R18 doujinshi describing these girls came to Itami’s mind…

But he felt a bit terrified that they really do exist.
The Beast Girls would probably look more realistic than the actress who
wore make up in the musical based on a Tezuka manga. If the witches
and vampires Kurata spoke of really existed, they would definitely be
moe.
“Well, the chance of them existing is definitely higher now.”
“They, they definitely exist!”
Moving away from Kurata who seemed to be burning up while clenching

his fist and saying “How moe!”, Itami cheered him on with “Well, good
luck.” from a distance.
Kuribayashi and another WAC, Staff Sergeant Kurokawa Mari, were busy
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taking off the drenched clothes of the girl who appeared to be sixteen

years old, and wrapping a blanket around her.
Although the men wanted to watch this scene, it was impossible with the
threat of punishment from Kuribayashi’s iron fist. They couldn’t even go
near.
Itami could only watch from afar as he coiled ropes up after going into
the well. The water that soaked his clothes at the bottom of the well was
cold, and his boots made squishing sounds because of the water in
them.
The other members used their issued shovels to dig holes for the
corpses, or clear the debris to collect artifacts. They gathered furniture
and earthenware used in the villagers’ daily lives, and items that
survived the fire such as bows and arrows. After all, taking video and
photographs were important work, they needed to bring this information
back.
Itami bent over to take off his boots and turned them upside down.
Water spilled out with a splash. He didn’t want to wear it right away, but
he couldn’t walk without it. And so, he stuffed newspapers from his bag
into them in order to absorb as much water as possible, then wrung the
water out of his socks before putting it back on.
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Moments later, Staff Sergeant Kurokawa (who was a licensed nurse)

came over.
She saluted Itami, so he had to return the salute. However, Itami who
was barely 170cm had to look up at Staff Sergeant Kurokawa who was
190cm tall.
Kuribayashi who used all sorts of ways to fudge past the minimum
height requirement and Kurokawa was called the beanpole and
shortstack WAC of 3rd recon.
“Her body temperature is back to normal. The bump on her head that
looked like something out of a manga had subsided, I think she will be
fine… But what do we do next? We can’t stay here too long, and it would
be too inhumane to leave this girl here alone.”
Kurokawa said in a calm and soothing tone.
Unlike the short tempered and brash Kuribayashi, the tall Kurokawa was
even mannered and quiet in contrast.
“Seems like the entire village is destroyed, and we can’t just abandon
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someone we saved. In order to keep her safe, we should take her with
us.”
Kurokawa smiled. Itami felt that time passed slowly when he was with
this lady, how unfathomable.
“I was pretty sure you would say something like that, Lieutenant.”
“You mean I am a real humanitarian, right?”
“Well, I wonder about that? I was thinking you have special taste or
because that girl is an elf, Lieutenant. It would be rude for me to say
more.”
Itami started sweating profusely, down his neck, into his collar and onto
his clothes.
According to their schedule, they need to visit two or three more

villages, but the Elven girl needed emergency medical care, so Itami
planned to backtrack and return to base. After setting up the antenna to
seek advice from base, he received a reply that was like ‘yeah, fine, just
get on with it.’
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“Sergeant Major Kuwahara… That’s how it is, I will be counting on you.

Let’s head back to Kouda village.”
After Itami said that, he got onto the passenger seat of the HMV. Kurata
will drive and Kuwahara will direct the entire platoon from the back seat.
In order to care for the elf, Kurokawa stayed with her.
The third recon platoon set off once again.
Their trip back was peaceful too. It was hard to believe that just this
morning a dragon was flying around and annihilated an entire village.
A clear sky without clouds and vast plains as far as the eyes could see.
Nearly half the day’s journey was spent in the dust kicked up by the
convoy. Compared to the time they came, the recon platoon was more
energetic and it felt like fleeing to them.
“It would be terrible if the dragon chased after us.”
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“Don’t say it, it might just happen.”
When he heard those words from the driver’s seat, Itami couldn’t help
retorting.
This was an unpaved road and the suspension of the vehicle couldn’t
absorb the shock completely, so it shook intensely.
Kurokawa took the girl’s blood pressure and pulse, then asked with her
head tilted.
“What’s the normal blood pressure and heart rate for elves?” She asked,
which left Itami dumbfounded. “Her vitals have stabilized, but they are a
bit low compared to the norm for Humans.” She reported.
“Is she fine?”
“Her breathing has calmed down, her blood pressure, heart rate and
temperature are stable. She is not sweating unnaturally… She is fine by
Human standards.”
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Kurokawa, who didn’t know about the biology of Elves, could only
answer this way. Itami felt that contacting the locals and conversing with
the elf would be the best course of action.
The villagers of Kouda welcomed Itami’s group with an ‘Oh, you are here
again’ kind of feeling. They were not hostile and just greeted them
casually.
Itami looked at his dictionary as he talked to the village chief and

explained the situation, how they found the village in the forest as
directed, how it had been reduced to ashes by the dragon attack, e.t.c.
“What? Annihilated? That’s terrible!”
Itami flipped through his tiny dictionary and chose the phrase to say.
“Also~. We went into forest. Big bird. Forest burned down. Village
burned down.”
There were no appropriate words, so Itami said ‘big bird’ as he sketched

the picture of a dragon on his notebook. Itami was good at making such
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illustrations.
The chief’s face turned pale when he saw the sketch.
“This, this is a dragon, and a Flame Dragon on top of that!”
Itami’s vocabulary increased with these new words. He wrote down the
words for dragon in romaji.
“Dragon, breath fire. Humans, many burned.”
“Not Humans, you mean Elves. Those living there are Elves.”
Using the language of this world, the chief repeated ‘re-namu’ several
times. Itami wrote down on his dictionary under the ‘E’ pages and wrote
‘Elf/ Re-namu’.
“Yes. Elves there. Many died.”
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“We are very grateful you told us this. We have to alert the villages
nearby. Dragons who know the taste of Elves and Humans will attack
villages and towns when they get hungry.”
To express his gratitude, the chief Shook Itami’s hand, and shouted to
his family and the people around him.
When they learned that a dragon attacked an Elven village, the face of
the villagers turned pale and they ran off.
“One person, girl saved.”
Itami’s words made the chief raised his head with an ‘Oh’. The chief was
then led to the back compartment of the HMV to show him the
unconscious blonde girl.
“How tragic. This child is left all alone, Everyone she knew is gone.”
The chief stroked the blonde locks of the Elven girl. Their culture might
be different, but Kouda village had some interaction with the Elven
village.
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The Elves watch over the forest, stopping the hunters from wandering
into its depths. They would also help the hunters when they were lost or
injured, even going as far as to escort them home.
Not meddling with each other’s affairs and staying away from each
other. But in a way, they respected each other.
“Erm~... This one, village take care…?”
The chief understood what Itami was saying, but he shook his head.
“Our race and culture are different. You should entrust her with an Elven
village. And besides, we must flee from here.”
“Village, abandon?”
“We are escaping. If you didn’t inform us, the entire village would be
destroyed. We are very grateful.”
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 3
There was a small patch of trees located some distance from Coda
Village, and within those trees was a small house.
The house was roughly the size of two six-tatami rooms. There were two
small windows in its walls which were designed to allow the maximum
amount of light and wind into the house, due to the lack of glass in this
world.
Its walls were made of sun-dried bricks laid on top of each other, and
was covered in ivy vines.
The light that filtered through the arching canopy above them warmed
the surrounding air causing the house to have an elegant feel to it.
Someone had parked a wagon in front of the house. The bed was
buckling under the weight of a small mountain of crates, sacks, and
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books tied together with twine.
After looking at the amount of luggage on the wagon and the donkey
grazing beside the road, one might ask if this was too much for one poor
beast to draw.
In front of this heap stood an obviously troubled person, clutching a

bundle of books.
She was a girl with silver hair, and looked to be around 14 or 15 years of
age. She was wearing a kantoi.
(TL Note: A Kantoi is something between a poncho and a robe.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B2%AB%E9%A0%AD%E8%A1%A3)
“Master, we can’t keep piling things onto the wagon.”
No matter what they did, they simply could not cram anything else onto
the wagon. The girl calmly related this fact to the person inside the
house.
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“Lelei! Can’t you think of something?”
A snowy-bearded old man poked his head out from a nearby window,
with a “I can’t take this” expression on his wrinkled face.
“It would make more sense to leave the Coam fruits and the Lochte
pears behind.”
The girl called Lelei removed the sacks full of ripe fruits from the wagon
one after the other. She placed the book bundle she was holding into the
space that was freed up.
Coam fruits and Lochte Pears were herbal medicines that were very
effective against high fevers. However, these fevers were rare, and so
they were not particularly necessary in the short term. And while they
were rare, they were not unobtainable by any stretch, so the precious
books she had just loaded up took priority over them.
The white-haired old man sagged his shoulders.
“The Flame Dragon shouldn’t have woken up for another 50 years, why
now…”
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The news of the Flame Dragon’s attack on the elf village had spread like
wildfire.
Normally, they would have dropped everything and fled, but since they
had warning in advance, there was still some time to pack. As a result,
the village was filled with activity as everyone made their preparations
to escape.
The old man grumbled and carried the sacks which Lelei had taken off
the wagon back into the small house. There was a secret door under the
bed where he planned to hiding them .
In the meantime, Lelei guided the donkey over and hitched it to the
wagon.
“Master, you’d best mount up quickly.”
“Ah? What are you saying? I’m not interested in mounting a little girl like
you.Your big sister would be much better… Oh yes, your big and bouncy
sister…”
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“...”
Lelei glared at the old man with the coldest look she could muster. Then
she proceeded to solidify the air into a lump and launched it at him. The
solidified air was still only about as hard as a rubber ball, but it still hurt
when it hit someone.
“Hey! Stop it! Magic is not a toy! Magic is not to be used for personal
gain or enjoyment… Hey!”
“...”
“Although there’s still some time, we can’t play around like this. Let’s
move out soon.”
“I got it, I got it, no need to rush… you really can’t take a joke, can you?”
The old man gripped his staff in one hand and settled into the seat next
to Lelei. Lelei, on the other hand, glared at the old man and spoke.
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“Jokes are meant for entertainment between friends, parents, lovers and
other closely related people. However, once they start taking on a
sexual nature, one must start taking the other party into consideration
as well. For instance, it would be completely unacceptable to start
making lewd jokes around a teenage girl. This might well irreparably
damage the relationship with them. I believe this should be common
knowledge for mature individuals, no?”
The old man sighed deeply as his disciple lectured him.
“Huu… I’m so tired. I wish I didn’t have to get old.”
“Objectively speaking, that is incorrect. I feel that Master is as hardy as

a cockroach.”
“Now that’s what I call rude. Is that how a disciple should be speaking?”
“This is how I was raised from childhood, and I was raised by my

Master.”
After her unreserved words, Lelei lightly struck the donkey with her
riding crop.
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The donkey obediently tried to move forward, but it could not, because
the wagon’s bed was overloaded.
“...”
“...Like I said, we’re carrying too much.”
“That was expected. Also, you were the one who said we could keep
piling things on, Master.”
“...”
Lelei quietly jumped off the wagon.
She felt that it would be better to keep walking than sit still on an
immobilized vehicle.
“Oi, oi! Lelei, you need to be more patient! If you’re like that, nobody will
want to marry you, and that would be a shame!”
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As the old man said that, he took up the goad and struck the donkey.
The donkey tried its best, but as expected, the wagon refused to budge.
Lelei noticed that one of the wheels was embedded into the ground,
about a third of the way in. If it was stuck like that, it was only natural
that the wagon could not move.
“Master, I think you need to get off the wagon.”
“Don’t, don’t worry. After all, don’t we have this?”
The old man raised his staff, and Lelei sighed. Mimicking the tone of her
master, she replied:
“Magic is not a toy. Magic is not to be used for personal gain or

enjoyment…”
Sweat poured like a waterfall from the old man’s forehead, and he
rushed to answer her.
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“We are magicians, we do not walk like the rest of Humanity.”
However, he could not defy Lelei’s glare, which was utterly devoid of
warmth or compassion.
The old man’s mouth opened up as if he were going “ah~”, and he

began chanting the words he had not spoken for a long time.
“...”
His solemnity as an educator clashed with the other feelings in his heart.
It would seem the old man’s next move would take some time. After a
while, he looked at Lelei with an uncomfortable expression on his face.
“I… I’m sorry.”
“That’s fine. After all, I know that’s how Master is.”
Lelei was a child who did not sugarcoat her words.
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After using magic to lighten the weight of the luggage, the donkey could
easily pull the wagon and its mountain of cargo. And so, Lelei and her
Master sat on the wagon and left the home they had occupied for many
years.
As they drove the wagon to the center of the village, Lelei noticed many
families with wagons full of things, much like herself and her Master. It
wasn’t just wagons they used, but haywains and plow harnesses, and
some people had even loaded up their horses with saddlebags.
Lelei looked closely at the other villagers, as if she were studying them.
Her Master spoke.
“You’re an intelligent child. Everyone else must look foolish to your

eyes.”
“It’s only natural that Humans would flee with everything they could
carry once they heard of the Flame Dragon’s approach.”
“You said it was natural for Humans… does that mean they’re foolish,
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then?”
“...”
Lelei could not deny her Master’s words.
If they really valued their own lives, they would immediately drop
everything and run as far as they could. Stopping to take on and secure
luggage would only waste time that could be spent on fleeing, and the
luggage itself would slow them down. It would be too late to abandon it
when the Flame Dragon came.
To begin with, why did humans even struggle so hard to survive? Death
was inevitable — it would happen sooner or later. What was the point in
slightly prolonging one’s life?
Lelei logically dissected the topic as she considered it, and the old man
was agonizing over how to speak with her.
When they reached the center of the village, the way forward was
blocked by a line of wagons.
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“What’s happening up ahead?”
The column of wagons did not move, but Lelei’s Master received a reply
from someone in front.
“Ah, it’s Kato-sensei. And Lelei too. Ah, we’re in trouble now. Someone
overloaded their wagon and the axle broke, and now it’s stuck in the
middle of the road and blocking everyone. We’re all pitching in, but it’ll
be a while.
They would be bogged down by the wagons behind them even if they
wanted to turn around and take another route. This was what some
might call a Catch-22.
As her Master was talking to the villager, Lelei’s attention was drawn by
a group of mysterious men, who spoke a language she had never heard
before.
“Disaster relief is part of our job too. Start by towing away the affected
wagon! Itami-taichou, please ask the village chief for permission to
begin operations, and Tozu, you tell the people behind that there’s been
an accident and to take another route! Language? Use body language!
Kurokawa, go make sure nobody’s hurt up ahead.”
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At a glance, these men were all dressed in green… Well, green and
some other colors, like brown.
No, it looked like there was also a woman among them. They seemed to
be wearing helmets; were they soldiers from somewhere? However, they
didn’t wear armor. It would seem they belonged to a group that Lelei did
not know of.
Although she wasn’t quite sure what they were saying, the men and the
woman leapt into action under the orders of a roughly 45-year old man.
From the look of things, he seemed to be their commander. They felt like
some sort of military organization, the kind that contained their violence
with rules and regulations.
She told her Master that she was going to “check things out”, and got off
the wagon.
The wagon that was the cause of this incident was roughly fifteen
wagons ahead.
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One of its axles was snapped, and the wagon lay sprawled across the
road. She could see scattered luggage, a fallen man, as well as a mother
with her child. The horse was collapsed on the road, its mouth dripping
with foam. It flailed its limbs as it struggled to get up, so the villagers
who wanted to help it stand up were unable to approach.
“You, very dangerous, faster get back.”
It was one of the men in green.
His words were unclear, but judging by his gestures, he must have
wanted her to keep back.
However, Lelei realized the fallen mother and child were injured. She
brushed aside the man and continued on, ignoring the flailing horse
beside her.
“Still alive.”
The boy was a little younger than Lelei, about ten years old. After giving
her a quick once-over, she found that he had struck his head, and his
face and limbs were gradually turning pale. His sweat was flowing like a
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squeezed rag, and his body was rapidly cooling.
The mother was unconscious, but her condition was stable. The child
was the one in danger.
“Lelei! What are you doing? What happened?”
She turned back and saw that the village chief was shouting at her.
Beside him was a man in green. He must have gone to inform the chief
about this.
“Chief, I think the cause was overloading of the wagon and rot in the
axle. The child is in great danger but his parents should be fine. The
horse is beyond help.”
“Is Kato-sensei nearby?”
“He’s worrying his head off in the wagons behind. He let me come here
to take a look.”
As she spoke, the woman in green began her triage of the child Lelei had
looked at. Her technique suggested that she had been medically trained.
The man in green beside the chief, roughly thirty years old, began
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signalling to his team.
Suddenly a cry rang out.
“Danger!”
“!”
The sound of an explosion followed shortly, and when Lelei looked back,
the thrashing horse lay motionless on the ground. It had missed her by a
hair’s breadth, but if it had come any closer, the full weight of the horse
— ten times that of a man — would have fallen on top of Lelei.
All Lelei knew was that the men in green had done something to the
frenzied horse, and that it had saved her.
***
The allied armies, gathered under the Empire’s banner, vanished in the
span of one night.
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If this were in Japan, it would have been the headline of every single
newspaper or scrolling across electronic signs in the shopping districts.
But in this world, to the residents of the Special District, the movements
of the army were unknown to them. Even if they lost the war, they would
simply exchange one set of rulers for another, and it would not affect
their daily lives much.
The reason why this was the case was because this country was
contested territory. Sometimes one party would take it, and sometimes
another party would conquer it. Since their rulers changed so often, it
was impossible for the people to feel any loyalty towards them.
In this world, as long as one’s home was not a battlefield, and one’s
families were not conscripted to fight on the battlefield, the common folk
would care nothing about their country.
Even so, the people's lives had been affected.
The recent rampancy of bandits was the cause.
This world was ruled by soldiers and knights, but none of them acted to
suppress banditry. This was because the obligations of nobles and their
knights did not extended to maintaining order.
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All they cared about was “control”. In truth, the nobles were no different
from the bandits. The former robbed the peasants and called it “taxes”,
while the latter used no such pretense. Both sides refused to accept any
form of remonstration and responded to any refusals to pay with brute
force.
Even when the nobles or knights rode out to hunt down bandits, they
were like shepherds driving off wolves, which meant that they would
stop once the bandits vanished from their sight. Frankly speaking, any
good they did was merely a side effect..
Since desperate bandits fought harder than normal and might even
manage to kill them by luck, nobles and their troops were not too fired
up about cornering and finishing off bandits. That opinion was hardly
rare. Even in Japan, there was a movie about seven samurai hired by the
villagers to defend them from the rampant bandits, while the lord of the
land did nothing to help.
That being said, the bandits preferred it when there were fewer nobles
and knights around.
Until recently, they had to skulk around in the shadows, but now they
could move around freely.
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An intelligent hunter would consider that killing all the prey would leave
none for the future. Fortunately, or unfortunately, an intelligent person
would not have become a bandit, and so most bandits were cruel and
ruthless in the extreme.
For instance, there was a family who fled their village as they received
news that a dragon had been spotted in the vicinity.
The father drove his wagon with his plowhorse, and on that wagon were
all the family’s possessions, his 32 year-old wife and his 15 year-old
daughter.
The villagers all fled as if they were grazing animals. However, unlike
wild herbivores such as buffalos or zebras, this family did not move in a
group. There was no time for that, not when a dragon could attack at
any moment.
So they ignored their villagers’ cries for them to stop, and left the village
on their own.
On their second night, they ran into a group of bandits.
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The man desperately spurred his horse, but there was no way for the
overburdened wagon and horse to move quickly. With no way to resist,
the family was captured by the mounted bandits.
The man was slain instantly, and his wife and daughter were taken
away.
In the darkness, over a dozen bandits gathered around a campfire and

gleefully rummaged through their spoils.
Their prey had not just been carrying coins and currency, but provisions
as well. They filled their bellies with the food they had captured. They
took turns raping the mother and daughter, but the more important
bandits had already satiated their bestial lusts and were relaxing with
wine.
“Boss! Coda Village is about to make a move!”
Ever since the Flame Dragon appeared, scores of villagers had fled.
Laden down with luggage, they could not move fast, nor could they fight
back. Why not attack them? There was no reason not to do so. They
would slaughter and pillage them.
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After hearing his minion speak, the boss laughed in satisfaction. It was a
good idea, so they should go ahead and do it. But as he thought about
it...
“We don’t have enough people.”
It would be asking too much of his band of twenty-odd men to take on

an entire village at once.
“About that, why don’t we get guys from around the area? That way, we
can work together to bring in the biggest haul ever.”
This was also a good chance to recruit more hands.
With enough people, they could successfully attack entire villages, and
even towns. If he played his cards right, he — cast out by his lord —
might even aspire to become a lord himself.
From a bandit to a lord. The sweet dream of going from a wretched little
thief to the ruler of his own domain filled his mind.
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This nameless bandit chief’s final moments were spent imagining a time
when he would be happiest. Was that a good thing, or a bad thing?
Either way, his head fell from his neck, with a curiously comical “goro”
sound.
It rolled across the ground and into the campfire.
The stench of burning hair and scorched flesh instantly filled the
campsite.
Biologically speaking, a severed head could retain consciousness for

several seconds. That being the case, the chief would have experienced
his head falling to the ground. His field of view would have rolled with
him, and before he realised what was going on, he would have seen
what used to be his body spurting blood .
After that, in his rapidly blackening field of view, he would have seen the
black-haired goddess of death bathing in his fresh blood.
The first thing anyone would think when they saw the girl was “black”.
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Her skin was so pale it was nearly transparent, her hair and clothes were
black, and her eyes were bottomless pools of obsidian.
The bandit chief’s severed head flew with a “pyun”.
She held a heavy halberd in her hands.
It was a weapon that looked like someone had attached a heavy, slablike
axe blade to a long shaft. It wasn’t something a fragile little girl could
swing like a matchstick. Nor was it something a girl in black lace should
be wielding. That she could use such a weapon with her delicate, slender
arms and her thin little fingers, as pale as white jade, was far beyond
anyone’s ability to imagine.
She rested the halberd over her shoulders, and exhaled loudly.
The girl was surrounded by the scattered corpses of the bandits.
“Well, that was fun. Ojii-san-tachi, thank you for tonight.”
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She grasped the hem of her skirt and curtseyed elegantly.
At a glance, she looked to be around 13, and judging by her beauty and
refined movements, she seemed to be a very well-bred girl. She had a
brilliant smile on her face, but that smile did not reach her eyes. Her
black pupils were filled with a hungry darkness, like a fathomless abyss.
“Thank you for offering your lives to me. I thank you on behalf of my
god. My god is very pleased with your gift, and he says that I should
enjoy myselves with you.”
“...What! What the hell are you!”
Among the surviving bandits, one of them managed to shout with far
more courage than he felt, although his bowels were frozen with fear. He
deserved praise for still being able to speak despite the present
circumstances.
“Me?”
She smiled adorably.
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“I am Rory Mercury. Apostle of Emroy, God of Darkness.”
“I-is that the formal wear of the priestesses of the Temple of Emroy?
One, one of the Twelve Apostles, Rory the Reaper?!”
“Ara~ you knew? Mhmh~ correct.”
In the face of the laughing girl, the bandits scattered like leaves.
They left everything behind and fled with all their might, driven by their
fear of death.
“What, what the hell, how can we fight an Apostle!”
“Oh, no. No no no no no. You can’t run away.”
Rory jumped, carrying the heavy slab of metal that seemed to weigh
several times more than her. She pursued the fleeing bandits like a
ferocious carnivore hunting down its prey.
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The halberd cleaved through the bandits’ heads like she was splitting
watermelons at the beach, and the surrounding area was strewn with
chunks of flesh.
“Ueh, abbah… aiiiieeeee!”
Rory towered over of the fallen man. She swung her halberd lightly,
sweeping it behind her legs before she raised it high above her head.
Her snow-white skin was dyed red by sprays of blood.
“Ufufu… God-sama said so, you know. The goal of all life is death. No
Human can escape it.”
A pitiful scream rang out just as the halberd swung down.
***
“Haa… haa… haa… why, what is an Apostle of Emroy doing here?!”
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The man cursed his misfortune as he ran with all his strength.
A pitiful scream rang out from the distance. Rory the Reaper had
claimed another soul.
“Damn, damn it!”
There were no paths in the wilderness at night. The countryside was

littered with swamps, rock formations, thorny thickets and trees. The
man stumbled occasionally, his body was covered in mud and sweat,
and his clothes were torn.
Once more, a howl rang out from in front of him.
He slipped on a patch of mud.
His body slid across the floor, and he bashed his head against the
ground.
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“Dammit, dammit, dammiiiiiiit, why is my luck so damn bad!”
“Ara~ weren’t you having fun?”
There was the sound of footsteps.
Upon hearing the clear, bell-like voice, he desperately looked up. The
black-clad girl towered over him, backlit by the silver disc of the moon.
“Weren’t you having fun just now? Didn’t you kill people?”
She planted the pointed tip of her axe between the man’s spread legs, a
hair away from his groin.
“Aiiieeee! I, I, I’ve never killed anyone!”
“Ara, really now?”
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“It’s true! This was the first job I did since I joined! The women too, they
said I had to wait till the end since I was the new guy! I didn’t even lay a
finger on them!”
“Hmmmmmm?”
Rory thought briefly about this before speaking to the man again.
“The other jii-sans have all been called to be with Emroy. Don’t you feel
lonely by yourself?”
The man shook his head desperately. He was not lonely, not lonely at all.
“However, won’t it be sad if you’re the only one left out?”
“No, please, I would really like to be left out!” the man begged.
Rory looked at him with a cold gaze that was as sharp as a knife.
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“What should I do with you, then~”
As she said that, Rory clapped her hands together.
“I’ve got it, this should be a good idea. Since you haven’t done anything
yet, why not start now?”
With that, the black-clad girl grabbed one of the man’s legs.
He could feel an unimaginable strength that belied her delicate

appearance.
“Ru run ra~” she hummed to herself, as she dragged the man like a
mop.
“It hurts! Please stop! Gwaahhhh!”
The wilderness here was filled with rocks and sand. They tore the man’s
clothes to shreds as he was dragged across them, and then rubbed his
sweaty skin raw. Soon his body was covered in his own blood.
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“Who did you like more between the mother and the daughter?”
“Noooo! Please stop! Gueeehhh…”
“Don’t stand on ceremony, this is the end for you, anyway. I’ll ask nicely
so you can do them.”
Rory grabbed the man’s leg and tossed him.
He landed in a ragged heap beside the mother and daughter.
“Well, go ahead then. It’s your turn.”
The man frantically shook his head.
The legs of the naked women remained spread, a hollow testimony to

their violation. Their arms were raised, as though hailing the Emperor.
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Neither of them were moving. By the looks of things, they had stopped
breathing.
“Ara~ what a bother. The two of them have passed on.”
It would seem they had been raped to death.
“So sorry, we didn’t make it in time.”
Rory closed their unblinking eyes and lowered her head. Then she
smiled to the man.
“Still, since they’re like this, why not do them anyway?”
Dampness spread through the man’s crotch, and a puddle of liquid

formed below him.
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 4
The bandit youth pleaded for forgiveness.
He was prostrating on the ground as if in prayer. His face was covered in

tears and snot, groveling for Rory to show mercy. He claimed that he
had not committed any sins directly, that his hands were still clean. He
had no choice but to resort to banditry in order to survive. He had
reflected on his actions and turned over a new leaf, that he would work
seriously and so on.
Rory sighed as she watched his pitiful appearance.
She averted her face in disgust as if she had seen something dirty. She
felt that she was going to be tainted by his filth if she looked any longer.
There was one major condition when killing others. The way Rory saw it,
there wasn’t any sin in killing people. The important thing was why; what
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was the intention and their attitude when doing so.
That was the teaching of the god Rory served.
What was wrong with thieves and bandits robbing others?
What sins did soldiers and executioners have for killing enemies and
death row prisoners?
That was how she saw it.
The god Rory served didn’t differentiate between good and evil.
She tolerated all kinds of people, respecting the careers they chose in
order to live, and respecting the path they had to travel. Therefore, a
bandit just needed to act like a bandit.
If this man could look into Rory’s eyes proudly like a bandit, Rory would
show him the appropriate respect. As an apostle of her god, she might
even love him for that.
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However, what was with this man’s attitude?
First of all, the excuse of saying his hands were still clean was
unforgivable. The moment he became a bandit, he became a member of
a group that relied on numbers and violence. It had nothing to do with
him taking part directly or not.
And it was inexcusable to resort to banditry simply because of poverty. If

he couldn’t get food, he should just lie down and die.
Those who lacked ability and didn’t have the luck to fill their stomachs
could choose to live on as beggars. Rory liked and respected the
tenacity of such people.
Stupid as a human, despicable as a man. There was no value in his

existence. The man’s ugliness made the apostle of darkness twist her
beautiful face into a scowl.
Rory issued her command coldly. He was to dig three graves.
The youth answered that he had no tools, but Rory replied that he had
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the pair of hands given to him by his parents. And so, the youth started
digging graves in the wilderness.
Unlike sand pits or farmlands, digging a hole in the wild wasn’t easy. His
fingernails peeled off and his skin was torn, but whenever the youth
wanted to stop because of the pain, the giant halberd would slam into
the ground, inches away from cutting off his fingers.
Driven by terror, the youth forgot all about the pain from the moment
before, digging with all his might into the ground covered by rocks and
grass.
Shortly after, he buried the father of the family.
Then the mother.
And lastly, the daughter.
When he started using his numb hands to cover the grave of the young
girl with mud, the sun started rising, lighting up the surroundings.
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The man did all that because that was the condition for him to be
released. No, that was just what he believed. The man turned back to
seek Rory’s opinion.
“Is, is this okay?”
With thirst, hunger, fatigue and the pain in his hands, the man who was
about to faint saw it.
He saw the girl clasping her hands in prayer— the figure of Rory.
Kneeling down on one knee, she clasped her hand in devoted prayer.
Basked in mysterious sunlight, she looked beautiful and noble, stealing
the breath away from all who saw her.
Her dark flowing dress was like an attire for funerals, and her hair was
black and long.
White porcelain skin.
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Her lips, which looked as if they were painted scarlet with blood, formed
a smile.
The girl stood up after finishing her prayer and lifted her halberd up
high. She swung the symbol of her faith and her god’s love down at the
man who didn’t even have time to turn around.
♦♦♦
The Elf who lived in Koan forest, Tuka, the eldest daughter of Hodor Ray
Marceau, still thought she was dreaming.
With her eyes which were blurred as if they were covered by a veil, she
could see humans rushing about.
Did something happen? Her mind wasn’t working properly, only allowing
her to watch and listen without any introspection.
The clouds in the sky and the scenery before her eyes flashed by from
time to time. Stopping and starting every once and awhile, rocking her
body with the movement.
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She appeared to be in something similar to a carriage.
It started moving and stopped, and moved and stopped, over and over
again.
What she saw from the windows of the carriage were the tired figures of
the people carrying luggage, as if they were running away from
something.
The carriage laden with luggage creaked as it advanced.
It started moving but stopped moments later.
The cloth covering the dim carriage was parted, allowing the light from
outside to shine in.
How bright…
Suddenly, her vision was blocked by a black figure.
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“Dou? Onnanoko no yousuha?”
There was someone conversing just out of her line of sight, but she
couldn’t understand what she was hearing.
“Kuro-chan~, how’s the girl doing?”
“Lieutenant Itami… She is gradually regaining her consciousness. She

can open her eyes slightly now.”
Their conversation was nothing but meaningless noise to Tuka.
A highly skilled sculptor focused his strongest passion and moe spirit in
order to create a beautiful girl with perfect skin. Right now, the girl was
lying powerlessly on her side. Between her golden locks was her slightly
opened blue eyes which were just like gems.
Itami looked at the Elven girl as he considered his problems.
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Her fever had subsided. He wasn’t sure about her vitals, but they
remained stable so she was probably fine, at least that’s what Kurokawa
said. However, they couldn’t leave her alone yet.
“The trek of refugees is slow and not making progress, more and more
problems keep occurring and the number of injured and drop outs keep
increasing. This escape is slowly exhausting them.”
He was just venting his complains. For Itami whose motto was ‘Eat,
sleep, play, repeat, life is everything in between’, this seemingly
unending trek was just suffering.
The villagers wore depressed expressions. They felt fatigue in their

bones, hunger in their stomachs and thirst in their throats. The piercing
wails of babies abandoned by their escaping parents permeated the air.
People bleeding from accidents on the road. The sun glared heavily on
their backs only adding to their struggle. The worst part for the villagers,
however, was all the mud. Mud which coated the ground and caked their
pants and shoes which they had no time to shake off.
There was a carriage that couldn’t move because the road had turned
into mush, so the family sat beside it. However, even if they wanted to,
the villagers couldn’t offer them a hand. They could only abandon the
dropouts with blank faces. They didn’t have the will or energy to spare.
The father carried his child, pleading with the passing carriages to at
least save his baby.
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Dropping out from the caravan meant death. They lacked food or water
for subsistence, and would most likely fall victim to wild beasts and
bandits.
It was natural to abandon. It was natural to be abandoned. This was the

line between life and death, the law of nature.
Someone please help.
Such prayers were meaningless.
Someone please help.
The gods would not offer salvation. They would not come to help, and
would simply stand there and watch from above.
Someone… Someone please help.
Like tyrants, the gods ordered them to die.
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That was why the only ones who could save men were other men.
The men wearing green gathered before the immobile carriage. If it was
just the wheels stuck in the mud, they could still help.
“Alright, we are going to push!”
“Give it all you have got, show me what you’re made of!!”
On command, the team pushed on the carriage with all their strength.
After recovering the carriage stuck in the mud, the men didn’t even wait
to receive thanks before returning to their amazing carriage that was not
pulled by horses.
The villagers wondered just who they were.
They were not soldiers of this nation or the residents of this village.
They informed the village about the impending danger and then
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immediately offered their aid. Rather than simply being generous, these
foreign people wore unbelievable smiles and were overly kind. This
impression was left in the heart of all the villagers.
But when a carriage couldn’t bear the load and broke down, they
became cold-hearted.
The men in green and the village chief approached the villagers
standing stunned before their luggage.
Next, the chief would convince them to take only the luggage they could
carry on them. The villagers never considered abandoning their luggage.
It was the food they lived off and their wealth. How would they survive if
they lose these? But the chief still made them abandon their luggage,
and in order to remove their hesitation, the men in green suggested
burning the luggage. With their belongings burned, they had no choice
but to go on. What about tomorrow? The day after tomorrow? With no
hope in sight, they could only take one step at a time in tears.
The group was divided into those in wagons and those walking. With
time, the wagon group gradually grew smaller.
Kurokawas asked Itami, “Why are we setting fires?”
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“They won’t be able to let go of their belongings while they are right
before their eyes. This is the only way.”
“Can’t we request additional transport?”
With the transport capability of the JSDF, they could easily move this
amount of cargo.
But Itami just scratched his head with a troubled face.
“First, we are behind enemy lines here. They might be ignoring us

because of our small numbers, but the enemy will definitely react if we
send a large unit deep into their territory. Accidental engagement,
unplanned expansion of our front line, and committing our forces are
exactly what we want to avoid. The sudden escalation of war could drag
the villagers into all this... Just thinking about that makes my head itch.”
Kurokawa smiled wryly in response to Itami’s words.
“That’s why, all we can do right now is give a helping hand.”
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Kurokawa had no choice but to nod in agreement.
When the refugees from Koda village reached this area, the sun was at
its peak.
Leading the wagon train was the HMV of the third recon platoon.
However, it was moving at a walking pace, since the villagers behind
were on foot, along with mules and farm horses pulling the wagons.
Maybe walking would be even faster than this.
“But… Can’t we go any faster?”
Sergeant Kurata complained.
“I haven’t driven this slowly since driving school.”
If he pressed too hard on the accelerator, he would leave the wagon

train behind. Kurata moved by using the inertia of the auto gear, simply
holding the steering wheel without stepping on the pedal.
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Reflected in the rear view mirror was a child grabbing the driver seat
from behind and looking to the front. The HMV was full of children and
the injured who couldn’t walk anymore. It was the same for the type 73
truck behind, its bench was filled with casualties and pregnant women.
Of course, the dangerous weapons, ammunitions and food had all been
shifted to the HMV.
Itami studied the terrain map made from aerial photographs, watching
the horizon with his binoculars. He compared the terrain with his current
position, calculating the distance they had travelled and how much
further they had to go. He recorded road conditions and their steepness.
These were not the only things he wrote down as the flow of rivers and
vegetation were also important information.
“That’s weird, ravens are circling around there.”
After answering ‘You’re right.’ to Kurata casually, Itami looked forward

with his binoculars again. He then discovered a girl squatting by the side
of the road, surrounded by ravens.
“A Goth Loli?”
That’s a costume he often saw during events and in areas such as
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Harajuku. There were many differing views on what was Goth, but Itami
was certain the clothing fashion style of the girl was that of a Goth Loli.
She was between twelve to fourteen years old. She looked very
attractive, a real beauty.
A girl like that was squatting at the side of an empty road, her black
jewel like eyes staring this way without even blinking.
“Woah, a life size ball-jointed doll?”
Kurata commented after watching through his binoculars.
That girl was like an inorganic doll with no seams.
No matter how much he wanted, Kurata couldn’t just drive off to look at

that girl. The wagon train from Koda was advancing as slowly as the
entrance to a doujinshi convention, the second hand of the clock would
turn five rounds before the HMV reach that girl.
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Itami decided to send Katsumoto and Furuta to go ahead on foot to

check her out.
Judging from her dress, she looked more like some Japanese girl
kidnapped during the Ginza incident than a native here.
When Katsumoto and Furuta tried to converse with her, they seemed
unable to communicate. The squatting girl looked like a runaway
ignoring the questions of two rookie cops.
When the wagon train reached the girl, she stood up as if she had been
kept waiting, dusting off the dirt on her dress, easily picking up her huge
halberd and walking alongside the HMV.
“Hey, where did you come from, and where are you going?”
The girl was speaking the local language.
Itami and the others couldn’t converse fluently with her. They could only
squeeze out a few sentences after flipping through their book of phrases
which took the place of a dictionary. Katsumoto and Furuta shrugged
and kept walking.
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The one filling in the gaps in their conversation was a boy about seven
who was sitting in the tiny space between Kurata and Itami.
“We are from Coda Village, Onee-san.”
“Hmm~? What about these people in the strange outfits?
“I don’t really know, but they are nice people helping us.”
The girl walked a circle around the HMV that was moving at walking
pace.
“So they are not forcing you to go along?”
“No, a Flame Dragon came and they’re helping us escape.”
Itami’s group simply listened with an uncertain expression, exhibiting

typical Japanese behaviour.
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Itami sent Furuta and Katsumoto to take care of the villagers at the
back, deciding to question the girl himself. He checked his phrase book,
and waited for the dialogue between the boy and the girl to stop before
asking.
“I wonder how this thing moves?”
“I’d like to know as well. But I don’t understand what they are saying…
But riding in it feels much better than a carriage!”
“So~ riding in it feels good?”
Before he could even stop her, the Goth Loli boarded the HMV from
Itami’s passenger side. She strode over Itami’s knees. There were no
doors, so she entered easily.
The HMV could seat ten adults.
The seats at the front faced forward, while the back seat faced the
center. There was enough space to store equipment in the center. If
they could ignore traffic rules like now, it was possible to load twenty
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children in.
However, there were already plenty of luggage, children and elderly on

the vehicle, it was as packed as a train during the morning rush hour.
The girl who entered while saying ‘excuse me’ wasn’t welcomed by the
villagers. They didn’t state their reluctance openly, but still showed a
troubled expression.
"Hey, it’s cramped, Onee-san.”
“Ah~ wait a moment.”
It was already a tight fit, and on top of that, she brought something so
long in with her.
The halberd was long and heavy. No matter how she positioned it, the
halberd would touch someone’s head or face causing them to shrink
away because it was cramped inside the HMV. As a result, it was placed
onto the floor of the vehicle.
She then looked for a place to sit, but there wasn’t any space. With no
other choice, the girl sat on the knees of the man hogging the passenger
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seat.
“Hold it!”
Itami was dumbfounded at her sudden action.
He wanted to stop the black-clad Goth Loli, but if he touched somewhere

dangerous, it could be painted as sexual harassment and trigger a huge
incident, so he didn’t. Because of the language barrier his protests and
curses in Japanese like “Hey! Wait! Wait!”, “Don’t touch that”, “Don’t
touch the pistol and fire extinguisher”, “Get out first”, “Wah, what the
hell are you bringing along!” were ignored completely.
The place the girl sat down upon was his knees.
He had to shout “Hold it!” at this stage.
One side wanted to push the other away while the other side was
fighting for a place to sit. The low class fighting thus began.
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“●×△、□○○○！！！！！”
“△□×￥！○△□×××！！”
And so, the struggle between two parties who couldn’t communicate
verbally ended with Itami giving half his seat away.
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 5
The JSDF paid close attention to the safety of their troops. Thus, when
they were deployed to foreign lands, a defensive base camp would first
be built. With that base as their stronghold, they would have a refuge
during an emergency. For example, they had done this in Samawah,
Iraq.
Contrary to the old military view which thought little of human lives,
they were now used to carrying out disaster relief missions to save
people. Moreover, the JSDF paid more attention to defense than their
predecessors. This was the result of the gradual change in the political
climate in Japan after the last World War
Furthermore, on the other side of the Gate was their homeland. In other
words, defending the Gate was the main reason why the JSDF was here.
By using both political and military methods, they were to conquer and
secure the land surrounding the Gate. This was the mission of the JSDF.
Mapping the land surrounding the Gate by taking aerial pictures and
deploying scouts was also part of their plan.
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Other than that, the construction of a fort, which was considered a relic
of the last century, was also included in the plans.
The fort was not a hastily constructed field fortification of dirt or

sandbags, but rather, it was built with reinforced concrete, with the
intention of making it a permanent defense structure.
It had been 3 weeks since the JSDF took over the land around the Gate.
After working tirelessly for several days and nights, Arnus Hill had
become an impregnable fortress.
The uniformly-built hexagram-shaped fortress displayed the character of

the aide that thought up this design.
Most of the people who viewed the fort with a bird’s-eye view said that it
looked like the six-sided fortification at Hakodate.
When a normal civilian became an officer of the JSDF, they would read
up on military history and debate the pros and cons of a fortified castle,
reviewing the ways to defend and attack such an installation.
However, there were some deviants who would giggle and say this was a
magic formation. That’s right, the people who knew nothing about the
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mysteries of magic had unintentionally constructed a large scale

hexagram that would surprise anyone knowledgeable about the arcane
arts in Arnus Hill and its vicinity.
For now, let’s change the scene.
The roaring sounds of the engines of a HMV, a Type 73 Truck and a Light
Armored Vehicle (LAV) made a cloud of dust in their trail.
The elderly, women, and children in the vehicles had to endure the
rocking of the vehicle from sharp turns and changes in speed, causing
their heads and bodies to collide with each other. Gritting their teeth,
they endured the pain.
Looking out the window of the vehicle, the view was blocked by the
escaping Coda villagers.
And the black shadow falling on them from the sky.
It was the Flame Dragon.
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It was the third day of the exodus from Coda Village, and the refugees
thought they were out of the Flame Dragon’s hunting grounds. However,
the beast suddenly appeared and immediately began attacking its prey.
Thanks to the prior knowledge of the Flame Dragon’s appearance

courtesy of the JSDF, Coda Village and a few other nearby villages had
all simultaneously fled from the beast. After the Flame Dragon couldn’t
find any humans or Elves to prey on, it followed its nose to a place filled
with humans.
Since the preparation for escaping had taken some time, and they were
weighed down by their luggage, the slow speed of the Coda Villagers
had allowed the Flame Dragon to catch them.
“Fighting with monsters is the JSDF’s tradition! Who’d have thought that
we would be doing it here!”
Sergeant Major Kuwabara shouted furiously at Kurata, “RUN! RUN!”.

Maybe it was due to the over-secretion of adrenaline by the brain, but a
hint of joy could be heard in his voice.
The Flame Dragon swooped down at the villagers who had stood frozen
in place. Seeing this, Itami shouted in the direction of the speeding LAV.
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“Suppressing fire! LAV! Shoot him with the machine gun!”
Private Sasagawa mustered all the strength in his body to hold on to the
handle of the .50 caliber machine gun while it made sounds like a
jackhammer in a construction site.
The thick cartridges fell messily to the ground amidst gouts of black
smoke as 12.7mm bullets created sparks on the Flame Dragon’s back
However, the tough dragon scales deflected all of the bullets.
“It’s useless!”
Hearing Sasagawa’s words, Itami shouted in reply, “Don’t worry about

that! Just keep firing! Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Although airsoft guns firing BBs could not kill people, being hit by them
was annoying. As such, even though the dragon’s body was covered in
tough scales which could not be penetrated by bullets, it was still a living
thing and possessed the sense of touch. Itami ordered his subordinates
to keep firing.
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Blossoms of fire erupted from the flash suppressors of the Type 64 Howa
rifles.
The Flame Dragon could not bear the rain of bullets. Its attack slowed
down, which allowed the farmer who was already in its mouth to escape.
The horrifying dragon turned his head towards the men.
An arrow protruded from its blind eye, but nobody could look directly at
its terrifying visage. It was like a scar on a Yakuza’s face.
The Flame Dragon breathed fire at them like a flamethrower, but was
unable to reach the wildly evasive JSDF vehicles.
“Ono! Yuniryu!! Ono!”
A female teenage voice came from behind them.
As he turned around, golden hair entered Itami’s line of sight.
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The pale Elf pointed her slender fingers at her eyes whilst shouting
“Ono!” repeatingly.
In that moment, although there was a language barrier between them,

Itami somehow understood what she meant.
“Go for the eyes!”
The JSDF troopers trained their sights on the face of the dragon and
opened fire.
The Flame Dragon looked visibly annoyed as it turned its face away and
stopped its movements.
“Katsumoto! Use the Panzerfaust!”
From the LAV, he hauled out a 100mm man-portable anti-tank rocket

launcher that had an RHA (rolled homogenous armor) penetration factor
of 700mm. It was an infantry weapon that possessed tremendous power.
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Exchanging places with Sasagawa who was operating the .50 caliber
machine gun, Sergeant Katsumoto clambered up with the Panzerfaust.
However, this weapon was front-heavy and hard to turn. In addition, the
safety-conscious JSDF did not have the habit of shooting from an
unbraced position.
“Backblast clear!”
“Idiot, just shoot already”—someone scolded under their breath. But

after remembering about their training, all they could think was “Heh.
It’s the JSDF after all…”
While he was aiming, the Flame Dragon attempted to escape into the
sky.
The LAV sped up suddenly, causing Katsumoto’s body to thrash around

and the dragon to shift out of the rocket launcher’s sight picture.
“Damn it! Keep it steady, Azuma!”
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“Don’t ask the impossible!”
After all, the rocket launcher did not have a computer guidance system.
Thus, shooting while moving was impossible. With that in mind,
Katsumoto aimed the rocket launcher at the Dragon again.
Due to the LAV suddenly braking and the recoil from firing the rocket, as
the trigger was pulled, the Panzerfaust seemed like it would miss.
The rocket accelerated towards the Dragon with flames sprouting from
its tail.
The dragon which had lost its balance spread its wings to regain its
balance while stepping back to evade the warhead. However, its footing
suddenly slipped.
Looking closely, there was a halberd stuck straight into the ground.
On the HMV, the goth lolita girl had cut a hole in the canvas covering the
luggage and thrown the halberd from there. Its handle hit the leg of the
animal.
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The Flame Dragon fell in the direction of the rocket, which should have
missed.
Due to the Neumann Effect, even the tough dragon scales were unable
to resist the blast. It exceeded the Hugoniotic elasticity limit of its
armour and broke through, blasting a hole clean through it.
If one compared the anatomy of the Flame Dragon to that of a human,

the whole left arm was blown off.
The air vibrated with the wail of the Dragon.
Its roar was like its eyes, which could shake the spirit and shatter a
warrior’s courage. All of the people present had their souls frozen.
The Flame Dragon’s piercing roar caused a brief lapse in the JSDF’s fire.
Seizing this opportunity, the Flame Dragon flew into the sky.
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Spreading its wings, it flew unsteadily as it gained altitude.
The JSDF watched silently as it flew away from them.
The Flame Dragon had been repelled.
Hearing this, anybody would be suspicious and say “Are you kidding
me!?”
People who could slay Dragons single handedly would only appear in
myths and legends.
Triumphing over bears and buffaloes barehanded was still possible if one
trained hard enough. But to fight an Ancient Dragon was suicidal.
Even if an entire order of knights, equipped with magic armor and

weapons, magicians, priests, and Elven archers and Spirit users were
sent against an Ancient Dragon, it would still be futile. This was common
sense in this world. As such, Ancient Dragons meant disaster.
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However, the news of “Although it wasn’t defeated, it was still driven

back” did not come from a single source, but from many people. Thus,
many people believed it. On the other hand, there were people who said
“It may be the truth, but are you sure it was a Flame Dragon?”.
The Flame Dragon’s active period occurred every 50 years, as

mentioned earlier. In addition, it was hard to imagine that anything
could defeat an Ancient Dragon. With that in mind, it would be more
convincing to say that the Ancient Flame Dragon was actually a large
Dragonewt or a Slither Wyrm.
That said, a very old Dragonewt could grow to the size of an Ancient
Dragon. Slither Wyrms were also more dangerous than Wyverns. With
that, even killing one of those lesser dragons could qualify a person as a
Dragon Slayer. With more than half of the villagers still alive, they had
more of a reason to believe that “It's only at that level.”
In this world, death could come to anyone, at any time. Being lost in a
forest meant death, playing beside the river and falling into it by
accident also spelled death.Thus, for humans who had an enemy such as
the Flame Dragon who can rain death upon them, the news that the
dragon was repelled gave them hope and led them to spread the news
further. Every one of them were curious about who the new hero was.
There were three types of survivors from Coda Village.
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Some of them were villagers who could seek out their family or friends
nearby. Those were the lucky ones, as their family and friends
guaranteed their safety whilst providing them with accommodation and
job opportunities.
The second type were villagers who had no family or friends and had to
live the life of a refugee. These people, who made up the majority of the
villagers, had no accommodation or job opportunities. Although they
worried about how to live through the next day, they still prayed in
gratitude that they had survived this disaster and hoped that Lady Luck
would help them as they scattered throughout the land.
Each of the surviving villagers grasped the hands of Itami and his
subordinates, and thanked them profusely.
To the refugees, the JSDF were mysterious beings. They had helped
them escape and even fought the Flame Dragon, although they had no
obligation to do so, and asked for nothing in return.
Given that they could not speak the language, they did not seem like
knights or priests of this country. If they were the army of a foreign
nation, the villagers would have been slaughtered and pillaged.
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Of course, they were not bandits.
The most reasonable explanation for them was that the JSDF was a
group of foreign mercenaries that was travelling to look for an employer.
Recently, it seemed like the country and its nobles were recruiting
troops.
The only thing out of the ordinary was that if they were a mercenary
group, they would not aid them without seeking profits. Thus, the
villagers were scared about what sort of recompense the JSDF would
demand in return for their power.
However, they did not ask for a single penny in the end.
Not only that, despite their praiseworthy accomplishment of repelling a

Flame Dragon, they had gloomy looks on their faces and sunken
shoulders that made people think that they were on the losing side.
They even helped to bury the dead (a priest happened to be nearby and
performed simple funeral rites).
As they were parting ways, the JSDF even held their hands tightly and
cried.
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Gazing at the JSDF who were waving their hands at them even after the
villagers were out of their sight, the villagers of Coda Village could only
smile bitterly.
The villagers were grateful for their sacrifice and the way they gave aid
without asking for compensation, but thoughts of “Can they survive like
this?” entered their minds.
“No matter what, weren’t they too kind?.......If this goes on, how are they
going to earn a living?”
“Now’s not the time to worry about others. We are also in dire straits,
what are we going to do from now on…?”
“Yeah.”
“Humph. No matter how idiotic the lords or nobles are, they definitely
won’t let go of these skilled people. No matter how you look at it, that
was a Flame Dragon! They fought on equal ground with that monster.”
“Yup. But, their hiring price won’t be low for sure.”
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No matter what, they would not be such idiots, right? Although they
thought this, the villagers were genuinely concerned; the nobles had a
common trait of unquenchable greed.
Anyway, the villagers prayed to their god that this mercenary

group(JSDF) with their unusual attire and values would be hired by a
good-hearted employer.
Incidentally, the luck of the villagers of Coda Village had not yet run out.
On their journey, they met a lot of people who asked for confirmation. In
other words, “Was the Flame Dragon really driven off?”.
“It was really a Flame Dragon, I saw it with my own eyes. It looked at me
with eyes that said ‘pitiful humans’......huh? Who, you ask? They were
the people who wore mottled green clothes. They were humans, for
sure. Not Elves or Dwarves. Maybe it’s the Eastern tribe’s attire.
Although they could not speak our language, they were smart and they
kept trying to learn our language. They were good people, they helped
us to escape without asking anything in return. For free, I tell you! It’s
true!”
Unlike the bards, they did not have a wide vocabulary and their
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description of the events was quite rough. But what they had seen with
their own eyes needed no exaggeration.
The listeners’ imaginations were easily stirred when they heard the
survivor’s words, leaving a large impression on them. Because the
witnesses had seen it with their own eyes, when they were asked “So
what was it like?”, they could answer their audience’s questions.
When the scene was described where the dragon’s arm got blasted off,
the listeners gulped and quietly said, “How, how powerful.”
They parted ways with smiles on their faces and without asking for
anything in return.
Even the JSDF troopers themselves would have asked “Who are you
talking about?” After all, a tale of heroes that would not even be found in
anime was currently spreading among the people.
In the bars or even on the street, the refugees would be stopped and
asked “Are you from Coda Village?” And because the villagers saw
different things from different points of view, what came out of each of
their mouths were naturally different. With this, their words painted a
surprisingly realistic scene.
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Just by telling their story, the people of Coda Village did not have to
worry about food or lodging before returning to their village.
“Knight Norma, what do you think?”
In the Imperial courts, there were female knights who served as aides.
One of them, Hamilton Uno Ro, asked her senpai, who was also her
colleague, about the tales from the street.
Several knights and their followers sat in the corner of the rowdy tavern,
filled with guests. The bar was dirty, and it only had a little space
between tables. The place was so noisy that one might not be able to
hear what was being said at a nearby table, unless one shouted. Amidst
this noisy atmosphere, the knights and their followers sat side by side
reaching out with their hands for food and holding their cups full of wine.
Glancing over, there was a girl from Coda Village working as a

temporary waitress who was serving her customers from a tray of ale.
After she set the plate of dishes down on the table, she described what
she had seen, and collected a good amount of tips.
Knight Norma, whose mustache was neatly trimmed, had an

uncomfortable look on his face.
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While he was at court in the sparkling clean palace, he enjoyed delicious

meals prepared by the wives of the nobles or their daughters. Although
he was part of the Princess’s order of Knights, they were nothing but a
decoration of the court and had nothing to do with the frontlines. And
now, an aide like himself was eating crude dishes and murky alcohol.
Although it was a mission, it did not sit well with him.
How the hell did I get myself into this mess…? Norma felt like cursing his
superiors. Just keeping himself from doing so had taken all of his
willpower. Since it was a direct order from the Princess, the mission of
investigating Arnus Hill could not be helped. However, he had expected
the Princess to lead the whole order of knights, so that his servants
would have to wait on him hand and foot throughout the journey.
However, that willful girl issued orders to station her main forces far
behind, only taking a few people to perform reconnaissance. They even
hid their identities, intentionally dirtying their clothes, eating the crude
black bread and murky wine of common peasants, which he considered
unfit for a knight like himself.
Norma raised his hand to signal the waitress for a refill. Seeing how his
kouhai did not recognize how bad the situation was for them, he sighed
a little.
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After he got his refill, Norma shrugged under the innocent gaze of
Hamilton who was waiting for his reply.
“If there are that many refugees who said the same thing, then it
probably isn’t a rumor. It’s not likely that so many people would come
together to tell such a lie. Still, it’s very hard for me to believe that it
was a Flame Dragon.”
“I think that if that many people are saying the same thing, then it
wouldn’t hurt to believe them.”
The waitress put down a bottle of red wine on the table as she said “It’s
true, Knight-nii-san. ~It really was a Flame Dragon.~”
“Hahahahahaha, you won’t fool me so easily.” replied Knight Norma Co

Igloo. “Ancient Dragons, Dragonewts, Slither Wyrms, and Wyverns, they
are all called dragons. It must be some sort of mistake.”
In reply to his reaction, the waitress pursed her lips in displeasure.
“Now now, don’t mind him. I believe what you just said, so tell me
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more.” Hamilton said as she gave her a few copper coins. That was way
too much for a normal tip.
The waitress’s mood immediately changed. She smiled cutely while

saying, “Thank you, young Knight-sama”. Although her attire made her
look old, she might be younger than she looked.
“After receiving so much, I’ll tell you what I kept from the others.”
Saying that, the waitress started her story:
When the news of the Flame Dragon’s appearance started to spread,

Coda Village became as busy as a beehive. The blacksmith’s wife next
door had come over to tell Melissa about the news. It was noon and she
was drying her clothes.
“Melissa! Melissa! Bad news!”
They often gossiped about the happenings in the small village and had
become quite close. Even if there was no one in the house, she knew
where Melissa would be as she went around back to where she dried her
clothes to look for Melissa.
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Melissa told her son who was taking in the dry clothes to inform her
husband who was out in the fields, and then she ran into her home to
start packing.
After a short while, her husband came back panting and shouting, “Is
everything okay?!?!” Apparently, the way their son had described it
made him think that the Flame Dragon had already attacked the village.
Seeing that his wife was safe and sound, the husband sat down on the
floor in relief. Although she was safe, the real danger was still lurking
around the corner. After explaining the situation to her husband, Melissa
returned to packing their luggage.
After loading their food, water, some basic daily necessities, a few
changes of clothes and their hard-earned savings onto their wagon
which was used for farming, it was buckling under the weight of all their
luggage.
They used a mule to pull the cart while her son and husband pushed it
from behind, and then they started down the road towards the village.
When they reached the center of the village, there were already many
other villagers also in their wagons crowding the road.
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Many wagons had broken down due to their heavy loads, blocking the
street.
After wasting precious time waiting for the wagons to be cleared up,
they were finally out of the village. By then, the sun was already
beginning to set.
At night they set up camp. At daybreak, they proceeded with their

journey. However, among the refugees, there were people who were
slow and people who were fast.
Three days later, the villages who brought the elders and children along
had fallen behind the caravan. The distance between each wagon was
widening and those in the back could not see those in front anymore.
Sometimes a wagon's wheels would get stuck in the muddy ground and
it would become immobile. Angry shouts of “Get out of the way!” and
desperate cries of ”Come help!” intertwined with each other, amplifying
the frustrations of everyone present.
Scenes of people quarrelling, wagons overturned, luggage scattered all

over, children crying loudly and women with obvious looks of despair on
their faces could be seen everywhere.
But, in their time of need, their saviors came to their aid.
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“They were the Men in Green. There were twelve of them, two of which
were girls.”
The waitress’s voice not only could be heard by the Knights, but also by
the other patrons. Unconsciously, the tavern had gone silent as Melissa
described the exodus of the village as well as the presence of females
among the people in green. No one in the tavern knew anything about
them.
“What do the girls look like?”
Norma’s question made Melissa “Hmph!” in annoyance.
“Men are pigs. Ugh, whatever. There was a tall female. During the day,
she wore a helmet that covered her hair, but at night, when we broke for
camp, I saw it clearly.”
“When she untied her ponytail, even I, a fellow female, gasped in

surprise. Her hair color was as black as a crow’s feather. If there wasn’t
a language barrier between us, I would have asked for the secret to its
vivid black colour. Her body was also slim. She was definitely an exotic
beauty.”
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Hearing her description, the eyes of the men lit up with lust.
“Err, how about the other one?”
“That one was like a cat. Her hair was chestnut brown and she had a
small body. Her hair was cut short like a boy’s and she was full of spirit.
She was also capable of taking care of others and instantly got along
with the children. But even the most powerful men were afraid of her.
When my husband got into a fight with Moyer’s husband, she entered
into the fight like thunder and used only her legs to beat down those two
large men……”
The men surrounding them instantly lost their interest. A blank

atmosphere had enveloped the scene. Such a boyish woman wasn’t
popular among the men.
“She’s got a great figure. Although she was short, her breasts were like
cow’s udders. Even I grew jealous of those melons. Her waist was also
very slim, it was unforgivable. However, her face was more cute than
beautiful.”
“UWAAAAA!”
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“As expected……”
Melissa clicked her tongue in annoyance at the cheering men. Although

the customers being excited was a good thing, as a woman, she could
not be happy about that.
“Hmm. It was like that. Many things happened, but we still managed to
move on. But that beast finally caught up with us.”
There was not enough water for the villagers and they didn’t have
enough food to satiate them. Still, they did their best to endure in order
to take another step forward, but they were nearing their limit.
Yet, they continued their difficult journey even as their supplies rapidly
dwindled to nothing.
Alas, they finally reached their limit.
Those who could still move continued on, while those who couldn’t sat
down in fatigue.
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The people in green’s strange wagon which didn’t need any horses to
move carried the children and elders who couldn’t move anymore. Still,
it could not take all of them .
“I couldn't move anymore. Still, I wished for my son to live on. I prayed
hard to God, but nothing happened. Those priests said that God exists,
but why didn’t God help us when we were in such dire straits? I won’t do
an idiotic thing like praying to God next time.”
The bright sky above them suddenly turned dark. Expecting to see rain
clouds, the villagers raised their heads and froze in place.
“It was a red Dragon. It had arms and legs, and it spread its wings like a
bat. It was those large wings that covered the sky.”
The dragon landed. In an instant, Moyer and her husband disappeared

before Melissa’s eyes.
Only the lower halves of their bodies were left.
Before the people even understood the situation, their natural instinct
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took over as each of them ran. Carrying their children, they abandoned
their luggage as they tried to get away from the monster.
The wagons overturned, crushing many villagers under them.
While everyone was escaping, the Flame Dragon spewed fire all around
it. After thoroughly roasting the humans, it swallowed them whole.
They scampered around like baby spiders as they tried to escape. Like a
child destroying an ant’s nest, the Flame Dragon squashed the escaping
villagers under its foot and ate them.
Despair filled the villagers’ hearts.
“In that instant, the Men in Green appeared.”
Melissa said with a tone of admiration.
“They rode on their wagons, which were faster than horses. On the two
wagons, the Men in Green raised their magic staffs and attacked the
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Flame Dragon with spells.
However, the dragon remained unscathed. Even their magic was unable
to pierce the dragon scales. But, they didn't give up.
They circled around the dragon repeatedly and kept attacking to buy
time for the villagers to escape.
Thanks to them, many of the the villagers survived.
The Flame Dragon turned around to attack the Men in Green. But, the
beast could not catch up with their frightening speed. By moving around,
they kept themselves safe from the scorching flames of the dragon.
But soon, the dragon got used to their tactics. The people in green who
could only cast magic from afar were at a disadvantage.
“At that moment, the leader of the people in green shouted something
and they took out that thing.”
“What thing?”
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“A giant magic staff. We call it the Divine Rod of Steel. We even heard
the incantations. It was ‘Baku-Burasuto-Kuria’. After that, there was a
loud bang and the Flame Dragon’s whole left arm was blown off.”
It was that moment when the so-called invincible Flame Dragon was
defeated.
After getting injured, the dragon let out an earth-shaking roar and
rapidly flew off.
After finishing the story, the people present were silenced by the
magnanimity of her tale.
“Divine...Divine Rod of Steel?”
Such an exaggerated name awed them into shocked silence.
After a moment of quiet contemplation, the Knights began discussing

their thoughts on this. The tavern also returned to its rowdy atmosphere.
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“In-In a nutshell, they were very powerful. Although they look like
foreign mercenaries, they had such amazing skills. I think we should
employ them. What do you think, Your Highness?”
The vermillion-haired female knight who was about to eat the Ma Nuga
meat in her hands was asked a question. She then put the meat back
onto her plate on the table to reply to the knight.
Ma Nuga meat was made by wrapping the a long bone from livestock
with smoked meat. To people from Earth, it looked like a type of sausage
or turkey leg. The meat was roasted and eaten directly without being
cut. It tasted magnificent when one bit into it.
Stretching her hands towards her wine cup, Piña Co Lada replied, “I’m
quite interested in the weapons used by those people who repelled the
dragon.”
Senator Godasen had said it before. “The enemy infantry’s weapon

made a sound of ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ A moment later, our troops had
fallen.”
Based on these words, it seemed to fit the bill with the Coda villagers’
descriptions. The Coalition Army’s defeat at Arnus hill must be related to
that magic weapon.
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Piña called the waitress to ask her a question.
“Woman, you have seen the weapons of those people. What do they
look like?”
Melissa tilted her head as she told her what she had seen.
Although being addressed as ‘woman’ made her unhappy, because of

the presence of the young female knight who gave her tips, she decided
to tell her the truth.
“In other words, those people used staffs that looked like steel. They
made an exploding sound, as well as spitting fire?”
“In my opinion, it is a magic weapon.”
“Then, the staff they used to repel the Slither Wyrm…….it’s called the
Divine Rod of Steel, right? What does it look like? Try with the best of
your abilities to describe it.”
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“Didn’t I say that it was a Flame Dragon, not a Slither Wyrm?” the
waitress insisted. With a wicked smile, she glanced at the men around
her.
“You’re being rhetorical. The Divine Rod is good stuff…...Well, I can’t

blame you, seeing that you were born in an overprotective environment.
But, why don’t you ask the girls who have husbands? It’s the same as a
man’s thing. Of course, it’s so large that you can hug it. I don’t think any
man here has a thing that’s as big or as black as it...”
The waitress laughed crudely as she went to the other table to take
orders.
Confused, Piña looked to the male knights for an explanation.
As if on cue, all of them averted their faces from Piña’s gaze.
She finally set her sights on Hamilton.
“You...you have a fiancee, right?”
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She must have thought that she was safe from the line of fire.
The prim and proper Knight, Hamilton Uno Ro, who was drinking soup,
sprayed it out in surprise. Her messy short hair shook with her head as
she protested, “I-I do…...but I am still a maiden! How would I know about
such a things…...ah.”
The men’s eyes landed on Hamilton. “Hmm, that kind of thing, eh?”
Piña’s suspicious gaze pierced her.
Hamilton could only blush furiously as she cowered down in her seat.
Note
1. (Shaped charge Neumann Effect: Explosive energy is released

directly away from the surface of an explosive, so shaping the
explosive will concentrate the explosive energy in the void. If the
hollow is properly shaped (usually conically), the enormous
pressure generated by the detonation of the explosive drives the
liner in the hollow cavity inward to collapse upon its central axis.
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The resulting collision forms and projects a high-velocity jet of

metal particles forward along the axis.)
2. (Hugoniotic Elasticity Limit: the point at which a solid becomes a

liquid after being subjected to a powerful shock)
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 6
There were three ways of evacuating the refugees. Two had already
been touched on.
The method Itami and the others picked was the third. They chose this
method of evacuation because there were only about 20 to 30 people
they had to worry about.
Following an armed group of unknown affiliation was just as risky as

jumping into a ravine for the people of this world. They might as well
have been stripped naked and sold into slavery. However, they had no
choice. They were children who had lost their parents when the Flame
Dragon attacked, or elderly people who had lost their children, and some
were even wounded. Under normal circumstances, the outcome for
them would be a long and slow death anyway.
Of course, some of them were different. For instance, there was the
Magician Kato and his pupil, who were very interested in the JSDF, as
well as the priestess of Emroy.
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However, many of the refugees were asked questions that could not be
answered, such as “Where do you want to go after this? We’ll take you
to wherever you want to go.”
Itami decided to ask the village chief about what to do with the
remaining 20 to 30 people. The reply he got was “Leave it to God.”
Itami tilted his head and asked again. After translation, the replies he
got were along the lines of “Where nobody needs to take care of them”,
“Anywhere”, “Wherever you want”.
He sighed deeply.
The village chief got onto the wagon his family was riding, and spoke to
Itami, “I fully understand that you are noble and compassionate folk, and
that we must seem cruel and heartless in your eyes. However, it’s
already very hard for us just to take care of ourselves… forgive our
selfishness in this matter.”
The village chief left without looking back.
Itami and the others had been struck dumb by the sheer callousness of
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that statement. They knew that everyone left behind had been
abandoned.
The HMV was loaded with the orphaned children, the wounded, the
Elven girl… all their eyes were on Itami. They were very uneasy about
the decision he was going to make here. Because they could not
understand his language, they studied the minute changes on his face.
Among them, the black-clad goth Loli looked at him with great interest
in her eyes.
However, Itami did not feel the great weight of the responsibility
everyone was placing on him.
“Well, who cares… Never mind, we’ll take care of it.”
His innocent smile removed the tension in the air.
Itami’s duty was to investigate the inhabitants of this world.

Communicating with them, building good relations with them, and
collecting the knowledge of this world was a critical part of that mission.
Wouldn’t it be great if he could bring natives back of their own free will
and improve their understanding of this world’s language and culture?
At least, that was what he thought.
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In truth, a civil servant who thought like this would be nearly impossible
to find.
Anyone who didn’t realize the problem with that sort of thinking would
never have become a public servant. What public servants hated the
most were people who increased their workload.
“You, you, you…”
Major Higaki grabbed his head, in front of his subordinate who didn’t
know what he had done.
The officers from the other Advance Reconnaissance Teams remained

silent, while the refugees who had been left outside the camp looked
around in curiosity.
“Who, who said you could bring them here?!”
“Eh? Was that a bad thing?”
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Itami idly scratched his head. Higaki paced around a little, before saying
“Follow me” and walking out of his office.
***
“General… the reports from the recon platoons we dispatched have

come in.”
“Oh!”
The man who responded was Lieutenant-General Hazama.
He had been a student of philosophy in Tokyo University, a graduate of

that school which only accepted the best of the best. However, the truly
inspiring part of his life story was how he enlisted as a private with the
JSDF and climbed the ranks until he became the mighty Lieutenant-
General he was now. One could say that, although he could have taken
the fast-track, he chose to go the long way instead. His catchphrase was
“No pain, no gain”.
Hazama took off his glasses, and looked from the pile of documents on
his desk to 1LT Yanagida.
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1LT Yanagida had graduated from the National Defense Academy of

Japan (NDA) with flying colours, and under normal circumstances he
would have been considered an elite thinker. However, in front of
Hazama he never seemed to be able to raise his head. The reason for
that was apparently because he failed to get into Tokyo University.
People compare themselves to others by many metrics; academic

records, resumes, performance records, and, for members of the JSDF,
their ability as warriors. They would always look for fields in which they
could surpass others. Then what would happen if an individual who was
excellent in all areas appeared before them? Most people would
unconditionally accept their inferiority and think, “That guy’s amazing”,
but Yanagida was far too proud for that. Perhaps he had an unfortunate
encounter as a child, or his parents had raised him that way, but in the
face of a superior individual, he did not feel respect, but rather
resentment from the bottom of his heart.
“What’s the matter, did you realize something?”
Hazama raised his crew-cut head and leaned back against his chair. The
cheap office furniture creaked under his weight. He didn’t think too
much about Yanagida’s resentment, though he did think, “I need to keep
an eye on this fellow.”
“Several reconnaissance reports have arrived, but I didn’t think they
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were that important because they’re just raw data…”
“That’s true, make sure they do a good job.”
Hazama did not feel that a simple reconnaissance would give him a full
picture of the situation. However, he was looking forward to
understanding the inclinations of the locals.
Their relationship with the locals, the safety of the JSDF units, and the
opinions of the Special Region with respect to Japan and governmental
influence were all closely interlinked. Ignoring the locals’ feelings would
breed contempt, or worse, active insurgency and that would outweigh
any benefits of such callousness. As such, it was critical to understand
what the locals meant by righteousness, evil and so on. For instance,
Islamic cultures hated dogs and preferred men to have beards.
“The only common point between the teams was that, despite the
difficulty, they all made first contact. The locals, who superficially
resemble human beings, primarily make their living through agriculture,
with forestry being a close second. Their population is distributed into
settlements and is generally low. The 6th Recon Platoon has only found
mercantile installations in villages with populations of over 500 people.
They mainly sell clothes, tools, farming equipment, oil lamps and other
miscellaneous living essentials... This is the stock list and the price
catalogue. Several photos are also enclosed.”
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Yanagida concluded his briefing by placing a sheet of photocopied A4

paper on Hazama’s desk. He excelled in this field of work and rarely
made mistakes.
Hazama went through the materials as if he were reading a table of

figures. However, this information was critical for understanding the
economic situation of the Special Region, so he had to send it back
through the Gate for study by government experts.
“At the present moment, we do not know if there is a central authority

for the Special Region. Every village encountered has been led by a chief
who looks after the villagers.”
“How do they choose the village chiefs?”
By understanding this, they could theorize if this world was run by a

democracy, an oligarchy, or a simple autocracy.
Yanagida sighed with exaggerated loudness, hinting at how difficult that

investigation would be.
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“All we need is to invite a few residents over for…”
“It would be troublesome if we brought them over without properly

communicating with them, no? Having it phrased as kidnapping or
forced transportation would be a headache…”
“About that…”
After laying the foundations, Yanagida was ready to make his main
thrust. Carried by the flow of the conversation, Hazama now seemed
ready to listen to his subordinate’s words.
“Fortunately, Itami’s team has brought back some refugees from Coda
Village.”
“Oh, that would be the place where the Dragon was sighted.”
“Indeed.”
Japan’s high-ranking officials, including Hazama, could only equate the
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beasts of the Special Region to dangerous animals like bears, sharks and
the like. It was incomprehensible to them that people would abandon
their villages over such minor threats. They simply could not imagine
such dangerous creatures in modern Japan, so all they could say was “It
can’t be helped if something like that happened there, right?”
One of the reasons why it was so hard for them to believe in the danger
posed by the Dragon was because of the Wyverns which had attacked
Arnus Hill. They had been easily brought down by normal anti-aircraft
weapons.
“Well, why don’t we lodge the refugees from Coda Village here? We’ll
explain it as a necessary measure. The people concerned will be
grateful, and nobody will think it’s a kidnapping, right?”
Yanagida began his explanation.
The plan was to build a refugee camp near Arnus Hill and take them in.
Since the evacuation of Coda Village was caused by a wild beast, it
would not be a temporary measure. While the refugees were there, it
would be possible for the relevant research and investigation personnel
to gain significant information from the refugees. Through extended
daily interaction with the refugees, they could solve the language barrier
problem, and gain a clear understanding of the Special Region’s
economic situation.
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In truth, the Ministry of Defense and the Prime Minister’s Office had
started making demands for detailed internal reports on the Special
Region. Yanagida was under a lot of pressure, so he wanted to show
them results quickly.
Hazama tapped the table with his finger.
“What happens if a fire fight breaks out? The enemy’s main armed force
has ceased combat operations, but this is still their target.”
This was one of the most obvious questions to ask.
“We need to consider how enemy forces will deal with locals who have
had contact with us.”
He recalled an incident in the past, where Japanese citizens had been

massacred because they were too close to a hated minority or religion.
“When the enemy approaches, we will take the refugees in and

guarantee their safety. Although how the enemy treats the residents, be
it torture or massacre, is not technically our concern, we cannot stand
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by and let such things happen.”
Hazama furrowed his brow. He approved of the plan to take in the

refugees. He had been thinking of something similar himself, so he had
no opposition to it. What annoyed him was Yanagida’s blunt way of
speaking.
There was a limit to how much one person could think about by
themselves, because there would be mistakes or omissions made. Even
if they housed the refugees within the base itself, it could cause all sorts
of problems. The enemy might have infiltrated the refugees and bringing
them into the base would invite sabotage, for instance. But they could
not locate the refugees far away just because they were afraid of taking
risks.
In order to make the ones who had caused the Ginza Incident surrender
to them on the negotiation table, they would need to firmly grasp the
situation in the Special Region. They would need to investigate and
understand this land, this domain, as well as this world’s government.
Just as Hazama was about to ask about the refugee center during
combat operations, a voice came from outside.
“I’m coming in.”
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There was a sign outside Hazama’s door which said, “No need to knock,
just enter”. As a result Maj. Higaki entered after announcing himself.
“I have a report. 3rd Recon Platoon has returned. Although they’re

back… actually… that Itami, he…”
And just like that, the matter of taking in the refugees was approved.
***
“Yo, Itami.”
Itami halted in place as he heard his name being called.
While his superiors chewed him out for nearly an hour, Itami had put on
a mask of carefully feigned ignorance and let the words flow in one ear
and out the other. In the end, the meeting (which felt more like an
interrogation) had ended with a “Since you brought them back, it can’t
be helped.”
He had to report to Ichigaya (the Ministry of Defense) about how he had
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been protecting those refugees who were unable to care for themselves,
such as the sick, injured elderly and the children. While the lecture was
unavoidable, when Itami said that he had forced his way through for
humanitarian reasons, the other side could only smile bitterly and
acknowledge his efforts.
“Although, you’ll have to take care of them.”
That didn’t mean that Itami would have to pay for them out of his own
pocket, but that Itami would be in charge of arranging the protection of
the refugees. That was the condition placed on him.
Itami thought about feeding the refugees and sleeping arrangements for
them, and left the black corridor for the staircase. If he put in a
requisition with the ration team, he could probably solve the first
problem. Granted, they would be eating combat rations, but they could
hardly pick and choose. The real problem was arranging for beds for
them. The barracks on the base were not completed yet, and the team
members had to make do with the frames of the buildings. Tents were
the only way out, it would seem. Preparing the documents, recording the
required items, the chops… ahhh, what a pain, Itami thought as he
stepped out into the corridor.
So when he heard the voice, he turned his head back very, very slowly.
After looking back, he saw someone sitting on a chair in the shadows, as

well as a mote of light from a lit cigarette. The wisp of smoke which
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curled up to the ceiling came from a mouth that was curled up in a sly
smile.
It was 1LT Yanagida.
“Itami, did you do it on purpose?”
“Do what on purpose?”
1LT Yanagida was younger than him, but he had been a lieutenant
longer than the freshly-promoted Itami. When ranks were the same,
seniority took precedence. On the other hand, Itami didn’t like Yanagida
at all. His principle was to involve himself as little as possible with
people he didn’t like. That way would reduce friction and smooth over
painful incidents in the other party’s memory.
“Don’t act dumb. Everyone knows it. You’ve never missed a single
periodic check-in before, so who’s going to believe you when you say
comms are bad? Were you afraid of being ordered to abandon the
refugees?”
“Ahhh, well, about that… it’s a different world, after all. It’s hard to
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predict the condition of the ionosphere and the magnetosphere, right?

Plus, there’s probably sunspots here too… ah ha ha ha…”
Itami scratched his head while he laughed like an idiot. It felt bad, but he
didn’t particularly need to convince Yanagida. Even if no one believed
him, the report still said, “Because of poor communications, I could not
receive further instructions, so I made a judgement call and brought the
refugees back to the base.”
“Hmph, you’re really trying to cover it up, really…”
Yanagida took a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled. Along with the
smoke came a sigh.
“Eh, well, we had to deepen relations with the locals sooner or later
anyway, this was just ahead of schedule. Even Top thinks of it that way
too. But to us… well, it’s a pain in the ass. Our plans are all in a mess
now.
Yanagida sounded kind of helpless as he said that.
When he saw the state Yanagida was in, he couldn’t help but feel guilty.
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“You’ll be spiritually rewarded for it, sooner or later.”
Yanagida forcefully put out his cigarette in an ashtray and shrugged.
“That’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough.”
“Well, someone’s being petty today… what do you want me to do to

cheer you up?”
Yanagida smiled thinly, then rose.
“We’ll talk about it elsewhere.”
***
The sun was slowly setting, and to the west, the sky turned red where
the day would end.
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As they watched the sky, the two men at the clothes drying point of the
West No. 2 Barracks (temporary) looked at each other.
Yanagida leaned against the fence and lit a cigarette before speaking.
“Judging from the information we’ve collected earlier, this world is a

goldmine. The DNA sequences of the creatures here are very similar to
ours. For all we know, we could even breed with them. The exact theory
is still in the hands of the scholars, but what I can tell you is that we can
live in this world. We’re breathing this world’s air now, and although our
food is imported from the other side of the Gate, if the creatures here
can eat it, then we should be able to eat theirs with no difficulty.
This world’s environment has not been destroyed or polluted. There’s a

lot of land and its plants are lush and vibrant. And those elements which
would be considered rare earths back in our world are abundant here.
The civilization level of the locals is as far from us as an ant would be
from an elephant, which is an overwhelming advantage for us. This
world has only opened its gates to Japan. This is either great good
fortune or a disaster in the making.
Investments in Japan’s resource entrepreneurships are going through

the roof in the New York, Shanghai and London Stock Exchanges. Oil and
ore-related stocks are going down. Nagata-cho’s MPs are in consultation
with the Economic Federation people day and night. The diplomatic
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services are going crazy trying to handle the NATO countries. However,
the government, the most critical part of this whole business, is having
trouble dealing with it. China, Germany and the other resource-providing
nations are starting to demand ‘The Special Region should be
internationally controlled’. The problem of whaling can be explained
away by being our country’s culture, so even if the whole world looks
down on us, it’s fine, but when it comes to the economy, our country still
isn’t strong enough to make enemies of half the world.
So I’m telling you, Itami, this is what Nagata’s people want to know.
They want to know what this world has that is worth antagonizing half
the world for.”
“And if there is such a thing?”
“Obviously someone who possesses something is stronger than

someone who doesn’t, you should know that. The People’s Liberation
Army massacred many Tibetans and Uighurs, China’s poisoning of frozen
gyoza, the Russians unilaterally tearing up the natural gas mining
agreement because they’re wealthy, South Ossetia seceding from
Georgia, in the end, all of these people managed to do what they did
because they had resources which everyone wanted. You could even say
that if we could gain something from the Special Region which was
worth antagonizing the whole world, we might resort to any means
necessary to secure it.”
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Itami shrugged.
“Yanagida, I didn’t know you were thinking so much about our country.
At least now I know you’re a patriot. However, people have many uses.
In truth, I’m not really interested in all this geopolitical stuff. See, what
I’m thinking about now is how the children I brought back are going to
eat and sleep. So what exactly do politics have to do with my job?”
“Didn’t I tell you? They want to know what value this place has. No,
that’s not right, they want to know where the valuable things are.
Whether the Special Region belongs to Japan or it’s managed by the
international community, anyone with that information will have an
overwhelming advantage. You do know that you’re in the best position
to gain this information, right? All the other recon teams did was check
out what the villages were selling and add a few new words to our
vocabulary. What you did was gain the trust of the people here. As long
as you’re around, we can find out where they build things, where they
hide things, how to communicate with them, and so on.”
“Hang on, Yanagida. Do you expect me to ask the kids where treasure is
buried? Where the oil fields are? Do you think they’ll tell me if I just ask
them? I’m sorry to say this, but I suck at geography, even though I went
through university. Do you think these uneducated children will do any
better? I can tell you right now that they won’t know anything that
doesn’t concern their immediate daily lives.”
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As he said this, Itami thought about the silver-haired girl with a wagon
full of books and the old man that was her master. It would probably be
more productive to let the linguists go through their books.
“Finding people with information and obtaining that information is

absolutely critical.”
After hearing this, Itami could not go on.
“Itami, of late, you’ve been allowed a lot of freedom in your activities.

Your next mission is going to depend heavily on how well the officers
can write, but regardless of what your orders contain, your final
objective remains the same.”
“Dammit, I’m tired of this shit.”
Itami continued cursing bitterly.
“Hmph! Well, you were happily spending taxpayers’ money up till now,
so how can you say, ‘Oooh, I don’t like it, I don’t want it’? Better work
hard.”
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Yanagida tossed his cigarette butt away after he finished.
***
Although he could not see what the future would bring, practically
speaking, he had to handle this carefully. Since the whole situation was
a mess, proceeding without a plan would be counterproductive. Even so,
the people who lived in these conditions were probably used to it.
In any case, he had to get them something to eat.
In any case, he had to start pitching tents for the refugees to sleep in.
In any case, he had to take the wounded to the doctors.
In any case, he had to distribute clothing.
The elderly people or the older children could take care of the younger
children.
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After a few days of these “In any cases”, he could probably relax a little.
Living in tents was not going to be a long-term arrangement, especially
since the people who would do so were children and old people. They
would obviously want strong walls and a roof over their heads.
After listening to Kurokawa and Kuribayashi’s suggestions, Itami was

currently about two kilometers away from the south of Arnus Hill. They
were building a campsite for the Coda Village refugees in the patch of
forest located there.
For convenience’s sake, they should have built the camp closer to the
hill, but that ran the risk of involving them in any fire fights that
occurred, so after studying the local terrain and conditions, they picked
this place.
Actually building the place was the job of the engineers, but it was up to
Itami to provide resources, expendables, schematics, blueprints, and so
on. MSGT Nishina was experienced with this sort of thing and had
provided a lot of useful feedback. Though he got frustrated by
Yanagida’s nitpicky obsession with details (down to pointing out
punctuation errors), in the end, he managed to obtain a computer from
his superiors to help with his problems, and he spent the whole of the
second day sleeping.
“If it were a government bureaucrat doing this, he’d have finished it with
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one hand.”
After hearing MSG Nishina’s words, Itami gave thanks that he had never
entered civil service.
“Well, I’m a public servant too, but because of special duties, we’re
hardly related any more. Ah, I’m lucky to be a public servant on special
duties!”
Sometimes he would mumble these words, and sometimes he would

shout them.
***
Preparing for a task was very troublesome. But once a mission started,
the JSDF worked fast.
In the blink of an eye, they clear-cut a stretch of trees, and after moving
the ground with heavy equipment, they easily built a set of roofed
houses.
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Lelei could only watch this scene with her mouth open and her tongue
tied.
“...Well, looks like we can unload our luggage at last. I need my sleep.”
Having resigned himself with these words, he vanished back into his
tent. After watching her Master, Lelei could not help but agree with him.
Their carriages were not drawn by horses, but they ran faster than
horses.
Their magic staffs could force back a Flame Dragon.
Their sturdy, vast fortress at Arnus Hill.
Their gigantic iron dragonflies soared through the sky while making
terrible noises.
The way they could instantly turn huge trees into planks, where even a
team of woodsmen would take half a day just to fell a single tree.
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Their carriages with giant shovels that could do the work of a hundred
men in a flash.
And then, there was the way they built houses in moments.
In truth, she was growing jaded to these surprises.
The children and elderly who knew nothing had been shocked into
silence. They gave thanks in earnest and sincerely accepted these
benefits. As for Lelei, who was wiser but still could not make sense of
these unreal circumstances, her brain had long since overheated.
“...Papa will be disappointed that he missed seeing something like this. I

have to tell him later…”
The Elf girl’s body had recovered quickly, and she was dressed in the
clothes that the people here had given her, which were a shirt and pants
made of a stretchy, yet soft material (which she later found out were
called “T-shirt” and “jeans”). She watched the proceedings silently.
Lelei was envious.
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She couldn’t bear to watch any more. All she wanted to do was curl up
under her blankets. Well, she had already forgotten that she was
supposed to be a guardian of the forest, and watched in mute surprise.
However, since she had chosen the path of the sage, she could not leave
these difficult-to-explain circumstances as they were. After all, a sage’s
ambition was to conquer the mysteries of the world with wisdom.
After properly motivating herself, she set forth.
As she got close to the moving iron-skinned carriages, the workers there
looked at her with a mix of surprise and fear. They seemed to be
shouting something along the lines of “it’s dangerous”. If she were run
over by such a large vehicle, she would probably be squashed into
paste. Because of that, they were probably trying to keep her away.
Just then, a vehicle puffing plumes of smoke rolled up from the corner of
the construction site. Lelei proceeded to study its structure carefully.
She understood with a single glance.
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That being said, a “mobile kitchen” was a great idea. Its advantages
were obvious for the military, but even trading convoys that travelled
long distances would appreciate it. After all, it took a lot of effort to set
up cooking fires.
She thought about what the man had said to her with a smile as she
stood in front of it.
“Please wait a while, we’ll be done soon.”
Sadly, Lelei could not understand his good intentions.
Lelei could tell that they were trying to learn the local language. They
repeated their words, and were eagerly trying to talk to her. While the
results were not very obvious, at the very least, they could
communicate. However, if Lelei waited until they learned how to speak
the local language, she would not be able to learn anything. She wanted
to know about the tools and technology they used, as well as what they
thought about. To do that, she would have to learn their language. Thus,
Lelei steeled herself, and began speaking to the man.
Leading Private Furuta smiled to her as he showed off his knife skills,

which he was proud of.
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His nickname of “Shopkeep” was not for show. He had joined the JSDF to
earn enough money to open his own shop. The pension he would get
after his contract expired was important to accomplishing that goal.
The girl pointed at the small pile of ingredients.
“Hm?”
“Uma-seu seru?”
She was pointing to the radishes and saying something. She repeated
the same word, and with some annoyance, Furuta said, “It’s a daikon,
daikon.” But after he said that he thought, “Crap, I have to be nice to
her.”
“Die Corn?”
“Yes, a daikon.”
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Furuta picked up the daikon and waved it around.
One could say that the pinnacle of Japanese cuisine was sashimi, and
one could also say that the best accompaniment to sashimi was daikon.
Raw fish cuisine had started becoming popular the world over, but not
everyone welcomed it yet. After all, Europeans and Americans found
eating raw fish barbaric.
Then, what about this world? As he thought about this, Furuta spoke to
the silver-haired girl.
“Core Rekt, Daikon.”
“Die Corn.”
Lelei tilted her head as she puzzled it out. There was a “Core Rekt” in
front of that noun, so it should mean something.
Perhaps this vegetable was called a “Daikon”.
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“Daikon.”
The man smiled, and nodded as if to say “that’s right”. While he nodded,
he showed her how he could cut the daikon into thin strips that looked
like sheets of cloth. As she watched his exciting knife skills, Lelei
wondered if all men in their world were master chefs.
With that, the sage Lelei La Lelena, though burdened by some

misconceptions, threw herself into the study of the Japanese language.
Note
Yanagida talks about some things with Itami, here’s a brief explanation
of the terms he mentions.
The Tibetan problem: this should be referring to the 1959 Tibetan

Uprising and the Uighurs, the Urumqi 7.5 Violent Incident, which was a
series of violent riots that took place in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous
Region.
The frozen gyoza poisoning incident refers to police discovering in 2008
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that 10 people in Japan got sick from eating gyoza tainted with pesticide,
and those gyoza were traced back to Tianyang Foods in Shijiazhuang,
Hebei. Chinese Police arrested arrested the culprit in 2010 Mar 26, Lu
Yueting, who poisoned the gyoza as revenge.
The Georgia and South Ossetia incident refers how Georgia got close to
NATO after declaring independence from the USSR, and Russia wanted
Georgia's natural resources too. During the 2008 Olympic games
Georgia attacked South Ossetia, but Russian forces beat them back.
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 7
The three waves of attacks by the Coalition Army could not really be
considered a battle. A better example would be a horde of lemmings
ignoring a cliff before them and committing mass suicide. And of course,
the biggest reason for this was because the Empire did not provide any
intelligence about the enemy.
At that time, the flags of over 21 nations were raised in the camps of the
Coalition Army, and their forces numbered over 100,000. Hailing from all
over the continent, the sight of soldiers from various nations gathering
in one place was awe inspiring.
There were light cavalry on bare-bodied horses.
There were heavy cavalry, sheathed in thick layers of armor.
There were dragon-riders, mounted on Wyverns that soared through the
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sky.
There were battle mammoth units, which shook the earth with every
step they took.
There were small-bodied soldiers who looked extraordinarily tough from

the southern nations.
There were heavy infantry, who bore large, rectangular tower shields.
There were spearmen, whose points formed a forest of steel.
And then there were crossbowmen, catapults, ballistae, and others

gathered together.
Though Goblins and Ogres were treated like beasts of war in the
Imperial Army, some of the other nations let them wear armor.
Because they came from different lands, they competed through the
splendor of their uniforms.
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This time, their combined battle strength was equal to that of an army
three times their actual number, and their advance darkened the sky
and shook the earth for days. Everyone felt that this battle was a
foregone conclusion.
Originally, Arnus Hill was designated as a sacred place, but in truth it

had been little more than a slightly slanted hillock.
There were no trees to block one’s field of vision and no large rivers to
block routes of advance, nor were there precipitous cliffs. It was simply a
little bump in the earth in the middle of a large expanse of open space.
They had been told that the top of the hill had been taken by the enemy,
but they had not received any information about the local terrain at all.
According to the Imperial troops in the area, the invaders from another
world seemed to be doing strange things like digging holes and ditches,
as well as surrounding themselves with a strange curled fence of little
needles.
If they could build underground fortresses like Dwarves, it might have

been troublesome, but Humans could only do that very slowly. It would
be impossible to complete it within a month or so.
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That being the case, the victors would be the ones with superior
numbers.
King Duran of the Elbe Kingdom combed his white-streaked hair back
and tried to guess at what Emperor Molt Sol Augustus was thinking when
he had gathered this many troops from the Coalition to do battle with so
few invaders.
Enemies of that number should have been easily taken care of with the
Empire’s own military power. There should have been no need to gather
the armies of the Coalition.
Therefore, gathering the Coalition Army was not a military move, but a
political one.
For instance, did he intend to demonstrate his own might before the
Coalition Army? However, if that was the case, he would only need to
summon the kings before him instead. Such great fighting power would
not be needed. There must be some reason why he wanted to assemble
over 100,000 men. After all, feeding so many men was not a trivial
matter.
Perhaps he intended to use this huge force to attack some country, but
since the Coalition Army had been raised with the intention of protecting
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the continent, there was no justification for using it as an army of

conquest.
“Then, Your Excellency, how shall we proceed with the attack?”
Normally, Archduke League’s words would have been worth considering

in meetings with the other military leaders. However, all of them were
thinking, “Mere tactics are useless when we possess such military might.
In the end, we will crush them like a strong hand crushing an egg”. As
such, they did not give it much thought.
In truth, he had summoned Archduke League more to mock his paranoia

than for a discussion.
“Your Excellency, you should seriously think about it yourself.”
“You may say that, but if it’s just our troops moving out, we still need to
consider formations and tactics. Still, the enemy looks to number 10,000
at most. In comparison, we have a 10 to 1 advantage in numbers and
the fighting power of 300,000 men, so wouldn’t a mass attack end the
battle without any effort? As for the enemy condition, we can probably
figure it out once we make contact with them.”
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“It is as you say.”
“You’re surprisingly sensitive for a man of your age.”
Duran did not hear League’s mockery as he was lost in thought.
***
The movement of a large army would need time. One reason was
because the roads were not flat, even, or even present, but the main
reason was the sheer scale of the movement. After all, it took almost
half a day to travel from the head of the formation to the rear.
Setting up camp would also take a lot of time, about 10 to 20 days.
Even so, the Coalition Army that reached Arnus Hill, encircled the hill in
accordance to their prior arrangements, and began forming their battle
lines while keeping a safe distance from the enemy.
That distance would be determined by individual experience. That was

to say, they had to consider the ranges and minimum safe distances for
archers, ballistae, catapults and so on. However, the JSDF had cleverly
camouflaged their trenches and rifle positions so as not to let the enemy
discover them.
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As a result, the four thousand men of the Arguna Kingdom, the vanguard
element of the Army, were now in great danger.
The Imperial troops that should have been stationed at the nearby hills
had vanished without a trace; could it be that they had already been
defeated? If that was the case, they had to rescue the survivors. The
Arguna King had this in mind when he ordered his men to advance.
The Kingdom of Arguna was a small country with no special features. Its
economy revolved around agriculture and animal husbandry. Because
they had no special features, they lacked appeal, but they might have
been counting on that to avoid being swallowed up by the Empire and
the surrounding countries. Because of that, their troops were made of
Ogres and Goblins with bows and battleaxes, followed by their mainstay
troops, the heavy infantry and bowmen, with sorcerers as a final battle
line.
This was their typical battle plan.
Their scattered bowmen would fire, and then the mighty Ogres and
Goblins would slash into the enemy formation to throw them into
confusion.
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Next, the heavy infantry would advance in a densely-packed formation,

their square shields formed into a mobile shield wall, marching in
lockstep until they entered the fray.
If they had enough sorcerers remaining, they would launch a magical

attack in concert.
Finally, the troops would open up and the cavalry would charge in to
secure victory.
This was their usual tactic.
That was why they did not understand what had happened to them.
What hit them was a massed artillery barrage from the JGSDF’s artillery
units.
The JGSDF artillery was famed for their firing skill, which they
demonstrated by drawing a picture of Mt. Fuji in the air with smoke.
They showered the enemy with shells, which simultaneously detonated
over a huge front.
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That was why the Coalition Army said “They were blown away in a
moment.”
The victims were troops from the Kingdom of Arguna, who served as the
vanguard, as well as the men of the Modwan Kingdom, and total losses
were estimated at 10,000 men.
Their fire was intended to utterly destroy the enemy who had entered
their kill zone. Therefore, they brought overwhelming firepower upon
their foe. After that first volley, the attack was concluded.
“I stood in formation, and thought for a moment that Arnus Hill had
erupted. Princess, have you ever seen a mountain erupt? In my youth, I
once saw a volcano erupt in the mountains. It was as though the entire
mountain had exploded. There was no sign of it beforehand, like
earthquakes, and then I heard the air tearing apart, followed by an
unimaginably vast explosion. My heart nearly jumped out of my mouth,
and that was but one of several occurrences.
As for what had happened… we halted to make sure of the

circumstances, but all we saw before us was thick, black smoke.
Soon the smoke dispersed, and it was as if someone had driven a giant
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plough across the ground. In the earth that was dredged up we saw the
bodies of the Arguna and Modwan armies, mashed into the ground like
rice grains in a paella dish…”
Duran closed his eyes and shuddered as he recalled that scene.
Besides him was a nun, who was trying to feed him some seafood paella.
But he did not eat it, instead turning his face away.
“And what of the two kings?”
Duran shook his head when he heard Piña’s question.
“How shall I put this…?”
Piña had searched through the villages near Arnus in the hope of finding
the Coalition Army after the battle had started. The conclusion she had
reached was that the Coalition Army had retreated back after losing
their commander.
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Though it was called a retreat, it was more like the shredded remnants
of the Army who were limping home, given that none of the soldiers or
officers had escaped intact. They were lucky that the enemy had not
pursued them, which was how they survived. In this condition, the
arduous trek home would probably be even more agonizing than battle
itself. In truth, the bodies of troops who had fallen out had already been
buried by villagers throughout the land.
Before long, Piña heard that a nunnery in service of the god Hoboro had
taken in a man of high birth. When they rushed to the place, they found
that it was King Duran of the Elbe Kingdom.
He was over sixty years old, and perhaps because of stress or some
other reason, all his hair was now white.
His body could not endure a long journey on foot, and the troops who
had been fortunate enough to survive had long since escaped. He
ordered his few remaining troops who were still faithful to return to the
country and spread word of this danger, while he himself recovered his
strength in this nunnery. However, this was just a nunnery, after all, and
there were no doctors and the food was poor in quality. His strength
came back slowly, but bit by bit, it also drained away.
The smell of rot from the stump of his missing leg was beginning to fill
the air.
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His face was pale, and his blood was not circulating properly, and he had
Battle’s signs under his eyes. If he stayed in this state, he did not look
like he would live long.
“I was in the third wave. This is what I have become. I advanced with the
Mocha army into the hillside, but iron thorns blocked our way. By the
time we cleared the obstacles and resumed the advance, light fell like
rain upon us, and right after that I was blown away in an instant.”
“King Duran, I will notify the Empire immediately, and have them ready
a physician and a carriage. We’ll talk about this after you regain your
strength.”
Although she was the princess, in terms of the peerage, Duran was
superior to her by virtue of being a king. Piña fell to one knee, took
Duran’s intact right hand, and bowed.
But Duran shook his head.
“I’m sorry to reject the Princess’ kindness, but I do not wish to trouble
the Empire. Besides, I am not long for this world.”
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“Why is that?”
“I have been thinking about why the Emperor would summon the
Coalition Army to fight this war… after becoming like this, I understood.
The Emperor knew this would happen. I think he was angry that we
remained intact while his troops were beaten. In other words, the
Emperor wanted to have the enemy destroy us for him.”
Duran did not use honorifics to dignify the Emperor, which showed his
anger. Since he was about to die, he figured he might as well speak his
mind.
“Princess, do not say you did not know this. Place yourself in the position
of the Empire. You can probably imagine what happened when the
Imperial Army clashed with the enemy…”
“Yes. The Imperial Army was beaten, that much I knew. But I did not
know what sort of enemy was waiting for us there, nor that the Coalition
Army we sent there would end up like this…”
“Please go, Princess. I do not wish someone armoured in lies and

wielding a sword of deception to stand before me. The Coalition Army
would have fought to the bitter end to protect this continent. However,
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our greatest enemy was actually behind us. The Empire is our enemy. I
say again, Princess, please go.”
“Your Majesty. It is too late to ask you to quell your anger, but could you
at least tell me what the enemy is like? What magic do they use, what
tactics? Please tell me about your tactics as well.”
“I will not speak of them. We made great sacrifices to learn that much. If
the Princess wishes to find out, then please proceed to Arnus Hill by
yourself. Perhaps the enemy will tell you for the price of your men.”
Piña had tried her best. The Emperor had underestimated their
opponents. He thought that he could make up the difference in fighting
power with strategy and schemes. However, Piña felt that the enemy
and the Empire were on completely different levels. She had the feeling
that if the Empire did not understand the enemy’s power, it would be
completely destroyed.
As those thoughts ground in her head, the Imperial Princess stared

straight at him.
“That will not do. You must tell me everything you know. If not, I will
take the Kingdom of Elbe hostage. If your Majesty does not speak, I will
lead troops to Elbe and burn it to ash.”
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That got Duran’s attention.
“What, what is this!? First you took my soldiers, then my servants, even
my life, and now you want my kingdom and family as well… like father,
like daughter… Very well, do as you please. Besides, once I die, it is only
a matter of time before my country will be swallowed up by the Empire. I
can hear Death approaching, so all this no longer matters to me. I will
rejoin my family in death, and then we will mock the Emperor and you
when you follow us.”
“You’ve completely lost hope at the brink of death… But the Empire will
not lose.”
Piña stood, looking down at the dying king.
“Anything is permitted, as long as one is powerful. That is what you

believe in. However, we have our conviction and our pride. When we are
invaded, we will naturally return the favor. The enemies at Arnus are a
mighty army, with weapons of godlike power and tactics of divine
potency. They crushed us like squalling babes. The Empire that brought
them here will share the same fate as us. ‘Anything is permitted, as long
as one is powerful’, you say? But the enemies at Arnus are stronger than
you. The Imperial Army is in grave danger. When you find out and beg
for help, nobody will answer. You have sown the wind, and you will reap
the whirlwind!”
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After Duran shouted these words, he collapsed, gasping on his sickbed.
Piña had no words to say.
Even with power and strength, it was difficult to conquer a heart. It

wasn’t as though she couldn’t do it, but if she had, the king would be
dead.
Since there was no more to be gained from the King, she had to give up
on him.
Duran’s angry cries echoed in her heart, as well as his hatred of the
Empire that betrayed him.
“Your Highness, please do not order the knights to attack Arnus Hill.”
Piña sighed as she heard the words that hit her right after she left
Duran’s room.
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“Hamilton, how stupid do you think I am?”
“I would not dare. But Your Highness is radiating an air that says ‘We
ride at once!’”
If they set out, their objective would not be Arnus Hill, but the Capital.
Piña thought this, but did not say it.
Her eyes roved over Hamilton, who resembled a very handsome prince
at a glance. As if to confirm her gender, Piña gently patted Hamilton’s
flat chest. Well, it was soft and bouncy.
Piña wondered what the hell she was doing. She could hardly believe
she was goofing off at a time like this… Or rather, maybe she was so
wound up that she needed to blow off steam.
“Forget it, whether or not we attack, we still need to go to Arnus Hill. We

need to see the enemy with our own eyes.
“Ah~ Princess, with just this many people? Won’t it be too dangerous?”
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“Indeed, it’ll be dangerous, but you’ll protect me, right?”
With that, Piña left the nunnery.
***
Beijing — People's’ Republic of China
Nanhai Building
The report on Chairman Dong Dechou’s desk described the Chinese

Communist Party’s strategy to deal with the 24th Far East Report. It was
filled with lines of Chinese characters, and it was not only thick but also
dense.
Chairman Dong looked at the report his secretary had given him.
The subject was still the Far East Report, but the inside was filled with
Kanji, and a large portion of it pertained to the Special Region.
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“The Special Region, hm…”
Dong had thought it was some kind of joke from the start.
Japanese anime had had a great impact on the world. His own son
constantly bugged his parents to buy it for him, so when he first saw a
report talking about a Gate that led to another world, describing
monsters and medieval knights that could have come out of a movie, he
thought there must have been some kind of mistake.
However, after double-checking it with the news agencies and the

diplomats, he knew that this was the truth. Well, Dong’s first instinct was
that, “This must be a disaster for the Japanese”, but once the JSDF had
eliminated the soldiers that came from the Gate, Dong could no longer
ignore what was behind it.
The predictions said that there were vast lands and ample resources on
the other side. Why should Japan have the exclusive right to them?
Even though Japan was a small country which lacked resources, it was a
developed country so it was wealthy enough even without the resources
on the other side of the Gate.
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Indeed, the Special Region was what China truly needed.
China had a population of over 1.3 billion people, which was steadily
increasing. It was this vast population which limited the number of
people which could enjoy a prosperous life, which required a massive
amount of resources and expansive territory. He would even risk the
censure of the international community in order to provide his people
with a good future and fertile lands.
If the Gate had opened in Beijing, all problems would have been solved.
They would explore and develop the Special Region and move their
citizens through. That way, the burden on China would be decreased,
and they could send resources back through the Gate, so they could
ignore sanctions by other nations. However, the Gate had appeared in
Japan. Rectifying that problem would be difficult.
Dong finished skimming the report, and sighed.
“As long as the Gate is in Tokyo, the methods our nation can employ are
limited. How much of a stake can we have in the development of the
Special Region…?”
Dong’s secretary replied in accordance to Dong’s thoughts.
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“It is impossible as long as Japan monopolizes it.”
“Indeed. Because of that, we need to place restrictions on the Japanese

government’s actions in the Special Region.”
“Understood.”
“We will promote relations with ourselves and Japan. We will make
demands as needed, or negotiate in a give and take fashion. Ideally, we
could move half our population into the Special Region.”
“Will we make another China there?”
“I would be overjoyed if we could do that.”
Dong smiled, and placed the report into his drawer.
***
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Some time ago, the content on TV and the news had started to change.
The public television stations started showing scenes of how the natives
of Australia and Tasmania had been massacred and violated and wiped
out by the immigrant English convicts.
Or perhaps they would show how the Spaniards destroyed the Incan
Empire.
Or Carthage, destroyed by the Romans.
These television shows made the same point, emphasizing and

repeating it so they would leave a deep impression in their audience. Be
it variety shows, soap operas, quiz shows, weekly magazines, the news,
they added their own message to change their viewers’ opinions.
The message was how a superior culture crushed and destroyed a

weaker one.
They emphasised the tragedies that resulted from ethnic cleansing.
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People would naturally sympathize with the underdog. They used this
sympathy to sway people.
They promoted the idea that the strong should be rational, and should
be controlled.
The images of African children starving in a desert stared out at society.
They paused for thought. They were led to stop and think.
Could it be that we’re victims too?
What was the JSDF doing on the other side of the Gate? Fighting the
enemy... Right?
The battles on the other side of the Gate received more and more
attention. However, there was not much elaboration on them. The
people were only assured that they had defeated the enemy’s attacks.
Since there were little or no casualties on the JSDF’s side, naturally the
people wondered about the fate of the people they fought. Were there
victims on the other side of the Gate?
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At the National Diet, a councilwoman from the opposition party rose and
asked that question. The person answering it was the Under-Secretary of
Defense.
“In the three engagements, the enemy losses numbered roughly 60,000.
None of them were from non-combat personnel.”
The opposition party members were speechless.
Simply put, the enemy’s single-minded attacks on our defensive position

were like the exact opposite of the Hill 203 Incident during the Russo-
Japanese War. The enemy was foolish indeed.
Casualties in war were natural. If we lost, our side would have more
dead. If we won, the enemy would have more dead. The anger of the
citizens after the Ginza Incident was understandable. However, to those
people who felt that they were more reasonable and rational, who
wanted to treat others with that compassion and understanding, the sort
of people who wanted to “save the world with kindness”, these figures
were unacceptable.
《The Shame of the JSDF? 130 Civilian Casualties?!》
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《Falsehoods In The Under Secretary’s Reply!》
《Unknown Battles In The Special Region! Were There Non-Combatants

Among The Huge Casualties?》
These topics circulated without end in the morning and evening papers.
TV and news reporters mobbed the Ministry of Defense and Parliament

House, pointing their microphones and cameras at either the Prime
Minister or the Defense Minister.
Prime Minister Hojo had stepped down from his post since his term had
expired, leaving the current Prime Minister to deal with the prickly
questions asked by the reporters.
Because the Chief of Staff and the Under-Secretary were suspected of

corruption, as the person responsible, the Prime Minister’s reply was
extremely serious. However, his answers were reported as “No
Comment”, “Those are serious words” and so on, and this only lowered
public approval.
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At the Diet, the opposition party decided to follow up on that by

arranging to have their members seated at the Speaker’s podium, facing
the Chief of Staff and the Under Secretary, who had to stand before
them and answer their questions.
“The civilian casualties that were reported were not caused in combat
with our forces in the Special Region, but were caused by a natural
disaster.”
In response to the Under Secretary of Defense’s reply, the opposition

councilman asked, “What kind of disaster? Did it have anything to do
with the JSDF?”
“According to the reports, it was a dangerous wild beast. It was a

creature like those you would see in a kaijuu movie. The JSDF Special
Region Reconnaissance Regiment engaged it in combat in order to
rescue the civilians from the kaijuu.”
“A moment please. A kaijuu? You mean to say the Special Region has
such life forms?”
“Of course, it is not an actual movie kaijuu, but something similar to it.
Special Region Class A Dangerous Beast, AKA ‘Dragon’. If possible, in the
future, we will refer to it as a kaijuu. We have recovered a portion of the
kaijuu’s body as a sample.”
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“Then we will believe this unbelievable story. That is to say, this incident
was caused by civilians being involved in combat operations against this
kaijuu?”
“No. The soldiers concerned used weapons to attack the kaijuu in order
to protect and rescue non-combatant personnel, but all casualties were
caused by the kaijuu.”
“Vice-Minister, earlier you said there were no non-combatant casualties.

However, why did you not come forward about this incident and its
many casualties?”
“The previous query was directed at enemy armed forces attacking the
JSDF. During those engagements, there were no non-combatant
casualties.”
“We are fully aware of the death toll, and that this is a disaster that has
claimed many victims. In the future, please inform us of such things,
then, how about the civilians rescued by the JSDF?”
“According to our reports, they have taken refuge in the nearby towns
and villages. Because of the kaijuu’s appearance, they abandoned their
ancestral homes and were attacked en route to safety by the kaijuu.”
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“I see. Then the survivors managed to escape. Do you know anything

about their lives now?”
“We have not gone to that extent. Our priority is safeguarding the region
around the Gate, and as a result we did not keep track of the refugees’
further movements. However, we have concluded that the injured, the
elderly, and the children without places to go will have trouble surviving
on their own, and under the judgement of the on-site commander, we
have taken them into our protective custody.”
“I see, then what about the people involved? Chairman…?” the

opposition councilman said as he shifted his angle of attack.
“In truth, without hearing from a witness, it is very difficult to get a clear
picture of the situation from reports alone. Since using the Gate is very
dangerous, it places a barrier between us and the people involved. As
such, I would like to request that the JSDF officer in charge at the time
and some of the survivors be brought here for an interview…”
A request to speak with the relevant officer, as well as the protected

locals. If the government had nothing to hide, they should not refuse.
The opposition repeated their points.
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The decision was made to deflect the attacks of the opposition party and
the media with the truth. For that reason, they decided to bring the JSDF
officer in question and several representatives of the locals to this side
of the Gate.
Note
Battle Sign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle%27s_sign
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 8
And so, this was the field commander in question.
Early in the morning, Itami sat down diagonally across from the desk of
the operational staff officer, ignoring his cold gaze as Itami browsed his
favourite web novel sites on his phone
<TL: google.com.sg/search?q=army+s3>
It had only been two days since he was able to use his phone on this
side of the gate.
Before the antenna was set up, he could only use it on his vacation days
when he went back to Ginza. After installing an antenna for mobile
phone usage, it was possible to make personal phone calls from this side
of the Gate too. What a joy.
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“I haven’t checked it for a long time so there are plenty of updates. Oh, I
should download this…”
Unlike the novels in bookstores, web novels contain both original and fan
fiction writings, allowing one to enjoy a large variety of works. The
amount is so massive that it was impossible to read it all. Hence, it was
a great fortune to find one masterpiece. Of course, there were some that
you wouldn’t want to continue reading after skimming the first few lines.
Sometimes, Itami would come across a series with great reviews in a

forum, only to find it gone from the web. There were times when he
wanted to read a series again only to realize it had been taken down.
When he thought about this, Itami became depressed.
“Ah~ Lieutenant, are you listening?”
Itami tried his best to tune out the voice coming from behind him.
It was a pleasant sound of a woman, but he decided to play dumb. He

was on break now, and didn’t want to listen to anything work related.
However, the sound of the operation staff officer clearing his throat
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made it impossible for Itami to focus on his novel. During times like this,
he really wished he had a private office.
“Lieutenant.”
“Ugh!”
It might sound normal in tone and volume, but Itami felt pain in his calf.
Could sound hurt people? Did sound have the capability to attack in this
world?
As he turned back while thinking about this, Itami saw Kuribayashi and
Kurokawa looking at Itami with suspicious eyes. If he had to describe it
using manga terms, it was a ‘Jii— tto’ kind of gaze. By the way, the thing
that induced a sharp pain in Itami’s calf was the tip of Kuribayashi’s
boot.
For martial artists who reached a certain rank, their fists and feet were
equivalent to weapons, even more so for Kuribayashi who had a close
combat badge. Was she allowed to use force on defenseless people? The
operation staff officer who should have been the witness to such cruelty
looked with eyes of approval instead. It appeared that Itami had no allies
in this fight.
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“May we have a word with you?”
“Who, me?”
Itami placed his phone into his drawer, and turned around together with
his chair.
Using a lazy tone to say ‘It is useless to discuss anything with me right
now’, Itami expressed how he was feeling at that moment.
Itami pressed his entire body weight onto the office chair, making it
creak.
“It’s about Tuka.”
Kurokawa was talking about one of the refugees under the care of the
third recon platoon, the Elf with blond hair and blue eyes, Tuka Luna
Marceau.
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“What about her?”
“Actually…”
According to Kurokawa, ‘She is weird’.
Specifically, she would ask for two sets of meals when eating. Kurokawa
hadn’t thought much about it, thinking it was just a cultural difference,
but it wasn’t so.
“Maybe she wants more to eat? Maybe her setting is an Elf that is
possessed by the demon of appetite?”
“No. She asked for two sets of meals. Not double the amount of food,
but two sets, including utensils.”
Kuribayashi said as she flipped through her logs.
“Hmm? Could she want to save it for someone? Such as a hidden pet or
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something?”
“One set would be left alone. As for clothes, the extra set she asked for
are for men.”
Itami didn’t understand either. He had a slight headache, and memories

he had already suppressed started surfacing.
“Hmm~. Well then, did you ask why?”
“We couldn’t communicate well with them, so we are not sure. But, we
did ask Lelei-chan, who has the best grasp of our language about why
she left the food behind.”
“And then?”
“She answered that she didn’t know, and that no one else was there
during Tuka’s meals.”
Silence mulled between them. Maybe she wanted to stay together with
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someone? Such a thought came out from Itami’s mind.
“Could it be, she had an imaginary boyfriend or something?”
Itami said jokingly.
However, Kuribayashi and Kurokawa didn’t react as he expected. They

had thought about the possibility of Tuka having an imaginary boyfriend
earlier.
“To be frank, it would be better that way.”
Kurokawa muttered worryingly.
“Have you discussed it with a doctor?”
“A shrink did came over. He raised the hypothesis that she was treating
her dead father as though he was still alive. But it was impossible for us
to judge whether that is normal or abnormal for her species.”
“How about asking Lelei’s teacher… Kato-sensei, wasn’t it? That old man
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would probably know more.”
“We did, but his views were about the same as ours. According to Kato-
sensei, she was of a rare race even amongst the Elves. His answers were
‘rarely seen’ and ‘unsure’.”
The phrases they knew right now were limited, so it was hard to
understand complicated sentences.
‘Couldn’t understand’, ‘Insufficient information’ and ‘Inconclusive’... All

these terms were simply translated as ‘Don’t know’. They would need to
spend more time conversing with each other to differentiate these
terms.
Itami’s interest was perked when he heard that she was indeed an Elf.
But compared to that, the important thing was the psychological
condition.
“The only thing we can do is talk to her, right? I’m not sure whether or
not she is treating someone who isn’t there as if he is alive, but we
should do what we can to help her.”
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“I think so too. To be honest, it's difficult to tell what’s wrong and

without knowing that, I can’t help her more.”
This caused Itami to think.
The tall and short WAC combo of the third recon platoon. Kurokawa was
popular among the refugee children. Even the girl in black priestess
clothing who troubled others by doing as she pleased listened to
Kurokawa. (According to Lelei, she is not a child and is actually much,
much, much older.)
Itami shifted his view to Kuribayashi.
“I, I don’t know. I am not trained in counseling, and so I don’t know

anything about psychology.”
Indeed, this petite lady with large breasts was a muscle brain that could
only communicate with her fist. Leaving something so delicate to her
would be like asking a pissed off, drunken gorilla with a bad hangover to
perform brain surgery.
“I get it. I will try it out later. But I’m not sure if I can express my
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intention well.”
“The children started learning Japanese recently, I think we will

understand each other’s language fairly soon.”
Itami wanted to point out that Tuka was not a child… but at this
moment, the voice of Sergeant Major Kuwahara came from the corridor.
“Commander, it is about time to go. Kurokawa, Kuribayashi, come back

soon.”
“Ah, coming.”
Itami followed the girls to the corridor.
With the command to ‘Draw arms’, the members of the 502 company
split up into platoons and entered the armoury. The members of third
recon platoon followed behind them to requisition their munitions.
They gathered before their barracks and tightened the flash suppressors
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on their type 64 rifles. Since it didn’t have a washer, it could fall off

when the weapon was used. After tightening their suppressors, they
could then fix rifle bipods and/or bayonets onto them.
Black tape was also brought along and used to secure important parts,
preventing them from falling off. They were going into a real battle, so if
their maintenance was half-assed… Well, with the possibility of bayonet
fighting, they had to be careful.
Deploying the bipods, the soldiers placed their rifles on their slings and
secured their bayonets at their waist. The bayonets had already been
sharpened in preparation for the battle. They were sharpened using a
simple grinding wheel, but they were sharp enough.
The platoon members sat down together and loaded their issued bullets
into their magazines.
Six magazines for each soldier. With twenty rounds in each magazine,
that would be 120 rounds. And of course, grenades were also
distributed.
Machine gunner Private First Class (PFC) Furata carefully placed his
5.56mm ammunition belt into the box of his Minimi.
<TL: wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_Minimi>
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Aside from his own rifle, Katsumoto was also given a 110mm infantry
anti-tank weapon known as the ‘Panzerfaust 3’, which he placed onto
the LAV. It would be impossible to damage the creatures known as
dragons without this, so the amount of Panzerfausts that were issued
increased.
<TL: wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerfaust_3>
The 12.7mm heavy machine gun on the LAV was operated by Sasagawa.
The ratio of the black painted armour piercing rounds to tracer rounds
on the ammunition belt had also risen.
After putting away the spare ammunition and materials, the platoon
members practiced their formations with their weapons.
With the command of Sergeant Major Kuwahara, they switched swiftly

between file formation, line formation and square formation.
They also practiced gathering and spreading out. Each member

watching their own arc of fire, covering every angle. If someone went
down, they practiced who would need to take over the casualty’s task
and what they needed to do. Everyone already knew this, but they still
had to drill it repeatedly.
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This was the culmination of studying old and new fantasy TV shows prior
to the JSDF going into another world. The reason why soldiers with
powerful weapons most often fell in battle was because they were cut off
from their allies and overwhelmed. In conclusion, working together and
supporting each other became an ironclad rule.
After Itami’s group finished their preparation, they clipped their

magazines onto their rifle and on Itami’s command of “Lock and load!”
chambered a round and put the weapon’s firing selector switch to the
“SAFE” position.
“The JMSDF would say something like ‘Battle Stations ready!’...”
In the tense atmosphere, Itami’s nonsensical words made everyone feel

weak.
“That’s an anime meta right?”
A female voice mumbled from somewhere.
“Anyway, we are heading out to a potential battlefield, so everyone keep

your guard up.”
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And with that, they left Arnus Hill and set off for the refugee camp built
in an imitation of an apartment building.
There were twenty-five people in the refugee camp right now. Twenty-
three of them from Koda village, one from an Elven village, and the Goth
Loli priestess who joined mid-way through their journey here.
The housing itself was originally just a trailer, but considering the
possibility that it might grow in the future, a building made to last for ten
years for four families was also built. That might be so, but the people in
the building weren’t family or relatives. They just came from the same
village, and the older ones cared for the younger ones.
There was no electricity, gas or water plumbing, but such things didn’t
exist in this world in the first place, so they didn’t feel troubled by this.
The children could use bottles to collect water from the spring nearby.
As for sewage, they could dump it by digging a hole in the corner of the
camp. In consideration for hygiene, dirty water was treated with bleach,
while potable water was brought to them by Itami’s group in plastic
bottles.
Out of the three daily meals, lunch and dinner were provided by Itami’s
group.
As for breakfast, they prepared it themselves with ingredients which
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were provided to them by the JSDF. In reality, the portions were a bit
lacking, so the children and elderly would wander into the forest to find
wild herbs to eat. Lunch was type two combat rations while dinner was a
huge pot of soup cooked by Furata and the other team members while
they chatted with the children.
If they wanted to, the JSDF could provide all three meals for them, but
they didn’t so as to preserve their ability to provide for themselves. The
JSDF wanted to support them in providing for themselves. Such was the
basic principle of the JSDF when they were deployed in Iraq. If they could
provide for themselves adequately, the next target would be for them to
provide all three meals for themselves. If they could find some work,
they might not be able to pay for their accommodations, but they would
at least be able to pay for their meals.
That was the plan, but the JSDF wouldn’t push them too hard. After all,
the residents were two elderly women and one elderly man, two injured
middle aged women, one injured man and the other nineteen were
children.
By the way, the three injured people suffered fractures, so they couldn’t
perform manual labour, even though they could care for the children.
The interesting thing was that, Lelei, who was learning to communicate
really fast, said that out of the nineteen so called kids, the Goth Loli
priestess, the Elven girl and Lelei herself weren’t children. So the
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number of children was actually sixteen.
So, how old were the three of them? The Goth Loli priestess probably
wouldn’t answer. According to Lelei, she was ‘Not a child, but much,
much, much older’. When questioned about the exact figure, the
expressionless Lelei frowned and shook her head, unwilling to ask.
By the way, Lelei herself was fifteen. In this world she was considered an
adult.
Elves have long lifespans that was a common setting in fantasy stories
so it was easy to understand. Tuka said she was 165 years old.
They thought numbers would be easy to understand, but it still took a lot
of work.
Lelei formed a circle with her thumb and index finger, and only extended
her middle finger. If her other three fingers were extended, that would
be a sign for ‘OK’ back on Earth. After that, she clenched her fist with
her thumb sticking out, which would normally mean ‘good job’.
But in her world, that meant fifteen, which was totally different from
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Japan. In the end, they used stones to compare the numbers, one was
an extended index finger, five was a thumbs up, ten was making a circle
with a thumb and index finger… that was the system.
With such a system, they counted to sixty nine. They could count
further, but the fingers would cramp and it was impractical, so it was
decided to ask about it later. In fact, Lelei learned to count in Japanese
before that happened.
When Itami and the others reached the camp, Lelei and the children
came out to receive them. When Kurokawa came out, all the children
went to her.
The members unloaded potable water, food ingredients, medical

supplies, combat rations and daily necessities.
In place of that, two canvas bags the size of pillows were loaded onto
the HMV by two slightly older boys. They seemed rather heavy. After
exchanging some words with the boys, Lelei and Tuka got onto the HMV.
Lelei was wearing a light brown hooded poncho in the style of Native
Americans. On her feet were moccasins and she held a staff in her hand.
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In contrast with her, Tuka wore a green T-shirt, tight fitting jeans and
basketball shoes. If not for her long ears, she would look just like a
typical high school girl from California. On her back were a bow and a
quiver full of arrows.
The boys who brought the luggage returned to the refugee camp, where
young boys and girls were working hard.
Midway up Arnus Hill, countless Wyvern carcasses covered the area.

According to Kato-sensei, the claws and scales of Wyverns could be
crafted into tough defensive equipment. Hence, they were valuable
items. The children thus harvested them from the decaying carcasses,
washed away the rotting meat and blood and dried them. This was the
first time Lelei and Tuka would be going to town to sell these items.
This might be a job they could perform indefinitely. If that was so, it
would help them achieve independence.
It wasn’t clear what Rory the priestess’ intention was, but she also got
onto the vehicle. She was still wearing her black gothic dress, holding a
halberd that looked really heavy in her hands.
As this was a good chance for Itami and the others to observe the
interaction of the residents with the merchants for intel purposes, they
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offered to provide transport and escort them. Also, Yanagida claimed he

wanted to see what would interest the merchants and came over with
some sample merchandise.
On a side note, the dead coalition army soldiers and the corpse of the
imperial forces that attacked earlier were all buried along with their
weapons, equipment and their money purses by the JSDF.
It was a sizeable amount of wealth… After all, there were no financial

institutions in this world, so the soldiers could only keep their money on
them. There were also knights and nobles of high status buried here…
But there were many ethical issues, so the JSDF couldn’t just take them.
In fact, this move resulted in a lot of currency in the local economy to
disappear, hitting the empire and the surrounding nations hard
financially, but these were issues for another time.
As many of the war horses that lost their owners were rounded up as
was possible.
It was done out of fear of complaints from animal protection groups, but
providing food for such a large number of horses was a problem. The
goods left behind by the enemy included horse feed, but it would only be
a matter of time before the supply dried up. Arnus Hill was surrounded
by barren land, and there was no grass suitable for them to graze on in
the forest slightly further away.
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And so, finding people to take over the horses was added into Itami’s
task list.
As for the goods handed to Lelei, there were about two hundred dragon
scales and three dragon claws, from just two wyverns.
That was after they sorted out the broken pieces and ones that were too
small.
How many scales would they get by processing all the wyverns on Arnus
Hill? Just thinking about that made all the refugees, be they young or
old, including Kato-sensei, dizzy.
Just asking the refugees to live on independently made the refugees

hang their heads in depression.
Be it building houses to live in, farming for food or hunting for games, it
would be impossible for the elderly, the injured and the children to
accomplish on their own.
When Lelei and Tuka were about to consider whoring themselves, the
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JSDF told them “we will help you” and gave them food and built homes
for them. When they were troubled over finding jobs, they were given a
free hand to process valuable items as they desired, allowing them to
collect the scales from the wyverns on Arnus Hill.
The scales of ‘dragons’ were actually quite valuable.
It was like telling them to pick as much as they like from a mountain of
treasure. Their responses were like “Is this fine? Is this really fine?”
For the villagers and children who lived self-subsistent lives of relative
poverty, the massive influx of income allowed them to buy things they
once thought were unachievable… They thought about all the ways they
could spend it, and they were still asked to take more, to take it all…
Sadly, this was beyond the imagination of mere peasants.
Dragon scales could be divided into several categories, the market value
would be dependent on the type and condition of the scales.
The highest level would be the scale of dragons, one piece in perfect
condition was worth ten Suwani gold coins. Armour made from the red
scales of a Flame Dragon (very difficult to craft) would be a legendary
treasure, enough money to buy an entire nation. If it really existed.
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The next grade would be newborn dragon scales. However, these two
types of scales were basically impossible to find in the market. As
mentioned earlier, it was impossible for man to hunt dragons. The only
way to obtain them was from the skin shed by dragons or newborn
dragons during molting. In reality, armour made from dragon scales had
made appearances in some tales of heroes and legends, and the item
itself was worshipped inside the temple of the god of war.
As for wyverns, nations with wyvern riders had a steady supply of them,
so these smaller scales were cheaper. One scale was between thirty to
seventy Silver Denari.
If you don’t splurge, one Silver Denari could feed a person for five days.
So if they sell all two hundred scales, Lelei’s group would be rich.
But, they needed a suitable buyer for them.
To trade them for cash safely, Lelei hoped to sell them to a large store.
However, she was worried about whether a large store owner would
negotiate with a little girl… If a small store couldn’t pay that much
money, she would have to let them pay at a later date. Even though
Lelei was a sage, she wouldn’t know about receipts and account
transfers.
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Fortunately, her master Kato had an acquaintance who was a merchant,

they could go there even though it was a bit far. The JSDF would be
going with them anyway… And so, Lelei’s gaze fell on Itami’s group.
“Hmm? What is the matter?”
After locking eyes with Itami and being asked that, Lelei kept her usual
poker face and stated the phrase which meant ‘nothing’.
“Well then, where is the shop of this Shooto person?”
Tuka and Rory leaned over and asked. Lelei answered straight to the
point.
“Italica city, west of Tipilika city, at the foot of Romalia mountain.”
“Tipilika city, Romalia mountain, Italica city…”
Sergeant Major Kuwahara had labelled the known landmarks on his map
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made from aerial photographs. He heard about the name of the places
in the vicinity from Lelei, and had basically mapped out the area around
Arnus Hill.
“I see, Appian highway, Roma river, Gurlpaz plains, Dima mountain

range…”
Lelei seemed to be curious about the map that showed the vicinity in
clear detail. The maps she knew would only sketch the hills and rivers,
and the map would be considered good if the positions roughly matched.
Therefore, it was only natural that she was interested in such a detailed
map. Lelei pointed out the places she knew on the map and stated their
names. Another thing that caught her attention was the compass.
Lelei felt the secret of how Kuwahara oriented himself and the map lay
in that object.
Kuwahara who was already fifty wondered how much magnetic north
deviated from true north in this world as he taught the usage of the
compass to Lelei who he was treating like his own daughter. Well, they
were sitting in a moving HMV, so the compass would shake a little
anyway.
Kurata stole a glance at Kuwahara from the rear view mirror and
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muttered, “The old man known as the demon drill sergeant seems really
happy when he is with cute young girls.”
In the early stage of the sergeant’s course, all trainees would have
experienced his orders to run with weights, which had built plenty of
frustration and anger in Kurata’s heart. But all his grudges dissipated
like the wind when he saw Kuwahara acting like a grandfather doting on
his granddaughter.
Rory and Tuka were talking about something.
They were talking relatively fast in their own language, so Itami and the
others couldn’t understand. However, they could still tell that Rory was
teasing Tuka. In the end, Tuka kept quiet with puffed cheeks. Rory had a
mischievous smile as she looked at Kurokawa. Itami was wondering what
she wanted to say when Tuka’s face and long ears blushed red.
There was clearly something out of place.
Rory laughed heartily, enjoying how Tuka was panicking. Lelei said that
Rory was ‘Very, very old”, but to see Tuka who was 165 years old being
treated like a child was odd.
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“Commander Itami, smoke ahead, to the right.”
Kurata who was driving pointed to the front right.
The exact same report was received via radio, the vehicle ahead also
noticed the same thing.
Itami observed the origin of the smoke with binoculars, but couldn’t
confirm anything as it was quite some distance away. Itami stopped the
convoy and asked Kurata, “Hey, will this road lead somewhere near the
source of that smoke?”
“The road is heading right towards it.”
“Damn. This is the second time that smoke has appeared right in front of
us. I have a bad feeling about this.”
Itami then asked Kuwahara for his opinion.
Referencing the map, Kuwahara found the city labelled as Italica near
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the source of the smoke. This convoy heading for Tipilica was moving
towards Italica.
Itami handed the binoculars to Lelei and asked for her opinion.
Lelei held it backwards, but changed it after realizing her mistake

immediately.
“That is smoke.”
Lelei said in Japanese.
“The reason for the smoke?”
The smart Lelei understood Itami’s question immediately.
“Farmland, burn, no smoke. Season, wrong. Caused by man. Flier? But

too big.”
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“Not ‘flier’, it’s fire.”
After correcting the mistake, Itami issued his orders.
“Watch our surroundings carefully, we are approaching the city. Keep an

eye on the sky.”
Kuwahara and Kurokawa picked up their rifles, covering the left and
right respectively. Tuka joined Kurokawa and Lelei helped Kuwahara in
observing the surroundings. The convoy moved off once again.
Rory squeezed between Itami and Kurata as she mumbled “Fresh blood”
with a lusty smile.
Italica city was founded two hundred years ago by gathering the
merchants in the region to construct a fortress city.
Politically speaking, this place was the cross road of the Dressia and
Appian highways, and developed as a border city between the nations.
But with the expansion of the Empire’s borders, its political importance
had declined significantly, and it was just a mid sized local market now.
It doesn’t have any local specialties, but the crops, livestock and
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handmade products such as cloth would be sent to the capital, so it

served as a collection base.
Right now, this was the territory of the Empire’s noble family, the clan of
Count Formal.
Colt, the head of clan Formal had three daughters, Elle, Loui, and Myui.
Aside from the youngest Myui, the other two had been married off to
other clans. Colt was planning to find someone to marry into the clan
after his youngest grew up to take over the family estate.
Myui was still single, and after Colt and his wife died because of an
accident, misfortune started to befall the city.
The eldest daughter Elle and the second daughter Loui married into the
Count Roen clan and the Count Missna clan respectively, so Myui had
the right of succession over them. This was the law of the Empire and
there were no grounds for them to dispute. However, the youngest Myui
was only eleven, so whoever became her guardian… would become the
de facto leader. And so, the power struggle began.
The talks between the two elder sisters started as a calm discussion and
turned into ugly quarrels, pulling each others’ hair in scuffles, and even
went so far as involving their husbands. The soldiers of Count Roen and
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Count Missna fought a small scale war as a result.
But their fight did not escalate further. They had limited forces after all,
and the husbands weren’t blind with rage like their wives were.
The security within the territory was maintained by the vassals of Count
Formal and the soldiers of Count Roen and Count Missna, so there
wasn’t any threat to the livelihood of the merchants and residents. The
value of Italica lay with its trade, there would be nothing to gain if it was
laid to waste.
And so, the situation became a stalemate.
The dispute of the sisters shifted into the courts of the capital, and
Myui’s guardian would soon be decided by the deliberation of the
Emperor.
However, the situation worsened after the empire’s campaign against

the other world.
The heads of the Roen and Missna clans died in battle. Elle and Louise
couldn’t spare the effort to take care of the Formal territory anymore
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and withdrew their forces, leaving Myui with the vassals of Count
Formal.
The young Myui couldn’t control her vassals and the running of the
territory became ineffective from neglect. There weren’t many loyal
vassals left, but there were plenty who had ulterior motives. Before she
realized it, corruption and injustice were running rampant.
The citizens were wary and security deteriorated.
Loose bands of soldiers turned to banditry and started attacking

caravans, grinding trade to a halt and stagnating the movement of
resources.
Bandits and trolls formed a group together and numbered in the

hundreds. Finally, Italica city itself was attacked.
Standing over the city gate, Piña loosed a few arrows at the retreating
bandits and took a deep breath.
Wounded soldiers staggered around or collapsed from blood loss. Arrows

were shot into the stone walls and the surrounding area was a mess.
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She spotted several citizens holding farm tools and sticks with a glance.
Outside the wall, the corpses of bandits and carcasses of horses were
scattered all over the ground.
“Norma! Hamilton! Are you alright?”
Inside the broken gate, Norma was defending a barricade. He supported

his body by putting his weight on a sword, his shoulders rising up and
down as he panted. He lifted a hand to signal that he was well, but his
armour was covered with arrows and signs of being hit by a sword.
His surroundings showed evidence of an intense battle, with bodies from

the attacking bandits and defending soldiers everywhere.
As for Hamilton, she was already sitting on the ground.
Her legs were straightened with her palms supporting her body, barely
keeping herself from keeling over. Her grip on her sword was loose.
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“Anyway, hah hah, I am, hah hah, alive.”
“What about me, princess? How cold!”
“Grey! Of course you will be fine, that’s why I didn’t ask.”
“Should I be happy? Or sad?”
Grey, a man who looked about forty with a stout build, showed no hint of
fatigue as he rested his sword on his shoulders.
There wasn’t any blood on him. If there wasn’t any blood on his sword,
he had probably been hiding somewhere, which would explain why he
still looked so energetic. He was the Knight Grey Co Aldo, a veteran of
the battlefield who rose through the ranks.
In Piña’s knight order, most of the knights were nobles. Since the knight
order didn’t have any real battle experience, such veterans were the
real core of the unit.
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The path to knighthood was narrow for soldiers. However, they would be
treated like normal officers after they made it through.
Hamilton said with a complaining tone, “Princess, why are we fighting

with marauders here?”
It was a bit rude, but she had to say it out loud.
“It can’t be helped! I thought the army from the other world would
attack Italica! Don’t you all agree?”
After completing her investigation of the areas around Arnus, Piña heard
some news as she was planning to infiltrate Arnus Hill.
“A large armed group appeared in Count Formal’s territory, and is

planning to attack Italica.’
After hearing this news, Piña thought the army from the other world had
finally started their invasion. ‘Are they sending out forces to suppress
the surrounding territories before laying siege to the imperial capital?’,
she thought.
She had to take countermeasures then. For Piña, instead of meaningless
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reconnaissance, an elegant battle suited her better. She pulled out of

Arnus, ordered her knights to head for Italica, while she and her group
rushed there in advance.
No matter what kind of battle it was, not knowing the scale and battle
potential of the enemy would be useless. If the enemy forces were
limited, she would defend Italica and attack with a pincer attack with her
knights that would arrive later.
However, she soon realized the ones attacking Italica were a marauding
band. Most of the members were remnants of the former Coalition Army.
In contrast, the head of clan Formal in charge of the city’s defences was
just eleven.
She couldn’t command in battle, and morale was at its lowest.
Piña was disheartened, but she couldn’t stand idle and watch the
bandits ravage the city. So she revealed her identity to the clan and
forcefully took over command of the Countess’ soldiers in defence of
Italica.
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“If we can hold for three days, my knights will be here.”
To be honest, they might arrive even later than that.
But the citizens and the countess’ troops believed in Piña and fought
with all they had. The enemy might be the remnants of a defeated army,
but they were former soldiers and proficient in attacking fortresses.
The city didn’t fall, but the gate that was supposed to be solid was
destroyed, granting the enemy entry. With the help of the citizens and
militia fighting with their farm tools, they survived the first day, but it
felt like a defeat.
They had lost too much.
The small number of troops decreased, and the courageous ones of the
militia fell in battle. What remained were casualties and exhausted
soldiers. Just one day was enough to plummet the morale of the soldiers
and citizens to rock bottom. Piña couldn’t think of anything to raise their
spirits.
That was how her first battle ended.
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 9
Piña Co Lada was the daughter of Emperor Molt Sol Augustus and his
concubine, the Countess Nell.
Emperor Molt had eight acknowledged children. She was the fifth among
them, and the third among the daughters. By the way, if one included
the illegitimate children, she would have about 12 to 15 siblings.
Because she was a legitimate daughter of the Emperor, Piña had a place
in the imperial succession. However, she was 10th in line (the Emperor’s
brother was ahead of her) so hardly anyone saw her as an heir to the
throne. At a suitable age, she would most likely be married off to a
foreign king or an influential noble. It was not glamorous, but she would
at least enjoy a comfortable life.
However, her existence was like a storm blowing through the upper
crust of society, though that was more because of her personality than
for political reasons. When she was young, she would often get angry
over small things and play over-the-top pranks, which disturbed the
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people around her.
When she was 12, she settled down, and began playing “The Knight
Game” with an all-noble cast.
According to popular gossip, she had been influenced after seeing a

female actress in a play. There was no way of telling if that was the
truth, but something had happened back then.
After claiming an old but sturdy building at the edge of the capital, she
gathered several noble children and made them live as if they were part
of the military, with herself as their commander. Because it was a game
of soldiers played as a group, they messed up a lot and didn’t have
proper food or uniforms. However, even when they failed, everything
seemed new, so the children had fun with it.
At first the adults were worried. But as they watched them and saw they
were happy, the adults calmed down and decided to wait until they got
tired of the game and came home.
In the end, the kids went home after two days, and their parents
welcomed them back by asking “Did you have fun?”
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Piña’s talent for leadership had developed here. This was because she
could see that, herself included, they were all far too weak.
She also realized that her colleagues would get tired of the game after
two days, and would want to go home after three days. Therefore, she
let everyone go back early, so they would continue thinking “It was fun”,
and then they would be more likely to play another round of “The Knight
Game”.
A week later, she started a second “Knight Game”.
They used the same building as last time, but this time she brought
cooks and servants, so the food, clothes and living conditions were far
different from before. When they saw this, it reassured the parents and
the children.
And just like that, this round of “The Knight Game” began in a
comfortable environment.
Although it was called a game, it was still a military affair.
Therefore, when the kids came back, the parents were heard to say
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things like “Their words and movements are much more refined than
before”, “They’ve become sociable and made good friends”, “They’re
stronger and more energetic”, “They aren’t picky about their food any
more”, “They’re living their lives correctly”. The Imperial Princess’
“Knight Game” had shown a positive influence on their children. And as
they played more “Knight Games”, some of the noble parents even
provided their own funding and encouraged their children to take part.
Piña’s comrades during this time were called the first batch. The first
batch made the rules, and they were the models for oaths, various
rituals, and ranks for the rest of the recruits.
Training up an order of knights took about two years, and when Piña was
around 14, what they called “basic training” was a period of cohabitation
of around two to three months. Schooling became part of their training,
and they invited several imperial scholars to conduct lessons, so as not
to neglect their education. The children's’ parents saw this “Knight
Game” as a form of “young people's education” in the form of training
for a knight order.
If this was where the “Knight Games” had ended, it would have been
seen as a meaningful endeavour which would have its place in the
Empire’s history books. After all, it made children more independent,
taught a healthy and regimented lifestyle, encouraged filial piety,
treated everyone as fellow brothers and sisters (in truth, many of the
children swore oaths of brotherhood or sisterhood with each other). The
adults were pleased with this sort of “Knight Game”.
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Similar youth groups sprang up across the country, and it was around
this time that these youth groups began styling themselves after knight
orders as well.
However, Piña ultimately wanted to develop this into a proper military

unit.
When she was fifteen, her knight group started incorporating the basics
of physical training, swordsmanship, archery, and horsemanship into
their training, and they also brought in outside coaches, officers and
NCOs from the Imperial Army.
The mood of the personnel ordered to assist in this varied. Those close
to retirement were pleased, but the younger officers and NCOs were
upset that they were just playing around with the Imperial Princess in a
“Knight Game”.
Therefore, with the mindset of “We can’t keep playing games with
them”, they began a program of serious military education. And this was
what Piña had hoped for.
The officers were hoping that the kids would be unable to take it and
that they would quit, but Piña believed that everyone could endure this
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round of training.
In this way, the military organization of the whole thing began taking
shape. Their theory and practice during their training was no less than
what actual army units were learning, and the members of Piña’s knight
group soon became excellent soldiers and grew rapidly.
When Piña was 16, something important happened which pushed her
knight group forward.
The boys graduated.
Those young noblemen who were not in the upper crust wanted to
become soldiers and officers in the future. Since they had grown up in a
group that valued martial valor, all of them wanted to become soldiers,
and Piña could not stop them from going.
With the words, “As one of the original knight group, go and be a knight
who does us proud”, she bade those young men farewell.
Now, the knight group’s core was largely composed of women. Because
they had to learn to be good brides, the female members had to leave
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the knight group too. However, some stayed behind, and there were
new recruits too.
Because there were more applicants this time round, the knight group
grew larger.
In the next three years, when the young men from the knight group
began excelling as junior officers, their achievements drew the attention
of the high-ranking officers.
When the knight group graduated... when the roses bloomed…

commanders from various armies came looking for future subordinates.
However, their eyes were on the male graduates, since there was no
place for females in the military.
Because of that, Piña decided to form a proper knight band, composed

mostly of females and some males (mostly higher-ranked noble boys
and some experienced veterans Piña picked herself), and with some
additional troops, they became the “Order of the Rose Knights”.
The “Order of the Rose Knights” received the blessing of noble society
and the court, but for the most part they played the part of honor
guards, guardians for noblewomen, and ceremonial occasions, but they
had no combat experience.
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And then, things in the Empire changed.
Things being as they were, the Order of the Rose Knights could no
longer languish in the rear echelons. Under the command of Piña, who
thirsted for actual combat, they raised flags of red, white and yellow
roses, and marched down the Appian Way.
They could hardly bear to look upon Italica as it was besieged by

bandits.
Arrows rained upon the city from the outside, past the city walls and
onto the outer ring of houses. The bodies of the bandits and the
defenders of Italica littered the ground on both sides of the city walls,
and the ground was painted scarlet with dried blood.
Those men who still had strength were rushing back and forth to put out
fires. The small ones could be extinguished with water, but the buildings
burning in earnest had to be abandoned.
The women tried to help the moderately- or critically-injured, while the

children collected scattered weapons and arrows.
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The lightly-injured people buried the dead, using shovels to dig mass
graves in the outskirts of the city. Normally, they would have buried
them properly, but there were too many corpses, so they did away with
the ceremony and just put them in the ground. The bandits’ bodies were
simply dumped into a deep ditch.
In this way, the soldiers, the merchants, the barmaids, the men, the
women, the elderly, the children, everyone in the city came out to help.
Anyone would be tired if they had to keep working like this amidst the
pitched battle of the afternoon.
“Your Highness… may we, may we take a break?”
An old man, who represented the citizens, asked that of the supervising
Piña in a small voice.
Everyone looked tired, and she understood their feelings. However, now
they had to quickly bury the dead, put out the burning houses and watch
towers, as well as repairing the city gates and barricades.
Piña knew the importance of these things, and so she turned an annoyed
look onto the old man asking for a rest.
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“The bandits haven’t given up yet. Once they rally themselves, they’ll
immediately attack again. We can’t count on destroyed city gates and
barricades to protect us; it’ll be even more tiring.”
“But, but…”
The old man must have thought Piña was being an unreasonable tyrant.
Their positions and perspectives were different. It would seem that
expecting them to understand was a naive dream she had.
“I’m not asking you. This is an order.”
“Gray, how are the city gates, can we fix them?”
Gray, who was keeping track of the gate’s condition, turned to Piña.
“Your Highness, in my opinion, it is beyond repair. The bolt is completely

destroyed,”
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“Then what should we do?”
“Why not tear it down and jam up the entrance?”
They could enter and leave via the small side doors. After all, they would
not be moving carriages and wagons through the main gate. If they
could open the side doors to move in and out, then blocking up the main
entrance ought to be fine.
“Good. Make it so.”
Gray directed the citizens to gather their sturdy furniture and pile it
against the gate.
“They might burn it down. Will that be all right?”
Gray shrugged and said that if it started burning, they might as well toss
more wood in.
Piña thought about it, and nodded. After all, a burning fence was a great
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barrier.
Piña looked back, and raised her head to the top of the wall.
“Norma! How’s your side?”
On top of the wall, Norma was surveying the outside with a bow in hand.
He looked back and replied, “No enemies so far!”
“Stay alert, don’t slack off. Who knows when they’ll come back.”
Norma nodded, ignoring the rills of blood flowing down his forehead, and
ordered his subordinates to keep their eyes peeled.
“Come, come, you should be hungry, right? We’ve prepared food.”
The speaker was one of the maids from the Count’s household, who was
driving a wagon with a big pot on it. She brought milk and barley
porridge, as well as black bread. Neither was particularly delicious, but
an empty stomach was the best seasoning for poor food.
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Piña was struck by the smell of the food and felt that working while
hungry wouldn’t help things so she ordered them to eat in shifts.
Afterwards, she felt that she should eat too, and so she went to Count
Formal’s home.
Because the guards and other men were out guarding the city walls, the
Count’s home was practically devoid of people, and she was not greeted
by anyone.
However, not everyone was gone. There were several large cauldrons in
the residence’s courtyard, filled with barley porridge or baking black
bread. All the maids were helping out.
In the end, someone came to greet Piña. It was the Count’s old butler
and the head maid.
“Your Highness, welcome.”
“Mm. Forgive me, but do you have anything to eat or drink?”
As she finished speaking to the head maid, Piña sat on the sofa like it
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was her own home.
The butler who stood by the side poured a silver goblet of wine for Piña.
“Your Highness, it seems we are saved.”
“Not yet. Those fellows will come by for another round.”
“Must we fight them? Maybe we could negotiate.”
“You want to avoid a fight? Simple. Open the gate and give them all your
money and food.”
The old butler, who was averse to combat, sighed as he heard Piña
speak.
“After they plunder everything you have, they’ll kill all the men. The
young women will be taken as slaves, but before that, they’ll probably…
no, they’ll definitely be violated. And the bandits will probably want to
gang-rape pretty girls like me. I could handle one, maybe two, but I
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don’t think I could stay sane after 50 or 100. What do you think will
happen to Myui-sama then?”
“M-Myui-sama is only eleven years old!”
“Who knows, some of the bandits might like them young… or no, they’ll
definitely have some sick freaks like that among them. So, do you want
to pray that there aren’t and open the gates to them?”
Sweat poured down the butler’s head, and he whined:
“Your, Your Highness. Please, please don’t scare me.”
“Then all we can do is fight, right? Trying to negotiate with these

animals is pointless. That is a path to destruction. All we can do is grit
our teeth and resist to the bitter end.”
Piña gulped down the wine.
With a satisfied “Whew!”, she helped herself to the black bread and
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barley porridge. However, after a mouthful, she frowned.
“So little and it’s bland too?”
The head maid sternly shook her head and spoke: “Your Highness, when
one is fatigued, their stomachs will be weak as well. Consuming rich
foods in that condition will only do harm to one’s body.”
Piña accepted the head maid’s comments without complaint. Come to

think of it, the Count’s maids were making food without any sign of fear,
and she herself did not remembering ordering them to do so. Whose
instructions were those? She could tell that the old butler was a lily-
livered coward. Then, was it the old maid?
As she thought about this, Piña asked the old maid a question.
“Have you been through something like this before?”
“I once lived in the town of Rosa.”
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The town of Rosa had once been attacked by the Empire. Although they
beat back the Imperial Army, their government collapsed and they were
finally taken by the Empire. It was now a ruin.
That maid must have been in Rosa during that battle. Warfare was not
limited to bows, magic and swords. Raising morale, distributing weapons
and rations were also ways to fight.
In that sense, the old maid was a combat veteran.
The lady of the house was young, and could not be counted on. So the
reason why the maids could soldier on without panicking must have
been because of the old maid.
Piña ate until she was nearly full, and wiped her mouth with a napkin.
“Then, I shall go rest in a guest room. If anything happens, bring the

messenger directly to me.”
As she finished speaking to the old maid, a playful gleam came into
Piña’s eye and she decided to mess with her.
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“What would you do if I did not wake up?”
Said the old maid: “Why, I would dump water on your head and invite
you to rise.”
She had a very creepy smile on her face.
Piña laughed, and said she wasn’t interested in bathing in bed as she
headed to the guest room.
However, in the end it was the feeling of cold water on her face that
woke her up.
As she wiped her face, she angrily donned her armor over her wet
clothes.
“What happened? Is it the enemy?”
Gray felt that Piña’s drenched red hair looked exceptionally fetching, but
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he held his tongue because of the emergency. Instead, he began his

report.
“We don’t know if they’re friend or foe.”
As the unknown party approached, the battle-ready soldiers and civilians

peeked at them from crenellations in the city walls or the gaps in the
roadblocks.
“Your Highness, you can get a good view from here.”
A farmer holding a steel hoe made a small hole in one of the roadblocks.
Through the small viewing aperture she saw what looked like four-
wheeled wagons… but they were not pulled by horses or cows.
Piña knew about siege weapons called “covered wagons”, which were
essentially giant boxes pushed along by horses, cattle or soldiers from
the inside. She wondered if the three vehicles in front were covered
wagons.
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On closer inspections, their wheels seemed to be made of some kind of

cloth or leather.
If that were the case, even if they could stop arrow fire, boiling water or
molten lead, they could not avoid being smashed by heavy rocks. The
troublesome one would be the vehicle in the back. It did not look like it
was made of wood, but rather, it was sheathed in metal.
There were people inside that “armored wagon”. The roof seemed to
have something like an arbalest on top of it, and it seemed protected
against arrows or thrown rocks.
Still, however exquisite their weapons were, weapons alone could not
take a city.
Siege weapons were meaningful because they were used to take the
city. However, she could see no enemies within her field of view. They
did not seem to want to break down the roadblocks either.
If the siege weapons were there to lower morale, they should be making
threatening moves, but they did nothing of the sort, so she could not tell
what the other side wanted.
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“Norma?!”
“No other enemies.”
Norma replied as though he knew what Piña was going to say.
There were spotty… no, they wore dark green clothing with brown and
light green splotches, and similarly colored cloth helmets on their heads.
It was hard to tell if they were carrying weapons or magic staves, but
from their stern expressions and sharp glares, these people had power
that could not be ignored.
“Friend or foe?! If you are a friend, then come out!”
Norma shouted loudly, while Piña, Italica’s defenders and the citizens all
held their breath.
After a while, the back door of one of the covered wagons opened.
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A girl emerged from it. She seemed to be 13 to 15 years old. Judging by

the long robe and the magic staff she was carrying, she was instantly
recognizable as a mage.
The staff seemed to be made of wood… which meant she was an

orthodox mage of the Lindon school. If that was the case, she should be
skilled with attack spells and spell combat despite her young age.
In the previous attack, the bandits had not fielded any mages. That
might have been why the defenders could hold out as long as they did,
but if the bandits now had a mage on their side, the battle would be
much harder.
Piña clucked her tongue as she thought about the difficult battle that lay
ahead.
The next to alight was a girl of around 16, wearing strange clothes.
Her clothes clung to her frame, showing off the curves of her body.
Because the clothes were a little too small, they exposed the snow-white
skin of her back and belly, setting the men’s imagination afire.
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As a woman, Piña felt that she had correctly divined the purpose of
those clothes.
The problem was this girl’s long, pointed ears. She was an elf, with
blonde hair and blue eyes.
No good… the enemy had Elves in addition to mages. She heard that
Elves were, without exception, excellent spirit-summoners. Of note were
those who could summon the wind spirits to create bolts of lightning that
could wipe out an entire platoon. Even a full knight company would have
trouble defeating both a Lindon-style mage and an Elf using spirit magic.
Should she try taking them down while they were off guard? Sniping
them with bows might work...
While she thought of ways to take down the two of them, after she saw
the girl alight from the vehicle, her damp clothes suddenly turned ice
cold.
She wore priest’s clothing, made of black silk and edged in lace.
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She was a young girl who wore a headdress of black gauze over her
black hair.
“That, that’s Rory… Mercury!”
She was an agent of the god of death, judgement, madness and war —
an Apostle of Emroy.
Because the Emperor counted as the highest religious official in the

Empire, he could speak with Apostles during national religious events. As
such, she had the chance to see the Apostles of the god Emroy, which
was why Piña could recognize her.
“Is that the legendary Rory the Reaper? Although it’s the first time I’ve
seen her, she looks like the young lady in the Count’s residence…”
Indeed, Rory looked much younger than the mage girl and the Elf girl.
However, her slender limbs were easily holding a halberd that looked
heavier than herself, and she thumped it into the earth as she came.
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“Don’t be fooled by her looks, she’s a monster that’s over 900 years
old.”
Before the Empire was formed, while this world was in chaos, there were
already unaging “demigods”, called Apostles. Even so, Rory was the
second youngest among these Apostles.
An Apostle, a mage and an Elf… Piña would rather flee than think of
fighting the three of them.
“However, what’s an Apostle of Emroy doing with a bunch of bandits?”
Piña shook her head at Gray’s question.
“You can’t judge these people like that.”
Normal human values did not apply to Apostles. They cared nothing for
the Emperor or the Senate’s laws, or even the thing called justice. It
might not be wrong to say they sneered at them.
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That was Piña’s worried explanation.
“Whether the Gods exist has nothing to do with good or evil. People pray
to them, but bad things still happen. One can get sick even if one lives a
virtuous life and a cruel tyrant can still live a long time. All these have
nothing to do with prayer or reverence.
Gods are beings that humans can’t understand. Or rather, humans can’t
understand the motivations of the Gods… and some people say the
Gods must be crazy.”
After hearing Piña’s thoughts, Gray’s brow was slick with sweat. He
muttered, “If her Holiness hears that, we’ll be in trouble...”
“Oh yes. These people style themselves as the Gods’ messengers. If you
say Gods are completely insane and incomprehensible, then there’s no
purpose for them to exist.”
In a polytheistic world, the faiths did not differentiate between good,

evil, orthodoxy or heresy. If one tired of one god, then one could worship
another. However, the priesthood was a religious organization that
enjoyed certain privileges and power. Anyone who denigrated the gods
would become a target for them.
“I didn’t hear that, I didn’t hear that...”
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Gray shook his head at Piña from behind her. Then, Piña peered outside
through the gap.
“Oh... they’re here.”
She looked to the front of the gate once more. The mage girl was
approaching them.
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 10
There was a disturbance at Italica’s main gate.
Usually, the traffic here would be flowing briskly, and between the
merchants and the taxmen they had to deal with, the area would be
very lively. However, that bustle was nowhere to be seen today. A pile of
wood and furniture blocked the main gate, denying all who would enter.
On top of the city wall, which was three stories tall, the sentries were
lining up and pointing their crossbows at them.
They had even installed a polybolos, which could release multiple bolts
in sequence.
In addition, they had many things that were difficult to imagine as

weapons. For instance, there were steaming cauldrons, suspended over
fires.
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If it were located by a river or on a mountain top, one might think it was

a cookpot for a witch. But on top of a city wall, there was no way to think
it was there to prepare food.
“I hope they don’t decide to give us a bath…”
Kurata, who was driving the HMV, muttered those words. Itami thought,
they can’t hear you. In variety TV shows, the “bath” in question was
little more than a harmless prop, but in reality, it was a horrible device
on par with chemical weapons.
Dying from being scalded to death by hot water would be a long and
painful way to go.
Being scalded by hot water over much of the body would cause the
formation of full-body blisters and a consequent loss of body fluids,
leading to dehydration. If that was not enough to kill a person, the loss
of skin would also invite infection. The dead tissues would then rot and
lead to sepsis, plunging the victim into terrible pain. Even if they
somehow survived, they would bear the scars and agony for life.
If he had known that this was not water, but rather molten lead, Itami
would have ordered an immediate retreat because he was keenly aware
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of the stories where people tried to kill themselves by self-immolating,

but somehow managed to survive after incredible suffering.
Italica’s defenders used weapons that were quite different from those of
Itami and his colleagues. They were sharp, or hot, and at a glance one
could call them “implements for murder”.
The term “killing intent” came up often in TV serials, light novels, or

manga, but Itami had never felt that sort of thing during his life in
modern society. Perhaps one could only sense these things after
becoming a martial arts master. What he could feel, right now, was a
sense of pain or heat whenever he looked at those things. In addition to
the caution coming from the defenders, he could feel eyes filled with
murderous intent fixed on them.
“Friend or foe?! If you are a friend, then come out!”
Although he didn’t know the meaning of those words being shouted from
above him, he could tell from their tone. He whispered to Lelei, “Doesn’t
sound like a welcome. Should we try another city?”
“The people in the town look very busy too, so it looks like we can’t
discuss things with them properly. Although I don’t know what they’ll be
fighting against, I don’t want to be involved in it. Frankly speaking, my
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safety and yours is my top priority. What do you think?”
“Yeah, they’re dying to have us in there.”
As Kurata grumbled from the passenger seat, Sergeant Major Kuwabara

said over the wireless, “If they don’t move, we don’t move”. The two of
them had their rifles in hand and carefully aimed them outside.
However, Lelei used her usual blank expression and steady voice to say,
“Rejected”.
“But we can’t get in while they’re like this.”
“There are other entrances. Italica is a plains city. There will be gates on
the north, south, east and west. There’s no way that there’s no other
way in.”
“Itami, you wait first. I’ll go over there to talk to them.”
With that, Lelei made to stand. However, Tuka immediately stopped her
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and told her to wait.
Tuka, like Itami, wanted to know why they had to go to this town.
Although she wasn’t afraid like Itami was, when one thought about it,
there was no benefit to getting involved with a town under siege. There
was a chance they might be pulled into the conflict… well, if they
entered the town, they would definitely be involved.
Lelei replied to her: “It’s not a question of entering the town, but I want
to let them know we’re not enemies. If we leave like this, they will think
we’re part of the enemy forces. If we come back in the future, or go to
other towns, that news will spread. It’ll be inconvenient.”
“However, are you going to pull these people into it because of us?”
Tuka gestured to Itami, Kurokawa and the others as she spoke.
“They helped us without asking for repayment. Shouldn’t we keep them

out of danger?”
“That’s why I’m going. We’ve received a lot of kindness from Itami and
the others, so I don’t want them to think that Itami and the rest are
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enemies.”
“Are you doing this for Itami?”
“Yes. After all, he and the others own this special riding carriage.”
Tuka had to nod as she heard this.
“It’ll be fine. We’ll just say we came to do business and that we’re
confirming the situation.”
“I understand. However, I can’t let you go alone. You need protection

from arrows.”
As Tuka said that, she began chanting a spell in the language of the
fairies.
Almost immediately, they could feel the motion of the wind.
And so, Lelei, Tuka and Rory exited the vehicle.
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“Itami, you should wait here.”
After repeating that line, the three of them slowly approached the main
gate.
The points of the sentries’ crossbow bolts tracked them as they

approached.
As Itami saw this, he felt uneasy even though they had told him to wait.
His mind was filled with thoughts like, “As a man, as a soldier, as a
human being,” and so on.
All he could do was watch.
Though Itami appeared to be frozen in fear, what he felt was actually

pride, or something similar.
Of course, most adults would not say “it’s my honour”, but would
deceive themselves with words like “the mission” or “our duty”.
However, Itami had always been very honest in this aspect, and he
quietly said, “I hate scary things, but I hate losing face too…”
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After clucking his tongue loudly, he left his Type 64 rifle in the vehicle,
carefully secured the heavy No. 2 bulletproof vest on his body, and got
out of the HMV.
By the way, they were all equipped like the troops in Iraq.
He had a pistol strapped to his thigh, but he left his rifle behind because
he did not want to appear threatening by carrying a weapon-like object.
“I’m going over too. Frankly speaking, I have to go. Let me go.”
“Nobody’s stopping you, are they?”
After freezing for a few seconds, Itami said, “Sergeant-Major Kuwabara,

I’ll leave the rest to you. If anything happens, come over and help”. With
that, he jogged over to Lelei and the others.
***
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Piña was forced to make a decision.
She had no basis for her decision, but she had to decide anyway. This
would be a big gamble.
“Gray, what should we do?”
Even the experienced Gray could not answer Piña’s question. Nobody
could guarantee the outcome, and under these conditions, the need to
make a big decision like this turned into an immense source of stress.
This was called the “Chains of Commanding”.
The soldiers gripped their weapons, awaiting Piña’s decision.
The bowmen’s hands trembled as they drew their strings taut.
The farmers waited with their metal farming implements.
The sword-bearing soldiers, the people of Italica, all their lives rested on
her decisions.
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To begin with, would the Apostle of Emroy, Rory Mercury, as well as an

Elf and a mage, actually join a group of bandits?
The answer… was “no”. She wanted it to be “no”.
As for why… well, if they had been part of the bandits from the start,
they would have taken part in the first attack and Italica would have
fallen long ago.
However, Rory and the others might not have been with the bandits
from the beginning. They might have been waiting for the right time to
join in. She could not conclude that they were not part of the bandits just
because they did not take part in the first attack.
And if they were not part of the bandits, then why had Rory and the
others come to Italica? Why had they come to a town under siege?
She should just deny them entry, but that might turn them into enemies.
Piña wanted Rory and friends on her side. After all, the townspeople and
soldiers would be certain of victory with an Apostle of Emroy, an Elf and
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a mage on their side.
She sensed that she lacked the leadership skills to make her men
certain of their victory.
Although she wasn’t sure why Rory and the others had come, if she
could talk them into joining, then she could tell the residents, “Help is
here!”
No, there was no time for long discussions. She had to make them her
allies.
Either that, or forbid them entry. She had two choices.
As Piña was thinking of what to do, the sound of knocking came from the
outside of the gate.
She held her breath.
Then, Piña gulped, and made a decision. She would use her imposing
demeanor to pin down the other party and drag them over to her side.
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The thrice-bolted gate was forcefully and powerfully thrust open.
“You’re here at last!”
After feeling a dull thudding sensation through her hands, Piña saw Rory,
the Elf girl, and the mage looking at a man who was collapsed in front of
the door.
His eyes had rolled up in his head and he had lost consciousness.
Immediately, the three of them stared coldly at Piña.
“Could it be… that… that was my fault?”
The white-clad mage, the black-clad priestess, and the blonde, blue-
eyed Elf nodded as one.
***
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Rory and Lelei knew it was just an accident, so they did not blame Piña,
but instead they went to help the unconscious Itami.
Itami was a big guy, and he was wearing a heavy suit of armor. With the
help of the others, they managed to drag him into town. Then, they
thought of removing his clothes to help him breathe.
First, they should remove the thing on his head. After that, they wanted
to take his shirt off, but what they thought was a cloth shirt turned out to
have metal plates in it. The shirt was mysterious in more than just its
appearance, and they had no idea where to start. They decided to try
and loosen his collar.
Rory put Itami’s head in her lap, while Tuka took a water canteen from
his belt.
The sentries and townspeople gathered round to ask, “What’s going

on?”
Piña choked up and could not answer.
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Lelei used all the knowledge she had to begin diagnosing Itami.
She peeled his eyelids open to check on his eyeballs, then looked at his
nose, ears and mouth to check for bleeding or injury, palpated his face
and head to see if there were any hidden injuries, and after making sure
he was all right she breathed a sigh of relief.
After that, she finally looked at Piña with accusing eyes.
“What were you trying to do?!”
However, the first to speak was not Lelei, but Tuka.
As she poured the canteen’s water on Itami’s head, she scolded Piña for
opening the door so forcefully when she knew someone was on the other
side.
She even went so far as to say rude things like “Dumber than a Goblin”,
but Piña knew that it was her fault for being careless, so she remained
silent, an apologetic expression on her face. She looked nothing like an
Imperial Princess now.
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When people got angry, the people around them would either get
excited or become even calmer. Lelei was now very calm, and she
seemed to have realized she was now in Italica.
With a glance, she realized the exit was shut and the bolt was in place.
The guards and the townspeople had gathered around them.
She couldn’t help glancing at Rory… but the black-clad priestess simply
smiled in amusement.
Itami recovered consciousness after a while.
“Owie,” he said as he rubbed his chin, while opening his eyes. It was
then that he realized the face of Rory, the black-clad priestess, now filled
his field of vision.
Her black hair grazed across Itami’s face. It was a little prickly.
She looked very young, but her expression was like a mature woman
who was very experienced with playing around. He couldn’t tell if she
was joking with him or being serious. Her hands held Itami’s head and
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moved it to her thigh. There was a bewitching beauty in her black pupils.
“Ara~ he’s awake.”
The words came from this world, but he could understand them easily.
Plus, Rory’s voice was like the tinkling of silver bells, and pleased his
ears.
“Do you remember everything?”
Itami nodded.
The door that had suddenly flung open smashed into his face and jaw,
and everything had gone black. It would seem he had passed out for a
while.
As he opened his eyes further, behind Rory’s face… a lot of people were
looking at Itami, and he saw Lelei’s worried face.
Suddenly, he heard Tuka scolding someone angrily.
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He had been furiously studying this world’s language, but now he did not
need a translator to understand the words around him. The language
center in his brain must have made certain connections, probably
caused by being bashed in the head.
The No.2 bulletproof vest was heavy, so Itami only managed to rise with
great effort.
For some reason, his upper body was soaked.
As Tuka was halfway through her scolding, she seemed to realize Itami
had gotten up and she asked, “Are you alright?”
“Yup. I’ve let you see an embarrassing side of me.”
Itami pulled up the zipper on his shirt and did up the buttons of his
bulletproof vest.
After that, he retrieved his helmet from Lelei and tidied his messed-up
gear.
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He heard Sergeant-Major Kuwabara trying to reach him, and pressed the

switch on his lower chest.
“Lieutenant, are you okay? I was worried.”
“Kind of, yeah. I passed out for a bit.”
“If you had waited any longer, I would have ordered our guys to burst
in.”
Being able to avoid an unnecessary battle was a form of good fortune. It

would be terrible if they left behind casualties because if this. Kuwabara
had waited so long because such thoughts were on his mind. The need
to rescue a captured comrade and the need to avoid a needless fire
fight. It was hard for him to decide which to prioritize.
“I’ll contact you again once I figure out what’s going on. Stand by for
now.”
“Got it.”
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“All right then, who’s going to tell me what’s going on?”
Itami was addressing the people around him.
Rory looked at Tuka, Tuka looked at Lelei, Lelei looked at Piña, and Piña
looked pleadingly to everyone around her. In the end, they all looked
away, uneasy looks on their faces.
Was it lukewarm or confused…? Well, the best word for their mood at
that moment might be “leisurely”.
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 11
The officers of the JGSDF Special Region Expeditionary Force

Headquarters, most of them field-grade, were heatedly debating each
other. If things went poorly, it might even break out into a fistfight.
Hazama looked at his subordinates, and thought that they had probably
held it in for a long time.
Many members of the JGSDF Special Region Expeditionary Force were

bored and restless. After all, there had been nothing for them to do after
they came here.
For example, there were the tasks they were doing now, which would be
base defense, dispatching small recon teams to gather information for
future planning, fine tuning the unit’s operational standards, all of which
were largely administrative tasks.
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As for base defense, there had only been a few live engagements in
total, and the enemy’s movements and strength were completely
unknown.
So under normal circumstances, they would maintain perimeter security,

build up the base, or maintain their personal equipment.
As such, the responsibility for defending the base was given to the 5th
Combat Group, while the offensively-oriented 1st and 4th Combat
Groups repeated their combat drills day after day in the base.
By the way, the 2nd and 3rd Combat Groups were not on this side of the
“Gate”, while the 6th Combat Group and beyond were not fully formed
yet.
At the present time, the Ministry of Defense was slowly rearranging

troop deployments, citing that there was no need to mobilize everyone
since they were not planning a full-scale invasion. The additional
mention of “operational budget” silenced all dissent.
These restless men must have been intensely jealous after hearing that
a certain recon team had “Encountered a dragon”, and “Defeated a
dragon and saved innocent civilians”.
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In the homeland, where life was peaceful and nothing of mention was
happening, they could endure it. However, this side of the “Gate” was a
battlefield, and the artillery and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) teams could
be proud of their showing in battle, while the infantrymen eagerly
discussed the tension before firing and the feeling of pulling a trigger.
The engineers, on the other hand, were busy building walls and roads,
and their uniforms were constantly stained with mud.
And yet, some people were given missions where they could win glory,
while they themselves…
Their twisted feelings, combined with the daily boredom of the 1st and
4th Combat Groups’ lives, rotted the men’s hearts. The officers who led
these men had been infected by their restlessness as well.
And then, like manna from heaven, Itami’s request for reinforcements
came in.
The personnel who got word of this were overjoyed, and naturally there
was a noisy and boisterous response from the troops.
Itami’s request could be summarized thusly:
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① Within the past month, a group of deserters from the enemy armed
forces’ central command has committed acts of plunder, violence, arson
and wanton murder within the Italica domain. Several villages have
fallen prey to them and many lives have been lost.
3rd Recon Platoon was attacked while attempting to visit the town of
Italica. The defenders have tried their best to mount a defensive battle,
but losses have been heavy. A second large-scale attack is coming soon.
By the request of the town’s representative, Piña Co Lada, we have

accepted the duty of providing security and protection for the local
population. Please send help immediately.
② The deserters from the enemy’s armed forces’ central command, also
known as “bandits”, are heavily-armed by the standards of the Special
Region. We have confirmed the presence of cavalry, infantry and
bowmen in numbers exceeding 600. The exact abilities of their mages
are unknown.
③ The city has no ability to eliminate these “bandits”, and although the
local authorities as represented by Count Formal’s family have already
submitted a request for reinforcements to higher authorities, they will
take a minimum of three days to arrive.
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In other words, this was the perfect opportunity to save innocent

civilians in the name of justice, beat the crap out of the bad guys, relieve
their restlessness, and gain live combat experience!
The colonels stomped their leather shoes as they argued fiercely beside
Gen. Hazama.
Col. Kamo of the 1st Combat Group must have been tired of the endless
arguments, because he came before Gen. Hazama saying, “Please! Let
us go!”
The 1st Combat Group was a combined-arms unit, built around a

company of infantry, supported by artillery, AAA, tank, engineer, signals,
sanitations, weapons and logistics platoons.
“Our 101st Reinforced Squadron is at full strength and mission-ready!

We’re ready to go at any time!”
Behind Col. Kamo, Ltc. Tsuge stood up as well, saying something very
troublesome. It was troublesome because he had gathered his men
before the order to move out had been given. At this moment they were
probably in full battle gear and running laps.
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“No, if we take our time jogging along the ground, we’ll take too long to
get there. Under these conditions, only we can get there in time.
Commander, please order the 4th Combat Group into action.”
Col. Kengun said this as he strode forward. The 4th Combat Group was a
helicopter-centric aerial combat group… in other words, an American-
style air cavalry unit.
“We’ve prepared the amplifiers and speakers, as well as Wagner CDs,”

said Ltc. Youga of the 401st Squadron.
“Very good, Ltc. Youga,” Kengun nodded. It seemed Kengun wanted to

bring him along too.
“...”
Hazama pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger, rolling it
slightly.
What should he do with them, these guys… were they possessed by the
spirit of Colonel Kilgore? (TL note: see Apocalypse Now
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKaYOW9zMoY) Maybe their brains

had rotted away...
Even so, he had no choice but to send reinforcements immediately. That

being the case, the fast-moving 4th Combat Group would be the best
choice.
Hazama gave Kengun his orders.
Col. Kamo and Ltc. Tsuge, among others, stood still as though bearing
mute witness to the end of the world. Conversely, Kengun and Youga
were all smiles.
“And what are you going to play?”
“The Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, of course.”
As he watched the two of them leave, Hazama could guess what the two
of them would be like in a few hours.
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***
The squadrons of AH-1 Cobra and UH-1J helicopters flew on a NOE (nap-
of-earth) course, while their loudspeakers blasted Wagner’s operatic
score through the sky.
All around them, the bandits fled.
What came from the sky were wings of death.
Though there was no way there would be anti-aircraft missiles pointed at

them, the helicopters launched flares anyway. These flares were
weighed down by gravity and traced a trajectory through the air, and
the dozens of smoke trails they left resembled the wings of an angel.
When the locals saw it, they must have trembled in fear at the descent
of a goddess of war.
The AH-1 Cobras fired their rocket pods, and turned the ground into a
sea of fire.
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Bullets rained from the sky and mowed the bandits down.
There were no blind spots under their overlapping fields of vision. The
troops did not even need to dismount, and they cut down the bandits
from their perches on their helicopters.
The residents watching this must have taken this apocalyptic vision to
be a glimpse of hell…
***
At this moment, the residents of Italica were desperately repairing their

walls and barriers.
Once they heard that they would be aided not just by the Apostle of
Emroy, the Elf and the mage, but even by the “Men in Green”, the
townspeople’s courage multiplied a hundredfold, and the soldiers’
morale soared.
If they did have the power to defeat a Flame Dragon, then routing these
broken men who had become bandits would be a trivial task. Of course,
the men in green only numbered 12, so they would still have to fight.
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However, once they took out their “rods of steel”, they would destroy
the bandits easily.
The despair that filled the town from earlier had vanished, and the
peoples’ eyes were filled with light and hope. Nobody wanted to leave
their homes behind and flee, so if they could, they still wanted to protect
this town. The presence of Itami and the others was the source of their
hope.
The eyes of the townspeople were locked firmly on the backs of Itami
and the others.
At Piña’s request, Itami had moved his people to the frontline on the
south gate. This way, it would not be hard for them to respond to
requests for help.
According to her, the south gate had already been broken through once,
and the defensive preparations there were completely destroyed. As
such, it was a weakness in their defenses. In the upcoming battle, it
should be the site of intense fighting.
The last time, they had halted the enemy advance with berms and
fences, but the ensuing melee had left many dead. Now the townspeople
were mobilized in full to repair the fences and strengthen the berms.
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To Itami, in order to safeguard the defensive line of the city wall and
gate, it would be best to concentrate their fighting strength there, but
Piña insisted that they would have a second line of defense behind the
walls of fences in the interior.
Her tactics seemed to assume that the main gate would be broken
down.
Unlike Itami, who was waiting for reinforcements, Piña did not think they
could hold out long enough for help to arrive, so her plan was to make
the invaders pay in blood for every inch they advanced, in the hopes of
breaking their morale. In truth, the idea was not a bad one, so Itami held
his tongue.
Itami gathered his men atop the city gate, and from there they had a
good view of the beautiful stone streets of a medieval-age city, under
the light of the setting sun.
Although it was a regional town, Italica had a population of over 5000

people. It was located at the crossroads of the Appian Way and the
Tisarian Way, and there were shops and inns located along the streets
that ran in the four cardinal directions. Behind them were various
warehouses, stables and merchant offices.
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In the forest to the north was the large manor of Count Formal, which
was surrounded by other luxurious homes, turning it into a high-class
residential district.
The south, east and west portions were surrounded by stone walls, while
the north was surrounded by cliffs as a natural barrier.
Itami turned back, and looked along the outskirts of the city.
There were roads that stretched to the horizon. There were planting
fields and fallow fields where the cattle grazed. There were fallen trees,
forests, and a few small houses. And then...
Itami’s binoculars caught sight of the bandit scouts, who were several
men on horses. They moved slowly, probably trying to spy out the state
of the defense preparations.
Beyond them, he could see the bandits’ hideout.
“So, we’re going to take their attack head-on, huh.”
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Itami nodded to Sgt. Maj. Kuwabara. That was definitely a possibility.
The bandits did not have the option of an enveloping attack.
There were far too few bandits to encircle the town, and a siege would
take a very long time. That would be very bad for the bandits. Similarly,
tunnelling and a slow, cautious advance by digging trenches were out of
the question.
That being the case, the bandits could only pick a point and assault it.
However, that was not simply an application of brute force, but an attack
that would make use of the unique advantage of the attacker.
This advantage was the attackers’ ability to dictate the time and place of
their engagements. With this freedom, they could feint an attack and
then break through the weakened defenses elsewhere. That was the
typical approach.
The objective they would attack would still be weak, despite it being a
feint.
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“I see, so the reason they gave us the south gate was…”
They planned to deliberately make a weakness along the defensive line,

which would draw in the enemy’s attacks.
That being the case, Piña’s tactics were understandable.
During the last battle, they had also deliberately feigned a vulnerability,
so the enemy would think it was an easy target. When the enemy
committed themselves to the attack, they began a battle of attrition with
them from the strong second defense line. Practically speaking, even if
the enemy broke through the city gate, they would be stopped and worn
down against the sturdy inner defensive line.
Since the attackers’ and defenders’ forces were too small for a pitched
battle all over the city, they favored concentrating their forces like that.
Giving the weaker south gate to Itami and the others was a tacit
admission that they were going to be bait, in order to turn the south
gate into the site of a pitched battle. Thinking of that, it made more
sense that she would focus on reinforcing the inner defensive line.
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“Well, you say that, but will the enemy fall for it twice?”
The enemy should have considered this after being beaten once. Would
they really try to attack this weakly-defended location?
In addition, this tactic had another big problem associated with it.
“Furuta! Put the machine gun over here. Azuma, rifle goes there.”
Kuwabara assigned each soldier their designated Area of Responsibility.
The troopers braced themselves and their Type 64 rifles against the
crenellated walls.
They would be firing down from a height of three stories. If the enemy
drew close enough, they could start firing arrows at them, so they
designated the range of the bows as the FPL (final protective line), and
apart from that they could pick their own targets at their own pace.
There was only an hour left until the sun completely set. Kuribayashi
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distributed the night vision gear while Kurokawa was left to mind the
vehicles and equipment.
Behind Itami and the others were a large number of citizens carrying
farming tools or wooden clubs, waiting uneasily for directions. Just then,
Nishina came, holding a phrasebook in one hand with both arms out,
making digging motions, and indicating that they should fill the sacks
they had with earth and bring them over.
The others were collecting burnable wood, in preparation for a bonfire.

The townspeople wondered why they weren’t making a fire at night as
they worked.
Meanwhile, someone asked a question of Itami, who was looking through

his helmet-mounted night vision gear with Tuka and Lelei.
“Eh? Why are we helping the Imperials who should be our enemy? Well,
it’s to protect the people of this town.”
Rory laughed as she heard the answer.
“Do you really mean that?”
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“Yes, I do.”
Itami’s attempt at humor made Rory shrug in a “stop kidding me” way.
To Itami, the Empire was his enemy.
If they went by the reasoning of “The enemy of the enemy is my friend”,

it would not be strange to take the bandits as allies, but Itami did not do
that.
Piña was an Imperial Princess defending Count Formal’s family. Because

of that, she had negotiated with Itami and asked for his help.
Rory was there too, but since she couldn’t stand Piña’s presence, she
left shortly after.
And then, Itami agreed to “the protection of the people of Italica”.

Officially, they could fight together because they had the same objective
of defending Italica.
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Even so, she still could not understand why Itami was taking orders from
an enemy princess. After all, he should have expected that the south
gate would become a forlorn hope and the site of a fierce battle.
“Do you want to know why?”
Itami was clumsy, and could not properly attach his night vision gear to
his helmet. For convenience’s sake, he let Rory hold his helmet with
both hands.
Due to the difference in body height, it made Rory look like she was
holding up her hands in prayer, while Itami was lowering his head to
listen to her.
“Emroy is a war god, so He does not forbid killing. However, the motive
for killing is important. Lies stain the soul.”
Itami wanted to take his helmet from Rory and finish working on it, but
Rory did not hand it to Itami, but made to place it on his head instead.
Itami raised his head to let Rory put his helmet on.
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As for her question, he quirked the edges of his mouth up. It looked like
a smile.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to protect the townspeople.”
“Really?”
“Of course. Although, there was another reason…”
Rory looked at Itami like she was going to bore through him with her
eyes.
“I want that Princess to understand that it’s better to get along with us
than to fight us.”
Rory smiled malevolently, as she believed she understood Itami’s words.
“Interesting. Very interesting.”
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He would carve the word “fear” into the Princess’ heart. He would show
his fighting power to her without holding back, and make her tremble at
the thought of doing battle with him. That way, getting along with him
would be much more attractive than fighting him.
“Well, if that’s the case, I’d like to help too. It’s been a while since I last
had the chance to cut loose.”
Rory lifted her skirt and curtseyed to Itami, like a dancer bowing to her
partner.
***
The battle began when the night was almost over.
The attack was executed just before the sun rose.
In the darkness before dawn, the bandit archers launched flame arrows
at the eastern gate.
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At the eastern gate was the knight Norma Co Igloo.
Under Norma’s direction, the sentries and militia returned fire with their
bows. Though they were called militia, they were farmers who had never
touched a bow in their lives and expecting accuracy from them was
impossible. However, their arrow fire would suppress the enemy and
might even cause a casualty or two.
In this way, the battle became an exchange of arrows for a time.
The soldiers, the farmers, the broken men who had become bandits,
they all screamed and fell.
Between the archers marched footmen in armor and carrying sturdy

shields. They pressed close to the wall. Their uniforms were varied while
their shields were of different sizes and shapes, which suggested that
they were of mixed origins.
Against them the stout grocery shop aunties and the older children
hurled rocks, or poured cauldrons of molten lead down on them. These
weapons were more effective and destructive than the inaccurate bow
volleys.
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Below the walls, the bandits raised their shields in an attempt to protect
themselves from the storm of arrows and rocks raining down on them.
Even if they were shot by arrows, knocked out by rocks, or burned alive
by boiling oil, they did not retreat.
They must have wanted to expend the hatred and frustration they felt at
not being able to attack Arnus against this place, and they rammed the
eastern gate with huge logs.
As for the bandits… for the remnants of the defeated coalition army, the
Battle of Arnus was not a battle.
Without having even glimpsed their enemy, without knowing what was
going on, their own people had simply fallen over. The hatred for the
Empire which had cruelly kept them in ignorance of their foe, their
grudges against the useless commanders who could only urge them
forward to their deaths, these feelings were deeply carved into their
hearts.
Without commanders, without comrades, without allegiance, without

supplies, without food, they wandered around in the wilderness, and in
the end, they had become bandits, without even their homes. Soon,
others who had suffered as they did came, and their numbers had grown
until now.
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Their respect for the Empire had become an equal amount of hatred and
anger, which ruled their souls.
This was war, which sliced with swords, killed with arrows, burned with
fire and trampled with hooves.
This was war, with its rape, its plunder, its massacres, and its deaths.
Indeed, they had made war their motivation. A personal war, a war that
could satisfy them. A simple slaughter, a simple spreading of death. The
feelings of stabbing, slashing and being stabbed, bathing in one’s
opponents’ blood, hugging the cold earth as they died. They threw
themselves forward to experience this. If not, the war would be over for
them.
Several ladders caught on the city wall.
The bandits raised their shields and climbed them.
Avoiding the arrows that flew at them, the bandits finally reached the
top of the wall.
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A brave farmer hacked up a ladder even after taking an arrow in the

shoulder. The bandits praised his courage as they fired their arrows,
cheering for him even as they cut him down.
The ladder that had lost its grip on the wall fell with the soldiers to the
ground, along with the farmer that had brought it down.
Even the loud crash as it hit the ground brought a round of cheering.
It was as though they had gone mad at a festival, banging on the shields
with their swords and screaming in their own tongues.
This was the song of praise they sang to Emroy, god of war.
The madness of battle was their sacrifice to Emroy and the flames of
war, fuelled by the souls of the dead combatants, burned fiercely.
The flame arrows struck the clock tower, which burned wildly out of
control against the black of the night.
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The Apostle, Rory Mercury, was trying to endure it.
She hugged herself to endure it.
Sweat gushed down her forehead.
“Wh-why?”
The spirit of battle that floated around her infected her flesh and
penetrated her spirit.
“Why aren’t they attacking here?”
The flames of war scorched her soul, and sweet movements flowed from
her heart and up her swaying spine.
Her arms and legs moved on their own, and she shook like a priestess
who was intoxicated by hallucinogenic drugs.
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“Huuu…. haaaa…”
The pleasure flowing out from inside her nearly brought her to climax,
and against the black of night, the demigoddess twisted her body so
everyone could see her bewitching form.
“Is she alright?”
Itami wanted to go over to Rory, since he was surprised by her sudden

frenzy, but Lelei and Tuka stopped him.
“It’s because she’s an Apostle…”
He did not quite understand, but that seemed to be why Rory was so
frustrated.
If she was like this while she was so far away from the battlefield, what
would she be like in the center of it?
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She would probably see everyone as an enemy and slaughter them all.
Nobody would be able to stop her, not even herself.
Lelei’s explanation just made Itami nervous.
***
“Bandits should go attack villages! You’re pretty damn bold to attack a

town!”
This was Norma the knight’s cry. He had discovered that none of the
arrows on his side had hit. Even if all the people on his side were
amateurs, he could see that the path of the launched arrows had
mysteriously diverted from their targets, as though they were protected
by the wind.
“Could it be that the enemy can summon spirits?”
Norma drew his sword and cut down a southern bandit who was scaling
the wall. The stricken soldier fell off the wall and to the ground.
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However, a bearded bandit from the north tried to hack Norma down
from behind.
After intercepting it with his sword, the bandits behind continued

attacking the militia on defense. They had spears, clubs, morning stars,
twin swords, scimitars and more.
The endless flow of bandits overwhelmed the people of Italica, and they
had nowhere to run.
***
There were some differences in the current situation from Piña’s battle
plan.
They had expected the first line of defense to fall, but it had fallen too
soon. Now the tops of the city wall were a battleground and the sentries
and militia had been forced off.
“We’re too weak. That’s even when you consider the raised morale.”
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They’d had expected the enemy to be aware of their schemes and to be

on guard for it.
However, in truth the enemy was not on guard at all.
They attacked and attacked, without any tactics or strategy,
And the militia and sentries who took this attack were caught wrong-
footed right from the beginning. Thus, they could not pin down the
enemy like Piña had hoped. They could not even inflict significant losses.
Still, on the whole, the defenders could still fight.
“Reality is different from what you picture in your head.” Piña, who knew
this, was not surprised that her plan had not turned out exactly as she
had hoped.
Even if she felt a vague sense of foreboding, like something stuck

between her teeth, Piña followed the plan and moved her main fighting
strength from the east gate to the defensive barriers they had built in
the interior.
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The east and northwest gates were reinforced with a second defensive
line of berms and fences.
Although a second defensive line sounded good on paper, they had been
built with the assumption that the first line would be overrun. So the first
line was essentially a sacrifice.
The militia did not understand this when the battle started. However,
now they understood that the people manning the gates had been
abandoned from the start.
Their allies stood at the berms and other barriers they built behind them,
yet none of them stepped forward to help. They were merely watching
them fight and die. How many people would not despair after realizing
this?
Some people realized this and gave up, swinging their swords wildly
until they soon fell.
“Where are the men in green? Where are our reinforcements?!”
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They could not possibly come. After all, they had been stationed at the
south gate, as fellow sacrifices.
And so, as the townspeople watched, the gate’s last defender finally fell.
Piña had assumed that the bandits would immediately press the attack
once they took the east gate, but the bandits did not do so. They raised
their swords and spears, and cheered three times. This was a literal
sacrifice, after all. After that, the city gates opened slowly, and the
cavalry and soldiers from outside entered.
The horsemen dragged the corpses of the militia and sentries who had
fallen from the city wall. They began tossing those bodies into the city.
Among them were the bodies of the rock-throwing children and the
aunties.
They hurled the severed heads of farmers and merchants at the inner
fence.
As the townspeople waited for the enemy to attack, the corpses of their
friends, relatives and family piled up like a small mountain.
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The townspeople facing the bandits from behind the fences gritted their
teeth against their tears and despair, while the bandits mocked them.
They cursed and insulted them as cowards hiding in a cage.
They toyed with the corpses as though they were puppets.
How could the militia, made of farmers and merchants with weapons,
bear to watch this?
“Bastards!”
A hot-blooded young man leapt over the fence, shovel in hand, while
others also joined him.
In this way, the battle inside the city was completely different from how
Piña had envisioned it, and her battle plan fell apart.
***
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Rory’s lewd moaning and physical contortions grew more intense as

time passed.
She held her breath and shook her hair. Her body bent backward like a
bow. She grabbed her head, on the verge of tears, and her feet stamped
the ground.
Her feverish gasping and twisted expression looked like she had been
cursed, like she was a puppet shuddering on her strings, her body
twitching and her arms flailing.
It was a cursed, mad dance she could not control by her own will, but it
was beautiful.
According to Lelei’s explanations, the souls of the fallen were passing

through her body on their way to Emroy. Although she would be
influenced by the personalities of the soul and their fighting spirit, to a
demigoddess like her, they were like an aphrodisiac.
Just giving in to this frenzy would be easy, but she couldn’t just give in,
or rather, she was not allowed to give in. The heat and anxiety burning
through her chest was making her suffer.
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“No, no, noooo! I’ll go crazy if this goes on!!”
Tozu, watching from behind, whispered, “Dammit. I’m hard.”
“Shut up, man, so am I.”
Although neither of them were into children, Rory’s moaning must have
made them think of something pleasant. The voice from Rory’s
shuddering body was just that seductive.
As expected, Kuribayashi whispered, “This is bad, right?” Tuka covered

her blushing face, while Lelei’s was a picture of calm indifference.
Itami’s sigh was his answer.
It would seem both sides had forgotten this place. There was no sign of
the enemy, nor were there any messages from their allies. Thus, they
had no way of knowing what was happening at the east gate.
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The reinforcements from Arnus should be here, and they needed a

forward observer to guide their attacks, so he decided to send someone
over.
“Kuribayashi!”
She replied with a “Yes”, and stepped forward.
“Sorry about this, but could you accompany Rory? Having men around
might cause problems. After that, we, including Tomita for a total of four
people, will head to the east gate. Sgt. Maj. Kuwabara, I’ll leave the rest
to you. Rory, we’re going! Just hang on a bit more!”
But Rory could not bear it any further.
She jumped down from the three-storey high city wall, and darted
toward the east like a rabbit.
Itami and the others followed her.
They ran to the base of the wall and got onto the nearby Type 73 truck.
Tomita revved the engine, and amidst the squealing of tires, they raced
over to the east as well.
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***
The three helicopters, one AH-1 Cobra leading and two UH-1s behind it,
raced through the brightening sky.
“Col. Kengun! 5 minutes to the objective!”
Ltc. Youga said, “According to the report from 3RCN (3rd Recon Team),
the east gate is currently engaged. For safety’s sake, we should
approach from the east and wipe out the enemies at the gate.”
Kengun nodded in approval, and said, “Take care of it, Ltc.”
The men in the helicopter cabin loaded the magazines for their rifles.
“Two minutes!”
As Youga said that, he pressed the button on the amplifier.
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He turned the volume to its maximum, and then pressed the “play”
button.
The sound of horns rang out.
The light sounds of woodwinds raced through the air like a Pegasus, and
the main theme commenced with the blaring of the trumpets.
This was a song written in honor of the eight Valkyries.
One of the troopers who had finished loading his rifle placed his helmet
between his legs. His curious comrade asked him:
“Why does everyone sit on their helmets?”
“So we don't get our balls blown off!”
***
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Blades carved into flesh and blood sprayed out.
A human head came apart like a watermelon being split at the seaside.
The sound of the sword hit echoed around.
There were shouts of men facing their dooms and bitter cries of
suffering.
Like a train station at rush hour, people were pressed against each other
everywhere.
Nobody could spare a thought for the overall situation. All their attention
was focused on the enemy in front of them while they hacked and
slashed with their swords. Of course, some people were cowering on the
ground, trying to crawl to a place without enemies, but they were
trampled into the ground by horses.
The ground was strewn with corpses and bodies and remains, and the
stone floor was dyed a reddish black by dried blood, and the brighter red
of freshly-spilled blood flowed from friend and foe alike.
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That was why they did not hear the distant sound that thundered
through the air.
A woman’s singing rang through the sky, accompanied by trombones.
At this moment, time stood still.
It stood still when she leapt over the berms, the fences, and landed on
the ground.
She knocked over men and horses, friend and foes, and cleared a space
around her.
In that instant, everything stopped.
Under the force of that impact and its destructive power, all sound
vanished and the clamor of battle faded away. In its place, they heard
the sound of trumpets:
「Ho-jo to-ho! Ho-jo to-ho! Ho-jo to-ho!」
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Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the black object that had appeared
before them.
It was a girl in jet-black priest’s clothing, edged with lace.
Both her knees rested on the ground.
Her left hand was planted on the floor.
In the other was a halberd that sent chills up people's spines.
She raised her head and her mad eyes looked forward. A radiant silver
glow limned her hair.
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In that moment, as the demigoddess smiled mockingly while the horns

blew, the top of the east gate caught fire.
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Vol. 1 :
Chapter 12
The formation of three choppers raked the bandits outside with gunfire.
As the helicopters flew by, they dropped off grenades, like they were
giving gifts. It showed the thoroughness of the JGSDF.
The attack came from several sides, in several waves.
From the east to the west, then doubling back and going over the
ground they covered… again and again, from left to right, front to back,
an endless hail of gunfire sprayed across the land and killed everything
that moved.
The bandits scattered, like a swarm of fleeing spiders. However, whether

on foot or mounted, none of them could escape.
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The bandits, caught in the middle of their burning, killing and pillaging,
had the tables turned on them, and they fell to the ground after being
hit by bullets.
A brave man actually managed to nock and loose an arrow at them, but
the arrow fired into the sky had little force. It fell swiftly, without any
power.
Aboard the helicopters, a trooper placed the blade of his rifle’s front
sight into the middle of the rear sight’s aperture, and centered the
bandit’s head in his sight picture. He factored in the speed of the
helicopter and the movement of the bandit as he took aim.
“Proper aim, proper posture, proper cheek weld, don’t snatch the
trigger…” As he muttered this to himself, he adjusted the 2.7kg weight
of the rifle in his arms.
He fired three times.
His right shoulder absorbed the recoil, and the lack of a need to recover
the cartridges was oddly relaxing.
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Usually, they would be under strict orders to keep an eye on where all
their rounds (or parts thereof) went, but now the empty casings fell to
the floor of the helicopter, and eventually out onto the bodies of the
bandits.
The muzzle of the rifle did not shine, veiled as it was in heavy black
smoke.
The warriors’ bodies became sacrifices for the flames of war, which
blazed brightly.
***
Italica’s city gate was wreathed in crimson flame, and the sun that rose
into the sky filled the world with heat and radiance.
The fully-armored soldiers were ripped to shreds.
The sound of Death’s wings were different from those of birds. It was a
more ferocious, more foreboding sound than their's, which repeated on
and on.
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A hail of lead fell upon the stones of the city wall, leaving it pock-marked
with small holes.
The mounted Piña, who was pressing her throat as she shouted orders,
suddenly lost her voice and stared mutely at the tragedy unfolding
before her.
She watched the iron Pegasi with their whirling wings of steel, soaring
through the sky that they owned.
The first thing one would think of when one mentioned airborne troops
were obviously the Dragon riders. But what Piña saw was not a living
creature, but a far more terrible thing. Dragon riders should have
attacked far more elegantly, using sword and lance in equal measure.
However, these were different. They brought with them a storm of one-
sided slaughter, of utter brutality.
When the flames of the iron Pegasi struck the ground, they destroyed
everything they hit. Stones were reduced to pebbles, horses were
blasted to pieces and men caught in the blasts lay down and died.
「Ho-jo to-ho! Ho-jo to-ho!　Hei-a ha!　Hei-a ha!」
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It was a symphony of death. She had heard all sorts of music during her
courtly life, but Piña had never before heard such a beautiful yet stately
display. Horns, trumpets, bassoons and the voice of the singer
thundered across the battlefield with incredible volume, playing an
accompaniment to a massacre.
Piña shuddered, as though she had been stabbed in the back by a sword
of ice. In an instant, everything had been destroyed by an absolute
brutality that nothing could resist. Her emotions, positive and negative,
blended within her and shook both her body and soul.
Piña’s mind and soul were battered by the carnage on all sides
assaulting her every sense.
She eventually came to the conclusion that humanity was worthless,

meaningless, and powerless.
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「Hei-a ha!ーーーーHei-a　 ha!ーーーー」
Until now, all the foes she had met had been physically massive beings.
However, this was a mistake.
She could not look them in the eye, yet she could not tear her eyes
away.
「Ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!!
Ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!ha!!」
Piña was defeated by the lyrics known as the “Valkyries’ Mockery”. Her
pride, her status, everything about her which had worth was denied in
an instant.
She did not know what the words meant, but she understood their
meaning.
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Oh miniscule humanity!
Oh tragic and powerless humanity!
What of your power and authority? All those things you pass down
through the generations, we shall destroy in the blink of an eye, like so!
Piña wept as she felt the Valkyries’ disdain. At the same time, she knew
there were mighty beings which far exceeded herself.
Powerful beings.
Radiant beings.
What welled up in her heart was respect. Respect and fear.
And there was despair, that such awesome entities were so far removed
from her.
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***
“Crap! Rory, she — she’s charged into the middle of the enemy!”
As an otaku, Itami was in awe of Rory’s strength.
However, this magnificent little girl did not seem very strong at all.
As a result, he was worried. He had spent time with her, and he was
concerned for her. He could not simply leave her alone like this.
Itami jumped off the truck and ordered, “Fix bayonets” while he applied
his own bayonet.
Kuribayashi and Tomita fixed their bayonets as well, tapping them to

make sure they were secure.
They looked at each other. Their firing selectors were switched from
“SAFE” to “AUTO”. He told them, “Don’t split up”, and then they
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advanced.
However, surging ahead of the rest like a cannonball was Kuribayashi.
Itami and Tomita muttered, “Cheh, that stupid woman” and then
sprinted as well, determined not to be left behind.
“Forward, charge!”
They locked onto their targets, advanced a few steps, and fired.
Another few steps, and then they were shooting from the hip.
They repeated the maneuvers they had learned in training.
Several bandits fell amidst sprays of blood.
Ahead of them was Rory, wielding her halberd in a dance of death. She
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swung, spun, cleaved her foe’s shield apart and then knocked him down.
She did not seem worried at all, and her movements were relaxed.
However, the bodies were piling up around her.
Her foes tried to press her with their shields, thrusting over the tops with
their swords and attacking her knees under the bottoms. But Rory
simply took a step back and swung her halberd from top to bottom.
She cut them apart, man and shield in one blow, like she was splitting
firewood.
She did not even look behind at the enemies circling behind her — she
simply thrust behind with the pointed base of her halberd.
Against a spear attack from all directions, she jumped up as the shafts
crossed beneath her, and used them as footholds to vault into the air.
Rory’s skirt blossomed like a black rose, showing off her black lace
garterbelts that connected to her black panties, and the smooth, flowing
lines of her legs. She swung her halberd in a full circle.
As if caught in the blades of a food processor, the tops of the bandits’

heads came off, spurting blood like a crimson tide.
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Her face was spattered in crimson pearls from the bloody rain, as she
cleaved the wind, cleaved through flesh, cleaved through steel.
A greatsword filled with equal amounts of fear, hatred and bloodlust

swung down on Rory’s head.
But Rory’s keen eyes noticed the attack, and her opponent’s desperate
gamble failed.
With her left hand, Rory grabbed her skirt and ducked the blow like a
bullfighter evading a bull’s charge.
At this moment, Kuribayashi arrived.
Shouting, “Bayonet thrust!” she stabbed the man trying to ambush Rory
in the back.
She used the recoil of firing her weapon to help extract her bayonet,
then slashed down at the foe in front of her. She stabbed and stabbed,
then swung her buttstock like a club. Smash, smash, smash! Then she
pointed the barrel of her rifle at the tip of the man’s nose, and fired.
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She parried a sword swing with her rifle, which ruined the rifle. The
buttstock was dented too, but Kuribayashi didn’t care, simply sweeping
her opponent’s feet and then stomping his face in with the heel of her
boot.
The wobbly bipod fell off with a clattering sound, and Kuribayashi went
“Acha~” as she thought of what the armoury sergeant would say. Then
again, this was why the Type 64 had been issued, and not the Type 89.
Muttering, “Expendable item, expendable item”, Kuribayashi gripped her
rifle tightly.
This was barbaric, hand to hand combat from an earlier age. But
Kuribayashi had trained for it.
Her small frame was as nimble as a cat’s, and she overwhelmed her
opponents in close combat and gunned them down as they tried to
retreat. After her rounds were expended, she threw a grenade at her
enemies’ heads.
She judged that her enemies’ bodies could serve as a shield for herself.
The explosions behind the enemy filled them with fear. They lost the will
to fight and cowered behind their raised shields.
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Kuribayashi drew her sidearm and fired three shots. Since they were
using wooden shields, the 9mm bullets could splinter a shield in one
shot, shatter it in another, and strike the person holding them with a
third.
Rory charged into the breach and Kuribayashi reloaded her rifle in the
meantime.
Itami and Tomita did not want to fall behind, so they protected the girls.
With their rifles, pistols and bayonets, they kept the enemies from
flanking Rory and Kuribayashi.
If one could take a step back and calmly observe the ladies doing battle,
it would be a beautiful sight. Especially Rory, whose might was
indomitable. Was it because of her battle frenzy, or was that just the
way she was? The two of them were smiling widely like they were in the
throes of pleasure, even though this was the battlefield. Still, any man
would want to see a face like that in bed with him.
The two of them eagerly displayed their tandem combat technique.
Bayonet swings, halberd thrusts, rifle shots, grenades, the whirling hilt of
the halberd, flying kicks and straight punches defeated the enemy.
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There wasn’t even any time to change magazines. Once Kuribayashi was
out, she shouted, “El-tee, gun!”
Itami tossed his rifle to Kuribayashi, and Kuribayashi tossed her almost-
wrecked rifle to Itami.
The Italica citizens and guards in the middle of the fights found that the
enemy attack had suddenly weakened. After looking around, they saw
Itami and company.
“The Apostle of Emroy is here! The Men in Green are here!” As they
shouted these things, they regained their discipline, and began helping
each other to fight. After that, they heard the sound of explosions and
the blaring of the trumpets.
「Führet die Mähren fern von einander, bis unsrer Helden Hass sich
gelegt!
Der Helden Grimm büsste schon die Graue!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!」
And then, the attack helicopter appeared, breaking through the clouds
of smoke that obscured the sky.
Their sheer majesty awed the people watching. They raised their heads
to gaze upon the iron Pegasus that had descended from the sky.
The AH-1 Cobra’s 20mm M197 tri-barrelled gatling autocannon swiveled

to aim at the bandits which Rory and the others had pressed into a
mass.
Seeing this, Itami and Tomita nodded to each other.
Itami grabbed Rory while Tomita grabbed Kuribayashi from behind and
ran, shouting “Get down!” as they did.
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As though they had been waiting for Itami’s retreat, the 20mm rounds,
fired at a rate of 680 to 750 rounds per minute, chewed the enemy into
mincemeat.
The Cobra descended as it fired. This was the final blow.
The flames of war blazed, and the torrent of shells destroyed everything.
Before long, the gatling gun stopped. The sound of the trumpets had
faded away, and in everyone’s ears was the sound of the helicopters’
propellor blades. All that remained were wisps of gunsmoke.
The UH-1J hovered in mid-air.
Ropes dangled down, and JSDF troopers descended them. With swift
movements and organized effort, they searched for any survivors among
the enemy.
At first, nobody dared to speak to the “Men in Green”. Whether in

numbers or strength, it was clear that they were soldiers from
somewhere. Someone reverently asked Tomita where they were from,
and the answer they received was “We’re from the JSDF”.
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Under the powerful downwash of the helicopter’s propellers, Rory

noticed that her hair was not being tossed around. As she pressed down
her skirt which was being blown up by the prop wash, she looked
around. However, there were no more enemies around her.
Suddenly she realized it.
She realized she was being hugged by someone.
Someone’s left arm protruded from below her left armpit across her
chest, and a gloved palm rested on her right breast. Rory Mercury
noticed this, and then her cherry blossom-pink lips parted, revealing
sharp canines.
***
Piña stood in front of Itami, Rory, Tuka and Lelei, but she had no idea
what to say.
Just yesterday, when she had met the four of them, she had ordered
them to help her, as though she was in charge.
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She had been leaning on a table, elegantly sipping her tea, explaining
important matters to them like they were her subordinates. This was
how Piña and people like her lived in high society.
Well, maybe yesterday’s attitude was not so bad, but it was close
enough.
But what about her status today? Was she not one of the tragically
defeated?
Indeed, the bandits had been beaten back, and the townspeople were
happy to have won and survived.
Of course, mourning and getting over the loss of life and lost family
members would take a while. Rebuilding the ruined villages and town
would be a problem too. However, this victory had been won by betting
their lives, so it should be celebrated. Mourning alone would not mean
anything to the deceased.
In that sense, Piña should have celebrated, as one of the victors.

However, the desolate atmosphere around her was one of defeat.
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She did not feel like she had won at all.
The winners were Rory, Itami and the “JSDF”.
These enemies who had taken control of Arnus, who rode iron Pegasi,
who held magic in their hands which could scorch the earth into a
roaring inferno, who had exterminated in an instant those bandits that
had troubled Piña.
If they decided to turn their fangs on Piña and Italica, what could she do?
The Empire’s Princess Piña and the young Countess Myui of House
Formal would become prisoners, and the Empire’s breadbasket would be
taken by the enemy.
What about the townspeople? Could they resist?
No, they would welcome the invaders with open arms. After all, it was
the JSDF who had won the day. Talk of the “Men in Green” had already
spread from the mouths of Coda’s villagers.
The common folk were simple and did not understand governance. They
would be hooked by anything that benefited them, even if it was only
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temporary.
If they demanded this town in exchange… I might have to kneel in front

of them and beg for their mercy, and for them to release myself and
Countess Myui.
Me, begging an enemy for mercy? A proud Imperial Princess? Pulling on

a man’s sleeve like some common whore in an alehouse?
Piña gritted her teeth.
If she went down on her knees and kissed their toes, they might actually
do it. She would have to accede to any humiliating requests they had.
Piña fearfully awaited the demands of Itami and his people.
She had planned to wait. However, in the next few moments, her vision
regained its color and the sound from around her called her back to her
senses.
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“We wish to take our pick of the prisoners.”
Lelei translated Hamilton’s words to Col. Kengun. From a linguistics

standpoint, Itami alone could not translate successfully, so Lelei had to
help.
Kengun nodded from a rigid posture.
“We understand that labor is the key to Italica’s recovery. Although that
is your practice, I hope that you can treat them humanely. We only need
three to five captives for questioning. We hope you can accommodate us
on that point.”
“They don’t quite understand the term ‘humanely’...”
Lelei was working hard. The fact that sweat was dripping from her
forehead onto her expressionless face only underscored that.
She tried to explain in her own words, and said, “Like you would treat a
friend, relative or acquaintance.” However, Hamilton frowned at that.
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“Would our friends and relatives attack peaceful towns and villages, to
murder and plunder?”
Piña called out to keep Hamilton, who was shouting angrily, under
control.
“All right, then don’t treat them too cruelly. You played a big part in this
victory, so we can let you have that.”
Hamilton relaxed after Piña opened her mouth.
Lelei spoke to Kengun for a while, and then she translated something for
her.
“We can understand that.”
Although she had butted in, where was this and what was she doing?
Piña desperately tried to mobilize her brainpower to understand the

situation.
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And who was this man, anyway?
The man standing in front of Piña was a stout-bodied warrior. He wore

green as well, but his bearing was clearly different from a mere
footsoldier.
His belly was fat, but from the wrinkles in his forehead, he was a grizzled
veteran. The man’s forthright, open attitude suggested he was confident
in himself. That self-confidence must have been born of long experience,
and Piña would kill to have that experience and self-assurance.
He seemed to be a JSDF commander.
After realizing this, Piña sat down in Count Formal’s seat, since she was
representing him. Beside her, Countess Myui sat between her butler and
the head maid.
The speaker was Hamilton, but the one who would negotiate, make
proposals and make the final decision was Piña herself.
Piña carefully considered her words to make sure of the circumstances.
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But in a situation like this, what kind of agreement could they come to?
She beckoned Hamilton with a finger, and Hamilton, with bandages on

her forehead and the rest of her, came close.
“Ah, Your Highness, you’ve come to, I was worried.”
“Forgive me, I made you worry.”
After that, they decided to go through the details again to make sure.
“Hm. Then, I would like to clarify the conditions with you.”
Hamilton recited them like she was reading out an epic poem.
“First, the JSDF shall pick three to five captives from here and take them
back. These captives and all rights pertaining to them shall belong to the
JSDF. In addition, House Formal promises not to mistreat the captives.
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Second, as thanks for the relief efforts of the JSDF, House Formal and
Imperial Princess Piña Co Lada will house and guarantee the safety of
envoys from Japan. In addition, the number of envoys, living expenses
and so on will be agreed upon later, but House Formal and the Princess
will pay the first 100 suwanis to the JSDF with no strings attached.
Third, the JSDF and the refugees staying at Arnus will not be made to
pay tolls, income tax, currency exchange surcharges and various other
taxes when trading in the domain of House Formal.
Fourth, once the treaty goes into effect, the JSDF as led by Col. Kengun
may not touch the wealth, holdings or personnel of House Formal (with
the exception of any captives from the first point) and the citizens and
must leave the domain of House Formal immediately. However, small
groups and the refugees living at Arnus will be guaranteed free passage
in the domain of House Formal for the purposes of communicating with
House Formal.
Fifth, the duration of this treaty is one year. If both parties do not object,
it will automatically renew itself.
Signed by
Countess Myui Formal
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Imperial Princess Piña Co Lada
3rd day of Mist Month, 687 IR”
After reading the contents of the parchment, Hamilton handed it to Piña.
She read it a few times. They had not come off badly. Or rather, these
were actually pretty good terms. And the JSDF had not asked to exercise
their rights as the victors.
Taking care of envoys would be troublesome and paying out 100

suwanis would be a sorely felt loss. However, both were necessary
expenses. Indeed, they had gotten off lightly by only paying that much.
Hamilton had worked hard too.
Piña had confidence in her ability to read people, but Hamilton Uno Ro’s
negotiating skills were beyond her expectations. How had she managed
to make warriors with such incredible fighting power give up their
victors’ rights? Magic? Or had she used her feminine wiles during the
negotiations?
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No matter what, if the diplomats heard about this, they would try and
headhunt her. Hamilton’s negotiation skills would be critical for the
knight band.
Piña thought about these things, then signed the end of the parchment,
and then put a blob of wax on it before stamping it with her signet ring.
Beside her, Countess Myui signed and stamped it with great formality.
Hamilton rolled out the parchment before Kengun.
After Lelei and Tuka read and confirmed the terms to him, he signed it in
Kanji.
Rory turned away with an unhappy expression on her face, while Itami
stood dumbly, with a black right eye.
Two copies of the treaty were made.
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While they made the second copy, Piña held on to the first.
She wanted to look at Kengun’s signature. The words seemed very

stylish to her.
***
The terms of the treaty took effect immediately, and so the 401st
Squadron flew back to base.
The townspeople took some time out from the post-battle cleanup to
watch them soar into the sky, waving their hats at them until they
vanished from sight.
Lelei, Tuka and Rory went to the home of the trader Ryudo to discuss
business.
Being exempted from taxes was a huge selling point for any trader, so
the girls were welcome by all of them. Things were made even simpler
since Master Kato had introduced them previously.
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They completed the sale of 200 dragon scales for 4000 silver denarii and
200 gold sinks.
However, actually claiming those 4000 denarii in liquid currency was

impossible. Ryudo had tried his best, but House Formal’s territory had
just been ravaged by bandits and trade in Italica had ground to a halt. In
addition, the Empire did not supply its outlying regions with a lot of
currency, so obtaining even 1000 denarii would be a big challenge.
In the end, the remaining 2000 was paid in credit guarantees, while the
remaining 1000 was written off as a discount. In exchange, however,
Lelei asked Ryudo for information.
This information pertained to the markets in the region and beyond, and
she requested him to carefully investigate the prices of certain items in
various markets.
Ryudo laughed as he heard this request.
Unlike the buying and selling of regular citizens, the information on the
prices of merchants was an important weapon in price negotiations. No
trader would ask so bluntly about them, nor would anyone answer so
readily.
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However, since Lelei was an outsider, she knew nothing about what
things cost. Because she knew nothing, she wanted this information, but
broader in scope, with more details, in exchange for the debt owed.
“One thousand silvers, huh.”
Nobody had ever paid so much for information before, but since a price
had been named, it was a sale. And the goods were of a pretty high
quality too.
And so, Ryudo agreed to collect the relevant information from all
around.
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 13
A group of horsemen raced down the road to the west, heading for
Italica.
Above them flew flags emblazoned with red, white and yellow roses. The
sound of many galloping hooves thundered beneath them.
Their polished breastplates and helmets reflected gold and silver light,
and the waving flags and upraised lances surged forward at great
speeds.
The knight at their lead was particularly noteworthy.
She was a spectacularly-dressed female knight whose golden hair

swayed in the wind. She lashed her horse repeatedly. Her mount mutely
bore the pain and threw itself forward in response.
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The countryside flew past the lady knight’s eyes, but it was too slow, far
too slow. She gripped the reins tighter, and lashed the horse harder.
“Bozes! You’re going too fast!”
The woman whose voice was filled with even calmness caught up to the
foremost rider.
She was a female knight with chestnut-brown hair. Behind her was a
group of mounted warriors, whom she had left behind in her haste to
catch up with Bozes.
The lady knight called Bozes replied in a voice like the tinkling of silver
bells.
“We’re still too slow, Panache!”
“Your horse won’t be able to take it, and people in the rear can’t keep
up with you. If this goes on, we won’t be able to fight even if we make it
there on time.”
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“It doesn’t matter, our objective is Italica, and the stragglers can catch
up later. Time is of the essence now!”
“But—”
“Even if only a few people arrive in the end, there are ways to fight with
small groups. The most important thing is to get there is soon as
possible, even if it’s by just a little.”
Bozes had said this much, and Panache could not convince her
otherwise. All she could do was follow behind Bozes and convince her to
slow down as much as possible.
After Bozes forced herself to loosen the reins and lower her speed, the
unit behind her finally managed to catch up a little.
“Panache, will we make it in time?”
“It’ll be fine. If it’s the Princess, she’ll think of a way.”
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“But—”
It was all Bozes could do to suppress the uneasiness in her heart. Her
energies were focused on the road which kept unfolding before her and
the tiny point of Italica on the horizon.
Therefore, the first one to notice it was Panache.
“Hm?”
Something was approaching from in front of them.
Although this was supposed to be a major road of the Empire, that

meant it had been built long ago and exposed to the elements in the
wilderness, and in places it would become very narrow, certainly not big
enough for two wagons to fit side by side. If the riders continued like
this, they would collide with the people in front of them.
Speaking of which, the entity approaching from in front of them was

drawing near with a speed that surpassed their expectations. It looked
like a box, and from a distance they could not tell exactly what it was,
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but it seemed to be a wagon of some sort.
“Bozes!”
“I know.”
“The hell you know! Look ahead!”
As Panache’s scolding brought her around, Bozes straightened up,

clicked her tongue and pulled back hard on the reins.
Panache raised her left hand to signal a halt to the rest of the unit
behind her, and she pulled on her reins to stop her horse.
The people behind them were slightly relieved, because they had a
chance to give their exhausted mounts a chance to rest. Both man and
beast panted heavily, sweating rivers.
“Ahhh, what a pain! Have them make way!”
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Just as the knights behind them were about to advance to remove the
obstruction, they saw Panache’s signal to wait and stayed where they
were.
“They came from Italica. I’ll check them out and see if they have any
useful information.”
With that, Bozes slowly urged her horse forward.
***
“You did what?!”
In her rage, Piña flung the silver goblet she was holding.
Bozes, who had proudly brought a prisoner of war with her in

anticipation of a commendation, was completely taken aback by that
reaction. She was stunned by Piña’s anger and the pain in her forehead,
and it was only when she felt the warm wetness flowing down her face
and saw blood on the finger she used to check it that she realized that
she had a cut above her eyebrow.
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The blood flowed down her beautiful cheek and dripped off her chin onto
the carpet below, before slowly spreading out.
“Y-your Highness, why do you say that? What have we done wrong?”
Panache dabbed at Bozes’ wound while begging Piña for mercy. Bozes
herself had collapsed on her rump in shock. Then, Hamilton reacted.
Rather than shout angrily at them, she sighed deeply.
***
That evening
The knights had reached Italica at last. Bozes and Panache, relieved
after seeing the peaceful streets, decided to report to Piña and apologize
for not being able to make it to the battle. However, not only did Piña
not blame them for that, but she even praised them for being earlier
than expected.
Overjoyed from the praise, Bozes and Panache congratulated Piña on

her victory and told her about their encounter with some foreigners who
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might have been the enemies who had taken over Arnus. They had
captured one of them, and they thought Piña would have congratulated
them on it, but once they brought him in front of Piña, she had struck
them instead.
The two of them did not know why Piña had not only scolded them, but
had even thrown a goblet at them.
“We broke the treaty in less than a day, and it just had to be him…”
Hamilton peeked at their prisoner, who was in the corner of the room.
Itami lay there, his body devoid of strength.
Hamilton placed a hand on his shoulder and shook him while shouting,
“Itami-dono, Itami-dono”. But Itami was covered in abrasions and he
sported many bruises from being beaten by many people, so his
physical and mental stamina was depleted, to the point where he
couldn’t even answer her.
It was not hard to imagine what had happened to him on the way back
here from looking at him.
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“Hamilton, how is Itami-dono?”
“It looks like he’s been hurt pretty badly, we need to get him care
immediately.
Piña summoned the chief maid of House Formal and said, “Sorry, we’ll
leave him to you”. The old maid and butler replied, “Understood”, and
then the maids came together to form a human wall around Itami. He
was transported away in this manner.
After watching Itami leave, Piña fiercely snapped her head back.
She looked just like a demon then, and after slapping Bozes — who was
a bit taller than her — square in the face, she began questioning her.
“What on earth did you lot do to Itami-dono?!”
“We, we just brought him here the way we would a normal prisoner…”
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The normal way of treating prisoners, for the Empire, usually involved
dragging them behind a horse, and when the prisoners collapsed from
exhaustion, they would be poked with spears or lashed with the flat of a
blade, forcing them to rise and continue. Even if they did stand,
however, they would still be brutalized with fists and feet. In this way,
the prisoners would lose the will and strength to resist or flee, and it was
also part of the process of breaking them before selling them as slaves.
Piña muttered, “This is bad, this is really bad”. She grabbed her head
with both hands and shuddered as she tried to suppress the rage
running rampant through her body.
If one thought calmly about it, it was not entirely Bozes’ or Panache’s
fault. After all, they had been handling an enemy who had taken over
Arnus, and they could not possibly have known Piña had signed a treaty
with them.
However, sometimes, unlikely things like this simply happened. The fact
was that the JSDF had immediately withdrawn from Italica once the
treaty took effect. Excuses like “they did not know” or “they were told
too late” would not work. After all, the ones who wanted the treaty to
take effect immediately had been Piña’s side. Itami had been captured
after the treaty took effect , and worse, it had happened within House
Formal’s domain, where they were guaranteed free passage.
These actions would break the treaty. There was no doubt about it.
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This was a preferred tactic of the Empire, starting a war on the pretext
of a treaty violation. Violations of treaties often happened in a world with
poor communications like this one, with subordinate units fighting on
long after the rest of them had surrendered because nobody told them
to stop.
It was because the Empire did these things often that they felt the JSDF
would do the same to them.
A chill ran down Piña’s spine.
The music which rang across the sky and the Valkyries’ sneer now
echoed inside her ear. She could not help but imagine her knight band,
Italica, even the whole Empire, burned to ashes by the flames of hell.
Bozes and Panache, who had learned about the agreement Piña signed
with the JSDF from Hamilton, finally realized what they had done, what
Itami had meant by “Let’s talk this out” and why he had not resisted his
capture.
“Itami’s men should have been there, what happened to them?”
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“The ran off just like that.”
They had laughed at Itami because Itami’s subordinates had run off

instead of trying to rescue him. However, they now knew why they had
chosen not to retaliate, but flee.
If they could have taken them all captive at the time, they could have
wiped them all out under the pretext of the unit going missing, but if
everyone else escaped, that would have been useless. Not that they
could have captured them in the first place — they had Rory the Reaper
with them.
“Your Excellency, we are fortunate that nobody’s life was lost here.
Rather than try and come up with some clever ruse, I feel we should
sincerely apologize to them.”
These were the words of Gray Co Aldo, who had been listening quietly
from the side of the room.
“But these were the people who even asked us to treat these bandits
‘hyu-main-lee’, and they even asked us not to abuse them. If they found
out what happened to Itami, don’t you think that would get them mad
enough to attack us?”
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“Then we just need to atone for that as well.”
“That is, you want me to atone for that, right? But what if the other party
asks us to hand over or execute the responsible parties?”
“Well, what else do you want to do? Declare war? These are opponents
who ride iron pegasi and have magic that can set the earth ablaze, and
then you have the Grim Reaper Rory Mercury to worry about. If it were
me, I’d rather not chance that.”
Even a hardened veteran like Gray was shaken to the core after seeing
those horrible scenes. Piña was steeling herself to undergo any kind of
humiliation as long as it would allow her to successfully atone for this.
That might be so, but, there was nobody present who was higher-ranked
than her. Piña needed to avoid a situation where she might be forced to
forfeit her life after Bozes and Panache admitted their guilt.
The air turned cold and heavy around them.
After a brief silence, Gray attempted to break the tension by saying in a
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humorous tone, “Well, in the end, the situation depends on what Itami-
dono thinks about it.”
In other words, he was telling all the women present to please Itami by
any means possible.
***
There was a musical theater troupe called the Takarazuka Revue in

Japan.
It featured an all-female cast who could sing and dance, in addition to

putting on plays; and its founding dated back from before World War II.
To Itami the Otaku, they were a world that was far removed from him,
but recently they were performing “Rose of Versailles”, a play whose
manga form Itami liked a lot, so he had considered going to watch them.
Come to think of it, the knight band they encountered on the way back
to Arnus from Italica had reminded him of an outdoor performance of the
Takarazuka Revue.
Everyone he saw with his amazed eyes were women, and all of them
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were beautiful, graceful, cute and charming young girls.
Even if there were some men hiding within their number, after seeing
that the first half of these ravishing beauties were wearing men’s
clothes, he might have assumed that everyone in the back was a woman
too.
Then there were their ornately detailed flags, weapons and armor, the
decadently decorated horse barding that gleamed in the sun, and the
uniforms made from cloth of gold and silver, all of which might make
one think of a romance manga set in the high society of the 18th
century French court.
The woman who raised her hand to signal a halt urged her horse
forward.
She was mounted on a white horse, and she had a head of chestnut-
colored hair. Her silver-colored breastplate was decorated by a white
tabard stitched with silver thread, and she wore a white cape. She had a
cavalry saber by her side, a slender sword whose hilt and guard were
covered with elaborate flower-themed decorate, and of course its blade
boasted an immaculate sheen.
Her eyes were cold and sharp, with a hint of trying to look cool. She
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gave off an air of a female actress trying her best to play a male role,
and if a high school girl who liked this sort of thing saw her, she might
squeal in delight.
Kurata sat there with a goofy expression on his face and said, “This is
the first time I’ve seen drill hair IRL.”
He was looking behind the lady in white, at the woman who seemed
hostile. She rode a black horse, and her luxurious golden ringlets
descended to her waist. So, this was the legendary drill hair. Was there
some sort of special ability associated with it? He could not help but
wonder about that as he saw the huge ribbon on her head.
At a glance, she was a beautiful woman who held herself like a daughter
of nobility, and the way she looked down imperiously on them (The fact
that she was mounted and thus had to look down on them only added to
the effect) seemed to say, “Kneel and lick my toes, you pig bastard”. If
she actually said that, he might have simply answered “Yes, ma’am”
and gotten to it.
Itami turned his attention from the female knights to the rose-emblem
flags, and mentally named the chestnut-haired woman the “white rose”,
and the high-class blonde the “yellow rose”.
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Kuwabara contacted the rest of the team over the wireless, and they
gripped their rifles tightly as they went on alert. Sensing this, Itami
immediately ordered them to hold fire in order to avoid breaking the
treaty. At this moment, Rory and Lelei were dozing in the back because
they had been up all night.
Of the three vehicles in 3rd Recon’s convoy, the one at the head was the
Type 73 truck, the second was the HMV, and the third was the LAV. The
female knights approached the Type 73.
The white rose spurred her horse toward Tomita before speaking.
Staff Sergeant Tomita, age 27, Ranger trained. He was a person who
could only communicate with this world through the use of a
phrasebook, and poorly at that. Under these circumstances, he could
only respond to the white rose’s question with frantic body language and
frequent references to his phrasebook.
Said the white rose: “Where are you from?”
Replied Tomita: “We are, from Italica go out.”
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Due to the language barrier, he had to try and assemble the sentence
from individual words in the phrasebook, and then speak slowly and
carefully so the white rose could understand. On her part, the yellow
rose treated the tongue-tied Tomita as an idiot and turned up her nose
at him.
The white rose asked: “Where are you going?”
Tomita flipped through his notebook and replied: “Arnus Hill.”
As she heard this, the white rose shouted in panic, “You said WHAT?!”
Only an enemy would want to go to a place taken over by foreign

enemies.
In addition, they had carriages that could move without being pulled by
horses, and they carried unfamiliar weapons. The knights had held their
doubts ever since they saw these people.
The female knights bristled with hostility as they heard his reply. “What?
Enemies!” they shouted, and then their lances, originally held upright,
were levelled straight at Itami’s team.
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The riders swiftly assumed their formation, which spoke of their

excellent drilling, and Itami realized they were nothing like a theater
troupe, but a professionally trained military group. The reason why they
had lined their horses up went without saying.
As they saw this, Itami’s men immediately assumed firing positions with
their rifles, and Sasagawa swivelled the LAV heavy machine gun over to
point at them, with a deep clanking of metal from the pintle mount.
The yellow rose alighted, a cold expression on her face, and she drew
close to Tomita before grabbing him by the labels and telling him in a
threatening tone to “Repeat yourself”.
In order to make sure this foreigner had not misspoken, she asked him
again, “Where did you come from, and where are you going?”
It was hard for Tomita to breathe with the yellow rose grabbing his
collar, and while he blushed for a completely unrelated reason, he forced
out “Italica come Arnus go”
Itami could not bear to see Tomita suffering, so he told Kuwabara, “Pops,
we cannot be the ones to make the first move under any circumstances”
before leaving his rifle, handgun and bayonet on his vehicle.
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Then, he called out to the white rose and the yellow rose in the local
language.
“About that, I’m sorry, did my subordinate offend you?”
However, the hysterical woman was stirred into a rage by the relaxed
tone of those words.
Itami suddenly felt them staring at him like he was some sort of criminal,
and he nonchalantly said, “Calm down, let’s talk about this.”
However, the female knight was no longer listening to him.
This was the first time she had ever been deployed in her life and she
was wound up enough that she had no energy left to spare on thought.
And right now, the veteran officers and NCOs that were so desperately
needed to maintain order here were somewhere far away instead.
Not to mention, the lack of fluency with the language made the knights
suspicious, because there was no way to tell if they were safe or
threatening. Their suspicion toward the people in front of them grew by
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leaps and bounds. And when their suspicion reached a certain level, it
was only natural that it would result in them drawing their weapons.
Panache, the white rose, pointed her sword at Itami who appeared to be
completely unconcerned and ordered him to surrender.
They would not feel safe until they rounded up and disarmed this
mysterious group of people.
They had no idea why the enemy would show up here, but they did not
dare take chances. At least, despite some weird movements among
them, they had not launched an attack yet. And just as the tension was
rising ever higher, a man saying “Let’s talk” kept trying to cut in.
“Hey, you, shut up!” the yellow rose snapped as she slapped Itami.
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The JSDF were filled with murderous intent as they saw this, but
Kuwabara stopped them by shouting “Wait!” and Itami added, “Now!
Run away! Run away now!”
And so, with the roar of their engines causing the knights’ horses to
panic, 3rd Recon fell back, tires squealing. Because it had happened so
fast, the effort which the knights put into calming their startled horses
was wasted, because the JSDF vehicles had long since vanished in a puff
of smoke.
Several knights spurred their horses to try and chase them, but they
could not catch up at all. Meanwhile, Itami had been left alone in the
midst of the enemy.
***
“Ow, ow, ow...”
His head hurt, his back hurt, his legs hurt, his right eye hurt, in fact,
most of his body hurt.
After regaining consciousness, he painfully forced his eyes open to see
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nothing but darkness.
Was it night-time, or had he just been locked up in a dark room… either

way it was pretty dark.
However, what made him nervous was the sensation of a soft down
blanket on him, which was so comfortable it filled him with foreboding
instead. He looked around to try and see where he was. His head still
hurt, but he tried to prop himself up on his shoulders.
And then, a pair of soft hands stopped him from rising.
This pair of hands gently pressed him down onto the bed and covered
him up.
After that, someone brought a candle over, and the warm light
illuminated Itami’s surroundings.
The faces of smiling maids appeared in the candlelight. “Are you awake,
Master?”
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“What, where, where, where is this?”
The Japanese he had spoken by reflex seemed to have confused them.

Itami did not recall going to an Akihabara maid cafe or maid hotel.
“Where is this place?” he asked after he managed to get himself under

control.
“This is Formal Manor.”
Itami nodded, as if to say “I see”, and began trying to make sense of the
circumstances.
A quick look around suggested he was not in a jail or dungeon or

something similar.
Itami mused that since he had been dragged back to Italica, it made
sense that this should be Italica, not to mention the people taking care
of him seemed to be House Formal’s maids.
After seeing the improvement in his current conditions, he realised that

Piña did not intend to break the treaty. In other words, it seemed Itami
had a chance to be released safely, so there was no need to push
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himself to escape from here.
“Then, could you get me a glass of water?”
The maid smiled and said, “Understood” before bowing and stepping
outside the room. Replacing her was a tall maid wearing pince-nez
glasses. She knelt beside Itami’s bed to look at him.
Itami looked at the maid’s face, blinked, and looked again.
“Is there something on my face ~nya?”
“No-no, no, it’s fine.” In his heart, he reflected that a world like this
ought to have things like this, and forced himself to accept it.
What Itami had seen was a pair of cat ears on the bespectacled maid.
Given that they even moved by themselves, they were probably not
fakes worn as accessories.
“May I ask what is going on?”
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“Nya?”
“Er, no… I mean, what’s the state of the town, of the manor? Or maybe
how I got here?”
The cat-eared maid froze, a troubled expression on her face.
However, the chief maid who had appeared beside her said, “It is now
past midnight, and many of the people in the town are asleep. The town
is at rest.”
The chief maid must have been trying to say that peace had returned to
Italica. She also mentioned that they would have a memorial service to
mourn those who had fallen in the town’s defense. However, she was
not sure how much damage had been done to the villages outside the
town, and she did not know how long the domain of House Formal would
take to recover from this. It might be a long time.
Piña’s knight band had trickled into Italica, mainly infantry and cavalry
who could not catch up. Now that over 80% of them were gathered, Piña
had ordered them to patrol the interior of House Formal’s domain and
secure it.
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“And so, Lady Piña ordered us to treat Itami-dono kindly, and she has
punished the knight leaders who treated you with disrespect.”
The white and yellow knight leaders had felt Piña’s wrath, which for
Bozes (whom Itami knew as the yellow rose) had taken the form of a
thrown silver goblet that had left a deep cut. It might even have left a
scar behind, which was why Bozes had the entire knight band’s
sympathies.
After that extremely detailed explanation, the chief maid bowed deeply
to Itami.
“We are very grateful for your aid in saving this town.”
The other five or six maids bowed deeply as well, and Itami realised that
they didn’t just have cat-ears among them, but bunny-ears too.
“We, the staff of House Formal, as well as the people of this town, are
deeply grateful to Itami-sama and his men for saving Italica. Regarding
the injuries done to Itami-sama, we pray that he will let the matter go
with his kind and noble heart. If Itami-sama wishes to vent his anger by
destroying this town in retribution, please know that we will all gladly aid
you in doing so. We ask only that Itami-sama spare Countess Myui, the
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heir to House Formal.”
After saying that, they bowed deeply again, letting Itami know all the
fears and worries in their hearts. Itami realised that they were loyal to
neither the princess nor the Empire itself. These maids were loyal only to
their liege lady Myui, and if they decided that Piña’s existence no longer
benefited Myui, there would be half a dozen knives in the Princess’ back.
Itami sensed that the same might apply to him as well.
The chief maid and the other maids had lowered their heads to him for
House Formal’s benefit. Anyone who could act incautiously around them
after knowing their motive must be the most clueless lecher in the
world.
Because he could not drink water while lying down, Itami decided to sit
himself up. The cat-eared maid in glasses helped him up, which he was
glad to receive because his entire body was sore from his injuries.
“Itami-sama. These girls are Mome, Aurea, Persia and Mamina. From
now on, the four of them will be your personal attendants. Please feel
free to ask them for anything you need.”
The girl who poured the water was human. Then there was the girl with
the glasses and the cat ears. Then there was the bunny-eared maid. And
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then there was one who looked like a human, but her red hair was a
mass of writhing snakes. The four of them knelt before Itami with their
heads lowered.
“Please ask us for anything you need, my master.”
Itami had no idea how to answer the cute girls and beautiful ladies who
were saying this to him. Even if the logical part of him knew that doing
anything ungentlemanly to them was dangerous, Itami had to forcibly
suppress the thought “Maybe it would be okay to fool around with them
a little”, which came from the bottom of his heart.
***
A little bit earlier, on the outskirts of Italica at evening
Outside Italica, the members of 3rd Recon, minus their commander, lay
prone on the ground to conceal themselves as they waited for dusk to
fall.
“You think he’s dead?”
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Kuribayashi said that as she observed the town through her binoculars.
They had watched Itami being dragged around and beaten by the
knights after they captured him, so her words were unconsciously
phrased as a wish.
Kuribayashi Shino had a little known habit — when she encountered

people of the otaku persuasion, she would instinctively react with “Die,
otaku scum!” She would point her rifle at Itami’s head from behind in
order to save him. However, since she was the sort of person who said
things without thinking about them, Itami called her the “brainless titty
monster”.
Understanding her personality, Staff Sergeant Tomita replied, “He

wouldn’t die from just that much, right?”
Tomita was already in camouflage.
Waiting along with them were Lelei, Tuka and Rory, who had camouflage
paint on their cheeks, the tips of their noses, their foreheads, and other
places which would easily reflect light. Kuribayashi had applied it for
them personally. However, since they did not have enough camouflage
uniforms, they remained in their usual clothes.
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“I mean, he’s a Ranger, that ought to count for something?”
“Who’s the Ranger?”
“Who else but Lieutenant Itami?”
“What? That’s bullshit, right?”
“No, no, it’s the truth.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s the truth.”
“No way~ It’s impossible~ give me a break~”
Kuribayashi, who had long coveted the Ranger badge, felt her dream
becoming tainted in that instant.
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Rory and Tuka did not understand Japanese too well and were quite
confused, while Lelei, who was more familiar with the language, had no
idea what those words meant. To satisfy her curiosity, she asked
Kuribayashi why it was impossible for Itami to be a “Rain Jar”.
The tormented Kuribayashi smiled bitterly and said, “Itami doesn’t fit the
image of a Ranger at all!” Rangers had wills as strong as steel, could
endure any sort of hardship to complete a mission, and so on. At least,
that was how Kuribayashi described her idealized image of her ranger,
exaggerating their greatness by at least 240% in the process.
Even Lelei, who had a calm and levelheaded personality, could not help
herself smiling.
After all, everyone’s impression of Itami’s spirit was that it was as soft as
a slime (however, it was so soft that it couldn’t be broken), and he was
the sort of person who would run away from difficult tasks, while finding
a way to muddle through any tasks given him. Some might call him
“easygoing”, while the less polite would describe him as a “slacker”
instead.
Of course, Lelei knew that 3rd Recon had not only saved the people of
Coda Village, driven off the Flame Dragon, helped the refugees settle
down in the Arnus Living Community and defeated the bandits ravaging
Italica, but she had also seen these things with her own eyes. However,
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these things were not the personal effort of Itami, but the result of 3rd
Recon working together, as well as due to other combat elements of the
JSDF.
When Lelei translated for Rory and Tuka, they laughed too. Kuribayashi’s
idea of mental strength described Kuwabara and Tomita well, and
maybe Kuribayashi herself, but it seemed completely incompatible with
Itami, who spent his time reading books (usually manga).
On many occasions, they had spotted him stringing up a hammock

under a tree and napping, or flipping through a thin softcover book (rare
doujins, only available at Comiket), in Arnus forest or near the refugee
camp.
“That’s enough, isn’t it about time?”
Tomita rose from the ground as he said that.
The sun had set during their entertaining discussion, and the veil of
night now cloaked their surroundings. It was the best time to move out.
Kuribayashi muttered to herself.
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“Staying up this late is bad for my skin…”
That said, after last night’s wild melee and exercise, her skin was
practically glowing with satisfaction. She and Rory might be the only two
in the group who felt that way.
And so, after last night’s intense combat, tonight they would be
conducting an infiltration.
Well, it should have been an infiltration, but Italica’s defenses had grown
lax to the point where even a monkey could just waltz right in.
The local guards were too exhausted from combat to keep their guard
up.
In addition to that, those obnoxious noble ladies from the knight band
had shown up and demanded, “You, show me around.” “Hey, where’s
the barracks?” and so on in a bossy way. It was a pain taking their
horses to the stables or making sure they were fed and watered. After
that, a whole bunch of troops they had never seen before showed up,
and they made things worse by treating the locals like a bunch of idiots.
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And of course, since the local guards and townspeople had never seen
the people from the knight band before, nobody would notice one or two
more unfamiliar faces.
In this way, Rory, Tuka and Lelei proudly walked into Italica through the
front door and successfully “infiltrated” the city. Even if they were
spotted by the sentries, they would only think “Eh, why did they come
back?” and so on.
“Well, if it was going to be like this, we wouldn’t even have needed to

put on the camouflage…”
As she grumbled, Tuka called on the spirits of sleep to visit the guards
watching the wall, putting them out until dawn.
After that, they signalled to Kuribayashi, Tomita, Kurata and Katsumoto,

who were waiting outside the town. The four of them poked their heads
up one after the other.
Silence reigned in Italica, and nobody noticed Tomita and the others
moving around. In this way. they easily made their way to Formal Manor.
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Although there were alert sentries here, nobody noticed Tomita and
gang.
After all, the sentries did not have night vision equipment and could not
spot anyone hiding in the darkness. As such, everyone waited until the
patrolling guards passed and quietly advanced, using the tall grass for
cover.
Eventually, they reached the side of a building, and Tomita found a

window (these were spaced evenly along the exterior of the building).
He broke it down and entered.
***
“Please ask us for anything you need, my master.”
A pair of bunny ears suddenly erected among the four heads which
lowered themselves.
The way they had stood up resembled a wary rabbit, and barely a
moment later, a pair of cat ears twitched and stood up.
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“Mamina, what’s wrong?”
The old chief maid directed a cold look to the bunnygirl called Mamina.
“I heard the sound of wood breaking downstairs. We might have an

intruder in the manor.”
Although she was a maid with bunny ears, she was radiating the aura of
a vicious killer. The cat-eared maid seemed less like an adorable
housepet than a prowling leopard.
“Nobody in the town would dare intrude on the manor, and Piña’s men
would come in through the front door. Since the bandits have been
exterminated, it should be Itami-sama’s men.”
The chief maid spoke thus: “Persia, Mamina, the two of you will lead
Itami-sama’s men here.”
“What if they aren’t Itami-sama’s men?”
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“Then deal with them as usual.”
“Understood.”
The cat-eared girl and the bunny-eared girl stood up. Their dextrous
movements would make one think of wild carnivores as they silently left
the room.
This piqued Itami’s otaku curiosity, and he asked the chief maid a
question.
“Are those two who just left maids here? What species are they?”
“Mamina is a Warrior Bunny, and Persia is one of the Catpeople. Aurea

here is a Medusa, and Mome is a normal human.”
“Uwah, that’s a lot of species. Is it normal to have so many together in

one place?”
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“No, actually it is quite rare. The previous Count Formal was an open-
minded gentleman. He felt that pointless friction between the species
would only bring difficulty to all of them, so he set out to employ as
many demihumans as possible. Then again, it could have just been his
personal interests at work.”
“The previous Count seems like a man after my own heart.”
“Well, Itami-sama does have the same feeling as the previous Count~”
Aurea reached her wriggly red hair out to Itami, but it was smacked
aside by Mamo with a solid “Thwap!”
“Ow, ow, ow~”
“Don’t do rude things to the master.”
“Okie...”
Aurea had a pitiful look on her face, like a cat whose food had been
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snatched away. Although she looked cute and adorable, the chief maid
stressed repeatedly that Medusas fed on spirit energy, so her hair would
absorb the energy of others. Even though she had been trained to
control herself, sometimes she would lose out to her instincts, so Itami
would need to take care around her.
After a while, the door opened.
Persia and Mamina entered, followed by Kuribayashi, Tomita, Kurata,

Katsumoto, Rory, Lelei and Tuka, one after the other.
As she saw Rory’s face, the chief maid and the other maids went “Oh! To
think your Holiness would personally come here!” and gathered around
her.
In the face of the pious devotees kneeling before her and asking for her
blessing, Rory looked at them with a kind expression and quietly held
out her palm to them. It seemed as though a divine light was radiating
from her hand, and the faithful were bathing blissfully in it.
Speaking of which, since Emroy was the god of death, judgement,

madness and war, Itami could not help but think anyone devoted to him
would be bad news. After all, there had been cults who used Sarin gas to
murder people, and there were a bunch of crazy people who believed in
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them. However, the worshippers of Emroy might be worse than those

cultists.
And the one who ruined the atmosphere was Kurata, who quietly sidled
up to Itami’s bed and whispered, “Well, looks like you lucked out,
Lieutenant…”
Itami knew Kurata was mad about moe monster girls, so he slyly
grinned, “Oh? Jealous, are we?” Although Itami wasn’t a huge fan of
monster girls or maids, someone who did like them would probably be in
heaven.
“I’ll introduce you to them later,” Itami whispered.
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 14
It was already past midnight. Yet Piña was not in bed, but deep in
thought in her office.
There was no way she could sleep if the situation continued to

deteriorate like this.
She had not yet decided how to deal with her failures or foolishness, so
she could not relax. Frustration and worry tore at her heart as she
agonized over what she should do next.
The room that Piña used for her office was once the previous Count
Formal’s study. The furniture was high quality, featuring items like a
heavy, polished desk, a comfortable chair, and the room itself was filled
with the fragrance of parchment and ink.
Were these all relics of the previous Count? Things like monocles made
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from insect chitin, quill pens, a bell to summon the maids, all of these
were proudly displayed on the desk. There was a thick stack of tax
collection reports on one side of the table, as well as records for land
management and tax records, and yes, come to think of it, she still had
to send for a good man to help manage the Formal estate. All these
were problems Piña was thinking of resolving.
She waggled the quill pen, scrawling several bright ideas on the
parchment, crossing them out, writing more ideas down and then
cancelling them again.
Underlined on the parchment was: “Is there a way to avoid breaking the
treaty?”
However, all of Itami’s men had escaped.
If they did not get completely wiped out between here and Arnus, they
would definitely return to base and make a report. There was no reason
for them not to.
If she wanted to stop them from making their report, she would have to
catch them or kill them.
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Question: if she sent pursuers after them, could she capture them?
Answer: No.
With her current battle strength, could she stop these people, who drove
off a Flame Dragon?
When she saw how they had abandoned their own leader and run off,
they seemed like honorless cowards. But in truth, they clearly had the
power to annihilate Piña’s knights in seconds, so she had no idea why
they would act so weak. What worried Piña was the suspicion that there
was some other reason for it. Paranoia began filling her mind as she
began wondering what other schemes her hidden enemies might have in
mind for her.
She had drawn Bozes’ and Panache’s faces on the parchment, with
“stupid”, “moron” and other such words beside them. In the end, she
gripped the parchment tight and tried to think.
She now knew that there was no way to avoid the treaty violation
becoming public knowledge. Time only flowed one way, and the more
she thought about it, the more hopeless it seemed.
Yet the Princess grabbed her head and muttered, “Don’t give up, don’t
give up”.
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Piña considered something else. She would not stress herself over an
impossible question like this. Instead she would consider how to make
up for her previous mistakes and reduce the impact on her side.
War was simply a continuation of diplomacy, and diplomacy was like a

game of cards. If one wanted to clash with an opponent with strong
cards, there were three strategies. Avoid having one’s opponent play his
strong cards, induce him to waste his strong cards, or gain strong cards
of one’s own.
However, these strategies were useless if one did not understand one’s
opponent, since one could not counter what one knew nothing about. All
she could do was keep her opponent from gaining even more strong
cards.
We have two strikes against us. First, we guaranteed the free movement
of the Jayesdeef, but we attacked them. Second, we captured Itami, and
we did not treat him hyu-main-ly.
For the first, like Aldo said, a good idea would be to apologize as quickly
as possible. No, that might actually be the best move we could make in
that case.
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For the second, the Jayesdeef preaches hyu-many-tearian treatment of

their opponents, and they might even be considered the “good guys”,
for a given value of “good”. If we honestly explain that it was a
communications error, they might treat us kindly. In the best case, we
might not lose anything at all.
However, apologies and atonement would be giving the other side a

valuable opening to exploit. For example, the idea that they might ask
for compensation or other things was the source of Piña’s worries and
unease. There would be no way they could refuse any demands made by
the JSDF who had such overwhelming fighting power and destructive
ability.
Piña was willing to negotiate with the JSDF because she had seen their
power with her own eyes.
However, Piña’s authority limited her to being an intermediary. Could

the Empire’s diplomats understand the terror of these opponents? Would
the Emperor and his advisors understand?
Piña was beginning to discover that right now, she alone in the whole
Empire knew what they were up against.
In the past, Piña believed that the Empire’s hard-line, imperialistic
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negotiation policy, paired with the threat of their military power, was a
reliable strategy. The young diplomats would skilfully debate their
counterparts and produce a long list of demands the enemy could not
refuse, and in the end they would force the enemy to bend the knee.
These scenes had filled her heart with joy.
But if they tried these tactics on the Jayesdeef...
“My stomach hurts again…”
Piña took out a new sheet of parchment and began a report to her
father, Emperor Molt. She wrote that the enemy possessed
unprecedented power and fearsome fighting ability, and described
everything that she had seen and heard about them. However, halfway
through, Piña could not continue writing, and in the end she ended up
scratching random lines through the report, even breaking her quill’s nib
in the process.
“Who would take this fairytale seriously? Not even an idiot would believe
it!”
After all, even she could hardly believe what she was writing.
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She would worry about the report later. For now, she just wanted to
discuss their plans for the future with Hamilton.
“To begin with, we need to decide how to deal with Itami.”
Currently, Itami was sleeping within this manor.
If he’s willing to play dumb and keep quiet, we can cut our losses. No, if
it works, we might end up having an ace in the hole instead.
The question then was how to persuade Itami to shut up. What could
they bribe him with? Or perhaps they could use the fact that he was a
man to seduce him? Or perhaps, both at once?
But then, there was another question — who would she charge with that
task?
Of course, she had considered handling that part herself. However, Itami
was merely a minor commander of about ten men. Even if he led a
special forces unit, in the Empire he would be a centurion at best. A
lowly commander like him was certainly not worth her body. The gift of
an Imperial Princess would be reserved for a higher-ranked person.
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Then, who should go?
Hamilton might be suitable for the task. She had experience with men,
and should be skilled with them. However, she was an important
consultant for Piña, and if the needed time for interaction dragged on
too long, it would be too late to regret her choice. So Hamilton was out.
As she thought further, the names of Bozes and Panache appeared in

her mind.
Since they had created this mess in the first place, it was only fitting
that they take care of it.
More to the point, the two of them were very suited to this sort of work.
As for why that was the case, it was obviously because of their looks.
Bozes’ hair looked like it had been spun from pure gold, and she was a
highborn daughter of Marquis Palesti.
Panache was the daughter of Baron Kalgi, and though she was not of
higher social rank than Bozes, she had fearsome eyes, and the
combination of her presence and looks was unbeatable. If she used the
two of them as a honeytrap, no man on earth should be able to resist
them.
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Although it was a waste to use them on a small fry like Itami, when she
considered the severity of the situation, a lineup like this was necessary.
Piña decided not to worry about the final question — whether the two of
them had the necessary personality for such a task. She had already
decided it was a perfect plan and was determined to carry it out. In any
case, deciding to give the necessary orders made her feel a little safer.
And so, Piña rang the bell on the desk.
To calm herself, she sipped some of the fragrant tea. In that moment,
the candles flickered in a small breeze.
A maid suddenly appeared from somewhere outside of Piña’s field of

vision, lifting her skirt with both hands in order to curtsy with a slight
flexing of her knees. Piña accepted the gesture of respect with a regal
nod.
“Your Excellency, what do you wish of this one?”
“Mm, go bring Bozes and Panache over.”
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“But they are sleeping, milady.”
“Never mind. Wake them up.
“Then I will go now.”
The maid left the study with those words, and Piña rose from her seat.
While she waited for them to show up, she tidied up the desk. In
particular, she tore up the piece of parchment which contained less than
flattering remarks about Panache and Bozes.
***
Springtime had finally arrived for Kurata.
A high elf girl, a quiet, expressionless magical girl, and a mature dark
priestess onee-san in a Loli’s body… why is it all the girls we’ve met in
the Special Region are Itami’s type? GM, I want to reroll this dungeon!
All the grumbling and grudges he had been holding in his heart until now
were dispersed in a single moment.
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After all, the kind of girl he liked had finally showed up. No matter how
one looked at it, Kurata was having trouble completely suppressing the
excitement in his heart — no, he had a goofy grin plastered all over his
face. However, he was afraid that giving in to his desires and pushing
people down might lead to terrible consequences, so he forced himself
to keep quiet.
In particular, it was Persia, the cat-eared glasses-wearing maid, who

captured his attention.
She was not a cute little Loli catgirl, but more like an onee-san type
panther or lioness.
She wore pince-nez glasses, but even they and her two feline eyes could
not hide the cool image she gave off, and there was a special kind of
feeling about her mature, sensual proportions which looked like they
could barely fit into her maid uniform.
And unlike in the Akihabara maid cafes or pachinko parlors, she was
different from the usual exhibitionist cosplay attendants. She did not
wear one of those heretical maid outfits which lewdly displayed her
body, but a proper set of work clothes. These tightly-fitted orthodox
maid clothes dripped with the true essence of maidness.
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As he watched his ideal catgirl maid take care of Itami, Kurata could not
help but grumble, “Ahhhh, I’m so damn jealous, you lucky bastard, hurry
up and introduce me to her or I’ll put a cap in your ass! (It should be
noted that shooting one’s allies in their buttocks is not recommended.)”
Itami grinned as he heard Kurata, and decided to throw him a bone.

“Hey, Kurata, this young lady here is Persia-san. Persia-san, this is my
subordinate, Kurata. I hope you’ll get along.”
That introduction was a starter’s pistol for Kurata, and he immediately

ran his mouth off.
“M-my name is Kurata Takeo! Pleased to meet you!” followed by his

nervous salute. However, his antics earned a curious “Nya?” from her,
followed by a smile.
This was the first time Persia had seen a male expressing such pure
admiration for her.
As a female Cat-person, Persia was proud of her looks. She was not an
adorable kitty cat, but more like a mature leopardess, and she embraced
her feminine nature as a source of appeal. In the past, there had been
many men who looked at her with lewd eyes filled with desire, and just
as many men who sensed her bestial nature and backed away in fear.
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However, Kurata was different from them.
A female author once wrote, “Cats and women have an instinct for
whether men have good intentions about them.” Persia, being a feline
and a female at the same time, perfectly illustrated this point, and
naturally, she could sense Kurata’s true feelings.
Granted, his intentions were not entirely pure, but this was the first time
she had ever encountered intense feelings like his which burned like a
bonfire, and it moved her. And so, the two of them hit it off pretty well,
and there was good chemistry brewing between them.
Much like Kurata and Persia were doing, the other maids of House
Formal were getting along well with the JSDF troopers.
Though this was in the middle of the night, Formal Manor was still a
noble home. Visitors to a noble home had to be entertained, therefore
the maids brought out tea and light snacks for their uninvited guests.
While the JSDF troopers were technically intruders, it hardly seemed that
way from how they were chatting with the maids.
The martially-inclined Kuribayashi seemed to have found a kindred spirit

in Mamina, the Warrior Bunny. Much like how the protagonists of manly
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action movies had a mutual admiration for each other, Mamina had seen
Kuribayashi’s moves during the previous night’s battle and she admired
her for them.
Lelei, on the other hand, was interested in Aurea the Medusa, so she
drew close to carefully inspect her, even going so far as to touch the
writhing tentacle-like strands of Aurea’s snake-hair. Lelei gasped in awe.
Throughout history, Medusas were persecuted by humanity because of
their unfortunate habits, and they were an endangered species in this
world. This was the first time Lelei had ever encountered a Medusa
outside of her history books.
Rory, on the other hand, was stuck dealing with the chief maid, who was
a faithful follower of Emroy. Rory felt that she couldn’t just brush the
chief maid off after seeing her earnest response, so she had to explain
Emroy’s message to her.
Mome the human maid was glued to Tuka, pestering her with questions
about the jeans and the trendy T-shirt she was wearing, asking things
like where she could buy them and so on. Tuka could only answer within
her knowledge, which was largely limited to how it felt and so on. The
maids were awed and rendered speechless by the stretchy, yet
comfortable material. Tuka smiled bitterly and commented that wearing
clothes like these which showed off her body made her a little
uncomfortable at times.
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On his part, Itami briefed Tomita and Katsumoto about the current
situation before discussing their future plans. After they realised that the
situation was not critical, they concluded that there was no need to force
an escape.
***
At this point in time, Bozes, under Piña’s secret orders, had arrived at
Itami’s door, with a pained expression on her face. However, nobody
heard her knocking.
Because Bozes was nervous, her knocking could be more accurately

compared to gently caressing the door.
She waited dumbly in the dark corridor for some kind of reaction.
She continued waiting, in front of the silent, unresponsive door.
As she waited, she began to get worried about a passer-by spotting her,
so she looked left and right, before taking a deep breath and exhaling to
relieve her tension. Even then, she still could not gather up the courage
to open the door.
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“You will seduce Itami.” To Bozes, that order might as well have been a
death sentence.
As a noble daughter, she had long been prepared for the eventuality
that someday, she would be married off to benefit her family or for
political reasons.
She was familiar with the idea that as a noble daughter, she might be
called on to welcome guests and ensnare them with her body.
She was also very clear about how countless heiresses throughout the
Empire had to marry people who were completely unlike the knights in
shining armor that they dreamed of. No matter how luxuriously they
lived after that, it was just a pretty way of describing a form of
transaction. In truth, since there were people who had to starve and
freeze in this world, this could be considered the purpose, or perhaps,
their duty, for those who could fill their bellies and dress well.
But the most insulting thing was that she was going to have to give
herself to Itami.
In her dreams, Bozes imagined that she would greet a duke, who was
also a young officer of an enemy nation while dressed in an elegant
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sarong, and enjoy an exciting, intellectual debate with him for the
pleasure of verbally fencing with an equal.
Armed with her greatest weapons (her jewels), clad in her strongest
armor (her dress) and wreathed in fragrant perfume, she would play love
games with him.
She would tempt him with her luscious body and dull his mind with her
scent, her every movement saying “Do you want me? Do you want to
have me? I can give my body to you, but if you want it, you’re going to
have to give yourself to me…” and so on, teasing him and drawing him
out until her partner surrendered completely to her, and then they would
make sweet love to each other on a bed of roses.
But her dreams were just dreams, and the reality was that Itami’s bed
would be her battlefield. They would not bond over the clash of blades,
they would not even be able to develop feelings for each other, and she
had already berated him with her tongue before stepping on and kicking
him. She had gone into shock when she learned the truth.
And if this was a battle, then it was no longer on even terms. After all,
her body was practically exposed to him already. She had applied a thick
layer of powder to cover up the cut on her forehead, garbed herself in a
revealing nightgown that she had gotten from somewhere and her hair
was a mess of drills. In this tragic state, she was little more than the
hourly discount at a brothel’s going-out-of-business sale.
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Be it physically or emotionally, she was already defeated. What kind of

face would she greet Itami with? Maybe, after she entered the room, she
should beg him for forgiveness and offer her body to him as a token of
her sincerity.
Men were not creatures who would honor a plea like “Could you be
gentle?” after you got into bed with them. If she did not manage to at
least secure his kindness as a promise before she gave herself to him, it
was not likely that he would listen to her once he was having his way
with her. Then, what was she selling herself in such haste for?
She guessed that the task of actually bringing down Itami the boss
character would be left to Panache, who would be coming after her.
Bozes was nothing more than an appetizer to apologize and beg his
forgiveness, sacrificing herself to cancel out the terrible mistake she had
made. Like a washcloth used to wipe away stains, whether it was fine
silk or tatty rags, she would be used and promptly discarded.
As she thought about this, her heart ached so much that she wanted to
cry. But she could not cry, not now. If she cried, her eyes would go red
and swell up, and it would ruin her looks, which were to be her weapon.
Of course, there were men in this world who liked to see women cry, but
she would have to wait until she was before him before crying her
beautiful tears. And so, the moisture brimming in the corner of her eyes
remained locked up there and did not course down her cheeks.
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The hallway was silent, and behind this large set of double doors was the
bedroom. There was another intervening door within the bedroom. The
designers’ intent had been to make sure that noise from the corridor did
not disturb anyone within.
And so, Bozes finally gathered enough courage to open the door, and
she walked toward the separating door in the deepest reaches of the
guest room, the one that had loomed large in her mind for a while,
intending to go to where Itami was.
Bozes entered silently and approached the bedroom. Her plan was to
silence Itami with the sensual pleasures of her body before his sense of
foreboding woke him up.
However, as she opened the innermost door, what greeted her was a
cheery, lively atmosphere.
The room was brightly lit with candles, and the maids were chatting and
having tea with the soldiers from another world.
Worse, nobody seemed to have noticed Bozes’ presence.
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“...”
She was ignored.
“......”
She was overlooked.
“.........”
She was about as substantial to them as air.
“Gggg….”
I worked so hard to gather my resolve, and this is how you treat me?
How dare you ignore me, Bozes, the second daughter of House Palesti?
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What huge brass balls you have.
Are you mocking me for being a rag that you throw away after filling me
with your seed?
Of course, she did not actually say that, but her rapidly-growing hysteria
filled in the blanks for her. As a woman, she could not tolerate the insult
of being overlooked.
The only way to vent the anger building within her was with the work of
her two hands.
Although it is hardly professional to describe the following events with

manga-style sound effects, I hope you readers will forgive me for writing
them in this way. Right after that, she did the following:
Tsukatsukatsukatsukatsukatsuka slap!
***
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In addition to the black right eye from yesterday, now there was a bright
red palmprint on the left side of his face. In addition, it looked like some
kind of five-clawed cat had scratched him on both cheeks. Truly, the
victim’s face was a picture of tragedy.
“That… what on earth happened?”
After a huge disturbance in the middle of the night that had nearly
flipped the roof off the house, the JSDF members now stood before Piña,
along with Bozes, who had been dragged before her, as well as the
manor’s maids.
The Imperial Princess Piña Co Lada now felt like she had swallowed a
burning stone, given the scorching pain in her abdomen, and then asked
for an explanation why there were more injuries on Itami’s face. She was
scared stiff, of course, but given her circumstances, she had to ask.
“Who else could there be but her ~nya?”
“Ara, but everyone knows that already, right, Miss Persia?”
After Kurata followed up on her words, Persia led the maids aside.
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“The bruise on the right eye was already there, it had nothing to do with
this time.”
After their testimonial, Rory, Lelei and Tuka stepped away from the
group.
The only one left was Bozes, her hands pressed behind her back by
Kurata and Kuribayashi.
Bozes lowered her head. “It, it was me”, she said, in a voice as loud as a
mosquito’s buzzing.
Piña’s sigh was deeper than usual, so much so that everyone in the hall
could hear it.
It wasn’t just her stomach which hurt. Piña grabbed her head, which felt
like it was going to explode.
“How am I going to take care of this…?”
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“Well, about that, we just came to take the Lieutenant back. We’ll let
you guys handle the rest as you please. We’re moving out at dawn.”
Tomita said that in order to wash his hands of any messy responsibility.
He had no idea what was going through Piña’s head. To him, all he had
seen was a girl he liked beating up Itami.
But the way Tomita said it, “Do as you please”, sounded like an
ultimatum to Piña.
And when Lelei translated it, her flat, emotionless tone made it seem
even more like a threat.
“That… that is quite troubling…”
Piña could not just let 3rd Recon go like that, so she was looking for
ways and means to keep them here, like saying “How about breakfast
with us”, “Please accept our hospitality”, and so on.
Kurata stood aside and explained in an apologetic tone, “In truth,

Lieutenant Itami’s been summoned to address the National Diet, so he
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has to get back to his country by today.”
Lelei’s translation used a slightly different word, and thus the meaning
changed.
“Lieutenant Itami has been summoned by the Nihon Senate and must
return by today.”
When Piña heard this, she had a look on her face much like Edvard
Munch’s “The Scream”.
In the Empire, only individuals with super-elite bloodlines and careers

were granted the honour of stepping into the Senate Chamber. A highly-
placed person would have a chance to steer the ship of state and
become a leader of men. Even if one were a low-ranked officer, they
would be permitted to brief the senators on the progress of the war, and
they might even have a chance to directly address the Emperor himself.
And once Piña learned Itami had been called to speak before their
Senate, she immediately mistook him to be part of Japan’s elite and an
important man in his country.
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To think we upset such an important person… if this gets worse, the

Empire is doomed, I have to think of something quickly...
At that moment, Piña instantly made a decision.
She clenched her fists and rose forcefully to express her determination.
“Then, I pray you will allow me to travel with you!”
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 15
In “Snow Country”, by Kawabata Yasunari, there was a line which went:
“After the long tunnel on the border is a country of snow.”
It described how the darkness of a tunnel suddenly became a pure white

snowscape, and what made it the most famous of all his works was how
the author described the scene so vividly that a reader might feel they
had been transported into the novel.
But if one wanted to apply that same turn of phrase to the experience of
passing through the “Gate”, it would be impossible.
Normally, anyone would be moved if they were walking down Ginza and
suddenly saw a sprawling natural landscape before them.
However, there was now an asphalt road on both the Special Region and
Ginza exits of the “Gate”, and the “Gate” itself was surrounded by a
concrete dome, so anyone emerging from either side of the gate would
only see a featureless gray landscape.
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In addition, the extensive security measures established around the

“Gate” — including fingerprints, palmprints, biometric and retina scans
— formed countless layers of barriers before entry, and these
troublesome procedures killed any romance the trip might have had.
In addition, every vehicle that went in and out of the Special Region was
subjected to a thorough disinfection before being allowed to proceed.
After leaving the concrete dome, one would see several freshly-
constructed buildings, so new their paint had not yet had the chance to
dry. Around these buildings would be the six-pointed star fort,
enwrapping the entire site in a solid defensive fortification.
Outside the star fort, on the surroundings of Arnus Hill, the terrain was
reshaped into something that could have come out of a field defensive
tactics manual, with communications trenches and all sorts of obstacles,
filled with an amount of chain link fences and concrete bunkers that
might have been considered “paranoid”. All of these denied entry to
anyone who tried to approach.
There was a stretch of trees to the south of Arnus Hill.
This was the site of the Arnus Living Community, where Lelei and the
other refugees from Coda Village lived. Although it was surrounded by
forest, trees in the Special Region looked almost the same as those in
Japan, so probably nobody but a trained botanist could tell the
difference.
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On the east of the hill, they were building a runway and hangars.
They had already set up a miniature airfield on one corner of the base,
and inside one could see them assembling several F-4 Phantom jets.
Probably nobody would be moved any more after passing through the
“Gate”, given the extensive development of the surroundings.
In truth, passing through the Gate was less exciting than visiting a
certain theme park based off an American mouse. They would probably
be very disappointed.
Still, it was not as though the JSDF lacked a sense of fun or adventure,
just that to a normal person, a theme park would be much more
comfortable than a garrison base like this. To servicemen, who were
already used to the sterile, boring environs of a military base, these
were just everyday sights, but to civilians it would be like stepping into
another world that felt wrong, in a sense.
One could say that now, there was no difference in the scenery on both
sides of the “Gate”.
Because of that, to Piña Co Lada, and Bozes Co Palesti, Arnus Hill itself
was like another world to them.
Piña had made a request regarding the treaty violation — she had asked
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to personally apologize to Col. Kengun and the other high-ranking

officials in person. Itami approved, and he had agreed to take her with
him.
That said, Itami did not have time to wait for Piña and her followers to
slowly catch up with them on horseback. Therefore, Itami had added
another condition: “Only you and one other follower are allowed to ride
in the HMV with us”. In truth, Itami was hoping that they would be
discouraged and give up.
Piña’s response was to assign Bozes and Panache to Italica’s security,

while Hamilton would liaise with and act as the representative for House
Formal. She announced that “I will go myself” in a determined, confident
manner.
However, they could not let their Princess walk alone into the enemy
camp. Bozes and Panache were arguing over who would get to
accompany her, and Piña finally selected Bozes to follow her. After
hurriedly packing their things, they boarded Itami’s HMV.
With the HMV’s high speeds, they swiftly made it to Arnus.
The scenery there was no longer familiar to Piña and Bozes.
What had once been a bare hill was now a fortress.
A flight of three helicopters on a training mission greeted Piña, as they

turned overhead while flying a nap-of-earth course. Their powerful
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engines created a mighty downwash that seemed like it was going to

sweep the surface clean.
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3rd Recon drove down the newly-built road among the flying sand and
dust.
After passing the OPL (Outpost Picket Line), they entered the territory
controlled by the JSDF.
The large space they had just entered was called the FEBA (Forward
Edge of the Battle Area), which was used as a training and practice area.
At the same time, it was a boneyard for numerous wyvern corpses, as
well as where the children of Coda Village’s refugees went to work.
The first thing Piña saw was JSDF troops formed up into squads with a
flagbearer at their head holding their unit flag high above himself. They
were chanting some mysterious magic spell that she couldn’t
understand while running in the opposite direction of the convoy and
swiftly passing by.
“Model A Ford and a tank full of gas!”
“Hand full of pussy and a mouth full of ass!
“Sound off!” “One, two!”
“Sound off!” “Three, four!”
“Sound off!” “One, two” (Two and a half beat pause) “THREE-FOUR!”
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...at least, that was what the arcane incantation sounded like to Piña’s
ears when the men ran past the convoy.
The speed of the vehicles left them far behind, but before Piña could
turn to watch them, the skeletons of several buildings came up by the
side of the road.
The JSDF had considered the possibility of street-to-street fighting during

a theoretical invasion of the Imperial capital, so they had asked Master
Kato to supply blueprints of an average residential building in the city.
They had turned these blueprints into mockups of Imperial buildings,

which the soldiers used to practice their urban combat tactics.
Initially, Piña had no idea what these troopers were up to.
In the Special Region, the most common form of attack was having
infantry or cavalry charge into close quarters with the enemy while
shouting “Waaaaagh!” or some other bloodcurdling battlecry.
Once contact was made, it was every man for himself. They would strike
down the enemy before them with blades, spears or shield bashes.
Unlike the barbarian tribes on the frontier, the Imperial Army did not
allow their legionaries to fight by themselves. Instead, their centurions
would maintain order and rotate out the men on the front line of the
formation to the rear as they got tired. Their enemy would fight until
they got tired and then they would be cut down, but the Imperial Army
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would always have their freshest troops in the frontline, while their tired
and wounded would recuperate in the rear.
This basic combat tactic remained the same whether they fought on
open plains or dense city streets. The commander’s job was to raise the
men’s fighting spirit, train their fighting skills, and lead them to victory
over the enemy.
However, the JSDF were different. They did not use shields, nor did they
form a dense testudo formation. They would spread out to sprint, halt
and drop prone, all the while communicating with hand gestures. They
were a closely-knit, well oiled machine that switched between stillness
and motion with a fluid grace.
At the same time, they were raising metal staves in all directions. They
looked like hedgehogs.
What on earth are they doing? Piña tilted her head as she thought, but
could not find an answer.
“They’re all holding staves like Itami. Could it be that all the soldiers in
the Jayesdeef are mages? If that’s the case, is that the secret of their
power?”
Bozes answered Piña’s question with a question of her own, “But mages
are rare, since magic is a special ability. Then, does that mean the
Jayesdeef can produce mages in large quantities?”
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Piña could imagine how those staves could strike down the enemy with
beams of searing light. After that, she understood what the Jayesdeef
were training for; their movements were calculated to conceal
themselves and respond to the enemies’ own movements, in order to
find their foe and kill them in any environment or surroundings.
Even if they were ambushed from dark corners, even if they were fired
on from high windows by snipers, even if they were flanked from both
sides by Imperial cavalry, before enemy troops could close the distance
to the Jayesdeef, they would be turned into Swiss cheese by their fire-
staves.
“No, these metal staves are not magic. In their language, they are
weapons which are called ‘guns’, or “small arms’.”
From the side, Lelei denied Bozes’ answer.
“The Jayesdeef uses these guns as the basis of their fighting ability. In
order to make full use of their guns in combat, they have trained and
developed their skills to this level.”
“They’re weapons? That is to say, they’re like our swords or bows?”
“Yes. The principle is simple too. They enchant a piece of lead with
explosive magic, seal it within a metal tube, and then they let the lead
fly free.”
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While inspecting the piles of wyvern corpses on the battlefield, she had
found many huge holes in the bodies. A closer inspection of their
shattered scales revealed lead chunks and other fragments. Working
backward from there, Lelei had deduced the mechanism of firearms by
careful analysis of what she had seen, heard and learned.
Piña’s vision suddenly blurred as she heard this. “So it’s not magic, but a
weapon? So since humans can make these weapons, they can distribute
them to all of their soldiers?”
“Exactly. They can arm every soldier with these guns.”
“If that’s the case, then obviously the way they wage war would be
different. No matter how many men with spears or swords we raised,
their numbers would be useless in the face of an enemy who fought like
this.”
“Yes. This is why the Imperial Army and the Coalition Army were
defeated.”
Out of the blue, a Type 96 armored personnel carrier roared up beside

them. The rear hatch opened, disgorging a number of fully-armed and
equipped men.
The soldiers who rushed out of the vehicle swiftly formed a neat firing
line, their weapons pointed at imaginary opponents.
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In this moment, Piña could vividly imagine cavalry and infantry being
gunned down in their ranks, and she furrowed her brows in anxiety.
“Too slow! Move your asses faster! Again!”
In response to their commander’s rebuke, the JSDF troopers got back

onto the APC. After watching them train like this, Piña could not help but
think “So there’s a huge difference even from their basic fighting styles”.
Unlike the fear which had been deeply engraved into her soul in Italica,
she was afraid because she could now understand her opponent, and it
frightened her.
She turned to look inside the HMV, and she saw Itami, Kuwabara, Kurata
and the others holding the non-magical weapons they called “guns”. If
they were weapons, even Piña or Bozes should be able to use them if
they got their hands on one of them.
If they could fully understand these weapons and obtain them, then at
least future battles would not be one-sided slaughters like what had
happened previously. Piña understood the importance of this. Her aim
now was to obtain these weapons and pass them on to the best
craftsmen she could find, and force them to make more, at any cost.
As though reading Piña’s thoughts, Lelei quietly chimed in from the side.
“That would be pointless.”
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Lelei pointed outside, through another of the vehicle’s windows.
On the open ground opposite them, something that looked like a cross
between a crazed elephant and a block of metal was thundering toward
them. It was a Type 74 Main Battle Tank.
“When they say ‘small arms’, they mean that these weapons are small
guns. So that means that there should be ‘big guns’ as well.”
They looked at the Type 74 as it turned its turret, their eyes going to its
105mm rifled cannon.
“Does, does that spit fire too?”
Piña’s thoughts were the same as Bozes’ murmured words. She realized
that this cannon was the so called “rod of iron” which the refugees of
Coda Village told her about.
“I have not seen it fire myself, but I do not doubt that it can do so.”
No blacksmith in the Empire could make such a thing. And it was not just
the Empire, but nobody on the continent could build things like that. It
probably would not make a difference whether she searched among the
underground world of the elves or among the master craftsmen of the
dwarves. It was a monster from another world, and she could fully
believe that it could defeat a Flame Dragon.
Iron pegasi. Iron elephants. What was this JSDF, this force that could
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produce these things in such great numbers?
Why did we even attack them in the first place?
In response to Piña’s quiet mutterings, Lelei replied:
“The Empire has trod on the griffin’s tail.”
“You, you… don’t talk like it doesn’t concern you! The Empire is in a
crisis for survival, how can you speak so easily about it?”
Bozes angrily grabbed Lelei’s shoulder, and in return she received an

even more hateful answer.
“I am of the Rurudo Clan. The Empire’s well-being has nothing to do with

me.”
The Rurudo were a nomadic people. Although Lelei had settled down
near Coda Village, she and her people had never had any particular
opinion about the Empire.
Tuka, who had been listening but did not have a chance to cut in, rushed
to raise her hand and say, “Yes, I’m an Elf!”
“...”
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Rory remained silent. She did not need to say anything, and simply
smiled.
The Empire had made the Allied Kingdoms bend their knees and ruled
over its citizens with force.
The Emperor did not expect his subjects to love, respect, or do anything
but fear him.
The Empire’s policy of conquest, suppression and rulership through

violence had led to the present situation — despite its dominance over
them, it did not have the loyalty of its subjects.
It was only now that Piña realised the consequences of the Empire’s
actions.
***
Piña was brought to Arnus Hill, to a building with a plaque on the front
that read “Special Region Expeditionary Force Command”.
She parted ways with Itami and the others here.
Escorted by a uniformed female officer, Piña and Bozes were guided up

a flight of steps and into the depths of the building.
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Following that, they were brought to a waiting room for a short time.
The waiting room was unappealingly small and it had little in the way of
decoration, but the high-backed chairs were very comfortable. The
craftsmanship of the table also seemed very exquisite. It must have
been the work of a renowned craftsman.
Just as they were starting to get bored of this room, a knocking came
from the outside.
Piña and Bozes practically jumped out of their seats.
The man who entered looked like he had just reached middle age.
His black hair was streaked with gray, and he had a crewcut the way
Kengun did. However, unlike Kengun, he had a warm smile on his face.
He seemed gentle enough, but there was a hint of strength within that
kindness.
Piña felt that his green uniform was too sparsely decorated, apart from
the set of colored bars on his uniform’s breast.
In truth, she found it hard to believe he was the general of an army.

After all, in her experience, a high-ranking officer’s chest, shoulders and
entire body would be plastered with medals, jewels and other
decorations. This austere look of his made him seem like a humble
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footsoldier.
However, since she had arrived here, Piña realized that this army
despised meaningless ornamentation and instead valued actual
competency. Therefore, she had no doubts about this man.
She immediately understood that the man before her might well be the
highest-ranking officer of this otherworldly army, or at least, he was one
of them.
Behind him, Kengun stood at attention behind the middle-aged man,

whispering into his ear from time to time. Kengun seemed to be a
relaxed person who was nevertheless devoted to his job.
There was another man behind Kengun. He had a sly smile on his face,
and he had entered with the female JSDF officer. They all wore the same
green uniform, though there were differences between them. From
Piña’s observations, she concluded that the mottled Jayesdeef green
uniform must be some sort of camouflage used in combat, and it was
different from the single-colored green uniform used for ceremonial
purposes.
Finally, Lelei entered the room, standing beside the middle-aged man.
The middle-aged man smiled, and said something to Lelei.
Lelei nodded, and then translated his words to Piña and Bozes: “This is
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the General of the Jayesdeef, His Excellency General Hajama. Following

that, Piña also introduced herself and Bozes to this General Hajama.
Because Lelei did not fully understand Japanese, she used her native
language to fill in the blanks.
“This is the Imperial Princess Piña Co Lada. Forgive me, but I do not
know how they address princesses in the country of Japan.”
“Over here, we address them as ‘Your Highness’. Then, how do you

address members of royalty in this world?”
“There are slight differences between men and women, but for ladies,
‘francea’ will do.”
After listening to Lelei’s advice, Hazama gestured to Piña to take a seat.
“Please have a seat, francea and Miss Bozes.”
After that, Hazama and his entourage sat down one by one, and they
began speaking, while Lelei served as their translator.
“I believe we signed a treaty earlier, but what happened to bring Your

Highness here in person?”
“The truth is, due to carelessness on our part, a misunderstanding

occurred. We deeply regret the events which followed, and we hope you
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will forgive us our trespasses.”
“I’ve already seen the report. Did some accident take place then?”
“Yes. I am ashamed that it happened.”
“Is that so? Although, we wish for your Highness to continue being an
intermediary between us and the Empire. If the events that have caused
you such grief require it, we can also reconsider the terms of the treaty.”
The Japanese attitude to diplomacy was to respond flexibly to minor

setbacks. However, this way of thinking was quite problematic for
diplomats, in particular Piña, who represented Italica and House Formal.
To her, denying the treaty was equivalent to the Jayesdeef attacking
them. Therefore, she misinterpreted General Hazama’s words as “If you
don’t obey the treaty, we will destroy you”. The addition of “We wish for
your Highness to continue being an intermediary between us and the
Empire” made her feel even more uncomfortable.
“No, no, actually—”
The man with the sly smile, who had been sitting to one side all this
time, suddenly cut in.
“I’ve been briefed by Itami. May I ask why this lady would have cause to
strike him?”
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Halfway through Lelei’s translation, Piña and Bozes were already

sweating bullets.
In the end, they still could not silence Itami. The two of them had tried to
cut in at every possible opportunity, offering every lewd temptation they
could muster, but ultimately, none of their attempts had worked. Then
again, it would have been a miracle if Itami had actually allowed himself
to fall victim to a crude seduction by a woman who beat him up one
night and then smiled sweetly to him while saying “Come oooon~” the
next morning.
“I confess, I wanted to laugh when I saw that palmprint and those

scratches. Itami even wanted to claim them as “injuries sustained in the
line of duty”, but no matter how you see it, they look like the wounds
from a quarrel between a couple. Did he do anything distasteful to either
of you?”
The way he smiled while earnestly asking, “Did Itami do or say anything
to provoke this violence?” made Piña think of him as a snake, with all
the accompanying negative impressions.
He refused to drop the matter and kept asking questions like, “Why did
you strike him?”, “Was there a reason you had to strike him?” during
any lull in the conversation. It was clingy and annoying, to say the least.
He did nothing wrong, yet he was assaulted for no reason. The words of
this snake-like man, while not inherently judgmental, sounded like he
was condemning them every time he spoke.
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“...”
Piña could barely squeeze out a response, and in the end, Lelei said
something to the man with the sly smile. Following which, the sly smile
became a mocking smile, and he introduced himself.
“I do apologize for not introducing myself. My name is Yanagida, and I

am pleased to meet you.”
To Piña, it sounded like “I’m Yanagida, remember it.”
***
“Well then~ looks like all that’s left is dinner and going to bed.”
They had already returned their unused rounds to the ammunition

dump, while their rifles were signed back into the armory after the
necessary maintenance (Kuribayashi’s rifle was a write-off. It had taken
irreparable damage when it had been used to block a sword strike, and
the armory had signed off on it), and their vehicles were returned to the
vehicle pool after cleaning the mud and sand off them. Sunset had come
and gone by the time they finished these chores, and there was no time
left to eat.
And then, he still had to write and submit reports, and tomorrow he
would be going before the National Diet, and after that he still had to
wait for further instructions… just the thought was enough to tire Itami
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out.
In any case, he’d worry about that later. Itami opened his desk and
placed various documents into a folder before slotting it back into the
depths of his table, but then he spotted a blinking light on the phone he
left in there. It would seem he had received an e-mail.
Now who could that be from? While thinking that, he opened the
messages and saw that they were from Risa and His Excellency Taro.
The two of them were Itami’s otaku comrades. In Taro’s case, he proudly
used his real name, so those around him jokingly called him “His
Excellency”, a title that he sportingly accepted.
Risa seemed to have written something that resembled a report, and

then plainly added at the end “Please lend me money ♡”. After that
there was a second, and then a third e-mail, which were accounts of
tragedy that read like “Send reinforcements immediately!” and “I don’t
have water, food or gas!” However, there was only a day or two between
the e-mails, so the situation could not have gotten as bad as she said.
This woman basically treated Itami — with his stable income as a public
servant — as a credit card with no limit. She would impulse-buy figures
or other expensive goods, which would then affect her ability to pay her
living expenses. He felt that he could not leave her be, but at the same
time he also felt that he was just enabling her.
Taro’s e-mail, on the other hand, simply asked about how he had been
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lately, and if he was free for a meet up.
Although he had almost forgotten which season it was during his time in
the Special Region, it was almost winter back on Earth. The year was
coming to an end, and Itami was thinking that it was about time he
started applying for leave to do things. It had been about half a year
since the summer doujin event was cancelled, so the winter event would
be more crowded than ever before.
If His Excellency Taro is asking to meet me, it’s plainly obvious he

doesn’t want to squeeze in at the doujin market with others, but instead
he wants me to buy his titles for him.
Although he had been summoned back to the homeland as a witness,

Itami’s first priority was to get the catalog for the market.
Just as he was thinking this, the lights-out signal went out, and the lights
to his block were cut.
Ah, it’s so late that even the cafeteria and canteen are closed by now.
Since there was nothing to be done, Itami took out several cans of food
from his desk (combat ration type 1 — chicken rice, preserved daikon,
assorted vegetables) and opened them.
At this moment, there was a knocking from the door.
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When Itami looked outside, he saw nobody there. For a moment he

thought someone was pranking him, until he saw Lelei waiting in the
darkened hallway.
“It’s pretty late, what’s the matter with you?”
Lelei was able to translate various documents into Japanese, so she had
been temporarily employed as a “specialist” (she was paid for that, of
course, albeit in yen). As a result, she could come and go freely within
the base. In order to avoid being mistaken for an insomniac wanderer,
she wore her ID pass hanging around her neck and came here while
carrying her basket.
“Itami, I’m tired. Send me back to the camp.”
With that, she tossed her staff aside and sat down. Lelei was not the
type to easily show her emotions and she was used to enduring
hardship. For her to actually show weakness by saying “I’m tired” meant
that she must have been exhausted. After all, interpreting for Hazama
and Piña must have been very draining.
“Eaten yet?”
It was hard to speak, so she groaned and shook her head. The way she
looked at Itami was like a puppy that had been abandoned by the
roadside.
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“Ah~ but I can’t drive now, why don’t you just sleep here? There’s a lot
of room here anyway.”
The camp where she lived was a pretty long distance away from here.
Besides, if he wanted to leave the base at night, he would have to do so

in full gear. In addition, he could not move around alone. Therefore, he
would have to wake up someone from 3rd Recon to accompany him.
Then he would have to request and fill out more forms and book a
vehicle and it would be a pain in the ass. That being the case, it would
be better to find Lelei a bed so she could sleep here.
Lelei seemed to have trusted everything to Itami, given the way she
nodded and murmured before closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.
Then, time to set the bed.
Every serviceman in the JSDF had a bed that consisted of one mattress,
one pillow, five towels (one was for decoration), one pillow case, two
bedsheets and one blanket (the abovementioned did not apply when
new bed provisions were available).
Since the materials provided were limited, the sleeping arrangements

one could produce with them were also limited.
First, he laid down three dust covers. Since a dust cover was roughly half
the size of a bed, he had to layer the three towels over each other.
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On top of that, he spread two bedsheets. He laid one piece on one side
of the pillow and the other at the foot of the bed, then he carefully
folded each one under the mattress in a hospital fold, so that the sleeper
could tuck themselves into one or both sides and feel like they were
wrapped up.
After that, he laid the last two dust covers on the pillow side and the foot
of the bed, folding them into another set of hospital corners, with all the
care of wrapping a present. Then he laid the pillow down as well as the
bedsheet, tucking it in under the mattress. With that, the bed was made.
He laid another blanket over this warm little nest.
After making the bed, Itami lifted Lelei in his arms and laid her down.
Her hair was pure white, and her clear skin was as flawless as porcelain.
People might have mistaken her for a life-size doll. Since Itami had no
interest in that sort of thing, he covered her up with the blanket, but at
this moment he felt that he could empathize with those people who liked
looking at young girls.
As he thought that, Itami frantically shook his head while thinking, “No,
no! Anyway, it’d be laughable for someone my age to be turned on by a
girl like that.” He tried to rationalize it away with his psychological
defences, but during the year Itami had graduated from high school,
there had been a girl in his class who had been pregnant and gave birth
to a baby. Thinking about it now, it did not seem impossible.
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Lelei said she was 15, but she seemed less developed and curvy
compared to a Japanese girl of 15. Lelei did not just look younger than
her age, but she seemed more delicate too. Still, when it came to being
older than they looked, there were two prime examples right here.
Suddenly, his vision blurred as he was looking at Lelei.
If this went on, he would fall asleep soon.
No, no, if I fell asleep here, somebody will see it and get the wrong idea.
I need to get back to my room to sleep, he thought.
Not long ago, Kurata was teasing him by asking, “Say, Lieutenant, do
you like DFC?”
Granted, Itami knew he wasn’t very good around carnivorous, mature

women, but it was ridiculous to have that interpreted into a taste for flat
chests. If pressed, Itami would say that breast size was irrelevant, only
the shape of the body.
In other words, he did not dare lay a finger on Lelei. Furthermore,

waiting unnecessarily beside a sleeping girl would invite unwelcome
gossip from people. He had to get out of here right now.
However, it was around this time that his body suddenly started feeling
heavy.
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After spending all night in combat, being taken prisoner halfway back to
base, being marched all the way back to Italica and yet another night
without rest, the accumulated fatigue was too much for Itami to resist.
And so, Itami passed out.
In the end, against all of his wishes, Itami ended up falling asleep on
Lelei’s tummy.
***
The next day, 11 AM, in front of the concrete dome.
Today’s sunshine was exceptionally bright. Itami was standing still, a

blank expression on his face.
He was wearing a Type 91 winter jacket, which made sense for Japan’s
weather, but considering the climate was still warm on this side of the
gate, it felt too hot. Because of that, he was only wearing the jacket and
had his sleeves rolled up.
Passing officers might have frowned on his poor personal grooming, but
after noticing his winter clothing, their expressions turned to wry grins
which made him uncomfortable.
The summer uniform was fine on this side of the gate, but anyone going
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back to Japan, which was in the middle of winter, would have to dress
appropriately. The discrepancy in seasons was funny in its own way.
“So slow…”
For the most part, everyone everywhere should have a sense of time,
but he did not know how it was for people in the Special Region. After
all, they did not have clocks, so they might not have the habit of being
on time as well.
So I’ll wait then, Itami thought as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
Eventually, the people he was waiting for finally arrived.
“Kuribayashi~ Tomita~ you guys took too long!”
“Sorry, Lieutenant, we were delayed because we were taking care of

things.”
In contrast to the uniformed Itami, Kuribayashi and Tomita were in

civilian clothes.
“It’s so hot out, why’re you wearing so much?”
That had been Tuka, speaking in a soft voice. Lelei gave Itami a long and
intense look, while that black-clad Gothic Lolita had followed them, of
course.
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Rory’s huge halberd was wrapped in canvas, but she didn’t seem happy
with the procedure, so she kept pouting and making little noises of
protest.
“It can’t be helped, if you carry that big thing through the “Gate”, you’ll
violate the Firearms and Blades Regulation Act and the Weapon
Possession Act among other laws, and the police will arrest you
immediately. They’ve been really strict on this lately, and it’s no
laughing matter. In truth, they wanted you to leave it behind before
going over.”
“And how could I leave behind this proof of Emroy’s will?”
“That’s why I said, you need to bear with this for a bit.”
For Rory, she had no other choice if she wanted to go to the other side of
the “Gate”.
Itami, the commander in charge during the battle with the Flame
Dragon, was not the only one being summoned by the Diet. Several
other witnesses from the affected refugees had been called too.
Among these “affected refugees”, the presence of Lelei was essential,

because she could translate for both sides. Although her services were
in high demand recently, almost to the point of abuse, all they could do
was ask her to bear with it. General Hazama had even told her in person
that after the meeting with the Diet, as compensation for her hard work,
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he would arrange for her to have fun and relax in Japan before coming
back.
Tuka would be coming along because she would be living proof that the
Special Region contained other sentient species besides Humans. Her
mere existence would answer many questions and to the media, it would
have great persuasive power.
As for Rory… well, she looked human enough, and resembled a child.
With that black priest’s garb on top of that, what if she were mistaken
for a cosplaying girl brought along to make up the numbers?
Although demigods were feared and respected in this world’s legends

(not including the countless stories of luckless others being killed off), it
would be troubling if she wanted to demonstrate her “divine power” in
the diet. As a result, Itami was in a dilemma over how to handle her.
But the main reason they had brought her along was because she said,
“How could you leave me out of something so fun?”
In addition, Kuribayashi and Tomita were there as their guards.
“All right~ that should be it. Then, let’s move out.”
Just as Itami said this, a car drove up in front of Itami and stopped there.
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Yanagida got out of the passenger seat and raised a hand in greeting.
“Sorry, sorry, the procedures took a bit more time than anticipated.”
What was this guy up too? Just as Itami was starting to get annoyed by
looking at him, Yanagida opened the rear door of the vehicle, and invited
the two people within to alight.
“Her Imperial Highness Piña Co Lada and her Excellency the Marchioness
Bozes Co Palesti. These two will be accompanying you secretly to Japan.
Please take care of them.”
Piña and Bozes got out of the car and lined up in front of Itami.
“Oi, Yanagida, we never talked about this.”
“Ah? Didn’t I tell you before? Then it shouldn’t be too late to explain to
you now, right? I’ve made the arrangements with Ichigaya Park (a hotel
run by the Defense Ministry), and the hotel at Izu is settled too. Go enjoy
your three day vacation.”
“You… don’t you remember how Her Imperial Highness and friend saw
to me?”
“Oh? The mistake from earlier? Well, just laugh it off, why don’t you?”
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“I can’t.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, don’t worry about it. In any case, Her Imperial
Highness will be an important intermediary between our government
and theirs, so it was only natural that she requested to come to our
country to learn more about it.”
“If that’s the case, then why is she coming with me?”
“Well, you just happen to be headed home, right? Besides, we don’t

have anyone else who can translate while going sightseeing at the same
time.”
With that, Yanagida drew close to Itami and spoke softly to him while
sliding a white envelope into Itami’s pocket.
“Courtesy of General Hazama. Use it to show the girls a good time.”
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 16
From the diary of Imperial Princess Piña Co Lada:
“After passing through the boundary known as the “Gate”, I saw rows
and rows of towers which scraped the sky. At this time, I wondered;
what did the men of the Imperial Army who first set foot here think? Did
they have any idea of their upcoming fate? Nestled within the valleys
between these vast buildings, I realized how small I truly was. The fact
that we have declared war on a country that built such magnificent
structures makes me worry for the fate of the Empire.”
Then again, Ginza would not have things like skyscrapers. If one thought
about it, most of the tall buildings one might see would be found in
places like Shinjuku or New York.
On the topic of grand structures, Piña and Bozes considered the Imperial
Palace, the Senate building, and various other military strongholds to be
quite impressive, so to them, even walking down Ginza must have struck
them dumb with awe.
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Having a tall building among regular buildings would only make the tall
building stand out more.
Because of that, from Piña’s point of view, a capital city should be

planned so that there would be an awe-inspiring structure standing in
the middle. However, the city on the other side of the “Gate” was
different. All its buildings were massive skyscrapers.
If there were a single giant tree, one might still be at peace when
looking at it from underneath. However, a forest of giant trees would
inflict an enormous pressure on those beneath it.
Standing there, Piña’s and Bozes’ hearts were deeply shaken by the
sights before them.
Of course, they were not the only two affected by it. Lelei, Tuka and Rory
were staring with eyes wide open, oblivious to the cold even though they
stood at the heart of Ginza in the winter.
“Ara, good thing I didn’t miss you guys.”
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A voice called out to Itami from behind the five girls, just as he was
about to leave the sentry post.
Turning around, he saw a group of black-suited men. At their head stood

their leader, a middle-aged man.
“You must be Lieutenant Itami.”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m Komakado from Intel. We’ll be handling escort and guidance duties
for this operation.”
The man was smiling, but the smile did not reach his eyes. He had the
same forceful aura around him as JSDF trainees who had just completed
the Ranger course. One could describe it as a pressure, but to him as a
JSDF trooper, it was more like a razor-edged look in his eyes.
The way this man smiled superficially was not entirely like that of a
soldier. He might have come from the Public Security branch of the
police, or perhaps another intelligence agency. He might even have
been the result of the exchange program between the JSDF and the
police.
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“Tell me, are you really from the JSDF?”
“As I thought, was it so easy to tell?”
“You don’t feel like a proper serviceman. If a pure JSDF officer was
handling this, there would probably be leaks.”
The corners of Komakado’s mouth turned up in a wicked smile.
“Hmm, you’re no ordinary guy. As expected of a man who was at

Nijubashi. You know, I read up on your background before I came here.”
“Nothing worth mentioning, I hope?”
“Not exactly. After graduating from an average university with average

grades, you entered the officer cadet course and ended up graduating
second from the bottom in your batch, as a second lieutenant. The
bottom cadet was injured during training and washed out. So in truth,
you would be the bottom of your cohort, am I wrong?”
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He flipped through his notebook.
“Some people commented that it was unfair that you passed while the
injured fellow had to flunk out. Your performance appraisals wavered on
the border of acceptable and unacceptable… and eventually you
managed to somehow scrape through. The superiors you angered sent
you to the Ranger course, but for some reason, even though you trailed
at the back of your cohort, you were never washed out. Your teammates
treated you as a plague and avoided you, and for some reason you were
posted to Narashino. Although you were slated to be a permanent 2nd
Lieutenant, after the Nijubashi incident you were promoted to 1st
Lieutenant.”
Komakado recited Itami’s history from his black leather notebook as he

flipped through it.
“Your fellow soldiers had the following opinions of you: “otaku”, “a true
salary thief”, “at least he understands the JSDF’s anti-war values”.
Kukuku, how interesting.”
As this fellow delivered his scathing lecture, Itami scratched the back of
his scalp.
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“So how did someone like you get into ‘S’ ?”
Acha~ Itami sagged his shoulders as he heard the question. That was a
prickly one.
“I think there was a paper some time ago which said that among all the
worker ants in a colony, 20% are slackers?”
“?”
“It means, no matter what kind of ants you have, 20% of them will
become slackers.”
“I see. So in order to ensure none of the elite, handpicked ants backslide

into slackers, you need to have slackers in there to begin with?”
“I bullshitted my superiors when they lectured me about slacking off.

The logic might sound strange, but rather than gathering a group of
elites together and having 20% of them become slackers, why not just
include those slackers from the beginning and minimize the decay of
skilled personnel? Back then, there were a spate of suicide cases in the
WAIR (JGSDF Western Army Infantry Regiment (Light)), so the unit took
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that suggestion seriously.”
“Kukuku, so, is that how someone like you got into the Special Forces? If
anyone knew that someone as easygoing and slack as you could get in,
they’d bang their heads on the wall while wailing about how they were
doing worse than you.”
Komakado’s words made Itami sigh deeply.
And just at this moment—
“Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh~~~”
A shrill cry of despair rang out from the side, like a girl who had been
abandoned by her lover.
On closer inspection, the one crying out was Kuribayashi.
Her face was pale, and that was not a joke or exaggeration. To her, the
fact that Itami was a Ranger was a seemingly irreconcilable paradox,
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and now she learned he was from the Special Forces. This otaku, this
supreme slacker, to think he was a member of the Special Forces she
admired! Learning that fact plunged her into the deepest despair, and
she wanted to curse this world and scream her anger to her enemies.
“Nooooooooooo~~~~!!!”
She ran off like a frightened rabbit, although since there were obstacles
set up around the “Gate”, she could not go far.
Tomita gave chase, and when he caught up, he patted her gently on the
back to show that he understood, comforting her like he would a victim
of sexual assault.
Komakado could not help but laugh as he saw this. He tried his best to
keep his voice down, but in the end, he was still laughing while grabbing
his belly. After a while, Komakado managed to calm down and catch his
breath. He straightened himself up, and then bowed to Itami.
“You aren’t an ordinary man. Being able to pretend to be a lazy ant

among the other hardworking ants is an impressive feat. I respect you,
and I mean that.”
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“No way, someone tell me he’s lying… Ah, this is just a dream, it can’t
possibly be real~”
Kuribayashi covered her face with her hands and tried to deny reality.
She radiated an aura of gloom and despair. Fortunately, the microbus
from Intelligence Branch picked this time to show up. It was a godsend,
because the interior was spacious.
Kuribayashi sat in the rear seats, while Itami was all the way in front,
sitting beside the driver, in order to avoid being contaminated by the
aura of misery around her. Rory, Piña and the others did not dislike
Kuribayashi, and Rory herself was actually favorably inclined toward her,
but they decided to cluster near the front in order to keep their distance
from Kuribayashi.
Her exaggerated reaction was somewhat problematic.
“Lieutenant Itami, where are we headed?”
The question came from the Intelligence Branch driver, who was wearing
a suit.
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“We’ll go get some clothes first. Since we’re out of time, just take us to
some place that sells suits, we can’t let them go on camera like this.”
Rory, Tuka and Lelei needed some proper clothes before they went
before the Diet. In particular, Tuka’s T-shirt and jeans did not look like
something that a person testifying before the National Diet should wear.
Originally, the plan was to let Kuribayashi pick out clothes for them, but
since she was suffering a mental breakdown, the task fell to Itami, the
man with no taste whatsoever. If Kurokawa were there, she would
definitely try to stop Itami from doing something stupid.
The driver in black informed his superiors about where they were going,
then started up the microbus and set off.
The area surrounding the Ginza side of the “Gate” was under the
jurisdiction of the JSDF, and some people called it the “Ginza Garrison”.
However, once their vehicle left the restricted zone, they were back in
the heart of Ginza again. The girls from the Special Region could not
help but stare in awe at the sights which now surrounded them.
Although, that was inevitable. The reason was because after the Ginza
Incident, the shopping districts in Ginza now sported all manner of shiny
decorations, festival lights and Christmas trees to draw in customers,
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and the glass display windows showcased name-brand clothing,

expensive jewellery, and all the things which would draw a girl’s
attention.
The Ginza district did not look like a place which had been the site of a
battlefield just half a year ago. The roads were packed with cars and the
shoppers thronged the streets.
Of course, there were shops which had not reopened, and which were
sealed off by thick metal shutters. For most of them, their owners had
died during the Ginza Incident.
Other shops had lost their staff to the fighting, and had gone out of
business.
Even so, there were still a lot of people who wanted to restore Ginza to
its former glory, and they brought in more and more customers. This
might be the resilience of the Japanese people.
“There are a lot of people here. Could this be a marketplace?”
“Ah, look at that dress…”
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Piña and Bozes were whispering a conversation to each other.
The microbus stopped in front of a clothing store which specialized in

Western fashions.
Itami sought out a female sales attendant and handed Tuka to her while
saying, “Get her a formal-looking set of clothes, to be worn right away.
The cheapest will do, just send the bill to this address.” Because Itami
emphasised “cheapest”, the lady brought Tuka to the returns section,
where the cheaper clothes were.
“Rory, Lelei, do you want to wear something more formal too?”
Rory walked one full turn around the store, looking at both male and
female fashions, before declining. “I’m not really interested in these
clothes. Besides, this is my priestess’ formal wear.”
Lelei replied, “No need.” Unlike Rory, she seemed completely

uninterested in new clothing.
Well, Lelei’s robe probably qualifies as an ethnic costume. The problem

is Rory’s goth-loli clothes. Even if she says it’s formal wear, there’s no
way anyone would believe it. We’ll just have to insist that it’s a set of
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ethnic clothing that just so happens to resemble a goth-loli outfit.
On the other hand, Piña and Bozes were looking at the clothes on
display, but their attention was focused on the quality of the fabric used
to make them.
They were currently wearing Imperial nobles’ clothing, suitable for semi-
formal events.
Those clothes were made of very high-quality, hand-stitched silk,

designed for use in garden parties or mounted activities. In that sense, it
was like a medieval musketeer’s uniform.
With the addition of a sidearm sword, it would make a good set of casual
clothing for a knight.
However, Yanagida firmly forbade them to carry weapons through the

“Gate”, so Bozes and Panache had gone through with nothing at their
waists.
The only complaint about these clothes was that their fabric was too
thin, so they considered buying a winter coat. However, the microbus
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and the clothing store were heated, so it was not a huge priority.
Instead, they simply wandered the store looking at clothes.
“Oh, this material’s quite sturdy. It would probably sell for a lot in the
Empire.”
The sheer variety of goods on display made them wonder if the owner of
this place was some kind of merchant prince, to be able to boast such a
huge stock.
“Lieutenant, where will we be going next?”
Itami replied, “Let’s get something to eat first. We’ll be going before the
Diet at three, so we should be there by two to give ourselves some
buffer time.”
“Then where shall we go to eat?”
Itami grinned, and gave the driver his directions.
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***
“Wait, why are we having beef bowls?”
Tomita grumbled, and for good reason. They had travelled all the way to
another world; could they not entertain their guests with something
better?
Itami rebutted him by saying that since they had to report to the Diet
from Ginza, they would have to pass by Shinbashi on foot, which would
take them past a beef bowl restaurant. He ordered eight beef bowl set
meals (paid by the JSDF, of course) and then everyone sat down
together to eat.
“We won’t be on vacation yet until we finish speaking to the Diet. As a

result, even though traffic and food can be billed to the JSDF, we can’t
spend more than 500 yen for meals per person.”
“5-500 yen?”
“Well, a single cup of coffee from the cafes here will cost more than that.
Beef bowls or soba are pretty much the only things that cost under 500
yen in this area. But we can’t have them eat while standing, so I went
with the beef bowl. Besides, it looks like they’re enjoying it.”
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Lelei and the others were digging into their food with great gusto. As an
aside, they had learned how to use chopsticks in the refugee camp. To
Lelei’s group, who were used to eating JSDF-supplied combat rations, the
beef bowl tasted delicious.”
“But is it alright to let the Princess and Bozes eat beef bowls?”
“They’re here to learn about us, right? That being the case, why not let
them experience what the average citizen has for lunch?”
The high-bred noblewomen in question were gingerly spooning up the

beef bowl and egg before swallowing it. Although it was the first time
they had encountered a rice bowl dish, they did not protest it, probably
because their time in training had inured them to vile food. That being
said, they found the beef bowl delicious.
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***
After their meal, the group continued on to the National Diet Building.
Itami, Lelei, Rory and Tuka were led to a waiting room by members of
the Diet.
This was where Bozes and Panache parted ways with Itami’s group.
Kuribayashi and Tomita followed them onto the microbus, which left
from the main gate of the Diet Building and travelled to a high-class
hotel somewhere in Tokyo.
Piña and Bozes were not official envoys, so there was no way to officially
invite them into a government building. More importantly, on paper, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office was officially
unaware that they were in Japan. They had been invited to Japan by the
Defense Ministry under the pretext of being “backup speakers in case
the witnesses to the National Diet were unable to give their testimony”.
After all, their presence in Japan at this point would cause a lot of
problems if it were made public.
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Once they gained a chance to open diplomatic negotiations, the

military’s opinions would obviously carry extra weight.
Diplomatic talks, especially those designed to clear up the aftermath of

military conflicts, would absolutely require military power to back up any
proposals made. But there were also many people who did not know, or
who chose to ignore this fact, and thus protested the accumulation of
military power.
The Japanese government did not intend to excessively limit the JSDF’s
activities at this stage, and in order to avoid interference from external
powers, they had officially disavowed the existence of Piña and Bozes.
That being said, Piña and Bozes were still VIPs. After all, it would be
beneficial to Japan to gain an intermediary for secret negotiations with
the Empire, so it was a simple matter to pad the nominal roll of people
present in order to accommodate them.
Piña and Bozes were brought to a stateroom in the high-class hotel

which was their destination. Two groups of four men and women were
waiting for them there.
“We welcome your visit, your Imperial Highness, your Excellency.”
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The first two were Councillor Shirayuri Reiko, the Prime Minister’s aide,
as well as Sugawara Kouji from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was
there to take notes for the meeting.
In addition, Kuribayashi and Tomita were present, wearing their dress

uniforms. Because Lelei, the most proficient with the Special Region’s
language, was not present, Kuribayashi and Tomita would take her place
as interpreters.
Piña and Bozes were understandably nervous. After all, a single mistake
could ruin the Empire.
Piña had not come here for talks. She had only agreed to come as an
intermediary to facilitate relations between the Empire and Japan. If
Japan asked her to speak on the Empire’s behalf, that would be a
completely different beast from being a middleman. Given that the
Empire had suffered multiple crushing defeats on the battlefield, asking
her to sign a treaty would be no different from demanding the Empire’s
surrender.
Because of that, she had to stick to her position of being an

intermediary. She was so worried about saying the wrong thing that the
sweat beaded visibly on her forehead.
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Piña felt that “Diplomacy is a war of words”, and right now she regretted
not having brought Hamilton along with her.
Similarly, Kuribayashi and Tomita were having a hard time.
The two of them did not have Lelei’s analytical and deductive skills, or
her extensive vocabulary, and although Itami was not a cunning linguist,
having him around would have cut out a lot of the trivial details.
However, the two of them had to rely on their phrasebooks — as well as
the occasional helping hand from Piña and Bozes — in order to somehow
push these talks through.
Where could they find the Empire’s heads of state, particularly

representatives they could communicate with, and what powers and
position did these people have?
As for these “representatives they could communicate with”, the first

choice would obviously be Piña, who made it clear to Japan who they
were communicating with. Of course, they would not dump all their
requests on her; even being a middleman would be enough. The
Japanese government would obviously want to verify that piece of good
news.
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Next would be the number of people in the first group of envoys.
In negotiations, a single person could not attend meetings and dictate

conditions by themselves. These matters would be discussed repeatedly,
over long periods of time, with both parties working together to come to
a compromise that they could both agree on. This was a long and tiring
process, and it only made sense to send multiple people to carry it out.
In addition, they would have to decide how to pay for their envoys’ stay
in their host country.
This too was natural; after all, diplomatic negotiations would not be
finished in a day or two.
The negotiation process might take months, or even years. There was a
joke that “Congress does not move, it dances”, but it accurately
reflected the process of ironing out the conflicts of interest between both
parties. The joke referred to the Congress of Vienna, which only reached
a decision because of the shocking news of Napoleon’s escape from the
Island of Elba. In other words, without any pressing threat, the Congress
of Vienna would not have reached a decision. From that example, one
could imagine that the negotiations would take a very long time, and as
a result, the food, lodgings and dress of the envoys, among other
expenses, would need to be taken into consideration as well.
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At the same time, since she was accepting the position of an

intermediary, the question of bribes came up. Only a child would frown
at bribes; they were a necessary part of doing business.
However, the bribes in question would also depend on the opposition’s

position. Both parties might not place the same value on mere currency;
therefore an effective bribe would be an offer of an object or service that
the other side needed.
In addition, they had to address the matter of how both countries would
speak to each other. Piña suggested sending several scholars to learn
the Knee Horn language, while Sugawara promised to take her request
into consideration. The language barrier had to be conquered in order
for effective negotiations to take place, after all.
The final item they discussed was the matter of the prisoners.
The Japanese government had captured roughly 6000 members of the

Imperial Army that had crossed through the gate to invade Japan.
Because there were a lot of them, it was troublesome to care for them,
to say nothing of where to house them. The government built a POW
camp on an unmanned island in the Seto Inland Sea, and stuffed the
captives in there.
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The expense of feeding these prisoners was shockingly high, and while
many of the lesser troops had died in the conflict, many of the prisoners
were high-ranking officers. As a result, their haughty air made them very
difficult to deal with, and they only provided information that an officer
might be expected to know. Perhaps their tongues could be loosened up
with such delightful measures as hot irons, but there was no practical
way such harsh measures would be approved, both for humane reasons,
and because they wanted to use them as bargaining chips with the
Empire.
As an aside, among these 6000 prisoners were huge beasts such as

ogres and other demihumans that the people on this side of the ”Gate”
might identify as apes. Although they were not sure if they counted as
human beings, they could speak, and so they were treated as humans to
avoid problems with human-rights violations. In addition, several
prisoners had been taken away by the USA in the name of
“Investigations by the United Nations”.
“Our country has imprisoned them as war criminals, and we hope your
nation will seek a way to bring them home.”
Piña was struck dumb when she heard the figure of 6000. “Let, let me
calculate how much ransom we need to pay,” she said. From what she
knew, it would be a staggering sum, and the thought of it made her
sweat even more.
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However, Shirayuri Reiko simply smiled at her answer. “In this day and
age, our country does not practice the ransoming of prisoners. After all,
we do not trade in slaves. Under these conditions, we would prefer to
take our payment in means other than hard currency. For instance, in
exchange for the release of your captives, we would expect certain
concessions from your country.” Shirayuri paused briefly, and then
continued.
“In order to give Your Highness some bargaining power as our mediator,
we are willing to unconditionally release a select few captives that Your
Highness will select. We hope you will make use of these terms to
ensure the negotiations go well.”
And so, Piña learned how the country of Nihon treated their prisoners, as
well as gaining a powerful weapon she could use to negotiate with the
nobles of the Senate.
“I have exclusive, reliable news that your son is still alive. If you want
him to be released safely, then you’ll have to negotiate with them. If
need be, we will prepare a meeting place as well.”
Which parent would not be moved by this news?
At this moment, Bozes cut in.
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“I know it may not be possible now, but I would like to meet some of the
prisoners. Could I count on you for that? I would also like a list of the
captives’ names.”
In truth, one of her friends had sent her husband to the battlefield
(Ginza).
At first, she had thought he had died in battle, but now there was a
sliver of hope she could cling to. However, the news she had now was
limited to “Some people might have survived?” If Bozes could give her
more concrete information, it would help things. Frankly speaking
though, Bozes wanted to run back to the capital and say, “Your husband
might still be alive! Chin up!”
Secretary Sugawara answered, “Then, the next time you ladies pay us a
visit, we will arrange for you to visit the prisoners in their holding facility.
As for the name list, I will complete it and hand it to you before you
return to the Empire.
And so, without being recorded in the history books, the first secret talks
were thus concluded.
***
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There were two sorts of events the NHK was required to cover as a
public television station, but which received low viewership numbers
despite NHK’s nationwide reach, because the people cared little for
them. Those would be election speeches and meetings of the National
Diet.
However, ever since the self-proclaimed revolutionary began his address

with “You gentlemen who are in power!”, the election speeches had
higher ratings than the Diet meetings, until today.
The reason why the ratings for the Diet meeting had increased was not
because a witness was being summoned today. Since perjury in front of
the Diet was a punishable offense, most people called before the Diet
were careful with their words, which made them boring.
However, today’s broadcast was different.
On one of the Net’s huge message boards, somebody had written

“Incredibly hot Special Region Elf spotted!” and in an instant the
viewership rates had skyrocketed.
Lelei, Tuka and Rory were present for this event, in addition to the
regular councilmen.
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As usual, Itami’s lack of visual impact meant that he was easily

forgotten.
Still, all eyes were turned to the girls: Lelei with her short, silver hair and
her long robe, Tuka with her blonde hair, blue eyes and long ears, as
well as Rory in her jet-black goth-Loli outfit while carrying something
long and wrapped up. Every councilman, every camera, and everyone in
the audience could not help but look at them.
The first to speak was Councilwoman Kouhara Mizuki, from the

opposition party.
Councilwoman Kouhara Mizuki proudly held up a large board and looked

straight at the camera before asking her questions.
“Witness Itami, I will cut to the chase. Firstly, I would like to ask about
the Special Region Class A Dangerous Animal, which we call a Dragon.
Why did 150 people from Coda Village have to be sacrificed?”
Councilwoman Kouhara’s board had “150 INNOCENT LIVES LOST!!”

plastered over it, to place emphasis on the civilian casualties.
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“Witness Itami Youji, please step forward.”
After the chairman called his name, Itami stepped forward as asked.
Because he was in a neatly pressed dress uniform, even Itami managed

to look...no, he looked the same as always, but maybe he was just
slightly more handsome… well, in any case, he responded in his usual
tone.
“Eh~ well, I think it was because the Dragon was too strong, don’t you
think?”
That unexpected answer left Councilwoman Kouhara speechless.
“Because we weren’t strong enough.” She, like many other Japanese

citizens, had expected him to make an earnest defense of himself, which
she would then pick apart in what was practically a textbook formula.
The man Itami had been painted as a hero by the media during the
Defense of Nijubashi. However, it would seem reality did not match with
the image.
“Are, are you trying to evade all responsibility by saying you weren’t
strong enough? 150 innocent civilians lost their lives under your watch;
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do you not feel responsible for them at all?”
She tapped her board with “150 PEOPLE” written on it against the table.
“Witness Itami Youji.”
The Chairman called his name again, and Itami once more stepped
forward.
“Eh~ what do you mean by strong enough? Are you saying that I should
take responsibility for the Dragon coming out by itself?”
“My question was directed at you, your superiors and the JSDF, to find
out what was wrong with your response to the situation! The appearance
of the Dragon was not your fault. However, as the relevant commander
on the scene, why did you not prevent those civilian casualties? That is
the question I am asking!”
In the face of the Councilwoman, who was panting heavily with “Haa,
haa” sounds, Itami grabbed his scalp like he always did and replied,
“Well, when I said the dragon was too strong, I meant that our rifles
were far too weak. Frankly speaking, our bullets were bouncing off its
hide like we were using peashooters, so it would be great if we could
have more powerful weapons in the future. Like I said, a plasma particle
cannon, a laser cannon, maybe you could hurry the labs up so we could
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get something usable like that? I heard that they’re going to begin
prototyping power suits soon, so I’d like to get those as well. The basic
research is done by the national universities, but I think it wouldn’t be a
bad idea if we developed things like that for national defense on top of
providing benefits for everyday life and healthcare-related issues. It’s
probably not easy to think of good things for military-related
applications, but I think the ones who can benefit from new equipment
aren’t just the JSDF, but the police and the emergency services as well.
I’m sure it would help them save a lot more lives. Also, I’m sorry so
many people died.”
Itami’s answer was blended with a healthy dose of playing dumb and
playing the fool.
The ruling party members could only grin at Itami’s farcical answer,
while cries of “This unruly fellow!” rose from the opposition side.
“Does the Ministry of Defense wish to explain further?”
The Vice-Minister of Defense struggled to contain his wild laughter as he

raised his hand.
“Yes, about the point First Lieutenant Itami raised, we have already
analyzed samples from the creature known as a Dragon. The Dragon’s
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scales are about as hard as tungsten, around 9 on the Mohs scale. They
also weigh one seventh of their equivalent volume in steel.”
In other words, a Flame Dragon covered with scales like these was
essentially a flying tank. The Vice-Minister was trying to explain in a
roundabout way that ensuring zero casualties while doing battle against
a creature like this was an impossible task.
Councilwoman Kouhara sighed, having long since abandoned any hope

of trying to get a straight answer out of Itami. Instead, she decided to
address someone else.
The first person would be Lelei.
As expected of Councilwoman Kouhara, she had selected Lelei, who

looked like a middle-schooler, in the hope of using her position as an
adult to get the answers she wanted out of her. After her self-
introduction, she asked, “Ah, does the witness speak Japanese?”
“Yes, a little.”
Hearing that answer calmed her a little, and she asked Lelei to introduce
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herself.
After learning that her name was Lelei La Lelena, she began asking Lelei
about her life now.
“Currently, I live in the refugee camp with the rest of the Arnus Living
Community.”
“Do you feel inconvenienced in any way?”
“I do not understand what you mean by ‘inconvenienced’. Are you

saying I am not free? I believe that is the case — no man on this earth is
truly free.”
After receiving a nonsensical yet eloquent answer to her roundabout

question. In the end, the councilwoman decided to speak plainly and
asked, “What I mean to ask is if there is anything lacking in your life, or
if you are troubled by anything.”
“I have ample clothes, food and shelter, and my vocational and

emotional needs are being met. I am content with what I have. If one
continually desires more, one will never be satisfied.”
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Councilwoman Kouhara was not quite happy with Lelei’s answer, but she
decided to leave it at that. Instead, she went for the question she
wanted to ask Itami, which was to say, “Were the 150 casualties from
Coda Village the fault of the JSDF?”
Lelei gulped and stared with eyes wide. Then she answered, “No,”
simply and quietly.
The next person called was Tuka.
“I am a high elf, belonging to the Marceau tribe of the Lodo forest,

daughter of Hodoryur Rei, Tuka Luna Marceau.”
After being asked her name, Tuka proudly puffed up her chest and
stated her family name.
Tuka’s clothes were a navy-blue suit obtained from the returns section
of the store, the result of the shop attendant randomly picking out
pieces. However, because of this, Tuka, who would normally resemble a
high-schooler, now had the air of a university student.
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“I apologize for this question which might be a bit rude, but are your
ears real?”
After hearing Lelei’s translation, Tuka’s face had a “Hah?” of bafflement.

In surprise, she answered, “What sort of question is this?”
Lelei replied that it was because they were curious about how her
appearance differed from them.
“Yes, they are, these ears are natural. Do you want to touch them?”
With a charming smile, Tuka eased her golden hair away with her
fingers, fully exposing her twitching, pointed ears.
This series of movements, combined with her adorable expression that

resembled a cute little animal, won the hearts of everyone around her.
Perhaps because of this, a sizable portion of the councillors, the
audience, and the media personnel gasped in unison. At the same time,
a veritable galaxy of flashbulbs went off, so bright that it was blinding.
Councilwoman Kouhara hurriedly said, “That, that’s enough,” before

moving on to ask Tuka about her life in the refugee camp. After hearing
that she was amply taken care of, she asked Tuka the same question
she did Lelei: “Were the deaths of the 150 civilians related to the JSDF?”
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In that instant, Tuka froze, and then she looked down. After Tuka
muttered, “I’m not too sure,” Kouhara asked her to elaborate, and Tuka
replied, “I was unconscious at the time.”
The last one to take the stand was Rory.
She was dressed in her usual gothic dress, but today, she wore a thin
veil over her face. At a glance, she looked like a noble daughter in
mourning.
Of course, the veil did not completely conceal her features, but the
combination of youth and stateliness combined to produce a special kind
of feeling about her. One could make out the slim line of her body
underneath her clothes, so fragile that it seemed that she might be
knocked over with a single breath. Yet, despite her small frame, she
radiated a feminine charm that was easily the equal of any adult. Even
non-pedophiles might be ensnared by her bewitching beauty.
One hand was holding some large object wrapped in canvas, while the
other was in front of her.
Councilwoman Kouhara took Rory’s black clothing to be mourning

clothes, and she thought that it would be the perfect chance to have her
attack the government's failings. After all, since she was wearing these
clothes, she must have lost someone close to her.
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Therefore, in order to draw out a tragic, heartbreaking story, she spoke

gently and kindly to Rory.
“Could you tell me your name, please?”
“Rory Mercury.”
“How is your daily life in the refugee camp?”
“As an apostle of Emroy, I lead a humble life according to my faith.”
“And what is that like?”
“In truth, it is very simple. In the morning, I open my eyes and pray. I
take life, and then I pray again. When night falls, I sleep once more.
After all, I still possess a body of flesh, so there is no other alternative.”
“What do you mean by ‘taking life’?”
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“One might compare it to hunting for the purpose of eating, or a live

sacrifice to my god, Emroy.”
Because the first word of the translation was “eating”, Councilwoman

Kouhara and the other councillors believed it was the slaughter of
animals for consumption. Although that would not be an inaccurate
description, in truth, “taking life” should have been interpreted literally,
as “murder”. It might have been simple good luck that such a shocking
revelation was never translated.
And so, after that question was done, Kouhara asked again, “Was the
JSDF the cause of your family members’ deaths?”
Lelei considered this question with a doubtful tilt of the head. The doubt
was not about how to translate the question, but rather, given that Rory
was an apostle, any family she had should have died a long, long, long
time ago. Therefore, that question seemed completely irrelevant.
However, the Chairman’s curious question of “what’s wrong?’

interrupted her stupor.
Lelei could only split this question into two parts. She asked them as:
“How about Rory Mercury’s family”, as well as “What do you think of the
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refugees at Coda Village?”
However, Councilwoman Kouhara had originally asked a single question,

and she thought that the translator was deliberately splitting it up in
order to cover up some misconduct in the JSDF and the Ministry of
Defense. Therefore, she firmly repeated herself.
“Miss Lelei, please translate my question exactly as I ask it. Were the
death of Rory’s family caused by the JSDF’s response?”
Since there was no choice, Lelei translated the question verbatim.
However, Rory’s response was silence. Kouharu Mizuki thought,

“Jackpot!”, thinking that she had finally managed to tug on Rory’s
heartstrings. If possible, she hoped that Rory’s feelings would be
reflected on her face. However, what Rory said next was in Japanese.
“Are you an idiot?”
In an instant, the Diet Chamber fell deathly silent.
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“Par-pardon me, what did you just say?”
Kouhara Mizuki asked her question, her voice filled with doubt.
“I said, ‘Are you an idiot?’, little miss.”
Rory turned, her words drowning out Lelei’s Japanese translation.
“That, that’s terribly rude. Why do you say I’m an idiot?”
“Well, isn’t that an idiotic question.”
As Rory said that, she raised her eyes up, so she seemed to be looking
down on a moron.
“I’ve been listening quietly from the beginning until now. All your
questions were intended to imply that Itami and his men weren’t trying
hard enough to save the villagers’ lives. The fact that they survived
combat with a Flame Dragon is by itself worthy of praise. You say one
quarter died? That’s a terrible mistake to make. You should be saying
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that three-quarters survived. How can you be a senator without knowing

such things? If everyone here is as much of an idiot as you are, it must
be pretty tough being a soldier of this country.”
“Witness, please take a more serious tone.”
The Chairman seemed to have tossed out those words in annoyance, but
Rory simply smiled archly, and shrugged. Kouhara, who was furious after
being so harshly criticized, tried to stare Rory down as she replied.
“Little miss, I don’t recall you being here before, but that is no reason to
speak so crudely. Is this arrogance how children in your world behave
toward adults?”
Her angry retort came out like a scolding for a child. Kouhara was hoping
that this younger person would lower her head and apologize. As an
older individual, it was the sole leverage she had.
“Little miss? Were you referring to me, by any chance?”
Rory hugged herself as she answered.
“Who else could I be speaking too? Also, why do you call me ‘little miss’?
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Is that the respect you show your elders?”
“Ah, this might come as a surprise to some, but…”
Itami, who sensed the situation going from bad to worse, raised his
hand. The elder Dietmen must have thought of Rory as a human, and
thus they were treating her like a human. However, the reason he had
brought them along was to show them that some things existed outside
of their experience, and having these people present in person would
hopefully be more convincing.
“Chairman!”
“Witness Itami, do not speak without the express permission of this

office!”
“I’m very sorry about that, but I feel Councilwoman Kouhara has made a
grave mistake...”
Indeed, there seemed to be a storm brewing between Rory and Kouhara.

The Chairman hoped that Itami’s words would help clear up this
embarrassing scene.
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“Witness Itami.”
Rory bit her lips and stared at Itami before returning to her seat.
Her eyes seemed to be saying, “Don’t interfere with me.”
“Eh~ Councilwoman Kouhara, and all ladies and gentlemen present. We

use our age as a weapon against the young, without thinking that
someday it might be turned on us instead.”
“Witness, kindly state your point succinctly.”
”Ah, I’m very sorry about that. That is to say… well, to put it simply, Miss
Rory Mercury is older than everyone present.”
“What? To think she could be older than myself?”
The incredulous speaker was a heavyweight member of the

Conservatives. He was 87.
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“Yes, she is.”
A disturbance swept across the Chamber, along the lines of “What

nonsense is this?”
Someone even proposed that they ask the witnesses their age.
However, someone else on the panel said, “It would be rude for us to
directly ask a lady’s age,” so they had to let Councilwoman Kouhara
handle it.
“Then, how old are you?”
“I am 961 years old.”
Even the councilwoman fell silent with the rest of the room. “Is she
immortal?” someone asked.
At this point, another female voice rang out, asking how old the other
witnesses were.
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“I’m 165 years old,” Tuka answered. The male councillors shuddered,
while the female ones swallowed. She was as beautiful as sculpted
crystal, and she would stay that way forever, Tuka was a being of
overwhelming beauty, radiating an aura of perfection that every other
woman would strive desperately to achieve. That fact was driven further
home now.
Everyone held their breath when they asked Lelei the question, and
when she replied “I am 15,” the men all sighed in relief. For these men,
who equated youth to beauty, they would have to seriously rethink the
way they looked at the world.
After this, Lelei began her explanation for everyone in attendance.
According to Lelei, the Humans on the other side of the “Gate” could live
to an age of 60 to 70 years, health permitting. Most of the people on the
other side of the “Gate” were Humans.
The realization that the Humans on the other side of the “Gate” were
similar to themselves drew some consternation from the councillors, and
it allowed them to relax a little.
Tuka, on the other hand, was one of the so-called undying Elves, and as
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one of the rare High Elves, her lifespan was so much longer than that of
a regular Elf that she was effectively immortal.
Rory was not human either, but a demigod, which was to say she was a
divine being incarnated into a flesh and blood body. Although she was
immortal now, she had once been a human, and her physical age was
frozen at the time when she had ascended to demigodhood. After a
thousand years, she would cast aside her cloak of flesh and become a
true god. In other words, the concept of age did not matter to her.
After hearing this, Kouhara wanted to grab her head and scream.
Earlier, she herself had said that juniors should respect their elders. Her
mouth, which had so proudly scathed older members of the Diet, was
now unable to speak from embarrassment.
That being the case, she should pretend to have forgotten it. That was a
sign of the strong spirit politicians had. If things went wrong, they would
forget it, ignore it, or just make something up. Nobody could play politics
without the ability to say up was down and black was white.
“Then, I have no more questions.”
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The session was over, but there was a feeling that there were questions
left unsaid, probably because the person who was supposed to ask those
questions had given up on asking them herself. Kouhara shoved the
newspaper clippings she never had the chance to use under her arm and
despondently returned to her own seat.
After that, members of both parties asked questions of their own. They
were mainly aimed at finding out about life and culture beyond the
“Gate”. Nobody dared probe deeper into Rory or Tuka’s background.
After all, they had taken down the Flame Dragon, so nobody could do
anything but praise them. They approved of the JSDF’s handling of the
situation with no complaints either.
At the end of everything, Councilman Higure asked a question.
He specifically pointed out Rory and asked, “I wish to ask one who has
lived over 900 years, with incalculable experience, who might well be a
living god — our world values freedom, but at the same time, we restrict
freedom to avoid undesirable circumstances, for instance, stories,
artwork and other materials involving young girls. What should we do in
this situation?”
Apart from trying to understand the moral values of the Special Region,
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the Councilman must have wanted to see how mature she really was
from her answer.
The witness Rory Mercury replied thus:
“Some questions with no answers cannot be answered even by those

who live forever. Yet, the absence of a correct answer does not mean
the question cannot be answered. If you want to know how I felt about
the complete ban on some culture and art that I could not understand,
was not interested in, or could not accept, in the name of preventing the
violations of others’ rights or other trumped up charges, I believe that
would be taking us onto the road of discriminating against others. If we
define culture as that which is healthy or humane, and defend that
decision in the name of justice, once any part of that system collapses, it
will cause an unimaginable number of problems for society. For instance,
if I drew a line in the middle and erased one side, the next day, a new
line will appear in the middle of the side that is left. I think suppressing
the instincts and thoughts of the human spirit is bad. The desire for
purity and wholesomeness, when taken to an extreme, is harmful.”
***
Itami and his team were done with the Diet session.
The microbus had returned to the Diet building to fetch Itami and the
others. It was escorted by two cars from Intel Branch, one in front and
one behind. It was sunset, which implied that the roads would be
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jammed, as well as the risk that some car might try to ram or otherwise
endanger them.
The convoy started and stopped in time with the changing of the traffic
lights’ colors.
As the cars around them passed the convoy, a car filtered in behind the
microbus. It was travelling at a ridiculously slow speed, and it hedged
the car that Komakado was in away from the microbus.
“Hm~ How strange.”
Komakado was mumbling to himself, but the driver was tensed up.
“Dammit, this clown’s really taking his sweet time driving!”
He thought of going over the crosswalk or overtaking the car in front of

him, but the cars in the lanes beside him suddenly slowed down, making
it impossible to change lanes or overtake.
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And so, when the traffic light turned red, the microbus left its escort
behind it.
As he watched the taillights of the rapidly-receding microbus, Komakado

tapped his mike with one hand and gave his orders.
“Command to all vehicles, the enemy’s here. Keep your eyes peeled.”
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 17
The train slowly pulled into the subway station under the National Diet
Building, on the Marunouchi line.
The combination of the train station’s location and the office hours of the
government employees meant that they started to head home around
this time.
A lot of these workers had secretly watched the National Diet broadcast
during their working hours, and they couldn’t help but sneak peeks at
Lelei, Tuka and Rory, who stood out due to their eye-catching
appearances.
In any case, every single look directed at the girls was like a physical
stab to Itami.
His JSDF uniform was long gone, replaced by a gray coat given to him by
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one of Komakado’s men, who told him to take the train instead.
In his current outfit, Itami resembled an average salaryman, but anyone

would be wondering “Who the hell is this guy?” if they saw him standing
next to these three lovely ladies with their blonde, black and white hair.
It would be hard to say “They’re my relatives” or “They’re my

daughters” given their different hair colors. Maybe he could try, “They’re
my girlfriends, you jelly?” and given the circumstances that might even
work, but Itami was not the sort of person who would dare to say such
things.
A kindhearted third party seeing Itami might think that he was part of a
criminal organization which kidnapped foreign girls for nefarious
purposes. It was a natural conclusion to reach.
It might be possible, but it would also be difficult to pass them off as a

group of tourists visiting Japan (with Itami showing them around the
country), or with Itami as a producer bringing three idols back to his
office. Among these three options, the first and the third would be
eliminated first.
If he wanted to improve his disguise, he should make a tour guide’s flag

and wave it while saying “Hihi~ please walk this way~”, taking them to
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high class restaurants and hotels, and posing them in front of ads which
read, “For illustration purposes only”. That way, at least onlookers would
think this was some sort of unethical tour agency.
Itami had been following the plan to board the train in front of him, and
in the instant the door opened, he swiftly darted aboard, as though to
escape people’s eyes. Lelei and Tuka joined him, and then looked
around in curiosity.
Rory, on the other hand, looked afraid. It was an expression he had

never seen on her before.
A quick glance around the cable showed that Bozes and Piña were
looking uneasy as well, while Kuribayashi and Tomita were beside them
as their escorts.
“Yo.”
Itami raised his hand in greeting, and Tomita nodded to him.
“We were supposed to take the bus to the hotel, but we were suddenly
told to alight at Yotsuya and take the subway over. Time was tight, so
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things got a bit hairy.”
“Well, at least you boarded without a problem, right?”
Itami looked at Bozes, who was clinging to Tomita’s arm.
Although everyone expected Tomita to bear a grudge against Bozes, the

way the two of them were attached to each other made him think ,”Oh,
congrats, you two!”
Tomita wore a jacket and leather boots, and he stood tall, radiating an
air of masculinity. In contrast, Bozes was a noblewoman who looked like
a piece of intricately-carved gold jewelry, but his visual impact was no
less than hers; in fact they even complemented each other. The only
flaw in this display was the frightened look on Bozes’ face. As a single
male, this lack of a romantic atmosphere was the only thing he could be
happy about when he saw them.
Piña was not clinging to someone like Bozes, but she stood stock-still
beside Kuribayashi, her nerves all wound up. But if there were a loud
sound and a power stoppage, she would probably shriek and tightly hug
Kuribayashi.
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As he thought about this, Itami was tempted to scare her, but he

decided not to for fear of making everyone angry.
“They call this the Marunouchi line, but it feels more like we’ve gone into
a catacomb. At least, it feels just as uncomfortable. Even if everyone
says not to worry, what if the ceiling collapses? What if the lights go out?
Are we going into the depths of the earth like this? It’s kind of scary.”
They had boarded from Yotsuya Station, so the train was still
aboveground. When it plunged into the earth halfway during its journey,
it gave Piña a huge shock. She could not calm down no matter how
people tried to explain things to her. After all, this might have well been
the most shocking experience in Piña’s life to date. The train car’s lights
were bright, but outside the window she could only see the jet black of
the underground. It was like taking public response, but Piña had no
frame of reference for this at all, and she had no idea where they were
headed while underground. Asking her not to worry in these
circumstances was an impossible task.
“Are your ghost houses called ‘catacombs’’? (This was a new word, so he
had to scribble in his phrasebook). Well, between the noise and the
ringing in the ears, it’s no wonder you’d be scared. But you know, the
Marunouchi line is much better now. Used to be, the train lights would
cut out while the train was in motion and the whole cabin would go
dark.”
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Just as everyone was chatting like this, the train horn blew, and the
cabin doors shut.
The noise frightened Rory so badly that her body was trembling
uncontrollably. She nervously reached a tiny hand out and tightly
clutched Itami’s hand.
“What, what’s wrong?”
Was Rory frightened like Piña was? However, there seemed to be a

fundamental difference between Piña and Bozes’ discomfort, and Rory’s
abject terror.
“The, the underground is Hardy’s domain…”
“Hardy? Is he a friend?”
“He’s bad news. If we met him here, I’d be snatched away to become his
wife. Hardy’s been like that since 200 years ago, always, always, always,
always…”
As she said that, Rory squeezed Itami’s left hand with her own even
more rightly.
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Her right hand was holding her canvas-wrapped halberd. Although he

was not too sure what she was on about, this god called Hardy (since he
lived underground, could he be some sort of demon lord?) seemed to
frighten Rory into a child-like state.
“So why are you hugging me?”
“To scare away Hardy. Hardy hates men, so if I had a man nearby, Hardy
might stay away.”
At this moment, Itami was expecting Rory to suddenly protest, “Don’t,

don’t get me wrong! I’m just using you as bug repellent! You’re just
camouflage!” If only Rory would say something like that right now, his
life would be complete.
Teaching people from the Special Region about the ways and customs of
this world seemed like an uphill task, but as a true otaku, he still wanted
to hear Rory say those cliched lines. Itami secretly resolved to
thoroughly educate her in these matters.
The next stop was Kasumigaseki station, and Komakado boarded with a
“yo” as a greeting.
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“What happened?” Itami asked.
“Turns out we’ve been followed, and they knew we were leaving from
Ichigaya Park. I think they even know we’re taking the train. So far,
we’ve got at least two possible suspects for the leaks. We need to take
care of those guys following us, or at least, shake them up a little.”
By “taking care” of them, he meant finding out who the people following
them worked for.
“And the two people who might have leaked the info?”
“We’ll leave them be for now. It’s all part of the plan.”
“Wouldn’t catching them be better?”
“There’s no need for that. We’ve known they would leak secrets for
some time now. Our plan is to have the enemy rely heavily on them
before catching them all in one fell swoop. They should be linked to
some ideological organization, or maybe they’ve been honey-trapped
and made to work for the enemy. They’ll be dealt with sooner or later,
but for now we’ll keep an eye on them.”
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“A honey-trap, huh…”
“It’s called a honey-trap, but it’s also a way to enjoy yourself. If they
reported that they were honey-trapped to their superiors, we would have
prepared some suitable information for them to pass on. So they can
enjoy their cash, women, or hobbies to their hearts’ content, as long as
they keep their superiors informed, they can do whatever they want.
And when the enemy gets mad and threatens to reveal the secrets they
have, since we’re already aware of it, all we need to do is mock them. Of
course, it’s annoying that not everything goes this way.”
The enemy would obviously prefer to pick people who would not turn on
them. The problem was that Japanese moral values did not emphasise
national security, and given that nationalism was treated as a dirty word
nowadays, it would seem the enemy could pick and choose who, when
and where to strike.
Komakado knew that any country in the world could easily honey-trap
Japanese citizens, and he laughed coarsely.
“Well, we wouldn’t have to worry about Mr. Itami being honey-trapped,

at least.”
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“Really?”
“Don’t you think so…”
As Komakado said this, he looked at Rory who was clinging to Itami’s left
hand, Lelei who was standing on Itami’s right, and Tuka behind him, who
looked like a US high schooler in her T-shirt and jeans. Komakado had
not seen the Diet telecast, so he did not know Rory and Tuka’s ages.
“Well because most countries haven’t trained operatives of this age, no,
wait…”
If enemy nations started mass producing Loli operatives, Japan would be

in grave danger. “No, no, wait. Recently, there have been a lot of call girl
agencies recruiting young girls. Maybe we should keep an eye on
those…” Komakado started thinking seriously as he said that.
“Call girl agencies?”
“Ah, well, these—”
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Komakado made sure the ladies around him could not hear him before
whispering to Itami.
These were known to provide female companionship to highly-placed

officials who were sensitive to scandals or first-rate businessmen. Of
course, the girls they supplied were of the highest quality, dressed from
head to toe in branded goods. The actual “transaction” would take place
in a five-star hotel, to create the impression that they were family
members going on holiday together so as to avoid the suspicion of
bystanders.
If these organizations were actually run by some country’s intelligence

organs, they would have people record the indecencies which their
targets would perform with their partner. After that, they would threaten
their target with exposure of these deeds to the media, and nowadays
they might even just upload the relevant images or video to the Internet
and wait for it to go viral.
Perhaps their targets might still be able to explain it away as a simple

love affair if their partners were adult women, but if they were caught
engaging in lewd acts with an underage girl, there would be no way out
of it. Therefore, anyone blackmailed like this would go along obediently
for fear of being socially and financially ruined.
“No way, where would they get little girls like that?”
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“Some dictatorships can manage that.”’
They could select attractive young girls from their population, brainwash
them into obedience and then send them out. People could do anything
if they received the right training, just like the way suicide bombers
could fearlessly blow themselves up, or how child soldiers could
unflinchingly gun down their fellow man. All these things were simple
enough to achieve in a country which laughed at the concept of human
rights. History also told of women like Da Ji, Bao Si, Xi Shi and Diao
Chan, all of whom were beautiful maidens, and weapons that brought
powerful nations to ruin.
Itami watched quietly as Komakado whipped out his phone and sent an
SMS to all his active officers conducting searches. He could not send the
message right now because they were underground, but he could finish
typing it up and send it once they reached the surface again.
“It’s a bit ahead of schedule, but we’ll be heading to Hakone now.”
Komakado told Itami of their travel plans as he typed on his phone.

However, Rory interrupted him. She was sweating profusely and her skin
was as pale as death.
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“Hey~ could we get out of here right now, please?”
“What’s wrong, are you carsick?”
“I don’t know, I just feel really uncomfortable, and I can’t calm down.”
“We’ll be getting off two stops later. Can you hang on a bit more?”
Rory’s fingertips sank forcefully into Itami’s arm as she looked straight
at Itami, a sincere, earnest expression on her face. She looked
miserable.
Just at this moment, the train reached Ginza Station.
Although he should have been in a lot of pain from the way she was
pinching him, strangely enough, he felt no pain at all. Itami covered
Rory’s powerless hand with his own, and looked to Komakado.
Komakado did not seem to understand what the gesture meant, so Itami
continued looking around. Lelei locked eyes with him and her
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expressionless face seemed to convey her approval, and Tuka shrugged

to show that she wanted to get off the train.
Tomita and Kuribayashi were Itami’s subordinates, so they agreed. Piña

and Bozes were not particularly fond of the subway, so they did not
show any hint of resistance.
The station was flooded with office workers heading home and shoppers
who were done for the day. And then a brief window opened — the
instant when the passengers on the train had finished alighting, but just
before the incoming passengers came aboard —
“Mr. Komakado, we’re going to get off the train here.”
“Coming through~” Itami said as he led his group off the train like a
father minding his family. Because he was selfishly going against the
flow of traffic, all the incoming passenger shot dirty looks at him.
However, once they saw Piña and Bozes, that resentment evaporated.
The feeling Japanese had about “not being able to read the atmosphere”
only applied to their fellow countrymen. When they saw people from
another culture, all they could do was say, “It can’t be helped” and try to
be more understanding.
“Hey, wait, what are you guys trying to do?”
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Left on the train, Komakado tried to catch up with Itami. Since he was
Japanese, the crowd was only too happy to press him back and into the
train, so he looked like a swimmer flailing desperately through choppy
water before he finally managed to squeeze out of the train.
“This is good too, right? Besides, we’re only one stop away.”
Ginza Station was right in front of Tokyo Station, and they would only
need to walk a little further to reach it. However, as Itami and his gang
crossed the ticket stand, they heard that the train on the Marunouchi
line — which was to say, the one they had just gotten off — had been
halted halfway between Ginza and Tokyo Station by a line fault.
Rory sighed in relief, glad to be outside of the underground train station

and back under Ginza’s night sky. She stretched her arms out and
exhaled deeply. Although the air here was filthy, to Rory it was still
better than being under the earth. She was happy to be out of Hardy’s
clutches. Piña and Bozes also seemed relieved and overjoyed to finally
be above the ground once more.
Everyone looked around at night-time Ginza. Unlike in the day, there

were lights everywhere, and in readiness for the fierce mercantile
competition of Christmas, the shops everywhere sported a huge variety
of illuminated decorations, turning the night into a sea of multicolored
light.
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Kuribayashi and Tomita had already realized the abnormality in the train
stoppage, and as they realised the machinations at work, they scanned
their surroundings with wary eyes.
“What does the enemy gain by doing this?”
Itami’s questions made Komakado’s eyes narrow into a line.
“They’re probably trying to prove something. They might also be trying

to probe our strength, which means this is a recon in force.”
“They” had already tried isolating and following the microbus, on the
hunch that there might be otherworldly visitors aboard.
“They” had even gone so far as to engineer an incident to force a train

stoppage.
Although none of them had been put in danger so far, this string of
incidents had everyone on their guard. Could it be that “they” just
wanted to let Itami’s side know and fear their power? In other words, this
was a warning along the lines of “Mark my words, you will not escape
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the palm of my hand”.
However, all their schemes had failed so far; the microbus surveillance
was foiled by Komakado’s plan, while they had evaded the train
stoppage because of Rory and sheer luck.
“The enemy must be worried because they’ve got two strikes against
them. One more and they’re out, so there’s a high chance they’ll take
direct action this time.”
The fact remained that very few people knew that they had changed
from the bus to the train, so Komakado was still trying to track down
leaks even though his mind was whirling with confusion. Who on earth
had revealed that information? He kept looking over his shoulder as a
result.
“When you say direct action, what do you mean?”
“Well, for example—”
Just as Komakado began to speak, Rory was attacked. A man who looked
like some sort of punk tried to snatch away the wrapped-up halberd she
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was carrying.
“Grabbing an item and forcing a chase in order to lure people into a trap
is a traditional method, but what the hell is that guy doing!”
However, in the instant that the punk grabbed Rory’s halberd, it

squashed him to the ground and left him unable to move. Itami and the
others knew what was inside, and they had knowing looks on their faces
as they looked on the poor punk in pity. However, Komakado knew
nothing, and all he could do was find it strange that a punk could be
pinned under something a little girl was carrying so easily.
Komakado reached out to grab the canvas-wrapped package, and in that

moment, a loud cracking sound came from his waist, like a tree branch
being broken.
“Gwaaaaah!”
It was an acute lumbar muscle sprain… in other words, he threw out his
back. Worse, he might have given himself a lumbar disc hernia. Intense
pain coursed through his torso, and Komakado could not help but
collapse to both knees, and then fall to the ground on all fours.
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“It’s so damn heavy, is it a barbell or something?!”
Komakado collapsed on the ground. People around them were flocking

around to see what the excitement was all about, and the distant sirens
of an ambulance carried over the commotion. At the same time, some
people who had watched the National Diet telecast, and they whipped
out their phones to take pictures of Rory, Tuka and Lelei.
There was no way the enemy could act covertly with so many eyes on
their intended targets.
And so, the third attack by the unseen enemy was foiled by the sacrifice
of Komakado’s body.
***
Because the bills had not been paid, the cell phone line had been cut.
So was the gas.
Phone calls kept coming in, demanding payment of the water bill. Things
were getting worse.
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Pension and health insurance payments? Yep, they were due.
However, without the computer everything would be over, so the power

bill had to be paid, along with the Internet fiber charges. In exchange,
there was no money to buy food.
Cereal and soya bean milk from the 99 yen store cost 208 yen for 2
meals (1 meal = 104 yen).
After that, the 99 yen store again once more yielded a bounty of
vegetables and rice. This was dinner, which cost 208 yen.
Thank you, 99 yen store, our Japan is such a prosperous country.
Since yesterday, all three meals had been cereal and soya milk, a diet
without any variation. However, this meant that the day’s meals would
only cost 312 yen, so no matter what, this discomfort had to be endured.
“I need to hang on until the winter doujin markets. Hang in there!”
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The pen moved over the tablet. Ten more pages, and it would be
complete.
But more money would be needed to hold on until X-day. Debts had to
be paid, bills had to be cleared, and the new year had to be celebrated.
A warm meal would be nice.
“Although I can’t do anything but endure this for now, this’ll kill me if
this goes on. I only see cornflakes in my dreams now. 100 yen today is
more useful than 10000 yen tomorrow. Why did I only realize this truth
now~”
The empty fridge had been unplugged for fear of running up the
electricity bill further. All lights except the bare minimum had been
switched off. Heating? What was that, could you eat it? Thicker clothes
would have to do, coupled with the warmth from the computer’s fan.
The LCD display of the computer’s monitor was the only source of light
in the house.
“Can someone lend me money~” She’d sent out the email, but all her
friends from doujin circles were hardly better off than her. Everyone was
rushing like mad to get their work done before the printer’s deadline,
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and they were racking their brains on how to get money. As a result, all
the replies she had received were cold rejections.
Her relationship with her parents was in a shambles, so turning to them

for money was not an option. If this kept up, would she need to
dumpster dive or sell her body?
As she thought about that, she looked at the reflection of herself in the
window glass.
Her skin was rough and uncared for, while her hair was unkempt and
dirty. Her glasses were as dirty as a milk bottle bottom and she had
panda eyes. Lit by the monitor, she looked like a walking corpse against
the background of the dark room. Nobody would be interested in paying
for her skinny limbs, her stringy muscles and her flabby belly, even if
she wanted to sell herself.
As she thought that, she sighed deeply.
“What kind of men would want to pay money to embrace a 29 year old
hag like this~”
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An email from a friend appeared on her PC.
“Didn’t you divorce Youji? That was you being stupid, however bad
things might have been, at least you would have been guaranteed
clothes, food and a place to stay.”
“Ah, it doesn’t matter if I realise it now, I was just stupid back then.
Argh, I fail as a human being~”
She recalled how she had gotten married to her sempai in the first place.
That had been because she had been annoyed by her parents nagging
her to get married.
Her financial situation had been just as dire back then. She had been
drawn to her sempai because his civil servant position guaranteed a
steady income for him.
She had known him since middle school, so she was very clear that her
sempai was a good-hearted man, and she understood her sempai’s
family situation.
It had happened on the Christmas when she was 25, on the spur of the
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moment.
I threw myself at him because I was hungry and wanted something to

eat.
“Well, that’s fine,” he said, and then sempai brought me to a nearby

restaurant and treated me to roasted chicken and other stuff.
At that time, I realised the power of having a stable income. The roasted
chicken and onions I had then were indescribably delicious.
“Sempai, please feed me. In turn, I’ll marry you.”
And that was how I confessed to him while I was drunk. I knew sempai
was not the sort of person who would reject me, but he did not reply to
me right away like I thought he would. He looked at me, and I had no
idea what I was thinking, and after an uncomfortable silence, he replied,
“Yes”.
I think sempai saw through me even then. Rather than being “married”,
I wanted to be “fed”. Our married life could not have gone well from the
beginning.
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Even though sempai knew what I was thinking, he still gently said “Yes”
to me. Because that was the kind of person sempai was.
In the end, I still wrote the e-mail for help to that caring sempai.
Normally speaking, asking that sort of thing of my ex-husband would be

very strange. After all, sempai did not leave me because he disliked me,
but because I took marriage too lightly. It was not his fault in any way, I
just wanted to return our relationship to how it was before we got
married. What did sempai think of me when I asked him to put his chop
on the divorce forms?
I thought and thought and thought about whether or not to send that e-
mail.
“I don’t have water, food or gas!”
The decision over whether or not to send that email had been like
debating a nuclear launch.
“I’m a really selfish woman.”
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After that, she had not eaten anything. Her last meal had been
yesterday, and she had grimly held on until now.
Her head was aching fit to burst, and her eyelids were heavy for want of
sleep. Even so, she still tried to cheer herself up, clenching her fists and
muttering, “Just one more page” in a small voice.
The time was 2335 in the lower right corner of the 27” TFT screen.
It was then that someone opened the house door.
It was a familiar sound, that of a key sliding into a keyhole
After that, the sound of the door being pushed open, accompanied by
cold air from the outside.
“Risa, you are still awake. If you are up, why’re the lights out? I thought
you were asleep. You must be cold like this, why don’t you turn on the
heater?”
That familiar voice belonged to her sempai, Itami Youji.
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“Ah, sempai!”
In the end, I still called him by that name, and after that I muttered,
“Food”. What a heartless woman I am...
***
To Risa, the scene before her was an earth-shaking revelation.
“Sem-sempai, you brought other women back?”
Coming to her house with women in tow and saying, “Sorry, but we need
to spend the night here, god, I’m tired,” before barging in was hardly
something she thought Itami would do.
Seemingly oblivious to Risa’s dumbfounded stares, he said, “Hey, come

on in,” and beckoned the ladies outside to enter.
On closer inspection, they were foreigners.
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The thing was, these foreigners were exactly the type which excited her.
“Uwah! A black Gothic Lolita, an elf girl, a silver-haired girl, a redhead

princess and a beautiful drill-hair ojou! There’s even a big-boobed chibi,
is there some kind of national cosplay event?”
Risa thought that she had memorized the event schedules, but apart
from the upcoming winter doujin market, there should not be any others.
Itami looked guardedly out of the window in response to Risa’s doubtful
questions, and then he turned back to apologize and explain why they
had barged into her house in the middle of the night and disturbed her.
Or at least, he planned to explain, but when he turned and saw Risa

hugging Rory and going, ”So cuuuuute~” nobody would have been able
to resist facepalming themselves.
“Actually, the hotel we were about to stay in caught fire, so I need to

take shelter here for a while.”
“Caught fire?”
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Risa began looking through the recent news on the net.
In the end, she found a headline about a fire in Ichigaya Park. The cause
was apparently arson.
After that, the line fault on the Marunouchi line.
And then, the pictures from the National Diet meeting, which was the
first time Risa had seen them. It was only when she saw their pictures on
the news that she realised that these girls were from another world.
“Hmm…”
With a click, it seemed that Rory Mercury’s “Are you an idiot?” had
already been turned into a banner. A following had already built up
around the girl from another world who overturned the logic that long-
lived people were old. The tweets on the media sites were reflecting
messages of this nature.
And then there were the pictures of the beautiful elf and the silver-
haired girl.
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Videos of the questioning had already been uploaded to video streaming

sites on the Net, and the comments and views for them were at a
frighteningly high number.
Was the black Goth Loli in the video the same Goth Loli in her room?
She was dressed in a jet-black Gothic Lolita costume heavily decorated

with ribbons. Her black hair was covered by a thin black veil, and then
there was the mysterious piece of luggage she was holding on to that
was taller than she was. And then, there was the fact that despite
looking like a young girl, she spoke and acted like a mature woman.
Someone else like her would be pretty hard to find.
Conclusion: they were the same.
Then, she compared the elf in the pictures to the blonde-haired woman
in her room now.
Her hair coursed down to her waist like a golden waterfall, and her ears,
as long and slender as rice-stalks, traced a beautiful curve as they
peeked out from between the strands of her hair. Her eyes were as blue
as sapphires. She was still wearing the suit that she had on during the
Diet question and answer session. Although she had changed her pants
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for a pair of figure-hugging jeans, the unique characteristics of her body

were still easily spotted.
Conclusion: they were the same.
Once again, she looked at the silver-haired girl in the video, and then at
the girl in her room.
Depending on the light, her bobcut hair could be seen as either white or
silver. Her skin seemed paler than most dolls, and her body was slim and
petite and clad in something that looked like a Native American poncho
or robe, though it was the slimness of her neck that drew Risa’s eye. Her
prim and proper face seemed to bear a constant blank expression, yet it
wasn’t a dispassionate mask that repulsed people. There were clear
signs that she was a living person there. If pushed, she would describe
her as a girl who had a detached look on her face.
Conclusion: They were the same.
After taking a close look at the news headlines and reading the
summaries of the Diet interviews, Risa suddenly clapped her hands as a
great revelation dawned on her.
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“So… these girls aren’t cosplayers, but the real deal.

Huhuhuhuhuhehehehehefufufufufufufu~”
As they watched this woman with murky glasses laugh by herself, Tuka
decided to represent the entire room by asking, “Who, who is this?”
Just by looking at Risa, one could tell she had long since abandoned the
look a woman should have, and after seeing the mountain of empty
boxes and piled-up books, one would wonder how she had managed to
live until now. And all the spare room in the house was filled with
intricate dolls, which looked weird no matter how one viewed it.
Rory trembled and asked, “Is there a Hardy here too?” before taking
shelter behind Itami’s back. She looked like she was on the verge of
tears.
Who’s this? Sensing that question coming from everyone, Itami decided
to answer.
“This is my ex-wife.”
“Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”
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“The Lieutenant actually got married? I can’t believe someone actually

existed who would marry a man like this! But then again, now that I look
at her, they’re a perfect match for each other!” The big-boobed
shortstacked Kuribayashi seemed to be saying what everyone had on
their mind.
***
After a long absence, Risa’s house was filled with light again.
The air-conditioner woke from its long sleep and began producing
warmth and warm air. After Itami had transferred her some emergency
funds, Risa did not have to worry about her bills any more, and could
pamper herself a little.
Speaking of which, Itami had immediately curled up in a corner to sleep

after finding a place to lay his head down. For the guests from the other
side of the “Gate”, camping outside during travel was only expected,
while Piña and Bozes were experienced in the life of a travelling soldier,
so they were not offended or disturbed by the arrangements.. Besides,
there were ample towels and blankets for everyone to use, and there
was a roof to keep out the wind and the rain, so these conditions were
not bad at all. In addition, the room was filled with all sorts of
entertainment to ward off boredom.
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Lelei swiftly claimed the spot next to where Itami was sleeping. For
some reason, something seemed to be bothering her. Beside her was
Tuka. Rory was also sleeping beside Itami, but on the opposite side of
Lelei. By the way, Bozes and Piña were sleeping with Tomita and
Kuribayashi.
“H~m. I roughly get the situation, but I don’t want to be caught up in

dangerous stuff~”
Risa was muttering to her monitor in between mouthfuls of the bento

Itami had bought her from a local convenience store. At times, she
would grab her stylus and tablet, apparently to make final changes to
her doujin manuscript. It looked like she was going to pull an all-nighter.
“It’s true, chief. Like your ex-wife said, we shouldn’t get innocent
civilians involved in this.”
Tomita had woken up a while back, and he was looking warily out of the
window as he spoke.
“Also, was it all right for us to come here after ditching Mr. Komakado?”
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The moment Itami heard that the hotel he was supposed to stay in had
caught fire, he immediately decided to abandon the injured Komakado
groaning from his stretcher in favor of taking everyone and running.
Although Komakado had his subordinates to take care of him, it was still
pretty heartless on Itami’s part.
“But still, I have the feeling that weird things will happen when he’s with
us. Don’t you think Komakado’s pretty weird?”
“Are you implying Komakado is the leak?”
“No, no, I don’t mean that. I’m just saying, maybe he’s one of the
reasons for the leak.”
“You mean, he’s being followed or watched?”
“Maybe. Doesn’t matter what exactly it is. However, ever since we

ditched Komakado, nobody’s been tailing us. I’m not too sure why, but
Komakado’s probably the reason we’ve had all this trouble so far.”
“Still, what exactly do those people following you want?”
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In response to Risa’s question, Itami purposely pretended he didn’t hear

it and replied, “Come, time to sleep, time to sleep”, before rolling
himself up in his blanket. However, before he could go to sleep, he
realised that Lelei had encircled his waist with her arms.
“What’s wrong?”
Although the area to his side was a mess, he felt very uncomfortable. If
someone peeled of the blanket and saw this, he would be in a lot of
trouble, involving some very hard-to-explain misunderstandings.
Therefore, he could not lie still despite enjoying the comforts of the
blanket.
“What are we doing tomorrow?”
“Nothing. Treat it as a vacation. I want to go relax, so if you want to see

something, buy something, or enjoy the hot springs, go ahead and use it
to reward yourself for your hard work.”
“But what if the opposition is waiting for us at the hotel we booked, like
today?”
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“Well, we’ve already booked the rooms, so if we don’t go, we’re wasting
it. If there’s a trap, we should boldly step into it like a moth to a flame.”
“But we can go find another place now, right?”
“It’ll be fine, why are you so worried? Compared to that, waking up at 4

AM is far worse.”
By rights, Itami and Tomita should be taking turns on watch. It was 0120
now, and Tomita was arranged to sleep at 0400. After Itami closed his
eyes, he drifted off to sleep soon enough.
***
“So, Miss Risa, you really were Lieutenant Itami’s wife.”
“His ex-wife, Now we’re just friends.”
Risa answered Tomita’s question without looking at him, her eyes glued
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to her PC monitor.
“But can you really go back to being friends after a divorce?”
“I don’t know about the other people, but to me, it was better being his
friend after we got divorced. I couldn’t settle myself down just after I got
married, and acting like a model housewife got really tiring after a while.
Tomita looked at the stacks of doujinshis piled throughout the room, as

well as the sheer number of ball-joint dolls which filled every available
space, nodding as he muttered, “Ah, yes, that’s right” in a somewhat
uncaring voice. He did not want to say something that might demean
the other party, nor did he want to lie, and thus chose this neutral
option.
Tomita picked up one of the books from the pile and flipped it open. His
face instantly froze.
“Ahh, you probably shouldn’t look through those, they might not be
good for your eyes. Or did my warning come too late?”
As he put down the lovingly illustrated 18+ BL manga he had just picked
up, Tomita’s face looked like he had just stepped on a landmine. He
followed that up by carefully closing the book, with all the seriousness of
a man reburying a mine, and placing it back into the mountain of its
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fellows.
Note
TFT: Thin Film Transistor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_transistor
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 18
It was 4am on a winter morning, and the sunrise was a long way off.
The printer whined and clacked as it spat out the final copy of
manuscript, while the room’s owner, finally free of the tension that had
gripped her for so long, passed out in front of the PC monitor.
Itami gently covered Risa’s sleeping body with a magical girl-print

blanket, and looked outside, at the world beyond the window.
The lights in the apartment were out, in order to eliminate the possibility
of being silhouetted by them, and thus more easily spotted by the
enemy.
So far, there was no movement within the area he could see.
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Just then, the newspaper delivery bike’s 4-stroke engine began ringing
through the streets below. A taxi deposited its drunken passenger at its
doorstep, and a loud argument about meter fare began. It should be
about time for people on the night shift to be heading to bed.
And so, the sounds of daily life returned to the city as the sun came up.
***
The Prime Minister’s Residence
“I’m sorry to disturb you during your rest, but Mr. Prime Minister—”
The Prime Minister was dressed in pajamas, which rustled as he reached

over to bring his telephone’s handset to his ear.
“The guests from the Special Region have vanished.”
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“When did this happen?”
“Around 2300 last night. Ichigaya Park, where they were supposed to
stay, caught fire.”
The Prime Minister looked to the clock beside his bed. It was now 5 AM.
“Why did the first report take so long to come in?”
“Sir, I apologize for the delay, but we needed to properly grasp the
situation and that took time.”
“Then, what have you properly grasped with your time?”
“Sir, the fire at Ichigaya Park was caused by arson.”
“Who did it?”
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“We’re not sure, but we think it’s probably—”
“What you think isn’t important. Who’s in charge down there?”
“He’s been hospitalized.”
“Was he injured? Was there combat with enemy forces?”
“We’re not too sure about that.”
“Cheh. Then, are the guests safe?”
“...We’re still searching for them.”
“Are you an idiot?”
“I’m sorry, but everyone responsible is currently doing their best.”
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“No, I asked if you were an idiot.”
“Sir, sir, what did you just say?”
The Prime Minister scoffed. “Hmph, never mind,” and hung up.
When he took the post, the Prime Minister was already prepared for the
grave duty of taking command of disaster management in the event of
an emergency, and he was also ready to accept calls which might come
at all hours of the day. However, he was also bothered by the fact that
the government officials who were his arms and legs were effectively
paralyzed.
The cabinet officials under him could be considered the elites among the
elites. Going by their individual backgrounds, each of them was very
impressive. In terms of their ability to manage and run an organization,
they were at the top of their class. However, there were times when a
situation happened which demanded immediate action, and a decision
had to be made in a split-second. These officials would mutter “Huh?
What?” while waffling around and wasting a lot of time, which showed
how useless they were in emergencies.
Worse still, they were incapable of dealing with irregularities in daily
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operations. Although public servants mainly did administrative work,

there were more and more cases where they could not even handle
things like “There’s a problem in the annual income records”.
That being said, in times of peace, spending more time on these

problems was fine as long as said problems were resolved in the end.
However, this was hardly a time of peace, especially since the

international situation around Japan was getting more and more hostile.
As soon as the battle conditions within the Special Region took a turn for
the better, the nations on this side of the Gate — America, China,
Russia, the EU, India, the Middle East, and South America — began
sending their representatives with the message, “Let us discuss the
matter of the ‘Gate’.”
America was the first country that had openly expressed their designs
on the Gate, and these uninvited guests had not even waited for their
host to serve them, but helped themselves with their own oversized
bowl. One could say that they were doing as they pleased. In the face of
this, the host had no choice but to keep providing food to fill their
appetite.
The heads of state in the EU did not wish to let Japan have sole
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sovereignty over the Special Region, and they had begun imposing
sanctions and other measures to voice their opinion. The resource-
producing nations like Russia, China, the Middle East and South
Americans were united in their demand that the UN should manage the
Gate.
The resource-producing nations feared what would happen if the

technologically advanced and economically robust Japan got their hands
on an effectively unlimited supply of natural resources. It might lead to
their own countries losing influence on the international scene.
However, a demand to let the various nations manage separate parts of

Tokyo, much like how the Allied powers had done with Berlin after World
War 2, was ridiculous beyond considering. After all, unreasonable
demands were only used as suggestions for a more sensible alternative.
The main problem was that certain influential groups within the country
actually welcomed the increased international scrutiny.
The ruling and opposition parties, various NGOs and countless religions
had already expressed their desire to enter the world on the other side
of the Gate. They also wanted the guaranteed rights to observe and act
freely in the Special Region. The mass media also wanted unregulated
access for their personnel, and even permission to freely speak and
interview the relevant people who had been to the other side of the
Gate, and so on.
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All these demands had come about because of yesterday’s Diet session.
The words of the girl who called herself a “demigod” and who claimed to
be over 900 years old had shaken the world.
The phones were ringing off the hook from magazines, media outlets,
talent agencies and even strange religions requesting a meeting with
them. One could not help but laugh at this farce.
And so, all these voices seeking full disclosure put a lot of pressure on
the government.
The reality was that if the weight of public opinion was not carefully
managed, once it was joined with the overseas voices which sought a
sharing of power, a lot of previously inconceivable demands might
become reality. The international community was like a rowdy
classroom, and the UN, in the role of the teacher, was ineffective at
maintaining order. Unless the students wrote a suicide note filled with
their hatred and suffering, the police would not intervene. And of course,
there was no international police in the real world, so it was the same as
saying that nobody would try to manage the situation. As a result, the
children in the classroom could only make friends with strong
colleagues, and ensure safety in numbers for themselves in this world.
The first nation they would need to deal with would be their ally
America, followed by the EU, with whom they had good relations. It
appeared that there would be a need to give them the benefits they
wanted. In reality, they still did not know enough about the Special
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Region, so even Japan itself would have problems trying to dominate and
develop the land as was planned. Frankly speaking, all Japan needed
was to control the important areas of the Special Region. The rest could
be left to the EU and the US.
The main problem now was Russia.
Russia employed hardline diplomacy, with their natural resources as

their bargaining chip, and their methods had set the EU and other
Western nations against them. The EU’s interest in the Special Region
was largely fuelled by their desire to stop being at Russia’s beck and
call. Once the EU could get their hands on a stable supply of resources
from the Special Region, they would no longer need to heed Russia’s
demands.
Of course, if this happened, Russia would be in trouble, which was why

they were demanding that the United Nations administer the Special
Region. To Russia, it would have been best if the Gate had never
existed, and thus they were the ones who had to be watched most
closely. They were a nation who could calmly sink a cruise liner or
fishing boat, if the situation went out of control, they might even launch
a SLBM to destroy the Gate and everything around it.
The thing about Russia was that they could not let the EU handle talks
with them for fear of giving them a reason to take drastic measures,
mainly because the Special Region would greatly reduce Russia’s
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influence over the EU. As such, they would need to say that “we are
taking this point into consideration, so please be at ease”, while also
implying to Russia that they would not escape unscathed if they tried to
take action.
China, on the other hand, did not resent the existence of the Gate like
Russia did. A lot of factors had led to that decision. China was a country
which both imported and exported resources. It was a country which had
the foolish goal of giving all 1.3 billion of its citizens a happy and
prosperous life. It was a goal that had devastated its resources and its
environment, and which would still require ten times the current amount
of materials and energy to achieve. This was because controlling 1.3
billion people was an arduous task, even for a country like China.
Perhaps it was a necessary step to unify the country, but after long
years of biased education, the egos of the Chinese people were growing
without limit. Chinese ways of thinking, their nationalist spirit, an excess
of racial pride, the one child policy which ensured any children would be
spoiled rotten, all these combined to create an excess of ambition which
could not be satisfied by their current poverty. Much like the stars of the
American and Japanese shows they watched, they wanted to drive
expensive cars and enjoy affluent lifestyles without wanting for
anything. At least, they wanted to, but as members of the mighty Han
race, they were forced to live more miserably than the Koreans or the
Japanese. This created resentment in the 1.3 billion, and much of this
resentment was directed at the inequalities within their nation. After all,
they belonged to such a great country and were proud Han citizens, but
they could not live comfortable lives.
This accumulated resentment demanded an outlet.
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They had no cultural influences to rein in their greed, and their egos
were fragile without any natural ability to protect them. They saw the
ones who pointed out their true face as the enemy, and turned their
excess of egotism into what they called “justice”.
Dissatisfaction like this had to be vented.
A democracy like Japan could peacefully demand a change in

government if they were unhappy with it. But a dictatorship could not be
changed by any force short of violence, which was why people under
dictatorships often revolted violently. This was the worst nightmare of
China’s leaders, especially since the seemingly impossible dissolution of
the Soviet Union had occurred just recently. As a result, they
desperately tried to soothe the people’s anger, and did their best to
satisfy their unlimited desire for more. They constantly told the people,
“The future under the Communist Party will be a bright one, the party
promises a wealthy and wonderful future for all its people, all nations will
revere China as their ancestor and bend their knee in respect.”
Japan could not avoid making contact with a China like this. Therefore,
rather than risk messing the situation up, peaceful coexistence was the
most beneficial relationship for the two powers.
The bait they would use for this would be the Special Region.
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Since China needed to obtain resources by any means necessary, they

would take it by force, or if that was impossible, they would try to build
an alliance with Japan and beg them for a share of the prize. China was
currently at a stage where they were both guarded against and envious
of Japan and their exclusive domination of the Special Region, but in the
future, they would try to get closer to Japan. In doing so they would
reveal their true aims.
In a sense, it was like crossing a log bridge.
They were hoping for the other party to react the way they wanted, and
they knew that trying to force the issue would result in both sides being
severely hurt. Therefore, it was only common sense that they would try
to change their attitudes and bow their heads while politely asking
“Please, may I have a little”. To achieve that aim, one might expect that
they would put on smiling faces and surround themselves in an air of
congeniality while shaking hands with the other side. However, the
situation was not that simply explained. The basic approach China took
toward Japan was “If you want to shake hands, step forward first”. The
officials of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs were the sort who would
respond to overt displays of force with shows of their own, but when
they encountered someone who extended their hand in friendship, they
would graciously take a step back, which played right into their enemies’
hands. Because of this, China was very willing to incite all manner of
small disputes, secure in the knowledge that they would end with a
shaking of hands and a signing of agreements. Perhaps the only way to
counteract China’s strategy would be to stand up to them with grim
determination, and the resolution not to take a single step back.
However, there was probably nobody in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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that had the courage for that. As the current Prime Minister thought
about this, he could not help but think that the previous Prime Minister,
Hojo, must have endured a lot of this. “Could it be that letting me
become Prime Minister was a trap so I would take all the blame for this?”
“In the end, the important thing isn’t one’s educational record, but their
personality.”
The previous Prime Minister was reviled by the opposition, but he was an
effective strongman leader who forced the policies he liked through
parliament. At the time, the relationship between the Cabinet and the
rest of the government was tense, and he had made it onto the previous
Prime Minister’s staff by being his Chief Cabinet Secretary. Although he
could have done as he wished with his position, that was only possible
with the backing of the previous Prime Minister’s unwavering stance.
The most distasteful thing was that when it was his turn to be the Prime
Minister, he wanted to take others’ views into consideration and produce
a more welcoming and inclusive regime, but for some reason, his
cabinet members kept being suspected of corruption and other crimes,
while all the dirty linen from the previous administration was dragged
into the light one by one, the party bosses shot their mouths off without
grasping the situation, and problems kept coming up in the various
ministries. It made him want to give up on the whole thing.
The first problem was: Why had the important news that “The guests
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from the Special Region have gone missing” taken so long to make it to
him?
The second problem was: Why had it taken so long just to verify that
information? How incompetent were they?
A few minor errors in the first report were fine. The important thing was
that people had to be informed that something was going on. Swift and
timely news was invaluable, since at the very least the person receiving
it could make the necessary preparations to handle it (both physically
and mentally).
Accurate details could be left to the second and subsequent reports.

With concrete information, they could make an effective response.
Therefore the follow-up reports had to contain more information and
clarify doubts in the earlier reports. What this all meant was that the
speed of reporting in this incident was too slow, and said reports were
not informative. Frankly speaking, the whole thing reeked of going
through the motions and it was shoddy work which was done to shuck
off one’s responsibilities as quickly as possible.
“I need to lecture them about this.”
He said that, but the fact was that in his position as the Prime Minister,
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there was no way he could pretend that he knew nothing about this. The
guests from the Special Region were potentially their key to ending this
war, and important factors in establishing good relations between the
Special Region and Japan after the war was concluded. More
importantly, the three of them had made a big impact in the public eye.
If anything happened to them… just thinking about it made his head hurt
and his scalp itch.
Therefore, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.
After a long series of rings, someone finally answered.
“Kanou, sorry I got you up so early.”
...
“Oh good, you’re up already? I was worried that I’d be disturbing you by
calling so early, but the way things are, I can’t help but give you a call.
Since we’re in the same situation, I hope you’ll forgive me for this. After
all, I was just woken up too.”
...
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“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about our guests from the Special
Region. As you know, there’s been a lot of noise ever since they arrived.
Our guests were scared off by the noise and ran. It would be good if they
were fine… yes.”
...
“Eh? Oh, about that… I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I only just
heard about them myself.”
“All right. In truth, I’m really worried about the people handling this
operation, they’re a real pain in the ass. I hope you will accept the
position of Minister for Special Area Incident Countermeasures.
Yes, I’m sorry I need to push all this troublesome business to you.”
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“Yes. Then, please take care of it.”
...
Prime Minister Motoi switched off his cell phone and cursed loudly,
saving a couple of choice lines for Kanou. “I’m going to quit, I’m going to
quit, screw this!” he grumbled as he got back into bed.
***
The veil of night was finally pulled aside, giving way to the day.
The TV was showing a couple of irresponsible commentators talking

about everything and nothing. There was no meaning to their mindless
prattle. In order not to wake up the sleeping people, Itami turned down
the volume of the TV set. Besides that, he had to tread carefully so he
wouldn’t wake up the people sprawled all over the floor. With careful
steps, he made his way to the kitchen of this small apartment, where he
began making french toast with bread, milk, eggs and other ingredients
from a nearby convenience store.
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Itami could only make a few recipes, usually related to roasting or frying
things, and when it came to seasoning his food, he was limited to simple
methods like adding sauce or sprinkling salt. Complex seasonings were
beyond him. If he absolutely had to flavor something, he liked to use
bonito fish sauce bought from a supermarket.
Therefore, to put it nicely, sous-chef Itami’s simple dishes brought out

the natural flavor of the ingredients, and the only utensil he really
needed for this dish was a frying pan.
If Itami had to make dinner, he would buy the cheapest Australian or

American meat he could find, fry it lightly, season it with salt and
pepper, and eat it without any further preparation. Most of the time, he
ate frozen vegetables from a bag, but if he felt like enjoying some fresh
vegetables, he would buy a head of cabbage, and chop it up into large
chunks. He would usually prepare four portions of rice at a time, then
put the rest in fridge and reheat it with the microwave as needed. In
summary, Itami did not carefully prepare his food like a chef, but instead
chose to cook simply and eat without ceremony. Granted, it was not
gourmet food, but neither was it inedible. Itami’s attitude toward food
was generally “good enough”.
After sorting out everyone’s messily scattered luggage, the center of the
room was clear enough to set up a folding table, upon which Itami
placed the bowls and plates for everyone.
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Tomita was snoring loudly, having finished an all-nighter, while

Kuribayashi woke up to go to the bathroom and then went back to sleep.
By the time the two of them came round, the breakfast Itami made had
gone cold, but they did not seem to mind. Piña, Bozes and Rory rose
earlier than the others from the Special Region. Rory knelt in front of the
window, basking in the sunlight as she prayed. Piña and Bozes, on the
other hand, were startled by the TV at first, but because they could not
understand the language of the news and other shows, they quickly lost
interest, and turned their attention to the mountain of doujinshi in the
apartment.
“Your, Your Highness! This is!”
“U~mu. I didn’t expect this world to have art of this quality…”
“Your Highness, this is another world.”
“That is true.”
“...”
“...”
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“If only I could understand the words here.”
“Your Highness, allow me to come to this world to learn its language.’
“How cunning…”
“But once I learn the language and return, I will surely translate these
works for Your Highness.”
“...”
“...”
“Uu, umu.”
Itami had been looking for an opportunity to cut into their heated
conversation.
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“Well…” As he made the sound, Piña and Bozes immediately put down
their manga and looked up with shocked expressions on their faces.
Rory, having finished the morning prayers she took so seriously, turned
to Itami with a curious look on her face.
“I’ve made breakfast, do you want some?”
***
Defense Ministry Special Area Incident Countermeasures Minister

Kanou Taro’s Residence
While Itami’s group was having a Western-style breakfast of french

toast, Kanou was having a traditional Japanese breakfast of natto and
miso soup. (Kansai readers, feel free to disagree)
His secretary Noji was carrying all the secret documents from Tarou’s
office with him as he entered the room. “Good morning, sir,” he said.
“Your Excellency, this is the itinerary planned for today—”
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Just as the secretary was about to open up his folder, Kanou took a
mouthful of his miso soup. “Sorry, cancel it all.” He said this in a special
tone of voice.
“This morning, the Prime Minister called me. We’ve lost track of our
guests from the Special Region, so resolving that problem is now our top
priority.
“How could that be!? The Prime Minister himself said that he would be
taking charge of it himself and took it from the Ministry of Defense to his
office because he said there would be peace talks! And now that
something goes wrong, he throws it back at us?”
“Oh, is that your opinion? What a coincidence, I was thinking the exact
same thing.”
Well, it was obvious enough. The Prime Minister wanted to end the war
with incredibly favorable terms to himself through the JSDF’s superiority,
and then claim credit for that achievement. Although it was not wrong
for a country’s leader to think that way, it was the Prime Minister’s fault
for passing off the matter like a hot potato once something went wrong.
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It spoke of his utter lack of guts.
As he chewed his seaweed and natto, Kanou grumbled along those lines.
Secretary Noji replied, “Yes, it is as you say,” and then withdrew his cell
phone to inform various people that the parts of their schedules which
pertained to Kanou would be cancelled.
“Ah, Noji, could I trouble you to go to the office and fetch me the data on
the guests? Also, help me check on the Prime Minister’s condition.
Matsui, go organize a meeting for the people in charge and contact the
relevant ministries. Apart from that, ask Intel Branch about what’s going
on. Inform me directly if there are any changes in the situation.”
“Ah, yes, sir.”
Noji returned his phone and his notebook into his pockets before leaving,
and Matsui the second secretary began calling people in his place.
***
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“All right, then we’ll spend the day having fun.”
After finishing breakfast, Itami spoke to the girls from the Special
Region, who were watching the TV. Currently, a repeat of yesterday’s
interview at the Diet was airing.
“Well, although you said we would be having fun, we can’t really let
ourselves go, right?”
After the way they were followed yesterday and how their hotel caught
fire, Kuribayashi reminded Itami that they could not be careless, given
that there were enemies around.
However, Itami shook his head. “My motto is ‘eat, sleep, play, and relax’.
Life is everything that happens in between!”
But that’s not the problem, Tomita thought as he tilted his head.
However, if the highest-ranked officer on the scene ordered them to
“spend the day having fun”, he could not say anything else as a
Sergeant First Class, could he?
“In any case, if there’s really an enemy gunning for us, even if we hide
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in here, we’ll still be in danger. That being the case, we should go have
fun in a place with lots of witnesses, right?”
Although Itami’s reasoning was quite persuasive, there was the feeling
that it was sacrificing something important. Naturally, Tomita and
Kuribayashi were not workaholics, and as young people they wanted to
go shopping and travel. In the end, everyone accepted Itami’s
declaration with a shrug and a “Well, that’s fine too”.
The question now was not whether or not to go, but where to go.
“Good, good! If we want to buy stuff, we should go to Shibuya and

Harajuku!”
The person raising their hand and shouting a suggestion was Risa.
Her desire to shop must have been some sort of predator’s

compensatory behavior — now that she had money after being poor for
so long, her habits of scrimping and saving had inverted into a powerful
desire to buy things that filled her mind.
“And why should we use your suggestion?”
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“Ehhhhh~~~ aren’t I one of your friends? Are you bullying me? Huh?
Are you?”
“No, I’m not bullying you. If everyone approves, then we’ll go with it.”
“Woohoo!” The happy Risa aside, Kuribayashi also wanted to go

shopping. As for Lelei and Tuka, they said “As long as there’s clothes
and underwear” after they were told about Harajuku and Shibuya. Rory,
on the other hand, seemed completely uninterested until Risa muttered
something about “Black Goth… you look good as you are, but there’s a
shop in Shimokitazawa which specializes in this sort of thing. Want to
go?” After Kuribayashi translated her words for Rory, her attitude made
a 180 degree turn and she was eager to go there too.
As opposed to the girls, who wanted to go shopping in Shibuya, Itami

said, “As for me, I want to visit Akihabara and Nakano...” His intentions
were pretty obvious from the names of those places.
“I’m fine with going anywhere, but Bozes says she wants to find out
more about this world, so I was planning to take her to a library.” Tomita
was simply relaying Piña’s and Bozes’ opinions, but in truth, he must
have been planning a library date of some sort.
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The way things were, it looked like everybody’s plans would not mesh
up.
Itami looked quietly at Risa’s face. His sixth sense told him, no, it
screamed at him, you must not go with her, you absolutely cannot follow
her. As a man, going shopping with girls would only result in a terrible
fate for him. If he did not have the resolution and the ability to lose
himself in the experience, then it would be better not to go in the first
place.
“In any case, we’ll all do our own thing in the morning. After factoring in
some additional buffer time, we’ll meet at Shinjuku Station at two. It
might be a bit late, but we’ll have lunch there. In the evening, we’ll go
bathe in the hot springs, and at night, there’ll be a dinner party!”
And so, Lelei and the others went shopping on the streets of another
world.
***
Itami was moving alone, and after parting ways with Tomita, Piña and
Bozes at the library, Rory, Tuka and Lelei set out for Harajuku with
Kuribayashi and Risa.
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Although they had seen it several times, walking in such large crowds
made them feel like being swallowed alive. Lelei stuck closely to Risa,
and the first shop they entered was a clothes shop.
“Well, you didn’t have to torture yourself by wearing this…”
After Risa said that, she stripped Lelei naked, removing her robes in an
instant, and she had a look on her face like a sexual offender. It was a
wicked smile that seemed to say “Uhehehehe, it’s okay, right, it’s okay
right?” Risa brought out all sorts of clothes - kawaii-type, gyaru-type,
natural-type and more for Lelei to wear, and it looked like Risa was
dressing up a life-sized doll.
She put clothes on and took them off, took clothes off and put others on.
Judging by Lelei’s expression, the outfit that made her react the most
was a simply designed blouse that reached down to her legs (or perhaps
it was just a shortened dress), with a pair of pants that ended at her
knees. The clothes were long enough to cover up the curves of her body
which embarrassed her, but at the same time her pants were made of a
body-hugging material which exposed the lines of her thighs. It was a
small gamble in this otherwise safe ensemble.
“Hm, but since we’ve come all this way…”
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She picked out blue, yellow and pink clothes — colors so bright they
could strike men blind — for Lelei to wear. Risa’s aim was to select cute,
yet practical clothes for Lelei to wear in Tokyo’s winter. But Lelei’s
favorite color was white, so in the end she only ended up picking white
clothes. In the end, it was a girl clad in white from head to toe who
appeared before Risa.
“This is white, that is white, doesn’t everything blend together?!”
To counteract that, Risa suggested that she select clothing with extra
decorations and embroidery.
In the end, her top was still white (although Risa pranked her by
selecting an item with a particularly revealing back. It exposed her
slender shoulders and radiated a coquettish charm). Her leggings were
white as well, but Lelei ended up getting a pair edged with lace and
ribbons.
In contrast to that, Tuka had been happily strolling through the aisles,
helping herself to whatever she liked. Although her stretchy T-shirt and
jeans were pretty good, she was worried that she would accidentally
expose her belly button, and also that she would be losing out if she
bought less stuff than Lelei. However, the clothes Tuka picked were all T-
shirts and dresses which emphasized her figure, suggesting that she
must have been quite confident in her body. Although she was different
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from the brainless titty monster Kuribayashi, she still had obvious curves
and body lines. She picked the color which forest elves most preferred —
grass green.
Risa took a look at Tuka’s waist, and gave her a belt. She also
considered how to protect her from the cold, and debated
recommending a jacket for Tuka to wear over her other clothes.
After Tuka and Lelei finished trying on the clothes and stepped out of
the changing room, Risa and Kuribayashi went “Ohhh!” at their new
styles.
The blonde-haired, blue-eyed Tuka and the silver-haired Lelei looked like
a pair of foreign models, and they were swiftly surrounded by the shop’s
customers, while the interior of the clothes shop had the atmosphere of
a modelling runway. The staff realised that they had brought in a lot of
customers, so they treated them pleasantly.
And so, Lelei calmly swept a flower-patterned camisole and other clothes
into her basket. For Tuka, she had a deep-V side cut dress and other
sexy items of clothing.
The people who had watched the National Diet live telecast or the
morning news could not help but wonder, “Are these the girls from the
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Special Region?” out loud as they saw Tuka, Rory and Lelei. As they
went to pay for their purchases, the shop gave the five of them special
treatment and a discount, as thanks for bringing more customers in.
By the way, each of them paid for their own things. Earlier, it was
mentioned that Lelei was receiving a salary for working as a translator
for the Japanese government, but Tuka was also employed in picking
suitable places for logging and finding water sources (finding water
sources was an important job), as well as playing the role of a
consultant. Rory, on her part, had been hired as a religious consultant to
avoid accidentally violating the Special Region’s religious taboos. As a
result, the three of them had a lot of Japanese yen which they could not
spend in the Special Region.
“Next up, underwear! Then the black Goth shop! And jewellery!”
After hearing Risa’s declaration, the five ladies continued on to a shop

specializing in underwear.
***
Elsewhere, Piña and Bozes were headed to the library, led by Tomita.
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After seeing the sheer quantities of books within the library, the girls’
eyes were as wide as dinner plates. They were deeply struck by this
country’s ability to make such a huge amount of books freely available
to the public.
“Then, what kind of literature were you looking for?”
There was a nearly limitless variety of literature on this side of the Gate.
However, because the girls were not fluent in Japanese, they could not
read the words here, so they should naturally prefer pictures or videos.
At least, that was what Tomita thought, but the two of them instantly
replied in unison.
“Art!”
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 19
Tokyo, Shinjuku Ni-chōme
Once, this place had been holy ground, but now, it was no longer sacred.
After taking the Marunouchi line to the Shinjuku-gyoemmae Station and
climbing the metal staircase on the outside of a certain building, one
would come to a place where one could find all sorts of rare anime
posters, wallpapers, postcards, and even animation cels for sale.
Some people might say, “Aren’t these stores a dime a dozen

everywhere, like in Akihabara, Ikebukuro and so on?”
The reply would be, “No, no, no. It’s convenient to you because you’re
living in the present day. Back then, Akihabara was considered a simple
electronics shopping street, and Ikebukuro didn’t have a place called
‘Otome Road’. It was a time when those people calling themselves
‘otaku’ could still be treated like human beings. At least, until a man
kidnapped a young girl, defiled her body with his carnal lusts, and then
murdered her, which made the name “otaku” synonymous with
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‘disgusting pervert’.”
Yes, this incident happened about 20 years ago.
“Back then, I’d just gotten married, and I lost the election...”
The oji-san in the western suit sighed as he recalled the good old days.
In a wistful tone of voice, Itami replied, “I was just a middle schooler

back then.”
Neither of them looked at each other, but instead, they looked up to the
building that had once been a sanctuary for people like them.
“Although, I didn’t expect you to come without SP. Why so low-key?”
“What are you talking about, don’t I have the strongest bodyguard by
my side?”
“Your Excellency, are you kidding or are you serious? Although either
would be kind of disturbing…”
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It was only now that the two of them turned to face each other, and their
handshake marked their official meeting.
The two men headed to another place. After paying the entrance fee,
they entered the gates of the Shinjuku Gyoen. It was a working day in
winter, so there were few people walking around inside the national
garden. One could feel the crunching of dead leaves underfoot as one
walked along the footpaths.
“To think, the brat from back then grew up into a fine young man.”
“To think, the oji-san from back then became His Excellency. That’s
more surprising.”
“You don’t have to call me Excellency or any of that.”
After all, they were comrades in arms, and there was no need to act like
people they were not. It was a completely different thing from the
jealousy of politicians or their fake, insincere smiles.
“At that time, you said ‘This manga’s pretty interesting’ or something
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like that, and that set me on the path I’ve been walking ever since.”
“Is that so?”
“When I was still in middle school, I was afraid of touching seinen

manga, but a certain old guy recommended it to me, and he spent a
whole hour selling me on it.”
“But didn’t I treat you to a meal in return? After all, since you were too
scared to touch seinen manga, that means you needed someone to tell
you what was inside, right?
“Speaking of which, that manga got animated.”
“Is that so?”
Kanou Taro snorted in laughter.
“And after that, you read all the manga I recommended you.”
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“Yeah. Every tankoubon I borrowed from you was interesting. Especially

the one where the black gunman had a showdown with the white kid in a
ghost town, that was really good.”
“I told you, right? That series was awesome.”
And so, the two otaku spent their time discussing manga, but as the
saying goes, time flies when you’re having fun.
“Ah, it’s about time.”
Before they knew it, they had spent an hour chatting. Because of
Kanou’s line of work, it looked like he would have to make a move soon.
“Oh, this is—”
Itami gave Kanou a bookstore bag. There was a catalog the size of a
phone book inside.
“Thanks. I haven’t been able to visit a bookstore lately.”
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Kanou waved as he left, saying “That’s it, then”. But after a few steps,
he suddenly turned around. “Ah, I almost forgot. Are the guests well?”
“Yes, they are.”
“You made the right decision in fleeing from the hotel and pretending to
go missing, but that gave us a lot of trouble too. It seems someone tried
to reach out to you, so we slapped them down. There are a whole lot of
punks who’re going to get a good beating. Anyway, after this, resume
the original plan.”
“What’s the situation like?”
“I think it was your previous unit, SFGp, right? Just leave it to them.
Anyway, just follow the original plan and go to that hotel. This is a direct
order from the Defense Ministry’s Special Area Incident
Countermeasures Minister.”
It was rare for Kanou to use the word “order”. Hearing that filled him
with relief, because he could feel Kanou’s determination in using that
word. Since he was giving that order as a minister, it meant that he was
willing to take up the responsibility that came with it. If he was not
willing to do so, then he would not have given an order, but instead said
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something like, “I’ve got something to ask of you” or “I’d like to discuss
something with you”. Then, if anything went wrong, he could just blame
it on the situation going bad and get away scot-free. In that sense,
hearing an order like this was something that put Itami’s mind at ease,
because from his position as a front-liner, he would be receiving the best
possible backup. Granted, the word “order” sounded cold-blooded,
because it was a command from a superior to an inferior, but when you
took a step back and looked at it, that was a realistic thing to say.
As Kanou walked away, Itami bowed at a precise 45 degrees, which was

probably the highest form of respect he could show.
***
The meeting time came, and standing at the meeting point, Itami looked
at everyone else and sighed. That was because they were all carrying
lots of stuff.
“Ara~ it’s been a long time since I went shopping~” Risa said that, but
could a simple “Ara” encompass it? Just looking at the clothes,
accessories, women’s products and so on, Risa alone had pretty much
finished spending all the money Itami had lent her, but she insisted, “No
problem, there’s still the money from the winter Comiket!”
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Tuka was also carrying a bag that came from an outdoor product shop,
as well as a compound bow wrapped up in paper from a sports product
shop. As expected of a Forest Elf, everything she bought was related to
the outdoors. “This bow is awesome!” she enthusiastically proclaimed.
Predictably enough, Lelei had bought about a dozen sets of books.

“Books are important,” she quietly said.
Apart from that, she was gingerly carrying a box with a notebook
computer. Itami was worried, not because she bought a computer, but
he was wondering where she would get a power supply in the Special
Region.
Rory had her huge halberd to carry around, so she bought

correspondingly fewer things. She was carrying a paper bag stuffed with
black-frilled ribbons, earrings, assorted clothing and other accessories.
She proudly declared “picking out these things was difficult.”
In contrast, Piña and Bozes, who had spent their time in the library in
search of art, were very jealous of Rory and the others, who had gone
shopping. Piña and Bozes could not bring any distinctive souvenirs home
with them. Tomita said, “They seemed to be looking for something, but
they did not find it. They seemed interested in Greek and Roman
carvings, but it seemed like it was different from their expectations.”
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***
There was a command center under the Rocky Mountains in the United
States of America, built to direct the US Army in case of a nuclear war.
In novels and movies, this place would have a darkened interior, lit by
the main screen and dozens of smaller points of light, with constellations
of target icons and travel paths all over the liquid crystal displays.
In truth, the interior of the JASDF’s Air Defense Command did look like
that.
However, unlike the above two examples, the underground regional

command center at Ichinotani — the room that was sometimes called
the Situation Room — looked more like a film studio for political
discourse. There was a video editing room in one corner of the brightly-
lit room, and the rest of it was filled with display monitors. In addition,
the room was filled with uniformed officers who constantly manipulated
the unit display icons on the large LCD monitors in response to the
second-by-second changes in the situation. Currently, the main display
was showing a Chinese plane flying toward the Ishigaki Islands off the
southwest coast of Kyushu, as well as the positions of two F-15s that had
been scrambled to intercept it. In addition, the location of a nearby
unidentified submarine was shown in red, while not far away from the
red submarine was a blue icon representing a friendly submarine in
pursuit.
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There was a line in a certain detective movie about how things would
not happen in the meeting room, but modern meeting rooms were now
linked to the scene of the action in real-time. In order to help improve
the decision-making ability of the active personnel — who were
immersed in the action and had a limited field of vision as well as intel —
the rear echelon would employ cool-headed operators who had access
and view to the big picture to provide command and support.
The Special Area Incident Countermeasures Minister, Kanou Tarou,

stepped into this room. He was followed by suited councillors, uniformed
officers, and his other support staff.
“Good morning, Minister.”
This location was active 24 hours a day, with people working in it around
the clock, but regardless of what the clock said, the standard practice
was to greet people with “Good morning”. It seemed like something out
of a TV talent show, but it lightened the serious military mood in the air
and allowed people to relax.
Kanou raised his hand and replied “Morning”, before he was led to the
temporary place in the command center that had been prepared for him,
and sat down.
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“I am the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ryuuzaki. Pleased to

meet you.”
The uniformed JSDF officer who had appeared in front of Kanou

introduced himself.
“To be honest, I didn’t expect modern wars to be fought like this.”
As he told Ryuuzaki about his thoughts, he removed his jacket and

handed it to a JSDF servicewoman for her to put it up on a rack.
“True, a lot of people think wars are like in the movies, where two huge
forces clash with each other for days. But warfare in this day and age
can be divided into two main types. The first is police actions mixed with
guerilla combat. The second is like the Gulf War, where you prepare
before the battle and scout out the enemies’ weaknesses, then once the
fighting starts, you take down the enemy’s weaknesses in one blow and
destroy his ability to fight. I think the only places you can find the old
style of warfare are in movies and in developing countries.”
Ryuuzaki cited the American forces in the Middle East as an example.
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In the past, guerilla warfare took place in the jungle, where both sides
could barely see their hands stretched out in front of them through the
dense brush. In this heavily wooded environment, they concealed
themselves and mounted hit and run attacks or ambushed the enemy.
However, war was no longer like this. The enemy would hide among
innocent civilians and wear suits or normal clothing to hide themselves
before opening fire, or they would blow up cars, and sometimes they
would even plant bombs on children’s backs and turn them into suicide
bombers. Sometimes these were called kamikaze attacks, but unlike
actual kamikaze attacks, the suicide bombers did not strike at military
targets. They were nothing but common terrorists.
In order to deal with situations like this, there had to be a way to tell the
enemy from innocent civilians. Then, they would need to destroy the
enemy thoroughly. A comparison could be drawn to treating cancer.
Among the masses of healthy cells, there were a few cancer cells, but
leaving them alone was not an option.
The aim of the police activity was to find where each and every cancer
cell was hiding.
The military, on the other hand, would remove these cancerous portions
with surgical precision. For instance, if one had cancer of the knee,
amputating the entire leg was an option, but such madness was no
longer allowed in this day and age. In order to avoid harming the healthy
portions of the body, extreme precision would be required. The
American military had gone all-in in the Middle East, but the security
situation there showed no sign of recovery. Simply put, they had done
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too little police work in the region. If one began an operation without
knowing what was going on and simply flailed around with the knife, the
Middle East would not be cured, much like a patient with metastatic
cancer. And if excessive force was used to cut chunks off here and there,
they would be censured for involving innocent civilians in military
operations.
“And so, in that sense, what we are doing now can be considered to be
the first type of modern war — ah, forgive me, I was so caught up in
talking that I forgot to put the situation on screen.”
The WAC manning the operations console nodded, and clicked her
mouse a few times.
A map of Hakone and its surroundings, along the Izu Peninsula,

appeared on the main screen. It started at 100’000:1 scale, but then it
zoomed in, from 50’000:1 to 10’000:1 and so on, and at the same time
the details on the map grew larger. Eventually, the entire EL display
was dominated by the image of a certain hot spring among the
mountains.
“This Sankai Hot Spring Resort, famous for its delicious food, beautiful
scenery and its open-air hot springs. This seemingly-normal inn will soon
become the stage for tonight’s events. The rules are very simple:
safeguard the guests staying here and prevent enemy forces from
attacking. Our men are already in place.”
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Spinning icons appeared in the mountains, rivers and other terrain

features surrounding the resort, each representing a trooper’s position.
The ♀ icons represented the enlisted men, while a second spinning circle
within one of the ♀ icons represented an officer.
Kanou exclaimed, “Ah, so it’s just like Ghost in the Shell”, and upon
hearing this, Ltc. Ryuuzaki nodded to the operator.
“Then, what are the guests doing? Are they bathing in the hot springs
now?! Oi, can any of you get me a view of the hot springs? Cheh, none
of you, huh?”
The uniformed officer’s joke made everyone snort in laughter, but it had
the effect of dispersing the tension in the air. However, after a service
woman mentioned, “This is sexual harassment, you know” everyone
regained their composure and tightened back up. The hitherto relaxed
Kanou hurriedly rearranged his tie.
“Then, surrounding the Sankai Resort are our country’s top men, the
Special Forces Group.”
“Oh, that was Itami’s former unit.”
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“Dare I ask how Your Excellency came to know such a man?” However,
as Ryuuzaki turned and saw the thick Comiket catalogue on his desk, he
nodded and said, “Well, I guessed as much.”
“Although, I would like to clear up a possible misconception with you.

The men of the Special Forces Group are not all SEALs, modern-day
ninjas or supermen or other such combat experts. Of course, most of
them are combat specialists, but some of them were chosen for their
other special skills. For instance, some of them are computer experts,
locksmiths, drivers or riders. Some are medically trained or familiar with
poisons, or they might be skilled in psychological ops and winning hearts
and minds.”
“Was Itami such an expert?”
“Yes. He is extraordinarily proficient in running away from danger or

things he didn’t like. His skill in that field was so outstanding that even
with a full security perimeter and Special Forces Group trackers, we still
could not capture him. In truth, we once ran a fox-hunting exercise with
him as the target, but it was a failure because it was too difficult.”
“...How is it that the reports I’ve read are so different from what you’ve
said?”
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Upon hearing this, the servicewoman present couldn’t help but laugh,
while some of the officers standing by the side held their bellies and
tried their best not to join her.
“Your Excellency, was this information given to you by someone from

the “suits”? If it was obtained by less than legal means, please destroy
it, and then tell us how you obtained this information so we can plug the
leaks in our security.”
“What’s this all about?”
“Personal information on the members of SFGp is only available via

illegal means, for instance, by professional hackers or hijacking experts,
but typically, we will add false information to the profiles in case the
enemy gets a hold of them. For instance, the standard deception profile
will paint an individual as a close combat expert, a psychological warfare
expert, an expert marksman, a HALO and HAHO-trained parachutist, a
world-class diver, a demolitions specialist, and other details that
resemble the ita-settings a middle-schooler would come up with. Am I
wrong?”
“Ah, indeed, that was what I saw. But why would you do this?”
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“The following is a national secret, but because you are the defense
minister, I will tell you. Please listen carefully. It is a joke.”
“A joke?”
“Yes, a joke. Well, it is also a form of revenge on a lazy bum as him, but
on the surface, it is part of the scheme to confuse our enemies’
intelligence gathering.”
“Oi oi, is he really so bad?”
“Yes, he is that bad. As a member of SFGp, all troopers are expected to

not only hone their own skills, but exchange techniques with their
comrades of their own accord, with the hope that through cross-training,
they will each refine their individual style of battle. But that fellow is
different. Not only did he not absorb skills from other people, he
assumed that he was supposed to be the lazy ant in the colony and
ended up spreading his cult of anime and manga within the unit.”
As the defense minister heard this, he could not help but grab his head.
“Oi oi, is this really all right? If the Special Forces couldn’t catch him,
should I say that they’re too weak, or he’s too good?”
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“That was why we could not flunk him out of the course,” Ryuuzaki said.
If they fired him because he was useless and lazy, then it was a tacit
admission that the whole of SFGp, who could not even catch a guy like
that, was even worse than him.
“Ahhhh, it hurts...”
The uniformed officers merely shrugged their shoulders and sighed.
***
Elsewhere, at the Sankai Resort
After soaking in the hot springs and washing off several days of fatigue,
Itami’s group went on a wild drinking binge after a sumptuous dinner.
Just as they felt they had done enough and should turn in, Kuribayashi
and Risa went to get more alcohol and snacks. As the other people
squinted at them and said, “Let’s sleep” the two of them had already
arrayed sake, beer, wine and whisky bottles on the table, along with
potato chips, fruits and other finger foods which filled the table. After
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that, Kuribayashi and Risa began drinking cheerfully, and Piña and Bozes
eagerly joined in. “I know this is wine, but what is sake?” they said, and
they showed a lot of interest in the whisky. Then, Tuka and Rory took
part as well. Lelei, who was reading, said “Drinking too much is bad for
your health,” but she ended up being dragged in and forced to drink
beer as well. As the room got rowdier and rowdier, Kuribayashi and Rory
decided to raid the men’s room. “Oi, you men, get your asses in here!”
they said, as they literally dragged Itami and Tomita into their room.
“What the...”
The scene which greeted Itami and Tomita was like some kind of Black
Sabbath, or perhaps the word “orgy” might be a better way of describing
it. Everyone was stinking drunk, their yukatas were barely hanging in
place, displaying their underwear for all the world to see. When one
thought about this, was it not very shameful? In the end, everyone was
made to kneel on the ground and they were lectured for close to an
hour.
As Tomita scolded Bozes about her state of undress, Bozes mumbled,

“But, what’s wrong with that?” The other girls muttered, “You’re a
pervert in denial.” “You wanted to see it, didn’t you?” “You should reflect
on yourself before scolding others.” “You wanted to do lewd things with
her in the futon storage cabinet, right?” among other things. In the end
they chased Tomita into the corner of the room amidst a flurry of thrown
pillows, where he had no choice but to stay quiet. Itami, on the other
hand, realised that it was better to shut up and decided to focus on the
food and drinks, trying his best not to stare too openly at the lovely
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displays all around him. However—
“Oi! Itami! I’ve got something to tell you!”
With a pomf, Kuribayashi plopped herself down in front of Itami. Given

that she was wearing a barely-on yukata and she was sitting with her
legs spread, he wondered if he should mention that her goods were on
display before deciding to shut up.
“El-tee~ Itami~ Lieutenant Itami, I‘ve got something to ask you… well, I
need a favor~”
Being terribly drunk, she pounded his shoulders with her fists as she
spoke. It must have hurt.
“Introduce me!”
“What?”
“I said, introduce me!”
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“Introduce you to…”
“Introduce me to someone in Special Forces Group!”
“Uh, what?”
Itami knew her ambition, so surely Kuribayashi wanted his

recommendation to get into SFGp, right? However, one had to be
Ranger-trained to join, and for now, the Ranger course was not open to
women, so he was prepared to tell her to give up on that dream.
However, the words that fell from her mouth were far from what he had
imagined.
“Introduce me so I can marry them!”
“Hey, hey, wait a minute! You’re not so easy that you’d go with anyone,
right?”
“‘Course not. They have to be Special Forces, and they have to be

single!”
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“But the way you’re talking about it, you aren’t taking the guy’s feelings
into consideration, right? Although more than half of the guys are
single…”
“Isn’t that OK then? When you think about it, a normal woman can’t
handle the duties of being a proper wife to people who go on dangerous
missions and spend almost every day outside. But I’m perfect for that!
I’ve got a small body and I’m a powerhouse. I’m pretty and I’m lively and
I have a cheerful personality. I have a close combat badge, so they don’t
have to hold back in domestic squabbles. And I’m a battle-tested,
combat proven veteran! And then there’s these boobs! Even if they have
to come back with wounded hearts from missions that nobody knows of
and which they won’t be praised for, my boobs will heal their bodies and
minds!’
“You call them boobs, but those are just lumps of muscle.”
“Hell no! My girls are 40% muscle, 60% fat, and they’re 92 cm across.
They won’t sag even if I lie down, they’re firm and fill the hand, and
they’re as bouncy as rubber!”
A cat-like expression crept across Kuribayashi’s face as she ranted, and

she proudly thrust her pert pectorals forward. “How about them?” she
shouted, as though she were about to fire her oppai missiles. Although
Itami was transfixed for by them for a moment, he quickly recovered
and looked up and to the right at the ceiling before muttering a reply.
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“Well, er, the members’ love lives are a pretty serious matter, I’ll let the
people on top know about it. Rather than marry a foreigner of dubious
origin, marrying a local would cause fewer problems and it would help
out their prospects. I mean, you’re earnest, pretty, curvy, and you’ve got
the right way of thinking. If I can, I’ll try and hook you up.”
“Awesome!” Kuribayashi shouted joyfully as she threw her hands up in a

“banzai” pose. Suddenly, an intense pain shot through Itami’s head.
With a dong sound, a smell of metal spread bitterly through his nose,
and his vision went dark. How strong had that punch been?
“Ah, I accidentally hit the el-tee.”
As his consciousness faded, Itami thought he heard “Well, it’s okay for
him to sleep like this, right?” as he gave up his struggling and let his
consciousness drift away.
***
After they detected the unidentified armed men nearing Sankai Resort,
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the silent battle began.
The Situation Room’s central display showed the progress of the battle
around Sankai Resort. Several analysts were huddled around the
terminals facing the commander as they sorted through the information
from spy satellites and disguised aerial drones while they muttered
softly to themselves.
“Three heat sources, north-north east, on the upland. Archer, they’re on

your 10 to 11.”
“This is Archer, target sighted.”
“Procedure 03. Got it?”
“Understood.”
The Special Forces Group’s history was short, and they were in the dark
regarding how they should handle these low-intensity, unconventional
operations. After trial and practice, followed by revisions and
refinements, they settled on the Master-Servant system. In other words,
they would pair a rear echelon operator (the Masters) with frontline
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combatants (the Servants).
Currently, there were seven of these pairs, codenamed Saber, Archer

and so on. The naming scheme was influenced by the fervent preaching
of a certain person.
“Lancer, shift to Point Three.”
“This is Lancer, understood.”
“Caster, Procedure 02. Rider is moving from your 3 to 4. Hold fire.”
“This is Lancer, we’ve been mired in mud. Will be late to Point 3 by 1

second.”
“Move fast.”
The tide of battle was swiftly turning in the Special Forces’ favor.
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They used the latest equipment, which revealed their enemy’s positions
to them, so they did not have to worry about the enemy’s numbers.
With the enemy unable to sense their presence, they swiftly picked the
enemy off one by one.
The only way to effectively do battle with the SFGp would be with a
skilfully deployed combination attack. However, while there were three
enemy groups in the area, all three of them were acting independently.
It was almost as though they were from different organizations.
Even an amateur to warfare like Kanou could tell from the screen that
the enemy’s movements were extremely confused, and he turned to
Ryuuzaki to discuss the enemy’s motivations.
“What the hell are they thinking? They’re a complete mess. They should
know how tight our security here is.”
The lead enemy group turned tail after being beaten badly, and then the
next group made their run. The way they were advancing was as though
they didn’t know the first group had just been beaten up.
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“Logically speaking, it is possible that the enemy did not expect us to

have such heavy defenses, and thus they took heavy losses. The other
possibility is that they now understand our combat strength and they
wish to complete their objective regardless of losses.”
“Enemy Group A has taken over 10 casualties, they are falling back.”
“Group B just fell back to reorganize, the real attack will be coming
soon.”
“Group C is not moving, they must be preparing themselves.”
“Could it be that the three enemy groups are opposed to each other?”
While they were discussing this, Kanou was wondering if the enemies’
actions were political in nature. War was a form of politics, and there
was no form of warfare on earth that was unrelated to politics. Victory in
battle was determined on the political level. There were times when
even a lost battle could lead to political victory. However, even with that
in mind, the enemies’ actions seemed utterly pointless. After all, the
enemy knew they were fully prepared for them, and yet they were
mounting such a daring attack. It was like trying to break a rock with a
thrown egg.
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Kanou clicked his tongue, because he did not have enough information
to come to a decision.
The best historical example of this dissonance was how skilled generals
who knew nothing about politics blindly tried to achieve victory without
heed for the political landscape, which eventually led to the downfall of
Japan. These people hated politics and were in love with the aura of all
things military. They believed strategy and tactics were despicable and
longed to show their martial spirit in direct combat. However, the truth
was that this was just stubborn valor. The government could not be
divorced from the military, because in truth, politics and military matters
were two sides of the same coin, and blindly cleaving to either of them
was a bad thing. However, Japan was now filled with overly-diplomatic
politicians who knew nothing about military matters, and Kanou felt this
would someday lead to the end of Japan. That was how it was when you
had people who stubbornly looked down on the military and pursued
peace at any cost while being guided by emotions as opposed to logic.
“Could you help me investigate the identities of the enemy? I have a bad
feeling about this.”
Kanou’s request made Ltc. Ryuuzaki frown.
“If the enemy has retreated, that would be fine, but hostilities have not
fully ceased yet.”
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“But there should be a way, right? For example, you can’t disguise one’s
race.”
For instance, countries like China or Russia were intensely nationalistic.

In order to ensure the absolutely loyalty of their operatives, they would
not use men from another country. Even on the rare occasion that they
did otherwise, they would not let them become part of such a sensitive
operation.
If they were Chinese, then it would be easier for them to blend in, since
they were Asians like the Chinese.
“Colonel, Saber is near two of the enemy bodies. Please allow us to

advance and verify.”
After receiving his subordinate’s suggestion, he ordered Saber to inspect

the corpses.
While waiting for a reply, Ryuuzaki turned to Kanou.
“What are you thinking about?”
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“Ah? Political problems, of course. I am a politician, after all.”
“But, what does that have to do with investigating enemy bodies?”
“This is Saber. I’ve just inspected the enemy corpses. Something’s

strange here. Permission to use a light.”
“Denied, it will reveal your location to the enemy. In this terrain, any
light from you can be seen out to two klicks away.”
“What did you say was strange?”
Kanou practically snatched the mike away to speak.
“Judging by the shape of the enemy’s faces, they don’t seem like
Asians.”
As Kanou heard this, a chill ran down his spine.
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“Sorry, but please verify their identities. It is crucial that we know where
the enemy came from.”
Ryuuzaki angrily snatched the mike away from Kanou, but after a brief
silence, he shook his head and spoke hoarsely.
“Saber, permission granted to use light. But work fast. After you’re
finished, immediately fall back.”
“This is Saber, the enemies are a black man and a white man!!”
If the enemy were Chinese or Russian, there was no way they would mix
black and white people in a combat unit. As he heard the report, Kanou
made a call to the Prime Minister’s office.
Note
1. Shinjuku 2-chome:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku_Ni-ch%C5%8Dme
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 20
“Mister, Mister President, how did you obtain this data?”
“Motoi, the question is not how I got it, but what will be done with it. Am
I wrong?”
“N-no, you’re absolutely correct.”
There was a pile of faxed documents from America beside Japanese

Prime Minister Motoi, whose forehead was covered in beads of greasy
sweat. These Japanese documents detailed the secret donations,
corruption, and bribery committed by the members of his cabinet.
Although this information came from America, the contents suggested
that they had been produced locally.
It had been only two months since the cabinet was convened. The
conservative councillors were already asking hard questions about the
deployment of the JSDF through the “Gate”. Then there was the ugly
news like the corruption of cabinet members, the injustices they
committed, and the suicide of one of the current ministers. All of these
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together made Motoi break out in goosebumps.
If these documents were released under these conditions, Motoi’s tenure

would end here.
“Fortunately, our investigative agencies managed to intercept these

documents before they reached the editor of the morning news.”
“Thank you very much, Mister President.”
“Oh, think nothing of it, we’re all friends here, aren’t we? That’s the
proof of it, right there.”
“Even so, I must still thank you for your kindness. I owe you a debt of
honor.”
“Well, about that… actually, I had a request for you, Motoi.”
“What would that be?”
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“I heard that there are some high-ranking guests from the Special
Region in Japan, no? I was hoping to invite Her Imperial Highness to visit
the United States by any means necessary.”
“How did you come to know about that?”
“How do you think those documents came to be on your desk, Motoi?”
All Motoi felt was despair born of the grief that national secrets had been
so easily leaked.
This situation was basically like showing your opponent your entire hand
in a card game.
“If that was what you wanted, you should have told us. I would have
gladly relayed your invitation to our guests. I will immediately pass it on
when it is ready.”
“No, no, there is no need to worry yourself. I planned to extend the

invitation directly.”
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“And by directly you mean—”
“Directly. I have already sent my agents to bring word to them.”
“Is that so, but in that case, you will only be able to meet tomorrow. The
guests are to return to the Special Region tomorrow. Were you not
aware of that?”
“That won’t do, Motoi. When you invite a lady guest to your home, if you
don’t treat them poorly enough that they want to go home, I’m sure
they’ll enjoy themselves thoroughly in the party to come. I believe that
moment of joy will make the perfect going-home present. Don’t you
think they would agree?”
“But, Mr. President, it is midnight here in Japan. The guests must be

resting.”
“No, no, good news must be delivered right away, even if you have to
get them up to do it. I believe the guests will joyfully agree, with help
from your side, that is.”
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“That makes no sense!”
“That just won’t do, Motoi. You can’t be shy and timid around women.
Even at the risk of being scolded for being insensitive, one must still
bravely forge forward. After all, the willingness to use forceful means on
occasions is the key to success. I know you Japanese feel that
reservedness is a virtue, but I feel that is your greatest weakness.
Perhaps you think I am unfairly criticizing you, but do bear in mind that if
you continue down this path, you will gain nothing of value. As a host
who is expected to entertain guests, providing too little entertainment
will only upset everyone. Which is why I’m asking, what exactly should
be done if that happens?”
“I thank you for your valuable insights, but I am afraid your methods are
not compatible with our national sentiments.”
“Is that so? Then I shall directly order my agents to directly present my
invitation to the guests from the Special Region. However, your
bodyguards are quite something. So far, we have not yet been able to
make contact with the guests. What should we do, Motoi? I trust you still
remember the proof of our friendship?”
That “proof” was obviously referring to the incriminating documents

sitting on his desk. The Americans had him firmly by the balls and he
would have to give in to them. Even so, he had to minimize the damage
done. That was his duty as Prime Minister. Therefore, Motoi thought as
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hard as he could about his present circumstances. He thought about the

situation, what cards he had to play, and what tricks he could pull before
giving his final answer.
“...All right, but all I can promise you is the removal of the security. If
anything happens to the guests, or if they disappear, I trust you won’t
blame me for that?”
“Of course. My country’s agents are very capable. They will take good
care of our guests.”
Good, he’d gotten the promise.
As Motoi thought about the American President, who was acting like he’d
won this round, he couldn’t help but feel the need to avenge himself on
him somehow. He had made these concessions to avoid opening up fatal
weaknesses in the US-Japan relationship, but it also meant that he had a
chance to foil the President’s plan and reverse their situation. However,
the moment he decided to do that, it would mean the rest of his political
life would be a lost cause. But then again, when you looked at it a
certain way, this Cabinet was riddled with holes, and since it was filled
with rot anyway, he had no qualms about putting it to the torch and
going out with a bang.
“Then, I hope you will take them safely, Mister President. Please have a
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good rest.”
“Of course we will, Motoi. I’m glad you said that. Have a good rest. Oh,
I’m about to have lunch.”
The American President hung up. He seemed to be in a good mood.
***
“Terminate? What do you mean, terminate the security operation for the
guests?!”
Kanou was shouting at the person on the other end of the connection.
Even if it was the Prime Minister himself, Kanou’s tone did not sound like
he cared who the other party was. The orders he had just received had
left him in disarray.
Motoi, on the other end of the line, briefly relayed the intentions of the
President of the United States. If they abided by Motoi’s words, it meant
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that they would be allowing enemy armed forces to take away their
guests. As he watched Kanou gripping the handset in silence, Ltc.
Ryuuzaki turned to his subordinates to order them to obey the Prime
Minister.
“The Grail is broken. Repeat, the Grail is broken. All teams cease combat
operations and fall back to the designated points.”
Nobody would be pleased to be ordered to give up on a job that had

been going very well. But the JSDF troopers had been trained to execute
an order upon reception.
No matter what each of them thought, their training had already taken
over their bodies. They fell back by leaps and bounds, covering each
other as they abandoned their mission.
And so, the points of light on the monitor stood down from their
defensive posture and moved westward.
“What’s going on?”
Kanou had not hung up, and he asked that question angrily. Therefore,
Motoi answered him, “I’m sorry, Mr. Kanou. I’m not happy about it
either. However, they have their hands on the ugly news about the
cabinet members. Our regime is doomed for sure.”
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“So in order to keep yourself in power, you’ll give up everything else?”
“I never said that, it is absolutely not the case. Fortunately, I never

promised the President anything like that. I only said I would withdraw
the guards. I never guaranteed that I would hand our guests over to the
US government. Although I’m not too sure whether it’ll turn out that
way, I’m going to resign my position. I was stuck with a lousy hand
anyway, and once I’m gone, how valuable do you think those secrets
they’re holding will be?”
“You... resign… Motoi, do you know what you’re doing? Your career as a
politician will be over.”
“That’s fine. Besides, I’ll be leaving my name in the history books, so I’m
glad that I made it this far. Then, Kanou, I’ll be leaving the future of
Japan to you.”
Motoi’s final words sounded like he was weeping, and the grinding of
teeth that Motoi heard from Kanou suggested he was not happy at all
that it had turned out this way.
Wars were not just fought on the battlefield, they were also fought in the
meeting room, the Diet, and in the Prime Minister’s Office. War was just
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a thing that changed depending on the theater that it occurred in. In this
way, Motoi had lost his war. However, even in his loss, he revealed that
he had the guts to not accept a complete defeat just like this.
“That... idiot. He was a coward, but he was still trying to look cool until
the end.”
Kanou bit his lip and slowly hung up the phone.
***
Itami woke from his dreams.
In the corner of his dim vision, he saw an unfamiliar ceiling. Normally

speaking, he would not be awake at this hour. He had passed out after
being hit on the head and then fallen asleep, which was why he had
woken up like this. In truth, he would have liked to be able to sleep until
daybreak, but maybe it was because he had been knocked unconscious
that he had woken up so soon. In any case, it was far too early to wake
up.
When he raised his head and looked around, the first thing he saw were
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the female members of the group sleeping together, covered in

blankets. Surprisingly enough, they were not in a drunken heap, but
were simply sleeping normally.
There was a window in the depths of the resort room, to allow guests to
enjoy the scenery outside, and by the window was a chair.
On the chair was a person.
He heard the sound of ice cubes swirling in a glass as someone poured

an amber fluid into it. That someone was soaking in the moonlight,
luxuriating in the scenery outside.
“Haa~”
Slow, lazy breathing. Slightly hurried breathing.
Flushed cheeks. Legs so slender and fine they looked like they were
about to snap.
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The person sitting there was Rory Mercury.
She was not wearing her usual black gothic lolita priestess’ outfit, but a
cotton kimono. Her limbs stuck out of the garment, and her long hair
which reached down to her waist swayed in the wind. Her skin was
spotless. As he watched her, he imagined that he was spying on a young
girl having fun by herself. However, it was because he was a man that
this taboo act excited him. Itami’s attention was thus seized, never to be
released. Her pupils shone lewdly. Her vacant gaze floated through the
air. She moaned softly and sweetly, and her powerless eyes lazily looked
into Itami’s.
“?”
Rory did not seem frightened by the way Itami was looking at her.
Rather, her expression seemed to say, “You saw it, didn’t you?” She
smiled gently, and then laughed quietly. After that, a wicked, playful
look crossed her face, and she extended a slender finger on her left
hand. “Come,” she said as she beckoned him over. Itami felt like he had
been hypnotized.
While Itami was thinking about whether to move, his body had already
made the decision for him. His doubts and his hesitation were wiped
away instantly. Of course, it was only natural that he would be this way.
But as he stood, he felt a heavy weight around his waist.
That was because someone was holding on to it.
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Because of this weight, Itami snapped out of his daze, and his
consciousness returned to him.
He pretended he didn’t hear Rory going “Cheh!” and finally found out
who was holding on to him.
It was Lelei.
Itami carefully disentangled the arms that were holding him, carefully
covered her up with a blanket, and then headed toward Rory.
Itami did not know where the whiskey on the side table had come from,
or when the glasses or ice had appeared there. The way Rory bathed in
the moonlight while holding a slightly trembling glass looked like she
had come out of a picture. Regretfully, she looked far too young. If she
were 20 or so, a lot of men would want to come near her. As a demigod,
her physical age was fixed. “Is it a shame not to be able to grow up?”
Itami asked.
Rory turned to face him.
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“Of course not. Once I ascend to divinity, I can change my form at will…
but in exchange, I will lose the pleasures of the flesh.”
“Isn’t that boring?” Itami asked as he took a glass, added some ice to it,
and then poured roughly half an inch of whiskey into it.
Rory lightly bit her lip and stared at Itami.
“There seem to be people fighting near this place.”
How did she know this? As he thought about it, Itami remembered what
had happened in Italica, the way the spirits of the war dead passed
through Rory’s body to go to the god she believed in. When that
happened, her body would react with sexual excitement. Her sensual
writhing from back then had been seared into his mind. Now that he
thought about it, perhaps the hot breaths she was exhaling were not
entirely due to the alcohol.
“I couldn’t sleep at all because of that, what’s going on out there,

anyway?”
“Even if you ask me, it’s not like I can tell-”
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“It’s like being tortured, Youji, hurry up and think of something!”
“Think of something? What are you saying?”
By now, Itami was too nervous to speak clearly.
“You won’t get it if I don’t say it?”
“Ahhh, in our country’s laws, there’s something called the Child Welfare
Protection Act, so if I touch a kid, I’m doomed.”
“Ara~ so I’m a child, then?”
“You, you look like one, everyone in the world would think so too.”
Rory made a show of looking around, and then said, “I don’t see
everyone in the world looking”. Then, she placed her lips next to Itami’s
ears and whispered “And even if we ended up in that kind of
relationship, I wouldn’t go around talking about it.”
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“Ah, but… it’s really not a good idea…”
“Kukuku… do I really look like a child?”
Rory’s liquid eyes pierced Itami’s soul. The tiny, dextrous tip of her moist
tongue played in the gap between her pink lips. Under Rory’s skilled
hands, Itami was little more than a child. She knew exactly how to
manipulate a man’s heart, and she was very experienced in that field.
She did not need an ample bosom or a slender waist to seduce a man;
they were nothing more than decorations. Leaving lechers aside, there
was no doubt that Rory could easily charm anyone.
“Really, am I a child?”
He couldn’t do this!
Run, run, run! Alarm bells were ringing in Itami’s head. However, his
body betrayed him. Rory drew close enough that he could hear the
rustling of her clothes, and slowly climbed up onto Itami’s lap. She
skilfully used her shoulders, back and waist to press as much of her left
forehead into Itami’s chest as possible. The movements of her hands
made his heart beat harder, and the slight pain of her fingers digging
into him felt incredibly good. After this sensual assault, Rory breathed
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warmly into Itami’s ear, and then she whispered two or three sentences
into his ear, which put him on the ropes. The proof of that was the fact
that his hands were starting to go to her waist.
At this moment, if she wanted to deliver the finishing blow, she could
softly whisper “Hold me”, or playfully say, “Hey, let’s have some fun”.
Which approach she chose was up to her. Catching the prey, removing
all resistance, and then, the feast. Just as she was certain victory was
within her reach, the loud ringing and vibration of a mobile phone
interrupted her.
This was probably what they meant by the word, “Cockblocked”. It was
like pouring a basin of cold water over them, and all her effort was
wasted.
What is this, Rory asked with her eyes, and so, Itami began explaining
what a mobile phone was.
“It doesn’t know how to pick the right time and place, that useless
thing.”
The angry Rory slid off Itami’s knee and left. Itami thought he could see
a black aura rising up from her back, and he thought, “I’m saved”. After
he got his breathing under control, he picked up the mobile phone he
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had placed in a pocket. He took a look at the caller: on the name field
were the two words “His Excellency”.
***
Kidel Heidegger had never heard of Japan’s freshly founded Special

Forces Group being so strong, and he clicked his tongue.
Heidegger had come from the Marines, but under the CIA, all he did
nowadays was clandestine activities. Because of that, it had been a long
time since he had taken part in combat. The US army’s fighting style
relied on overwhelming firepower, raining bullets on their enemies’
heads like sand and attacking with vast quantities of ammunition. If the
enemy hid in a building, they would chuck in a grenade. If they hid
behind a wall in ambush, they would blow away both the wall and the
enemy in one shot. The doctrine they had learned in officer school was
simple and plain — attack the enemy with six times his amount of
firepower. That was focused in his mind. However, they could not do this
during CIA missions. This was because CIA missions usually took place in
locations where such brutal methods were not viable. For instance, they
might take place in peaceful streets, in residential areas and sometimes
in the commercial areas. They could not use guided missiles or rockets
like in the military, and of course, there would be no supporting artillery
fire. What weapons they had were basically technical skill combined with
teamwork, and their tactics were to swiftly locate the enemy, silently
approach to an ideal distance, and defeat him quickly without giving him
any time to react. However, these tactics were based on extensive
information and intricate planning.
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The original plan was to assault the resort used by what they called “the
guests”, eliminate their guards (two to three JSDF personnel, according
to their sources), then swiftly take their two targets away. The reason
why they could not act incautiously in Japan was because their police
response times were very fast. In an instant, they could block off roads,
set up checkpoints, and lock the entire area down. Therefore, the crucial
part of the operation depended on whether or not they could swiftly
escape after doing their job. They had mobilized twenty agents for this,
and after the enemy camouflaged themselves, they set up in ambush in
the forests surrounding the resort, waiting for the enemy to walk into
their trap. The CIA men were not familiar with the area, they were in
darkness, and they were attacked from multiple sides. On their part,
they did not have black fatigues or body armor used for field ops, and
their weapons were only pistols and MP5SD3s. Once they came into
contact with the Japanese Special Forces, even a skilfully assembled
task force would not have been able to do anything.
To think the opposition had such firepower. Somehow, Japan had gotten
wind of an attack and had made their preparations. Half of the twenty
men lying in ambush had been wiped out in an instant.
In any event, it was just bad luck that their attack ran into the powerful
Japanese defense. And this might be the first time the Far East Japan
branch had taken so many losses in a single operation. In truth, once
they had been ambushed, the operation had failed. If they continued
taking losses, even retreat would be difficult. Once Heidegger realized
this, he suggested to his team leader that they retreat. However, the
team leader, Chuck, shook his head.
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He ordered everyone, including Heidegger, to wait for instructions, and

then picked up his radio handset.
“Roger! Kim, don’t touch Goldman! Is Tanaka still alive?”
“No, he got one between the eyes.”
“Son of a bitch. Didn’t they say the opposition was just a bunch of
bodyguards? This is completely different from the briefing!”
The normally calm and collected Roger could not help but curse and
swear at this.
The Japanese did not like guns, and when they opened fire they would
aim for the limbs, and they only used handguns, so they would be easily
defeated. Roger and the others had heard the rumors, and their
personal experiences confirmed it. However, the actual conditions on
the ground were different. Those bastards had not shown a single scrap
of mercy as they fired on him and his guys.
“All right, Top’s settled things. After a while, the JSDF will withdraw, and
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then we’ll proceed as planned.”
The team leader Chuck said this in a tone that suggested that
everything had been taken care of, but when Roger heard those words:
“What! As planned? Was losing this many guys part of the plan?!”
“The Japanese defense was stronger than anticipated, but Top’s dealt
with that by political means.”
“So why didn’t they do that from the start? That way we wouldn’t have
had to sacrifice so many guys for the job!”
“The White House had to burn a valuable card that they were going to
use elsewhere because of your incompetence.”
Just as Roger was about to strike Chuck, Heidegger sensed that

something was wrong, and hastily interposed himself between the two
of them.
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“Get a grip, Roger! We’re still on the mission! And Chuck, you’d better
watch your mouth.”
With looks of mutual hatred, the two of them spat and turned away from
each other.
“All right, since the problem’s been settled by political negotiations, then
let’s make good use of this chance. It should be about time. Peter,
Roger, you two are on point. Move out.”
Roger was thinking, ‘Why are you treating me like this?’, as he glanced
at Heidegger, but after Peter tightened his grip on his weapon and
whispered, “Move out”, Roger had no choice but to follow.
Using their trump card meant that Top did not trust anyone on the
ground at all. After they stood down from their alert state, they closed
the distance to the resort, keeping an eye open in case there were still
more guardians within. They sent people to watch the exits and picked
the garden for an entry point. They already knew where the target room
was from the resort employee they paid off, and with their eyes on their
surroundings, the CIA team slowly approached the “Guest’s” room.
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 21
Sometimes, things occurred that seemed like tragedies to the people on

the scene but appeared as a comical farce to people watching from a
distance. The news of how the Japanese government had invited
important guests from the Special Region to discuss future relations with
them sent ripples throughout the world’s intelligence communities, and
they all wanted to be the first to know more. However, the decision to
come to Tokyo had been hastily decided, and the guests would only be
staying for a brief three days and two nights, so there was no time to
learn more about them. The governments of various countries had been
given no choice but to plan their next moves based on inadequate
information.
When the United States of America heard that Japan had hidden the fact
that they had invited guests from the Special Region to their country to
form good relationships with them, they were unhappy, to say the least.
More precisely, they were jealous.
Perhaps it might be easier to explain the situation this way: Imagine a
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Japanese boy meeting a pretty girl, and then an American boy — who
thinks of himself as the center of his world — also wants to meet the girl
as well. However, the Japanese boy keeps the fact that he knew the girl
a secret, and responds by playing dumb even when directly asked.
However, in matters like these, the first one to make a move was the
winner. Even if the American boy could understand and praise the
protagonist of Natsume Soseki’s “Kokoro”, he could not understand the
feelings of guilt and frustration in his heart. It was only natural to the
American boy — who believed that victory justified everything — that he
should kidnap the beauty and take her back to his country. Even if the
Japanese government protested, all he would need to do was reply,
“What guests are you talking about?” and the matter would be settled.
After all, the Japanese government was also acting on this in secret, so
they could not take too harsh a stance. After that, all they would need to
do was build a strong relationship with the guests, and then they could
do as they pleased. For example, if Japan wanted to build ties with the
countries on the other side of the “Gate”, they would have to get
through the US first as an intermediary, and beg them for the right of
passage. Because of this, even without sufficient intelligence, the CIA
brass ordered their Far East Branch to begin the events which led to this
farce, and this way of thought was not exclusive to the Americans.
The thing that made it a comedy was that it was not just the Americans
who thought they were the center of the world. Other people had also
decided to take action the same way they had.
And so, all the men who planned to snatch the “guests” from their beds
revealed themselves at once, in front of the bedroom of the sleeping
beauties.
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There were only 12 people left from the Japanese branch of the People’s
Republic of China’s Ministry of State Security. From the Russian
Federation, there were only eight of their SVR agents remaining. Nine
people remained from the CIA’s task force. And so, the three groups
suddenly encountered each other. All of them were involved in illegal
activities on foreign soil, so they were all multilingual, and they carried
nothing on them which might reveal their national affiliation. Their
fatigues were bought from military surplus or survival stores, and they
all wore balaclavas. Their weapons were all sourced from different
countries. Therefore, even an elite agent would not be able to tell where
they came from at a glance.
However, they were very clear on one thing.
That was to say, the other two groups in front of them were the enemy.
After all, they had just been mown down in a one-sided slaughter with
nothing to do but die. They would kill anyone suspicious whom they saw.
In the past, the three nations had all gone through similar training
exercises. Therefore, everyone but their comrades was an enemy.
“......!?”
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“......!!”
“......!”
If an opening appeared, even for just a second, they would take

advantage of it and rush in. After staring dumbly at each other for a few
seconds, they managed to react at last, and hastily pointed their guns at
their enemies. However—
The shutters of a nearby window flew open, and a girl in a black dress
landed on a nearby boulder.
“Gentlemen, thank you for coming all the way here tonight.”
Their reflexes, honed through long years of intensive training, were

thrown into disarray by the girl who stood just a few meters away.
They were aware that there was a young girl among their targets.
However, they had not expected that girl to leap out and stand in front
of them. Naturally, they would open fire if she tried to get in the way.
After all, they were black ops agents. Such ruthlessness was only to be
expected. But if they did not pose a threat, then they would try to avoid
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harming the other party. Therefore, they pointed their muzzles at her on
reflex, but they hesitated before pulling the trigger.
As Rory saw this, a smile crossed her face, an expression which suited
her nickname of Rory the Reaper. Right after that, a black maelstrom of
death raged forth.
“Ufu~”
Something unbelievable had happened. Someone who looked like a

delicate young girl was swinging a mighty halberd that gleamed in the
light of the moon and the agents’ torches. Then, while her opposition
was struggling to make sense of this incredible sight, every swing and
every hit she made claimed the life of one of the American, Chinese and
Russian agents.
In the space of two breaths, the survivors finally managed to regain

control of themselves.
All they could do now was retreat behind cover and return fire. However,
all this did was add to the confusion.
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They pointed their silenced weapons at the girl, intending to fill her with
their highly lethal 4.6mm and 5.7mm rounds, but the moment the girl
sensed their gun barrels pointing at her, she leapt aside gracefully
before they could pull the trigger.
They opened fire on the other men of unknown provenance as well.
If any of the agents were hit, they and their comrades would return fire
on the shooters. The three-sided firefight began amidst the black Gothic
Lolita’s storm of carnage.
The black Goth girl floated daintily through the air like a feather, turning
and tumbling in mid-air to evade bullets. If she had wings on her back,
they would be black.
After landing on all fours like a beast, she moved nimbly, pressing the
agents into melee range in an instant, and then cutting them down with
her halberd.
Even these elite agents forgot their tactics and training amidst the hail
of bullets and the black storm raging around them. It was all they could
do to stay alive. To them, everyone except their own countrymen were
enemies. They fired wildly, and were shot to death in turn.
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The destructive power of the girl’s halberd made a mockery of their

Aramid-fiber body armor. With every swing, she cleaved a man’s body in
half.
The agents had never been trained to deal with this sort of unreasonable
destructive power. As they thought, “How do we fight someone like
this?”, the urge to flee rose within them.
The resort’s yard had a small pool, lanterns and a large boulder, all
dotted with plants and trees and illuminated by the silver moonlight.
Before they could reflect on the fact that the landscape accurately
reflected the wabi-sabi aesthetic, the agents cursed the fact that there
were too many blind spots here, and they were not experienced with
combat in such cramped quarters.
The black Goth girl made skillful use of this terrain, swinging behind the
large boulder to evade a hail of bullets before coming out from the other
side to press her attack.
The hanging lanterns were struck with bullets and sailed gracefully into
the pool, where the carp floated on the surface, their white bellies up.
The vegetation, carefully tended to by the gardeners, was smashed to
smithereens in an instant.
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Although they had already been reminded that they were not to point
their muzzles at the resort under any circumstances, amidst this chaotic
battle, several bullets struck home into the building, leaving bullet holes
in rainwater pipes on the outside and smashing wine glasses on the
inside.
Exchanging fire, concealing themselves, moving when there was an

opening, and then shooting again. These people and their valuable
techniques were killed off, one by one.
The American team leader Chuck was hit by a ricochet early on and fell
to the ground, but his patriotism and sense of duty would not let him die
before he did one last thing for his country. As he watched his comrades
fall one by one, he reached for his wireless and softly gasped a report.
“The operation... is a failure. We encountered unexpected resistance

and were destroyed.”
“What happened out there? Was it the Japanese?”
“...No... it… it was too chaotic... was the black Goth… girl....”
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“What happened? Answer me!”
Deaf to the shouts coming over the wireless, Chuck passed quietly into
death.
***
Heidegger took a hit in his right thigh.
He hid behind a stone lantern and withdrew an elastic bandage from his
first aid kit. As he checked his remaining ammunition, Roger, who was
taking cover behind the large boulder, took out an enemy trying to circle
around him. As he turned back, he saw it.
An indescribable feeling developed in his heart as he saw the merciless

slaughter.
“You monster!”
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Heidegger saw Roger sent flying before his eyes, and fired at the black
Goth Loli girl.
“You monster, you monster!”
But the girl blocked the incoming bullets with the huge blade of her
blood-soaked halberd. After he emptied his magazine at her, the
gigantic halberd cleaved down.
He narrowly evaded the attack, but he still felt like he had been hit
somewhere. Heidegger was now lying in the small pond, and the other
enemies looked like they were going to follow up and gun him down.
He raised his MP5 to shoot back, but the magazine was blasted away by
the enemy and bullets spilled over the ground. He did not have time to
change magazines, so Heidegger reached for his SIG P239 with his left
hand. This was when he realized that he no longer had a left arm.
“Cheh...”
He reached for the Makarov in his thigh holster with his right hand. An
enemy drew his gun at the same time as he did. He poured his strength
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into his intact left leg and launched himself away, away from the bullets
of his enemy. The enemy too was retreating, and escaped from under
the barrel of his gun.
“Son of a bitch…!”
As the bullets flew through the air, Heidegger reloaded his MP5 with one
hand, every bullet that went in filling the weapon with his killing intent.
He raised his gun to the air, not caring about anything besides shooting.
Then, a fiery heat consumed his chest, his face and his waist, and he
collapsed to the ground under the weight of gravity. He wanted to
change his magazine, but his hands simply clutched his gun and did not
listen to him. The strength was draining from his body, and he thought
he could smell the scent of death in the air.
“Son of...a bitch…”
After his vision vanished like a switched-off television, he stopped

breathing at last.
As silence returned to the resort’s garden, there was nobody left alive
who saw the girl fight.
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Rory’s skirt swayed gently in the cold winter wind.
The surviving carp in the pool were thrashing on the surface of the
water.
Tuka, who had brought a compound bow to help Rory, breathed a sigh of
relief.
Itami, Lelei, Tomita and the others were hiding in the depths of the
room. When they saw Rory smiling while covered in blood, standing in
the middle of the corpse-strewn garden, they could not help but feel a
chill down their spine.
When the incident occurred, the Ichinotani Situation Room could only
watch dumbly as the unexpected battle unfolded before their eyes.
“Was it infighting?”
“What the hell just happened!?”
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The camouflaged dirigible drone — loaded with third-generation night-

vision gear, high-definition cameras and directional microphones — was
transmitting data nonstop. Of course, that data included how the three
teams that attacked the resort had started shooting at each other.
“Oh my god, what just happened? Can someone tell me?”
Kanou was looking for answers, but there were none for him. After all,
nobody could make sense of what had just happened.
In addition, the sight of a young girl swinging around a gigantic halberd

only intensified the confusion. After all, it was far too unreal a sight for
anyone to accept.
“Holy shit! That girl’s one of those people who put on a stone mask and
suck people’s blood, right?”
These words suited the manga-reading Kanou very well. His extensive
experience with manga meant that he could at least rationalize her
abilities in his mind.
The battle ended with the deaths of everyone except the girl.
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As time went by, the corpses scattered throughout the garden began to
cool down. As the residual heat in the bodies drained away, their
signatures in the infrared spectrum began weakening, and their bodies
slowly disappeared from the eyes of the night-vision cameras.
“In any case, let’s handle it with Case Three.”
One of the officers snapped out of his stupor, his mind restarting as he
began giving orders. Case Three involved specialists from the police
cleaning up the scene. Because they were working according to plan,
they began their tasks without any delays. The specialists started
loading the corpses into body bags and recovering the leftover weapons
and ammunition (although for some reason, they did not manage to
collect all of them), removing the traces of the firefight and taking any
wounded or survivors back to their unit to be taken care of. In addition,
they asked any witnesses for their help (silence) and so on. Also, they
contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other related parties to ask
or hint to them “An incident happened, do you know anything about it?”
Of course, no country would honestly answer that question. Be they

Russia, China, Korea, Iran, or France, their embassies would only reply,
“We don’t know. It has nothing to do with us. To think a tragedy like this
occurred, what a shame.” and similar answers. This time around, they
would probably all deny their involvement as well.
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The problem was that the Americans answered their question with, “My
boss has already discussed things with your boss. What should we do?”
Because the Japanese side was still unclear on what was going on, they
replied, “Please send someone to take a look at the bodies”. There was
no reason to refuse, so they were sure that the request would be
accepted. After inspecting and dissecting the bodies, the American
Examiner would say “2/3s of the wounds on the body were caused by
the Russians and Chinese”. The Japanese coroner would concur as well.
They would then classify this incident as an unlucky encounter that
turned into a firefight, but that would be a problem for later. The
question now was whether they should sever ties with America, or at
least, cease all activities against them and deal with the situation
neutrally.
As for the resort that became the stage for all of this, the cover-up was
fairly easy because they were already cooperating with the government
in the first place. After all, this resort was originally run by the Ministry of
Defense. Most of its guests were what they called “stakeholders”. The
very few exceptions tended to be relatives of JSDF or Ministry of Defense
personnel who were lodged here as regular guests. At breakfast time,
they asked “What was all that racket last night?” and the explanation
was “There were some military otaku playing survival games in the
mountains out back, but they must have something wrong with their
heads because they ended up taking things into the garden. The police
post sent out some people to arrest them, and after a good scolding,
they had to clean up the mess they made. Something like that.”
“Really, they must have no sense at all to play wargames in a place like
this.”
“Well, I guess the JSDF are all like that~ I hope my Hiroshi will be fine
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and won’t be led astray.”
As they spoke with what were probably the middle-aged mothers of their
servicemen, the staff who knew what was going on felt the ache of not
being able to share what they knew.
***
Elsewhere, Itami’s group was fleeing.
As the hunting hounds began fighting with each other, Rory had slain
them all, but Itami was not nearly naive enough to think the hunters
behind them would give up. After they swiftly packed their things, they
left the resort before the sun came up.
Tomita mumbled, “Seems like we’re always running into this kind of
thing.”
After walking along the streets for some time, they found a bread van
that was stopped, but had its engine running.
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If it was a getaway vehicle for the people who attacked the resort, one
van would probably not be enough. It would not be strange if there were
similar vehicles around it. However, there were no other vans within line
of sight. In truth, having several vehicles with idling engines clustered
together on a rural road would probably arouse the suspicion of the local
authorities. Therefore, any vehicles used for escape would need to be
spaced out of sight of each other. Itami did not know this, and after
realizing that thinking too much about this would be pointless, he
decided to take action.
After receiving Itami’s signal, Tomita swiftly circled around the van from
the blind spot on its right side, staying out of sight of the rear view
mirror as he closed in on the foreigner sitting in the driver’s seat. He
pointed the muzzle of his looted H&K MP7 at the man’s head while Itami
approached from the front. He smiled politely, and said, “Sorry about
that, but would you mind getting out of the van?” as he revealed a
looted Makarov pistol. The driver was a big Russian man, and he exited
the vehicle with his hands up.
“He’s a bad guy so I can shoot him, right? Can I? Can I at least hit him?”
Kuribayashi said as she tilted her head up to take in the foreigner who
was far taller than her. At the same time, she was holding her looted FN
P90 at the ready. The way she spoke suggested that she was still a little
drunk.
“In any case, what are we going to do about him?” Tomita said as he
forced the man down on the ground. The man realized he was in mortal
danger, and obeyed without a struggle.
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“But then how are we going to incapacitate him? We don’t have ropes
and we can’t knock people out like in manga. We might kill him by
accident. Or we could just give him two in the back of the head, that
ought to solve our problems. Want to try it?”
As Kuribayashi said this, she removed the big white man’s handgun
which he was storing in a shoulder holster. All the weapons and ammo
she revealed in her thorough, head-to-toe search were confiscated, of
course.
“Thanks for the extra weapon and ammo. And this is a PDW too. This is
some cutting edge stuff. Ah, what a haul, what a haul~”
Kuribayashi’s inability to conserve ammunition was her one flaw as a

soldier. With all the ammo she had taken, her baggage probably
weighed several times as much as her. Just then, Lelei showed up.
“We just need to incapacitate him and not kill him, right?”
“Do you have something in mind?”
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“I do.”
Lelei extended her hand at the back of the man who was lying prone on
the ground, and chanted a long verse in mixed tones, like a “one-man
chorus”. Strictly speaking, this might be like speaking with one’s
diaphragm, except the sounds she was making were like bird chirps.
After a while, the white man sighed deeply.
“He will sleep like this until morning.”
“That, that’s awesome!”
Kuribayashi’s exclamation seemed to speak for everyone present. They

all felt the same way.
The gasps coming from the Japanese who were seeing magic for the first
time might have been like the uninitiated watching an illusionist. Lelei,
on the other hand simply got onto the van with a totally unconcerned
expression, followed by Rory, Piña, Bozes, Risa and Tuka. Tomita was in
the driver’s seat, Itami was in the front passenger seat, and the skinny
Kuribayashi was squeezed between them. However, the plan to head for
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Tokyo was aborted by Itami.
“If we charge straight to Ginza like this, we might run into another
ambush.”
“Then what should we do? You’ve got a point, but right now the other
side of the “Gate” might be safer than this one. I think it would be better
to head there as quickly as possible.”
“What a joke, the war zone’s safer than here. This vacation’s a bust,
you’d best compensate me for it, Lieutenant.”
Itami raised a fist to answer Kuribayashi.
“Nonsense, I haven’t rested at all either. I need to get leave on

December 29 to 31 from Yanagida, no matter what.”
“I don’t know what you plan on doing for those few days, but I’ll take
mine some other time.”
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“Same here, I don’t want to get pulled into something else by you.”
Kuribayashi and Tomita thought the same way. Lelei translated their
dialogue for the others, and then Piña asked a question in a somewhat
reserved tone.
“There is something I would like to know. Why must we run around and
hide like rats?”
“I’d like to know too, Lieutenant. It’s been weird since the start, what’s
going on?”
After hearing their questions, Itami paused to think.
“Actually…”
“Actually?”
“I have no idea.”
“Lieutenant?”
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Kuribayashi’s eyes were narrowed into a straight line as she pointed her
P90 at Itami. To repeat what was said earlier, the alcohol still had not
worn off, and she seemed quite trigger-happy.
“Watch your words, or I’ll put a cap in your ass.”
Itami raised his hands, like he was calming a wild horse, and then gently
said, “I’ll explain.”
“You’re just raising your own death flag,” Risa’s voice came from behind.
“Enough nonsense!”
“Please wait, Kuribayashi-dono. You are Itami-dono’s subordinate, right?

Please, do not be so unreasonable. I believe this is a political problem.”
Piña interrupted them.
“I understand Itami-dono’s situation. There are some things which
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cannot be publicly admitted to. Of course, this is just a theory on my

part, but I hope you will listen.”
“...”
“Let me verify something before we start. You will not betray us, right?”
Itami shook his head and answered, “Certainly not.”
“I believe Bozes and myself should have enjoyed a peaceful vacation

with you, correct? However, right from the beginning, all sorts of
problems have been taking place, like the sudden change in
transportation, the frequent changes in destination, and how we had to
dismount that hellish subway thing when we were moments from our
destination and so on. Granted, that was largely for the benefit of Rory-
dono, so it could not be helped. After the inn we were supposed to
reside in caught fire, we took shelter in Risa-dono’s home to evade the
ones who set the fire. I also believe that was a good decision, However,
all these incidents happened in a mere two days, and last night, the
resort we were staying in was attacked, forcing us to hurriedly escape.
Far too many things have occurred. Our guards have been stripped
away and we have been staked before a beastman. Perhaps it has
something to do with this country’s decision makers. I came to be a
mediator between Nihon and the Empire, and the negotiations I will be
mediating will probably pertain to peace. Therefore, I realized that in this
world, there are forces which desire this peace, and those who do not,
and these two forces are currently in conflict. Am I wrong?”
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 22
A highway service area on the outskirts of Tokyo...
It was 5 AM, and most people were still sleeping. However, a truck was
racing toward the city.
The service area’s parking lots were nearly empty of people, but filled
with morning mist.
The sounds of three girls’ footsteps carried over the mist. They watched
carefully for cars as they jogged out.
One of them looked like she was 12 or 13. She was a jet-black demigod.
The other seemed 14 or 15. She was a wise wizard.
The last appeared to be 16 or 17. She was a Wood Elf.
Itami sat in the front passenger seat of the van and watched them as he
thought. Could he have imagined that there would be such beautiful girls
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in the world?
Risa, in the back seat, asked Itami a question.
“So, which of those three do you like best?”
Itami pretended he had not heard and kept silent. However, Risa
continued talking to force an answer out of him.
“By looks, it should be the Elf girl.”
“Ah…”
“For personality, it should be the black Goth girl.”
“Mm…”
“And the silver-haired girl makes you want to protect her.”
As Itami heard this, he mused that Risa probably knew him better than
any other woman in the world.
“You really understand me, huh.”
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“How long do you think I’ve been with you, anyway?”
Risa kicked at the back of Itami’s seat while she banged away on her
laptop’s keys.
The laptop was currently connected to a mobile network.
Tomita and Kuribayashi shrugged as they heard the exchange of the

couple in the bread truck. Tomita rubbed his shoulders, sore from a
night of driving from Izu, Hakone to Tokyo.
The three girls got back in after opening the van’s sliding door.
“?”
“Owie,” Itami said as he grabbed his head. Rory looked scornfully at him,
thinking that he must have said something stupid to be bonked on the
head by Risa.
Rory and the others were holding cans of amazake, red bean soup with
mochi, potato stew, cocoa and other strange and wondrous things, and
they distributed them to everyone except Itami. This was the first time
they had encountered vending machines, so they cheerfully helped
themselves. However, they probably did not know what they had
bought.
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“What about me?”
Itami said that, but it must have been lonely to be the only one to
receive anything. Itami asked Rory, but she ignored him and headed to
the back of the bread truck. She seemed to be sulking about something.
“Ah well, forget about it, then. I didn’t want to drink red bean soup
anyway,” Itami muttered as he sagged his shoulders. This must be what
psychologists called “sour grapes”.
“What did you do now?”
“Beats me. I didn’t do anything.”
In relationships between men and women, one could do nothing and still
be blamed for it. Risa realised this through her woman’s instinct and
decided to change the topic, in order to ward off the unhappy feelings
boiling in her heart.
“All right, the bait’s in place. Now all we have to do is wait.”
“What?”
Rory was looking at Risa’s laptop’s LCD screen from over her shoulder,
but there were no pictures. All she saw was words, so she got sick of it
quickly. Tuka was sleeping. Lelei was looking in awe at Risa, who was
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easily using the notebook computer she had bought.
“At 1400 today, Rory Mercury, Tuka Luna Marceau and Lelei La Lelena
will offer flowers to the plaque for the victims of the Ginza Incident, and
then they will return to the Special Region.”
This information was posted on a certain famous message board. In

response, the net exploded with worship for them.
“How about that? You think it’ll work?”
Itami turned to look behind the front passenger seat’s headrest, at the
LCD screen, while slurping cup noodles from a supermarket. The noise
combined with the spraying soup made Risa frown.
“It’s good. A whole bunch of people will gather to see them… hey, stop
it. Don’t eat ramen on top of a person’s head.”
Risa continued her work.
“Judging by the online reaction to the National Diet telecast, it should be

fine. We should be able to gather about a thousand people or more, like
the “live guerrilla performances” of famous rock bands.”
In order to protect themselves from their enemies in Ginza, Risa

suggested that they should mobilize a huge gang of “big friends”, in
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order to protect them as they returned to the “Gate”. The Americans,

Chinese and Russian could not use extreme methods under the
observation of a large crowd. Of course, there was still the chance they
might be shot at in the middle of the street, but it was safer than trying
to dodge assassins by themselves.
Of course, after seeing this plan, Itami gave it two thumbs up.
“In any case, I need to keep going before the sun comes up. Sempai,
you should sleep for now.”
After hearing Risa, Itami obeyed. He leaned his weight back on the back
of the chair and fell asleep, like Piña and the others.
“...Also, sempai?
Risa was talking as she was banging away at the keyboard.
“What’s up?”
“You should probably go visit your mother soon.”
“...........................................................................”
Itami’s silence was an ironclad refusal, and Risa’s body froze up. Then,
he quietly said, “Now’s not good,” suggesting he did not want to talk
about this any further.
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***
Piña’s eyes were closed, but she still heard what passed between Itami
and Risa.
The two of them were supposed to be divorced, but they sounded like
they were still getting along pretty well. Of course, Piña could not
understand what they were talking about, but because she could not
understand the content, she studied their voices and tone and came to
that conclusion. Perhaps he was particularly sensitive about her. That
said, it was still quite troubling that she could not understand their
words. For all she knew, they might be discussing something important
which could determine the fate of the Empire and herself. With that in
mind, Piña willed herself to learn Japanese by any means necessary.
Of particular note were the forces on this side of the “Gate” which did
not wish the peace talks to take place. Piña was especially cautious
about them. According to Itami, the top three strongest nations in this
world were America, Russia and China in that order. She became angry
because the Empire’s fate would be decided by the three of them
fighting with each other. At the very least, she hoped that she could
cooperate with the peace-loving factions, and ensure the Empire’s
survival through diplomacy, because there was no way they could beat
them in terms of military power. Even if she could not defeat her
opponent, however, she had no intention of simply letting the heavens
decide her fate. As a member of the royal family, she was forbidden
from doing so.
Letting the heavens decide was a foolish move, because the heavens
would bring both good and bad things.
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The nobility of the Empire could only rely on their personal strength in
the end. Because of that, she needed to understand what was
happening on this side of the “Gate”. Japan’s situation was obvious
enough, but she also needed to understand what was going on in the
countries called America, Russia and China. She could not do these
things by herself. After returning to Italica, she would have to rely on
Hamilton, Panache, Nicolatica, Suisses, and the other members of her
knight band to help her. After returning to the Empire, she would have to
report to the Emperor. Then there was the matter of persuading the
Senate.
She had recovered a “gun” from the resort. She had concealed it about
her without letting Itami know, and after confirming the feeling she got
from it, she knew that she had to bring it back to the Empire in one
piece, no matter the cost. There was also the matter of the “art” she
saw here, and Piña quietly gathered her determination.
***
Today, the TVs were showing a special news bulletin. The morning
papers used a whole page of their respective publications to write about
how the Prime Minister was suddenly rushed to a hospital and had
announced his resignation. Vast numbers of camera crews encircled the
Tokyojoshi Medical University Hospital building, along with many
reporters and broadcasters holding their microphones and narrating the
events with shocked looks on their faces to the entire nation. The
opposition parties slammed the ex-PM for “abandoning his duty”, even
twisting his name into a pun to that effect. Thanks to this news, a group
of people who did not want to be exposed in front of others made their
move. The first to discover this was an interviewer for the daytime
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program “Osomatsu-sama deshita!!”
Their three-man team was comprised of the usual cameraman, boom

operator, and female interviewer. They went around asking people on
the street for their reactions to the PM’s hospital stay and his
subsequent resignation. However, the responses from the people on the
streets of Ginza were all the same. Most people would stiffen up and
give excessively formal answers when under the camera. In other words,
they all replied, “Really? Why the hurry?” with shocked expressions.
Those who were critical of the current administration went “Well,
resigning was expected, right?” and “How irresponsible” over and over
again. Just like the typical reaction to weird news, they would say: “That
guy? I thought he would do something like that sooner or later.” They
were template responses one would expect when gathering reactions to
scandals like this.
They would use up to ten… no, up to a hundred clips at a time. The clips
would cover all sorts of positive and negative reactions from the people.
The editor would go through the expected and unexpected material and
present it in a way that left the best impression on the audience.
Therefore, the ability of an interviewer to collect useful footage was a
measure of their skill.
That said, the rookie interviewer Kuribayashi Nanami did not understand
this precept yet. She had thrust her mike into a passing man’s face for
the umpteenth time, asking his opinion about the PM’s hospital stay. Her
boilerplate questions got boilerplate answers, which the cameraman
dutifully recorded. However, what the producer wanted was not “model
answers”, but “exciting answers”, and so far, she had only collected
model answers, or offshoots of those model answers. Naturally, much of
the material she gathered was unusable. The cameraman and boom
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operator were becoming demoralized. The director said, “Bring me back

some footage we can use”, while the producer said, “Can’t you guys
work a little harder?” After all, there was a female reporter who started
alongside her that was already hosting a regular program.
She resolved to work harder to produce something usable. She

considered if there were any flaws in her presentation; the way she
spoke, the questions she asked, the way she held the mike… she even
wondered if things would go better if she should change clothes to
emphasise her big breasts. However, her crew asked if she wanted to be
remembered only for her looks, and she decided against it.
She sighed as she looked around for people to approach. Ginza was a
busy place, and she should not have been worried about not being able
to find anyone to interview. Then, she sensed it. There was something
odd about the crowds today.
Ginza was famous for its crowded streets, and most of the time, the
crowd would enter through the north, wander through the center, and
leave through the south, or move from east to west. However, the flow
of people halted in front of her eyes. They were obviously not waiting for
a traffic light. Yet there was a horde of men gathered by the side of the
road, which was not a good place to wait.
It wasn’t just one or two of them who felt this way either. Most of the
passers-by felt it was annoying and stopped, as though they were
waiting for something.
“Is there something special going on today?”
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The boom operator replied, “Haven’t heard anything.”
The cameraman calmly turned his camera on the crowd standing by the
side of the road and said,
“There’s more and more of them.”
One after the other, they stood still. The customers who were supposed
to be buying things did their best to squeeze into the group. This
situation seemed very strange indeed.
“Is an idol going to be performing a live guerilla concert?”
“Mr. Cameraman, please keep filming.”
Upon hearing Nanami’s words, the cameraman turned his lens around.
“I got it. Before that, you should contact the people on top, right?”
Nanami, drunk on the idea that she might be getting an exclusive scoop,
had forgotten the most basic task of reporting back to her superiors. She
hastily whipped out her mobile phone after the cameraman reminded
her.
***
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The station chief of the CIA’s Japan branch, Graham Morris, was unhappy
about the emergency mobilization of his men. He was waiting for the
people codenamed “the guests” outside the JSDF’s Ginza Garrison,
which encompassed an area 200 meters on each side and which was
sealed off by chain link fences.
There was only one gate into the Ginza Garrison.
In front of that gate, there was a plaque erected in memory of the

victims of the Ginza Incident, and until this day, people still kept coming
forward to offer flowers to them.
Their mission was to stealthily and swiftly abduct “the guests”, then
speed them back to the United States.
The Japanese government should have been taken care of.
They had not expected the Prime Minister to invalidate the cards they
held with his resignation. At the very least, the promise not to interfere
was still in effect. The ones they had to be wary of were the Chinese and
the Russians. The team they sent to Hakone had been wiped out, and
according to the report they got from Chuck, it was because they
encountered the Chinese and Russians there as well and engaged in a
three-sided fire fight. If one looked closely, one could see foreign faces
everywhere. They might not have all their agents here, but there were
enough to maintain a constant presence. That was what his instincts told
him.
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Eliminate the Russian and Chinese interference while snatching the

guests. It was a difficult operation, but not impossible for them. Any
country would have difficulty operating in a busy place like Ginza.
However, the numbers in front of them were increasing without end, and
he asked one of his subordinates about it.
“Are there any special events scheduled here today?”
“Not that I know of.”
“But the amount of people gathering here is pretty abnormal.”
And so, by the time he realized it, Ginza’s streets were overflowing with
people.
***
The Chuo Line, Sobu Line and Yamanote Line had a simultaneous line
fault that delayed the trains coming into Shinjuku Station. The sun
blazing overhead was hot and bright, so much so that it felt like being
stuffed into a box, and the stress it created was rapidly fermenting into a
kind of aggression. Because the pedestrian paths in the center could not
accommodate all the people, they spilled out onto the roads and blocked
the way of the cars.
“It looks like there’s thousands of people out there. Maybe over ten
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thousand?”
Ginza Central Police Station’s Traffic Control Chief Iwasaki was receiving
a report from a patrolman. The massive jam out there kept the police
cars from moving. The officers were proceeding to the scene on foot, but
there was a frightening amount of people present. At a glance, it looked
like an unplanned demonstration of some sort. The people here filled the
sidewalks and spilled out onto the roads. It looked like they were waiting
for something.
After seeing the television camera crew, the policemen called out to
them.
“What are all these people gathered here for?”
The man the police called out to looked confused and fearful of the
policemen, but just then, the cheerful and energetic female reporter
answered on his behalf.
“Everyone seems to be gathered here to see the girls from the Special
Region.”
Nanami had left the cameraman at the place where he had the best
view of the flower offerings, waiting for the chance to take a good shot.
The crews from the other channels could not get into Ginza because of
the traffic jam and the sheer volume of humanity in their way. In their
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place were rows of dozens of video cameras and tripods, which were
obviously not there for interviews. They radiated a different kind of heat
than Nanami’s cameraman. After the department chief said, “Make sure
you get a good interview. If it gets published, I’ll give you the
department prize”, Nanami had an energetic look on her face.
***
“What should we do now?”
Tomita was at the driver’s seat and he was getting worried because the
huge crowds caused a traffic jam which left them immobile. Cars could
drive to Shinbashi, but they had to stop there. Frustrated drivers honked
continuously, and some even started swearing and cursing at each other
because of the horns. The police officers were desperately blowing on
their whistles and trying to direct traffic, but because this was a sudden
occurrence, they did not have enough people to handle the situation.
“Aw crap. I didn’t expect it to get so big…” Risa said as she grabbed her
head.
Her predictions were completely off the mark.
The information about Tuka, Rory and Lelei appearing in Ginza had
spread through the Net in an instant. People had gathered from all over
Japan to see them, and an initial estimate put their numbers at around
40’000 people. The maximum capacity of the Tokyo Dome was 45’000
people, to put that number into perspective.
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“I-Itami-dono. Where did these vast crowds come from?”
“Are, are they planning to fight a war with someone?”
Piña and Bozes had terrified expressions on their faces.
The faces of Lelei, Tuka and Rory were hidden by the flowers they had
bought along the way to offer to the dead.
“We can’t move at all like this. What should we do?”
To Tomita’s question, Itami could only reply, “We walk.”
“But, don’t you think it’ll be dangerous if we go on foot?”
“It’ll be fine.”
Rory’s smile from amongst the flowers was her answer.
She held her unwrapped halberd in her right hand, while the left had the
flowers she was going to give. Then she opened the van door and got
out. Sitting down for a long time had made her body stiff, so she
stretched her back with an “Mmmm~”. Then she tucked her halberd
under her armpit and asked someone from the crowd, “Teenager A”, a
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question.
“Where is Gin Zar?”
And so...
After seeing this, Risa said:
“It was like a scene from those epic movies where the heroes could part
the seas. The people in front of her simply made a path.”
Note
PM Motoi’s name is written 本位, which can also be read as Hon’i, or

“neglect”.
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Vol. 2 :
Chapter 23
Sadly, there were some people in this world who abandoned reason and
allowed their emotion to rule them. For instance, crazed killers running
amok. There were also those murderers who hated monks so much that
they even hated their cassocks as well. There were those who would
even turn their blades on their targets’ family members.
They would also turn their emotions on the wrong targets. Sometimes
they would go after people who were completely unrelated. In the case
where their hatred transferred to the perpetrator’s family, the sins of the
fathers would be passed on to their sons, as in how debts would be left
to them or their relatives to pay, in the barbaric Roman way. However,
those were how civilizations from 2000 years ago did things, because
they were not as spiritually mature as people now.
However, to the victims of the Ginza Incident, Rory, Lelei and Tuka, as
guests from the Special Region, were in a sense the first citizens of an
enemy nation they had seen.
They were buried in the huge crowd thronging Ginza, and there was no
guarantee that the people here would not transfer their anger onto
them. As a result, Itami relaxed the stern look on his face and spoke
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despondently to Kuribayashi and Tomita.
“Let’s forget it for today. We’ll spend the night at Risa’s place.”
The two of them sagged. However, it was only expected that Itami —
who ran away from things he did not like — would say something like
that. However, Kuribayashi replied:
“But if we wait until tomorrow, we might be ambushed by agents from

somewhere, and when the time comes, we’ll have to force our way
through as well, right?”
The original plan was to protect Piña and Bozes from the Americans
using the crowd Risa gathered. If they ran away now, her hard work
would be wasted.
“Ahhh, we run and they chase us over and over again, they’re like debt
collectors or something.”
Ichinotani nixed the idea of hiding in a military camp. If the government

protected them, then when the American President called, they would
not be able to escape. Prime Minister Motoi had resigned for that as well.
Because their movements were not under government control, they
could say, “They ran off, so sorry”, and then stick their tongues out at
them in their hearts. His Excellency Tarou had laid the situation out to
Itami, and he understood.
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“Ahh, what a pain…”
Itami squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed his hair, then he sighed
deeply before turning to Kuribayashi and Tomita and giving them an
order.
If anyone tried to harm the girls, Tomita and Kuribayashi would shoot
them. This was not “permission granted”; this was an “order”. Tomita
and Kuribayashi had volunteered to join the JSDF, and as career soldiers
with the rank of sergeants, they had been highly trained. In addition,
they were veterans of actual combat. Once they heard the command
phrased as on “order”, it flipped a switch in their minds which turned
them into killing machines. Following that, the two of them inspected the
magazines of their looted weapons, and they stuffed more spare
magazines into their waist pouches or pants pockets. Of course, they
would not openly carry their weapons and frighten the people around
them. Instead, they tucked their weapons into their coats, but with the
safeties off so they could shoot at any time. Surrounded by the huge
crowd around then, they got off the bread van and set feet onto Ginza’s
pavement.
Kuribayashi Shino wore a black leather jumper.
Under that, she wore a stone-washed denim mini-skirt over a pair of

stockings. Her feet were encased by a pair of heeled boots. Perhaps the
heels were because she had a complex about being short? As her
nickname of “titty monster midget” suggested, she was a petite woman,
but unlike the long bodies and short limbs of real midgets, her muscled
body and slender limbs were proportionately scaled. That was to say,
she gave the impression of a woman who had been shrunken down with
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the exception of her breasts.
The front of the jacket was open, exposing a white sweater.
If she were drawn in a standing pose, one would be able to see her left
hand pressing down the left hem of her jumper, while her right hand was
thrust inside it. If that depiction was in full color, one would be able to
see the red lipstick on her lips and her clearly defined eyebrows, in
addition to the cool expression on her face. Naturally, her right hand was
gripping a German-made Heckler & Koch MP7. Because of her natural
big breasts, even after concealing the SMG’s 34cm length inside her
coat, the way her bosom pushed the material out allowed people from
certain angles people to see what she was carrying inside.
She stood like this in the frigid winter wind, her mind on alert, which
made people think that she looked really cool.
Beside her was Tomita. He wore a half-coat of cashmere wool. The tall
and masculine Tomita was well-muscled, but not to the point of looking
clumsy. His body resembled that of a nimble athlete. His skin was
tanned, his face was stern, and his chin was shaven, so he looked fierce
at a first glance. He watched his surroundings like a hawk.
He had a Belgian-made PDW under his arm, the FN P90.
The last was Itami. At a glance, he looked like a salaryman in his 30s. He
wore a wrinkled suit, and a pair of cheap 2000 yen leather shoes (made
of synthetic leather), and the grime on them was evident at a glance. He
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wore a dull longcoat, the same kind you might see in Shinjuku bars. If he
stood in traffic during the peak hours, he would vanish into the crowds in
an instant, and picking him out from everyone else would be very
difficult. He had a Makarov handgun under his suit coat.
And so, the three of them shifted into battle mode in an instant. Risa
gasped in surprise behind them. Until just now, they had been relaxed,
but now there seemed to be a blazing aura around them, and there was
an air around them as sharp as a bared katana. This was different from
the air of intimidation that the yakuza or punks had around them; it was
more like a carnivore awaiting its prey, which unsettled and discomfited
people. However, Itami only stayed like this for a few moments. In an
instant, he returned to his usual easygoing self.
“Sorry, Risa. We can’t take you along for the rest.”
Risa shrugged at Itami, who had stuck his head in from the outside of
the van.
“Can’t be helped, right? What should I do about this van?”
“Find a place and abandon it. And don’t forget to return me the money I
lent you.”
“If, if my doujin sells, the income should be enough for that. When are
you coming back again?”
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“Beats me. Not for the time being, at least. I’ll let you know when I can
make it.”
Just as Itami was about to turn away, Risa called out to him and he froze.
“S-sempai, even if you say you’ll come back, sometimes you don’t. So,
would you let me wait for you here?”
“If you have to say this sort of thing, why did you even leave me in the
first place?”
“Because, because I felt bad about marrying you as a meal ticket. I felt
that I was no good as a human being.”
Itami fell silent for a moment before replying, “Do as you like”. This time
he was really gone.
***
“And so, Prime Minister Motoi’s sudden hospital visit and the
announcement that he was going to resign took the world by surprise.”
The room had a giant image of Prime Minister Motoi as its background,
and famous people the world over were commenting on it.
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A bearded university professor said unhappily, “That was far too

irresponsible.”
A female author replied in his defense, “The Prime Minister’s job is

taxing; it’s only natural that he might end up having health problems as
a result.”
“The opposition party’s been hounding him about his cabinet’s dirty
laundry for days now, but now that he actually resigned, they don’t have
anything to say.”
The man with a nameplate saying “Former Governor”, who was now a
political commentator, briefed the Diet on the situation.
“Nah, the opposition won’t be discouraged. Once the next Prime Minister
takes charge, they’ll just poll for the dissolution of the House of
Representatives and then re-elect everyone.”
“I think the topic of discussion now is who will be the next Prime
Minister. Nagata-chou of the incumbent party is already moving fast.”
After reporting the commentators’ remarks, the presenter went on to

the next topic, which was the candidates to be the next Prime Minister.
“The incumbents have nominated three candidates, Morita-shi, Kanou-

shi and Aramaki-shi.”
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The huge pictures of the three men appeared on the display.
“Morita-shi has a strong support base and is viewed as the No.1

candidate. Kanou-shi is popular with the people, but he does not have
much support within the party. It is not known whether the next party
leader will be decided through internal agreement or through an
election. Stay tuned, gentle viewers!”
After the political topic was concluded, the presenter’s face seemed to
change as he moved on.
“The Ginza Incident”
It was followed by commercials.
After about four 60-second commercials (about washing liquid, car

insurance, and super-thin, super-fragrant diapers), the next segment
featured the people who had been summoned before the National Diet.
What the viewers saw was Tuka, the Elf with the flowing golden hair,
standing on a red carpet and bathed in the light of countless flashbulbs,
radiating an ethereal beauty. She looked like a model for shampoo and
conditioner.
Then there was Lelei, with her silver hair and calm eyes.
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After her was Rory, in her black Goth Loli outfit, with her sharp tongue
and playful expression.
“The three guests from the Special Region were warmly welcomed by
the people. As someone who was formerly believed to only exist in
people’s imaginations, Tuka Luna Marceau is the most popular among
them.
A commentator said, “She’s very beautiful, isn’t she? Don’t you think
she’d stir the otaku imagination? Since they were only thought to exist
in fantasy until now, anyone would want to meet a real live elf.”
“I watched the Diet live telecast too, it really surprised me. That girl’s
called Lelei-san, right? In just a few months, she’s mastered Japanese to
this extent. And I thought Tuka-san’s ears were some sort of prop too,” a
young female entertainment lawyer said.
“Speaking of their ages, what’s up with that? No, I know it’s

embarrassing to ask a lady’s age. Maybe the years in the Special Region
are very short?” a female author asked. She seemed quite concerned
about that issue.
“According to reports from the Ministry of Defense, a year in the Special

Region is roughly 389.3 days long, and every day is shorter than ours, so
it all equals out in the end.”
“But Rory Mercury-san said she was over 900 years old. Yet she looks
like a middle-schooler.”
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The obsessed female author went on about it.
“Also, Tuka-san is supposed to be 160 years old, doesn’t she look too
young?”
The truly obsessed female author continued.
A book once wrote that a properly educated woman would not be jealous
of anything. For instance, they would not be overly sensitive about looks
and wealth. However, when a 50-year old woman saw another woman
who was far older than her, yet looked like she was in her teens, it would
be difficult not to have mixed feelings about her.
“They already said at the Diet that the two of them are from long-lived
species.”
“How about their men? They look young, but they’re over a hundred
years old.”
“In truth, it does seem kind of unreal,” the bearded professor said.
“I won’t say they used makeup or cosmetic surgery to look young. I’d
thought of it before, but given the faces they showed to the audience, I
don’t think anyone would mind if they were over a hundred or over 500
years old,” the young entertainment lawyer replied.
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“The girls who raised such a stir are now here today to offer flowers to
the Ginza Incident memorial plaque, and after that they will return to the
Special Region. A truly staggering number of fans have come to Ginza
today to catch a glimpse of them.”
The presenter changed scenes, showing a close-up of people thronging

the streets until they spilled out onto the roads.
Traffic was completely paralyzed, with massive jams everywhere. The

police were struggling to control the crowds, trying to herd them with
police whistles. Then, the presenter’s face appeared on the screen.
“What you’re seeing now is Ginza at one in the afternoon. Fans from all
over the country have gathered in force. We’ll go over to our interviewer
who’s on the ground right now. Nanami-san~”
The image shifted from the studio to a live telecast.
***
Because this was a nation-wide broadcast, Kuribayashi Nanami was

frantically practicing her lines and ignoring her surroundings. She had
written the word “man” on her palm, and trying her best to make a good
smile. Behind her, one could see people thronging the memorial plaque.
“Kuribayashi-san~
After that, without any prearrangement at all, the crowd automatically
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parted, opening a clear path that led to the altar where the flowers
would be offered, under the plaque. Along this path walked the black
Goth girl, the long-haired elf, and the silver-haired girl, all carrying
bouquets of flowers, followed by a woman with a head of vibrant red hair
and another woman with golden drill hair, and behind them were a
Japanese male and female who looked like their bodyguards. There were
seven of them in total.
“Is the sound working, Kuribayashi-san!”
In truth, Itami was present too, but his sheer lack of presence meant
that he was eclipsed by the three girls who were the stars of this show.
In that sense, one could say that he was a failure as a main character.
“Kuribayashi-san~”
After she realised someone was calling out to her, Kuribayashi hurriedly
put on her earpiece.
“Ah, this, this is live from Ginza.”
“Right now, what’s going on in this image?”
“Ah, yes. We’re on the scene right now. Currently, the three girls are
approaching the flower altar, while the crowd is cheering and waving to
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them. The fans have filled up the roads and sidewalks and jammed up
traffic for blocks around, but they’re especially polite to the girls. Nobody
arranged it, but it seems the crowd has parted for them.”
A youth suddenly dashed out of the wall of people. Before Tomita could
body-check him, Rory raised her halberd and thumped it down into the
ground, creating a ringing sound like a shakujo. Coupled with her
bewitching smile, the youth fell flat on his butt, and then he scrambled
back into the crowd.
“We can only see three people in that image, are there any more?”
“Yes, there are seven in total.”
“Are the other four from the Special Region as well?”
“I don’t think so, they look like… like… nee-san?!”
“Hah? Kuribayashi-san?”
“Sor-sorry. I don’t know why, but my big sister is there.”
“Is that Kuribayashi-san’s big sister?”
“Yes, my big sister works in the JSDF, she should be in the Special
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Region, I never heard anything about her coming back. Nee-san, what
are you doing?!”
“Hm, it’s Nanami-chan, what are you doing here?”
The older Kuribayashi sister replied nonchalantly to her little sister from
the road. That said, she was still watching her surroundings at maximum
alertness. They had to work extra hard because they were not
professional SPs.
“I’m doing a TV broadcast.”
“No way, you mean it’s live?”
“Well, it’s just a webcast-”
“Yaho~ Mom, are you well?” In this instant, the camera turned to her.
Because of this, everyone in the nation saw a glimpse of her carrying a

H&K MP7 with her right hand in the middle of Ginza. Assuming she was
still thinking straight, the only reason why she would expose herself like
that was because 70% of her attention was being spent on looking out
for danger. Under Kuribayashi, Tomita’s and Itami’s oversight, Rory and
the other people from the Special Region offered their flowers. As they
did this, over a hundred flashbulbs went off. After it was done, Rory
looked around and quietly said, “Someone should ring a bell for the
spirits of the dead.” Then she raised her halberd and loudly asked,
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“Won’t someone ring a bell for me?”
And as though in answer to her request, the Ginza Wako Clock Tower
began ringing. The way Rory went “Mm, thank you”, then smiled and
closed her eyes brought a somber air to the place.
The camera paused to film the elder Kuribayashi and the three Special
Region guests kneeling before the memorial plaque. After the bells
finished ringing, they rose and turned their backs to the plaque, in order
to face the crowd. The cameraman quickly shifted to capture their faces,
while the boom operator recorded the Kuribayashi sisters’ exchange.
“Then, can we interview them?”
The younger Kuribayashi was speaking normally in front of a national

audience. But the producer clenched his fist and smiled, “Well done”
from his production room. Originally, his opinion of her was so low it
could not have gone any lower, so she could only go up from there. His
opinion of her now was reflected in the fact that she managed to get an
exclusive close-up with the three girls who were the talk of the nation.
“No way, no way. After they offer their flowers, we’re returning to the
Special Region ASAP.”
“Why not? Not even for a while?”
“We were attacked yesterday, you see.”
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“Attacked? By who?”
“Americans, I think, or maybe the Chinese or Russians. The train we

were on got stopped for some reason, the hotel we were supposed to
stay in was burned down by arson, and a whole bunch of things
happened, so that’s why today we—”
She was pissed off about the whole thing, and toward the end her words
were starting to jumble together. Saying all that was pretty much the
same as exposing the whole affair. Besides, anyone who read the papers
or watched TV would find that what she said matched up with recent
occurrences.
***
“Yo, Graham.”
Before the unhappy Graham stood a Japanese man.
It was Komakado, from Intelligence Branch. Once, he had seemed like a

grim and imposing man, and with his crutch that grim darkness
surrounding him only deepened, as though he was radiating an air of
discomfort.
“What’s up, Komakado? There’s nothing for you to do here.”
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“It’s true, we’ve been ordered not to interfere with your work. However,
there are Russian and Chinese agents out there. We can’t ignore them,
so we locked onto them.”
“I see…”
As Graham thanked Komakado, he sighed in relief. If this kept up, Japan

would be helping them suppress the agents from the Russians and the
Chinese.
The CIA’s plan was to create a panic and cut the TV broadcast, then take
advantage of the confusion to have their teams abduct the guests. It
was a difficult plan to execute.
“Speaking of which, Graham, how do you CIA people tell Russian and
Chinese agents apart? Could you teach me? I’d like to know how.”
“What are you saying?”
“Oh, I’m just curious if CIA agents have a way to instantly tell them
apart. Russians and Chinese look the same to me…”
As he listened to Komakado say that, Graham worriedly went for his cell
phone.
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He tried calling all his emplaced subordinates, but there was no

response.
“You son of a-!”
“Like I said, I can’t tell the Russians from the Chinese. Sorry about that.”
Komakado smiled as he faded into the crowd, and Graham knew the
operation had failed.
Komakado withdrew his mobile phone, and dialled a number from his
contact list.
Several seconds later, Komakado spoke.
“Yo, Itami. That was a pretty slick move you pulled.”
***
“God damn!”
Darryl, the President of the United States, angrily kicked over the
wastepaper basket in his office. He had a telephone and display in front
of him which currently showed the live telecast from Tokyo’s Ginza
district. No CIA agent team, however skilled, could snatch the guests
now. The fatal blow was the mention that “We were attacked by the
Americans, Russians and Chinese,” which had been heard by the entire
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nation. On top of that, the CIA personnel in charge of inciting a panic and
disrupting the TV broadcast had been captured by the Japanese, who
apparently could not differentiate between the Russians and Chinese.
The command team was intact, so they could try and force the issue, but
that would end up being broadcast throughout the nation as well.
Once word of that got out, any hostiles would instantly become a villain.
Be they American, Chinese or Russian, anyone who tried to use force
now would end up scoring a goal against their own country. He had not
expected the Japanese government to be bold and vicious enough to
actually try something like this. Without any direct action on their part,
they had sealed off the Americans’ ability to act, and they had even
exposed the illegal activities of the Americans, Russians and Chinese,
which would only lead to censure and difficulty for them.
For instance, the White House could say to the Japanese government
“Don’t say such meaningless nonsense” with reference to that
servicewoman, as could the Kremlin, or Zhongnanhai. The Japanese
would probably release an official statement along the lines of “The
Japanese government knows nothing about any so-called illegal
activities conducted by the Americans (or Russians, or Chinese) and end
the matter there.
If an accusation like that was made on national television, the Japanese

government would have to respond with “Nobody would believe the
words of a mere JSDF trooper”. Even if they tried to press the issue, the
Japanese government would reply “She babbled that nonsense while she
was drunk and on vacation, right? And her gun was just a toy, the proof
is that Japan did not supply her with such a weapon,” and then they
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would cut off communications.
However, one would not even need to ask to know who the citizens that
watched the broadcast would side with. After all, it was a simple
conversation between two sisters, which was why it felt realistic to the
audience. Darryl thought he saw a phantom Motoi lecturing him from
inside the transmitted image.
“If you try and do anything to our guests, you had best prepare
yourselves.”
“Shit, shit! Bloody Motoi! That son of a bitch!”
He trampled on the remains of the wastepaper basket, and scattered it

even further across the Oval Office’s red carpet.
President Sheganov of the Russian Federation toasted his screen inside

the Kremlin with the glass of vodka he was holding. “Not bad, Japanese.
Not bad.” Within the depths of Zhongnanhai, Chairman Dong Dechou
clicked his tongue, and then ordered his man on the scene to withdraw.
***
And so, Itami and his companions managed to safely… well, not quite,
they had accumulated a fair bit of mental and emotional fatigue, but
they did manage to reach the Ginza side of the Gate.
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Before passing through the Gate, they had to submit to an inspection by

the sentries, much like an airport. If they were moving a vehicle through,
everything in the cargo compartment would have to be opened up and
anything hand-carried would also be inspected. After that, the security
personnel would take their fingerprints, palmprints, perform a retina
scan and measure their pulse rate among other tests. Only after all
these tests were completed could they enter the concrete dome which
contained the Gate.
But then...
“Did you buy all of these in Tokyo?
“Is something wrong?”
As Itami responded in a playful way, the commander of the sentry post

sighed deeply.
While checking the girls’ luggage, they found Rory’s black Goth clothes
along with her punk-style (with spikes and chains) clothes and
underwear. Apparently Rory was not interested in normal clothes, but
she seemed to like metallic things. After that were a bunch of daily-use
items and things like Lelei’s laptop, Tuka’s compound bow, all of which
piled up like a miniature mountain. The sentry commander could only
close his mouth.
“We have to check all of these, you know.”
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However, inspecting feminine-use items would pose all sorts of

problems.
The female soldiers would handle delicate items like underwear and so
on, but if they had to inspect each and every sundry item, they would
never get things done. The commander was thinking about whether to
just briefly go over the things. Meanwhile, more female personnel
conducted body searches of Lelei, Tuka, Rory, Piña, Bozes and
Kuribayashi.
And then, with a “What’s this?” they withdrew a pistol that had been
very well concealed upon Piña and Bozes’ persons.
“Oya.”
Tomita said.
“Well done.”
He was impressed by the way Kuribayashi had not flinched at all. He

smoothly followed up by saying “Oh, it’s for self-protection. We let them
carry it just in case”. Then, with a loud thump, a heavy backpack was
deposited in front of the commander.
“What’s this?
The contents of the backpack, when placed on the inspection table,

turned out to be a veritable mountain of looted weapons.
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“Well, we couldn’t just leave them lying around, could we? We picked
them up, but do we need to turn them over to you?”
In truth, the JSDF did not have any procedures for handling looted
weapons.
If he tried to follow procedure and impound these weapons, it would

create a lot of problems related to the handling and seizure of them.
Besides, there was no way unmarked weapons used by illegal nationals
and seized by common civilians could be entered into a report.
“So what will you do?”
Because of that, the mere existence of these looted weapons was a pain
in the ass. Naturally, a man who was part of an organization would
probably not want to subject himself to that sort of bother. After the
sentry commander heard Itami’s story about how he got those weapons,
he turned aside while saying, “I saw nothing” and “I heard nothing”.
“These guns are your loot. So their responsibility falls to you. In any
case, I’ll record these weapons on a black sheet. Our part in this is now
settled. How about that?”
Recording them on a black sheet meant that the records would only be
revealed if a problem surfaced in the future. Otherwise, those records
would not exist on any official documentation. Under certain conditions,
these black sheets might be shredded by orders from the brass.
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And so, the looted weapons and ammunition ended up going into the
stores of 3rd Recon.
***
Lelei, Rory and Tuka were seated in the back of Tomita’s HMV. They
were headed back to the refugee camp at the foot of Arnus Hill.
Since they had brought back a lot of souvenirs with them, Itami was
helping to sort them out.
“Japan was a fun place,” Rory said.
“It was very exciting. I hope to be able to visit again,” Lelei said.
“Shopping was fun,” Tuka smiled.
The three of them bade their farewells to Itami before they went their
separate ways.
The sky was getting dark, since the sun was setting.
Tuka returned to the room she had been given at the prefab housing,
and opened the door with a bright, “I’m home!”
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“The other side of the Gate was awesome, and we brought back so
much stuff,” she said as she put her things onto the table in the
darkened room. But she tilted her head because there was no response.
“Hmm? Not there?”
After searching briefly in the room, she sighed and said, “Really, Dad,
where have you gone?”
“I look away for just a moment and this is what happens.”
Tuka sorted out the things she bought as she muttered to herself.
Elsewhere, Piña and Bozes were in the room assigned as their quarters.
The two of them were enveloped in a grim atmosphere, and they sat
silently on their beds.
An intermediary for the Empire and Japan. She now realised just how
heavy a burden it truly was.
If this war continued, the Empire would undoubtedly lose. The difference
in civilization, technology and warfare was far too great to overcome.
She had seen it with her own eyes and felt it with her own body.
“Your Highness...”
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Bozes called out to her, in an attempt to clear the air.
“Mm. Tomorrow we return to the Capital,” Piña answered.
She would immediately begin the work for the peace talks, in her role as
mediator.
She did not know what form those talks would take. If things went
wrong, they would end in the Empire’s defeat. But if she let the war
carry on, the death toll would be around the same as well.
Piña converted her resolve into words.
“I shall end this war.”
Note
1: A shakujo is a buddhist prayer staff.
2: Minister of Defence Kanou Tarou = His Excellency Tarou. Because

some people out there will need this pointed out to them.
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Vol. 3 :
Chapter 1
The Imperial Princess Piña Co Lada awoke after a long sleep.
She immediately opened her study to the light of dawn. As the shutters
were swung back, the morning sun shone on her face and made her
squint.
The Imperial capital was two days inland by foot from the shores of the
Azure Sea. The sunlight was strong, but the cool wind blowing down
from the glacial north made it comfortable instead.
The Imperial Palace was located on the easternmost of the Imperial

Capital’s five hills, on the slopes of Sadela Hill.
One of the mansions in the palace’s east wing was hers. It was well
ventilated, and the wind brought the fragrant scent from the cypress
trees in the eastern forest over to her. Piña loved the way it cleared her
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head when she breathed it in.
“Your Highness, you didn’t sleep in your bed again,” Hamilton grumbled
as she opened each of the windows to the study.
Piña was wearing a garment that people in this world called a “Tunic”,
and her upper body was sprawled over her desk as though she had
jumped out over it.
The desk was covered with all manner of books, as well as letters from
many places. Most of them were made of parchment, but recently, they
had started using photocopy paper bought from the Arnus Living
Community (ALC).
“Ah, I messed up…”
She hurriedly tried to smooth out the parchment she had crumpled in
her sleep. It was a financial report from House Formal. She must have
fallen asleep while reading it.
A closer look at her fingers revealed ink stains there. While she managed
not to get her clothes and face dirty, her clothes were crumpled and her
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body and face felt uncomfortable.
“Your Highness, why not have a bath before you have breakfast?”
“Sorry. We’ll go with that,” Piña said, throwing her hands up in surrender
after hearing Hamilton.
“For today’s schedule, the more important events are lunch with Lord
Cicero of the Senate, and the dinner party to celebrate the birthday of
Marquis Ducie’s daughter. Between lunch and dinner, Shandy wishes to
speak with you. I think she wants to recommend candidates for the next
leader of the White Rose Knights.”
“I think Panache and Shandy swore a vow of sisterhood, right? Doesn’t

that mean Shandy Cuff will be the next leader of the White Rose
Knights?”
“Perhaps she does not wish to be the leader, but wants to go with
Panache to Arnus instead?”
Piña wrinkled her immaculate forehead with a frown. If she wanted to

repay the trust placed in her by her own sworn sister, wouldn’t it be
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better for her to stay and manage the knights? What on earth was she
thinking, suddenly saying that she was sick of the knight band’s
traditions and rules? If it was really like Hamilton said, she could not
agree just like that. In any case, she would meet Shandy first and decide
what to do about her later.
“Today, Sugawara-sama will meet Lord Cicero, and then there’s the
Ducie house party, mm.”
“This is the namelist for the first batch of prisoners to be released.

Arrange to have the relatives of those on the list to attend the party, and
then Sugawara-sama will hand the namelist to the various family
representatives. Would you like to go over the draft for the list?”
“Ah~ I saw it last night. I think they arranged for 15 people to be

released, but I only see 14 names here. Why is there an empty space?
Just as Piña was thinking about looking for the needed documents
among the huge piles on her desk, a stack of them fell over onto her bed
like a rockslide.
“Ah~ah…”
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After stopping the Princess from doing it herself, Hamilton went to clear
up the mess.
“Your Highness… the empty space on the namelist is an enticement for

Lord Cicero. I believe his nephew was among the prisoners taken by the
JSDF. In order to increase the chances of success for our meeting today,
I decided to leave room for him to be included in the first batch.
Piña grabbed her head and contemplated Hamilton’s words. She did not
know if her memory had reached its capacity, or if she just could not
think any more.
“Are you alright? You look tired.”
“If I said I’m not alright, would you take my place?”
“You know I can’t…”
“Then, it just means I have to work harder, right?”
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Piña rolled up a document and pressed it on Hamilton’s chest before

leaving to take a bath.
***
After her bath, she tied her red hair up again, put on some light makeup,
and got dressed. After these preparations, Piña finally showed up at the
breakfast table, about an hour after being woken by Hamilton. It was
already quite fast considering the time noble ladies normally took to
ready themselves.
That being said, Sugawara Kouji had still waited for quite a while before
Piña showed up, and he had helped himself to breakfast first. The menu
was hot barley porridge with meat jerky, as well as some citrus fruits.
Piña’s mansion had a lot of maids, and they ensured that he would not
be inconvenienced in any way. Sugawara was wearing their formal wear,
known as a toga, in order not to cause any problems. However, if Piña
was not around, he could not do any work.
Diplomacy began by meeting the other party. He did not know anyone
else in the Imperial Capital, so no matter who he met, he would need
Piña to introduce him. The reason why Sugawara had been sent over as
part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Special Region Incident Response
Committee was to increase their presence in the Imperial Capital. His job
was to build relationships with people here, make preparations for the
true negotiations team that would be sent out, hone his proficiency with
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the local language, and keep a firm grasp on the movers and shakers of
Imperial society.
“Good morning, Your Highness.”
“Good morning, Sugawara-dono. You’re early as always.”
You’re the one who’s late, Sugawara thought as he swallowed those

words while complimenting Piña with the pretty words he used for
business encounters. It was a trick he had learned while studying in
France, and it seemed to work quite well on the ladies here.
When Piña sat at the table, she only had a little porridge and some fruit.
The breakfast before her seemed to be as bland as possible to reduce
the strain on her stomach. The reason for this reduction in intake will
soon be explained.
“We’re having lunch at Lord Cicero’s house and then a dinner feast at
the Ducie home. Frankly speaking, one does not have enough stomachs
for that.”
It seemed that the trouble related to receptions were the same
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everywhere. Sugawara had only come here after accumulating a lot of

similar experiences, so he fully agreed with her.
“Our country has a saying, a healthy body begins with one’s stomach.
Although, it is difficult to preserve one’s belly in this line of work, so it’s
fairly troublesome.”
“Ah~”
For women in particular, diet had a significant effect on their skin, bodies
and looks.
Piña seemed to be contemplating these topics when Sugawara said to

her, “My country makes good stomach medicine. Would you like me to
provide some for you?”
“Please, by all means. Thank you, thank you very much.”
In the Empire, feasts were events where one had to be prepared to eat
and drink a lot. There were almost no other entertainments besides that,
and in the case of Japan, preparing an appropriate amount of food and
alcohol was also to be expected. The problem on this side of the Gate
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was that the “appropriate amount” was very large, which proved
troublesome.
Naturally, Lord Cicero’s luncheon was a luxurious one.
There were meatballs made of mutton, soup made from fish and
vegetables, as well as large quantities of fowl, fish, beast and other
vegetables.
The fruits were chilled with snow from the mountain slopes, and the
variety of food, as well as the quantity, was quite impressive. Guests
over here showed their politeness by eating, and unfinished food was a
sign of a good welcome.
It was all thanks to Princess Piña that he could receive such a warm
welcome. If Sugawara had tried going it alone, he might have just gotten
a basin of cold water dumped on his head instead.
Cicero La Maltose was a member of the Maltose family, one of the

founders of the Empire. However, it was merely a branch of a famous
family, and it was among the lowest-ranked among the Imperial
peerage. However, he had exceptional debating and leadership abilities,
and as a Senator, he had a significant amount of political pull. Since
there were other Maltoses in the Senate, they called him Lord Cicero to
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avoid confusion.
In this war, he belonged to the Imperial, pro-war faction. In other words,

he was a champion of the idea that “Since this is an emergency, we
should gather the Empire’s strength and reconstitute the Legions under
the Emperor, and drive the barbarians of Arnus away with military
force!”
In opposition to them were the Senatorial, pro-peace faction. They

proposed that “Since this was started by the foolish actions of the
Emperor, we should transfer his power to the Senate and rebuild our
army under them. At the same time, we should make contact with the
enemies in Arnus and ask them to return to the other side of the Gate by
means other than violence.”
Cicero had been chosen for negotiations because he was a member of

the pro-war faction who could still be reasoned with.
The pro-peace faction wanted peace at any cost, but there were far too
few of them. Therefore, the plan was to try and lure away some of the
pro-war nobles to the pro-peace side.
Sugawara explained this to Piña, and then asked her to introduce a

suitable person to him. Based on her previous experiences, she had
chosen Cicero.
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“Lord Cicero, may I present to you his Excellency Sugawara Kouji, an

ambassador of the land called Japan.”
Piña had artificially inflated Sugawara’s status. Sugawara, knowing what

she intended, did not correct her.
“Pleased to meet you,” both sides said as they greeted each other.
With a haughty attitude, Cicero said, “Forgive me, but I know of no such
country called Japan. May I know what is it like?”
The Empire was a powerful nation. It had over a dozen vassal kingdoms
to begin with, and when one counted allied nations and rural tribes
which banded together to form a country, it had ties with over a hundred
other domains. Cicero might have been a Senator, but he was no
diplomat, so it was understandable that there were countries which he
did not know
“How shall I put it… Japan is a land of four seasons, with beautiful
mountains and rivers.”
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As he heard this, Cicero snorted in quiet laughter. His wife looked at him
with an oafish look on her face and shrugged.
He had asked the ambassador of a primitive backwater nation about his

land, and the answer he had received was some nonsense about a
beautiful country. In other words, hardly an answer.
At a glance, Sugawara seemed like he might be talented, but ultimately

he was a farm-born plebeian. It would be a long time before he could
match wits with an Imperial patrician. That was Cicero’s opinion of
Sugawara. Well, it was not his fault that his country was backward.
Cicero prided himself on fairness, and therefore he would raise his low
opinion of Sugawara by a notch or two… or at least, he planned to do so.
Piña was watching from the side, and she could see right through Cicero.
She sighed in annoyance and quietly thought about saying, “Be more
careful, you’re playing right into his hands…” But she was just an
intermediary, and not a proper diplomat, so she did not speak out.
“I brought some gifts from my country with me. Please accept them.”
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Now there would be a show of presenting gifts. Sugawara snapped his

fingers. Piña’s servants, as well as Sugawara’s JSDF escort, Sergeant
Naoe, began bringing in the gift boxes.
Cicero’s cold smile warmed up into a genuine smile.
Piled before Cicero were bolts of beautifully embroidered cloth, silk from
Kyoto’s Nishijin district, stitched with colored thread of gold and silver,
black and red Kanazawa lacquerware, intricately decorated works of art,
brightly embroidered folding fans, and Satsuma Kiriko glassware.
There were cultured pearls from Shima, of which a legendary craftsman

once said, “if only I could decorate all the necks of the world’s women
with these”. There was also a katana made by Kansai swordsmiths.
Then there were reams of wagami paper, western-style writing paper as

well as fountain pens and other writing instruments. They were handy
tools that one could hardly bear to set down.
In addition, there were eating utensils made of gold, silver, ceramic and
porcelain.
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This was a display of Japan’s artistry and useful rarities.
Piña was used to seeing Sugawara at work over the past few days. He
would begin with a humble attitude, and then display attractive objects,
in order to make people want to keep talking to him. It was precisely
because Cicero was a patrician of good taste that he understood the
technological ability needed to produce the things he saw before him.
Cicero’s wife was distracted by the vividly-colored Nishijin silk and the
embroidered cloth. Cicero himself was enchanted by the beautiful curve
of the katana. Although he was known as a politician who was skilled in
debate, he was still a man, and he was naturally drawn to the weapon
first.
“These are marvellous, were they all made in Japan?”
“Indeed, they were all produced by the craftsmen of my country.”
“What manner of country is Japan that produces such wonderful objects?

Forgive me, it seems I looked down on you earlier.”
Cicero’s attitude had changed. He cast away his initial arrogance and
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replaced it with an equivalent amount of respect. His attitude was one of

a connoisseur of fine goods and a frank and honest love of culture.
“However, your Excellency Sugawara is quite cunning. You spoke of your

country’s scenery when there was so much more for you to be proud of.
Come, tell me, where is this land of Japan?”
Piña pressed her forehead and thought, he walked right into it.
And so, the other side opened up and lowered their guard.
“My country Japan is currently at war with the Empire. We are from the
other side of the Gate.”
When he heard this, Cicero’s jaw dropped.
***
For the most part, the pace of the subsequent negotiations was entirely
dictated by Sugawara.
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Cicero was a hardline supporter of the pro-war faction, and bringing him
over required all his diplomatic skill. Also, the fact that Piña brought over
an enemy ambassador might not have been treason, but it came quite
close.
In addition, in order to recover from his shock, Cicero had threatened to

send troops through the Gate to conquer Japan. The legions were
currently being reconstituted, and that work would be completed in a
few months. Their new strength would be around 100’000 men, and in
his panic he had accidentally revealed information that should have
been kept secret.
However, this was because Cicero accepted the existence of a country of

Japan. Because he accepted their existence, he could underestimate the
actions of their civilians.
Sugawara had become an equal being, accepted by the other side, and
a point of contact for further negotiations. This meant that in future, it
would be fine if he came calling by himself. What was left was to inform
the other party of the facts.
At this point, Sugawara withdrew a piece of paper, and that made Cicero
— who was scolding Piña — quiet down. On that paper was written the
name of… the son of Mrs. Cicero’s little sister.
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“I believe this is Lord Cicero’s nephew? He is currently a prisoner in our

country.”
“What did you say, is he still alive?”
“He is, yes.”
Cicero’s wife, listening from the side, passed out from excessive joy. The
maids hurriedly carried her away from the dining hall.
“In addition, in exchange for Princess Piña’s hard work in accepting the
role of mediator, we will unconditionally return these people to you, in
accordance with her Highness’ wishes.”
“Unconditionally?”
“Indeed, we will not impose any demands upon you.”
“How about ransom?
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“Strictly speaking, her Highness’ cooperation is sufficient ransom. The

safety of these prisoners is entirely within her hands…”
Cicero understood what those words implied; Do not interfere with the
Princess’ situation.
Piña was working as an intermediary because she feared for the lives of
these prisoners. Cicero thought. She had no choice. Not protecting these
people would be treason in its own right. She made this sacrifice to
protect patrician sons and fathers, as well as my ego and reputation.
These words meant, “Admit defeat”, or “If you want your prisoners back,
make peace”. If Sugawara had flat-out demanded them of Cicero, he
would probably have rejected them right away, but since the other side
was simply asking for Piña to serve as a mediator, he could not refuse.
Regardless of opponent or circumstance, he could accept that
negotiation itself was not a bad thing.
If he interfered with her actions as a mediator, the prisoners would

probably not be coming back. In addition, while only a few people were
coming back now, once Piña negotiated with Japan, they could probably
bring more people home. Therefore, even a pro-war supporter like
himself could not do anything to Piña. After all, whether his nephew
came home or not was her decision.
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To Cicero, he was the one who had to beg for Piña’s favor. Therefore, he
silently grasped Piña’s hand. Piña’s calm nod represented her
acceptance of his request.
“Actually, there’s going to be a birthday party for Marquis Ducie’s

daughter. You should have received an invitation too, right?”
“Forgive me, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know
Marquis Ducie’s daughter…”
“Well, in truth, tragedy has befallen House Ducie. The Marquis has
decided to throw a party for his daughter’s birthday to lift his spirits. I
thought to bring him good news. Would you accompany me there?”
Any politician who could not read the meaning from these words was no
politician at all.
In all likelihood, House Ducie had probably sent people through the
Gate. Therefore, the good news of which she spoke must have meant
that these people had survived. If he showed up there, Cicero’s own
nephew might have a better chance of coming home as well.
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Cicero politely lowered his head and kissed the back of Piña’s hand.
“Please, allow me to join you in sharing the good news.”
***
While Sugawara of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was making strides in

the Imperial Capital, the temporary living area of the refugees at Arnus
had changed greatly in these few short months.
This was because this place was where the Imperial Princess Piña Co
Lada sent her knights and their followers (all of whom were female…) to
study the Japanese language. This required the founding of a campus
building.
Initially, after hearing Piña describe that dreamlike city of skyscrapers

and “art”, all of her knights were eager to go to Japan and study there.
However, since none of them could speak a lick of Japanese, there was
no way they could go abroad and study there. Tokyo would not just
accept them like that either. In addition, there were many other things
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to take care of. At the very least, they had to be able to carry on a
conversation in Japanese, and so the Japanese government set up an
educational institute at the refugee camp.
In this way, Japan had also bought themselves some breathing room.
The camp was also the home to the sage who was the official translator
between the Special Region’s language and Japanese, as well as the
horde of children who were learning Japanese with her. For all they
knew, this might well be a better place to learn Japanese than Tokyo.
In addition, there were Japanese people in the camp too. For example,
Itami Youji, other JGSDF members and certain diplomatic officials from
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were personally learning the Special
Region’s language in this place.
However, now that there were several times more people present, there
was not enough room for all of them.
While they were trained in fieldcraft and living off the land, the members
of the knight band were also patrician ladies. Being cooped up in the
small prefab buildings would only give them stress. Their followers, who
had to take this stress head on, would become even more stressed in
turn. Therefore, providing sufficient necessities became the most crucial
task. In addition, they could not possibly allow diplomats of the Ministry
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of Foreign affairs to stay in temporary housing, and making the knights

stay in tents was hardly acceptable. Therefore, they decided to abandon
the idea of a temporary camp and construct more permanent structures
instead of temporary ones.
Other than digging wells and building water storage tanks, the JSDF also
had to dig proper drains and prepare water-purification facilities. To
power all of these, they installed solar power panels. Through the steady
accumulation of these improvements, life in the camp slowly started
resembling that in Japan.
As an aside, the free provision of food and other living supplies was
halted. Given that the refugees were making a comfortable living by
harvesting wyvern scales, nobody objected to that.
However, it was inconvenient to have to go to a distant town to buy

things. As a result, they set up a shop in the camp to sell various
expendable items. Naturally, running this shop was left to the members
of the Arnus Living Community (ALC).
After a while, the older refugee children could be seen running the shop.
They soon called this shop the PX. It was much more convenient and
closer to buy things from the PX compared to the extremely
troublesome process of going in and out of Ginza.
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The refugees did not mind the expansion of the PX.
The ALC did not need to expand. All they wanted was the things they
needed.
The original idea was to use the sale of Wyvern scales to buy the food
and clothing they needed, and to one day save enough money to return
to Coda Village and rebuild. All that was left was protective equipment
for work (gas masks, protective clothing and other expendables) which
the JSDF would supply.
However, the PX attracted more and more guests. The highborn ladies of
the knight band came by more and more often, and their maids would
also buy things. They would snap up their daily necessities, such as
clothes, tea and other luxuries in an instant.
The diplomats who came to learn the language would visit as well. In
addition, the JSDF troopers from Arnus Hill came too. They did not just
buy items from Tokyo, but vast quantities of local art products and
souvenirs.
The PX had to accommodate more customers, and soon there was not
enough space inside.
After the shop building was constructed, the number of things it could
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sell increased as well. But as sales increased, there were not enough
people to help with the importing, sale and exporting of products.
When they saw that the children and elderly had their hands full running
the place, the maids brought by the patrician ladies volunteered to help
(This was because after seeing the catalogue of items from beyond the
Gate… especially ladies’ underwear, they realized that the PX needed
help so they could freely buy the things they wanted).
As a result, the young men of the JSDF were attracted by them, and the
number of customers increased again, which led to a vicious (?) cycle
where there was once again too few staff. The ladies who started out as
volunteers ended up doing it full-time… after a few days, the need for
professional staff became obvious.
In the Special Region, people were hired by connections. Since there

were no job centers, there were also no recruitment services. Therefore,
all they could do was put out word among the people that help was
needed. After that, the middlemen would recommend people. It was
very important that the middleman was a good one, otherwise one
might end up getting weird people.
House Formal, which had close ties to the ALC, announced that they had
several candidates for them. The ones they sent over were women from
the Catpeople tribes. Since House Formal needed to deal with its
financial situation, it was only natural that they sent their demihumans
over to work. However, that only accelerated the vicious cycle further.
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And then, another problem reared its ugly head.
Wyvern scales were very valuable and also very profitable, and as a
result traders from all over were attracted by them. These traders
visited Arnus one after the other, and what they saw were the valuable
convenience goods from the other side of the Gate.
For instance, paper, pencils, clothes of stretchable fabric… the traders

came in droves for these things. However, the people in the camp were
not qualified traders. And so, more and more requests kept coming in
(Thieves appeared as well), and the older children which made up the
majority of the ALC found it hard to refuse these requests.
Lelei sighed as she filled out the Japanese order form Itami had given
her. He would then send it on to wholesale companies or enterprises in
Tokyo. After purchase was complete, they would import the good, and
after the goods were imported they would be sold, and then the cycle
would repeat endlessly. They might as well install a phone line or a fax
machine at this rate, and some of the diplomats were requesting a fiber-
optic line for Internet access, which was being considered.
By the time she realized it, the scale of the economic activities here had
grown tremendously.
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Where there were profits, there would be traders. However, the

presence of too many people was troubling. After all, there was no place
for them to stay and no restaurants for them to eat. The traders who
came had to camp in the dangerous territory outside the refugee camp.
And of course, people with ill intentions had appeared with them. In
order to take care of them, the security troopers were forced to work in
shifts.
If they asked the traders not to come, the goods would stop coming as
well. The people they needed here would also vanish, because merchant
convoys needed guards. They certainly could not keep relying on the
JSDF, and so they needed mercenaries. That being the case, those
mercenaries would also need places to sleep, which meant more
buildings.
Things being how they were, they could not shamelessly beg the JSDF to
“please build more temporary shelters for us!” They would need to find
carpenters and craftsmen to construct new buildings. Therefore, they
had gathered Dwarven craftsmen and woodsmen, as well as the traders
who worked with them, some mercenaries who looked a bit fierce… and
of course, all these people needed places to eat and drink, and after
they built a tavern, they had to hire a cook as well. When the cook
produced excellent food and drink, it drew even more customers, and
once the shops and tavern began operating at night, the JSDF troopers
came as well. And of course, a place that sold alcohol would naturally
need waitresses, so they asked House Formal to provide them with more
recruits. The people who came over had bunny ears, fox ears, dog
ears… they were monster girls.
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In this way, people of many different tribes kept flowing into the Arnus
Refugee Camp. The ever-growing vitality of the place, combined with the
influx of Japanese culture and the uncontrolled expansion of the place…
before they knew it, the refugee camp became known as Arnus Town.
***
Arnus Town had become lively, and then it became even livelier.
Who would have thought that just a few months ago, this place was a
refugee camp hosting less than thirty people?
A wooden hammer striking a bell rang out noon, accompanied by the

sound of disciples being scolded by their master.
The creaking of heavily laden traders’ horsecarts coming to and fro,

escorted by mercenaries whose equipment clanked as they moved,
promising they would return… all these were now daily fare.
Nobody knew where it started, but travelling peddlers began setting up

roadside stalls. They displayed tribal crafts and valuable gems and
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stones together, while the maids shouted to the uniformed JSDF

personnel “Hey, want to take a look?”
When the sun set, the tavern came alive, a beacon of light in the
darkness.
There were about twenty tables in the cafe, filled with stocky Dwarves,
Harpies, Catgirls working in the PX, the maids working as waitresses and
the JSDF troopers rubbing shoulders with them, holding mugs of frothy
beer in one hand and heartily toasting each other.
There was a muscular old man with white hair inside the kitchen, who
took orders with gusto.
Naturally, each table was getting noisier and noisier.
On several tables, there were people who looked like former soldiers.
They removed the swords at their waists and sat on the chairs. One of
the men sighed, and put his sword on the table.
“Oi, how was the interview?”
“Not bad. I got a job as a guard for the trade route going from Italica to
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the Empire,” said a man with a scar on his face as he leaned in to tell his
counterpart, a man with a huge beard and holding a mug of beer, about
the results of his interview.
In order to wet his throat, one needed to order “Oi, one ale!” Shortly
after that, the bunny-eared big sister of the tavern replied, “We don’t
have ale, do you want a beer?”
“What’s a beer?”
“It tastes great. You can only get it here. Just try it. In the worst case,
just take it as though someone tricked you into drinking it.”
Since that much had been said, all he could do was order a mug. After a
mouthful of cold, frothy beer, he spoke again.
“This is good!”
“There’s eight convoys running between here and Italica, you can join
me if you want.”
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“Well, if we end up together again, I’ll be in your care,” one of the men
said as they shook hands. Then, he looked around and lowered his voice.
“What happened after that?”
“It took me a long time to get this job, don’t talk about it. I heard about
what happened to the guys who attacked Italica, it scared the shit out of
me.”
“Then, you’re seriously looking for a job? Hehe…”
“Turning over a new leaf and living your life correctly is the most
important thing.”
“I see, I see.”
Halfway through their conversation, a loud voice boomed, “What’s this,

big men like you whispering to each other! All right, you’ve waited long
enough!”
The bunny-eared woman who carried herself like a big sister laid big
plates of meat and vegetables before them and said, “All right, eat up!”
The big-bearded man, filled with crude desire, reached out to squeeze
the appealing buttocks before him and received a roundhouse kick that
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sent him flying out of the tavern.
After watching the man being bodily kicked out of the tavern, his
comrade beside him laughed out loud. The bunny big sister clenched her
fists.
Then, she shouted, “My ass isn’t that cheap!”
Just then, a voice said, “Yo, Delilah. How much to touch?” The speaker of
this vile sexual harassment was Itami, accompanied by the black Goth
priestess Rory Mercury, Staff Sergeant Kurokawa and Sergeant Major
Kuwabara.
Delilah, who was originally puffed up with anger, flushed red. “B-Boss
Itami, you’re so mean~” before covering her face with both hands and
darting into the kitchen. The white-haired head cook shouted, “Boss, the
VIP tables inside is ready for you!” That was fortunate.
“Alright, this is good.”
It was called a tavern, but it seemed more like a roofed and walled
canteen. Or rather, this should have been a canteen from the beginning,
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but because of the huge increase in customers, they had to start seating
them outside.
Now, the so-called VIP tables were the places used by the original
residents, the diplomats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ladies of
the knight band and the JSDF officers. They were basically a place for
fine dining.
As a 1st Lieutenant, Itami was allowed to use these VIP seats, but he
personally preferred the noisier, livelier seats outside.
***
“Then, you were saying…?”
After Itami took a seat, Kurokawa sat down opposite him, while Rory sat
beside Itami and Kuwabara took a place beside Kurokawa. They were
here to discuss something concerning 3rd Recon or its members.
As usual, Rory ordered a round of fresh draft beer for everyone. In place
of Delilah, who was hiding inside the shop and wouldn’t come out, a
Foxgirl called Dora came to take their order.
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After the beer came, Kurokawa took a swift mouthful before speaking in
low tones.
“It’s about Tuka. How long are you going to leave her like that?”
The Elf in question, Tuka, was approaching from behind Kurokawa. She
approached slowly, as though observing the inside of the tavern. She
looked like she was looking for someone.
“Tuka! What are you doing?” Rory called out.
“Mm, mm. Just, something.”
“Are you looking for someone?”
“Hmmm?”
“Like say, a man?”
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Tuka waved her hands and said, “No, no,” and left after smiling bitterly.
As Kurokawa watched her leave, she said, “That’s what I mean. She
comes looking for someone who isn’t there around this time every day.”
Once again, she looked at Itami, wondering what he would do.
Beside her, Kuwabara watched the black Goth girl downing a bottle of
beer, and he could not help but sigh. Kuwabara was a man of staunch
morals, and the sight of someone who looked like a young girl heartily
downing alcohol just felt wrong to him. However, when he tried to ask
her about it, Rory called him a “brat” instead. After all, she was over 900
years old, and even if he was 50 himself, he was probably nothing more
than a toddler in her eyes. Even so, he felt somewhat insulted by it, but
when he realised she must have felt insulted by his words as well, it
gave birth to a complicated feeling in his heart.
“But, is there a need to force her to face reality?” Rory seemed to be

saying that while drunk, and obviously Kurokawa the counsellor would
agree.
“Of course there is.”
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“Isn’t she desperately trying to imagine her father is still alive because
she can’t face that reality?”
“She’s running away from reality.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“What’s not wrong with that? People can face tomorrow because they
can see reality and accept it. By denying reality, you cloud up the
present, and tomorrow will never come. No, you can cloud it up, but your
tomorrow will be that much crueller. Tuka’s father is dead. He…
probably died in that village that got burned down. If she can’t accept
that fact, she’ll lose herself in her fantasies and spend her days in the
prison of the now.”
Rory rounded her shoulders and sighed as if she was exhausted. The
mug in her hand was empty. Behind her, a child who was struggling with
what she had just heard said, “That’s not all there is to life.”
Rory was thinking about the same thing Kurokawa was pondering. No, it
would be more accurate to say she had always been thinking about it.
However, it was merely “the truth”.
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The truth could not save anyone.
Kurokawa was now walking her own path. After that, she would not
notice if anyone said anything. She would have to wait until she realized
it by herself. Along with the painful memories… These are my personal
experiences, but how should I explain them to her? What a pain...
Itami spoke.
“Then, Kurokawa. Let’s say we corner Tuka and tell her ‘Your father is
dead’, and we make her accept reality. How about that?”
“How about that? After the period of sadness called ‘mourning’ has
passed, she’ll be able to accept her father’s death. Her lifespan will be
far longer than ours. It might even be eternal, for all we know. An
eternity spent in delusion about a dead person is just too sad.”
“That… well, that may be true.”
Rory meshed her fingers behind her head and looked to the stars in the
sky. 961 years. It was long… or short, a little voice in her head said. In
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those 960 years, she had met and become close to people. Naturally,
she bid them farewell. She had overcome these things by herself. So she
could boldly say that trying to change someone else’s thinking was
sheer arrogance. At the same time, because they were humans, they
would not be able to realise that they were being arrogant. If they had
not found the answer yet, they would probably never find it.
“Kurokawa, let’s go with what you said. Tuka can’t bear the pain, right?
So now, while she’s lost in the gap between reality and fantasy, if we
suddenly force her to accept reality, can you confidently say she won’t
lose herself even deeper in the past to turn her eyes away from the
truth?”
These words shocked Rory. She had not expected Itami to say
something like that at all.
The truth was like a shot of strong medicine. Anyone could keep quiet,
and because it was so effective, they could be trusted. That was why
people might be driven to their ends. Rory thought, I can’t imagine a
man who was so detached from reality would know about these things,
and then she grinned. She has always been interested in Itami, and now
her interest deepened.
“That, that is…”
“Are you absolutely sure it will be fine? How much do you know about
Tuka, anyway? Do we, no, do you have the power to help her? None of
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us are psychologists or social workers. We can’t constantly keep

coddling her. If we force her to accept reality today, what happens if
we’re ordered to withdraw tomorrow?”
“...That is to say, we should leave her like this?”
“Ahhh, I’ll say something you won’t like to hear. If you don’t have the
resolve to take responsibility for her until the very end, then don’t do
anything unnecessary,” Itami said coldly to Kurokawa.
3rd Recon would be setting out for a mission tomorrow. They were to
establish contact with the diplomat in the capital. Saying she had to
prepare, Kurokawa left in a huff, an expression of anger on her face.
Kuwabara left shortly after, saying he had to escort her back to the
barracks.
The only two left were Itami and Rory. They faced each other and drank.
“Well, go on and drink then, you big idiot.”
Rory offered her mug to him so he could have more. Itami grinned, and
clinked mugs with her.
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“Did you really have to say it that way? It felt pretty cruel. I don’t think
Kurokawa can hate you any more than she does now.”
“My heart’s not so big that I can be that gentle to everyone. It can’t be
helped.”
“Hmph~ you don’t have a lot of people in your heart, then.”
As she said this, Rory thought: liar.
Itami was faking his cruelty. If Kurokawa were allowed to do as she

pleased, something terrible would have happened, and she would have
concluded, “What a shame we couldn’t do it right.”
“It’s hard enough trying to care for one or two people.”
“Well, then decide on one, or think only of one.”
“What?”
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“The girls will like you that way.”
“If I’m not nice, they won’t like me, right?”
“That’s wrong. To a girl, a man who’s nice to everyone… hm, I suppose

that works as an example, to a man, it would be like a woman who
opens her legs to anyone.”
“Hah?”
“People want companions so they can swiftly satisfy their need for love
and affection. A woman wants a man who only shows his love to her.”
“Hm~ Is that so…? Rory, you’re pretty nice yourself, even though you
worship Emroy, the god of death and judgement. I mean, you’re one of
his Apostles, and you’re called ‘The Reaper’.”
“Ara~? That’s a misconception. To rule death is also to rule life. The goal
of all life is death, and the way one dies is also the way one lives.
Therefore, one who welcomes death cannot help but respect life. The
death that follows a person’s life is the result of every day that he lived.”
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“Is that so…”
“It is,” Rory smiled, and finished the beer in her mug.
“One more!”
“Oi oi, let’s stop here for tonight, if you get drunk I’ll leave you here…”
“Aw, come on, be nice to me~”
“If you’re going to be like that, let’s get you onto the bed first.”
“Meanie~”
Rory kicked Itami in the calf.
“Aiee, that hurt…”
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As Itami rubbed his calf, Rory laughed like the ringing of a bell.
Then, a gravelly woman’s voice cut in.
“What’s going on here? Why’s there a brat drinking here? Or could it be

that this man intends to get a young girl drunk for some purpose? Could
it be you have lewd intentions in mind?”
Suddenly, everyone on the scene fell silent, like they had been doused
with cold water.
The chatter that filled the tavern vanished, and the only sound that
remained was the crackling of the torches.
The crude mercenaries and the crude Dwarves’ faces were bone white
and they were silent. After glancing at the person who had just spoken
the unspeakable, they glanced away.
It was a skinny man wearing a white headscarf… no, it was a woman.
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She had coffee-brown skin, and long, tapered ears.
She was a woman who belonged to the race that was known in this
world as Dark Elves.
Note
Wagami is a fancy kind of Japanese paper.
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Vol. 3 :
Chapter 2
“What’s going on here? Why’s there a brat drinking here? Or could it be

that this man intends to get a young girl drunk for some purpose? Could
it be you have lewd intentions in mind?”
Just hearing the woman speak filled her heart with anger.
She had been so happy spending time with Itami.
The mood was good, and so was the beer. She planned to continue
teasing Itami, and then fake passing out in drunkenness and then
hopefully he would carry her to the bed… no, he was practically about to
do it...
...and then, Itami cradled Rory like a fragile doll as he brought her to the
bed.
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He laid her body gently on the bed, and then placed a soft pillow under
her head.
Because he was worried about knots in her long black hair, he combed it
gently with his fingers, and in order not to get her priestess’ outfit
wrinkled, he carefully tidied up her skirt and prepared to remove her
boots.
He caressed her gently as he held her heel with his left hand and
supported her knee with his right, carefully bending her legs into a slight
curve. Naturally, this would flip up her skirt, and the base of her legs,
where they joined her hip, would become visible.
However, Itami did not notice. Or perhaps he had, but kept quiet.
Grasping the end of a bootlace in his left hand, he undid the knot with all
the ceremony of unwrapping a present.
After loosening the bootlace, a small gap between her calf and the inside
of the boot appeared, and Itami worked his fingers into it to pry it off.
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“...ah~n…”
The feeling was close to a foot massage, and the moan she made was
very suggestive.
And so, now that there was enough space between Rory’s skin and her
boot, Itami grabbed the heel of the boot and said, “I’m taking it off, is
that alright?”
Rory’s face was red, and her eyes were closed. Then, she nodded gently,
almost imperceptibly.
However, that was enough for Itami. No, in truth, even if she had not
responded, Itami would not have gone on waiting. Having filled himself
with determination, Itami would not look back. With a bit more force
than necessary, he pulled off the boot on her left leg. And just like that,
her legs, once hidden by the jet-black boots, were now exposed in all
their glory, covered in white lace-edged socks.
“Owie… please… don’t be so rough with me…” Rory pleaded in a soft

voice. But the cruel Itami ignored Rory’s voice, and went to work on her
right boot.
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After finishing up, Itami prepared to leave the room after neatly
arranging her boots by the bed.
However, her hand grabbed Itami’s sleeve and would not let go.
“What a hopeless fellow you are…”
As he thought of how to deal with Rory, Itami gently pried Rory’s fingers
off and left. Or rather, he tried to leave. While he was trying, Rory
reached out both her hands to grab Itami before dragging him onto the
bed and mounting him.
After that, they would do all sorts of mufufu things until dawn… or at
least, they should have.
But now, that… all that… All that was ruined now. How dare she call me,
Rory Mercury, a brat!
Rory clenched her trembling hand into a fist and looked at the owner of
the voice.
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At a glance, she seemed to be a Dark Elf female.
She looked to be roughly 300 years old, but on the surface she
resembled a human in her late twenties.
She wore a kind of turban used by the southern tribes when they
travelled, and a mantle of some sort.
The mantle superficially resembled a magician’s robes, but it was

simpler in design, so it looked like a piece of cloth worn on the body. In a
way, it had been carefully made, but the way this woman wore a piece
of tatty cloth on her body, with her curves visible through the rents in
the fabric, made the people around her quite excited.
To begin with, she looked like the sort of woman any hot-blooded male
would want. In addition, she wore the Dark Elves’ unique “bondage
armor”.
“Bondage armor” was just the common name for it. Technically
speaking, it would be a piece of protective gear. It was made of tough
leather riveted to metal components, and its defensive properties were
quite good. It would not interfere with the body’s movements in battle
and barely impeded the wearer’s dexterity, but the armor’s design
would lewdly display the wearer’s body.
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The legends of the Dark Elf tribes to the south told of their swift and
nimble battle arts. That was why they favored this sort of defensive
gear.
A woman like this now stood proudly before Rory and Itami.
Her right hand grasped her saber, and she looked like she was going to
kill Itami right then and there.
“You, who are you? What are you doing here?”
Before Rory got angry — no, in truth she was already angry, but before
she vented her wrath — she wanted to learn something about this
woman. Given the way she looked, it could not be helped if people got
the wrong idea of things, so she did not intend to do something
unreasonable like beat her to paste or chop her into pieces. Still, she
wanted to toy with this woman.
The Dark Elf female looked at the young girl, who was so frightened
(apparently) that she was trembling all over. To calm her down, she
decided to answer her question carefully.
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“My name is Yao, a Dark Elf of the Ducy tribe that lives in the Schwarz
forest. I am the daughter of Deban known as Yao Ha Ducy. I heard this
was where I could meet the men in green. I have a request for them.”
When she heard this, Rory’s eyes seemed to shine.
Pretending to be a powerless little girl, she hid behind Yao the Dark Elf
and begged her for help.
“Please, help me! I keep telling that man I can’t drink any more, I keep
begging him to let me go but he keeps making me drink!”
The surroundings were already quiet, but now they were even quieter.
One could almost hear people gulping in the background.
Itami pointed a finger at himself in a “Eh~ is she talking about me?” way
as he looked around searching for a helpful gaze. However, nobody
came to his aid. Several of the guests started gathering up their food
and swiftly exited the tavern, leaving Itami all by himself.
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“So that was what he was up to.”
“This man gets women drunk so he can do whatever he wants with

them! He said ‘Here’s a little drink’ but he wanted to get me so drunk I
couldn’t resist him! Then after I passed out he would do this and that
and steal my purity and then discard me like a broken shoe~”
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Rory pretended to cry as she covered her face and knelt down.
After seeing her like this, Yao tried to comfort her by saying, “Poor thing,
you must have been so scared.” However, she was also trembling in
anger at the vile villain standing before her.
Itami could see Rory sticking her tongue out between the hands
covering her face. Her eyes said, “Sorry~” as she peeked at him.
There were certain women who liked to mess with the men close to her.
For instance, while he drove a car, she would cover his eyes. When he
scolded her, she would cry and say, ”Don’t be mad~” When she was like
that, all the man could do was endure her antics. In most cases, these
women did it to get their man’s attention.
“To think you would intoxicate a child to sate your impure bestial lust! I
shall never forgive you!”
Yao closed the gap between herself and Itami, drawing her saber as she
did.
She held it forward with her right hand, the torchlight shining on its
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razor-sharp edge.
“Fear not. I shall end his villainy and life,” Yao told Rory in a comforting
tone.
Then, when she looked forward again, all she saw was an empty seat
and an empty mug slowly spinning on the table.
“That… was fast.”
“The Boss is really good at running,” the head cook said.
“Bye bye Boss~ we’ll put the drinks on your tab~” Delilah smiled.
They were waving happily to Itami as he vanished into the night.
Because he had disappeared so quickly, everyone else froze for a

second, and then resumed their normal activity like nothing had
happened.
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The head cook pinned Itami’s picture to a wall behind the counter, and
wrote the day’s sum on the picture in pencil.
With nobody to point her saber at, the dark elf stood there in a daze.
When she came to, she nodded to herself. “Hm. The villain has fled.”
As she returned her saber to its sheath, she wanted to say, “It’s all right”
to the little girl, but she was gone.
The girl who had been clutching herself in fear until just now had
disappeared, as though she had never been there. Yao looked around,
but she could not find the girl in the black Goth priestess’ clothes. It was
not that she wanted the girl to thank her, but she should have at least
said something before she left.
“What a rude brat. From her age and clothing, could she be a shrine
maiden of Emroy?”
“Oi, are you going to order something, or did you just come here to
chase my customers away?”
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After hearing Delilah’s voice, Yao, who had been planning to eat in the
first place, apologized and sat at the counter.
Yao turned to the head cook, who was holding a knife.
“So, what’ll you have?”
“I haven’t had dinner yet. Some meat and vegetables please. And
something to drink.”
“Alcohol alright with you?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Delilah, give that Dark Elf-nee-san a beer.”
“Kay~”
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There was a Dwarf sitting beside her, and a glance at his red nose and
face clearly indicated how much he had drunk. He asked Yao, “Yo, Dark
Elf lady. You’re looking for the men in green, right? Why’s that?”
The Catgirl on the other side of Yao patted her shoulder and asked,
“Why’d you come all the way to this place to look for the men in green
~nya?”
Yao personally did not mind drinking with others. This acceptance of
company could be mistaken for kind-heartedness.
“Mm, I heard they were a group of good people, with no ulterior motives.
Alright, please listen to me, then. I came looking for the men in green
because I had a request for them. Everyone, do you know where I could
find them?”
“A request?”
“Yes. No matter what, I absolutely have to get their help.”
So that was why Rory put on that farce.
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Everyone realized why Rory the Reaper had chosen to take her revenge
in that way. As one, they sighed as though to say, “You just drew your
sword on one of them, too bad for you.”
Whether a mistake or not, hardly anyone would want to heed the

request of someone who bared steel at them. If she wanted to achieve
her goal, she would need to clear up the misunderstanding and
apologize, before soothing the other party’s feelings. That was a difficult
task to begin with, and now it was made even more difficult.
The Dwarf male turned away from Yao and said, “It might be
impossible.”
The Catgirl looked away too. “Yes ~nya. I think it’ll be really hard ~nya.”
“Why is that? I heard the men in green were righteous people. They
should not be the sort to abandon those in need. Why does everyone
say that?”
Just then, Delilah put a mug of beer in front of Yao and said, “Here you
go.” Yao looked at the frothy golden liquid and asked, “This is beer?”
before taking a mouthful of it.
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“Mmm, it’s good.”
And then the head cook placed a plate of food in front of Yao.
As Yao tucked into her dinner, she said, “Of course, I don’t intend to
have them help for free. I can pay them with what the Chief gave me.”
Yao plonked a bag the size of a man’s head onto the table. As an aside,
there was a talisman against thieves on the bag, empowered by the Lord
of the Underworld, Hardy. If someone other than the rightful owner
touched it, they would be cursed.
“A raw diamond.”
As they saw this, a disturbance started among the mercenaries. This

was not just a mere sum of money; it was enough to buy a marquisate.
And there was a talisman of Hardy, ruler of the Dark Elves, on it as well.
Both the talisman and the gem were extremely valuable.
“And if that is not enough, I will offer my body as well. I have prepared
myself for that. I have already bid farewell to my relatives.”
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“Ohhhhhhhh~!”
By now, the commotion had spread to some of the women as well.
Yao’s body was bewitchingly beautiful. There was probably no man on

earth who would not be excited if he heard that he could do anything he
wanted to that body.
One of the mercenaries said, “Why not let me do it,” while the others
started to say, “No, let me, no, pick me”.
Yao looked to a mature-looking woman and said, “Ah, what a pain”, and
then she smiled. Then she turned to the crowd.
“I’m sorry, but in all likelihood, none of you will be able to do it.”
“Well, that’s true. Anything worth staking this treasure and your body on
can’t be that simple.”
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“Ah, yes.”
“Then, what is your request?”
Everyone’s eyes were on Yao. She took a drink to wet her lips, and then
spoke in a grave tone.
“I want to exterminate the wounded Flame Dragon.”
***
The Flame Dragon had flown to the Schwarz Forest several months ago.
It happened suddenly. That said, despite it being the home of the Dark
Elves, they had only taken a few casualties at first because most of them
were outside of the village for religious reasons.
However, the Flame Dragon was not satisfied with so few deaths. It flew
by again and again to fill its empty stomach, and many of their brethren
had been lost one by one.
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If this went on, the tribe would be destroyed.
The Dark Elves abandoned the Schwarz Forest, which was now the
Flame Dragon’s hunting ground. They scattered to the nearby barrens,
creeks and foothills.
Thus the Dark Elves’ daily life became one of evading the Flame
Dragon’s attacks.
They watched the sky day and night, and even cowered from passing
birds. When the air raid horn sounded, all they could do was hide in their
holes like moles and tremble in fear.
However, if they were careless, the Flame Dragon would get them.
It would breathe fire into their holes, dig them out, or just collapse the
holes on top of them.
The same friends whom they had greeted in the morning would be torn
apart, chewed up and swallowed by the Flame Dragon in the evening.
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They had to cover their ears and ignore the pitiful cries of their
comrades surrounding them and their wails as they awaited the end.
They let their friends sacrifice themselves to buy time to escape, and
moved to ever more treacherous places or deeper valleys to hide.
But a life spent fleeing was no life at all.
They had to hunt for their food, but the Elves’ hunting grounds were also
the Flame Dragon’s.
When they spotted their prey, the Dragon had its eye on them. When
they brought their quarry down, the Dragon might claim them instead.
They tried various other means to feed themselves.
They peeled off tree bark and boiled it, then ate it as they drank muddy
water. This was their life.
The resources they had brought from the stricken regions were running
thin. Their food stocks were gradually running low. Resolving themselves
to die, their young archers prepared themselves and headed to the
hunting grounds.
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There were casualties every day.
No day went by without the cries of orphaned children, or the sound of

voices cursing the Flame Dragon for the loss of their children and
relatives.
Of course, there were those who took up bow and sword in anger and
challenged the Dragon.
However, they were like eggs thrown at a rock. All their valiant efforts
accomplished was adding to the number of corpses in the Dragon’s lair.
The aid of the spirits, their mithril arrowheads, their strong armor, none
of them availed them against the Flame Dragon.
They thought that magic swords might help, but then they could not
even get the tips through the scales. The magic swords merely added to
the collection in the Flame Dragon’s lair.
The Dark Elves’ hearts were filled with despair and emptiness.
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There were those who believed in Hardy and who felt the call of the
afterlife, and went to it with desperate laughter, like prisoners just
before execution. It spread like an incurable disease through the tribe.
There were many who lost the will to live and lay down and died.
“This can’t go on,” someone had said.
“The Flame Dragon must have a weakness. The arrow sticking out of its
eye is proof of that.”
There was an Elf who had taken his revenge on the Flame Dragon. The
thought of that rekindled their courage.
“There must be some way to defeat the Flame Dragon. Look at its
missing left arm.”
At the same time, the tales of the “Men in Green” reached them.
They used a magic staff called the “Rod of Steel” to destroy its left arm,
and saved a human village from extinction. These tales were the last,
best hope for the Dark Elves, who faced extinction themselves.
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After that, the tribe decided as one to send an envoy.
The one who was sent out would have to bear a heavy burden.
The envoy would need to escape the Flame Dragon’s claws, and find the
men in green by hearsay alone. The envoy would need an iron will, a
sense of duty, and a keen survival instinct.
The envoy would bear the hope of the village.
They would have to beg the men in green for their aid, by any means
necessary. Failure meant the destruction of their tribe, their comrades,
their relatives and friends.
Such a great responsibility could not be borne by any ordinary person.

They would need great battle skills and knowledge, as well as the
integrity to not give up the mission halfway and run off with the
treasures entrusted to them.
They gathered the young people of the tribe, and began their selection.
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In the end, two names were left. One of them was Yao Ha Ducy.
She was a skilled swordswoman and wise, and she was adept at
summoning the spirits.
Her straightforward but earnest attitude was well known throughout the
village. They were certain she would not give up her mission halfway.
There were two candidates, both of whom were equal in ability, talent
and personality. However, the female Yao would be more useful. That
was because her bewitching beauty would be a powerful weapon in
negotiations with the opposite sex. According to the rumors, the men in
green were commanded by a male.
However, things were not that simple. The chief looked at Yao’s face and
sighed. Frankly speaking, her bad luck was a major point against her.
She fell into traps more often than others while hunting, and when trees
were felled, they kept falling on top of her head.
It would rain when she went swimming, and when she went to town to
buy things, the shops were invariably closed.
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Her lover was NTRed away by a “good friend”, and when she was finally
about to marry her childhood friend after overcoming various obstacles,
he died of natural causes before their wedding day.
After that, during the mourning, a man who had confessed his love to
Yao before she was married fell off a cliff while hunting and died.
Thereafter, no man dared to go near her.
In addition, she had no luck at all during lucky draws, and the only time
she won something was when she drew the top prize at a friend’s
wedding.
Honestly speaking, it was enough to erase all her merits as a woman.

However, although her luck was bad, she kept pushing herself to keep
carrying on with life in spite of her misfortune.
Everyone agreed on that. The elders could not disqualify her just based
on her bad fortune.
At this point, the elders told Yao the reason why they had chosen her.
After that, they asked if she was prepared to offer her body as a reward.
In truth, those words were not necessary, and they might have been
hoping she would refuse.
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In truth Yao was thinking about whether or not to withdraw.
However, she had accepted. Since she had no luck with men, if the other
party asked her to be a slave, a lover, a whore or a maid, she would
agree. However, Yao would not sell herself cheaply. If the price of her
body was the head of a Flame Dragon, she would proudly pay it.
Still uneasy about the whole matter, the elders chose Yao as their
envoy.
Since this concerned the life and death of the entire tribe, a miserly
payment would be meaningless. Therefore, they entrusted her with the
most valuable treasure of the tribe.
And so Yao began her journey, and after overcoming bad luck and
difficulties, she finally stood before Arnus Hill.
***
Yao’s sleep was interrupted by a roaring noise.
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She sprang up and looked around to see what was going on. She was in
a beautiful forest whose canopy let the sunlight in through small gaps.
She had come all this way to Arnus Town, but then she was told that
there were no more rooms in the inn. Since it was late at night, she
could only leave her business until tomorrow, and so she had chosen to
camp out in the forest at the foot of Arnus Hill.
Yao had a good night’s rest. Perhaps it was thanks to the spirits nearby,
who had granted her the blessings of wood, water, wind and tree.
A pair of swords was dancing in the sky above the forest, and thunder
followed in their wake.
They slashed through the air and rose high on mighty wings. They were
F-4 Phantoms.
These soon-to-be-retired aircraft were not subject to the same annoying

restrictions as they would be in Japan. As they took off, the control tower
told them, “Birds are all gone, fly as you please as long as you don’t
crash,” which filled the pilots with glee as they were let off the leash.
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They were veteran pilots, with thousands of flight hours. However, since
they were over 40 years old, while they were taking the F-15 and F-2
conversion courses, they were transferred to a training unit because of
their age and because it was their personal decision. They would spend
the rest of their careers peacefully on the ground. There were no plans
to reassemble the fighter planes which were disassembled and sent
through the Gate.
All that they had left was the sky. There were no passenger planes they
had to give way too and no American aircraft cluttering up their
airspace. The sky belonged to them, and the freedom to roam it as they
pleased was an opportunity any airman would drool over.
After takeoff, they folded up the landing gear and pushed their engines
to full throttle, climbing up to 10’000 meters above ground level before
performing an Immelmann.
The planes turned 180 degrees in mid-air, and with their heads facing
the earth, they half-rolled and dived before pulling up again, in a Split-S
maneuver.
They had passed Mach 1 during their aerobatics, but there were no town
councils here to complain about the noise from their supersonic flight.
That said, they still had to be considerate of the Arnus Garrison and the
members of Arnus Town, and how they would react to the constant
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thundercracks in mid-air caused by the breaking of the sound barrier.

They were friends after all. They pushed their throttles to full once more
and began a simulated dogfight. After peeling off horizontally, they
levelled themselves out, and then they gripped the control stick with
their knees and pulled back to bring their plane’s noses up.
The G-forces from the sudden turn crushed down on their bodies, and
even breathing was impossible. With a loud “hu”, they poured their
strength into their waists and used every ounce of strength in the upper
bodies to stabilize the aircraft.
In the instant the G-forces vanished, they gasped out the air in their
lungs and took deep gulps of oxygen. They were competing to see who
could hold their Gs longer.
The copilot said, “They’ve got a lock on us!”
“You bastards—!”
He immediately threw his plane into a Scissors maneuver. The plane

jinked sharply, in order to shake the imaginary bandit locked onto them.
Heaven and earth spun round and round the cockpit. Once they got the
bandit off their tail, it was their turn to lock onto them.
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While flying the Knife Edge, they went into a horizontal corkscrew roll...
right now, they would even lock onto an F-22 to show everyone how it
was done. Just by maneuvering alone, they were already of a world-class
standard. In the past, they even managed to conduct a simulated shoot-
down of an American F-15 while flying an old F-104.
They soared through the sky as though freed from their shackles, like
innocent children at play.
***
They were silver swords, slicing through the sky.
The silver swords seemed to be playing a game of tag in mid-air.
Yao watched the sky dumbly for a while, and soon discovered that they
were man-made objects. Elves had exceptionally keen vision, and her
field of vision could see the men seated in the giant blades soaring
through the sky.
Then, she smiled, even as her tears fell.
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“They were true, the stories were true…”
The Flame Dragon soared through the sky like it owned it, feeding on the
helpless ground dwellers.
But now, the sky was no longer ruled by the Flame Dragon. The flying
swords were faster and sharper, better than the Flame Dragon in every
way. It was only natural that anyone who possessed these things would
also possess the Rods of Steel which could chew off the Flame Dragon’s
arm.
To be frank, Yao had doubted the truth of the tales she had heard. After
all, stories tended to grow in response to people’s hopes. In order not to
have her heart broken, she constantly thought about what she would do
if they turned out to be false.
But now that she saw the flying swords dance through the sky, it told
her that her journey had not been wasted, and it turned into proof for
her hopes.
Yao had the feeling that her task would be over soon.
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All she had to do was return to Arnus Town and meet the representative
of the men in green.
Asking for help, no matter how difficult, could not possibly be harder
than the road she had travelled until now. It seemed as though her
comrades back home would be saved at last.
With those thoughts in mind, Yao gathered up her determination and set
out toward Arnus Town once more.
As the thickets gave way to grass, her steps became lighter and faster.
Soon they became a jog, as though she was unwilling to walk all the way
then, and in the end she broke into a flat-out sprint that sliced through
the wind.
***
At Arnus, 3rd Recon, led by Itami, finished their equipment checks and
convoyed up.
To one side, 1LT Yanagida was holding his clipboard as he did the final
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checks on the contents of the two-wheeled pushcarts.
“Silk, lacquerware, pottery, porcelain, pearls, whoa! They even have

sake, and it’s high-class too, ‘Koshino Kanchubai’. Could I have a bottle?
“Give me a break, Yanagida-san. These are our ammunition.”
The man who replied to him was a diplomat in a suit, called Todo. He
knew Yanagida was kidding, but his answer was sincere.
“Really? You mean you won’t drink it yourself?”
“You’ll have to trust us on that.”
With the contents on the inventory list, they could open a department
store that sold famous goods from all over Japan. This seemed more like
bribery than simple gift-giving.
Because many of the items were fragile, they had to be wrapped

properly. Since there were many of them, they become extremely large
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pieces of luggage.
“After that, cases of gold coins, silver coins, and copper coins. We’ve
checked inside them.”
They needed funds to do business in the Imperial Capital, and those

funds were in those wooden boxes. The money was needed for activity
expenses, setting up bases in the Capital, as well as recruiting and
paying off informants. There were all sorts of other activities and fees to
pay, so they often ran out of money during operations.
“Women, food and drinks. It’s similar to the way companies here
welcome guests. We’ll find fallen nobles or people unhappy with the
current regime and have them spread rumors to make the opposition’s
job more difficult.”
Although he was still learning the language, one of the young diplomats
had already performed several missions in the Special Region. He
knocked on a case of gold coins as he spoke.
The Japanese government had obtained this currency by purchasing

them from the ALC.
The ALC received Japanese yen in exchange for the currency, which they
used to buy all sorts of Japanese goods.
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“People in the governments of developing countries are very

straightforward, they’ll ask you for bribes up front. It’s like when we
were negotiating the Chunxiao business with the Chinese diplomats,
they even threatened us with, “Oh, you won’t mind if we send our ships
over then”. I was pretty envious of how they could do things. I wish I
could say, “Do it if you dare. We’ll see who’s stronger.”
“You mean you can’t just tell them that? I mean, here.”
“Well, that’s just how diplomacy works. We’re no longer in the colonial
era. We need to maintain a presence in the Special Region and keep
building close ties with the locals, to avoid leaving causes for conflict
behind. Now, we’re just going to focus on beefing up the pro-peace
faction.”
As he said this, a CH-47A Chinook landed behind him.
The downwash from the rotors stirred the sand and dust into a storm.
As it touched down, the amount of dust it threw up blinded everyone

nearby.
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The rear loading ramp lowered, and 3rd Recon boarded the Chinook
together at Sergeant Major Kuwabara’s order. Yanagida and the
diplomats loaded the carts onto the Chinook.
They securely fastened the cargo inside the Chinook to make sure it
would not move around in flight. After that, everyone sat on the seats
lining the inside of the helicopter and fastened their seatbelts.
After ensuring that the diplomats were seated, Yanagida spoke to Itami.
“Then, I’ll leave the rest to you. Make sure they reach their destination
safely.”
Itami raised a thumb.
The rotors picked up speed, and the dust flew again.
Yanagida got off the craft and the rear door closed. Then the Chinook
took off.
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And so, they flew toward the capital.
Arnus was about 10 days away from the capital by horse. By Chinook it
would only take about half a day. However, in order to avoid people’s
attention, they could not land too close to the city. In the end, they
chose to land in the hills far away from the Capital, and walking from
there to the Capital would take about one and a half days on foot.
***
Before she entered Arnus town, Yao heard the noise and looked up to
see a boat passing over her head. Flying swords dancing in the sky, rods
of steel, and now flying boats… with all these so close by, the men in
green must be here, Yao thought as she entered the town.
Note
1: Koshi no Kanchubai (越の寒中梅) is a brand of Japanese sake. You can

find out more here: http://www.niigata-meijo.com/
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Vol. 3 :
Chapter 3
Yao’s head hurt.
She approached everyone wearing green or dark green clothes and

asked them, “Sorry, could I ask you a question?”
But none of them understood her
They were all the same. They simply smiled stiffly, or grinned, and their
faces had confused expressions. She could not tell if they did or did not
understand her.
Judging by the looks on their faces, they did not seem to understand her.
She tried her best, but in the end, she still could not communicate with
them.
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As she was tormented by the thought that her efforts were in vain, she
desperately hoped that there was someone who could speak her
language. But she had no choice but to randomly approach people on
the street.
After half a day, she had only managed to speak to around 20 to 30

people.
In the end, she realised that she could not communicate with the men in
green… no. Though she could not get her meaning across, they could at
least recognize individual phrases she said.
In the end, even people like these had started showing up.
“Dark Elf-neechan, are you looking for the men in green?”
She smoothly replied, “Is there a way to talk to them?” After all, the man
speaking to her was not wearing green. By the looks of him, he was
probably a man who understood this country.
He seemed too skinny to be a mercenary. He was most likely a trader, or
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a hired hand.
The man said to Yao, “I know where the men in green are, let me take
you there.”
Yao was immensely grateful to hear this, so she took his kind words at
face value.
Then, the man took her away from the busy streets and into the dark
depths of the forest.
“Where are we going?”
“This way. The men in green are here.”
Yao could feel the sweat on the hand holding hers, and she wondered,
“What’s with this hand?”
Could it be that he mistook me for a prostitute? she thought. This is bad.

As she was thinking about this, he took her to a secluded place and said
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“I have money, and I have connections. I can put in a good word for you
with the men in green,” and then he tried to force himself on Yao.
“I will not be controlled by strength or money,” she said, and kneed him
in the groin. In the depths of pain, the man realised he had made a
mistake and ran off with a twisted face.
Why had he dropped his money pouch, she wondered, before resolving
to return it.
Normal women would probably shout, “How dare you!” and continue
chasing him, and they might end up beating the crap out of him. But Yao
did not do that. He was a young man, and it was only understandable, so
she decided to look at it from an enlightened point of view and let it go.
Yao was quite aware of the effect she had on men (especially in her
bondage armor). If anything happened, she would take care of it by
herself. After all, this was not the first time this sort of thing had taken
place. She was worried that it might end up becoming a bad habit.
She was not the sort of woman who would be bought by money, alcohol
or brute force. However, if someone approached her courteously, she
would seriously consider it. However, she never met that sort of people,
so she had no choice but to kick them in the crotch instead.
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In the end, all she had done was waste time. She had been dragged
around the town.
Even now, her fellows were still exposed to the threat of the Flame
Dragon. Her sufferings were nothing in comparison to that. Yao
motivated herself and went back into town to look for people.
However, she could hardly find any men in green in the back street.
What she found instead was a line of carts stuffed full of cargo, lined up
in a row. By the looks of things, the back street was a warehouse district
of some kind. There were also warehouses under construction, and some
of them had finished roofs, so the building materials were piled inside.
They were then covered by a thick cloth to ward off rain and dust.
The workers here were moving cargo from the carts to the warehouse.
Most of the cargo was meat jerky and other staple foods. There were
livestock in cages as well. After some work, they would probably be sold
in the canteen.
There were mercenaries of all stripes having a rest by the side. They
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wore stained traveller’s clothes, and looked like they had just come to
town. Their horses were being watered and fed.
One of the mercenaries saw Yao, and he decided to be a busybody and

come over.
“Yo~ neechan, what’s up? If you’re bored, why don’t you come play with
us?”
At least this time he had asked nicely, and he seemed stronger than the
rude fellow just now. However, he still lacked the proper attitude, and
his tone dripped with lewdness. Yao fixed him with a cold glare and
replied, “Hmph~ your little toy couldn’t begin to satisfy me.”
And so the man ran away, a hurt expression on his face.
It looked like Yao’s words had a crushing effect on that man. Perhaps he
had a size complex.
She sensed that she had done something bad, and hastily fled the
scene.
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After a while, she came to a place where crates and boxes were stacked
high.
In front of her, Yao saw traders haggling over prices. There were boxes
which contained a very fine and very shiny fabric. Even Yao could tell at
a glance that they were expensive.
“What’s this?”
Out of curiosity, she asked what the fabric was. A nearby trader
explained, “This cloth is called ‘satin’. Its key features are that it’s
lustrous and feels smooth to the touch. It would make very pretty
clothes.”
The trader had come to Arnus just for this.
“I’m not here to buy things.”
The man, who looked like a supervisor, broke off his haggling.
In order not to let too many people crowd Arnus Town, the ALC had set
up branch stores in Italica, the Capital, Lognan and Deiabis, which
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focused on sales.
“Please, I need this, could you help me out?”
The trader had obviously been to all the branch stores, but all the places
he visited were out of stock. He could not obtain the fabric he wanted.
However, he did not give up. He could not wait here for the goods to
arrive. In order to get things done, he had to get the silk by any means
necessary
The trader said: there had been a great upheaval among the patricians
of the Empire.
The Imperial ladies now wore figure-hugging dresses in vibrant colors,

and adorned themselves with sparkling accessories of dyed gold and
silver threads.
The other women, their souls stolen by these fresh, new and brilliant
items, nervously asked, “Where did these come from?” But their owners
simply smiled enigmatically and kept silent.
“What’s that lovely little fan in your left hand?”
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The answer: “Oh that? it’s nothing much. Ohohohohoho~” and then they
would fold it up with a patapata sound.
“Then, those accessories on your person, what are those lovely pearls?
They don’t look like normal pearls…”
The answer: “Oh, those? They’re not high-class or anything like that.
Ohohohohoho~” and then they would move so their pearl necklace
made a clacking sound, and show off their pearl earrings.
“How did your body (translation: breasts) become like that?”
“Ah, no, I have no idea how they grew so big.

Ohohohohohohohohohohohohoho~”
“Come on, tell me, where did you get those cosmetics from?!”
“From the same place we all do. If it looks pretty, then that’s because
the person underneath was beautiful to begin with.
Ohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoho~ koff, koff”
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Women would not be jealous of others because of their intelligence or

temperament, but in turn, they would be intensely jealous of wealth,
beauty and other such things. They would use others’ jealousy of them
to feed their senses of superiority. Therefore, they would compare
themselves with each other. One patrician lady was so jealous she bit
her handkerchief to shreds.
And so, these noble women, driven by jealousy, envy and hatred, made
their desire into a spearhead which pointed at the Imperial Capital’s
fashion industry, which were the textile shops and tailors.
However, the shops and tailors could only say, “We can’t make anything
that good. We can’t even make threads out of gold. If we had the
material, it might be possible… do you get it?” That was to say, without
the necessary raw materials, they were helpless.
To them, what they meant by “anything good” was patrician ladies’

dresses, maid uniforms, or priests’ formal wear. The quality of all of
these was in turn determined by the quality of the cloth, dyes,
embroidery and stitching used to make them, and the difference
between two good pieces could be very fine indeed. This meant that if
the cloth they used was inferior, there was not much they could do.
And so, the textile tradesmen and seamstresses began running

everywhere to gather information.
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There was a tailor who made dresses out of unknown materials. They
started there, looking at those tailors who went in and out of the noble
homes, and when they found him, they squeezed a confession out of
him (his daughter later said that originally he didn’t want to talk, but he
was forced to speak after he started fearing for his life.
After that, all the information they collected pointed to “Arnus.”
And so, all the tailors and textile merchants thronged the ALC branch
shops to secure printed cloth, nishijin embroidery, and other such items,
which they sucked up like vacuum cleaners.
However, at the same time they also saw samples of other goods, made
from materials such as lustrous satin, sheer and translucent chiffon,
strong and tough taffeta, soft velvet, stretchable elastics and so on. The
dying techniques they used were impressive, and the colors they
produced were bright and vibrant. Even the incredibly expensive purple
dye, reserved for the royal family, was sold like any other product.
By the way, the products sewn from stretchable materials were “T-
shirts”, which absorbed sweat well and were popular despite their high
price. There were even signs that wearing them might become a trend.
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“After we use this fabric as the base material, the rest will be up to the
design.”
The tailors, long past the horizon of despair, clenched their fists tightly.
Somehow, somewhere in the inventories of the ALC branch shop in the
Imperial Capital, they had found an “art book”, used for reference.
Although there was only one copy, placed all by itself to one side, it
seemed to draw people in with its extraordinarily detailed art, which also
had words written in some country’s letters on it.
Nobody could understand the text, but that was not a problem. To them,
the important thing was the clothing designs that they used for
reference. Some designs were too fancy, but that just meant they had to
modify the design for their own use. When they thought, “This is pretty
good...” they would take the feature they found and adjust it for use in
other projects. In this way, the foreign art book became a top secret
among the tailors of the Imperial Capital, and was carefully preserved.
By the way, if a Japanese person were to read the words on that book,
they would find that the words said “cosplay” or “layer”. As for why such
a book would be in the Special Region, probably only a certain Japanese
man with a strong connection to the ALC would know.
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***
—Several weeks ago.
“Does anyone know where my magazine went? It was the international

cosplay special.”
“Beats me. Didn’t see it.”
“Where did you leave it?”
“El-tee, please take care of your own things.”
***
And so, the Imperial Capital’s fashion trends were dominated by

brilliantly-made dresses of dubious origins, or strangely designed new
dresses made of mysterious yet marvellous materials.
The trader continued his explanation.
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A certain patrician debutante-to-be was set to appear on the social

scene soon. The merchant had been asked to “give me the best possible
dress” for that event. If he failed to do so, her father would not be kind
to him.
Therefore, for his wife and children’s sake, he had searched everywhere
for the fabric, and finally he had encountered a material called “satin”.
The trader said he wanted to use it for the dress.
“However…”
The man in charge held his hands in front of his chest and muttered to
himself. Before he was responsible for the ALC’s textiles, he had also
been a cloth merchant, and he was very familiar with the patricians’
high-handed ways. Therefore, he wanted to help the trader before his
eyes. However, he could not sell the fabric directly to him. That was the
place of the branch shops.
As she saw the troubled pair, Yao said, “How about this…”
The trader had to return to the capital in any event, and the textile
supervisor had to send his goods to the capital. That being the case, why
not put down a deposit first, and then wait until the fabric arrived at the
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capital before collecting it from the branch store?
Once they settled the payment, even if the trader decided that he did
not want the fabric, it would be fine. He would pay first and receive a
receipt, and then exchange the receipt for the goods he wanted. The
ALC would not lose out in any way. Still, it would be in the trader’s best
interests to stick to the agreement to facilitate future transactions.
However, if he could not wait for the goods to arrive, it might cause
problems as well.
After the trader and the supervisor heard Yao’s thoughts, they pounded
their fists into their palms.
“I see, that way it’ll all work out!”
“That’s quite a trick, to arrange things so nobody loses out. Then again,
such wisdom is only to be expected of the Dark Elves.”
“Ah, that’s true, as expected of such a cunning race.”
The way the two of them looked at Yao seemed to say, “What a villain
you are”.
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Yao thought, What, isn’t this very normal? and then she left, as though
her job was done.
***
She returned to the main road once again, going from store to store in
search of the men in green.
Soon enough, she saw a Catgirl maid speaking with several men in
green.
They seemed to be chatting. The girl smiled, and the men’s faces turned
red. As she encouraged them, they bought more and more things.
Ah, could it be these men can speak the language? As she thought about
that, she realised that was not the case. Rather, the Catgirl maid was
speaking the men in green’s language.
Yao thought. Why could she speak to the men in green? She could not
shy away from asking. When she chatted up the Catgirl, it turned out
that she was the one drinking beside Yao.
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The Catgirl mischievously asked, “Found your man in green ~nya?” and
then she honestly answered Yao’s question.
“Because of this ~nya”
She withdrew a small but skilfully made book.
It contained the language that the men in green (according to the

Catgirl, they were Japanese) used. It was a phrasebook for simple
conversation.
Edited by the Arnus Living Community / Supervised by Kato El Ardestan /

Printed by Gakuon Publishing. Because of the color of its cover page,
they all called it the “Little Red Book”.
“Could, could you sell this to me?”
The red book’s cover had the following words printed in gold lettering:
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The contents of this book are for internal use only. Do not use for non-
educational purposes. After using, destroy by burning.
“This book is issued free of charge to the ALC members or the people
working for them. The language study people have them too ~nya. I
don’t know how outside people can get it ~nya. I never thought of
selling it, so I don’t know how much it costs. Sorry, but I can’t sell it to
you ~nya.”
“Is there really no way? Like I said last night, I have to find the men in
green and get them to help by any means necessary. Since this
morning, I’ve found a few, but I couldn’t communicate with them at all.
Please, I’m begging you…”
Since she had come this far, Yao was prepared to do it. She bowed
deeply to the Catgirl.
If she could, the Catgirl would have liked to give the book to Yao.
However, she was an employee, so she could not make that decision
lightly.
Although it was given to them free of charge, books were very valuable
things in this world. When she received this book, she was prepared to
pay several months of salary for it. The things she needed for work like
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the maid uniform she was wearing now, the furniture in her home, her
food bills, and the costs of other expendables were deducted from her
monthly pay, which was a natural thing in this world. However, the book
was a different matter.
She was issued essential items. She had a discount on food (employee
price). The hostel had adequate facilities. Of course, if she damaged
them by fooling around, she would have to pay for the damages, but
wear and tear over the course of proper usage was a different matter.
These were working conditions she could not find elsewhere. One might
even call them revolutionary. When she saw her employment contract,
she nearly said, “What’s ‘paid vacation’, can you eat it ~nya?”
Because of that, they were very serious about that work and had a
strong sense of duty, for fear of losing the trust of the ALC. Even in the
face of temperamental mercenaries, they grinned and bore it.
If they were no longer trustworthy, they would be sent back. It would

also mean they would be throwing mud in the face of House Formal,
which had recommended them to such an ideal workplace, and their
entire tribe would be shamed as a result.
She understood that Yao’s tribe of Dark Elves was in grave danger, but
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giving her that book would endanger the Catpeoples’ way of life. Their
homes depended on the money they sent back to them.
Therefore, she could not say something like, “It’s just a book, take it.”
Normally, when she encountered a difficult situation like this, she could
ask one of her superiors “What should I do ~nya?” In this case, her
superiors were the elders who were the ALC’s managers, the sages, or
the Elf. However, as luck would have it, all of them were out. So she
asked Yao to wait. However, Yao replied, “I can’t wait any longer. It has
to be now.”
“It can’t be done ~nya!”
“I beg you, please…”
“Even if you lower your head to me, I can’t do it ~nya...”
“Then what do you want from me?”
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Just as the Catgirl was agonizing about what to do, two people from the
security details (military police) entered the store. They were dressed in
the JGSDF fatigues, but they had armbands with “Military Police / MP” on
their right shoulders.
As MPs, they would make regular patrols. Currently, they were on their
beat.
“What’s wrong, Meiya-chan? Having problems?” the MP asked in a

Kansai accent. Although the Catgirl’s Japanese was not very polished,
she did not have trouble answering him.
If she told them she was troubled because of Yao’s request, the MPs,
might treat Yao as a suspicious person and throw her out of the store.
But if she heard the reason why Yao came to Arnus and felt sympathy
for her, they probably would not do that.
Just then, one of the MPs furrowed his brows after looking over Yao.
“Hm? This Elf. Isn’t she the one in the reports?”
“I think she is. Brown skin, silver hair, elf ears, very beautiful, wearing
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leather armor… if you gave her a whip she’d be perfect. Her turban and
scarf are just like that scammer we were told about.”
“Then again, the one who told us this was a shady sort himself, but since
we’ve met her, we might as well ask her directly.”
In truth, the MPs had received a report from a victim. “I was seduced by
a beautiful female Dark Elf, she brought me to the forest and kicked me
in the crotch and then stole my money pouch!”
According to the Special Region JSDF Expeditionary Forces Special Law,

MPs were empowered to investigate crimes and arrest criminals within
any territory in the Special Region administered by the JSDF, in order to
maintain public safety.
The MPs told Yao, “Sorry, I have something to ask you”. Because it
concerned the law and order of Arnus, they were trying their best to
communicate in the language of the Special Region. It definitely was not
because they wanted to chat up the Catgirl. Probably.
A Japanese who could speak our language?!
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Yao was overjoyed. And he even said that he had something to ask her.
From the morning until now, she had approached countless people.
Because she could not communicate with them, she was plunged into
despair. But in the end, someone she could talk to appeared in front of
her. Having some good luck at last filled her with happiness.
As she thought about it, her tears started brimming in her eyes. She
even wanted to cry out in joy.
“Sorry, but could you come with us for a little while? We have some
questions for you.”
Yes, yes. As long as you’ll listen to me, I’ll go anywhere you want.
And so, Yao complied with the MPs’ request and followed them, as a
suspected con artist.
***
This place was in the middle of the forest.
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There was a small spring between the forest’s trees. A large boulder lay
by its side, and an old man sat on that boulder.
He had his magic staff in hand, and he carefully watched the pupil he
had raised.
His pupil was a girl young enough to be his granddaughter, and as an old
sage and a magician, it was his job to observe how she had grown. He
remained still, like a picture.
Lelei La Lelena stood calmly by the side of the small lake. She grasped
her staff, and prepared to work magic.
The horn-like sounds from her throat were mixed with the sounds of a
one-man chorus.
「Abru-main!」
First, she would need to create the framework for the “Initiation”.
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The world ruled by the “true principle” would be expanded by the

“magic principle”, and then one would create an “array” to
accommodate the “false principle”.
The air was not moved by the wind. It was propelled by “false air”
produced by the “false principle”. Under the influence of a magic-user,
the roiling of the “magic principle” slightly ruffled her hair.
Her soul touched the “true principle” at the heart of all things.
A silence like that of a vacuum spread throughout the quiet forest.
A small ring of plasma appeared around her hand. This ring of light
orbited her wrist like a bracelet.
The ring quietly split into two, then four, and the number steadily
increased. Not just that, as the number of rings increased, so did their
size, and they gradually spread forward.
The rings of light were like a string of pearls, and by the time they
spread past her finger, there were over 30 of them. They grew larger
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and larger as they spread forward until the diameter of the foremost
rings was now the same as her petite height.
「Duge-main」
Lelei withdrew her arm from the ring in the air and snapped her fingers.
Then —
— The smallest ring of light exploded, followed by the next, in a chain

reaction.
The explosions came in rapid succession. The chained blasts formed a

column of violet light, like a gigantic trumpet of explosions.
The projectile of light it created was a block of condensed heat. When it

touched the surface of the spring, it boiled off a large amount of water in
an instant, creating a phenomenon that could be called a steam
explosion.
And then, the water blasted into the sky fell like rain.
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Bathed in the sudden downpour, Kato could not move for a moment.
This was far beyond the results he had expected. It seemed to freeze his
soul. Be it the impact, the high temperature steam around them, or the
icy cold rain that fell, all of them were bad for his heart.
Lelei maintained her blank expression as the rain fell, and waited for
Kato’s evaluation.
“Hmm~”
Kato swept back his damp hair, and squeezed the droplets out before
speaking.
“Lelei, you’ve done a wonderful job. I have nothing to say. Can you
explain the “principle” you just showed?”
Lelei bowed quietly and spoke in a scholarly tone of voice.
Mages of the Lindon school were feared for their combat magic, but in
truth, the situation was not as it seemed.
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For instance, the use of magic in battle was merely using magic to alter
the “true principle” of natural phenomena, so they could be used for
combat purposes.
“It’s like this.”
Lelei picked up a pebble and let it float in mid-air, and flung it against a
nearby trunk like a bullet.
The “false principle” interfered with the “true principle” which made the
pebble fall. However ballistae and catapults could also do this, and
better, so she had to train to overcome the spell’s weakness.
This time, Lelei lifted about 10 pebbles. The pebbles floated around the
target and stuck it from all sides, leaving numerous holes in the trunk.
This was a technique ballistae and catapults could not duplicate. This
was why combat magic was feared.
But practically speaking, what was the difference between looking at it

from a mundane and from a magician’s point of view? Fire magic
basically drowned the target in fire. Using kindling or flaming oil would
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have the same effect. Similarly, water magic of all sorts eventually
ended up soaking the enemy in water.
And all of these could be replicated by machines and tools. In addition,

the radius of the “false principle was small, while the power it could
produce was easily exceeded by large devices.
Although it would be fine in small battles, many battles recently were

large-scale clashes of power, and thus the importance of mages went
down. Of course, they were not completely useless. They were
indispensable as doctors and for their utility magic. However, the Lindon
school which prided itself on combat magic could not rest on their
laurels like that. It was their duty to continue the research their
forefathers passed down.
However, in the face of the “guns” and “cannons” and other potent
weapons used by the JSDF, even the effort they had been putting in until
now would not be enough to keep up with the times.
It was a problem that could not be solved by using the “false principle”
to interfere with the “true principle”. The practical applications of the
“true principle” were more effective, and technological development
meant that it would eventually catch up to and surpass magic.
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This meant that the country on the other side of the Gate had a far
deeper and broader understanding of the “true principle” than they did.
If they used the “true principle to work magic”, could they produce a
spell that exceeded all others in power? That was what Lelei was aiming
for.
For example, the research into “flame” on the other side of the Gate.
According to that research, “flame” was a phenomenon created by the

combination of “oxidizers” in the air with material “fuel”. They called
this phenomenon “combustion”.
After that, “explosions” were an instantly-occurring form of

“combustion”. It was similar to how a sealed object would burst after
being heated, but different at the same time.
“Why don’t you try setting off an explosion?”
Lelei created a ball of light in mid-air.
On the other side of the Gate, the “oxidizer” was called “oxygen”. The
“fuels” were objects made of “carbon” or “hydrogen”. Now she would
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use the “false principle” to generate and isolate a quantity of “oxidizer”

and “fuel”, and then combine them. After that, she would seal them in a
field, and let it float in mid-air until it reached the right density. Then
finally, she would release them from the “false principle” in one go.
She snapped her fingers, and the ball of light exploded.
“On the other side of the Gate, there is a substance called “gunpowder”.
It is comparable to this ball of light.”
“Ah, that makes sense. You’ve created new applications of magic,

Granted, these applications were influenced by research from the other
world, but combining them with magic and obtaining results from it
make you worthy of the title of ‘Sage’.”
By controlling the hitherto ungraspable phenomenon of explosions, the

value of magic was increased as well. If one thought about it, this would
have a lot of useful applications in military, industrial and other fields,
Kato reasoned.
“However, this lacks power.”
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Explosions by themselves were not very destructive. They released a

huge burst of light, heat, and sound, and ended. To create a more
powerful effect, one would need to gather more fuel, but that was hardly
efficient, Lelei explained. At this point, Kato raised his hand to interrupt
her.
Then, after telling her, “It seems we have guests,” he looked behind
himself.
Lelei looked in the same direction he did. There stood a JSDF MP.
“I’m very sorry, but there are some difficult things we have to say. Could
you help interpret for us?”
Lelei sighed softly, then bowed to Kato before following the MP.
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Vol. 3 :
Chapter 4
The interior of the MP questioning room looked like it had come out of a
detective movie.
It was roughly four tatamis in size. There was a table in the center like a
decoration, with a chair in front and behind it.
The chair near the door was for the “questioner”, while the chair near
the barred window was for the “subject”.
There was another table in the corner of the room near the exit. This
was where the transcriber sat, and also where the internal phone was
located.
Yao drooped her shoulders as she sat in the “subject” chair. She had
managed to keep herself from crying so far, but it was quite traumatic to
be suspected for a crime she had not committed.
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The MP opposite Yao was paging through the Little Red Book and a
heavily-used dictionary, trying his best to communicate with her. The
wastepaper basket beside him was filled with balled-up pieces of paper.
It would seem it had been a very trying experience.
Because the MPs were treating her as a suspect, they were supposed to
speak sternly and apply intimidating levels of pressure as they
questioned her. The fact that the victim’s purse was in her possession as
well was a strike against her. In other words, she was caught red-handed
with evidence for the crime she had been accused of.
Still, they did not go that far.
That was because the MP who was the investigating officer (IO) was
aware that his linguistic skills were mediocre.
When one did not share a language with someone else, one had to be
very careful when trying to communicate. He carefully wrote down every
word she said, translated it and tried to string it together into sentences,
and then he asked Yao if that was what she had said. After all this hard
work, he could finally say, “Ahh, I get it, no wonder, it was like this all
along.”
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What became clear was that this was not simply a matter of a simple
purse snatching.
The MP went “Huh? This isn’t what the victim said at all,” and began
thinking.
There was a brown-skinned Elven beauty in front of him. In addition, he

found a word in the dictionary that could mean “was attacked” or “was
beaten”, so he could not just disregard that. If she had really been
sexually assaulted, she would need therapy for it.
The MP’s stern tone of voice eventually gave way to a gentle “Mhm,” as
he listened to her speak. Then he cursed his inability to properly
interview her before turning to his subordinate.
“Well, that was embarrassing. I didn’t know the details. Help me get
Lelei-san for this.”
The phone in the questioning room rang, and the MP said, “Please hold
on,” before picking up the handset.
“Oi, this is Kikuchi. Ah, yes, we’ve waited a long time. Bring her in.”
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Once Lelei came in and heard of their difficulty, she settled it in an

instant. After listening to Yao’s testimony, it was determined that the
accusation of extortion was false. The man who made the false report
confessed after being brought in, and he was arrested on charges of
attempted rape.
The way crime was handled in the Special Region was that if the victim
or the accused was Japanese, or if the crime took place in Arnus Town or
the Arnus Garrison, the accused would be taken to Tokyo for trial. If the
matter took place outside these places and if the accused and victim
were both locals, they would be handed to a relevant judicial authority
as designated by Piña, which would be House Formal in Italica. The
accused would be judged under the Special Region’s laws. In this case,
since Yao and the man were from the Special Region, he would be sent
to Italica.
And so, the case Yao was wrapped up in came to an end. In order not to
let this chance get away, Yao grabbed Lelei’s hand as she was about to
leave and told her all about her desire to meet the men in green, and
asked her to translate. Then she told her about the Flame Dragon.
Even Lelei could not pretend she had seen and heard nothing after
hearing about how the Dark Elf tribe had been attacked by the Flame
Dragon. She was confident that the Flame Dragon she spoke of was the
same one that had attacked Coda Village, and many of Yao’s friends and
family had lost their lives to the Flame Dragon.
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“That is to say, you want me to ask the Japanese for aid on your behalf.”
“Yes. From how I see it, you are a generous and compassionate person.
Please help me.”
Naturally, Lelei had no reason to refuse Yao.
Yao’s dream was gradually coming true. But shortly after, she was
plunged into the depths of despair once more.
***
Arnus Town’s canteen — VIP tables
The air here was that of a freshly-cleaned cafe, while the stable-looking
tables and chairs were lined up in a row, interspersed with decorative
plants and pictures. They gave this place a high-class feel that was
completely different from the chaotic atmosphere of the regular tables.
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Although it was still too early for dinner, Bozes, Panache and the other
noble daughters of the knight band had taken over the best places in the
house.
After stacking several books on the table, they huddled up and

whispered to each other. A careful listener might hear snippets of
conversation like, “From Risa-sama,” “New edition”, “Dividing up
translation duties” and so on.
“Ladies. We have new tea leaves today. Please, try them.”
The waiter serving them was called “Shopkeep”. He did not shrink from
serving these elegant, noble ladies, but responded to them in a
straightforward manner.
Apparently, he had been sent by Yanagida to train at a certain specialty

restaurant in Ikebukuro.
Since normal people were prohibited from entering the Special Region,
and they were selling tea and coffee from Japan at special prices to local
chefs and waitresses, as well as training them, the JSDF were unanimous
in saying, “Shouldn’t this be handled by Section 2 (Intelligence)?”
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As they watched the hardworking subordinate of Yanagida, the various

JSDF officers commented, “Wasn’t he the one who went to Ikebukuro for
training?”
That being said, he still looked like a proper butler.
“Ah, this is good! What is this dessert?”
“Yes, milady. This is a Napoleon cake (mille-feuille). It is made with thin

layers of wheat biscuit to reduce sweetness, which are then covered in
alternating layers of brandy-flavored custard cream, and finally iced with
chocolate. This specialty dish was made by renowned pastry chefs from
Kiyoyama.”
“Marvellous. To think, the country called Japan has made desserts like
this into an art form.”
The noble ladies spoke their praise in Japanese. Since they had come
here to learn Japanese, they should obviously be using Japanese while
they were here.
“I am certain the chefs would be glad to receive the praise of such

informed diners.”
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He carefully remained silent about the fact that the cake had not been
invented in Japan. As a waiter, he was a high-class servant to high class
people… and it would probably be best not to confront them with
evidence of their ignorance.
Besides, his eyes were working hard to gather information. However,

after he saw the true identity of the books on the table, his heart filled
with frustration.
“They’re fujoshi,” he muttered. That word clearly illustrated what he was

thinking. Perhaps it was too early for them to be exposed to this sort of
culture. He had wanted to get eyes-on the EEIs (Essential Elements of
Information), or “What they cared about, and what actions they would
take for those things.” But now, how was he going to fill out the report?
On the other side, Yao sat dumbly at another table.
She was staring into thin air, her eyes not focused on anything. She was
like a switched-off robot, sitting quietly there.
Lelei took a seat opposite her. She watched Yao as she thought.
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“Sorry for the delay.”
Delilah, the restaurant’s poster girl, served them a pot of tea on a silver
tray.
Lelei liked the herbal teas from Japan. This time, she had ordered St.
John’s Wort, which was effective for depression. Just to be clear, this tea
was for Yao’s benefit, not Lelei’s.
However, Yao did not react to the tea at all. Since it could not be helped,
Lelei poured Yao a cup of tea, and urged her to drink it.
“Have some.”
“...”
Yao’s facial expression did not change, but she mechanically brought the
cup to her mouth.
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After a while...
...the cup was empty at last.
Lelei filled the cup again, and urged Yao to drink it.
“Have some.”
“...”
Yao maintained a stupefied expression as she once again mechanically

brought the cup to her mouth.
After she finished her cup and put it back on the desk, she was finally
composed enough to speak.
“It feels like a nightmare. There’s no hint of reality about it. It must be a
dream.”
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Lelei kept silent, and Yao lowered her eyes to look opposite. Once more,
she brought the cup to her mouth.
After looking at Lelei’s emotionless face, the tears began to fall.
“..................You won’t say anything?”
“This is not a dream. What you heard and what you saw, all of that was
reality.”
“It, it must be some mistake in translation, right?”
“The translation was correct.”
“Please. Say you got it wrong.”
“Even if I did, nothing would change.”
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“But why? Why not?”
“Didn’t General Hazama explain his reasons already?”
“But... if it’s like that... then I…”
“We hope you can help us defeat the Flame Dragon. Please help us.”
That was what Yao had asked General Hazama after Lelei granted her
wish to meet the Men in Green’s leader. In addition, she had showed him
the raw diamond her tribe had given her.
However, Hazama was in a funk from the beginning. He opened the

map, and after confirming the location of Yao’s home village in the
Schwarz Forest, he shook his head and frowned like he had bitten into a
bug.
“It’s too far away. I’m sorry, but we can’t help you.”
Hazama continued with his explanation.
“Your village is in the Schwarz Forest, which is within the borders of the
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neighboring Elbe Kingdom. I trust you know what it means for an army
to cross a national border?”
It was an ancient and well-established fact that marching troops over a

country’s borders was synonymous with declaring war. This was the
same in the Special Region and on Earth. Even without crossing borders,
just massing troops near a border would raise political tension.
“Then, then how about a small force? I, I’ve heard the men in green only
needed about ten people to chase off the Flame Dragon. A small force
like that shouldn’t count as an army, right?”
“I can’t do that. Sending a few men to fight a dangerous creature like a

Flame Dragon would be tantamount to sending them to their deaths. I
cannot give that order.”
And then, Yao cried. It was all she could do. Yao had never cried like this
before in her life. Even when she lost the man who would have been her
husband, even when she learned her lover had died, she had rubbed her
face, but the tears flowed in silence. They flowed now, down her palms
and her arms to drip off her elbows.
“Kufu….”
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She tried to silence her crying, but it leaked out anyway.
The officers at the surrounding tables had been keeping silent for some
time now, because of the heavy atmosphere in the room.
Hearing the faint laughter of the girls attending the language classes
only made them feel for Yao even more.
***
“It was like she hadn’t slept all night,” Delilah said as she informed the
cook about the situation at the VIP tables.
“Can you blame her? General Hazama rejected the Dark Elf-nee-san’s
request to take out the Flame Dragon,” the cook said as he continued
preparing food.
“Was it because she made Rory angry?”
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“That shouldn’t be the case, right? Maybe it had something to do with

Boss Itami.”
“Well, that’s true. Then it must be because of people on top, them. I

wonder why they’d refuse? I mean, it’s rare that all their commanders
would gather up. Ah, I need to learn more Japanese…”
“Delilah, I don’t care what you do on your own time. However, please
focus on your job. I don’t want to lose my job here. If anything happens,
I’ll give your name out straight away.”
“Got it, got it. I won’t mess it up.”
After clasping her hands and lowering her head to the head cook, she
poured hot coffee into cups.
***
Colonels Kengun and Kamo, as well as Lieutenant Colonels Youga and

Tsuge were seated at a table some distance away from Lelei and Yao.
The four of them looked at the crying Yao.
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“Youga, is there really nothing we can do?”
“You know we can’t. Besides, the opposition is hounding Ichigaya (the

Ministry of Defense), we can’t have any snafus now.”
Ltc. Tsuge, who had been listening for some time, decided to cut in: “So
how does exterminating the Flame Dragon become ammunition for the
opposition’s attacks?”
Youga replied, “The thing is, they’ll immediately pounce on any losses
incurred, avoidable or not. The commander on the scene will get it for
sure, but the engagement is also going to be in the Empire’s territory.
Even if it’s to exterminate a Flame Dragon, crossing a border will cause
a lot of problems.”
“What if we had a witness? Someone who invited us there?” Col. Kamo

said as he shrugged.
“If we did that, it would be a perfect reason to call for a vote of no

confidence on the Cabinet. Although we’ve secured a promise from the
House of Representatives to ignore whatever antics the Senate pulls, the
Cabinet still chose a weak doctrine.”
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Just then, Delilah brought the coffee over.
While she was serving the coffee, their conversation stopped. Once she
left, Col. Kamo smiled.
“Still, do you think he can really get away with it? I was laughing my ass
off when I saw it on TV. He got scolded for his joke of an answer, but it
was just a formality. To think he was only cautioned to watch his words
for bullshitting in front of the Diet… is that his character?”
“He was lucky because the three girls behind him had a bigger impact.
It’s only because of what they said that it was all dismissed as ‘It’s just
Itami’.”
“In truth, the strange thing was what they had done after they brought
the refugees back. Of course, they couldn’t just abandon people in
trouble, so a more bureaucratic answer might have been because they
did not want the kids to be uneasy. Itami did nothing wrong by saying
‘It’s fine, leave it to me’. For all we know, that’s why those three girls
were so supportive of us,” Tsuge said as he finished his coffee.
“It’s not just defeating the Flame Dragon. Our original objective was to
defeat the Empire and demand reparations from them as the plaintiffs.
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Since when did they scale us back to just defending the area around the
Gate and preventing invasions? What’s the government thinking?”
“That’s probably because they largely understand the political situation

of this world. If we defeat the ruling power here, the Empire, this entire
continent will probably regress into civil war. That‘s probably why. After
all, in the past the old Roman Empire destroyed Dacia (present day
Romania) and ended up losing their defense line against the invasion of
the eastern barbarian tribes.”
For instance, if the United States were to fall right now, China and
Russia, now free of the US’ stabilizing influence, would probably go to
war in various locations. One could already see the spectre of those
conflicts in Tibet, among the Uighurs, in Georgia (the country) and so on.
Only a fool would think war would not happen.
Similarly, if the Empire were destroyed, the stronger nations of this

world would immediately wage war against each other to seize power.
Although Japan’s JSDF was invincible in this world, their power still had
limits. Therefore, in order to maintain peace in this world, they had to
make sure no sides lost.
Kengun sighed heavily and then said, “Peace is important for trade and
gathering resources. I prefer things this way.”
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Kamo put his hands on the table with an audible thud.
“In that case, why did we even come all the way to the Special Region?
If we were just defending the Gate, we wouldn’t need so much
firepower.”
“Right now, a lot of wheels are turning in the Empire. We want them to
cede the area around the Gate to us, pay us reparations, as well as sign
favorable trade agreements. So we will negotiate, and if the Empire
doesn’t accept, we attack. The plans are all drawn up, we should be able
to take the Imperial Capital within 80 hours of the order being given.”
“And when will that be?”
“I’m sure it won’t be tomorrow, but I’m fairly sure the talks will start
within the next month or so.”
Kamo looked to the ceiling. “No matter what, that’s in the future.”
“In modern warfare, once you see your target, that means someone is
going down. Once we start, we mustn’t stop. Drive straight to the end
and finish it quickly. That’s the important thing,” Tsuge said as he
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ordered a coffee from Delilah after finishing his cup. “Well, they say
waiting is part of business, but I’m pretty sick of it.”
“Like I said, it can’t be helped, right?”
“That’s why, we should send out a minimum of troops which won’t cause
a ruckus if they cross the border. That should work, right?”
“A minimum? That Dragon’s been compared to a flying tank, you know.”
“That said, there’s only one of them.”
“That’s true, and we have JASDF assets too. Can’t we kill it with
Phantoms?”
Kamo thrust his body forward, “We’re downing it?”
“Can we down it in the first place?”
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“The Dragon has armor comparable to 3rd-generation MBTs (Main Battle

Tanks). I don’t think 20mm cannon will cut it. How about air-to-air
missiles, could they take down a tank?
“Hmm…”
“That is to say, we can’t bring it down without enough firepower. Hm,

why not try a different tack? ...Dammit. ATMs (Anti Tank Missiles) can’t
hit high-speed flying targets. AAMs (Anti Aircraft Missiles) which can hit
them don’t have a big enough warhead to pierce 3rd generation tank
armor. How the hell did 3rd Recon hit it with a LAM (110mm Anti-Tank
Rocket Launcher)?
“Then, what should we do?”
“That’s why, if you want to bring that Dragon down, it’s got to be like
this.”
Ltc. Youga opened up a JSDF notebook on the table and began sketching
a battle plan.
First, they would engage the target in the air with Phantom fighters.
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“Didn’t we already establish that they couldn’t bring it down?”
“They can’t kill it, but they can force it down. Which means we’ll be
attacking from an angle of 20 or 25 degrees. That should be enough to
drive it downwards.”
Once the Dragon descended near ground level, it would be the artillery’s
turn to shine. They would rain 155mm and 203mm shells on the
Dragon’s head, giving it no time to breathe or recover while assailing it
with the shockwaves from sequential explosions. After all, they could
draw a picture of Mt. Fuji in the sky with their shells; there was no
reason they could not do this.
And then, when they knocked it to the ground, their Cobra attack
helicopters would press the attack with TOW missiles. If possible, they
would bring in Type 74 tanks firing APFSDS to finish it off. In the end, the
infantry would move in to verify the kill.
“Well, we probably won’t have to worry that it’ll suddenly regenerate or

power up, like in manga.”
“Okay, hang on a bit.”
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Now that they were finished, Kengun began totalling up the battle
strength needed.
“Since the Type 99 (155mm Self-Propelled Howitzer) fires six rounds per
minute, we’ll need at least ten of them. Since the target is mobile,
double that to 20. As for other assets, we’ll need at least a company.
Four Type 74 tanks. Two JASDF Phantom fighters. Two Cobra helicopters.
Spotter helicopters. Then there are the support vehicles too… damn,
that’s a lot of assets.”
“That’s why I said it’s impossible...”
As they heard Ltc. Youga speak, the other three could only droop their
shoulders.
***
Yao was crying. However, she was fully aware that nobody would help
her no matter how much she cried. She had already experienced what it
was like to cry and not be comforted by anyone.
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Therefore, she would stand up. She had to rise from where she had
fallen and help herself up.
She had cried. She had hurt.
She wiped her tears clean with a handkerchief and wetted her lips with
the cold tea. Then she stretched both her hands out. In this way, she
would sort out the feelings in her heart.
Suddenly, she realised that Lelei the translator was gone. She had left a
message with the Bunnygirl (Warrior Bunny) waitress: “I still have work
to do. If you’re worried about not having a place to stay, you can sleep
at the ALC.”
In truth, Yao did not mind camping out. However, she was worried that
she might be attacked again.
She had received so much help from someone else, yet she had not
even thanked her. Yao made a note to thank Lelei properly when she
saw her again, and then verified the location of the ALC.
“In any case, I still need to figure out how to solve this problem.”
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She had to find a way to save her friends and family.
For starters, she had already confirmed that the people called the men
in green were a part of the army of the country called Japan. She also
understood why they could not violate the borders of the Elbe Kingdom.
She had learned that defeating Flame Dragons was not impossible, but
attempting it with small groups of people was risky.
If their commander Hazama had just refused her out of selfish

intentions, that would have made things simpler.
After all, people who sought money could be bribed with the diamond.
People who sought fame could be tempted by the fact that they would
be celebrated for defeating the Flame Dragon which even heroes could
not beat. And if she encountered a lecherous man, she was confident
that her body was superior to that of any human woman, and her 300
years of erotic techniques would leave them limp and pliable.
However, Hazama was not a person who could be seduced by these

methods. He had not refused Yao’s request for personal reasons. He was
a man who calmly prioritized the future of his nation and the rules of the
military. Trying to tempt him would be a waste of time.
Therefore, she would have to convince his subordinates. In an army of
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this size, there had to be someone who could be swayed by wealth or

women, or both. With that in mind, Yao looked around her surroundings.
Note
APFSDS - Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot; a type of anti-

armor warhead that is essentially a giant metal arrow.
LAM - Light Anti-Armor Missile, AKA the German Panzerfaust 3

manufactured under license by Japan.
WARRIOR BUNNIES - Vicious, cruel soldiers known for both decapitating

their enemies with their teeth and also for causing Sir Robin to soil his
armour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCI18qAoKq4
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Vol. 3 :
Chapter 5
The hegemonic nation called the Empire did not have a name.
Names were tools used to differentiate oneself from others. An Emperor

was one who ruled all the peoples, all the tribes, who held sway over all
his allied kingdoms, a king of kings and lord of lords. He was matchless
in his domain and military might. He was a singular, insuperable
existence. By this line of arrogant thinking, the Empire would need no
name.
The river that flowed from the glaciers to the sea was called the River
Ro. It would take two days to travel on foot from the sea to the Imperial
Capital.
Shipping vessels travelled back and forth along the River Ro.
The Imperial Palace was situated on the easternmost side of the five hills
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of the Imperial Capital, and the hill called Sadela had an expanse of flat
ground on one of its slopes. There was a beautiful alabaster building on
each of its sides, and all of them were surrounded by a broad stretch of
forest. This beautiful green color was the dominant tone throughout the
Palace.
The mansion on its southern ward belonged to Zorzal El Caesar, the

oldest son of the Emperor, and Piña Co Lada’s brother from another
mother.
He was pressing a woman down onto a chiffon-veiled bed. He grabbed

her neck from behind and pulled it up, enjoying the interplay of pain and
pleasure on her face, his grunts and her moans mixing together as he
lost himself in his bliss.
“My, my Prince, please, please forgive me…”
“Hmph, is that all the queen of the Warrior Bunnies can handle? Hm, I’m
sure you can make better sounds than that. Moan for me.”
However, as he looked down on the Bunnygirl whose body was already

twitching as she passed out, Zorzal slapped her buttocks with a “Hmph!”
and dumped her onto the bed like a used toy.
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The white-skinned woman rolled off the bed like a broken doll. The
impact returned her to consciousness, and her body shuddered.
Her hair was as white as snow, and two fur-trimmed ears stuck out from
the sides of her head. However, her body was covered in bruises, bite
marks, and many other signs of violence.
“If you pass out from just that much, you won’t be able to satisfy me…”
“Please forgive me…” the woman moaned in a trembling, small voice.

Her red eyes looked over to him as she climbed off the cold stone floor
and back onto the bed.
“Try harder, then. Your people’s fate depends on it.”
“Please show mercy, my Prince, my people…”
“Enough! I’m going back!”
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Zorzal did not even bother to answer her as he turned his muscled body
away and ordered his attendants to dress him.
His Warrior Bunny lover sobbed as she rose naked from the bed and
wrapped herself in its sheets. Then she limped away, supporting herself
against the wall as she left the man’s room.
Zorzal clicked his tongue. “I’m getting sick of this toy.” He wondered
whether to dispose of her.
A voice responded to his muttering.
“Your Highness, even if it’s for fun, you shouldn’t couple with a filthy
beastwoman like that.”
The speaker was Count Marx of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
“What do you mean, I’m an enlightened man. I treat all people the same
regardless of species. That Warrior Bunny’s body is among the best I’ve
seen.”
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“But, if she gets pregnant…”
“That’s fine too. She’s the queen of the Warrior Bunnies. Having my
child be their leader is a good thing too.”
“But hasn’t the kingdom she ruled long been destroyed?”
“Shh, quiet… Tyuule’s ears are very big. She might overhear you.”
Marx shook his head.
She had sacrificed herself to protect her country and people. She had
endured this terrible abuse for a full three years, but her home was long
since destroyed and her people were nearly extinct. What few survivors
remained were scattered throughout the land and lived in misery.
Worse, those survivors mistakenly believed that she had betrayed her
people, and swore to exact revenge on her. That was cruel, even for a
Beastman. The thought of what Zorzal would do when he became
Emperor sent a shiver down his spine.
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“Speaking of which, Count Marx. Why did you come here today?
Peeping? Or do you want Tyuule despite your age? That’s fine too. She
might be a bit dirty now, but she’s pretty when she’s cleaned up.”
After Zorzal was dressed, his attendants left the room. Now only Zorzal
and Count Marx were left in the room.
“In truth, I have a matter to report.”
“What is it? Speak.”
“Recently, there have been some unsettling moves among the

Senators.”
“And by unsettling you mean…?
“Yes, my Prince. Meetings in the night, secret trade deals, that sort of
thing. At first, there were only a few of them doing this, but their
numbers have steadily increased.”
“Hmph. Is my brother up to something again? He must be stirring up the

Senators. It seems Diabo has finally pulled out all the stops in his bid for
the throne.”
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“No, that does not seem to be the case. The ones meeting with the
Senators appear to be the people who have unlawfully laid claim to
Arnus.”
“What, how could that possibly happen?” Zorzal said as he shook his
head in disbelief.
“Could they be emissaries? After all, we’re at war, having envoys going
back and forth is common. Usually the enemy negotiates with the
Empire for peace or surrender. Could it be they can’t fight any more?”
“However, it seems many of the Senators have already been bought

off.”
“What did you say?”
“Until now, everyone who has gone to war against them has died, but it
seems quite a few people are still living as prisoners. This gathering of
the Senators should be to negotiate the terms of their release.”
“How could this be?”
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Zorzal punched his fist into his palm.
“To think, Imperial Senators would buckle under this sort of

intimidation.”
“Using one’s kinship as a weapon seems like something the despicable

enemy would do.”
“Well, it can’t be helped. After all, their own relatives are being held
hostage. That must have clouded their judgement. Very well, I know
what to do. I shall inform the Senators of the enemy’s despicable
methods and wake them up.”
“If your Highness goes in person, I’m sure they will.”
“Still, Count Marx. Why did you not inform my father about this, but
me?”
“There are many things to be considered, and if this news reaches the
Emperor’s ears, I fear something irreversible will happen. This cannot be
a good thing for the Empire. Thus, I reported directly to yourself, as the
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heir to the throne.”
“Well, that’s true. We need to avoid conflict between the Senate and the
Imperial family. Only Diabo will benefit from that. If that’s the case, then
we need to resolve it ourselves. Then, where are they meeting?”
Marx told him where they were meeting.
“What? So close to us?”
Zorzal furrowed his brows, and then said to the patrician youths outside.
“We’re moving out!”
As Count Marx watched him leave, he muttered to himself, “You idiot.

Go as grandly as you like.”
***
The name for this sort of thing would be a “garden party” or “garden
festival”. The word conjured up impressions of large tents and roasting
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meat. It was located on the outskirts of the Empire, and many guests
were invited to enjoy it together.
The garden was so vast that it contained parts of the forest that seemed
to stretch to the horizon, as well as small hills, miniature forests, and
even a little stream that led to a pool, in addition to enough grassland
for a 36-hole golf course.
A large white canopy was spread over one corner of this garden. Below
that, master chefs were barbecuing fish and beast meat over a large
fire. They made heavy use of those spices that were rare in the Empire,
and the smell alone was enough to make people drool.
Some of the young girls in maid outfits could not help themselves and
tried some, for which they were scolded once the old maids found out.
A short distance away, a group of musicians were playing a piece. It was

not enough for people to consider it noise, but their music livened up the
scene.
The pies filled with soup gave off a delicious herbal scent. Beside them
were heaps of fruits stacked up from various countries.
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After the guests filled their bellies, they would move on to the desserts.
These were frozen treats nobody had ever eaten before. The people
here were happy enough just to have crushed ice drizzled with honey
and fruit juice. However, the dish making its debut was called “ice
cream”, which was made with milk.
They tried the ice cream — which was packaged into small cups — out of
curiosity, but then people started gathering because of the delicious
taste.
“If you eat too much cold stuff, you’ll have a stomachache,” the
patrician ladies chided their children from where they were sunbathing.
However, it was not very convincing given they had cups of ice cream in
their hands as well. Therefore, the kids just chorused “Kay~” before
running off and pestering the maid in charge of ice cream for more.
The maid did not have enough ice cream for the children who wanted
third and fourth helpings. In the end, the children began showing their
bad attitudes and saying, “You’re so petty!”
However, when the maid calmly replied, “I’ll tell your mothers,” the kids
dropped the act. Instead they pressed their hands together and begged,
“Pleeeeeease~”. Brats would be brats no matter where they were.
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It was not just the food that was ready.
When evening came, an archery range had been set up.
A middle-aged patrician man pressed his belly against his daughter’s

back as he taught her how to aim. However, this strange pose only
served to make her miss completely, which in turn embarrassed him and
drew laughter.
There were many others enjoying ball games and frisbee games. The
kids ran around playing tag, and their mothers looked on as they
enjoyed themselves.
Carp and goldfish swam in the small pool, while the ones who enjoyed
fishing cast their lines. It was probably a form of entertainment to turn
their catches into their meals.
As Piña watched this, she took a fruit out of a basket and chewed on it.
“Sugawara-dono, inviting the families as a whole like this was more fun
than I thought it would be. I like this feeling as well. Perhaps future
events for the knight band can be like this too…”
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“Is that so? Thank you for your praise. However, having the head maid
here helped a lot. I didn’t think of hiring musicians either.”
“No, that was House Formal’s idea. After all, the treaty stipulated full
cooperation, so future events like this will not be a problem. Italica is
doing well, and they say that the finances of House Formal are on the
upturn. The House was quite clear about that being the result of trade
with you.”
“However, it seems they’ve only sent over Human maids…”
In order to reach an agreement with House Formal, he had visited them

in the past, and there he had met people of various races, like the Cat
People and the Warrior Bunnies. They were signs that this world was a
different one, but yet the head maid had only brought along human
maids to the Capital. It seemed wrong, somehow.
“Well, the Capital…”
Piña’s answer was not very clear, but she got the meaning across to
Sugawara.
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After attending parties hosted by various powerful patricians, and after

visiting several patrician households, he realised that they only had
Human maids. It would seem only House Formal was an exception. The
other families accepted it, even as they disliked it, probably because the
previous Count Formal was an open-minded man.
Piña and Sugawara headed for the garden, where everyone was, in order
to see if anyone was feeling bored and if there were any problems to
solve.
Sometimes, they greeted guests, or were greeted by guests in turn.
At times, he spotted an interesting character, and then he would ask

“Who’s that?” to learn about that person’s name and family. That job
required a good memory.
Piña’s eye went to a Japanese man giving the master chefs tips on how
to use spices.
“Sugawara-dono, who is that man?”
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“Ahh, he’s one of Itami’s men, called Furuta. He used to be a chef at a

first-rate restaurant before he enlisted.”
“I see, is that why he makes such delicious food?”
One could not make such sublime flavors by randomly tossing in spices.
His name is Fu-Ru-Ta, Piña thought as she made a mental note of him.
“Your Highness, it’s been a while.”
“Ohh, Tuen-dono. Are you well?”
“Yes, my family is doing well too.”
The introductions that he had requested at the beginning were taking

place.
“Sugawara-dono, this is the third son of House Mare. His elder brother’s
name is on the list of prisoners to be sent back.”
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And so, Piña introduced Sugawara to several members of the nobility.
All of the important guests here were already familiar with Sugawara,
and some had even brought their relatives along, for instance, their
wives and children. To them, Sugawara was not a messenger of a
fearsome enemy nation, but a bringer of wondrous gifts from another
land.
Halfway through the introductions, a daring young girl ran over and
grabbed Sugawara’s arm, pressing her budding breasts into it in a
teasing manner.
“Sugawara-sama, I saw my cousins’ beautiful jewelry and I’m jealous.

Could you help me?”
This was quite rude, after all, and so she was promptly scolded by her
parents.
The girl who clung to Sugawara was roughly 11 or 12, so she probably
was not acting for greater benefits. It was kind of unsettling, but he did
not shake her off. However, it would be difficult to be a diplomat without
knowing how to handle situations like these. But there was a good way
of dealing with young children.
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As she watched the mother scolding her daughter, she whispered,

“She’s from the Tueri family, and a relative of Marquis Caesar.”
Marquis Caesar was the leader of the Imperial Senate and by extension,
all of Imperial politics. To the Japanese government, that meant that
they needed channels to him at any cost. Naturally, Sugawara
immediately responded appropriately.
First, he stood before the girl’s parents, who were angry about her
rudeness, with a genial expression and asked them to kindly not scold
her any more. Then, he remembered her name — Sherry — and
promised to give her a pearl necklace. This way, they would form a
bond, and in future he could ask them to introduce him to other people.
This was what the diplomats’ superior had meant when they said, “Gifts
are our ammunition”. Personal benefits could not be allowed to conflict
with the well-being of a country, and sometimes people were attacked
by the mass media on it. However, for the sake of diplomatic efforts,
they could not afford to be stingy. Being too miserly might lead to
relations breaking down.
What happened was that Sugawara adorned Sherry with a necklace from
a velvet box, and she promptly ran off like an innocent child to show it
off to her cousins.
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Of course, after receiving a gift like this, one needed to repay it in a

fitting way. That was the way they did things in the Empire. Soon
enough, the repayment took place — they helped to connect him to
Marquis Caesar.
As an aside, because of this arrangement, the almost 30 year-old

Sugawara was beginning to warm up to the 11 year-old Sherry. Her
calculative parents noticed this and began enthusiastically pushing them
together, and the way things were developing began to worry him.
***
Piña smiled bitterly to the panicking Sugawara and the overjoyed Sherry,
and then let her eyes wander around her surroundings.
For now, it was impossible to fully monitor the activities of all the guests.
As a host, she could not simply play around. To be precise, as a host,

one could not enjoy oneself at the expense of one’s guests. Still, it was
better this time round. She did not have to introduce ladies to
gentlemen and vice versa.
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Events like this created a chance for young men and women to mingle.
Although it was only natural for young patricians to flirt with each other,
doing so out of the blue was very rude. There needed to be proper
introductions first, and much of the time, the host would arrange for
those.
Piña was the leader of a knight order which contained many young men
and women. If she had to arrange for all of them to meet each other, she
would be too busy to so much as take a drink.
And this party was attended by the relatives of many patrician families,
as well as their children who had not made their social debut.
In front of her parents’ eyes, they could not do anything overboard. And
if they were to spend time on introductions, they would not have any
time to enjoy themselves.
Because of that, most of the guests decided to enjoy themselves as

families. They split into two groups of males and females and had fun by
themselves.
The ladies had obtained beautiful clothes courtesy of someone related to

Sugawara, and they competed to outdo each other with displays of their
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brilliantly colored dresses and jewellery.
Since the materials and fabric were equivalent, then the only way they
could complete was through the design and stitching of their dresses,
which sparked their respective jealousies and competitiveness. In
addition, the minute differences in quality of the accessories and
decorations on their clothes ate at their hearts, which was why they
wanted to maintain good ties with Sugawara and his fellow diplomats,
who had not yet entered the scene.
There were also some ladies clustered around Sergeants Kuribayashi

and Kurokawa.
Kuribayashi was very obvious in her women’s JGSDF uniform. However,

similar to how Piña and her subordinate knights dressed, the guests
could quickly accept her status as a female soldier.
While she chatted with them, Kuribayashi chose Sergeant Tomita as a

demonstrator to teach the ladies self-defense techniques.
“Grab his arm, bend it inward, just like this.”
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As she explained, the tiny Kuribayashi brought the tall Tomita to the
ground by way of a kokyu-nage. Her audience applauded her swift and
crisp movements. In addition, some of them were charmed by Tomita,
who looked strong and fierce, but remained calm and reserved.
(TL note: kokyu-nage is an aikido move, “breathing throw”.)
On another side, Kurokawa was displaying the ways that Japanese used
makeup, and basking in the admiring gazes of the audience. As a
nursing student, she had studied makeup therapy, and it was a happy
coincidence that it could be put to use here.
Makeup therapy was used to help with the depression suffered by

people suffering from chronic illnesses. Maintaining a happy mood had a
positive effect on their treatment.
“If you apply too much eyeshadow, it’ll be too dark, therefore you need
to apply it evenly. Also, you need to half-close your eyes to finish it
smoothly. You also need to be careful with the lines of your eyebrows. A
small change can produce a big effect.”
Kurokawa picked several ladies to demonstrate her skills on, and her
hands wrought a great change on them. Though they did not quite look
ten years younger, it brought out the cuteness that they should have
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had at their age, or perhaps she just made them prettier, and the
women gasped in awe.
“Itami truly has a host of talented people under his command!” Piña said
in praise.
Sugawara agreed that he was a lucky man. 3rd Recon had only arrived a
few days ago, and now that there were more recon teams who could
effectively use the Special Region’s language, it was much more
convenient for their activities. 1st Recon, which had been called back to
Arnus, was not quite suited for this sort of work.
“The people from before were too rude, and lacking in humor.”
“As expected, it was because of their commander. No, if Itami-san were

to become a regular soldier, we would be in trouble. He’s a very special
case.”
“I understand.”
Although Piña did not know Japanese people like Sugawara did, she
could understand his meaning after seeing his serious, dignified
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appearance. In contrast, Itami was a… lazy? Easygoing? Or maybe a

liberated being? In the end, what saved them was his nature.
No matter the circumstances, a normal man would be filled with

resentment after being beaten up by a group of people. However, Itami
knew that Piña owed him a debt she could not possibly repay, but yet he
had not taken advantage of it. That was a very rare case.
It would be simple enough for Itami to get back at them; simply not
allowing them to speak to Risa would be revenge enough.
To Piña, who thirsted for “art”, cutting her off from her supplies would
break her spirit. In order to avoid this, she had to grow a culture of
“artists” in the country, and the first step in that was the language
classes. Right now, she had to stay on Itami’s good side no matter what.
Piña was prepared to do anything in order to accomplish that.
She had already picked out an appropriate girl from the knight band and
sent her to Arnus for language classes. Although she was still dormant,
on her command, she would take action.
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Although it might be sad for the “lucky” girl, Piña had already thrown all
restraint out of the window. She would use any means, no matter how
subtle or high-handed.
After reaffirming her resolve, Piña nodded to herself, and then asked
Sugawara, “Then, where is Itami-dono?” She had to make sure he was
happy.
“He’s over there.”
Sugawara pointed to the main square, and specifically at an area that

was walled off by sandbags and forbidden to the children.
***
The guests there were their main objective… in other words, they were
Senators, and the young men who would become new Senators. The
JSDF had set up a shooting range here for them to experience the
feeling of firing guns. In addition, they would also understand the terror
of the guns that Japan possessed. That was the main objective of
organizing this garden party.
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In order to ensure bullets would not go astray, they set up targets in

front of a big pile of sandbags. The targets in question were cheap pots
of fired clay, bought in vast quantities.
Behind them were berms of dirt. This was what Itami and the others
were setting up beforehand.
The Senators were lined up at the firing line, and under the supervision
of 3rd Recon’s troopers, they opened fire on the targets 50 meters away,
to their hearts’ content.
The twenty or so Senators took turns firing.
Cicero stood at one of the firing positions. He followed directions, and

firmly held his rifle, took aim, and then pulled the trigger. The loud
report of the firing and the kick in his shoulders made his eyes water.
Piña wanted to ask, “So how does a gun feel, Lord Cicero?” but she did
not. If anyone had asked her that question, she would have thought they
were trying to intimidate her. Therefore, she kept quiet. After all, they
had experienced and had enough time to think about it.
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The first shot made him jump.
The second shot awed him with its power.
The third shot let him feel that power with his body.
By the fourth shot, he wanted to own the gun he had in his hands.
And then, after ten rounds, he realized what it meant to fight an army
that was fully outfitted with these weapons.
Next, they demonstrated the Minimi (a light machine gun). After they
saw a line of pots shatter in an instant, they understood why the
invading army they had sent beyond the Gate had been defeated. They
also knew why the Coalition Army that attacked Arnus had been wiped
out.
After that, there was a question.
“How do you make these things?”
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Of course, they could not teach the Senators how to make them. Then
again, even if they told them, they might not be able to understand it.
What the Senators could understand was that these weapons called
guns were a collection of countless intricate parts. They were the
product of a technology more advanced than the ones which had
produced the gifts which Sugawara had given.
And after that, the question was, “How can we buy these?”
But they could not give them the answer they desired. They could not.
How could anyone be so stupid as to sell weapons to their enemies in
the middle of a war? The Senators knew that too.
In fact, if they had agreed to sell them, the Senators would have
suspected some sort of scam or trick. Then why had they asked? It was
because guns possessed a power which could not be ignored.
In order to prevent their theft, each gun was secured by two chains and
each one had a person supervising them.
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The kind instructors, who explained how to load, how to aim and how to
pull the trigger, did not allow their vigilance to slacken in the slightest.
Then a voice from behind suggested, “How about buying them all off?”...
But judging from the way they spoke and their actions, it would be
impossible. In the end, they had to end it with, “...As if.”
Cicero returned his rifle to the soldier in front of him, and left the firing
range after thanking his instructor for his time.
After that, they began demonstrating even more things that frightened
the Senators.
“Ah~ we’re beginning the 81mm mortar demonstration, please come

this way.”
Itami led the Senators to a new firing range.
Some distance away, there was a cylindrical object standing slanted on

two legs. The cylinder looked like a tube made of metal. This tube
pointed out to the grassland in the distance.
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As the audience started to crowd in, Itami shouted, “It’s very dangerous,
please stay back!” and the Senators had no choice but to stop.
With an order from a commander, the three-man mortar crew began

their tasks.
One of them fitted the sighting unit and began aligning it with the
horizon and a red and white aiming post.
Another person loaded the mortar round with its fuse and its propellant
charge.
After that, the person standing behind him took the round in both hands,
and slid half of it into the mortar barrel, but did not let go.
“Half-load complete!”
The commander folded his fingers as he counted down, “Five! Four!

Three! Two!”
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“Fire!” “One!” the two voices rang out together.
The man holding the mortar round let go, and immediately ducked his
head down to avoid injury.
After that, the round slid down the barrel as it was pulled down by
gravity.
The tail end of the round was loaded with a propellant charge. The
distance it flew could be adjusted by changing the amount of propellant.
Once the charge hit the firing pin at the barrel’s base, it triggered a
small explosion. The shockwave produced by the detonating propellant
launched the round from the tube.
First, a tongue of flame spouted from the mortar’s mouth, and then the
round flew out. This was the strange thing; there was almost no gap
between the round and the barrel, yet the flames and shock wave
emerged first.
After seeing this, the audience was frightened by the bang which was far
louder than those of the guns. And then...
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“Impact~ now!”
After that, a huge plume of black smoke bloomed from the target,
followed a second later by the gut-churning sound of an explosion. In
order to amplify the visual effect, they had fitted the round with a long-
delay fuse, so it would explode on the ground. This would create a spray
of dust and sand like in the movies.
And then the mortar continued firing.
The rounds dug huge chunks out of the earth, and the sounds of the
explosions roared like thunder. They fired over ten shots in the end.
The Senators who saw this also imagined their cavalry and heavy
infantry being blown to smithereens. In addition, they also envisioned
their fortresses and castra engulfed in these explosions.
“Sorry to trouble you, but… what is the maximum range of these

weapons?”
Itami did some mental calculations and replied, “Hmm, from the
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measurements of this place, I’d say 3 leagues or so (1 league = 1.6km).”

This was a conservative answer; there was no need to accurately
describe their weapons to their enemies.
“Did you say three leagues?”
In the Special Region, even the battlefields were not that large.
“Ah, I have another question. How many of these weapons do you

have?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you the exact details. You can assume that every
man has one.”
“E-everyone?!”
The Senators each reached the same conclusion. No, in truth, they had
already known this. They just did not want to admit it to themselves.
If we fight them, we will lose.
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They had experienced it firsthand. The Empire’s soldiers, the Empire’s

weapons, the Empire’s tactics, none of them could hope to defeat Japan.
Who was the idiot that suggested declaring war on a foe like this? The
Senators looked at each other with hateful eyes, but all they saw was
the pained expressions on each others’ faces. Everyone had the same
thing on their minds.
After that, they saw Piña and Sugawara watching them.
The Senators understood.
They knew why Piña had so enthusiastically volunteered to be a

mediator. Indeed, it was for the sake of the captives… but she knew,
before all of them had discovered now, that if the Empire continued
fighting, it would be defeated. No, not defeated. Destroyed.
They were surrounded by women and children who knew nothing of the
terrifying enemy they faced. And there were many other patricians other
than them. None of them were on their guard. They lived in leisure.
Before this day, Piña thought she might have been one of them.
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After exchanging looks, Marquis Ducie and Lord Cicero stepped out of
the group.
Cicero forced out his question.
“Sugawara-dono. May I ask why Japan wants peace? It’s clear that as
long as they fight, they will be victorious.”
“Peace is exactly what my country wants.”
Marquis Ducie replied in a voice that matched his distinguished station.
“Peace… I see. What a pleasant-sounding word. But this word has many
meanings. The peace attained through victory is sweet, but the peace of
being defeated and cast aside is bitter. Both are peace all the same, but
this old one is aware that they have completely different meanings. Until
this day, this old one has only tasted the peace of victory.”
“But your Excellency, there is still some time before the armies of Japan
come for us.”
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After hearing Cicero’s words, the Marquis nodded.
“You are correct. Peace talks are essential. However, we must verify the
conditions of the peace treaty with Japan.”
Sugawara nodded, and then he coldly stated the basic stipulations:
One: The Empire must admit its guilt in starting the war and hand over
the persons responsible for punishment.
Two: The Empire must pay the appropriate damages to Japan. This
amount is 500 million suwanis.
Three: The Empire must cede the territory around the Gate for 100
leagues around the Gate to Japan. A demilitarized zone will exist for 10
leagues around this border where both sides are not permitted to station
military forces.
Four: The Empire must sign trade agreements with Japan.
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“Five… five hundred million suwanis?!”
“There wouldn’t be that much money in the world even if you gathered
it all together!”
“Asking to punish the responsible parties, on top of ceding territory, this

is asking too much!”
“Exactly. Do you intend to destroy the Empire?”
After seeing the panicking Senators, Sugawara hurriedly clarified the

conditions.
“There’s no need to pay it all at once. Also, the sum can also be paid
with mineral rights.”
“Even… even so… Don’t you think it’s a bit much?”
“It’s, it’s impossible. We won’t be able to convince the other Senators of
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this.”
“How can you say you desire peace when you say this?”
Piña was also trembling when she heard the conditions of the Japanese
government.
To think, the peace proceedings she was presiding over would turn out
to be a death sentence. Sugawara’s words about paying in instalments
and paying in mineral rights went in one ear and out the others.
Sugawara, who had been a pleasant diplomat who was building ties with
Japan, was suddenly turning into a gigantic monster before Piña’s eyes.
The strength fled her body, and in the end, she could not even remain
standing and sat down. In a voice filled with despair, Piña asked:
“Sugawara-dono. May, may I ask how this is different from an

unconditional surrender? Rather than this… wouldn’t it be better to just
kill us all and save the time?”
“Indeed, 500 million suwanis was probably too much of a shock,”

Sugawara said after a brief pause to think.
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“That amount is basically one year’s worth of our budget, and a little bit
extra.”
The Senators sat down one by one.
All the gold objects on the continent… starting from the crowns of their
vassal kings, their treasure, their currency… if you gathered them all up
and reforged them into suwani, they could not mint anywhere near 500
million of them. And to think, this huge sum was roughly equivalent to a
year’s expenses for the enemy. How big was this country called Japan?
Regarding the problem of payment, the Japanese government had

already verified the Special Region’s economic situation and identified
potential problems before drawing up the agreement.
For example, the sum total of all the gold ever mined throughout the
whole of human existence was around 160’000 tons. Granted, this was
due to advances in mining methods over the recent two or three
centuries.
Judging by the technological level of the Special Region, they probably

still extracted gold by hand, using pickaxes and shovels. Even with the
help of ogres and goblins, given their undeveloped methods, the total
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amount of gold extracted would be around 10’000 tons.
In addition, even the Empire could not completely administer the whole
of the Special Region.
And within all this, the suwani was this world’s most valuable currency.
A suwani contained roughly 60 grams of gold and was roughly the size of
a Japanese 500 yen coin. It was very thick and heavy. Besides using it in
circulation, it was also used as a form of investment, similar to the gold
koban coins of Edo-period Japan. As a result, very few were made and
almost none of them appeared on the market.
One thousand of these gold pieces would weigh 60 kilos. One million
(one thousand thousand) of them would weigh 60 tons. 500 million of
them would require 30’000 tons of gold… that was to say, it was
impossible to pay.
Then there was the most commonly circulated gold coin in the Empire,
the sink. It was slightly smaller than the suwani, and its gold content was
slightly under ten grams. As a trade currency of the Special Region, its
value was commonly subject to fluctuations depending on local
conditions. Therefore they could not simply equate 6 sinks = 1 suwani
by gold content alone.
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915
Sinks were quite valuable because of their convenience in trade.

Therefore, the exchange rate was 5 sinks to 1 suwani.
If the Empire bought back large amounts of currency to pay off the debt,
it would cause hyperinflation and make buying things difficult. This
would also affect other currencies.
The average citizen used silver denarii, and a soldier’s daily pay was in
soltas (a day’s pay for a soldier was one solta). If gold currency was
gone, then the importance of silver and copper currency would increase
as well. This would lead to explosive inflation and eventually a large-
scale halt in trade.
If they did pay this huge sum, it would not just be the Empire whose
economy was destroyed, but the entire Special Region’s. In addition, if
they tried to bring so much money back through the Gate, the
Americans, Russians, Chinese, French, Italians and other nuclear powers
would most likely order a nuclear strike on Japan as well. With the gold
market in freefall, the entire world’s economy would collapse as well.
Therefore, actually paying 500 million suwanis was out of the question. If
they actually paid it, it would cause a lot of headaches. Circulating
inferior currencies with lower gold content would also be very
troublesome. These poor currencies would cause a market crash if they
were used in the Empire.
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That being said, they could not actually tell them that the amount was
“being decided”.
On Japan’s side, they were simply following the example of their

neighbors after battle. They had asked for 1.4 times their yearly national
budget, so Japan had instead asked for their yearly budget instead.
These funds would be used for compensation paid out to the victims,
various other forms of compensation such as for loss of income caused
by the Ginza Incident, in addition to the cost of the JSDF’s ammunition,
manpower, fuel, and so on.
Sugawara tried his best to explain these details to the Senators (of
course, some things could not be said), and in spite of his clumsy
command of the language, he finally managed to make the Senators
understand.
The important thing was that the reparations they demanded could be
met in ways other than by currency.
They would decide on the punishment of the responsible parties later.

Similarly, the details of the trade agreements.
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In other words, what Japan wanted was...
They wanted the Empire to apologize and say, “We were wrong, and
we’re sorry.”
And then, they wanted someone to be punished.
The Empire had to pay reparations, as much as they could.
Because they could not possibly clear the entire debt in one shot, they
would need to pay in instalments, and they could pay with valuable
goods, or with the rights to underground minerals.
Everything around the Gate belonged to Japan, and the Imperial Army
could not approach it.
And then, trade. Or rather, they could make more money with trade.
...Those were the details.
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These terms were quite reasonable to the loser. In addition, they would
not need to become a vassal country and pay tribute in perpetuity.
In the worst case scenario, after being defeated, the whole country
would be conquered. Its rulers and nobles would be executed or exiled,
and after its land was taken the people would become slaves and there
was a chance there would be rampant looting in the cities and streets.
Therefore, this request for mere currency was incredibly lenient, in a

sense.
The Senators who understood this point sighed in relief. Their shoulders
were heaving, as though they had just finished a sprint.
“Let, let’s discuss this properly...”
“Y-yes, that’s it. Let’s sit down and talk about it. Especially the
reparations. If we learn about each other's situations, we can find a
solution that’s satisfactory to both our sides.”
Although it was not exactly what Sugawara was aiming for, it would
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seem the preparations for talks would go swimmingly. The dates, the
participants… all these were settled in a flash.
At this point, Piña collapsed.
Perhaps she had fallen from shock, because she would twitch from time
to time. Itami picked up a branch and poked her, and then Piña’s entire
body seized up.
“Ah, Piña-dono. Are you alright?”
Next, he patted Piña’s face. Then, Piña suddenly threw open her eyes
and grabbed Itami’s hand.
“Itami-dono… I… I don’t think I can make it any more. So I must tell you
right now. I’m very sorry about what happened back then. Please,
please, I pray you will forgive me!”
Back then? ...Ah, what happened back then. When Bozes and the others
beat the crap out of me… As Itami recalled that incident, he gently lifted
up Piña’s upper body.
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“Oh, it’s fine. Humans don’t die so easily.”
“No, I can’t… I’m not going to make it… please. Please forgive me,
please…”
“I got it, I forgive you, I forgive you, so get a hold of — Waah!”
Piña was hugging Itami tightly.
And then, she muttered “Really? You forgive me… thank you, thank you
so much…” before bursting into tears.
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Vol. 3 :
Chapter 6
And so, the Japanese diplomats and the Imperial Senate could finally
begin the preparations for the peace talks. Piña breathed a huge sigh of
relief, having crossed a difficult hurdle. After all, she was only a
mediator, and what happened next would be up to the Japanese and the
Senators.
Piña’s job was to guarantee freedom of movement to the Japanese or to

facilitate that movement. It was not very important, which meant that it
was a job with little responsibility. Now she could start clearing up the
leftover work that the official she sent to House Formal had been
bugging her about, as well as managing the knight order. She could also
spend time reading her beloved “art”.
Of course, as a member of the Imperial family, she was concerned about

the progress of the negotiations. However, the real problem was the
veteran Senators. She knew the facts and that she had no role in what
was to come, but it should be fine to hope for something.
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In addition, Bozes’ mistake was wiped away by the guarantee of mercy

from Itami, along with her guilt, her unease and the mixed feelings of
fear and regret in her heart. Because of that, she felt like the storm had
passed and the sun had finally come out for her.
Piña wiped her tear-stained cheeks with the back of a hand, and smiled,
brighter and more happily than before. Not long ago, she had been in
the depths of despair, but now her spirits were rapidly rising, like a
Patriot missile. Itami was not good at dealing with women, and seeing
Piña’s unguarded, genuine smile made him nervous.
What made it worse was the feeling of her twin peaks pressed tightly
against him, as well as her softness, her warmth, her floral fragrance, all
of which titillated his senses. As his affection gauge rose, not just by 1
point, but all the way up to 8 (10 points would be the maximum), Itami
blushed bright red, like a shy schoolboy.
“Ah, that, this, your Highness. We shouldn’t go on with this, a lot of

people are watching.”
After the matter, once people started saying, “So you like it like that,” or
“Having fun, were we?” even if he tried to protest, it would just look like
he was making excuses. That was to say, in order not to be teased, he
had to get back to work.
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And of course, Piña as she was now said, “And what about that?” She
was so high on joy that she scarcely knew what she was saying. Even if
she knew, she probably would not care. After all, her delight sprang from
the bottom of her heart.
Forget it, this is just part of the job, Itami thought. But once he thought
about how he would be scolded when he went back, he fell into a funk.
Those were his true feelings. Just then, his earpiece rang.
“Avenger, this is Archer. Please respond.”
His wildly beating heart immediately returned to normal and his blood
and brain that felt like liquid fire promptly cooled down. He pressed his
comm button and replied.
“This is Avenger. What’s wrong?”
“Sorry to interrupt your fun. A bunch of riders who don’t seem like
guests have just passed the SSL (surveillance security line) and they’re
headed your way.”
“One moment.”
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After Itami finished, he turned back to Piña in his arms.
“Your Highness, I’ve received a report that a group of horsemen are

closing in. Do you know anything about it?”
“Ah ~ I haven’t. Is something wrong?”
An old Oriental medical text once wrote that an excess of certain

emotions would have negative effects on a body. For anger, the blood
would rise to the head and expand the blood vessels, while for fear, the
blood would rush to one’s lower body, causing the muscles to relax and
leading to incontinence, and a loss of strength in the diaphragm.
Similarly, excessive joy would cause a profound relaxation throughout
the body. Because of her joy, Piña was now excessively relaxed in a
mental sense, so her reflexes were dulled and she was useless to him.
There were also some people who thought better under stress. Piña was
probably this sort of person. Since he could not get any information from
her, he had to imagine that they were rogues or gangsters, or that they
were elements of the Empire’s military, and think of countermeasures.
If he wanted the “S” (Special Forces Group) contingent watching over

them to take care of it, he would have to hurry, but it would be unwise to
take action without knowing who the enemy was. If he ordered them to
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go to work, it meant that every single one of them would be buried in

darkness. He had to consider if his actions would make trouble for Piña.
If they were thieves or bandits, then they would have to be eliminated.

The problem was if they were members of the government or the
military. In that case, they could not be taken out unless there was
grave danger. However, if they saw the JSDF here, it would be very bad,
so he would have to think of a way to hide everyone.
Because Itami’s basic principle was “escape”, he was not particularly

troubled by that conclusion.
“Tomita! Kurata! Katsumoto! Get the Senators out of here on the HMV.
Sugawara-san, there’s a group of unidentified horsemen heading here,
so please halt the negotiations. Get the VIPs out of here. But the garden
party doesn’t need to stop. Let their family members stay here.”
After clearing up the rifles and mortar, the JSDF members ran as Itami
directed. Sugawara also swiftly gathered up the Senators and his harried
actions spoke of the urgency of the situation.
Itami patted Piña’s face with both hands and said “Please pull yourself
together. Get a grip.” before she finally returned to normal.
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The Senators who heard of the situation from Sugawara were very aware
that they could not let their dealings with Japan come to light. If it was
discovered that the pro-war faction was preparing for peace talks, the
radicals in the faction might well have them assassinated. In addition,
they also heard that the Ministry of the Interior would resort to dirty
means.
They would surely conclude that “Senators together = preparing for

negotiations”, and after listening to scattered fragments of news and
rumours, they would blend it with their own thoughts and come to a
twisted conclusion. The truth would be lost forever. This would not be an
isolated incident.
Therefore, everyone approved of leaving right away. Even if the people

approaching were bandits, there was no need to worry. After all, they
had just witnessed the terrifying power of Japanese weapons. In
addition, they wanted their families to enjoy themselves, so there was
no reason to protest the evacuation.
Since both sides had already agreed to negotiations, the fine details
could be handled through correspondence. Therefore, the Senators
made haste in leaving.
Three HMVs threw up curls of sand as they screeched to a halt. These

vehicles were left behind by 1st Recon. A total of six JSDF troopers
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927
dismounted and stood before the Senators.
After being shocked by the rifles and the mortar, they were once again
left in awe of these wagons which moved at high speeds without being
pulled by a horse. With these, Japan could cross the distance between
here and Arnus with a snap of the finger. At the same time, it clearly
demonstrated the uselessness of the barrier of distance which the
Emperor was counting on.
“Are we going to board these?”
“We’re going to take you to the vicinity of one of the capital’s gates.
That is to say, we will drop you at the less crowded southeast gate. Do
enjoy the ride.”
The southeast gate opened into the forest, and the gate itself was small.
The path leading to it was dark, and probably nobody would be walking
down it. The eastern and south sides were poorly lit by the sun because
of the wall, and the living conditions there were like a sewer. Naturally,
the only people who lived there were on the bottom of the social run,
and it was also called the Beggar’s District. It was also called Akusho
because of the lack of safety there. Normal people would not go near it
without a good reason.
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However, because of those reasons, it was the best place to move in and
out of the capital without being spotted.
In truth, the JSDF also used the southeast gate. In addition, they were
already familiar with the surrounding terrain and they had bought off the
guards with cash and Japanese products. They had also met and greeted
the criminals of the Black Streets.
With Kurata leading the way, the twenty-odd Senators boarded the
HMVs.
After that, the HMVs’ engines roared as they sped out, and everyone
screamed like it was the first time they were riding a roller-coaster.
***
Zorzal led a group of his men to the forest park on the outskirts of the
capital, and the HMVs left around the same time. It was a close shave. If
one listened carefully, one might be able to hear the sounds of the HMV
engines vanishing into the forest. They might not know what it was, but
they could probably tell it was headed away from them.
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Now, what Zorzal saw was children and their mothers enjoying food,
drink and playing all sorts of games, as well, as noblewomen flaunting
their gaudy dresses at each other. All he heard was light music, and not
the scheming that Count Marx had warned him about. After seeing their
merriment, all hatred faded from him, and he did not want to worry
about that fading noise.
Although he had not been invited, nobody stopped Zorzal from

advancing. Everyone could sense that Zorzal and his cronies were
directing surprised looks at them.
After examining the women here, he realised that they were all patrician
ladies or heiresses. He knew some of them from the courts.
While these ladies were surprised by the people barging in on them,

after noticing that he was the first son of the Emperor, they mistakenly
thought, “even the Prince was invited”, and so everyone swept forward
to welcome him. After all, the organizer of this party was Princess Piña,
so it was hardly unusual for her to invite her older brother as well. He
was simply a guest of honor.
Zorzal and his men could not be too rough with them.
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In the face of people who had nothing to do with the policy and were of
patrician birth to boot, they had to treat them with respect. The way
they had to treat the children running underfoot went without saying.
Their fierce desire to shout “What’s going on?!” drained away. After
dismounting, Zorzal ordered his men to find out what was going on.
“What are you doing here?”
“This garden party was organized by Piña-dono and Sugawara-dono. It’s

not an official meeting, just a gathering of various noble families and
their children to have fun together. Were you not invited as well, your
Highness?”
The one answering him was the elderly head maid. She was getting on
in years, but she stood ramrod-straight as she answered the Prince. The
fact that she had named his half-sister Piña drew his attention, but not
more so than the name “Sugawara” which he had never heard before.
The maids presented wine and all sorts of food to Zorzal and his men.
The trays were loaded with many kinds of food. For instance, collagen-
rich meat juices were chilled into blocks (with other foods within) and
served as a jelly. Then there was the Ma Nuga meat and fruits, and then
on another plate there was flatbread made of wheat, as well as all
manner of vegetable and meat dishes. All these things loomed like a
mountain in front of them.
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Zorzal and friends nervously picked up the unfamiliar food in front of it

and put it into his mouth. After that, their expressions changed.
“It’s good!”
The meat jelly bounced as he chewed it and melted in his mouth, and
the flavor slowly spread over his tongue. Like a great mixologist’s drink,
even kissing a thousand girls would not compare to it. Indeed, the
feeling in his mouth was like a lover’s tongue at work. Size, texture and
flavor, all these were the crystallization of Furuta’s efforts, producing the
highest order of cuisine.
In the blink of an eye, the food in front of them vanished. Zorzal’s men
spread out to look for more.
“...Mmm.”
Elsewhere, Zorzal tilted his head, unable to understand the situation.

Count Marx should not have lied to him. Even if he did lie to him, it
would have done no good for his Ministry. Could it be that he told that lie
so he would come to this party? But there should have been a better
way to put it.
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At least, this place looked like a festival, and not the site of some
conspiracy like what Count Marx said. He must have made a mistake
somewhere. Perhaps he had gotten the place wrong, and found a place
like this while exploring.
At the same time, his hands were reaching toward the rare food and
drinks.
“Mmm…”
Zorzal was used to the palace’s food, but he had never tried these
before.
The soup was just a simple boil-up, yet its taste was surprisingly deep. It
was golden amber in color and emanated a fragrant scent.
The Ma Nuga meat felt different when he ate it. It practically melted in
his mouth before his teeth touched it. This must have been the product
of an incredible control of heat in cooking. And then there was the skilful
use of salt and other flavors (spices). It was the best Ma Nuga meat he
had ever eaten.
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Zorzal took mouth after mouth of the meat, savoring the fat juices
pouring out into his mouth. Then he went for the next piece. Soon
enough, all three trays were empty.
“Ani-sama!” Piña shouted. Zorzal tossed the bone he had finished aside,
and looked to her.
As he saw Piña jogging over, he noticed that she did not have her knight
game people with her and went “oh?” Then he thought that if she was
the organizer of this event, then Count Marx must have gotten
something wrong somewhere.
“Ani-sama, what are you doing here all of a sudden?”
Zorzal replied, “What, can’t I be here?” as he reached for his fourth

piece of Ma Nuga meat.
Piña certainly did not want him here, but under these circumstances,
she could not say so directly. Instead, she replied, “Of course not, how
could I leave my elder brother alone? It’s just that you hadn’t shown
much interest in this sort of thing. Oh, it’ll taste better with this.” She
handed him a batch of mustard that Furuta had specially blended to go
with Ma Nuga meat.
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Zorzal frowned as he saw the mustard’s color, and its nose-stinging

odor. When he bit into the meat, the intense flavor made his eyes water.
“Piña, who made these dishes? Where can I find him?”
He was holding his fifth piece of Ma Nuga meat, this time drizzled with
the yellow mustard. He seemed quite fond of it.
Piña looked at the piece of meat before her which was practically
painted yellow, and did not know how to answer him. She nervously
replied, “I know that person.” Although the one in charge of the actual
food preparation were the palace chefs, Furuta of the JSDF was the one
who did the flavoring and directed the cooking.
“Have him prepare the royal dinner next time. His Majesty will be
pleased.”
“Brother, even if you ask personally, I’m afraid I cannot guarantee that.”
In the courts, a chef did not have a lofty position. Hardly anyone would
bring in a low-status chef. However, Zorzal thought nobody was looking
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935
and shrugged, and then tried to think of a way around this problem.
“That’s nothing, as long as he doesn’t enter the palace, it should be fine,

right? We’ll just say we borrowed someone from a noble family. That
should solve the dinner problem.”
Piña thought for a moment that this would be a good chance to let her
brother meet a Japanese person. But then she immediately shot that
idea down.
Yes, her brother thought he lived in a world where “everything goes

according to my will”. Everything good was for his benefit in the world
which existed solely to satisfy him. He would discard anything which
denied this. Even the truth would become his enemy… no. It was
precisely because it was the truth that it was his enemy. At the same
time, he would even believe lies as long as they pleased him.
Naturally, the greatest fantasy he had was that the Empire was the
strongest power in this world.
Zorzal would not understand that there was a country far more puissant
than the Empire on the other side of the Gate, that had already dealt
them several crushing defeats and which could not be beaten. In this
case, he would turn the truth into his enemy.
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Therefore, Piña gave up the idea of showing Zorzal the truth.
The problem was why her brother had come here. It could not possibly
have been a coincidence. She decided to ask Zorzal, and the answer she
got was “Count Marx told me to come here.”
“Did he say that, exactly?”
“No, just something like it.”
“Then, what did he say?”
Zorzal clicked his tongue at Piña’s incessant questions and replied, “He
said there were people gathered here to plot and conspire. He must
have messed up. Think nothing of it!”
After that, he joined his cronies in assaulting the other food stalls. They
even chased away the kids gathered around the ice-cream maid.
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As Piña watched him leave, she muttered “Count Marx” under her
breath over and over again.
***
Zorzal and the others did not just eat their fill, but they carried a lot of
food away.
There was only just enough food for the garden party, so in the face of
these rapacious intruders, a food shortage immediately developed. They
took the entire tub of ice cream (and very nearly the maid too). The
young men and women began circulating whispers about the poor
manners of the first prince.
Because of them, Piña, Sugawara, Itami, the JSDF troopers and the
maids had nothing to eat. Those maids who had pinched some food
were lucky, but Itami and the musicians were left without anything to fill
their bellies.
Even so, they continued smiling, as they watched the patricians and
their families leave, then, their faces set with a grim determination, they
set about the task of cleaning up.
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Piña and Sugawara stood in a corner of the forest garden, which was
quiet again. As they watched Itami and the others at work, the old head
maid brought out some herbal tea for them, and some of the leftovers of
Furuta’s fish bone dessert (she was surprised that it could actually be
eaten after suitable flavoring with salt and pepper), and then they began
discussing the reason for Zorzal’s intrusion.
“We should think of this as a warning by Count Marx.”
“Could it be a recon by fire? Because he wasn’t sure what we were

doing, he barged in directly to see our response?”
“It’s not impossible, but Ani-sama would not use a recon by fire or
whatever. He and his men are hot-headed and a clever ruse like a recon
by fire is beyond him.”
“They don’t have anyone who can make calm, rational decisions among
them, so it does not follow they could perform a recon by fire. It would
be best to treat their actions as a warning. However, after considering
your brother’s position, he might be preparing for a direct attack.”
“Indeed, if he had seen the Senators discussing business with furtive

expressions on their faces, Ani-sama would have gladly scattered the
party and captured everyone. Senators gathering together to discuss
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things is not a crime, so even if one wanted to report them for it, nothing
would happen. But Ani-sama would not think of such things. That’s just
how he is.”
Because he could not suppress them using the law, Zorzal would instead
openly arrest the Senators, charge them with treason and accuse them
of conspiring against the Empire. Those were the high-handed means he
favored.
Naturally, the Senators would object. After all, Zorzal’s actions were very
objectionable. In addition, this was not a lawful arrest. And if the
Senators were charged with treason, the Senate would become
powerless. Even in wartime, it was only natural to maintain
communications with representatives of the enemy. Otherwise, the war
would go on until one side was completely destroyed.
However, regardless of the legitimacy of the approach, the hearts of the

people would be more easily swayed by an emotional approach.
Although people often said, “Let’s talk it out”, when Zorzal painted the
Senator's actions with the words “treason” and “defeatism”, the pro-war
faction’s blood would be boiling with anger.
Once that happened, everything the Senate/pro-peace faction said
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940
would be shouted down, and the influence of the Emperor/pro-war

faction would increase.
“I see, so that was what Count Marx was aiming for.”
However, this was not all.
The passionate action Zorzal incited was like getting drunk on strong
wine. The next day, one would wake up and be embarrassed by their
ugly actions. Even if the Senate did not recover as quickly as a man did
from a night of drunkenness, they would eventually realise what they
had done several days later.
After calming down from their excitement, the voices condemning the
pro-peace faction, who had done nothing wrong, would become softer.
At the same time, the number of voices criticizing Zorzal would increase.
Many people would frown on the disturbance caused by Zorzal’s rabble-

rousing. There would be more voices calling for the removal of Zorzal
from the succession and passing the throne to his brother Diabo.
However, even if Zorzal was eliminated, Diabo was still part of the
Senate faction, so that would not be good for Count Marx at all.
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Thanks to the calming effects of the herbal tea, Piña managed to cool
her head and begin connecting the dots. The points of data formed a
beautiful line, which she carefully wove to prevent the whole thing from
breaking down, until they finally formed a full picture for her to see.
“In any case, Count Marx has found us out. We were lucky to avoid his
scheme this time, but who knows what he’ll try after this?”
“If we look at it from the perspective of disrupting the peace process,

then the most effective course of action would be to assassinate the
responsible people. If he goes by legal means, then he would arrest
anyone with a differing opinion, any intellectuals opposed to him, as well
as anyone related to the media, right? After that, he would stir up the
peoples’ fighting spirit in debate in order to give the military a free hand
in doing things.”
The methods Sugawara mentioned struck a chord in Piña’s heart.
“Arrest them all?” (By the way, Piña had no idea what the media was, so
she ignored it.)
The words “high treason” came to mind. As she thought, “It can’t be”,
she began to feel uneasy. Those words were not exactly uncommon in
the Empire’s history.
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“You need to remind the Senators to be watchful of those around them.”
If Count Marx was really planning to hang the crime of high treason on
them, then there was no point being watchful. However, the process of
arrest, sentencing and punishment would need a certain amount of
evidence and witnesses, so they would need to make sure they did not
incriminate themselves from normal speech.
As she thought about that, it all fell into place. She linked Zorzal to the
charge of high treason.
“If Ani-sama was attacked today, it might have become the casus belli
needed for a purge.”
Once the pro-war faction was roused to anger, they would damn the pro-
impeachment Senators with accusations of high treason and eliminate
them all in one swift movement. By the time they calmed down from
their bloodlust, it would be too late.
“Your Highness, do you think Count Marx will use the charge of high
treason to mount a purge?”
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Piña could only shrug as she replied to Sugawara.
“I don’t think so. The jurors would all be Senators. Even the pro-Emperor
faction would not find them guilty, as long as their minds were clear.
False testimony cannot hold up for long under extended investigation
and debate. Count Marx’s plan needs to be accomplished before the
Senators regain their calm,” Piña muttered as she scratched her head.
“I’m just a mediator, why do I have to worry about all of this…”
She had just been freed of the burdens weighing her down, and now
more of them had appeared. The troublesome situation, the stubborn
pro-Emperor faction, the scheming Count Marx, and then the easily-used
Zorzal, the list of hateful factors was full once again.
However, this concerned the country’s future.
It was precisely because Piña was a member of the Imperial family that
she took her duty to the Empire so seriously. If she could do something
about the situation and did not, she would be guilty by inaction.
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The stress on her had just been relieved, and now the pressure was back
again. However, because of that, Piña’s mind began to clear.
“In any case, today should be fine. However, if Marx really plans to use
the charge of high treason to mount a purge, he will make other moves.
We need to evade those and prepare for the impeachment and talks,”
Piña told Sugawara.
“Right now, the most important thing is to speak with Marquis Casel.
After that, we need to get the Senate to agree on the negotiations and
talks, in order to tie the Count’s hands. However, this is not a job for
myself as a mediator, or yourself, Sugawara-dono, as an envoy of the
enemy.”
“Then, who should we look for?”
“Hm. Lord Cicero should do.”
After Piña finished, she rose, highlighting the beautiful curves of her
body.
***
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“Zorzal took the bait, but we did not catch a fish. What a shame.”
The Emperor, seated on his throne in the audience chamber, looked at

Count Marx. He noted the man’s lowered head and sighed.
“Well, that’s fine. We will have more chances. There’s no need to be

hasty.”
“However, if this goes on, the Senate will rule to begin the negotiations.
Should we not do something now?”
“Don’t be mistaken, Count Marx. I have no intention to deny these talks.

If they want to talk, then let them talk, as much as they like. But I will
not give them so much as a hair in concessions.”
“However, with things as they are, it may be difficult to follow that

course.”
“That’s nothing. All we need to do is make sure they never reach a

decision. If they want to talk with the enemy so much, then let them talk
forever. They need to negotiate to begin negotiations, they have to vote
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on when the negotiations will begin, they have to vote on the conditions
they have and so on. If they have to debate over each and every little
detail, they will make no progress. Sooner or later the enemy will give
up on negotiations.”
“Your Majesty’s wisdom is fathomless and farsighted. Your servant is

awed by your prowess.”
“Count, proceed as you see fit. However, in the end, we must secure a
military victory. If you lose, I won’t forgive you.”
“Yes. Your servant shall accomplish it with all his might.”
Marx lowered his head once more.
***
Nagata-cho Prime Minister’s Residence.
“Prime Minister. The report from Sugawara in the Special Region has
arrived.”
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The secretary from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivered the

document to the Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Morita, Motoi’s successor, adjusted his glasses as he

received the document before opening and reading it.
“I see. The foundations for the peace talks have already been laid. Now
we need to send Vice-Minister Shirayuro Reiko over to the Special
Region. Has the Ministry of Foreign Affairs chosen the people to handle
the work?”
“Yes. However, the report also indicated that forces exist which oppose
the peace talks. We are somewhat worried about the safety aspect.
“Oh?”
Morita flipped through the pages. After he closed the report, he looked
like he was talking about someone else.
“Well, it should be fine. There should be a way.”
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“That is incorrect, sir. The report also mentions that the Empire’s
military is stirring.”
“Is that not why we sent the JSDF there?”
“Indeed, that is why.”
The man from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs retreated to the back of the
Prime Minister’s office with gritted teeth, thinking what do you mean, it
should be fine? Morita had only been Prime Minister for several months,
and already he was wondering if he should have been trusted with the
position. The way he talked about things like they didn’t concern him
was very frustrating. Although he hoped that Morita would be a wise and
long-sighted man, he did not get that impression from him at all. For
example:
“The problem should be China, Russia, and America, right?”
“And the EU, sir.”
“The matter of the Special Region should have been mentioned in the
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summit meeting.”
“They already asked us to disclose the details of the Special Region at

the last meeting.”
“So why don’t we do that?”
“Hah? Are you serious?
If Russia, America, China or the EU knew what resources there were in

the Special Region, they would be even harder to manage than they
were already.
A planet’s worth of resources would be effectively unlimited. Every

country in the world would kill their way to Japan, where the Gate was, in
order to secure those resources.
And then, if they tried to avoid diplomatic pressure by keeping the

details of the Special Region a secret, it would be a clear sign that Japan
wanted to monopolize the Gate for itself. All Japan could do was keep a
low profile and try to keep the surrounding nations calm. If they found
out about all the treasures beyond the Gate, they would all demand free
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access to the Gate.
What waited there was pressure and violence.
In reality, actions took place, and then meanings were assigned to them.
The final resort in reality was always violence. In the face of massive
violence, no appeals to peace would be successful.
Even if they somehow survived the application of force, the enemy,

would gather even more force to seize the Gate. Once that happened,
reasoning and international accords would have no use. After all, there
were things like Israel constantly oppressing the people of Palestine in
defiance of UN decree and Korea violating the Treaty of San Francisco to
illegally occupy Japan’s Takeshima islands. The only way to solve these
problems was to back one’s words with force. That way, both parties
could confidently make their demands and the problem could be solved.
Now, it seemed like Japan and the other nations were acting out some
sort of play.
Other Nation (anyone would do): “Oh, open the Gate. Let me see. Let me
in!”
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Japan: “No, the Gate is here, it’s mine. I’m the one suffering over there!”
Other Nation: “Oh, shut up, I won’t forgive anyone who keeps good
things to themselves!”
Japan: “Don’t be so childish. I already said I didn’t want to lay sole claim
to it.”
Other Nation: “Fine, if that’s what you think, I’ll take it by force!”
Japan: “If that’s what you think, we’ll give the things in the Gate to our
friends, and of course our enemies will have nothing. Where are my
friends~”
(America raises a hand) “We have a treaty~ (please sir, may I have
some more?)”
If the EU saw this, most of them would raise their hands as well.
In fact, just about everyone would say, “I’m your friend too, let me in,
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give me some”, so in the end there would be no enemies.
Japan: “Like I said, sit there and watch. We don’t know what exactly is
inside.”
Then back to the top, from the beginning.
The job of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was to keep people from saying
“Hey, that guy wants to take the Gate for himself, let’s all gang up and
control it together!” and to keep things like that from happening.
Because of that, information about the Gate had to be kept secret. Once
many nations took control of it, there was no telling how the situation
would proceed. So they would keep things secret and occasionally leak a
bit of information to their allies, so as to keep them docile under the
expectation of more goodies.
They told the Americans that the nation called the Empire existed, as
well as the state of its surrounding vassal countries, so rather than
taking control through the military, they should sign a trade treaty since
they had already pinpointed potential resource caches, and they had
agreed.
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To America, if they signed a treaty with the Empire, then their

companies with branches in Japan could take economic action in the
Special Region, without a need to secure their investments with a
military occupation. Just handling Iraq and Afghanistan was troublesome
enough for President Darryl, so he gave serious thought to the matter of
the Special Region.
In truth, their Ministry of Defense had already predicted that a large-

scale military invasion through the Gate — situated as it was in traffic
jam-prone Ginza — would be impossible.
The Gate was not very big. At the most, it could fit one fighter aircraft or
three to four large trucks side by side.
The American army used a lot of weapons, ammunition, food and fuel to
mount a campaign. This would require them to completely seal off Tokyo
and convert their roads into dedicated supply lines. However, the Gate’s
dimensions could not be changed, so it would be like filling a 50 meter
long Olympic swimming pool with a kitchen tap; it would be a waste of
time and effort. And then there was the matter of the campaign’s cost.
In addition, really big transport vehicles would not be able to fit through

the Gate. Perhaps it would work if they were completely disassembled
for transportation to the other side. At most, they could only send tanks
and helicopters through.
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What this meant was that the JSDF had made the right decision by
waiting around the Gate. After building up their forces, they would take
the important objectives in one go. This was the best way.
The Japanese government was also agonizing over that bottleneck when
it came to shipping resources home from the Special Region. After all, a
financial district like Ginza simply did not have big enough roads to
accommodate the flow of transport trucks needed.
If they decided to build underpasses and overhead bridges, they would

need to decide how long those paths would run, and that would cause
another round of problems from the resource-extracting companies.
Therefore, the secretary had not taken Morita’s “So why don’t we do
that?” as a serious order. He looked at Morita like he was a lunatic.
Just thinking of Morita annoyed him.
“Of course I’m not serious. I’ve thought about it, but I’ll handle this
objectively, so don’t worry.”
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That was what the secretary thought after the fact, but if things went
poorly, Morita might casually release information because it was
troublesome.
Note
The book described Pina’s heart soaring like a PA3 guided missile, which
is the latest version of the MIM-104 Patriot missile system.
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Vol. 3 :
Chapter 7
The JSDF’s activities in the Imperial capital had begun. In order to give
Sugawara the support of the common folk, the JSDF’s Special Region
Expeditionary force had set up several bases of operation throughout
the capital. They were places like the warehouses of the ALC’s Imperial
capital branch, or the second floor of a tavern, but the thing they had in
common was that they were places where people could move in and out
without being noticed. The most obvious of these was a rented mansion
near the capital’s southeastern gate.
It was technically within the capital’s city limits, but there were all kinds
of different races and species here. Ordinary citizens would never go
near this place.
Every few steps, a pickpocket would try their luck, and behind there
would be people following. It could be compared to Hong Kong’s
Kowloon district.
Almost none of the rows of shops belonged to proper businesses.
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They sold all sorts of lewd tools, various drugs, and slaves captured from
all over the continent.
Of course, people had to live here, so there were also shops which sold
food and clothing. However, everything on sale here was strange. The
clothes on sale might be stained with blood or rent from a cut, and the
shops even sold grass from the roadside. As for the butchers, one
always had to be suspicious of their purchases, lest one accidentally end
up buying human meat.
Because this place was called Akusho, a lot of the men here were either
humans with blades bared, Werewolf Beastmen who were every bit as
ferocious and bloodthirsty as the weapons they carried, or Four-Arms.
One could also see the odd Goblin or Ogre in the distance. Many of the
remnants of the Coalition Army came here to be thieves, enforcers,
mercenaries, or to do some form of violent work. In any event, they were
all villains.
As for the women, there were girls who looked lewdly around their
surroundings, or those who stared blankly into the distance like
vegetables as fragrant smoke wreathed them. None of them had a
proper job, and most of them were prostitutes.
The species present included: Humans, Warrior Bunnies, Catpeople,

Dogpeople, Lamias, several horned species, and winged species like
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Harpies or Winged Men. The men in the streets ogled them lasciviously,
while the women responded with bewitching smiles, and a coy offer of,
“Want to play?”
In this place, the strong fed on the weak. Therefore, the people here
paid no heed to corpses on the street. Did it appear yesterday? Today?
Well, even if it happened tomorrow, nobody would care, because this
was a way of life for the people here. This was not Arnus. It absorbed the
very worst elements of the Imperial Capital and continued festering in
the darkness.
The JSDF chose this place for a simple reason: in this melting pot of
people, nobody would notice an extra strange fellow or two. There were
other gates where many people came and went, but the people there
were ordinary cityfolk, and anyone who stood out would attract a lot of
attention. This place, on the other hand, was where people who did dirty
work lived. It was important that these people were here.
The thing was, whatever happened in Akusho would not make it out of
the district. In that sense, it was perfect for secrecy. However, the flip
side of that was that there were several notable individuals in Akusho.
The JSDF were much better-mannered than the people on the streets,
and they paid well.
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When they hired people for requests, they always paid twice as much as
the crime bosses here. They had ruled these streets from the beginning,
and to these crime bosses — Gonzori, Medusa, Paramounte and Bessara
— the JSDF were eyesores.
These JSDF people came from elsewhere, bought a house, and then
acted all secretive. They did not even know how to properly greet the
bosses. They even dared to ignore the rules of the street and the power
of the bosses. And because they always paid so much, the people who
traditionally feared the old bosses were now getting rebellious. They
were truly a bunch of annoying people.
All these small aggravations piled up, and the bosses of the district
became angry.
One of them — Bessara — started thinking, “Since they’ve got all that
money to throw around, they must have a big stash. Why don’t we nip
over and help ourselves to some of it?” So he gathered his men and
punks from the street to attack the JSDF’s Akusho base of operations.
And then, what greeted them was a baptism of hot lead.
The looted H&K MP7s and FN P90s provided by Itami and friends found a
use here. Naturally, the servicemen were very well equipped. In this sort
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of unconventional warfare, the rules were very simple: kill your enemy
when you saw him. Nothing else mattered.
And so, the brave men of 5th Recon who were manning the base
welcomed their attackers with a hail of bullets. Bessara’s men were
slaughtered in seconds and their corpses piled up.
It was over after the first round of fire.
Not only had Bessara lost all his men, but his own home had been blown
up. Without men or a dwelling place, Bessara had also lost the fighting
power to protect himself and give him authority. And then, in the next
moment he paid for his life of lawlessness.
The residents of Akusho, many of whom had lost their wives, children
and other relatives to his vile activities, surrounded him and stabbed
him with knives and swords until he looked like a pincushion, and then
dumped him in an alley.
After seeing his gruesome remains, the people on the streets muttered
to each other, “The JSDF is untouchable.”
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The Gonzori, Medusa and Paramounte families did not join the Bessaras
in their attack, and so they were spared. When they realised that the
JSDF did not intend to claim the Bessaras’ share of profits, which was to
say, the income from his brothels and his protection money, they
breathed a sigh of relief and reached a common understanding that
nobody was to make a move against the JSDF.
Although they were an unpleasant bunch of people, they were good

businessmen, and they knew trouble was bad for business. So they
changed their minds, and approached the JSDF for work.
The JSDF wanted information, and pawns that could collect that
information. Under request from the JSDF, the crime bosses gathered
their pickpockets and thieves and had them spy on the patricians’
actions. Sometimes, they would enter their houses and steal books, and
protected themselves by showing their worth and usefulness.
Simply put, the JSDF were treated like conquerors. It was only natural
that the strong could do whatever they wanted in Akusho. People might
praise those who defied the strong on the surface, but in their hearts
they would curse the defiant for fools, and these defiant people would
not live long.
In addition, when people approached the JSDF with evil intentions, they
would maintain their composure and politely ask them to stop.
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When they saw illegal activity, they had frustrated looks on their faces,
as well as feeling sympathy for the plight of others.
As a result, the men of Akusho were, regardless of species, both fearful

and respectful of the JSDF.
In contrast, the women had mixed feelings about them.
Simply put, they could not like them.
No matter what temptations they used, the men of the JSDF were
unmoved. Since they had so much money, what was wrong with
spending a little on them? But no matter how they fluttered their
eyelashes, or what seductive words they spoke, the JSDF men did not
respond.
It was true that the men on the streets were richer thanks to them, and
in turn the women had bigger earnings. However, the women still
wanted the JSDF to spend money on them, because that was how a
woman’s heart worked.
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But even when they shouted, “Are you really men? You impotent
bastards!” all the JSDF did was shrug and steadfastly refuse to take the
bait.
This was why they seemed sweet on them on the surface, but inwardly
resented them.
However, what changed everything was the clinic run by a female nurse
who changed every few days. It offered checkups, pregnancy tests as
well as information and counselling related to contraception and other
related issues. It changed the way their lives went.
The contraceptives and other such devices sold here were an

irreplaceable aid for their jobs.
“Oh, is Kurokawa on duty tonight?”
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The woman called Mizari, who was surrounded in a cloud of marijuana-

infused smoke, entered the treatment room. Unlike the way she was on
the streets, she had lowered her guard.
After all, this was the only place on the street which was safe, besides
her nest. No, she could not even relax in her own nest. This might be the
only place she could let her guard down. After all, when a certain crime
family made a move against the JSDF, they had been massacred for
their audacity.
Everyone knew what would happen when the JSDF raised their hand to
strike.
Kurokawa was dressed in comfortable jeans and a tube top. She took a
couple of copper coins from the woman with a pair of wings protruding
from her back (a Winged Woman), and handed Mizari a box of the
rubber contraceptives. They took payment because “This was not a
charity”. The people who lived in Akusho did so with pride, so the JSDF
had to respect that pride and their ability to earn money by accepting
their coins.
A self-righteous person might think this was enabling behavior, but in

truth this sort of thing had a powerful social impact.
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When one was poor, one did not have the time to worry about pretty
ideals. Instead, a person had to eat, and selling one’s body was a
perfectly acceptable way to earn one’s next meal. It was not as though
they were inconveniencing others by doing it. It was all well and good to
try and assail their way of life with logic, but one had to consider the
situation they were in first. The thing which troubled them most in their
trade was accidental pregnancies. Given the medical technology of the
Special Region, an abortion might well result in death, so the risk to their
health was very high.
In addition, it was unclear if there were sexually-transmitted diseases in

the Special Region.
The reason why Kurokawa and her fellow servicewomen were doing this
was because the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare wanted to find
out if they existed.
They were concerned that the JSDF personnel might bring back a
disease with them from the Special Region, much like how Columbus
brought syphilis back to Europe and caused an epidemic. The male
servicemen had also been strictly warned about this.
“Kurokawa, you won’t tell me to stop smoking, will you?”
The other WACs (women’s army corps) kept on nagging Mizari to stop.
That was because the Special Region’s tobacco was infused with strange
herbs which were bad for the skin and internal organs. Regardless of
whether it was good or bad, they nagged her anyway.
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However, Kurokawa simply shrugged. “I could, but you need it, right?”
“Huh, you understand? Do you have experience with this sort of thing?”
Mizari was referring to prostitution.
“No, I was just thinking, I couldn’t do your job if I couldn’t smoke.”
The Winged Woman’s pretty mouth turned downward into a frown.
“Cheh. I hate high-and-mighty women like you.”
“That’s fine, I’m not here to win a popularity contest.”
Mizari frowned at Kurokawa. Kurokawa, not to be outdone, made a funny

face at her with her fingers. After a while, the tension between them
evaporated, and Mizari laughed.
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“You’re so childish. Just like me.”
“That’s true. I don’t feel much different from yesterday, so I doubt the
me from twenty years ago would be much different from myself today.”
This made Mizari snort in laughter, and then she rose. “All right, I’d best
get back to making money.” Then she puffed a cloud of smoke into
Kurokawa’s face.
Kurokawa waved her hand to disperse the smoke. It was plainly

deliberate. The two of them lived in different worlds, so it would be best
if they kept their distance.
Then, she suddenly thought of something else, and asked a question.
“What if… what if I told you there was a way for you to not have to
smoke this, or work like this?”
However, Mizari simply looked at Kurokawa like she was an idiot.
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“How could someone like me work such a wonderful job like that? All I
know how to do is spread my legs for men and show them my ass.
That’s what I do. That’s all I do.”
“Have you heard of a place called Arnus?”
“Ah, that place. I heard it’s like Heaven. But don’t you need a
recommendation to get in? Besides, I don’t have any special skills. If I
went there, I’d just be doing what I do now.”
And what if I told you I could give you such a recommendation? What
about that? These words started in Kurokawa’s throat. But just as she
was about to open her mouth, she remembered Itami scolding her,
“What can you do?” Her resentment toward Itami from that time
remained in her heart, and when Mizari said “I don’t have any special
skills”, she felt that there was a lot the Winged Woman wasn’t saying.
If she could find a proper job in Arnus, Mizari wouldn’t need to stand in
the dark at night, Kurokawa thought.
Mizari smiled to the speechless Kurokawa before turning away. She took
a puff, and returned to her working girl’s full-hipped sashay as she hit
the streets once again.
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***
When Mizari visited Kurokawa again, it was well past midnight.
Most of the time, the prostitute would have gotten one or two, perhaps
even three johns by now. The only ones moving around at this time of
night were women. There were no men in sight.
While those soiled doves who had not gotten any business yet would be
throwing themselves at men, those fallen women who had hit their
quota for the night would retire to their homes to rest. In other words,
one could tell which of the whores knew their trade well.
It was at this time that Mizari brought her fellow prostitutes to the JSDF
base of operations, which momentarily panicked Kurokawa. After all, the
Bessara attack had been fairly recent.
She grabbed her handgun from a drawer and stuffed it into her pants. As
a servicewoman, she was very familiar with its use.
“Kurokawa, we’ve got something to tell you.”
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When she opened the door, she saw a very nervous-looking Mizari. She
seemed to be looking around, as though she were afraid of something.
The streetwalkers with her also seemed very worried. Kurokawa had the
feeling that something abnormal was going on.
Kurokawa opened the door to let them in.
“Inside. Hurry.”
And so, the ladies of the evening poured into the basement, whose
pitch-dark interior was brilliantly lit by the fluorescent lamps that were
powered by the portable generator within.
The girls could not help but be frightened of the fluorescent lights,
having only ever been exposed to candlelight or lamplight. Some of
them looked directly at the light and squinted. However, light had a way
of wiping away unease. Mizari smiled and said, “Well, that’s a big help
for my bird eyes.” The other girls managed to relax enough to share
their thoughts on the situation before flopping down onto the chairs and
the bed used for treatment, while those who couldn’t find a space either
sat on the floor or leaned against the walls.
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After everyone found their place, Kurokawa spoke.
“All right, what happened? Why did all of you come here?”
Mizari answered on their behalf.
“All of us can sense what’s going to happen on the streets, no, in the
Capital. But the trick is that we don’t tell, don’t ask, and pretend nothing
happened. That’s how we survive in these streets.”
The girls nodded as one.
“So with that in mind, this child’s name is Tuwal. Please listen to her,
and help us.”
As Mizari said that, she brought out Tuwal, who had wings like she did,
but was from a different species. Tuwal was a Harpy. Winged Men had
wings on their backs, but Harpies had wings in place of their arms.
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“Please, help us.”
Kurokawa was unable to answer. After all, they had not explained
anything at all.
She asked them to continue talking about what was going on. After all,
she could not help them if she did not know where to start.
However, Mizari simply asked Kurokawa for help again. All she said was
that she hoped Kurokawa could help them.
“Ahhhh, what a pain! If you help us, we’ll do anything you want in
future!”
In the end, Kurokawa gave up. She realised she could not handle this by
herself, so she went upstairs to wake up Sergeant-Major Kuwabara.
***
That night, the Imperial Capital was shaken by an earthquake.
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After hearing a distant rumbling from the distance, the earth suddenly
began to shake violently.
The problem was that the city had never experienced an earthquake
before, and so the buildings were not protected against the violent
shaking. They were made of stones stacked on top of each other, and so
the more fragile buildings collapsed.
That being the case, the foundations of the Capital’s streets were not
completely destroyed. But the true damage was to the hearts of the
cityfolk.
Because there was no seismograph on hand, no exact figures could be

taken, but from the spread of the destruction, it seemed to be around a
magnitude 4 to 5 earthquake.
The earthquake occurred in the middle of the night, so it took the Capital
completely by surprise.
They were thrown out of bed while soundly asleep, and they were too
drowsy from sleep to properly panic at first. Various objects began
falling to the floor like rain, including things like shelves and objects
hanging from the ceiling.
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When the cabinets collapsed, the sharp fragments from shattering vases
and ceramic cookware was enough to cause cuts. The fragments littered
the floor, so there was no place to stand.
The people of the Capital believed that the earth would not move. That
was what it meant to be “as solid as a rock”.
Water flowed, wind blew, fire burned, wood grew. But the earth did not
move. That was a fundamental principle of the world. When that
preconception was shattered, everyone thought the world was going to
end. This terror was deeply engraved on the people’s souls, leaving
grievous spiritual wounds.
Predicting this disaster would have been difficult even for the
scientifically advanced Japan. It was not impossible, but only a god or a
being with far better sensory abilities than a human could have done it.
However, in the Special Region, there were people who approached

these two categories. There were some people who saw the disaster
coming.
The Harpy Tuwal felt a sudden chill throughout her body as she saw off
her second john.
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At first, she thought it was a cold, because her body was sweating
profusely.
Because the second man had a lot of stamina, she did not even have the
time to collect her money and clean up. She wanted to stand up a few
times, but she could not because there was no strength in her body and
her skin was gradually getting colder. However, the shaking in her body
was slightly different from a cold. It was like someone was pulling her
hair from behind. And then, she lost strength in her waist and legs, like
she was afraid.
Then, she remembered. Towal had experienced something like this

before.
In the past, she and her kind lived in the South, where the volcanoes
were. She had felt like this just before the volcanoes erupted. Yes, this
was a premonition of an “earthquake”.
But even if she felt that way, there were no volcanoes near the Imperial
Capital.
She had not been here long, but she had never heard of an earthquake
here before. Therefore, she wondered if she had gotten things wrong.
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However, the mounting frustration and fear in her heart would not die
down. Therefore, Tuwal sought out Mizari, her mentor, to discuss things.
The fact was that Mizari and the other prostitutes also felt the same
nameless dread. It was a feeling which told them they could not stay
here, that they had to run as quickly as possible.
However, she had never experienced or heard of an earthquake before,

so she did not understand why she was feeling uneasy and afraid.
Fortunately, she understood because of Tuwal. Thus, they immediately
went to look for the men who usually protected them. Usually, they
would take off their shirts and say, “I’ll protect you.” That attitude would
have been useful now.
However, the men just felt that the women were being annoying and
refused to acknowledge their fears. Their reactions were along the lines
of, “Earthquake? You’d best go back and make more money.” Of course,
they felt the same fear too, but they could not bring themselves to
openly acknowledge it.
The unease grew stronger and stronger in the meantime. In the end,
they decided to abandon the useless men and went to Kurokawa for
help.
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The commander of the JGSDF Akusho Operations Base (as it was

commonly known), Major Nyutabara, received Kurokawa and Kuwabara’s
reports, and promptly had a headache. He had no experience when it
came to handling earthquake reports, and he doubted the provenance of
the reports in any case.
However, Tuwal’s ancestors were avian species. Nyutabara had been

stationed at Himeji Garrison and Shibata Garrison in Niigata, and he had
personally experienced earthquakes twice. For some reason, the
memory of how the wild birds near the bases had vanished just before
the earthquakes stood out brilliantly in his mind. If they could have
spoken to the birds, perhaps they could have predicted those
earthquakes.
The girls’ senses might be keener than humans. If it turned out they
were wrong, then they could laugh it off as a joke. Therefore, it made
sense to treat their words as the truth, and adopt the requisite
countermeasures. He thought about this, and made his decision.
The preparations were not a big deal, for the servicemen who had grown
up in earthquake-prone regions. They had learned how to deal with
these problems from a young age. They used the wireless to
communicate with their people scattered throughout the Capital and
ordered them to extinguish their fires. Then, they grabbed their
equipment, weapons, food and medical supplies and headed for a wide,
open area, being wary of things which might fall on their heads, as well
as taking care to stay away from large buildings, cliffs and the water’s
edge.
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These were very simple things, but for people who had never
experienced earthquakes before, they would have had a hard time
thinking of these.
***
Piña grumbled as Sugawara woke her up for a walk in the forest outside
the palace. Hamilton followed her in a half-asleep state. After all, her job
as a scribe was very tiring.
Itami, Kuribayashi and Tomita were assigned as Sugawara’s guards, so

after they received Nyutabara’s wireless transmission, they brought Piña
and the others to a safe place despite doubting the reports. In addition,
Itami was in his uniform, while Kuribayashi and Tomita were in their
combat fatigues and fully armed, with an extra pistol each.
The maids and Piña’s torch-bearing guards could not hide their worry.
They were only following because they knew they had to follow Piña no
matter what.
Even if they explained that the earth would shake and what would
happen after that, the maids would not be able to imagine it. It would be
like trying to understand what it would be like to fall from the sky.
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Therefore, when the earthquake came, they received a massive shock.
First, there was the gentle trembling that marked the early stages of an
earthquake.
“Oh, it’s coming, it’s coming…”
The length of this period made Itami say, “Looks like it’s going to be a
big one.”
There was a correlation between the length of the initial trembling and
the distance to the epicenter of the earthquake. This meant that when
one calculated the distance to the epicenter, the stronger the early
vibrations, the bigger the earthquake would be.
After this, the real shaking started.
The earth heaved as though it had been struck mightily.
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It was roughly 30 to 40 seconds before the quake tapered off. However,

for those people in the Imperial Capital who had encountered an
earthquake for the first time, it seemed like an eternity.
Piña wailed. She thought that the world was collapsing. Beside her,
Sugawara and Itami said, “Ohh, it really came.”
As she saw Itami, Kuribayashi and Tomita standing around calmly, Piña’s
eyes filled with fearlessness and a determination not to lose out to this
earthquake. She imagined that they would probably maintain their cool
even if the ground vanished from under their feet.
Itami was a man who would look for excuses to slack off when he was
tired of annoying things. Either that, or he would immediately flee them.
He did not seem to have any of the qualities of a warrior. Yet, at this
moment, he seemed perfectly calm and composed.
The maids and soldiers fell prone in terror.
The sounds of the rooted trees swaying and the sound of the leaves
grinding against the wind sounded like the movements of a huge
monster. The maids cried and screamed, while the soldiers shouted in
response. However, they, like Piña, saw the same thing; Itami, Tomita
and Kuribayashi, looking around their surroundings like nothing was
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happening.
The steadfast forms reminded them of the gods.
The maids grabbed at Tomita’s and Kuribayashi’s legs one after the
other, while the soldiers looked at them with admiration, as though they
were invincible heroes.
“Well, if it’s only this much, it shouldn’t be a problem. The weaker parts
of the walls might collapse, but the rest should be fine. Can’t say the
same if we were closer to the epicenter, though.”
The shaking stopped after a while.
Piña heard Itami’s calm analysis as she was left adrift in detached
silence, but her thought processes were on hold, so she could only nod
and answer “Mm”.
As the guards heard Tomita and Kuribayashi asking, “Are you all right? Is
anyone hurt?” they immediately straightened up upon hearing the words
of their heroes. They were currently in a state of abject submission. As
mentioned before, this was the psychological impact of an earthquake
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on people who had never experienced it before.
***
It was roughly the same in Akusho.
The quake struck as they were leading the women out of the southeast
gate. Fearful cries and shouts came from all over the streets.
Because the paths in Akusho were very narrow, all sorts of things fell off
the roofs.
Nyutabara shouted, ordering everyone to gather in the center of the

street, then Kuwabara and Kurokawa echoed the shout down the line.
The women obediently gathered in the middle of the street, grabbing

their hair and wailing as they did. After that, they knelt down one by
one.
Kuwabara and the others began bantering, “Ohh, it’s starting.” “Really?
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Seems like a big one.” “Tuwal-san, you need to get a job at the Japanese
Meteorological Agency”. Naturally, anyone would think they were
reliable, and so the women hugged their legs.
The men laughed as the girls plastered themselves onto them.
In particular, Kurata was trembling in delight, thinking my body is happy,

my legs are happy too as a group of Beastwomen hugged him.
Kurokawa was not particularly interested in this sort of thing, but she did
not mind being clung to, and she gently patted Mizari to calm her down
as she sobbed on Kurokawa’s chest.
***
Because Itami and the others protected and helped to evacuate them,
Piña’s spirit returned quickly. When she heard that there might be
aftershocks after a big earthquake, she said, “I need to get to his
Majesty.” She was worried for her father, but also concerned about the
state of the court.
Since Piña said so, Itami and co. had no objections. “Is that so. Then,
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take care when you go.” Piña looked like she had seen the apocalypse
as she heard those words, or maybe it was a girl being jilted by her
lover. Either way, she pressed her pale face against Itami.
“Won’t, won’t you go with me?”
“It’s not that, I’m just saying, the Emperor… going to his side like this
might not be good.”
From Piña’s point of view, Itami and the others were soldiers of an
enemy nation. Bringing them to the Emperor’s side would be like
checkmating herself. If this were a RTS game, it would be like enemy
paratroopers landing in one’s home base.
However, the fact was that Itami and company were Sugawara’s guards,
so something like pointing a gun at the Emperor was absolutely
forbidden. However, the JSDF’s words were just words. Piña had to be
ready for anything.
Still, Piña was insisting that they go with her. Itami and Sugawara looked
at each other, wondering what was to be done.
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“Itami-dono. Please, stay by my side.”
In other words, what she meant was, “It’s scary, so please go with me.”
Behind them, Hamilton nodded with a pale face. They were scared silly,
and then there was supposed to be an aftershock on top of that. It could
not be helped that none of them wanted to leave Itami and the other
JSDF troopers. The maids were nodding behind them, and the guards
formed a human wall behind Itami, suggesting that they did not want
him to leave.
And so, Piña brought her guards, the maids, Itami, and the others into
the Imperial Palace.
***
The palace which Piña led them into was plunged into chaos.
One could see various items and furniture tumbled to the floor.
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Not only had the bureaucrats not rectified this matter, but they were
sobbing in the corner, while the Praetorian guards were standing aside
in a stupor. Others were prostrate on the ground, praying to the gods to
save them.
Naturally, neither Piña nor Sugawara were questioned. Neither did

anyone try to impede them as they proudly strolled through the
passageway.
As she saw the sad state the palace had been reduced to, Piña grabbed
her head and ordered her guards to find the officials in charge of the
court in order to gather them up for a briefing.
In any event, they needed to restore order to this chaos. For that, they
needed to gather the people in charge.
“Hmm. The quality of the troops has dropped,” Piña sighed as she saw
the soldiers frozen in just about every corner she cared to look.
She had experienced it firsthand, so she could understand their terror at

a natural disaster they had never seen before. However, she was still
disappointed by how disorganized the Praetorians were.
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They had taken away a lot of officers and non-commissioned officers

(NCOs) from the Praetorians in order to reconstitute the legions. The
soldiers who replaced them were poorly trained and inexperienced. The
negative results of that approach were on display now.
And so, Piña and the others finally reached the Emperor’s bedchamber.
As they looked around, they found that shockingly enough, the

Praetorians assigned to protect the bedchamber were gone. They must
have fled or otherwise disappeared at some point. Piña suddenly felt the
strength leave her body, and she took a deep breath to regain her
spirits.
“Sugawara-dono. I will introduce all of you to the Emperor. Until then,

could you keep quiet?”
Since this was a necessary part of courtly etiquette, Sugawara would

obviously obey. After that, Piña let the maids open the door to the
bedchamber.
“Oh? I believed the first one here would be Diabo or Zorzal. To think it
would be you, Piña.”
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The Emperor sat up on his bed, his face covered in cold sweat as he
welcomed Piña.
It looked like he wanted to see which of his children would come first in
this time of emergency.
Although he was slightly disappointed that reality did not match his
predictions, now was not the time to be so relaxed.
“Your Majesty. Please prepare yourself.”
Piña ordered a maid to get the Emperor dressed. After that, she had her
guards surround them for protection as she accompanied her father to
the audience chamber.
The Emperor rose, although he still needed to hold onto Piña’s shoulder
to move.
After entering the audience chamber, they saw that the civil and military
officials gathered there all had panicky looks on their faces. Then they
closed in on Piña and the Emperor to beg their aid.
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Piña helped the Emperor onto his throne.
“Don’t panic. You lot, bring the ministers and the other officials in here.”
“Military officers, go get control of the troops and prepare for battle.
Defend the Palace. Also, have the troops find the generals throughout
the Capital and have them report to the Palace.”
As they heard Piña’s voice, the various officials remembered their jobs
and went into action. After emerging from a vortex of chaos, they all
regained their discipline and began moving in the same direction.
Piña breathed a sigh of relief as the court finally resumed its normal
functioning.
However, as she looked around carefully, she saw that the candle stands
and other articles in the audience chamber lay scattered on the ground,
and the shattered remains of the picture frames littered the ground.
She suppressed a gasp at the sight of the audience chamber’s dismal

state, and ordered the maids to tidy this place up.
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Organizing the audience chamber should have been the job of the
Emperor’s most trusted advisors. Normally speaking, Piña and the maids
would be forbidden from this room. What they did was in defiance of the
court’s rules. However, in this time of emergency, only she and the
others could act normally, so it could not be helped.
At these occasions… no, it was precisely because of occasions like these

that maintaining one’s dignity was even more important. The panicking
people could calm down after seeing the stern discipline of the audience
chamber. In contrast, if the audience chamber remained a mess, it
would only intensify the confusion in their hearts.
The first time she saw the chamber’s luxurious decorations, she
grumbled that they were useless frippery, but now she saw the purpose
of the grand display here. That was to say, without those decorations,
the audience chamber itself would be useless frippery.
Until recently, Piña and her knight band respected practicality and
looked down on the extravagance of the palace’s furnishings. But after
taking on the task of being the intermediary for the Empire’s diplomatic
relations with Japan, she finally understood their purpose.
“Piña, you seem to have shed a layer of skin.”
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However, Piña did not understand the hidden meaning in the Emperor’s
words, and replied, “My skin is in place, and it is undamaged.”
And then, the Emperor’s serious facade crumbled.
“Piña, for a while now, there’s been a group of unfamiliar people by your
side. Since there is some time before the generals gather, why don’t you
introduce them?”
Piña nodded, and then slightly lowered a voice. Then she opened her
hand and indicated Sugawara like she was slashing at him.
“Allow me to introduce the ambassador from the land of Japan,

Sugawara-dono.”
Sugawara took a step toward the Emperor with his chest held high, then
lowered his head in respect. Behind him, Itami and the others saluted in
time with Sugawara. The way they did things was slightly different from
the usual courtly etiquette.
“The land of Japan? I see, so you have accepted the role of a mediator
between our Empire and their country. But why have you brought them
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here at this time? They have come all this way, but we have not yet
welcomed them properly.
“Forgive me, Father. But I heard they were knowledgeable about this
earthquake, and they said there would be another quake. Therefore I
kept them by my side to benefit from their advice.”
Those words made Piña’s father blanch.
“You, you said there will be another shaking of the earth?”
“Indeed, which was why I asked them to come with us.”
The Emperor wiped off the sweat that suddenly beaded on his nose with
his pajama sleeve.
“Very well. Ambassador-dono, I bid you welcome.”
Sugawara, who had been introduced at last, spoke the words he had
been rehearsing in his mind.
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“Thank you very much. I pray your Majesty will be in good spirits.”
“How could I be in good spirits after this cataclysm? However, it would

seem it has also let me see how my daughter has grown. I must thank
you for that.”
“No, your Majesty. All this was the result of her Highness’ training and
refinement.”
“I always thought she was just playing war games.”
“Her Highness has long graduated from games! If her Highness were to
go to war now, I am certain she would be an excellent commander!”
The sudden interruption came from Hamilton.
Right after that, Hamilton realized that she had rudely interrupted a
conversation between the Emperor and a foreign ambassador, so she
blushed and tried to make herself as small as possible. However,
Sugawara and the Emperor ignored her. If they did not, they would have
to censure her for her rudeness.
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“Ambassador-dono. Regretfully, we are busy at the moment. At any

other time we would have prepared a great feast for you. Forgive our
poor hospitality tonight.”
“Yes, your Majesty. There will be many other opportunities to discuss the
future of our nations.”
Sugawara bowed once more and then retreated behind Piña. He had
said what he wanted to say. However, the Emperor spoke once more to
Sugawara.
“Speaking of which, does your country of Japan have a king?”
This question was asked to ascertain what exactly Sugawara knew about
the Empire. Much like how Japan was gathering information on the
Empire, so too was the Empire gathering information on Japan.
But how had he done it? Suddenly, the questions welled up in his mind.
“No. Our country is not ruled by a king, but by an Emperor, although it is

largely a symbolic position.”
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“A figurehead position, you say? It is hard to imagine a country where

the ministers stealing power from their ruler can be a strong one. The
world beyond the Gate is indeed alien. Then again, there should be a
person who rules you in that world, am I correct? Until this day, I have
not met an equal to myself, so I am unsure of how to proceed. I pray you
will forgive me for any accidental rudeness in communication.”
Just as he was speaking, a great sound came from the hallway behind
them.
“Father, Father, are you alright?!”
Zorzal charged into the audience chamber like a wild horse.
His lackeys had their breastplates on backwards and their sandals on the
wrong foot, and some of them had their scabbards but no swords. They
were clearly in a panic.
Zorzal had a chain in hand, and the other side was linked to a whole
mess of collars, which were locked around the neck of Tyuule and some
other women. The white Warrior Bunny Tyuule had been dragged naked
all the way here from her bed, and there was a bitter expression on her
face. Beside her were other girls, with black, blonde and red hair, and
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their bodies were covered in abrasions from how they were dragged
here in the nude. Their condition seemed quite serious.
As Itami, Tomita and Kuribayashi saw this, they were shocked

speechless.
Sugawara the diplomat remained impassive, but one could hear him
clicking his tongue softly.
“Father, are you hurt? Good, let’s flee together!”
“Where will we run to?”
“In any case, we need to get out of here.”
Piña turned to her elder brother, who was harassing the Emperor, and
said, “Ani-ue, just now, I ordered the generals to report to the Palace. If
we leave now and the officials return to find nobody here, the palace will
be thrown into chaos.”
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However, Zorzal replied, “We don’t have time for that! Noriko already
said there might be a second or third shock, so we must leave here
immediately!”
If this went on, it might be seen as the Emperor abandoning his throne.
Piña thought, no matter what, I need to calm Ani-ue down. So she

started to think of a topic that might get his attention, and then she
spoke to him again, with a tone to sooth him.
“Ani-ue, I was not aware that you knew about the aftershocks. Even I
only just learned of them from these people.”
“I told you didn’t I? Noriko said so.”
“And who is this Noriko?”
As Piña asked her question, Zorzal yanked the chain leading to one of
the collars
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“Ah!” Tyuule and the other women cried out.
“It’s this black-haired girl, I caught her from the other side of the Gate.”
Zorzal indicated her with his chin. But at this moment—
“You son of a bitch! I’ll fucking kill you!”
Itami threw a lightning-fast punch that connected with Zorzal’s chin.
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***
“You son of a bitch! I’ll fucking kill you!”
Itami threw a lightning-fast punch that connected with Zorzal’s chin.
It rocked him back on his heels, and the tall man fell flat on his ass,
cupping his chin as he cursed loudly. “You hit me, you bastard! You dare
strike me, the first prince of the Empire?!” he snarled as he glared at
Itami.
Itami was being Itami and rubbed his right fist. “Ow ow! Why’s his face
so hard? I’m not cut out for this at all,” he whimpered as a tear leaked
out from the corner of his eye.
“You fools! To think you actually raised your hand against his Highness!
Your families will be exterminated for this!”
Zorzal’s flunkies drew their swords.
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Normally, simply drawing a weapon in front of the Emperor in court was

a grave offense, to say nothing of actually offering violence to a member
of the Imperial family. However, the court was currently paralyzed in the
wake of the earthquake. The Praetorians who should have defended the
Emperor and his household were missing. Since there was nobody to
maintain order, the area before the throne was a sea of chaos.
Tomita, watching from the side, flicked his Type 64’s fire selector to
レ(automatic fire), while Kuribayashi inspected Tyuule and the black-
haired girl on the ground.
“Are you alright?”
As she heard someone speak in her native Japanese, the black-haired

girl raised her head in surprise.
“We’re from the JSDF. Are you Japanese?”
When the girl heard those words, her tears fell like a waterfall, and then
she clutched Kuribayashi’s hands. She must have suffered a lot,
Kuribayashi thought, and that thought filled her with strength. She took
out her survival knife and cut the girl’s collar off her before throwing the
severed leather away.
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“Did you come to rescue me?”
“Yeah. We’ll bring you home.”
In truth, the JSDF did not know girls like this had been captured by the
enemy, so technically speaking, Kuribayashi was lying. However, once
they knew there were Japanese citizens suffering here, they could not
possibly abandon them. They would definitely rescue them. Itami and
his team were of one mind, and they prepared for battle. If anyone tried
to stop them, they would be blown away. They each prepared
themselves for what might be a gruelling fight.
On another side, Sugawara sighed as he realized his efforts up till now

might be about to go up in smoke. But when he saw that a Japanese girl
had been kidnapped and subjected to such brutality, he could not
suppress his anger either. He smiled bitterly to the Emperor, and then
asked him a question in a tone that sounded polite, but was filled with
mockery.
“I believed the prince-dono mentioned that he captured her from the

other side of the Gate. What is this, your Majesty? And Piña-dono, did
you know about this from the start?”
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“Su-Sugawara-dono?”
Piña did not understand why Itami and Sugawara were doing this. That
said, she had a rough idea of what was going on. It must be the way
they treated their captives, because she knew the Japanese placed great
value on human life.
Even so, she did not think it was enough to jeopardize the status of the
talks between Japan and the Empire. They should have been able to
separate their personal feelings from the benefit of the nation.
However, Itami now had his sidearm trained on Zorzal, a member of the
Imperial family. This was something she could not cover up. No, right
now, even Piña might be in danger because of his actions.
She knew well the power of guns, and she thought that if anything
happened, she would have to protect the Emperor with her own body
and fall before the throne. She decided to try talking him down before a
bloodbath began.
“Itami-dono! Please stop at once! Everyone, please stay your blades. For
my sake, stand down!”
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However, Zorzal’s flunkies still had their weapons ready, and they were
spreading out to encircle the group. There were 15 of them in total, and
to them, they had the advantage in numbers. As such, they did not think
too much about the situation. After all, all they had to do was kill all the
enemy in order to win.
Zorzal laughed from where he was on the ground, as he imagined the

man who struck him being cut to pieces.
“You barbarian scum, you’ve just sealed the fate of your homeland! We
will exterminate everyone in your country! Everyone from your king to
his people will die! Your lands will be nothing but ash! This is all your
fault! Reflect on your sins as you die in agony!”
Itami’s reply was “Kuribayashi, Tomita. Ignore him. Fire at will.”
Kuribayashi drew her bayonet from her waist and fixed it onto her rifle.
Then she flicked her own fire selector to AUTO before stepping forward.
“Don’t break your gun again.”
Kuribayashi simply grinned in response to Tomita.
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The dancer: Kuribayashi. Her partners: Itami and Tomita. The Danse
Macabre was about to begin.
***
Bayonet fighting (not to be confused with jukendo) was a combat art

that was still in use in the present day.
Much like how aircraft cannon were still useful in the age of guided
missiles, bayonet fighting was a core part of the infantry combat
curriculum. It was essential in melee combat, and could not be allowed
to waste away.
In the Falklands War in South America, and the Iraq and Afghanistan
conflicts, bayonet charges were crucial to finishing off their foe.
In addition, unlike kendo, which was more of a sport, bayonet fighting

was practiced for actual combat. It was a skill which was designed for
war.
Even in the world of martial arts, where possessing a weapon would put
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one many levels above unarmed opposition, bayonet fighting was

exceptionally useful against other martial arts like karate and judo,
regardless of how skilled the practitioners of the latter two were. This
was because if a bayonet fighter’s opponent was skilled in close combat,
the bayonet fighter could just back off and fire their rifle. This was not
being unfair — it was war, and it was different from judged contests.
The Type 64 rifle weighed 4.3 kilograms unloaded. Kuribayashi used it as

a bludgeoning weapon even as she slashed and stabbed with the razor
sharp bayonet, before deflecting a sword swing with the body of her
weapon.
They could not keep up with her nimble body and graceful movements.
Not to mention, the soldiers of this world were used to advancing in a
shield wall, so they were hard-pressed to engage Kuribayashi, who was
leaping all over the place.
Their main battle tactic was to charge into contact with the enemy, bash
with their shields, and slash with their swords.
However, Kuribayashi did not charge them.
She shot the enemies with shields, swiftly evaded their incoming swords,
and then thrust her bayonet into her opponent's armpits and into their
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hearts. If they got too close, she bashed them with the butt of her rifle
and slashed their carotid arteries while they were stunned.
It did not matter how strong a warrior was or how fine his blade if he
could not hit his enemy. Zorzal’s flunkies prided themselves on their
brute strength and trained themselves intensively for that purpose, but
Kuribayashi mocked them as they flailed uselessly at her. The only way
they could fight her was by overwhelming her with the weight of their
numbers.
However, Kuribayashi was covered by Tomita.
As an enemy began to circle behind her, Tomita coldly pulled the trigger.
A 7.62mm round was powerful enough to penetrate 10 mm of steel
plate. When it hit a man, it pierced the thin metal of his breastplate and
began mushrooming by the time it entered the body. Then, it tumbled
end over end as it moved, ripping up his internal organs before exiting
through his back.
As they saw their comrade fall after a single shot, Zorzal’s cronies gave
up their plan of flanking Kuribayashi.
And then, in front of them was an unfettered beast.
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Kuribayashi licked her lips after making her eighth corpse and sneered,
“Who’s next?” as she eyed Zorzal’s lackeys. However, none of them
dared take a step forward.
“Well, if you’re giving up, throw down your arms!”
Zorzal’s lackeys threw down their weapons as one.
Kuribayashi seemed very pleased with this display. She then nodded and
said, “Very good,” before ordering them out of the audience chamber.
The lackeys were confused for a moment, and they looked to their
master, Zorzal. However, as they saw Kuribayashi pulling back her rifle’s
bolt, they scattered amidst a clattering of metal.
Zorzal’s eyes were wide in disbelief as he looked on the slaughter in

front of him and at the sight of his fleeing cronies.
His body was shuddering uncontrollably as Itami levelled a mysterious

weapon at him. Would it spit fire like the thing that killed his flunkies?
Would it spit fire and turn him into a corpse like the one beside him?
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Was he going to die? Why, why was all this happening to him?
He was the first prince. He should not be subject to this unreasonable

treatment.
He was the future Emperor of the Empire. Nobody should have dared do
this to him.
And then, Itami looked down the sights of his gun at Zorzal, and spoke.
“All right, first prince-dono. As you were saying, this girl was one of the
people you captured from the Gate. That means you must have more
prisoners, right?”
“Hmph! I have no need to answer disrespectful questions asked by

disrespectful men!”
Zorzal said that in an effort to restore the tattered shreds of his dignity.
If this man knelt down before him and apologized, then respectfully
begged a favor of him, perhaps Zorzal might find it in himself to show
his largesse. If not, then there was nothing to say. He could go ahead
and kill Zorzal if he wanted. But if he did that, then the man could forget
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about hearing the answer. Zorzal and the knowledge he had was his own
hostage.
In the end, Itami smiled bitterly and called out to his subordinates.
“Kuribayashi. Make him talk.”
“Roger, el-tee~♪”
This was the first time Kuribayashi had been so happy to obey an order
given by Itami.
The following scene is somewhat violent, and we need to adhere to the

age limitations on this publication. Thus we will describe the scene with
sound alone.
Pachi, gucha, dosun, gan, ban, goh, dosu, gucha...boki, something like
that.
And of course, Zorzal was screaming all this while.
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“Stop! Wait, stop! Stoooooop! Ahhhh it hurts! Guheee! Abbah!

Gwaaaaargh! No, don’t break my finger, let me g-
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
Unable to bear this sight, Piña and the Emperor looked away.
Of course, they had thought of stopping her, but they were worried that
if they spoke out, Itami and the others would turn their anger on them
instead.
Piña was grateful for her experience in Italica. After all, this was the first
time a member of the Imperial family had been in such grave danger.
Hamilton and the maids were hugging each other as they stood by the
wall. They were trembling as though the earthquake had come again.
This gruesome scene finally came to an end when the door to the
audience chamber opened,
The ministers, generals and those Praetorians who had regained their
discipline were all led here by Count Marx. However, as they saw what
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was before the throne, they froze.
The first thing they saw were scattered corpses, followed by Zorzal, who
looked like he had been applying blood to himself as makeup.
Zorzal’s broken teeth were scattered all over the floor, along with what
looked like molars. Blood streamed from his mouth and nose. Everyone
who saw him was frightened.
Itami glanced at the soldiers who had just arrived, then trained his gun
on Zorzal once more, like a kid about to squash a bug.
“Well, your Highness the First Prince. I believe you can answer my
question now.”
Zorzal did not reply. However, that was because he was too dazed to
understand Itami’s question. Itami then decided to pull him up by the
lapels to get his attention.
However, at this moment, Tyuule interposed herself between the two of

them, throwing her arms open in a protective gesture.
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After seeing that body covered in cuts and bruises, Itami winced in
sympathetic pain before he could appreciate her beauty. Her injuries
were probably from being dragged around.
“Please do not harm the Prince.”
She was covered in wounds caused by this man, and yet she was
protecting her tormentor. Her strong spirit gave Itami pause.
Her state of mind might have been similar to children who were abused
by their parents. Or it might have been a form of Stockholm Syndrome,
where captives empathized with their captors.
In deference to her will, Itami lowered his gun. But he was still
frustrated, and he poured that frustration into his next words.
“Your Highness. I believe you mentioned earlier than this woman was
one of the people you captured from the other side of the Gate. That
means you must have other people in captivity, am I correct?
Zorzal could not speak because of the immense pain, and could only nod
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weakly as he whimpered in agony. Then, he scrabbled behind Tyuule. It

was a disgraceful sight.
“Hiroki! What happened to Hiroki?” the girl called Noriko wailed from
behind Kuribayashi. It seemed like they had been kidnapped together,
so there had to be at least one more person here.
“The man was sent to the slave markets. I don’t know what happened
after that.”
Zorzal spat out blood as he answered, then fainted from overexertion.
Sugawara faced the Emperor, seated behind Piña.
“Your Majesty. I hope you will reserve your welcome for after you return
the captured citizens of our country to us. I do not know what gods you
worship, but you had better pray to them for the lives of our people.
Princess Piña, I will leave the matter of finding these people to you. I
look forward to your answer.”
After saying that, Sugawara exchanged glances with Itami, and then
made to leave this place.
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However —
“Stop right there, barbarian scum!”
If they permitted this sort of violence against their leaders, the Empire
would be utterly disgraced. Under the command of one of the generals,
the Praetorians drew their swords. It looked like there would be another
battle here tonight.
“Hold!”
However, the Emperor’s voice kept them from moving. This was because
the Emperor was fully aware that fighting the JSDF would only add more
corpses to those already on the ground.
“Sugawara-dono. I admit the army of Japan is powerful. However, being

strong in battle does not equate to victory in warfare. Your nation has a
grievous weakness.”
“And what weakness would that be?”
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“Your country loves its people; far too much, perhaps. Excessive
righteousness makes you predictable. Excessive trust leads to massive
losses. When the enemy is strong, one should not fight them. The tip of
the sword is very sharp, but the hilt of the sword is its weakness. If the
edge is sharp, then all one needs to do is break it. Even a so-called
invincible foe cannot hope to escape unscathed when they are
exhausted and fleeing for their lives. Once a country’s national power is
depleted, no matter how civilized or advanced they are, that country will
be destroyed by barbarians. That is a fact which has played out before in
history.”
Sugawara replied, “Indeed, our country does have this weakness. Our
JSDF trains to defend our country. Do you wish to test their conviction?”
“What’s this, do you intend to fight to the end? Have the negotiations
not started already?”
“Your Majesty, I am fully aware that peace is merely the preparation

time for the next war. That being said, peace talks are no reason to stop
preparing for war. My country, indeed, my entire world has moved
beyond the Empire’s mindset after centuries of bloodsoaked history. I
hope this Imperial Capital will not vanish during the course of the peace
talks.”
He seemed to be hinting that a certain nation was trying to drag out the
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peace talks to buy time.
Sugawara’s words were a threat. Even though they had ceased all
combat operations during this ceasefire, if Japan put their minds to it,
they could resume hostilities at a moment’s notice. And this time the
battlefield would be the Imperial Capital.
The Emperor clicked his tongue quietly, and spoke.
“You say that, but isn’t that the same as rejecting the upcoming peace?”
“Indeed it is. So please be prepared for the dreadful consequences that

will result if you lie.”
“Oh, all right, I believe you. It’s only natural to believe in one’s country.
But do you think you can make it through intact?”
As the Emperor was saying that, the aftershock struck.
The earth shook once again, and flakes of paint from the cracked ceiling
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fell like dust.
The Emperor went pale from fear, while the generals, ministers and
Praetorians fell to their knees as they clung desperately to the walls.
“All right, let’s go!”
Leaving these pathetic faces behind him, Itami proudly led his people,
Sugawara and the girl called Noriko past the trembling Praetorians, and
left the audience chamber.
At the group’s head were Sugawara and Itami, followed by Kuribayashi

and the kidnapped Noriko, with Tomita bringing up the rear. Itami
offered Noriko his uniform coat to cover up her nakedness.
Everybody was silent.
After ten to twenty minutes of walking, they exited the palace. As Itami
sighed, he moaned, “Crap. My hand just moved by itself and I hit him.”
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Sugawara nodded.
“Yes, that was a huge fuck-up. How are we going to report this?”
The rush of blood to their brains had subsided. Itami and Sugawara
began worrying about what excuse they would give for this.
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Vol. 3 :
Chapter 8
“Dare I ask how your Majesty intends to address this unprecedented

disgrace and destruction?”
The Senator who was also a patrician, Marquis Casel, directed these
unsweetened words to Emperor Molt Sol Augustus, seated on his throne
amidst the rubble of the Senate Building.
Once, this place was a darkened hall, but now it was an open-air
amphitheater.
It was hard to tell if the drama being performed was a comedy or a

tragedy. The bigger pieces of debris were already gone, so now it looked
like either a modern art masterpiece, or a deranged amateur’s attempt
at a theater backdrop. Either way, it resembled a waste heap.
A gentle wind ruffled the Senators’ togas.
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Some of them sneezed as their noses were irritated, and powdery dust
dirtied their sleeves.
The night was dark and full of terrors for them; they had been shaken
out of bed and their sleep ruined by the earthquake, and then the
aftershocks frightened them further. Even a dim light could slightly
relieve their unease, but nobody could sleep before the sun came up
again.
And so, after some time without sleep, the sky in the east began to
brighten up. The Imperial Capital turned toward morning, and its people
could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Just then, almost as if they had come with the sunrise, a great bang
accompanied the first rays of dawn.
It was a thunderous report that felt like it would split the eardrums of
anyone who heard it.
Two gigantic swords slashed across the sky, dumping four objects
behind them. These four objects flew unerringly into the Senate Building,
perched on one of the Imperial Capital’s hills, and the sturdy structure
was thus neatly demolished.
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The Senate Building, the symbol of the Empire’s power, was destroyed in
an instant.
Of course, this was a precision bombing mission conducted by JSDF

troops hidden in the capital with laser designators. However, the people
who did not know this simply took it to be a show of the gods’ wrath
after the earthquake. Gripped by fear, the people began quietly
circulating the rumor that the Emperor must have done something to
offend the gods.
The intellectual elite of the Empire, the Senators, did not think it was the
wrath of the gods, but a man-made phenomenon. Yet even that was only
possible because of their positions.
That being said, the Senators were still crushed by the destruction of the
building that symbolized their authority.
On the other hand, one had to consider that if this was not done by the
gods, but by men, then one had to wonder how powerful these men
were, who could reduce sturdy stone walls as thick as a grown man’s
outstretched arms into tumbled ruins.
The Senators’ seats, sundry items, carved bas-reliefs, tributes from
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various countries, trophies, as well as the huge statues of divinity, all of

them were now ruined fragments on the ground.
Everyone who thought about it could not help but shiver.
What if the Senate had been in session when this occurred?
Or, what if the enemy used this power to conduct indiscriminate attacks
on the Imperial Capital?
Because the speaker’s podium and the rings of seats were gone, the
Senators had no choice but to sit on convenient stone chunks, or directly
on the floor. Some people even listened to Marquis Casel’s words from a
kneeling position.
“And another thing. All this was because our men captured some of the
other world’s residents to learn about them. When the enemy
ambassador found out, he was very angry, and apparently, Crown Prince
Zorzal was involved in this matter and brutally beaten before his
Majesty’s eyes. Have I gotten any part of that wrong?”
The Crown Prince in question sat beside the Emperor, his face swollen
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and moaning in pain.
The fact that he had been “brutally beaten” was evident to anyone with
working eyes.
Although he looked like he had been savagely mauled by a group

judging by these wounds, the Senators were shocked to hear that all this
had been inflicted on him by a single female soldier.
People heard that the soldier was “female”, and they assumed she was
probably a Giant, Ogre or a Troll of some sort. But the truth was that she
was merely human, and a petite-bodied woman at that. It was almost
unbelievable that someone like her could beat Zorzal into his current
state. Much like a squirrel defeating a bear, if word of this got out, Zorzal
would be a laughingstock.
Therefore, Zorzal could not lend any truth to these rumors.
“These injuries were not caused by a person. I fell down the stairs during
the earthquake.”
“Could all these have been caused by falling down the stairs?”
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“They were long stairs, and I fell all the way down.”
Without his two front teeth, every word he spoke was accompanied by
an annoying whistle, but he still tried to make excuses for himself.
If truth be told, once he admitted that he had been beaten up this badly
by a girl, he would have nowhere to hide his face. When people said the
name “Zorzal”, the meaning behind it would be “the guy who got his ass
kicked by a girl”, so every time his name was mentioned, it would be like
mocking him.
Of course, Zorzal could not allow that to happen. Otherwise, he would

lose all his authority as the future Emperor. So he denied these events
with all his strength. The events of the audience chamber would be
painted as a battle against the Japanese ambassador, who was trying to
save his people, while Zorzal was merely attempting to defend the
slaves that he owned.
His desperate attempts to save face made Marquis Casel look scornfully
at Zorzal. They had finally obtained a trump card in the form of violence
against a member of the Imperial family, but because someone wanted
to save their face, they could not play it. By protecting his personal
interests while sacrificing the nation’s well-being, Zorzal had only
compounded his failure. More importantly, he was still too stupid to
realise his mistake. It was almost laughable.
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“I heard that the enemy ambassador visited Lord Cicero several times in
order to speak with the Empire. As such, ample preparations were made,
and there were several meetings. Truthfully speaking, I was also
introduced to him, and plans were made for a meeting in the near
future.
But what happened here? Why would they get so angry over a mere
woman slave? It was not as though she was a member of royalty. Does
anyone know what they are thinking? If so, please explain in detail.”
Everyone looked at the ground after hearing Casel’s question.
Nobody here knew the full picture. Lord Cicero and Marquis Ducie
understood the nature of the Japanese emissaries, to an extent. But they
did not know what had caused last night’s outburst.
As the man in charge of the proceedings, Count Marx was quite well
informed. Yet even he knew nothing about Japan or its emissaries.
The name of Piña, who knew both sides, was mentioned.
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And then, Piña was summoned to address the Senate for the first time in
her life.
Piña stood nervously under the weight of 300 pairs of eyes. Those eyes
seemed to be judging her.
She was worrying about how to atone for the sin of bringing soldiers of
the enemy to the Emperor, but the Senate did not bring it up. Instead,
they asked Piña to share what she knew about the country of Japan and
its people.
“I, I wish permission to address the Senate and speak of what I know.”
The Speaker for the Senate nodded, giving her permission to speak.
Piña coughed twice and then started from the beginning, or when she
had first met the JSDF.
“I first met them at Italica.”
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And as she spoke, the politicians slowly realized the kind of people they
were at war with.
The enemy’s weapons could strike from further away than a bow could,
and they slaughtered soldiers with overwhelming power. And then they
even attached blades to them. In the face of these weapons, the
Imperial soldiers were destroyed where they made contact with the
JSDF.
This also illustrated the reasons behind the defeat of the Imperial and
the Coalition Armies.
Quite a number of Senators began growing suspicious as Piña narrated

her fanciful tale. However, Cicero, Marquis Ducie, and the other Senators
who had attended the garden party knew that what she spoke was the
truth. After all they had fired those very weapons personally, and they
could allay their fellow Senators’ suspicions.
Piña continued speaking. She spoke of the hellish scene when the JSDF’s
iron pegasi exterminated the bandits squirming below them like vermin.
Sitting as they were inside the carcass of the Senate Building, they could
not bring themselves to doubt her tale.
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“The enemy is a country called Japan. They come from beyond the Gate,
from a land that surpasses the Empire in every way, in a world made of
sky-scraping towers. These towers stretch as far as the eye can see, and
they extend up to the heavens. The dark depths of the earth, where we
bury our dead, are brightly lit streets in their world, and people live
there. Their society is orderly and clean, while filled with art and ample
literature.”
And then, Piña mentioned the list of prisoners of war which the Japanese
government had given her when she had accepted the position of
intermediary.
“Forgive me from keeping this from you until now, but this book lists the
names of all the captives taken by Japan that are still alive.”
The Senators immediately fought over the book which Piña brought out.
“You see, Norris! It’s your son’s name!!”
“Derkins’ name is here too. Did you say all these people are still alive?
Piña-dono? Is it true that they’re all alive?”
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“My son is still alive! This is wonderful!”
The Senate Building resounded with joyful cries. But at the same time,
there were those who could not find their kin, and fell back into despair.
These alternating scenes of joy and sorrow threw the Senate into chaos.
“The people in this book are now prisoners of Japan. Part of the payment
of taking the job of mediator is the right to select ten or so people from
that list to be unconditionally returned to the Empire. Naturally, I chose
the family of Lord Cicero and Lord Ducie, due to assistance rendered in
the facilitation of negotiations.”
“That’s too unfair, your Highness! What about the rest of us? Must we
impotently gnaw our nails?”
It was only natural that those people whose relatives were not picked by
Piña would feel that way. However, she wanted to offer an inducement
to people to begin the peace talks quickly, so she had to give priority to
the cooperative Senators.
Of course, if she actually said that, the Senate, filled with pro-war
Senators, would break out into interference and all sorts of attacks. As a
result, in order to ensure the success of the negotiations, she had to
carefully pick and choose her allies, and everyone present understood
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that. Also, if the talks went successfully, they could also negotiate for
the release of other prisoners. So in that sense, Piña’s choices were only
to be expected.
However, now that the situation was at this stage, there was a need to
discuss how to get back the rest of the captives. But how much ransom
money would they require for that?
“The representatives from Japan have said that their country does not
practice ransoming of captives. They will also guarantee the safety of
the prisoners whether or not a ransom is paid. If the Empire has any
prisoners from Japan, they will arrange for a mutual exchange. If not,
then something can be worked out in future negotiations.”
“They don’t practice slavery? They don’t take ransoms?”
“Hmph, well, if they’re going to work something out in future

negotiations, that’s as good as a ransom, right? Our people would make
good leverage in those deals.”
“That being said, it’s a mercy that they won’t be sold as slaves. We need
to free them quickly!”
After the Senators finished speaking, Piña continued.
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“I feel I know why the ambassador of Japan was so wrathful.”
The Senators urged her to elaborate.
“Their country did not take our patrician sons and brothers as slaves,
and they were treated well as captives. They do not do this for any
particular gain, but because it is their nature. I feel this is what his
Majesty saw, their love for their people. If they knew of the mistreatment
of their own people as slaves... well, I trust you know what happens if
you snatch away a griffin’s cub?”
Piña opened her arms to emphasize her point.
They were surrounded by the remains of the Senate Building. The walls
and pillars were pulverized and tumbled, and debris lay everywhere. The
ceiling was blown clean off, and they could see the clouds floating by
overhead.
***
Without a place in the Senate, Zorzal quietly retreated from the building.
Before long, he was back in his own room.
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His face was covered in bruises, and it was not just his lips that were
swollen. There were lumps everywhere on his body and marks where he
had been beaten. His swollen lips and missing teeth made him wheeze
with every breath, which deprived his voice of its authority.
He was the picture of a defeated soldier.
As he passed through the door, he ran out of strength and collapsed. His
slaves and subordinates hurriedly lifted him up.
Without wasting a word, Tyuule lent him her shoulder, and helped lower
him onto the bed. She cooled his body and face with rare and precious
ice cubes.
“It looks like the peace lovers are going to make up a majority of the
Senate. The problem is that they’ll end up surrendering unconditionally
through the negotiations. We need to do something… a military victory
sounds good, don’t you think?”
The speaker was a young man standing on the balcony. He was

watching Zorzal being carried to his bed.
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When he noticed, Zorzal turned his swollen face to look at him. At a

glance, the young man looked to be of patrician stock. Instead of
Zorzal’s brutality, he had an air of refinement about him and an
intelligent look in his eyes.
“Diabo.”
“Ani-sama. Well, you’re a sorry sight. Don’t push yourself too hard.”
The young man called Diabo entered Zorzal’s bedroom and looked at his
older brother’s face as he lay on the bed.
“Hmph. Showoff.”
“I could say the same.”
Zorzal tapped his swollen face and said, “This was my doing.”
“I do envy that naive mindset of yours. I honestly can’t imagine how
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someone as proud as you is still alive. Father did kill the man who was
our elder cousin, you know.”
“Father was young then. That’s why he took in the orphan of the
previous Emperor. But now, Father’s getting on in years. He should be
thinking about a successor now, and we’re the ones who carry his
blood.”
“So you were planning to take the throne while I was playing the fool?”
“Ani-sama, it was because of your idiot act in front of Father that I could
freely take action. I must thank you for that.”
Because of that, he had a chance of taking the throne. However, Zorzal

pointed at the shrugging Diabo, and indicating his naivete.
“The one who will be the next Emperor is not you, but me.”
Diabo could not imagine his older brother as “Your Majesty”. It felt like
talking to someone else.
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1037
“And what of it? Ani-sama, do you have a way to hold on to the throne? I
don’t think so.”
“Is that why you think you can easily gain the throne? When this war
ends, the Emperor will step down with it. But he won’t stop pulling
strings once he steps down. He’ll give the throne to a know-nothing like
me so he can play me like a puppet and hold the real power behind the
country. That’s probably what he was thinking. You showed too much of
your talent. The Emperor already knows what you’re up to.”
Diabo’s eyes went wide.
“But then, what’ll happen if Father dies? It would be too irresponsible to

leave the Empire to you.”
“Oh ye of little faith. Do you really think I’m that useless?”
Hiding his fangs and claws in front of the Emperor for many years had
been a difficult task. Zorzal was implying that a useless man could not
do that much.
“Tyuule, where are the other people from Japan that we captured along
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1038
with Noriko?”
Upon hearing the question, Tyuule bowed deeply, and switched to her
soft, powerless expression, with a smile filled with wisdom and power.
“Yes. There are two more people. They were sold to the mines as slaves,
and we know their location. The first one was called Nogami Hiroki, but
regretfully he perished in a mineshaft collapse. The other one is called
Matsui Fukui. She is currently alive and working in the same mine. If you
order me, I will immediately bring her back and protect her. What shall I
do?”
“Bring her back right away. It was a good thing I didn’t sell Noriko off.
Well, it was largely due to my interest in her anyway, but if I’d known
earlier, perhaps I should have been nicer to her?”
Zorzal managed to smile, despite his entire body being a mass of pain.
“No, my Prince, what you did was fine. After all, she was an unskilled
woman. If you had sold her off, she would only have gone to a brothel to
service countless men. It was an honor for her to receive the attentions
of the next Emperor.”
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1039
Diabo watched from the side, unable to speak, his mouth hanging open
in shock.
He had hidden his claws until now. Could it be that they would only be
allowed to shine for such a short time before the situation was decided?
Indeed, the Emperor would probably be made to step down after the
peace talks started, but the Senate would not accept Zorzal as the
successor, right?
“Ah, so that’s the objective of the people of Japan. They want Zorzal to
find the slaves before making their entrance… we were tricked!”
Enslaving captives was a common practice in the Empire. Denying that

aspect of life would be very foolish. If they managed to find a captive
and successfully return them to Japan, it would be a success for the pro-
peace faction. Now that the pro-peace faction composed a majority of
the Senate, this might well be the shortest way to the throne.
“Since the Emperor has decided to vacate his seat during the talks, now
should be the time to consider his successors. From the way Piña grew
unexpectedly, she’s also an enemy. Although she’s far too close to those
Japan people… ah, well. Dealing with Japan will be important in the
future, might as well let her handle that.”
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1040
“Then, Ani-sama, what about this war? If this goes on, the talks will end
up being a surrender...”
“What’s to be scared about the enemy? They destroyed the Senate

Building, but they did it at dawn when nobody was around. If we can’t
beat them in a fair fight, then we’ll just have to fight unfairly. The
Emperor was probably thinking about that much. Diabo, you should stop
trying to challenge me and think about which side you want to stand
on.”
After Zorzal finished, he called Tyuule to his bed and ordered Diabo
away. He blinked as he realised there was nobody around him. Zorzal’s
subordinates and women had already left.
“Then, your Highness, please take care of your body.”
“Like you care… though I wish I could forget about this pain…”
“Your Highness, that can’t be helped, ah…”
***
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The large transport helicopter, a CH-47A Chinook, returned to Arnus Hill.
Mochizuki Noriko looked outside from the viewports on the helicopter,

and her chest tightened.
After leaving the Imperial Capital, the scenery had changed from
orchards and farmland, to pasture and barren wastes, or sometimes a
sea of trees, and then in the distance she could see an airport in the
distance, along with a group of concrete buildings surrounded by a six-
pointed star fort.
That place felt like Japan.
“I’m home...”
She was so moved that the tears flowed freely down her cheeks.
Since last night, she had cried several times. Of course, she was worried
about her lover Hiroki, but at the same time, she was happy to be able
to return home. She believed that the JSDF who rescued her would also
be able to rescue her lover.
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She wanted to meet her parents as soon as possible.
Seated on both sides of Noriko were Kurokawa and Kuribayashi, who had
taken very good care of her. She was given clothes to wear, food to eat,
beverages to drink, among other things. The feeling of chocolate and
other familiar desserts in her mouth made her so nostalgic that she wept
again.
Itami and the others did not ask her about her time in captivity. They
would leave that aside for now, so Noriko could forget those painful days
and rejoice that she could go home at last.
After receiving Sugawara and Itami’s reports, General Hazama, the

supreme commander of the Special Region Expeditionary Force, ordered
them to return with the kidnapped person to Arnus immediately. In
addition, he requested two F-4 Phantoms for a bombing mission to strike
fear into the heart of the Emperor and his officials.
What this meant, of course, was “Bring her back right away”. The
method they chose was similar to how one would treat an animal or a
child; upon discovering misconduct, immediately apply punishment and
a scolding. Thus, as they pondered the lesson of a short, sharp blow to
the Empire, they considered potential targets.
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The Defense Minister approved the airstrike, provided civilian casualties

were kept to a minimum.
When Morita’s cabinet called up Natsume from the Defence Ministry, the
usual cold reply was, “Go ahead. But make sure you do it well and put
on a good show.”
After receiving Natsume’s report, Prime Minister Morita furrowed his

brows and said, “What a headache, but since he already did it, it can’t
be helped.” His tone seemed brighter and fresher than just now.
The Chinook landed on a helipad in the depths of Arnus Garrison.
Kurokawa and Kuribayashi helped Noriko stand up, and took her to the
medical facilities where the doctors were waiting for her. Arnus was
equipped with a field treatment center for people injured during combat.
While Noriko was there, she went through a battery of tests; internal,
external, reproductive, gynecological, psychological and many others. In
addition, there were some interviews conducted in order not to increase
her emotional burden, such as the circumstances under which she was
abducted. She was also assigned a counselor who was experienced with
helping victims of crime to help her get over her emotional wounds.
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After that, 3rd Recon moved a huge pile of cardboard boxes containing
all sorts of specimens down from the Chinook.
As expected of the country that dominated the continent, the Imperial

Capital contained items, trade goods and information from various other
nations. Because of that, they had a good grasp on the Special Region’s
ores and where they were located.
The people of the Special Region did not know about rare earths, so the
JSDF had to prospect for it themselves. The people of the Special Region
only knew of iron, tin, lead, gold, silver, copper, platinum and other
related metal deposits. To investigate further, they obtained samples of
the ground from traders at their target location. In addition, there were
rumors of something strange that burned as it flowed, so in future
negotiations with the Empire’s government, requests for the right to
extract these resources would be a very important topic.
On another front, someone had made a DVD containing videos of the

various species and races found in the melting pot of the Black Streets.
Most of these were made by Sergeant Sasagawa, whose hobby was
filming, while the rest were made by other members of the team, who
seemed to like filming the ladies more often than not. That aside, there
were also many species and demihumans in their native clothing, which
were all collected as material.
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1045
They compared this information with reports made by the captured

soldiers from the Ginza Incident, as well as with reports from the farmers
and traders encountered around Arnus.
1st Recon and 5th Recon did some information-gathering of their own.
They mainly recorded information on the plants surrounding the Imperial
Capital and took extensive samples of seeds and leaves, as well as
insects, animal spoors and the soil.
In contrast, under Itami’s influence, 3rd Recon mainly took pictures of

the demihumans’ practices and culture (done by Sasagawa) or the
various foods from the region (done by Furuta). All these things were hot
topics on the television and the weekly magazines.
Of particular note was the fact that media interest in the residents of the
Special Region (especially the female ones) had skyrocketed ever since
the testimonial in front of the National Diet. The TV stations and
newspapers submitted an endless stream of requests to conduct their
activities in the special region, and they kept ambushing the responsible
parties day and night, to the point where said parties wanted to go on
strike. In order to ease this pressure, the Ministry of Defense permitted a
small dissemination of the information Itami and his team had collected.
They made the headlines in photography magazines, under the title of

“Girls of the Special Region”.
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1046
It contained numerous pictures of the Special Region’s black Goth girl,

the blonde-haired elf girl, the silver-haired magical girl, the cat-eared PX
shop attendant, the tavern’s bunny-eared poster girl, among many
others. It soon became a big hit in the Akihabara shops.
In other words, these were all important data. Itami was doing final
checks on the material before sending it out when Yanagida walked
over.
“Yo, Itami, you’re back. What did you do this time?”
Although he wanted to say something, Itami ended up clicking his

tongue and grabbing his head. No matter how he tried to phrase it, he
had thoughtlessly instigated an incident in front of the enemy’s leader.
There was no way this would not be seen as a problem.
A more concrete example would be to imagine a summit meeting

convened by a general of the northern half of a certain peninsula.
Halfway through, the Prime Minister’s bodyguard suddenly whips out a
gun and points it at the general’s son while demanding, “Return the
people you kidnapped”. While acting out like that might relieve some
stress, it would be a diplomatic disaster with the other party’s trust in
them shaken. This did not take into consideration the disastrous effects
of beating the Emperor’s firstborn son half to death.
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1047
“I’m the one who wants to grab my head. Your situation is pretty
amusing. Well, no matter what happened, you still managed to
successfully rescue one of our kidnapped people. Frankly speaking, I’m
not sure whether to punish you or praise you.”
“Then, what’s going to happen?”
“40% pay cut. However, the government is going to make a big deal
about the fact that you rescued someone. This way, Cabinet support for
us should go up a bit more. Because of that, the brass ruled that you
shouldn’t be punished too heavily.”
“How about General Hazama?”
“Same old sour face as always.”
Itami turned to face in Hazama’s general direction before putting his

hands together and saying, “Sorry for the trouble”. As usual, he looked
like a man who was not worried about himself. To Itami, who had no
ambitions for glory, being allowed to keep his job was a godsend.
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1048
“Don’t tell me, you want me to make a public appearance?”
In truth, that was why Yanagida had come looking for Itami. Be it cutting
his pay or other things, there were a lot of things he wanted to scold him
about. However, Yanagida waved both his hands in denial.
“Well, it’s too late for today. The brass is tearing their hair out over how
to handle this kidnapping thing. The fact is, we couldn’t contact her
family, though we managed to get her records from the police. After
that, we learned her entire family went to Ginza to distribute “Have you
seen my daughter” leaflets… They did so during that fateful day too.”
That was the day when Itami was headed for the Summer Comiket,
when he was waiting for the Yurikamome line. On that day, at that time,
Ginza was painted bright red with blood. A lot of people died then. The
number of people Itami managed to save back then was far too few
compared to the number of victims.
“Seriously?” Itami whined.
“We’re keeping it a secret from her for now. At the very least, we’ll wait
until the doctors and experts rate her as ready before we tell her. I came
to help prepare 4th Recon for their expedition to the Imperial Capital
and to send them off. Looks like it’s about time. Also, I was wondering
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1049
whether to tell you about the current conditions in person, or through a

report. But standing around and talking isn’t good either. Meet me at
Arnus Town later for a drink.”
Itami concealed his distaste at being invited out by Yanagida. Why do I

have to go with you, he thought.
Rather than staring at Yanagida’s sinister face, he would much rather be

drinking with Rory or Tuka (Lelei was still underage in Japan, so she
could only order the food there). Well, them or Delilah, the Warrior
Bunny poster girl. Kurata and Tomita were fine too.
“Ah, don’t give me that look. I’ve got a lot of interesting things to talk
about too. Meet me at 1900.”
However, it would probably be better not to think about pointless things,

since he was booked by Yanagida. He did not seem like the sort to be
put off by distasteful facial expressions and evasive attitudes. That being
the case, he should accept Yanagida’s treat. Itami could stomach that
better.
***
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1050
Kurokawa and Kuribayashi stayed close to the kidnappee, Mochizuki

Noriko. Their things were left by the side of the helicopter. The other
team members busied themselves with tidying things up, carrying
luggage, preparing their weapons for return to the armoury, sorting out
their personal items and so on. Although Itami was the commander, he
felt bad about telling Kurokawa and Kuribayashi to take their things.
And so, in the end he persuaded Sergeant Major Kuwabara to move

them with him.
The first thing to do was to get to the medical facility, and they walked
all the way there carrying the girls’ heavy bags. Finally, they reached a
concrete building which looked like a prison. It had 300 beds, in
preparation for large-scale battle casualties, as well as a procedure
room, an operating theatre, and 20 separate treatment areas for
patients in critical condition.
However, they had no patients so far. After all, there was no fighting
going on, and the JSDF people did not get themselves hurt.
Because it was just too boring, the nurses and doctors assigned there at
the start returned to their respective treatment centers and continued
their regular duties.
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1051
If there were an unexpected number of casualties which were beyond

the abilities of the eight resident doctors to handle, then they would
recruit more people to help. This was only possible because the Gate
opened out to Ginza.
And so, less than ten of the beds were in use. Currently there were four
patients in residence.
Unlucky servicemen who were hurt during training, who banged their
heads, cut their fingers, caught a cold, or got a stomachache from
drinking the Special Region’s water, almost none of them needed a
treatment center stay.
In contrast, the people who needed to stay in the treatment center for
critical wounds were all from the Special Region.
The people currently in the treatment center included one of the

apprentices working on a construction site at Arnus, who suffered a head
injury from his master, as well as one of the mercenary guards hired by
the ALC, who was injured in battle with a thief. Then, there was an old
man on the verge of death, whom 4th Recon had found in a nearby
nunnery.
At a glance, he looked to be around 60 to 70 years old. His left arm was
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1052
severed near the shoulder, while his lower left leg was severed in the
middle of the thigh. He was also suffering from sepsis, but he recovered
quickly after antibiotics were administered. He was currently undergoing
rehabilitation to get used to his prosthetic limbs. The problem was that
he refused to say anything about himself besides his name. Because of
that, he would have nowhere to go when he was discharged.
The doctors hypothesized that he might have been a senior commander

in the Coalition Army. Given that he was in the protection of a nunnery,
he might well have been a noble of some sort. He must have been
keeping quiet because he was afraid he would be taken prisoner.
This was the air that hung over the nearly-empty treatment center.
Itami felt that seeing only one or two duty nurses filling in reports inside
a gigantic nurse’s office was a surreal sight. He asked one of the white-
clad nurses where his subordinates were in this vast treatment center.
Then, he headed for Noriko’s room. A big ward like hers would cost
10,000 yen a day if it were in a city hospital. Itami muttered, “What’s the
point of making the rooms so big?” as he walked down the long hallway.
He might cause trouble if he just barged into a female patient’s room

(she might have her clothes off for a sponge bath). Therefore, Itami
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1053
stood in the corridor and called out to Kurokawa and Kuribayashi, “I

brought your stuff, girls.”
Kurokawa opened the door just as the doctor began drawing blood from
an arm. Itami was treated to the sight of a needle piercing soft flesh.
Kuribayashi was standing by the side, and she looked away as though
she were the one being poked by the needle. Itami was also the sort
who would look away during injections. He didn’t want to watch, but...
There were enough blood tubes in the kidney dish to make him wonder
how many CCs of blood they needed for tests.
He could understand why they needed to run so many tests; after all,
they had to protect against infection, parasites, all sorts of poisons, and
many other unknown hazards. However, if they took this much blood, he
could not help but think that even healthy people would get anemia.
One needed a fair bit of physical strength to withstand medical

examinations. It would be a bad joke if people got hurt while receiving a
medical checkup. Itami noticed that Noriko’s face was pale even as she
lay on the bed.
Itami said, “Feeling better?’ to Noriko as he handed Kurokawa and

Kuribayashi’s things to their owners. Itami’s nonchalant attitude calmed
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1054
Noriko down, and she replied, “I feel good.”
To Noriko, Itami was her favorite of the three JSDF troopers who had
rescued her.
“Kurokawa, will Mochizuki-san be staying here?”
“Yes, she will. Even at the fastest pace, the tests will still take a couple
of weeks to complete, so you’d best be prepared for it.” Kurokawa
answered as she saw the white-clad nurse pick up the kidney dish.
Among those tests were blood tests, blood chemistry tests, X-ray scans,
urine tests, pap smears, endoscopies, EEG scans, ECG scans, ultrasound
scans, pregnancy tests, and so on. While a simple test could be
completed in less than a day, the sheer amount of tests being conducted
meant that one would need to wait for up to two weeks for the results to
come in.
“Is that so… Well, you’ve come all the way here, so you’re almost home
anyway. Just take it easy and wait.”
“I don’t mind that… but I’d like to call my parents and tell them I’m
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1055
fine.”
Itami saw that Kuribayashi was reaching for her mobile phone. He
stopped her with a look, and then said loudly, “Ah, sorry about that.
They haven’t set up civilian lines yet. Also, they’ll need to run a lot of
tests on you before you go through the Gate and back to Ginza, so you’ll
need to wait a while before you can phone home. Plus, if stern people
like us contact your folks, they might be frightened. So let the suits —
that is, Sugawara and his people — handle that.”
Itami put his hands together with an apologetic look on his face.
Since Itami was begging her pardon like this, all she could do was grin
and bear it.
Then, the nurse took out a paper cup and said, “The next test is…” and
then Noriko headed for the restroom. Itami took this chance to drag
Kuribayashi and Kurokawa into the hallways and explain what he had
heard about Noriko’s family.
“...Therefore, you can only bring up her family when the doctors and
counsellors give the green light. Understood?”
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1056
Kurokawa had a pained expression on her face, and she couldn’t speak.
Kuribayashi patted the pocket with her cell phone and whispered, “That
was close…”
“Yeah, it scared me too. All because of your phone.”
After a while, the nurse brought Noriko out of her ward. Noriko padded
across the floor in her treatment center slippers.
Itami said, “Then, we’ll come by if anything happens.” Of course, that

was just being polite. As a nurse, Kurokawa had a chance to keep taking
care of Mochizuki, but Itami and Kuribayashi probably would not see her
again after this. Noriko understood this, but she still bowed to them.
“Thank you very much.”
It was easy to tell that she was brought up well by loving parents, and
she would not embarrass herself anywhere she went.
***
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After the day’s work was done, the base flag was lowered, and the bugle
for that ceremony told the JSDF troopers to stop whatever they were
doing.
Anyone who could see the flag had to salute it. Anyone who did not
would have to stand at attention where they were. After the bugle
finished playing, they returned to their own activities.
At this point, a lot of people would take their basins and bathing
products to the bathhouse (sadly, there were no showers in the Special
Region) to bathe, or they would head to the canteen for dinner. Others
would polish their boots, wash and iron their clothes, repair any holes in
their uniforms or read books or the like to pass the time.
Basically, they were free to do whatever they wanted until it was time
for lights-out.
Itami headed for Arnus Town’s canteen, having been invited for a drink
by Yanagida.
They had only been gone for a few days, but there was a big change in
the ALC’s canteen.
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The ceiling was extended outward, so a little rain would not be a

problem. And then there were more tables. The amount of staff both
inside and outside the kitchen increased to deal with the additional
customers.
The homey atmosphere of the place brought more and more customers
in.
Still, when Delilah saw Itami, she ran over and greeted him cheerfully.
“Yo, boss, welcome back!” As they heard her say that, the other
residents who knew Itami greeted him as well, and told their friends who
did not know Itami about him.
“Welcome back, Boss Itami!”
The people here were nice. The contrast between the constant hostility
of Akusho made the lively atmosphere of Arnus that much more
welcoming.
“Oi, how come there’re so many people here?”
Yanagida looked annoyed. But why would he not be? After all, he was
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looking at the entirety of 3rd Recon behind Itami.
“Lieutenant Yanagida, I believe you said it was your treat?”
After 3rd Recon took two tables for themselves, Itami shouted, “Hey
onee-chan! 12 beers please!” to which the response was “~Kay!” Then
everyone began digging into their food and drinks.
“Oi, oi, oi, Itami, what’s this all about?”
“As expected of First Lieutenant Yanagida, how generous of you. Guys,

go easy on him!”
“Give me a break,” Yanagida muttered as he took out his wallet and

double-checked the number of people present.
Even if things in the Special Region were cheap, beer for 12 would still
cost a pretty penny. Kuwabara and Nishina smiled bitterly as they saw
the younger people ordering expensive drinks.
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The old Dwarf on the adjacent table laughed coarsely as he rapped on

the head of the person next to him, while the PX shop girls chatted
cheerfully.
Everyone was either eating, drinking, or talking amidst this commotion.

Then, Yanagida began listening to Itami talk about what was not written
in his report.
After he was done, there was a brief pause. Then it was Yanagida’s turn
to speak.
“Itami, while you were gone, an interesting person came by.”
“Looking for me?”
“Your team are the Men in Green, right? And you’re their leader.”
Itami knew about the stories which the refugees of Coda Village had
spread, and he had benefited greatly from them. The fact was that
everyone on this street showed a great deal of respect to Itami, not
simply because of his rank, but because of those stories.
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“Then, what did they want me for?”
“They want you to slay a Flame Dragon.”
“Ehhh… a Dragon? That’s impossible, right? We can’t take on a monster

like that.”
“Well, the thing is that we can’t do anything because of the location of

the place, but there’s also many other reasons why we can’t help.”
Yanagida went on to describe how the girl called Yao met with General
Hazama to request that he help exterminate the Flame Dragon, and how
Hazama had refused his help because the Dragon was not in Imperial
territory. Then there was how Yao went to all the other JSDF officers and
tearfully begged them to save her home and her people.
“Well, that’s a pain.”
“Is that what you think?”
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“But it the brass says we can’t, then we can’t, right?”
“Well, that’s true. But the Elbe Kingdom is to the south, and they seem
to have crude oil there. And the girl called Yao had a huge uncut
diamond with her. Now that was a pretty sight.”
Yanagida’s hands cupped the air like he was holding an invisible

watermelon, to show the size of the diamond.
Something felt wrong about the topic. Itami focused himself and went on
his guard.
“And?” Why was she looking for him? What did she have in mind?
“Won’t you go take a look? Like I told you earlier, if you go as a

prospector, you can move around freely. Then, by the time you find
those resources, you’re already across the border. Then you encounter
the Flame Dragon, so you have to take action. It shouldn’t be a
problem.”
“It is a problem! A big one!”
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Itami slammed the table as he rose.
“Don’t talk about that battle so lightly! That Dragon’s pretty damn scary,
you know!”
As Itami shouted, everyone became quiet. The people in the canteen

wondered what was happening.
“What’s wrong, el-tee?”
Itami lowered his voice as he answered Kurata.
“What he means is that he wants us to bring down the Dragon.”
The members of 3rd Recon were unable to speak. They had beaten the
Flame Dragon back once, but they did not think they could do it a
second time.
“What if we prepared 100 LAMs and volley-fired them?
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Itami ignored Katsumoto’s joke and looked straight at Yanagida.
“You’re basically telling half of them to go and die, just like the
refugees.”
There were many casualties when the Flame Dragon attacked the
people fleeing Coda Village.
The reason why 3rd Recon had not taken any losses back then was
because the refugees occupied the Dragon’s attention. They could easily
imagine what would happen if they took the Flame Dragon head-on.
“If it’s an order, I’ll obey it. But if I can refuse, I will. I don’t want to die
and I don’t want them to die either.”
Yanagida shrugged and replied, “Really now?’ as if Itami’s words were

not worth listening to.
“Still, I know you’ll do it. I can predict it. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of the
paperwork for you.”
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“Why do I have to go?”
“Who knows?”
Yanagida said, “Well then,” and picked up the bill.
“It can’t be helped. Tonight is my treat. Well, just think of it as an

apology.”
“An apology?”
Yanagida raised his right hand to the surprised Itami and walked off. But
before leaving, he said one more thing.
“Go check up on the blonde Elf girl.”
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Vol. 4 :
Chapter 9
“Piña!”
“Diabo-nii-sama… what’s the matter?”
Piña stopped in her tracks when she saw her panicked elder brother.
At long last, they had finished that waste of time of a meeting. After
that, the Senators were going to discuss the future course they would
take. As Piña turned around and halted, her movements went against
the flow of the moving politicians and created a frustrating blockage in
one of the Senate Building’s hallways.
What had once been a ceiling was now a patch of open sky, and the
stars were visible in the sky.
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The sudden stoppage made the Senators collide with each other, and
the impacts sprayed sparks from the torches they were holding all over
the young and old Senators. Then, they gave Piña dirty looks and walked
past her.
Diabo, who found Piña among the crowd of Senators, led her into a small
room to avoid prying ears. This was one of the less damaged rooms in
the Senate Building; it still had three walls standing. This was enough for
privacy.
“Do you know about Zorzal?”
“Mm. Father decided to make Ani-sama his heir. I can breathe a sigh of
relief since he had decided on the official succession. So, what’s
happened now?
“I don’t know what that idiot is thinking, but he wants to compete with
Father. I don’t even dare say whose side I’m on.”
Diabo narrated what had happened in Zorzal’s room.
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However, Piña needed some time to digest it.
“...Well, isn’t Ani-sama always like that? Maybe being named the heir
went to his head. Something cunning like that sounds wrong for him.”
“I agree… what’s this all about, anyway?”
“Could it be I’ve made a mistake? Since Ani-sama is going to be Emperor

one day, it’s only natural that Father would want to supervise him. Why
compete with him? What’s he trying to do?”
“Right now, he just seems to be watching and waiting.”
“Which means he won’t keep watching forever?”
Diabo looked like he was about to spit out a grain of sand in his mouth.
“There are two kinds of idiots in this world. Some idiots know they’re
stupid. The other idiots just think they’re smart. That fellow sounds like
the latter case.”
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“Father is now planning to advise Zorzal, and when he dies, he hopes

Diabo-nii will take over for him so the Empire can carry on… at least,
that’s what I think?”
“He wants me to be that moron’s counsel? Nobody told me anything like

that. Why the hell do I have to advise him!? Shit, Father gave up too
soon!”
Filled with anger, Diabo punched the broken wall. The fragile paint layer
shattered under the impact and turned into dust which drifted away.
“Ani-sama. In most cases, the eldest son has the most convincing claim
to the throne. The people won’t care about his personality or talents (or
lack thereof), only that he’s the eldest son. The same thing applies with
the army. If we disrupt this natural order and try to determine the
succession of the Emperor with pure ability, there may be other
ambitious people who think “I can do it too” and make their bid. If that
happens, the country will be plunged into chaos.
Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. This is why Father will worry
about his decision right up until the end. However, the country is now in
danger. If Father selected you as Emperor, Zorzal would oppose you,
and the country would be in even greater danger. With that in mind, it
was the most sensible decision to let Zorzal take the throne.
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Diabo-nii-sama, not many people like Zorzal-nii-sama, but there are

many in the courts who support you.”
Piña’s calm and logical words cleared Diabo’s head. She had grown while
he wasn’t looking. Her words were very persuasive.
When Diabo compared himself to his elder brother, he felt that he would
be better at administration. Thus, he had worked tirelessly to make
himself the next Emperor, but he had forgotten that his uncle, little
sister and little brother were also his rivals for the throne.
What would his little sister do when she realized this?
Zorzal did not treat his sister as a rival, because he believed that one’s
enemies would not try to get close to you. Therefore, Diabo had to think
about how to make use of her connections and influence. At this point,
Diabo looked at the flip side of things; that if the enemy army worked
with Piña, she would be a frightening foe. He needed to make use of her
as soon as possible.
As he thought about it, a chill ran down his spine.
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Diabo suddenly realized that Piña was the closest to the throne.
A common tactic the Empire used was to help a noble who was most
aligned with the Empire’s interests become king of his country, then
signing a formal alliance with the country which now had the Empire’s
interests in mind. The country of Japan possessed overwhelming military
power, and it was in a good position to make use of it. His father, the
Emperor could not possibly have overlooked that.
With that in mind, Diabo tried to see the situation from the Emperor’s
point of view. Emphasis on “tried”.
He had too little information to work with, but after adding Piña into the
equation, and considering that Zorzal would become the Crown Prince,
he could see the outlines of the future taking shape.
“Japan is too soft as an enemy. As long as you do not fight them head-
on…”
As Diabo recalled the Emperor’s words, he realised that it implied the

Japanese were easily manipulated. They loved their people, they were
friends of justice, and they were overly trusting. How did one make use
of enemies like that? No, how could one make allies of them?
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In other words, all one needed to do was change the current

antagonistic relationship between the Empire and Japan.
But how to do it? The key person for that plan was… Piña.
He needed to create a situation where Piña would end up opposing the

Crown Prince.
The best way to do this was to have Zorzal wage war on the Japanese.
Zorzal would play the role of warmonger. For that to happen, they
needed a military advantage, however temporary, and then the initial
victories and misconception of the situation would lead to confusion.
That would require a set of skills that were completely different from
politics...
If he could put this plan into practice, he could have Japan ally with Piña
for the just cause of ending the war. Japan’s military power would
eliminate Zorzal and Piña would take the throne.
In this way, Japan, who was their enemy up till now, would become
Piña’s ally, or in other words, an ally of the Empire. After that, Japan
would help support the Empire’s authority, and they could absorb
Japanese culture and knowledge faster than the other countries. In a
sense, Zorzal would be a sacrifice for this future, while he could stay in a
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safe place.
As for Piña, she could not overlook her father even if she became
Empress. In addition, she had nobody skilled in national administration
on her side. All she could do was use the people Father gave her… which
meant there was a chance he could call the shots from behind the
throne.
“Umu~”
After thinking about the matter calmly, he decided to abandon Zorzal’s

plan of “the retired Emperor versus the current Emperor Zorzal”.
Instead, it would be more practical to turn Japan, which was one of
Pina’s hidden cards, into an ally.
Although Zorzal wanted to compete with his father, the fact was that his
imagination was far behind his father’s. More importantly, he lacked the
power to make his will become reality.
Diabo felt like he had suddenly woken up from his older brother’s lies.
If this went on, it would be dangerous to be Zorzal’s ally. And even if
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Zorzal became the Emperor and Diabo became his ally, his life would be
uncertain too… In the end, all he could do was become an advisor to
Piña, his father’s puppet.
Since Diabo was eying the throne, he began considering how he could
put himself in Piña’s place. In other words, he had to catch up in his
relationship with Japan. In that particular field, he had fallen far behind.
Diabo continued thinking.
Once again, he tried to think as the Emperor did.
He added Piña and Japan into the simple plan of the Emperor opposing
Zorzal, and then thought about how to make himself the fulcrum on
which all their relationships would turn.
That being the case, what Diabo could do was become a fourth faction.
Then, when the time was right, he could throw out a casting vote to
make himself the next successor.
The question now was who he could ally with.
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Perhaps he could ally with the Empire’s vassal nations. Naturally, since
he was going to join the battle for the throne, he would certainly want
power that could fight against the Imperial Army. If there were no forces
like this, what if he looked through the Gate, within Japan, or at
countries beyond Japan? There should be a faction that was powerful
enough out there, right?
“...? Nii-sama, are you thinking too much again?”
Anyone would find it strange if someone else stood in thought for so

long.
“Although I understand that Zorzal-nii-sama’s thoughtlessness is

troubling, Diabo-nii-sama is also overthinking the matter.
As he realised Piña was looking at him, Diabo concealed his schemes,

and replied that Piña was the one who was confused.
“Who was it, anyway? Who was the one who put that big idiot Zorzal up
there?”
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“Well, if you’re calling him an idiot… actually, don’t you think Zorzal-nii-
sama might actually have the ability to succeed, but he was just hiding it
until now?”
“Impossible! He’s an idiot. Just consider the following. If he was afraid of

Father, then he should have hidden his talents until Father passed away.
But he exposed them at a time like this; doesn’t that make him an
idiot?”
“Well, nii-sama, don’t you think that’s a bit much? Perhaps he was
simply overjoyed about becoming the Crown Prince, so he couldn’t
control himself for a moment.”
“In any case, he’s a real idiot! That can’t be helped! And if he is really as
much of an idiot as we think, who knows what foolish things he’d do!
The fact was that while pretending to be an idiot and doing foolish
things, Zorzal ended up believing that he was a true genius when in
reality he was in fact a big idiot!!
Listen, Piña. That big idiot is very scary. The worst part of that is his
petty intelligence!! There are a lot of idiotic merchants who are penny
wise, pound foolish. Who knows, they might just be a hair separated
from geniuses. The problem is that big idiots drag down everyone
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around them.
It’s no longer just his problem. It also involves you, Piña. You’d best think
of what to do after this.”
Those last words might well have been a warning to Piña that said, “The
Empire will revolve around you in the future. The people behind you
(including Diabo himself) will be watching to see how you move the
Empire.”
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about that for a long time.”
“You, you have? Well, as expected, there’s no way you couldn’t be

thinking about that.”
As expected, she had the throne in her sights. His sister was truly one to
watch. However, the battle was not decided until the very end. Diabo
clenched his fists, and resolved himself not to lose. And then, Piña’s
answer was not quite what Diabo expected.
“I want to be a protector of fine art!”
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The way she replied was as though she did not realise her situation at
all.
***
Tyuule took off the leather collar around her neck, before throwing it
away in disgust. Then, she collapsed face-down on her simple bed, in her
cramped, personal room.
She covered her face, which was covered in bruises and bite marks, with
both her hands. She pressed at them with her fingers, but she knew the
marks were still there. Even though she knew they would not vanish
when pressed, she still could not help herself.
“.......”
She sighed softly. After that, a muffled, hoarse voice came from below
her bed.
“Tyuule-sama. This is Bouro.”
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Still face down on her bed, Tyuule replied as though she were sleep
talking.
“What is it?”
“This is the report we received from your subordinate at Arnus.”
“Is that so. Put it aside. I will read it later.”
She was grateful for her subordinates’ loyalty, but right now, she was
just too tired. Even the closest relative felt like a stranger at this time.
Bouro had no other duties besides delivering the report, so Tyuule

expected him to leave. However, Tyuule’s loyal servant remained where
she was.
“Tyuule-sama. Since Zorzal is now the Crown Prince, the Empire’s end is
only a matter of time.”
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1080
Tyuule scoffed in her heart, and quietly muttered about why he had not
left yet. She almost began to order him away. However, Bouro was her
only minion. Without Bouro, Tyuule would truly become Zorzal’s caged
bird. Therefore she could not reject him too harshly.
What this ugly male wanted was a reward. And indeed, loyalty deserved
a fitting reward. However… Tyuule was sick of it. First Zorzal. And now
this man.
Tyuule grabbed her head, turned over so she was lying on her back, and
then she let one leg dangle to the ground.
Before long, a liquid, dripping sound rose up from below her,

accompanied by the sensation of a tongue licking at her feet. Tyuule grit
her teeth against the unpleasant feeling, and spoke calmly.
“Getting that bastard fired up has been a real chore.”
You are a great man, yet other people underestimate you despite your
great talent. This is why geniuses cannot be understood by those below
them. Let them say what they want. At least, I understand you.
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You are strong and righteous. Of course your magnificent gestures will
invite jealousy from others. You are, no, only you are truly correct.
You are perfect. Your methods are too revolutionary, so the plebeians
cannot understand them.
A genius does not need to do as a plebeian does. Do as you please.

Yours is the right way.
The Emperor fears you, so it is not that he didn’t name you Crown
Prince, but he could not. The Emperor is a fearsome man who killed your
sworn brother. Being feared by such a fearsome person proves that
you’re a perfect being. In order not to be assassinated like your sworn
brother, you need to lie in wait. Hide your talent. Conceal your ability.
Pretend to be a useless man. Now, you can only play the role of a
useless person.
Tyuule whispered these honey-coated words into Zorzal’s ears in

between her sweet moans, and that was how she snared Zorzal’s soul.
He believed those pleasant lies, and with those as a base he believed

even more lies, and then he lied to himself because he believed those
sweet lies. At this stage, he no longer suspected her. His ego and
confidence expanded with no basis for it, and he even claimed other
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1082
people’s ideas as his own. Or rather, he treated it as other people

stealing his ideas.
“The spineless warriors from the other world are not worth fearing,” she
whispered, and when the Emperor-to-be heard them what he thought
was, “How did you come to know my thoughts?”
“However, I must not be careless. I need to find a way to sabotage the

peace talks. No matter what, I have to make the war continue. I must
fuel the fires of war. Let all the humans in this land hate, curse,
massacre, plunder and destroy each other, until the Empire falls. Let the
Empire burn, let the streets burn, let the villages burn, let the humans
vanish from the face of the earth. They will not receive a single scrap of
mercy. Only then will my revenge be complete.”
“Then, I have a good idea. Kill off the Nihon slave. They destroyed the
Senate Building after finding out a couple of their people were enslaved.
If they knew the rest were killed, they would go out of their minds with
wrath.”
“They attacked just because one or two of their people were made
slaves…”
As Tyuule heard those words, the nameless irritation in her breast
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1083
became anger.
When she had been enslaved herself, nobody came to help her.
Nobody saved her. Nobody sympathized with her.
Nobody thought about her.
And then, she heard that those of her people who survived actually
believed the lies that she betrayed her race, and swore vengeance on
her.
She could never forgive that.
She had sacrificed herself for her home. But nobody thought to repay
her for that. Nobody loved her for it, and simply put, she would never
forgive them for their foolishness. And now her anger would spill over
onto Noriko, who was in the same situation as herself.
“Naive. Far too naive. I can’t do it myself. I need to implicate a member
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1084
of the royal family. The best choice would be Piña. But if that’s not
possible, Diabo is fine too. Noriko needs to be killed somehow. Then the
war will continue. It will continue forever. The war will draw in everyone
around it. The humans will kill each other, and their corpses will cover
the earth. Zorzal and the Empire who killed my father, my mother, my
brother and my tribe will be destroyed. Everything will be destroyed.
And then I will be pleased. And then, Bouro, I will grant your wish…”
The ugly man licking Tyuule’s calf had a face which looked like a cross
between a pig and a dog. His eyes gleamed as his ugly features twisted
into a smile.
“Leave it to me, Tyuule-sama. I will rack my brains for you. As such,

please do not forget our arrangement. Eeheeheeheehee…”
***
This was a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of foreign affairs from

America, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Russia,
China and Japan. Kanou Taro was there, but his earpiece boiled in his
ear, causing pain.
He pulled out the earpiece, which was streaming translated words, and
tried several times to cool his ears. However, his body was the sort to
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1085
heat up easily, and since the words exchanged by the diplomats excited
him, his temperature went up again. He had to quell it by sheer force of
will.
Kanou sighed, and spoke to Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, whose

name was Vladimir.
“We cannot accept a request like that. Ginza is situated in the heart of
our economic district in Tokyo. We cannot accept an unconditional
stationing of foreign armed forces there. Not to mention, our country has
no reason to trust Russia. After all, was the invasion of South Ossetia in
Georgia not a recent occurrence?”
It took some time for the translators to render Kanou’s words in Russian.
Kanou took the opportunity to take a drink from a bottle of mineral
water on his desk. Vladimir’s face changed colors as he heard Kanou’s
words, and he began speaking forcefully at Kanou. However, Kanou did
not speak Russian, so he waited with a blank expression while the
translators did their jobs.
The translated message was:
“We will not tolerate your malicious slander of our nation. My country’s
actions in South Ossetia were taken to protect our people. The ones who
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1086
should be censured are the Georgians, who wanted to perform ethnic

cleansing. My country’s military actions were justified and are above
criticism!”
Kanou shrugged and said, “I was kidding,” and the Vice-Minister of

Foreign Affairs turned to look at him. The Vice-Minister would not show
his skill here… in other words, he would be handling the secret
negotiations behind people’s backs (in other words, under-the-table
negotiations). After receiving the approval of the American, UK and
German representatives, he scribbled it down on a notepad and showed
it to Kanou.
The notepad read: “Broad agreement. Details TBD.”
“Well, all I saw was Russian soldiers pointing their guns at members of
the press…”
As the translators did their job, they somehow managed to convey

Kanou’s tone in a very aggressive manner.
Vladimir pounded his table and rose, his ear tips red.
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1087
“These are lies from the Western media!”
“Live telecasts are hard to fake. I believe the new “evidence” supplied
by the Russian government post facto are the fakes. In any case, our
country cannot trust yours. Therefore, Japan rejects the Russian
request.”
The Russian foreign minister glared at the representatives of the other

countries, clenching his fist.
This G8 summit was convened to discuss economic and political

problems. Naturally, the Gate which appeared in Tokyo, Japan, was one
of those topics.
The incident happened in Japan, so it should be Japan’s problem. And the

managing the Gate should also be Japan’s responsibility.
However, once they learned about the vast resources hidden beyond the
Gate, they ignored the drawbacks the Gate brought with it — in other
words, war — and focused entirely on its benefits.
Each country was basically saying the same thing, “Don’t hog
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1088
everything, share some with us.” In addition to the G8 countries, there

were other countries who were interested in the Gate, like Korea, India,
Taiwan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Singapore, among others.
Prime Minister Morita caved under the pressure from all these countries,
and decided to make a big concession.
Of course, Japan could not just roll out the red carpet for them. They had
to take care of their own interests as well. One could not just tramp into
someone else’s house with muddy shoes. They had to say what had to
be said, and refuse what had to be refused.
That was the main demand Kanou and Natsume made during the
Cabinet meeting. The Cabinet went with it in the end, but they added
their own restrictions onto the plan before approving it.
And so, the usage of the Gate and the amount of intervention Japan
would accept on its soil would be decided by the eight nations here.
Now, it was the Japanese Foreign Minister’s turn to speak.
“Our country is deeply concerned about the threats levelled at Japan by
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the Special Region’s, that is to say, the Imperial Army. Please believe
that we act with the defense and security of Tokyo in mind. What we
desire is to enter the Special Region, observe the Japanese army, and to
provide the minimum military presence needed to protect our country’s
interests. A refusal at this point will only invite suspicion regarding your
reticence to divulge your activities. Please keep that in mind.”
Kanou remembered that the Korean Embassy had said something

similar.
“Please be at ease. Ever since Japan was defeated in the Second World
War, we have become a democratic country. We would never commit
atrocities like the military suppression and subsequent massacres of the
Uighurs and Tibetans. In fact, our country has invited residents of the
Special Region to share their opinions before the National Diet, and to
provide proof of the JSDF’s righteous action. If you still have doubts and
insist on visiting the Special Region in person, that is not an impossible
request, although we will need to stipulate certain conditions up front.”
These were the main points of the terms dictated to the Foreign
Ministers of the various countries:
“To begin with, because the Gate is in Tokyo, any travel to the Special
Region must pass through Tokyo. However, no country would permit
foreign militaries to move through their economic centers. We hope you
will acknowledge that fact.
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In addition, while passing through Japanese territory, the personnel of

the various nations must obey our country’s laws. Our country heavily
regulates the possession of weaponry, and the possession of firearms,
blades and other weapons are strictly forbidden.
In accordance to our country’s regulations regarding explosives,

explosives and ingredients that could be used to make explosives are
forbidden from being taken to the Special Region. If there is a need to
transport such items, it will be done so in accordance to our country’s
methods. In addition, please obey our traffic laws.
Violations will be punished in accordance to our country’s laws. In

addition, to enforce these conditions, visitors will be subjected to
luggage searches. Refusal of these searches will also be subject to
punishment.
In the unlikely event that armed foreign military personnel are found in
Ginza for any reason, they will be viewed as offenders in accordance
with our country’s laws and will be immediately fired on by JSDF troops.
Any offending vehicles will be destroyed. In addition, we will request
compensation from the home countries of the offending soldiers, to the
tune of one million US dollars per offender. If any buildings or other
assets of our country are damaged in the process, we will request a
suitable amount of compensation for them as well.
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In addition, these monies will be paid to our nation in the form of a

deposit. Therefore, a deposit will be required to send troops to the
Special Region, and the amount will vary according to the number of
personnel sent. If there are ten people, the deposit will be ten million US
dollars, and if there are 100 people, the deposit will be 100 million
dollars.”
At this point, the faces of the ministers from the various countries were
stern masks.
Only the American foreign minister was smiling. The TMCSUSJ permitted
American soldiers to bear arms on Japanese soil, so the above conditions
were largely irrelevant to them. As for the deposit money, there was no
need for the US to worry about getting it back, given the relationship
between the US and Japan. In addition, the sum was a pittance
compared to the potentially vast benefits they could gain from the Gate.
(TL Note: Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United
States and Japan.)
The UK and German ministers remained impassive, but they were

scribbling notes to each other in some form of discussion.
In truth, these two countries had long given up on gaining any territory
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and benefits from the Gate. Much like the US, they realised the difficulty
of sending and supporting a large army through the tiny conduit of the
Gate. Therefore, they decided to provide support for Japan in exchange
for other considerations.
If that were the case, they would not need much firepower or
intelligence personnel to keep an eye on the Japanese. The deposit they
would need to pay would be correspondingly minimal.
The Canadians and Italians seemed to be consulting with their

ambassadors. They might be communicating with their countries. Under-
the-table dealings were also taking place, as each of them stated their
case and listened to others before reaching a decision they were all
willing to abide by.
The problem now was France, with its large overseas colonies, the
militant Russia which might well launch an invasion, as well as China,
which ruthlessly claimed territory and suppressed minorities. These
three countries shook their heads bitterly at Japan.
Much like they had done a century ago, these countries were planning to
devote a large amount of fighting power to secure colony rights.
France still had a lot to think about regarding the problem of resupply,
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but since China and Russia were closer to Japan, their supply chains
were short and since they naturally prioritized their militaries, they did
not have to worry too much about the unique nature of Japan’s roads.
In addition, China wanted to solve their overpopulation problem by

exporting their people to the Special Region.
Once they moved their people over there, they could take control of the
region with military forces under the pretext of protecting their people.
However, Japan would certainly demand a ruinously huge deposit to
move their people over, so China would not agree.
“My country will not take actions which affect the economy or politics of
Japan. Therefore, we feel this excessive deposit is unnecessary. In
addition, we feel the summary execution of armed personnel is too
barbaric. Please reconsider your terms.”
Kanou replied to the French foreign minister.
“I refuse.”
Although he did not understand what Kanou was saying, fireworks
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seemed to be going off behind the Frenchman’s eyes.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Please allow us to politely refuse. The large deposit is intended to deter

excessive movement of military strength to the Special Region. This is
because our country does not wish to destabilize the Special Region. In
particular, we are currently undergoing negotiations with the armed
forces of the Special Region. If chaos were to break out during this time,
the situation might devolve into an armed conflict. Or does France
intend to cause havoc in our political and economic districts and take
advantage of the confusion to launch an attack?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Do you swear that the French troops who are to be sent beyond the
Gate will not cause problems in Ginza?”
“Of course.”
Then, Kanou replied, confident the problem had been solved.
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“Since the French personnel will not enter Ginza bearing arms, then
there is no need to worry about summary executions, because there is
no way they will commit any offences which require those executions.
Am I correct? Or are there plans to commit offences once they are in
place?”
As Kanou said these words, the day’s deliberations ended.
***
Elsewhere, heedless to the opinion of the world and what went on

behind the scenes, Itami was fumbling around blindly in Arnus town.
He had a bad feeling about this.
It was a very bad feeling.
The blonde Elf Yanagida mentioned could only have been Tuka. Nobody
else fit that description in this place.
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Itami did not dislike Tuka. No, in truth, she was the type he liked… all
right, he liked her a lot.
She was beautiful, and she did not need makeup to be attractive. Her
face was pretty, her hair was a honey-golden hue, her skin was soft and
silky, her limbs were slender, and so on. She made people want to dress
her up like a moving doll.
Her cornflower-blue eyes possessed a mysterious charm that Itami could

not resist.
If she had troubles, it would only make him want to talk to her even
more. However, Itami felt there was an insurmountable wall between
them, so he did not do so.
That wall was like a giant piece of unexploded ordnance in her mind.
“Go check on the blonde elf girl.”
He recalled Yanagida’s annoying face, and his words.
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He thought of Tuka and that piece of unexploded ordnance that might

go off at any time.
Itami had treated her gently until now in order not to let that piece of
ordnance explode
If anything happened, if she lost the balance in her heart, what would
happen to her?
No, that was wrong.
He knew what would happen to her. That was why he tried to deny it. He
turned his eyes away from it because he did not want to see it.
After Yanagida left, Itami and co. headed for the residential district of
Arnus town, which was when he started his fumbling around.
He had to check on Tuka. However, if the situation had become one that
he most feared, he suddenly did not want to go near her. As he wavered
back and forth, it took him 25 minutes to reach his destination. He must
have looked like a stalker.
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Anyone would be suspicious of the way he got so close to a girl’s room.

However, everyone in the ALC, from the children to the elderly, knew
Itami. So when they saw him doing something strange, they instead
greeted him quietly.
“Itami-ojisan, good evening… what happened?”
He was a boy who was about two to three years younger than Lelei.
He was holding a box full of washed Wyvern scales. Itami knew why he
was working so late.
The ALC had grown quite large, and the people they employed had
increased. Yet, the residents of Coda Village did not stop working.
Perhaps they were not sure of their position, but they did not think of
hiring people to work for them.
As more and more people came to the ALC, as well as new members…
well, it was a complicated feeling for them. Of course, they needed
people to help them, but they all felt that they had to set a good
example by doing the work first. Therefore, it was difficult for the
workers to goof off while the boss was not looking. Or rather, if they
slacked off while the kids were trying their hardest to earn money, they
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would be failures as adults.
In addition, they had simple natures. They were very respectful of

specialists who could do things they could not, like the mercenaries,
traders, engineers, and other professions which needed specialized
knowledge. They would go “And so, when you do this, that solves it.”
“Whoa, you’re awesome, oji-san!” or something like that. At this point,
anyone who did not want to work was probably being stubborn.
Who knew, this might be why this place was called “Heaven” or “The
best workplace”. That being the case, the important administrative tasks
were handled by Lelei, Tuka, Rory and Kato, so nobody could try and
exploit them through loopholes. And they also had the JSDF for security.
In the past, a dishonest man tried to cheat people, but in the face of the
JSDF MPs’ terrifying mental calculation techniques (in the Special
Region, most people who could do mental calculations were doing more
important jobs), his scheme fell apart and he was drenched in cold
sweat.
Incidentally, while this man was being transferred to a job where he

would not have contact with money, he attempted violence against a
Dark Elf woman, which resulted in him being fired and sent to Italica for
trial.
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Because of this, the male Harpy who was working with the boy panicked
and said, “Ah, young master, let me carry this back for you,” and then
he carried the box of scales back to the warehouse. The boy, his hands
now empty, ran over to Itami and asked the same question from just
now: “What’s wrong?” with a mischievous look on his face.
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just… something.”
“By something you mean… a night raid?"
Now, this was a precocious kid. Still, if he was two years young than
Lelei, he would be 13. It was not too surprising to hear these words from
a boy on the edge of growing up. What would a normal adult do now?
Scold him? Or let him off?
Itami was curious about where he had learned those words from. Then
he replied, “Well, no,” to the boy. After that, he continued in a more
serious tone, “You can think that, but don’t say it. If weird rumors go
around, it’ll be bad for the girl you’re talking about.”
“Then again, you mean you won’t do anything? Her Holiness’ room is at
the back, while Lelei-neesan’s room is opposite… or are you going to
pounce on Tuka-san? Are you?”
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“Oi oi, if I touch Lelei, it’ll be a crime. Japan has child welfare laws and
teenage legislation or something like that. And for the record, I am
looking for Tuka, but not to do naughty things.”
He had not mentioned Rory, but she would have cleared the minimum
age requirement. Still, the kid seemed to be implying that Lelei was
Itami’s even though he had a reason not to touch her. It was a surprise,
but he felt that he had to protest that.
And then, the boy deliberately tilted his head.
“..............Could it be that oji-san doesn’t know about the three-night

rule?”
“What’s that?’
“...............Ah, it’s impossible, I’m done with this guy.”
As Itami watched the boy walk away with a hmph, Itami wondered, what
are you mad about? Then he put him out of mind. Still, his brief chat
with the kid helped him gather his resolve to head to Tuka’s room,
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because he did not want to keep thinking about it.
He knocked on Tuka’s door.
Before he heard a reply, as he stood in front of the temporary housing,

he imagined a scene he did not want to see at all.
What he saw was his mother from the past. Her gray face was crowned
in wild hair, and she was banging her forehead against the wall over and
over again, like a restless spirit. A chill ran down his spine as he saw it.
“Still alive” “Yes. Still alive” “Still alive” “Because nothing happened”
“Because the murder never happened” “That’s right, never happened”
“But, not here” “Not here” “Then where” “I have to find him” “Find him”
“Find him” “Find him” “Find him” “Find him” “Find him” “Find him” “Find
him” “Find him” “Find him” “Find him” “Find him” “Find him” “Find him”
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him” “Find him” “Find him”
He shook his head to clear away the horrible images from his mind.
It was not cold outside, yet his hairs were standing on end.
After a while, the door opened from the inside.
“Yo, Tu…”
He planned to greet Tuka, but the one who greeted him was Lelei. Inside
the lit room, he could see Rory, wearing her black Goth outfit.
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“Come in…”
The expressionless Lelei spoke in a way that suggested she was afraid of
being heard. Itami took the hint and swiftly entered.
After he came in, he slid the bolt home after closing the door.
And then, three people looked at Itami.
One of them was Rory. She seemed tense, but after seeing Itami, she
relaxed a little.
Another was Lelei. Her expressionless face looked somewhat uneasy.
The last one was Tuka.
She sat on a wooden bed, and her hair was wild and mussed up, like she
was afraid of something. She looked frightened and fragile, but when
she saw Itami she broke into a smile. With tears streaming from her
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eyes, she stood up to hug Itami.
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1107
Then, still hugging Itami, she turned to Lelei and Rory.
“See, I told you. He came back.”
“...”
“...”
Rory looked hurt, while Lelei’s gaze swept past Tuka and rested on Itami
once more.
Itami was confused because he did not know what was going on. All he
could do was ask, “What happened? What’s going on?” But Tuka beat
him to it.
“Really, you two, there’s got to be a limit to jokes. I’ll get mad if you go
too far. And then… that lying Dark Elf! Afterwards I need to fix her good!
I’ll throw her out of town!”
The arms hugging Itami tightened a little. She sounded really angry, and
so Itami nervously asked:
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“Ah, about that, Tuka… what exactly happened?”
“It’s like this. Those two, they said Father was dead. Funny, right?”
“Father… died?”
Itami turned his pleading eyes from Tuka to Rory and Lelei. However,
Rory turned away, like she had been stabbed, while Lelei simply met
Itami’s gaze and watched his movements.
“Yup. But it wasn’t their fault. The Dark Elf’s the one to blame.”
“And the Dark Elf is…?”
“Don’t you know? She’s famous in town. She came to beg for the help of
the Men in Green to save her tribe and her home. But after she was
rejected by the JSDF… well, I felt sorry for her, and I gave her a place to
sleep, but she turned out to be an ungrateful person. I don’t know what
she was thinking, but she suddenly said Father was killed by the Flame
Dragon. She wanted me to admit it, and she said after I admitted it I
should ask the Men in Green to take revenge. How rude.
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“...Take revenge?”
“That’s right. No matter how badly you need help, you shouldn’t lie.”
“Lies?”
“Yeah, about Father being dead and all. Eaten by a Flame Dragon, how
stupid is that? He’s alive and well, aren’t you, Father?”
Tuka looked at Itami with her blue-green eyes and called Itami “Father”.
She was smiling when she looked at Itami, but her eyes were not seeing
him. They were filled with madness. And that awoke the memories that
were sealed in the back of Itami’s mind.
In that instant, Itami’s stomach lurched.
Everything he had eaten and drunk while Yanagida was treating rushed
up from his stomach.
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He couldn’t hold it down even with his hands. Moving fast, he threw
open the door to Tuka’s room and vomited on the spot. He threw up
everything he could until his stomach was empty, like someone had tied
a rope around it. After that he threw up his bile, but he still could not
stop his heaving.
“What on earth is going on?!”
Tuka wailed, and went to pat Itami on the back with a worried look on
her face. Itami waved her hand away, but his gut still hurt, enough that
he could not move.
“Dammit! What the hell is this!?”
Itami, still stained with vomit, slowly stood up.
Son of a bitch, someone broke Tuka!
Behind him, Lelei was chanting a spell with her solo chorus voice.
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After that, Itami’s consciousness vanished into darkness
***
The first thing he saw when he woke up was the ceiling of the temporary
housing.
From the window, it looked to be well into the night. But the lamplight
illuminated the room, and this mix of light and darkness seemed to be
all that was left of the world.
“So you woke up at last?”
Rory smiled to him from where she was sitting at the head of the bed.
Behind Rory was Tuka, who was breathing slowly.
Itami realised that he must be lying on Tuka’s father’s bed. Tuka kept
changing the bedsheets and blankets even though nobody used it.
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“Lelei put Youji to sleep. And then, Tuka was pretty worried… she said
‘Father’s going to die’.”
Lelei was standing beside Rory. Her left cheek was red and her lip was
split.
“What happened?”
Rory replied on behalf of Lelei, who was unable to speak. “There were
some problems getting Tuka to sleep.”
Still lying down, Itami sighed deeply.
Fortunately, his vomiting spell from earlier was over. His stomach still
hurt from the way he had emptied it.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“How do you want me to tell it?”
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Rory looked at Lelei, to indicate that she could speak for herself. Lelei
acknowledged the look and stepped forward.
From Lelei’s explanation, it all started when Lelei brought the Dark Elf
called Yao over, and gave her a room.
“Yao?”
“Wasn’t that the woman who called me a brat?”
Itami recalled that time when he had been drinking with Rory, and the
Dark Elf who pointed her side sword at him.
“Ahhh, her, is it?”
She had come to beg the Men in Green to save her village from the
Flame Dragon which attacked it. However, the JSDF rejected her request.
“I heard that much from Yanagida. But why did she tell Tuka her father
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was dead.”
“Let me explain that part.”
A Dark Elf woman appeared at the door. How long had she been there?
She undid the turban that hid her face. She had a look on her face that
went beyond fearlessness and headed straight into wickedness.
Rory clicked her tongue and reached for her halberd, while Lelei brought
her staff close to her. The two of them were radiating hostility.
“It’s a little late for greetings, but… oh Man in Green, my name is Yao. I
am a Dark Elf from the Ducy tribe in the Schwarz Forest. I am the
daughter of Dehan, Yao Ha Ducy.”
After that, Yao bowed deeply.
“I already know your name.”
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“I see. I apologize for that time. I mistook Rory-dono for a young girl, and
I thought a wicked man was trying to take advantage of a child. Please
forgive me.
“Then, why did you say all that rubbish to Tuka?”
Itami sat up on the bed from his supine position, looking straight at Yao.
“That was an accident. I was only telling the truth.”
“Then, let me ask you. Why did you tell her the truth?
“Is that not obvious? Because of malice.”
Malice?
Yao snorted as she saw Itami’s surprised expression.
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“Yes, malice. What other reason could there be? ...I heard about the
three of you from Mr. Yanagida. They say that the three of you will break
all the rules to save people. Which means, I had no choice apart from
doing this.
I already went to your comrades. I pressed my head to the ground and

begged them. I told them that if they could help me, I would do anything
I possibly could for them. Any request, any demand would be fine… but
every single one of them refused me. Right now, my people are suffering
and praying for someone to come with the strength to defeat the Flame
Dragon. But all of your comrades laughed and said, “If it’s Itami, he
might have a way.”
Itami looked to Lelei, and she quietly said, “I translated for her.”
“That was why I broke her. If you want to save this Elf’s heart, you have
no choice but to tell her that her father was killed by the Flame Dragon,
and then finish it off. Well then, Man in Green. What will you do? Will you
leave that Elf as she is? Or will you take up arms and fight?”
Itami’s teeth ground against each other.
They made a creaking sound as he gritted his teeth in anger, and he
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glared coldly at Yao.
Yao’s expression was a complicated mix of anger, sorrow and mockery,

and there were tears streaming down her cheeks.
She took a step forward, to Itami. And then she spoke.
“When a person’s loved ones are killed, that person will definitely want
revenge on the killer. If the culprit is a natural disaster, then all that
person can do is curse the gods.”
Yao’s eyes flickered toward Rory for a moment.
“But what of the Flame Dragon? The killer is there, but there is nothing
that can be done about it. Nobody can catch it to punish it. Yet it is not a
disaster sent from the heavens. Then… then where should this anger be
directed? Who can this wrath be vented on? Where can the hatred for
the loss of one’s kin be pointed?”
Yao stepped forward again.
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“Revenge is a rite that restores one’s spirit after it has been ravaged by
the anger and hatred of loss. That is the only way to heal one’s soul and
stand up again to face reality. That is the only way we can have a
tomorrow.”
Then, Yao got to her knees and pressed her head to the floor in front of
Itami.
“I beg you. Even if it’s just for this girl’s sake, please save my people. I
beg you.”
Yao went on to say that she would offer her body as payment. She would
do anything he told her too. She would not even complain if he ordered
her to tear herself apart.
Yao poured all her strength into those words.
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Vol. 4 :
Chapter 10
From the looks of things, Yao and Yanagida’s plan was a complete
failure. All she could do was grit her teeth in anger. On his part, Itami
had already accepted the broken Tuka.
“Papa♪”
Itami went along with that sad fantasy of hers.
After treating him as her father, she seemed to have pulled back from
the brink of madness, and he had responded appropriately to her.
Of course, this was just sidestepping the problem. Or rather, it was

running away from it.
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It was not impossible that they might receive a withdrawal order

tomorrow. When that time came, he obviously could not bring Tuka back
with him. All he could do was leave her here, and that would be as good
as killing her.
Still...
What can I do? What can I say? Itami grit his teeth and tried to hold back
the tears, and instead forced his face into a smile before turning around.
“What’s wrong, Tuka?”
Tuka was humming cheerfully as she made breakfast.
After the two of them finished their meal, Itami said he had work to do,
so he would be returning to the “team”. On her part, Tuka had work to
do for the ALC, so she headed to the nearby forest.
When evening came, Tuka waited for Itami to return after preparing
dinner. This fake and peaceful life went on for ten days.
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“What are you doing today?”
“Oh, just JSDF stuff.”
“You must be really busy…”
“Well, this town’s grown quite big, so we have to do the work the JSDF
assigns us. Isn’t that the same for all of us?”
“Well, that’s true…”
“Also, I’ll be going to the Capital tomorrow. You need to take care of the
house.”
“The Capital? Why is that, Father?”
It seems they need someone to translate and lead the way. 3rd Recon
will be there too, so there’s no need to worry.
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Itami was Tuka’s caretaker, but he was still a JSDF serviceman at heart.
He had no right to refuse any orders given to him. Therefore, he needed
to lie as appropriate.
“Father, can’t you not go? I’d like you to stay at home…”
“Don’t be like that. I’ve gone out for several days quite a few times in
the past.”
Suddenly, Tuka’s brows furrowed, and she winced as a headache came

over her.
No matter how much Tuka tried to treat Itami like her father, they were
ultimately different people. There were small differences in their speech
and habits.
In addition, Itami knew nothing about Tuka’s father, Hodoryu Ray

Marceau. If he had some idea what he was like, he could at least
improve his act, but without any information on her father, Itami could
not help but conflict with Tuka’s mental impression of him.
These conflicts were where the fantasy broke down. Tuka would retreat
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1123
from them to protect herself. Then, she would ignore those conflicts. She
would not think, would not see, would not hear and would not
understand them.
The stress from doing this manifested as painful headaches which swept
over Tuka.
Living, eating and spending time together with Tuka was slowly
increasing the deviations from her idealized image of her father. When
the conflicts with reality increased until Tuka could not bear them, it
racked her with headaches and other signs of bodily discomfort. And as
the days went by, the frequency of these attacks and the pain that
accompanied each one increased.
Itami looked at Tuka’s pretty face, now twisted in agony, and muttered
quietly, “What should I do?”
He could not do anything. It was taking all his effort just to maintain the
present situation. As Itami thought about this, he left Tuka’s room, but
just as he stepped onto the street, he saw Yao, who had been waiting for
him.
“What, you again? Haven’t you gone yet?”
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“...”
Itami felt a twinge of guilt as she glared at him with her hateful eyes,
and he averted his gaze. Then, he angrily jerked his head aside and
stalked past Yao, ignoring her.
In most hero stories, a beautiful maiden would tearfully beg the hero for
help, and the hero would set forth with sword in hand. Itami hated those
stories.
That was because battle was a thing which was won by living and which
was lost by dying.
Because stories were stories, the warrior would win, earn his reward and
gain a lover. But in reality, the opposite happened. Most of the time, the
warrior’s corpse would litter the countryside.
What would the beautiful maiden do if that happened?
The whole thing sounded like someone was looking for an idiot who was
willing to throw his life away for meager compensation paid after the
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fact. Then, if he succeeded, they would paint him as a hero.
In these stories, the warrior’s life was cheap.
Itami did not want to die. Although his way of living up to now was not
very good, he did not think his life was worthless enough that he would
discard it at another’s whim.
He had been married (although it had ended in a divorce), but he felt

that he had gotten to know more women. He was looking forward to
what would happen with them.
However...
“She can’t stay like this forever. The end will come soon.”
Yao’s words were like a curse.
Itami stopped, and shouted behind him.
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“Son of a bitch!!”
“Yo, Itami. So, how long are you planning to play house?”
***
Yanagida’s voice came from behind Itami, as he was seated in front of

his PC. He was mocking him about Tuka.
“Do I need to tell you? You should know.”
“Ah, forget it. As long as you’re fine with it, so am I. More importantly,
the first batch of prisoners we’re repatriating are coming through from
Japan. The PM’s aide is going with them too. They’re going to begin the
talks soon, using the prisoners as collateral.
“What about the kidnapped people?”
“They’ll arrange for some sort of prisoner exchange. This round of
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returns is also meant to send a message to Piña, that we’ll treat our
captives well. They we’ll say, ‘Whether the rest of the prisoners are
returned depends on your attitude. Their treatment might worsen
depending on how things go.’ Then the Empire will have no choice but to
say, ‘We’ll work as fast as we can’ or something similar.”
“Is that so…?”
“Is that so… Isn’t that a little dull for you? Totally unlike the guy who
slugged the Crown Prince of the Empire in the face and had him beaten
into a pulp.”
“Sorry, I’m kind of distracted now.”
Itami sighed, and took his hands away from the keyboard.
He was not making any progress. Instead he was talking with Yanagida
about meaningless things. For some reason, he also felt worried.
He had never liked talking to Yanagida in the first place, and now that
feeling intensified.
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“Are you alright?”
“Frankly speaking, no. Recently, my brain’s been all messed up,” Itami
said as he closed his laptop and grabbed his head.
“Then the solution is simple, right? Kill the Dragon and all your problems
will be over.”
“If I do that, most of the people who go with me will die. I can’t do that. I
like Tuka, but I like my guys as well. I can’t sacrifice any of them.
Did you know? Sergeant Major Kuwabara’s daughter is going to get

married. He was telling me how much he wanted to play with his
grandson after he retired.
Nishina complains about how his newly-married wife dominates him with
her job, but secretly, I think he kind of likes it.
Kuribayashi also needs to go on dates with the guys I introduced to her.

She’s quite picky too, I think she said something about ‘None of the men
are my type’.
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Kurokawa is still an idealist as always, but she’s gotten better after the
incident with Tuka. She’s doing quite well.
Tomita is dating Bozes, who came for the language classes. There are
even rumors that they’re breaking the regulations by trysting at night. If
they get caught, he’s going to be punished.
Kurata is totally devoted to that House Formal maid called Persia. He

works extra hard whenever he’s picked for missions in Italica.
Katsumoto is concerned about the kids in the ALC.
Tozu’s financial skills are getting better and better. He’s always shown
an abnormal understanding of stocks, and he’s been praised for his work
with the ALC’s finances.
Azuma’s about to finish his training for assignment to a combat unit.

After he finishes his course, he’ll be a Sergeant.
Sasagawa takes part in photography contests. He takes them seriously,

too.
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Furuta never stops honing his culinary skills, and he’s always been
thinking about how to make new dishes with the ingredients from this
side of the Gate.
Well, as you can see, they’re all a bunch of interesting fellows. Although
it would be different if it were a proper mission, if I had the choice, I
wouldn’t want to take them anywhere dangerous.”
Yanagida pulled over a nearby chair and sat down on it.
“I’m just telling you that this matter involves diamonds and oil. They’re
an immense boon to a resource-starved nation like ours. In any case,
think of the country’s interests. If the place where the Dark Elves live
has resources like that, we need to get them in our debt. Afterwards,
extracting those resources will be easy.”
“Then, Yanagida-san, why don’t you go yourself?”
Itami was saying that Yanagida was also a JSDF man. He had to go out
and get his hands dirty instead of plastering his ass to a chair all day
long.
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Yanagida simply shrugged, seemingly unconcerned.
“Unfortunately, I have no men under me. Or do you mean you’ll lend me

your people, Itami?”
“As if. You can go by yourself.”
“Me, by myself? No way…”
“Yanagida-san. The only thing that humans can freely use are their own
lives. If you think diamonds and oil are worth betting your life for, then
use yourself as the stake. After all, the prize is a diamond the size of a
human head and a Dark Elf beauty too.”
“Well, if a person could handle it alone, I’d like to do it too. However,

that’s a Dragon. What can I do against it?”
Itami narrowed his eyes and said, “Well, LAMs work against the
Dragon… if you can hit it.”
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Even a tank would have trouble taking on a Dragon in an open field.

However, in a place with dense cover and lots of ground clutter like a
forest, a single person might be able to do it.
Well, that was assuming the Dragon was equal to an attack helicopter.
In the end, fighting it was still a problem. Then, what if he imagined his
opponent as a flying tank? It would be fine to fight it in a cramped space
where it could not turn around easily. Lure the Dragon into terrain like
that, and then take it down with a LAM. It could work.
“Well, your opponent is a living creature. You could poison its food,
ambush it while it’s sleeping, and so on...”
“............................I could. It might even work.”
Surprised, Yanagida looked at Itami, who was lost in thought and not
very responsive. He stood up abruptly to abort the topic.
“Well, Itami, just let me know when you’re ready to go. I’ll take care of
the paperwork for you.”
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Itami did not turn to look at Yanagida.
“............................Ah, I’ll be counting on you, then.”
***
That night, Itami brought Tuka to the canteen so she could drink with
everyone.
Usually, Elves did not mix with people because they were haughty by
nature. However Itami was worried that people might misunderstand if
people on the streets saw them together. At the same time, this meant
Itami could stop playing the role of a father. It gave Itami time to think.
The townsfolk and 3rd Recon gathered around Tuka, and Kurokawa sat
beside her to help.
Tuka felt Kurokawa had a professional look around her. As a result, Tuka
had an expression that said, “Could it be that she has a thing for me…”
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Though it probably was not to that extent, one could say that she had
feelings of admiration.
And so, Kurokawa sat beside Tuka, and Tuka told Itami, “Father, come
sit with me”. Itami, on the other hand, was sitting at another table and
drinking with Lelei and Rory.
“How does it feel to have a daughter older than you,” Rory smirked.
Itami smiled bitterly at her.
“It’s complicated. Very complicated.”
It would not be long before the game was up. Itami’s words also carried
a hint of wanting to stop this charade. Lelei and Rory knew this, which
was why they did not answer him.
Itami and Tuka were running towards a cliff edge. But if they stopped
halfway, Tuka would break down. Therefore, Itami could not quit.
Itami was fully aware that the two of them would wait until he made a
decision. That being the case, there was no need to ruin the mood like
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this. This was supposed to be a happy occasion.
“Hi, sorry for the wait.”
The Catgirl seemed a little wobbly as she brought the food over. She
must be new here.
“What happened to Delilah?”
“Sempai received a letter from her hometown, so she’s taking a break.”
“I see…”
Rory raised her glass and toasted Itami from the opposite side of the
table. Seated beside Itami, Lelei raised her glass of a non-alcoholic drink
from Japan and toasted him as well.
The two of them had a radiant air about them.
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Women like this were very rare, be they lovers or just friends. Women
who did not know much would disregard the situation and selfishly adopt
an annoying or annoyed attitude.
With that in mind, Rory and Lelei were excellent girls. He had to treasure
them.
After realising that, Itami began thinking about what he could do, and
what he should do.
***
Itami’s mother had fallen ill when he was still in middle school.
In order to stop her husband, who was getting more and more violent,
she reached for a knife from the kitchen.
It was self-defense. It could not be helped.
The police, lawyers, detectives and people from a women’s counselling

facility came by to comfort her. However, his mother could not stop
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hating herself.
She kept on castigating herself, even though there was nothing to be

done about it.
It tore at her, the pain of losing her beloved husband, her anger and
hatred for the “person” that killed her beloved husband, and the unease
for her child’s future.
The path his mother chose to save her soul was to deny reality. That was
the only thing she could do. Itami now knew how she had managed to
carry on living somehow.
But at that time, Itami did not understand why she had done it.
Be it right or wrong, it was important to maintain one’s balance. After all,

saving everyone in the world was impossible. However, the young Itami
did not understand that logic.
Every morning, every night, he saw a place set for his father. It made
him worried, then angry, and then—
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“Dad’s dead. You killed him.”
If only he had not said that.
Many times, he imagined himself going back to that moment, like one of
those light novels where people could travel back in time. He had also
dreamed of himself at that time. He had wished, begged and prayed to
be allowed to go back to the past. If only he could have returned to that
time, he would have done something differently. He could have, he
should have. He kept thinking about it. However, reality could not be
rewound. That was why it was reality.
If he could go mad like his mother, that would be fine too. But he could
not.
And so, Itami saw his mother slowly breaking down. If one threw a frog
into boiling water, it would immediately jump out. But if one put it in cold
water and slowly heated it up, it would stay in there. In this way, her
madness grew and grew, and it was hard to tell when she would
explode. Then, as time passed, she broke in front of Itami’s eyes. His
mother set herself on fire.
In the end, she was forcibly hospitalized, because there was a fear that
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she would endanger herself or other people.
Her hospitalization was mandated by the law. Therefore, it was done

without her consent or that of her relatives. When the burden of paying
for her hospital fees was too great, it would be taken over by the
government.
All Itami the high-schooler could do was watch as his mother shouted, “I
don’t want to be here, I want to be discharged!” But it was too much for
him to live with his broken mother. Therefore, the word “mandated” was
a relief for him. He no longer had to feel guilty about her hospitalization.
“It’s compulsory, so it can’t be helped. It’s the law, after all.”
The heavy, metallic sound of the iron gate closing still echoed in Itami’s
ears until this day.
Yes, this was not an ordinary hospital.
One could see the patients chatting with each other along the hospital
corridors.
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Because they were not physically ill, their bodies were healthy, and most
of them wore normal clothes. They did nothing but stay in the hospital
while time passed.
They had breakfast, talked, had lunch, and then they waited for dinner.
And then, by the time they realised it, ten or maybe twenty years, had
passed. No, for some of them, thirty years had passed in reality.
However, their mental ages were still stuck at their 20th or 30th
birthdays, when they had been institutionalized. After all, they had not
had the chance to gather the life experience people of their ages should
have had. It was hard enough just trying to withstand the pain their
illnesses brought them.
Mental hospitals back then were wards that looked like large Japanese
rooms, where people lay down on the floor and slept in rows. Calling a
room like this a ward felt very wrong. However, that was what it was. It
was only recently that regular hospitals began giving each individual
patient their own beds.
As one walked along the highway, one could see uncles and aunties
smoking like punks, using an empty tomato juice can as an ashtray.
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These were the more stable patients. Sometimes, one could see the
more severe cases.
For example, the ones who talked to thin air.
There were people who would keep climbing up to high places, and
teenagers who would shout angrily at public phones.
There were women who were drugged with powerful medication and
wandered around the halls, with goofy, sedated expressions on their
faces.
There were men with stethoscopes who did examinations on the nurses.
There were girls who ran around naked.
There was a man who was tied to his bed, wearing a diaper, and
screaming until his throat was about to break.
There was a unique stench in the hospital air, and it was not just
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1142
cigarette smoke. In order to prevent suicides, the bathroom doors were

low and made with a large gap from the floor, so people could see if
anyone was inside.
In the end, Itami abandoned his mother in a world like this. It was all he
could do.
When Tuka intimately grabbed Kurokawa’s arm as she smiled and

laughed with the soldiers around her and with the PX girls, there was no
sign at all that she was going mad. But if Itami left her alone like this,
she might well end up like his mother. No, she would definitely end up
that way.
And regretfully, modern psychiatry had not yet found a cure for that.
All it could do was prescribe drugs to alleviate the symptoms. Incurable

people could not be cured. The only thing that could be done was to
feed them medication and wait for them to get better.
Itami had taken over ten years to understand that. Therefore, he felt
that if he was going to save Tuka, he would have to do it now.
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On that day in the past, he could not do anything.
Back then, he was merely a child.
Then, what about himself now?
Was he still incapable of doing anything?
Perhaps if Tuka took down the Flame Dragon that killed her father, it
might help ease her madness. Perhaps if she accepted her father’s
death and avenged him, it might stop her hatred.
However, this was a risky gamble, and it was the most disastrous kind.
To begin with, he could not wager anyone else’s lives on this.
Itami had only one chip he could bet, the one that belonged to him
alone. He took that chip and placed it on top of Tuka’s, and then slid
them both onto the green gambling table.
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However—
“Is that all I can do?”
Although he had already accepted that he had no other choice, fighting

a Flame Dragon was still a terrifying prospect.
***
It was close to midnight, and Itami was seated on one of the benches in
front of the doors to the treatment center.
The night breeze blew. Itami grabbed his head and muttered, “What
should I do…?”
Four or five minutes later, he heard a metallic, clacking sound

approaching him. A silhouette loomed out of the darkness and stood in
front of him.
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“Young man, could I sit down here?”
The silhouette was an old man. No, he might be younger than that.
However, the numberless wrinkles covering his face made him look like
an older man. The reason why he made a metallic noise when he walked
was because his left leg was a prosthetic, and he was speaking in the
language of the Special Region, not Japan.
Overawed by the old man’s presence, Itami immediately scooted over to

make some room.
Besides, there were other benches here. There was no need to give him
a hard time if he wanted to sit there.
“Hoooh~ you actually did it. I come here every night. Keep that in
mind.”
The old man did not seem used to his prosthetics, and sat down after
much effort.
“Then, young one. What are you worrying about, and at such an hour?”
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“It probably doesn’t have anything to do with you, Gramps.”
“Is that so. Then, forget it. If you don’t want to talk, it’s fine.”
The man breathed in deeply. He seemed quite taken by the noises his
artificial left arm made when he moved it.
“I still don’t understand how such exquisite objects are made. In your
world, do all the people with missing arms and legs get by with these?”
Although Itami was quite annoyed by the man trying to strike up

conversation, he could not embarrass the JSDF by being rude, so he had
to entertain him. “Mm. Well, not everyone is like that, but for the most
part, people have these.”
“The doctor said I could walk normally after I was fitted with these, but it
still seems fishy to me.”
“There are people with artificial limbs who can run faster than normal
people.”
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The man was shocked, and he pressed Itami for details. According to
Itami, the people in the Paralympics could set records with their artificial
limbs which normal people would be hard-pressed to beat.
“I see, I see. Well, it looks like you can speak when it comes to a topic
you’re interested in. Fine, we’ll leave it at that. Tell me; what’s been
bothering you to the point that you’re up this late?”
“Hah?”
“A man shouldn’t be waffling around. It’s disgraceful.”
Itami wondered how he had started talking to the old man without
realizing it. After sorting his thoughts out, he realized that he did have
something to discuss with him.
However, the person he was looking for was this treatment center’s
psychiatric social worker.
That social worker did not look much like a man. Rather, he seemed
rather androgynous. His hair was short and he wore round glasses.
Although his white clothes let people know he was medical personnel, he
did not have a doctor’s air of authority. Instead, people might mistake
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him for a weak student, or perhaps it would be better to say he had a

gentle aura about him.
“Well, if it isn’t Lieutenant Itami. What are you doing here at this hour?”
“Actually, I had something I wanted to consult the doctor about…”
This social worker was here for Noriko’s sake. He was in charge of
counselling her and helping her recover.
Itami was quite surprised to know that the person supporting Noriko was
a man.
Most people who had gone through what Noriko had would be afraid of
men. And in truth, in many cases, female trauma victims would be
better handled with a female psychologist. However, for Noriko’s case,
the doctor decided that a male psychologist would be better.
Otherwise, she might never be able to trust men, and her unease around
men might spiral into a phobia of men. If that point was not addressed,
she might not be able to have a lover or get married and have children.
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Of course, it would be very difficult at first. However, it was important to

be able to differentiate between scary men and non-scary men. That
step was accomplished quite easily, because Noriko had Itami and the
others.
Itami and Tomita represented the non-scary men in her heart. In order to
pass on this symbolic position, Itami formally introduced her to the male
social worker, and this was how Itami met him.
By the way, this social worker was a strange person who took an infantry
NCO course and retired as a Sergeant before going into university. He
was permitted through the Gate after being made a provisional
serviceman.
Itami sat opposite the social worker and slowly explained everything.
He told a story about a daughter whose father was murdered. Was

killing her father’s murderer and avenging him the only way to save her?
The social worker shrugged, and replied that all that could be done was
to observe the situation and react accordingly.
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“Because, someone told me this before.”
He spoke up despite it being a personal opinion. The human desire to

avenge oneself on an enemy was not related to instinct.
To seize the enemy and punish him. In this day and age, the victims of a
crime and their family members would have their feelings cleansed
when the police arrested the culprit, handed him to a judge for trial, and
he was finally sentenced and the sentence was carried out.
Of course, this did not rule out the noble idea of forgiving a transgressor,
but that usually only happened if the victim had some religious or
philosophical background which allowed it. In that case, when the
victims and their families forgave the perpetrator, their hearts would be
cleansed.
“In other words, taking revenge isn’t even important at all.”
“Indeed. Who knows, it might really be unimportant. However, this

“unimportant” matter can give people the strength to move forward. If
one does not want to be chained down by unimportant things, then
that’s fine too. Draw the curtains on the matter and be done with it. A
person’s heart needs closure.”
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After Itami heard this, he started to think. Did he have to defeat the
Flame Dragon to save Tuka?
By the time he realised it, the old man was sharing his opinion on Tuka’s
matter.
“I feel the same as him. Perhaps taking vengeance will ease her heart, If
I knew one’s enemies were at large, doing as they pleased, I would be so
angry I could not even eat.”
“Still, the enemy is very strong.”
“What, are you afraid?”
“Mmm. Yes, because it’s a Dragon… no, in your words, it would be a

Flame Dragon.”
“What did you say! Has the Flame Dragon appeared?”
The old man’s brows furrowed.
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Itami looked him over again, and then he realised something. The old
man wore an eye patch, and he was covered in wounds. And his face
had large scars on it.
“Well, because of the location, we can’t bring a lot of firepower to bear

on it. If I engage it with a small group, most of us will become
casualties.”
“That’s true. It’s only sensible to throw one’s full force against a strong
opponent. There should only be one bastard who sends his fighting
strength out in bits and pieces, or ordering his allies to attack an enemy
without telling them anything about their foe.”
That last sentence seemed to have struck a chord with him.
“Even if I brought Tuka along, the two of us alone couldn’t win.”
“Ohhh, I see. You don’t want to involve innocent people in this. However,
going in with just the two of you is simply suicide.”
“That’s why. I know it’s impossible, and that’s bothering me.”
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“Oi, young man. Even if you don’t want to kill yourself, the time will
come when you have to do something you don’t want to do. In order to
keep it from turning into a suicide, you have to rack your brains and
figure something out.”
The old man rose as he spoke.
The metallic sound came from his artificial leg, and his shoulders rocked
back and forth as he hobbled forward. Then he placed his hand on
Itami’s shoulder.
“Sometimes, you’ll run into a situation which is dangerous, but which

you can’t run from. Sometimes, you know you’ll lose, but you have to
advance anyway. If you can’t be a smart man, then you should be the
stupidest man of all. What do you think?”
***
The next day, Itami and 3rd Recon were in the Chinook.
As usual, Yanagida was bringing over the things they would send to the
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Imperial Capital. After making sure his people were seated, he sat down
too.
The airman was speaking to Yanagida.
Tuka arrived to send them off. She was standing outside the helipad,
with Rory and Lelei.
Itami felt a surge of frustration as he saw Tuka’s crying face. But this
was only natural. His mission was to lead his people while they were in
the Imperial Capital and protect the diplomats. Then he would return,
and stay for a little while before his next mission. That was all.
He could only stay for a little while.
After Yanagida was done, he got off the helicopter.
As the rear hatch closed, Itami’s chest boiled with frustration.
“Then, we’re moving out.”
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Halfway through the pilot’s announcement, Itami suddenly cursed,

“Dammit!” and turned to Sergeant Major Kuwabara beside him.
“Sorry, Gramps. I can’t go.”
However, the noise of the propellers spinning up for take off drowned

out Itami’s voice.
“What did you say?”
“I’m getting off! I’ll leave the rest to you!”
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1157
Itami decided to give up his command, and leapt out of the rear hatch
just before it closed.
And then, the helicopter slowly flew off.
Itami watched the members of 3rd Recon as they left.
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Vol. 4 :
Chapter 11
As Itami watched the helicopter leave, he turned to Tuka, who was

trying to smile through her tears, and said, “I’m not going to the Imperial
Capital.”
He took off his gloves, and set aside his heavy helmet.
After that, he felt as though he had been released from something. Well,
he would probably regret it later. However, right now, he had decided
not to worry about these annoying things. It felt like nothing mattered
any more.
“Will that be all right?”
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From the way Tuka looked, she must have been worried about making
trouble for her father. However, her joy of not having to watch the house
alone took precedence, and she slowly walked in front of Itami before
lying against his chest.
“Well, the most important thing for me is protecting your smile. I’ll stay
with you, so you have to work hard too.”
Itami was feeling pretty good after shrugging off all his responsibilities.
Because of that, he could even use an embarrassing line like that in a
completely natural way.
“Wh-what?! I-is this what you should be saying to your own daughter?”
Even Tuka’s voice of protest was wavering, thanks to the trembling in

her heart.
Itami smiled bitterly and replied, “Does it sound like that?”
In truth, he had not meant it like that at all. All he wanted to do was
cheer on Tuka, who had lived a hard life until now.
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The problem was that a blockheaded man like him had no idea what
kind of effect his words had on women. Would any woman not swoon
when she heard that a man she liked wanted to protect her smile and
stay by her side?
Tuka leaned her forehead on Itami’s chest and quietly said, “Dummy.”
Sadly, Itami was in his full battle gear, so he could not feel her soft and
warm body through his outfit. His bulletproof vest, with metal trauma
plates inserted, blocked her body and the feel of her.
In other words, the only thing Itami could do was stroke her head, like he
would a cat.
The thin, soft strands of her hair flowed past his fingertips. Then he
patted his palm down on her lovely head. When his fingertips grazed the
tips of her long ears. Tuka shuddered, then relaxed. Tuka seemed like
the very sensitive type, and it must have felt good for her.
After getting his breathing under control, Itami exhaled quietly, and told
Tuka to get ready for a journey.
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“Let’s go together.”
Tuka had a vague idea of what her father planned to do.
In Itami’s 30-plus years of life experience, asking a woman to go on a

trip with him was a difficult endeavour. People would reject him, they
would feel uneasy about him and look disgustedly at him, and in the end
he had to laugh it off by saying it was a joke.
Therefore, when he said it to Tuka in a tone that sounded like her father,
it seemed to hit the spot. With a delighted expression on her face, she
asked, “Where will we be going?”
She looked pleasantly surprised. Although Itami did not know the man
himself, he still tried to imitate a fatherly voice, which was to say, the
voice of Tuka’s father, Hodoryu. As a man who lacked the authority of a
father, he had to force himself to play a father’s role. Instead, the tone
he produced made Tuka treat a father as a man she could love.
Tuka’s innocent smile pierced Itami’s conscience. In order to suppress it,

he forced himself to smile to her.
“We’re heading to the south. What, you don’t like it?”
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“Mm! I’m going, I’m going! I’ll go anywhere as long as it’s with Father!
I’m very happy that we’re travelling together!! Will we be leaving right
now?”
“I need to make some preparations first. After that, we’ll set out
immediately.”
“Then, finish up quickly. I want to go before noon.”
After Tuka finished, she reluctantly peeled herself from Itami’s body. She
took a few steps in reverse, only turning away when she was out of the
reach of his fingertips.
“I’ll get ready right away!” Tuka shouted over her shoulder before she
ran to her room.
“Itami, are you an idiot? No, I’ve had that feeling for a while, and it
seems I was right.”
Yanagida, who was watching from the side lines, was the first to speak
after Tuka ran off.
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“So you’re not just abandoning your mission, but you plan to take on the
Flame Dragon by yourself? That’s far too reckless. What kind of reason
am I going to make up for you to go out all by yourself?”
“Yanagida-san, you can’t say that. Didn’t you promise me that you’d
take care of the paperwork?”
“Even if you say that…”
Yanagida shook his head.
“Well, since the diplomatic visit is over, you probably won’t be fired for
this, but this isn’t going to help your chances with our people. Your
punishment from the earlier incident has not been dealt out yet; you
might still be suspended, demoted, and transferred somewhere else.”
“Argh, I prepared myself for all of that, but it still sucks to hear it being
said…”
Itami grabbed his belly and frowned.
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He could not take the pain in his stomach any more. Once he was cut
loose from the Special Region, if he wasn’t thrown to the austere
northern garrisons, he would be posted to a distant island. Naturally, he
would never be able to see Tuka again, so he had to prepare himself for
that.
“Then, I won’t say it. Right now, what you need to do is catch up with
3rd Recon, then after you complete your mission, you can take your
team to bring down the Flame Dragon. I think I can explain it like that.”
“Yanagida-san, you don’t need to go on. I don’t intend to involve them in

my personal affairs. I have no time to hesitate. I don’t want to have
regrets because I chose to handle this matter later. Therefore, right now,
I’ll be moving out.”
“Don’t be like that, you’re being too hot-headed. Don’t you think having
more gear will increase your chances of success?”
“I’ll figure something out. Sorry.”
Itami pressed his hands together and faced Yanagida. Then, still in this
posture, he turned to the HQ at Arnus Hill and made a praying gesture to
Lt. Gen. Hazama. “Sorry for giving you trouble again,” he said before
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clapping his hands.
“Dammit. Dammit, I’m really pissed off. Is that blonde Elf really worth all
this? There are a lot of good women in this world. With your reputation
and connections, you could persuade the locals to sell their oil and
mineral rights and make a killing in the financial sector. When that
happens, the girls will be throwing themselves at you.”
Indeed, that sounded great.
Itami was a healthy, hot-blooded man. He had imagined orgies with girls
who were just his type. However, his fantasies were far too unrealistic.
For example, how could he find himself being hugged by a horde of half-
naked girls?
He shook his head to clear out that mental image. After all, he was not a
manga protagonist or anything. He had to face reality coolly and calmly.
Yes, he needed to be realistic about planning his future moves. Even if it
was difficult, he had to visualize a realistic future.
However, the next thought that came to mind was himself being
surrounded by hostesses and gorgeous women who were far removed
from his tastes, of going on talk shows after leaving the JSDF, taking part
in a signing event for a book called “The Hero of Nijubashi” (and he did
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not even know who wrote it), or joining a conservative party and running
for elections.
His imagination was rather meagre.
However, he could still imagine all the wonderful things Yanagida was
describing, to a certain extent. He lacked the ability to create or produce
things, nor did he have the ability to imagine a future he would make by
sacrificing himself. But he could not abandon Tuka’s future for those
reasons. It would be too cruel.
In contrast to that, he imagined himself continuing his life as a

serviceman, bringing Tuka, Rory, Lelei, Piña and Bozes to a Comiket, and
then making a big disturbance. He liked those happy days better.
“I guess… I can’t do that after all,” Itami said.
Yanagida’s answer was a shrug. Itami could not tell whether it meant
“You’re an incurable idiot” or “I don’t get it.” However, even if Yanagida
could not accept Itami’s reasons, he would support him until the end.
“That’s how it is, Yanagida-san. I’ll leave the planning and preparations
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to you. In addition, I’ll need a vehicle, weapons and explosives. Oh, and
some spare fuel and provisions.”
Yanagida grabbed his head and looked to the sky while saying, “Hold on,
hold on”, then he hurriedly extracted a notebook and pen from a pocket,
and wrote down Itami’s requests into a list.
“What weapons will you need? And how much rations will you need?”
“I need at least 10 LAMs, the more the merrier. As for food, since only
Tuka and I are going, food for two people should be enough.”
“Oi, is it alright to not bring Yao along?”
“Yao? Who’s that?”
“The main culprit. The Dark Elf woman.”
“Ahhh, her? Who cares about her? Yanagida-san, by that logic, that
would make you a second culprit as well, right?
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Yanagida coughed. “Huh, looks like it backfired on me. I’ll do my part, so

don’t keep bringing it up, all right? Also, rations for two, right?”
After confirming with Itami, Yanagida looked past Itami’s shoulder and
behind him.
“Ah, yes, for two.”
“Will that really be enough?”
“Is something wrong?”
“...”
Yanagida could not speak. His eyes seemed to say, “Don’t regret it” as
he looked at Itami. Just then, a mighty force swept Itami’s legs out from
under him.
The sight before his eyes suddenly changed to the open sky, and by the
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time he came to his senses, he was already flat on his back.
Itami was coughing non-stop from the sudden impact, and then
suddenly, the sight of Rory in her lace-edged black Goth skirt loomed
over him, along with her luscious legs which vanished into the depths of
her skirt.
She wore black stockings under her black boots, and then what looked
like a black garter belt, but he could not see clearly since it was dark.
Further up, all he could see was blackness. As he tried to get them out of
his line of sight, he locked eyes with Rory.
“Don’t you think you’re treating us like strangers?
The halberd’s pointy end slammed into the ground, just beside Itami’s
ear.
Beside her, Lelei was watching the supine Itami.
“It’s because, no actually, you see, I felt like I shouldn’t involve you
guys.”
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Rory sat herself down on Itami’s belly, and she punched Itami’s chest
with her tiny fist.
“That’s why I said you’re treating us like strangers. Come on, what’s so
bad about involving us?”
“Can I?”
“Don’t say that. It makes me feel lonely.”
Rory kept pounding Itami’s chest.
“But it’ll be very dangerous. We might not come back safely.”
“Well, that sounds like fun. I’m excited now.”
As Rory smiled, Itami could see a demonic, battle-hungry light in her

eyes. Itami felt like she was going to devour him in one gulp.
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“But, you see, that…”
“You idiot. If you aren’t sincere when you invite a woman to play
dangerous games with you, she’ll be waiting forever.”
“But, we’re going to exterminate the Flame Dragon. Do you mean you’re
going to die with me?”
“Of course not. A double suicide’s far too lame. Since I’ve got 40 more
years in this body of mine, I want to enjoy my time with it before I let go
of it.”
“Which means you’re not going?”
“Don’t tell me you were planning to lose from the start. Did you intend
to kill yourself?”
Itami shook his head. He felt that even though amidst that suicidal
danger, there was a faint glimmer of a chance that he could make it
back alive.
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“Then, that means you don’t want to kill yourself with me?”
“....................................”
“....................................”
“....................................”
“Then you should be more honest. Oi.”
Rory punched Itami’s belly hard. The blow carried past the protection of
his bulletproof vest with its metal inserts.
“Uuu, I got it, I got it, I’ll say it. Hang on a bit.”
Itami sat up to ward off Rory’s second punch, and in the end his face
was met by her slim bust.
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“Rory, can you come with me?”
The air of danger bled away as Rory smiled. Itami thought, so she could
smile so sweetly...
“It’ll be expensive, you know.”
“Then I’ll owe you first. Though I don’t know if I can pay you back.”
“That’s fine. I’ll definitely come back. I’ll claim your soul after you die
and turn you into a familiar.”
“Are you a demon?!”
Rory ignored Itami’s pitiful face. After a quick glance over Itami’s body,
she grabbed his right arm and bit down on it.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!”
Itami wailed like he was having a bite taken out of him, and Rory freed
his arm from her maw.
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“Contract established.”
There were obvious bite marks on Itami’s right arm. Rory licked the
blood that flowed from them.
Then, she wrenched her halberd out of the ground. She held up three
fingers to Yanagida and said, “Three people”. Then she headed back to
her room, to prepare for the trip.
As he watched Rory leave, he heard Lelei say, “Four people”.
“Oi, oi, Lelei, you’re coming too?”
Lelei gazed dispassionately as Itami and said, “Wasn’t that obvious?”

Her tone was cold, like she was talking to an idiot. Then, she continued
sternly, “Does the sun not rise in the morning? Do objects not fall to the
ground?” as she stared at him.
Did that mean he would not understand if she did not explain it? And
then,
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“Magic is necessary to increase your chances of survival. I want

permission to go…”
Lelei’s eyes seemed to ask, anything else?
On the other side of those emotionless eyes, Itami could sense all sorts
of emotions hidden within Lelei. And then, he realised that she was very
angry.
“L-Lelei-san? Could it be… you’re mad?”
“...”
And so, Itami said, “Four people, please” to Yanagida.
Since he had already agreed to let Rory come along, there was no
reason to leave Lelei out. The anger of a girl who did not show her
emotions was quite frightening.
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Although Itami had thought of refusing her with, “You’re too young” or
“You’re an important part of the ALC, Lelei would probably reject them
like scolding a baby. Worse, it might add fuel to the fire.
Lelei seemed very happy with Itami’s response as she left. She was
probably going to prepare.
And now, Yao appeared in front of Itami.
She had arrived without saying a word, and then she went to one knee
in front of Itami. Both her palms were pressed to their opposite
shoulders, and she bowed deeply to him.
“No matter what orders you have, my body will forever be yours. I will
obey any and every order you make. If you wish me to take my life right
now, I shall do so without delay.”
Itami sighed as he heard Yao pledge her loyalty to him. The sheer
forcefulness with which she had declared her willingness to commit
suicide was very oppressive.
“In any case, if you die here, it’ll be inconvenient for me. Lead the way.
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I’ll take on the job of destroying that Flame Dragon.”
“I understand. If you wish to confine me, please give the word.”
He could sense Yao’s desire to be punished in her words.
Her self-mockery and her desire to be punished must have been some
sort of emotional defense from being scolded by others. Yao was keenly
aware of her own guilt and Itami’s anger.
In this state, even if Itami punished Yao, she could not hate him for it.
She could only take it as part of the job.
Perhaps punishing those who wished to be punished would make them

happy. If Yao had a conscience, then no matter how severe she was
castigated or punished, it would be meaningless.
The thing was, Itami was still very upset. He felt that all this was a pain
in the ass. The opposite of love was not anger or hate, but ignorance.
When he dealt with her, he would freeze his heart.
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If Itami had known more about Yao, he might have felt differently about
her. But to Itami, this Dark Elf called Yao was the one who pointed her
sword at him for no reason, and she was the main culprit for breaking
Tuka.
Yao sensed that Itami was deliberately keeping his distance from her. As
a result, guilt and remorse flooded her conscience. “It can’t be helped,”
she thought, and it felt like a special, gentle kind of hell for her.
Being used and discarded for the sins she had committed would only be
natural. It was the way her days would end, as one used to misfortune.
However, she still wanted to be punished. She wanted to suffer and be
scolded. She wanted to be humiliated and degraded.
In the depths of Yao’s heart, she knew she wanted to be abused. The
thought of that made her shudder with joy.
“So in the end, you’ll need enough for five people.”
Yanagida, who had seen all of this, said those words like he was spitting
grains of sand. For some reason, he seemed very unhappy.
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“I say, Itami. Now that we’re like this, I might as well come clean. I hate
you. I’ve always hated you, and now I hate you even more.”
Just as he was wondering what he was going to say, Yanagida came out
swinging with a torrent of abuse. Then he put his fountain pen and his
notebook back in his breast pocket, and looked at Yao, kneeling before
Itami.
“You know, I graduated from the National Defense Academy, and

entered the JSDF with outstanding grades. You could even say I was one
of the elite. But you know, nothing this good has ever happened to me
before. I worked my ass off to study military matters, the law, and all
sorts of other subjects, and I was sincere and earnest to my colleagues
and superiors. I bowed my head when I should have bowed it, I kissed all
the requisite asses, I made nice with the suits from HQ and even
managed to neatly resolve all their messy political and financial
problems. I worked damn hard to survive in this competitive world, all
the way until now. That’s why I can seriously and sincerely say that I
hate you. Let me be clear about this. I despise you. A slacker who puts
his hobbies first? Don’t make me laugh.”
As Yanagida continued scolding him, Itami could hear his pride as a

member of the elite. However, his earnest tone made Itami want to
listen.
“Who the hell do you think you are? You’re completely unmotivated, but
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you made it to my rank on a fluke? If that’s the case, what the hell have
I been working for? Certainly, the JSDF is a military organization, and
rewarding success in actual operations is only natural. But don’t you
think a fellow like you who does whatever he wants and mocking my
hard work behind my back, is being too cunning? That’s why I hope you
have a hard time. I hope you keep running into troublesome situations. I
hope you meet with danger. I hope you’ll have to write letters to your
subordinates’ parents, telling them “Regretfully, your son met with
misfortune in the Special Region and passed away”! That ought to
match up with my hard work. Don’t you think? Huh?
But now, what’s this? Because it’s a personal matter, you can’t involve
your people?
Are you doing that for the nation’s benefit? Or are you just saying that to
save your own face?
We soldiers can only work with the subordinates that we’re given! Our
subordinates are what we’re assigned based on our rank. That’s only
natural! Everyone completes the orders they’re given so we can be
assigned our own subordinates! Am I wrong?
Once we leave the unit, we can’t do anything by ourselves. It’d be funny

if we could!
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But you, why is it that people still follow you?
Why is it that you, and you alone, can find people willing to accompany
you?!
Shit, I’m pissed off. God dammit.”
Yanagida kicked the ground as he turned away.
Itami watched Yanagida’s shoulders tremble for a while, and then he

recovered his breath and spoke.
“Well... never mind. How shall I say this... I’m sorry?”
“Shut up, I’m just venting, don’t say anything!”
***
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“What, are we bringing this woman too?”
Tuka frowned as she saw Yao, and Itami said, “This woman was
supposed to do a lot of things, but now she’s given up on them and is
heading back to her village. Since it’s along the way, we’ll be giving her
a lift.”
Neither Rory nor Lelei said anything about the lie. Yao eagerly went
along with Itami’s lie by lowering her head and saying, “I’ll be in your
care for a while.”
Tuka was unhappy that what she thought would be a two-person trip
had picked up a bunch of fellow travellers along the way. However, Rory
and Lelei were close friends, so she was glad that she could travel with
them. It was a different kind of joy from just travelling with her father, so
her spirits soon recovered.
The people of Arnus Town gathered to send off Tuka, Lelei and Rory,
who were packing their things.
Lelei left the running of the ALC to Kato, and she told the children that if
they had any problems with finances or management, they should go
talk to Kato.
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Rory greeted her flock and her drinking buddies, while Yao looked at the
JSDF troops and the MPs who had taken care of her.
Just then, the sound of a horn made the wall of people surrounding them
give way. After that, Yanagida stopped the HMV he was driving in front
of Itami.
“Yo, Itami. I made you see an embarrassing side of myself just now.
Please forget it.”
“What’re you talking about? I don’t remember anything like that.”
“That’ll do.”
After Yanagida finished, he shut off the engine and got out of the
vehicle. As though taking over from him, Lelei went up into the rear
seat, while Rory nervously sat on the HMV. Naturally, the vehicle
commander’s seat was Tuka’s.
“I loaded up everything you asked for.”
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Itami got into the driver’s seat.
“Everyone, are you ready?” Itami asked the girls on the vehicle.
“All right, let’s go!”
“I’m ready.”
“Anytime is good.”
“I, I’m okay with this.”
Following that, Itami stepped on the gas.
And so, these people set off from Arnus in a HMV.
***
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Arnus Hill Treatment Facility
One could see Arnus Town from the wards. The old man, lying on his
bed, watched the vehicle as it left the town.
“So, the young man’s set out.”
His eye which had lost its light was covered with an eyepatch. His left
arm and leg were manmade. After dressing himself, he pressed the
button to summon the nurse.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Duran?”
The old man shrugged as he heard the nurse’s voice over the intercom.
“Sorry about this, but could you bring over the highest-ranking person
here?”
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“No, I just want to say that I’ve been hiding something about myself for
a while.”
“Did you have a change of heart? In the past, you just said, ‘I’m just a
farmer’ every time we asked you about your past.”
“It’s nothing, I just felt that since the young man already showed his
courage, how could an old man like myself cower here?”
“I understand, I’ll get the doctor immediately.”
***
Arnus Living Community, Worker’s Hostel
The dwarf foremen were proud of the houses they built. They were
confident that they were not inferior to the JSDF’s temporary housing.
Among these houses was the room of the canteen’s chief waitress,
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Delilah.
The floor was made of stone and the bed was made of wood. The first
time she had seen it she had gotten a shock, because the place that was
supposed to be filled with straw was instead filled with cotton pillows
and blankets.
In addition, this place even had furniture like a small desk and cabinets,
and a small kitchen too. The windows were hung with colorful curtains.
But the most unbelievable thing was that all these were for Delilah’s
personal use.
When she thought about this place, she was so moved that she wanted
to cry.
It was hard to believe that a Warrior Bunny like herself could meet with
such good fortune.
Even in House Formal, which was known to treat Demi-humans well, the
maids still had to sleep in a big dormitory together, and even the more
senior people had to share a two-person room.
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And now, she had a room of her own.
The people coming in and out of Arnus Town had increased, and the
cramped canteen’s tables had also increased. Naturally, Delilah and
Dora were short on manpower. As such, their salary went up as well.
After that, Delilah was assigned to train the newbies, and so she became
the chief waitress. The new title came with a pay increase and a room of
her own.
Delilah was surprised and delighted.
She would open and close the windows for no particular reason, or dust
the curtains, and she soaked in the admiration and praise when she
showed her colleagues and understudies around her room. The latter
would go, “Sempai, it’s so awesome!” as they enthused over the room.
There was no need to worry about roommates, and she could walk
around naked or sing as she liked. She had never felt so happy and free
before.
In addition, she could be proud in the letters she wrote to her friends at
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home. In order not to burden them with the cost of replying, she
enclosed the return postage with her letters as well.
She had sent a recommendation letter to House Formal, hoping that

they would be able to recommend her friends for jobs in Arnus.
Delilah desperately hoped that her friends would reply that they could
join her here.
In the morning, she woke up a little later than usual to make the bed,
and opened the canteen doors when it was close to noon. She would
work hard, chat with the customers, then close up around midnight and
come home to sleep.
She did not need to worry about where her next meal would come from.
Neither did she need to worry about a place to sleep.
In fact, having too much free time was frustrating.
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She lived every day like she was dreaming.
However, the letter she received last night was completely different
from her expectations.
“Why, why would Italica send an order like this to me?”
Delilah found it hard to accept the contents of this letter. If she carried
out the instructions enclosed within, it would be impossible for her to
work in Arnus Town after this. Not just that, it would mean every Demi-
human in town would lose their jobs. It was an absolutely unforgivable
deed that she was being asked to do.
“Why?!”
Why had House Formal issued an order like this? It was impossible for
House Formal, with its ties to the JSDF, to do such a thing. In addition,
House Formal was supervising the peace process with Japan, so an order
like this was doubly impossible.
However, she had to act as she was directed.
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This was because it was a command issued by House Formal’s secret

agents. Delilah considered the conflicting order, her current situation,
and her own happiness, and all she could do was hold the letter in front
of her without moving.
She needed to talk to someone about this. But who could she turn to?
Her colleagues? No. Her boss, the head chef? No. It might be best if she
looked for Itami and the ALC officers.
Just as she thought this, the sound of the HMV’s engine came from
outside her window.
“Ah, Boss Itami!”
But by the time Delilah flung the window open, the vehicle with Itami in
it was gone.
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Vol. 4 :
Chapter 12
“Oh gods. Oh apostles who hold apart the heavens and the earth. I offer
you this prayer. My flesh I offer to become a being of sacrificial flame.
Emroy, God of War.
Hardy, God of the Underworld.
Deldort, God of Covenants.
Palapan, God of Vengeance.”
As Delilah recited her prayer, she faced the small altar on her desk.
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She went to one knee, before the candle that represented the gods. The
tips of her long rabbit ears were nearly touching the ground.
She was wearing her battle dress.
Her beautiful face was daubed in camouflage makeup, and she held a
coal-blackened shortsword.
“Deliver me from fear, from mercy, from love, from confusion. This body
shall, with this sword, at this time, claim the life of the foe. May its edge
be anointed in the red of fresh blood. I swear upon my soul that my
loyalty shall neither change nor be destroyed.”
This was the prayer of the Warrior Bunnies.
Once, the Warrior Bunnies had a small kingdom in the northern plains of
the continent.
According to the records, they were cruel and fierce, passionate and
lustful. However, those were human records, which were biased against
them. Still, the records existed for a reason. Within their domain, the
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tribes fought each other constantly. After that, they would mate with
males from outside their tribes to breed the next generation, and this
vivid impression was imprinted in the minds of historians.
In this society, their pure-blooded queen had absolute authority over the
tribes, as well as many Warrior Bunny subordinates. There was also a
peerage of nobles which existed to support the queen. However, that
just represented their position and pedigree, unlike the Empire’s
patricians, whose status was passed down through familial lines. This
was because Warrior Bunnies had no concept of a family. There were far
too few males born to support a proper family line. The Warrior Bunnies
were an extremely fertile race, but they produced very few males. Thus,
the males were rare, and because they were rare, all the pure-blooded
offspring born to the males of a tribe would immediately become backup
candidates for the queen.
Because there were so few males in each tribe, the other females would
breed with the males of other species to obtain their seed and their
offspring. And because they had no concept of husband and wife, they
would live with whoever they liked, and leave once they were bored.
They did all these things happily. And so, each tribe could function as a
family. Delilah herself had been raised by the women of her tribe and
grew up under their tutelage.
However, their country had been destroyed by the treachery of their

queen.
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The Empire attacked them.
It was not a military offensive, but it was more like hunting. Indeed, the
Empire’s objective was not territory or wealth, but the Warrior Bunnies
themselves. They started a war in order to capture the beautiful Warrior
Bunnies so they could sell and use them as slaves.
The Warrior Bunnies resisted the Empire bravely, of course. Each of

them was far stronger than any individual Imperial soldier. At the
beginning of the war, they toyed with the Imperial Army and gave them
a hard fight. However, that was all they could do.
The Imperial Army was superior in numbers and equipment, and the
Imperial Army had long refined the art of organizing and using military
power. The Warrior Bunny tribes all over the Kingdoms were completely
overwhelmed by the Imperial counterattacks. Their battle lines were
constantly penetrated, until their offensive lost momentum and stalled.
Under suppression from all sides, they were finally defeated.
The last of the Warrior Bunnies who could still resist were killed off after
they were toyed with. The ones who ran out of strength and surrendered
were degraded by the Imperial soldiers and then their ears were cut in
half in lieu of a slave brand. After that, they were sold as slaves in the
markets, like vegetables.
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Of course, not everyone was captured. A few of them managed to

escape. However, these escapees had a harder life than the slaves.
They abandoned their homes and scattered to the four winds to evade
capture by the Imperial Army. Surviving from day to day took all of their
strength. They stole and sold their bodies just to obtain the food they
needed to survive. Some of them chose to cut their ears and surrender
rather than live such a miserable life.
When they made that decision, nobody stopped them.
Their resolve was wavering. Rather than lead a miserable life for a few
meager scraps of dignity, they might as well become slaves and have a
marginally easier life.
Therefore, those who remained were the strong ones who refused to
forsake their honor and dignity, even in the face of death. They were
kept going by their resentment of the queen who betrayed them. They
survived through hatred and honor.
And then, they met the previous master of House Formal, Colt.
Nobody knew whether it was a hobby or because he was open-minded,

but the ones who knew him generally agreed, “It should have been a
hobby”. That was because he preferred Demihuman beauties to human
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girls.
In truth, there were several Catgirls and Medusas who had received his
affections. However, when asked about the Count, they would all smile
happily, but with a hint of bitterness, and say nothing. As such, the truth
was shrouded behind mystery.
Later on, when Myui was old enough to inherit the House, she heard
from the aged maids about her father’s thinking and the foolish things
he said. However, Myui could not disclose these words. After all, she had
to protect her father’s reputation, so she could not casually repeat them.
From this, she could conclude one thing. He had not abused his position
and power to take advantage of them. Even though he was fond of
Demihumans, he respected their free will and was quite open-minded. It
would not be wrong to have a good opinion of him.
In any case, House Formal gathered the Warrior Bunnies, Cat People,
Harpies, Medusas, and various other Demihumans facing oppression into
its territories and protected them, in addition to forbidding the sale of
them. As a result, within the domain of House Formal, Demihumans
received basic human rights.
What the Warrior Bunnies received from the Count was a patch of hard
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1198
land that was difficult to farm. However, this was the only place they
could live in peace. They built small houses and eventually a settlement,
and called their people over. They treated this place as a second home.
In addition, the Count would sometimes save them from poverty by

hiring volunteers as his maids. Because of this, their lives slowly took a
turn for the better.
They decided as a group that they would do anything to repay that

kindness, no matter the cost.
Therefore, in accordance with the orders from House Formal, she made
her final decision.
Delilah stopped thinking and abandoned her doubts. She gripped the
shortsword that she had been provided to finish her mission.
***
Yanagida watched Itami leave, but his face no longer bore an angry
expression. After a while, he shrugged and said, “Cheh, I can’t do
anything with him”, before switching his mind back to its daily work
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1199
mode.
The people of Arnus Town returned to their jobs. The PX girls went back
to PX, while the head cook and the waitresses returned to the canteen,
while the Dwarf foremen went back to their construction sites.
Yanagida headed back to his office, to deal with the extra work Itami had
given him.
He reported Itami’s movements to Major Higaki, whose face was twisted

in frustration, and then the folder he showed him made the Major even
more annoyed.
“In other words, ‘Lieutenant Itami received important information on

underground resources from a local resident, and due to its importance
and urgency, he handed his command to Sergeant Major Kuwabara and
proceeded to the Elbe Kingdom’s borders under the guidance of said
local resident.’ Is that right?”
“Indeed. From the beginning, the brass ordered Itami to use his
connections to collect information on resources and other things. This
action was taken in accordance with this directive.”
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1200
“Ah, forget it, since it concerns underground resources like oil and
diamonds, we can’t do much about it.”
“Mm. Ever since we started, the Cabinet’s been barking, ‘Find it, find it,
haven’t you found it yet?’ All the recon teams here who speak the local
language are working around the clock because of the Imperial Capital,
so they had no time to do any prospecting or whatnot, despite this being
an extremely important objective.”
“It’s fine as an objective, but the problem is its urgency. Is it important

enough that we have to divert resources from or abandon our efforts in
the Imperial Capital?”
“Yes. The situation around Japan is turning grim. Before long, America,
the EU, China, Russia, and various countries from around the world will
be setting foot into the Special Region, if we don’t accurately pinpoint
the locations of these resources, our country will lose the advantage.
This is a vitally important part of our national strategy and we absolutely
have to get around to doing it. That’s why I felt Itami’s decision was a
correct one.
“Still, isn’t it dangerous to go alone? I’ve also heard that Dragons were
sighted there.”
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1201
“That fellow’s prepared himself for it.”
“Is that so. Prepared himself for it…”
As Major Higaki said that, he closed his eyes and then reached out to the
chop on it.
“All right. We’ll take it as that.”
Yanagida kept the document and saluted Major Higaki before leaving.
Just then, Major Higaki suddenly spoke to Yanagida.
“I’ve always been wondering, what exactly is that guy thinking about?”
Yanagida swiveled in a textbook 180 degree turn, and then he

answered.
“From the beginning, I thought of him as an idiot. Now, my suspicions

are fully confirmed.”
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1202
Major Higaki looked outside the window, and then he spoke like he was
talking to himself.
“Why then, how can that guy be so stupid?”
Yanagida ignored Higaki’s question.
“The rules and regulations exist to be followed. However, if one blindly

follows the rules, someday, humanity as a species will be supplanted by
AI-equipped machines.”
“What’s this? Some kind of sci-fi stuff?”
“No. I believe it will be a problem for us in the near future.”
“Is that so. If that’s the case, what is the value of a human life? What is
its purpose?”
“The value of humanity lies in their abilities to escape the bounds of
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rules and regulations. At certain times, the rules and regulations must
be broken. When they are broken, we will be able to see the value of
humanity.”
Higaki sighed loud enough for Yanagida to hear.
“That girl Yao prostrated herself before me and begged me to save her
people. She even hugged my leg. And she was such a beautiful girl.
When I heard her cry, my heart ached. At that time, I was confused. But I
did not act. I could not act. I have a family to feed, and my subordinates
have their own families. I could not take action casually.”
“Major, that’s quite normal.”
“If that guy did what you said and showed the value of humanity… I’d be
quite jealous of him.”
After Higaki said that, he turned the back of his spinning chair to
Yanagida.
Yanagida continued speaking to his back.
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“Major. That’s just because your time has not come yet.”
***
Yanagida continued his work.
“All right, the next one is…”
After a quick jog, he reached the JGSDF Special Region Expeditionary

Force Headquarters — Operation Staff Unit’s 2nd Branch.
The man in charge of the 2nd Branch was Colonel Imazu, who was
responsible for intelligence operations in the Special Region.
While most of his subordinates were uniformed soldiers, he was also in

charge of a few suits from Intel Branch, as well as men from the Public
Security Agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the police. In a
sense, 2nd Branch was the final destination of people from many other
units.
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1205
And then, they would be deployed according to their specialties to

gather information in the Special Region, perform data analysis and
evaluations, or determine the direction of future operations. And Col.
Imazu’s job was to coordinate everything they did.
“Chief Imazu, I have some documents for you to chop.”
Imazu glanced at the request forms Yanagida presented to him. They

were post facto documents intended to support the legality of Itami’s
solo operation. Higaki’s chop was already on those documents. All Imazu
needed to do was chop it himself.
Imazu read each one before chopping them.
“Yanagida. This might concern natural resources, but don’t you think it’s
a bit too hasty? It feels like it’s being rushed.”
“Currently, the remaining recon teams have all been sent to the Imperial
Capital to carry out 2nd Branch’s operations. Under these conditions, we
do not have the luxury of doing as we please.”
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1206
“Then think of something. While we can ask scholars like Kato-sensei or

Lelei-chan about information, or obtain aerial surveillance from JASDF
recon flights, we still need to have boots on the ground to perform
investigations. While the talks are important, our job is also very
important. I’m counting on you.”
In truth, there was a very limited number of personnel who could speak
the local language and carry out investigations, among other things. In
order to ensure there were sufficient people for activities in the Imperial
Capital, the resource prospecting mission had been delayed to the point
that no progress had been made.
Normally, Yanagida would make adjustments based on each branch’s

wishes, and in order to allow the operating units to successfully
complete their mission, he might have to deny certain requests.
However, he simply could not think of a solution for the current
situation. Therefore, in the end, he had to adapt to the situation and try
to buy himself some reaction time.
“Well, when you think about it, don’t you think Itami’s actions are a
solution for you?”
“What do you mean?”
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1207
“Well, think about it. A JSDF officer hires three to four locals, and then
travels all over the place doing reconnaissance. Won’t that solve the
manpower problem? Pick one or two people from each of the six teams,
and that way you’ll have enough people for six resource prospecting
teams. Plus, a recon team should be able to do fine with just one or two
people.”
Indeed, this line of thought was not a bad one.
Resource prospecting basically meant finding the location of an ore vein.

If they met enemies, they could just run away. In that way, one would
only need a couple of troops per team.
Granted, it was more dangerous to operate with fewer members, but

they could use trusted locals to make up the shortfall in numbers. On
paperwork, they would be guides. In other words, just like what Itami
was doing.
The main thing was that they needed to ensure the teams could call for
reinforcements if something happened. If they could use the SFGp and
the West Brigade, it would be a great idea.
“Please consider the idea. There’s no need for you to decide

immediately, but I hope you can think about it.”
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1208
Yanagida was thinking about the resource prospecting platoons as he

left 2nd Branch.
***
The bugle for the flag-lowering rang out.
The sun was setting in the west. The combat units’ training and other
work was over. Each unit returned to their barracks and reported to their
commander before working on their weapons in preparation to return
them to the armory. After that, they ate, bathed, washed their clothes
and polished their boots. After that, they tidied their rooms and their
personal equipment, and otherwise passed the time.
Naturally the personnel on evening and night duties were not part of
their number. Because they had to patrol the surroundings, they had to
draw arms and ammunition from the armory.
Yanagida was one of these people whose work was still not done at this
late hour.
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1209
He still had to show his documents to the most powerful man in the
JSDF, explain them to him, and then politely ask him to put his chop on
them.
“I see, so Lieutenant Itami learned of possible resources in the Elbe

Kingdom, and took several local residents to guide him while he did his
prospecting. Is that it?”
In the face of Hazama’s heavy tone, Yanagida straightened his back, and
silently nodded.
The stern atmosphere of the General’s office made Yanagida

uncomfortable. This was because the leaders of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th,
and 6th Combat Groups, as well as the four pilots from the JASDF were
all in the same room as him.
In particular, Col. Kamo (commander of the 1st Combat Group) and Col.
Kengun (commander of the 4th Combat Group) were fixing him with
sharp looks. It seemed like they were going to jump him at any moment.
Yanagida was under so much stress that he could not speak. Their
hostility was very clearly directed at him.
What did I do to make them so mad? His nervousness and tension was
building up. No matter how elite Yanagida felt he was, right now, he was
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1210
a mere First Lieutenant.
Yanagida gritted his teeth, and replied to Hazama, “Yes, that is exactly
it!”
“What the hell is that fellow thinking?”
“Itami was acting in accordance with our ministry’s Directive 5-304,

‘Special Region Strategic Direction: Resource Investigation’!”
“I know that. I’m not talking about the official reason. Do you know what
I mean?”
“I do not know. Whether official or unofficial, Itami moved out to scout

for resources!”
Yanagida’s camouflage fatigues looked like they had been soaked in

water. Perhaps if one squeezed them, they could fill a cup or two with
his sweat.
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“Is that so. That’s it, then.”
Hazama glanced at the documents which Yanagida kept peeking at.

After he sat back onto this chair, he asked the commanders for their
opinions.
“Gentlemen. What do you think?”
Kengun replied, “We will do as the General commands.”
“Us too, we’re ready to move out at any time.”
After Lieutenant Colonel Kamikoda replied, Ltc. Kurihama, Ltc. Nishimoto

and Maj. Mizuhara thrust their chests out in support.
“Good. Very good.”
Hazama stood up.
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1212
“Leaving China aside, ancient China had a lot of people and stories we
should respect. For instance, Shen Baoxu. He was a minister of Chu
during the Spring and Autumn Period of ancient China. When the country
of Chu was on the verge of destruction by the Wu army, he went to the
kingdom of Qin to ask them for reinforcements. The Qin king said, ‘The
destruction of Chu is your problem. Why then, should I sacrifice the
soldiers of Qin for you?’ After that, Shen Baoxu wept in the courtyard of
the Qin palace for seven days while begging for help. The Qin king was
moved and sent out his army as reinforcements. What do you think?”
Ltc. Kamikoda of the JASDF replied first.
“I think it was foolish to send the Qin army to die for another nation.
Only an idiot would do that.”
“Indeed. However, we have an idiot like that in our midst.”
Ltc. Kurihama exhaled, and spoke.
“He may be an idiot, but he is still a Japanese citizen. We can’t leave him
hanging out there.”
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1213
“Exactly. Gentlemen, do not let that idiot die. Colonel Kamo!”
“Sir!”
Kamo stood up ramrod-straight, thrusting his chest forward.
“Order 1st Combat Group to stand to. Then, select appropriate troops to
provide reinforcement for Lieutenant Itami’s resource investigations.
Next, Lieutenant Colonel Kamikoda!”
“Sir!”
“I wish to request air support. Prepare for all emergencies that could
happen, for example, an encounter with the Special Region Type A
Dangerous Beast.”
“Understood!”
The commanders each departed the General’s office.
Although he sort of understood what had just happened in front of him,
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1214
Yanagida was still stiff. Then, he nervously asked a question of Hazama.
“That… I thought we decided not to take action because it would involve

us crossing the border of the Elbe Kingdom? Why did you decide to
move our forces out?”
Yanagida was operating on the assumption that Itami would be burned

to death. If they had been so willing to send out their troops from the
beginning, Yao would not have needed to drive Tuka to her wits’ end.
Hazama looked at Yanagida.
“Well, it doesn’t matter now. Since Itami’s started moving, everything is

going to turn on him. Yanagida, I believe you speak the language of the
Special Region?”
“Mm. I can carry on a simple conversation.”
“Then, I need you to head down to the treatment center. I want you to
meet someone. Your mission is to listen to his terms, and then relay
ours.”
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1215
“I understand. But, who will I be meeting?”
As Hazama heard Yanagida’s question, he coughed loudly, and then he

took off his sweat-soaked coat before answering him.
***
“The King of Elbe is currently in our treatment center?”
Yanagida could not hide his surprise at Hazama’s words.
To think such an important person was so close by. If this was true, then
this incident could lead to relations between the Elbe Kingdom and Japan
developing in an advantageous direction.
“That… is that true?”
“Ah, it is. Just now, Bozes-san contacted us. Apparently, she and one of
the language students called Suisses-san spoke to him in person.
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1216
There’s no mistake about it. They were also quite shocked when they
found out.”
Hazama had arranged for the language students to determine if the King
was the real deal. He thought that Imperial nobility ought to know the
royalty of the Empire’s vassals, and in the end he was right.
And so, Yanagida was headed to the treatment center to visit a certain
ward.
What Yanagida saw was a one-eyed man with one hand, taking his
dinner on his bed. He had a good appetite for someone who looked like
he should have been hospitalized.
“Ohhh, you came. While I was waiting, I wrote a letter to the Prince,
who’s managing the affairs of state in my place. However, I doubt he’ll
be happy to hear from me. He probably thinks I’m dead.”
As Duran saw Yanagida, he began explaining the current circumstances,

as well as giving the self-introduction he had steadfastly refused to give
until just now.
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1217
Yanagida seemed to have a good grasp on the situation, so he remained

steady. Duran then decided to turn his attention to his food instead of
him. He seemed to have wanted to control the flow of the conversation,
but he had lost it instead.
Yanagida decided to abandon his tough stance of negotiation. No matter

how small his kingdom was, Duran was still the man who led its army.
He could not be underestimated. After that, Duran decided to comment
on the food he was having.
“I haven’t been too happy because I could not drink, but since the
nurses and doctors keep nagging me, I had no choice but to endure it.
However, from tonight onwards, I’ll be able to take-out my food from the
canteen and have it here. These people of Arnus are eating some really
good stuff. It feels like every day is a feast day. That’s the true measure
of a people’s happiness.”
His tray was laden with fried meat and vegetables.
Although it wasn’t clear what he had eaten, the canteen in Arnus Town
should have sold ordinary set meals. Once the Special Region’s fresh
ingredients were flavored with Japan’s spices and seasonings, the result
was delicious. However, it was quite hard to imagine that someone who
was addressed as “Your Majesty” would be so enthusiastic over such
ordinary food.
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1218
However, the hospital food must have been awful. He did not know the
exact circumstances, but by the looks of things, Duran must have spent
a long time in the hospital, eating the same tasteless patients’ meals
every day. After that, normal food would have tasted several times
better than it really was.
“Well, the town below is also supported by my country, so that’s only

natural.”
After praising Japan in this roundabout matter, he asked Duran why the
prince left behind in his country would be unhappy that the king was still
alive.
“Ahhh, well, that fellow seems to be drifting further and further away
from me every day. Life would be much easier for him if I were not
around. He didn’t seem happy when he saw my messengers.”
“Is that so…”
Even if a king approved of a military force crossing his borders, it meant

nothing unless the people went along with it. It was crucial to let the
Elbe Kingdom know that this was not an invasion.
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1219
“Give these letters to Duke Cremsan and Duke Watt. They are my close
friends, and their locations are marked on that map.”
Duran handed the letters and the hand-drawn map to Yanagida.
“Tell these people to get the useful members of the nobility to help out.”
Yanagida did not accept those items. Instead, he waved both hands in
refusal. “How could I? We do not wish to interfere in your family
struggles. This has nothing to do with my country.”
“Don’t say that. The Elbe Kingdom was mine to begin with. I simply need
some help from you to get it back for me.”
Yanagida frowned at Duran’s request and replied, “It might be best to

ask the Empire for help.”
Disappointment crawled over Duran’s face as he said, “I hate the

Empire.” From the look of things, he seemed to be nursing a deep
resentment against them.
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1220
“Well, even if your Majesty provides us your help, how will that benefit
my country?”
“Well, I can permit you to cross my borders to slay the Flame Dragon.
How about that?”
Yanagida shook his head. Then a wicked expression bloomed on his

face.
“I would like to send your head to the prince, packed in salt. With your
permission, of course.”
Duran went “Cheh”.
“What an annoying fellow. You want to pack my head in salt? There’s

people who’ll bet their lives to exterminate the Flame Dragon, and then
there’s you. Which of you comes from Nihon?”
Yanagida replied that they were both Japanese, and two people could
not represent all of Japan. All Japanese people had their own
personalities, and one could not judge them all by the example of just
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1221
one individual.
Their menacing dialogue was merely a war of words fought for their
countries’ interest.
Normally, this would have been the job of a diplomat, and not an officer
like himself. However, right now Yanagida knew that if this dragged on,
they might lose benefits which they might have otherwise gained. The
fact was that the Japanese government missed out on a lot of chances
because they did not seize them in time, and sometimes this even led to
losses. However, due to Yanagida’s daily work, or perhaps because of his
personality, he was the sort who would use his cunning intellect to
extract as many benefits as he could, however low the chances were.
Yanagida understood that this was the difference between himself and
Hazama, which was why the latter had sent Yanagida to make sure the
negotiations went in a favorable direction.
“Then, what do you want?”
At last, Duran had decided to stop playing the fool, and had decided to
get straight to the point in order to hear Yanagida’s requests. Duran
acknowledged that he had nothing to bargain with.
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1222
Yanagida decided to honestly say what he wanted.
“We want rights to the underground resources in your kingdom. Tax-

free, of course.”
“The gold and copper mines are the source of my country’s wealth.”
“Well, I never said you had to give them all to us.”
“But—”
“Then, half each of gold, silver, and copper. Then we’ll take all the
valuable resources other than those three.”
“One moment. Do you mean half the present gold mines?”
“Then, half of the newly found gold, silver and copper mines, and
everything else apart from them.”
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1223
“This is hard to answer…”
“Why is that?”
“Well, first tell me what you want with those things beside gold, silver
and copper. It’s sticking in my mind. If there are valuable things besides
gold, silver and copper in my country’s soil, then why do I not know of
them?”
“Well, even if you wanted to know, why would I tell you?”
Duran replied as he let his tension go. “I don’t want to lose out.”
Yanagida muttered that making him lose was the point, and then he
turned to Duran.
“If you don’t know about them, then it’s as good as not having them.
Please continue in your ignorance. Unless you mean to say that I should
get the salt ready…”
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1224
“I got it, I got it. Half of the gold, copper and silver mines, and
everything else underground. Is that alright?”
Yanagida rose and offered a hand to Duran while saying, “Please don’t
forget the tax exemption.” Without that, the profits from oil and
minerals, as well as all forms of trade, would be subject to massive
duties and tariffs.
“Cheh, what an irritating fellow. Well, I have no choice.”
“All right then. In exchange, the JSDF will escort Your Majesty back to
your kingdom. As for the Dragon extermination, we hope you will be able
to help as well.”
“Fine, fine. At this rate, my country will become an ally of Nihon.”
“Let’s do that, then. Sadly, I am only a junior officer, but the diplomats
will be returning from the Imperial Capital in a couple of days. At that
time, they will discuss the details with you.”
“What’s this? Such an unreliable fellow…”
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1225
To Duran, who wanted to remain independent of the Empire, as long as

that condition was met, they could gain Japan’s protection.
Duran hmphed in dissatisfaction, but Yanagida paid it no heed.
“As long as Your Majesty honors the underground resource agreement,

you will be able to maintain good ties between your country and Japan.”
***
There was a reason why the medical facility at Arnus was called the
“treatment center”. In Japan, there were regulations for the naming of
medical facilities. Those with less than 19 beds were called “clinics “ or
“treatment centers”, while those with over 20 beds were called
“hospitals”.
Arnus’ treatment center was designed to accommodate over 100

people. In that sense, it was comparable to general hospitals in the city.
However, they were only using 5 beds now. According to the regulations,
they should only have enough personnel to meet the standards of a
“clinic”. However, if they designated it as a clinic, then in case of an
emergency, they would not be able to accommodate more than 20
people. There was no way to predict when a large wave of casualties
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1226
would arrive in a combat zone, so it was a frustrating problem.
Therefore, in order to get around the limitations of a clinic, they decided

to call it a “treatment center” and bluff their way through. However
fancy it looked on the outside, it was still laid out like a temporary
hospital in a disaster area.
That said, it looked pretty flashy from the outside.
There were benches placed near the entrance to the treatment center,
and a girl was seated on one of them.
Her name was Noriko.
The sky was covered in countless stars.
She had come out from her ward in the darkened hospital because she
could not smoke there. Instead, she had to go to a designated smoking
area. As such, it was quite common to see a lot of patients in pajamas
gathered at the entrance to smoke.
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1227
This was not meant to be a compliment, but patients in good spirits did
not accumulate stress easily. Therefore, as long as it was permissible
with their current conditions, the doctors and nurses would give tacit
consent and allow their patients to smoke.
However, there were only five people in this treatment center, and only
Noriko was a smoker among them. Usually, the old man called Duran,
with the artificial arm and leg would be here to talk to her, as though he
did not want her to be bored. However, he had not showed up tonight,
so Noriko was here smoking alone and in peace.
It was fortunate. Just for tonight, she wanted to be alone.
Today, under the approval of the doctor and the social worker, they had
informed her.
That was to say, “We could not contact your parents after the Ginza
Incident. We fear they may no longer be in this world.”
“No way…”
“.......”
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1228
Naturally, Noriko was immediately suspicious, but the doctor could only
shake his head, and then he handed her a mobile phone.
“What’s this, didn’t you say the phone lines were down? Liar.”
As expected, Noriko immediately phoned home. However, the call did

not connect. She called her siblings, but the ones who picked up were
people she did not know.
“Strange. Is this phone broken?”
After that, she tried to call her university friends.
However, the numbers of her close friends were on her mobile phone,
which was long since missing. She could not mentally recall their
numbers either, so she could not contact them.
The fortunate thing was, she remembered that one of her acquaintances
had a phone number ending in 1111, so she nervously pressed the
number pad.
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1229
After that, the friend was shocked that Noriko was calling. After rejoicing
that Noriko was fine, the friend told Noriko what had happened to her
family after her disappearance. Then she promised to spread the news
to Noriko’s friends that she was fine, and that none of them could
contact her family. Finally, she heard that her house had burned down. It
had been abandoned for several months, and it had caught fire because
of an overheated electrical appliance.
When subjected to an intense mental shock, people’s minds would

engage something like a circuit breaker so they would not feel anything.
Right now, the only things she could feel were how tired and how
burned-out she was.
Although it was good that she did not feel sad, she was not completely
without sadness.
Right now, she probably looked like a wreck. If this were a TV show or an
anime or a manga, she would probably be crying into her pillow until it
was all wet. With that in mind, she should probably show an expression
on her face that matched her current condition. That would be a sad
face, in this case. However, no matter what she did, she could not make
that face. All this felt like it had happened to someone else. Because of
that, the whole thing suddenly felt very laughable.
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1230
No matter what she did, she did not feel anything. If she hit something
hard with her hand, it should have hurt, but now her hand felt like it was
unassociated with her. There was pain, but it was not her pain. Perhaps
she could say she could not feel herself. She felt light and floaty, as
though her body could not settle in one place. In the bed, in a chair,
watching a tree, punching a wall, hitting her head, none of them worked.
And then, Noriko realized it. “It feels like I’m not myself anymore.”
When she thought about it, it made sense. She had no idea what
happened to her lover who was kidnapped with her. She thought about
him every day, and after her rescue, she found out her entire family was
dead, and she did not even have a house any more. It would not be
strange if she had changed.
Noriko’s mind came to that conclusion.
Right, it’s only natural to change. As Noriko thought about it, she
decided to try and steady herself down by walking to the treatment
center’s entrance and having a cigarette.
She spat her cigarette out as she exhaled, and then she thought.
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“I might as well just die right now.”
To think she had actually said that, and in such a casual tone. She
wondered why she would even think of such a thing. She tried to think of
the way she would die, so she would shudder, but in the end even that
did not happen. Just—
“So, you want to die? That’s good,” a woman’s voice said in a comforting
tone.
Fortunately, she had learned the language of the Special Region after
being kidnapped in order to survive. That was how Noriko could
understand what the voice’s owner was trying to say.
“Who’s that?”
“Speaking of which, are you called Noriko? It’ll be troubling if you’re

not…”
A Warrior Bunny stood in front of Noriko. She was dressed in a

frightening disguise, and the feminine lines of her body radiated a
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bewitching air.
“Frankly speaking, if you didn’t want to die, I wouldn’t want to kill you,
but since you want to die, yes. I can help you.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Mm. There’s a reason for it.”
“I see… I’m going to die…”
Noriko stood before the woman who was cloaked in the shadow of
death. Yet, her heart did not falter. There was no fear, no disgust, not
even joy. All she could feel was ‘ah, so that’s how it is.’ Therefore, Noriko
looked the woman in the eye. She silently watched what would happen
to her body.
The Warrior Bunny drew the soot-blacked blade at her waist and held it
like a billiard cue, aiming it at Noriko’s throat.
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“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. It may hurt a little, so please bear with it. It
doesn’t hurt as much this way.”
“Which way do you mean? I don’t like pain.”
Then, she felt something sharp touching her throat.
“Argh. I don’t know how to make it painless. What should I do… well, I
could try letting you die as quickly as possible. Would that be all right?”
“How fast is “as quickly as possible?”
“Ahhh, what a pain. What should I do?”
The Warrior Bunny seemed quite troubled about this.
“I expected you to resist or run because you did not want to die, and I
was prepared to chase you down and kill you, but I never expected you
to tell me to do it.”
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She seemed to be trying to say something, judging from the way she
was scratching the back of her ears.
For some reason, this movement reminded Noriko of the other Warrior
Bunny she had seen before, and Noriko giggled.
“Heh. For some reason, you look just like Tyuule.”
The name Noriko mentioned without thinking made the other woman
freeze up.
“You… whose name did you just say?”
The sword pressed against her throat stayed there, without moving, until
Noriko looked at the woman in front of her again and asked, “What’s
wrong?”
Just then—
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“You over there, what are you doing?!”
The Warrior Bunny moved on reflex.
Yanagida aimed his 9mm pistol at his target and pulled the trigger three
times, without hesitation. However, the Warrior Bunny’s nimble
movements were far swifter than what Yanagida expected. She
somersaulted through the air and avoided Yanagida’s bullets, and then
she swung her sword down at him.
He evaded the swing by sheer luck.
While following the target jumping around in his field of vision, he lost
his balance. The half step he took backward saved his life.
The razor-sharp tip of the sword sliced past his chin and stabbed into the
tip of his boot. Yanagida aimed a kick at the crouching Warrior Bunny,
who was about as high as his belly. The steel caps on his boots qualified
as a lethal weapon. However, the Warrior Bunny back flipped out of the
way, and then kept just out of sword range from him.
Yanagida trained his pistol on the Warrior Bunny again, but he could not
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keep her in his sights. She evaded his aim as though dodging a sword or
a spear. Although she could not outrun a bullet once fired, the person
holding the gun was a human, and she could move faster than he could
take aim. This was a technique that was possible for a master
swordsman.
“Cheh—”
Yanagida knew he would not hit, but he fired anyway.
To avoid his gun’s muzzle, the Warrior Bunny went flat on the ground,
and then darted forward at Yanagida, aiming her blade at his waist.
Because she was attacking from below him, Yanagida could not react in
time.
It was hard enough just trying to twist away, and he felt something
burning in his waist.
“There you are!”
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The impact made him pull the trigger. But fortunately, his muzzle just
happened to be pointing at his opponent’s back. Yanagida did not need
to aim, so he kept pulling the trigger, not stopping even after his
magazine was empty.
He kept pulling the trigger until he passed out.
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Vol. 4 :
Chapter 13
The dark, underground storehouse was lit by candlelight. The air was
heavy with dampness, and the ice-cold stone walls sapped body heat.
Light and sound were kept outside by thick and sturdy walls. Down here
there was only the hellish darkness. In this place, the only thing that
might look familiar was —
—a half-rotted chair.
After long years of use, the entire chair creaked. In addition, it had been
left where it was for a long time, so there was a thick layer of dust on it.
House Formal’s old butler was seated on this chair that was about to fall
apart. Sweat dripped off his forehead and he panted heavily. He seemed
to be looking into the darkness.
“I, I don’t know anything!”, he panted.
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Several people appeared from the darkness, and one of them dealt the
old butler a tight slap.
“Ow!”
The slap echoed off the wall, followed by the butler’s cry. The side of his
lip split, leaking bright red blood.
“Bartholomew. We already know you sent a fake letter in Lady Myui’s

name.”
The cat-eared glasses-wearing maid Persia grabbed the silent butler by

his lapels and lifted him up. Behind her, the head maid watched the
pained expression on the old butler’s face impassively, before asking
another question.
“I, I don’t know. It wasn’t me. It definitely wasn’t me. Please, believe
me!”
“Please tell the truth. It isn’t too late yet.”
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After that, the butler was beaten several times, but still, he refused to
talk.
“It really wasn’t me, I know nothing! Besides, why are you suspecting
me? I’ve worked here longer than everyone else. There should be a lot
more people who’re more suspicious than me. Anyone could have gotten
into the study!”
“But you were the one in charge of the house seal. Am I wrong?”
Seeing the look in the old head maid’s eyes, Persia began beating the
butler again. She did not strike to kill, just to make him suffer.
However, the old butler stubbornly refused to talk.
“Just let me read his mind!”
Aurea stepped forward. As a Medusa, her hair could absorb the energy
of her victims, and at the same time she could probe their thoughts and
memories. The problem was that absorbing that much energy from
someone would kill them.
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However, the old maid stopped her.
“Your mind-reading can’t serve as evidence. We need to make him talk.”
The old maid looked to the corner of the underground storehouse, at the
shadowy figure who seemed to be supervising the questioning.
The objective of this interrogation was to show that House Formal and
their guarantor Piña were innocent. At the very least, they had to
convince everyone present. Although Aurea insisted, “If I read his mind,
we’ll know the truth!” they would not be able to convince anyone
without evidence.
Mamina, who was standing at the other corner of the room, was
trembling with rage. Then, she spoke in a wrathful voice.
“Persia, let’s switch! I’ll do it!”
Mamina the Warrior Bunny stepped in and punched the butler. Delilah
was from her tribe, and she was her close friend. She blamed Delilah’s
violent actions on the butler and there was no way she could suppress
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the anger boiling in her.
“Please stop! He is just a suspect. What would happen if you killed him
out of anger? People might think we were trying to silence a witness!”
The head maid’s words halted Mamina’s fists.
The old butler and the chair were lying on the floor, and he was moaning
in pain.
Mamina clicked her tongue in frustration, then stepped back, her

shoulders and ears swaying before she leaned back against the wall.
What Delilah did shook the whole of Arnus Town. Although it was a
developing town, everyone knew all about it once the MPs began
investigating Delilah’s room in the worker hostel.
After that, everyone began speculating, “Looks like Delilah did

something”, and then the Dwarf apprentice in the hospital said, “A
Warrior Bunny and Yanagida came into the hospital, covered in blood!”
and “Delilah stabbed Yanagida!”. Once they put this information
together, it began to spread like wildfire.
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Kikuchi, from the MPs came to interview the head chef after the latter
contacted him, and the chef said, “Mm, from the start, she was always
eager about poking her nose around.”
“Then… will we be chased out of town?”
The chef and the PX girls lowered their heads. They were afraid that
what their companion did would affect them as well. However, Kikuchi
the MP tilted his head and asked, “Why would we do that? This matter
has nothing to do with you. Unless you’re saying you’re involved?”
Those words let the people of Arnus breathe a sigh of relief. It was as
though a great weight had been lifted off their shoulders.
However, House Formal could not do that. The MPs found a letter
ordering Delilah’s room which ordered her to carry out an assassination.
The letter was written in House Formal’s exclusive stationery and
stamped with the House’s seal, ordering her to kill a girl named Noriko.
It was utterly ridiculous, but nobody was laughing.
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Currently, House Formal was neutral ground between the Empire and
Japan. This neutrality allowed it to remain peaceful and prosperous.
Therefore, any attempt to sabotage their relationship with Japan would
be like dropping a rock on their own feet.
In addition, in the remote possibility that an order like that had to be

given, they would never allow anyone to know it, but carry it out
directly. In the Special Region, leaving behind written proof of an
assassination order was the height of stupidity. However, when she
heard the truth, the head maid could not help but think that House
Formal was doomed.
There were countless examples of such incidents in the history of both

Earth and the Special Region. For example, people leaving behind
swords with family crests on them at the scene of an assassination, or
letters cursing a country’s king, and even suspects with no memory of
the crime were used as evidence. In addition, it was also a fact that
Delilah was a spy for House Formal. However, they would never have
ordered her to kill a Japanese girl. House Formal was adamant on that.
After all, they did not even know that there was a girl named Noriko.
However, with that in mind, they could not figure out who gave Delilah
her false orders.
Ltc. Youga, leader of the 4th Combat Group’s 401st Squadron,

approached the head maid with a letter in hand. That letter was the
same one found in Delilah’s room, now a piece of evidence. He asked,
“Did you send this letter?” and asked her to “Please uncover the truth.”
After that, the head maid began investigating everyone in the House.
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In the end, the sole suspect was the Count’s butler, Bartholomew.
The reason was because he was in charge of the house seal.
Of course, the butler would never admit that he had sent that letter. He
was a member of the Count’s household, and if disaster struck House
Formal, he would be caught in it as well. However, surely he would be
the only one with the chance to use the house seal and House Formal’s
stationery, right?
Just as Persia was looking for an untouched place on the butler’s body to
bruise, the men supervising the interrogation made their move.
“Enough.”
Ltc. Youga was accompanied by a sergeant from 1st Recon, who would
be their interpreter.
The two men had impassive expressions on their faces. Persia, Mamina
and the head maid were uneasy at the cold attitude Japan was showing
to House Formal.
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“No, we can’t stop now, we haven’t uncovered the truth yet.”
The head maid was getting desperate. She had to hand the truth and
the true culprit over to Youga, no matter the cost. As long as they could
find the true culprit, they could clear up the misunderstanding. In other
words, it was their sole ray of hope.
“But this man refuses to talk.”
“No, I’m sure we can make him talk.”
“Head maid, you’re wasting time.”
Wasting time. Those words sounded like a death sentence for House
Formal.
“How could that—”
Just as Youga was about to speak, a knocking came from the warehouse
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door.
“Lieutenant Colonel, you rang?”
“Oh, we’ve kept you waiting. Come in.”
“Where’s this place? It’s so dark…”
The man whose excitement was out of place in this grim, dark dungeon
was a medical officer (1st Lieutenant) in the JGSDF. However, his words
seemed to lighten the oppressive atmosphere here. The head maid and
the other maids wondered what Youga was going to do.
“Sorry, could you lend us a hand?”
The medical officer nodded with a “Hmph, I got it” and then withdrew a
syringe from his bag. Then he took out an ampoule, snapped off the
head, and filled the syringe with a drug.
“And now…”
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Youga asked Persia and the maids to step back, and then he looked into
the old butler’s face.
“We will not hit you.”
That made the butler groan, “Is, is that so. Then, please listen to me. I, I
don’t know anything.”
While the interpreter was translating for Youga, he withdrew a piece of

paper from his satchel. This was not the paper sent to Delilah, but a
photocopy. In addition, it also showed the fingerprints of the people who
had touched it.
“Then, you said you do not recognize the letter that was sent to Delilah,
right?”
“Of course. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Is that so? If you remember, you should tell us now. Here, look closer.”
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Youga indicated the fingerprints on the letter.
“These prints should be familiar to you as, hm, how shall I put it… ah,
claw marks. These are imprints of fingertips. Their presence on an object
indicates that the owner of these fingerprints has touched that object
before.”
As the butler heard the translated words, he turned pale and his body
started trembling.
“The fingerprints in red belong to Delilah. Then, there are two other
fingerprints which do not belong to her. Now, if these fingerprints don’t
belong to you, then all will be well.”
As he said this, Youga tightly grasped the butler’s hand. The interpreter
brought a fingerprint pad and a sheet of paper along.
The old butler’s body went stiff, and he struggled madly to resist.
“What’s this? Why are you resisting us? It’ll be over in a moment if you
just cooperate. All you need to do is prove these fingerprints are not
yours, and you will be absolved of guilt.”
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The old butler grit his teeth, desperately trying to keep his hands shut.
“Everyone, can you help me out?”
Mamina and Persia were only too glad to help Youga. They held the old
butler’s hand, pried his fingers open, and obtained prints from all ten of
his fingers.
“It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me, it really wasn’t me,” the butler
muttered as she shook uncontrollably.
In front of him, Youga compared the butler’s fingerprints to the ones on

the photocopied letter. Well, he did that, but in the darkness of the
dungeon, there was no way to make a proper comparison. So this was
basically going through the motions to frighten the butler.
However, even before the comparison, one could already figure out the
truth from his reaction while they were taking his fingerprints.
“Hmm~ well, that’s a shame. It seems you told a lie. Could you tell us
why?”
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The trembling butler was still surprisingly stubborn. He shook his head
frantically like he had a seizure, wordlessly denying Youga.
“Perhaps he has some reason why he can’t speak.”
After hearing those words from the interpreter, Youga turned to the
medical officer. The man stepped forward and tied a rubber tourniquet
around his arm, and then disinfected the butler’s arms with alcohol.
The butler did not know what the medical officer was going to do, and
stared in surprise at his arms.
At this stage, Persia and Mamina were willing to help with any task. They
pinned down the butler’s arms so they could not move. The head maid
watched in silence. She had the feeling that Youga could get the truth
out of the butler.
After the tourniquet made the butler’s veins appear, the medical officer
pressed the tip of a surgical needle into it. Then, he screwed the syringe
onto the other end. This way, even if the butler twitched, he would not
have to worry about the needle tip coming out. This was a common
technique used in mental hospitals, in order to administer tranquilizers
to confused patients that were flailing around.
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1252
The medical officer spoke to him in a mischievous tone.
“This is a drug called amobarbital. Once it is injected into your body, you
will lose the ability to think, and you’ll answer any questions asked of
you regardless of your will. Not bad, right? It doesn’t matter what you
want to do, this drug will make you talk. So you won’t be breaking your
agreement with whoever employed you.”
Of course, this drug was not a truth serum. However, after being shown
the evidence, and being told that “It doesn’t matter what you want to
do, this drug will make you talk”, the butler finally ceased his resistance.
The medical officer slowly depressed the plunger of the syringe and
injected the drug into the butler’s veins. Then he released the rubber
tourniquet, and let the drug circulate through the butler’s body. The
butler’s consciousness blurred, and in the end his mind was clouded.
The medical officer continued depressing the plunger, until it bottomed

out in the syringe. Amobarbital was a tranquilizer, and injecting a large
quantity of it at once would put the butler to sleep. It was a very difficult
task to keep the butler on just this side of consciousness, but the
medical officer skilfully accomplished that task.
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“Go ahead.”
Together with the medical officer, Youga began his questioning.
***
Colonel Imazu, of the JGSDF Special Region Expeditionary Force

Headquarters — Operation Staff Unit’s 2nd Branch, read Youga’s report
and clicked his tongue.
The report read: There is an underground organization which seeks to

damage the peace talks between Japan and the Empire. This incident
was instigated by someone who sent a false order to one of House
Formal’s spies.
After questioning the old butler, they were certain that he was the one
who had leaked House Formal’s stationery. However, his contact in
Italica had fled. There were some traces, but that line of investigation
terminated in a dead end.
Maintaining one’s composure in a state of confusion.
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No amateur could do that. Imazu keenly felt the importance of human

intelligence in addition to other forms of intelligence gathering.
In order to stop incidents before they happened, they had to be faster

than the enemy. The fact that they had prevented Delilah’s
assassination of Noriko was because Yanagida had been there by pure
coincidence. Still, now that they knew there was an enemy, they could
begin to formulate responses to them.
“The question is, who is our enemy?”
He had worked hard to gather suitable people for this, such as Defense
Ministry suits, diplomats, Cabinet officers, as well as men from the Public
Security Bureau. Imazu had assembled them here today to ask their
opinions.
“We also need to plan our counterstrike against the enemy, once we
learn who they are.”
“Well, like I said before, the enemy knows of and can describe Noriko.”
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1255
“Right. She’s not an actress or a celebrity. She’s someone that almost

nobody in the Special Region would know, so that narrows down the
suspect list greatly. In addition, the enemy knows her face well enough
for a description, so it can’t be a matter of a quick glance.’
“Crown Prince Zorzal. He’s the most likely suspect.”
“Indeed. However, we also need to consider that this is what the

opposition wants us to think. We need to consider him and everyone
else around him. We’ll ask Mochizuki Noriko about any relationships he
might have with others, and then we’ll thoroughly investigate them.”
Imazu nodded, and one of his subordinates began preparations.
“There must be people who’re unhappy with the peace talks between
the Empire and Japan.”
“I still think it’s Zorzal.”
“True, that fellow’s pretty suspicious.”
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1256
They had read Sugawara’s reports on the patricians, and as such they
knew Zorzal was part of the pro-war faction and did not want peace with
Japan.
As they ventured guesses at their enemy’s identity, they laughed

maliciously.
“Oh, another thing. Our enemy also knows House Formal sent spies to
Arnus.”
“Wasn’t that the butler Bartholomew?’
“Bartholomew was just a sacrificial pawn in this. A quick look would have
dug up a lot of suspicious things. In fact, the most suspicious thing is
that he did not flee.”
“In other words, there’s another enemy agent in House Formal.”
According to Youga’s report, Bartholomew’s weakness was his debts and

women. Traveling merchants could purchase blank paper with House
Formal’s crest at a high price, and then after the enemy honey-trapped
him, they could manipulate him at will. Therefore, the enemy was also
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1257
one who could grasp and take advantage of his debts and his lust for
women.
“If we investigate House Formal, we should be able to root out anyone

connected to the enemy. Who knows, we might be able to pick the trail
up again from where it went cold.”
“It’s not just in House Formal. We might have enemy agents in Arnus
too.”
“Speaking of which, how long does information take to travel from Italica
to the Capital?”
“Ahh, it’s annoying when we don’t have intel. By the distance, I’d say, 10
to 13 days?”
“This doesn’t include them moving at night, but it should be about that
much.”
“The enemy agent knew Delilah would take action today. However, he
does not know how it ended. Therefore, the enemy should be trying to
gather as much information as possible.”
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1258
“Ahh…”
“As long as the enemy does not have some special way of transmitting
information, reports of this incident should reach the Capital in 10 to 13
days.”
After listening to all of this, Imazu had a pretty good idea of their overall
direction. However, he could not make this decision alone. Therefore, he
asked the whole of 2nd Branch, “What should we do?”
The suits replied after some discussion.
“Though there are probably spies in House Formal, their number should
be limited. That being the case, we should feed the count false
information. After that, we’ll follow the clues and find where the enemy
is hiding. It’s an old one, but a good one.”
“You might not need to deceive them. First, we release the information
that the assassination failed. Then, we tell them that the delegates for
the negotiation will be arriving in the Special Region soon. Then you leak
information that the first round of talks and the first batch of captive
repatriation will take place in Italica. The fact that Shirayuri Reiko, the
PM’s aide, is coming with the first batch of captives should not be public
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1259
knowledge, so we can use that against them too.”
“That ought to scare them. Who knows, they might even take direct
action against the talks.”
“Suggestion. While we were investigating the people around Crown

Prince Zorzal, we followed the trails to a dead-end. However if we
release false information, we should be able to see who our man is by
watching who takes the bait. However, if we do that we’ll need to pick
one of our people to be our man on the inside.”
As he said that, he produced a name list of the personnel dispatched to

the Imperial Capital.
“Right. This guy should be usable.”
One of the staff members pulled out a report from the mountain of
documents on a nearby desk.
“This is the information collected from the ladies engaged in “Special

Vocations” in Akusho. It includes various bits of gossip on patrician sons
and daughters, as well as scandals on the Senators, provided by their
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own maids. Because these were largely hearsay, there was no real use
for it before today. However, now we might have a chance to turn these
people into collaborators.”
The men looked at each other, like kids about to play a prank.
Imazu rose to make his summation.
“Delilah was a good girl. She was the flower of our canteen.”
Everyone nodded in unison. They had all spoken to her before in the
canteen.
“Gentlemen, we must find the ones who deceived her and spilled the
blood of our countrymen. The enemy has the home ground advantage,
but we have the advantage of speed. At the very least, we will be ten
days faster than them. We must not lose here. Do you understand?”
And so, the counter-terrorist operation led by the 2nd Branch quietly
began.
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***
“This drink they call “brandy” is really something else. It’s definitely top-
shelf stuff. It seems someone gave it away as a gift, and of late, all the
patricians are begging for more. I tried it, of course, since everyone
wanted some, and it’s good. It’s no wonder why those people who gorge
themselves on gourmet cuisine keep wanting more of this.”
ALC - Imperial Capital Branch.
This was where the traders of the Imperial Capital brought in their
goods.
Kurata busied himself with helping the cat and dog-eared girls in the
shop. He spoke warmly to the traders, and then he tried turning the
topic to Crown Prince Zorzal.
“However, information about the people in court is more profitable than

information about the regular patricians. For example, the people
around the Crown Prince have been buying up stuff. If it’s for his
personal consumption, it might inflate the price.”
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1262
“The Crown Prince-dono, is it? Well, it’s difficult. The people who do
business on his behalf are all very stubborn, they hardly leave any
openings.”
“So it’s impossible, huh.”
Kurata sighed. So far, he had been unable to get past the obstacle of the
Imperial traders. Even getting close to them was difficult. He was out of
ideas.”
Suddenly, a trader spoke to him.
“Oi, oi, don’t give up so soon. I’m just about to get started.”
“You mean…?”
“Actually, his Highness has been organizing banquets at various

patricians’ homes. Since they’re unofficial, even a minor merchant like
me has a chance to do business. You should know the rest, right?”
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1263
“I see, I see. So, a little discount, then?”
“Ahh, yes. That’ll do.”
The two men shook hands.”
“I’ll give priority to the stuff you ordered. So when do you want me to
send it over? And the location? Your guys will be handing it to the chef,
right?
“What do you mean? That’s a strange way to make a transaction…”
“Look. Since we’re sending over drinks and ingredients, why don’t we
hand it to the experts? That way it’ll show off our wares’ value. You give
this stuff to a skilled chef, he makes good food and hooks his customers
on it, and then we’ll make more money, right?”
“Oho, my salesman spirit is burning! I’m counting on you. If this keeps

up, I’ll be involved even if it’s just a bunch of leftovers. Deal!”
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1264
The two of them shook hands again.
***
“Furuta-san, your Ma Nuga meat is really popular! Could you teach me

how to make it later?”
Furuta was turning and twisting a frying pan in front of the kitchen fires.
He had infiltrated this kitchen as a substitute chef. The maids he was

talking to were busy running back and forth between the kitchen and the
guest tables. Furuta replied:
“Alright. In exchange, why don’t you introduce a few of the guests to

me? Most connoisseurs have their own preferred tastes. Ladies, for
example, would prefer sweeter stuff. And if possible, I hope you can go
into detail as well as telling me where they’re from.”
“Yay~ well, today’s guests are mostly military. Is that enough?”
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“More details would be better. Young officers generally prefer saltier

flavors, while you need to cut down the oil and salt for older soldiers and
flavor with spices instead. If possible, I’d like to know their names as
well.”
“Mm. Got it. Then, I’ll keep my ears open.”
After the maid finished, she picked up the tray of meat Furuta had just
finished roasting, and took it back to the banquet.
After that, a very rude Zorzal barged into the kitchen.
“Who made this Ma Nuga meat?!”
The great shout startled Furuta for a moment. After all, he was an
infiltrator, so he had to be wary of being found out. The fear of being
exposed clutched at his heart.
And then, Zorzal noticed the other chefs were looking at Furuta. He
stalked towards him with surprising speed.
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‘No good. Does he suspect me? Is my cover blown?’
The more he thought about it, the closer his hand strayed to the 9mm
pistol stowed under his apron.
However, it would seem his worries were misplaced. Zorzal patted

Furuta on the shoulder.
“Was it you, then?”
“Y-yes. Yes, I made it!”
“I’ve been looking for you for a while. I think you cooked at Piña’s party,
right? No, I know it. I can’t forget that flavor.”
“Eh, ah, yes, I have cooked for Princess Piña before.”
Furuta drew himself up and stood still.
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“I knew it. This taste is fantastic. Actually, I have a job for you. Come to
the palace tomorrow. You can do that, right?”
This was as good as saying, “I won’t take no for an answer”. For some
time now, Zorzal’s attitude was a prideful one that brooked no refusal.
Then Zorzal grabbed the freshly-made Ma Nuga meat nearby and
walked away.
Furuta was stiff with tension. Just watching Zorzal leave was all he could
do.
After that, the Warrior Bunny Zorzal was pulling behind him gave Furuta
a look that seemed more like an appraisal.
“Ah, who’s that?”
The maid who had just returned to the kitchen shrugged.
“You mean that Warrior Bunny? I have no idea. She’s probably a

pleasure slave his Highness took a liking to. Normally, he drags her
everywhere. But her eyes are pretty arrogant. I don’t know what his
Highness did to her, but she’s just a Warrior Bunny.”
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Judging by what the maid said, Furuta was not the only one whom she
looked at that way.
***
Two Phantom jets soared through the sky of the Special Region, like
silver swords.
Above the clouds.
The sun shone down on them, against the backdrop of an azure sky.
With nothing to block the sunlight, the Phantom jets’ metal skins heated
up under the scorching rays of the sun.
“Currently at angels 10.”
The two-plane flight maintained their high altitude.
Several lines appeared on the copilot’s HUD. Kurihama, the copilot,
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adjusted his course in response to his fuel consumption.
The pilot Kamikoda maintained his situational awareness with

mechanical efficiency. Behind and to the side, their fellow aircraft was in
charge of determining their heading.
“Kamikoda, 10 minutes until the border. Our speed is 280 knots, bearing
190. Turn Heading Now.”
“Oh...”
“Roger.”
His partner craft followed the turn beautifully.
“Complete.”
Kurihama adjusted the flight systems with computer-like efficiency, to

the point where normal people might be frustrated by having to put in
the sheer effort that Kurihama was making.
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However, this way, they would not have to worry about going off course
because they had lost their bearings. In addition, this decision brought
out the greatest ability of the plane, which relieved Kamikoda.
They soared through the virgin sky.
Since there was no GPS navigation network here, they had to rely on
maps and landmarks, as well as their position as calculated by their
instruments. After that, they would determine their heading, and finally,
they would plot their course based on the weather reports and their fuel
consumption. Kurihama handled all of these, except for combat
operations.
Because of this, they could show off the Phantoms’ full power.
Because of this, Kamikoda and the others could be here.
“It’s been three days already. We should be able to see it by now,

right?”
“Well, if you see it, don’t launch an attack. We’re just going to evaluate
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its fighting ability.”
“Got it.”
“Well, we say that, but if the unexpected happens, we’ll be counting on

you, Kamikoda-san.”
The voice of Mizuhara from the partner craft came over his earphones.
“Oi, that’s enough, jii-san, you’re too old for words like that. Mind
yourself a little, okay?”
Just as Nishimoto made his joke, there was a ping on the sensors.
“Radar contact, bearing 127. Altitude 3250. Combat Maneuvering, go!”
“Oh.”
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Kamikoda made as if to flip a switch, and tilted the flaps of his craft,
lowering its nose. The engines made a great noise as he pushed the
throttle to the maximum.
The horizon loomed ahead of him like a wall. That was correct. It was
just like a wall. The powerful G-forces crushed their bodies as they
plunged toward the ground through a hole in the clouds.
“Huh. Target’s at 180, altitude unchanged. It’s close, and it’s definitely
alive. Radar returns are way too weak. Its RCS is small enough that it
could count as a stealth aircraft.”
“Huh, in other words, we have to close in on it. All right, we’ll do this by
the book and hit it from behind.”
He breathed with his diaphragm to withstand the Gs, and at the same
time, he finished his preparations, along with his copilot.
The other plane would be orbiting high above to observe the battle. In
addition, they would provide support in the event it was needed. Apart
from that, it would not move much while completing its mission.
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The Phantom tore through the air and its engine roared.
The Dragon’s red-scaled body appeared in the center of the HUD (heads-
up display). The way it glided on air currents was oddly beautiful.
“That’s the one.”
“Target sighted. Identified as Special Region Type A Dangerous Beast,

AKA Dragon. Target confirmed.”
In this world, the strong would devour the weak.
In a sense, the dragon was just feeding itself. Assigning it the label of
“Dangerous Beast” for its activities was merely human arrogance. In this
world, the Dragon was simply an apex predator.
However, humanity disregarded that fact and hunted it. They would not
permit it to roam around and kill people. That too was a purely human
reason.
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“If we want to, we should be able to hit it.”
“Even if we hit it, we won’t be able to bring it down. The 20mm will be as
effective against it as a water pistol. Don’t make pointless attacks. We
don’t want to show all our cards to the enemy.
“Roger.”
As planned, Kamijoda opened the plane’s throttle to the max and

approached the Dragon from the rear before buzzing past it at close
range. In other words, he was taunting it.
Caught in the jet’s powerful slipstream, the startled Dragon briefly lost
control of its limbs.
Kamikoda did a barrel roll and ended up in the Dragon’s vicinity, while
maintaining the same speed and heading as the Dragon. It was like
hitting a dog on the head — it would snap at you. The disruption of its
flight seemed to have wounded the Dragon’s pride, and it immediately
gave chase to the Phantom.
“Hey, I think we made it mad.”
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15,000 feet above the ground, Nishimoto watched as the Dragon chased
after Kamikoda before speaking to Mizuhara.
“It’s got a tight turn radius.”
“That’s because it can flex its body. Looks like we can’t dogfight it.”
“Next, we’ll see how well it can climb.”
Kamikoda opened the throttle and began to gain altitude.
The Dragon continued its pursuit. Kamikoda teased the Dragon by

letting it almost catch up, and then he applied more power to pull
ahead. All the while, he was observing the Dragon’s limits.
“Still climbing at 3600, 3700, 3800 with wings. Its forward thrust is a lot
higher than expected.”
“Next, sudden descent.”
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The climbing jet suddenly angled its nose down into a steep dive.
Drawn by gravity, the plane began to free-fall. The Dragon also stopped
beating its wings, tucking them close to its body as it plummeted after
the Phantom.
“Crap! Kamikoda, more thrust!”
This was the advantage of the Dragon’s ability to freely control airflow
with its wings.
It closed the distance in moments.
“Altitude, 1000, 700, 500”
Although the lock-on alarm did not sound in the cockpit, the two of them
felt a surge of tension that was pretty close. In an attempt to shake the
Dragon, Kamikoda skimmed across the ground and pulled up after that.
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As expected, the Dragon gave chase, but it seemed to understand that it

could not climb fast enough, so it gave up the chase and hovered in mid-
air.
“It can hover…”
“It’s on par with a VSTOL aircraft, that’s for sure.”
“From its mobility, it looks to be about the same as an attack helicopter.

Pretty smart, too.”
Kamikoda levelled out his plane, and maintained his altitude at 2000
feet.
“Kurihama, done with your assessments?
“Ah, basically.”
“Hm, then it should be our turn, then.”
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“At least, I want to say that.”
Kurihama’s chin was trembling as he said that. After all, Kamikoda had
pushed the airframe to its limits several times.
“Battles are not won with airframe performance. You need spirit as well.
We need to see what this fellow can do. Plus we can’t chicken out and
leave the job half-finished. Right?”
As Kamikoda said this, he steered his plane until he was facing the
Dragon.
The Phantom fighter was rapidly closing in on the Dragon.
He could see the Dragon’s face in the HUD.
“Looks like it’s only got one eye. Put us on a collision course.”
The Dragon’s body grew swiftly in their field of vision.
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“This is good intel,” Kurihama said. That said, he did not know how
useful that blind spot of the Dragon’s would be when they closed in.
Full throttle, and then afterburners.
The sound barrier shattered, creating an explosion and a shock wave
This was a game of chicken.
The Dragon lazily spread its wings while keeping its body still, and then
it flapped forward while keeping its body straight. It moved regally, as
befitting of a king of the sky.
“Then, how about this?”
***
The aircrew chief glared at Kamikoda and Kurihama.
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“We don’t have many spares, and a lot of the parts are nearing the end
of their service life.”
“Yeah, we know that.”
Kamikoda and Kurihama’s planes were well scorched. The canopy glass
had turned cloudy under the effects of high temperatures.
Although one could not tell from the outside, the radar and other
electronics were damaged from the heat.
The aircrew chief did his inspection and confirmed the grave damage
both planes had sustained. The fuel systems showed signs of heat
damage as well.
It was sheer luck that they had avoided its razor-sharp claws.
Kamikoda clenched his fists.
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“That cheating bastard, it used its fire breath in a no-weapons duel! How
unmanly is that?!”
“You moron, do you think a giant lizard cares about that? Besides, that
fellow might be female.”
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Vol. 4 :
Chapter 14
Rain poured from the sky, turning the road into a river.
The sky was dark and overcast, which made it hard to tell where the
potholes were under the water. Every time a wheel sank into one, the
HMV would lurch heavily.
Once they got bogged down in mud, getting out would be difficult. Itami
judged that carrying on in the rain would be too dangerous, and so he
turned off the HMV’s engines to take a break.
“The rain around here’s really heavy. Even though it was clear in the
morning, it ended up like this in an instant...”
After hearing Yao say that, Itami decided to wait for the weather to
improve before moving on.
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The noise of the engine was gone, and only the splashing of raindrops
remained.
Itami opened the door, causing the rain pooled in the roof canvas to
wobble around. The sides of the HMV were open to the elements, so the
wind and rain blew in from there. Since the sun in this region was quite
strong, having the sides open was just nice.
The rain came in from both sides, but fortunately the vehicle was big
and the interior was not too soaked. The passengers watched the storm
outside their windows and waited for it to stop.
Itami took a map and a compass from his backpack, in order to confirm
their next direction.
“Our current location is PDG・34・RE249.487311.”
Because the latitude and longitude of the Special Region was not
determined yet, the mapmakers drew arbitrary lines on the aerial recon
photos for use in navigation.
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Along the way, Itami asked Yao about the route she had taken to Arnus,
in order to learn what lay ahead of them.
She set out from Modabarden Village, then curved south around the
base of Mt. Colro, passing through the Terilia Plains, then going past
Metabal, Gremina, Hebrae and Tongut.
Itami drew a curvy line that connected all the places Yao mentioned.
They would backtrack along this route to Yao’s home.
It was not far in a straight line, but the mountains and valleys in the way
meant they could not travel that way. However, the path Yao had taken
instead went in a great big curve around the countryside, which was why
she had taken a month to reach Arnus.
“It couldn’t be helped, I was chasing the rumors of the Men in Green. If
I’d known you were in Arnus from the beginning, I wouldn’t have
detoured so much.”
Rory and Lelei stared mutely at Yao.
If what she said was true, that meant she would have been collecting
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rumors from streets and villages, and then after that she would have
reached Arnus a month later. From that point of view, the time she spent
in Arnus would have been very short.
“We’re now on the Terilia Plains,” Itami said as he checked the location
off on the map.
“After that, I went around the base of Mt. Colro in order not to be noticed
by the Dragon, and then I followed the stream forward. Well, it doesn’t
matter whether you’re coming or going, it’s difficult in both directions.”
They could only travel by daylight, and they could not move quickly
where there were no roads.
Although it was called the Terilia Plains, it was not nearly as flat as it
sounded. Itami had hoped to make some progress, but the huge
boulders everywhere forced him to steer around them, so in the end,
they only moved a little faster than normal.
Itami looked at the map and calculated how long it would take to get
there.
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Two thirds of the cargo bed was taken up by fuel cans and crates
containing LAMs (110mm antitank rocket launchers) large quantities of
explosives, all sorts of equipment, ammunition, food and water.
There were other things as well. The girls had piled things onto the HMV
like they were running away from home, and currently, Tuka was asleep
on a thick fur blanket in the crevices between all the other items. She
looked all right, but Itami knew he did not have much time left.
Tuka had gotten worse ever since they set out from Arnus. Then again, it
made sense when one thought about it. How could Tuka’s father operate
a complicated HMV so naturally? It must have caused a huge conflict in
her heart.
Because Tuka would occasionally be tormented by intense headaches,

Lelei put her to sleep with magic. Thanks to that, they could speak about
things that they could not let Tuka hear.
“Yao. The Dragon was sighted in the Schwarz Forest, right?”
Itami indicated a point on the map, and Yao nodded. She traced a circle
around that point with her finger.
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“Strictly speaking, its territory appears to encompass the entire

southern area, which also includes the Schwarz Forest.”
“That big?”
“If you want to find the Flame Dragon, head south from the Schwarz
Forest to the Lordom Valley. The Flame Dragon hunts in the same place.
We can ambush it there.”
The Lordom Valley was where Yao’s tribe was hiding.
“Our objective is to let Tuka avenge herself on the Flame Dragon, not to
save your people.”
“However, the people there know where the Flame Dragon’s lair is.”
“That’s true,” Itami nodded. Then he decided to head for the ravine
where Yao’s tribe was.
Yao smiled in satisfaction, and Itami felt like hot nails had been
hammered through him.
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“Let me get this straight. I’m not going to fight there. If the Dragon can
fly around freely, we’re at too much of a disadvantage.”
“Then what should we do?”
“Right now, the plan is to set up an ambush in its nest. The specifics will
depend on the local terrain.”
“What terrain would be good?”
“For example…”
The Dragon could not turn freely in narrow spaces. If its nest was not a
place like that, they would have to pick another battlefield, lure it there,
and destroy it.
“If you need a decoy, let me know. I can get my people to help.”
Yao spoke lightly, as though it was really that simple.
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“Something feels strange about all of this. Why didn’t you just run
away?”
Much like how Coda Village’s residents had abandoned it. There was that
choice.
Yao answered, “Humans can do it, but Elves cannot.”
Elves could only live on land that suited them.
Humans could move around and build streets and settlements, but elves
could not. They could not leave the Schwarz Forest that they were
accustomed to. It was hard enough for them just to hide in Lordom
Valley.
“Travelling is fine, though.”
Yao smiled, as though she were mocking herself.
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Itami understood their situation as being able to travel on a boat, but not
being able to live on it. Some people could live on the sea, but they
could not. Much like how humans could only live on land, Dark Elves
could only live in the forests.
Come to think of it, Tuka was taking good care of the forests at the foot
of Arnus Hill. To her, it must have been a necessary environment.
“Still, is this all right?” Rory asked as she looked at the sleeping Tuka.
Of course, they could not tell Tuka the true purpose of this journey. All
they had said so far was that they were heading south, towards Yao’s
village.
“Ah. I was planning to bring her in front of the Flame Dragon, then tell
her ‘This is the enemy who killed your father’.”
“She’ll definitely be mad at you for tricking her.”
She would be. But the fact was that using Tuka’s fantasy and pretending
to be her father was already tricking her, in a sense. Itami smiled and
said, “Why are you saying this now, after everything we’ve been
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through?”
“If that’s the case, we’re all accomplices,” Lelei said.
“Well, it can’t be helped. She can scold us all together,” Rory grinned,
before patting Itami’s shoulder.
***
The Schwarz Forest was a vast domain that was often called “a sea of
trees”.
It was far deeper than anyone could have imagined. In its furthest
reaches, fallen tree trunks were covered in piles of rotting leaves, and
over them grew the branches of gigantic trees. The roots on the ground
overlapped each other so thickly one could not see the ground, while
above them the sky was blocked out by the spreading tree canopies. It
was like stepping into a different world.
Of course, walking through here on foot was a difficult task, to say

nothing of actually driving a vehicle in. They had no choice but to go
around it. After making some progress toward the South, they decided
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to rest for the night. The next day, they followed the edge of the forest
westward, before finally reaching Lordom Valley.
The Dark Elves were hiding in the caves here.
At a glance, this looked like pretty good terrain for a fight.
Like the name “valley” would suggest, the flat land was sliced open by
the flow of a river into a narrow, twisting ravine. If they could get the
Dragon to descend into the bottom of the ravine, they might be able to
carry out an ambush on it. However, this place was far too narrow for
the Dragon to squeeze in.
Come to think of it, this place was a place for the Dark Elves to hide. If
the Flame Dragon could fit in here, they would be done for.
The bottom of the ravine was quite narrow. The river had scattered large
and small rocks all around, and it looked like a good spot for fishing.
However, there was no way for the Dark Elves to gather enough food
from this place. They would need to leave the Valley eventually, and the
Flame Dragon was counting on that.
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In addition, the sudden, torrential rain would raise the level of the river
until it seeped into their caves. They had to struggle every day so their
possessions and food would not get washed away. It was a hard life.
“Please, stop here.”
Yao was waiting for Itami and the rest on top of a cliff. Hardly affected by
the muddy ground after the rain, she nimbly descended to the bottom of
the valley. After passing through a narrow passage which could only fit
one person, she descended another slope and reached the bottom.
Itami shut off the engine.
And just at this moment, Tuka woke up, stretching her arms like she was
cheering “banzai” as she stretched. Then, like a child, she rubbed her
eyes in a very adorable way.
However, she immediately grimaced and said, “the petrol stinks”.
Tuka was sleeping amidst the petrol cans and the ammunition and
explosives boxes, so it was only natural she would say that. The HMV did
not have glass except for the windscreen, so when in motion, the air
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from outside would ventilate the interior. However, when the vehicle was
stationary, the fumes would sear the nose, though it was not harmful.
“Did you have a good rest?”
“Mm, I did.”
After Tuka said that, she dismounted.
Then she stretched again, taking in a lungful of the fresh air outside.
After surveying the landscape, Itami took his pistol and got off the
vehicle. Since this was Flame Dragon territory, he had to be prepared.
That said, 7.62mm rounds were useless against it. Still, he surveyed his
surroundings with his binoculars. He paid close attention to the sky.
“Where is this place?”
In response to Tuka’s question, Itami said, “This is Lordom Valley. Yao’s

people are taking refuge here.”
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“I see, so we’re here at last. We can finally get rid of that Dark Elf.”
Tuka’s opinion of Yao was difficult to explain in words. As for Yao, she
was home at last, so she could breathe a sigh of relief.
“But to think, she lives in a place like this…”
Tuka nervously looked down into the ravine, at the river flowing far, far
below her.
Elves loved the green of the forest, but there was none of that to be
seen here.
The valley only had rocks and sand. The closest thing to vegetation here
were a few shrubs and the weeds that covered the ground.
“Why did they choose to live here?”
It would seem she had let herself forget about how Yao and her people
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had been attacked by the Dragon. She had completely excised

everything related to the Flame Dragon from her mind. Therefore, all
Itami could say was, “Who knows? There should be a reason for it.”
Even while he was talking, he did not fail to watch the sky.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
Suddenly, seven to eight dark elf men and women appeared out of the
landscape. They were holding bows, and they surrounded Itami and the
others.
***
“Yao, you have returned at last. But have you forgotten why we sent you
out?”
This was a cave at the very bottom of the valley, where sunlight could
not reach. Yao was on one knee, lit by the dim light of the nearby
lanterns. She was surrounded by seven of her tribe’s elders in a horse-
shoe shape. Face toward the ground, she carefully replies, “No, I have
not forgotten.”
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“It has been two months since we sent you forth. Many of our people
have died in this time. We have lost contact with the others who
scattered to other lands.”
“We had started to think you had given up your quest after not having
come back for so long.”
Yao looked up to the three most important ones among the elders and
said, ”I have brought a Man in Green back, in order to help defeat the
Flame Dragon.”
“Ohhhh!”
The elders exclaimed as one.
“Well done. Mm. Well done.”
“Then, then where is the Man in Green?”
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“I left them at the entrance of the Valley, because bringing them here
would cause unnecessary trouble,”
Yao’s answer made the elders frown. Then they asked her in a surprised
tone, “Why did you not invite them here? Guests who have travelled a
long way should not be made to wait. It is rude.”
“Indeed. A lack of etiquette will reflect poorly on our tribe.”
The elders rose at once and made to leave the cave. But Yao darted in
front of them, saying, “Please wait, please wait,” as she prepared to
explain the situation.
“What is the reason for this?”
“This is the reason the Men in Green refused to defeat the Flame
Dragon. I have committed a grave sin.”
Yao told them what she had done in Arnus. She paid particular attention
to what she had done to Tuka, narrating it in extensive detail.
“From our point of view, we were indeed asking you your reasons, as
well as the purpose of what you did. However, what we wanted to ask
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was, is this matter really important?”
Yao was asked about her actions because the elders did not understand
them. She had expected to be rebuked for what she had done. After all,
Yao felt that she had committed both an unethical act and a grave sin
against Tuka.
But the elders did not care about that. This made Yao feel that there was
something wrong with her moral values.
“So you are saying that this Itami person came to save that Elf.”
“Yes. This Itami is also one of the Men in Green.”
“A wise and considerate person may decide to leave a friend to die if he

determines there is danger.”
“However, a compassionate person may step into danger, perhaps even

break the rules, to save a friend.”
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“Mm, he must be quite a man. If he is unmoved by fame or fleshly

desire, he may well be a person worthy of our trust. Then, that Elf has
come along to exterminate the Flame Dragon?”
“Yes. Itami plans to bring Tuka before the Flame Dragon and tell her the
truth.”
The elders saw Yao’s tortured expression. They sighed and looked at
each other.
“Yao, you seem unable to accept what you have done. Were we in your
place, we would have done as you did. This was a necessary action to
complete your mission. Regardless of what people say, we must use any
means necessary to do it. That is the virtue of us Dark Elves.”
“Indeed. Even trickery is permitted. You have done well, Yao.”
After reflecting on Yao’s actions and her lack of morality, they heaped
praise on her.
“Do you find the actions you took to carry out your mission unbearable?
However, this guilt is not yours alone.”
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“Indeed. We ordered you to use any and all means to complete your
task.”
“You were simply following orders. We will all share the responsibility
with you.”
The elders viewed Yao’s actions as representative of the entire tribe,

and then they began discussing the appropriate compensation for this
task.
“However, all this was the result of my actions. If compensation is

needed, should I not be the one to offer it?”
The elders replied in depressed tones to Yao, who was insisting that she
should offer to be the compensation.
“And what do you intend to do?”
With an eager look on her face, she replied, “Please leave it to me.”
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“As for you, casually betting your life is disgraceful. It is not atonement.
It is merely taking the easy, despicable way out, and that will only
compound your sins.”
“That does sound like something you would say. Then, if you truly wish
to atone, then you cannot choose an easy path. You must take the
longer, harder path, and you cannot carry that weight alone.”
“Then what should I do?”
“Obviously, you must help defeat the Flame Dragon. In addition, you
must defend that Elf who is so precious to that Man in Green.”
“Naturally, we will gather our warriors to help.”
“Also, I believe the Man in Green left his army and came here on his
own. In order to prevent him from returning to a messy situation, how
about offering gifts and our thanks to his superiors?”
“The gratitude of the Dark Elves alone will not be enough. The Flame
Dragon has scourged many kingdoms and tribes. If you gather them all
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to offer their rewards and thanks, it might be enough to appease the

wrath of his superiors.”
“Mm. I shall do this.”
The elders decided on their plans for the future. At the same time, they
drew up plans that Yao herself had not even thought of.
Yao’s way of thinking had been swiftly demolished by the elders. At the
same time, she also realised that she alone would not be able to restore
Itami’s reputation, so she stood aside and waited.
“Then, let us go welcome the Man in Green.”
“Oh. We shall go receive the Man in Green who once drove off the Flame
Dragon.”
Tao followed the elders out of the cave.
But at this moment, a shockwave came from a thunderous explosion in
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the valley.
***
“Shit! It’s the Flame Dragon!”
The shouts of the Dark Elves rose from all around them.
The Dark Elf male who had approached Itami and his group to check
them out was snatched up by the swooping Flame Dragon. His legs
thrashed from between the gaps in the Flame Dragon’s fangs, and the
huge beast chewed and swallowed him in one gulp.
“Aaah, ah, ah, aaaawaah, aah, ah—”
Tuka had seen the whole thing from start to finish, and she froze up.
Standing still in front of a Flame Dragon was nothing short of suicide.
The other elves began fleeing for their lives, and some of them raised
their bows to fire on the Flame Dragon. However, their arrows were
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useless against the Dragon’s armor-like scales.
The Flame Dragon completely disregarded the Elves. Instead, it focused

all its attention on the frozen Tuka. Then it opened its blood-stained
maw and lunged at Tuka.
Just as Tuka was about to consumed by the jaws of death, a great crash
of stone shattering echoed throughout the Valley.
Like a black petal borne on the wind, Rory Mercury charged the Flame
Dragon and struck a mighty blow with her halberd. The massive slab of
steel struck the Flame Dragon square on the jaw.
However, even that mighty blow could not shatter the Flame Dragon’s
resilient scales. Still, the heavy impact of the attack smacked the Flame
Dragon’s face away.
It was as bizarre a scene as an ant uppercutting an elephant.
And then, the Flame Dragon collapsed onto the ground. It threw up a
cloud of dust that flew everywhere. The impact of its fall shook the
ground and rang like thunder.
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“So strong…”
The Dark Elves stared in awe.
“duge-main”
Right after Lelei cast her spell, a series of rings made of magical light
formed in front of her.
Lelei snapped her fingers. In response, the powerful blast wave surged
out in a straight line and struck the Flame Dragon’s body.
However, the ray of magic power bounced off the Flame Dragon’s scales
and buried itself in the ground.
The Flame Dragon nimbly got back to its feet with the help of its flapping
wings. It knew it was at a disadvantage on land, and it kicked itself off
the ground and soared into the air.
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Rory attempted to pursue, but the Flame Dragon’s breath drove her
back down.
The Apostle of Emroy, God of War, swung her halberd so forcefully that
the wind of its passage cleaved the high-temperature exhalation apart.
However, the Flame Dragon took advantage of her lowered guard and
followed up with a swipe of its sharp claws.
“Kya~an!”
Rory managed to evade the claws, but her small body was still sent
flying by the Flame Dragon’s paw.
She landed with both feet on the ground, her momentum digging two
trenches into the ground as she slowed to a halt. Then Rory grabbed her
halberd in a power stance, wiped her face clean of mud with the back of
her hand, and licked at the blood flowing from a small cut on her lip.
“Not bad.”
The battle was a stalemate. Neither side had struck a decisive blow
against the other.
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Lelei created a second series of light rings. The Flame Dragon

understood what it was and got out from in front of her.
The light rings were very hard to re-orient once formed, so all she
managed to do was carve out a hole in the ground. Lelei clicked her
tongue in frustration.
***
“Ha, haa, haha, haa, haa…”
Tuka was having trouble breathing, and she shuddered uncontrollably.
Itami grabbed Tuka and bore her down to the ground as Rory smote the
Flame Dragon mightily.
“Ah, ah, awa, naa…”
Itami said to the panting Tuka, “Tuka, look carefully, look carefully at
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that....”
He embraced Tuka from behind and pressed both his hands on her face
and forced her to look at the Flame Dragon.
“That’s the Flame Dragon that killed your father. Do you understand?”
Tuka closed her eyes and tried to turn away, but Itami used all his
strength to stop her.
“Look! Look at it! That’s the Flame Dragon that burned your village! It’s
the one that killed your father!”
“No, no way, Father’s not dead, because father—”
“I’m not your father. I’m just a stranger. You’re not my daughter!”
“Hiiiiiiiiii, no, why are you saying these cruel things? Somebody save
me!”
Tuka’s heart was being torn apart. Itami’s words and the cold reality
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before her eyes assaulted her relentlessly.
The battle of the Flame Dragon versus Lelei and Rory was finished in an
instant. Now, the Flame Dragon surveyed the scene. It seemed to be
looking for an enemy from its memory.
Tuka saw the arrow stuck in the Dragon’s eye.
What she saw next was the image of her father fading away as she
plunged into the well, and the sharp teeth of the Flame Dragon jaws
behind him.
“That, that is—”
“That’s right, that bastard killed your father! Shoot it! Take it down, kill
it! Let it all out!”
“No way! I can’t do it. Nobody can beat a monster like that!”
Still holding Tuka, Itami got off the HMV and grabbed a LAM from the pile
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in the back. He did not know when the enemy would show up, so he
prepared one of them for use at any time.
“This LAM took out one of its arms!”
As Tuka saw the LAM, the Flame Dragon howled and kicked off the
ground, flying up into the air. The great cry robbed her legs of strength.
Since Itami had been through this before, he didn’t freeze up
completely.
“Shit, that bastard remembers the spanking it got from this!”
Once the Flame Dragon took to the air, Rory’s halberd would not be able
to reach it. Lelei’s magic was useless against fast-moving targets.
Rory tried to jump up and attack the Flame Dragon several times, but
she was driven back by either its right paw or a stream of flames.
Lelei’s magic was very destructive, but it was not instantaneous and
thus easily avoided.
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And then, the Dark Elves arrows did no damage even if they hit.
They thought that all they could do was wait for the Flame Dragon to
leave.
The Flame Dragon soared up into the sky, where Rory could not reach it
at all, and leisurely spread its wings to keep it hovering in the air while it
turned its back to them.
However, Itami raised the LAM and held Tuka rightly from behind.
In order not to let her run away from reality again, he could not show his
powerlessness in front of the Flame Dragon.
He took aim at the airborne Flame Dragon’s back, and pressed Tuka’s
finger on the trigger. She had to do this herself.
“You can do it. Look carefully. That’s the enemy. Use your strength and
pull the trigger. Do it!”
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Itami was shouting into Tuka’s ear.
“I can’t, I can’t do it!”
Itami forcefully restrained the crying Tuka, who was trying her best to
struggle out of his grasp, while adjusting the LAM’s aim so that it would
not miss.
“That’s enough, pull the trigger!”
Frightened of the voice shouting into her ear, drifting into a hazy
dreamscape, Tuka rightly squeezed the handle.
She pulled the trigger, and a jet of flame roared forth from the rocket
engine, driving its antitank warhead downrange.
As expected, the shot missed. However, it hit the side of the valley wall.
Its thunderous explosion sent a shockwave through the Valley.
***
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Once they heard the Flame Dragon had been driven off, all the Dark
Elves emerged. From where they were hiding.
“The Men in Green came! And there’s Rory Mercury and the wizard girl!”
To the Dark Elves, who had been one-sidedly hunted and preyed upon,
this was wonderful news. Now was the time to exterminate the Flame
Dragon and return to their peaceful lives in the Schwarz Forest, so they
all raised up their weapons.
They had heard of how the Flame Dragon was driven off. The Man in
Green could do it. And he had the aid of the Apostle of Emroy and a
wizard of the Lindon school.
And so, the Dark Elves hiding in the nearby hills, plains and the
mountains gathered in Lordom Valley with vengeance in their hearts. By
midnight, the narrow valley was filled with Dark Elves. Even more people
arrived by the time the sun came up.
The elders were thinking, “To think there were so many people”, or “To
think so few were left”. How long had they hidden? However, the days of
waiting for extinction were over. The battle that would decide the fate of
the Dark Elves was nigh.
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They opened the precious food stocks to welcome Itami and the
warriors. The cooks did their best with the meager ingredients they had
in order to produce good dishes.
Elsewhere, Yao, who had brought them here, was showered in the praise
of her friends and people.
Yao, who had once been nicknamed “Unlucky”, had never received a
welcome like this before. She simply could not calm down.
Yao did not feel she was worthy to receive everyone’s praise, at least
not before she had atoned for her sins. Yet, her idea of atoning for her
sins was discarded by the elders as taking it lightly, so now she did not
know what she should do.
Although she was safe now, a lot of people had gotten the wrong idea
from her absence.
“What happened to Todorom?”
“He got eaten. Happened right after you left.”
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“How could that be, even he died?”
“He was the one competing with you to be the messenger too. Ah, what
a shame.”
A quick glance revealed that there were much fewer people of her age
than before. After realising so many people had died, even Yao, who was
used to misfortune, could not help but droop her shoulders.
“Yao, you idiot! Why didn’t you come back sooner? If you did, Medosa…
Medosa…!”
Yao mutely bore the cry of despair from one of her friends, who had lost
her lover.
“Yao, you idiot! You…!”
Anyone seeing Yao silently endure the unfair castigation from her friends
would be inclined to forgive her. But to Yao, that unrestrained abuse was
what she deserved right now.
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In addition, there was the man who ran off with her friend. Now he came
before her and said his wife was dead.
In truth, Yao did not mind embracing him again. However, she could not
forgive her first love who had run off with her best friend. She should
have refused him. However, she felt that it would be alright to grant him
the comfort he sought. And then, she was surprised that she felt this
way.
She realised that she was quite the masochist.
However, Yao was no longer in a situation where she could decide what
happened to herself.
Yao thought of that, and thus she said, “I, I belong to the Man in Green.”
And then she turned around and fled from her friends.
***
Right now, Itami looked very demoralized.
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“Dammit.”
Tuka was curled up by the fireplace, asleep on Itami’s lap. She was tired
out from a bout of crying.
The Dark Elf elders who came to check on her felt that she had sealed
off her heart to maintain balance in her spirit. When she suddenly
understood what was going on, her pent-up emotions burst forth all at
once. The pain was worse than normal, and Tuka was unable to bear it.
Therefore, she ran away from reality and let Itami become her father.
Now, one false move might lead to an irrecoverable situation. The rest
she was taking now was a warning sign of that.
Itami grabbed his head as he wondered how to deal with Tuka.
“Itami-dono, are you troubled?”
Itami sighed in response to Yao’s question.
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“I’m thinking about Tuka. Her whole mind is filled with Father this,
Father that, and no matter how I try to deny it, she won’t listen. I feel
so… powerless.”
“Once, when I lost my fiance, I was depressed for several months. My

heart still aches from time to time when I think about him.”
“What, you had a fiance?”
Yao pouted slightly and replied, “Yes, is that strange?”
Itami shook his head to indicate that was not the case, and then he
turned the topic back to Tuka.
“Forget it. No matter, what, I need to bring her in front of the Flame
Dragon again, even if I have to drag her.”
Yao nodded in response to Itami’s idea.
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“I belong to Itami now. I am ready to obey any orders you have.”
After Yao said that, she sat down beside Itami, as though waiting for
instructions from him.
***
“Ahhhh, what a pain, the halberd’s edge won’t harm it at all!”
Rory grumbled as she sharpened her halberd’s edge.
She had considered just using the halberd as a bludgeoning object. Who
knew, she might be able to lay it out with a good whack. Of course, the
Dragon would not stand there and let her use it as a punching bag. Even
with one arm, it was still strong and agile enough to keep up with Rory.
She did not think she would lose, but she did not think she could win
either. The Flame Dragon was one of the worst matchups for Rory.
“Beating him to death’s not fun at all…”
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She disliked the feeling of crushing people to death. Cutting people up in

one slice was much better. Just as Rory was muttering to herself, a Dark
Elf elder came before her.
“Your Holiness. We are deeply grateful that you have come to this
unsightly place.”
Rory stopped polishing her halberd, and pointed it at the elder.
“That’s fine. I didn’t come for you.”
“I understand that clearly. However, I pray you will not stay here. Please,
come inside.”
The elder ushered Rory into a cave. “It will be more comfortable here
than by the riverside.
However, Rory shook her head in refusal. She had a look of disgust on
her face.
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“You know I can’t go underground, right?”
“I heard you had a dispute with our god before, is that why?”
“...”
“No, I pray you will not be angry, but… I heard it was not a good thing.”
“Why do I have to be that fellow’s bride? Besides, all she wants is to use
an enfleshed demigod as a pawn. I don’t want to waste my remaining 40
years on boring stuff like that. Well, I did manage to meet an interesting
man as a result.”
“Oya? May I know who Your Holiness has her eye on?”
“I plan to stay with that fellow until he grows old and dies.”
The Dark Elf’s line of sight followed Rory’s to Itami.
Itami was now seated down, and Tuka was sleeping on his lap.
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And Yao was standing beside Itami, talking to him.
“Still, why did Hardy open such a big hole at Arnus?”
As Rory said that, Yao sat beside Itami. Rory frowned, and then she
stood up.
“A hole? Arnus?”
The abandoned elder had no idea what Rory was talking about.
***
Lelei was frustrated at the weaknesses of her magic.
Once her target started moving, it would be very hard to take aim.
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The Flame Dragon could not possibly stay still while she was preparing
her attack. That meant that it would not work unless she could pin it
down.
Of course, given Lelei’s current skills, she could not do it.
Lelei felt that she needed Itami and Rory’s help, so she began looking for
him. Then she saw him sitting down, sandwiched between Yao and Rory
while Tuka slept on his lap. It made Lelei nauseous, and she stood up.
***
Nobody knew when it had started, but people were starting to gather
around Itami.
While it was natural for Rory, Lelei and Yao to stay by his side, the Dark
Elf elders and the warriors of the various tribes began clustering nearby.
The elders told Itami that the warriors from the tribes would accompany
him when he moved out. However, to Itami, knowing the location of the
Flame Dragon’s lair was good enough. Therefore, he tried to explain to
the elders about the dangers of the place they would be heading to, as
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well as many other things. The elders simply smiled to him in a way that
suggested they could not accept no for an answer.
“Tomorrow morning, then.”
“Sorry about that. Then, I need your people to help me carry some
things.”
“That’s fine. Everyone who wants to go with you to exterminate the

Flame Dragon is already here. Let us know if there’s anything else you
need help with. Nobody will refuse you.”
“Indeed, indeed. All the young ones are prepared for this. Everyone feels
that tomorrow will be a special day.
“Well, you say that, but we might not be able to finish it in one day. Just
getting to the objective will take two to three days, longer if something
happens.
The elders smiled at Itami’s words.
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“We understand. Since you plan to attack the empty nest, you won’t be
able to do anything if its master is home. However, the Men in Green are
quite adept at cunning tactics, it seems.”
Itami’s plan to attack the Flame Dragon was to plant 75 kilos of C4

plastic explosive into its nest and blow it up when it came home to roost.
It was an evil and despicable plan.
Itami was not interested in fighting it head on like a traditional hero.

After all, Itami’s specialty was running away from difficulties and finding
ways to run away from difficulties.
If that was not enough to kill it, they would ripple fire LAMs into it. The
Flame Dragon would take a fair bit of damage in the process, and it
could push the situation in a favorable direction.
The elders had no idea what Itami meant by “explosives” and

“explosions”. They simply thought that if the Men in Green spoke of
them, they must be very powerful.
“Why not let the young ones watch and learn?”
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He said that, but when Itami looked at the people whom the elders
considered “young ones”, they were all older than him.
For example, Yao looked like a bewitching 30 year old, but in truth she
was 315 years old. Itami had had mixed feelings about this when he first
found out. But when he thought about the age problem, he recalled the
very young-looking Tuka and Rory, and decided to think of something
else.
“Speaking of which, the way the Flame Dragon keeps hunting in the
same places doesn’t seem very intelligent to men. Could it be that it’s
not very smart?”
Lelei answered Itami’s question.
“The Flame Dragon has very long active and hibernation cycles. The
more food it acquires and consumes, the longer it stays in hibernation.
We do not feel that should be a problem.”
“I see… and how long is it active?”
“By rights, it should not have woken up for at least another 50 years.”
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“And what does it do when it hibernates?”
“Well, it sleeps the way some animals hibernate in winter. There are
records in scholarly books.”
“When it’s active it eats. When it’s hibernating it sleeps. What a pleasant
life it leads. If only I were a Dragon…”
Itami was quite envious of it. To Itami, whose life was one long break,
being able to add playing into that cycle would be his ideal form of life.
“It’s hardly a pleasant way of life. All living creatures have a lot to do
during their active period. For example, besides catching food, they also
have to build nests, fight over territory, and so on.”
Lelei’s words made everyone freeze.
In this world, there were some people who would frighten you if you
went “Ahhhh” when you met them.
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For instance, when a dentist wanted to drill your teeth.
For instance, when an assistant hair stylist snipped his scissors.
To a customer, they would normally relax and leave the haircut to the
hairstylist. But if they heard the word “Ah”, they would panic.
Or perhaps when the captain of a passenger flight was talking to his

passengers and was cut off half-way by a “This plane isn’t flying
normally.” Anyone would feel a chill down their spine.
Similarly, Lelei’s words made Itami and the Elves straighten up.
There was a fatal flaw they had not noticed, but which would be soon
brought to light. Their bodies shuddered in fear.
“What’s wrong?” Lelei asked nervously.
“Yeah, so like an animal, it reproduces during its active period and raises
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kids.”
“Oi, oi, oi don’t say that, I don’t want to meet Flame Dragon cubs.”
“Well Young Dragons shouldn’t be as bad as Flame Dragons.”
“Then how bad are they?”
“Ancient Dragons > Young Dragons > (mature subspecies) > Wyverns.”
The situation had not changed at all. As Itami heard this, he suddenly
stood up.
“I forgot something, I‘m heading back to get it,” Itami said as he began
the preparations for going back. Yao was sobbing beside him, “How can
you do this after coming all this way?” and the elders were in a panic.
Rory, who was holding Tuka, spoke to Itami.
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“How about this girl?”
Itami exhaled deeply.
“Dragons only lay one or two eggs at a time. In addition, Ancient

Dragons only reproduce once a century.”
Lelei continued explaining, as though to calm everyone down, and Itami

relaxed, in more ways than one.
“That’s right, the chances should be pretty low.”
“Indeed, Itami-dono. I’ve only ever seen one Dragon.”
“That’s true. I doubt we’ll really be that unlucky.”
Itami felt more relieved as he said that.
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However, the surrounding Dark Elves all shuddered and looked straight
at Yao when Itami said “unlucky”.
“What? What happened?”
Itami could sense the change in the room, and asked about it.
“Nothing, that, it’s nothing… ahahahaha…”
Yao had broken out in a cold sweat since someone mentioned the word
“unlucky”.
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Vol. 4 :
Chapter 15
It was clear that everyone did not know much about the Flame Dragon,
but even so, they had to take up their weapons and fight. That was what
it meant to be a warrior.
The Dark Elves equipped themselves with the gear that they were
familiar with — sabers, katars, bow and arrows, and their trademark
black leather armor.
There was something… special about the tight-fitting bondage armor

they wore. It would have been one thing if only the women wore it, but
more than half of the group were men and they wore the same armor
that their female counterparts did.
I don’t want to be seen with these guys... Itami thought as he glanced

around like a wary herbivore.
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“Itami-dono, the nine of us will accompany you on your mission.”
Yao greeted Itami as the representative of these men and women.

Perhaps she might have understood how he felt. After that, they began
introducing themselves.
From the males, Crow looked like a human man in his 40s, while Meto,
Ban, Fen and Nokk looked to be about the same age as Yao. Kom looked
like a teenager. After listening to them talking among themselves, Kom
seemed to be the youngest of their group, at a mere 154 years old. For
some reason, he felt that he had to respect them all as his elders. As for
the females, Seimy and Nayu looked slightly younger than Yao.
In any case, they gathered together and said, “Please take care of us”,
and then Itami began distributing the gear on the HMV. Said gear
referred to the LAMs and the plastic explosives, as well as reels of
detonating cord.
“Is this what they call the ‘Rod of Steel’...?”
The long metal tube looked weighty and potent to the Dark Elves, and
they enthused over it.
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“I’ve heard that this is not a magic item, but something called a
weapon… but how do we use it? We should be able to use it too, right?”
“Ah, yes, I’ll teach you how to use it now.”
Since the Dark Elves were intelligent beings, not only did Itami have to
distribute the equipment among them, but since he was entrusting them
with weapons, he had to teach the Dark Elves the proper way of using
them too. If they were horses, there would be no need to worry about
them accidentally fiddling with the gear, but since they were sentient, if
they made a mistake or fiddled around with it carelessly, there was a
risk of an explosion which would blow them all up.
To that end, Itami carefully explained the operation of the LAM 110mm
anti-tank rocket launcher to them.
Once the Dark Elves learned how to use it, they might think, “We can
beat the Flame Dragon now”. It was obvious from the looks in their eyes
that they hated the Flame Dragon bitterly, and there was a risk that they
might be overcome by their emotions and wildly discharge a rocket the
moment they saw it, especially since the possession of the weapons
made them think, “We have to kill the Flame Dragon this time, no
matter what”. Still, that enthusiasm was useful, although their final
objective was to defeat the Flame Dragon and let Tuka deal the finishing
blow. The first two points he drilled into them were “Do not touch the
trigger if you’re not ready to fire” and “Do not fire if anyone is standing
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behind you”.
First, they would need to extract the LAM from its transportation
package by pulling it out by the warhead, slowly and carefully. After
removing the protective covering from the launcher tube, they would
have to attach the firing assembly and weapon sight. The Dark Elves
were not familiar with tools, so it would be faster for Itami to do it
himself. While Itami was setting up a LAM, he could hear the Dark Elves
around him cracking dirty jokes.
The person to Itami’s side that said “If such a thick thing went into me,
I’d break” must have been Seimy, and Ban proudly retorted “Mine’s
bigger”. It would seem the Dark Elves were a sexually open tribe. He did
not know if this was a good or bad thing, but if he got embarrassed,
people might think he was a weirdo.
The Dark Elves could not read the instructions and warnings on the
launcher tube. Therefore, Itami got around this problem by personally
demonstrating how to set up the launcher. First, he pulled out the long
probe on the tip of the warhead, removed the protective cover, and then
turned it in the direction the arrow pointed. Then he explained that
against tanks (or armor), the probe would need to be extended. Against
humans, it could stay as it was. Naturally, against the Flame Dragon
they would need to pull it out.
“Then, how do you make the thing on the front shoot out?” Fen asked as
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he lifted the LAM. He was muscular and much more physically imposing
than Itami, so when he put it on his shoulder, he looked pretty cool.
“When the warhead touches something, it will explode. Just telling you is
troublesome, so I should probably let you experience it. Also, in order to
counteract the weapon’s recoil, the LAM sprays out a countermass from
the back with great force when you fire it. It’s very dangerous, so make
absolutely sure nobody’s standing behind you when you fire it.”
“Mm, I see…”
The Dark Elves picked out suitable targets and began practicing firing
postures. Since the warhead was very heavy, everyone realised that
tracking a mobile target was difficult.
“Then, what about those crates and that rope?”
Kom, the Dark Elf who looks like a boy but who was 154 years old,
looked at the rest of the gear. Counting the weight of the LAMs and the
other stuff, each of them would be carrying 20 kilos of equipment.
“Oh, that’s the explosive and the primer. You can carry those normally.
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Honestly speaking, that explosive is more important than the LAMs.”
After camouflaging himself with grass and leaves, Itami began climbing
the Tyuba mountains. He had even painted his face in green and brown
camouflage paint, while all the metallic parts on his weapon were
wrapped up to prevent them from making noise when they bumped into
something. While he did not know much about the daily life of the Flame
Dragon, it was a wild beast, so it should have keen senses. It would be
best to take the appropriate steps against it.
After that, Itami carried the sleeping Tuka on his back.
“Father, I’m scared. Something’s coming,” Tuka said.
Because she seemed completely terrified, Lelei put her to sleep.
However, Tuka was quite obvious in her usual clothes, so Itami draped
her in his bulletproof vest. It served to camouflage her, and the titanium
alloy trauma plates would protect her from danger. Then again, it was
questionable how useful it would be against a Flame Dragon attack.
Behind him was Rory, Lelei and the nine Dark Elves following them. All of
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them camouflaged themselves, like Itami did.
“Ugh, this smells gross.”
Crow pinched his nose as he grumbled. Yao replied, “Itami-dono told us

to do this, so it can’t be helped.”
That was why everyone slathered all the exposed parts of their body in
animal oils.
“I know this is supposed to hide our scent, but won’t the smell just make
us more obvious?” Nokk said as he climbed.
There were no trails on this mountain and the terrain was rough. The
HMV could not drive through here, so they had to go on foot. They kept
low as they moved, until they were almost rubbing against the ground,
and they moved through trenches, depressions, and the shadows of big
trees. They changed camouflage to match their current terrain and
camped at night, only moving the next morning.
Slow as walking might be, they would reach their objective eventually if
they just kept moving forward.
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On the evening of the third day, they finally reached the slopes of Mt.
Tyuba. The smell of sulphur hung heavy in the air, negating their scent
camouflage.
Everyone changed into a sand and rock-type camouflage pattern. Itami

blackened the mud that he and Tuka used to camouflage their hands
and feet, in order to hide the obvious green color.
Itami ordered everyone to go prone, and then signalled with his hands
for Crow to come to the head of the group. Crow had been here before,
so he would be their guide.
Crow squatted beside Itami.
“Does the Flame Dragon enter from that crater?”
“Yes. Its nest is on one of the outcroppings protruding from the side of
the volcano’s mouth,” Crow explained.
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He had come to this place before to gather the sulphur found near the
volcano. When burned, the smoke from the sulphur would preserve dried
fruits for a longer time, and it would look fresher as well.
Although he had only come to gather sulphur, he chanced upon a cave

during his searches. That cave led to an outcropping on the interior of
the volcano, where the Flame Dragon lay sleeping.
“I had a bad feeling when I saw it, so I ran.”
Itami questioned Crow about the interior of the volcano, particularly the
condition of the air within.
According to Crow, the volcano’s mouth was apparently bottomless, so

he did not know anything about what lay below. However, the interior
was well-ventilated due to the cave leading to the outside, and unlike
the exterior, which reeked of sulphur, the air quality inside was very
good.
“So the Flame Dragon’s nest is inside the cave?”
Rory seemed quite shocked when she heard it, but she quickly shut her
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mouth.
“No, it’s inside the volcano’s mouth. The cave simply connects the
outside to the inside.”
“Then, what if we descended from the summit of the volcano?”
“Not possible. The interior of the volcano’s mouth is a sheer cliff. I don’t
think we could climb down from up there.”
Rory frowned, because she could not go under the earth. Itami smiled
and said, “Don’t worry.”
“That’s fine, Rory can stay outside. All we’re doing is checking if the
Flame Dragon is in. If it comes back, she can contact us.”
According to the plan, they would enter the cave and check if the Flame
Dragon was there. If it was gone, they would plant the explosives, and if
it was in, they would immediately fall back and wait for it to leave. If
things went well, Rory would not need to do anything.
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“Shouldn’t we stop it from leaving?”
“Mm. We don’t want to make it suspicious. We’ll hide and wait for it to
leave first.”
Itami muttered, “Does Rory know how to use this?” as he fiddled with his
earpiece and headset mike. Rory hurriedly pulled her mike to her mouth
and Itami tested the wireless connection to Lelei and Rory.
“We’re going in.”
Itami let Tuka down. His plan was to go in with a rifle. Just as he was
about to do it, however, Yao and the other Dark Elves urged him to stay.
“Let us handle these trivial tasks.”
Itami was only too glad to let Yao and Crow go in instead of himself.
It took a while before Yao and Crow got back, and Itami directed the
others to take a rest, while they had a dinner of dried travel rations. The
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smell of food would be covered up by the smell of sulphur, but that same
smell made it difficult to work up an appetite.
Still, considering what would happen soon, they did not know when they
might next get the chance to eat. Fortunately, everyone understood this,
and they ate with gusto regardless of their current location.
Lelei and Rory each took out a set of JSDF Type II Combat Rations (beef
curry / tuna salad / pickled vegetables / rice) as well as just-add-water
heating packs. The Dark Elves had dried fish from the valley, dried fruits,
beans and the like, but they were fascinated by Rory and Lelei’s
processed foods. They were quite surprised with how the heating packs
immediately produced steam when water was added.
Tuka quietly slept by the side of the group.
Itami had been carrying her all this while, but she was so light that he
hardly felt fatigued. That said, the tension was tiring him out. Since he
didn’t feel too hungry, he ate slowly.
“You should let Tuka eat too, otherwise she’ll cry when she wakes up.”
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“Oh well, what can we do?”
Lelei said that as she took a spoonful of curry.
Just then, Yao and Crow returned.
“What’s it like?”
“Mm, the cave and the volcano shaft are connected, and there’s a nest
on an outcropping of rock. The Dragon’s not in, it must have gone.”
“Excellent.”
After hearing Yao’s report, Itami picked up Tuka.
At last, they were going into the cave. Everyone tensed up, knowing that
they were going into enemy territory. They even spoke more quietly.
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“Then, Rory, we’re counting on you.”
“All right, I’ll keep a lookout near the volcano’s mouth.”
Rory tapped her mike. “Is this thing on?”
“Reading you loud and clear. Ah, screw the comms protocols. Okay, I
hear you.”
They bid farewell to Rory at the entrance to the cave.
Clutching her halberd tightly, Rory vanished up the side of the brick-red
mountain with nimble steps, while Itami and friends headed into the
cave after they parted ways with her.
The interior of the cave was so large they thought that they must have
been dreaming.
Lava flowed, and became solid when it cooled. After that more lava
would flow out, and solidify as well. After countless repetitions of this
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process, the layers of stone looked like a staircase.
The way the layered stone spread out looked like the stairs leading up to
a shrine. The walls were not one solid sheet; they looked more like a
giant set of curtains. Calling this place a shrine would not be out of the
question. It boasted a long corridor, a high viewing platform, and even
an altar-like structure. The power of nature was not to be
underestimated.
If they brought a holy man here, he might set up a church on the spot.
Itami lit up his surroundings with a flashlight, then left the not-altar
behind, and went deeper into the cave.
The Dark Elves lit their surroundings with flaming torches. The echoes
made by the close quarters and the flickering shadows made by their
light sources contributed to the spooky atmosphere.
“Itami-dono, this way.”
Itami could see light coming from ahead of him.
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He put Tuka down, and nervously advanced, holding his rifle. Above him,
he could see the starry night sky through the mouth of the volcano. The
light was coming from the mouth of the volcano.
There was an outcropping here.
Though it was called an outcropping, it was actually quite broad. The

caldera of the volcano was about the size of a baseball field, and it was
roughly bowl-shaped. In its center, a hole led down to the main shaft,
and the outcropping was located here.
The outcropping was roughly the size of two basketball courts, and the
way sand and rocks were mixed here resembled the seaside. The
Dragon’s nest here looked like a formation of stones on a beach.
Crow confirmed that this was the Flame Dragon’s lair, and the Flame
Dragon had been resting here earlier.
Although they had never seen a Dragon’s nest before, this layout was
far too simple, and it made them suspicious.
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Still, when they stood there, they could believe that the vast thing
before them was where their enemy made its lair.
There were fragments of what looked like broken eggshells scattered

over the ground, as well as enormous footprints that could only have
been made by a Dragon.
“The eggshells are fresh. It looks like the young dragons hatched
recently, and that they left the nest right after hatching.”
Lelei’s conclusion after inspecting the fragments put everyone at ease.
There were things which looked like rocks on the sand, but a closer look
revealed that they were the remains of what had once been helmets.
Nobody knew how long these things had been here, but they also found
sparkling weapons like swords and the like, half-buried in the sand.
“And this is?”
Yao picked up the helmet and the sword, feeling them in her hands.
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“I think these belonged to the heroes throughout history who came to

challenge the Flame Dragon.”
“Well, this is a magic sword, after all.”
Nokk’s eyes were sparkling as he focused on that sword. He breathed,

“This would be worth a lot if we brought it back…”
The Dark Elves closed their eyes in silent prayer for the ones who had
borne these weapons and armor. The weapons and armor that belonged
to those brave enough to bet their lives against the Flame Dragon must
have been the work of a master.
“All right, let’s get to work. Lelei, help me look after Tuka. Everyone,
help me light up the surroundings.”
After hearing Itami’s instructions, they brought their equipment over.
Itami unpacked what looked like blocks of cheese from the boxes. In
total, there were 75 kilograms of it.
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“It looks a bit like cheese.”
The young Kom was fascinated by the things Itami was unpacking from
the boxes. He pinched off a piece to put in his mouth, but Itami smacked
it out of his hand.
“This stuff is poisonous. Don’t even lick it.”
Frightened by the mention of poison, Kom immediately put the piece

back.
Itami picked up the piece, and brought it near Kom’s torch. The white
substance quietly burned as Itami stuck it into the torch’s flame. This
unexpectedly peaceful reaction was unlike the common impression one
might have of explosives.
“This stuff will only burn if you light it. You need to do some work to
make it explode.”
Itami laid a tarpaulin on the ground and put the white substance on it, as
though he were a sculptor.
In the movies, when planting C4, the actors would stick electrical
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detonators into the wrapped explosives, but that would result in an

incomplete detonation in real life. In order to fully bring out the plastic
explosives’ power, it had to be kneaded well. Without sufficient
kneading, the explosives might even fail to detonate.
Itami’s hands turned a pale yellow after kneading the explosive.
It would be far too much to expect one person to knead 75 kilos of C4,
so everyone chipped in. In the end, they molded it into bricks.
Itami touched the ground and took out a small device. It was called an
electronic detonator.
He touched the ground to discharge his static electricity. This was

because enough static electricity could initiate a detonation. By touching
the ground, he grounded himself and removed his static electricity
charge.
The next part required a lot of specialized knowledge. Only Itami could
do it. He took out the cable reel and a pair of pliers, cut off several
lengths of wire from the reel, and then began turning them into auxiliary
circuits.
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He stripped off the cable casing at the end, and then he joined the wires
inside onto the contacts of the detonator.
Itami worked in silence, while Yao held a torch above him to provide
light.
“Is there anything we can help with?”
“Yes. Dig a pit in the Dragon’s nest. About this deep.”
After receiving their instructions, Ban, Fen and Nokk started digging.
Itami’s forehead was slick with sweat, but he produced good work,
without any mistakes. He spliced the lengths of cable, and then joined
them to the final detonation circuit.
Usually, only engineers would study these techniques of rigging

explosives. However, they were part of the basic curriculum within SFG,
and Itami had learned them. He was hardly a diligent student, but much
like it was in school, he felt that “failing at your tasks means failing at
life”. His determination helped him to master this skill, and this
determination was now a part of him.
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Suddenly, he recalled the memories of his instructors cursing him out

and knuckling him on the head.
Itami stopped his work, gently put down the detonators, and pressed his
mike’s switch.
“Rory, can you hear me?”
He called Rory several times, but there was no response. Perhaps the
wireless signal could not penetrate the thick rock. If that was the case,
there was no point in making her a sentry.
Damn. Still, they were close to completion. Might as well finish it up in

one go.
“Cheh, this is going to be a pain... Everyone, eyes to the sky. Lelei, the
reception here seems pretty bad. Try and raise Rory.”
After saying that, Itami went back to work.
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Then he turned off his mike’s switch and took off his headset. Electronic
switches could cause sparks, and he broke out in a cold sweat as he
realised he had been handling the explosives and detonators with the
headset on.
What would the others think if they knew how close he had come to
blowing them up? He looked around to gauge the others’ reactions.
Fortunately, nobody seemed to get Itami’s meaning. They simply went

“huh?” in confusion.
After that it was time to set the processed explosive.
He stacked the blocks of C4 into the hole Ban had made, layering them
on top of each other. Then, he plugged the detonators into the bricks.
Then he carefully unrolled the cable from the reel, so as not to tangle
the detonation cord in anything.
“Give me that sword over there.”
“?”
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Yao and the others tilted their heads as they watched Itami place the
magic sword on top of the explosives.
When terrorists used plastic explosives, they would often sprinkle them
with screws in order to increase their killing power. The fact was that a
normal explosive was not as powerful as people thought it was. The
fragments caused by the shockwave of the explosion were what caused
a lot of collateral damage. They were layering the magic swords and
other masterwork weapons on the explosives for the same reason. If it
worked, the swords of the warriors who failed in their quest would
wound the Dragon, earning their departed masters a small measure of
peace.
The explosives were covered in a thin layer of sand and dirt, and another
layer erased their footprints. They paid out the wire from the reel and
headed back to the cave from the outcropping. Of course, the wire could
not be exposed, so it had to be shallowly buried.
Finally, they joined the wire to the detonation trigger.
And so, the preparations for the demolition were complete. What Itami
thought had only taken a while had actually taken close to five hours,
which shocked him when he checked his watch.
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His shoulders and waist ached from all the squatting he did. He took a
deep breath and said, “Okay, job’s done.” However, when he looked
around, everyone was frozen stiff.
He wiped the sweat off his head and looked behind, and the Flame
Dragon loomed before him.
***
Rory was assigned to look out for the Flame Dragon near the volcano’s
crater. However, she wound up looking at the sky full of stars once the
sun set.
Not long after, she spotted a Flame Dragon in the night sky. It was flying
close to here.
Since they had a plan, the plan had to be followed. Rory hid herself so
that the Flame Dragon would not spot her and she tried to warn Itami
about the Flame Dragon. However, there was no response.
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“Mm? Is this really all right? What if I didn’t get through?”
A chill ran down Rory’s spine.
Come to think of it, Itami was also responsible for this. Most of the time,
he spoke the same language as Rory, so eventually he began treating
her like a Japanese person. For a Japanese person using the wireless
handsets, if the reception was poor, the accepted practice would be to
move to a place with better reception, such as a window. Perhaps the
only place for people on the top and bottom of a volcano’s mouth to
communicate would be at the lip of the volcano’s crater. However, Rory
ran toward the cave in order to get closer to Itami. Doing that increased
the thickness of rock the signal would have to go through, which only
worsened things.
“Oi, answer me!”
Rory desperately shouted for Itami. However, the Flame Dragon neared
the volcano’s mouth, and it descended into the volcano..
If this went on, the Flame Dragon would attack the defenseless Itami
and the others. What should she do?
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It was pointless to stay on the outside. Rory decided to try and directly
warn Itami of the impending danger, and so she quickened her pace and
ran toward the cave entrance.
However—
“................No way!”
Rory was shocked speechless by the sight before her.
***
Itami locked eyes with the Flame Dragon, its wings spread.
The unexpected encounter froze Itami and his friends in their tracks. The
Flame Dragon had not expected humans to show up in its nest, and
stared in shock at these uninvited guests.
It felt as though they could feel the heat of each other’s breath. But in
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truth, both sides were not that close to each other. It was a purely
psychological effect.
Itami slowly, slowly backed up, nervously reaching for his pistol in its
thigh holster. Itami knew that he might as well be waving a toy gun
around in front of a Dragon, but he had placed his rifle elsewhere while
he was working.
The place was so quiet that he could even hear someone else gulping. If
they moved, they would die. As the old saying went, at that moment
everyone thought the same thing and they stayed still.
Nobody knew how much time has passed. It might have been an instant
or it might have been an eternity. If a second had 75 instants, then
including the time spent on each breath, when one reckoned it as
instants, it would have been a tremendous number.
Kom did not know how long this would last, but he was unable to bear
the way both sides were staring each other down. He screamed like a
madman and lifted up his LAM.
“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
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By that signal, the silence was broken by clamor.
Itami ran.
Lelei dragged Tuka back to the cave to protect her.
At the same time, Yao ran to protect Tuka.
After that, the Dark Elves and Kom raised their LAMs.
The boy fired his LAM, at such short range that he could not possibly
miss. After the brief ignition of the rocket engine, the anti-tank warhead
struck home on the Dragon’s throat and exploded, flooding the crater
with blinding light and clouds of thick smoke.
“Got him!”
Suddenly, the Flame Dragon and its right claw emerged from the smoke,
aborting their short-lived joy. The boy’s body was torn in half in a swipe,
and his upper torso flew into the distance.
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What splattered on the wall was no longer recognizable as an Elf.
Worse, when Kom fired his LAM, there had been people behind him, who
were severely injured by the backblast of the weapon. Ban and Nayu
died instantly, their bodies shredded by the countermass ejected by the
LAM at point-blank range.
The people slightly further away were also affected, and they collapsed
on the ground. This was good news for them, however. The Flame
Dragon’s tail sweep should have hit everyone, but the fallen people were
not hit. Only Kom’s lower body was smashed away.
The Flame Dragon roared, shaking the interior of the volcano’s mouth.
The Dark Elves stood up again, shouldering their LAMs. They had
forgotten everything Itami taught them amidst the dragon’s thunderous
roar.
Nokk did not flip his safety from S to F. In his panic, all he did was blindly
mash the trigger.
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Crow remembered to turn off the safety, but he forgot to pull out the
probe, and his attack was not effective. In order to achieve the Neumann
effect and breach the Flame Dragon’s tank-like scales, the probe had to
be pulled out. In addition, the detonation of the warhead at short range
would not only injure himself, but his teammates as well.
“The probe! Pull out the probe!”
Nobody heard Itami’s voice through the Dragon’s roar and the
explosions. Lelei dragged Tuka to the cave, while Yao noticed Itami and
shouted, “Get to the cave!”
Itami ignored Yao and grabbed the LAM she was holding.
At this moment, a Dark Elf died, and soon another one followed.
Nokk was chewed through by the Flame Dragon’s sharp fangs, while
Meto was pulverized by a swipe of its paw.
Of course, the Flame Dragon was not unhurt. The explosion of the LAM
caused it intense pain, but sadly that was all it did.
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Then the Flame Dragon breathed fire at the people who were
desperately fleeing it, planning to wipe them all out.
The reason why normal attacks could not deal a lethal blow to a Flame
Dragon was not just because its scales were sturdy and tough, but also
because they overlapped each other. This gap between the scales and
the body was like spaced armor on tanks, which cushioned impacts.
To the Flame Dragon, this bunch of hateful little creatures were cradling
black staves, which created a tremendous impact which stunned, but
they were nowhere as potent as the power which destroyed its left arm.
Its shock lasted only a second, and then the Flame Dragon determined
that this object was no threat to it. What it wanted to do was to chase
away the maggots infesting its nest.
***
Itami pulled the probe out, twisted it in the direction of the arrow, and
then locked it in place.
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He raised it on his shoulder, and held his breath as he aimed.
He swivelled the safety from S to F.
And just as he was aiming the LAM, Seimy was thrown into Itami.
He fell to the ground, cushioning Seimy’s fall. Itami could not rise for a
time, having taken the full impact straight on. Seimy was slightly hurt,
and she reached for the dropped LAM.
“Idiot, don’t shoot!”
Itami was right behind her and he ran as fast as he could. In what might
have been a stroke of luck, the fired LAM warhead struck true on the
Flame Dragon’s leg.
Shortly after, the Flame Dragon’s howl of agony rang through the
volcano.
The missile’s explosively forged projectile warhead pierced the Dragon’s
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scales — whose hardness was over 9 on the Mohs scale — and ripped
into the Flame Dragon’s thigh.
Mangled scales and flesh flew everywhere, and the Flame Dragon
thrashed in pain.
***
“Tuka, wake up.”
The girl’s comfortable rest was interrupted by her father’s voice.
“Father, what happened?”
Tuka rubbed her eyes as she woke up.
She looked around, and found that she was in her home, which filled her
with nostalgia. Radiant sunlight flowed into the room from the windows,
and she felt that today would be another peaceful day.
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Her father’s voice also warmed her heart. Her head was still a bit fuzzy,
but her father’s gentle voice made her feel happy. As she remembered
the terrible nightmares she had earlier, her happiness grew deeper.
The sounds of footsteps came from outside the window, as well as the
sounds of shouting and explosions. However, that seemed like it was
happening in a faraway world. Right now, all she wanted was to enjoy
her conversation with her father.
“Father, what’s wrong?”
She looked around, but she could no longer see her father. Instead, she
saw the Flame Dragon chewing through the body of a young girl in an
instant.
“Yuno!”
Her best friend, so close as to be family, was devoured in an instant.

Tuka did not know when she had picked up a bow, but she made her
decision in an instant, nocked an arrow onto the bowstring, pulled it taut
with all her strength, then aimed and loosed. But sadly, her arrow was
knocked aside.
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She was not the only one firing arrows. The Elf warriors around here
loosed an endless hail of arrows at the gigantic Dragon. They exploded
when they hit, but thanks to the robust protection of its scales, the
Dragon was unharmed.
The female Dark Elf Seimy was chewed to pieces by the Dragon, and the
Flame Dragon’s roving eye lighted on Tuka, selecting her as its next
prey.
As the Flame Dragon looked right at her, Tuka’s entire body shivered in
terror.
She wanted to run, but her feet would not move. She wanted to scream,
but her voice was gone.
At this moment, Tuka froze, as though her soul had been stolen away. Or
rather, it was more that she wanted to flee, but her mind had not gotten
the message. Why had she challenged this monster? She must have
made a mistake. Even if she directed her hatred and anger at this
monster, she would have no chance of victory. Thus, Tuka cursed her
foolishness.
“Tuka, run!”
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Her father protected the stunned Tuka.
“You just need to hide here, listen to me!”
And then, Tuka was dragged into the cave by Lelei and Yao.
In the instant before she entered the cave, she saw the form of the man
who had replaced her father, snatched away by the Flame Dragon — she
saw him die for her, and the sight of her father being eaten by the Flame
Dragon.
She desperately reached for him, but touched nothing.
Her father’s shape drifted away and away, further and further away.
Father died for me.
It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault. It’s all my, It’s all—
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“You’re wrong.”
Lelei’s voice spoke into Tuka’s ear.
“You did not kill your father. The Flame Dragon did.”
“But—”
“Itami got it wrong. For someone like you who could live for so long,
wounds of the heart would be trivial matters. After ten, a hundred years,
your soul would heal. All you had to do was wait until your self-loathing
faded away. Therefore, there was no need for him to save you. Only
humans, with their short lifespan, are driven to solve every problem they
encounter. It is how they live.”
Tuka carefully considered the words Lelei said.
It would seem she was just griping. Lelei let out a series of sighs, and
then looked straight at Tuka.
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“You decided on your own that you could not defeat the Flame Dragon,
so you turned your anger at a far more accessible target — yourself.”
“But, we can’t beat it… or can we?”
“If a member of one’s family is killed by a thief, then one should hate the
thief. But people will misaim their hatred — why should they go to where
the thief hides? If one loses a family member to sickness, then one
should hate the disease. It is not the doctor’s fault; yet people will hate
the doctor.”
“Then what should I curse? Who should I vent my anger at? In the end, it
all comes back to me!”
Just as Tuka was shouting, the female Dark Elf blasted through the
Flame Dragon’s thigh.
The shockwave of the explosion and fragments swept past Lelei’s face.
She slumped like she had been slapped.
“All right! We did it!”
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The survivors, Crow, Fen and Yao were breathing hard, and their bodies
were stained with fresh blood. Carrying their LAMs, they forgot their fear
in the midst of their excitement. Each of them was hurt in different
ways.
“This is the turning point between success and failure. You just need
to—”
Lelei raised her head. A rill of blood streamed down from her forehead.
“I’ll take down that Dragon. You just need to keep it still.”
Lelei rose, holding her staff. She began incanting what was known as the
one-man chorus, and began the “Initiation”.
Lelei’s hometown had been destroyed by the Dragon, and many of the
people she knew had been killed by it.
“Abru-main!”
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As Tuka watched Lelei rushing forward, she finally realized that what
was happening before her eyes was not a dream, nor a fantasy, but
reality.
“Rihommun!!”
Lelei levitated a sword with her magic, and launched it.
The sword flew like an arrow, but its sharpness alone could not pierce
the sturdy scales. With a hollow clang, the sword bounced away.
Accelerating it with magic did not work. It was futile.
Its leg was hurt, and the Dragon, helpless before this onslaught, sought
to escape the LAM’s explosion. In the process it bashed into the cliff
below the volcano’s mouth. After it regained its balance, it spread its
wings.
The Dark Elves were delighted by the turning of the tide. They grinned
as they saw the Flame Dragon cowering in fear of the LAM.
“We can do it!” Crow shouted, but there were almost no more LAMs left.
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Fen picked up the LAM under Nayu’s body, pulled out the probe, and
shouldered it. The process took only a few seconds, but the Flame
Dragon would not miss this chance. Ignoring the fact that it would be
attacking its own nest, it breathed a sustained stream of flame at Fen,
who turned into a walking pyre.
The burning Fen ran toward the Flame Dragon, and then at point blank
range, he pulled the trigger.
The Flame Dragon took its second wound from Fen’s dying attack.
***
Lelei thought — how could she accelerate the swords until she could
pierce the Dragon’s scales?
Then, she remembered how Itami had placed the swords on top of the
C4. Indeed, using the force of the explosion would be enough.
Lelei picked up a sword and a tiny series of rings surrounded the sword’s
hilt.
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She launched the sword with magic, and when it touched the Flame
Dragon, she detonated the rings. The explosion of the rings drove it
deep into the Flame Dragon’s belly.
To the Flame Dragon, preparing to swipe at Yao, this was a mere flesh
wound. For something its size, being pierced by a sword was like being
pricked by a thorn. It hardly hurt.
However, pain aside, the sword had pierced its scales. It was an
intolerable blow to the Dragon’s pride.
Its heretofore invulnerable armor was no longer an absolute defense.

The Flame Dragon turned its gaze to Lelei, and then to the tiny prick on
its body. A look of disbelief spread over its face as it parsed this
inconceivable event.
A roar that sounded more like a wail rang past Lelei, and she smiled
darkly.
“Fufufufufufufufufu, die, you shitty lizard!”
Lelei levitated all the swords in the area — the rusted sword, the ruined
sword, the magic sword, the nameless sword, the gem-encrusted sword,
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the greatsword, the razor-sharp sword, the divine sword, the barbarian
sword, over ten, no, more than twenty of them.
The spirits of the countless warriors who had challenged the Flame
Dragon and died in despair now inhabited their weapons. And now, they
floated above the Flame Dragon’s head, moved by Lelei’s full power.
Note
Buddhism concept of an instant.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%88%B9%E9%82%A3#Noun_2
The Neumann Effect is the theory behind shaped charges, which was
expounded upon in v1c5 when 3rd Recon blew off the Flame Dragon’s
arm.
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Vol. 4 :
Chapter 16
“Ooh…”
Itami rubbed his forehead as he shook his head, his vision slowly
returning to him.
The ground, which should have remained still, seemed to be spinning

back and forth. Had he fallen down? Or did something knock him down?
He did not know. After being hit by Seimy and her LAM’s backblast, the
semicircular canals in his ears were disturbed, and his sense of balance
was disrupted.
Every part of his body that had sweat on it was stained with dirt, and
combined with the thick black exhaust smoke of the LAM, Itami looked
like a filthy mudman. The grit had even gotten into his mouth, and the
feeling of the dust filling the gaps in his mouth was disgusting.
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He tried to gather up saliva and spat several times to clear his mouth.
After that, while he felt some spit on his face, he remembered how he
had been knocked down.
How long had passed? An instant? Several seconds? Or a few minutes?
The world spun before his eyes, and as Itami waited for his dizziness to
fade, he looked around.
Right now, Seimy’s face was within arm’s reach, and her eyes were
staring at Itami. The fact that her eyes were so close and so still startled
Itami. What had happened to her? Then, as Itami’s line of sight drifted
down her beautiful, over her slender neck and her ample, generously
proportioned breasts, he understood.
Seimy was a corpse.
Although she was chewed to pieces by the Flame Dragon, she was not
gulped and swallowed down. The seductive Seimy was reduced to this
state in the span of a few seconds, which struck Itami as unnatural. This
girl would never move again. Her motionless body would not think, nor
would it speak. It was but a carcass.
Itami slowly reached his hand out to touch her face.
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Her body was still soft, and there were traces of heat in her flesh. Her
face was untouched. When he closed her eyes, she looked like she was
sleeping. However, after looking down at the unimaginable reality below
her breasts, at the crimson ruin of her waist and the nothing that was
left of the rest of her body, Itami finally realised that she would never
wake up again.
Suddenly, there was an explosion, and a wave of heat carried a hail of

fragments down on Itami.
He hurriedly grabbed his head. Although he had small cuts all over his
body, he could not pinpoint which of his many bruises or burns filled his
body with agony. The shock wave that came with the heat and the
fragments battered his entire body. It would not be a surprise if that
impact dealt heavy damage to him.
This was when Itami keenly realised that his battle with the Flame
Dragon was just beginning, and it would keep going on.
It was said that when a man was decapitated, he would still be conscious
in the brief period before his brain cells died. If that was true, then Itami
was the last thing Seimy saw as her world faded to black.
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If that was the case, what was she thinking as she looked at Itami?
“I have to go.”
Itami patted Seimy’s head in farewell, and then his conviction spurred
his body into motion as he crawled forward.
He realised that his helmet was gone. Because the chin strap was old
and frayed, it broke when the helmet was subjected to a light impact
and the helmet flew off. Should he be glad that his head was still intact,
or sad that his helmet had failed him?
Grabbing his head as he dodged the flying fragments, the shockwaves of

the explosions, and the Flame Dragon’s gouts of searing fire, Itami
looked around, feeling for the detonation trigger.
Before long, he found it buried under some dust and sand.
Itami reached out for it, but it did not feel like a detonation trigger at all,
and he clicked his tongue.
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The detonation wire had been severed. Was it because of the LAM’s
explosion, or the flying fragments? Nobody knew.
“Dammit!”
His hard work was all wasted.
If they could not use the explosives, then they had to bet everything on
the LAMs. However, the Dark Elves had sacrificed themselves in a wild,
uncoordinated charge. The only Dark Elves left were Crow, Fen and Yao.
And the three of them were worn out. They were covered in blood and
cuts, and black scorch marks all over them which might have been
caused by the Flame Dragon’s breath or the LAM’s backblast.
Yao grabbed a LAM from Ban’s corpse and charged the Flame Dragon.
She faithfully followed Itami’s instructions. She pulled out the probe and
set the safety to F. If it hit, it would blow the Dragon’s scales to gory
chunks.
The maddened Flame Dragon threw itself against the rock walls,
jumping around as though to escape the LAM’s rockets. Every time its
vast body smashed into the ground and stone, the outcropping of stone
shook violently, and rocks from the walls rained down on everyone,
accompanied by an avalanche of volcanic ash, gravel and bedrock.
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Just then, Fen was consumed by the Flame Dragon’s breath, and with his
dying attack, he scored a telling blow on the Flame Dragon.
Itami rose, saying “You idiot!” as he did.
In just a short while, the Dark Elves had accrued a startling number of
casualties. Seimy was dead, and now Fen was dead. If he hesitated for
even a single moment, the next ones might be Lelei, Tuka, Yao and
Crow. The instant he thought that, Itami blurred into action. Perhaps it
was some grand resolve, or his conviction, but whatever the case, it was
moving him. He did not imagine anything, his mind was blank and the
only thing he did was the reflexive actions drilled into him during his
training. Itami launched himself out, grabbed the detonation trigger, the
reel of detonation cord, and he had the pliers in his mouth.
He ran beneath the Flame Dragon’s feet, felt for the buried detonation
bus, and began excavating the ground.
A mere clash of blades was not a battle. A mere exchange of gun and
cannon fire was not a battle either. Digging, conveying orders, setting
explosives, every task had its place, and every order relayed had to be
faithfully executed. That was the whole of a battle.
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Itami’s order to himself was to ensure their final trump card against the
Flame Dragon was usable.
He found the severed ends of the wire, stripped them, then spliced them
together.
It sounded simple, but the Flame Dragon was tramping about above
him, spewing flames from its bloody maw, and the shockwaves from the
LAM explosions rocked the area.
The Dragon cried out as though it were wailing in pain.
It spread both its wings to leave the outcropping — at last, it was going
to flee.
The dust and sand falling on Itami’s head made him cough
uncontrollably. He grabbed the reel and paid out the newly-repaired
detonation cord. Just then, somebody laughed with mocking shrillness.
“Fufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufufuf
ufufu!”
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He glanced behind — it was Lelei.
Her robe-like vestments blew in an invisible wind, and her emerald eyes
glowed with power.
Her slender arms projected forth from her body, and her outstretched
hands reached to the sky. Her fingers pointed forward, and there Itami
saw countless swords floating in the air as if they had been hung there,
their numbers blotting out the starry sky beyond them.
“Die, you shitty lizard!”
With her uncharacteristic crudity as the signal, the swords fell like rain.
Itami suddenly realised that being caught in this sword rain was no joke,
and he swiftly fled. Yao and Crow realized the danger as well, and
panicked.
“Fufufu…”
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Lelei’s personality seemed to have changed all of a sudden.
The usually calm and emotionless Lelei, like a sheet of white paper, was
now vividly dyed by assorted emotions.
“Wah! Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!”
Itami grabbed his head and threw himself down onto the ground. Yao
and Crow followed him to the dirt, their foreheads almost touching.
They gritted their teeth and waited for the swords to fall. However, the
impact they created was not as powerful as they thought it would be.
The floating swords were not simply drawn down by gravity. From the
way they were launched, they were clearly aimed at the Dragon’s eyes.
They flew to their objective with precision targeting. The swords
encircled the Dragon from all sides and cut off the Dragon’s escape, and
then the explosions began.
The impulse of the explosions launched the swords forward. Many of

them were blown to pieces, and many others bounced off, having lost
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their sharpness. Of course, some of them pierced the Dragon’s tough

scales. But from the looks of things, that was only a small fraction of
them. At an estimate, 10% of them struck home? Or 5%? From this, one
could see how many merchants had betrayed the heroes who placed
their trust in these swords.
However, Lelei controlled many swords.
Perhaps only a small fraction of the swords struck home, but even a
fraction of a large number was still an impressive amount.
The swords made by legendary smiths pierced into the Flame Dragon’s
body. In addition, Lelei’s attack also targeted the wings of the Flame
Dragon as it tried to flee. Both wings were shredded into tatters and lost
the power to lift its vast body, and so it fell.
***
That vast body struck the outcropping.
It did so with an incredible impact.
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The outcropping lurched violently, and cracks spread through the

bedrock. The Flame Dragon was as badly hurt as the stone it fell on, and
it thrashed in agony. Its wings could not bear it aloft, and the numerous
wounds all over its body leaked blood. Impaled by dozens of swords,
spears and blades, it did not have the strength to stand up.
It did not even have the strength to moan in pain.
“We did it!”
Yao and Crow were elated as they saw the Flame Dragon sprawled on
the ground like a beaten dog. They each drew their sabers. However,
even if it could not fly, it still had offensive and defensive power on par
with a tank. As Itami saw their charge, he saw that it was still dangerous.
“Idiots! Stop!”
Itami managed to grab Yao by the hair, but Crow did not stop. In
addition, Lelei collapsed in exhaustion before him. Itami’s hands were
full holding onto Yao and helping Lelei up.
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Crow drew his sword, and looking straight ahead, he swung at the Flame
Dragon with all his strength.
As the blade bounced off with a ringing metallic sound, Crow realised the
unnatural toughness of the Dragon’s scales, but the thrill of striking the
Dragon with his sword consumed him, and he launched blow after blow
at it.
“You bastard! You bastard!”
Crow seemed to have forgotten everything else as he swung his sword,

and when he realized it wasn’t working, he stabbed with the point. He
drove his blade through the gaps between the scales. He planned to
work his blade and cut out its scales.
However, even on the brink of death, a Flame Dragon was still a Flame
Dragon.
It raised its head and looked at its shifting body, and at the same time it
exhaled a gout of fire over the irritating gnat picking at it, and Crow
burst into flame.
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“Uwaahhhh!”
“Crow!” Yao shouted and reached her hand out to him, but Itami held
onto her for dear life.
“Don’t go, Yao! Don’t do it!”
“Crow! Itami-dono, let me go!”
“Don’t do it, you’ll get caught in it as well!”
Yao’s shouts were futile, and Crow went from a rolling fireball on the
ground to a lifeless corpse.
The Flame Dragon’s eyes were filled with bloodlust. It exhaled brief
spurts of flame as it intimidated Itami and the others. Its eyes were filled
with the dogged determination to live that any Ancient Dragon would
have.
“Why! Why did you stop me?!”
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“You stupid bitch, get a fucking grip and calm the fuck down!”
Itami could not let go of the agitated Yao. His plan was to back away
from the Flame Dragon that might breathe fire at any time and into the
cave, and he kept pulling on Yao’s hand as he went.
***
“Ah, aaah, aahhhhh!”
“Just bite your nails and watch from the side,” Lelei said mockingly. Tuka
could only sit there in silence and watch the battle play out before her.
The Dark Elf died in the fire.
Yao reached her hand out to help her comrade, but Itami held onto her
and did not let go. He was steadfastly determined to drag her away from
the Flame Dragon. Yao, filled with bloodlust, kept resisting Itami’s pull.
She kept trying to break free from him and run at the Flame Dragon.
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At that moment, she saw her body superimposed over Yao’s.
I’m an idiot, I’m an idiot, I’m an idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot,

idiotidiotidiotidiotidiotidiot.
The Flame Dragon before her shook its body slightly and bared its fangs
at Itami. Itami’s back was to the Dragon as he scooped up Lelei and
yanked at Yao’s hand.
The Flame Dragon lowered its jaw, revealing its razor-sharp fangs.
Tuka saw the image of her father over that of Itami, his back to the
Dragon.
“Father… is dead.”
And in this moment, that thought filled Tuka’s mind.
She clenched her teeth, and stepped forward.
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1392
She had no sword or bow in hand. Most Elves would be defenseless in

this state.
Tuka went forward with her bare hands.
Forest Elves lived in the woods, and they had an affinity for wind and
wood-elemental magic. And of course, Tuka was a High Elf, and she only
needed two verses to incant her magic.
“Teruymmun! Hapuriy!”
This was spirit magic that summoned lightning.
Goooooooooooooooooooooo!
A tear ran down from Tuka’s sea-blue eyes, and she finished the
incantation for her lightning spell.
Of course, Tuka’s lightning attack would not be fatal to the Flame

Dragon. Perhaps if her father or many Elves in unison cast that spell, it
might have felled the Dragon.
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1393
However, that was enough. That was enough to get the Flame Dragon’s
attention. Even if it was just for a fleeting moment, a fraction of a
second, an instant, a blink of an eye, it was enough for the man whose
body overlapped with the image of her father to get away, to flee the
gaping maw and save himself.
Blue-white lightning flashed through the air, and the earth trembled.
As the lightning struck, Itami grabbed Lelei and pulled Yao toward Tuka.
And then, Tuka received them with both arms. In this way, Itami brought
Lelei, Tuka and Yao into the cave. This time, Tuka was not alone; she
was with everyone, and together they went for the safety of the cave.
As the electricity struck the Dragon’s body, the current which should
have flowed harmlessly along the Dragon’s body and into the ground
was instead conducted into its body by the swords protruding from it.
Electricity followed the path of least resistance when it travelled, and so

it stabbed into the Dragon’s body. After that, Itami armed and fired the
detonation trigger. The electronic impulse raced down the freshly-
repaired detonation cord and into the countless detonators stuck into
the 75 kilograms of C4 plastic explosive buried within the earth.
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1394
The Flame Dragon’s heart pounded.
And then —
The Flame Dragon howled mournfully, its death throes exploding into
the air like the rending of a slab of metal. And then, after the wail, it was
the earth’s turn to explode, making people think the volcano had
erupted. The wall of sound echoed through the cave and the earth
shuddered. The shockwave blasted through the ears of Itami on the
ground and the standing Tuka. For everyone, it felt as though their very
souls had been blasted to bits by the explosion.
The Flame Dragon’s vast body was torn asunder by the destructive
power of the C4.
The blood that spurted from its cardiac arteries burst into flame as it
contacted the air.
Every beat of the Flame Dragon’s heart spurted more blood from its
arteries, and in place of the red liquid that should have flowed through
its body, tongues of flame flew into the air. The blood that splattered
everywhere began to burn, and soon its body was consumed in flame.
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1395
The sturdy dragon scales had been blasted apart and the inside of its
body was a furnace. At this stage, there was no saving the beast. The
Flame Dragon shuddered and trembled, trails of crimson flame spraying
out of the injuries in its body and setting the whole place on fire. As it
struggled in agony, the outcropping finally collapsed, and it fell into the
endless darkness below.
***
And then, with that, the whole world started to come apart.
***
The cave’s roof began to collapse, as though it was a mineshaft whose

supports had been knocked out. Cracks spread through the ground and
grew larger, finally becoming a yawning crevasse. It seemed as though
the four of them would be dragged down to hell.
“Run!”
Itami slapped Yao’s face, then picked up the immobile Lelei and urged
Tuka on.
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Tuka’s body had been battered by the tremendous impact and she hurt
all over, but she had no time to complain about that. “Run! Run! Run!”
Itami shouted, and Tuka broke into a sprint.
The cave roof, the stalactites, the floor, cracks appeared everywhere
and they began to collapse.
The earthquake did not stop. Instead, it seemed to be getting stronger. If

this kept up, the entire world might break apart.
The cave’s interior, where the steps seemed like the inside of a temple,
began to collapse behind Itami’s band as they ran past.
The debris that fell was swallowed by the yawning void below them.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
The bolt of fear that lanced through Tuka as the ground underneath her
disappeared into the Abyss made her scream.
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“Tuka!
Itami grabbed Tuka’s left hand with his right. He desperately pulled her
up, trying to keep her from falling.
“Hold on!”
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1399
Itami was thinking of hauling her up when Yao suddenly reached her
hand out and supported her body. Both their hands gripped Tuka’s
firmly.
Countless cracks appeared around them, all of which led to the earth.
The sturdy, hard floor beneath them sudden felt like sandy stone. The
rock pillars collapsed. All the pillars holding the cave up snapped and
broke.
It was dangerous here, it was dangerous there, and there was hardly a
safe place in sight.
Itami held tightly onto Tuka’s hand and ran through the collapsing cave.
The group ran desperately forward, as the floor behind them collapsed
just a hair’s breadth behind every step they took. It felt as if the
collapsing cave was pursuing them in order to swallow them into the
depths of the earth.
The fear of the collapse and the fatigue of the full sprint drained Tuka’s
strength without remorse.
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Her flowing long hair was stained with dirt and blackened by smoke.
Sand and debris stuck to her skin with her sweat as the mortar, and she
looked like she had rolled around in a mud puddle.
Her heart pounded like a clock tower striking twelve, and her chest felt
like it would break. Every breath she took burned and filled her with pain
and misery.
A rock fell from the mouth of the cave. The word “catastrophic collapse”
would be appropriate here — everything was falling. However, some
people survived — they had cheated death.
She was alive.
Itami was alive.
Lelei was alive.
Yao was alive.
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1401
Tuka gripped Itami’s hand and savored the reality — that she had not
died, and that she had avenged her father.
Before she knew it, they had made it outside, and her strength returned.
***
The group emerged from the collapsing cavern with their lives. As they
made contact with the outside air, Itami’s group collapsed like puppets
whose strings had been cut.
Their shoulders heaved as they took deep breaths, and then coughed
uncontrollably.
They had breathed in the searing air, and it burned their lungs. Their
limbs were as dull and heavy as lead, and Itami was angry and
depressed at his pitiful state.
The area around the cave entrance was covered in debris, and the dust
in the air settled slowly.
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1402
The western side of the sky still sparkled with stars, but the east was
stained a dreamlike red.
“Haa, haa, haa… is everyone alright?”
Itami’s question was simple. Tuka replied, “I’m alive”, Yao said,
“Somehow” and Lelei replied, “No significant injuries”.
“You sure took your time,” Rory said in a voice that was more of a
whisper.
It looked like everyone was safe, but come to think about it, everyone
was covered in wounds, so calling this “safe” did not seem very
appropriate. In any case, after Itami confirmed that everyone was back,
he breathed a sigh of relief.
“...”
After a brief silence, Itami suddenly noticed something.
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“Rory!”
Itami raised his head, he saw a ragged doll, fallen on the ground, clad in
shredded black Goth clothing sewn with lace.
Her limbs looked like they were about to come apart, and her body was
covered in wounds.
There was hardly a spot on her which was intact. A thin white smoke
rose from her wounds, like steam hissing off a hot pan, and the wounds
healed in an instant. But to a bystander, this healing could not match up
to the bleeding and the damage she had taken. The fact that she was
still alive was quite surprising.
“What’s this? What happened?”
Ignoring everyone else around him, Itami went up to the Loli and cradled
her in his arms.
When Rory’s arm drooped powerlessly to the ground, he panicked. It

would seem her left arm was only attached by a piece of skin.
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Amidst his panic, Itami managed to stick her arm back on. It seemed
illogical, but this time, it was the right thing to do — the wounds all over
her body began to heal.
“Really, onee-sama, to think a human would be worrying about you. It

seems you’ve gotten rusty.”
Itami turned around, looking to where the voice had come from.
Further up the slope stood a girl in white priestess’ clothing, flanked by

two young Dragons.
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Vol. 4 :
Chapter 17
The girl wore a set of white Goth clothing.
She looked to be around 20 or so.
Her deep blue skin was covered by lace-edged white cloth. A pair of firm,
perky breasts swelled from her chest and pushed against her clothes,
and the space from her cleavage to the shiny belly-button piercing was
displayed for all to see. The clothes on her torso were held together by
lace tapes, which compressed and bound her exposed flesh. The sleeves
of her clothes seemed to have been torn off, while the white skirt of her
clothing was torn and tattered. Her skirt was designed to show off the
full length of her luscious legs. The skin of her belly, her arms, her legs
and her face were covered in tribal tattoos. There seemed to be some
significance to them; perhaps her whole body was tattooed.
The girl had a head of thick, white-gray hair, and her gold pupils were
slit vertically and gleamed with an eerie light. She rested the shaft of an
enormous scythe on her shoulders and licked her lips. She resembled a
yakuza resting his sword across his shoulders, down to her confident,
imposing attitude. When Itami realised the situation he was in, he had
the feeling of impending doom — she seemed ready to rush out at any
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time and kill everyone around her.
“Onee-sama, you’re the bride-to-be of my master, letting a filthy human

casually touch your body is too carel- ack.”
Perhaps she was not used to speaking politely, but she nearly bit her
tongue, and then she muttered, “dammit”.
“What a pain, who’d want to be a wife to that woman?”
As Rory grumbled, she tried to stiffly raise her trembling body.
After rejoining the cut surfaces of her severed arm, her bloodstained
limbs could move at last. However, she still could not use her strength.
The halberd which she would normally swing about like a matchstick
needed all her strength just to hold in her hand, to say nothing of raising
it.
“Aren’t you glad to meet my mistress, Onee-sama?”
“How many times have I said this already… my god is Emroy, who rules
over death, judgement, madness and war!”
“Haa… is this what they call marriage blues? How sad.”
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After that, she added a dangerous pronouncement at the end: “As I

thought, I’ll need to bring you back by force.”
“What do you mean, wedding blues? What’s sad and not sad? Aren’t you
just saying that on your own? And then you go mumbling on and on by
yourself over there!”
And then, Rory clung to Itami like a child, with a “I’ve had it” look on her
face, almost on the verge of tears.
As the girl in white saw this, she directed a suspicious look at Itami.
When the girl in white spoke to Rory, she was clearly trying to convey
her respect, but when it came to Itami, it was plain she viewed and
addressed him with scorn.
“Oi, that male human over there, could it be you’re trying to commit
adultery with my master’s bride-to-be? If you are, I’ll rip you a new
asshole.”
Itami thought, ‘Why me? Adultery?’ He was filled with the desire to deny
this ridiculous charge, so he shook his head like a child’s rattle drum.
However, Rory was still clinging tightly to him, and she said, “I can’t use
my full strength right now, so please buy me some time”. Itami had no
objections to that. Under these circumstances, in order to understand
the girl in white’s relationship with Rory, Itami felt he needed to
communicate with her.
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“Question! Question!”
Itami raised his hand, and the girl in white grumbled, “What is it, you’re
a pain,” before clicking her tongue and saying, “Fine, fine, hurry up!”
“Well, my first question is, who are… Ah, sorry about that. I am from the
JSDF Special Region Expeditionary Force, 3rd Recon Team, and my name
is First Lieutenant Itami Youji.”
The girl in white had a pair of large wings on her back. She spread those
draconic wings and gently glided down, landing soundlessly before Itami
and Rory. After that, she looked him up and down, like she was
inspecting a fruit. The way she stared at him felt like she was licking him
with her eyes. The girl in white’s slender pupils and actions made Itami
think, She must really be related to reptiles.
“Enough with the fancy introductions. My name is Giselle, and as you

can see I am an Apostle of Hardy.”
The way she bowed and lowered her head reminded Itami of the working
girls in Arnus Town’s canteen. Rory quietly told Itami that she was a
Demigod of the Dragonkin race, and she was also the youngest apostle
in this world.
“Hardy… I mean, so Hardy-sama is a god, then?”
“Of course. Speaking of which, you must be really ignorant not to know
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that.”
In response to being berated about his cluelessness regarding the

Special Region, Itami simply chuckled sheepishly and said, “Ehehe,
people often say that about me,” as though he was the fool in a manzai
act. Then, in order to preserve the current atmosphere, Itami continued
asking, “I’ve been thinking since just now — that god Hardy seems to be
female, am I correct? And she intends to take Rory, also female, as a
wife. What’s that all about?”
“That’s right. What’s so funny? You got a problem with that?”
“No, no, not at all. I was just thinking, from a human point of view, that a
woman marrying another woman is new to me. Of course, I’ve heard of
this in other countries, but I haven’t actually witnessed it myself, so I
just wanted to make sure.”
“Everyone likes different things, gramps. Don’t ask about this again, jii-
san.”
“J...Jii-san?”
While Itami was old enough to be called an “uncle”, this was the first
time anyone had ever said that right to his face. This simple word was
very damaging, and Itami took it straight to the heart. While he was
quite hurt, he hid his feelings away and returned to the strong and
confident Itami.
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“What an open-minded deity she is.”
As Itami finished, Giselle said, “Haaa, what will I do with you?” Then she
cricked her neck and shrugged.
“In truth, I don’t even know what my master wants. Although, I don’t
think it really matters if my master likes men or women. If you ask me,
all you need to do is accept it. Of course, under normal circumstances,
who would understand a god’s heart?”
“Not me, for sure. I’m only interested in women.”
“In any case, that’s how it is. Ahhh, what a pain… In any case, it’ll be a
long while before my master’s feelings are accepted by more people,”
Giselle said as she sighed. Then, she looked to the horizon, where the
sun was coming up.
“In other words, these things are a matter of personal preference. Then,
Giselle-san, do you like members of the same sex like Hardy-sama? Or
do you prefer the opposite sex?”
“Me? I prefer men too.”
“Then, how do you feel about what’s happening now? Ignoring

someone’s wishes, dragging someone away by force, and then forcing
them to marry a person of the same sex, whom they don’t like. How
would you feel if that were you?”
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Itami’s words made Giselle furrow her brows. She looked away and
clicked her tongue.
“Ahhh, what you said is so annoying. However, bringing back onee-sama

is my god’s wish. As an Apostle, I have no choice but to obey. All I can
do is what my master says. Don’t you agree?”
“And because of that, you’ve been fighting her until now?”
“Yup. I didn’t expect to meet onee-sama here, so when I saw her we had
at it.”
“I’ve always felt Rory was very strong. Did you beat her into this state by
yourself?”
Rory’s wounds were grievous. Of course, they would heal, but when he
first saw her, she was covered in deep wounds, and her Goth outfit was
drenched in blood.
Giselle frowned.
“Are you an idiot? Onee-sama took all those wounds for you.”
As Giselle finished, she spat onto the sand.
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“No wonder, someone like myself could never have hurt her like that. If I
fought the apostle of Emroy, god of war — Rory the Reaper, the most I
could manage was a draw. But then how had she ended up like that?
Her movements were slow, and she was wounded before we even
started fighting… at first I thought she was looking down on me. Later, I
realised onee-sama was suffering your injuries on your behalf. After a
closer look, I saw that your bodies and hearts were linked,” Giselle said.
Itami was shocked when he heard that, especially after realising he had
not been hurt at all. He lowered his head to the silent Rory and asked,
“Why did you do that?”
Then, Rory stuck her tongue out at him and shrugged. “Why not? It
wasn’t bad or anything.”
Rory’s easygoing tone made Itami feel powerless, and his heart felt like
it was being crushed by something.
“Well, we can sort all of that out later. This time, I’m going all out on
onee-sama.”
As Giselle finished, she turned to the two Young Dragons behind her.
Somehow, they had approached without anyone realising. Giselle
stroked their large bodies, and the two Dragons seemed to like it,
purring deeply from their throats.
“If I fought one on one, it would be a draw. But with these two guys
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around, I’m pretty sure I could beat onee-sama.”
Between the two Young Dragons, one was red and one was black. They
probably hatched from the eggs in the Flame Dragon’s nest. Their scales
and the aura they emitted made one think of the Flame Dragon’s savage
form. However, they lacked the fearsome presence of their parents, and
their bodies were smaller. That said, they could still be described with
the word “huge”, and were disturbing to look at.
“You seem qu-quite close to them. Aren’t you worried they’ll get hurt?”
“Ah? I’ve been taking care of these two ever since they were born. I
woke the sleeping Flame Dragon, had it mate with a Water Dragon, had
it lay its eggs, then when they hatched, I trained them up to this state. It
was really tiring, but it was worth it. The combination of the Flame
Dragon, Young Dragons and myself are invincible. Just as planned.”
“Th-then why are you starting this fight again?”
“You are stupid, aren’t you? My goal is to defeat all the other demigods,
including onee-sama. Speaking of which, Rory-nee-sama, how’s your
body healing up? It’s about time for round 2, and this time you won’t
need to hold back.”
As Giselle made her challenge, she took a stance with her scythe. The
two Young Dragons behind her spread their wings, taking an attack
posture while keeping their distance.
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Rory detached herself from Itami, and levelled her halberd at Giselle.
However, the weapon’s weight pulled on her body and made her
tremble. Although her body was regenerating, the severe wounds she
had taken had had an effect on her.
“Please wait, your Holiness. Was what you said true? Did you wake the
Flame Dragon?”
Yao’s question instantly dispersed the gathering tension between both

sides.
The way she questioned Giselle while she clutched her wounded left arm
with her right hand and limped forward was worthy of respect.
“What? And who might you be?”
“Why! Why did you have to do that!?”
The way Yao shouted those words in anger struck Giselle as quite rude.
She replied in a low, dangerous tone.
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“Of course! My people and I worship Hardy as our chief god, and we
have been faithful followers. Instead, our god rewarded us with the
disaster of the Flame Dragon. Why is that?”
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Giselle was starting to get a bit annoyed, and she exhaled deeply.
“You shouldn’t question anything my master says. If she says something

is black, then regardless of whether it’s white or red or anything, it’s
black. As believers, all you need to do is follow and believe. Isn’t that
what you’re for?”
“B-but—”
“Hardy-sama has a plan for you.”
“Was leading us to destruction part of that plan?”
“Of course. If your faith was really that strong, it would be even more
obvious, don’t you think? You lot should be glad to be able to contribute
to Hardy-sama’s plan. Even if you die, die in silence! That’s what faith is,
am I wrong?”
As she heard Giselle’s answer “Did you have to ask such an obvious
question?” Yao’s entire body shuddered, and she wailed miserably.
“If, if it was just me, I would faithfully obey Hardy-sama’s command. But
turning me and my people into sacrifices is far too much. Did Hardy-
sama really want us to be eaten by the Flame Dragon?”
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Giselle laughed and clapped as she heard Yao speak.
“What’s this? Ah~~ so you were the ones the Flame Dragon was eating.
I was wondering where it was getting its food from. So Dark Elves, was
it. Well, it must have been unfortunate for you.”
Yao was still agitated just now, but Giselle’s words left her speechless.
The Dark Elves becoming the Flame Dragon’s food — if it was Hardy’s
will, that would have been fine, but the truth was that it was not clear. In
other words, the response of Hardy to her worshipper’s prayers was
blind ignorance.
“Unfortunate? Unfortunate, you say?”
Yao fell to her knees, her hands dangling on the ground.
“I prayed so many times, I cried so many times, I was hurt so many

times, I implored Hardy so many times, I begged for help so many times,
and I lost hope so many times… but every time I thought of my god, and
I cheered myself up, stood myself up, went in search of hope, left my
home behind and travelled.... but no matter how many times I prayed,
Hardy never answered. She may not even have heard.”
The blood streaming down Yao’s face from her scalp looked like tears of
blood. Giselle looked a little lost for words, and she frowned before
answering Yao.
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“How could the gods listen to every little prayer of all their little
worshippers? Things like, ‘I want to get rich’, ‘Save me’, ‘Let me win the
top prize’, ‘Grant me a good harvest’, sometimes even ‘Grant me
victory’... if Hardy-sama had to listen to and grant each and every little
one of your desires, how busy do you think she would be? People who
can only beg others for help deserve to become lunch for the Flame
Dragon.”
That was the last straw for Yao. The notion that a sincere prayer from
the depths of her soul could be compared to a selfish request filled her
with explosive rage.
She drew her saber and slashed at Giselle.
However, Giselle’s scythe was faster than Yao, and its curved blade
arced down at her.
***
In the blink of an eye—
As he saw Yao about to be cut by the scythe, Itami charged forward and
tackled her to the ground.
If Giselle and Rory started to fight, Itami and Yao would be drawn into it.
Fortunately, the scythe merely grazed Yao. Rory took advantage of this
opportunity to swing her halberd at Giselle.
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Giselle nimbly evaded the blow with a graceful dodge. The Red Dragon
decided to step in, and swung its sharp claws at Rory. This time,
however, it was Rory’s turn to dodge.
Itami hugged Yao to him while drawing his 9mm pistol from its thigh
holster and firing three shots in the direction of the Red Dragon. The
three rounds hit the Red Dragon pursuing Rory, but they bounced off its
tough scales. Though they did not do any harm, those shots managed to
check the Red Dragon’s advance. Unfortunately, this meant that the
Dragons and the Demigod now treated Itami and the others as enemies.
An arc of light flashed out, and then both sides backed away from each
other.
Rory raised her halberd again, and Itami helped Yao up and moved to
Rory’s side. Lelei and Tuka were being marked by the Black Dragon. Just
running away had sapped all their strength, and now the two of them
had no means of attack. Their stamina had been depleted in the battle
against the Flame Dragon and there was no time to recover it.
“Damn…”
He had wanted to avoid getting involved, but instead they were fighting.
Itami realised that his pistol was useless against the Dragon, so he
pointed it at Giselle instead. As she saw this, Giselle smiled and said, “Oi
oi, a mere human male thinks he can challenge me? You have good
eyes. I like brash people like you.”
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“Of course, he’s the man who defeated the Flame Dragon, after all,”
Rory panted, in order to preserve the moral advantage.
“Say what?... Koff, ah, no. Forgive me. Now, I believe just now onee-
sama said he defeated…?”
“The Flame Dragon. I said, he defeated the Flame Dragon. I mean, he

did make it out unscathed, didn’t he?” Rory whispered the last part to
Itami.
Under Giselle’s keen gaze, Itami nearly shouted, “I didn’t defeat the
Flame Dragon.”
All Itami had done was set the plastic explosives. The real fighting had
been done by the Dark Elves and Lelei, and the final blow was dealt by
Tuka. However, Itami realised that he had to lighten Rory’s load, and the
way to do that was to make Giselle think he was a worthy foe. He used
all of his acting talent to pretend that he was fine.
And then he muttered, “Why am I dealing with stuff like this…?”
The Special Forces Group created fictitious back stories in order to cover
up the truth of their members, and he had become the Hero of Nijubashi
despite not doing anything fantastic. The legend and the truth about him
were very far apart. Who among them could understand the frustration
of having to be someone he was not? However, at this moment, he rose
to the occasion. With practiced ease — or rather, with long experience
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from pretending — he projected the image of a veteran warrior.
“I’m not lying. Go look in the volcano’s mouth and see, The Flame
Dragon’s corpse should be there. Oh wait, I destroyed the outcropping
where its nest was because it was in the way, so it should probably be
buried under tons of rock. Ahahahaha…”
Itami was trembling fit to burst at this point, but he could not show his
fear. Rory quietly elbowed him in the side and said “Good job,” in a
small voice lest someone hear it.
Giselle jerked her chin and the Black Dragon took wing, flying over to
investigate the crater.
“Hehe, well, what I do know is that you barely escaped with your life.
Even with onee-sama’s protection, what can one mere human do?
Anyway, that male human over there. Speak your name again, I forgot it
just now.”
“Youji. Itami Youji.”
Rory cut in before Itami could answer. Then, she grabbed Itami’s hand,
like she was buying him.
“I’ve already made a contract with Youji. As for you, you might have two
Young Dragons, but my partner’s the man who could beat a Flame
Dragon.”
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“I see… not bad, onee-sama. Not bad at all.”
Just then, the Black Dragon which flew near the volcano cried out. It was
a cry of despair because it knew its parent was dead.
“Ara, how exciting! I didn’t expect a fellow like you among the humans.
Looks like I didn’t become an apostle for nothing.”
Then, Giselle moved her scythe to an attack position.
“Do you really think you can beat Youji and me with just your two Young
Dragons?”
As Rory was exchanging words with Giselle, Itami was fervently praying,
“Please God, make her go home, make her think she can’t win and flee,
come on, go, get out of here…” However, the person he was praying to
leave was right in front of him, and she — Giselle — had already said
that “The gods will not listen to every little prayer of their worshippers”.
“Haa~ well, this makes things interesting. Towat! Mout! Don’t hold back
on them!”
In response to GIselle’s command, the two Young Dragons took wing,

flapping their wings against the backdrop of the freshly-risen sun. Giselle
raised her scythe, and Rory raised her halberd.
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“Here I come!”
“Dammit! I never asked for this!”
Itami had never intended to fight from the beginning. His plan now was
to run up, grab Rory, and run off.
“Yao! Take care of Lelei! Tuka, run!”
As Itami shouted to her, Yao seemed to forget her pain and picked up
Lelei. Tuka set off running as though she had been launched from a bow.
What had been the prelude to an epic duel had now turned into a great
escape. Giselle was completely taken aback by the proceedings and
stood still in stunned confusion as she tried to make sense of what was
going on.
A cold wind blew across the now-empty slopes of Mt. Tyuba. The
freezing gusts seemed to come from the gaps between the rocks, and
one could hear what sounded like a crow in the distance.
“Caw...”
How could they have fled so fast? By the time Giselle came to her
senses, Itami and the others were already small points in the distance
vanishing into the horizon.
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“How, how, how… how could this be?”
The Red and Black Dragons looked at Giselle with a “What now?”
expression on their faces.
“Quick, get them!”
And so, the two Dragons flapped their wings, rising into the air as they
gave chase.
No human being could hope to outrun a flying Dragon’s pursuit, no

matter how fast they ran.
They spread their wings wide, rapidly gaining speed and altitude. After
that, they prepared to breathe flame from mid-air. But just as they did—
***
A quartet of vapor trails traced a serpentine path through the air and
struck the two Dragons.
“Kurihama, has the target gotten smaller from the last time we saw it?”
Kamikoda asked as he launched the Sidewinders (infrared homing air-to-
air missiles) he had locked onto the targets.
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“There’s two of them, they’re completely different targets!”
“But we can confirm that Lt. Itami’s being pursued by those two life
forms.”
Kamikoda nodded his head as he heard Ltc. Mizuhara’s voice.
“Military power. Weapons free. Combat maneuvering, go, go, go!”
As Kurihama said so, Kamikoda added, “Get them!”
“Kamikoda you have the red target, Nishimoto will handle the black.”
The proximity triggers for the air-to-air missiles activated, and the Young
Dragons were enveloped in explosions. However, if attacks like that
could finish them off, this job would not be so difficult. Kamikoda locked
onto the Red Dragon in his HUD, and squeezed his trigger.
The M61 Vulcan Gatling-style rotary cannon fired its 20mm ammunition
at a rate of 6000 rounds per minute. The storm of lead that headed their
way was far beyond hurricane-force, and the Young Dragons spun
around like they were in a power mixer.
The two Dragons lost their balance and the ability to stay airborne, and
they fell to the ground.
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And then, the Dragons proved that their reputations were not for show
— though their movements were sluggish, they climbed up again and
spread their wings in preparation to take off again. Their fighting ability
was excellent. Even though they were youthful Young Dragons, they
were still members of the Dragon race, who laid claim to the title of
“Rulers of the Sky”.
However—
“Rounds impacting — now!”
The shells from 15 pieces of 155mm SPHs (Self-Propelled Howitzers) — a

total of 150 kilos of TNT — burst over the heads of the Dragons. The
surrounding land and air — including the Dragons were shaken by
thunderous explosions, and the hits kept coming, without a moment’s
respite.
***
“Fire for effect!”
The Dark Elf elders were covering their ears, surprised looks on their
faces, as they looked at the flames belching from the muzzles of the
Type 75 SPHs. The surroundings were wreathed in smoke, and visibility
was close to zero. Amidst the smoke, the loaders got to work.
“What are these people doing?”
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1426
“Could it be some sort of ritual?”
They did not realize that these thunderous noises were the sign of an
attack being carried out on a target several kilometers distant.
However, the continuous hail of howitzer shells were blowing up the

slopes of Mt. Tyuba.
“Ohh, such magnificent power!”
King Duran of the Elbe Kingdom was seated on an observation

helicopter, and through his binoculars he watched the distant battlefield,
gasping again and again.
The slopes of the mountain were covered in the smoke thrown up by the
barrage of shells, and he watched the two Young Dragons being
surrounded and pounded by the impact and destruction of the artillery
attack.
“When those things came down, I had no idea what was going on.
However, it is all clear from a distance. It was a miracle I escaped from
that battlefield.”
The noise in the helicopter’s cabin was so great that one had to shout to
be heard. So it sounded like Duran was barking angrily at Col. Youga,
who was seated next to him.
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“That would be Your Majesty’s good fortune,” Youga replied as he

nodded.
“Good fortune? Well, it still remains to be seen if being allowed to

escape with my life was fortunate. Then, let me see what else you have
in store.”
Youga pressed a button on his wireless set and ordered, “All right. Cobra
flight, engage!”
And so, the two AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters angled forward and
advanced at great speed. The two attack choppers shifted into attack
position, and then launched their TOW missiles.
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1429
Since they were an older model of wire-guided missiles, they required a

human operator to track their targets with an optical sight that would
send signals to the missile that would correct their course. In this way,
the guided missile would close in unerringly on their target.
These missiles were designed to destroy MBTs. When these arrows fell
from the sky and struck home on the Young Dragons, it tore their bodies
apart.
The Dragon’s scales, famed for their toughness, were shredded with
contemptuous ease. Blood and flesh sprayed out all over the
surroundings, and under the effects of two or three more anti-tank
missiles, the two Dragons were cut to pieces on the chopping block of
Mt. Tyuba.
***
“What, what is this!? Why… is this happening…!?”
Giselle had been caught in the first wave of shell bursts and was half-
buried in the surrounding dirt and sand. She dumbly watched as the
Young Dragons she had raised by hand were swallowed by explosions.
She had been so lost in her battle-lust that she failed to notice anything
outside of her field of vision.
As a result, when the distant shells and guided missiles flew over, their
destructive power stole her attention. She completely failed to notice
where those things had come from, and so she made a mistake —
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“Is, is this the power of Itami Youji?”
If Itami were here, he would probably be going “No, no” and trying to
correct her misconception. But of course, he was not.
And now that the explosions had ended, she could hear a voice going
“Gi~-se~lle~? Where are you~?” coming from the direction of the
blasts. When Giselle turned, she saw the form of Rory Mercury.
Rory’s tattered skirt was blown up by the downdraft of a helicopter, and

her hands, caked in dried blood, were holding her halberd as she looked
for Giselle.
Several lines dropped down from the helicopters, and the infantrymen
fast-roped down. The men who descended slowly approached the Young
Dragons, to verify their deaths. However, at this point the two Young
Dragons resembled a seafood platter.
With this scene behind her, Rory grinned widely as she stepped forward.
Though it was not cold, Giselle broke out in goosebumps as the beautiful
terror drew close to her.
“O-onee-sama…”
Her legs were shivering, and her arms were shivering. She flattened
herself on the ground to avoid discovery and slowly crawled backwards.
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“Crap, if this goes on they’ll find me.”
This was what it meant to alternate between offense and defense. Right
now, it was her turn to be the prey.
“Gi~-se~lle~? Where are you~? I’ll lock you up nice and good, so come
out~”
Demigods would not age or die, and the flip side of that was that they
could not be killed. This was both a blessing and a curse.
Even if her arms were chopped off, even if her legs were severed, even
if she was decapitated, Giselle — as a Demigod — would not die. Some
Demigods had had their limbs removed and ground to dust, or burned or
fed to wild beasts, but their limbs grew back from the stumps.
Therefore, in a battle between Demigods, victory meant removing one’s

opponent’s freedom. The loser would have their limbs amputated, they
would be cut in half, perhaps even left as a severed head, or they might
be imprisoned in a temple, where they would wait, perhaps hundreds of
years, for someone to free them.
Some Demigods had been imprisoned underground for the thousand

years it took for them to be freed from the prison of their flesh. It was
not difficult to imagine what kind of evil deities these demigods — who
had been trapped under the earth for centuries — would become.
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Some Demigods had been captured by cruel people, who commanded

wild beasts to tear them apart with their jaws and continuously gorge on
their regenerating innards. Since they had bodies, they could feel
pleasure and, of course, pain. But since they could not die, what awaited
defeated Demigods was a fate worse than death.
“Gi~-se~lle~? Where are you~?”
Giselle looked over the people following Rory. They were Itami, Lelei,
Tuka and Yao. Two humans, and two Elves. Normally, they would be
nothing for her. Right now, though, she had no hope of winning. With
Itami as her opponent, the man who had finished off the Flame Dragon
and who had demonstrated the awesome power that had exterminated
the two Young Dragons, there was no way she could hope to win.
Giselle decided to flee. She did not care if her body was dirtied by the
ground. Escaping from this place was her number one priority.
***
Thus ended the Battle of Mt. Tyuba.
The men of the 1st Combat Group streamed onto the ground, and they
began verifying the corpses of the two Young Dragons. The two orbiting
F-4 Phantoms dipped their wings twice and flew off.
After that, the troopers who had received Itami’s report descended into
the volcano’s mouth and discovered the Flame Dragon’s corpse. At last,
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1433
they could confirm that Tuka had had her revenge.
The JSDF, who were used to disaster relief operations, respectfully

recovered the corpses of the Dark Elves from the volcano. In addition,
they transported the corpses of the Flame Dragon and the two Young
Dragons away, for research purposes. They airlifted the Dragons’
corpses underneath their helicopters, which proceeded without a hitch.
Itami and the others leaned against each other as they watched the
activity unfold before their eyes.
Tuka and Lelei rested on Itami’s shoulders, while Rory was asleep on
Itami’s knees. As for Yao, her back was to Itami’s. She sat in silence. The
god she worshipped had betrayed her, and it had been a heavy blow for
her.
Both joy and sorrow required energy. In their exhausted state, they had
no energy to feel. The only thing they could do was sit there and stare
blankly.
“We survived…”
“Yes, we did…”
Tuka’s still, small voice was the only thing that answered Itami. She was
the least fatigued of all of them because she had been sleeping until
before the battle started.
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“We did it…”
“Mm. I got my revenge,” Tuka replied tersely.
“So don’t call me Father again.”
Tuka slowly turned to Itami, and replied without hesitation.
“No.”
“Why…”
“I’m used to it.”
“Really…”
Somehow, Itami felt that nothing mattered any more.
***
“Suspended for two weeks, docked one month’s pay…”
Itami received a document from Maj. Higaki’s office the moment he
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came back, and he drooped his shoulders. Although he’d been prepared
to accept any form of punishment, actually receiving the summons to a
court-martial was quite depressing.
The other Recon Team leaders hardly looked at Itami, each of them
working on the documents they had before them.
“And also, you are relieved from command of 3rd Recon.”
Higaki picked up a new folder and pushed it in front of Itami — it was a

letter of dismissal.
“Yes…”
“It’s only to be expected. No matter the reason, you abandoned your

subordinates and went AWOL.”
After Higaki finished, Itami could not help but nod.
“That is all for disciplinary action,” Higaki said to Itami. And then —
“Atten-tion!”
The footsteps from behind made Itami jerk up straight, and everyone
else rose as one.
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Lieutenant General Hazama appeared in time with the footsteps. Beside

him, a line of JSDF servicewomen followed him, holding black trays
brimming with certificates and the like.
“First Lieutenant Itami. For your efforts in liberating the kidnapped

Japanese citizen, the Minister of Defense has awarded you the
Distinguished Service Medal, 1st Class.”
Hazama handed the certificate and the decoration to Itami.
“Next will be the commendations from the Special Region. First, from
King Duran of the Elbe Kingdom, to the Japanese government, and then
to 1LT Itami; a letter of gratitude — ‘Thank you for slaying the Flame
Dragon. As such I award you the title of Lord, and from this day on you
will be a noble in my Kingdom.’ Next, from the Schwarz Forest, the
Council of the Dark Elf tribal leaders has sent a letter of gratitude to the
JSDF Special Region Expeditionary Force and to yourself. You have been
given the title of an honorary tribal elder among the Dark Elves, and this
is for you.”
Hazama handed the raw diamond Yao was hauling around with her to
Itami. The diamond was the size of a human head, and it was weighty in
his hands. If this were exchanged for cash, it would fetch an almost
incalculable price. It might well be equivalent to winning the grand prize
for ten lotteries in a row.
“Human trafficking is illegal in Japan, so you’d best take good care of

that Yao girl.” After Hazama finished, he handed Yao’s documentation to
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Itami. Slave trafficking existed in the Special Region, so of course Yao

would have a proof of ownership attached to her.
“What’s next? Rube Village of the Dwarfs… here’s a letter of gratitude

for you. And another one from a place called Reizobaum. And one from
Torte Village. All of them are letters of gratitude thanking you for your
heroic deeds in slaying the Flame Dragon. And then…”
A never ending parade of female staff officers handed a plethora of

scrolls, documents and the like to Itami from black trays. The final item
was a piece of black parchment, which was tied by a black ribbon and
sealed with wax. It looked very ominous.
“From the Belnago Shrine? Does such a place exist? Well, never mind…”
The award certificates, the decorations, the raw diamond, as well as a

stack of letters — they were almost too much for Itami to carry.
Therefore, they had to just jam the black parchment into the rest of the
other things.
And then, a final service woman handed a piece of paper to Hazama.
“Oh, there’s this. After all the awards and praise you’ve received, if we
just punished you, it would look badly on us. Therefore, you have a new
assignment. First Lieutenant Itami, I name you a Special Region
Resource Investigator.”
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“Resource Investigator?”
“Mm. Your job scope will be to run around the Special Region and find us
useful resources. Was this not what you always wanted?”
“Well, yes.”
“Once your suspension is lifted, go do your job.”
“Yes, understood, sir!”
Hazama patted Itami on the shoulder, and then he left, along with his
train of female officers.
Itami was left alone, carrying a huge pile of things in the center of the
room. The others treated him as invisible once more, going back to their
work. However, this time, some of them were secretly smiling, while
others were glaring jealously at Itami. Both responses made him
uncomfortable.
“Ah, sorry about that.”
As though on Itami’s command, jealous voices from all around him

shouted, “You bastard!”, followed by a hail of thrown documents.
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***
“Belnago Shrine?”
When Itami asked her that question, Rory smiled thinly.
“That’s a shrine of Hardy.”
Itami was in the co-driver’s seat of Risa’s van, and he raised his
eyebrows when he heard Rory’s answer. The scenery of the Kanto
region’s outskirts sped past the window, and there were fields and
gardens among them. There were few vehicles on this road, and at the
junction for agricultural vehicles, a tractor was kicking up dust devils as
it drove on.
“Do you want to go?”
The black letter from the shrine was an invitation for Itami.
When Rory asked him, Itami shook his head. The gods of the Special
Regions were beings which could not be judged by standard logic. He
had no idea what they were up to, so Itami wanted to avoid their
schemes as much as possible. However, Rory said that she wanted to
go.
“This is an invitation they sent, so we can march right in, bold as we
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please, into Hardy’s territory, My plan is to say, ‘I don’t want to be your

wife’, and then ask her what she’s up to.”
“The Lindel Campus is near Belnago. If you’re going there, so am I,”

Lelei said. She had already published her thesis and was applying for a
position as a sage.
“Hehe, Kato-sensei allowed Lelei to skip past the savant stage and
directly apply to be a sage!” Tuka said cheerfully.
Becoming a sage meant that one was a keeper of great secrets, and it
implied that as a wizard, they were ready to become a master in their
own right. Although Lelei was probably the youngest ever to apply to be
a sage, a magician who could aid in the defeat of a Flame Dragon had no
business being a mere apprentice, and so Kato agreed.
“I will personally witness the moment Lelei is acknowledged as a sage!”

Tuka’s words reflected everyone’s wishes.
“If I have the chance to go to Belnago Shrine, I plan to inform the

Goddess of my will. Therefore, your Holiness Rory, I have a request of
you…”
“I know, but is it really all right?”
“Mm, of course.”
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“What’s the matter?” Tuka asked, and then Yao smiled and answered.
“I plan to change my name, Yao Ha Ducy, daughter of Dehan, of the

Ducy tribe, of the Schwarz Forest, to Yao Ro Ducy.”
“Uwah!” Tuka said, her eyes wide.
“Ah, I don’t quite get it,” Itami said, a confused look on his face. Tuka
explained to him.
“Well, for instance, my full name is Tuka Luna Marceau. Luna refers to
the god of music, Lunaryur. This means that I venerate Lunaryur as my
god.”
“I see… then, what does ‘Ro’ mean?”
“It refers to her Holiness, of course.”
“I don’t think a Demigod has ever had worshippers before.”
“Well, rather than praying to a blind and deaf god, the Demigods not
only can hear their believers’ words, but they can respond to them, so
they are more worthy of worship.”
Yao thrust her chest out as she said that.
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“Then, Rory, when you ascend to divinity, what kind of god will you be?”
Itami already knew the answer to Yao’s question about Rory. This time,
it was Rory’s turn to answer.
“Emroy governs Death, Judgement, Madness and War. Her apostles can
carry on her portfolio when they ascend, or they can take a portfolio
nobody is in charge of, or become the guardian deity of a certain
domain.”
“Whoa…”
“Then, what sort of domain will Rory take charge of?”
“Death?”
“War, maybe?”
“Judgement would work.”
“I personally think Madness would suit her style.”
As everyone started with their wild guesses, Rory lowered her head and
blushed before quietly giving her answer. Apart from Risa, who had no
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idea what they were talking about, her answer froze everyone else solid.
“Oi ~ what’s with you guys?”
Risa turned behind to ask what was going on with them, but they all
stayed still. Although Risa felt this was all a bit ridiculous, if the driver
had frozen up as well, there would have been a traffic accident, so this
was actually a blessing in disguise.
Then, the answer which affected everyone so badly was—-
“Love… is that so wrong?”
***
And so…
“We’re here~”
Itami got off the vehicle when he heard Risa’s voice.
They were in a patch of agricultural forest, and a medium-sized hospital

building came into view. It looked old from the outside, and it would
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seem it had only 30 years left in its life. Perhaps if one could endure the
age of the building, it might be a relaxing place.
“Itami-dono’s okaa-sama lives here.”
“Youji’s mother?”
“My father’s mother… should be my grandmother, then.”
‘“...Mother-in-law…”
Itami could not find it in himself to take a step forward. Now, Tuka
pushed him.
“Go see her.”
Now, Tuka had forgiven Itami for pretending to be her father, and also
for dragging her to go exterminate the Flame Dragon, but the condition
was to “go see your mother.”
Of course, Itami had pretended to be Tuka’s father for her sake. Still, he
felt guilty about that, and it was messing up their relationship.
Therefore, Tuka used the excuse of “My conditions and your
punishments are two separate things”. She gave her own punishment to
Itami, because she felt that was the only way they could remove the gap
between them.
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Itami was also aware of what she was thinking. However, the thought of
meeting with his mother made him uneasy.
“I got it, I got it…”
Itami took a deep breath as he said that. However, his cowardly attitude
toward this annoyed the impatient Risa, to say nothing of Tuka, Lelei
and Rory. The latter three each kicked Itami in the butt, with a “Just go
already!” look on their faces.
Note
The BGM-71 TOW (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided)

missile is an anti-tank missile that uses thin wires to steer it in flight.
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Vol. 5 :
Chapter 1
By the time the Flame Dragon’s head was placed upon the gates to the
Imperial Capital, it had been several months since the earthquake, and
in the meantime, the fear in everyone’s hearts had slowly faded away.
The Flame Dragon was a force which could not be resisted by humanity,
and people the world over considered it a natural disaster, much like an
earthquake. Therefore, all people could do in the wake of the tragedy
which the Flame Dragon brought was sigh and mutter, “Such
misfortune”. They felt it was sent by the gods to torment humanity,
much like floods and hail. This attitude of helpless acceptance was
deeply rooted in people’s hearts. Of course, people had tried to protect
themselves against such disasters. Much like how measures could be
taken to protect against floods, many heroes who had tried to slay the
Flame Dragon had appeared. The key word was “tried”. Until now,
nobody had succeeded. Those heroes might have been weak, but they
did not lack for either courage or motivation. The only thing they had
done wrong was that they had lost. It would not be an exaggeration to
say they could never have won. And because of that— There were two
main opinions when it came to the rumors of the Men in Green chasing
off the Flame Dragon. Some were filled with hopeful expectation while
others were dubious, and a brewing tension filled the air between both
camps. These rumors were spreading in the countries allied to the
Empire, let alone within the Empire itself. And so, today, the symbol of
terror and despair — the Flame Dragon’s head — now adorned the
Imperial Capital’s main gate, for everyone on the streets to behold. Just
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being able to drive off a Flame Dragon was impressive enough. Now that
the proof of the Flame Dragon’s death was before their eyes, it had a
powerful impact on everyone who saw it. Their reaction could be
described as “awestruck” or even “dumbfounded”, though a more
objective description might be that “they stared with eyes wide and
mouths open”. Usually, when an enemy army was defeated, a castle
was conquered, or when a hated foe was slain, the people’s hearts
would be filled with a fierce joy, and they would cry out in excitement.
However, the being called the Flame Dragon was so powerful that it
seemed unrealistic that someone could actually kill it. Now that they saw
the Flame Dragon’s head, separated from its corpse, all they felt about
this was confusion. In any case, the lack of excited action or cheering
could be due to the shock which filled everyone. That said, it did not
mean they were unmoved. Their reaction could be described as a
“dormant heat”. For instance, a wildfire burned hot and strong, but if left
alone, it would quickly burn itself out. In contrast, the people’s feelings
were like how boiling magma would flow everywhere without being
exposed to the light of day. If someone cast a flammable object into it, a
great fire would blaze up in an instant. High city walls surrounded the
Imperial Capital. The southern face of the walls was where the Imperial
Capital’s main gate was located, in the form of a pair of well-fitted
double doors. The south gate was jammed up by those people who had
come to see what the fuss was about. Every single location in sight was
filled with people, be it the streets or the windows of nearby buildings,
and some people had even climbed onto the roofs in order to see the
Flame Dragon’s head. Everywhere, one could see people moving back
and forth, to the point where they were rubbing shoulders against each
other and treading on their neighbors’ feet as the moved. Fortunately,
there was no large scale disturbance or panic. As they looked at the
Dragon head, they froze and watched with their mouths wide open,
hardly daring to blink as they let this incredible fact wash over them.
Shortly after that, the people began whispering to each other. “Who
could have done something amazing like this?” “Was there a poster or
did anyone say anything?” After all, there was no mass media which
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could swiftly inform people of facts. When people wished to show or

declare something before the masses, they had to put up a plaque or a
poster with their desired message. Otherwise, people would not know
what had happened or who had done it. For instance, some charlatan
might jump out and declare “I did this!” as the people were busy
discussing the matter. However, there had been no announcements or a
bill posted. All the audience could do was look at the Flame Dragon’s
vast head. Who had done this, and what sort of massive battle had that
person fought to obtain an achievement like this? Nobody answered the
crowd’s doubts and questions. This magnificent trophy before them was
a silent witness to the monumental victory that had been won. That
silence was more convincing than any amount of words. Humans were a
race that came up with their own theories, explanations and conclusions,
and then sought people to agree with their findings. That being the case,
the speculation started at once. Some people said, “I think only the Men
in Green could do this. What do you think?” By the time the Emperor
announced the slaying of the Flame Dragon, that news had already been
making the rounds on the streets. Slightly earlier, the Emperor
considered that this might be a matter of national security. In order to
make a judgement call on this issue as quickly as possible, this news
raced up the reporting chain to the Emperor. However, that method
resulted in the widespread circulation of rumors. Almost everyone who
heard the news wondered if their ears were working. After that, various
ruling nobles sent envoys or even went in person before the Emperor to
verify the truth with him. The Dragon’s head had appeared on the south
gate in the morning, and by the time the highest authority in the Empire,
Emperor Molt Sol Augustus released an official statement, it was
evening. Emperor Molt simply said, “Is that so” after hearing the report
from Count Marx, the head minister of his Cabinet. After that, he gave
an order -- dispatch troops to disperse the crowds, and have the head on
the city gates brought into the Imperial Palace. “Your, your Majesty, did
you know about this beforehand?” Count Marx was surprised by the
Emperor’s calm reaction to this news, hence his question. “It seems the
canaries in the palace are starting to get uneasy. In the face of that, I
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1449
have gathered my resolve. I will not be perturbed no matter the

situation.” The defeat of the Imperial Legions, the sudden earthquake,
the collapse of the Senate Building, all these frightening events had
occurred recently, one after the other. Perhaps it was because of these
events and the promise of future ones like it that the Emperor said he
had “gathered his resolve”. Still, his attitude toward bad news was quite
surprising. Therefore, Count Marx was deeply disturbed as he stood
before the Emperor. “I see…” “Mm. The news of the Flame Dragon’s
demise has flustered some people. But this is not in itself a bad thing.
Being able to eliminate a disastrous entity like that is a cause for
celebration.” “But it seems the situation is not as simple as you say…” “I
understand. The slaying of the Flame Dragon is a feat that has never
been accomplished before and may never be done again. It is a feat
comparable to a single soldier defeating an army or taking a castle.
Should that Dragon’s slayer report his name, they will receive ample
praise and compensation regardless of their origin or species. But that
person has not yet come forward, which I cannot understand. It would
make sense if that person was humble, but then why would a humble
person put the creature’s head on display? It is a contradiction I cannot
resolve.” “Indeed. That person’s motives are unknown. Still, there should
be some way for us to understand his actions... “But perhaps I am
thinking too hard, and trying to see something where there is nothing. If
this person intended merely to inform the people of the Flame Dragon’s
death… Count Marx, I hereby charge you with investigating who was the
person who hung the Dragon’s head on the gate. If we can find out who
did it, even if that person’s intentions are hard to grasp, we should still
be able to gain a clue regarding them…” Count Marx bowed with an
“Understood” before leaving, with the intention of investigating as
swiftly as possible. However, the Emperor called out to him before he
could leave, and he turned back to the Emperor once more. “May I serve
you in some way?” “Call Piña to me.” “Piña-dono, you mean? From what
I know, she is currently entertaining the ambassadors from Nihon… shall
I summon her immediately?” While a summons from the most exalted
ruler of the Empire should be obeyed immediately, the person being
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1450
summoned was carrying out an important duty of the state. So, should
she be summoned, or not? Count Marx was waiting for that answer. And
then the Emperor changed his mind, and waved his hand as he
continued speaking. “Oh, that’s right. Tonight we celebrate the return of
our countrymen. I should have attended that event, but I forgot.” “Your
Majesty, may I know what matter requires Piña-dono? If the need is
great, I could…” “Never mind. I will see her again at the celebration
tonight. We can talk then.” “If it pleases your Majesty, could you
enlighten me with regards to your intentions?” “Mhm. In truth, I
intended to ask her about a report concerning the Men in Green. The
report stated that the Men in Green drove the Flame Dragon away from
a village. I had thought it to be a joke at first, but things being as they
are, I feel it is worthy of further investigation.” “From the looks of things,
could it be that these people exterminated the Flame Dragon…?” Count
Marx looked profoundly disturbed as he said that. “Mhm. Who are these
Men in Green? Which country do they hail from? We must investigate
this matter thoroughly. Then, I shall entrust you with that task.” Count
Marx dipped his head in respect while replying, “Understood” in a
suitably deferential tone. Then, he muttered the words “Men in Green”,
as though to carve them into his heart. *** At this moment, the luncheon
to welcome the Japanese ambassadors was about to begin in the
southern palace of the Imperial Capital. It was organized by Princess
Piña Co Lada. In attendance would be various ministers, important
Senators, military figures, patricians, as well as their accompanying
spouses and daughters. According to the Empire’s practices, if a foreign
ambassador was present, they would be formally welcomed regardless
of whether their nations were at war with each other. Otherwise, the
subsequent talks and negotiations would not be officially recognized.
Since this was the most important part of the process, the Emperor
would speak words of welcome to the visiting ambassadors, which was
in effect a formal guarantee of protection and free movement for the
foreign ambassadors during their time in the Empire. After that, the
foreign contingent could begin mingling with the Imperial diplomats. And
then, the Japanese had chosen to politely refuse this invitation. The
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1451
reason was because both sides had already done battle with each other,
and the spectre of the Ginza Incident loomed behind both sides. In
addition, the hostage return was not yet completed, and the Japanese
government felt that treating each other as friends at the current
moment would not be appropriate. Therefore, Princess Piña came up
with a solution that satisfied both sides — she organized a luncheon in
her own name. After the luncheon, the guests from both sides would
move to the adjacent hall, where a celebration would be held to
welcome back the released prisoners. In this way, the Japanese would
have a reason to be there, for the return of the prisoners. After that, the
Emperor would show up in person to meet the Japanese guests. It might
have sounded surprising that the willingness of people to attend an
event could change depending on what it was called. That kind of
thinking could be considered laughable and pointless, from a certain
perspective. It was because of this pointlessness that adults needed
excuses like “showing off” and “presence” in order to show up to these
occasions. However the fact that people could think of these occasions
as laughable and pointless was a sign of prosperity. Only a developed
and mature society had the luxury of thinking of events in that way.
Even without reams of rules and regulations, people could respect each
other's’ boundaries and live while understanding each other. After all, in
an undeveloped society, people would scoff at these values, perhaps
even ignore them entirely, and life in that society would be chaos. For
example, it would be like a student at school being bullied and looked
down on by their peers. One could imagine the final result of that.
Phenomena like these existed in the international community. In order
to live in peace, one needed something to be proud of and which others
could respect. Therefore, even the pointless things described above
would prevent the seeds of future conflict from being sown. That was
diplomacy. Unlike interpersonal relationships, there was no room for
error in international diplomacy. This extended to the peace talks as
well. Although the objectives of both sides was to reconcile differences
in opinion and clear up contradictions, since the talks would involve the
reputations, traditions and customs of both sides, among other things, it
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made the process of these talks very complicated and troublesome.

However, a diplomat’s job was dealing with these problems and
achieving a common understanding with people who were troublesome,
but who had something worth trading for. In order to ensure both sides
could come to a common understanding, even those pointless things as
mentioned above might become part of a scheme. With that in mind, the
composition of the diplomatic party from Japan became obvious. For
example, there had to be around 20 politicians among the personnel
going to the Imperial Capital, as well as several colonel-grade military
officers, as well as a certain councilwoman called Shirayuri Reiko, who
was Japan’s representative. Her job title had been changed from “Prime
Minister’s Aide” to “Vice-Minister for Special Region Problem
Countermeasures”. This was done in order to address the arrogance of
the Empire. Said arrogance was best expressed as “Since no other
nation is our equal, a Senator from the Empire is automatically superior
to a Senator from any other country.” The fact that she was present was
a form of countermeasure employed against the Imperial diplomats, who
were used to being arrogant and patronizing to their foreign
counterparts. The Empire did not have female ministers. When a female
emissary came to the Empire, the assumption was that she must be
some form of royalty. According to courtly etiquette, someone like her
would be below the Emperor and the Imperial Household, but she would
be above senior politicians and officials. This time, the Japanese
delegation had chosen personnel in defiance of the Empire’s usual
practices. In response, the Empire decided to lower the quality of their
reception — in terms of etiquette, dress, and so on — of the Japanese by
one grade below the highest possible level. In other words, the Japanese
contingent’s welcome would be slightly poorer than the Empire’s highest
standard, in order to preserve a sort of equality. The preparations for all
of these could be attributed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs official
Sugawara Kouji. Currently, he was introducing the key figures to Vice-
Minister Shirayuri, as though he was showing off the fruits of his
diplomatic labors. “This is Lord Cicero, a member of the Senate.” “Well
met, Vice-Minister-dono. I had not expected the representative of Nihon
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to be a female. May I ask if there are many female ministers in your

land?” “No, there are not many. Even in my country, the politicians are
usually male.” “Thus, being able to hold your position must imply
formidable ability on your part.” “You flatter me. In truth, I was
somewhat worried about taking this position.” Her words made Cicero
think of their earlier defeat, and he smiled bitterly. “It seems we have
been completely deceived. I was thinking the same thing when I met
with Sugawara-dono, but it seems that the people of your nation are
overly humble. Please be merciful to us on the negotiation table.” After
they had exchanged the minimum basic pleasantries, Cicero beat a
hasty retreat. With that, the Imperial diplomatic offensive was
concluded. In accordance with Japanese protocols, Vice-Minister
Shirayuri Reiko wore an evening dress which was not fancy but yet not
plain. In accordance with Imperial traditions, she lounged on a large
couch. “It’s strange, this place.” she said to Sugawara in a tone that
might have been taken as a complaint. Sugawara explained, “We have
no choice but to use the enemy’s capital as the place for negotiations.
Do consider the speed of their communications. Normally, we would
have begun talks in a neutral country, but given that the Empire uses
horse couriers to pass messages, just about any disturbance could be
used by them to send out a messenger to buy time…” Shirayuri replied,
“That’s not what I mean.” though those last words seemed somewhat
ambiguous. Then she looked at the patrician ladies nearby. The way
they dressed like Japanese people was quite surprising. As an example,
the upper crust of European society had been influenced by movies and
television shows recently. Once a culture reached its peak and
flourished, all sorts of strange and wondrous trends might emerge. For
instance, people might wear big hats that made others ask “Isn’t it
heavy?”, tied with ribbons that made people want to ask “What are
those for?” as well as hairdos that were several times bigger than one’s
head. And then there were designs which were unnaturally revealing,
which showed off the curves of the body, and there were even outfits
which resembled tropical birds... Vice Minister Shirayuri’s son frequently
watched anime, and these people looked just like the characters in those
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1454
shows. “I heard that the formal wear of males in the Empire was roman
togas, so I assumed that their women’s clothing would also be in the
Roman or Grecian style... In truth, only their host, Princess Piña, had met
her expectations, which confused her even more. Normally, there should
not have been such sudden changes in fashion. At the very most, there
should only have been slight variations from the basic styles. But given
the two strikingly different styles before her, she was quite curious as to
what had caused this to come about. Fortunately for Sugawara, Shirayuri
was only voicing her doubts, and not asking for a proper investigation.
The changes in Imperial fashion were result of contact with other
cultures, and in a way, Sugawara was somewhat responsible for this.
That being said, explaining the true nature of “Cosplay” to the ladies of
the Empire would be difficult even for someone like Sugawara. ***
“Sugawara-sama? Can women become ministers in your country?” The
welcome party organized by Piña had successfully concluded, and right
after that, the next event was about to begin. In the Japanese context, it
would be like an after party following a wedding. Unlike the previous
welcoming party, the atmosphere of the next event was much more
relaxed. People chatted and enjoyed fine food and drink, and the sounds
of joy and laughter rang through the air. As expected, everyone had
been wound up after the stiff lunch party for the ambassadors of the
enemy. In contrast to that, the purpose of this second party was to
celebrate the return of 15 patrician men, who had been thought dead.
The gathered family members lost themselves in the revelry, and it was
only natural that the atmosphere was one of jubilance. Because of that,
the Japanese contingent seemed somewhat out of place. The delegates
gathered in a corner of the room, sampling the food laid out on the
nearby tables and exchanging notes about the key figures in the Empire
as they awaited the Emperor’s arrival. Just then, a voice called out in
greeting to Sugawara. Sugawara had been busy with translation duties
and making introductions since the start of the previous party, and he
was taking advantage of his spare time now to catch his breath.
However, shortly after that, he was startled by that voice, and he was
certain that the owner of that voice should not have been here. His head
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1455
began to ache as he slowly turned back to look at the source of that

voice. Standing by herself was the heiress of House Tuery, Sherry-san.
This young lady had just celebrated her 12th birthday several days ago.
She was cheerful and adventurous, and her big round eyes made her
look adorable. This girl tilted her head and smiled mischievously at the
obviously startled Sugawara. In the past, Sugawara had given Sherry a
necklace of small pearls. That necklace now adorned her neck. In
addition, she was wearing a dress which covered her whole body and
made her look like a flower. The way she was trying to doll herself up
and look like an adult was quite amusing. “Sherry-sama, not tonight.”
Sugawara turned away as he said this. As a member of the Japanese
delegation, he was wearing a tuxedo. Just then, someone tugged on his
sleeve. “Please don’t be so cold. I know you’re not interested in a young
girl like me, Sugawara-sama. However, in four years’ time I’ll be a
woman in my own right. Until then, I’m going to work hard to make
myself into a woman who fits you, Sugawara-sama. So, please be kind to
me. Treat it as a future investment. Then, next up... why don’t you
introduce me to that lady minister of your country?” Sherry’s eyes shone
from her smiling face. She was confident that she would not be refused.
Just then, Sugawara was started to feel dizzy. Even if she had boldly
come over and spoken intimately to him. Sugawara could not treat this
girl coldly, because she was a valuable connection to Marquis Casel. At
first, he had thought his role to be that of a babysitter, but a
misunderstanding had occurred somewhere and changed something in
this girl’s heart. Since Sugawara was not good at looking after children,
he decided to learn from Professor Higgins in “My Fair Lady”, giving her
guidance on how to speak and act as well as teaching her Japanese.
Perhaps that was what had caused the problem. That said, to Sugawara,
girls of her age changed their minds at the drop of a hat. At first, he had
thought Sherry’s parents would not seriously consider this sort of thing,
so he thought of maintaining a respectful distance to cool things
between them, which might solve the problem. However the Tuery
family had exceeded his expectations. When Sherry had made her
feelings known, Marquis Casel, who was her caretaker, immediately
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named Sugawara as a candidate to be his future nephew, and began to

take him seriously. The reason for that was simple — political
considerations. At present, House Tuery did not have rich lands, nor did
they count any capable officials or up-and-coming soldiers among their
family. In order to improve their present circumstances, they would have
to improve their ties to Nihon and make their presence felt in the
diplomatic arena. The surprising thing was that this idea was not the
brainchild of the house’s adults. It was Sherry who had listed the pros
and cons of the plan on her own accord in order to convince her father
to support her pure love. In addition, Sugawara was nearly 30 years old.
As an elite diplomat, his future was worth watching. Ever since he had
begun working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, his objective had always
been to reach the highest ranks of that ministry. However, the ridiculous
notion of becoming a new son-in-law of House Tuery, and that his
intended wife was going to be a 12 year-old daughter of a nation over a
thousand years behind Japan, was not only unheard of, but would
actively hold back his career. In addition, it could be considered a crime,
and Sugawara had no interest in young girls. Therefore, he refused to
have anything to do with this mess. From Sugawara’s point of view, it
would have been much better to discuss wedding plans with the heiress
of a first-class enterprise. Of course, looks and family background were
not the only criteria. Anyone whose family background could exert great
influence in the diplomatic field would also be desirable. For instance,
someone who had connections with the great economic powers of
Western Europe, and so on. In any case, Sugawara had been using the
excuse of work to avoid Sherry, but he had not expected to meet her
here. House Tuery must have been quite something to bring a 12 year-
old girl to this event. “No, the one I shouldn’t be underestimating is this
young lady…” Sugawara sighed as he felt a bout of dizziness come over
him. At the same time, he felt like he was being bound by something.
Sherry drew closer to him, and said in a voice like throwing a tantrum, “I
haven’t seen you much recently, I’ve been feeling really lonely…” “I’ve
been busy recently. After all, my work is my priority. I hope you’ll
understand.” “Wah, I’m so happy! I always thought you treated our
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meetings as work. But little did I know you started taking them as
personal meetings. I’m so happy to hear that~” “No, no, that’s not what
I mean…” Sugawara tried to keep Sherry from hugging him, but the girl
before him would not be denied. “I’m so glad every time I see you. But
this must be boring for you, is it not, Sugawara-sama?” As Sherry said
this, she grabbed Sugawara’s hand and pressed it to her developing
chest. Now that she had him in his grasp like that, there was no escape.
“Or does this mean you’re already tired of me? Okaa-sama told me that
no matter what kind of feelings I had for a man, I should not cross that
final line. If not, he would treat me coldly. Sugawara-sama’s been so cold
to me, that must be why, right?” “It’s not like that! Sherry-san, please
don’t say things in public that will damage people’s reputations!”
Sugawara lifted up his unpinned hand and frantically waved it to indicate
“no”. “Ah, that’s wonderful. I can tell from your words that you know
what that legendary final line is, Sugawara-sama. But what does that
mean? Okaa-sama’s lectured me about it before, but it seems I missed
the chance to ask her about it and now I don’t know anything about it.
Could you tell me, please?” I’ll make sure to teach you properly!
Sugawara shouted… in his heart, of course. “Is this proper? Things like
that should not be mentioned in front of many ears. The truth is that
rumors are like the wind. One cannot see the wind, and people tend to
make up things in their minds to fill in what they cannot see. Now, if
crude people were to make up things in their own heads and spread
them, it would lead to a terrible result. In the end, the lady in question
will be worse off for it. Please understand that I am saying this because I
am thinking about you.” “Yes. I know very well that you think about me,
Sugawara-sama.” Sherry seemed to absorb that lesson politely and
sincerely. And then she said, “Let us meet in private afterwards and talk,
then. Promise me!” Suddenly, another wave of dizziness came over
Sugawara . He grabbed his head and groaned, unable to reject Sherry’s
invitation. “Now, for various reasons, I must now greet the Vice-Minister
that my future husband serves. Sugawara-sama, please introduce me.”
“What are these ‘various reasons’? I won’t agree if you can’t explain
them to me.” Sugawara was still desperately trying to avoid the topic of
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becoming a son-in-law. “Don’t say that. After all, there’s no harm in

introducing me, right?” “But how shall I begin?” “In any case, please
look over there.” As Sherry said so, she indicated the Japanese
delegation with Vice Minister Shirayuri. “As you can see, the people of
the Empire are merely clustered together and watching the movements
over here. Wouldn’t that make this chance to mingle meaningless?
Therefore, I shall set an example, and then the others will follow, ” she
said. At the present moment, the gathered nobles surrounded the
released prisoners. They had no plans of even speaking to the Japanese,
let alone understanding them. An observer would come away the
impression that neither side had any intention of speaking to each other.
After all, as nations at war, the people from both sides might well have
lost people to the armies of the other. From the perspective of the
Imperials, this was only natural. Sugawara and the others understood
this too, so they also felt that there was no reason for either of them to
try too hard to reach out to the other side. “Well, this isn’t a big
problem. The delegates have already spoken with the important people
of the Empire, haven’t we?” Piña’s welcome party had been organized
for just that purpose. Afterward, all they would have to do was wait for
the Emperor to show up, exchange pleasantries, and then the basic
formalities of the peace talks would be complete. And then, Sherry
wagged her index finger while going “ch, ch, ch”. “How naive you are,
Sugawara-sama. To us, the people of the Empire, Nihon is an unknown
quantity. Even a girl like me knows that your country has remarkable
culture and frightening military power. However, how much do they
know about the people of Nihon? I know full well that you are a kind man
despite your cool exterior, Sugawara-sama. Of course, that is only
limited to the special relationship I enjoy with you. I don’t know about
the rest of your fellows. In addition, the leader of the Japanese delegates
is female, and given the rumors I’ve heard, there’s reason to believe
that the women of Nihon are incredibly vicious and powerful. I believe
everyone is afraid to approach her under the effects of that
misconception, fearing that anything they do might invite a brutal
beating with fists or feet.” Sugawara recalled the brutal melee in front of
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the Emperor, and the servicewoman who had beaten the Crown Prince
half to death with her bare hands. He had been there at the time and
remembered the incident vividly. “It seems that the events of the night
of the earthquake spread like wildfire. The people of the Empire are still
worried about how long that peace will last, even if it is achieved. Have
you considered that?” Humans were creatures that sought to exorcise
their fear by force of arms — “They are scary, so I must defeat them”.
This impulse caused a chain reaction that might lead to the seeds of
future conflict being sown, such as civil wars and the like. The
government of Japan had extended an olive branch to the Empire to
avoid that sort of thing. “Things being as they are, your efforts ought not
be wasted. You need to work harder to achieve a common
understanding with us.” this girl suggested. “That being the case, I,
Sherry, shall set a good example. In this way, our countries will take a
step toward mutual understanding, and this will be a great help to
Sugawara-sama’s work here.” Sherry batted her eyelashes as she
finished, as though to ask Sugawara, ”How about that?” At this point,
even Sugawara had to take her proposal seriously — her words were
definitely worthy of consideration. “Is she really only 12 years old?” In
Arnus, there was a girl who looked about as old as her, but who was
actually over 900 years old. “Could it be Sherry-san is someone like
that?” Sugawara thought for a moment. The words, “high and mighty” or
“putting on airs” failed to do justice to this girl. Indeed, she was hard to
understand. With these thoughts in mind, Sugawara could not help but
ask, “Sherry-san, were you hit by a truck in a previous life and
reincarnated with memories of your past life?” After listening to
Sugawara, Sherry smiled adorably and said, “I have no idea what you’re
talking about. You’re saying strange things, Sugawara-sama.” At this
point, Sugawara realised that he had been unconsciously affected by
Itami. The man’s constant babbling of nonsense had left its mark on him,
and he cursed his own lack of focus. That being said, this girl called
Sherry was wise beyond her years. And in truth, her optimism and vision
was difficult for Sugawara to deal with. However, at this point in time, he
had to separate his personal feelings from his evaluation of her proposal.
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“All right, I get it, then let me introduce you. However, don’t get it
wrong; I may have accepted your proposal, but that doesn’t mean I
accept you.” “Mm, I understand. I understand your true intentions,
Sugawara-sama. Then, I’ll leave the rest to you.” In search of guidance,
Sherry thrust her hand out at Sugawara like a patrician lady. “Does she
really understand?” Sugawara had his doubts, but things being as they
are, he had to take Sherry’s hand, knowing well what others around him
might think. “Your Excellency, my name is Sherry, a member of House
Tuery, and I am pleased to meet you.” Sherry said as she curtseyed
neatly before Shirayuri. Sugawara could not help but be impressed by
her immaculate Japanese and her picture-perfect politeness. However...
“I have received much of Sugawara-sama’s affection. I hope to learn
many more exciting things from him in future.” As Sherry said this with a
blush, Todo and all the other men of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
pierced Sugawara with their needle-sharp gazes. Their eyes seemed to
be asking, “What have you done to this girl?” or “Sugawara, you’re
finished.” They seemed to be revelling in their rival’s misery. Sherry’s
words had not only devalued Sugawara in the eyes of others, but they
had even put him in one hell of a fix. “Thank you for your inquiry, my
lovely young lady. Your Japanese is very good.” “Your Excellency is most
kind. After all, I have only studied phrases suitable for greetings.”
Sherry’s humble attitude, along with the Japanese she had learned in
just a few months, reflected on the various things Sugawara had taught
her and what he had spoken to her. The emphasis on “exciting things”
was unmistakeable. Shirayuri bowed politely to Sherry after hearing
that, and then fixed him with a judgemental look. “Sugawara-kun, I trust
you have not been irresponsible?” “I have conducted myself with
restraint.” “That is good. In future, please avoid developments which
might lead to unsightly consequences.” “That goes without saying.” The
way Sherry had interacted with the Japanese contingent allowed the
patricians to shed some of their tension. As Sherry had predicted, the
patrician ladies began flocking to Sugawara, asking to be introduced.
Then, as though drawn in by the spectacle, the Senators and other
Imperial worthies joined them. This was how the talks between the
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Japanese diplomatic contingent and the Imperial patricians, which were

also the first step in the peace process, began. At this moment, the
atmosphere in the hall was one of peace and harmony. And then, as
though aiming for this moment, one of the followers struck the ground
with his staff, sending a sonorous sound ringing through the room.
“Announcing the arrival of his Imperial Majesty Emperor Molt, his
Imperial Highness Prince Zorzal and her Imperial Highness Princess
Piña!” *** This was the first public appearance of Zorzal El Caesar as
Crown Prince. Given his personality, he might have been quite cynical
about it. “Zorzal-sama. May I ask why you look so bothered?” In
response to Tyuule’s question, Zorzal slowed down and replied in a
rough and agitated tone. “Why do I have to meet with the Nihon
delegates?!” “This is public activity, and your Highness is the Crown
Prince, so…” “Dammit! What a pain in the ass!” “For-forgive me!”
Tyuule has no choice but to jog behind Zorzal, given that her stride was
shorter than his and she was wearing high heels which she was
unaccustomed to. The corridor they travelled was dark and made of
stone, so it was very slippery. Tyuule could not help but squeal as she
almost tripped and fell several times. And now, Zorzal suddenly stood
still and braced her with an arm that was as solid and stout as a log.
“Don’t you know how to walk, idiot? Also, I was not scolding you.”
“However, the mission from last time failed, and that was all my fault…”
“The ones at fault were the useless operatives. You just relayed a
message, where is the fault in that?” Ever since Zorzal had become
Crown Prince, his attitude to Tyuule had slowly changed. Of late, he had
kept Tyuule by his side, without the chains and collar, and even allowed
her to wear respectable clothing. Incidentally, Tyuule’s clothes were
modelled after the latest patrician fashions. Not only was there barely
any material to them, but they lushly illustrated the curves of her body.
They seemed designed to embarrass the wearer. This form-fitting
clothing was covered up by a long tunic. If a Japanese person was
present, he might see it and think, “This must be a bunnygirl from some
high-class nightclub.” Zorzal slowed down so Tyuule could catch up with
him, and spoke quietly. “The antics end here. The most important thing
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is to gain the approval of the troops. In addition, we must maintain

relations with the pro-war faction. Once the defeatists relax, we’ll
pounce on them in one fell swoop, so now is the time for us to get some
pawns for us to use.” “Y-yes, I understand.” “Ahh, what a pain! At a
crucial time like this, I need to mess up their negotiations by any
means!” In his eyes, the end of a war meant a military victory, and a
perfect victory would be icing on the cake. And now, the war was going
to end without fulfilling either of these criteria. Zorzal felt that a
conclusion like this did not sit well with the kind of country he intended
to rule. “Of course there is no such thing as an army which does not
know defeat. However, in the past, the Empire has had situations where
they were temporarily at a disadvantage. Yet, did the Empire not
overcome these difficulties each time? After all, the army of Nihon is
only defending the area around Arnus Hill, and they have no way of
doing battle in the Empire’s domain. In other words, the enemy feels
that invading the Empire is a tricky affair, which is why they are rushing
to talk of peace. Has nobody discovered this yet?” Anyone who realised
that ought to know that it was possible to fight a war against Nihon. Yet,
the Emperor had succumbed so easily to the request to make peace.
These actions would only benefit the enemy, Zorzal was declaring.
Before long, the two of them had reached the end of the corridor, and
the door to the hall lay beyond. “Father!” The Emperor and Piña
appeared before his eyes. Zorzal was about to try and convince the
Emperor, but one of his followers advised him not to make noise. After
all, the gathering was on the other side of the door, and however thick
the wood it was made of, a loud voice would still carry through it. Zorzal
resisted the impulse to shout, and then quietly but fervently tried to
persuade the Emperor and Piña to forbid the peace proceedings. But the
Emperor did not listen to him, nor did he intend to support the Crown
Prince’s demands. “Zorzal. When the war began, nobody could have
expected so many unexpected developments. Since things are not going
according to our desires, we are best served by ending hostilities before
the damage becomes too severe.” “The Empire can still fight!” “All the
more reason to end this sooner rather than later. Once we can no longer
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go on… perhaps there may not even be the time for talks.” “What
happened to the pride of the Empire?!” Zorzal was trying his best to
keep his voice down, but even so, this was close to a shout. He kicked
the wall and said, “To think Father was such a coward.” At this
embarrassing moment, Tyuule stepped forward to clear the air. “Your
Highness, the time is nigh. Please quell your anger.” Since Zorzal was
now the Crown Prince, he could not do as he pleased like he had in the
past. In his current position, he had to make sure the ceremony for the
return of their prisoners went well. Abdicating his duties and messing
the ceremony up would be an unthinkable sin. As Tyuule helped adjust
Zorzal’s clothes, she surreptitiously looked at him and realised his foul
mood was no longer present on his face. After a few deep breaths,
Zorzal managed to calm down. He might feel angry, but he had to nod.
“I understand. I will play my part at this ceremony.” “It is as you say,
your Highness. Please wish the prisoners well for returning to our soil.”
Tyuule said in relief. “Announcing the arrival of his Imperial Majesty
Emperor Molt, his Imperial Highness Prince Zorzal and her Imperial
Highness Princess Piña!” As the herald spoke, the doors before them
swung wide. Just then, the brilliant light of the hall beyond shone on
Tyuule. But even that was only for a fleeting moment. As the sound of
the doors closing carried through the long corridor, the shaft of light
illuminating her grew narrower and narrower until the doors were shut.
In the abnormally silent and darkened hallway, Tyuule lowered her head
and muttered, “What a simple man.” Then, she spoke, as though to
someone, “Is everything ready?” As she finished, a garbled voice came
from a seemingly empty corner.” “Yes, all is ready. We have made
ample preparations, so please look forward to the results, kihihihihi~” “I
will not permit failures like last time. That is what comes of leaving the
important work to others.” “I have no excuses for the failure to
assassinate Noriko. That is why I have summoned the elite of our tribe,
Ukushi, Kakushi and Kurume.” Three shadows suddenly appeared in the
darkened hallway. “Then, proceed. Let me see what havoc you can
wreak.” Tyuule grinned evilly as she raised her head. *** The ministers,
patricians, officials, officers and the others welcomed Zorzal and the
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others with a round of applause. According to etiquette, the country’s

leader would be first, followed by Zorzal, and then Piña. The imperial
family would meet first with the ministers and senators, and then the
Japanese delegates, who were the most important people in this event.
The released prisoners were placed at the end. However, when Zorzal
arrived, he went straight for the prisoners, who were by the side and out
of sight. Then, he began calling their names, and patting these confused
people on the shoulder. “Viscount Helm, you’ve returned!” “Your, your
Highness. Thank you for your concern.” “You’re the son of Marquis
Karasta, am I correct? Are you well?” “I am grateful that a beaten officer
like myself could receive your Highness’ concern…” Zorzal smiled
secretly. This event was to celebrate the return of their prisoners, so
nobody had any reason to stop him. Emperor Molt, Piña’s aides and the
guests in presence had not expected Zorzal to misbehave himself and
not play by the rules. They could only stare at Zorzal doing as he
pleased, unable to interfere. “Your Highness, perhaps it is time for
yourself to return…” one of the aides nervously suggested. Zorzal
ignored the aide’s reminder. Instead, he began asking about the
difficulties these prisoners had gone through. His ears were poised to
listen to their complaints, and from his attitude he clearly opposed the
peace talks. The Emperor looked at his back, and sighed deeply. “Leave
him to it. He will speak to the captives, while I will proceed with the
following events.” After the Emperor’s statements, the events involving
Zorzal had to be cancelled. The Crown Prince’s willfulness made the
guests frown, so everyone had no choice but to ignore him and go on
with the proceedings. However, Zorzal’s attitude moved the former
captives. After all, ever since they had been imprisoned, they had spent
every day under the supervision of guards who did not speak their
language, fearing, “Will I be executed today?” or “Will I be sold as a
slave tomorrow?” In truth, they had not been ill-treated. What made
them uneasy was the fear that they would be treated the same way the
Empire treated their prisoners of war. If they regretted their actions,
these imprisoned Imperial leaders would surely rethink their conduct in
the future. However, it was now too late to think of such things. After all,
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as prisoners, they did not know what suffering they would meet in the
future. In that climate of unease, the footsteps of their guards were like
the sound of the Grim Reaper approaching. As they held their breath
and listened, they feared that those footsteps would stop outside their
cell door. And now that they had returned safely to their country, they
had to worry if they would be accepted by their people. After all, they
were stained by the ignominy of having been taken prisoners, and they
were worried that they would be treated coldly when they returned.
Because of this, the Crown Prince had disregarded the proper procedure
and gone to the prisoners when he should have met the Japanese
delegates. His warm words and comforting pats on the shoulder filled
their hearts with warmth. In addition, Zorzal’s concern for the prisoners
was genuine, and not an act. After all, he had been beaten and insulted
as they had. The events of the night of the earthquake were an indelible
scar on his pride. Ever since that night, the smiles of the maids as he
passed them in the hallway felt like mockery; the whispered words of
passing officials felt like they were criticizing him. The only way Zorzal
could preserve his pride was to tell himself, “That was a stratagem to
make Father think I was useless.” “All the headache-inducing things I
have done up to now were on purpose.” “Being beaten by a woman was
painful, but there’s no need to dwell on it.” Shortly after, his hard work
was rewarded. The Emperor, who was reluctant to let go of his power,
had named Zorzal his successor. This was because Zorzal’s antics made
the Emperor think that he was a useless puppet who would dance on his
strings. However, after becoming the Crown Prince, he could not act as
he wished. The wounds on his body had healed, and after applying
dentures made of wyvern scale, his physical appearance had been fully
restored. Zorzal decided to discard his previous act, and let others
realise his true ability. And then, the Emperor chose to disregard
Zorzal’s actions. Normally, without the Crown Prince, the events could
not continue, but the Emperor simply said, “Let him be.” In the end, the
others around the Emperor agreed with him and ignored Zorzal. Zorzal
sneaked a glance around him, and saw that the Emperor was greeting
the Japanese delegates. This was the time to formally recognize the
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Japanese contingent as ambassadors. After that, the Empire could

officially begin the talks that Zorzal had so strenuously opposed. At this
time, the released prisoners pleaded with Zorzal. “I should be grateful
for the chance to return to our country, but I can’t just sit there and see
our Empire bound by unfair terms.” “Your Highness, give us a chance to
wipe away our previous mistakes!” They quietly pleaded with Zorzal to
give them another chance. “Be patient for a while. The war is not yet
over. I will give you all an opportunity to show your true strength. I need
more time.” After hearing him, the prisoners looked at Zorzal with
hopeful eyes and said, “We will obey you.” Those eyes were the only
ones turned to him. Normally, everyone in court should have been
looking at him, the Crown Prince. “Still, why did it turn out this way…?”
Zorzal gritted his teeth when he realised the Emperor had completely
ignored him. *** “Speaking of which, Princess Piña, do you know about
the Flame Dragon’s head that was hung on the city gate?” “I have seen
it with my own eyes. Truly a heart-pounding sight.” “I saw it too, but it
did not seem as fearsome as the legends told. Flame Dragon or not, it
seems anyone with a bit of skill could have taken it down.” “Indeed, I
concur. The legends spoke of many heroes failing to subdue the
Dragon… could it be that they were just weak?” The young patrician
men were relaxedly chatting with Piña and sharing their thoughts. Under
normal circumstances, the 10 ren (roughly 16 meters) area around her
would be designated a danger area which all males should avoid as
much as possible, but today seemed special, because Piña was
surrounded by many boys. Piña, who had been sampling food in the
corner, was quite surprised by this development. At the same time, she
was quietly watching them, to see what they planned to achieve by
approaching her. “Your Highness, you seem to be in a good mood.” Piña
nodded and replied, “Mm, I am.” The truth was that this was a joyous
day for the Imperial Princess Piña Co Lada. She could finally shrug off the
burden weighing down on her shoulders. During the Battle of Italica, the
JSDF had made their strength abundantly clear, and during the visit to
Tokyo, what she had seen in that country called Japan made her realise
that continuing the war would be suicide. In order to avert the Empire’s
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destruction, she had to do everything she could to end the war with
Japan. Because of that, on most days, Piña had gone around with a
melancholy expression on her face. Of course, she also felt that even if
the basic aim was to make peace, the Empire should not roll over and
accept every single condition the other side proposed. Otherwise, even if
the Empire managed to limp along, the livelihoods of the people would
be wrecked. When that happened, even the Imperial Capital would
become an empty ruin which could not support human habitation.
Earlier, Sugawara had informed her of Japan’s terms in an informal
manner… for instance, an astronomical sum of compensation. If they
tried to accumulate the money to pay up, even the neighboring
countries would be plunged into an economic crisis, to say nothing of the
Empire itself. Therefore, her new objective would be to find some way to
lower the amount payable. Although the peace talks had started, the
situation was far more dire than fighting a battle. The Empire had very
few chips they could use for leverage. Even so, this was no longer
something Piña had to worry about. The peace talks would be attended
by representatives chosen by the Emperor. This meant that she only had
to continue being a mediator for both sides, and maintain the
relationship they had built with Japan so far. Of course, that included
training up translators, arranging various activities, immersing herself in
Japanese culture and other chores. Compared to that, the duties she had
handled in the past were hardly worth mentioning. As she thought about
that, relief flooded through her heart. The days of worrying about the
Empire and being depressed by day and sleepless by night would be
over. She could hand the cleanup after the party to Hamilton, and the
thought of that freedom filled Piña with relaxation. “I’ve felt this way
before…” She had felt the same way at the garden party she had
organized with Sugawara, when she had successfully convinced the pro-
war Senators about the importance of making peace. However, after her
brother Zorzal barged in all of a sudden, and learning that Count Marx
was working against them behind the scenes, she had to take up the
burden she thought she had put down. What kind of scheme was
Minister of the Interior Count Marx hatching? Piña felt that whatever it
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was, it was not good, so she had no choice but to be on her guard. After
that, there had been several incidents which threatened to derail the
peace process. The brawl in front of the Emperor, the request to free the
kidnapped Japanese, and the destruction of the Senate. There was even
the attempted assassination of Noriko. Every time one of these things
happened, Piña’s gut would swell, her head would ache, she would get
dizzy and nauseous, among other things, and deep wrinkles would
appear on her brow. However, these worrisome things would end today.
“Things being what they are, there’s no need to worry. No matter what
happens, the peace talks will go though.” After all the trials she had
gone through to date, caution was now part of her personality. Her
pessimistic imagination was finally starting to cleave to reality. Given
the current circumstances, no matter how hard Piña tried to imagine
things, she could not visualize anything which could upset the present
situation. As long as nothing happens to Father, there’ll be no problems.
Because of that, Piña’s expression was one that only a successful
individual who had overcome scores of difficult problems would possess.
In this calm and peaceful state, the curve of her lip and her soft, velvet
cheeks broadcast a wave of feminine appeal that snared the souls of all
the surrounding men. “Oh, she’s too beautiful.” “Your Highness. In
future, please continue blessing us with your radiant smile.” The
patrician boys were entranced by Piña, and gathered to praise her grace
and beauty. Feeling a little embarrassed, Piña held her face with one
hand, curling her hair around her finger. At this point, she was doubly
sure of one thing — she was feeling very relaxed now. “So that’s what it
was all about…” Piña tried her best to put on a look of elegant grace.
“The Flame Dragon is not worth being afraid of, you say. I shall engrave
those words into my heart. The Empire needs talented individuals like
you gentlemen. However, nobody has discussed how best to harness
your courage and ability. Therefore, I hope you gentlemen will
voluntarily enlist, lead troops into battle, and burn brightly for the
Empire.” Once she finished, the stammered replies came in from all
around her. “Ah, no, well… about that…” “My family has produced
generations of bureaucrats, so I need to carry on the family tradition.”
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And they all took half a step back. “Aw, what a disappointment. If only
you gents could enlist with the same courage you use to chase girls, I
might become closer to you. Don’t you think so, Shandy?” “Indeed, your
Highness.” The woman called Shandy Kaf Marea was one of the female
knights who had been called back to the Capital along with Bozes in
order to translate for the peace talks that would start tomorrow. She was
only 17, but her linguistic knowledge could be put to use immediately in
her role as an interpreter. Her chestnut brown hair was tied into a braid,
and she radiated an air of elegant charm. Since Hamilton was busy
today, Shandy took her place as Piña’s attendant. “The doors of the
Imperial Army will forever be open to you.” “Mm. Currently, the Imperial
Army is undermanned, so promotions will be easy. After all, we are still
at war, so chances to prove yourself will be commonplace.” “Exactly.
Also, they say the country of Nihon does not trade in slaves, so if you are
captured, you may rest easy.” “And if that happens, you can rest
assured that I will work to persuade them to release you. However, that
might take around ten years…” As she said this, the patrician youths
started recalling urgent things to do, and they left in a manner that
resembled fleeing. In an instant, the area around Piña was devoid of
male presences. “Hmm. Do you think I overdid it?” Piña seemed to be
scorning the boys as they fled, and she hmphed in disgust. At the same
time, she coughed on something she brought up into her throat. “I
haven’t had the pleasure of seeing your Highness’ razor tongue in action
for a while. It was a most refreshing experience.” “It has been a while
since I managed to vent on other people. I feel quite refreshed now.”
More accurately, she had not had the free time to mock people. One
could imagine the pressures that had been dogging Piña up till now. “But
if nobody brought it up, I would not have known that someone hung the
Flame Dragon’s head on the city gate. Is it true?” “Indeed it is. I had my
suspicions at first, so I went to verify it myself. The Flame Dragon looked
like how the old people described it. Judging by its fearsome
appearance, I am sure it is the real thing. Piña coughed again, and
quietly said, “Itami-dono, did you succeed at last?” “Your Highness,
while I believe it is only proper to relax after doing good work, stuffing
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your face with cake like that is like despoiling a natural landmark.”
Naturally, the “landmark” of which Shandy spoke was a stern yet
beautiful thing. After hearing that, Piña hastily washed down her cake
with a mouthful of wine, and dabbed at her mouth with a handkerchief.
“Did Itami-dono succeed at last? I hope he is well…” This time, she
managed to speak those words out loud. Shandy applauded as she
heard it. “ I’m sure he’ll be fine.” “Do you know the facts of the matter?”
“How shall I say this… I wrote the report myself. I was in Arnus before
Itami-sama left, and I don’t know what happened after that, so I was
worried as well. But it’s good that he’s made it through that trial intact.
Shandy’s joyful expression was as though she were describing her own
activities. Piña looked at her with surprised eyes, and then said, in a
vaguely reproachful and suspicious tone, “So you wrote that report. I
thought it was some sort of prologue to a heroic epic…” “Your Highness,
I hope you can praise me with a ‘Well done, Shandy’.” Just then, a wave
of pain shot through Piña’s head. Shandy’s essay was well-written, and it
was plain that her appreciation of art had taken a great leap forward.
However, objectivity was the essence of a report, and so Piña carefully
reminded Shandy to take more care in future. “The report was very
detailed, so I have no doubts. However, writing Tuka into a man was too
much.” After that, Shandy shrank and said, “I’m very sorry.” “Although, I
eagerly look forward to subsequent reports. I am quite interested in how
Itami-dono did battle with the Flame Dragon.” “Indeed. Panache-nee-
sama is collecting information now, and she will return soon. I am all
wakuwaku in anticipation.” “Wakuwaku?” “Yes, wakuwaku tekateka. It
refers to a state where one’s heart beats rapidly, and one’s skin glistens.
The meaning is roughly ‘my heart beats rapidly in anticipation, and my
excitement is such that my skin glows from the thin layer of sweat upon
it.’” Shandy clasped her hands in front of her chest as she related the
term she learned from Arnus, with a dreamy expression on her face. As
Piña saw this, she began to worry for the state of Shandy’s mental
health. “What’s wrong? Are you alright?” “Yes, I am feeling very well.
Although I left for Arnus on your Highness’ order, in truth I could not
muster up the motivation at first. However, after witnessing several
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things for myself, I began to feel that I would have volunteered myself,
even without your order…” The truth was that Shandy had been given
secret orders to seduce Itami. Because Panache, leader of the White
Rose Knights, had been ordered to Arnus for language classes, Piña had
intended to let Shandy inherit the position of the White Rose Knight
Leader. However, Panache had stubbornly. said, “I wish to go to Arnus
with Onee-sama”. Piña had given her those orders as a condition of
sending her over. As a result, Shandy had been very interested in Itami’s
activities. “Haa… Let’s set this mission aside for the time being. Do not
act without my express permission.” “Ehh~ Whyyyyy~ You’re so
meeeean~ yo~ur~High~ness~” Shandy pouted to Piña, her lips pursed
like the mouth of a porcelain teapot. This made Piña think of Shandy’s
hobby; she liked to worship famous people. For instance, the champion
of a martial arts tournament, or a handsome male actor amidst a sea of
female actresses. Anyone could see that a person who could defeat a
Flame Dragon would be the object of admiration for a girl like herself.
Still, while she might have been given the order of “seduction”, if she
developed actual feelings for him, that would be bad. “I’d advise you not
to act incautiously around him.” Piña warned. “Ehhhhh~ whyyyy~?” A
few reasons came to mind, but to Piña, the most important — and most
troubling — reason was that she did not wish to offend Risa, the source
and a creator of the “fine art” that Piña so loved. “But aren’t the two of
them already divorced?” “The truth about the relationship between a
man and a woman cannot be easily learned by looking at the surface of
matters. I lack experience with such matters and do not fully understand
their mysteries, but I can be sure that they are always messy and
troublesome. Shandy, even if you told me ‘I can’t hold back this feeling
any more’, I would not relieve you of the mission you have been tasked
with. Missions like these are hard to hand to someone that I do not trust
completely.” And if true feelings actually developed, Piña would have to
consider the possibility of betrayal. “Uuu… does that mean I won’t be
able to go to Arnus anymore?” “Indeed.” “I don’t like that. I don’t like
that at all. However… I understand, I’ll bear with it.” Shandy drooped her
shoulders in despair. “Are you really alright?” “I will… try…” As she
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finished that, she puffed up her cheeks and looked up, her unhappiness
plain on her face. In contrast, Piña was done reproaching her, and she
stuffed her mouth with a dessert she had been holding. “Then, I shall
personally view the Flame Dragon’s head. I believe it was at the city
gate…” she said as she rose. “Your Highness, you’ve stuffed your mouth
again. Your cheeks are bloated, it is truly a crime against nature.” This
time, the “nature” of which Shandy spoke referred to her charm and
presence. Piña motioned to Shandy to wait as she hurriedly chewed and
swallowed the food. “These desserts are a gift from Nihon, it would be a
shame if I did not try them. Besides, if you want to talk about eating
habits, aren’t you eating as much as I am?” “We are playing different
roles. I may be a patrician, but since my status is low, a minor faux pas
can be forgiven by everyone on account of my cuteness. However, your
Highness’ beauty and refinement is a “charm point” in your position an
Imperial Princess. Therefore, you must never do things which would sully
your Highness’ image.” “Really?” “Mm, yes. And speaking of the Flame
Dragon’s head, the Emperor has already ordered it taken down, so it is
no longer at the city gate.” “How… how fast.” “It can already be
considered fairly slow. After all, it has been there from dawn to dusk,
and the gawkers blocked the roads up.” Thanks to that, traffic in the
Imperial Capital had been paralyzed all day. “Then, where is the Flame
Dragon’s head now?” “About that…” Shandy touched her chin with an
index finger, a confused look on her face, but an instant later, she
cheered up again. “...it’s over there.” As Piña looked in the direction
which Shandy’s finger was pointing, she was just in time to see the
Flame Dragon’s head being carried in. *** The Flame Dragon’s head was
very large, and very heavy. It had required 20 strong soldiers to lift and
move it. How had it gotten onto the roof of the gatehouse tower? She
kept thinking about that point. Count Marx’s report had said, “Though
we are still investigating, we have not learned anything significant so
far.” “To think nobody noticed despite it happening at the main gate.
How sad is that?” the Emperor sighed as he furrowed his brows. “I
understand your Majesty’s displeasure, but please consider that the
Imperial Capital is a metropolis of over a million souls. The crowds pass
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through the gate day and night. In addition, the gates have never been
shut for over 200 years. The patrols only come by at fixed intervals.
Once night falls, people will only focus on the ground beneath their feet,
and not on what is above them.” Count Marx explained in a convincing
tone. A long time ago, the gates of the Imperial City would shut at
nightfall, and then the sentries would look around with wary eyes, But
now, wagons bearing goods came in and out even in the dead of night.
Moving items around the city gate was nothing new, and would not
attract attention.” “It can’t be helped. However, the investigation must
continue. In particular, the places frequented by the Flame Dragon. Pay
attention to the tribes, settlements and the movements of our allies.”
“Understood.” After giving the order, Molt reached his hand out to
caress the chin of the Flame Dragon’s head. He tapped it a few times to
test its hardness. After feeling the feedback from the uneven and solid
surface below his fingers, he stroked it to feel the wall of impenetrable
armor its scales produced. It would be impervious to swords or bows. Its
teeth were more impressive still. The smallest were the size of a grown
man’s thumb, while the largest were as thick as a woman’s slender arm.
It seemed the legends of Dragons being able to chew through stone
towers were not exaggerated. The Dragon’s eyeball was nowhere to be
found, yet the empty socket was still bone-chilling. This was the proper
feeling that a Flame Dragon, bringer of terror and despair, should
inspire. The head itself was already so large — the size of its body, from
wingtip to wingtip and snout to tail, would beggar the imagination. From
ancient times, legends of the Flame Dragon struck fear into the hearts of
men, so people imagined it to be a beast beyond the bounds of reality.
As it turned out, the truth of the beast was not far behind the legend
surrounding it. Before he realised, there were a crowd of guests
gathered to look at the Flame Dragon’s head. The gawkers were so
frightened by the fearsome visage of the huge draconic head and its
teeth that their bodies trembled. Just then, Molt turned around and
addressed the guests who were looking at the head. “Ladies and
gentlemen, please, take heed. This is the head of the Flame Dragon
which appeared in the Imperial Capital and struck fear into the hearts of
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many. In the past, not only did it lay waste to cities, but it also slew
many. The lives of the people were miserable beyond words. However,
that accursed creature is now a corpse. There is nothing to fear from it.
Let us treat this as a gift from the gods, and celebrate this memorable
day!” “Your Majesty, who was responsible for this?” an officer asked.
The answer was one that everyone present was looking forward to. “The
facts of the matter are not yet clear, and I have heard that there are
people spreading lies about this. No matter what, we cannot make a
hasty decision about this, so I feel this matter should not be discussed
here. After the appropriate investigations are made, I will make sure I
enlighten everyone on the subject.” After that announcement, Emperor
Molt left. Then, as though to fill the gap he left, the ones watching from
far away came closer, bringing their faces close to the surface of the
Dragon’s head. Some even went to touch the gaps between the
Dragon’s teeth, and they all discussed their opinions of the head. “Your
Majesty!” Molt turned around as he heard Piña’s voice. “Oh, Piña, I was
looking for you.” he said. Then he stepped out of the crowd, in order to
touch his daughter’s shoulder. Piña asked her father, “Did the Men in
Green do this?” “Indeed. Earlier, when I received your report, I could
hardly believe it, so I merely skimmed it. Now that I think about it, I must
thank you for your hard work.” “Please, do not blame yourself so. It
could not be helped. The fact is that when I drafted the report, I could
scarcely believe it myself.” “Then, have you learned anything new? We
must reward them for their great achievement.” “Five people went forth
to purge the Flame Dragon: Itami, Rory, Lelei, Tuka and Yao. I sent
someone to observe their movements. Perhaps you could ask her for
more details.” Piña introduced Shandy to the Emperor as she explained
herself. Molt seemed particularly interested in one of the names. “You
mentioned Rory?” “Yes. That would be the Apostle of Emroy, Rory
Mercury.” “Oh, if she was part of their group, then the elimination of the
Flame Dragon would be a matter of course. Still, it is hard to believe
someone could persuade one of the Apostles, revered in the same
breath as the gods, to lend her aid. Perhaps it was a whim of hers?
...Although if that is the case, the glory will go to the gods, and not to
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the Men in Green, as the rumors say.” “That would be incorrect. Itami
Youji is one of the Men in Green.” “Itami? That name sounds familiar.”
Piña nervously said, “He was… the man who struck Ani-sama, before
your presence.” Molt muttered, “So it was him.” with a crestfallen look
on his face. “So the Men in Green are enemies after all… Then, how
about the others?” “Tuka is an Elf of the Rodo Forest, while Yao is a Dark
Elf of the Schwarz Forest.” Perhaps he was displeased, but the Emperor
seemed more and more depressed, muttering, “More non-humans.”
Then, when he heard Shandy’s words, he cheered up and smiled. “The
last member of the group was Lelei La Lelena. She is a disciple of Sage
Kato, and a resident of Coda Village.” “Oh, that Master Kato! Is she
human?!” Shandy was a little confused by the sudden change in the
Emperor’s attitude, but she answered him. “Y-yes, she is. She is one of
the Rurudo people… she seems to have settled in Coda Village so we
can consider her a citizen of the Empire.” The Emperor nodded, smiling
brightly as he muttered, “Yes, yes…” “Marvellous! This is truly welcome
news. I am relieved to hear that a member of the Empire aided in the
slaying of the Flame Dragon. Piña, find that Lelei person and invite her
here. Listen well, this is an order. You must accomplish it by any means
necessary. Do you understand?” Emperor Molt was suddenly overjoyed,
as though a switch had been flipped within him. Then he spread his
arms, and announced the news he had just heard to all the guests. The
unexpected thing was the vigorous applause that news garnered. The
mood in the hall had been pleasant enough, but people had not overly
displayed that joy. That was because the people in the Empire did not
wish to have to loudly thank an outsider for slaying the Flame Dragon.
To members of the ruling class, doing so would be gravely regrettable
and damaging to their pride. However, if they could praise a member of
the Empire for exterminating the Flame Dragon, that would be a
different matter. It would be something about which they could be
proud. In this world, those who made great accomplishments not only
earned great glory for themselves, and it would be a potent diplomatic
tool for their countries of origin. If someone could win the approval of
other countries or tribes, then once that exalted person showed up, even
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his fellow countrymen would benefit from the glory reflected of him, and
their influence would skyrocket. For example, someone like this would
be like an athlete who gathered all manner of Olympic gold medals and
world cups to himself. While such a person may not exist, if such a
person did exist, he would be praised by all the people of the world, who
would gather to cheer in unison, “Incredible, incredible” for him. Starting
with the Elbe Kingdom, many other tribes and nations had bestowed
knighthoods or honorary chieftainships on Itami, one after the other.
They did this to draw closer to him, and gain benefits from affiliation
with him. Thus, their actions were not purely to praise him. Similarly, the
Emperor would laud Lelei for her accomplishments. The answer to the
question, “Where does Lelei La Lelena, pupil of Master Kato hail from?”
would spread through the Empire and its surrounding territories like
wildfire. And of course, the happier the nobles were, the more upset a
certain man became. The black flames of jealousy burned fiercely in
Zorzal’s heart. Hatred flowed throughout his body, and he clenched his
fists so hard the nails broke his flesh and caused his blood to flow. He
glared viciously at the Dragon’s head and at the Emperor himself.
“Dammit… What’s so great about killing a mere Flame Dragon?” As the
Crown Prince, Zorzal had no choice but to endure the ignominy of being
ignored, while someone who was not even here earned the praise and
respect of everyone present. To Zorzal, that was an unforgivable sin. It
was absolutely unforgivable that he was not the one being praised by
all, that he was not the one bringing victory and glory to the Empire. Nor
could he forgive the man who made that announcement. If pressed, he
would say it was because the name he announced was not Zorzal, but
that Lelei La whatever. Why was he praising an outsider so generously,
but his own son, not at all?” Unforgivable. This is absolutely
unforgivable. I want to kill them all. That man, that Lelei, I want to kill
them all! After that, the hatred in Zorzal’s heart seemed to have become
a form of strength. “Everyone, let us drink a toast in celebration of this
joyous occasion!” Emperor Molt led everyone in the toast, as the clinks
of glasses echoed back and forth throughout the hall. Just then, a golden
wine goblet fell to the ground. Following which, a scream shattered the
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sudden silence. Before anyone could react, the Emperor had fallen on
his back, facing the sky.
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Vol. 5 :
Chapter 2
A HMV raced over the sprawling, grassy plains, under the light of the
radiant sun.
It threw up a trail of dust as it roamed leisurely over the plains, speeding

towards the horizon as if aiming for the clouds in the distance.
Inside the vehicle, the sounds of the engine blended with those of a lute.
The lute’s player was Tuka Luna Marceau, who rode in the back seat.
She was an elf girl who worshipped Lunaru, the goddess of music.
Her fingernails — which looked as pink as seashells — strummed the

instrument’s strings, producing beautiful melodies which sounded like
they had been made by a virtuoso musician. Were she to play in Japan,
she would be able to pack the concert hall full of people, with extra
patrons squeezing in to occupy the standing room. Or at least, that was
how Itami Youji — who was unfamiliar with the music world — imagined
it would be as he drew on his memories of relevant manga.
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“Then, what shall I play next?”
“How about something livelier?”
After requesting a song from Tuka, Itami looked down at his watch, and
then at a map, and then back at the watch again. He repeated this
several times.
“All right, Father.”
With that, Tuka took up the lute again.
“Come on, Tuka, can’t you call me something other than Father?” Itami
said as he kept his eyes on the map. It was partly because he was busy
with what he was doing, but also because he was embarrassed about
being called ‘Father’.
“Don’t~ Want~ To~. Besides, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
For some reason, Tuka’s face and the tips of her ears had flushed red.
“And, and besides, how could I call you Y-Youjy? My instincts would keep
me from…”
She trailed off into mumbling. Given the way she was speaking to herself
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in a small voice, it would seem that she could only relax while
addressing him as “Father”.
“Keep you from what?”
“It’s~ no~thing~”
Tuka was whining a little to try and drop the subject. Then she began
playing a cheerful melody, as Itami had requested.
From what he could understand of the lyrics, the song was a humorous
tale about a girl who was in love with a certain man. The girl tried
everything she could to get the man’s attention only for all her attempts
to end in failure, leaving her to sigh over and over. However, in the end
the girl’s wish came true. More accurately, her wish had already been
granted since the beginning.
“That was beautiful. How long have you been playing this instrument?”
Tuka seem vaguely unconcerned with Itami’s question as she replied,

“Let me think. I guess it’s been over a hundred years.”
As she said this, her pointy ears began twitching up and down.
“O-over a hundred years…”
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Should he be impressed by this? Or should he nod, because it was only

natural that she would reach a standard like that after a hundred years
of practice? Itami did not know how to respond.
“Are all Elves this amazing?”
“Yes, we are. An Elf of my age usually has a favored instrument of their

own.”
“Ah… I see.”
Then, what about the other Elf?
Itami turned his gaze to the female Dark Elf by Tuka’s side.
As their eyes met, Yao shyly laughed “ahaha”, nodded and said:“Yes,
that’s right.”
“And what instrument are you good at Yao?”
“I can play the flute… but it’s just a hobby. I’ve never actually performed
for strangers. Of course, you’re not a stranger, and I would gladly play
for you. However, this sort of thing is better with nobody else around.
Although, it’s early right now, so would you be willing to wait for
tonight… Owwwww~”
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Though she had (uncomfortably) tried to conceal her intentions by

stating them in a roundabout way, it was quite obvious from her lewd
tone that she was intending to seduce Itami. Halfway through, however,
her spiel suddenly ended in a strange yelp.
Given that Itami was in the vehicle commander’s seat, he had no idea
what was going on. However, Rory — who was behind that seat — and
Tuka — who was opposite her — seemed to be swishing their legs
around for some unknown reason.
“It’s embarrassing if I don’t get to help!” “How can you call that sort of
thing ‘helping’?” The girls took their shots at each other, and their
whispered back and forth came to Itami’s ears.
What are they up to? Itami thought. When he turned around and leaned
back to check on what was going on behind him, Tuka frantically
changed the topic, as though she wanted to cover up their earlier
squabble.
“Fa-father, he… my father Hodryur played the sitar very well, and they
say his music could entrance anyone who heard it.”
“Really? So your music teacher was your own father, Tuka.”
Tuka froze as she heard those words, and then continued, “I didn’t have
a teacher.”
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“Then who taught you?”
Tuka tilted her head, a confused expression on her face.
For Elves, their talent for music was an inborn thing, so they had no idea
what that question meant, and no idea of how to answer. Tuka was in a
similar situation.
However, Yao seemed to sense Tuka’s difficulty and lent her a helping
hand.
According to Yao, Elves were not a race that specially sought people out
to learn how to practice the arts. Even basic things like martial arts and
spirit magic were learned by seeing and doing, and the rest was all a
matter of personal devotion, practice and experience.
“So, rather than say that she had no mentor, it would be better to say
that everyone around her was her mentor.”
“Ah... I see.”
For example, one would not need a teacher to learn how to speak, or to
learn how to perform trivial everyday tasks. One normally picked these
fundamentals up just living day by day, and Tuka was in a similar
situation. Because of that, the Elves did not think better or worse of each
other by their proficiency in various skills. While this was not necessarily
true for all Elves, they generally saw things like natural ability as a fairly
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dull topic. To the Elves, if someone could not master a certain skill after
a long time, that person was merely a late bloomer; whereas if someone
was very skilled in a certain aspect, they simply said that he had
invested a lot of time and effort into his craft. In fact, the thought of
someone actually knuckling down and training long hours in order to
surpass others within a particular field was something like “obsession”
to the Elves, and they thought poorly of such things.
“If you thoughtlessly try to plant a tree, and force it to conform to your
will, then even if you planted that tree on fertile soil, gave it ample
water, and used the power of the spirits on it… in the end, that tree
would still grow into an unnatural form. Don’t you think so? We Elves
obey the rules of nature — we seek unity and understanding in nature,
and aim to live balanced lives.”
Elves had much longer lifespans than humans, and thus they spent a lot
of time on anything they did. The elves would only take out their
instruments and play if they wanted to enjoy their music. After about
one or two hundred years of this, they would naturally become masterful
performers.
“I see. No wonder people say, those who excel or stand out in some field
are usually weirdos.”
To the elves, learning techniques from masters and passing own

techniques were things which existed for those short-lived races who
wanted to improve themselves. However, it was because of the elves’
attitude — their habit of doing things slowly and completing tasks over
hundreds of years — that the human race managed to conquer the
world.
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“Humans reject the paradigms with which we Elves view the world.”
As a human himself, Itami scratched his head and mumbled:
“Well, I don’t know what to think of your situation. I wonder how

Beethoven or Mozart would respond to you.”
“Say, Youjy. Who are these people you’re talking about?”
Rory raised her body over Itami’s shoulders, and planted both her hands
there. At the same time, her black hair cascaded down over his
shoulders with a quiet rustle.
“In my world, they were composers. They lived hundreds of years ago,
but the music they wrote has endured until today. Apparently, they were
pretty eccentric for their time.”
If they knew about Elves, would they be jealous of them? Just as Itami
mulled this over, a gaze came from the driver’s seat that seem to be
saying: ”I have something to say.”
The gaze’s owner, Lelei, gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“You…”
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“You what?” Itami asked. Just then, he heard the sound of another
engine — clearly different from the HMV’s — coming close. Before Lelei
could continue, Itami’s attention was drawn away.
“Oh! It’s here, it’s here!”
Itami eagerly looked to the sky, and shouted over the radio:
“I have visual confirmation of the aircraft. Drop the package!”
“No need to sign and stamp the delivery order, but please, bring back
some souvenirs! See you!”
The voice from the radio’s speaker belonged to the plane’s pilot. Shortly
after that, a C-1 medium transport plane swooped over them, it’s
turbojets roaring through the clear blue sky. The sound of the exhaust
was so powerful that it completely drowned out Tuka’s playing.
Thus, the C-1 transport made a low pass over the ground.
Then, a large crate fell from above Itami and the others, popping free as
if it had broken through its bindings.
“Ah! It’ll break if it falls from such a high place!”
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“Watch out!”
This violent method of delivery made Tuka and Yao exclaim in surprise.
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1489
However, the crate’s parachute opened immediately, braking its fall. It

would be difficult to call that descent “slow”, but at least it did not seem
like it was going to strike the ground with a tremendous impact any
more.
“Lelei, head toward the direction where the crate dropped.”
Lelei gripped the steering wheel tightly as Itami pointed toward the
falling parachute.
“...Understood.”
Though Lelei looked like she was wavering between speaking and
silence, in the end she nodded slightly, and with a turn of the steering
wheel, the HMV changed its course.
***
Itami, the ex-commander of 3rd Recon, had a new mission — to

investigate resources in the Special Region.
Simply put, his main objective was to travel around the special region
and search for any ore deposits in the places he visited. The brass went
on to point him toward locations which might contain oil or rare earth
deposits. However, there was an elephant in the room which had to be
addressed in order to accomplish that mission.
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—Namely, that Itami himself was neither a geologist or a mineralogist.
There were those expert geologists who could look at a small rock and
determine whether or not an ore was present. People like that typically
ended up working in the mining or construction industries. In contrast,
when Itami looked at a rock, all he saw was a rock. Therefore, in order to
properly conduct the investigation, they needed native guides to help
pick up news from local residents. In addition, they needed to get a
rough grasp of the resource distribution in the area from these rumors.
“Yes, got it. Though, I didn’t expect the brass to actually let me go
investigate by myself. That was quite surprising.”
The truth was, Itami’s superior Maj. Higaki was worried about Itami.
Would Itami end up with depression after his suspension ended and he
had nothing to do?
“Are you still saying that? Wasn’t it you who ran off to the Elbe Kingdom
in order to investigate their underground resources, not long ago?”
This was what the authorities had to say about Itami going AWOL to slay
the Flame Dragon: “In the course of executing out his resource-
prospecting mission, 1LT Itami coincidentally encountered a Class A
Dangerous Beast, known as a Dragon, and slew it with the help of
locals”. Those were the official contents of the after-action report.
“Well, how could I do it by myself? The girls were there to help back
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then.”
“Then, recruit local assistants this time as well. We’ve already budgeted
for those expenses.”
Higaki flipped through a binder, and showed Itami a spreadsheet.
The brass had given their approval after being shown reports on the
discovery of raw diamonds and oil, so the budget for resource
prospecting had been greatly increased. While that was certainly an
unexpected surprise, further funding for these activities would only
come if they could continue to show appropriate results. They could not
celebrate just because their budget was increased for the moment.
Itami’s finger traced the numbers on the spreadsheet, and he was

shocked.
“Uwah… one, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand,

million… are there really so many expenses to pay off?”
“These pencil-pushers feel that if they throw money at a problem, they’ll

get results. Thanks to them, we’ll be sending other people on resource-
prospecting missions besides you.”
“More money is good, right? We should be happy that the brass gave us
all this budget. Though, I have a question; are the locals that we hire
with money really reliable?”
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“You’re not the only one who’s been on good terms with the locals. Of
course, they aren’t as visible as you are. Besides, the Dark Elves that
you helped volunteered to assist us.”
“Those Dark Elves? When did they…”
“They came calling while you were suspended. They said, ‘We finally
took back our homeland and gained a measure of peace, but our homes
were destroyed while we were hiding, so we wanted to come work for a
wage’, ‘Please give us jobs’, and so on. Also, the Elbe Kingdom sent
people over as well.”
“I can’t believe that old gramps was actually a king. Finding that out
stunned me for a bit. Although, we did happen to help them in their hour
of need.”
“Well, they’ve all got ulterior motives. However, we won’t have to worry
about them betraying us, at least. That’s the most important thing. In
any case, you’d better get to work on this mission. Got it, Itami?”
“Yes, sir! Understood!”
Itami crisply snapped off a textbook salute, and just as he was about to

turn and leave his commander’s office —
“Ah, that’s right, hang on.”
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Itami froze mid-movement as Higaki called out to him. He turned around

and asked, “Anything else?”
“I almost forgot to give this to you.”
Higaki handed Itami a payslip. He flipped through it, and was shocked.
He even wondered if there was something wrong with his eyes.
“One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand… uwah, this is…”
“You brought this on yourself. Didn’t someone give you a diamond as a

gift? With that, your deducted pay shouldn’t be a problem, right?”
“Those are two different things, right? And it’s hard to value a diamond
like that. Frankly speaking, until they properly verify its value, it’s just an
ornament.”
After receiving the raw diamond, Itami had brought it to a high-end

jeweler’s shop in Ginza to have it valued.
Of course, because the diamond was not only of a high grade but
because it was huge, they told Itami that it was impossible to calculate
its value.
If they smashed it into pieces, they could probably sell it. However, the
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jeweler firmly refused him — in a careful, cautious tone — and said: ‘We
could not possibly do anything as shocking as that. This diamond is
precious precisely because of its vast size. If we broke it up in deference
to the owner’s wishes, it would be an insult to the stone’. However, the
price which corresponded to a gem of this size could not be expressed
by mere numbers. If pressed, he would say that it would be an
‘astronomical’ sum. In fact, it would not be much of a stretch to say that
it was a ‘radio astronomical’ number.
<TL note: In astronomy, optical telescopes are the most common types
used, and they can see a long way. Radio telescopes can see even
further than that. In short, the stone is really valuable.>
“I am confident that there is nobody in this country with the purchasing

power to acquire this gem. The people who could afford it would
probably be Arabian sheikhs or Jewish financial magnates. Our firm
simply does not have the connections with big players like that, so
please forgive us for not being able to introduce a buyer to you.
However, you might wish to try speaking to specialized gemstone
trading firms and asking around. We cannot guarantee what kind of
response you will get, when that response will come, or even if you will
get a response in the first place. All I can ask is that you wait patiently.”
The jeweler returned the gemstone to Itami with trembling hands as he

said this.
Because of this, Itami’s finances were still in dire straits. Not only was he
not an overnight millionaire (or more), he was, in fact, flat broke.
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—All this was because of what had happened to Itami after slaying the
Flame Dragon.
“Ehh…”
Itami took out his JSDF-issued notebook and methodically crossed out a
few lines of text within its pages.
Every time he did, he sighed. This made the nearby ladies focus their
attention on him.
“What’s the matter? Why so glum?”
Rory peeked out from behind the seat’s backrest and peeked into Itami’s
notebook.
“Nothing, it’s just a shopping list. Since my pay’s been docked, I’ve had
to cut down on expenses too. But the more I think about it, the less I
want to give up on any of the items here. It would be a shame to not buy
them…”
He muttered, “Can’t give this up, can’t give that up,” and then he
opened up a doujin market’s list of doujin circles and lined it up next to
the notebook. All this was why Itami was called an otaku. Of course, if
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Rory knew the truth behind all of this, she would probably have poked
his head from behind, while grumbling “Don’t make me worry about this
sort of thing”. That said, she could not read Japanese characters well, so
all she said was: “That’s a shame,” and then returned to her seat.
Besides Itami, only Lelei could understand Japanese characters at a

glance. However, she was in the driver’s seat to the right of Itami, her
hands firmly clenched around the steering wheel, watching her front
while stepping on the gas. Therefore, she had no time to peek at what
was in Itami’s hands.
The HMV drove steadily on toward the north.
Since there were no man-made roads on the plains, they would

occasionally encounter rocks or sinkholes along the way. Lelei the driver
did not need to spend much energy to maneuver around these
obstacles, which also spoke of how skilled she had become at driving
around them and solving all the problems they had on the road. Of
course, part of the reason that she could do all this was because of the
advanced driver assistance system installed in the vehicle. But one
could also turn it around and say that nobody could have expected a
novice driver who had just begun learning the day before to be able to
drive so well.
“Adapting to the environment is more important than learning skills in a

place without traffic regulations.”
What one learned in a driving school was how to drive safely while
obeying traffic regulations. However, in a place without signal lights or
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road signs, those skills were not as important.
Incidentally, Rory, Tuka and Yao had also tried their hand at the wheel.
On that day, Itami received a grim reminder of how frightening rookie
female drivers could be. In fact, he told the three of them:
“I’m not riding in any vehicle you girls are driving.”
“No matter how long it takes, those three must never, ever, under any
circumstance, be allowed to touch a steering wheel”, “It’s too
dangerous”, “There’ll be an accident for sure”, “Innocent bystanders will
get hurt”, “In any case, it’s forbidden!”
Thus Itami evaluated their driving skills.
Therefore, only Lelei — who was very confident in her skills — was
permitted to practice driving.
“She’s adapting pretty well. Though, she should be getting tired around
now. Hey, come switch with me,” Itami said.
He did so out of concern for Lelei, but surprisingly enough, Lelei had no
intention of stopping.
For some reason, she paid Itami’s words no heed, and continued
gripping the steering wheel. Shortly after that, she replied tersely:
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“No need. I hope you will continue standing by.”
After that, Itami looked at the side at her face for a while. He noticed
that she had started wearing malachite earrings recently, and her once-
skinny body was beginning to show some curves, a clear sign that she
was growing up.
“Could it be… you enjoy driving?”
Lelei replied:
“Very much.”
“Why, why do you like it?”
“I enjoy controlling the rudder while swiftly analyzing the conditions of

the road surface and the friction of the wheels, as well as paying
attention to the vehicle’s mobility and its characteristics. The effects of
manipulating the rudder are instantly visible in the form of a physical
change in travel. I feel that driving is a personal test of one’s intellect
and rationality. The vehicle itself is a construct of human intellect, and
the feeling of melding with it is oddly similar to the feeling of casting a
spell...”
Lelei did not stop to breathe, and kept delivering what sounded like a
thesis.
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“...So it’s fun, huh.”
While Lelei was monologuing, there was a slight change in her

expression. Perhaps it would be apt to describe it as “a faint red flushing
of the cheeks” or “shyness”.
Until that moment, Lelei — who had been supremely focused on driving
— seemed like a part of the vehicle, with no change in her expression.
After that, once she finished answering Itami’s question, she added:
“Also, the Academy City of Londel is not far ahead. We’ll be able to see it
after crossing that ridge.”
It was as Lelei said.
After crossing the peak, a new world seemed to open up before Itami’s
eyes: stone buildings, clustered like stars, spread out in all directions in
front of him.
***
“Londel is an old city with a long and distinguished past. Most old cities
look like this, and all sorts of races make their home here…”
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From Lelei’s explanations, he had learned that Londel was founded

around 3000 years ago, beginning as some sort of private academy. The
dual-aspected God of Wisdom Elrantola — though still a Demigod at the
time — had inspired the construction of the academy.
Londel’s history was longer than the Empire’s, which was a point of pride
for its residents. Though the neighboring countries rose and fell in a
never-ending cycle, its reputation as an enduring capital of wisdom
stood the test of time.
Many sages and magicians gathered here, spending their days in study
and research. At the same time, younger disciples who thirsted for
knowledge came here from all over the world, studying diligently to
achieve their goals.
“The word ‘Lindon’ from the ‘Lindon School’ means ‘originated from
Londel’.”
“I see...”
Lelei was a disciple of the Lindon School. Itami murmured in awe as he

heard of the name’s origin, and then his attention was stolen by the
city’s sights.
The interior of the city was made of sun-dried bricks, mortared together
with plaster. The roof overhangs were made of a single, solid piece of
material. The spaces between them were narrow enough that two
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1501
people could stick their arms out of the windows on facing walls and link
their hands. In addition, the buildings were so old that the originally-
white exteriors were now dirtied to the point where one might think they
had been charred. The plaster chipped off the walls, revealing the bricks
within. Sights like these could be seen all over the city. There were clear
marks where masons had reapplied the plaster, and thus patches of
different-looking colors everywhere on the walls. All of this made the
run-down looking portions of the wall that much more obvious.
Most of the buildings were two or three stories high. The rare four-story
buildings stood out from the others as they reached to the sky.
Above the narrow street, people hung laundry to dry from the second
and third story windows, and their clothing swayed gently in the faint
breeze.
The people on the street were a melting pot. It was much like the
interior of a small inn in that both were basically exercises in how to
cram as many people as possible into a small space. Because of that,
the density of the people on the streets had pretty much reached its
maximum point.
The road called the Central Avenue was in reality little more than five
meters wide. The many people milling back and forth included Hags with
baskets on their heads, Dwarves hauling lumber, aged elders (human),
as well as apprentices from various species. The HMV was trapped
between theem — this was the same logic as a person who wanted to
drive down a busy shopping street at evening.
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However, if one looked around, one would see wagons heaped high with
vegetables, or mounted old folks on horses who had met the same fate
as the HMV. The people did not understand the concept of traffic flow,
and thus they moved in random, illogical ways — striding across the
center of the road, casually winding in and out from the side, standing
and chatting where they were… Scenes like this were everywhere. The
bigger cargo wagons and carts were slowed to a crawl by these chaotic
conditions.
It would seem that everyone in the HMV — Itami included — was used to
situations like these, and they all bore expressions of resignation. They
yawned and had looks like “Let’s push forward a little” written on their
faces. However at this time, there was no point in tapping their feet in
annoyance. Itami, who was trying to get used to the local atmosphere,
grumbled, “Ah, what bad luck, we came in at rush hour,” and then he
shifted his feelings to a pattern which better suited waiting out a traffic
jam.
“It’s always like this here. It’s neither planned nor logical.”
Lelei said these words, at once wistful and resigned, from the driver’s
seat as she slowly drove the HMV on.
In front of the HMV was a wagon laden with vegetables which looked like
pumpkins.
Its driver was an old man. In the back was a male Halfling and a young
cat-eared girl, who sat together in a very familiar way, leaning their
backs on each other. It was a scene which made people want to smile,
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and Itami wondered if that Halfling adult and that young cat-eared girl
were a couple as he stared at them without realizing it. Just then, the
eyes of both sides met, and Itami smiled in order to cover up his
embarrassment.
Perhaps she had been affected by the air of impatience and anxiety in
the vehicle, but Lelei put forward a suggestion to everyone.
“After turning right at the junction ahead, there’ll be a large inn not too
far ahead. If you really can’t wait any longer, you can go ahead and take
a look.
However, Tuka disliked the bustle and clamor of the streets. She
rejected the idea by saying “We’ll get lost if we walk around in strange
areas,” and punctuated her statement by taking out her musical
instrument. Meanwhile, Rory’s face read “I’m so glad we won’t have to
be stuck here”. After saying, “Got it, I’ll be heading over first”, she
dismounted and asked Yao to join her.
“That’s a big help.”
“I know. Let me pick the inn for us.”
And so, Rory and Yao stepped forward excitedly, soon vanishing into the
crowds.
“Has she been here before?” Itami muttered.
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Tuka agreed and said, “It’s definitely not her first time” while scooping
up her lute.
“Speaking of which, what should I play next?”
“Hm, that’s right. What’s a good piece…”
By the time the HMV had reached the inn, Tuka had played about ten
requests for Itami.
***
Rory chose an inn which was called the Reader’s Rest. This was a four-
storey building whose bottom two floors were made of brick while its
upper two floors were made of wood. It looked like quite an
extraordinary place.
Standing at the inn’s main door, Rory and Yao frantically waved their
hands to Itami and the others as they shouted “Over here, over here”,
“We’re right here”.
Lelei spotted them from a distance away, and she guided the vehicle
over. The inn’s valet saw this and frantically ran out. However, as he did
this, the hairy Beastman realized that this wagon was apparently not
pulled by horses, and he tilted his head in confusion. Then, he
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respectfully addressed Itami and the others within the vehicle: “You
must be Her Holiness’ followers. Please follow me.” With that, he herded
the nearby pedestrians out of the way and guided the car toward the
inn. Since the city was a gathering place for many species, one could
see many mixed-blooded humanoids everywhere.
“We’re Rory’s followers? When exactly did I agree to be addressed like

that?” Itami grumbled. In response, Lelei answered:
“The inns here are very picky. Usually, you can’t stay without someone
introducing you. What she did was quite appropriate.”
“It sounds like an old restaurant in Tokyo. Still, that means that all we
need to do is mention Rory to get rid of all the problems in our way,
right?”
“Indeed. The residents are just as old-fashioned as this city, and they
bow easily to fame and power.”
“Mm, after all, it seems that the gods are the highest authority in this
world.”
They looked toward the inn’s parking area, where stagecoaches and
cargo wagons were neatly lined up in a row.
Inside the stables, they could see horses for pulling wagons and geldings
used for riding. They were all helping themselves to fodder. Further
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within were creatures which looked like dinosaurs. At a glance one might
think the inn was preparing to set up a branch of Jurassic Park.
“The roofed garage is here..”
The Beastman guided Itami and the others to the garage for roofed
wagons in a natural tone, without bothering to explain the details to
them.
According to Lelei, inns like these usually had two places for parking —
the open-air parking lot, and the roofed garage, which had locked doors
and a roof. Although using the locked garage was more expensive, it
was a worthwhile expense for merchants transporting large quantities of
cargo. In contrast, the open-air parking lot was free of charge, but if one
parked a goods wagon there, they risked thieves making off with their
cargo, and of course there was the inconvenience of being exposed to
the elements.
It was troublesome to move the HMV’s weapons, ammunition and other

equipment to their room, so to Itami, rejoiced at the fact that they had
an enclosed area to park the vehicle.
After everyone had dismounted, Itami hastily retrieved his toiletries and
other daily-use supplies as well as his sidearm. Then he closed the
garage’s door with his hands full.
After that, Lelei, Tuka, as well as Rory — who had popped in from behind
them — began knocking on and fiddling with the garage’s door and lock.
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“What are they doing?” Itami mused. The valet, who had been standing
to the side all this while, quietly replied:
“That’s a many-layered ward. Magic, spirit magic, as well as Her

Holiness’ curse… any idiot who touches those will die a horrible death.
Even if they survive by some miracle, they’ll probably wish they were
dead. Ohhhhh, it scares me just to think of it.”
After realizing that they were probably setting up anti-theft measures,

Itami vowed not to come near this place again.
***
“Welcome, your Holiness Rory, as well as her followers. I am the owner

of the Reader’s Rest, Hamal. It is my honor to personally serve your
Holiness during your stay here. This is no idle boast, but even in the
ancient city of Londel, the Reader’s Rest can be considered one of the
most aged of our many historic institutions. And now, thanks to the
patronage of your Holiness, this humble establishment can tally another
mark of honor upon its long and distinguished history.”
The innkeeper Hamal was clearly not human at first glance — not only
was he huge of body, his skin seemed to be red in color. Once he asked
around, Itami learned that he was a Pooka, a species which was adept at
commerce.
Separated from them by a counter, the innkeeper handed a guest
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register to Rory. At the same time, a palm-size Fairy descended beside

the book, quickly producing a pen for them.
Rory accepted the pen with a “Thank you”, and then signed her name
with grand, sweeping strokes.
The innkeeper beamed with satisfaction as he read out Rory’s name.
“Rory Mercury… as expected your Holiness’ calligraphy is impeccable.

This is no idle boast, but this register contains the signature of Tyrant
King Solmon of Kracia.”
“Ah, what a nostalgic name. In those days, I was just a trainee priestess.
Did that person stay here as well?”
“Indeed. King Solmon spent his youth in this city of Londel. Of course,
your Holiness’ name will also become a point of pride for our household,
and it will be passed down through the generations.”
After Rory signed her name, Lelei took up the pen and signed for the
other four. However, during this time, the innkeeper continued speaking
only to Rory.
“Your Holiness, may I ask why you have come to this place?”
Everyone knew that Londel was a city of learning and knowledge, so all
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1509
the shrines here were dedicated to gods of wisdom, knowledge and so

one, like the God of Wisdom Elranyala. In turn, it was practically unheard
of to have an Apostle of Emroy visit this place.
“Actually, I came to accompany this girl.”
As Rory spoke, she gestured with her eyes to the innkeeper. Only then
did he seem to realize that Lelei existed, and he muttered “The Rurudo
girl?” He eyed her from her silver hair to the tips of her toes, as though
he were licking her body with his gaze. Apparently, the Rurudo were a
very rare breed of humans, living a nomadic lifestyle with no fixed home.
“A sage’s robe… I see, is she a freshly-admitted apprentice?”
Simply put, the “admission” Hamal was talking about referred to signing
on with a master to learn his craft. All who wanted to walk the path of
academia needed to start by learning basic knowledge from the sages in
their homes. After that, outstanding apprentices would journey to Londel
to seek ever more esoteric knowledge. Even so, things like schools or
organized educational institutions did not exist in this City of Wisdom. In
their place, the apprentices sought out teachers in the city and begged
to be allowed to study under them. Most of the apprentices who came
here to learn their art were around Lelei’s age. Therefore, the innkeeper
came to the conclusion that Lelei was a “freshly-admitted apprentice”.
Rory understood the innkeeper’s thoughts, and she simply smiled

without saying anything.
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“Welcome to Londel. I will arrange for your rooms, which will be the best
in the house, of course. I pray your Holiness and her followers will wait
here for a few moments.”
The innkeeper blew his whistle, summoning the boys who did odd jobs
around the inn. Soon enough, Brownies, Pookas, Hobbits, and youths of
various species filled the room.
“Add another bed to Room 2 on the fourth floor. Tidy up Room 3 on the
other side as well. Hurry!”
“Yes, Hamal-san!”
Several of the servants dashed out after receiving instructions to add

another mattress to the three-person room.
Others, who did not have anything in hand, encircled the group while
saying, “Let us help you take your luggage.”
“Uwah, this girl’s really cute!”
“She’s beautiful. Look, her golden hair’s so pretty!”
“You lot! That’s a guest! Don’t be rude to them!”
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1511
“Your Holiness. Please allow me to take your halberd.”
One of the servants took the halberd from Rory, and then he began to
yelp “Uwaaaaah!” as he felt its weight. At the same time, he lost
balance in shock, and fell to one side.
The halberd fell toward the crotch of another servant, who shrieked
“Aieeee!” and leapt away before falling flat on his ass. Then, the sharp
halberd embedded itself into the wooden floor with hardly a sound.
“Oi, you lot! What the hell are you doing?!”
“Sorry, Hamal-san. But… it’s really heavy… Please, please follow us,
your room’s on the fourth floor.”
“One, two, three!”
The halberd was finally moved by the combined strength of three

people, who then proceeded to carry it up the stairs.
Rory shrugged and said, “Good grief,” as she saw them struggling,
before walking up the stairs.
Lelei, Tuka and Yao handed their luggage to the inn’s servants, and they
proceeded up the stairs empty-handed. In the end, only Itami was left
where he was, still holding his luggage.
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“Ah… what about me?”
Itami was a little depressed and at a loss for words, given that nobody
had spoken to him or offered to take his things. “I haven’t been
forgotten, right?” “I’m still a guest, right…?”
Those grumbled words made it to the innkeeper’s ears.
Hamal turned his gaze on Itami and said:
“Ah, that’s right. A minion like you can stay in Room 3, the one opposite
the others. I’ve been thinking about it, and although it’s just a storage
room, it’s probably still best for a minion to be nearby when he’s called
on. Don’t you think so? You should be thanking me. Fei! Show him the
way there!”
Itami blinked, and he saw a Fairy girl, so small that she could stand on
his palm, hovering in mid-air.
She made a “come with me” gesture to Itami.
“Thank, thanks.”
Someone like her could not possibly help him carry his luggage...
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As Itami muttered “Room 3” to himself, he slowly trudged up the stairs.
***
On the other hand, Hamal — the only one remaining downstairs —

looked at the names on the guest register, and he began thinking:
“Who’s this Lelei girl?” and “What does she have to do with an Apostle
of Emroy, anyway?”
Anyone who ran an inn needed a keen pair of eyes for scrutinizing
people. Foolishly allowing people of unknown provenance to stay at
one’s inn might lead to them welching on their bills, or worse, stealing.
The Reader’s Rest had been in business for a thousand years, and it
kept its own traditions. Every generation of its proprietors kept an eye
on any guests who came in, and they were instantly aware of anything
funny they got up to. It was through this practice that the inn had gotten
its reputation for reliability, and it was why their big customers had
flocked to them. It was for this reason that Innkeeper Hamal did a
background check on every customer who stayed here, though recently,
his actions had gone beyond the line of simple “alertness”. His mind
churned and spun with all sorts of imagined scenarios — they had
become a hobby of his.
“Lelei La Lele… huh.”
To most people, the sage’s robe Lelei wore looked very plain. However,
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Hamal was very perceptive. He had immediately deduced that her

clothes and their stitching were well made and valuable. Still, it was hard
to imagine that a wandering Rurudo girl would be able to be that
extravagant. Thus, Rurudo decided to flex his imagination, and drafted a
colorful script for her.
—For instance, might that girl have caught the eye of a wealthy noble,
and become an adopted daughter?
—If people spoke highly of her, then there must have been some
wealthy old tycoon or noble who handed the family business and his
powers to his son, and decided to find meaning in his twilight years
through teaching. After searching all over, he found a talented girl, and
decided to raise her — probably into a wife for his grandchildren,
perhaps, and he took pains to properly educate her.
—On the other hand, if there was malicious gossip about her, then she
would be a young (child?) concubine, and not an adopted daughter. If
that girl really was in such a situation, there might be people who would
sympathize with or resent her — perhaps after marrying his latest
conquest, the lecherous old man might have died of a heart attack or
some other reason. After that, his sons would be frustrated — how would
they deal with this (child?) concubine who was most likely younger than
them? The most reasonable conclusion was that she would be exiled
from the household, but in exchange she would be allowed to live a life
of freedom. In addition, she would be sent to Londel with a generous
allowance.
If that sequence of events was accurate, then he would be justified in

predicting that her Holiness would have taken pity on the poor girl and
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escorted her here.
“Tuka Luna Marceau and Yao Ro Ducy.”
It was worth thinking about this Elf and Dark Elf pair as well. After all
Elves and Dark Elves had never gotten along. Yet, the two of them were
travelling together, so the reason for that ought to be interesting.
“Itamy Youjy… well, he’s just a baggage-carrying minion, no point

thinking about him.”
His clothes were an uneven mix of dark and bright green and covered in
brown stripes that seemed to be randomly thrown in. Surely they were
some form of jester’s motley.
After a while, the sound of footsteps came down the stairs, and the
servants who had ushered the guests to their rooms came down the
stairs.
Hamal shouted at them: ”Keep quiet when you walk!” and then quietly
whispered: “How was it?”
In other words, how generous were the guests?
One could determine a guest’s affluence by the tips they gave to the
help.
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One of them answered, “They tipped in Molt coppers”, and showed the
money in his hands to Hamal.
“Oh, really? Did each of you get them?”
“Each of us got one.”
A sizable portion of the people who chose to stay in the Reader’s Rest
were from the wealthy class of society. Even so, most of the time they
only tipped a few slim Bita coppers each, which they took to be a fact of
working life. However, anyone who could give away thick and heavy
Mort coppers as tips must have been quite generous. Thanks to these
tips, the servants were all talking about those female guests.”
“That silver-haired girl with blue eyes is really cute!”
“I think that blonde Elf girl is better.”
“Oi oi, she’s an Elf, so she’s probably pretty old.”
“If that’s the case, who do you prefer?”
“Her Holiness, of course.”
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“Isn’t she even older?!”
And so, the servants went back and forth, which let to a lively
discussion.
Hamal personally felt that the Dark Elf girl was most his type. Under
these circumstances, her actual age was not a problem. The most
important thing was the mature woman’s sex appeal that she
possessed. They’re boys, which is why they can’t appreciate her charms,
Hamal thought as he looked smugly at the serving boys.
“Oh, we have customers again. There’s work to do, you lot, so step
lively!”
Hamal clapped his hands, and the inn servants chorused “Yes sir” before
rushing off to their work.
After that, guests who wanted to stay filtered in. Today’s occupancy rate
was quite good. Most of them seemed to be book traders who frequently
visited this place, or parents who were sending their children here to
find a master. Hamal politely welcomed them all, and bade them sign
the guest register, then had the servants lead the guests to their rooms.
He repeated these familiar tasks by rote, intimately familiar with each
and every step of the process.
There were also some travelling merchants who had turned back from
their journey to the Imperial Capital.
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Once he asked, he discovered that a critical bridge leading to the Capital

had collapsed, and now fording the river was a problem.
There had been no news of the river flooding, so nobody could have
expected something like this to happen. Upon closer listening, he heard
people say things along the lines of “Looks like someone sabotaged it on
purpose”.
“But would anyone gain from that?” Hamal asked. His guests replied,
“There might be certain traders moving product to the Imperial Capital.
They might want to jack up the prices and in order to cause rumors of
the destruction to spread, they would do such a thing.”
And so, the travelling merchants came to the inn one by one, though
they tapered off after Hamal had taken quite a few of them in. Then, the
sound of footsteps came from the staircase.
Hamal turned to look, and saw that Rory and her companions were
descending the stairs. As he saw this, he deeply realized something —
that truth could sometimes be more vivid than fiction. Judging by the
sizeable tips the servants had received, the “perverted old gramps and
his (child?) concubine” plot might actually be quite plausible.
“We’ll be heading outside for a while. We’ll have dinner outside, so

there’s no need to prepare it for us.”
So spoke the man that Hamal thought was their minion. He had changed
out that colorfully striped jester’s outfit of his for another set of clothes
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1519
which certainly seemed foreign enough, but looked quite stylish. What
the innkeeper did not know was that Itami was now wearing the JGSDF
dress uniform. At the same time, Lelei, Rory, Tuka and Yao were in a
circle around him. One could say that it perfectly illustrated how he lay
at the heart of the relationships between the five of them.
And then, Hamal saw something he had not expected — the girl that he
had taken for a newly-minted acolyte wore a pure white robe, with a
white braid stretching from shoulder to shoulders and hanging down her
chest. In her hand she held a magic staff which symbolized the Lindon
School.
Anyone who lived within Londel knew what these vestments

represented. Because of that, if she were to walk on the main roads,
anyone who saw it would immediately clear a path for her.
“This, this is quite a surprise. Ah, my eyes must be deceiving me. Do you
intend to contend for the title of Sage at such a young age?”
Anyone who wanted to compete in the final trial for the title of Sage
would need to dress like this. It was practically a tradition.
The Academy City of Londel periodically conducted academic

conferences. There the robes of those candidates whose abilities were
acknowledged by their peers would remain pristine white. In contrast,
those who could not convince the gathered masters of their skills would
be mercilessly pelted with jars of jet-black ink. Of course, the state of the
blackened robe could hardly bear watching. In addition, the failed
candidate was not allowed to change out of that stained, blackened robe
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until they left Londel, so they would have to endure the shame of the
condemning eyes of all around them. Because of that, anyone who met
such a fate typically fled the city after calming down.
When contending for the title of Sage, a key part of the process involved
presenting a thesis. According to the rules, one needed enough evidence
and experience for the subject matter of the thesis that even the most
ancient professor would nod in deference.
When presenting one’s thesis, it was common for someone in the

audience to level weaselly arguments at the candidate in cutting tones,
which would be followed by mocking laughter from all sides. This often
caused the author to panic and rush through their presentation, only to
find that they had tripped over their own tongue halfway, or submitted
the wrong manuscript, or messed up and accidentally cast a spell during
the presentation, and some had even fled the conference in tears. In any
event, it was a terribly cruel set of proceedings.
Of course, even if one failed during this ordeal, they would not die.
Anyone who could endure the shame of being mocked by the audience
could challenge them as often as they liked. However, anyone who could
repeatedly do so in the face of multiple defeats either had no sense of
shame or was simply thick-skinned. Hamal felt that describing the girl
before him as thick-skinned or oblivious would be a terrible mistake.
Waiflike, maybe. As delicate as fine porcelain. If you handled her too
roughly, she might break, no?
That was what Hamal thought.
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In addition, he had no idea who her master was. To think he would

actually allow her to make such a rash attempt! As he thought about
this, Hamal hastily asked:
“Forgive my intrusion, but may I ask the identity of your honored

master?”
“Kato. Kato El Ardestan.”
The innkeeper knew of this name. To be precise, everyone in the

Academy City of Londel knew this name. “It would be strange if
someone didn’t know him” — so famous was that name’s owner.
The Old Sage Kato. A man who was a magician among magicians.
So that was it, she was that man’s disciple.
Hamal’s jaw dropped, and he could not say anything. After this startling
revelation, he saw the girl before him with new eyes.
***
Lelei led Itami and the rest of the gang away from the inn. After
travelling a short distance, they came across row upon row of buildings
in what looked to be a residential district. Because they were now
halfway up a mountain’s slopes, they had an unobstructed view of the
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1522
sprawling streets at the mountain’s base.
“That building is called a meeting hall, used for convening conferences

and sharing academic results. And that over there is the city hall.
Sovereign city-states usually have a small council.”
After that, Lelei turned and pointed to the mountain’s peak.
“And then, from this point on is the research district.”
The area she was pointing to was encircled by high walls.
The brick walls seemed to be protecting something. Aside from the great
gates, there seemed to be an air around the place which was hostile to
outsiders. It would be quite accurate to describe it as the wall
surrounding a huge mansion.
However, on closer inspection one would find that there were no guards
on patrol, nor was the area restricted in any way. Anyone could pass the
wall and reach the other side. There, all the buildings were old and
dilapidated, looking as if they would collapse under their own weight at
any moment. Because of that, Itami and company nearly assumed that
this was the pauper’s district. Although they were only separated by a
single wall, the buildings on the outside were still quite presentable,
despite their plainness. However, this place was the heart of the
Academy City Londel. If this place were a university, then this would be
the equivalent of their main campus.
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1523
The young men and women nearby were dressed similarly to Lelei. Their
clothes were immaculate, without so much as a hint of dust, dirt or
grime on them. It would seem all of them had spent long years as
apprentices. When Lelei appeared from behind, most of them looked on
with wide eyes. After that, some pretended that they had not seen
anything, while others did spit-takes, and then they scattered like birds.
A keen-eyed observer would be able to discern the dark and complex
emotions within them.
“Lelei, if you can really become a Sage at this age, you’ll probably raise
up a storm of jealousy around you.”
Lelei kept her eyes fixed straight ahead after hearing Rory’s words, and
she nodded emotionlessly.
“I am prepared for that.”
Lelei was determined to contend for the title of Sage.
She had been allowed to do this because Master Kato had already
acknowledged her ability — had felt that she was skilled enough to
contend for that title. On the other hand, people had spent five,
sometimes ten years in research and study, but their efforts were
fruitless. There were quite a few people like that in the Academy City of
Londel. As these people toiled in obscurity, it was only natural that they
would feel jealous when they saw someone as young as Lelei achieve
the goal which had eluded them for so long.
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1524
If one looked around, one would see several young people in dirty robes,
engaged in an intense debate of some sort, while writing something on
the ground in large characters. Looking further, one could see a group of
students surrounding the Dwarves, who seemed to be tutors delivering a
lecture.
Itami could tell that this was equivalent to a university’s research

department. However, unlike Japanese universities, the professors and
students here were not limited to fixed locations, but they could turn
even the shade of the trees on either side of a road into a makeshift
lecture room.
“Could it be that some big names come here to lecture too?”
“Of course. The research facilities of the masters are all isolated, so they
have to come by themselves.”
An oddly-placed word made its way into Itami’s ear, and he could not
help but ask, ”Isolated?”
Lelei nonchalantly repeated, “Yes, isolated”.
As she said that, a flare of light erupted from a building not far ahead.
After that, a flood of water erupted from everywhere on that building
which could be considered a window. The nearby region was subjected
to a miniature flash flood, and those unfortunate apprentices who had
been passing by were soaked to the bone.
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1525
“What the hell just happened! My equation! My precious equation, I only

just finished formulating it!”
“My, my samples are ruined!”
“My thesis! My thesis! Ahhhhhh— it’s all wet now!”
All around them were people beating their chests, stomping their feet,
wailing and gnashing their teeth. It looked like the site of a terrible
disaster.
Looking around, it would seem even Yao had not been spared this fate.
Thanks to a splashing wave from the flood, she was now dripping water
everywhere.
Fortunately, Yao had shielded Lelei with her body, and Lelei had not
been touched by even a droplet of water. She quickened her pace to
avoid the streams of water beneath her, and with each step she
repeated what she had just said.
“Isolated.”
Itami thought about his uniform, which had been caught in the spray,
and mused on what Lelei had just said.
“I see.”
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1526
“Could it be that the wall was made to separate the districts for this
reason? So… could it be that Master Kato was living in Coda Village as a
form of isolation as well?”
“...If something like that happened there, it would be very dangerous.”
“Wouldn’t the villagers of Coda get involved too?”, “Would it be safe like
that?” and other questions kept streaming forth. That’s true, which is
why Master Kato’s hut was located some distance away from the rest of
the village, Itami thought. If that were the case, a lot of the questions
they had when they went to inspect the damage to the village could be
easily explained.
“This way.”
They followed Lelei into a narrow alley, which seemed to link to other
narrow alleys, creating an environment where people might get lost and
go astray easily. Before long, the group stopped before a small building.
They opened an unimposing gate and climbed a narrow and treacherous
staircase, the sort which looked like it would hardly bear someone
brushing up against it. Every time they put their way on it, the stairs
creaked loudly, making people think that they would collapse at any
moment. After taking that into consideration, Itami and the others had
to proceed slowly and carefully as they ascended. Almost immediately, a
small wooden door came into view.
There was only enough room at the top of the stairs to accommodate
Lelei and Tuka. Rory, Yao and Itami had to wait in the middle of the
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1527
staircase. After that, Lelei rapped on the door, using her staff in lieu of a
door knocker.
“Who is it? If you’re here to collect debts, you can save your effort. I’m
broke.”
A grumbling, questioning voice answered the repeated knocking. Judging

by the hoarseness of the voice, one could imagine that it belonged to an
older woman.
“I’m Lelei.”
The door swung open the moment she stated her name.
From it came a cute-looking old lady (human) who seemed to be in her

late 70s.
Judging by her looks, she must have been beautiful 50 years ago, Her
grey hair was streaked with black and white, tied up in a bun and
secured with a hairpin. Her back was straight and there seemed to be a
sparkle in her eyes, from which one could tell that this old lady had lived
a full and meaningful life. The look in her eyes seemed to summarize her
attitude towards life.
Naturally, she wore a Sage’s robe, though hers was somewhat old.
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1528
“Well! Well well well! Is that you, Lili?”
“No. It’s Lelei.”
The old lady lightly swatted herself on the head with her right hand.
“Yes, that’s right, it should be Lelei. Although, Lili sounds quite cute
too,” she said as she rubbed Lelei’s head.
Once the two of them drew near to each other, the others discovered
that this old lady was about the same height as Lelei.
“Thank you for coming all the way here to visit me. All right, all right,
don’t all cluster up around the door. Sadly I don’t have anything for
guests, but please come in anyway.”
After being invited into the old lady’s home, they looked around, and
found that it was filled with parchments and books, as well as numerous
specimen cases.
All the walls were covered in bookshelves. The tables were all covered in
mountainous piles of books, and the floor around them was strewn with
scrolls or notebooks that had fallen from the countless piles of books.
There hardly seemed to be any space to move around in the house.
Itami and the others unconsciously squeezed themselves into what few
gaps they could find, while Rory stood right behind Itami, as though
trying to hide herself.
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1529
The old lady noticed Lelei’s garb, and asked:
“Judging by the way you’re dressed, it seems you’re competing for the
title of Sage, right? But don’t you think it’s a little early for that? Has that
old rogue Kato finally gone senile?”
In response, Lelei produced a letter written on parchment, and gave it to

the old lady.
She cracked the wax seal open and muttered, “Let me see what’s in
here” and began reading the letter.
“Hmhm, I see. Ara ara, is that so…”
The more she read, the more exaggerated her reaction became.
Before long, she finished the letter. Then, she quietly looked back at
Lelei, her eyes filled with delight.
“ I didn’t think you’d be able to accomplish so much. If that’s the case, it

makes sense you’d skip grades. Kato painted you with glowing words. If
Arpeggio learned about this, she’d be jealous.”
“How’s Alfie?”
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1530
“Same old, same old. She seems to have gone out for something. She
should be back in a while. ...Ara ara, this isn’t good, I can’t leave my
guests standing as they wait. Lili, could you give me a hand? I need to
get some chairs for them...”
“My name is Lelei.”
The two of them went back and forth at each other as they searched for
suitable chairs in the room. However, no matter where they looked,
everything that could have something placed on it — be they tables or
chairs — was occupied by books. Then, just as the old lady was about to
reach out to push away a specimen case, a pile of books on a nearby
table tumbled like an avalanche, and in a chain reaction the specimen
box also fell. The rocks within the protective case — probably gemstones
or ores of some kind — spilled out over the ground.
“Ah! Sensei, what are you doing! Didn’t I ask you not to make the house
messier than before?!”
Just then, a cry of complaint came from outside the door.
A woman with brown hair placed her shopping basket on the ground —
to be precise, she hurled it to the ground — and stormed in, muttering
“Really!” as she did. Once she entered, she radiated an aura that made
even the old lady and Lelei back off, and then she began to pick up the
stones on the ground.”
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“What’s wrong? You seem particularly grouchy today, are you

constipated?”
“What, what are you saying, it’s nothing like that!”
This woman had a head of slightly-curled brown hair, which she sloppily
tied up with a cloth ribbon.
In addition, there was no sign of makeup on her face. The fact that she
— as a woman — looked so slovenly and unkempt might make people
feel that she had cast away any attempt at trying to look attractive or
feminine. However, in stark contrast to her dressing, her body was
curved and well proportioned, and her sensual body lines were visible
even through her clothing, to the point where people dared not to look
at her directly.
“Mm… this piece goes in this box, that pieces goes in the other box.
One, two, three… eh, where’s that rutile gone?”
It would seem that this woman and the granny both lacked talent in
cleaning and tidying, to nearly fatal levels.
“Ara, you mean this?”
Just as the old lady reached out to the table, the painstakingly
rearranged specimen cases fell to the ground again.
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1532
Silence filled the room.
The brown-haired woman looked at the old lady. The way her body was
trembling suggested that she was desperately trying to control her
emotions.
“Sensei, let me make this clear. You’re in the way right now, so could
you please step outside for a bit?”
“That, that’s right… well, it’s getting later, so I’ll take our guests to
“Marina” for dinner. You should come over too after tidying this up. It’s
rare that Lili comes by, and you probably have so much to talk about.”
“Lili? Who are you talking about?”
“No. It should be Lelei.”
“...Got it. I’ll come over once I’m done. Mm, that’s right, of course I need
to go over right away. I can’t wait to talk to my little sister — the little
sister who’s now planning to skip the rank of Doctor and jump over her
big sister’s head to contend for the title of a Sage, the little sister who
ignored the feelings of her lonely big sister who has no luck with men,
the little sister who wears earrings because she wants to look more
attractive, the little sister who looks down on her poor elder sister while
being well-to-do herself, the little sister who even brought Elves back
with her — oh yes, I’d love to talk to her, about all sorts of things.”
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Just as this woman was talking, Itami noticed something rare from his
place by the side.
A bead of sweat slid down Lelei’s forehead, and then lingered on her
cheek...
***
After passing through the wall around the research district, they walked
a little further before reaching the restaurant called “Marina”.
There were three plainly-made tables within and a counter.
There were two or three female patrons who looked to be acolytes. They
were keenly focused on studying the books in their hands, and one of
them was recording nonstop.
The air in here was like a cafe near a ladies’ college. Since places like
this were a family business, they were decorated cosily, which made
them popular with women.
“Lady Mimoza, welcome. My, you have many people with you today. Are
they all your students?”
A red-faced man who looked like the owner welcomed the old lady with
a bright smile.
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“No, no, they’re all my guests. Come, look, they’re all pretty girls. How
about it, do you like them?”
“Indeed, they’re all very pretty. Looks like I’d better give it my best shot
today.”
With that, he energetically headed back into the kitchen.
Mimoza smiled in satisfaction as she watched him, then picked a table

and called the others over.
“Come, come, please take a seat, everyone. The food here is pretty
good, and since the customers are all cute girls, it should get even
better. The most important thing is — it’s cheap.”
After thinking a little, Itami pushed two four-man tables together and
arrayed chairs around them before sitting down. Then he began
searching for the menu.
“I wonder what sort of food this restaurant serves?”
“Just leave it to the owner, I guess.”
And so, after they had sat down and caught their breath, Mimoza
suggested that Lelei introduce both sides, in order to make good use of
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1535
the time until the food arrived.
“This is Mimoza La Mel. She is a magician and a Great Sage, as well as

one of the elders of Londel City.”
According to Lelei’s introduction, this old lady was Master Kato’s senior,
under the same master. Lelei’s big sister Arpeggio was currently
learning from her. She also added “she’s highly versed in matters of
archeology” — that seemed directed to Itami — and she nonchalantly
hinted, “Sensei Mimoza would probably be vital for the resource
prospecting mission.”
After that, it was Itami and gang’s turn.
Lelei introduced them in the order they were seated, from the furthest to
the nearest.
After Mimoza heard the introductions of the two Elves, her eyes sparkled
and she said:
“Well, seeing Elves and Dark Elves sitting peaceably at the same table is
something new. What happened to make them get along so well? If it’s
possible, could you tell me about it?”
As she finished saying this, Tuka and Yao exchanged looks and smiled
uncomfortably. Neither of them had expected anyone to say that they
were “getting along well”.
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The truth was, it was hard to say they got along, even in the broadest of
terms. The two of them had complex feelings about each other… for
instance, Yao had done something terrible to Tuka in order to save her
people, and until now she was still consumed by guilt over her deeds.
When Tuka regained her senses, she was grateful to Yao to some extent,
but at the same time she could not deny that what Yao had done was
truly evil.
Even so, neither of them hated each other. Thus, the fact that the two of
them could calmly sit down at the same table was nothing to be worried
about. In any case, after everything that had happened, they were just
uneasy about being with each other.
After that, just as Lelei was about to introduce Rory—
“It’s been a while, Rory. Could it be that you came to find the answer to
that question?”
Mimoza interrupted Lelei, indicating that there was no need to introduce

Rory.
“It was 50 years ago, when Rory and I were travelling around.”
“Mimoza, you’ve grown old.”
“I have indeed. Are you jealous? I’m the very picture of a granny now.”
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As she said that, the old lady raised her wrinkled hands. She seemed to
be showing off a pair of prized treasures. Rory seemed envious herself,
even pouting as she saw it.
“Then, Lili… no, no, it’s Lelei. How about introducing the next one?”
Lelei glanced at Itami sitting beside her.
“This gentleman is Itamy Youjy.”
Lelei did not say anything other than his name.
“Oh? Itamy Youjy… it’s pronounced like that, right?”
“Pleased to meet you.”
Itami rose and bowed politely, then filled in for Lelei — that his surname
was “Itami”, his given name was “Youji”, and then continued:
“I’ve heard that you are well-versed in archeology, Mimoza-sensei.

Therefore, I would like to ask; are there any useful resources or ores in
the area? Do you know of anything like that?”
“Mmm, I can say I know a few. Of course, that depends on your
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definition of ‘useful’.”
“Wonderful. If it’s at all possible, I would like you to tell me.”
“Mm, I don’t mind you asking. However, shall we discuss that later?
Right now, I just want to chat happily with all of you. What do you
think?”
“It’s fine. Until Lelei’s done with her conference, I’ll be around. I can visit
you any time you’re free.”
After receiving Mimoza’s approval, Itami bowed politely in thanks.

Etiquette of this sort came naturally to Itami once he stepped into
society. At this time, Mimoza eyed the fabric of his green uniform and
asked:
“These clothes are quite rare. Which country do you gail from?”
“I come from Japan, from the other side of the Gate at Arnus Hill.”
“Ah! Well ,that’s interesting. I’ve heard that a Gate opened at Arnus, but
there’s been no news about what’s on the other side of the Gate. Now,
tell me, what’s that place like? Lelei, have you been there?”
“We’ve already been there,” Rory said with a smug look on her face.
Mimoza leaned forward eagerly.
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“Ah, I’m envious. Come, tell me about your trip!”
Lelei, Rory and Tuka looked at each other in response to Mimoza’s

request. After exchanging looks for a while, they each began relating
their own account of events — Rory talked about the sights on the
streets, Tuka described the luxurious clothing that she had seen, while
Lelei mentioned several Japanese bookstores she had been to.
“Those stores have an astounding amount of books. Also, according to

Pina, there are libraries there, which contain all sorts of books and which
are available to the common folk. If I get a chance to go there again, I’ll
definitely go take a look. I feel we should build one in Londel as well.
As Itami listened to them speak, a question popped up in his mind, and

so he asked:
“Could it be that you don’t have libraries? Here, in this Academy City?”
“Not here, no.”
“According to records in ancient books, there had once been facilities

like that, but in the end, they were no more.”
“That’s a matter for long ago. They used to fight holy wars in this region,
and the zealots of a monotheistic religion burned the book storage to
ash,” Mimoza said with a sad look on her face.
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Part of the reason why the city of Londel was known as the City of
Wisdom was because it contained many wise folk, who each possessed
impressive book collections. Now that the libraries had vanished, anyone
seeking knowledge had no choice but to gather it on their own. Under
these conditions, only selfishly hoarding books would sate their thirst for
knowledge.
“If it’s really as Lelei says, then that would be great. However, collecting
these valuable things presents certain difficulties.”
“It’s fine. The printing press makes book production easy. In the land of
Nihon, publishing books is commonplace to the people there. As a result,
they have large gatherings called Dou-Jin-Shi Mar-Kets where such
materials are regularly released to the people. Every time this release
takes place, countless people gather there. It is a majestic sight.”
Lelei had a rare look of excitement on her face as she said this.
“It would be great if books were cheap enough to be easily accessible to

people.”
“That dream will come true one day.”
Lelei looked to the sky and nodded, as though she had predicted the
future. But just then...
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“That’s bad!”
There was a great crash, as though someone had hit the door with all
their strength. Everyone slowly turned to look at the source of the
sound.
“Wait, wait a bit, that would be bad. Very bad. There’s people who would
be inconvenienced by the price of books going down.”
Just then, Lelei’s elder sister Arpeggio El Lelena appeared at the door.
She had a spine-chilling expression — like she was wearing a hannya
mask — on her face.
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Vol. 5 :
Chapter 3
It was sunset.
Every day, around this time, lessons ended and the students would
return to their dwellings.
At the same time, the city’s residents would slowly began rousing
themselves, as though to fulfil some silent pact with the students. To
merchants, evening was when business picked up, and one could hear
people shouting “We’re opening for business!”
To the housewives, the most important thing for them when evening
came was to rush home so they could prepare dinner for their husbands
and children, so they frequently appeared en masse on the streets
whenever the time came.
The pedestrians on the streets milled about here and there, far
exceeding the density of the morning crowd. The entire city was a scene
of extraordinary liveliness.
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Several robed students flashed through this scenery, pushing aside the
people blocking them as they swiftly darted through the crowd While
they ran, they strained their voices and shouted what they had just
seen, as though conducting some form of public service.
“It’s a fight! It’s a fight! Two mages are going to fight!”
“And they’re both girls!”
“And one of them is that genius girl Arpeggio!”
“What!? You mean Iron Alfie’?”
It would seem this fight involved someone who was quite famous in this
city.
“Who’s her opponent?”
“She’s a human girl called Lelei. Seems to be fourteen, fifteen, maybe.”
“Never heard of her. Then, where are they fighting?”
“Just in front of ‘Marina’. Hurry!”
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1544
Once they heard this, quite a few people sprang into action and ran at
top speed. They sprinted through the streets like a stampede of mad
bulls, and the number of people joining them increased quickly as they
moved on.
“Well then, apprentice knight Gray. Did you hear that?”
“Indeed I did, Shandy-dono. They’re somewhere near a restaurant called

‘Marina’. Although, there’s no need to search around; we just need to
follow wherever the crowd is heading.”
“However, that would waste time, and the more we dawdle, the more
dangerous the situation could become. Our hidden enemy must surely
be around here somewhere.”
“You have that right. Anything which your servant could hear could not
possibly escape the enemy's notice.”
The two knights who were dressed as travellers nodded and spoke as
they walked down the streets, following the crowd of students who were
rushing toward their destination.
***
And so, the street which had become an impromptu battlefield filled up
with curious students in the blink of an eye. This resulted in a complete
lack of customers for ‘Marina’, at a time when it should have been
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1545
busiest. The fact was, this spat was causing the owner a lot of problems.
On the other hand, his salesman soul was undaunted by this difficulty —
instead, he decided to try his luck selling snacks to the audience, so they
could watch and eat at the same time. In the end, not only did he not
run a loss, but he actually made more than he would have through
normal business.
The people who were here to watch the commotion were laying bets on
one hand and eagerly waiting for the fight to begin on the other.
Arpeggio El Lelena thumped her magic staff into the ground where she
stood, on the eastern side of the road.
Master Kato had once spoken of this 24 year-old woman, saying straight
to Lelei’s face: “If I had to mount someone, I’d rather mount someone
like your big sister — with her perky boobs, slender waist and juicy-fruit
butt”. Her sensual curves were immediately apparent even through a
layer of clothing, and they drew the eyes of every man in the crowd.
On the west side, with her staff in the ground, was Lelei La Lelena.
If this dispute were judged by the maturity of their appearances, then it

would be very obvious that this 16 year old (she had celebrated her
birthday just recently) would lose. Her scrawny body had only just
started rounding out, and it was around this time that her feminine
sexual characteristics were starting to develop.
The sisters faced each other, about ten paces apart, when the wind
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1546
suddenly gusted up, carrying a spray of dust with it.
A bale of straw rolled across the ground as the wind blew. The mood of
confrontation — like a showdown in spaghetti western films —
intensified further.
Incidentally, this road was not very wide, but it was still enough for two
horse-drawn wagons to pass each other going different directions.
Therefore, the wagons and pedestrians behind the feuding pair found
the road impassable. The two people standing in the middle of the road
were basically blocking traffic. Still, perhaps it was because they felt
they had front-row tickets to something good, or they had resigned
themselves to watch, but there was no frustration on the faces of the
bogged-down drivers; only looks of excitement.
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1548
Soon enough, there were more people taking bets. A man who looked
like a bookmaker shouted, “Three to one odds here!”
It would seem that the mildly famous Arpeggio was favored for victory.
Gambling was quite popular in this City of Wisdom. As for the reason
why, one could say that they had no other forms of entertainment. In
other words, one could view this as a local custom which also revealed
the attitudes of the native people. In a way, life for the common folk
here was difficult, but compared to the people of any other nation in any
other world, they held their heads high and took everything as it came.
“Is that girl Lelei? I’ve never seen her before.”
The crowd around the pair began a quiet discussion, eager to find out
anything about the nameless girl confronting Arpeggio.
“She’s wearing a Sage’s robe, right? How come it’s so dirty?”
“Look at her hair. Someone dumped soup on her head, right?”
Indeed, Lelei’s hair and robe were dyed a deep red by a soup made with
fruits and vegetables.
It was made by boiling meat and vegetables for a full day and night, with
the marrow-juices adding to the taste as it dissolved into the soup. It
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1549
produced a thick, rich flavor, which would prove quite difficult to wash
out of her clothing. And now, it made a mess of her pure white robes.
“That’s terrible. Who did that?”
“Who else but that genius Arpeggio? At least, that’s what I can see from
this.”
“I think Arpeggio got mad and said ‘how could a brat like you try to be a
sage’ or something.”
“Uwah, seriously? So this fight’s because of jealousy? Man, that’s so

uncool.”
Alfe clicked her tongue as she heard the people whispering things like
these around her.
The fact that others had immediately seen through her motives only
made her more embarrassed.
Still, what had led to this state of events?
She had given in to her emotions, and so… well, that was a quick
summary of it.
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1550
“So she was acting up because she was jealous? Well, that must be hard
on her.”
Though people quietly jabbed at her like that, it could not be helped.
Rather, it did not matter if she stood here either due to stubbornness or
pride, because either way, she would not take this lying down. She had
to demonstrate the difference between her strength and Lelei’s once
and for all.
This was why she had to roll up her sleeves and do it.
To the bystanders, it seemed like she had gone too far. Even she herself
was not proud of this. However Alfie had her own reasons for taking on
Lelei seriously, no matter the cost. Right or wrong, she still had to
devote her heart and soul to this reckoning with Lelei.
If she did not do this, if she allowed herself to silently fade away into the
flow of time, she would be eternally tormented by her negative
emotions, forever looking on her little sister with envious eyes.
If she pretended to be magnanimous and applauded her little sister’s

accomplishments, perhaps the two of them might be able to get along
for a while longer. However, this period of harmony would ring false.
From that moment on, everything she did would contradict what she
truly felt inside, and there would be an invisible wall of dishonesty
between them. In addition, they were not truly related by blood. If a hint
of deceit worked its way into their relationship, the two of them would
immediately turn on each other. She had to avoid that at all costs.
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1551
Therefore, Alfie had chosen this course of action, to challenge Lelei of

her own accord, despite knowing that people would mock her as a
jealous girl.
That said, how had she gotten to this place?
How… how had her little sister taken one giant step after another, until
she had exceeded herself, as the elder sister?
Alfie looked to the side, at the man called Itamy who was watching the
battle, and bit her lip.
***
After tidying up Mimoza’s lab. Arpeggio shoved the unused parchments

into the satchel she carried with her, locked the door, and then rushed to
the restaurant.
Once she reached the restaurant, she edged the door open and poked
her head in to chat up the restaurant’s owner.
“How are you? Is Mistress here?”
“Lady Mimoza has already arrived with her guests.”
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1552
After hearing the owner answer in the affirmative, she proudly strode
into the restaurant, treading the familiar wooden floors under her feet.
Just then, she heard Mimoza and Lelei talking. However, the contents of
their conversation made Arpeggio think her heart had stopped.
“It would be great if books were cheap enough to be easily accessible to

people.”
“That dream will come true one day.”
Those words hit her like a bombshell.
So great was her shock that her hand slipped, and the door crashed
loudly.
However, that could not be helped. After all, the things Lelei and the
others were talking about clearly included some things which distressed
Arpeggio.
“Wait, wait a bit, that would be bad. Very bad. There’re people who
would be inconvenienced by the price of books going down.”
Alfie inched closer as she spoke. It was as though she was damning Lelei
as a corrupt merchant, conspiring to knock the bottom out of the book
market.
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1553
“Alfie, what are you doing? Stop that at once.”
“Mistress, you should be more aware of these things! Research supplies

aren’t free! They cost a lot of money!”
“And here I was wondering what you were so excited about. Is that all?”
“Is that all?! Aren’t you taking this a bit too lightly? The magical
grimoires which I worked night and day and spent so much effort to copy
out are worth three sinks, no bargaining allowed. If the price of books
hits rock bottom, then my four months of work would go down the drain,
wouldn’t they? If that really happened, our food, our rent, our living
expenses, how would we… ahhhhhh!”
It certainly seemed quite strange to have a woman grabbing her head in

what looked like despair and suffering. The fact that she was quite pretty
as well made it look even more comical. Itami’s jaw dropped as he
watched Lelei’s sister, unable to speak. Nor was he alone — even Tuka,
Yao and Rory were hard-pressed to hide their shock.
At this, Mimoza rose to her feet — in order to protect her pupil’s

reputation, she felt that she had to clarify some of the subtext here.
“I apologize if you were startled. This girl of mine specializes in mineral-

based magic. However, branching out this far into the field carries with it
certain expenses. Therefore, she has gone to great effort to work part-
time as a copyist, but even so, she’s not making much. So… when she
heard something along the lines of ‘The price of books might go down’,
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1554
she exhibited this… greatly discomforted behavior.”
Lelei looked like she was going to comfort her big sister. She patted her
shoulder and said:
“Don’t worry. What I’m talking about won’t happen in a couple of days.
It’ll be in the future.”
“The future?”
“Mm. In the future. Eventually. It will come to pass one day.”
Arpeggio‘s entire body seemed to go limp, sinking down into a pile on

the floor.
Perhaps her antics from just now had fatigued her, but Alfie sighed
deeply.
Lelei took all this in, and sensing that her big sister had calmed down,
she went to take a glass of water for her.
After a while, when she returned to the dining table with her glass, she
found that her place had already been taken by someone else.
“Ah…”
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1555
And that someone else was Alfie.
On the right was Mimoza, and to the left was Itami — that was how well-
positioned that place was.
Though Lelei’s expression remained the same, she stared at Alfie’s back,
standing still as she did. If she could exert force just by looking at
someone, perhaps Mimoza might have been forced away by the
pressure of Lelei’s glare.
Lelei silently pulled up a chair, slotted it into the only remaining space
between Alfie and Mimoza, and then sat down.
Alfie, who had deftly seized the opportunity earlier, did not seem to
understand her little sister’s feelings. She merely grabbed the cup in
Lelei’s hand with a “thanks’ and downed it in a gulp, which also quelled
the heaving of her breast.
“Don’t scare me. Really now~”
As though drunk, Alfie suddenly plopped herself on the table and started
griping. Everyone’s eyes went to her once more.
“Alfie, you’ve always been so wilful. You’ve never been patient enough
to finish listening to what people say.”
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1556
“But, you said ‘one day’... when will that be?”
“It’ll be a while, but not too long.”
“I see. I heard that in Valleta, people have been using something called
typesetting to print things. So that’s why I said it’ll come eventually.
However, does that mean there’s really no future in this sort of thing?
What should I do from now on…”
Just as she finished, the man beside her asked, his interest blooming:
“Do you mean, authoring books?”
“No, no. Well, there’s writing involved, but it’s basically just copying the
valuable books penned by great sages of the past. Of course, they have
to be bound and illuminated, so the finished tome looks both intricate
and informative. After all of that is done, you can take it to the store
shelves and sell them.”
“This girl not only has good calligraphy, but she’s good at prettying the
volumes up, so her works are quite popular among the wealthy.”
“Ehh~ so that’s what it’s like.”
After Mimoza finished, the man softly murmured in understanding.
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1557
Illuminated manuscripts looked good on the shelf, and also hinted at

their owners’ generosity, because said owners would have paid a
premium to decorate their rooms with such items. Therefore, nobles or
wealthy merchants who wanted to pretend that they were cultured were
often very happy to buy such exquisitely made volumes.
“Copying an entire book by hand is really difficult, no? My ex-wife also

worked in publishing, and she had to face her desk every day. I’m quite
surprised that she actually managed to stay sane after all that.”
“Would that lady be a Sage as well?”
“Hell no. She’s a doujin artist… er, how shall I put this. In any case, she
drew pictures to tell a story.”
“Oh… so she’s an author of picture books…”
Alfie nervously looked Itami up and down and then asked:
“Then~ though this might be a little intrusive… why did you part ways?
Women who stare at desks all day aren’t very attractive, are they?”
“Of course not. She was the one who brought up the subject of divorce.
The truth is, I don’t mind women doing that sort of work, so I guess the
reason why she wanted to break up was because she wanted to return
to the starting point. I guess we just drifted apart somewhere in our
lives.”
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1558
Itami went “ahaha” as he sheepishly scratched his head.
After that, Alfie put an arm around her little sister’s neck, and gathered
her close.
“Who is this man?”
“Itamy Youjy.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a soldier from the other side of the Gate.”
“So why is a soldier from the other side of the Gate not in the Imperial
Capital, but all the way over here?”
Londel had long known of the war between the Empire and the country
on the other side of the Gate. However, when one took the location of
the Gate at Arnus into consideration, the city of Londel was in the
completely opposite direction of the Imperial Capital. There was even a
mountain range between the two cities, complete with a mountain
stream that flowed from the icy peaks. Because of that, nobody thought
that the fighting would come here.
“He’s on a resource-prospecting mission, by order of his country.”
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1559
As this conversation reached Mimoza’s ears, the old lady seemed to

remember something, and clapped her hands together.
“That’s right! Speaking of which, Itamy-san wants to know something

about ores. That’s Alfie’s specialty. Alfie, if you don’t mind, go help him
out.”
“Ah, yes. If you don’t mind, I’d be glad to accompany you.”
As she said this, Alfie straightened up in her chair.
Just then, as though waiting for this moment, the restaurant’s owner
came in with the food, taking advantage of the brief lull in the
conversation. Soon the narrow table was heaped high with bowls filled
with stew and plates laden with food.
“As always, everything looks delicious.”
“Mm. I was pretty motivated today.”
As the owner said this, the ladies in the shop smiled.
And so, it was time to eat. In order to fill the time, Mimoza decided to
bring up the “homework”.
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1560
“Rory. Before I forget, let me answer the question you gave me last
time. You asked me — ‘Why are there so many species in this world?’
And the answer I can give you is — the Gate. The sheer number of
demihumans in this world could only have been brought here when the
Gate opened and allowed them to pass through. With that in mind, we
humans should have been the last immigrants. Historically speaking,
humanity would be the youngest residents of this world.”
Mimoza leaned forward, and Rory asked if that was her final answer.
“Mm, I’m pretty sure. It’s for the same reason that Arnus is viewed as a
sacred place in the Empire — not for religious reasons, but because it
was the place where humanity first flourished.”
“As expected of you, Mimoza.”
Mimoza seemed to have gotten a little excited after winning Rory’s

approval — she curled her arms and clenched her fists
“Aah, it looks like the question’s been settled. I feel so relieved. To think,
I would discover what it means to be liberated at this age.”
“Why did you ask her that question?”
In response to Itami’s question, Rory gave a serious, earnest reply.
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1561
“If you compare this world to a tree, then we as Demigods would be the
gardeners who tended to that tree. If we see a branch that has grown
too long or grown the wrong way, then we will cut it off, if need be. Of
course, the tree called ‘The World’ won’t grow if all we do is trim, am I
right? So what we do is pick out some Sages with promise, and pose
them a seemingly unreasonable question.”
Even Itami knew that Rory meant knowledge and technology when she
talked about branches.
“It sounds like raising a bonsai.”
“Pretty much. You trim the branches you don’t like and get rid of pests
that fly in. We have always guarded the peace of this world through
those means — well, we should, but…”
“You should? Why do you say that?”
But just as Itami was about to ask, he saw Rory sigh, and then quietly
hiss “Hardy, you idiot.”
Elsewhere, Lelei seemed to have her doubts about what Mimoza had just
said.
“I’ve never learned anything like that before.”
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1562
Mimoza, on her part, simply shrugged and said, “Well, it’s only to be
expected.”
“You see, that’s the direction in which I took my research. Kato focused
on physics, so his knowledge of history was only average. It would have
been strange if he actually shifted his focus to studying history.”
Right after that, Alfie elbowed her sister in the sides, and the look on her
face seemed to say, “As I thought.”
“Didn’t I say it before as well? — Mm, yes, Master Kato is a specialist in

combat magic. But learning solely from one old master leads to your
knowledge being lopsided. Still, it’s not too late for you. Why don’t you
stay here and benefit from a structured education?” Alfie advised.
However, Lelei remained unmoved. She simply said, “If I did not seek
Master Kato’s tutelage, I would not have had the chance to contend to
be a Sage.”
“That may be so, but that doesn’t matter, right? Here’s some advice for
you, that white robe of yours might end up turning all the colors of the
rainbow, like a tropical bird — they say that recently, the Elders have
been bringing liquid dyes into the conference hall, and you can imagine
how that turned out.”
“It’s fine. I have confidence in my research. If possible, I would like you

all to see this.”
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1563
With that, Lelei withdrew a scroll from a bag which her robe had covered
up.
As she did this, several funnels which she had kept inside the bag spilled
out. Lelei hurriedly moved to pick them up.
She had bought these copper funnels from a Japanese grocery store.
One could use them to fill a container about the size of a wine bottle
with liquid from a large beaker (about one liter’s worth of wine, sauce,
and so on). Now that bottles were commonplace, funnels like that were
quite hard to find.
“Why, why do you have things like these?”
Lelei gave Itami’s question a deadpan answer:
“The shape and materials of these objects are well-suited for producing
the Neumann effect. In addition, they are cheap to make, so losing them
is not a great loss. The most important thing is that nobody would think
of them as weapons.”
Just as the two of them began discussing this, Mimoza and Alfie opened
Lelei’s scroll and began reading.
“This packaging looks terribly plain…”
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1564
Alfie began by finding fault with the scroll’s exterior. However, by the
time she read its contents, she fell silent.
“Well, this is quite surprising. If you directly presented the knowledge

from another world as-is, you would definitely be accused of plagiarism.
Instead, you used it as a base, and then fused it with our magical
systems. If you do this, those picky Elders will have nothing to say.”
Mimoza smiled to Lelei, as though giving a guarantee.
“The coming month’s conference will be quite interesting…”
Alfie said that, but her body had long since frozen up, her brows knotted.
Shortly after that, she muttered:
“She, she surpassed me. She completely…”
Arpeggio brought her index fingers together and she rubbed their tips
against each other as she kept sighing.
“...Lelei surpassed me.”
“That’s just too bad, Alfie. But you have lots of time, so don’t give up.”
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1565
Mimoza’s words were intended to comfort and encourage her. But to

Alfie, who had sacrificed so much and devoted her life to research in
order to gain results, the shock of being so easily eclipsed by her
younger sister was not something that simple encouragement could help
with.
“Haa… I might as well not bother with this research business. I don’t
have any talent. When will I get a chance to shine? I might as well retire
and go back to the village to teach children.”
Alfie was completely depressed.
And now, it was Lelei’s turn to give her encouragement.
“It’s not like that. Obtaining solid results from mineral magic research
takes great time and effort — that’s just how research in that field is.”
“R-Really?”
“It was only by the slimmest of chances that I managed to witness the
knowledge from the other side of the Gate, and by standing on the
shoulders of giants I arrived here. But everyone knows that mineral
magic research requires a great sum of money to carry out. Nobody can
deny that.”
“That’s what I mean. Without money, I can’t even afford experimental

samples… Say, Lelei, you’ve come into a lot of money recently, right?
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1566
Lend me some!”
Before Alfie could finish, Lelei turned toward the dining table and began
spooning up the soup.
“This is really delicious.”
She had completely ignored Alfie’s request.
“Oi! Don’t tell me that you don’t have any money now!?”
“Mineral magic — even if it’s alchemy — is like a witch’s cauldron that

melts down every single coin thrown into it. People have literally seen
their money go up in smoke. As you can see, this field of research is
truly frightening. Anyone who gets involved with that business is asking
for it. Because of that, nobody is going to help you.”
“Uwaaaaaaaaaah!”
As though bemoaning her misfortune, Alfie grabbed her head and wept
piteously. As they watched this, Tuka and Rory whispered to each other:
“Lelei’s sister is quite an interesting character.”
“Mm. This is the first time I’ve seen such a passionate human woman.”
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From the side, Mimoza merely sighed in exasperation, before joining

their conversation:
“That girl threw herself into research ever since she was first able to do
so. She’s all wound up, physically and mentally. I guess she’s just been
pushed to her limits.”
“Speaking of which — when you were her age, all you did was mess
around and have fun, Mimoza.”
Rory began counting on her fingers, for some unknown purpose. Her
right hand was not enough, so she carried on to her left hand.
“Rory, could you please not bring up the past?”
It would seem Rory’s actions had managed to turn an old woman’s ears
red in embarrassment.
After a while, when she realised that nobody would pay attention to her
crying, Alfie suddenly dropped the act and said:
“I’ve had it! I might as well find someone and marry him!”
“Eh? It feels like she changed all of a sudden,” Tuka said.
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“What interesting things will she say next?” Rory replied, a look of
eagerness on her face.
Alfie put her arm around Lelei again and said:
“Tell me about Itamy-san, hm?”
“Itamy Youjy. A military officer of the country of Nihon. Granted the title
of’ Lord’ by the King of the Elbe Kingdom. In addition, he is an honorary
patriarch of the Schwarz Forest Dark Elf tribe, et cetera.”
“A ‘Lord’... well, he’s not a very highly-placed one, but he’s still a noble!
How, how about his financial situation? His assets?”
This time, it was Yao who answered.
“Due to certain contributions by Master Itamy, our tribe gave him a

diamond which was about this big. In addition, I am also considered
Master Itamy’s property.”
Alfie stared at the shape which Yao made with both hands — something
about the size of a human head — and fell silent. She rose, radiating a
pressure which made Yao feel very uncomfortable, and asked:
“A, a diamond? The size of a human head?!”
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At this point, Alfie could not help but let her imagination run wild.
This man possessed enormous wealth, enough for her to build an

environment suited for research stocked with all the lab reagents and
equipment she could possibly need at a moment’s notice.
They could leave household chores and raising the children to a hired
maid (the silhouette of Yao came to mind as she imagined this). Besides,
if her husband was a soldier, then he would hardly be at home due to his
work. Another thing was that this man had already been divorced, so he
was still single.
In other words — he was quite the catch!
Alfie did not care much about anything else as long as she could live
comfortably. The sort of lifestyle she wanted was which people
described as “As long as my husband brings back the bacon, I don’t
mind being left alone at home.” Of course, to a man, a home life like
that would basically destroy his hopes and dreams...
By the time Alfie had recovered from these heady delusions of hers and
jerked her head back, she found that her seat had already been taken by
someone else — Lelei was sitting there nonchalantly, practically leaning
up against Itami. It would seem that Lelei had taken advantage of Alfie’s
standing up to swiftly occupy the void which she left.
“Hey, wait a minute. Lelei, that’s my seat.”
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“It was mine before you got here.”
“There’s no point saying that now. Give it to me.”
“No.”
“Why not? Why are you being so difficult?”
After that, Lelei gripped Itami’s sleeve tightly and said:
“We already have a three-nights kind of relationship.”
The three nights in question (one could call it a ritual, but it was more of
a tradition) referred to the fact that a couple which spent three nights
sleeping together in the same bed were now joined together. In other
words, this was a declaration that “From this day forward, we are
married.”
“Who… who and who?” Alfie asked in a trembling voice.
“Itamy and I.”
“Aieeeee!”
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She had been surpassed in academia, beaten in financial power, and

now Lelei had even taken the lead in the field of love...
At this moment, the tense string knotted around Alfie’s heart strained
even further — and like that, it snapped. By the time she returned to her
senses, she had already beaned Lelei on the head with the bowl of
soup.
Part of her had considered that it would be bad if Lelei got burned, but
once she picked up the bowl, all that went out the window — the soup
had grown cold after being left there for so long. That being the case,
there was no need to hesitate — Alfie hurled the soup bowl at Lelei’s
head.
Her silver hair was now stained reddish-brown by the sweet potato soup.
In addition, the dripping soup had reached her shoulders and stained her
white clothes.
Everyone was staring in shock at Alfie, while she herself realised what
she had done.
Crap, I went too far.
Even so, she did not regret what she had done. Right now, Alfie was
feeling more relaxed than she had ever been — indeed, all this was
necessary.
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At this moment, Lelei rose, somewhat unsteadily. She glared at this big
sister of hers, and a fire burned in her eyes.
And this brings us to the events at the beginning of this chapter.
***
The two female mages stared each other down, like duelists waiting to
strike.
The apprentices around them held their breaths, waiting for the battle to
start.
No matter how you sliced it, both sides belonged to the Lindon School —
one of battle mages. Therefore everyone here could observe the
intricacies of magical combat during this battle. If they were lucky, they
might even be able to observe spells which were typically reserved as
trump cards — something which they all eagerly anticipated.
In the exact center of the distance between the two sisters was Rory in
her black priestess’ outfit, who slammed the end of her halberd into the
ground.
“Koff—. I shall explain the rules which both sides must abide by. First,
neither of you will do anything which endangers the others’ lives.
Secondly, since you are both ladies, you will not strike each others’
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faces. Everything goes apart from these two rules, and you may indulge
yourselves to your hearts’ content. Also, I will state the loss conditions.
One, if anyone breaks the abovementioned two rules, they lose. Two, if
anyone surrenders, or if they are knocked down and unable to rise to
their feet by the count of ten, they lose as well. In addition, both sides
must reconcile with each other after the battle is over. Do you both
agree on these four points?”
Emroy was the God of War. Rory was the Apostle of Emroy. Lelei nodded
silently, assenting to those conditions. Similarly, Alfie nodded in
acknowledgement.
“Then, I, Rory Mercury, Apostle of Emroy, the God of War, grant my

sanction to the 13th Lelena Family Sisters Battle!”
Rory’s declaration was like a starter’s pistol.
Alfie made the first move. There was a flash of light from her right hand,
and a small ball of light flew out at Lelei.
In response Lelei summoned a ring of wind around her white robe, easily
evading the ball of light.
Right after that, Alfie whipped out a weapon known as a bolas.
Originally, bolas were throwing weapons used for hunting prey.

However, in the hands of a skilled user it could be used for all sorts of
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highly variable attacks, showing great power in the short to medium

range. In addition, it was not a heavy weapon, so it was easy to carry on
one’s person. Usually, bolas were made by joining several weights with a
rope, but the bolas Alfie was holding were made of three weights linked
by fine chains. In addition, since Alfie was an exponent of mineral magic,
she had managed to alter the physical properties of the weapon in her
hand — the spiralling weights were made of different materials and
heavily enchanted with magic, which released brilliant light in
accordance with their user’s will.
As he saw this, Itami mumbled, “That, that’s…”
Mimoza assumed he was gasping in awe, and stepped in to explain.
“Amazing , isn’t it? The current focus of Alfie’s research is the use of
minerals as a contact medium to release all sorts of magical
phenomena. Usually, one would need to use the ‘magic principle’ to
delve into the ‘phenomena’ from which everything springs. The principle
behind the use of a contact medium opens a new possibility in the
practice of expressing the ‘phenomena’ — it becomes faster and
simpler. However, the effects produced are as varied as the types of
media themselves. For instance, steel simply glows and gets hot. A
certain type of media we know can produce a powerful light. With
specially treated wood, one can even produce a defensive barrier. Alfie’s
research centered around these properties, to discover the fundamental
principle governing them.”
However, Mimoza’s explanation did not dispel Itami’s doubts. Instead, he

seemed confused, and frowned.
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“No, no, I didn’t mean that. What I wanted to say was, wouldn’t Lelei get
hurt if it hit her? Logically speaking, that’s what should happen, right?
This is… it’s definitely not on the level of a mere sister’s squabble any
more.”
“But this is how mages have always settled their disputes with each
other.”
As the two of them were talking, the sound of the air shattering
resounded through the street as blades of compressed air streaked
continuously through the air, and debris rained down from the sky like a
monsoon. With waves of their staves to defend against an attack, evade,
and then slash out horizontally, the attacks of both sides crashed
against each other in the middle.
“It’s only been a few years, but you’ve grown quite a bit.”
“This white robe isn’t for show, you know.”
“Bold words. See if I don’t rip the stitches out of your clothes.”
After that, both sides upped their ante — and their firepower. Deflected
bolts of light went astray and scorched the eaves of nearby houses.
Several chunks of stone debris scattered into the crowd, which drawing
howls from them. The fact that nobody had been hurt was a miracle,
which seemed to be proof that the people watching were actually
mages.
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“It, it looks like they’re going out of control…”
Pieces of shattered stone fell from the sky like bullets, making Itami
cringe back into his uniform.
The moisture in the air crystallized into icicles, whose sharp tips glittered
in the light as they flew back and forth. Some of them stabbed into the
nearby walls, and their plaster crumbled and fell.
“The first thing mages of the Lindon School learn is defensive magic.
Therefore, in most spell battles, both sides rush to see who can break
the other’s defenses first. However… the two of them have very high
attack and defensive power. Lelei’s grown so much I can barely
recognize her.”
The truth was, both of them had exerted the whole of their abilities, and
the pressure was building by the second.
That said, all people had their limits; and at a certain point, both of them
stopped moving. They panted, and with every breath they cast an attack
spell, before raising their weighty staves and using all their strength to
throw up a defensive barrier.
And then, a sound like a heavy lump of metal striking something else
echoed all around, raising a cloud of dust.
“Uuu, is this what they mean by a genius? Dammit…”
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Alfie clenched her teeth, and took a step forward.
The first half of this battle was like a duel between two knights swinging
at each other with all their might. The fact that they had come this far
was a testament to a clash of strength versus strength and will versus
will.
However, if they continued dragging the fight out like this, the difference
in their respective strength would soon become clear — Alfie was
attacking less and less, while she was defending more and more.
In this intense situation, Itami felt it was about time to try and stop
them. With that, he turned to Rory the referee, and ventured:
“Rory, what should we do now? I think their determination is going to

push this fight to a dangerous stage…”
“You’re right, but it would be best to wait a bit more, until victory and
defeat are apparent, before we stop them. Otherwise, the grudge
between them won’t go away. Look, even under these circumstances,
Alfie is still looking for a chance to deliver a decisive counterattack,
while Lelei — who’s confident of her victory — is waiting for a chance to
finish the fight in a single move.”
Rory had a point, but was it really all right?
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However, just as Itami was about to share his thoughts, a wail came
from the nearby crowd, clearly unrelated to the sisters’ battle.
There was the sound of a swinging sword, and —
After a cry of anger, there was a moan of pain from someone.
“You coward! Prepare yourself”
At first, people thought it was just two spectators who had gotten into a
fight because they were excited. However, when they turned to look,
they saw a man with a sword through his chest slumping to the ground.
***
Though this battle involved the exchange of powerful magic, though it

scarred the ground with holes and marks, though the nearby walls were
perforated like Swiss cheese, it was still a battle between sisters which
took place under the auspices of Rory, Apostle of Emroy, and her
precondition was that it did not involve the taking of human life.
Because of that, everyone could watch in excitement.
But now, the ground was covered in fresh blood.
Someone had died under the eyes of everyone in attendance — a man

whose body was soaked in blood staggered a few steps forward before
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collapsing to the ground.
After that, everyone’s face changed — some grimaced, turning pale,

while others flushed red, glaring angrily at the killer, and some looked
aside, storming off to summon the guards.
There were even some people who were experienced in these matters,
who raised their magic staves as they moved to the side, ready to
capture the killer with spells.
There was a wrathful look on Rory’s face as she asked:
“...To think you would dare stain the soil of a battleground sanctified by
I, Rory. State your reasons for doing so, Gray Co Aldo.”
“Yes.”
The killer — Knight-in-Training Gray, sheathed his bloodstained sword

and genuflected before Rory.
“Your Holiness, it has been a while. This one is honored to meet you
again.”
The deference this man was showing seemed somewhat exaggerated.

The reason why he did this was due to the hostility of everyone around
him.
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To him, the first thing to do when asserting the rightness of his actions
was to project a straightforward yet humble image of himself. It was of
paramount importance. One could say that in this place, it was exactly
the right thing to do, and as he drew the attention of the surrounding
audience, they slowly stopped what they were doing to watch.
Naturally, Gray’s answer was loud enough for everyone to hear.
“I understand that your Holiness is upset by this development, but if you

will permit this one to speak one thing, it would be that this one hopes
everyone can swiftly leave this place. Eliminating one assassin does not
guarantee this place is safe.”
Gray’s words raised a commotion from the people around him. When he
said this place was “unsafe”, it implied that there was danger here. But
who was in danger? What kind of danger was it? Everyone looked
around in confusion.
The kneeling Lelei and Alfie seemed to have recovered from the
exertions of the intense battle, and when they heard this they had no
choice but to raise their heads.
Shortly after Gray showed himself, the person who had searched the
deceased man’s body and belongings — Shandy Kaf Marea —
approached Rory and produced the crossbow she had just found.
At a closer look, the crossbow was drawn and a bolt fitted to the string. If
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it were a gun, one could say that it had been loaded, the hammer was
pulled back, and the safety was off. In other words, a round would be
fired once the trigger was pulled. Normally, nobody would go around
with a weapon in that state upon their persons. Because of that, one
could infer that the dead man had been aiming at someone with this
weapon and planning to shoot them. All this lent a great deal of
credibility to Gray’s words.
At this moment, Lelei and Alfie looked at each other — what was going
on? The two of them had no idea was going on, and so they asked
Shandy:
“What was with that man?”
“That man was hiding in the crowd with the intention of killing you, Lelei-
sama.”
“Ehhhhhh?! But why?!”
The person who cried out was not Lelei, but her sister Alfie.
“I cannot explain now. Everyone, please hurry and...”
Everyone reacted slowly to Gray’s words, as though they were unable to

comprehend what he was talking about. However, there was one person
who immediately understood what was going in times like these.
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“Got it. Everyone, follow me. Quickly, let’s get out of here.”
That person was Itami. He gathered Lelei and Alfie together and hurried
them on, going, “come on, come on, come on,” breaking into a stride as
he shunted the people on the street out of the way, leaving the
restaurant ’Marina’ behind him.
Gray and Shandy followed behind him, levelling watchful looks at

everyone around them.
At the same time, Itami called Yao over and told her, “Go back to the inn
first and see what’s going on.”
Perhaps she was delighted by being given a task, Yao replied in a cheery
voice:
“Understood! I’m to make sure there’s nobody suspicious hanging

around the inn, right?”
“Tuka, you go with her too. Please.”
At this moment, Tuka — who still had trouble understanding what was
going on — immediately agreed, nodding and saying, “It can’t be
helped”.
And so, Tuka and Yao jogged back to the inn ahead of the others.
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Lelei and Alfie followed them. Behind them were Mimoza and Itami,
while Rory, Gray and Shandy shot wary looks all around them.
“Tell me, who’s set their sights on Lelei? She’s a good girl.”
Mimoza’s protestation made Gray and Shandy look at each other.
Both of them were hesitant and unsure of how to answer. There were
many people around and many ears to hear what they had to say, so
this was not a good place to talk. That said, Itami also wanted to learn
something about this. Therefore, he decided to change his tack and
asked them questions instead — he pressed them on matters within the
area they could explain and avoided questions which were difficult to
answer, trying to get the information he needed through inference.
“Who gave you your orders? The Princess?”
“Yes,” Shandy said.
She had been repeating the same set of actions since just now — she
stopped, looked around and then quickly paced forward again. This
made her breathing fast and uneven, and her brown hair was glued to
her forehead with sweat.
Shandy felt she had been a fool. If not for this assignment, she could
have been a translator during the talks in the Imperial capital. However,
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reality was indifferent to her wishes, and right now, she was forced to
work a dirty, grimy job in a place like this.
“Her Imperial Highness commands that we are to take Lelei-sama to the

Imperial Capital. In addition, her Highness said that Itami-sama and his
companions would surely trust Gray and myself. And then, surprisingly
enough, we learned who was hiring the assassins, and proceeded here
with all speed.
The reason why Gray could earn Itami and his companions’ trust was
because he had been closely acquainted with Itami and the others
during the Battle of Italica and introduced by Shandy, who had been
learning Japanese in Arnus.
“So who’s gunning for Lelei… no, you can’t answer this question here.
However, I’m sure you can tell me why you’re so tight-lipped, right?”
“As expected of you, Itami-sama. As for ‘who’ it is, we’re still in the
guessing phase, and speaking incautiously will only jeopardize our
chances at nabbing them.”
After saying that, he added, “However…” and then proceeded to clarify

his words.
“However… the news of the Flame Dragon’s head in the Imperial Capital
has won you much fame in the Imperial Capital and its surroundings,
Lelei-sama. One could say that everyone knows of you, and that
‘someone’ is unhappy with that.”
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“The Flame Dragon’s head showed up in the Imperial Capital?”
“Did you not know of this?”
“If I’m not wrong, the head of the Dragon was taken by the Dark Elves.
They said something about wanting to use the Dragon’s head as
evidence and tell the entire world that the Flame Dragon was dead, and
let everyone know that their lives would no longer be in danger…”
“Indeed, it could be used in that way.”
“And it was very effective. Because of that, everyone’s opinion of you is

at an unprecedented level, Lelei-sama.”
Although Gray and Shandy had made their explanations to Itami, he still
tilted his head and muttered, “How strange” in confusion. This was
because they had not said a thing about why only Lelei was so popular.
If the reason was because she slew the Flame Dragon, then everyone
here should be a target, but the truth proved that this hypothesis was
flawed.
And then, Gray stopped and looked back to Lelei before saying:
“It is known that the fame is not solely yours, Lelei-sama. However,
because you and your companions are either foreigners or not human at
all, the humans in the Empire react much differently to you than to your
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other companions. This one feels the matter stems from this.”
Itami was still confused.
“What?”
“It’s because Lelei-sama is both a citizen of the Empire and a member of

the human species.”
“My people are nomadic and call no place home. I have no intention of
becoming an Imperial citizen.”
“The smallfolk do not care about these circumstances. No, I can’t say
that — perhaps it is because of these circumstances that the people
cheer for you. Say what they may, this was a task which the nobles, the
army, or even the Emperor could not accomplish. And now you — not
even a citizen of the Empire — managed to do it. Your existence is a
great encouragement to anyone who does not wish to labor under the
Empire’s rule.”
Itami felt that this might be similar to the attitude of “cheering on the
Japanese team in overseas baseball or soccer tournaments”. If the
Japanese team won, the media would air all sorts of special programs
revolving around them day and night. However, the members of the
other baseball teams would not receive any coverage at all. Only a small
fraction of die-hard fans would care about those teams — in a sense,
that example was oddly suited to this situation.
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“Oi, wait a minute. Your explanation still doesn’t tell me why someone
would want Lelei’s life.”
Gray was naturally wary of someone who had been fighting Lelei not five
minutes ago. He asked, “My apologies, but who might you be?”
Before Alfie could answer, Lelei injected from the side, “She’s my big
sister.”
“So that’s what it was! That battle of yours from just now was just a
sisterly spat. That was quite a magnificent display of sibling rivalry.”
“That’s not important. You haven’t answered my question yet. Why is

Lelei being targeted. Speaking of which, what’s all this about the Flame
Dragon’s head?”
“Oya, you didn’t know?”
Gray looked at Lelei in confusion.
“I didn’t tell her.”
“What a shock. You should have told her from the beginning.”
“I didn’t do anything outstanding.”
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“There’s your problem. Lelei-sama, you and your companions have no

idea how impressive that feat was.”
Gray had a look on his face that seemed to say, “I don’t believe this”,
and then he shook his head. After that, he summarized the details of the
Flame Dragon incident to Alfie.
“Not long ago, the Flame Dragon was slain by the combined efforts of
your honored sister and everyone present.”
“What? Don’t be stupid… hey, is that true?”
Gray paid no heed to Alfie’s question, and continued speaking in a calm,

matter-of-fact tone — to him, there was no time to waste on dispelling
her doubts. At the same time, it was precisely because of Gray’s tone
that Alfie realised that he was telling the truth.
“It would seem that ‘someone’ is deeply repulsed by Lelei-sama’s

accomplishments. That person has brought out various reasons to
convince themselves of the rightness of their prejudice: “Real live
heroes are a pain to deal with”, or “I can’t stomach it if she’s not a
citizen of the Empire” and so on… But no matter what reason that
person brings out, the ultimate root cause of that problem, the reason
why they can’t just let it go, is simply this — they are jealous.”
“I see.”
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Itami nodded as he mumbled to himself. It would seem this was why

Lelei had been targeted.
“However, the problem now is that the assassins they sent are not
amateurs. The fact that Lelei-sama slew the Flame Dragon has drawn
the full attention of the person pulling the strings, and so that person
has sent skilled killers to carry out the mission. This one and Shandy-
dono alone are not enough to stop these people. Therefore I hope you
can all lend us a hand in this.”
“Of course. Who would say ‘no’ to protecting the people close to them?”
Itami’s prompt answer drew a keen stare from Lelei.
“Marvellous. I expected as much from one of the legendary Men in

Green. Then, let us join hands and soundly smite these assassins!”
However, Itami shook his head as he heard Gray speak, and the look of
his head seemed to say, “I might disappoint you, sorry about that”.
“Hey, do I really look that combative to you?”
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Vol. 5 :
Chapter 4
Thursday, May 5, 2016

Gate - Thus the JSDF Fought There!
Volume 5 Chapter 4
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Translator: Nigel
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Editors: Skythewood, Nate, AMetroid
JGSDF Imperial Capital Akusho Operations Center
Normally, only the permanent staff would occupy the interior of this
operations center, but this week it was full of people. The interior buzzed
with heat and activity.
The displays that were everywhere showed footage from hidden

cameras. Leading Private Sasagawa clutched the wireless handset as he
spoke to all sorts of people, while Leading Private Tozu and the others
placed red and green unit markers on the map of the Imperial Capital
that was spread on a table.
Apart from that, the important intelligence personnel from 2nd Branch
were trying to make sense of the events within the Imperial Capital, as
well as to put their painstakingly established intelligence network to use.
In the corner of the corridor was Master Sergeant Nishina. He lay on a

camping bed, snoring as he scratched his belly in his sleep. Everyone
had been working day and night, and they rested in shifts.
“We’re back from shopping.”
The Kurokawa and Kuribayashi pair had returned. Beside them was their
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helper, the Winged Woman Mizari. All three of them were holding bags.
Thus, all the men thanked them before gathering around them, and
even the people who had been sleeping leapt up from their beds. After
that, they peeked into the bags they snatched from Kuribayashi, but
when they saw what was inside, a great cry of “What, this again?!” filled
the air.
The bags contained rye bread — black and hard from being baked at
high temperatures — meat jerky, and dried fruits.
“If you don’t like it, don’t eat it! We had to fight tooth and nail for
these!” Kuribayashi raised her fists as she shouted. Tozu and Sasagawa
muttered their apologies and scurried away.
As Sergeant Major Kuwabara chewed on something which looked like a

dried red date, he tilted his head.
“It’s been bothering me for some time, but where do you get this stuff
from? None of the shops are open. Could it be…”
“I sure as hell didn’t break into people’s houses with these fists to steal
it!” Kuribayashi shouted back before he could finish.
“We got them from Furuta’s black market.”
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“Oi oi, is that alright? Didn’t the previous chefs fall foul of Zorzal
because he suspected that they were poisoning the Emperor? Is it really
all right to sell food stolen from the palace?”
Kuwabara tapped lightly at his head with a chopping motion. Of course,

this was not the usual reference of being fired from a job, but of the
chef’s head literally being chopped off.
“It’ll be fine because he has Zorzal’s favor. Besides, it’s not as though
he’s stealing it from the palace. He makes arrangements with the
merchants that deal with him and passes them on.”
“That’s thanks to us; otherwise getting any food on these streets would
be very difficult,” Mizari said as she distributed the rations to the men in
the operations center.
She then went up the stairs, and there she found one of the servicemen
who did not have much contact with his peers, on account of the fact
that he either hid inside this room or was wandering everywhere.
“Kenzaky, food’s here. There’s enough for everyone.”
“Oh… thanks.”
Sergeant Kenzaki, who was lying on the bed, accepted the food Mizari
offered him.
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After that, he pulled Mizari onto the bed, which startled her.
However, she said, “So that’s what it’s about, preparing for setting up
shop?”
Mizari lightly tapped Kenzaki’s arm. The man flashed her a charming
smile and immediately released her. Their back-and-forth touching was
just the way they teased each other.
Still, he was up here shirking work and not helping the others downstairs
who were practically working themselves to death, so she wanted to see
what he was doing up here. His life was like this as well — either he was
sleeping here or exercising, or he was nowhere to be found for several
days.
When he returned, he often radiated a killing intent that made her

shudder. When she met his gaze then, she was paralyzed, like a frog
being menaced like a snake. Thoughts like “I’m going to die” and “Do
whatever you want” crossed her mind during those times.
Men like him who emitted an air of prickliness were not uncommon in
Akusho, but there was nobody whose presence was as sharp and cutting
as his. This made Mizari keenly aware of the differences between their
respective worlds.
“Kenzaky… this week’s been pretty bad. How about tonight, will it be
okay?”
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“I’m sorry, but it’s forbidden. Another time, perhaps.”
Although she had expected that answer, Mizari still felt a little
disappointed.
***
Elsewhere, Kurokawa looked in on the interior of the operation center,

intending to report to Major Nyutabara. However, she found Nyutabara
reporting the Imperial Capital’s situation to Colonel Imazu in Arnus, and
he gestured to Kurokawa “Thanks, but please wait a while.”
If she listened carefully, she could hear Imazu’s Kansai accent through
the handset.
“Got it. The pro-peace senators have all been placed under house arrest.
Then, how’s the situation on the streets?”
“It’s been a week since the Emperor collapsed, and there’s no sign that
they’ll lift the state of martial law on the Imperial Capital. There are
troops everywhere on the streets, menacing the citizens. They’re
allowed to move about during the day, but since movement in and out of
the capital is restricted, just about all the shops have run out of stock
and closed down. As a result, the number of pedestrians has dwindled to
almost nothing. The Imperial Capital Operations Center is running out of
rations as well. Please resupply us as soon as possible.”
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“What? There should be enough rations for 150 men. An army marches
on its stomach. You have to manage your food properly!”
“The Vice-Minister and her entourage consume a lot of it. Remember,

the Vice-Minister, her maids and manservants all need to be fed.”
“If that’s the case, it seems food will be more effective than money as a
bribe. The supplies will come as soon as possible. We’ll airdrop after we
confirm the C-1 transports’ schedule. Also, how are the Vice-Minister and
the others?”
“Well, while they’re nominally under confinement, they’ve still been

allowed free use of the Jade Palace, so the diplomatic agreement should
still be in effect. I guess they’re not touching them because they’re our
foreign ambassadors, no?”
“No. That sort of humanitarian thinking won’t work here. Idiots are called
idiots because they do idiotic things that we don’t do. You need to
abandon all your previous logic. Be on your guard against being put on
the defensive and being placed in difficult situations. Do you
understand?”
After rebuking Nyutabara for his optimistic view of the situation, Imazu
considered the information he had obtained so far.
“In any event, it seems Zorzal’s coup was a success.”
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“Mm. Zorzal took advantage of the Emperor’s illness and announced

that he would be dissolving the Senate and taking power as the Prince
Regent. After command of the Empire’s armies was transferred to him
and various legions pledged their loyalty, he placed the Imperial Capital
under martial law. Most of the pro-peace senators have fled with their
households.”
“Got it. The fact that they took their families with them implies they had
no other choice but to flee. If the situation gets truly dangerous, we will
immediately withdraw; otherwise you will have to hold position.
Understood?”
“I understand. However, there are some household members of the

absent senators who were not taken along. Shall we protect them?”
“You cannot act without thinking. If you help them for no good reason, it
will only put them in a worse place. You have to consider the situation
carefully.”
“I see.”
“In any event, you need to keep an eye on the Vice-Minister and our
comrades in Foreign Affairs. Also, the Emperor’s health. Whether he
lives, dies, or has a chance to recover are Essential Elements of
Information (EEIs), get it? I’ve said so much, but in the end it’s up to you
guys.”
“Sir!”
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With that, Nyutabara terminated his call to Imazu.
“The Emperor’s sickness… Anyone here have contacts within the

Palace?”
Nyutabara called out into the Operations Center, but the only person
who responded was Kurokawa, standing before him.
“At this time, I think Staff Sergeant Tomita — who has a close bond with
one of Princess Pina’s confidantes — might be able to help.”
***
Imperial Palace — Ula Bianca
Currently, the Imperial Palace was in utter chaos.
Once the Crown Prince Zorzal announced his accession to power as the
Prince Regent, he proceeded to distribute key positions in the domestic,
finance, agriculture, foreign affairs and palace ministries to his own
people, as well as defining the powers of those offices.
It was true that the Regency as administered by the Crown Prince had
control over the national ministries. However, rearranging them was
something which should have been done under the auspices of the true
Emperor. Zorzal had done so because he wanted to ensure his policies
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were carried out. However, the sudden elevation of his lackeys to the
same level as current ministers and the forceful seizure of the functions
of state left the political scene in turmoil.
Of course, the law did not limit the ministers that propped up Zorzal’s
regency in any way. However, the masses would not be able to accept
that. Still, the Emperor was sick, and nobody knew when he would
succumb to his illness. In the near future, the ministers chosen by the
Prince Regent might end up being their superiors. If they publicly
opposed them and drew censure, they might be placing themselves in a
difficult situation. In other words, they had to protect themselves in the
face of an uncertain future. Thus, an uneasy situation arose where the
current and future ministers both held a degree of power.
Of course, the opposition to Zorzal soon popped out of the woodwork.

They argued “Why is it that a mere Crown Prince is allowed the power
over a nation?” and so on. However, once Zorzal’s status as heir was
legitimized and he began flaunting his might, their arguments against
him lost their power. They could only stand if the other side actually
respected them to begin with. They were useless against someone
whose aim was to run roughshod over the opposition.
The current ministers derived their authority and powers from the
Emperor. However, the Emperor was currently indisposed. Therefore,
they were holding on for dear life like candles in the wind, unable to
enact policy. In addition, while they did not discuss the idea of being
suppressed by an ascendant Zorzal in the past on general principle, now
they had no choice in the matter.
In addition, now that the pro-peace faction had almost all been subject
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1601
to house arrest, only the proponents of wars remained to decide matters
Resolutions which benefited the pro-war faction and bills which went in
Zorzal’s favor were passed without any opposition. Because of that,
most of the ministers were left stymied in the face of this chaos and
could do nothing but hope the Emperor would recover soon.
***
After the announcement of the arrival of the Prince Regent, the doors to
the Regency Hall swung open.
Under the eyes of the future ministers, bureaucrats, and the young
generals who would manage military affairs, Zorzal strode in majestically
through the opened doors.
The ambitious young bureaucrats and military officers dressed

themselves in grand clothing stitched with gold and silver threads which
reflected the Prince Regent’s own grandeur. They far exceeded the
current ministers in the field of luxurious dress, and they looked like
they could have come out of a painting.
Behind the Prince Regent was Tyuule.
Her status was still that of the Prince Regent’s possession. However,
ever since Zorzal’s ascension, everyone saw his shadow when they
looked at her. As the closest person to Zorzal’s brilliance, she reflected a
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faint light of her own, and she received the treatment of an empress
despite technically being a slave.
Zorzal casually shed his cloak, tossing it to Tyuule, who was waiting by
his side. After that, he approached the Prince Regent’s seat and took it.
Tyuule accepted the cloak, her face a mask of neutrality. She clutched it
to herself, waiting by his side like an obedient maid.
On the other hand, Pina — who had been kept waiting for quite some
time — advanced to Zorzal’s throne and asked angrily:
“Nii-sama! Why did you relieve Marquis Casel, Lord Cicero and the other
members of the pro-peace faction of their posts, and then place them
under house arrest?”
Zorzal furrowed his brows in confusion. He had a look of bafflement on

his face as he explained:
“House arrest is such an ugly word. These people are all suspected of
being bought off by Nihon. Therefore, they are being confined to their
own homes until investigations are complete.”
“Being bought off? That’s it?”
“Yes. Their guilt is quite apparent, even going by what we can see on
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1603
the surface. When the investigation is concluded, we will naturally have

to deliver suitable punishment to them.”
“And will these punishments be decided through official hearings, Ani-

ue?”
“We are at war. In the army, anyone in our forces who dances to the
enemy’s tune and thus aids them must be dealt with. Do you think we
have the luxury of holding tribunals for every single one of them?
Decisiveness is the key to victory.”
As he said this, Pina’s field of vision suddenly blacked out for a moment.
Indeed, the punishment for military personnel spreading falsehoods and

being corrupted by the enemy was a summary execution. However, all
that was only done on the eve of battle or when battle was staring them
in the eyes. In the first place, summary punishments should not have
been handed out. For instance, even a superior officer could not
randomly condemn his own men to death. In many cases of mistrial,
defendants were not put on trial because “their subordinates were
punished”, but because the tribunal wanted to hear “why the
subordinates were punished”. And if there was no satisfactory reason for
that, then the superior officer would himself be subject to punishment.
Pina looked at her brother, who did not seem to have grasped this
principle and who was using the argument of “it’s done like this in the
military” to accuse anybody he wanted. Her body went weak.
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“Ah, Ani-ue. How far are you going to take this…”
“I tire of this, Pina. While Father is sick, it falls to me as Prince Regent to

administer the government. Since that’s the case, everyone has to do as
I say.”
“Ani-ue, there must be something wrong about your understanding of

the succession of power, no? It comes with bearing the responsibility of
the station! It’s not to be used to do whatever you want!”
“Ahhh, what a pain in the ass! I forbid you to address me with that
nitpicking attitude! Is that the tone you should be taking with me?”
“That is the tone I have always taken with the Emperor.”
Zorzal was stunned into silence by Pina’s calm retort, and his vision
swam for a moment.
“Cheh. Well, that’s true and I accept that. However, I will not tolerate
this when I become Emperor.”
“Then, will you chop off my head?”
“Of course not. You haven’t been bought off by Nihon. It’s good that
you’re focusing on your work.”
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“However, the newly appointed representatives, including Count Woody

and Baron Clayton among others, don’t even plan to look at the peace
treaty!”
“Nonsense. These people also hope for peace at the end. However, we
cannot discuss peace under these conditions. That is all.”
“You talk like you have the upper hand.”
Pina levelled a cutting remark at him, but Zorzal would not admit defeat.
“Are defeatists so blinded by their pessimistic worldview that they

cannot see any way to win? Helm, Mudra, Karasta!” Zorzal shouted
toward the ranks of soldiers before him.
The three of them, standing at the head of the other officers, advanced
before Zorzal and genuflected before him.
In the middle was Viscount Helm, on the right was Sir Mudra, and on the
left was the son of Marquis Karasta. Each of them had been granted the
position of General in Zorzal’s regency. In addition, Helm and Karasta
were two of the prisoners released by Japan several days ago.
“Then, shall I ask you gentlemen about what lies within your hearts?
Speak, and clear away Pina’s foolishness.”
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1606
In response to Zorzal’s query, Helm rose.
“Indeed, it is as Princess Pina says; open combat against that foe is

futile. That being the case, if we adopt another approach, we may be
able to gain the advantage.”
“Is that so. But there is no time to worry; what our Empire needs now is
victory.”
“I know. Then, please watch as I lead the enemy by the nose.”
“Oh? And how will you do that?” Zorzal asked as he leaned forward.
“We shall fully embrace the idea of evil. They say the enemy called
Nihon loves the common folk too much. Thus, let us gather the Goblins
and Kobolds and attack the cities near Arnus, the villages and the
caravans. We will burn their farms, kill their animals, and poison their
wells. In all directions, north, south, east and west, we shall turn the
area into a wasteland.”
“That is nothing more than scorched-earth tactics. But will this not invite
an enemy counterattack?”
“No. After all, it is only the demihumans who are doing so as bandits.
They have nothing to do with us, and we know nothing about it…”
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1607
“I see. However, that will cause the army of Nihon to harry the
marauding demihumans and bandits. What will you do, then? Will you
fight?”
“An unbeatable foe is nothing to be worried about. If we encounter

them, our troops can pose as traders and wave to them in a friendly
manner. We can remove our armor and blend in with the villagers, or
pass through national borders and infiltrate neighboring countries. We
can take the people we meet on the roads as hostages, and tell our
pursuers to back off if they want the hostages to live. Since they are
willing to protect homeless wanderers, then we shall gather those
starving refugees who have lost their homes and pack them off toward
Arnus and encourage them to seek aid there. That way, we can mix our
people in with these refugees and infiltrate the enemy.”
Zorzal was left speechless after hearing all that.
His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, as though he was

deciding whether or not to speak. He thought, is it really alright to let
him do this? He had to take another look at the man before him.
Because of that, the others were exceptionally shocked by his words.
Helm was a general who knew the horrors of reducing an enemy’s

territory to bloody ash. Even desiring the regular consequences of
conventional warfare would be seen as a bloodlust by others. Therefore,
having someone like him propose such a reprehensible plan was quite
the shocking development.
Pina was furious, and with brows furrowed, she drew her sword.
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1608
“Have, have you no shame, Helm? Do you dare call yourself a proud
soldier?!”
Viscount Helm was one of the first graduates of Pina’s Knight band,
which made her even more incensed. The fact that one of her former
comrades could actually speak of a tactic like that — no, calling such
deplorable methods tactics was disgraceful in its own right — was
absolutely disgusting to her.
However, Helm countered: “Then, can you defeat them on the field of
battle?”
“Let’s leave that aside for now. I’m asking you about our pride as
soldiers! What of the Empire’s reputation?”
“If we are beaten then our reputation and pride will be food for the dogs.
It’s all well and good for a soldier to conduct himself in a righteous and
high-minded manner, but they are all for nothing if we are defeated in
the end. Shall we leave a reputation for honor after death? No, it’s not
worth it. It’s not worth it at all. I would rather enjoy a glorious and
prosperous life rather than death.”
“What, what happened to the man I used to know?”
“There was no need for that in the past, so I did not do it. I too paid
attention to my public bearing and reputation. But now that we have
encountered a foe we cannot defeat by normal means, we no longer
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have the luxury of such indulgences.”
Helm’s words did make sense. Zorzal felt that it would be effective If
they infiltrated the people and launched attacks on the army of Nihon. It
would make their men guarded and suspicious. Their reprisals would
surely wound the people. If they turned the cities into a battlefield, they
could accuse the Nihon soldiers of massacring innocents. If they did that,
the people would hate the army of Nihon, and view them as enemies.
The foe would have to constantly watch their backs. It was a truly
brilliant scheme.
“Lord Helm, how about disguising ourselves as the enemy and attacking
settlements all over the place?”
Zorzal shouted “Good!” and slapped his thigh in response to Mudra’s

suggestion.
Mudra was the third son of a merchant, and ever since he had enlisted,
he had earned a name for himself as a pillar of the army’s logistics
division.
Due to his birth, there were ugly rumors about how Mudra had abused
his position to resell official supplies. However, no such thing had ever
occurred, and Mudra used his vital work in the transport of material
resources to dispel such hearsay. As such, he had moved up in life, and
now possessed a knighthood.
“Mm, that’s a good move too. We’ll blacken the enemy’s reputation.
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1610
Since we’re doing this, let us attack the people within the city, with all
the burning of houses, plundering of riches and raping of women that
implies. In that way, their reputations will be trod into the dirt and their
names will be uttered as curses. When they have to deal with both the
Empire and its people, they will not have such an easy time of it as they
do now.”
“That’s exactly right. In addition, we can replenish our resources and

expenses through doing so as well, so I see no downsides to that.
Speaking of which, what does the enemy wear? Do we have any
samples of their clothing so we can duplicate it?”
“When I was on campaign in the land of Ginza, I saw what the enemy
wore. After I was taken captive, their image was branded deeply into my
eyes.”
“Me too!” Karasta shouted.
The first two people had been elevated purely through their successes,
but Karasta had reached his military position by virtue of his birth.
For someone like him, who had been born the first son of a Marquis,
accomplishments were not very important. Therefore, he had not earned
the ire of others even though he did not display valor on the battlefield.
On the other hand, any successes he did achieve were quickly rumored
to have been stolen from someone else. However, he was not a
completely incapable person. Perhaps it was because he treated the
people around him kindly, but he ended up becoming friends with the
people around him, with their overconfidence, ambition, and cruelty.
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1611
Zorzal rose, a beaming smile on his face.
“Helm, go and begin your operation.”
“Understood. Then, I shall begin our preparations.”
That sort of thing could not be considered a military operation. Pina

shouted, “Please, I’m begging you, stop.” But her words were ignored
and discarded. She looked to Zorzal, tears brimming in her eyes.
“A-ani-sama, please, don’t do this!”
“What are you on about, Pina? We’ll discuss this later, I’m busy now.
Next, Advocate-General Rufrus, how’s progress on the matter I ordered
earlier?”
A white-haired youth stepped forward from among the bureaucrats.
He was a skinny man with a sinister look on his face, and there was no
sense of warmth in him.
“We’ve finished preparing the bill for the special legislation pertaining to
the oprichnina. We’re almost done selecting the key personnel too, so
once the bill passes, we will begin purging the pro-peace faction.”
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(TL Note: Oprichnina was the Russian policy of instituting secret police,
mass repressions, executions, confiscation of land etc. Basically a reign
of terror to eliminate traitors.)
As she heard those words, Pina looked to the ground, her expression
unreadable.
“Hang on, hang on, what you said just now was…”
She mumbled like she was talking to herself, and clawed at her scalp
through her crimson hair.
She had thought and theorized and worked for so long and at last she
thought she could be at peace. But in the end, all the hopes she thought
she had accumulated collapsed into dust. Perhaps she could pull herself
together once or twice, working up the spirit to continue fighting, but if it
went on three or four or more times, she could not help but wonder if
she was cursed by something. It was now that she realised how
powerless she was in the hands of fate.
“Why? Why did it end up like this?”
It was clear that Pina’s weakness came from her nervousness over the
horrors Zorzal would soon unleash. The Crown Prince’s appetite for
sadism knew no limit.
***
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After leaving the Regency, Pina strode unsteadily toward the Western
Palace, to the residence of her second brother Diabo.
Pina was afflicted with the chronic disease known as despair, but she still
managed to pull together her remaining scraps of courage. Realizing she
could not stop Zorzal by herself, she decided to ask someone else for
help.
“Ani-sama? Ani-sama, where are you?”
However, nobody answered Pina’s calls. Normally, Diabo’s servants and

his maids should have come out to welcome her, but the palace seemed
so quiet and empty that one might have thought that nobody had ever
lived here.
“What’s going on? Nii-sama, Diabo-niisama!”
Pina wandered throughout the vast palace before finding her brother,
who was sorting out his luggage with a servant. The young servant
carried a heavy pack on his back. He was sweating heavily and had a
distressed look on his face.
“Shut up, Pina! What do you want?”
“It’s nothing special… Nii-san, what’s this? Are you preparing to go

somewhere?”
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“I’ve decided, I’m fleeing this place. I’ve already sent my followers away.
I can’t take them with me. Ah, right, I let them take everything valuable
here as a reward for their loyalty. It’s just that… once you die, it’s all
meaningless, hahaha.”
Diabo laughed heartily as he regarded his empty palace.
“Fleeing? Please, please don’t do something so irresponsible! Help me

stop Zorzal nii-sama!”
“What foolishness are you spouting? Why should I help you do

something so dangerous?”
“Nii-sama, you have a seat on the Senate. Also, don’t you feel any
responsibility to this country as a member of the Imperial Household?”
“I’m not fleeing the Imperial Capital because I’m abdicating all my
responsibilities. In fact, the opposite is true — in order to do my duty, in
order to stop Zorzal, I’m planning to borrow some strength from other
countries…”
“Other countries? But if you do that, won’t that plunge this country
further into chaos?”
History was littered with examples of losing one’s territory or even one’s
entire country by borrowing external power to quell internal disputes. It
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1615
was abundantly clear from that same history that there were no such
thing as friends at a national level.
“All right, then how are you going to stop him? Do you think Zorzal’s the
kind of man who’ll listen to words alone? If you want to talk him down,
you’ll need to back your words up with an equal amount of power.”
“That may be so, but we might be able to slowly bring him around, so it
might be too early to flee right now…”
“No way. According to my investigations, he’s already tossed the people

who are pro-peace and opposed to him into jail. If you try and lecture
him, who knows what will happen.”
“He’s going to institute oprichnina. That’s much too cruel. We have to

stop it from being carried out, no matter what.”
Pina chewed at her fingers as she said that.
“But that’s impossible! The only people left in the Senate are the pro-
war people.”
In desperation, Pina dashed forward and embraced Diabo.
“Diabo-nii-sama! For the sake of the future, please lend me and the
Empire a hand!”
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1616
“Hey, let go, let go of me! Metmes, what’s up with her?!”
Diabo flailed his arms in a panic. However, Pina’s grip was surprisingly
strong and he could not slip her grasp easily. The lad who was Diabo’s
manservant was similarly powerless to dislodge the Princess’ hands, no
matter how Diabo ordered him. At his wits’ end, all he could do was
repeat, “Your Highness, please calm down! Please, calm down!”
“You’re so mean! You’re a mean old brother who’s going to abandon me

without even listening to me! How can I let go if you’re like that?”
“Let go! Pina! So why don’t you run away with me?”
“I can’t abandon Father on his sickbed!”
“Just let go of me!”
“You’re mean. Nii-sama, help me, please!”
Diabo struggled valiantly under Pina’s full-strength grab. Pina’s hair was
in a mess, but she was unwilling to release her grip around Diabo’s
waist. This was not a simple contest of strength between the two of
them, so Diabo could not do something like cast Pina aside. Thus he did
not struggle as desperately as he should have. In the end, Diabo
abandoned his attempts to wriggle free of his little sister’s grasp and
clicked his tongue.
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“...I get it. I’ll do as you say. It can’t be helped…”
“Do you get it now?”
Pina smiled in delight. It would seem the two of them had relaxed,
though they were both covered in sweat. Still, Pina did not lower her
guard, and remained fastened around Diabo.
“However, I have certain conditions.”
“What kind of conditions?”
“Whatever the circumstances, you and I are both competitors with

Zorzal for the succession. Trying to go up against him under those
conditions could be fatal. Don’t forget that.”
Pina did not want to step into the realm where their lives would be in
danger if either of her brothers said anything. However, Pina looked at
the matter objectively. The loss of a father or brother was an inevitable
casualty when competing for supreme power. They could not be as
loving as normal siblings.
“……I understand.”
“In any case, we have to be prepared to lose our lives. I trust I don’t
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need to keep going on and on about it? Don’t forget.”
Pina nodded again, somewhat more sedately.
“I understand.”
“Well then, since it’s like that… I need a matching promise from you.”
A vague sense of dissatisfaction grew in Pina, and she squeezed Diabo

around the waist.
“Then, what do you want me to do?”
“Come to think about it, I received a copy of your subordinate’s report

about the dragonslayers. It read like some kind of heroic epic…”
“That was a mistake on my part. Forgive me for not properly instructing

the writer on how to do her job.”
“No, I felt it was quite well-written. I was more interested in that Dark Elf
girl. She was willing to trade her body in order to save her tribe. In order
to fulfil the task asked of her, she gave everything she could give. It was
a truly poetic image, I feel.”
“Ah…?”
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“Then, can you do the same thing?”
“Ah?”
“That is, can you offer yourself to me the way she did?”
“What do you mean by…”
“That is to say, are you willing to serve me in bed as my pillow?”
As she heard that, Pina immediately backed away from Diabo.
“Ah, ah, Ani-sama, what, what did you just say?”
“I said exactly what I said. My meaning should be very clear. Do you

need me to explain more directly before you understand?”
Pina’s face turned as red as her crimson hair, and she replied:
“Nii, nii-sama… we, aren’t we brother and sister? Well, we only share a
father… but, but we’re still siblings bound by blood and, and… I don’t
think it’s quite right.”
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“And what of that? There’s no problem with us becoming man and wife.”
“No, no problem? I don’t like it. It, it means I would bear your child, nii-
sama…”
“Hmph. So after all that talk about thinking about the country, that’s all
you can really give of yourself. You speak so grandly about offering up
others’ lives but you don’t dare breach a taboo like that. That is your
limit.”
“Ah…”
Diabo patted himself down and rearranged his messed-up clothes. He

scoffed at Pina.
“The long and short of it is that politics is bringing someone over to your
point of view and making him agree with you. Human beings live
surrounded by all sorts of selfish desires. You need to consider all sorts
of methods to make use of these desires. Inflaming passions and
controlling emotions is a good skill to have. Zorzal’s use of violence and
fear to maintain his grip on his power is clearly quite effective. In other
words, that man’s actions were more suitable to the situation than yours
were. You didn’t even stop to consider the meaning of your actions
before acting out and throwing a tantrum like a child. Forget it, don’t
mind it, I’m sorry I scared you. I was just testing to see if you had any
ulterior motives. I meant nothing by it. Please forgive me.”
“Wait, wait!”
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“What, changed your mind?”
Pina reached a hand out to Diabo, who looked her up and down like he
was tasting her body with his eyes. It was all terribly exaggerated, and it
was clear that he intended to play on Pina’s sense of disgust and her
pride.
However, Pina clutched at Diabo’s sleeve with trembling hands.
“If I do as you say, Diabo-nii… then will you help me stop Zorzal-nii?”
Pina’s face was covered by her hair and thus unreadable. However, one
could sense her fear and her conviction warring within her tiny,
tremulous voice.
“Stop it. Don’t force yourself to say something you don’t want to.”
“...Which means you’ll help me?”
“Well… even if you say that, I can’t do something that’s impossible for
me. Pina, I misspoke. This isn’t a problem you can solve just by enduring
a bit of pain for a while. Rolling around with you all night, no, all day and
night, without a break would be quite painful for an inexperienced girl
like you.”
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“...That’s fine.”
“Hold, hold on! There’s a big difference between saying you can do it
and actually doing it!”
“I’ll endure it. No, saying I’ll endure you would be disrespectful to you,
nii-sama. Please enter me. Your little sister would like nothing more than
to be embraced by her big brother.”
Her words were clear and her reply was swift. This was the proof that
Pina was determined to cross the line in her heart.
On the other hand, Diabo was sweating heavily. The look on his face
practically screamed “oh crap”. He began backing off at full speed.
“Then… Pina, this is moving a little too fast. Shouldn’t you respect
yourself a little more?”
“It’s fine. Nii-sama, let’s fall together!”
Pina’s expression was clearly one which was detached from normality.
She had a creepy smile on her face, a sure sign of a deranged mind.
“Don’t fall into depravity!” Diabo shouted.
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However, Pina — who had crossed that line in her heart — paid his words
no heed.
“Mm. Still, doing it like this is a little distasteful. I’d like to bathe first,
and these clothes are kind of in the way… Nii-sama, please wait a bit for
me.”
Pina was muttering things to herself which made Diabo’s heart rate pick
up.
“Pina! Can you hear me! Oi~”
Diabo lightly patted Pina’s face with a patapata sound, but Pina turned
her glazed, unfocused eyes on Diabo.
“Then, I’ll be back soon. But you have to wait for me.”
And then she ran off to the Western Palace.
“Well then, Diabo-sama. What shall we do now? Shall I set out a bed?”
said Metmes the manservant.
“There’s no need for that! I don’t want to sleep with my little sister! I’m
leaving.”
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“Is that really all right? Princess Pina asked you to wait for her.”
“It’s fine! Leave me be!”
“Well, about that... your servant feels that hell hath no fury like a woman
scorned.”
“It’s a damn sight better than being killed by Zorzal for stating an
opinion. We’re going!”
“Ah, yes!”
And so, Diabo and his servant left the Imperial Capital.
***
Elsewhere, Pina returned to her suite, gathered her maids, and soaked
herself in a bathtub infused with scented oils. She carefully combed her
hair, applied some light makeup, put on her best seduction panties, and
then veiled herself in her best dress. From her instructions, the maids
guessed that “This must be a critical moment for Her Highness”, and
they redoubled their efforts. Of course, there were questions of “Who’s
the lucky man?” and it spread like wildfire through the maids’ network of
“who’s who of where”.
However, all of their guesses fell short of the mark. What Pina intended
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to do fell into the “other” category. If the maids knew the truth, they
would probably be disgusted instead. An abortionist might be
summoned and she might be imprisoned in her room with a loyal maid
for the rest of her days. Therefore, Pina did not tell anyone about the
person in question. After preparing herself, she left her residence.
And then, she ended up hugging her knees on a bed in the Western
Palace.
Shandy’s report told of a Dark Elf girl who gave of her wealth and her
body to look for help, but who was rejected. It also painted a heroic
picture of a man who sacrificed everything, up to his life for friendship.
Pina was envious and jealous of them from the bottom of her heart. She
was a highly fortunate woman, but she still fell far short of them.
“Am I not even worth bedding, nii-sama?”
Consumed by despair and weakness, the Imperial Princess Pina Co Lada

broke down into tears.
***
“Your Highness the Prince Regent, it’s been a long time. You look well,”
said the man dressed like a merchant, who was kowtowing before
Zorzal.
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Clearly, he had been enjoying heavy meals every day, given that he was
so fat that his chin had fused with the rest of his body. In addition, his
limbs looked so tiny that it made people feel that he would roll away if
pushed.
A wave of frustration washed over Zorzal as he saw that disgusting fat

body, and he let his displeasure show on his face as he spoke in an
annoyed tone:
“To hell with looking well! Are you implying I’m glad that my Father the
Emperor is in his sickbed?”
“That, that was not at all my intention and I apologize! Your servant
humbly apologizes for not detecting your Highness’ heartache at this
development… although the inauguration of the Regency is truly a
matter for happiness. Please accept this specially prepared gift.”
“Is that so. Then, put it over there.”
The guest wiped away the cold sweat which had suddenly formed on his
face, and nervously placed a small yet heavy-looking wooden box
among the small mountain of other presents in the corner of the office.
“What a majestic sight. Although, when you pile them up, is it not
unclear who gave which gift?”
“Are you worried that your painstakingly-prepared present will be
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forgotten? It’s fine. My secretary is very efficient. She’s memorized them

all. Tyuule, introduce yourself.”
Tyuule stood at a fixed position in Zorzal’s office, and she dipped her
head. She seemed to be taking some sort of shorthand as the quill pen
in her right hand raced over the parchment on the board in her left
hand.
“Is this Tyuule-sama? She is as beautiful as the rumors say. Pleased to

meet you, my name is Maruki.”
“And then that’s my head manservant, Nei.”
Beside Tyuule was an unassuming man in an elegant outfit, who looked

to be in his forties or fifties and stood ramrod straight.
“Nei-sama, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”
The head manservant graciously acknowledged him with a nod.
“Then, what do you want today? I doubt you’re here just to deliver a
celebratory present.”
“Indeed. I pray your Highness the Prince Regent will show your favor to
the Maruki Consortium and make us the Imperial Household’s official
supplier of goods.”
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“What, the news is out already? It seems your ears are fairly useful.”
“Our eyes and ears are very sensitive. We trust your Highness intends to
revamp everything.”
“Hm, so your senses are keen and you’re observant too. Indeed, I do
intend to make a fresh start. Because of that, I need to change my
suppliers one by one. I want fresh people, with fresh attitudes.”
“We at the Maruki Chamber of Commerce approve of your Highness’

considerations. If we are fortunate enough to receive your imprimatur,
we shall aid your Highness’ policies with all our might.”
“Yes, yes, I know what you want to say. That’s all for today, I’m busy…”
“In, indeed. I once more tender my sincerest apologies for not noticing. I
have wasted enough of your valuable time.”
In accordance with Zorzal’s directions, Tyuule approached the office

doors with beautiful footsteps and opened the door for the merchant.
She even smiled to him. Of course, that expression meant “Please leave
quickly.”
The merchant smiled back stiffly, and then nervously fled Zorzal’s
presence. Tyuule watched him leave, and then muttered to herself.
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“That one’s no good.”
Tyuule looked exceptionally charming as she scratched her head with

the hand holding her quill pen.
“Indeed. The fact that people like that are spreading all over the place is
the fault of the previous Emperors. However, people like that will not be
allowed to run free in my Empire. While he’s very perceptive, I don’t
need bribery or the like. I doubt someone like him deals honestly. People
like that are to be forbidden entry. Got it?”
“Understood,” Tyuule replied as she scribbled something onto the

parchment with a karikari sound.
As he observed the two of them, the head manservant Nei decided to

draw on his great stores of experience and warned:
“Your Highness, while I thoroughly agree with your reasoning, I feel that
a massive, sudden change will plunge the palace into chaos. How about
a slight readjustment first? It is important to sort matters in order of
priority. We will take care of the important things first and worry about
less important things later, and then the situation will clear up.
Alleviating chaos is part of the duties of this office.”
“It’s fine. Chaos is what I want.”
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“This… may I ask how putting the palace into chaos is beneficial?”
“Nei, you are a mere servant, so you cannot understand the finer points
of bureaucracy. I intend to play the fool for a while and observe the
court officials. In addition, there is a truth I will tell you.”
“What kind of truth is it?
“In a vast nation like the Empire, the bureaucrats develop their
individual habits, appearance, rules and so on, to the point where they
are immune even to changes in policy. The previous Emperors feared to
touch this system. However, though the Emperor can decree or the
Senate can make rulings, it is these people who actually carry out their
directions. Therefore, in the process of executing their orders, they take
their fellows into consideration and alter the final product into something
which looks like the intended article but which is utterly worthless. Still,
this is only possible with a healthy bureaucracy. In a chaotic situation
like this, they will not have the freedom to modify my dictates, and they
will be forced to swallow them whole.”
“However, will not these days of panic lead to nothing meaningful being
done?”
“Isn’t sorting out these circumstances the job of the ministers?”
“Even so, in the current confusion, the task of sorting things out will not
be simple.”
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“It’s fine. All they need to do is neatly resolve what happens amidst this
chaos. I want things to be simple and clean, an efficient state of affairs
with no clutter.”
There was a knocking on the door. Tyuule opened it to welcome the

caller.
The next visitor was Advocate-General Rufrus.
“The Senate rejected the special legislation for oprichnina which I

submitted by the command of Your Highness. The reasons given was
that the charge of ‘flouting Imperial authority’ was far too vague and
there were also whispers that ‘even the pro-war faction might be
indicted by this’.”
“What?! Did I not make myself clear?!”
Zorzal grabbed the scroll case and opened up the bill.
“Hm, what to do. An excessively strict definition will lead to a harsh law
that leaves a lot of people open to being accused of treason.”
“To think this was the cause of dispute in the Senate. Can we not push it
through forcefully?”
“If we do that, it will only deepen the Senators’ unease. More
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importantly, there are several officials who are trying to push us into
negotiating with Nihon for certain items.”
“Yes, what a shame. Still, it must be those people who were bought off
and corrupted by gifts so they would interfere in the diplomatic
process.”
“So what should we do?”
As she heard Zorzal muttering to himself, Tyuule timidly volunteered an

answer:
“Your Highness. How about changing the definition of ‘flouting Imperial

authority’ to a simple ‘those whose actions impede his Majesty’s
policies’?”
“Actions that impede policies…?”
“Mm. This way, most of the Senators will not oppose it. Though it may
be rude, they cannot do anything about it.”
“Interfere… however, people who have differing opinions will live in

fear.”
The oprichnina legislation was intended to cover treasonous behavior

against the Empire. In other words, it targeted most of the members of
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the pro-peace faction. The question now was the definition of treason. If
one defined it as “actions which impeded policy”, then it might lead to
people being unable to voice dissenting opinions at all. This was the
beginning of a slippery slope that ended with ‘You disagreed with me,
therefore you’re guilty. The sentence is death!’”
Of course, if he did that, all his efforts and his public opinion would go
down the drain. This was the opposite of what Zorzal’s ideal scenario.
What Zorzal envisioned was a Senate whose members advised the
Emperor of their own accord and debated for the welfare of the country.
Certainly, he could get a lot more people to work by castigating them,
but such action ran counter to Zorzal’s dream.
In order to push Zorzal to a decision, Rufrus stepped forward.
“We’ve prepared the draft for the bill…”
Deep in thought, Zorzal did not question Rufrus and simply nodded.
“Just leave it here, give me more time to think. After that, we’ll let the
Senate move on it again.”
Just then, a voice came from the door.
“Forgive me for disturbing you during your work.”
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1634
Zorzal said, “Come in”, and in response, Furuta the chef entered.
“I apologize for making you wait for lunch… shall I come back later?”
“No, I’ll have it now. Frankly speaking, it’s been a while, so just put it
here.”
Zorzal allowed Furuta to put his lunch on his desk.
Once Furuta entered, Rufrus retreated from the office. However, Tyuule
said, “Please wait” and held him back. After that, she spoke to Zorzal,
who had already transferred his attention to his food:
“Your Highness, Advocate-General Rufrus is quite busy. If this keeps up,

it will hinder him in the execution of his duties.”
“That’s true. After all, Rufrus also has to command the people who will
carry out the oprichnina. What shall I do about this?”
“Please allow me to handle the task of communication. This way, we will

not need to keep summoning Rufrus-sama.”
“Is that so. Thank you Tyuule, you’ve been a great help.”
Zorzal nodded, and handed the task to Tyuule.
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“Then we’ll do that. Rufrus.”
The Advocate-General replied: “Yes, understood,” and left.
After a while, Nei spoke:
“Your Highness. Lunch should be had in the dining hall. Eating in a place
like this ill-befits your position.”
“Hmph, why do I have to keep shifting around just for lunch? I’m very
busy.”
“However, eating in an appropriate place makes the food taste better. In

addition, it does not compromise your image and authority. One must
appear dignified as a ruler.”
“Is that so? Then I’ll change some other day. This is a daily occurrence,
after all, so there’s no need for all that pomp and circumstance. Besides,
Furuta’s food tastes good even if you eat it here.”
“My thanks, your Highness.”
The head manservant looked disapprovingly at the hastily-hired chef. He

seemed to be scolding Furuta with his eyes for not agreeing with him.
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However, Zorzal simply said, “Come, time to eat,” and opened up the
lunchbox on his desk.
“Oh? And what have we here?”
“It is a sandwich of roasted meat in grain buns, known as a hamburger.

It is flavored with your Highness’ preferred seasonings and served with
vegetables. You hold it like so, and take great bites of it. Then you add
the included vegetable sauces to taste…”
Nei sighed as he saw this.
“It is quite unrefined of one to consume lunch in a place of work.”
“But it’s so good. This suits me perfectly. Furuta, pay his mumblings no
heed and make me more of these. Got it?”
“Yes. I understand.”
Beside him, Tyuule was helping herself to a hamburger as well. It was

quite adorable how she took small bites out of it, the way a small animal
would eat a fruit.
“Come to think of it, Furuta, how about officially becoming a palace

chef? It just so happens the head chef position is open. Of course, it’s
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not left open for you specifically, but I honestly cannot think of a better
man for the job.”
“I am very grateful for your offer. However, I have a dream of my own.”
“I know, you want to own your own shop, right?”
A dispirited Zorzal sighed deeply.
“Still, it’s such a small dream. I feel like scolding you.”
“That is quite a rude thing to say.”
“No, it’s fine. Frankly speaking, I feel it’s good that a minor character
can retain his pride. Never mind, I get it. Go chase your dream. But
before that, stay by my side. All the other chefs pale in comparison to
your skills. Got that?”
“Yes, your Highness.”
“However, you’ve made a serious mistake, Furuta.”
“What, what mistake did I make?”
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“You didn’t make enough of this marvellous dish! You’ll need several
times more than this to sate my appetite!”
Zorzal glanced into the box, at the hill of hamburgers as he said this. If
that was not enough, how much could he eat?
“I understand. Then, I shall go heat the rest up now. It should be ready

soon.”
“...Cheh. That means you were prepared for this.”
“Yes. I know your Highness is a big eater, and if I brought them all out at
once, the last few would get cold. I thought it would be better to leave a
few until they were needed and then serve them hot.”
“Ah! Truly a remarkable chap, no matter how I look at you. I understand,

now go get the rest ready while I’m eating. That’s right, Tyuule, you go
with him too, and see if Furuta really does have more laid up in store.
Also, something might happen if he’s too rushed.”
“Ah? Yes!”
Tyuule had been steadily gnawing her burger into a crescent shape —
accompanied by “om nom nom” noises — and she was clearly reluctant
to leave it.
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“Tyuule-san, please hurry, his Highness eats quickly, so it’s important

that we return soon.”
“Y-yes!”
Zorzal had a displeased look on his face, but he laughed happily. Tyuule
and Furuta took that as the starter’s pistol for them to jog toward the
kitchen from the office.
As Tyuule panted, she asked:
“Aren’t, aren’t you afraid of his Highness? Just now, you could have
died.”
“I can’t say I’m not afraid, but…”
Furuta could not do or say anything which involved lying about food. Not
even if someone else said things which forced him to leave the family
restaurant he had been groomed to inherit, left him homeless due to
wicked rumors, and finally forced him to join the JSDF.
Therefore, he felt that if he had angered Zorzal and been forced to flee,
it would have been fine. Or rather, he wanted to make him angry and
terminate this assignment quickly.
For people in this world, it was difficult for someone to run to a place
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where Zorzal could not reach. However, Furuta had been prepared for
that eventuality. If he called for help, a helicopter would come and
recover him, and once he went through the Gate, Zorzal would not be
able to touch him. Therefore, he acted without fear, but that only served
to impress Tyuule, who did not know this.
“To think the dream of someone with such vision and ability would be
just to open his own shop… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
“I guess you can’t make sense of that, given that you serve the Prince
Regent. However, to me, a shop is something like my own castle, or my
own country.”
“And you want to become the king of your own little kingdom?”
“Yes. And the people who come before me to eat shall be my subjects.”
“How fortunate your citizens must be. After all, they have good food to
eat. However, don’t you think the people are irrational and prideful
beings? In the end, they’ll treat you coldly. Sometimes, people do bite
the hand that feeds them.”
“Then, as long as I satisfy everyone’s appetites, it won’t be a problem.

Otherwise, the people will flee elsewhere and the shop will be forced to
close.”
This is what the Third generation head didn’t understand. Furuta felt
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that he was very foolish.
“So you feel that it’s the king’s fault that his people betray him?”
Tyuule had stopped for some reason.
Furuta thought “what is it” as he turned to look at Tyuule’s face.
“I think neither side is in the wrong.”
“You, you actually think that way… so you intend to be a king who is
loved by his people?”
“That would be nice.”
Furuta had drawn ahead of Tyuule, who was a little behind him,
watching his back.
Tyuule mused that many of Zorzal’s followers wore fancy clothes,

twisting their bodies to bear their weight. Yet the body of Furuta — who
did not go out of his way to curry favor with the strong — was ramrod
straight. He was not very tall, and he was dressed in dirty work clothes.,
Even so, why was it that she thought she could see something like a
light coming from his back?
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***
Elsewhere, Zorzal was busy munching on burgers as he scrolled through

the files the Advocate General had brought him. He was signing off on
amended documents.
“Hm? Where’s the draft for the oprichnina bill? Where’s it gone?”
He looked on the desk, he looked under Furuta’s lunch basket, but found
nothing. Nor was it under his desk. He searched everywhere but could
not find it.
The head manservant Nei was puzzled by these actions, and asked:
“Has something happened, your Highness?”
“No, it seems Rufrus forgot to give me an important document.”
“Still, did you not hand the matter of communication to Tyuule in the
end?”
“Ah, come to think of it, I did leave it to her. All right, I’ll move on to the
next file. Hold this.”
And so, the oprichnina bill, in Tyuule’s hands and without Zorzal’s
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knowledge, was slotted into the “re-proposal” box.
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Vol. 5 :
Chapter 5

Volume 5 Chapter 5
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1645
Translator: Nigel
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1646
The Academy City of Londel
The shroud of night fell over the silent Reader’s Rest.
From the outside, one could still see two or three lit windows on the side
of the inn, but they were the exception ― for the most part, the windows
of the four-story, 40-room inn were dark. However, this did not mean
that the guest rooms were unoccupied. In fact, most of the rooms were
taken. However, lamp oil was not cheap, so they were used to sleeping
early to avoid wastage.
Rather than rely on a feeble light to exorcise the night of its terrors,
everyone chose to flee into the comfort of sleep instead.
However, when one turned to look at the buildings on the other side of
the street, their windows were still lit up.
Those lights belonged to scholars who were too immersed in their

research to spare time for sleep. In contrast to the line of blazing wildfire
which raced through the streets of Akusho, they were a soft, gentle
glow.
“Ah, the skyline of an old city. I’ll never tire of it, no matter how many
times I see it.”
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How many days had they stayed here now?
The man looked down on the streets of Londel from one of its run-down
old buildings.
The Reader’s Rest was located at the foot of the mountain, and from
there one could gaze all the way up the slopes, to the mountain’s peak.
This sort of scenery was part of the charm of old cities. And indeed,
Londel was an old city with the weight of history behind it, so it was not
wrong to feel that way. However, unlike in Tokyo, Nara and other
sightseeing spots ― where old buildings were empty shells good only for
tourism ― the buildings here were all being fully utilized. The lights in
the night skyline were all put to practical use, and there was a certain
beauty to this lack of false ornamentation.
The girl who stood beside the man responded:
“Indeed. These lights are not like the brightness of Tokyo. Feeble flames
flicker on the candlestands. Under their weak light, the apprentices
frantically scribble with their pens. With the flame of wisdom to banish
the darkness ignorance, they combine their individual progress as they
delve ever forward, exploring with their hands into uncharted territory.”.
A rustle of clothing could be heard from the girl under the covers. She
reached out to grab the man’s sleeve. It would seem she was naked
under that pure white bedsheet.
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“Wait… what are you doing?”
“Father, shouldn’t you be coming soon? I’m already prepared.”
Behind Itami and Lelei were Tuka (who was looking around while peering
through an infrared night vision scope, wearing only a T-shirt), Rory
(whose cheeks were puffed up in annoyance), Yao (who was wearing a
sports bra and a pair of bermudas, and had a clueless look on her face),
as well as a still-sleepy Shandy in a kantoi.
(TL note: kantoi were mentioned way back in v1; it was Lelei’s outfit
when fleeing Coda Village)
“Yup, I’m coming now. I only asked because I’m trying hard not to die.”
Itami was dressed in an olive drab T-shirt and his BDU slacks. He idly
patted the rifle slung over his right shoulder, felt its hard metal parts
and its sanded wooden stock while Lelei made the bed under her. She
looked different from how she usually did, probably because she was
barefoot, in a baggy tank top and wearing hot pants. She went on to
wake the sleepers around them.
“If I mention my mentor’s name, it should reduce the chances of us

being harassed.”
Was that person really as great as she imagined?
Lelei replied to Itami: “If that happens, won’t it all be over?” as he
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1649
loaded a pair of taped-together magazines, then covered the metal parts

of the rifle in black vinyl tape so that there would be no sound when they
touched each other. In addition, he did not fully set the safety lever to
[S] once he finished loading it, but left it halfway to the [F] position. This
way, he could quickly switch from the “safe” to “fire” positions with a
fingertip. Technically speaking, he should have set it all the way to
“safe” to observe proper firearms safety, but the difficulty of readying
the Type 64 rifle was a flaw in its design.
“Well, it would be best if the assassins were willing to give up, but that’s
unlikely. So we’ve got to do this.”
Using the Reader’s Rest as a base of operations, Itami and the others
had been wandering the area around Londel every day for the past two
weeks. There was a poor village about half a day’s journey by car away,
and the Belnago Shrine was about two day’s journey away.
They had many objectives here, but the most important one was Itami’s
resource prospecting. In addition, the way they left almost after arriving
at any given area was also related to shaking off the assassins after
Lelei, so they were killing two birds with one stone, No matter how
skilled the assassins were, they could not catch up with the HMV’s
movements.
Still, they could only keep this up for a while.
No matter how far they ran, they still had to come back to Londel. The
reason why Gray and Shandy knew to find Itami and the others here was
because Panache from Arnus had spread the news, and the assassins
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1650
obviously knew this as well.
As Lelei said, the fact that she was taking part in the conference meant
that even if they knew the assassins would strike, they would still have
to meet it head-on.
“But, if the assassins do the same thing next time…”
“If that happens, we’ll still have bought you the time to make your
presentation at the conference, right?”
With that in mind, their present conditions and fighting power were most
ideal for them.
They had Itami, Rory, Tuka and Yao here. Gray ― who was currently in
the room beside them ― was here as well. This was the perfect place to
welcome any assassins.
“Eh?! I’m not counted part of your fighting strength? I’m older than
Lelei-san. Do I look so unreliable?”
Shandy ― a cute, gentle-looking little brown-haired girl ― tried to

change the others’ perception of her. Itami felt bad about having her
follow along, but in the end he relented.
“Shh! It’s as Itamy-dono said, someone’s coming up the stairs.”
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“You should tell us this sort of thing earlier!”
“Sorry. I only just heard it myself.”
Gray, who had his ear plastered to the door as he listened for people
outside, gave the signal that someone was coming. Itami and the others
concealed themselves in the various corners of the room, as they had all
arranged.
They hid in the darkness and held their breath.
They heard something rolling along the ground.
It sounded like a coin that had fallen out of a pocket. The inn rooms were
large and there was little for it to bump into, so the sound of the coin
rolling around went on for a long time.
“…………………”
“…………”
Finally, the rolling stopped, and silence resumed.
An atmosphere of uneasiness seemed to spread through the room.
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Someone said: “S-sorry. My bad…”
And then the apology was muffled by something.
Soon, Gray had the measure of what was happening outside. He said,
“They’re coming, four of them,” before moving away from the door and
blending into the shadows.
This time, the room was truly silent.
Now, they could see the shapes of several people quietly ascending the
stairs of the Reader’s Rest.
Their number was exactly as Gray said ― there were four of them.
They studied the figures closely. They wore black clothing which
concealed the shapes of their bodies, and it was impossible to make out
their gender.
After climbing the wooden staircase, they advanced toward the corridor.
There was the sound of something scraping on the corridor, and the
silhouettes suddenly stopped.
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“Shh!”
The person who pressed his finger to his lips seemed to be scolding one
of his subordinates. The fact that they approached their target without
any hesitation made them seem even more like amateurs.
The shadows crowded around the door, and then quietly turned the
doorknob.
The well-maintained door did not creak when opened. The four shapes
simultaneously went to the beds and drew their swords.
“…………!”
Standing on the carpets beside the beds, they gripped their swords and
thrust them down with all their strength. Thee sounds of thumping and
stabbing echoed through the room.
“Did you do it?”
“I did it, we did it!”
Their cheers filled the room. However, they was cut short the sound of
something metallic falling and rolling on the bed.
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“What a shame, at least you tried.”
Those words were accompanied by an explosion which was 160 decibels

in volume and a flash of 6 million candelas in intensity. The light filled
the darkness of the room in an instant ― humans, furniture, everything
was swallowed by the brilliant white light.
The shapes ― who had looked directly at the flashbang ― were blinded
into dizziness by the flash and their ears rang like they were in the heart
of a storm. Some of them stood in place, reeling from the shock, while
others covered their eyes and groped around in an attempt to find a way
out.
However, they could not move calmly, since they were drowning in the
vortex of fear which came from losing both their eyesight and hearing at
the same time. Frightened by the sudden darkness, they fell to the
ground and rolled around, bumping into each other and screaming in
terror.
“Alright… heading your way.”
“好了，去你那里了。”
With great effort, Rory grunted:
“Benh!”
“Banh!”
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“Dosu!”
“Pesh!”
She wielded her halberd with her eyes closed, and neatly knocked out
the assassins.
The lingering smoke from the flashbang rose into the air. Itami was
concerned that the flashbang might have ignited anything flammable in
the room. Fortunately, the wooden floor and the beds were only a little
singed, and there was no sign that a fire had started.
Lelei and Tuka lit the room’s lampstands with magic.
“My eyes, my eyes~”
He had repeatedly warned the group to “plug your ears, turn your face
away and close your eyes, do not look directly at the flash”. However,
the brown-headed girl had looked straight at the flashbang, which was
why she was rolling around on the ground. There was nothing they could
do but wait for her to recover on her own.
Beside her, Yao was on all fours with her butt perked up into the air,
taking a pose which would arouse any man as she crawled around,
looking for something.
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“Where did it go?”
“Yao, did you drop something?”
“I’m looking for the lucky charm her Holiness bestowed upon me… ah,
found it!”
She had to stick her shoulder under the bed and feel around with her
long arms before coming back out with a brass 5 yen coin.
“Before getting this, I didn’t find it strange when all sorts of bad things
happened to me, such as getting hurt or splashed with water. Ah, in her
Holiness’ words, it seems to be a good luck charm.”
Itami could not help but think, 5 yen is pretty cheap for that sort of
thing. However, this might be what they meant by “faith can move
mountains”. It certainly seemed real enough to her.
(TL Note: 5 yen is pronounced “go-en”, which sounds the same as

“connections”. Basically it’s a good luck charm for Yao to make friends.
This is covered in the manga’s minotaur arc.)
“Why not run a string through the hole in the center and tie it around
your neck?”
“Ah, I’ll do that.”
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Yao clutched the 5 yen coin tightly as she said so. She seemed very
happy.
“All right, the surroundings didn’t catch fire. Still, I want to have Tuka
and Rory stand guard and monitor our surroundings. Gray-san, what do
you think, are they still alive?”
“Don’t worry, they’re still breathing!”
The invading assassins had been knocked out by Rory’s halberd and now
lay on the ground. Gray went over each of them, tying their hands
behind their backs with leather cords.
Yao ran one of those cords through the hole in the center of her 5-yen
coin. Gray felt a bit depressed; he had come to help, but in the end this
was all he could do.
“Tuka?”
Tuka was watching the buildings outside, a composite bow in hand.
“Just now it seemed as though there was someone drawing close,

Father.”
“Got it, just remain alert… what kind of assassins are these people
anyway? They look kind of young, don’t they?”
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As they turned one of them over, they discovered a huge mark on his
face.
It was a large bruise from where the halberd had smitten him across the
face. It seemed difficult for anyone to live with an injury like that. Still,
he seemed vaguely familiar.
Rory and Itami had the same misgivings.
“Hmm? That kid looks like one of the boys working at this inn.”
“Ehh?!”
They hurriedly went for a candle, and took a look at the faces of the
other three.
***
It was the middle of the night, and the owner of the Reader’s Rest,
Hamal, was sleeping comfortably on his bed when he was suddenly
awoken.
“Ehhh~ Damn it, do you know what time it is?”
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Due to his long experience at receiving guests, he masked his desire to

shout in frustration with a charming smile and opened the door.
“Dear guest, may I know what this is all this about? After all, it is the
middle of the night.”
He asked that question without revealing the hidden annoyance in the

depths of his heart. However, when he looked closely at the caller, he
saw a Dark Elf, a female Dark Elf, who radiated a mature woman’s
charm.
It was the middle of the night. And now, a woman had come to a man’s
room.
Could, could it be? She was looking for a one-night stand?
Ever since his wife had died, Hamal had taken the act of sleeping alone
to be natural, so he could not help but fantasize about such a lewd
encounter. However, the words which flowed from that woman’s pale
red lips made the somewhat excited Hamal’s pinkish ears blanch a pale
white.
“Ehhhhh?!”
Which was: that the inn’s staff had tried to attack their guests.
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“Ah, could it be that our boys did that…”
This was as much his faith in his own workers as it was an attempt to
deny reality. Therefore, he decided that it would be better to see it with
his own eyes.
After entering the guest room, the sight of his own people on the ground
with their hands tied behind their backs made Hamal collapse onto his
haunches.
“You, you, you lot… what have you done?”
He did not even have the strength to get angry.
“What have you done?!... We’re finished. This inn is finished!”
Looking around, it would seem his cry had awakened the guests around
them, and they were moving around and peeking at them from the
corridor. Hiding what had happened tonight would probably be
impossible. The rumors would race down the merchant district in an
instant. This was an inn favored by travellers, and they would spread the
news throughout the entire city. If that happened, the flow of clients
here would end immediately. Anyone would have to think twice about
staying in an inn where its staff attacked its own guests. The loss of faith
in an inn’s ability to host guests could be said to be its death knell.
The boys looked fearfully at Hamal.
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He did not know what kind of excuse they would give, but the first thing
they said was, “We were tricked.”
“Tell me about it.”
At this point, Hamal was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
It was common to be angry when one’s expectations were betrayed.

Therefore, when one gave up on everything, when one expected nothing
of the other party, there would be nothing to be angry about.
The boys replied:
“We heard―”
“―That her Holiness was fake―”
“―That she was a vicious killer who planned to kill all the merchants in
this inn―”
“―Even that she was being chased by bounty hunters.”
Everyone was so shocked by these words that they could say nothing.
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When they put together the words of the four of them, the story they got
was that Rory was fake, that she was a fraudster who planned to target
the guests at this inn. Also, that she was a bounty target.”
“Who do you think will believe you?”
“The thing was, we saw the bounty poster, and we were paid gold coins,
so we wanted to protect the guests… that was what we thought.”
“And, and you lot didn’t even think it was strange?”
There was no way to tell if a bounty notice was real or fake. It was very
simple for someone to draw on a parchment and make up a story. In
addition, giving out money without any prior accomplishments was very
generous and very suspicious.
“That person seemed to know what he was talking about and he gave us
gold coins, and he trusted us, and he seemed to be hiding some kind of
guilt, which meant, he thought…”
“So you lot will suspect a copper coin but let a gold coin go
unchallenged? Are you stupid?”
The lads had nothing to say and lowered their heads. Hamal sighed and
looked to the ceiling.
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“And then, you snuck into the guests’ rooms?”
“We didn’t do nothing.”
“Yeah, we were caught before we could do anything.”
They said that, but a quick look at the beds revealed the swords
embedded into the mattress. There was no way they could claim they
had not done anything. This was not conspiracy to murder, but
attempted murder.
Under the eyes of Itami ― who represented the other guests ― they
were hard-pressed to explain themselves. And of course, the gray-faced
Hamal was looking even more ill at ease.
“There’s a world of difference between saying you didn’t manage to do

anything and you didn’t want to do anything.”
The boys apologized in earnest ― “We, we’re sorry,” ― after Tuka

scolded them.
As she saw their earnest expressions, she thought, they must have been
good kids under normal circumstances.
Before that, Gray had been quietly listening to the punks try and talk
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their way out of it. He said, “Yes, that’s right, it must be like that,” and
nodded.
“The person who uses these methods is called the Piper.”
“The Piper? Who’s that?”
“Sometimes he’s a human male, or an Elf girl, or even a Hag, but his
true identity is unknown. This guy is an expert at manipulating the
human heart, and he does things like turning little girls who wouldn’t
even harm a fly into assassins that poison food and drinks, or making
those elderly people with stiff backs, the kind who have trouble walking
down the stairs, stab you in the back. Unless you take down the man
himself, the assassins won’t stop coming.”
“How troublesome.”
Hamal edged closer toward Gray.
“But, but how can he make ordinary people kill others? If these people
weren’t mentally unstable to begin with, I have no idea how he could
turn them into murderers.”
“Indeed, killing is a taboo, but that line of thinking is just like a lock. With
the right key, one can undo that lock in one’s heart without much
difficulty. For instance, we knights and soldiers can easily kill people if
our superiors command it.”
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Hamal’s face turned pale as he heard this. If one considered killers to be

mentally unstable, was he not implying that soldiers and watchmen
were mentally unstable as well?
“Ahhh~ I deeply apologize for my poor choice of words. I beg your

pardon for my carelessness.”
“No, no, if you are all just regular citizens, I won’t mind.”
Gray did not seem to mind much as he continued speaking.
“Owner. Did you know that if I did not kill anyone, the laws would not
find me guilty?”
“R-Really?”
“The law states, ‘a murderer must be punished’, but if there’s a suitable

mitigating factor, the punishment will be appropriately reduced. The
easiest way to absolve one of guilt for murder is when one does so to
protect himself from being killed by a murderer. There are people who
will harm others for all sorts of nonsensical reasons, and similarly, there
will be those who will believe lies to fearlessly protect themselves or
their families. Anyone with any common sense will easily realize that
there are many circumstances under which one man might kill another.
The Piper is an assassin, so perhaps he has some kind of belief and
sense of righteousness that drives him to make people kill each other.
He quietly tells an easily influenced girl to do it for her lover. He tells an
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1666
old man that his son has been cheated by some cruel person. In my
humble opinion, the desire these lads had to protect the guests was
used by him… or perhaps they thought we were cold-blooded murderers
or something similar. In any case, they swallowed that particular pill and
did it because they wanted to protect the guests who were staying here.
And then, after playing on the boys’ youthful sense of justice and their
professionalism, they stopped thinking and drew their swords… at least,
that’s what I think happened.”
As the boys heard this, they began nodding one after the other.
“Then, tell us, what did the man who lied to you look like?”
The boys answered in unison:
“He felt like a kind and gentle person.”
“He was very tall, and seemed very generous.”
“He must have looked like a hero when he was young, and as an older
man he looked quite dignified.”
“He was a human male.”
This was the result of combining what the four of them had said.
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About ten days ago, they had gone to tavern after they had finished
work. After getting their fortunes told by a travelling diviner, they helped
themselves to drink and a hearty meal.
Then, they heard someone say “Excuse me, are you workers at the
Reader’s Rest?” and then the man who had just come in greeted them.
That man had a refined look about him as he smiled, and he seemed like
the sort who was good with words.
“He was intense, yet generous. He treated us to drinks, but admonished

“don’t drink too much when you’re still young”. He also paid close
attention to our stories about the girls we liked and whom we spoke
with.”
Soon enough, the lads were finished talking, and the man began
speaking.
The man said: ”My job is not one that I can take pride in, like yours are.
What I do is clear the streets of their trash and refuse…” In other words,
he captured criminals, and occasionally he would be greatly rewarded
for it.
The man told them of the things he had seen and done.
The boys heard of the suffering of the victims he had encountered, and
felt anger as they heard of the evil methods of the villains he had seen.
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They cheered when he told of how he brought those villains down, and
the heartfelt thanks of the victims moved the boys to tears, like a drama
series.
After that, every time the boys went to the tavern, they drank and
listened to the bounty hunter tell his stories. And then, after they had
meet him several times, the topic went to the mark this bounty hunter
was chasing ― a group of conmen.
He spoke of a gang of crooks, one that had cheated many traders and
wiped out their fortunes, to the point where they killed themselves after
going bankrupt. The families who survived them had gone through much
hardship as well.
“Then… what methods did they use to deceive people?”
“I can’t say that. However, all of these traders were forced into
bankruptcy and then suicide, while their families were sold into slavery
to pay off their debts. Therefore, I will never forgive those guys.”
“Then why not share their methods? If someone had done it sooner,
then wouldn’t a lot of people have been saved?”
“That would be very dangerous. These tricksters are proud fellows, and
they’ll blame their failures on other people. For instance, if negotiations
stopped halfway because the other party sensed a con and ran away,
they would hunt down and kill that person because they were angry at
the other side fleeing. Therefore, those conmen are very dangerous.
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Frankly speaking, people like that prefer making their money in mining
towns like these.”
And then, the man said:
“Right now, in order to save the people they have hurt, I would like to
capture these five before they can find another victim. If possible, I’d
like to capture them unhurt. However, I can’t prepare for that. That said,
they have bounties on their heads, so it’s okay if they’re brought in dead
or alive as long as someone else doesn’t do it.”
That gang of tricksters was made up of four women and one man.
One of them was an impostor of the demigod Rory. Another was a

Rurudo girl. Two of them were an Elf and a Dark Elf.
“If people like that live around the Reader’s Rest, you need to tell me.
I’m no match for them by myself, but don’t worry, I’ll find a way to show
you…”
The man had a determined look on his face as he spoke to the boys.
“Actually, there’s been a bunch of people exploring around the local

mines,” the boys said.
The boys then described what happened after that, and then the events
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from just now had taken place
***
Hamal looked at the boys’ faces and asked, “Is that so, you lot? Is that
really it?”
What they had done was unforgivable. However, he could not reproach
them for thinking like that. After all, Hamal was the one who had
fostered that attitude in them through his daily lectures.
Their motivation had been the safety of the customers, and it had been
fuelled by their youthful enthusiasm. The mistake had been the methods
they had chosen to do so. In this way, they had been led astray by
flowery words.
Hamal pressed his head to the ground and spoke.
“Your Holiness, and everyone else. I wish to bear the punishment of

these boys in their place, in my capacity as their employer. Please direct
your displeasure to me. Though there may be no future for the Reader’s
Rest, I hope the same will not apply to these lads. I beseech you to
forgive them.”
“Hamal-san!”
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The boys were shouting, “Please wait,” “Why are you doing this for us”
and so on. The fact was that they wished to be punished for their own
wrongdoings. They could not allow their employer to suffer for their
mistakes because he had done nothing wrong. All he wanted was to
protect the reputation of the Reader’s Rest.
“What should we do?”
Itami and the others looked at each other. Eventually, Rory smiled
bitterly, and as she strode forward, she made her pronouncement.
“I forgive them. However, as the owner of this inn, you’d best educate
them about where they went wrong.”
Since Rory had spoken, there was nothing else for the others to say.
The other guests ― who had been crowding around to watch the
proceedings ― nodded in approval of Rory’s judgement. They were not
aware of the exact motivations behind the boys’ actions. On that part,
all they knew was that “The Piper is an evil man”, and that they
despised his methods.
Itami himself had his doubts. What was the justice system of this place
like? They could be forgiven just because nobody minded. However,
actually begging for forgiveness made the prospect sound worse. In any
case, it was a very troublesome system.
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“My sincerest thanks for your forgiveness.”
Following Hamal’s lead, the boys lowered their heads in apology as well,
though they were also delighted to be forgiven.
“It is indeed disrespectful to yourselves to have to stay in an inn like

this. I shall immediately arrange alternative accommodations for
yourselves, but may I know if there is any particular inn which your
Holiness desires to occupy? It is fine, we shall prepare a better room for
you than this one.”
Rory glanced over to Lelei, communicating something with her eyes

before she replied:
“There’s no need for that. People who have been tricked once tend to
grow, and I’m looking forward to that. So this would actually be the
safest place.”
The way the boys looked at Lelei seemed to say that they would not be
deceived again.
“Therefore, we’ll spend the night here..”
“I, I understand. Before your journey ends, this inn will serve you with its
heart and soul,” Hamal said while bowing several times as he backed
out of the room.
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After the boys were freed of their bonds, they followed him out. He said
something inaudible to them, and then poked the back of the heads of
one of the shorter lads.
At great length, the door closed, and he began explaining the situation
to the other guests. It was unclear whether Hamal intended to hide the
truth or disclose everything.
“But, those boys, will they really be all right?”
Itami tilted his head to the side and scratched his scalp. Rory reassured
him that it was all right, and Lelei helped her explain.
“Gray himself said that breaking the taboo of murder was simple.
Everyone in the army is like that ― with the appropriate training, they
can do all sorts of things which they would normally deem to be
forbidden.”
As Lelei mentioned this, Rory, Tuka and Yao nodded. Itami agreed as
well; after all he had been through intense training himself, so as long as
the order was given, he could kill people regardless of how right or
wrong it was. In the key moment, he would forget himself and act. One
could say that it was a natural reflex given the events of the Battle of
Nijubashi. The fact was that if someone told him to do it, he would, so he
did not pay that too much heed.
“Perhaps that man called the Piper is skilled at finding these

psychological weaknesses.”
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Itami smacked his palm.
“I see, so he brings out the chuunibyou in them. What an ingenious

method.”
“Chew-nib-yo?”
“How shall I describe it… they’re people who build their personalities
around their thoughts and fantasies.”
“There’s no term like that in the dictionary. I shall memorize that

definition for future reference.”
Lelei mumbled an explanation, allowing Itami to continue after being

briefly lost for words:
“The people who were tricked by him will end up being tricked again.”
To the Piper, they were rare victims of chuunibyou, and so he might

come after them once more.
Itami said, “So you mean, they might forgive him again?” as he watched
the complicated expression on Rory’s face.
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And so, Rory imagined the Piper going “kukuku” in her mind.
Yao felt miserable. Her hands were stained with guilt, and the desire to
atone drove her every day. For all she knew, she might have felt the
same way as the boys.
“So, should we use those boys to see if we can get the Piper to show his
face again? I don’t have any ideas. What should we do? We could try
observing them, but our faces are already known to him.”
“Fortunately, because somebody didn’t turn their face away in time and
ended up rolling around on the ground, there’s one person whom they
won’t recognize here.”
Itami looked where Lelei’s finger was pointing.
He saw Shandy, who was lying flat on the bed and rubbing her face with
a pillow.
***
On the dawn of the next day, Itami awoke in his room… a storeroom as
it turned out.
The word “storeroom” conjured up images of filthy walls and squalid

furniture, but the room was not that run-down. If one did not know it was
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a storeroom, it might have been mistaken for the cheapest room in a

business hotel. The furnishings were basic ― a bedframe, headboard
and chairs ― but they looked clean and Itami felt it was still very
comfortable. The room itself was large, the furniture was of a high
quality, and with a blanket to cover him, he had no problems getting to
sleep.
Several crossbeams ran across the ceiling, and windows in the roof
allowed light from the outside to enter. A small, butterfly-like Fairy flitted
overhead.
The ceiling beams stretched wide, joining the sloped sides of the roof.
This created a large space over his head, and it did not feel cramped in
the least. At least that was how he felt when he woke up and saw this for
the first time while his mind was still foggy from sleep. The only thing he
was certain of was that this was not a JSDF barracks.
While his body and mind were still groggy from waking up, Itami had
already dressed himself and put his boots on.
He put the wash basin on the table at the head of the bed, poured water
into it from a nearby pot, and then used it to wash his face. Then he
clipped the pistol from under his pillow to his belt, opened the door and
headed out into the corridor.
He knocked on the door facing his, which led to the girls’ room.
However, there was no response.
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They had probably gotten up and gone for breakfast. While the Japanese
might have remained asleep after sunrise, the people of the Special
Region typically began their days just after the sun rose, because work
and travel were best done during the daytime.
In fact, by the time he descended the long staircase from the fourth to
the first floor, he could already see the travellers gathered for breakfast
in the dining room.
The departing travellers paid their lodging fees at the service counters
while the inn boys ran around moving luggage as cargo wagons and the
like departed. The air was filled with a lively energy. There was no sign
of the “this inn is doomed” atmosphere and the customers fleeing that
Hamal had feared from last night.
“Ah, good morning, Lord Itami!”
That energetic greeting came from one of the boys who had a large
mole under his left eye.
As though this on cue, everyone around him began greeting Itami.
It was not just Hamal and the boys, but even the other guests were
calling out to him
A close look revealed that the palm-sized Fairy that looked like a
butterfly had her head lowered as she hovered around him.
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“Ah, ha, yes… good morning.”
Itami could not help but stop in his tracks, and he returned the greeting
despite feeling terribly confused about everything.
What was going on here?
Also, why were they calling him “Lord”?
Under bombardment from the well-meaning gazes all around him, Itami
fled for the crowd in front of the dining hall. Then, he found a gap in the
mass of people, and positioned himself at the back of the line.
However, the dining hall’s chef roared, “Oi, you can’t stand there!” and
glared at him
It would seem he had queued up in the wrong place.
“Ah, yes. Sorry, but where should I line up? There’s no sign saying ‘End
of the line’ over here.”
(TL Note: the Japanese actually have signs stating (End of the line) when
it comes to long queues.)
“No, that’s not what I mean... you’re different, come over here.”
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The chef led Itami over and said, “See, over here!” and sat him down at
a table at the center of the dining hall.
There, he saw Rory, Lelei having their breakfast, being served by a

palm-sized fairy.
“Ah, good morning.”
“Morning.”
Rory seemed a little out of it this morning. Lelei was as neutral as she
always was. Tuka had a very stiff smile on her face. Yao was face down
on the table for some reason, muttering “Shame, an eternal shame”.
“So, what’s the matter?”
“Youjy, are you all right?”
“Well, a bunch of people greeted me warmly this morning.”
“Good morning, Father.”
“Oi, oi, Tuka, are you alright?”
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“The fairies have been touching me all morning.”
Everyone was assaulted from all sides by greetings, like an

encirclement. Fortunately, nobody was rude enough to address them
while they were eating, but in their place, people were lining up to meet
and greet them. For instance, the group where Itami had been standing
earlier. It was because of them that Itami had been fortunate enough to
be led here.
Now, if the group had been full of people that interested Itami, it would
have been much better. People like seiyuus, mangakas, people that one
would encounter at doujin festivals, holding hands with Rory and the
others. That would have pleased him.
“It’s nothing exciting. All they’d get in the end is a number plate.”
Lelei was still narrating events in her neutral, emotionless voice.

Although she appeared calm on the outside, there was a ripple of
emotion in her heart which only she could feel.
“The hotel’s owner gave a lot of number plates to the queuing people.”
“But why?”
At this, Yao ― who had plastered her face against the table ― raised her
head, revealing her bright red cheeks.
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“The postmen delayed by the bridge collapse finally reached last night.
The head of the Fire Dragon was hung up in the Imperial Capital, and the
news of how you slew the Flame Dragon has made its rounds, Also, the
news of what I did in Arnus was heavily embellished. Ah~ I want to crawl
into a hole somewhere...”
Yao blushed as she said that, and went face down onto the table again.
“I feel bad about it too, because I became a burden for you in the
process.”
Tuka clasped her hands together and pleaded, “I’m sorry, Father, I’ve
disgraced our family name”. And then, the tips of her ears flushed pink,
and she laid herself down on the table as well. Naturally, the “father”
here was her natural father, Hodryur Marceau.
“Actually, I don’t really like people who take part in dragon hunts for
fame and fortune.”
Rory was clearly unhappy about missing out, and she made her
displeasure known.
The fact was that the battle with the red and black Young Dragons and
Giselle deserved just as much publicity. However, the news of that had
not spread very far.
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“Still, how did that all get out? People were addressing me as Lord since
just now. I forgot how exactly I came to be one...”
They had verified the contents of the rumors, and there was bits of truth
mixed into it, though it was still quite detached from reality. While it was
understandable that the rumors had been embellished with the
imagination, the problem now was how it had gotten out in the first
place. To begin with, only a few people in the Empire should have known
about this matter.
“It seems the news spread from someone around Pina, so that person
should be here by now.”
“Pina doesn’t know that person, so if possible, I hope we can let this
matter be.”
“As if I could let this malicious misrepresentation be,” Lelei grumbled.
“How so?”
“They’re saying Lelei dealt the killing blow to the Flame Dragon.”
After hearing that, Rory sighed “Ehhhh~” at Itami.
If one used Gray’s reaction as a benchmark of the reactions of the

Empire’s citizenry, it would seem they were more reverent of her than
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they were shocked or dismayed. Now who could have encouraged that
attitude, Itami wondered.
The answer to that came from Rory, who was licking her soup spoon in a
decidedly unladylike way.
“The people of this country feel like they’re in trouble.”
“They’re at their wits’ end?”
“Indeed. This world has been stagnant for a very long time. The Empire
stood above all other nations and maintained order, and the Emperor
ruled over all humanity in a similar way. Humans built relations to all the
other species, and these relationships have stood for a very long time.
More than anyone else, humanity is a species which looks forward to
tomorrow. Because of their dreams, they can bear with the unjustness of
the present. However, now they feel like they’re locked in their present
positions. There’s no more meaning to their labors, and they’ve lost their
motivation.”
“Mmm~”
“The Emperors of old used warfare to break through that stasis. They
attacked the countries around them, dominated all sorts of species, took
new land, expanded their sphere of power, handed out noble titles and
built far-reaching roads to declare their glory. However, that was their
limit… So when the Gate opened, the Emperor did not think twice and
ordered an attack. However, that attack failed. A sense of unease grew
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in the people’s hearts as they realised they were on the verge of

defeat.”
“So this is basically hero worship?”
“Indeed. This might be enough to scatter the suffocating atmosphere

hanging over the land. And then, they want that hero to live near them.
They draw great strength from the presence of that hero, which is why
the people of the Empire are going wild over Lelei.”
Lelei calmly insisted that she was not an Imperial citizen but a Rurudo.
However, only she and the people around her could hear that. Those
words did not carry outside the dining hall, drowned out by the people
greeting and calling out to her.
Perhaps nobody would care even if Lelei shouted that she was not from
the Empire. This was because people saw what they wanted to see, and
ignored what they did not want to see.
“Some people are raising altars to Lelei while others are raising knives…
I can guess who’s doing this. Say, where’s Gray-san?”
“He went to get breakfast for Shandy.”
Shandy was their ace in the hole against the Piper, given that nobody
had seen her face. Thus she had to hide in a place where the inn boys
would not see her. Therefore, she was quietly observing them from the
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outside, in the darkness. Yes, watching them, all by herself.
When Itami thought about that, he kind of pitied her.
However, the fact was that Shandy was spending her time in an all-night
tavern, and she seemed to be getting along quite well with a horse
messenger that she met by chance. Given that she had exaggerated the
details of the dragon slaying, there was no need to pity her. Rather, it
was better to pay her no heed.
“Good morning, everyone. You’ve come.”
This was the inn’s owner, Hamal.
“The culprit is here,” Tuka said.
“I’m like this in the morning because of you,” Yao added.
“The only thing to blame is the speed at which the rumors spread.
Indeed, I did help them along, but that was all to protect you.”
“And why is it that spreading these tall tales will protect us?”
Itami was wondering if that plan was actually workable.
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“The Piper works by using lies to trick others into killing people. Once
your faces and situations are known to everyone, that method will be
useless. At the very least, nobody would have a reason to attack the
heroes who slew the Flame Dragon, no?”
“Is that really going to help?”
“Your Holiness is right to ask that question. However, the Piper’s secret
movements and his actions are now spreading as well, so it will be quite
hard for him to make a move. Anyone trying to persuade others with
flowery words can be shut up with ‘Ah, you’re lying…’”
“WIll that really be all right? What if the boys’ deeds get out?” Tuka
asked in a concerned tone.
“I am glad that you all understand. Truly, honesty is the best weapon.”
“―Or you’ve just managed to kill two birds with one stone,” Rory
muttered.
“What, I was prepared for this inn to close down from the beginning. This
is just a sacrifice I can make to atone for what I did.”
Looking outside, one could see the scarred boy being bullied by the
guests. “I won’t be tricked any more,” they heard him say. Because of
these words, Hamal looked over very uneasily.
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“Thanks to you, we might not need to close down.”
“It’s a stroke of fortune amidst this calamity.”
“Indeed. All this was because of your magnanimity, your Holiness.”
“If we do this, will Lelei’s presentation be successful?”
However, Itami’s optimism was shattered. Gray shouldered his way out
of the wall of humanity.
“Still, this is kind of hard to deal with. If a horse messenger can come
over here, that means a different assassin from the Piper might have
arrived as well. If he infiltrates the crowd seeking an audience with you,
our eyes alone will not be able to find him. At that point, we’ll need to
watch our surroundings.
Gray sighed deeply, and then took a seat in an empty chair.
“Boss, before something happens, I want to discuss something with

you.”
“This, this… I apologize. It might be best for you to prepare yourselves.”
“No, now that it’s over, it can’t be helped that it got blown up so much. I
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apologize for lashing out during the course of my duties.”
“That’s right, who might you be?”
It was only natural for Hamal to be suspicious of Gray, who was not a
guest of the inn. Though he had not noticed him in the chaos last night,
when he met him again today, he had had no recollection of someone
like him staying here.
“This one is the helper of one of Imperial Princess’ Pina’s knights. I

represent the Empire in welcoming you all to the Imperial Capital.”
“Oho, an invitation from her Highness?”
“Indeed. The fact is that the Empire sees the completion of this great
task as a threat to its authority. Her Highness ordered us to extend a
sincere invitation to you. At that point, after encountering events like
these, we also took on the task of protecting you.”
“Is that so? ...Oi oi, get some breakfast for this knight-sama.”
“Okay~” replied the Fairies on the table.
“Ah, it’s fine. This one has lodged in another inn, and I have already had
my breakfast.”
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“Then, how about a cup of tea?”
“Thank you, I’ll help myself to one, then.”
Hamal informed his guards as a glass of tea was set before Gray. Once
the group had finished breakfast, he wanted this place to become a
place for people to gaze upon their heroes. Looking beside the serving
boys, they could see the queue of people with numbered plates growing
ever further.
Itami and the others felt that it was a good thing that the entrances and
exits were not being blocked up. While this allocation of space had been
Hamal’s plan, it was much better than being penned into a room
surrounded by cheering people.
伊丹他们感觉这手法的好处就是入口处没有被堵塞。大概在哈马尔的隔间中，
对于谒见没有任何打算。但是，比起拥挤得进退不得，这种无秩序的欢呼声
中，确实好了很多。
“Everyone, we were glad to meet you all. However, the latest we can
leave is tomorrow morning. Now that I’ve said that, I can say that I’ll be
proud of you wherever you go...”
Of course he could not say it was because he disliked the atmosphere in

the room right now.
In the face of the silent Itami and gang, Gray took a cup of cheap tea as
payment for his services as a guard before smiling and asking:
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“So, has the bridge been fixed already?”
Hamal blinked, as if to say he knew nothing about this.
“At least, the bridge near Galif has been repaired. The messenger came
a little late, apparently because the area was flooded. However, it’s not
just Galif which was affected, but Motallan and Pylan as well. It will take
a few days before things go back to normal over there. It’s terrible, the
traders in the Capital are going numb.”
After hearing Gray, Hamal muttered to himself.
“Really? How much longer do we have to wait at Motallan and Pylan?

How about the overpass at Elron?”
“Hah? I’m not too sure about Elron. Maybe the bridge there broke?”
“However, if someone was really up to something, I doubt they would let

off the overpass there. I was thinking… well, actually, I have a request to
make about the meet and greet.”
Gray wanted to suggest that they not gather everyone in the dining hall,
but have them wait in the corridor and come in one by one. That way, it
would be much harder for the enemy to remain unseen. It would be
easier to deal with them if the situation degenerated into chaos.
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Hamal approved of this suggestion.
And so, the meet-and-greet session for the dragon-slaying heroes was
conducted in the Reader’s Rest.
***
It was night time, just after the sun had set.
The four boys of the Reader’s Rest headed out for a tavern after
finishing the day’s work, as usual.
It was not because they had been fired, but simply because the inn did
not prepare evening meals, so they had to have their dinner at nearby
restaurants.
They knew they had made a terrible mistake. This was a wrongdoing
they could not atone for.
It was too late to reflect on their sins. They vowed in their hearts that
they would never make such a mistake again, but they could not turn
back the hands of time. After explaining their crimes and awaiting their
expected punishments, they expected the reputation of the Reader’s
Rest to plummet and for the guests to flee them. The inn might well go
out of business.
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However, Hamal ― the inn’s owner ― had stepped forward to shoulder

the blame. And then Rory, Apostle of Emroy, had absolved that sin with
the words, “I forgive you”. Ordinarily, the crime of taking swords and
stabbing them into beds which they thought might have contained
people would be punishable by beheading, but in the end they had been
spared the chopping block.
At that time, they did not know if the inn could still survive, but the bad
reviews and flight of their guests had not happened. There was none of
the castigation and accusations which they had expected. Not even a
word of mockery.
They could feel it ― this second chance was a sign from Emroy.
They had grown as human beings. They had learned something

important as inn workers.
Of course, this was hardly something to be happy about. However, after

being freed from overwhelming despair, it was only natural that they
wanted to do something about the sign they had been given.
However, a Wild Woman appeared before them.
She was around 17, with an attractive body. Her brown hair was cut
short and she had an energetic air about her. Her eyes sparkled like
stars as she looked over to them and her voice was pleasant. She had a
direct way of speaking and showed no fear of talking to strangers.
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She strode over to them and shouted while pointing with a finger:
“Dum~mies~ the lot of you!”
That first statement defied all words.
The girl, who called herself Nora, continued speaking after making sure
that they were from the Reader’s Rest.
“Did you think that after the dragonslayers forgave you, that everything
was over? That because you were tricked, you weren’t guilty of
anything?”
The boys could not refute her statements.
All they could do was slowly, reluctantly nod their heads.
“We understand that. Therefore, we have resolved not to act rashly in

future.”
Their subdued reply drew a cold response from the girl.
“What’s that, you’re being so useless because of that Piper guy?

Because you met him this time, you won’t do anything at all? In the end,
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the outcome will be the same.”
Thanks to the Piper, they had almost done something unthinkable. It was
only natural that they would reflect on their sins and not act rashly
again. However, that might well be part of his plan as well. Still, they
had no choice but to endure with that knowledge burning in their minds.
Because of that, the leader of the boys looked at Nora with a troubled
expression on his face and asked, “How will it be the same?”
“You moved because you danced to the Piper’s tune. Then, because you
don’t want to be fooled again, you won’t do anything. Obviously, what
you need to do is not play into his hands. Think for yourself a little. You
should take action on your own so you won’t be controlled by him.
Simple, isn’t it?”
These words had a great impact on them. It woke them from their
hesitation like having an urn of water dumped on them.
They had been deceived by the Piper once, so falling for his tricks again
would be unbearable. Then, what could they do? How could they avoid
making the same mistakes again?
“Then, what should we do?” the boys asked, looking at Nora for help.
“Catch him with your own two hands. That way you can wipe away the
mistake you made in the first place.”
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“We don’t even know where he is.”
“There’s no guarantee of that. Your enemy will surely reveal himself at

some point, even for just a brief moment.”
“And when is that?”
“Doesn’t the Piper talk people into killing his targets? That means he
should probably come by and see if the job was completed.”
“Really?”
The boys were doubtful of the way Nora lectured them with an upright
finger. Once bitten, twice shy, after all.
“He’ll definitely come to make sure. You’re boys working at the inn,
right? People check to make sure you’ve cleaned properly, right?”
“That… well, yes,, basically.”
The four of them looked at each other. After finishing the tasks their
boss gave them, they did not know what happened after that. They
should have finished… but they could not be sure that it was complete.
The new hires might not have done a good job, and it might not be up to
standards. They had to go in and make sure themselves.
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“Right? Assassins work in the same way. The Piper will definitely try to
see if you carried out your job. I guess he’ll be going back to the
Reader’s Rest to check on things.”
As they heard this, the boys grabbed their heads and wondered what to
do next.
“If that’s the case, does that mean we’re going to miss the chance to
catch that guy?!”
“That’s why I’m saying you’re idiots.”
The boys grit their teeth as Nora went “idiots, idiots”.
“All right, then tell us why you want to help us. Are you trying to use
us?”
“It’s not the same. I’m giving you a chance to catch the bad guy.”
“How so?”
“The truth is, I’m quite mad at the way that Piper guy does things. I’m
also wondering what I can do to strike a blow for those heroes. But I
heard some news about that Piper guy, so I decided to put myself in his
shoes. I’m not the same as you guys, but I noticed some things.”
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“Dammit, I hate to admit it, but we’re a step behind you.“
“It’s true, really… Well, if I had to do it, I would attack Lelei-san on the
day of her presentation.”
“No way! If you do that....”
“Like I was telling you, the best way to catch that guy is with an act.”
“An act?”
“Yup. Unless we work together closely, we won’t be able to fool his eyes.
Therefore, you guys have to talk this over with Lelei-san and the others.
My plan is to knock Lelei-san down and then pretend to stab her in the
belly, where she will obviously be wearing a bronze plate. The people
around me might try to stop me, so I hope you can help run interference
for that and keep any people from escaping.“
“Mmhm.”
“If I that happened, that guy would show up to verify if Lelei-san was
dead. In that moment, you need to catch this guy. In addition, Lelei-
san’s friends are all Dragonslayers. Don’t you think that it would be easy
to catch the Piper with their help? And did you guys forget his face?”
“No.”
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“Then isn’t it simple?”
“That’s amazing. We’ll definitely be able to catch him that way.”
“Right? How about it? Sounds good, right? Or do you plan to run and
hide and return to your normal lives and accept your failures?”
The boys looked at each other and nodded vigorously.
“Got it. We’ll do it.”
Their faces were exactly the same as they had been when they had
declared they would take down that group of fraudsters.
***
In a darkened corner of the tavern, Shandy, who was facing a fortune

teller, only saw the beast girl shaking hands with the boys and quietly
said,
“That person is no good. No good at all.”
That woman called Nora might be a disguise of the Piper, or one of his
puppets.
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She would use those boys to make it impossible for anyone to get near
their target. The staged murder attempt on Lelei at the presentation was
also a trick. After all, the protective plate could not protect the head or
other vital spots.
Rory and Lelei felt that a person who was tricked once would be tricked
again.
These four people were too kind and trusted people too easily. Being
able to trust people was a virtue of a kind, so this was just taking
advantage of their good natures. However, at this moment, Shandy
wondered if it would be better to expose this right away.
There were people who would say they were tricked when it was not the
case.
“Then we’ll see you again later,” the boys said to Nora as she left.
As Nora left the tavern to head across the street, Shandy watched her
from the darkness.
“Itami-sama, he would definitely confirm who had contact with the boys,
however…”
As she considered Itami’s instructions, she had a flash of inspiration.

Perhaps following Nora meant she could capture whoever was
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controlling her, and maybe Itami might thank her, and perhaps,
somewhere else, he might give her a special prize. Shandy’s imagination
spun out of control, and after hurriedly giving the fortune-teller a few
coins, she moved to pursue the woman called Nora.
“Please wait.”
The fortune-teller hurriedly stopped Shandy and said,
“Someone important to you is currently trapped in a difficult situation,

and only you can help her.”
The female fortune-teller had picked out the card which showed “The
Empress Surrounded by Swords” and explained it to her, but Shandy
only cared about chasing Nora and did not pick up on the meaning.
“Ah, thank you, but I’m a little busy right now.”
With that, the woman Shandy exited the building and mounted up on
her horse.
And so she vanished, and did not come back the next day either.
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Vol. 5 :
Chapter 6
Thursday, May 19, 2016

Volume 5 Chapter 6
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Translator: Nigel
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The Londel Conference. That was the shortened title which many places
used, but the official name was the Londel Academic Degree Board of
Examination.
It had a long history, stretching back about 3000 years or so.
The Academy City had originally been founded as a place to test the
worthiness of apprentices to learn from the libraries of various Sages
who had gathered there to conduct research.
In the Special Region, where there were no communal libraries, rare

books were almost always in the care of various famous Sages. From
time to time, the powerful and the wealthy might forcibly gather books
like that in one place, but these collections would invariably be
destroyed or lost due to changes in the government, war, fires, and so
on. In addition, there were those people who were appointed as
librarians that selected and discarded books at their own judgement as
well as burning books in the name of tidying up their collections. These
occurrences repeated over and over, and in the end, books containing
important knowledge vanished from the public domain.
Ever since, the Sages resolved never to relinquish control of their

libraries again. If anyone wanted a book, they would have to write it
themselves, or pay someone else to write it for them at a high price.
As a result, people who wanted to further their learning had no choice
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but to come here and knock on the teachers’ doors.
However, if they allowed just anyone to come in and read those books,
their valuable libraries would be worn out in short order.
Anyone without the requisite basic knowledge would not be able to

understand the contents of those books, which meant that the books
would be useless to them. Therefore, the teachers had to verify that any
supplicants had the required level of knowledge before permitting them
access to their archives.
And then, this test of an apprentice’s learning became a measuring stick

for good students.
“This time, I’ll finally be allowed access to the archives!”
“Ha, then you’ll be able to properly begin your research life. Good luck!”
“Huh, my browsing clearance is higher than yours, Teacher.”
“That’s great. You must have really worked hard. How about it, want to
take what you’ve learned and work for a lord?”
Conversations like these had been heard in Londel for over 2000 years,
until now.
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The copying of rare texts had produced enough books that there was
less of a need for access to archives, but conversely, it had become
more and more important to show the fruits of one’s studies. As a result,
there were rigorous examinations to earn the academic titles of
“Bachelor”, “Master”, “Doctor” and the highest-ranked position of
“Sage”.
The various academic degrees and the examinations needed to obtain

them were as followed:
The first was the bachelor’s degree. To attain it, one needed to become
an apprentice.
Through various connections and searching for a scholar of above

bachelor level, one could find somebody to teach them basic knowledge.
After that, if the prospective student had the right attitude, was serious,
and possessed good grades, they would receive a recommendation and
be given the right to call themselves a pupil of a Sage. And thus the long
life of an apprentice began.
After that, they needed to undergo an interview with two other Sages
aside from one’s own master. If they passed, they could officially use the
title of “Bachelor” for their own, becoming part of the academic
community.
People with that title could access the archives of the school to which
their master belonged, as well as earning the right to give private tuition
of basic knowledge to children.
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The Master’s Degree required an oral examination involving at least two

other Sages from different schools before they were allowed to use the
title. Anyone with that title was allowed basic access to the archives of
any other Sage. In addition to reading privileges, they were also allowed
to directly pose questions to other Sages. In other words, they could
begin compiling knowledge from various masters.
In addition, they could release research results, and they were

acknowledged as substitute teachers in place of Sages by scholars of
Bachelor-level and below.
Incidentally, Lelei was currently a Master.
After that was the Doctorate, which was considered a hurdle in the
academic’s career.
First, a prospective Doctor had to present a thesis before a board of

examiners in Londel. Then, they had to obtain the unanimous approval
of all the examiners.
However, once one became a Doctor, they had unrestricted access to

archives of all the Sages. In addition, they could expect preferential
treatment in the courts of many nations, in deference to their titles. Of
course, actually being called “Excellency” was a privilege reserved for
nobles, ministers, and generals, but someone as versed in academics as
the former group were in their respective fields could expect treatment
of a similar standard.
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Lelei’s big sister, Alfie, was a “Doctor”.
And then, there was the final stage of Sage. People at that level could
found their own archives. That in turn meant that supplicants would
come before them, which effectively meant that they were a one-man
university. In the Special Region, the beings known as Sages were
people which commanded the power and prestige of such an institute.
Naturally, the examinations to become a Sage were exceedingly

ruthless.
To some people, it was compared to a public execution, or perhaps a

lynching.
This was a difficult hurdle to cross, which had caused many prospective
challengers to withdraw in disgrace. Therefore many people stopped at
the Doctorate stage. For instance, some of these people were landless
second or third sons of nobility who could not inherit. People like that,
who went into academia to make a living, often felt that reaching a
Doctorate was enough. They would receive the respect due to them
when they returned to their homes and be treated well. There was no
need to subject themselves to repeated misery for the sake of
advancement.
However, today, Lelei had come to contend for such a position. To

people who had determined to make a life out of this path, academic
degrees were not a goal, but merely one of many necessary steps which
had to be taken in the endless quest for knowledge.
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“I see…”
Itami and the others nodded after listening to the history of the
examination board.
Rory, Tuka and Yao indicated that they understood. Normally, that
should not have been the case. Tuka and Yao were essentially home-
schooled and refined their skills through experience and personal
development. Rory had been schooled as a priestess-in-training before
she became a Demigod, but she should only have had a vague idea of
what organized education entailed. Still, after Lelei’s explanation, they
realized how amazing scholars were. They had a picture of the sort of
willpower and motivation needed to tread the path of academia.
Therefore, just as Lelei was about to move on to the next topic, she was
stopped by an “Eh?”
“It seems Itami gained the equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree in Nihon.”
Granted, Itami had obtained it from a newly-built third-rate university,

but it was still a degree.
“No way!”
The person who blurted that out was Tuka, who called Itami “Father”.
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“When I learned this, I wondered if I should use the word ‘bachelor’ to

translate the Japanese term. However, after some investigation, I
learned that there was no problem with that translation. In conclusion,
Itami is an academic with the title of Bachelor.”
“Is, is Nihon such a great country…”
Rory’s face was frozen in shock, while Yao tightly gripped the 5 yen coin
hanging around her neck. Tuka, on the other hand, continued in a
teasing manner.
“Well, Lelei said it, and it’s not wrong… but it still feels wrong to me.”
“I was as shocked as when I heard her Holiness intended to become a

goddess of love…”
Lelei nodded as well.
“La -- the Goddess of Wisdom -- once said, there are those lesser people
who only understand things, those in the middle who culture their ability
to understand things, and the superior beings who refine their intellect.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s meant to be a criticism of those people who became academics by

memorizing facts.”
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1710
Even Itami could not help but smile uneasily as he was described thusly.
“Somehow, I feel like people are treating me as an idiot.”
“Nobody’s treating you as an idiot, Father. It’s just… right, it’s just very
surprising. The fact is, you’ve never considered yourself an academic,
have you, Father?”
“Just call me a man full of surprises.”
“Because of that, I’ve never thought of learning anything from you,

Father,”
“Doesn’t that sound a lot like treating me as an idiot?”
Tuka pressed her hands together (as though in prayer) and stuck her
tongue out, saying: “Please don’t be angry. It’s just that the truth slipped
out by accident!”
“Ahhhh, this is annoying!” Itami retorted with a scary look on his face.
Then, he planted his hands on Tuka’s cheeks and kneaded them around.
“You, you, what shall I do with that naughty mouth of yours~!”
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1711
“Ahhh, ugyu! Ireh, Ireeeeaah!”
An outsider viewing this from the side might think that Itami was
abusing Tuka.
However, he was only using a tiny bit of force and not his full strength.
This fact was not lost on Tuka, who did not scream or cry, but instead
counterattacked by pressing on Itami’s face with both hands.
“Yuu, yuuuu yuuuuhhhhh!”
“Ngiiiiiiiiii! Tchu, Tchuga, yed, yed go ob mehh!”
“Djuu firsd Fahja!”
As the two of them squeezed and pinched each other’s cheeks, their
bodies ended up pressing intimately against each other.
“Ugyuuuuuuu~”
“Nuuuuuuuuu~”
Rory and Yao were quite envious of how the two of them were playing
around.
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“That looks nice, I want to do that too.”
“I see. So I will get that reaction if I do that.”
Lelei did not seem to be expressing any emotion, but there seemed to
be a hint of frustration there.
“Still, this is not good. Tuka’s gone out of control.”
“Someone should stop her.”
“Then, allow me…”
Yao cut in while saying, “Itamy-dono, don’t be so rough.”
“On that note, should you not reflect on your usual actions? An
knowledgeable person’s actions seem dignified , which is a quality you
lack. Instead, you look like an uneducated person. That was what Tuka
was saying, right?”
Tuka patted her puffed-out cheeks with her hands and pouted.
Looks aside, she had been enjoying playtime with Itami, so she felt like
that they were being busybodies.
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However, Lelei was right, so she had to force herself to nod.
On the other hand, Itami massaged his face and grumbled.
“Well, you say that, but I can’t do something that doesn’t match my
personality.”
Until now, he had been constantly scolded by his superiors for his
manner of speech, his personal conduct, and so on. He had even been
enrolled into the elite Ranger course. Despite all that, he had not
changed his ways. In that sense, Itami’s easygoing attitude and passivity
were very strong things.
Just as this relaxed mood began spreading among them, Itami suddenly
drew the pistol strapped to his thigh and trained it on the door.
Rory raised her halberd, while Lelei readied her staff. The empty-handed
Tuka began incanting her spirit magic.
Shortly afterward, Gray walked in, saying, “I apologize for the delay.”
“....”
Gray immediately stopped in his tracks, realizing that he had stepped

into a killing ground. He raised his arms in surrender.
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“For-forgive me. I should have knocked before coming in.”
“What, it’s just Gray,” everyone said as they let go of the tension in their
bodies. Itami holstered his pistol as well.
“Then, where’s Shandy? Any clues?”
Gray shook his head at Itami’s question, and everyone looked

disappointed.
Lelei anticipated that the Piper ― who had deceived the workers of the
Reader’s Rest ― would try to meet up with them again, and thus Itami
and the others had sent Shandy to shadow them. However, they had lost
contact with the chestnut-haired female knight ever since.
Gray had searched many times before returning, and he continued in a

tired voice:
“It’s been four days since we lost contact. Although, if this were a
battlefield, it would still be a little early to give up on searching for
her...”
Within the knight band, Shandy was Gray’s superior and also his
colleague. However, for a man like him who had started as a common
soldier, his current position was as high as he could go. In contrast,
Shandy had been born to a noble family and was earmarked as the next
leader of the White Rose Knights. Much glory awaited her after this. The
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fact that the experienced Gray was following her and guiding her on the
finer points of things was also a command by Pina. And now Shandy had
gone missing. He could not help but feel responsible for that.”
“This one will go search the area one more time.”
“I’ll go too…” Lelei said, intending to follow him, but Itami stopped her.
“Lelei, you stay here. I know you feel responsible as the one who
suggested the idea in the first place, but that responsibility should be
borne by me, the commander, am I right?”
Gray bowed as he heard this.
“Just so. Lelei-dono, the fact that you left this matter to Shandy-dono
was because you trusted her, am I wrong? Then, please wait here. It is a
shame for a knight to have one’s trust in him withdrawn halfway.”
“...”
And so, Lelei sat down, as though accepting Itami’s words. Rory raised
her index finger and asked:
“The whole reason we came to Londel was for today, right?”
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“The conference won’t end today. All we need to do is come again

another time.”
“You say that, but what about the Piper? If this keeps up, he’ll keep
launching attacks on us. Also, if we let him be, the number of sacrifices
will only go up.”
The sacrifices in question were the people duped into becoming

assassins by the Piper.
There were very few circumstances where one could subdue an attacker
with murderous intent without harming them. The situation changed
with the time, location, people and other factors. Although the matter
had been settled with just a few bruises on the faces of the inn boys, if
they had not been so sloppy, they might already be dead.
“Since the old days, strategies have been planned in the head and
implemented on the battlefield with guts and willpower. I know you’re
worried about Shandy-dono, but it’s not worth it if it affects you to the
point where it affects your planning. I hope you can be prepared to stick
to your decision once you make it.”
“Just so. We’ve come this far, so we should go meet and greet the Piper
first.”
“...”
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Lelei bit her lip. She was a person who had always relied on herself, and
she was not used to letting other people to things for her and fretting
about the outcome. However, after everyone persuaded her, she finally
came over to their point of view.
“Hm?”
Itami watched the door with a wary look on his face. He reached toward
the pistol on his thigh, ready to draw it at any moment.
Soon, everyone could hear someone sprinting along the corridor. The
footsteps were heading straight for this place.
Itami drew his 9mm handgun and Gray unsheathed his sword.
The group waited with bated breath as the door was flung open. They
looked ― and saw a panting Shandy rush in.
“Sorry I’m late!”
“Shandy, where have you been…?”
Tuka and the others hounded Shandy with questions. However, it was
Gray who was most delighted to see her. He advanced before Shandy
and clapped her on her shoulders.
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“Shandy-dono, please give your report…”
“Ah, yes, I was late because I was following a woman called Nora.”
“What do you mean you were late? You were gone for four days! Four
days! There’s got to be a limit to how late you can be! You should have
at least kept in touch with us! We were so worried!”
Tuka was complaining with her hands on her hips, on behalf of everyone
else.
“I’m really sorry for that, Tuka, but there was no free time for me to
communicate. Then, did you learn about it from the boys?”
Rory laughed, as though she was looking at an idiot.
“We already heard about that.”
“That Nora person is a puppet of the Piper, did you notice?”
“Really?”
Itami had a look on his face like a kid whose prank had failed as he
scratched the back of his head.
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“It would be awfully convenient if that Nora girl were the Piper. But the
man himself would probably never show up.”
The Piper’s modus operandi was to use others as assassins while hiding
in a safe place. It had failed once, but that did not mean he would come
after her, sword in hand.
“Then, where’s the Piper? You should have seen him over that long time,
right? Is he a man or a woman?”
“He’s a man. He looks just like how the workers described… but I lost
him.”
“What’s this? You made us worry so much and then you lost him?”
Tuka pouted in annoyance.
“I’m sorry. However, I followed him to Pailan Street. He got away while I
was sleeping…”
Gray patted Shandy on the shoulders, as though comforting her.
“Aiya, it can’t be helped, then. It’s more surprising that you could
actually follow him over a period of two days. Tailing someone like that
requires a group, doing it by yourself was impossible from the start.”
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Tuka agreed with Gray’s assertion that it was good enough to have
confirmed his face.
“You did a good job. Thanks for your hard work.”
“It’s fine. I’m pretty good within the knight band, you know? I’m the best
at long-range scouting.”
After choosing his words carefully, Itami spoke.
“Actually, all you needed to do was verify what kind of person the inn
boys got into contact with. Frankly speaking, there was no need to
pursue him.”
Of course, he was also trying to hint that she should not make others
worry.
“Ehhhhh~ then, that means… it was a waste of effort?”
“Well… not really. Verifying the Piper’s face was a great

accomplishment. However, it would have been better if you kept in
contact with us.”
“It slipped my mind. Still, I managed to look at the Piper’s face. It was
perfect!”
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Shandy clenched her fist as she bragged of her results.
Itami thanked her before speaking to the others.
“All right, then as we planned, we’ll wait for the Piper to show up at the
conference hall.”
And so, Lelei took up her staff, Rory reached for her halberd and Tuka
took up her bow.
Itami slung his rifle over his shoulder and looked at everyone.
“Are we ready?”
And so, everyone set out from the Reader’s Rest. However, Shandy
made a feeble protest.
“Ehhh~ I just came back, I haven’t had breakfast yet, And my clothes
are sweaty. At least let me change my underclothes, I’m tired~”
“Crap… she’s right.”
Itami was baffled about what he should do.
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If Shandy were a subordinate from the JSDF, he could simply end the
matter by saying, “Let’s go.”
If it were Tuka or Rory, he might be able to urge them on by saying,

“come on”. However, Shandy was just an outsider trying to help. In
addition, she had spent four days working hard, so he did not want to
push her too much.
Still, among all the people here, only Shandy had seen the Piper.
Without her, they would not be able to find the Piper. Although the lads
from the inn would help as well, frankly speaking, they would be of little
use.
“If we don’t set out now, we’ll be late for the conference.”
After Yao spoke, Gray stepped forward, a severe look on his face.
“Shandy-dono, now is the time to persevere. Granted, it must be

exhausting to perform several days of scouting and then sprint all the
way back, but since the final battle is upon us, it only makes sense to
take the field in this condition. Am I wrong, Itamy-dono?”
Itami nodded, going, “Hmm, yeah”. The servicemen of the JSDF had also
received mental training of this sort.
And so, Shandy stood up, mumbling something along the lines of “sorry
for being so selfish” as she lowered her head in apology. And then, she
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continued by saying that they would stick to the plan, despite her tired
face. The opinion of Itami and the others towards her went up by several
notches.
Soon, they arrived at the first floor lobby of the inn. There, the inn’s boys
were preparing to set out.
“Ah, good morning.”
“So, it’s the day. Then, please follow our plan. Do you have the plate
on?”
“We’ll be making a move first, to see if the Piper shows up.”
“Good luck!”
The group was grateful to them, but at the same time the boys made
them feel a little uncomfortable.
That said, it would be better to have their help to catch the Piper if he
showed up there. In addition, since they wanted to help, it would be
better to let them do so. As such, Itami and the others did not point out
they had been tricked again. All they could do was watch the inn boys
silently as they said, “All right, we’re going.”
***
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The hall of the Board of Examiners was only a short distance from the
Reader’s Rest.
While it would be better to use the HMV and its superior mobility under
these circumstances when they might be attacked by assassins at any
time, Lelei would be delayed if they were bogged down in a jam like they
had a few days ago. In addition, there were limited places to park at
their destination, and if they walked, they could reduce the chances of
danger even if something happened.
While they were on the road, Itami took the opportunity to ask Lelei a
question that he had been thinking about for some time now.
That was to say: since she had already gained a high degree of fluency
in Japanese, she possessed a laptop, and there was Internet access at
Arnus, why did she not just help herself to the many insights available
on the Internet and thus revolutionize this world?
“Lelei, I’m impressed by how dignified you are. It’s one thing to not
plagiarize other’s findings, but there’s something else there which lends
to that as well.”
To this point, Lelei replied:
“As an apprentice, the first thing I learned from Master Kato was that
knowledge can affect people in various ways.”
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This could also be compared to the development of astronomy.
The rain and clouds retreated, the crops ripened, the tree branches were
heavy with fruit, and it was the harvest season.
With the aid of the Earth Mother Goddess, the god of agriculture made
his bid to be the lord of the heavens.
Soon, the god of agriculture achieved victory.
In the old days, when people had no homes and wandered from place to
place with a tatty piece of cloth around themselves, mankind looked to
the starry night sky and slept with their backs to the earth.
The constellations and galaxies in the sky evoked wonder. And in turn,
they used those celestial phenomena as the background for strange and
fantastic stories. Soon, the tales of the stars became linked to the
seasons. Once they developed proper agriculture, the stories of mankind
grew more complex and detailed.
For instance, they said that the kind god of agriculture was in the sky
during planting season.
However, the god of torrential rain appeared alongside him, and they
waged an intense battle in the heavens. Amidst the booming of thunder
and the windstorms which blew everything away, the kind-hearted god
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of agriculture was vanquished and forced to flee to the west.
And then, the god of rain ruled upon the celestial throne for a time.
It just so happened that it was the rainy season. The days without the
sun dragged on. However, it had to be endured, because it was only for
a short time.
Thus, humans attempted to understand the link between astronomy and

the seasons by inventing myths.
However, the Sages worked ceaselessly to understand the movement of

the stars and the principles by which they operated.
The fruit of many meticulous observations resulted in the creation of the

calendar. And then, the budding field of astronomy became a separate
field of study in its own right, taking an important place in the world of
science. And then, about 2500 years ago, they discovered an important
fact. This fact ― that the world was round ― overturned all the
hypotheses of the past.
The gods of this world did not talk about how the world and all the things
within it were created. They simply waited silently for those mysteries to
be unravelled. Therefore, the simple-minded folk believed that the sun
had suddenly appeared over a flat earth, and the Sages of the past used
that assumption as the basis for their understanding of the world.
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For instance, the equator was directly under the sun’s path of travel, so
it was natural that these places should be warmer, while one travelled
further away from the sun the further north one went, and so the lands
there were colder. In addition, the angle formed between the earth and
the sun was smaller.
And so, the Sages answered the questions posed about the world in this
manner.
Then, at some point, the astronomer Passol had the idea of taking the
triangulation techniques used in creating maps and applying it to the
problem of measuring the exact distance between the earth and the
sun. He sent his disciples to seven different locations in the north and
south, and at the same time of the same day, they measured the angle
between the earth and the sun.
The conclusions were quite surprising.
After compiling the measurements from the seven locations, the

distance from the earth to the sun still could not be calculated.
At first, he thought there had been some sort of mistake, so he decided

to increase the number of measurement points from seven to 14.
However, the number of variations only increased with the number of
readings he took. The further away the measurement point, the bigger
the discrepancy in the readings.
He spent several months mulling over these results. In the end, he hit on
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a terrifying possibility. The further he went to make his measurements,

the more distorted the earth was… which meant that the surface of the
earth was a gigantic curve which, when extended indefinitely, would
eventually meet somewhere. And thus his round-earth theory was born.
The people were filled with shock and fear after hearing Passol
cautiously present his thoughts.
If they accepted his words, then that would imply the spherical earth
was floating in the heavens without any support. The simple-minded
masses found it very difficult to believe this. In addition, if the earth
really was round, then the people at the edges ― no, not just the people,
all buildings, plants and animals ― would slide off the sides. In fact, the
earth had nothing to support it, so it would fall as well. If they were
currently falling, then what lay ahead of them? In fact, what were they
falling towards?!
The people envisioned everything on the horizon falling away, followed

by scenes of destruction.
They imagined the land shattering, like how a fruit would squash against
the ground.
Londel’s halls of academia were besieged by people wielding hoes and

shovels.
The people were furious at the theory of the earth being round, and they
demanded that the academics state that their measurements and
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evidence were wrong. While Passol and his friends were not to blame,
the people mistakenly believed that their findings would destroy the
world.
Knowledge could change one’s view of the world. If it was not handled
properly, it would lead to massive public outcry. The Sages immediately
discovered that this could happen in the right time and place.
The crowd shouted angrily and hammered on the doors to the

conference hall, seeking to break them down.
Amidst this storm of anger, the Sages continued presenting the details
of their findings without distorting them, despite their fear. This was the
resolve of the Sages. Therefore, they announced to the public:
“Although the world is a sphere, it will not be falling anywhere. This is

because the land where we live is the center of the world. Below us,
there is something like a seed in the core of this spherical world.
Therefore, the earth will not move, and it will never falter. Everyone can
live in peace upon the surface of our Mother Earth.”
This was a lie. They had made it up out of whole cloth, without a shred of
supporting evidence.
The Sages ― who were obliged to use the sword of wisdom to eradicate
the darkness of ignorance ― had now pulled the wool over the peoples’
eyes. However, to the people of the time, their lies were more important
than the truth. There was a saying that a frog in a well did not know how
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wide the ocean was, but the frog could never survive in that ocean
anyway. It would drown in its vast waters. It simply could not grow
enough physically to survive the size of the world. Therefore, the people
chose to keep themselves in the darkness of the well. In other words,
the people wanted to be told lies. This was progress to them.
Knowing that the land they lived on was the center of the world made
them feel like they were beings who ruled the world. This line of thinking
satisfied their pride, and allowed them to escape the cruelty of reality.
“I trembled in fear when I read that thesis in the night.”
The young Lelei had often imagined herself delivering that great
discovery, and then being drowned in the shouts of an angry mob and
beaten with clubs.
“A Sage has to consider what their inventions and discoveries can give
the people. I wish to present on how to make explosions with magic.
Therefore, even if it is far-reaching, it still has its limits. In that way, I
satisfied my own desires. However, we should not venture further ahead
than this. I understand that the theory was originally intended to be put
into practice with gunpowder. Since I know the effectiveness of
gunpowder, I can imagine what the use of that would be like. However, I
also know what happens when gunpowder is used for evil, and it
frightens me. The JSDF fights with gunpowder, after all. In addition, as
long as the Gate of Arnus remains open, sooner or later, the people will
learn how to make gunpowder, and how to use it. Even so, I can’t bring
myself to do it.”
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After Lelei finished, she rounded her shoulders, muttering something

about “you can look down on me for being weak if you want”.
Of course, Itami would not treat her that way. Once they mastered
gunpowder, humanity would naturally seek greater power. Itami could
easily imagine the endpoint of that search.
Rory and Tuka, who were listening from behind, smiled and nodded,
saying that things were fine as they were now..
“Because, someday you’ll want to research the topic too, Lelei…”
Those words sounded like they were trying to shove away something
troublesome and apologize at the same time. To Itami, he was quite
interested in what would happen if Lelei explained how to make
gunpowder, but after seeing Rory’s wicked smile ― completely at odds
with her gentle words, he did not dare pursue the subject any further.
***
The conference hall was already packed with apprentices, even before
the conference had started.
They pushed through the omnipresent Sages and apprentices until they
reached the entrance of the conference hall, where Mimoza and Lelei’s
adoptive elder sister Arpeggio were waiting.
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“You’re late, Lelei!”
It would seem the two of them were waiting for Lelei.
The nearby apprentices seemed to have quietened down and began

looking around, probably because they had heard Arpeggio’s voice. And
then, whispers of “So that’s the legendary…” and “She’s so young” and
so on began floating around.
It would seem Lelei’s reputation had preceded her.
“Well, that’s only to be expected, right? It would be strange if someone

aiming for Sagehood at such a young age didn’t become the talk of the
town.”
As Arpeggio said that, she took a handful of Lelei’s pure white robe.
“Huh, so you managed to make it in time.”
“Because of you, we had to make another.”
Mimoza laughed as though she had played a prank.
“The news of Lelei slaying the Flame Dragon has spread far and wide.
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Alfie, all you do is say mean things. Weren’t you acting all proud and all
until just now because of her?”
“Mimoza-roshi! Didn’t I tell you not to talk about that?!”
“Ara, is something wrong? Then, would it be better to say that you took
out the robe you had treasured and kept for so long because you were
afraid Lelei’s robe wouldn’t be done in time? Or maybe I should say that
you burned the midnight oil to shorten the robe for her?”
When they looked over, they saw the red-faced Arpeggio hiding
something behind her back. That must have been the precious thing
Mimoza was talking about.
“Ro, roshi! Isn’t that just revealing everything?”
“Ara, sorry about that. It just slipped out. Oh my, the tongue gets so
loose once you get old.”
“So once you’re old enough you can say anything you want?! I’ve told
you before… not even if you make it sound cute! It’s thought crime, no
matter how you look at it!”
Arpeggio’s face flushed red as she protested.
However, her teacher simply took it as it came, paying it no heed as she
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chuckled. And then, Arpeggio’s voice grew louder in response.
This carried on for a while, but Arpeggio would not let the matter go,
until a skinny male Elf stood up and poked Arpeggio’s shoulder.
“Alfie-san, Alfie-san. Everyone’s watching. It might be better to stop it

here.”
“Will you shut up, Flat!”
“Ah, yes…”
After that merciless rebuke, the male Elf could only lower his head
glumly.
Arpeggio turned away from the male Elf and toward Mimoza. She then
began going on and on about the gravitas of an elder sister and
maintaining the proper order of the family and so on.
On the other hand, Itami’s attention went to the male Elf which Arpeggio
had rejected.
“Who’s that guy?” “So there’s Elves among the apprentices,” and
“What’s his relationship to Alfie?” Questions like these bubbled up in
Itami’s mind. Of course, Arpeggio paid him no heed, but at the very
least, he was someone that she permitted to touch her shoulder.
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“Ah, my name is Flat El Coda. Pleased to meet you.”
He must have sensed everyone looking at him, so the male Elf began by
introducing himself.
“Are you Lelei-san? I’m pleased to meet you. I’ve heard much about you
from Alfie-san. Being able to present to the Sages at the board of
examination at such a young age is an amazing feat. When I was 16 I
was still idling around in my home village… also, like I said, the news of
slaying the Flame Dragon has begun to spread too. It’s the talk of the
town. For all we know, it might be the talk of the continent. If it’s true,
then you must be a true hero. I take my hat off to you.”
“Well, the rumor about the Flame Dragon is somewhat falsified, so allow
me to correct you on that account. The ones who fought the Flame
Dragon head on were Itami and Yao over here, as well as the deceased
Crow, Meto, Ban, Fan, Nokk, Kom, Seimy and Nayu. Tuka was the one
who delivered the finishing blow. All I did was rain attacks on the Flame
Dragon.”
Tuka added, “I, I only woke at the end,” and then lowered her reddened
face.
Yao teared up as Lelei recited the names of her fallen friends without
missing a single one.
“You’re all amazing. Tuka-san, Yao-san, thank you for what you’ve done.
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As a fellow Elf, I’m proud of you. Since all I can do is be a researcher, I

can only give you my respect.”
“And by researcher he means…?”
Lelei looked to Itami as she answered him.
“It usually means a Sage who doesn’t use magic.”
As she said that, Flat went “hahaha” to fill the silence.
“Well, it’s not that I can’t use it, but I choose not to. Elves can only use
spirit magic. However, it’s not right to experiment with and analyze spirit
magic.”
“Magic is just a tool. I believe there are many Sages who do not use
magic, but who have still left many great accomplishments behind.”
“Still, the number of fields in which you can conduct research are
limited. There are also limits to the methods one can use to observe and
analyze.”
“Forgive me, but what is your specialty?”
Flat replied, “Astronomy.”
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“Uwah!”
Having just heard the trials and travails of the development of

astronomy, Itami began pitying him. As he saw this, Flat had a worried
expression on his face, as though he had done something wrong. Lelei
noticed, and felt like she had to explain Itami’s reaction, so she said:
“I told him about the history of astronomy, in particular, Passol’s Round

Earth Theory…”
Halfway through that, Flat laughed at himself. He seemed to have

understood something.
“It’s fine. Recently, there haven’t been any developments which would
lead to me being bashed all sides.”
“Being bashed?”
“Mm. This field occasionally requires one to put one’s life on the line.
Still, I’m confident I can convince everybody.”
Flats clenched his fists as he began talking about the latest

developments in astronomy.
After Passol, there were other matters which could shake the world in
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astronomy. One of them was Mochrie’s “Heliocentric Theory”.
With the advancements in the observation of the heavens, they had

learned that there were many kinds of celestial bodies which sparkled
brightly in the night sky. Among them was a class of stars which could
move and which dazzled those who looked upon them, called planets.
The results of their observation revealed four of these “planets” in the

sky; one red, one yellow, one blue, and one white. Much like sun and
moon, they were confirmed to be celestial bodies which orbited the
earth which was the center of the universe. However, that explanation
could not satisfactorily explain oddities in the way the planets moved.
At times, they observed the planets in the southern part of the sky
moving from the west to the east. However, at other times, they saw
them moving from the east to the west, in reverse. This change was
most obvious in the red and yellow planets, but the blue and white
planets also showed similar variations. All this was learned from
studying hundreds of years of observational records.
This was how the astronomers of the time explained that phenomenon:
All the planets were suspended in a transparent sphere, which explained

how they had so many different ways of revolving around the earth. In
addition, this would also explain why the planets were seen to be
moving in reverse, or why their positions changed in the sky.
In truth, observation equipment and techniques back then were of a low
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grade, so they could not elaborate on that problem. They wrote it off as

an acceptable degree of error.
However, with improved observation technology, they could not accept

these difficult-to-explain phenomena. Therefore, the astronomer Mochrie
devised a new paradigm through which to view the world.
In the end, what he came up with was the “Heliocentric Theory”.
“The world upon which we live is similar to the other four planets,
orbiting around the sun. This theory adequately explains the reason why
the other planets are seen to be moving backward from time to time. In
other words, this is the result of our planet’s rotation around the sun
catching up with and surpassing that of other planets.”
Of course, that line of thinking generated an enormous backlash.
The earth did not move. The earth could not move. This was a fact that
had been firmly grounded in the hearts of men ever since the Round
Earth Theory had been born. In addition, it was not just the people, but
many Sages who doubted the truth of Mochrie’s theory.
If the earth moved, then why was the moon not left behind?
In addition, if the earth spun around the sun, then why did the stars in
the heavens not change in position or appearance? All these questions
and more were still present in the Heliocentric Theory.
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1740
In order to answer those questions, Mochrie proceeded to go into further

detail.
“A invisible principle, invisible to the naked eye, connects the earth to

the moon. Thus, the moon will always follow the earth.”
However, many researchers immediately countered with: “You magic-

users immediately jump to some invisible principle whenever you
encounter something you can’t explain” and so on, while the magic-
users said, “The invisible principles cannot normally affect the laws of
physics. They can only do so within a specific bounded field generated
by the magic principle.” In the end, they argued that this theory was not
conclusive.
***
Japanese academic conferences ― for instance, those pertaining to

medical matters ― were sponsored by pharmaceutical companies and
the like, and they were held in high-class places like hotels. The
attendees would wear name cards (with the names of the sponsors on
them), pay a minimal attendance fee, which allowed them to take part in
various gatherings within the conference, and breakfast and tea would
be prepared for them as well. There was also a type of gathering called
the luncheon seminar, which required its participants to attend briefings
by certain pharmaceutical firms about their products, but served a free
lunch to anyone who attended. In addition, one could also enjoy a
luxurious buffet dinner by paying a nominal fee.
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However, such sponsored conferences were few and far between. Most
of them were run by the meager fees collected from their attendees and
were concerned with the alarmingly small amount of funds available to
them. Therefore, they were very spartan affairs.
The academic conferences in Londel were invariably of the quiet sort.
The conference hall was a very old building, and its pillars were starting
to crack. The reception and other functions of the conference were
handled by the apprentices. It felt a little like a school festival.
After whining to her heart’s content, Arpeggio asked Flat, “What do you
plan to do today?”
To which he replied: “I plan to put forward the results of my research.”
“Does it have to do with the Heliocentric Theory?”
“Nope. I’m just reporting observations today.”
“That’s good…”
“Still, I found something interesting. Everyone will be surprised!”
The male Elf tapped a rolled-up manuscript as he said this.
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“Well, it’ll be good if you successfully deliver your report. Good luck.”
Mimoza smiled and watched as Arpeggio lectured him with hints of

resignation in her voice. Arpeggio seemed to be trying not to say
something.
Sensing her teacher’s eyes on her, Arpeggio protested:
“What is it, roshi?”
“Oh, nothing. Well, it would make you angry.”
Arpeggio looked like she was about to throw a tantrum as Mimoza said
that, but after Lelei asked “What?” from the side, Mimoza decided to
disclose everything.
“Flat proposed to Alfie. The two of them have that kind of relationship.”
And then, this aged lady wrung her hands and squealed, “Kyaaa~” Rory
and Tuka shuddered as they heard that utterly unfitting sound coming
from her.
Incidentally, appearances aside, Mimoza was still the youngest of the

three of them.
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“Ro, roshi! I already rejected it! It’s an irrelevant relationship! Why do I

have to marry this stupid Elf? I don’t even view him as a man, really!
Wait, roshi, are you listening? This is your disciple speaking, oi!”
“...That kind of relationship. Got it?”
Despite Mimoza’s playful tone, Itami and the others understood

completely.
“People who are submitting routine reports, please come this way~”
With that, Flat smiled uncomfortably and headed in that direction. In

addition, another voice echoed from another direction.
“Those going before the Doctorate and Sage Board of Examiners, please
gather here.”
And so, twelve to thirteen scholars headed in the direction of that sound.
Apart from Lelei, only three other people, all men, were in white robes.
Looking over, they could see the staff explaining something to the
gathered scholars.
In order to avoid getting in the way, Itami kept a distance from them,
staying alert as he did so. Tuka, Rory and Yao dispersed, while Gray and
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Shandy scattered as well, watching their surroundings with wary eyes.
“I’ll go say hi to that gramps in the rest area~”
With that, Mimoza left, leaving Arpeggio alone. Because of that, she kept
stealing glances at Itami. It would see she was very mindful of the being
who enjoyed the privilege of being claimed as “mine” by her little sister.
Just as well. Itami called out to her, wanting to learn more about the
conference.
“Arpeggio-san. Is there a fixed number of people who can pass the

degree placement Board of Examination?”
Arpeggio seemed to relax a little when addressed by Itami, and

approached him.
“No, it’s not. Sometimes everyone passes. Sometimes nobody does.

Why do you ask?”
“Have you heard of an assassin called the Piper?”
“Mm, the one targeting Lelei, right? But would an assassin who
manipulates others really show himself?”
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As they were talking, Itami’s eyes were still on the scholars around Lelei.
Right now, the staff were having everyone draw straws. It might be to
determine the order in which they gave their presentations.
“It’s just hearsay, but if he can manipulate people with just his words, he
must be amazing. He would be an amazing con artist.”
“I don’t think it’s just words. Fancy words alone can’t make a person do
that.”
“So that means having one of the people here be the assassin would be
impossible, then?”
“Not possible. Everyone there is a scholar worthy of becoming a Doctor

or a Sage. Perhaps mind-controlling magic would work on them, but not
to such an extent. At the very most it could only intensify their emotions
like joy, anger or sorrow.”
Itami muttered, “Magic, huh…” He had been with Lelei for a long time,
but he was still an amateur in that field.
Therefore he began listing the possibilities, which did not involve magic
use.
If there were only a fixed number of passes… the Piper could tell the
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ones hovering on the brink of passing “go kill that interfering person”. In
fact, he would not need to tell the scholar to do it in person. Family
members and lovers would do, as long as they would act rashly for the
people they loved. That might even be a better approach.
“Well, if there were a fixed number of passes, that would certainly be a

possibility.”
This struck a chord with Arpeggio. After all, she herself had challenged
Lelei to a duel while caught in the throes of jealousy. Still, that had only
been on the level of a squabble. She would not do something shameless
like picking a fight with a stranger whose face she did not like, to say
nothing of actually killing them.
“Still, the Board of Examiners bases its decision entirely on the

candidate’s presentation. It’s not affected by the presence or absence of
others. Therefore, there’s no need to worry about that,” Arpeggio said.
As they conversed, Itami’s vision suddenly lighted on a white-robed man

who seemed to be in his fifties. He seemed to want to take a step
forward, but in the end he drew back. He looked suspicious, and it
seemed like he would be the last to make his presentation today.
At this moment, Itami’s imagination kicked into overdrive. While he was

lazy by nature, he did not hold back when it came to imagining things.
He recalled the contents of all the manga, light novels, fanfictions, and
other 2D works he had read so far. With all the plot twists from them in
mind, layered on top of common and uncommon sense, he began
deconstructing the situation before him. And then, he added a pinch of
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the results of his counterterrorist training to taste.
Firstly, he assumed the Piper’s methods include those which would be

familiar to people from Japan and this side of the Gate.
In other words, he would lie or cause a misunderstanding to make his

mark feel persecuted or burn with righteous anger. If the Piper’s mark
began feeling strongly about his target, then he would add some sort of
sanity-destroying comment and push the mark forward. This was a
common method used by dictatorships, extremist terrorists, or radical
religious groups to inflame people's’ emotions. People acted on their
emotions, which acted as a filter for the information they kept or
disregarded, so inciting their emotions was the first step. Of course,
magic could do the same too.
“Then, how about this? You can see parts of your research in the content
of some other person’s research. For instance, if that person were Flat-
san, and he went first, and what he presented sounded better…”
“...In-indeed, that might make people feel murderous. But they wouldn’t
kill them. If it were me, I’d just give them a good thrashing.”
A good thrashing, huh. Itami blinked.
“Then, how about this? The valuable research you accumulated over
months and years was stolen by someone you hate. You know who took
it, and that they’re going to present it as their own. And then they’re
standing quietly in front of you…”
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“If it were me, I’d definitely, absolutely kill him. Nobody would take that
lying down!”
Arpeggio thrust her chest forward and said so, without any
hesitation.This was proof of how much scholars valued the incarnation of
the sweat, blood and toil..
Therefore, Itami immediately drew his pistol, and pointed it at the fifty
year old man who was waffling about behind Lelei.
“All right, stop right there. You’ve come all this way, but it would be
better if you didn’t move. You wouldn’t want to shorten your twilight
years even further, wouldn’t you? There’s many other happy things
awaiting you in life. Well, probably…”
It was a clumsy warning, but it was a firm one. Still, the man’s body
stiffened up. There was probably a degree of guilt within his shock. As
such, the knife he was holding fell from his hand, spinning on the stone
floor.
“I, it, it’s not my fault! It’s that little minx who stole my research!”
Suddenly, all eyes focused on the man blurting out that excuse.
“...In any case, how could a little girl like that produce the research
necessary for a Sage’s board of examination?! She must have stolen my
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research! It’s because of people like that honest researchers like myself
have such a hard time! The conferences now are rotten through!”
Itami said, “You should probably talk about this elsewhere,” and handed
the rest off to Gray. “He was merely tricked, so please listen carefully to
his story. Yao, go help Gray-san.”
“Understood.”
Thus, Gray and Yao took the man away.
“I was just trying to protect my research! I hate women!”
***
The sounds coming from so far away seemed rather pitiful.
In any event, that man had been duped.
Under the eyes of the conference staff and many tutors, Lelei revealed
the contents of her report to that man, and confirmed that they were
covering completely different fields. The man understood that he had
been deliberately misled.
It would seem that man had failed the Sage examination board many
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1750
times, so he was filled with the determination to pass. In addition, he

resented his own long years of research. And he disliked women.
Therefore, he had been chosen as a mark by the Piper.
It was a pretty ingenious scheme.
Firstly, a thief had broken into his lab. Just as he was about to breathe a
sigh of relief that nothing had been stolen, someone had come and
kindly said, “They stole your research”, and thus the Piper went to work.
That kind man pulled out several bits of evidence that proved his
research had been stolen (probably spied out when he had sneaked into
the lab). After that, when he understood the basics of the research
which had been stolen, he said, “There’s a woman who wants to present
your research as her own.”
“If I complained that someone else stole the research, wouldn’t that be
the end of things?”
He replied calmly then, but then he heard the reply, “Isn’t it first-come-
first-serve when presenting research at conferences? All she’d have to
say is that she coincidentally decided to cover the same topic and you’d
be the one who was finished,” and then he saw red. After that, he
overlooked all the tiny contradictions and small details he would
otherwise have spotted.
“Your only hope is the drawing of straws on the day itself to decide who
presents in which order. If you can present before that girl, you can turn
things around, and it’ll be fine. So you’d better pray the staff haven’t
been paid off.”
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The trick was that the Piper did not plunge the man into absolute
despair. By leaving him a handful of hope and then poisoning him with
doubt, his intense unease would make him defy his better judgement. In
addition, the Piper had skilfully played on the man’s resentment and
hardships in his daily life, as well as his dissatisfaction with the academic
conferences. When his last hope of drawing straws did not work out, it
made him think that this had all been part of a conspiracy against him.
“That little thief, that wretched woman! If I don’t deal with her quickly,
my chances at the conference are doomed!”
And so, his righteous anger and his personal frustration blended
together and pushed him into action, to the point where he was tightly
gripping the knife within his robe.
As he got to that part, Itami thought, What, you couldn’t stop to make
sure?
However, people driven by emotion would probably be as reckless as

that. This was possibly why crimes of passion could not be completely
eradicated.
The man, who knew that he had done something unforgivable, said that
he would give up on this conference and would try again in the next one,
and then he headed home. Although he had been holding a knife and
standing near Lelei, he had not done anything else, so he was not guilty
of anything. However, his back looked like it had been scorched black as
he departed lifelessly.
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(TL Note: This seems to be a reference to a line from Hayate the Combat
Butler: 背中煤けてるぜ, said while playing cards)
***
The conference began after the person in charge of the conference

greeted them.
The lectures and dissertations on new discoveries and fantastic findings

came one after the other.
After that, the Doctorate placement examinations began, with the

candidate surrounded by the board of examiners on all sides. This was a
tradition which had been handed down through the ages, and so Flat El
Coda’s presentation was scheduled before it was Lelei’s turn.
During the Sage placement examination before him, several bottles of

ink flew through the air, dying the speaker red, yellow, green and other
colors before he scampered off on his hands and feet. Perhaps it was
because he had personally witnessed that pathetic sight, but the tall and
skinny male Elf cringed and trembled behind the stage.
Itami felt some sort of unspoken empathy for him when he saw the man
in that state, so Itami, who was accompanying Lelei backstage, decided
to address him, in order to help relieve the tension that was knotting
him up.
“I heard from one of my companions that Elves don’t have mentors. Are
there other Elves like you, Flat-san?”
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“No, there’s nobody else like me. I’m just a strange person. I don’t need
a degree, but when I talk about certain things, having a degree is more
convincing.”
Flat seemed to have relaxed a little.
However, Lelei did not look good at all. She seemed even paler than
before in Itami’s eyes. He thought of her a pale-skinned girl under
normal circumstances, but somehow she had managed to lose even
more color than before. Well, when he thought of someone as very pale,
they would probably still have the red of blood under their skin to give
them a little warmth. However, the tension of being made to present
soon made her look like a white porcelain doll.
Itami looked over to the raucous conference hall.
Tuka and Gray were on both sides of the stage, while the team of Yao
and Rory watched the crowds. As he looked through the hall, he found
that the boys from the Reader’s Rest were checking the audience to see
which of them was the Piper. They had been completely taken in by that
Nora woman’s words, so they were certain the enemy was in the
audience. In contrast, Shandy was hiding. She felt that the enemy would
attack them from behind, so she decided to stay on alert elsewhere.
However, a troubling situation had arisen.
The mentors carrying out the examination were already palming and
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fingering the ink bottles which they would throw if the presentation was
a poor one. It made him wonder if this was an actual, rigorous
examination, given the air of playfulness with which they did it.
From a security point of view, it was impossible to rule out the possibility
of the ink bottles containing anything dangerous (in addition, thrown ink
bottles were almost always dangerous).
If they threw the bottles, they would need to pull Lelei back.
“It’s fine. The mentors won’t throw them.”
This was what Lelei had concluded. It was very difficult to quash one’s
unease with willpower and put on a confident facade. Therefore, Itami
patted Lelei’s reliable-looking back.
“If you can pull it off, it’ll be good for me too. I’m counting on you.”
However, Flat walked back to them, a despondent look on his face.
“Lelei-san, you’re so confident… I’m about to run away because of my

nerves.”
“You’re not being examined, just present in a relaxed way.”
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“...Well, you say that, but my personality won’t let me do it.”
“You won’t be able to win Nee-san’s heart like that. Work harder.”
“Ah, yes…”
Flat nodded earnestly to his future little sister-in-law, and then after the
staff who had finished the cleanup gave him the signal, he stepped onto
the stage.
***
When the crestfallen male Elf showed his face, the Sages present
wondered what sort of baseless speculation the astronomers were going
to bring forward again, and went on alert.
In the past, he had attempted to state that “The world’s core revolves
around the sun” or some other nonsense in an attempt to address the
flaws in the Heliocentric Theory.
Of course, everyone present had shouted him down, and all he could do
was step down.
He had also put forward the theory that the heart of the sun was clouds
and the core of the earth was alive and spinning, and had been criticised
for the irresponsibility of his words. Still, despite the many hostile glares
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1756
directed at him, Flat El Coda delivered his half-hour presentation, which

amounted to “so and so existed, thus the earth is distorted.”
The Sages in attendance had been tense at first because they thought it
had something to do with the Heliocentric Theory, and then they
relaxed. However, most of them had baffled expressions on their faces,
as if to say “What is this fellow on about?” Even if he said the world was
twisted, they could not understand what he was trying to say.
“That idiot.”
Even the person who understood him best, Arpeggio, grumbled like she
was spitting something out.
“As everyone knows, I have been ceaselessly conducting research on

the baseless Heliocentric Theory. Therefore, I have been continuously
observing the celestial bodies. However, recently, I mixed up the
coordinates of the object I was observing with that of another celestial
body. I confused the White Planet with the star Vulpeculae.
As the Sages heard this, they let out a collective sigh.
A scholar who specialized in astronomy would not do something like

confuse one celestial body for another. This might even go so far as to
call every single thing he had presented into question.
“However, the reason was because the Vulpeculae went through some
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1757
unexplainable movements. Please observe.”
The, Flat sketched the results of his observations onto the blackboard
behind him with a piece of chalk.
He showed that at the same time of every month (the 5th month, the
6th month…), the Celestial Fox Star was slowly shifting its position with
respect to the Big Dipper.
This was a natural phenomenon that accompanied the changing of the

seasons.
The rainy season had its own sky, the dry season had its own sky as
well. But over the 7th, the 8th, the 9th, the 10th months, as time went
on, other abnormalities began showing themselves. As it moved in a
direction that was different from the direction in which it should have
gone, he accidentally mixed it up with the White Planet.
“And so, once I realised that I had I confused the two celestial bodies, I
immediately looked for the original White Planet. And this is what I
found.”
He sketched the movements of the White Planet, which had travelled in

an abnormal direction, much as Vulpeculae had.
Although the planets were named thus because they moved in

mesmerizing ways, their orbits had been clearly mapped out over long
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1758
years of study. No matter what, they could not have deviated so greatly
from their paths.
(TL Note: In Japanese, planets are called 惑星 and the

mesmerism/confusion of which they speak is 迷惑. )
“As I thought about this, I decided to record the activities of all the
nearby celestial bodies, and after I observed how they moved over the
months, I came to my conclusion,” Flat stated. If the heavenly bodies
were like a piece of cloth, the cloth was now crumpled up and pressed
together.
When the stars’ orbits ran into the wrinkles of the cloth, they would be
affected by the distortions and shift toward the southwest direction, and
after passing through those wrinkles they would resume their normal
orbits. In other words, part of the sky was distorted. This was what Flat
meant by “the world is distorted”.
“I have not found any examples of this sort of behavior within the
historical examples I could access. In addition, this distortion
phenomenon seems to be growing and expanding with every day which
passes. Currently, it can only be discovered through careful observation,
but before long, you should be able to see the familiar constellations of
the southwest sky bunching up.”
Of course, he was questioned by the floor.
“Could that be because your observation equipment is too old, or

broken?”
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1759
“Honestly speaking, they are quite old, because I can’t afford new
instruments. However, I do not think they are the reason for these
results. I believe it is something more esoteric than that.”
“Could it have been a mirage of some sort?”
Mirages were phenomena which occured in deserts an on the sea, where

distant cities and islands seemed to appear on the horizon. Everyone
knew of these things and research had been done into them.
“For several months?”
Mirages were caused by the weather. The difference in temperature

between the earth or sea and the air caused light to bend, so they knew
that mirages would not appear in the sky. Similarly, that theory was not
very persuasive even if you factored in the effects of the weather and
clouds.
“As I thought of what they might portend, I performed various forms of

investigations, and then the earth shook. I feel that all these occurrences
must be linked somehow. I hope everyone will pay attention to the night
sky. If we can explain these phenomena, I feel we will be able to become
closer to the secrets of the fundamental forces of the world. Thus I
conclude my report…”
And after he was done, Flat returned backstage.
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His exit was marked by the sound of clapping. Much of the audience was
relieved by his meticulous, calm presentation. As a result, none of them
knew that the idea he had put forth, that “the world is distorted” would
soon bring about a tremendous upheaval.
“All right… it’s finally your turn, Lelei.”
As Itami said that, Lelei did not take a deep breath, or coax herself to be
brave in front of her audience, but simply walked up onto the stage
without any further ado.
Just then, a woman rose from the audience and walked toward the
stage.
“Cheh… if only you could have waited until the end of the presentation.”
Itami grabbed his pistol and gave the signal. The boys on standby gave
the “she’s okay” signal, so it would seem this woman was Nora.
Nora was holding a small dagger in her hand, but it would seem this was
all just as planned.
The inn boys believed it was just an act and that Lelei would not come to
harm. Itami, on the other hand, felt that she would try to kill Lelei as part
of her act.
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“Everyone sees Lelei as a hero, so if she’s being marked for

assassination because someone’s got a grudge against her, then it
would be best for the assassin to strike before she gains the title of
Sage.”
As Itami grumbled to himself, Lelei waited on the stage for Nora to

approach her.
To Itami, the woman appeared to be acting according to plan. She was

closing in on the stage and was about to deliver a direct attack. So he
had to get there before she made her move.
However, Nora sneered, and then she crouched to make a move he had
not expected. She jumped while she was still some distance away from
Lelei. Itami had underestimated the athletic ability of the Beastmen
races.
“Cheh, dammit!”
Itami readied his pistol.
Tuka, Yao and Shandy ran over to protect Lelei, but because they were
taken by surprise, they were a fraction of a second too late. The cruel
blade closed in on the defenseless Lelei.
In this way, her plan would have failed. But in truth, it would have
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succeeded.
However, Nora’s biggest miscalculation was the city of Londel. The fact
that Lelei was being targeted for assassination was now the talk of the
town.
In other words, as Nora began pouncing on Lelei, the question everyone

had in their hearts ― “Oi, oi, is this what they said would happen?” ― as
they looked suspiciously at Nora was answered. And if she was there… if
she made any false moves in a conference hall packed full of mages...
From all directions, balls of light, arrows of wind, magically guided stone
shards, boulders, chakrams, and even thrown daggers rained down on
Nora. And then, before anyone knew it, the woman’s broken body
collapsed to the ground.
The boys of the Reader’s Rest nervously ran over to Nora, to carry her to
the physicians.
On the other hand, Itami and the others were frozen in shock. This soon
became depression as they realized how they had failed her.
And then, the mages surrounding them realised the unshakable truth,
that even Itami could have died in an instant.
“...How shall I say this, but isn’t it a little too much?”
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One could compare this to a pervert sneaking into a concert for a prank,
and after bluffing the guards and drawing close to the stage, he turned
around and discovered that everyone in the audience was a cop, so
frightening it was
Even so, at least they could stop worrying about Lelei’s assassination. If
anyone other than the Piper had snuck into the conference hall, they
probably would not make their move after this.
“Well, it should be fine, then.”
Itami pulled himself together and returned backstage.
Tuka and Yao, who had rushed out to cover Lelei, returned to their
original places so as not to disrupt the presentation.
Shandy, who had come a little later, raised her hand as though to cheer
Lelei on. And then, as the hand came down, she plunged a short sword
into Lelei’s chest.
“Eh?”
Volume 5 End
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Vol. 7 :
Chapter 1

Volume 7 Chapter 1
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Translator: Nigel
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Editor: Deus Ex-Machina, Skythewood
The rippling green fields of wheat extended toward the horizon, and the
expanse of virgin land looked as beautiful as a painting.
That said, this lovely scenery was scarred by black lines, as though the
artist’s hand had slipped or his passions had raged out of control.
Villages burned, and the smoke rose.
Staff Sergeant Tomita of 3rd Recon watched the roiling black smoke in
the distance. It made him think of a mighty dragon soaring toward the
clouds. However, it had been created from the sacrifice of the lives,
homes and harvest of the peaceful villages. With this in mind, if one
were to give this view a name, perhaps “Rise of the Evil Wyrm” would be
appropriate.
The large transport helicopter —— a CH-47 Chinook —— and its escorts

practically scraped the roofs of the houses as it passed over the smoke-
shrouded villages.
He watched the blaze beneath him devour houses and their furnishings
with fangs of searing flame. It was accompanied by a loud crackling as
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the fires chewed them all to pieces.
The vegetation burned loudly, licked by serpentine tongues of fire.
However, this sound was mercilessly stamped out by the roaring of the
Chinook’s 4336hp turboshaft engines.
The forward and rear rotor blades tore the thick clouds of smoke apart,
churning the air below them into a downwash and extinguishing the
flames directly underneath.
The members of the JSDF Special Region Expeditionary Force’s 403rd

Squadron —— who were not so much travelling with Tomita and the
others as they were giving them a lift —— looked silently upon the tragic
sight below them.
The only people who continued speaking were the television news
reporters.
They had not asked for anyone’s permission before gravitating to the
places with the best view, whereupon they trained their camera lenses
on the village below them. The man with the microphone ——
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Komurasaki —— narrated the scene as if talking about secrets only he

knew. He went on and on about plainly obvious facts like “there was a
village here”, “the fire rises”, and “there are victims everywhere” as the
smoke climbed lazily into the air.
As she watched this, Tomita whispered into the ear of Staff Sergeant
Kuribayashi.
“When they said we would be protecting a member of the TV news staff,

I thought it would be your little sister.”
“Hell if I know. We keep getting missions like these, does it even count
as recon work any more?”
Their conversation was vaguely inappropriate for this scene. In truth,

they were simply blowing off steam, so they did not exchange many
words. Instead, they locked eyes, and shrugged helplessly.
“Lads, as you can see, this is a terrible sight. Our mission is to hunt
down Zorzal’s lackeys. We will find the main body of their forces and
crush them without mercy. Got that?!”
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The team members nodded in unison as they heard their sergeant

major’s bellowing. “We get you!”
“Good answer. Now load up!”
The members of 1st Team tapped their magazines against their helmets.
This was to ensure that the magazines —— which contained 20 rounds

of 7.62mm ammunition —— were properly loaded. It was a small thing,
but a rifle stoppage during combat could be a fatal matter. They were
that careful because they were headed toward the battlefield, where the
line between life and death was very fine indeed.
They loaded their Type 64 rifles with practiced movements. Sliding in

the magazines, slapping them home, setting them to safe… the rifles
they were holding transformed into savage instruments of murder in
that instant.
“Rounds loaded! Weapon safe!”
That said, the rifles did not sport any threat displays, nor did they crouch
with their hackles up or growl in readiness to pounce, like hounds. The
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ice-cold blue-black steel did not look any different, whether or not it was
filled with bullets. That said, if their index fingers applied more than 2.7
to 4.3 kilograms of pressure to the triggers, it would exceed the break
pressure and cause the firing pin to strike the primer charge of a loaded
round. The weapon would then obediently spit a chunk of murderous
lead in the direction its user desired.
In that sense, the team members were much the same as those rifles.
Under normal circumstances, they were friends, husbands and sons.

They were not martial artists like one might see on a television sports
program. At a glance, little about them stood out to an observer. There
was no way of telling who they were once they were no longer wearing
their uniforms.
That said, once they held loaded weapons with the safeties off, they
became famished wolves, seeking their prey. They advanced fearlessly
to exterminate their foes, impelled by the trigger-pull of their orders.
The team members applied black vinyl tape to secure small, loose parts
and reduce the noise they made before they slung their rifles onto their
backs. Some of them also had civilian-made dart sights attached onto
their weapons via jury-rigged mounts. They peered through them in the
darkness of the Chinook, verifying their sight pictures before stowing
their rifles.
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One of the men standing by the side asked:
“Are these sights really useful?”
“Well, it’s like having a sighting post and a reticle, though they’re on the
verge of being written off… I think.”
Now that the fighting had begun in earnest, the JGSDF higher-ups had
permitted their servicemen to modify their weapons. Targeting optics
were one of them, as were barrel-mounted laser sights and foregrips.
The shadow of the second Chinook came to rest above the village
square.
In the distance, one could see a Cobra attack helicopter hovering in mid-
air, ready to support the JSDF servicemen on the ground.
Ropes unfurled to the ground, each of them as thick as those used in

tug-of-war contests at school sports festivals, and the team leader
lowered his upraised hands.
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After that, the members of 1st Team fast-roped down, touching down
one after the other.
The cameraman recorded their descent.
Beside him, Tomita and the others took aim at the ground, on guard
against enemies who might attack the descending servicemen.
After the members of 1st Team had fast-roped down, the Chinook
hurriedly reeled its lines back in and ascended once more.
In the quiet interior of the helicopter, Komurasaki turned toward the

helmeted helicopter pilot.
“Oi, find a place to land. We can’t get down like this!”
The airman in the cabin looked troubled, but all he could do was smile
and reply:
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“Understood. However, we need to verify that the ground conditions are

safe before landing.”
“That means we’ll miss out on the exciting parts, no?! Put us down right
now!”
“Sure, we could do that… but do you know how to use this?”
The airman pointed to a descending line.
The most dangerous time for helicopters on the battlefield was the
moment they landed or took off. Angled descent and fast-roping was
used to minimize that particular risk. Naturally, this was not something
that one could explain to an amateur who was demanding, “do this
now”, so the reason they did not descend was to protect the craft and to
ensure the safety of the media crew. In the face of that, all Komurasaki
could was mutter “it can’t be helped” between curses.
As Komurasaki and his cameraman looked longingly toward the ground,

the Chinook slowly gained altitude. Once the pilot was sure that they
were safely away from the ground, the helicopter hovered in the sky
above the burning village.
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***
The team members immediately fanned out in all directions the instant
they touched down.
It looked as though they were in some kind of race, given the way they
held their weapons while sprinting. They surveyed their surroundings,
vigilant eyes aiming down the sights of their weapons.
Their crosshairs swept over doors, trees, anywhere that people might be
hiding. However, they did not discover anyone living. All they saw were
people collapsed everywhere; men and women of all species who might
have been alive until recently. Their bodies were covered in slashes and
stabs made by swords, or torn by wild beasts.
“Use the infrared scanner!”
Obeying the team leader’s orders, one of the team members took out a
device that resembled a raygun from a science-fiction movie, and
pointed it at the nearby trees and dark places.
This device could pick up the infrared radiation emitted by warm-
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blooded creatures, and thus discover anyone who was hiding.
Its primary purpose was a tool to find prey while hunting. It could pick up
large beasts within 900 meters and bird-sized creatures within 20
meters. In addition, one could also use it to find casualties buried under
rubble. However, this device was not standard issue —— in other words,
issued by the JSDF —— but the personal property of the team members.
Regretfully, in the tight-budgeted JSDF, one had to make up a shortfall of
personal equipment from one’s own funds.
“Picking up thermals from everywhere, it’s useless.”
It was a good piece of machinery, but the huge heat sources nearby had
a large impact on its performance. The raging fires near the houses were
the main contributor to that, and then one had to consider that the
corpses scattered around were still warm.
“Cheh…”
If their technology was not effective, then they had to use their own
eyes and ears to verify the truth.
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In the end, the ability to observe their surroundings and notice the
unusual was a core skill for these team members. This had been the
case from antiquity. They had to hone these skills because no matter
how far technology progressed, there were countless circumstances
where said technology could not be used, or where both sides’
equipment impeded or cancelled each other out.
The soldiers looked for survivors among the fallen even as they looked
for traces of hiding attackers. However, the crackling of burning wood
made it difficult for the men to hear cries for help. Even the crunching of
their boots across the ground hampered their ability to sense the
presence of the enemy, and it put them all on edge.
Still, the members of the team calmly controlled their breathing, and
they followed up on even the slightest of changes as they steadily
advanced. Their eyes moved with unhurried speed; they scanned,
inspected and searched everywhere around them.
The sudden sound of gunfire rang through the village.
“What’s going on?!”
A tense voice demanded a report over the radio.
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The team members —— so on-edge that they were practically bleeding

—— reacted swiftly.
They lowered their stances, and while some people looked in the
direction of the gunshot, others turned to other directions to prevent
anyone from slipping past their eyes.
“Over there… they’re fleeing toward the south of the village!”
The warning was accompanied by the sound of scattered gunfire.
The radio reported the numbers and heading of the enemy. After
receiving the team leader’s orders, the squad leaders brought their
people to the south, where the enemy planned to flee.
Advance!
Heeding the hand signals of their leaders, the squads dispersed to await
the coming of the enemy.
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The enemies that had attacked the surrounding region recently did not
look like Imperial troops. Since they conducted their attacks in clothes
similar to those of the local farmers, there was no way to tell if they
were Imperial soldiers or fearful peasants who had taken up their
farming implements as weapons in fear of those soldiers. Thus, the
members of 1st Team had no choice but to treat anyone pointing
weapons at them as a potential enemy. No —— even if they were
unarmed, they still had to be considered as potential enemies.
“Anyone who runs is an enemy! Anyone who stands still is a well-

disciplined enemy!” That line had been used in a war movie to mock the
impossibility of reason on the battlefield, but the truth was, being able to
retain one’s senses in the madness of the battlefield was abnormal.
When one really thought about it, how could anyone rationalize the
murder of a human being? Anybody who could calmly and logically take
a life was probably more frightening than a madman. Thus, it was only
natural to be driven by insanity on the battlefield, and it was those
people who could not switch back from madness to normality who were
considered mentally ill.
In addition, it had been a tradition that those people who did not identify
themselves as friend or foe —— as well as those who did not dress
themselves as combatants —— would not be accorded the rights of an
armed combatant. Such behavior was deeply despicable, and hardly
anyone would raise an eyebrow at their summary execution if they were
to be captured. Even the Geneva Conventions —— to say nothing of the
Hague Conventions —— mandated that “open carrying of weapons” was
the minimum requirement for such status.
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Still, there were the bleeding hearts who took the side of those who
violated those rules of warfare, and sympathized with those people who
used the common man as shields, the weak who blended into the
populace and fought the strong with underhanded means. People who
used civilians for protection would normally be condemned and
destroyed, but said bleeding hearts instead pointed their fingers at the
soldiers who hunted them, calling them “murderers” and “cold-blooded
animals”.
(TL Note: the JP term is 病的な潔癖症, lit. "cleanliness obsession", or

cleanliness-oriented OCD. Probably refers to the moral guardians that
want to keep their hands spotless and clean.)
Indeed, they were not here to call out the insurgents or flush them out,
but to utterly annihilate them. Anyone who used innocent people as
their armor deserved nothing but extermination, as though they were
vermin like cockroaches or rats. Terrorists spread hatred and suffering,
threatening order and reason with madness. They blurred the line
between peacetime and wartime, which was a supremely despicable act.
Normally speaking, one would blame those who hid behind civilians for
involving them in the fighting.
That said, uniformed soldiers were compelled to play their part as

flawlessly as possible.
The battlefield was a place where momentary misunderstandings and

failures in judgement compounded with each other. To protect one’s
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comrades and survive, there was one ironclad rule —— “If it looks like an
enemy, open fire”. However, soldiers were required to have perfect
discrimination of their targets, as though they were killing machines. If
they could not do that, they were criticized as being “flawed”.
In this way, soldiers were shot in the back by the ones who they were
protecting. Their hearts filled with guilt, they were mentally defeated
even before facing the bullets and bombs of the foe.
The members of 1st Team saw what appeared to be merchants on a

trading wagon, and trained their weapons on them. There were eight
people in total, human beings of the Special Region.
As they began to pull back their triggers, the men hesitated.
There was the urge to turn these people —— who might harm them and
their comrades —— into corpses, which could do them no harm.
However, they were not that fatigued yet. With sheer force of will, they
fought off that impulse, waiting for orders despite the dangerous
circumstances around them.
“Halt!”
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The members of 1st Team called out to the wagons with their broken
command of the Special Region’s language that they had learned in
Arnus, while covering the traders with their weapons.
Perhaps they did not hear it, or perhaps there was another reason, but
the traders ignored the team members and attempted to break through.
The squad leader let off a warning shot near a horse’s leg to frighten
them into submission. A shell casing tinkled onto the ground, and the
startled horse reared up on its hind legs.
The panicked driver pulled tightly on the reins to calm his horse down.
After a great struggle to get the beast under control, he obediently put
his hands up.
The goods wagon slowly ground to a halt.
The soldiers backed off to form a semicircle around the wagon. This was
so that they would not get in the way of their comrades’ line of fire.
Then, with the greatest of care, they trained their weapons on those
people and ordered them off the wagon.
“May I know what you gentlemen want? We are travelling merchants; do

you require anything?”
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This humble and polite voice came from the man with the messy
moustache on the driver’s seat.
The members of 1st Team took aim at his crotch.
Imperial soldiers were adept at the use of the sword and spear, and their
defensive techniques were comparable to that of a skilled boxer. Thus,
they were trained to respond quickly to attacks aimed at their heads and
chests. However, the abdomen and groin could not move without the
help of the legs. Thus, they had lower mobility, and were easier targets
even in the heat of battle.
“Why were you fleeing?”
The squad leader began his interrogation while maintaining a separation

of several paces.
The messy-moustached man seemed to be the representative of his

group. He shrugged and replied:
“Is that not obvious?! We were passing by this village, and then we
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1784
found smoke rising from it. We wanted to see what was going on, but
then we discovered that the village was in this state. Nothing good will
come of being involved with this sort of thing, so running away would
make sense, right...?”
In short, the man was mumbling about how the village had already been
like this when they had gotten there.
It was a plausible enough reason. But if they let them go just like that,
there would be no point in stopping them. The squad leader reported to
the team leader, and then he asked: “May we inspect your cargo?”
“Ah… ah… well, about that…”
“Or is there something you’d rather not let us see?”
The traders looked to each other, and reluctantly pulled the canvas off
the cargo bed of their wagon.
There was a veritable mountain of furniture, supplies and other

valuables in there. It was hard to tell if they were new or second-hand.
The squad leader gave the pile an once-over before saying:
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“Looks like they were taken from the nearby homes.”
The large container at the base of the cargo bed piqued the squad
leader’s attention. It seemed to be moving, even though nobody was
touching it. He was just about to order them to “open that box up”, but
before that the mustachioed man tried to splutter out some kind of
protest.
“Come on, give us a break, it’s all good merchandise.”
The man sighed, long and deep.
“Well, yes, some of it is slightly used (stolen goods). But we can’t do

business if everyone keeps asking about it.”
“Where were you planning to take these?”
“Anywhere. In times of war, you can sell anything anywhere.”
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“By which you mean?”
“Anything? You can sell anything. Food, furniture, daily necessities,

alcohol too. Slaves as well, by the way. Ah yes, female slaves. Do you
want a woman? We have all sorts here. There’s sure to be one that suits
your tastes in there. We can provide anything —— or anybody —— you
want.”
The moustached man smiled lewdly as he said that.
“If you’re a local trader, you ought to have an Imperial trading permit or
a pass issued by House Formal. Could I take a look at it?”
In response to the squad leader’s question, the trader replied, “Ah, yes,
of course I do.” Then he opened the bag at the driver’s seat.
“Now where did it go? It’s very important, I should have put it in a safe
place. Don’t tell me it vanished all of a sudden. Everyone, please be
patient, if you think this is taking too long, maybe you should go do
something else in the meantime…”
The squad leader said: “It’s fine. There’s no rush. Take your time.”
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The moustached man seemed very nervous, and muttered, “You are
most kind.” His colleagues seemed to be holding their breath as they
watched this.
“Ah, yes, I’ve got it. This is it…”
“You, the representative in front. Bring it here. I permit you to approach

me.”
In accordance with the squad leader’s directions, the representative

produced a piece of folded paper. The squad leader looked at it and
noticed reddish-black stains on the edges.
“This has been stained by blood.”
“No, no, I cut my hand recently, and then I touched it…”
The moustached man waved his hands as he said this.
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“Gregor Benton, I presume?”
“Gregory Ha Bayton. That is my name.”
The moustached man had a look on his face which said “I won’t fall for
that”.
“That should be it, right? It’s the real thing, right?”
Indeed, this was a genuine pass issued by House Formal. That said, the
pass only recorded the name of the trader in the language of the Special
Region and Japanese, as well as the goods he traded, and the names of
the nobles who were sponsoring him.
What the squad leader was concerned about was the reports filed with
them when a pass was issued. The people of the Special Region did not
understand the meaning of the barcode at the base of the document.
“This document is genuine.”
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With that, the members of 1st Team visibly relaxed. This was because it
meant that the chances of them being enemies had gone down, while
the probability of them being safe had gone up.
After the squad leader verified the pass’ date of issue, he pointed the
device he was holding at the barcode at the base of the document. A
picture of Gregory Ha Bayton appeared on the device’s LCD screen.
“...Hm~”
The man beside the squad leader glanced at the image, and then told
him in Japanese: “These people are fakes.” The picture displayed was of
an old man that looked completely unlike the moustached man before
him.
The moustached man seemed to have sensed the change in the air, and
began asking if the documentation was incomplete or if it was because
there was blood on it. However, the people behind him could no longer
take the tension in the air. As one, they drew their concealed weapons
and prepared to engage the JSDF servicemen in a life or death melee.
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However, they had anticipated this development. The team members

had already backed off, and they had no difficulty dealing with this
situation.
They shot the armed men in the gut. Said men bent double like they had
been folded in half. Others simply keeled over, and the moustached man
was arrested at gunpoint before he could draw his sword.
“They must be the ones who attacked the village!” one of the team
members shouted at the dead men while pointing at the weapons they
carried.
The swords they held were still stained with blood; blood which probably
belonged to the villagers. The hilt of the sword bore the crest of the
Imperial Army.
“Oi! Hold on, you lot! What are you doing? Massacring civilians!?”
Komurasaki and his cameraman had just rushed over.
“No. These are Imperial guerillas.”
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“Really now? Are you trying to keep us from uncovering the truth about
how you were murdering civilians in cold blood?”
Komurasaki called out to the cameraman, who was filming the

deceased.
“Oi, I want you to get a good shot of the corpses. Make sure you get the
faces. And make sure you don’t put the JSDF insignia or whatever into
it!”
In accordance with Komurasaki’s directions, the cameraman began

recording the Imperial soldiers masquerading as traders.
The squad leader sensed that this might end up making the nightly
news, so he explained the meaning of the bloodstained sword and the
crest of the Imperial Army, and then ordered the captive moustached
man to open the containers and luggage on the wagon.
They opened all the boxes and found bottles of all kinds. After that, the
team members steadily discovered articles of what looked like
camouflage uniform —— speckled green and dark green —— among the
stolen property.
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“Cheh… these Imperial soldiers did their plundering in these clothes,

huh.”
The team members insisted that Komurasaki record that as well.
It did not look like JSDF camouflage battle dress at all, but these things
would be enough for their victims to spread fearful rumors about “the
Men in Green”.
Even Komurasaki could not refute that ironclad evidence.
“You’ve got proof, good for you, then!” Komurasaki said resentfully as
he turned to the cameraman, saying:
“It would seem soldiers of the Imperial Army have disguised themselves
and attacked the village. But was there a need to kill them? The
servicemen of the JSDF did not concern themselves at all with capturing
them to be dealt with by due process, and so I must question their
actions,” and so on.
“We’re not cops,” the members of the squad grumbled. Everyone in the
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1793
group seemed to share that opinion.
The squad leader ordered the moustached man to open the box which
had gotten his attention in the first place.
There was a girl in there, curled up and covered in mud and blood. She
trembled in fear. She seemed to be of a feline species, with a pair of cat
eyes and pointy ears. Her fur was brown and her hands and feet were
tipped in sharp claws, while she had a bamboo flute on her neck.
The squad leader patted her head to comfort her, and asked:
“What’s your name?”
“...Kucy.”
The squad leader turned back to the moustached man, whose arms
were raised high, and loudly demanded:
“Well then, where’s your hideout? Where’s your area of operation? Your
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1794
main force? Don’t worry, we’ll make sure you spit it all out for us!”
It should be emphasised that people who used civilians as cover while

they bombed, shot, and stabbed others had and deserved no rights.
However, the bleeding hearts would probably insist that even people like
these had to be treated like proper prisoners of war.
They would hand the moustached man to House Formal, per their
agreement.
That said, outsiders would not know if being interrogated by them was a
good thing or a bad thing.
The frightened, twitching expression of the moustached man was

dutifully captured on film.
“What? Say again? ...You’ve spotted a pack of Black Dogs near the
village?”
The soldiers went tense as they heard the squad leader’s words.
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“Burack Dawgs?”
(TL Note: The JP is 黑妖犬, which Komurasaki pronounces as こくようけ

ん to show that he has no idea what it means)
Tomita —— who was escorting Komurasaki and the cameraman from

behind —— explained for him.
“They are Special Region Type B Dangerous Beasts, also known as

“Black Dogs”. They look like dogs, but they’re the size of a tiger. They
hunt in packs and they’re coming for us. Recently, Zorzal’s troops have
been using creatures like that as weapons.”
(TL Note: Black Dogs probably refers to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog_(ghost))
Tomita and Kuribayashi formed up on both sides on Komurasaki and

watched their surroundings. Under Nishina’s orders, Tozu and Azuma
formed up to protect the cameraman and the sound technician with his
enormous boom mike.
“This area is very dangerous, let’s go. I’m calling the Chinook to get us.”
“Don’t be foolish! If there’s such a dangerous creature around, what

would we be if we didn’t film it?”
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Komurasaki said that and pointed to the soldiers, who were facing the
west. “Aren’t you all coming with us? We’ll be safe for sure, right?”
However, that was not the case. The commander of the 403rd Squadron
had decided to defeat the monsters that showed themselves.
The Dangerous Beasts of the Special Region were a threat, but they
were not creatures which could be controlled from a distance. Thus, if
they were nearby, it implied that forces of the enemy must be present
as well. Granted, it was very risky, but one had to reach into the fire to
take the chestnuts cooking within. Defeating these creatures would
allow them to exterminate Zorzal’s guerillas.
The leader of 1st Team bundled up the girl and turned her and the
prisoner over to Kuribayashi, saying “Look after them for me” before
rushing off to the west.
“Oi, what do you want me to do with them?”
“Give her milk, duh. Judging by your size, you’ve got a lot in there,
right?”
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“Are you kidding me? I can’t produce milk if I haven’t had a baby!”
Kuribayashi was left dumbfounded, embracing the girl.
On the other hand, Tomita advanced in front of Komurasaki —— who

was intending to move to the frontline —— and spread his arms to block
him.
“Wait, please wait! I told you, we can’t do this!”
Komurasaki jabbed his finger into Tomita’s chest and yelled at him for
getting in the way.
“Your duty as servicemen is to provide the maximum cooperation with

members of the press!”
However, Komurasaki’s shout was drowned out by a thunderous roar

that ripped through the air. A series of explosions went off from the west
side of the village.
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The fire support had begun
The Cobra attack helicopters were ripple-firing their rockets, while the
infantry on the ground opened fire as well. Explosions went off
everywhere, and Tomita and Komurasaki reflexively shrank against
them.
The crawling beasts were torn apart and their blood spurted through the
air. However, the four-legged beasts did not know how to retreat, and
they continued their foolhardy charge by sheer weight of numbers.
“You can still shoot a powerful scene from the air!”
“You can’t compare filming on the ground to filming safely in the air! Our
enemies are just a few dogs; what’s there to be afraid of?”
“There’s a lot to be afraid of! They’re fast, they move low to the ground
and they’re very dangerous. And they hunt in packs!”
As a combat specialist, Tomita swiftly narrated the fearsome nature of

military dogs, which he had picked up in his daily life. He went on to
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inform Komurasaki of exactly how much more dangerous these Black

Dogs were.
A moment’s carelessness might cost them their lives. The enemy was
going to come at them from all sides. There was no safe zone like the
“rear echelon” for them, so finding a place where they would not be
attacked was very difficult.
“And how about that girl? We have to follow you because we’re your
escorts, but if this keeps up, you’ll involve that girl in the fighting too!”
As Tomita asked Komurasaki what they should do about the girl called
Kucy, hesitation crossed Komurasaki’s face for the first time.
The intense downwash churned up the soil.
The Chinook Tomita had called touched down. The rear door opened, as
though welcoming Tomita.
“This is bad! They’re coming, I can see them!” the cameraman shouted
as he studied his viewfinder.
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1800
He had been surveying the world through his high definition camera,
and so he swiftly learned of the enemy’s status.
“Oh, they’re Giant Ogres, and there’s what look like Mammoths among
them. There’s a Special Region monster gallery out there and they’re
coming right for us!”
The forms of heavily-armored Giant Ogres loomed among the bodies of

the countless Black Dogs.
They held clubs that were the size of telephone poles. Anyone foolish
enough to close in with them would be crushed by their tremendous
might.
Lined up into a solid wall, they advanced through the storm of bullets
and shells like heavy infantry. Their presence seemed more oppressive
than that of a tank.
Since they did not have a solid defensive line, the JSDF commander
decided not to take them head on. Instead, he elected to flank the
enemy from both sides and crush them. The soldiers went into action
upon receiving their orders.
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“Hurry! Hurry! We need to be airborne before the next bombardment

starts!”
The airman waved his gun and gestured for them to get on after taking
the captives aboard.
“Just hand the girl to the helicopter. We’ll continue filming on the
ground.”
As he heard Komurasaki’s words, the cameraman looked uneasily at

him. Could he keep up through the repetitious fighting and moving while
carrying his heavy camera? The doubts boiled up in his heart.
“Komurasaki-san, this isn’t good. It’s very dangerous,” the cameraman

ventured, hoping to change the man’s mind.
“You stupid bastard! You’ll never amount to anything because you half-
ass everything!”
Komurasaki cursed and grabbed the cameraman by the collar and

dragged him out in front. They started out toward the frontline, where
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the men of the JSDF were engaging the enemy.
Tomita looked back to Kuribayashi and had her board the Chinook with
the girl.
“What are you going to do?”
“We’ll bring these people back. Please have the helicopter hold station
and support us, if possible!”
“Can’t we just leave these imbeciles behind?” Kuribayashi bellowed.
“Of course we can’t. Lieutenant Itami said so, didn’t he? We’re the JSDF,
loved by the people.”
Tomita smiled and winked, then caressed the head of the girl clinging to
Kuribayashi.
As the large helicopter with Kuribayashi on it lifted off, Tomita smiled

comfortingly as he watched them leave.
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“Ahhh, this is bad. I think I felt something,” Kuribayashi muttered.
She blushed as she watched Tomita hurry toward the frontlines.
***
“This is a good place. There’re gaps all over the wall, just what we need.
We’ll be able to see what’s outside even if we close the door.”
Komurasaki opened the door of the little cottage at the village’s edge
and peered around the inside.
This dwelling place looked crude, as though construction had been

rushed, but it was built to last, and so there were many pillars within.
A winged female lay on the ground where she had been raped. She
appeared to be a resident here. The fact that such a beautiful woman
lived out in the boondocks was quite surprising, but then again, that
might have been what inflamed her attackers’ bestial lusts.
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Beside her was the body of a young man, a sword protruding from his
belly. He appeared to have been trying to protect her.
However, Komurasaki paid the life and origins of these people no heed.
He turned to the cameraman and said:
“Here, Fukushima. Start from here!”
“Ah, we can’t. It’s too dangerous here, Komurasaki-san. Wild beasts are
sensitive to the scent of corpses and they’ll find us.”
“It’ll be fine. There’re corpses everywhere. Once we blend in with the

stink, they won’t find us!”
Komurasaki seemed abnormally excited. As they saw the brilliance of

madness in his eyes, the cameraman and the sound technician could not
help but back away from him. However, they could not flee now, not
even if they wanted. As though to tell them that their time was up, the
Chinook flew over their heads.
In addition, the legion of monsters —— composed largely of Black Dogs
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1805
—— was closing in. Like Komurasaki said, all they could do was hide in
this little hovel and pray the enemies passed them over.
The cameraman and the others —— including Nishina and the other JSDF
servicemen —— rushed into the house and closed the door behind them.
Shortly after that, there was a tremendous crash as a gigantic canine

creature crashed against the door. The savage breathing of the wild
beast and the way it tore at the door filled them with terror, and they
were keenly aware of the dire situation they were in.
“What are you lot doing? Go block the door up!”
They did as Komurasaki indicated and began piling obstacles on the

door.
“Use the bigger pieces of furniture as barricades and put them on the
bottom. Flip the bed over so there’s more surface area in contact with
the ground! Use the logs as wedges to jam it in!”
“Ko-Komurasaki-san, you sound pretty experienced with this sort of

thing,” Matsuzaki of the press team said as he put his mike aside and
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piled the obstacles on.
“Don’t look down on us; we were veterans of the anti-war protests... I’ve
got live combat experience of climbing over chain link fences and
fighting with metal pipes! Bring that wood over and shove it in there!”
(TL Note: This part probably refers to the anti-Vietnam War protests in
Japan which sparked a lot of student violence in universities. The JP uses
the word 全共闘内ゲバ世代)
Everyone piled the furniture up, blocking up the doorway and

obstructing it.
The Chinook hovering overhead launched a fierce attack. Even if it only

made a small difference, Kuribayashi was doing her best to wipe the
monsters out.
However, it was not effective against the heavily armored Giant Ogres.
The bullets simply bounced off them, and their wildly-flailing clubs
smashed through the unoccupied houses nearby and demolished them.
Some of the Ogres even tried throwing their clubs, in the hope of
bringing down the Chinook.
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They missed, but there was a feeling that if they connected, they could
cut the helicopter out of the sky in a single hit. Just watching the scene
made the onlookers break out in a cold sweat.
Komurasaki and the cameraman Fukushima were beside themselves in

ecstasy as they filmed the scene.
“Wonderful, wonderful! How moving! How powerful! We’ve got the

Pulitzer Prize in the bag now!”
“These, these guys are weirdos,” Tomita muttered as he sat down and
watched Komurasaki.
Granted, he had run into the battlefield of his own accord, so he was
hardly normal himself. However, Tomita had discovered that the
creatures called newsmen took that to the next level. They could have
taken a helicopter and gone as they pleased, but instead they recorded
scenes of people about to be killed or swallowed up by disaster. They did
not warn them or aid them, but instead calmly watched from the side,
preserving it for posterity. One could not make a living this way without
being exceptionally cold-hearted.
Newsmen were the people who ordered their pilots to lower altitude so
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they could film trucks and the like being devoured by natural disasters,
but they would never do anything like warn the truck that it was
speeding into danger.
Suddenly, Nishina and the others poked his shoulder with a “Oi, oi,
Tomita.”
What was the matter? Tomita turned, and Master Sergeant Nishina
pointed to the Winged Woman on the ground.
“Look at her.”
“This… this… isn’t this Tuwal-san?”
The name from Leading Private Azuma’s lips sounded familiar.
“Eh?” Tomita went as he got closer and looked at the woman’s face.
She was Tuwal, the Harpy from Akusho who had foretold the
earthquake. She had left the Imperial Capital with her lover to live her
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life correctly in a frontier village.
Tomita gently prodded her still-warm cheek.
Was she alive, or was she dead?
Cough.
Though it was weak, there was a reaction from Tuwal.
“She, she’s still alive!”
“Ohh, she’s still alive?!”
Nishina and the others cheered up immediately, now that they knew
that she could be saved. However, the weak flame of her life was on the
verge of guttering out. They had to get her to medical treatment as soon
as possible.
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“If this keeps up, she’ll die!”
“Nishina-san, there’s no time.”
Nishina nodded in response to Tozu and Azuma’s words.
“All right! Tomita, get the Chinook. We’re getting out of here!”
However, Komurasaki protested Master Sergeant Nishina’s decision.
“Are you retarded? You’re telling me we’re going out now?”
There was no doubt that the monsters roaming outside would spot them
if they left.
Even an amateur like him knew that the four JSDF servicemen here
could not stand against that alarming horde outside.
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“So you want us to abandon this girl?! You lot go on and on about how
we take life and death into our own hands, but aren’t you just as
ruthless yourselves?”
However, Komurasaki tried to deflect the matter away from himself.
“Why don’t you consider your priorities? Saving a dying girl of the
Special Region is very important, but are you telling me that you want to
endanger Japanese citizens like ourselves to save her? Really, you lot
care more about them than your own people.”
Nishina and Komurasaki glared at each other.
However, Tomita separated the two of them.
“It’s fine. We can get her to the chopper without going outside.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“We punch a hole in the ceiling. Then we put her on a rope.”
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1812
Tomita pointed to the ceiling, and then turned a disdainful eye to

Komurasaki.
“We’re not the IJA of the past. I will show you what it means to be a
modern man of the JGSDF.”
***
Putting a hole in the half-wrecked ceiling was not very difficult. First,
they opened fire on the ceiling struts to cut them, then climbed up the
pillars to prise open the roof timbers.
However, as they hacked away at the support frame of the crudely-built

cottage, the walls that had felt sturdy until just now began to waver. It
would seem this house was supported by that frame. Without it, the
hovel began to shake like a two-bit stage prop.
In addition, the Chinook conducting the helicopter casualty evacuation

seemed to have gotten the monsters’ attention. Monsters flooded
toward the house from all sides, and a rain of 120mm mortars pelted
down on their heads.
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1813
Dust flew everywhere, and these fiends of the Special Region were
blown to smithereens and buried under the dirt.
The airborne Cobras fired their rockets, raking them over the armored
Ogres.
In the face of the spine-chilling explosions and the no-longer reliable

wall, Komurasaki covered his ears and shouted, “Son of a bitch, it won’t
hold!”
The snouts of the Black Dogs began poking in through the gaps in the
walls. The startled cameraman scrambled back in fear and fell flat on his
butt.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Tomita raised his rifle —— with bayonet affixed —— and fired it as soon
as the blade bit into the beast’s flesh. The recoil helped him wrench his
bayonet loose, and it had certainly dealt his foe a wound.
Tomita and the others opened fire through the walls —— at the beasts
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1814
poking their noses through it —— to keep them away.
“You’re up next.”
Komurasaki raised his head as he heard Nishina’s voice. He saw Tozu,

carrying Tuwal from behind, being winched into the Chinook.
“You, go!”
Komurasaki pointed out Matsuzaki the sound technician as the next

evacuee. Nishina passed the rope under Matsuzaki’s armpits and
secured it.
“Fukushima, your turn.”
“Ko-Komurasaki-san, what about you?””
“I’ll be the last of the civilians to go. Say what you will, I’m one of the
people in charge here. Make sure you get a good shot of me coming up.”
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1815
Before he finished, there was a sound like a dump truck smashing into
the shaking house.
Dust and wood chips rained down from above. The walls creaked and
split, and a gigantic monster which looked like a rhino was visible
through the gaps in the wall. It was trying to break through the walls
with its thick and sharp horn.
Tomita deftly changed out his magazine and fired on it.
The rhino-like monster was riddled with bullets and fell back as a corpse.
However, the hole in the wall it had made became an entry point, and
the monsters swarmed in. Among them were the forms of the rare Trolls
and Kobolds.
Private Azuma pulled his trigger and ran dry of rounds in no time.
Panicked, he worked to change his empty magazine, but as he did, an

axe-wielding Goblin closed in on him.
Tomita drew his sidearm and fired at the Goblin’s belly over Azuma’s
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1816
shoulder. Once it was on the ground, he kicked and kicked at it, then
raised his pistol at the Troll crawling over the corpse into the breach.
Azuma had finished reloading in this time, and renewed his shooting. He
and Tomita covered each other while they were reloading, in a
spectacular display of effective support fire.
Fortunately, their enemies were not that smart.
Now that there was a gap, they single-mindedly tried to break through it.
Thus, all they had to do was hold the line there and they could keep
them at bay.
“All right, we’re next.”
He glanced behind him, seeing Komurasaki’s legs vanish through the

hole in the ceiling.
“Rope extraction! The two of you are going up together!”
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1817
With that, Nishina tied the ropes to Azuma and Tomita, who were too
busy shooting to do it themselves.
“All right! Do it!”
In response to Nishina’s roar over the radio, the Chinook suddenly

ascended at a speed of 600 meters per minute.
The three of them soared into the air above the little house at an
alarming rate.
They pointed their muzzles down, expending all their remaining

ammunition in their former perimeter. Then, as a farewell gift, they
dropped all their grenades below them.
Below their eyes, the little cottage collapsed under the explosions,
burying many monsters underneath.
An F-4 Phantom passed Tomita and the others as they rose. It dropped
napalm bombs, instantly turning the battlefield into an inferno.
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The stench of monsters burning and their cries of pain echoed through
the land.
If one looked into the distance, one could see 403rd Squadron heading
toward the place where the monsters had come from. From the air,
there was a formation of Imperial troops with their banners waving.
*************************************************************************
The Imperial troops knew that the operation was a failure, and decided
to flee.
Their plan was to attack the frontier village, then attack the Japanese
troops that showed up while posing as traders and villagers, and then
bring in their monster army during the confusion.
However, the technique had only worked the first few times they tried it.
The enemy had instantly improved their response rate, and even their
main force had been discovered. Now, they were the ones being
hounded instead.
Helm, the guerilla leader, had no choice but to find another way. He
spurred his horse on as he agonized over the problem.
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1819
“Flee into the forest! You’ll be found more easily if you scatter!”
That said, the soldiers naturally wanted to run in all directions. They felt
that since the enemy was hunting down their formation, then leaving the
group might give them a better chance of survival. However, once they
dispersed, they would not be able to participate in future battles.
He felt that the monsters running beside his horse were an eyesore, but
at the moment they were necessary for Zorzal’s forces.
“Eh, it can’t be helped.’
Helm stopped his horse and produced a flute from an inner pocket.
“General, do you plan to use the trump card you have in store?”
One of his adjutants asked him that as he bellowed at his men not to
scatter.
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1820
As Helm played an inaudible note, he paused briefly to respond, “This is

to save our lives too. It might not do much, but I want to give the enemy
some trouble.”
After saying that, Helm continued playing the silent flute.
*************************************************************************
After being taken into the Chinook, Tomita was so tired that he was laid
out and panting on the floor of the cabin, but he managed to proudly ask
Komurasaki: “Heh… how about that? ...Did you see that!?”
A visibly displeased Komurasaki replied, “Aye, I did. I saw it all. The

soldiers don’t protect the people. That’s what I believe, and I won’t back
down on it. But you guys aren’t regular soldiers. To be precise, you’re
men of the JSDF… oi, what are you filming? Don’t film me!”
Komurasaki glared at Fukushima the cameraman, who was grinning

while training the lens on him.
He was probably upset by someone recording himself agreeing with

Tomita, and gently pushed the camera away.
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1821
However, the cameraman instead continued filming the floor of the

Chinook.
“Oi! What’s going on?!”
Fukushima stared at his camera. His entire body was stiff, fresh blood
leaked from his mouth, and he collapsed onto the ground.
As Komurasaki looked at the spreading patch of reddish black, he

screamed,
“What the hell is going on?!”
At some point, a large monster had appeared behind Fukushima the

cameraman.
The monster had plunged its thick claws into Fukushima’s back. It was
croaking and screeching even as it grew larger.
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1822
Its limbs were sheathed in rippling muscle, and its claws were growing
ever longer and sharper. It was clearly bad news.
Its fur was brown and tan. Its face was savage, a carnivore that was
neither feline nor canine. However, its chest was a clear sign that it was
female. That strangely human-like feature made them think it might
have human blood in its veins.
Kucy had been a little girl until recently, but her head now touched the
ceiling of the Chinook, forcing it to hunch over as it grew to a great size.
The Chinook’s ceiling had never been high to begin with, and this forced
the large monster to curl up into a ball. There was no trace of reason in
its eyes, only base savagery.
Nishina and the other servicemen could only stare dumbfoundedly,

unable to move as the girl turned into a monstrous beast.
They could not open fire from this position.
The creature was coming from the front of the aircraft, where the
cockpit was. If they missed, they might end up shooting into the cockpit,
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1823
where they would most likely hit the pilot or an important flight system.
The monstrous Kucy swiped with her powerful limbs at anything she
saw.
Matsuzaki was still cradling his boom mike when he was knocked back
by the fearsome power of that hand, and he flew out the rear door of the
cabin, which had not yet been fully closed.
“Ah, aieeeee!!!!!!”
Scared senseless by this scene, Komurasaki collapsed just as he was

about to rise.
Fortunately for him, it meant that the monster’s arm swiped a head’s
distance above him. It would seem the creature prioritized nearby
targets over distant ones, and Komurasaki was next.
The monster raised an arm, and it whistled through the air to carve a
chunk out of Komurasaki’s flesh...
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1824
Just as that was about to happen, the sound of a heavy metallic impact
rang out, and Komurasaki’s body slid toward the back of the cabin.
Kuribayashi warded off the monster’s claw with a reverse-gripped knife.
“Ku-Kuribayashi!” Tomita shouted.
“Protect Tuwal and Komurasaki-san!” she shouted back.
Tomita picked up his rifle and grabbed Tuwal, while Nishina dragged
Komurasaki by the lapels toward the rear of the craft. Still, they could
only bring them to the rear hatch; any further and they would be
outside, which meant an assuredly fatal fall.
Kuribayashi cast aside her gouged helmet and faced the beast head on.
The helmet could not stop the creature’s claws, and blood dripped from
her forehead, down her cheek, and stained the tip of her combat boots.
Kuribayashi wiped the blood from her forehead with her sleeve, standing
with her knife ready as she carefully studied Kucy for weaknesses.
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1825
“You looked like such a cute kid… to think your true form was a monster
like this. You really pulled a fast one on us, huh?”
Confused, the monster looked at the tiny female human fighting back
against it.
The difference between their physical statures was readily apparent. The
conclusion was clear to all, even if they did not fight. Still, that little body
did not flee, but strode forward in challenge. The creature could not
understand that.
“Haaaaaaaaah!”
With a great cry, Kuribayashi brandished her knife and lunged in for an
attack.
A high-pitched sound rang out as the knife hit the beast’s claw.
Kuribayashi worked her knife again. That shrill sound echoed through
the cabin once more, and sparks flew as steel met claw.
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1826
The monster bared its fangs to frighten its foe, swinging its arms with
brute force.
Kuribayashi dropped to the ground, rolling to avoid the steadily

advancing swipes of its claws. She slipped past the thrust of the attack
and worked her way into her opponent’s reach before initiating melee
combat, slashing and stabbing at her foe with her knife.
Every time they clashed, new wounds appeared on both sides, and their
blood flowed freely.
Kuribayashi’s arms and legs were covered in injuries.
Similarly, the monster’s hide sprouted cuts and stabs, its purplish-black
blood staining its fur.
Kuribayashi stripped off her heavy body armor, as though finding it

bothersome. She toyed with the beast with nimble movements, feinting
several times and taking advantage of her foe’s momentary openings to
close the distance and go for the kill.
However, the monster swung its mighty arm, and tossed Kuribayashi
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1827
into the wall of the cabin like it was brushing the dust away.
“Kuh!”
Unable to defend herself, Kuribayashi slowly slumped to the ground after

hitting the wall.
The monster’s left armpit seemed to have been cut up, and unable to
bear the pain, it went to one knee while moaning.
Then, it pounced on Kuribayashi, as though saying, “You put up one hell

of a fight!”
However, Azuma, Tozu, Tomita and the others raised their bayonets and
counter-charged it.
Their lunge did not harm the monster, but it protected Kuribayashi.
Angered by the interference of the three males, Kucy released a

deafening ululation, flailing its arms wildly. Those sharp claws broke the
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1828
Chinook’s windows and slashed through the interior of the cabin.
After shaking her head dizzily, Kuribayashi swiftly inverted her hands
like a gymnast performing her floor exercises and shoved up from under
the monster’s jaw. The beast’s head collided with the low ceiling, while
its chin was wounded from being attacked from below.
Kuribayashi then continued her combination attack. Unable to bear it,

the creature drew its arms back to defend itself. It was then that
Kuribayashi drove her knife’s blade into the tip of its elbow.
“The ulnar nerve, or the funny bone… Well, if you cut that on a human,
their arm becomes useless. What about a monster like you?”
Even when a person fully relaxed their arm, there was still a bit of
tension in their muscles. This was called muscle tone.
An arm could move freely because of the balance between contracting

and relaxing muscles. If one severed the relaxing muscle fibers, then all
the contractile muscle could do was kink up, unable to perform any
movements. The reason why people with neuromuscular paralysis had
their strange, hook-handed posture was because of this reason.
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1829
The monster, whose arm was curled up into what looked like an eagle’s
claw, swung at Kuribayashi with its left arm. However, with only one
usable arm, more openings appeared in its stance.
Kuribayashi leapt back to avoid the beast’s claw, and then shouted:
“Pilot-san! When I give the signal, reverse the chopper!”
“...What do you plan to do?!”
“Shut up! Just back it up! I’m going to toss this bastard out!”
As Nishina heard this, he clutched Tuwal tightly, and indicated that

Tomita, Komurasaki and the others should hold on tight so as not to be
thrown out.
Kuribayashi stood on her palms like a gymnast, and her swinging legs
swept at Kucy’s left arm, which was braced against the ground.
With all her weight on that arm, Kucy found itself striking the ground. It
hurt so much that it grit its teeth in pain. However, it immediately rose
to its feet while extending that arm; it planned to seize Kuribayashi with
that arm.
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1830
That was the moment Kuribayashi was aiming for. She charged into the
creature’s unprotected bosom.
“Now!”
With that, she executed a shoulder throw toward the rear of the
Chinook.
However, Kucy pressed her weight on Kuribayashi’s body, squashing her

from above.
Kuribayashi could not finish the throw, and ended up being pressed from
above by the monster’s massive body.
As the ground suddenly pitched under its feet, Kucy scrabbled at the
craft’s interior to avoid being tossed out. Then, it bared its fangs at
Kuribayashi and drew close, intending to chew on her head.
“However strong you are, I’m still not lez!”
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1831
Kuribayashi desperately pushed Kucy’s face away.
“Gaaahhhh, if you want a kiss so bad, go find a man to give you one!”
However, Kuribayashi could not defeat that preternatural strength. She

twisted her head aside to avoid that drooling tongue and that lower jaw
covered in sharp teeth, screaming “Noooo!”
“Kuribayashi!”
Now that the helicopter was canted back at an angle, it was all Tomita
and the others could do to keep Komurasaki and Tuwal from falling.
They could only watch all of this impotently.
Just as those teeth were about to touch Kuribayashi’s face, she delivered
a mighty head butt to the universal weakness of all monsters —— their
snouts.
“Ahhhhh, what a pain!”
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1832
Agony coursed through Kucy’s nose, and it could not help but twist its
head aside. In the moment that it jerked its body away, Kuribayashi
scrabbled free of its vast body, then twined her legs around its neck and
executed a choke from behind its back.
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1833
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1834
“Fall, damn you!”
In the face of this sudden reversal, Kucy tried to shake Kuribayashi off. It
suddenly rose up and bashed its head against the ceiling.
Kucy’s head and Kuribayashi’s body collided with the ceiling. As that
frightening sound rang through the cabin, Kucy’s massive body slid
toward the open rear hatch.
The unconscious Kuribayashi fell toward the outside as well.
Tomita desperately lunged at Kuribayashi. Azuma and Tozu reached out

to grab Tomita’s legs. By the narrowest of scrapes, Tomita’s fingertips
touched Kuribayashi’s bandolier and tightened around it.
Perhaps it was because of the shock of the impact, but the pilot quickly
levelled out the Chinook.
The monster was still gripping at the cabin, hanging from the edge of
the hatch. It looked like it was trying to climb aboard with just its left
arm.
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1835
Tozu and the others saw this and tried to kick it off, lashing out
repeatedly with their combat boots. The monster struggled desperately
to resist in its desire to not be thrown off, but then Tomita aimed his
9mm pistol at it.
“So long!”
The series of bullets turned Kucy’s face into a pomegranate. Even so, it
emitted a mighty bestial howl, its limbs flailing as it fell.
As Kuribayashi came to, she was congratulated by everyone in

awestruck tones: “You really are one hell of a woman.”
“Where is this?”
It would seem she had bumped her head, so her memories were unclear.
Her vision was blurred and her head was spinning.
“Are you all right? Do you remember us? Who am I? Don’t be like that!”
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1836
Tomita and the others showered Kuribayashi with thumps on the

shoulder, until she winced in pain. However, that brought her memories
back to her in short order, and she remembered where she was.
“Ouch! I hurt everywhere, don’t be so rough with me!”
“Sorry, sorry. But really, you were amazing out there.”
Kuribayashi smiled as she heard Tomita’s words.
“So you’ve fallen for me? Why don’t we go out?”
Kuribayashi said this in a joking tone, because she knew Tomita was
already attached. This was not just because it was alright to be rejected,
but because she wanted to gamble on a million to one chance that he
would be up for it. However, the answer was evident enough; yet Tomita
responded in a way which Kuribayashi had not expected at all.
“Ah, I can’t. You see, I’m going to get married after this war is over.”
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1837
The cabin fell into silence.
“Eh…”
Nishina and the others went pale. Kuribayashi shivered as she realised
the dire situation her careless words had wrought.
“You… you!”
“That… that’s a…”
“Death flag!”
Indeed. It was an ironclad rule that anyone who said “I’m getting
married after this war is over”, “We’re having kids after this” and the
like would undoubtedly meet a tragic fate. Then there were things like,
“I’ll hold them off, you guys go ahead first”, a line which was widely
known to spell certain doom for the speaker.
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1838
Itami had forbidden these words; he had banned them with all the
censor-happy fervor of the People’s Republic of China. It was on the level
of receiving a “this search result has been removed due to relevant
legislation” when Googling it. Yet, Tomita had uttered that line in the
end.
Kuribayashi realised that she was responsible for that, and naturally, she
cowered in fear.
“What, what should we do?!”
She was more panicked than she had been while fighting the monster.
As he saw her like that, Tomita replied:
“Ah, don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine. It’s just a superstition, nothing
more.”
“That’s no good. We have to get back to the el-tee.”
“Him? You mean Itami? Wha? Why?”
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1839
“Itami will surely know a way around this!” Kuribayashi declared. A man
who lived a hacked life like his would surely be able to snap a death flag
like that in half while chuckling.
The more she thought about that, the more Kuribayashi obsessed about
the death flag she had raised with Tomita.
*************************************************************************
Chateau Formal had never been this busy before.
“Zorzal imprisoned the Emperor and Princess. They were rescued with
the aid of the JSDF, and now Italica is officially the new Imperial Capital.”
Because of that pronouncement, the chateau was now a temporary royal
palace, which meant that the senators and their families flocked to the
new capital in great numbers.
The first thing that the legitimate government of the Empire would do
was build an army to retake the Imperial Capital.
However, the pro-peace faction and all their banner lords could not
scrape up enough troops to resist Zorzal. Thus, they had sent envoys to
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1840
all manner of nations and former vassals, and even to the demihumans
that they had formerly scorned. The government promised to elevate
their status in exchange for military aid.
Now that Italica was a temporary royal palace and also a military
headquarters, a massive tent garrison had sprung up outside the city.
The canteens and taverns lining the streets were filled with soldiers of
every race and species. While they could be more relaxed with the
enlisted ranks, commanders and other high-ranking senior officers had
to be treated politely, so the maids of House Formal were kept busy
round the clock, with hardly any time to catch their breath.
The few human maids of House Formal were hard-pressed to handle the
tasks of proper service by themselves. So the demihuman maids ——
not very presentable in Imperial high society —— were mobilized to help
them. The cat-eyed and bespectacled Persia, the Warrior Bunny Mamina,
Aurea the Medusa and so on had to receive guests of all sorts and
complete various tasks.
Aurea the Medusa’s crimson hair snakes twisted back and forth like
tentacles as she rushed into the kitchen and shouted, “Head maid, it’s
terrible! It’s horrible!”
The head maid was commanding from the kitchen, alternating between
castigating the chefs for insufficient skill and scolding the maids
receiving guests for being improperly dressed.
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1841
“Head Maid, His Majesty is looking for you!”
It would seem the “terrible” thing had nothing to do with the withered
man enfolded by those crimson hair snakes.
Was he young, or was he old? He was mummified now, so that could not
be seen. However, his sex could at least be told from his clothing. A
careful look at his face would tell that there was no misery or fear on his
face; he had gone to the gods with a look of supreme bliss on his face.
The Head Maid wrinkled her brows.
“Aurea, have the mice been getting in again?”
Catching the mice was all well and good, but that meant the kitchen
would get dirty. How could she bring a corpse here? The Head Maid
delivered all this and more in a quiet voice.
However, Aurea did not seem to mind and delightedly replied:
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1842
“I found a mouse and caught him and drained him dry. I’m so happy I
got to eat my fill!”
How much life-force had she absorbed? Aurea’s skin was shiny and
radiant. Her crimson pupils were narrowed and she was all smiles.
“Please do so in moderation. Once you’re used to gourmet meals, it will

be hard to bear when you can no longer indulge yourself.”
“I understand. I’ll try to hold myself back.”
Aurea’s hair drooped, as though displaying her depressed mood. She

dumped the mummified man to the ground, where the maids would
dispose of it as a piece of litter.
“Then, who sent this one?”
Aurea looked like she could not harm a fly, but in truth, she was a
vampire —— or rather, she was a thief of “essence”.
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1843
She did not feed using brute force and sharp teeth to tear her prey to
shreds. Instead, she used her doll-like beauty and cuteness to lure her
prey, before binding them with her serpentine hair tentacles and sucking
them dry, much like an insectivorous plant.
Without sharp claws or fangs, she instead used pleasure to keep her
prey from fleeing.
Once those tentacles touched her victims, they would drown in that
hellish pleasure and lose the ability to fight back. By the time they
realised the fact, their souls would have been squeezed dry and they
would shortly become residents of the netherworld. In addition, Aurea
could look through the memories of her victims. There was no way to
hide anything contained within the mind from her. That said, Aurea
could not memorize every single detail, so she only remembered the
information she was concerned about.
“This man was the minion of someone called Bouro. He was planning to
poison the food.”
The Head Maid sighed as she heard Aurea’s report. “As I thought…”
“It seems we can’t do anything before catching this Bouro person.”
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1844
Aurea nodded in agreement.
The Head Maid sighed again, and then she pulled herself together.
“Anyway, you came here because His Majesty was looking for me. I shall
go at once. Mome, Aurea, you two will follow me as well. Hurry!”
As the aged Head Maid said that, she forcefully gathered up her skirts.
Then, she sprinted through the hallways with a vigor that did not match
her age, as though something terrible had happened. She was trailed by
her trusted Mome and Aurea.
Mamina the Warrior Bunny hurriedly ducked out of her way along the
corridor.
Persia the bespectacled Catgirl maid was sending dirty dishes back to
the kitchen. She swiftly stepped around them with a spectacular pivoting
turn, maintaining her balance on the stacked dishes as her skirts
fluttered up around her. Her comrades applauded this feat, which would
not have been out of place in a talent show or a circus act.
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Like a rising tide, the Head Maid ran to the door of the suite on the top
floor, and then took deep breaths to calm her panting. She swiftly wiped
her sweat and inspected her bearing to ensure she was presentable.
Mome and Aurea also helped adjust each other’s clothing.
Pina’s female knights stood guard on either side of the door, without
moving a single muscle.
Though they looked at her with sympathy, the Head Maid swiftly
regained her serious demeanour. Perhaps it was a natural born ability or
some sort of special skill, but her sweat immediately stopped flowing, as
though a tap had been turned off.
She opened the door, first announcing, “Your servant presents herself in
response to Your Majesty’s summons” before entering.
Emperor Molt lay on the large bed. Count Marx, his regent and the
Japanese ambassador Sugawara stood by his side.
“Your servant presents herself in response to Your Majesty’s summons.”
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1846
The Emperor looked to the Head Maid who served him, and then
introduced Sugawara to her.
“This is Sugawara-dono, the ambassador from Japan. He will be staying

here for some time, so I hope you will arrange quarters for him. I
understand that this is an imposition, but I hope you will find a way to
accommodate him.”
Those were the Emperor’s words, but still, the Head Maid’s expression
quivered.
Chateau Formal was already home to far more guests than it had been
designed for. They had run out of space to accommodate the Imperial
senators and various nobles, so the government had begun
requisitioning the homes of wealthy farmers and nobles in the city, as
well as those civilian homes which looked presentable.
Even the tent city outside the walls of Italica was emblazoned with the
banners of the various nobles in residence.
Though Sugawara was only one person, arranging a room for him under
the present circumstances was still very difficult.
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1847
Therefore, when Sugawara said, “There is no need to worry, Your

Majesty. I have already found a room of my own in the city”, even the
Head Maid sighed audibly, a clear breach of etiquette.
“Oh? May I know where you are taking residence?”
Still, nobody noticed the head maid’s gaffe. This was because Count
Marx’s question drew everyone’s attention. The way he asked his
question seemed to be a clear attempt to ask if an outsider like
Sugawara could find a place to stay in Italica. It was highly
discomforting.
“Well, we are quite hampered ourselves. If there is a large place like that
around, I was wondering if you could share the details with us.”
“The truth is, I reached out to a merchant I knew and borrowed the
corner of a warehouse from them. Under these circumstances, being
able to sleep without fear of wind or rain is the most important thing; all
other considerations are secondary. Granted, it is somewhat cramped,
but it is still better than my dormitory as a student.
The Emperor nodded in relief.
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1848
“Wonderful. I feared that slighting the emissary of Nihon would result in

our reputation being dragged through the gutter, so I made an
unreasonable request of yourself, Head Maid. Now, there is nothing to
worry about, so I rescind that order of mine.”
With that, the Emperor permitted the head maid to leave.
“Still, you must not act incautiously around the Nihonjin. They have
secretly forged relationships with the merchants of our Empire. We must
be on our guard.”
“Ah, Count Marx. That’s enough of that sort of thing.”
“But we’ve been surrounded by the pro-Nihon faction before we knew.”
“What are you saying at this point in time? Ever since we asked the
Nihonjin for help in fleeing the Imperial Capital, have we not already
been in their midst? Am I wrong, Head Maid?”
“Of course not, Your Majesty. That is exactly the case.”
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1849
The Head Maid turned back to confirm that just as she was about to
leave the room.
“Look now, Italica is now heavily influenced by Nihon.”
The Head Maid explained herself as she saw the upset and angry look on
Count Marx’s face.
“The blame for that can be laid on the ones who snuck their filthy rats
into House Formal, pardon me for being blunt, in the hopes of doing ill to
Your Majesty. If I may dare to say so, perhaps the good Count might do
well to work with Nihon to fight against these petty villains.”
Delilah’s attempted murder of a Japanese citizen had put House Formal

in a dilemma. The only way for them to clear their names was to root out
the underground organization responsible, which meant working with
the Japanese. As a result, the House had built a close relationship with
the Japanese, to the point where they could be considered
representatives of the Japanese government.
Count Marx was clearly displeased by this, but in the end, he could only
say “Forget it” and show how he was swallowing that bitter pill.
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1850
The fact was that the Imperial administration had found its footing due
to the cooperation of House Formal and the Japanese government.
“Then, how goes the war? Can we retake the Capital?” the Emperor
asked.
Marx reported that the loyalists were mounting an attack to retake the
Imperial Capital. The 5000 prisoners of war released by the Japanese
government formed the core of a semblance of an army.
However, Zorzal’s troops were regulars, boasting superior fighting

ability. They could not make any progress even if the path to attack the
enemy was clear.
“We are reconstituting the 2nd Army. Once we can get our
reinforcements to the frontlines, we should be able to bring our elites
near the Capital.”
The Emperor chuckled at Marx’s overly optimistic statement, even

though he knew that there were things that Marx could not mention.
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1851
“And what of the battle in the shadows?”
The Head Maid reported that over 50 people had tried to infiltrate the
Chateau or incite an uprising in Italica ever since Emperor Molt had
made his base in Italica.
“We’ve already discovered several rats trying to infiltrate the feast. Just
now, we caught someone trying to poison the food in the stores.
However, Aurea was waiting there and eliminated him.”
Aurea nodded in silence. She looked like nothing more than an adorable
blossom of a girl, so long as she held her peace and kept to herself. The
Emperor was captivated by her charms, but his knowledge of the Venus’
flytrap nature of Medusas put a complex expression on his face.
After that, he considered why the previous Lord Formal had taken this
Medusa into his household. If… perhaps… yes, that must have been it. If
one could arrange for her to siphon essence under the conditions of
“don’t kill your partner” or “don’t harm them”, surely one would be able
to enjoy the most exquisite ecstasy. It would certainly be worth it.
The hellish pleasure of legend. It held a demonic charm; the temptation

of experiencing sex which would drain one’s strength dry, to the point of
death.
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1852
“Aurea, is it? Could you tell me about the relationship between yourself
and your previous master?”
The Emperor was unsure of how to bring the subject up.
Depending on her answer, he might consider keeping her around to

serve him.
“We are currently keeping an eye on spies in the chateau. We shall

exterminate them when the time is right.”
However, the Head Maid seemed to have sensed the Emperor’s

intentions, and interrupted his train of thought.
If she were a human noblewoman; no, even if she were a demihuman

maid, she would have sent them over to serve the Emperor in his bed if
they caught his interest. However, Aurea was the only person that she
could not permit to go.
“Are these people Zorzal’s men?” the Emperor murmured.
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1853
Count Marx nodded.
“They might be agents of other countries, but in all likelihood, it is as

Your Majesty says.”
Italica —— the temporary Imperial Capital —— was the target of a

clandestine campaign by Zorzal. There was an offensive underway, and
the fighting was intense. Thus, Aurea was a valuable combat unit; she
could not be removed from the frontline.
That said...
“Your Majesty. There were those with incurable illnesses, or wounds

which would not heal, who feared death, or who were in pain… the old
Master gave me the task of laying them to rest with the tenderest of
mercies.”
Aurea sensed the look in the Emperor’s eyes as he looked at her.
Sadly, many people looked at her the same way. More accurately, it had
been like this before she came here. This was the reason why Medusas
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1854
were treated as an unclean race; why they were ostracized and

disdained.
“Is that so. Sooner or later, the day will come when I will fear for my own
end. When that time comes, I hope you will aid me as well.”
“I understand.”
The Emperor sighed deeply, and said, “Go then. Do battle with the
enemy.”
***
“There’s someone who’s not on the guest list. He’s currently in the
western corner of the great hall.”
The Warrior Bunny Mamina heard the voice in her earpiece, and led her
subordinate battle maids to quietly encircle the rats who had snuck into
the feast.
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1855
With cultured, practiced grace, Mamina shrouded the murderous intent

in her heart with a tender smile. Balancing a drinking-laden tray in one
hand, she approached her target and asked, “Would you care for some
refreshment?”
Panic flashed momentarily across the man’s face, but Mamina’s warm
smile seemed to put him at ease.
“Thank you,” he said as he helped himself to a wineglass of amber-

colored liquid.
“It’s quite rare to see a Warrior Bunny as a maid.”
“About four-fifths of House Formal’s maids are demihumans. If I may be

so rude, may I ask whose household you hail from?”
“I am Nikas. I am a butler of Baron Monterey.”
The man glibly answered Mamina’s question —— it would seem he had

prepared for this.
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1856
Baron Monterey was one of the few members of the neutral faction, but
he had declared his loyalty for the Emperor. He and his personal troops
had arrived at Italica recently. Since he was new here, nobody
recognized him. Thus, most people would let him off after light
questioning because of that.
“He’s lying. Baron Monterey has a man called Nikas on his staff, but his
face is completely different from this guy.”
A man’s voice pointed out the lie through the background radio chatter.
Looking up, one could see countless cameras installed in the chateau’s
ceiling, observing every corner of the building. The computer located in
a different room compared the guests to their mugshots, picking out
anyone suspicious.
To the enemies who did not know of such technology, Italica and
Chateau Formal were nothing less than the gates of hell. Spies checked
in —— they did not check out.
Mamina smiled. “Nikas-sama, you’re quite a handsome fellow. Would

you mind sharing a word with me in private?”
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1857
She closed the distance between the two of them, until their chests were
almost touching, and whispered sweetly into his ear, as though her voice
was going to melt into it.
“M-me?”
“Indeed. Do you know of a custom of the Warrior Bunnies? When we see

a handsome man, we won’t let them go. What do you think of… tender
love in a private corner?”
Mamina turned pleading eyes on the man, who was immobile on account
of being charmed by her.
The pain in his belly told him to keep still and remain silent, and that he
had better be careful even of his breathing.
The man’s eyes slowly left Mamina’s and wandered downwards.
Past those ample peaks, he finally saw the tips of a pair of daggers
pressed against him.
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The man was encircled from the front and rear by maids, as though he
was their plaything. One might envy his position, but the truth was, he
had blades resting on him from three different directions. His situation
was dire indeed.
“Then, please come this way.”
“...Is, is there some kind of mistake? I’m not into this sort of play…”
“There’s no point acting dumb. I hope you’ll tell us your name and who
sent you. Let me get this out of the way first; our house counts a Medusa
as one of its vassals, so resistance is futile.”
And so, yet another spy was brought out of the great hall with a stiff
smile on his face.
If he were a rookie spy who yielded quickly to torture, he would probably

be sentenced to forced labor in the quarries or in some mine. If he was a
hardened agent who refused to talk, he would be fed to Aurea, where he
would be squeezed dry even as he rolled around in pleasure.
The man began trying to explain himself once they reached the empty
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1859
corridor.
“Wait, wait a minute. I am a spy, but not from the Crown Prince. I’ve
always wanted to pledge my loyalty to His Majesty. It’s true. I can hail
the Emperor if you want, or curse Zorzal’s name for as long as you like.”
“So stop wasting time and give us your name and allegiance.”
“I can’t do that. My job is to sweep the interior for traitors. It’s true. Your
sentries do good work; they found me out right away. Well done. It was a
flawless display, I’d give you full marks for it.”
“Thank you for your praise. However, if you don’t tell us who you work
for, we can’t trust you. Do you think we’re stupid enough to be content
with that?”
“Is that so? Yes… all right, I got it, I got it. My name and allegiance, is
that it?”
Mamina stopped, and waited for the man to speak.
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1860
“My name is Nora. In truth, I am one of Count Marx’s men.”
Count Marx? If that were the case, then he was an ally. But why did this
man’s voice suddenly sound like a woman’s?
As they paused to think for a moment, an opening appeared.
The man took advantage of that opening and slipped the cordon of
Mamina and her people. No, the man’s body and clothes tore apart, and
a woman emerged from within. Mamina and her fellow maids were a
second late in reacting to this unexpected development.
“Ah, stop!”
Mamina and the others hurriedly gave chase.
“As if any spy would actually stop when told to!”
“A shapeshifter?!”
(TL note: the original text used ジヴォージョニー and I have no idea what
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1861
that means)
That woman was a demihuman.
Her bestial athletic ability allowed her to rival Mamina’s feline jumping
power. Everyone was cowed into submission by the frightening
experience that her battle-hardened and scarred body gave off.
Mamina tossed a series of dirks at her. Many of them were deflected

with the sound of high-pitched metal, but several of them struck home in
the flesh of the woman called Nora.
“Kuh!”
The woman pulled out a knife and grabbed at her wound.
“You’ll pay for this!” she cursed, before leaping out of a window in the
corridor.
“Cheh! Dammit, she got away. After her!”
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1862
“No, it’s fine. The transmitter’s already planted on her. Let us handle the
tracking.”
Just as Mamina and the others were about to give chase, the voice that
blended into the background chatter halted them in their tracks.
“Trance-meet-her?”
“Did you use the throwing knives I gave you? They’re the sort which
leave their tips in the body even when you pull them out. Unless she
cuts herself open and digs them out, the transmitter will tell us where
she is, no matter where she flees.”
Mamina smiled.
“Which means it’s gone well, then?”
“Indeed. It doesn’t matter if she has to lick her wounds or report her
failure, she still has to return to her hideout or base to do so. We can
follow her trail from there to her nest. That’s our plan.”
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1863
“Then, can we leave the rest to you, Yanagida?”
“Ah, yes. Leave it to me… I’ll make sure they suffer.”
At the same time, there was the sound of a long-range remote-

controlled drone taking off from somewhere within the courtyard of
Chateau Formal.
“Do you understand, Delilah?”
A voice came from the speaker.
“Leave it to me, Master Yanagida. I will do anything you ask of me.”
*************************************************************************
As this shadow war unfolded, the pro-peace senators continued

discussing the future of the Empire. To them, their tongues were
weapons, while the great hall was the battlefield where they fought their
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1864
war of words. Although it was not a matter of life and death, they were
all struggling in their own way.
Cicero was feeling conflicted as he took a mouthful of wine as the

bespectacled Catgirl maid Persia served him. His friend who was seated
beside him chided:
“The taste doesn’t change even if a demihuman serves it, no?”
Indeed, this was terribly uncouth behavior for a guest. His friend saw
this, and decided to warn him against it.
Cicero seemed to be trying to exonerate himself as he replied, “No, no,

it’s not like that. I’m just wondering why the previous Count Formal
would go against our tradition and hire demihuman girls. I used to think
demihumans and the like were savages… forgive me. I had no intention
of denigrating you.”
After Cicero said that to Persia —— who was still serving him —— he
continued, “I used to think that hiring demihumans signified a lack of
taste. But after coming here and observing them, I feel it would be
better for me to change that line of thought.”
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1865
“Indeed. They are the equal of any human maid, be it in terms of

etiquette or personality. In some ways, they are superior to human
maids.”
“That’s right,” Cicero nodded as he observed the demihuman maids

working in the great hall.
The truth was, the maids of House Formal were not only capable, but
beautiful. In addition, their ears were very keen, and they hardly missed
anyone calling for them. In that respect, they were fundamentally
different from human maids, who were very noisy and would not pay
attention to people unless one shouted at them.
“Still, I can’t get used to it. It just feels wrong to me.”
Cicero shrugged as he revealed what was in his heart.
“Well, if it’s a matter of getting used to it, then it’s just takes time. Our
armies would not even exist without demihumans. I heard that Zorzal’s
even been enlisting Giant Ogres into his battle lines.”
“Ah, I know about that. Well, since I’ll become accustomed to it sooner
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1866
or later, I should probably bear with it. Still, can the maids here bear
with me while I adjust?”
“It’ll be fine, they’re all very well-mannered. They will wait for you to
become used to them. More importantly, we should listen to Sherry-
san’s report. She’s returned after so long —— shouldn’t we hear what
she has to say?”
Cicero nodded, and then he asked the scion of House Tuery before him:
“Forgive the delay. I hope you will tell us about what you saw in Nihon.
Why don’t you start from the impending change in regime?”
“Yes, Cicero-sama.”
Sherry did not blanch, even while under the eyes of the senators.
She spoke directly and openly to the senators surrounding her.
“Firstly, I would like everyone to understand that the Prime Minister of
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1867
Nihon is chosen by the senate. After that, the Prime Minister chooses his
cabinet.”
“In other words, the Prime Minister represents the nation, and he is the
man who is in charge of policy?”
“Yes. Japan’s current Senate is about to reach the end of its terms, and
so they are preparing to select new councillors.”
The senators had bitter expressions on their faces. After all, they were in
a similar situation.
“In other words, if the selected councillors change, then the nation’s
policies might change as well?”
“Yes. In Japan, the senators are chosen by the people. Thus, it is possible
for the makeup of the senators to suddenly change.”
Sherry had a bitter smile on her face as well, revealing her complex
emotions. She knew that her fate depended heavily on the results of the
change in Japan’s regime. Sherry had returned with Sugawara to
impress this fact upon the senators.
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1868
“What an outdated institution. There were times when our Empire was a
republic, but every time the office-holders changed, our diplomatic
stance changed as well. This might be a big problem. This is why we’re
pursuing the maintenance of the status quo.”
Perhaps it was because Sherry was still a child that Cicero’s explanation
ended up sounding like that of a teacher. And perhaps it was because of
that explanation that Sherry’s answer sounded like that of a model
student answering her teacher.
“Indeed, the first citizen should hold the highest office.”
“Hm, it seems you’ve learned quite a lot. Then, can you summarize the
Empire’s leadership for us?”
“Yes,” Sherry nodded. Then, she began narrating, as though from a

textbook.
“The Emperor is responsible for the overall policy of the nation and its
diplomacy. Domestic affairs are managed locally, by governors selected
by the Emperor to administer domains on his behalf. In addition, the
Empire has permitted certain cities with long and distinguished histories
to rule themselves. Certain places which are not suitable for a limited-
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1869
term regional governor, but which require long periods of acclimation

—— such as House Formal’s domain, which counts many races and
tribes among its denizens —— have been ceded to individuals who
possess the requisite adaptability. This is the reason for the Empire’s
centralization and compartmentalization of power.”
“Marvellous. If I were your tutor, I would praise you. Why did the
Emperor of the time choose compartmentalization? What was the name
of that Emperor?”
“Unfortunately, governors serving a limited term must sometimes leave

their domain, and this leads to poverty and starvation more often than it
does to prosperity. Thus, insurgency and insurrection breaks out.
However, if that domain were to be part of one’s fortunes, one would
have a vested interest in administering it carefully. This was the
conclusion of Emperor Kaulas.”
“That is correct. Full marks.”
“I am very grateful.”
Sherry had a bashful smile on her face, like a student who had passed
an interview.
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“I did not expect a young girl like yourself to know that much.
Governance is much like that; the key is to maintain coherence and
continuity. Of course, there are many ways to do that, but to people who
must live on someone else’s domain in difficulty, this is the most ideal
method. Thus, a government whose national policies change with the
wind is quite flawed. In particular, fickle diplomatic stances are quite
disagreeable.”
The hitherto silent Marquis Casel raised his hand.
“That’s not right. One cannot say that democratically elected

representatives are backward. After all, sometimes the Imperial
succession comes into question.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” the surrounding senators nodded in

agreement.
“You have it at that,” Cicero nodded. Then, he countered:
“Well, a man ruling other men is bound to be flawed. Perhaps the pursuit
of that nonexistent perfection is the very proof of our immaturity, as
human beings.”
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Case’s own rebuttal addressed the same topic Cicero had brought up.
“In any case, whether we are an Empire or a Republic, we must accept

the flaws of both approaches as unavoidable. Since we value the
continuity and instant deliberation of imperial rule, we have chosen to
be an Empire. One could say that compensating for the flaws of such an
institution is our duty as those who support it.”
“I’d like to ask the two of you something. Do you consider the inability to
prevent the rise of someone like Zorzal to be a flaw of the system?”
Cicero sternly answered the question from the floor:
“Do not try to foist off your flaws as the vulnerabilities of the regime.
These matters have to be considered separately. Evaluating the
Emperor’s successor is our duty, after all. We ended up getting stuck in
a vicious cycle of avoiding trouble and did not try hard enough to keep
that man from the seat of power, instead taking him lightly.”
“And we have paid for that in blood and suffering. The best proof of that
is how we are looking dumbly at each other here.”
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However, Cicero shook his head and said, “No, not yet.”
“We have not paid it off yet. We are not even close. We must take the
Empire back and return it to normal. Only after we do so can we say that
we have paid the price for our failure.”
The senators immediately launched into a flurry of conversation.
“But how can we take the Empire back? Zorzal says he has abandoned
the Capital, but he still controls the administration and the armies. His
Majesty has declared that Zorzal be removed from the succession, but
the men and generals of the armies still obey him.”
“He’s merely coercing them into servitude through force! All we need to
do is inform the loyalist generals of His Majesty’s will and they will surely
recant their ways.”
“No, don’t try to force the issue. Zorzal’s installed his ‘cleaners’
throughout the armed forces. They say that even the rank and file are
under close scrutiny, to say nothing of the generals. Pointless rebellion
against them will only result in the separation of head from body. It
nearly happened to us too.”
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The “cleaners” were the ones who denounced those who spoke out
against Zorzal’s policies, analogous to political commissars. They were
officially known as the Oprichniki, and they belonged to the Oprichnina.
The pro-peace senators here had nearly been captured and purged by
them.
“Then all we need to do is defeat them, right? Let’s all take the field and
settle it once and for all!”
“But we are too few. The lines of battle are holding for now, but don’t
forget that this is because Nihon is keeping Zorzal at bay.”
The resentment here fed off itself, and just as it looked like it was
coming to a boil, Sherry asked, almost as though she were grumbling:
“Are the other countries and the vassals willing to help us?”
The girl’s voice was vastly different from the adults, so everyone here
clearly heard her words.
Ordinarily speaking, they would tell her to shut up while adults were
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talking. However, she felt like a student to them, so Cicero could not
help but answer, though he felt it was a rude question.
“Naturally, we have sent envoys out. But all the other countries remain
noncommittal. They appear to be content watching us beat each other
up.”
In this way, the girl Sherry received the freedom to speak her mind in
this place where she should have been forbidden to interrupt. In order to
make sure of things, she purposely asked a question whose answer was
obvious:
“His Majesty has taken a side, but the other countries have not done so.
Why is that?”
“That is simple enough. If they stand by us and Zorzal wins, anyone who
supported us will be destroyed. It is plainly obvious. This is a decision
made with the fate of a nation at stake. It is only natural for them to be
cautious about this.”
“In other words, we must show that we are able to win in order to obtain
allies, then?”
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“Correct. However, it is said that His Majesty’s health is failing, and we

do not know when he will collapse again. In addition, Zorzal commands
the armies.”
A noble by the side took a swig of wine and added:
“The regional governors are also following him.”
“How unfair,” Sherry pouted childishly.
“Zorzal holds the advantage, no matter how you slice it.”
“That much is true. However, the reason why the other nations have not
joined Zorzal is because of the element of Nihon. Making an enemy of
Nihon would be inadvisable, to say the least. However, Zorzal is
obsessed with defeating Nihon. Thus, anyone joining Zorzal will end up
at odds with Nihon. Every nation dreads that prospect.”
“Which is why they are not siding with him,” Cicero shrugged as he
ended his lecture.
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1876
“Thus, Nihon’s importance is rising rapidly, no?” Sherry continued on the

topic of Japan.
“Correct. We know that Nihon has no intention of dominating the

Empire. Fundamentally, they wish for us to rule the Empire, and
maintain peaceful relationships with the other nations. I understand that
this is not purely from the goodness of their hearts. After all, ruling a
foreign people is a tiresome and expensive process. However, they are
currently in the process of changing their Prime Minister. If that is the
case, the attitude of that Prime Minister toward us is a matter of great
interest. Sherry-kun, tell us honestly; what does Nihon think? Is there
anything you have seen or heard that could shed more light on the
matter?”
“Hmm~” Sherry hummed as she poked her face with her index finger.
“The people of Nihon are very angry with what Zorzal-sama has done.
After all, the news of Zorzal-sama’s men attacking villages all over and
trampling the innocent is common knowledge.”
And then, someone from the floor raised a question:
“However, I seem to recall Zorzal turning around and censuring Nihon,

saying that the Imperial massacre of villagers was a fabrication and they
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were all done by the Jayesdeef.”
In truth, the news of soldiers in speckled green uniforms attacking

villages had been spreading, and several nobles nodded as they heard
this.
“They say that, but at the very least, the people of Arnus do not believe
them. This is because there are many witnesses and pieces of evidence
stating that Zorzal-sama was using bandits and demihumans to do his
dirty work.”
“But the people of Arnus are all closely linked to Nihon. Can the words of
these people be trusted?”
Nobody here was willing to believe that a fellow Imperial citizen like
Zorzal would shamelessly accuse others of his own sins. Scorched-earth
tactics were vicious, but they were also necessary. If they had to be
done, then they had to be openly conducted. Nobody here wanted to
believe that Zorzal had fallen so low that he would try to push the blame
for that upon others.
However, Cicero raised a hand to quiet everyone.
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“No. Piña-dono received a warning that Zorzal’s men intended to commit

such deeds. Thus, though I find it hard to swallow, it was most likely his
doing… I see. So he really does intend to defeat Nihon.”
Morality aside, sowing chaos with his attacks against the invaders was
the correct answer.
When there was an overwhelming difference in combat ability, there was

no other choice. His willingness to do anything for victory spoke of his
determination to win.
However, this method would destroy everything.
This was because this strategy of deceiving people by pushing the

blame to others would shatter the faith of the people and they would
never again have faith in the nation.
Even if they had to resort to cruel methods, the Empire had always
adopted the attitude of “Yes, I did this. Do you have a problem with
that?” Although this might make people hate the Empire, it would also
make them fear it, and thus they would submit.
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But what if they used deception?
The contradiction in what they had experienced and what the Empire
said would make them doubt everything. Indeed, they would not be
afraid, but apprehensive. Once that happened, ruling the country would
be very difficult, even if they won.
If one wanted to rule a country by force, then a nation would need to

adopt a policy of sealing the mouths of the people. It would need to
trample on the hearts of others in order to keep the doubts in the
people’s hearts from turning into hatred and resentment. Thus, the
nation had to make the people blindly believe that everything was the
fault of external enemies.
The government would have to prevent the people from spreading

hearsay, restrict idle conversation, tear out any insurgency by the roots
and thoroughly dominate the people.
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1881
But such a nation would certainly have no freedom. Even drawing a

breath would be difficult.
A lie had to be repeated often enough to be taken as the truth. The

government would be forced to use all its strength to have a falsehood
be taken as reality.
The government would then have to unceasingly attack anyone who

spread the truth, and continuously spread its lies to the people.
Censorship of speech was the proof that lies were in circulation.
“What a frightening prospect.”
Cicero sighed as he despaired for the future of the Empire. Even if they
could weather the storm that was Zorzal, he could not help but worry
about how to rebuild the desolated Empire.
“If that is the case, we should hand the weighty duty of resisting Zorzal-
sama to her Imperial Highness. May I know what Piña-sama is doing
now, then?”
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Sherry sought out Pina’s form among the people around her. However,
depressed looks bloomed on the faces of the senators, and their
representative Cicero.
“Her Highness has lost faith in the matter of politics. ‘Do you intend to
have me commit fratricide?’ she said before leaving Italica.”
A shocked expression came over Sherry’s face. “So the great Imperial
Princess was such a person?”
She knit her brows in displeasure.
“This is nothing short of desertion,” she continued. However, nobody

heard that, because she spoke too softly. Then, she nonchalantly put on
a cheerful smile.
“Where is Her Highness now, then? Has anyone gone to fetch her?”
Fortunately, everyone who saw Sherry thought that her change of
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expression was the result of their failing vision.
Cicero seemed to be one of them. He wiped his eyes, and answered:
“No, His Majesty ordered us not to bother with her for the time being.
Her Highness should be travelling with the Men In Green now.”
“The Men In Green, huh…” Sherry mused as she tilted her head.
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Vol. 7 :
Chapter 2

Volume 7 Chapter 2
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Translator: Nigel
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1886
Normally at this time, the sun would be shining brightly in the southern
sky. However, the weather now was terrible. The sky was obscured by
clouds and a light drizzle fell like mist, drenching the earth.
However, the men of the JGSDF did not have the habit of using
umbrellas in their combat fatigues.
Itami was carrying a Type 64 sidearm and wearing body armor — among
many other articles of equipment — as he prepared for his next mission
beside a CH-47JA Chinook at Arnus’ helipad.
That said, his resource-prospecting mission had not yet been

terminated. He was still carrying out his prior assignment… in a broader
sense. He was to serve as a guide for a group of academics from Japan
as part of his prospecting mission.
His objective was called Kunapnui. It was a border region about 1000
kilometers to the northwest of Italica.
Thus, he was permitted to use a Chinook as a form of transportation.
The generous budgeting for the prospecting of resources made that

possible. Although on some level it could be considered to be
misappropriation of funds, all the paperwork had already been handled,
so there should have been no objections to this. In addition, he would be
accompanied by several reliable subordinates from his time in charge of
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1887
3rd Recon. Apart from Sergeant Major Kuwabara, there was Kurata,
Katsumoto, Sasagawa and Kurokawa. Kuribayashi, Tomita, Tozu, Azuma,
Nishina and the others had been assigned to protect members of the
media, while Furuta was acting as a spy and thus not taking part in this
operation.
In their place, he had been allowed to bring along local collaborators.

Thus he had chosen Rory, Lelei, Tuka and Yao. Naturally, the four of
them had immediately started packing their bags the moment they
heard about the mission to Kunapnui. To them, travelling with Itami was
not so much a natural thing but a privilege.
If anyone had any objections, they could be referred to the observers

from the legitimate Imperial government who was accompanying them.
That would be the Crown Princess and her female knight escort.
Naturally, the Crown Princess in question was Piña Co Lada.
“Ah, are you sure you want to come with us?”
In response to Itami’s question, Piña smiled as brilliantly as she could

while clutching a 100 yen plastic umbrella.
“Of course; I have been pondering the revelation granted to us by

Hardy, Lady of the Underworld.”
“Well, you say that, but I have no idea what she was getting at. I don’t
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think we need to trouble Your Highness in order to verify it.”
“But aren’t you going there anyway, Itami-dono?”
“Well, ah, yes. Orders are orders.”
“In other words, the government of Nihon takes a serious view of such
things. Don’t you think it should be considered seriously, Itami-dono?”
Piña’s opinion of Itami remained as high as ever. This was because she
was certain that something big must have happened if the Japanese
government had dispatched Itami on this mission.
However, Itami did not think that the JSDF brass were taking this
investigation that seriously. After all, they might have sent academic
experts along, but the people they had chosen to accompany them were
only around the same standard as himself.
The higher-ups probably felt they couldn’t just ignore this, so they
decided to send someone over, Itami reasoned.
“Well, the earthquake and the abnormal alignment of the stars in the
sky are all real enough. Since someone mentioned that these strange
phenomena have been happening ever since our worlds were linked, we
can’t ignore them, even if they’re “divine revelations”. Particularly
because Hardy-sama seems closely tied to the Gate.”
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1889
“Then I must go in person to verify the cause of these oddities, whether

it is the earthquake or something else entirely.”
Piña took a step towards Itami, looking at him with a little resentment.
“Also… I tire of matters of governance. I have received nothing but

blame for everything I have done for the Empire’s future, so I no longer
wish to involve myself in it. If I stay with Father, I will only be drawn into
more political conflicts.”
“But aren’t you already the Crown Princess, your Highness?”
“I do not recall accepting that title. Father gave me that title of his own
accord and told everybody else.”
“Still, His Majesty’s health is in grave condition. Should anything happen,

you are the only person who will be able to assume the mantle of
leadership, Your Highness. Isn’t it better ...
Piña pursed her lips and puffed up her cheeks.
“Do you think of me as a burden, Itami-dono?”
“Er, well, I wouldn’t quite put it that way…”
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1890
Itami hurriedly tried to placate her, but Piña’s expression was one of a
girl whose lover had mentioned the topic of breaking up. She covered
her sorrow-filled face with both her hands.
“Uwah, do I exist only to be conveniently rescued?!”
“It’s not like that!”
“Then why are you so cold-hearted and merciless, Itami-sama?”
“...Er, are you by any chance throwing a tantrum?”
“Do you even need to ask?! After being abandoned by my elder brother,
plunged into the abyss of despair, and roundly castigated by the pro-war
faction, the hand which you extended to me was like a ray of light in the
darkness, Itami-dono. It seemed as though you glowed with a halo from
behind your back. In that moment, I felt that I must offer my all to you —
no, that I wanted you to utterly claim me. I believe that is a common
trope in Risa-sama’s works, as a lead-in to domination scenarios. My
heart pounded mightily. Honestly, it was too moe. I am ashamed that I
am not a man.”
“Hrk!”
That pronouncement drew a series of reactions from around Itami.
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For a moment, silence reigned. Right after that, a spine-chilling air

surrounded Rory, Lelei, Tuka and Yao.
“No, no, I personally think it would be great if you could remain a lady.
I’m not interested in doing that sort of thing with men, so please, give
me a break!”
“When you shouted ‘Piña! Come!’ I thought… I thought…”
“Did I say that? Really?”
Itami glanced back at Lelei and Rory — who were busy with travel
preparations — to verify if he had indeed said such a thing.
Lelei was silent, as though the question was not worth answering. She
headed to the rear hatch of the Chinook, clutching her luggage.
Rory and Tuka — who looked like teruterubozu in their ponchos —

seemed to be huddling with Yao and discussing something. Whispers
and fragments conversation containing words like “Homo” and “Shudo”
came up.
(TL Note: teruterubozu are the Japanese fine weather dolls which look
like ghosts, while shudo is the ancient samurai form of faggotry)
“...And, and, and even after all that…”
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“After all what?”
“When I learned that you had only rescued me because I was along the
way, I did not know whether to feel disappointed or neglected. The
knowledge that I had been so casually treated filled me with despair! Did
you know that?!”
“Haa… ah, it’s a bit hard to imagine.”
“Indeed, indeed! Could it be so easily imagined?!”
“Then… do you want me to know? Or is it better that I do not know?”
“Of course I want you to know!”
“Okay, I get that…”
“No, I don’t want you to know so easily. As if you’d understand the

humiliation that I went through!”
“Then what do you want me to do?!”
Piña bit her lip with a “hmph” as Itami shouted in exasperation. Then,
she forced herself to say:
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“I hope you can follow my words. First, imagine me on my knees, both

hands pressed to the ground, my head lowered in resignation. Then, I
rise to my feet, my chest held high, wailing loudly and cursing myself.
That is a rough approximation of my misery.”
“So I just have to imagine that?”
Itami’s well-honed imagination immediately began visualizing the scene

as she had requested.
“Yes, and please be sure to dwell on the suffering I had to endure. Just
like how I am in the rain today… no, imagine my form, drenched by rain
and mud as the torrential rain churns the ground into a swamp.”
“Mud and a storm… is it?”
“Indeed. Mud symbolizes humiliation. Make sure to imagine my hair

soaked by rain and my hands trembling as they dig into the ground. My
nails should be broken and bleeding profusely due to clawing at the
soil.”
“Urk... that sounds painful.”
Piña and Itami groaned together, rubbing their fingertips as they did.
Their overdeveloped imaginations — though derived from different
sources — produced a palpable sensation of pain.
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“Umu, that does hurt. Let’s keep the fingernails on,” Piña relented.
It was only when she said those words that Itami realized that Piña was
not speaking from personal experience. Well, to be fair, he had already
realized that, but pointing it out from the beginning would be rude.
“Which means that it didn’t actually happen?”
“Well, if it did, wouldn’t it be dirty and painful? No — the resentment was

real, so much so that I beat up my pillow. And my tears got it wet too.”
“So your pillow is the enemy now?”
Itami imagined Piña’s fists going “boff boff” as she beat up her pillow.
He visualized her in a princess-like white dress. But after considering

that she was drenched by the rain, he reasoned that he would be able to
glimpse her body through the translucent fabric.
“Don’t imagine the part about the pillow! There’s pouring rain and mud
everywhere, staining my body! Don’t leave that out!”
Itami corrected his mental image in accordance with Piña’s request.
“Well then. Can you imagine the sheer suffering your cold ruthlessness
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caused me, Itami-dono?”
“…………”
“…………”
Itami was at a loss for words, so he tried to continue his visualization.

Yet, it seemed to be heading in a lewd direction.
Suddenly, Itami glanced at Piña. She seemed to be looking forward to his

reaction. In order to gauge what sort of reaction was appropriate, he
asked: “May I know our current situation now?”
“You were about to admit your mistakes and apologize, then offer up
your sword to me in a pledge of loyalty, Itami-dono.”
“My… mistakes?”
“Indeed, Lord Itami.”
“But I have no sword or anything like that.”
“Then your sidearm will do.”
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1896
“Ah… that’s right. I need to give orders to my people.”
Itami tried to use speaking to his subordinates as an excuse to flee.
However, they did not need his directions at all. They had already begun
moving stacks of canvas, inspecting their personal equipment and
ensuring they had enough food and water, even without detailed
instructions.
In order to avoid being drawn into this mess, they turned their backs on
Itami, as though to say, “we’re very busy”. While that was certainly a
possibility, it was most likely not the case. At least, that was what Itami
thought.
Still, he could not interrupt them while they were focused on their work.
That being the case, he could still… yes, he had to take care of
Hamilton, the female knight accompanying Piña. This should have been
the first time she was taking a plane, so he would need to take the
appropriate action.
In truth, she faced a rather severe problem.
There was still some time until takeoff, but she was already on one of
the Chinook’s jump seats. Her body was stiff and she looked nervous.
She had taken shelter inside the craft to avoid the rain, but the reason
for her stiffness was immediately apparent, judging by her wail of “I
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can’t believe a big lump of metal like this can go into the sky!”
“Can’t we go by horse, your Highness? Let’s take our time going to

Kunapnui by land!”
She sounded like a condemned criminal being strapped into the electric
chair.
“...Hmm~”
Itami was starting to have his doubts about speaking to her. Piña herself
was pointedly avoiding Hamilton’s line of sight.
“It looks so heavy already and now you’re filling it with even more
things? How is it even going to float through the air?!”
Everyone seemed to be thinking the same thing, which was why they
turned their backs on Hamilton.
Amidst shouts of “Please stop! Give me a break! Don’t put in anything

else!”, Kurata, Katsumoto and one of the airmen continued their task of
loading up the helicopter.
Lelei was helping as well. She glanced briefly at the pale and trembling
knight before heading to the Chinook’s cockpit.
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Her face was always expressionless, so there was no way of telling how
Lelei felt. However, she did not look like she was about to explain the
principles of flight to Hamilton and thus ease her fears.
Her attention was focused on the aircraft personnel, who were

conducting their preflight checks.
After entering the cockpit, she studied the interior closely, as though she
wanted to cling to the pilots’ backs. The look on her face was like a
puppy waiting for treats.
Once she had learned how to drive the HMV, Lelei’s interest had turned
toward the various vehicles the JSDF had brought to the Special Region,
such as their bulldozers, the XLR250R motorcycles, and so on.
Much like with the bulldozer and the motorcycle, she was waiting for
them to ask, “Do you want to try the driver’s seat?”
However, they could not let this girl into the pilot’s seat. While they
knew that Lelei — a technical specialist — had experience driving a
HMV, riding a bike across the wilderness and flattening out the earth
with a bulldozer, they could not allow just anybody to operate an
aircraft. This was a legal issue. There was a limit to how much the rules
could be bent, even if they were in the Special Region.
Lelei seemed to understand that as well, so she did not actually say that
she wanted to pilot the helicopter. Instead, she used her eyes to convey
her thoughts. The truth was, despite her lack of outward emotion and
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speech, Lelei was a hot-blooded girl who communicated through body

language.
The airmen keenly felt Lelei’s hot gaze burning into them, and her close
attention put them on edge. The way she scrutinized every little thing
they did was as though they were taking an exam.
“Ah, you seem to be looking closely at all of this — is it so interesting?”

one of the pilots asked.
“I was thinking about how to apply it to magic,” Lelei replied.
Then, she nonchalantly continued, “I believe it should be possible to fly

with magic.”
“Well, if you can do that, you’d become a real magical girl.”
Everyone felt the same way.
That said, if that topic had been brought up before now, they would have
suggested to Lelei, “You should be riding a broom instead, right?” After
all, “magic users” + “flying = broom” was an iconic image that came up
when one thought of novels, movies, anime and manga.
However, she shut down everyone who brought the subject up with a
flat “No”. In addition, she directed a reproachful look at them, as though
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to say, “A broom? What are you on about? You want a girl to ride such a
slim thing? Are you retarded? Are you tired of living? Are you a pervert?”
and so on.
When Itami heard about this, he told Lelei, “Well, I’ve seen anime and
manga where they had things called training brooms, which were
actually metal bars”, in an attempt to explain why everyone thought
that way.
At that time, Lelei had stared at the broom Itami had handed her, then
indicated that she understood before telling her own side of the story.
“It would definitely hurt. I don’t like it… and I don’t want to get used to
it.”
Itami nodded in response.
“Well yeah, I wouldn’t ride a bike whose seat was changed out for a bar.
My butt would hurt…”
When one thought about it calmly, it was a perfectly reasonable

conclusion to reach.
And so, nobody asked Lelei to ride a broom any more. The very idea was
ripped out by the roots and eradicated. And now, she was staring at the
Chinook pilots with a “jiiiiiiiii~” expression.
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1901
The pilots felt her eyes burning into their backs, but they paid it no heed
and continued their work.
Pilots went through extremely harsh training. However intense the

motivation which led them to join the JSDF and throw themselves into
their training, they would still be coldly rejected with a “We do not need
you” if they could not complete their courses within the allocated
timeframe.
Only people who could surpass that strait gate could earn their wings.
The foundation of their pride was their skills, earned through blood,
sweat and tears. If their skills could not pass the inspection of a magical
girl from the Special Region, they would not have a leg to stand on. The
memories of their harsh training flashed past their eyes.
They had to satisfy Lelei’s expectations to maintain their pride. They had
to show that ardent gaze of hers that this was what flying was about,
that this was how one flew, constantly demonstrating their technique
and mastery to her.
Thus, the atmosphere in the cockpit was quite intense. It radiated an air
that made everyone unwilling to approach. Itami felt that going in there
would be a bad idea.
In other words, there was no port for Itami to take shelter from the
storm.
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1902
“Itami-dono, won’t you say something?”
Itami went “Uh,” as Piña approached him.
“Come on,” Piña said as she drew closer.
“No, ah, about that…” Itami continued retreating.
“Come on, come on, come on…”
With every step Piña took towards him, Itami took one backwards.
“Ahem!”
Sergeant-Major Kuwabara coughed very deliberately to get their

attention, before straightening his back and issuing an order.
“Fall in!”
Kurata and the others formed up in front of him, chests upthrust.
Overjoyed at this sudden rescue, Itami snapped off a textbook salute

before proceeding to report to Lt. Gen. Hazama, who had appeared
before them. Piña looked vaguely resentful, but now was not the time to
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1903
worry about her.
“Preparations to move out are complete!”
“Mm, good work.”
Hazama had no desire to cling to formalities. He introduced Itami and

the others to the aged but robust-looking men beside him, as well as the
television studio’s cameraman and the rest of the press team.
“This is Professor Urushibata of Kyoto University’s Xenobiology

department, and this is Professor Shirai from the National Astronomical
Observatory of Japan. This is Professor Youmei of Todai, who specializes
in theoretical physics. And then there is Kuribayashi Nanami-san of the
press team.”
“My name is Urushibata.”
“I am Shirai.”
“I am known as Youmei.”
“And I’m Kuribayashi Nanami. Thank you for taking care of my Nee-san.”
“Eh~ is the media coming with us? Nobody told me about that…”
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1904
Youmei roared at Itami’s reply: “How could the mass media not pay
attention when I take the field?!”
In truth, this was the first time academics had been allowed into the
Special Region.
“We won’t get in your way,” the younger Kuribayashi pleaded with her
hands together. All they could do was take her word for it.
To the side, Youmei was griping to Hazama about “Why did you delay
my introduction until the end” and so on.
“I bear a doctorate of Tokyo University; the vocational field of a

curriculum vitae only needs to have one of these four entries in it:
teaching assistant at Tokyo University, lecturer at Tokyo University,
assistant professor at Tokyo University or professor at Tokyo University.
Do not mention me in the same breath as the rest of those riffraff.”
Hazama began to tremble and sweat as he apologized to Urushibata and

Shirai, who Youmei was pointing at. He hurriedly wiped his forehead off
with a handkerchief and then replied: “Sempai, you were a schoolmate
of mine, so I had to consider the matter from many angles. I hope you
will forgive me for introducing you last.”
At this, Youmei’s attitude suddenly changed.
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1905
“What, you are an alumnus of Tokyo University?”
“Yes, although I was five batches removed from yourself, sempai.”
“Ohhh, I see, I see. So you thought of me as part of the family. Then it

cannot be helped. After all, one seats one’s family at the rearmost tables
at a wedding… mm, so you saw me as kin. Ahahaha!”
Youmei’s heart seemed to have grown three sizes all of a sudden, as

though he was pleased by something.
Then, he suddenly turned his attention elsewhere, slowly discarding his

umbrella. Then, he crawled upon the ground and beat at the soil of
Arnus, shouting “Mumumumu, are we riding this?!”
As he peeked into the Chinook, Hamilton was scared stiff, but the spike
in her heart rate showed no signs of ending.
Urushibata paid no heed to Youmei’s rudeness and strange behavior, but

instead observed the scenery of the Special Region. From time to time,
he stared at Tuka and Yao’s bodies.
“Hohoho… I see. It would seem that hypothesis was correct — in an

Earth-like habitat, the lifeforms which develop will tend to be similar to
human beings...”
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1906
Professor Urushibata delivered his analysis as he paced back and forth

while inspecting them. The two of them were startled by the way he was
staring at them and looks of fear bloomed on their faces.
Usually speaking, Yao would be deeply offended by someone who eyed

her with lust, and she would seek to either scare him straight or beat
him up. However, the way Urushibata looked at her was far removed
from the lewd gaze a man had for a woman, so she was lost as to how to
respond.
Indeed, he was looking at her in the way a researcher would appraise an

excellent specimen.
Itami and the others thought, “I hope he doesn’t want to dissect Tuka
and Yao.”
Perhaps they should have expected that, but Urushibata said, “Ah,
Hazama-kun~ can we bring these two back with us?”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Urushibata-sensei. The two of them are local
collaborators.”
“Is that so? What a shame.”
The others almost asked, “What’s a shame?!”
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1907
Around this time, the third academic Shirai was taking pictures of the
region around Arnus while holding a tripod frame which had a reflecting
telescope on a manual equatorial mount. Perhaps he was a collector of
some sort, but the camera he was using was the film-using kind, which
was quite uncommon in this day and age.
“If only the rain would stop soon. Muhuhuhuhu, what will the sky of the
Special Region be like? I’ll snap it all up!”
Each of them was quite a character. They were all bizarre in their own
way.
“Are these… teachers in a university?”
Hazama replied, “Mm, yes… Probably. I guess.” It was a voice that was
at odds with his usual regal bearing.
*************************************************************************
Then, what exactly had happened which required a group of academics

to travel to Kunapnui, which was deep in the Special Region? To answer
that question, we must turn back time to when Itami and the others had
gone to the Belnago Shrine.
After learning from Gray and the others that assassins were going after
Lelei, Itami decided not to stay in Londel and instead decided to run
around doing whatever he wanted.
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1908
His logic was that as long as they kept on the move, the assassins could
not catch up with them, no matter how many were sent against them.
This method of thinking was largely correct. The only way to catch up
with them was if their pursuers had predicted where they would go and
stolen a march on them. However, Itami was the sort who took
operational security seriously, and he had put some thought into this.
“We’ll head here next, then.”
Roughly 50 miles to the west of Londel, Itami — who had finished

collecting mineral samples from an abandoned copper mine with Lelei
and her stepsister Arpeggio — raised a stick up on a map, holding it in
place with his index finger.
“I’m letting go!”
Yes, he was going to decide their future direction by following the

direction in which a stick fell.
However, simply holding it up with his entire hand ran the risk of
unconsciously influencing the direction in which it fell, so his idea was to
support it with one finger, then close his eyes before turning a circle
around it first.
In addition, he had resolved himself to go where the stick went,

regardless of where it pointed.
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1909
Of course, strictly following that rule would lead to running around in

circles in the desert. Thus, they still went in the general direction the
stick pointed, but they were flexible enough to allow themselves to
gravitate toward nearby settlements and the like. That said, since the
direction that was chosen was essentially random, no more assassins
targeting Lelei had appeared before them.
Everyone looked as one to the stick as it fell.
“Bearing 326… looks like north-northwest,” Itami said as he consulted

his compass on the stick’s direction.
“North-northwest?” Rory asked, as she stared in puzzlement at what

should have been a chance occurrence. Then, she studied the others’
faces as she asked, “Did a queer wind just blow past?”
“I don’t think so… at least, I didn’t feel any wind.”
Itami was seated on the ground, studying the opened map and paying
attention to where bearing 326 would take them. He looked up as he
heard Rory’s question, and thus his forehead nearly touched Rory’s face.
“Really?”
Rory tilted her head. She was a Demigoddess, after all, and she seemed
to have sensed something imperceptible to humanity.
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1910
“Well, perhaps the wind might have blown the stick a certain way, but is
that a bad thing?”
Tuka raised her head as she said this. Her face was also very close by.
“Hm~” Rory hmphed, then looked down, beside Itami.
“Still, that takes us to Belnago. I don’t like the sound of that.”
If one traced a line on the map and swept it out… they would soon pass
through the region marked as Belnago. In Rory’s opinion, it was far too
accurate to be a coincidence, and so she felt that someone had a hand
in this.
Itami felt that it might not be so, even if Rory said that. Still...
“Well, I was invited to the Belnago Shrine, so at some point I’ll have to
go there. Is anything wrong with that?”
The invitation in question sat within their luggage. An inauspicious aura

hung about it.
It was a scroll parchment, dyed black with what looked like dried blood.
Someone had written on it with ink that appeared to have been made of
some kind of litharge.
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1911
The contents were an invitation for Itami — who had defeated the Flame
Dragon and fought off the Apostle Giselle with his might — to visit the
shrine. Even the sealing wax was black. If this was a sign of the author’s
sense of humor, it must have been very dark indeed. Although it was
written in a business-like style, he felt like burning it after reading it just
once. Incidentally, it was because of this item that they had considered
visiting Belnago in the first place.
“Rory, didn’t you say you were going to tell that goddess Hardy that you
weren’t going to marry her? I believe Yao wanted to sever ties with her
as well.”
“That’s right. However, I have a bad feeling about what will happen if I
go now. She’ll probably call up those assassins and the like as well.”
“I concur with her Holiness’ opinion,” Yao said, showing her doubts
about the goddess she had once worshipped.
She had renounced her faith after learning that her fellow Dark Elves
were used to feed the Flame Dragon.
Gods existed in the Special Region, and there were many of them. It was
quite natural for worshippers to pray to those gods that aligned with
their beliefs and abandon those which they no longer favored. This was
completely different from a certain narrow-minded, monotheistic faith
that reverenced a totalitarian deity, which split its adherents into several
sects and let them fight among themselves, and which counted apostasy
as a mortal sin.
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1912
“Then… should we try again?”
As she heard the suggestion which came from Shandy Kaf Marea, Tuka
immediately nodded in agreement. Itami slowly nodded as well, and
erected the stick again.
He closed his eyes, turned a circle, and released his finger.
And then, the stick pointed to...
“…………”
“…………”
“North-northwest, huh.”
Gray Co Aldo seemed to speak for the speechless group.
“What should we do~”
“Try it again.”
Itami let the stick go again.
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1913
“…………”
After seeing the results, Lelei looked away and sighed.
“You know, they say Belnago has really good food,” Arpeggio said to
Gray. She probably felt that going to Belnago was a done deal, so she
began talking about the news surrounding that place.
“Let’s, let’s try one more time.”
Itami held up the stick, and this time, he leaned it toward the south.
Then, he closed his eyes and let go.
As expected, gravity pulled the stick toward the south. However, a gale
unexpectedly blew at the stick, so that it landed pointing north-
northwest.
“…………”
“…………”
“Har— Hardy, damn you…”
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1914
Rory kicked the stick.
“Owie!” Itami yelped as it bounced off a tree and hit Itami on the

forehead. It was still pointing north-northwest from its resting place on
the ground.
Itami rubbed his aching head and picked up the stick.
“Everyone! Let’s look at this differently. This stick doesn’t point north-
northwest, but south-southeast.”
Itami indicated the thicker end of the stick, implying that since it was not
an arrow, either end could be used as the head.
It sounded pretty forced, but everyone applauded in approval, saying

“That’s a pretty good idea…”
However, a gust of wind came before that sentence could be completed.

It turned the stick, pointing it north-northwest.
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1915
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1916
“Kuh…”
When Itami had chosen this method of deciding their direction, he had
declared that he would go in the direction it indicated, no matter how
harsh the route. He had been joking back then, but it had been a
promise.
Lelei patted at her knees, swiping the dirt off before getting into the
driver’s seat of the HMV and starting the engine. Tuka and Rory got on,
looking dead inside.
“It can’t be helped, I guess. Let’s take care as we move off.”
Thus did Itami and his company set off toward the Belnago Shrine.
***
Belnago.
It was a temple city that was famous as being consecrated to Hardy, the
Goddess of the Underworld.
Typically, one associated the Underworld with the final destination of the
deceased. It made one think of the afterlife, and it was located deep
underground.
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1917
That said, not everybody who died went to the Underworld. The souls of
those who fell in battle, or who had performed sufficient feats of arms
were instead summoned to the throne of Emroy.
In that sense, there were other places for the dead to go besides the
Underworld, but on a whole, those were very rare exceptions. Under
normal circumstances, the souls of the deceased would be drawn to the
Underworld which Hardy ruled. Thus, Hardy’s shrine was often visited by
those who did not primarily worship Hardy, but who wished to pray for
the souls of their parents and grandparents. As one might expect, this
meant that Belnago was full of activity, thanks to the hordes of
worshippers which flocked to it.
“That sure is a lot of people,” Itami murmured as he observed the throng

milling around before the shrine.
After securing their lodgings and parking the HMV, they took to the
streets, which were packed with worshippers. It was comparable to a
shrine being packed for Hatsumode.
(TL Note: Hatsumode is the Japanese New Year visit to a shrine to pray
for good luck)
The stalls and shops before the shrine were targeted at visitors, and
they were similarly filled. It looked just like a scene from Sugamo’s Jizo-
dori, the front of Kawasaki Daishi, or the Kaminarimon at Sensoji.
(TL Note: Jizo-dori is a shopping district in Toshima, Tokyo. Kawasaki

Daishi is another name for the Heiken-ji, a temple in Kawasaki. Sensoji is
Tokyo’s oldest temple, in Asakusa)
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1918
Shrines were typically associated with a stern and grave atmosphere,

which made people uncomfortable. The fact that this place was
unexpectedly worldly put Itami at ease.
There were cheap wooden accessories everywhere, sold by the local

souvenir stores. There were also metal chalices and carvings of the
scenery, each stamped with the mark of Belnago Shrine.
They were instantly recognizable as true souvenirs, given their

cheapness and decorative nature.
In addition, there were racks adorned with ores from various mines,
which were being sold as souvenirs as well.
There were things like crystals, lapis lazulis, jades and other precious
stones, as well as their ores. There were colorful, banded stones of
unknown provenance, each with a price tag of their own.
Itami was about to ask why these things were being sold as Belnago’s
souvenirs. After hearing Arpeggio’s explanation, he could only nod and
say, “I see”. In short, Hardy had jurisdiction over everything under the
ground, so the ores extracted from there could be seen as the bounty of
the Queen of the Underworld. Thus, every city that operated a mine
worshipped Hardy, and offered their ores and minerals to the shrine as a
tithe, which only served to enrich the shrine’s coffers. Any excess was
sold on the market as souvenirs, like they were now.
Alfie (Arpeggio’s nickname) and Shandy immediately started browsing
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1919
the wares on sale. The ores in particular were an unexpected find for
Arpeggio, who could use them as research specimens, and even her
eyes had changed at this.
However, Rory urged Itami and the others on toward the temple. Not
wanting to be left behind, Shandy and Arpeggio followed them, though
they cast longing looks at what they were leaving behind.
As Lelei saw this, she said, “You don’t have to follow us. Wait for us in
the inn after you finish shopping.”
It might have sounded like a cold abandonment, but Arpeggio

understood that Lelei wanted them to enjoy themselves shopping. Still,
she shook her head.
“As if I could. This is a golden opportunity to witness the innermost

sanctum of Belnago Shrine; how could I pass it up?”
She put her arms around her little sister’s shoulders and pulled her
close.
“For all we know, it might end up being the subject of a research paper,
no?”
Alfie was a mineral researcher, so to her, Hardy was like the keeper of a
storehouse of treasures. Thus, it only made sense to stay in her good
books.
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1920
On the other hand, there was Itami, who had long been conditioned to
seek the end of a line whenever he saw one. He looked around and
asked Rory:
“Hey, Rory, is it okay if we don’t queue up?”
“It’ll be fine. Don’t you have that invitation from Belnago?”
“Ahh, yes, I do.”
Itami produced the black scroll from his backpack.
“The priests will show us the way as long as we have this.”
“I see. So this is like a pass for a tour group, or something.”
And indeed, just as Rory had said, it had a remarkable effect on the
attendants standing by the main door. The exquisitely beautiful clerics in
their white-ruffled priestess’ dresses were stunned as though stricken by
lightning, following which their skirts swished as they genuflected before
him.
It would seem this scroll was far beyond a mere tour group pass.
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1921
“Uwah, that’s amazing.”
The fact that he was now a supremely important guest seemed to have
gotten to Itami a little.
“Let’s try it again,” he said as he revealed the scroll once more.
The priestesses genuflected before him as they had earlier. It was as

though they were wicked officials who had beheld an incognito lord’s
badge of office.
(TL Note: This refers to the period drama called Mito Komon, where a
former daimyo travels incognito, finds corrupt officials through their
misdeeds, and subdues them by flashing his inro.)
Just as he was about to brandish the jet-black scroll one more time, Rory
bonked him on the head with the hilt of her halberd.
(TL Note: A reference to the line “控えおろう”, also from Mito Komon)
“Ow…”
“How much longer are you going to play around? Let’s go.”
Itami clutched his head as Rory dragged him by the sleeve.
And so, Itami and company received special treatment from the
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1922
priestesses in white goth outfits as they were ushered into Belnago

Shrine.
Simply put, one could describe the shrine as a vast cave.
It was comparable to an inverted pyramid. It was essentially a huge

mound that had been flipped over.
Of course, it was not simply a hole excavated in the ground. If that were
the case, the shrine would flood whenever it rained. Thus, there were
large stone pillars everywhere with support beams between them,
supporting a gigantic ceiling that covered the pit. The actual altar to
Hardy was located in the deepest reaches of the hole, where the apex of
the inverted pyramid would be.
It would seem this was as far as regular worshippers could go.
Priestesses clad in white goth outfits stood in a line before the altar,
dispensing blessings upon the worshippers in the form of words. Itami
and his group could hear things like “May you be blessed” as they drew
near.
However, the white goth priestesses ushered them even further within.
If one looked carefully, one could see a narrow set of stairs which
extended deep into the earth. Those steps faded into darkness and
nothing could be seen further in.
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1923
That must be the true altar; in other words, the entrance to the
Underworld.
Up till now there had been no sense of claustrophobia, because the

ceiling was high and broad. However, they were actually going
underground now. Itami was not a tall person, but he could not help but
shrink as he thought of how low the ceiling of the tunnel would be.
Rory and the others had the mournful expressions of non-swimmers who
were being forced into the water. He could imagine them squeezing
their eyes shut, pinching their noses, taking a deep breath, and then
jumping into a bottomless pool.
“Are you alright, Rory? You’re just not used to the underground, right?”
“Under normal circumstances, entering the domain ruled by another god

would cause all sorts of problems. But, but this is different. We have
Hardy’s personal invitation, so it should be fine…”
Her forced voice squeaked a little towards the end, so it hardly sounded
convincing.
Rory seemed to be very bothered by the matter of going underground,

trespassing in another god’s territory aside. Thus, when Itami took the
lead and said, “I’ll go in front”, Rory sighed in audible relief. Then, she
drew up behind him, clinging to the hem of his uniform.
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1924
Itami led the group down the long, long stairs.
After descending through what seemed like the interior of a pyramid for
about five minutes, they came to a large, open chamber.
It was a gigantic shrine. Countless pillars stood within the vast

underground space. The scale of the place was comparable to the
interior of the Metropolitan Area Underground Discharge Tunnel. That in
turn made Itami think of the atmosphere surrounding the passage which
led to the volcanic lair of the Flame Dragon.
Now that the ceiling was high again, Rory seemed much less tense, and
even had a relaxed expression on her face as she looked around. That
said, she had not once let go of Itami’s shirt.
A stern pronouncement issued from the altar at the heart of the shrine:
“You visitors. The goddess Hardy makes her advent. Pay your homage
unto her.”
A ray of divine light tore through the darkness and illuminated the altar,
and as one, the priestesses genuflected before it.
Rory sank the spiked head of her halberd into the ground and went to
one knee.
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1925
Itami hesitated, and then saluted. He rarely performed a 45-degree bow,

so that was not his first reaction. Tuka and Lelei did as the priestesses
did, while Gray and Shandy touched their hands to their chests, in the
salute of the Imperial Army.
Before long, a mote of radiance descended from somewhere near the

ceiling. That point of light reshaped itself into the form of a woman.
Itami wondered if this was some sort of movie special effect or CGI.
Unable to resist his curiosity, he glanced behind to see if there was a
projector there.
However, there was no beam of light that betrayed the presence of a

cinema film projector, and there were no mechanisms in the shrine’s
floor or ceiling which he could see.
It soon resolved itself into the form of a woman in her twenties, with
silver hair reaching down to her waist.
Her serene expression was like an exquisitely-carved piece of glass,

while her slender curves were a simple yet elegant illustration of the
feminine form.
She stepped forth silently.
In that instant, the green eyes of Hardy met with Itami’s, as though they
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1926
were drawn in.
She smiled gently, and the fingertips of her right hand moved, delivering
a tiny greeting. It seemed like a performer on stage waving to a friend
she had found in the audience, and Itami could not help but panic.
After all, Itami did not have a particularly good impression of Hardy after
the Flame Dragon incident. But it was nice to have a beautiful woman
smile at him, and the atmosphere in this place was quite sacrosanct and
all. He had once thought she was arrogant, domineering, and
unreasonable, but now he felt that she was direct and honest instead,
which strangely endeared her to him.
Hang on a bit, he thought.
According to what Rory had said, the gods determined the forms they
took by their own will. That would mean Hardy had most likely not been
born with that perfect body of hers. Itami considered the fact that even
the smallest cosmetic changes — made over and over again — might
result in onlookers being unable to tell what a person originally looked
like. Plastic surgery and the like was commonplace in Japan, so it was
quite likely that Hardy was an artificial beauty.
Hardy then took on a hurt look, as though she had not been expecting
that. She then turned to Rory and said something to her. Regretfully,
Itami and the others could not hear their conversation, and Rory herself
was silent, as though ignoring Hardy. It looked like a muted television
drama.
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1927
Hardy’s eyes filled with tears and her movements became frantic, and
she gesticulated at Itami while pleading silently with Rory.
Eventually, Itami began to feel sorry for her. Since she was pointing at
him, it must have something to do with him. At the very least, he wanted
to know what she wanted.
“Rory, what is the goddess-sama saying?”
Rory sighed, as though to say “give me a break”, before replying, “She

wants me to tell you that it isn’t plastic surgery.”
Itami realised that it was probably not the best choice of words. He
lowered his head and replied, “Ah, sorry about that.”
Then he realised something:
“Does that mean you can read minds?”
So you do understand, Hardy’s face seemed to say as it blossomed into

a radiant smile. She nodded to Itami in approval.
In all honesty, how many men would not feel guilty with a beautiful
woman before them and their hearts laid bare?
Given that she was possessed of such bewitching beauty, it would be

bad if she realised what they were thinking. Of course, there were some
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1928
people who might not care, but Itami was an honest man, and he sighed,
“I can’t think of stupid things any more…”
Hardy covered her smirk as she saw the change in Itami’s attitude.
Then, she said something else, but Itami could not hear her. Rory, on the
other hand, seemed thoroughly unhappy and refused to communicate,
so Hardy trailed off halfway and looked around, as though searching for
something.
Following that, the priestesses advanced in unison, as though they had

been waiting for this. They looked upon their goddess with expressions
which seemed to say “Please choose me.”
“Er, what are they doing?” Itami asked as he leaned down towards Rory.
“They’re saying, ‘Please make use of my body’, or something like it.”
“Body? Is that like possession or something?”
Itami thought of Kyouyama Itako or Himiko, famous miko of their

periods.
Spirits and divinities could not directly interfere with humanity, but by
borrowing the bodies or mouths of mikos, they could interact with the
world of mankind.
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“Becoming one with one’s god is arguably the highest honor for any
priest…”
“Really now…”
“However, taking such a mighty soul into one’s body will generally break
one’s mind, so it’s like committing suicide…”
“That’s bad. That’s terrible,” Itami said.
To Itami, one had to be alive to enjoy honors and whatnot. A corpse

could not enjoy the glory it was covered in.
“Still, they’re priests; they’ve accepted that.”
“Why do they want to do this?”
“That’s because it is a good chance to raise their status in the clergy.

Someone who can hold on to their sense of self after having a god
descend upon them might well bear a fraction of divine power…”
“Ah, I see. That means, they might have a chance to become gods?”
“That has been the case for some, but for the most part, it has not. It
ultimately depends on the person themselves.”
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“I see. And becoming a god doesn’t seem particularly advantageous

either…”
Itami had no idea what benefits that state would grant, so he tilted his
head in contemplation.
“That means there’s nothing good about it at all.”
If even Rory the demigoddess was grumbling about it, that suggested
that there were more things he did not understand. However, she swiftly
changed her attitude and continued:
“However, it is a priceless gift to people who live for their faith.”
“Hm, I see.”
On the other hand, Hardy did not seem to have found anyone
satisfactory among the white goth priestesses, and a look of despair
crossed her face. It looked as though she was sighing. Then, she looked
beyond the priestesses with a look of resignation on her face, and then
her expression suddenly lit up with delight.
As Rory turned to where Hardy was looking, she exclaimed in a panicked

voice:
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“Ah, wait!”
But Rory could not stop Hardy as she darted toward Lelei’s body.
Lelei sprawled on the ground, as though physically struck. A faint glow

limned her.
“What... just happened…”
Rory’s hands covered her mouth, staring in shock as though she had just
witnessed a truck accident involving a schoolgirl. The priestesses were
also startled into silence.
Alfie patted her little sister’s face and shouted “Lelei, Lelei! Wake up!
Open your eyes!”
Just then, Lelei sprang up, and it seemed as though her silver hair had
descended to her waist. Then, she lightly touched her sister’s hand and
smiled to put her at ease, before addressing the group:
“Guests who have travelled far to come here, I bid you welcome. My
name is Hardy. Let us proceed.”
Hardy — who had stolen Lelei’s body — stepped up to Itami as though

showing off to Rory, and took his hand.
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“Wh-where?”
Being addressed with Lelei’s voice and her face made it feel as though
Lelei was actually saying it. However, after remembering that the spirit
of the goddess Hardy was within Lelei’s body, Itami decided to correct
himself and said, “Wh-where will we be going?”
Hardy placed her index finger to her lip, tilting her head in thought.
Then she announced, “Mm~ to sate my hunger, of course.”
However, Itami’s watch said that it was three in the afternoon. It was too
late for lunch but too early for dinner.
“A, a meal? But I’m not hungry…”
As she heard Itami’s denial, Hardy’s green eyes filled with a dangerous
gleam and narrowed into slits, as though to say, If you don’t come with
me, terrible things will happen.
Of course, even as Hardy displayed that terrifying side of her, she was
still tugging on his arm with just a hint of force, and the way she looked
up at him was quite charming.
This was a magnificent use of the carrot and the stick.
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In that instant, an alarm bell went off inside Itami’s head.
Lelei would never have — or rather, she could not possibly have —
shown him a seductive expression like the one on her face now. Though
he was reluctant to admit it, Itami was slowly becoming aware that the
girl before him was not the one he had gotten accustomed to and
familiar with. In addition, he was firmly convinced that no girl would ever
fall in love with him at first sight, a position which over 30 years of life
had solidified into an unbreakable pillar. Thus, if a female continued
approaching him despite these two factors, it was a sure sign of a scam,
a honeytrap, or some black-hearted joke. Thus, Itami swiftly backed
away from her.
“My, how cold. Do you not like this girl’s body?”
“That’s not it!”
Hardy advanced and pressed herself against Itami. After seizing his
hand, she embraced it tightly with both arms.
“So you don’t mind, then?”
“Har-Hardy-sama? You’re, uh, making things hard for me....”
Itami tried to pull himself free, but Hardy was unwilling to let go and
redoubled her grip on him.
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“How mean. I was hoping you would call me Hardy, in a tone of respect
and intimacy. Don’t you address Rory directly?”
“No, ah, well, about that… Hardy… sama?”
“Hardy.”
“...Hardy...san?”
“Ah well, that’s fine too. We’ll leave it at that for now.”
After that Hardy released her grip on Itami’s arm.
“Please follow me.”
Hardy led Itami, his group, and the white goth priestesses out of the
shrine in a long train, to what seemed to be the most luxurious-looking
restaurant in the town surrounding Belnago Shrine. She shouted for the
boss, opened up a menu, and then proceeded to order everything on it
from top to bottom, enough to fill up the entire table with food.
The quantity was such that even Itami and the others could not help but
stare in stunned silence. Even the eight of them eating together would
be hard-pressed to finish it all up. The cuisine was mainly heavily-
flavored dishes of meat, vegetables, river fishes, mint, mushrooms,
grains, cheese and cream. They gleamed with oil and fat, and they
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looked like they could cause indigestion just by looking at them.

However, Hardy dug into the food, as though intent on finishing it all by
herself.
The emptied plates piled up and up. The onlookers could not help but
worry that she would hurt herself by eating so much.
“Well, uh, you might be able to finish it all, but perhaps you could, uh…
show some restraint?”
While everyone around her was left dumbfounded by that prodigious

appetite, Tuka gathered her courage and ventured a protest.
However, the goddess of the Underworld simply shrugged and replied,

“Ah~ being a god isn’t easy, you know. Emotions fade away as one
travels the endless river of time, and soon one stops being able to feel
things. If that happens, I’ll become a being that only exists to carry out
her functions. To avoid that, I need to take my fill of enjoyment and
excitement.”
“In other words, eating?”
“Exactly. You should know well, High Elf of the Elf races. How do you
greet the end of your own millenia-long lifespan, High Elf? After losing
your joy, your emotions, your passions, you interest in everything, you
turn into a tree because you tire of life, do you not?”
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“…………”
“Then, will you return Lelei to us after satisfying your hunger?”
That question came from Alfie, for whom this situation was like
negotiating the terms for the release of a family member who had been
kidnapped.
“Of course. However, I want to thoroughly enjoy myself first.”
Hardy licked her lips playfully as she said that.
“When you say ‘thoroughly’, you mean…”
“Of course, if I had a companion with whom I could share my joys and
sorrows, I could return her to you right now… Rory, marry me. Or, I could
marry you. Let us become one and grow old together.”
As expected of a god; it would seem even gender was not a barrier to

her.
In addition, even her voracious consumption had not impacted her

elegant air in the slightest. They could all feel her magnanimity and
grace even through her casual conversation.
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Of course, Rory was determined not to lose out. She nibbled a piece of
toast in an adorable manner, and when she heard Hardy’s sudden
statement, she turned her face away in refusal.
“No thanks, I already have someone.”
“By ‘someone’, you mean this gentleman here, don’t you?”
Hardy’s face and body suddenly pressed close to Itami, and in response,
Itami scrabbled back.
“Don’t be a stranger. It’s hurtful.”
Rory moved, her frustration at its peak.
She suddenly rose to her feet and forced herself between Itami and
Hardy, then rested the edge of her Halberd on Hardy’s slender neck.
“If you don’t watch yourself, I’ll get mad!”
“Ah~ what a rude girl. That’s some nerve you have, a demigoddess
pointing a blade at a full goddess.”
“You may be a goddess, but that doesn’t mean I’ll bow and scrape
mindlessly before you. I’ll repay kindness with kindness and rudeness
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with rudeness. This is an ample reward for someone who stole the body
of a girl who wasn’t even one of your priestesses and making moves on
someone else’s man.”
“That said, they were all weak-spirited girls. Why would I care about my
priestesses if there’s a reliable girl who can take my spirit?”
(TL Note: the JP term is 霊格, referring to spiritual power)
“That’s pretty damn immortal, you know that?”
“Of course I do. I know it very well.”
“If you do, then get out of there at once!”
“I don’t want to. It’s been so long since I last took on a mortal form.
Can’t I enjoy myself a little? Lend it to me for a while.”
“As if I’d lend her to someone like you. Youji and Lelei both belong to
me.”
“Well, it’s jealousy then? How cute… as they say, all’s fair in love and
war. I love the feeling of claiming a man that other women like. Immoral
things like that excite me so much that I shudder.”
“There’s no joy in a loveless relationship!”
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“That’s a prospective goddess of love for you. I guess nobody else will
do. Love me, then.”
As Hardy said this, she reached a delicate fingertip out to caress Rory’s
cheek.
Rory pressed the edge of her halberd against Hardy’s neck again, who
backed away while saying, “Like I was saying, stop it…”
“Didn’t I say I wasn’t marrying you already? I responded to your

invitation to make it plain to you!”
Having learned that intimidation was completely ineffective, Rory pouted

and put up her halberd.
“Ah~ isn’t that a shame. Still, I’m sure you’ll come around some time. I’ll
wait for you until then. You, the Elf girl over there. How about it? Become
my lover. You don’t mind girls, do you?”
To Itami, that was a statement which could not be simply brushed off.
And indeed, Tuka did seem somewhat disturbed by it, but she did not
attempt to hide her reaction. Instead, she composed herself and primly
answered, “Please permit me to refuse, Hardy-sama.”
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“And why would that be?”
“I do not like you.”
Hardy sighed, and then turned the thrust of her attack to Yao.
“How about you, Dark Elf?”
“You have no need to ask, do you? All you need to do is read my mind.”
“...How mean. Even a god can only use physical senses while in a body
of flesh. Please tell me what you are thinking.”
“Then please permit me to refuse you as well. In the past, I might have
readily acceded to your invitation. However, I no longer care for you at
all. The reason for my visit today is to renounce my faith in you.”
“Is that so? What a shame.”
“Isn’t that obvious enough? You turned my friends and tribesmen into
the Flame Dragon’s fodder! How could I not hate you for that?!”
Itami sensed Yao’s emotions rising to a head. He placed a hand on her

knee in warning and reminded her:
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“Yao, calm down.”
“...Yes.”
Yao lowered her head and remained silent.
“Eh~ you’re quite obedient to this man. Oi. Then, order this Dark Elf girl
to be my lover.”
“I am afraid I must refused Hardy sa—n. I do not intend to repeat the

same thing over and over again, but there is a reason why Yao dislikes
you.”
“Indeed, I know. However, I have no intention of regretting my actions,

nor do I care about them.”
“What?! Why is that?!”
Yao sprang up as she shouted her reply, but Hardy merely shrugged in
displeasure.
“Please don’t ask pointless questions. Would you be able to accept any
answer I gave you? Even knowing the answer would not lessen your
pain. Why? Why? Why?! ...Much like an interrogation, your questions are
not intended to find an answer, but to induce guilt in someone else and
hurt them. No matter how many answers I give or how many replies
you’re given, it’s like drinking from the sea, which only makes one
thirstier. So don’t cloak it in sophistry, but fiercely, earnestly, directly
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hate me. There’s no need to pretend that you actually want to know the
reasons for it.”
“No need to pretend?! Are you saying my misery and pain are all fake?”
“Exactly. I know nothing of your pain and misery, nor do I want to know.
After all, I did what I did with full knowledge of the consequences.”
“Too much! That’s too much!”
“What’s too much? Where have I gone too far? Consider what you are
eating. You take the lives of animals and plants to feed yourselves. Is
that not too much?”
“If we don’t do that, we will die. These are the rules of nature.”
“Then you should understand why the Flame Dragon hunts and eats,
then.”
“But there was no need to use us as its feed.”
“The Flame Dragon decides what it eats. In addition, I did not put you all
on a plate and serve you up to the Flame Dragon as a meal. Is that
incorrect?”
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“That… that might be so.”
“Still, I would not have minded doing that. One needs to kill other
creatures to raise a carnivorous pet. This is a universal and natural
course of action. You feed your dogs and eagles with meat; where does
the meat come from?”
Indeed, the staff of an aquarium fed fish to orcas and dolphins. Those
fish were painstakingly raised with others of their kind in another tank. It
was easy to gloss over it, but it was a selfish and cruel scenario.
Humans instinctively placed themselves outside of the food chain, but

perhaps a being which surpassed humanity would see that as a violation
of natural law and scoff at it.
“The strong prey upon the weak. It is a rule of nature. Because of that,
you too have the right to defend yourselves. Thus, I will not pursue the
matter of you slaying my Flame Dragon. The plan may have gone awry,
but that too was to be expected.”
“But!”
“And in any event, I am the mistress of the Underworld. All but a few
souls will pass into my domain upon their demise. I will guarantee them
happiness after death. Thus, the right to spare or slay is also mine to
exercise. If one can exchange a moment of agony for the bliss of the
afterlife, then it is hardly different from the pains of childbirth. It is
merely a transition from one world to the next. Your parents, your
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friends, your fiancee, all of them are living happily in the world of the
dead.”
Those words were apparently chosen to provoke Yao.
Unable to bear it any further, Yao drew her rapier and pointed it at
Hardy’s neck.
“Happily? You dare speak that word? Don’t give me that nonsense!
Happiness is earned through struggle, not given by others! Not even a
god can give people happiness!” Yao shouted as her emotions raged out
of control.
Itami hurriedly grabbed Yao’s shoulders from behind, pleading with her
to “Stop it, Yao.”
“Itami-dono, please do not stop me. I, I…”
“I know why you feel that way, but you can’t!”
Itami had a pretty good idea of why Yao was so angry.
After all, Hardy’s exposition was pretty much the same as a dictatorship
bragging about the happiness of his country’s people under his party’s
rule.
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If you asked each of the citizens about it, they would probably respond
with something along the lines of “It is thanks to our Maximum Leader
that we are living in happiness”. However, that answer would sound very
fake, because there was no scale on which happiness could be
measured in the first place. Everybody’s definition of happiness was
different from each other. There was no way to simultaneously ensure
the happiness of everybody at once.
It was precisely because of this that the best mankind could do in

satisfying themselves was to not infringe on the rights of others. People
had to respect each other when pursuing their own happiness, and the
work of creating an environment which permitted such a thing to take
place was called “social welfare”.
While adequate food, housing, clothing and health were all preconditions
for happiness, they were by no means the same as happiness. By using
policy to create happiness, one would need to define the precise
meaning of happiness, and then force everyone to conform to that
standard.
It would be like trying to create a utopia by plastering the streets with

slogans like “Aren’t we all happy together?” “Let’s be happy together?”
“It would be strange to be unhappy” and “You need to examine yourself
if you’re not happy”.
Simply put, it would be a sacrilege against the soul. How many people
would not be angry when they learned their friends and family were
being subjected to that sort of treatment?
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Itami could sense the righteous anger from Yao’s wrath toward Hardy.
Even so, it would not be fair to direct that rancor at Lelei’s body.
“You can’t. That body belongs to Lelei.”
“But—!”
“Dammit, didn’t I tell you to stop?! You too, Rory! Don’t just stand there
and gawk, help hold Yao back!”
Rory and Tuka stared as they saw Itami — who hardly ever raised his
voice — bellowing at Yao. Then, they gazed at Yao with meaningful looks
in their eyes.
“...Yes.”
As she watched a deeply remorseful Yao quiet herself, Hardy sat down
primly and touched the place on her neck where the tip of Yao’s sword
had touched it. The crimson line of the wound healed shut in an instant.
“Hardy, don’t treat souls as dolls. Souls are not toys.”
“If you want to save them, then fight for them like a good little minion of
Emroy.”
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The animosity between Hardy and Rory was clearly apparent in that
brief exchange of words. If this kept up, the mood in the air might
become even more malevolent.
“Hardy-sama. Perhaps it is time you told us the reason for summoning

us here?”
Itami decided to push to the main topic. The use of -sama was to
emphasize the distance between them.”
“...All right. That might be better.”
Yao looked like she wanted to lunge at Hardy, who deliberately trembled
and went “oooh, I’m sooooo scared”.
“Actually, there is a place I’d like you to visit. It’s the reason I called you
here.”
“Visit? Us?”
“Yes. It concerns the future of this world. No, that’s not right. It also
concerns you people from the other world.”
“And what would that be?”
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Hardy shouted for the storekeep and ordered wine, which she drank
after filling her glass.”
“Before I tell you about that, I need to mention something about the
Gate.”
“Ah, that’s right. I have some things to ask you about the Gate.“
Rory drew close to Hardy, but the latter decided to answer Itami’s
question first.
“Joining the two worlds was unexpectedly easy. One could say that a
world is like the flow of a river that began with the creation of the
universe. In the process of their chaotic flow toward the horizon of
eternity, they meander and narrow through the influence of valleys and
mountains. Sometimes, two worlds are close together, and very nearly
merge. At that instant, a simple push can link two worlds. This is when a
Gate opens. However, these flows will not always flow together. At some
point, they might end up flowing toward their individual destinations. Do
you understand so far?”
“Ah, I think I do…”
“The Gate at Arnus is where the two worlds are in contact. Originally, it
was just a small hole, and it was very unstable due to the vibrations of
worlds, so passing through it took quite a bit of effort. The magicians of
the Empire created a magical device so as not to let it disappear. This is
much like anchoring a ship to a pier with a chain attached to a rock.
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“I see, so that’s the door-like structure on Arnus Hill.
“Indeed. That magical structure joins the two worlds together. Thus, the
Gate will not vanish.”
“And if the Gate does not vanish, will there be a problem?”
“The two worlds should have slowly drifted apart. If they are bound
together by force, this will cause many logical errors. Many undesirable
consequences will result on both worlds. The worlds will bend, twist and
warp. No matter how hard one pulls on the oars or how wide one casts
one’s sails, the ship will not sail. If one insists on sailing anyway, the
body of the boat will start to creak — no, perhaps it has already started
to creak — and fissures might even appear on the stones of the pier,
no?”
Hardy smiled as she said this. To the listeners, it was as though she
were telling them that this was deadly serious, and it sparked unease
within them.
“So, so… what will happen?”
“Hm, well, first… ah, the earthquakes have already happened.”
Earthquakes. The very thought made Shandy and Gray — citizens of the
Empire — hold their breath.
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However, Itami was Japanese, and he was not unduly alarmed. After all,
he had grown up in a country where he had been told “the big one will
come in the next decade”.
Thus, Itami asked: “And then?”
Hardy did not answer Itami’s question right away. Instead, she raised
her glass and downed it in one gulp, before cheerfully answering:
“You’ll need to see for yourselves, and then decide what you want to do
next. That is why I called you here. Of course, you don’t have to go over
right away. There’s some time, and you’re very busy. You can go over
whenever you’re free. However, this isn’t something which can be
delayed forever. I hope you understand that.”
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Vol. 7 :
Chapter 3

Volume 7 Chapter 3
Translator: Nigel
“What are you scheming?”
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It was Rory’s turn to speak with Hardy after she was done with Itami.
“To make this world a more beautiful and wonderful place?”
“You could have just said you wanted to throw it into chaos.”
“That would not be inaccurate,” Hardy chuckled, like the sound of silver
bells.
“On that note, the place where the worlds were joined doesn’t seem
quite appropriate. Why did you make a hole there?”
“Pure coincidence, of course. Also, the culture and artefacts from the
other side of the Gate have done a marvellous job of shaking up the
stagnant, rotting Empire. Now that the Empire understands that there is
a nation stronger than them out there, the Empire built by humans and
for humans can no longer stand. From now on, all races will be able to
raise their heads and improve their lot in life. These are interesting times
we live in.”
More like troubling times, Itami thought. Did all those people in Ginza die
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for that? However, Hardy did not care one jot about that sort of thing.
Telling her would probably be a waste of time.
“If that was the reason for opening the Gate, then what are you doing
now?”
“I want to witness humanity’s decision firsthand, and what they will do

next.”
“Decision? Do next?”
“Indeed. In order to fulfil my duties as Queen of the Underworld, I must

destroy the structure at Arnus. Does that not mean I must destroy the
otherworld army that has conquered Arnus and guards the Gate?
However, Giselle alone would probably not be enough for that. You won’t
help me either, Rory. So I needed to increase my forces. That was why I
awoke the Flame Dragon.”
Yao was stunned. The question which had been asked earlier was finally
answered.
“Just, just for that? If you just wanted to shut the Gate, then could you
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not have just told us? We would exhaust ourselves to carry out your will.
There would be no need for a Flame Dragon…”
“Ah, is that so? Would you really have understood?”
“Yes, all you had to do was find someone willing to listen and tell him.”
“Do you really believe what you’re saying? You’ve experienced it before,
haven’t you? Pleading with all your heart and soul and receiving no help
in return?”
After hearing that, Yao could not respond.
She had humbled herself and begged others to help her protect her tribe
and defeat the Flame Dragon, but nobody was willing to aid her. Even
Itami — who had set out to make a move — had not done so for her
sake.
Then, Hardy glanced at the silent Yao and said, “Well, in any case, it’s
your problem now. Since you interfered with my plans, you need to take
responsibility for it.”
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“Take responsibility… What do you want us to do?”
“Go see what happens when you leave the Gate alone, and then decide
what you will do next. I will simply be watching from the side.”
She sounded like she was looking forward to something exciting. Itami
could not help but put up his hand.
“Then, in that case, do we need to come back here and report to you?”
“No need for that. I will send Giselle with you, and you can deal with her.
All you need to do is view it with your own eyes and then contemplate
what actions you will take next.”
“But I can’t contemplate or anything. It’s not like I’m an expert.”
“Then bring someone knowledgeable along. It needs to be someone who

can visualize the consequences…”
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If the earthquakes were only the first of many bizarre phenomena that
resulted from the existence of the Gate, then it was their duty to
investigate. Still, he was hoping that Hardy would go into more detail.
Should he bring a seismologist along, then?
“Your face suggests that you understand and that you do not
understand. Did I get my point across?”
“Youji’s face has always been like that.”
“No, I’m having a bit of trouble digesting it with just that. It’s still a little
hard to take in…”
Itami scratched his head as he said this.
“That’s fine. If that’s the case, I am willing to give you a little incentive
for motivation.”
“An incentive?”
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“Yes. You’ll understand if you personally benefit, no?”
“What sort of incentive are we talking about here?”
“I can’t entirely resolve the problem that has been troubling you so far,
but I can take care of a large part of it. What do you think?”
“And what exactly is troubling us?”
“The problem that you’re griping about, of course.”
As Hardy said this, she cast the goblet in her hand.
It traced a neat curve and struck one of the curtains in the restaurant
with a high-pitched sound. No, the source of that sound was the cup
striking the head of someone hiding behind that curtain.
The man tore through the curtains and collapsed to the ground.
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Gray and Shandy nervously approached the fallen man. Their conclusion
— from his clothing and the dagger he held — was “He’s probably an
assassin”. The realization of what that meant made them tremble. They
had not announced their movements, and they had travelled to Belnago
via the HMV, which was impossible to outpace. Yet how had the
assassins found their way here.
“You mean you can’t help us finish them all off?”
Itami wondered if she could just directly get rid of all of them.
“Of course not. I can only take care of the ones who came to Belnago.
I’ve given prophetic dreams to the ones who want to kill these girls, and
so the anxious ones who don’t want others to get her first will come
here. Of course, some of them have not responded. They will probably
be the hardest to deal with. You’ll have to take care of them yourself.
Think of it as a trial.”
“Prophetic dreams… so you were the one who called them here.”
Rory bared her teeth as she glared dangerously at Hardy. If Itami had
flat-out denied Hardy’s request from the start, then she would simply
have hinted to all the assassins that they were in Belnago. In other
words, there was no room for them to refuse.
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However, Itami held Rory back and thanked Hardy.
“Forget it. It’s still a load off our backs. Fleeing will be easier once there
are fewer people hunting Lelei. It should be easier for her to attend the
conference in Londel now.”
If Hardy could deal with most of the assassins, then investigating the
oddities would not be a problem. In addition, she had told them that
they could go when they were free. Since they would be gallivanting all
over the countryside for their mission, they could simply head over when
it was convenient to do so.
“Don’t scare me like that, did you honestly intend to continue running?”
“I plan to run until I can’t run any more… is that bad?”
As Hardy heard Itami’s answer, she looked at Rory with a look on her
face that seemed to say you’d better think of something.
“I say, Rory. You’ve been following him all this while. Why didn’t you
teach him that important fact of life?”
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“There was no need to. He is Youji. That is enough.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Hardy muttered. Then, she wagged her
index finger at Itami, like she was his teacher.
“Is that really a good thing? The more you try to run from your problems,
the more they tend to catch up with you and wait at the place where you
have to return. If you continue running in spite of that, you may end up
losing the path behind and ahead of you.”
He might not like her, but this was still a divine revelation. Itami nodded.
“...Aye. That might be true. I’m painfully aware of that.”
“Which means you know that and you still intend to run?”
“Yes. I dislike pain and suffering, so I try to avoid it as much as

possible.”
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1961
“Someone like that beat the Flame Dragon?” Following that outburst
Hardy open-mouthedly stared at him, her hands on her cheek.
“When Youji decides to get serious, pursuing him is quite the task.”
“Is, is that so… he seems a lot different from how Giselle described
him.”
“Ah, what did she tell you about me?” Itami nervously asked. He was
quite worried about what sort of rumors were spreading around him.
“She said you were a battle maniac who insisted on fighting any foe he
encountered, and that you possessed frightening power that could
desolate an area of 50 yuns in a single blow.
(TL Note: ユン is yun and seems to be a unit of measure)
The demigod Giselle seemed to have exaggerated Itami’s abilities quite

greatly. While some people inflated their opponents’ strength to excuse
their loss, she seemed to have gone too far.
“That’s totally off.”
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1962
“That’s right, it’s completely the opposite. Youji’s the kind of man who’ll
run if he gets the chance.”
As he heard Rory needling him, Itami replied, “Leave me alone, besides,

I’m a coward.”
“That’s fine. Youji, you may say that you’re afraid, but when push comes
to shove and you have to defend something important to you, you’ll rise
to the challenge. We’ve all seen that. I hope to see more in future.”
Yao and Tuka nodded as Rory said this.
“But…”
Then, Hardy spoke up.
“You cannot run from the trial which awaits you. Your enemy has drawn
up battle lines and awaits you. It is time for you to stand firm and
choose. Will you let this girl present her thesis at the conference?”
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1963
As Hardy said that, she put her hand on her… on Lelei’s chest.
“...If, just if… we didn’t go for the conference and just fled right away,
what would happen?”
“Do you still not understand? Your enemies will not back down. If you
run, you’ll probably run back to Arnus, where you live. In the end, the
people important to you will be involved in this, and many more people
will have to die. That’s how it is.”
“As I thought, huh?”
Itami clicked his tongue, his brow a mess of wrinkles.
*************************************************************************
In the darkened interior of the Chinook, Lelei studied Hardy’s hair by

what little light could enter through the small window.
Strictly speaking, it was also Lelei’s hair.
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1964
After being possessed by Hardy, her hair had grown out until she could
sit on it. She had tied it into a braid and then cut it off below her neck.
The density of the weaving had shortened it somewhat, but the braid
was still around the length of Lelei’s arm. It was the same familiar
platinum blonde, but it seemed have retained part of Hardy’s divinity,
and it glowed like a translucent gemstone.
“Since you are not a priestess, but have offered your body to a god, I
shall reward you with the right to use divine magic, using this as a
catalyst. However, once you do so, the magic in question will be fixed
and you will not be able to use any other kinds of divine magic, so you
must choose carefully. Also, I ate a li~ttle too much because I haven’t
eaten in so long. You might be worried about losing weight afterwards,
sorry about that. I thought of moving the fat to certain parts of your
body, but that might change your body to the type that man doesn’t
like, so I did not do so. I’m pretty wise, right?”
And with that, Hardy departed Lelei’s body.
“When the priestesses of Belnago saw this hair, you could see their
desire to possess it written all over their faces.”
From the priestesses’ point of view, the hair Lelei had grown out was
essentially part of their goddess’ body. It was a sacred relic which should
have been placed in a holy sanctuary. However, it was a gift from Hardy,
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1965
so they could not just steal it from Lelei. All they could do was suggest
that she should “make herself look a little better”. This resulted in Lelei’s
somewhat unsightly haircut, as though it had been hacked off with a
knife. Then, they tried to gather up the leftover strands which remained.
It would seem that the priestesses intended to weave the strands into a
holy tapestry and place it within a reliquary.
After this, events proceeded as described.
After leaving the Belnago Shrine, Lelei returned to Londel under the
protection of Itami and the others, to present herself to the conference.
Most of the assassins targeting Lelei had been drawn to Belnago like
moths to a flame and captured by the shrine’s warrior monks. However,
the Piper — never one to sully his own hands — could not be dealt with.
Shandy had fallen for his scheme and made a big disturbance at the
conference hall. In order to get him off their backs, they entered the
Imperial Capital and discussed matters with Zorzal to resolve things.
Still, there was the matter of the agreement with Hardy.
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1966
They had to go to Kunapnui in order to fulfil their promise. Lelei felt quite
depressed at having to inconvenience everyone for this.
“Don’t worry about it. We gave everyone a lot of trouble too, didn’t we?”
Tuka urged Lelei not to worry about it. According to her, the back and
forth of “loans” and “exchanges” were a natural expression of
interpersonal relationships. Avoiding troublesome things like that might
be a relief, but they were also signs of a sickness called “loneliness”,
which would plague one until death.
“I like you too, Lelei. So go ahead and share the things which bother you
with me. Maybe if we can share our worries with each other, we can help
each other deal with them.”
Rory nodded. She was seated on the other side of Lelei, sandwiching her
between them.
“...Thank you.”
Lelei nodded as she quietly replied.
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1967
***
“We’re about to take off. Everyone, please strap in.”
Itami’s call was the signal for Kurata and the others to squeeze into the
cramped interior — packed with cargo — and take any empty jump
seats.
Itami was the last to enter the helicopter.
“Arunusu tower, Juliet Golf 5044, request IFR clearance.”
(TL Note: This part is in Engrish)
Fragments of chatter between the pilots and Arnus Control Tower

filtered out from the cockpit. Just as they were musing about the
conversation that had ended up as shouting at each other, there was a
loud noise, followed by the sound of a fierce impact. Itami stepped up to
see what was going on, and saw the co-pilot grabbing his head.
“Ah, crap…”
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1968
The co-pilot was mumbling to himself, and the captain seemed to be

looking down on him with pity.
“What, what happened?”
In response to Itami’s question, the captain muttered “How shall I put

this…”
“Well, this guy said that Control’s English pronunciation was a little
weird, so Control said Japanese was okay.”
“Control to JG5044. Cleared to Kunapnui. Ready to copy?”
As though to validate the captain’s words, one could hear Japanese

through the incomprehensible English babble coming from the speakers.
“Ready to copy. Go ahead.”
“Oh, isn’t that Lelei-chan? Your Japanese is as good as always. Can you
keep up with our English? I’ll feed you the data.”
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1969
Lelei recorded the control tower’s English weather data in fluent

Japanese. It made the others feel sorry for themselves and that they
were imposing on her.
“Don’t feel bad. It’s best not to worry about her. The truth is, she’s so
smart it feels like she’s cheating, and she makes everyone else seem
stupid in comparison. The right thing to do is hand off troublesome
things to others. As the saying goes, it’s better for a stupid man to sleep
than think. There’s no point in agonizing over things. It’s better to
change your thinking.”
Itami had said this to encourage the other man. However, the copilot
took it as a trampling of his pride, and his head drooped even lower as
he moaned “Gueeeehh...”
“You’re not helping, Itami! Stop rubbing salt into his wounds.”
“Ah, sorry. It just slipped out…”
However, what Captain Tsuchiura saw was Lelei’s eyes, staring hungrily
at the co-pilot from behind Itami.
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1970
“If you don’t feel up to it, I can take your place.”
Tsuchiura had half a mind to take her up on her offer when he saw the
state of his co-pilot, but if he did that, his fellow airman’s pride might
never recover.
“Ah… no need for that. It’s fine.”
Lelei’s words perked the co-pilot’s head up, and he hurriedly rushed to
complete the flight preparations. In all likelihood, he must have felt that
he could not keep wallowing in depression. It was less that he had pulled
himself together but that someone had lit a fire under his ass.
Forget it, Itami thought. It would be fine as long as he could fly.
As he glanced back into the cargo hold, he saw that the window seats
had been taken by Rory, Piña and the other aviation virgins. The other
members of the team fit themselves in the spaces between them.
The professors were having a heated debate about the distortion in the
world that Itami had described in his report; specifically, what form it
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1971
would take. Perhaps that was why there were empty seats beside them,
and Itami took one of them.
“According to the report, it appears there is some sort of astronomical

displacement going on.”
In response to Youmei, Shirai said:
“Actually, questions about changes in stellar topography have come up

in Japan.”
“What did you say? Why did nobody mention this in public?”
Youmei and Urushibata asked that question in the same voice.
“That’s because our astronomers are still verifying the matter. They feel
the deviation is a matter of mechanical error. After all, this sort of thing
would normally be unthinkable. How could the positions of stars and
galaxies shift in such a short time? Actually speaking these doubts out
loud would call one’s own abilities and vision into question. However, if it
were to slip out at a drinking party… well, it would spread like wildfire.”
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1972
“Is that so. That would mean the same phenomena have appeared on
both sides of the Gate.”
“U~mu,” Youmei grunted, stroking his beard with his fingers.
“In truth, I reasoned that the Gate must be the cause as soon as I read
the report.”
“Then what about the earthquakes?”
“Well, there are earthquakes in Japan every day, including the ones we
can’t feel.”
“Well, we can’t regard an increase in earthquakes as statistically

significant… can we?”
As the engine’s output increased, the incredible roaring of the engines

filled the Chinook’s interior.
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1973
The helicopter took off, filling everyone with the sensation of floating.
The virgin team plastered their faces to the tiny windows of the cabin,
entranced by the sight of the ground receding beneath them.
“Uwah, uwah, uwah~!”
Hamilton clung to Piña as the helicopter shuddered in the wind.

However, Piña seemed quite nervous too, and her expression was
ghastly. She kept silent, as though her right to shriek had been taken
away by Hamilton.
“What a shameful display!”
As Youmei snorted in anger, Professor Urushibata tried his best to

smooth things over.
“Give them a break, Professor Youmei. After all, this is their first time on
an aircraft.”
“Granted, it is only expected for primitives to be astounded when

exposed to the trappings of civilization. But we are not tourists. Why
must we bring these girls with us on a scientific expedition? What is the
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1974
JSDF thinking?”
“Don’t get the wrong impression, they’re apparently important figures in

the Imperial government. Our destination is Imperial territory, so you
might compare them to travel passes.”
“Oh… Well, it can’t be helped, then.”
The cameraman filmed Piña and the others, who were staring intently
out of the windows.
“Is that red-headed girl really a princess of the Empire?” Kuribayashi’s

little sister asked Kurokawa.
“Yes, that’s correct,” came the reply.
“The Empire is the enemy which attacked Ginza, am I right? Why are we
treating them so kindly? Why haven’t we taken them as prisoners?”
“It’s complicated.”
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1975
“Can you tell me a little about these complicated matters?”
As she saw the younger Kuribayashi waiting with her notebook out,
Kurokawa realised that she was trapped.
The clouds were like a white veil, and the Chinook ascended through
them.
There was hardly any time to enjoy the sprawling view of Arnus beneath
them, as the view outside the windows was soon little more than a sea
of white. Droplets of what seemed like rain splashed against the window.
However, the droplets stopped splashing within moments. Right after

that, the mighty rays of the sun flooded the darkened interior of the
Chinook.
Piña and the others exclaimed “Uwah!” as they beheld the dream-like
view before them.
“This, this is what Heaven looks like, your Highness.”
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1976
“Do the gods live in such a marvelous world?”
Rory sighed as she heard their conversation. “It’s nothing like that at
all…”
It would seem she had been to Heaven before.
“Itami-dono. I wish to try walking upon that fluffy surface! Please allow
me to dismount!”
“I want to go too!”
Piña and Hamilton pleaded as one. In particular, there was no trace of

fear in Hamilton, who had been bleating in terror just now.
However, Itami shook his head. “Haaa~ It can’t be done.”
“Why?! Can’t you think of something, Itami-dono?”
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1977
“Those are clouds. They’re like fog. If I put you on them, you’ll pass
through them and then fall until you hit the ground. It’s veeeeerrry
scaaaary~ It’ll hurt so much when you hit the ground. Just thinking
about how all your bones will be crushed to powder frightens me.”
Hamilton clutched her ears shut and trembled, as though imagining

what Itami had just described, and Piña froze as she felt a chill down her
spine.
Still, she insisted: “How, how will you know if you don’t try?”
It would seem she imagined that it was like walking on freshly-fallen

snow.
“Ahhh… if you do that, you’ll die. You’ll die for sure.”
“Really? Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying. If you don’t believe me, you can give it a go if you want.
Still, do it when I’m not looking. I don’t want to watch a suicide take
place before my eyes.”
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1978
“Gggk. Does that mean the residents of the celestial realm do not want
us mortals around?”
Piña and Hamilton grit their teeth and clenched their fists. Such was
their sorrow that even the onlookers could not help but share their
depression.
The professors glared at Itami, as though their eyes were saying, “What
did you do to them, you fiend?”
Kurokawa exchanged malicious whispers with Kurata; something like

“Hey, Kurata, did you hear that? The el-tee did something terrible to
Piña-denkadono. I think he deceived her or something.”
“I think it was something like jump down into the world of the gods, like
he was telling her to go kill herself.”
“How is that my fault?” Itami said as he pointed to himself.
“It’s not?”
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1979
Rory feigned ignorance.
“Cheh… Fine, fine. If you’re so dead set on it, how about skydiving? We
can’t do it today, but we can arrange it when we next go to Japan.”
“You… what did you say? Sky… die… ving?”
Piña blinked.
“Yup. There’s a thing called a parachute; it can slow your speed of falling
so you don’t get hurt. Solo jumping needs a certain degree of training,
but if it’s just for entertainment, you can jump with an instructor holding
you from behind… although it won’t be cheap.”
“Let’s do it, let’s do it!”
Piña and Hamilton’s faces changed. Perhaps one might describe this
behavior as manic-depressive.
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1980
“Itami-dono, I would be delighted to walk the sky!”
“Oi… is it just Piña and her?”
Rory and Tuka looked unhappy. Lelei was quite restrained, but she still
made a noise of displeasure.
“Fine, fine. You can come too.”
“Yaaay~!”
Was falling from the sky really that enjoyable? Itami thought. He was a
man who did not take pleasure in throwing himself out of a perfectly
good aircraft, so he looked upon the girl’s simple joy like he had found a
surprising lifeform.
They must be feeling happy because they were looking out at the sky
from the window.
Things would probably be different without that infinitesimal barrier
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1981
between them and the sky.
They would be directly exposed to the limitless abyss before them, and
their moods would change instantly. The wind would rush across their
bodies and the earth would loom far beneath them. Their smiles would
probably freeze up and their faces would twitch in fear.
Itami smiled evilly as that thought came to mind. However, that made
him recall his own fear-filled experiences, so in the end he could not
smile.
***
The Chinook skimmed over the ocean of clouds, like a boat sailing over a
ripple-less lake.
They slowly descended as they drew near Kunapnui. Soon, they sank
into the clouds, as though falling into a hole beneath them.
Depression spread through the passengers as the movie-like scene of

fluffy white clouds floating by was suddenly interrupted.
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1982
“The window’s gone white again,” Piña said. Itami replied:
“Yes, we’re descending. The weather outside doesn’t look good.”
In fact, mist-like water droplets were condensing on the windows.
The helicopter lurched up and down and side to side. It was unstable,
and visibility was poor.
The members of 3rd Recon understood that a sudden change of air

pressure caused by a sudden descent might cause their ears to pop.
They had prepared themselves for this by adjusting the pressure in their
membranes. However, given that there was no ear popping, they
realized that their descent was actually quite slow.
“They’re taking a lot of care in setting us down.”
“Well, there’s a lot of people aboard who are new to flying, so it’s
probably a consideration for them.”
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1983
The conversation between Kurokawa, Kurata and the others went along
those lines, but that was not the case.
This was not familiar airspace, but territory they were visiting for the
first time. The prospect of descending through the clouds in such a place
filled the airmen with dread.
Even in Japanese airspace, there had been cases where rescue

helicopters had crashed into mountain peaks under poor visibility
conditions. Moving through the clouds robbed them of their sense of
balance, which resulted in the pilots not knowing how to properly orient
their craft.
“Settling with power.”
“All we can do is believe in the map and what they say about there
being no high peaks around here.
If Itami knew that the two pilots were gritting their teeth and paying
careful attention to the controls in case the ground suddenly leapt out at
them, he might feel that jumping out with a parachute might be a better
option.
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1984
In fact, once they broke through the cloud cover, a steep slope
resembling the sides of the American Grand Canyon appeared before
them. Though they were a good distance away and perfectly safe, the
sheer size of the geographical feature deceived their senses, and the
pilot hurriedly pulled up on the joystick.
“Ah!
As the helicopter shuddered, the passengers clung tightly on so as to not

be thrown from their jump seats.
As they looked out the windows, they saw fog and rain lashing the steep
slopes beneath them.
“What — what’s that?” the cameraman muttered as he placed his lens

to the window. The rain and fog floating within the valley was not the
white color they were familiar with.
Instead, it was black, resembling a cloud of ink poured into clear water.
its surface was a flat plane, like a pool of still water. The black mist filled
the valley and covered the land, and scattered peaks poked from the
obsidian sea.
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1985
“I hope it’s not a poisonous gas.”
“Aye,” the professors said to each other with bitter expressions on their
faces.
The airmen seemed to feel the same way, because they avoided
touching the fog, choosing instead to hover at an altitude.
They abandoned their original plan to land within the valley, and began
looking for a place to set down.
The pilot answered Itami’s query into the cockpit with a change of plans.
“Lieutenant Itami, I’m sorry to deviate from the plan, but we can’t land
here. We need to pick a spot somewhat further away.
“I’ll leave it to you then, Captain.”
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1986
“Oh… frankly speaking, that helps a lot.”
One could describe the personality of JGSDF members as “thorough and

stubborn”. They disliked changing their plans, and thus their pilots and
operators were trained to accommodate that quirk of theirs. However,
Itami was more casual in many ways, so he did not sweat the small stuff.
He decided to leave the selection of the touchdown location to the pilots.
“Tsuchiura-san, how about that peak over there which looks like a
mountain? Let’s land there.”
“Not in that area. The instruments aren’t reliable.”
“The instruments?”
“Maybe it’s the magnetic field in the area or something, but there’s a
difference between what I see and what the instruments are telling me.”
The pilot’s instincts — honed through long years of flight experience —

told him something other than what the values on his instruments said.
In the face of this unprecedented occurrence, he decided to avoid
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setting down over there.
Incidentally, the pilot was a Captain, equivalent to Itami’s superior.

However, Itami was in overall command of the operation. The reason for
this was similar to the extreme example of why military medical officers,
despite their high rank, could not command troops.
The pilot found a shelf-like region some distance from the black fog, and
landed the Chinook there.
***
“Onee-sama, we’ve been waiting quite a while for you.”
There were no signs of habitation from the air, so everyone thought that
this place was uninhabited. Yet, a voice greeted Itami and the others as
they came down the helicopter’s ramp.
They squinted, and saw a draconic woman with bat-like wings hovering
above them, her grey hair soaked by the rain.
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1988
She looked to be around 20 years old. Her deep blue skin was covered in
tribal tattoos. She wore a sleeveless white goth priestess’ outfit, and her
gold-pupiled eyes seemed filled with depression as she looked at them.
Itami and the rest of 3rd Recon immediately brought their rifles up as
they saw her. This was because that woman was accompanied by
countless Wyverns. They covered the sky, baring their sharp teeth and
fangs.
“Who is that? Do you know her?” Pina asked.
“Please don’t stand behind me, it’s very dangerous,” Yao said, a LAM on
her shoulder. Then, she proceeded to give a summary response.
“That is Her Eminence Giselle, the Apostle of Hardy, Queen of the

Underworld.”
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1989
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1990
“What, that person is…”
Giselle landed, holding a massive scythe like that used by the Grim
Reaper. She looked around herself, like a punk looking for victims among
the crowd. Then she jumped as she realised Itami was there, before
slowly backing off.
“I-I suffered greatly in the past because of you. But, but today, this, this
will be your end…”
“I’m leaving.”
However, Rory simply turned and left. Giselle’s tone suddenly changed
to one of begging, and she hugged Rory from behind while saying, “Ah,
please wait, Onee-sama!”
“That’s why you’d better fix that attitude of yours. I’ve been thinking
that it doesn’t match someone who claims to be a priest. Belnago’s rules
might be relaxed, but surely they’re not that relaxed. Are they?”
Giselle’s blue skin broke out in a sweat.
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1991
She had tried speaking in a proper tone in the past, but after being
infected by Hardy’s way of speech, her tongue tied up in knots every
time she tried to sound formal. Asking her to switch back was too much.
Her mouth opened as she attempted to say something, but the words
would not come. A pitiful expression bloomed on Giselle’s face, as
though she had forgotten how to speak.
“…………”
Rory patted the teary-eyed Giselle on the back.
“I get it, I get it. As long as I can see you’re trying.”
Giselle hurriedly bowed to her.
However, after feeling everyone looking sympathetically at her, she

snapped, “What are you lot looking at?”
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1992
The subtext of that was “How dare you people look down on me?”
“Gi~se~lle? What was I just saying?”
“Ye-yes… I’ll behave myself.”
The demigoddess forced herself to curb her unruly tongue and with
great effort, squeezed those words out in a polite tone.
After seeing all this, Itami and the others felt that there was no point
keeping their heavy weapons at the ready, so they lowered their
weapons without being commanded to do so.
Even the nearby Wyverns scratched at their heads, almost as though to

say “Good grief.”
***
“So, is that the anomaly you wanted to show us?”
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1993
“Ah, er, yes. If you want to observe it more closely, you’ll need to go
down the mountain… so please ride these, onee-sama.”
Giselle whistled over several Wyverns and bade them carry Rory and the
others.
“We, we’re going to ride these?”
Giselle frowned as she heard Professor Youmei’s panicked voice.
“He’s a nervous wreck... ah, no! Ah… well, they understand, and they
won’t let you fall, so please do not worry and mount up. Ah, also, each
one can only take two people.”
After Rory glared at her, Giselle’s fumblings were quite comical.
Rory, Lelei, Tuka and Yao immediately set about playing rock-paper-
scissors.
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1994
“Jan-ken-pon!”
After three consecutive draws, victory was decided in the fourth round.
Having shown scissors and won, Yao triumphantly pumped her fist in the
air while going “Woohoo!”.
“Kuh,” the other three went in unison.
And so, the Wyvern assignments were Rory and Tuka, Lelei and Youmei,
Urushibata and Shirai, the younger Kuribayashi and her cameraman,
Piña and Hamilton, and Itami and Yao.
Kuwabara and the others remained with the Chinook at their landing
zone. Their job was to pitch camp and stand sentry.
“I didn’t expect I would win. Looks like my luck’s taken a turn for the
better.”
Yao squeezed Itami’s hand. However, Itami looked back at her with a
regretful expression.
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1995
“Yao, sorry to bother you, but the truth is I can’t handle this sort of
thing. I’ll leave the reins to you.”
“Eh? You’re a man in green, who slew a Flame Dragon, and you’re
cowering before something like a Wyvern?”
However, that did not sound like a joke at all. Itami’s pale face was
deadly serious.
“I’m only saying this because it’s you, but… but I’m really scared of
heights.”
“Eh?! But you were fine on the helicopter, weren’t you?”
“Well, it was all right in there. Even if there was an accident, I’d have
something to hold on to. But look at that.”
Squatting before them was a lifeform with savage eyes and sharp teeth.
It made one think, “Is that some kind of giant alligator?” Perhaps
touching or maybe even sitting on it would have been fine, but he would
obviously be afraid to entrust his body to it and take to the skies. In
addition, he did not know how to ride one. Muttering all this and more,
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1996
Itami swallowed his pride and asked Yao for help.
“First things first, you have to keep this a secret. I’m only telling you
because it’s you, Yao.”
Is it really okay if I take the reins? Yao wondered, distinctly ill at ease.
Yao felt that it would be very dangerous as she thought back on her bad
luck.
However, Itami had already revealed his fear of heights, and he had
gone pale when looking at the Wyvern. Forcing him to control it would
be too much. I have to help Itami no matter the cost, Yao thought.
“It’s okay. My luck’s been getting better of late, and bad things haven’t
been happening. I won the rock-paper-scissors just now, right? Her
Holiness gave me that talisman too. It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine.”
Yao clutched her 5-yen coin as she cheered herself up, then mounted
the Wyvern.
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“Come, Youji-dono. We’re setting out immediately,” she said as she

smacked her waist.
Itami nervously climbed up the Wyvern’s back.
“Please hold on to me so you don’t fall off.”
“Is, is this alright?”
“Tighter. Until you can’t let go!”
Itami did as Yao said, wrapping his arms around her slender waist and
plastering himself to her seductive back.
As Tuka saw this, she glared at her right hand and grumbled, “Why did I
make paper, dammit?”
“Kuh, I’m so jealous,” Rory said, staring at Yao like a vengeful spirit.
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1998
Lelei’s eyes were fixed on her hand.
Youmei asked, “Miss, is there something wrong with your hand?”
“I miscalculated,” Lelei answered.
How had it turned out like this?
“I should have won on the fifth round.”
Lelei claimed.
“You-Youji-dono, I can feel your breath on my back…”
Her body-hugging leather armor transmitted the heat from Itami’s

breath directly to her body. With that heart-racing sensation behind her,
Yao could not help but lean backwards.
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1999
“Ah…”
However, Itami was beyond caring, clinging as he was to Yao. Since

there were no safety belts here or parachutes, all he could do was
entrust his body to Yao.
“I’m so glad that I ended up with you, Yao.”
“Eh? Why’s that?”
“I can’t hug Rory, Lelei or Tuka like this, can I?”
Itami’s words referred to their frames. The other three were shorter than
Itami, so it would not be less of hugging them from behind but putting
his arms around their necks. Thus, Itami had to find someone around his
size. In that respect, the tall Yao was ideal.
However, Yao did not interpret Itami’s words that way. To Yao, it
sounded as though Itami was saying that he was embracing her
precisely because it was Yao.
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2000
“Ah, so, so you mean, it’s okay because it’s me?”
An elated Yao straightened her back up as she puffed up with courage.
“I understand. Please leave it to me,” she said as she gripped the

Wyvern’s reins. Her luck had been bad all this while, so she had been
quite reserved. Now, Yao displayed the cool confidence that only she
possessed at this time. She lightly kicked at the Wyvern to get it
standing.
“Ohhh, uwawawah!”
Itami could not hold back his shrieking. After all, the sight of looking
down those sheer cliffs would strike fear even into those with stable
footing. That fear was multiplied tenfold when one was on the shifting
back of a beast.
Yao looked back to Itami, reassuring him.
“It’s fine, Youji-dono. Please do not let go of me. I’ll be fine, so please
enjoy my breasts as much as you like. It’s embarrassing to be groped in
public, but I have no objections if you wish to take advantage of me
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2001
during the confusion.”
“Don’t say that! It’ll sound terrible if it gets out! Do I look like I have the
time for such things now?! Just fly it safely” Itami shouted as he
squeezed his eyes shut.
And so, after their preparations were ready, the Wyverns spread their
wings, like planes preparing to take off from an aircraft carrier.
“We’ll have dinner waiting for you when you get back.”
Kurata waved “Bye~bye~” to them as they left, like an air marshal.
“Then, we’ll be setting out. I’ll leave the rest to you.”
After verifying that everyone else was ready, Giselle spread her own
wings.
Then, she stepped off the edge of the cliff, like a glider. The Wyverns
followed behind her, gaining speed from their sudden plunge.
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2002
Unlike aircraft, riding on the backs of animals had a unique instability. As

he felt his organs push up into his body from the fall, Itami screamed
once more, and clung to Yao with all his might.
“Huhu! What ever will I do with you?” Yao smirked. However, in that
moment, Tuka and Rory (who were flying ahead of them) transfixed Yao
with their gazes. The two of them seemed to be muttering some terrible
imprecations, and a chill ran down Yao’s spine.
In truth, Tuka was going, “Calm down, right hand, calm down!” while
clenching her fist, and Rory was incanting a prayer along the lines of,
“My Lord Emroy, please forgive her sins. That woman knows not what
she does”.
The two of them looked like they were cursing her. Of course, that was
not the case, but it seemed that way to Yao. It caused Yao’s rapidly-
soaring confidence to shrivel up, and the uneasiness that had been
eclipsed by being chosen by Itami reared its ugly head.
“Ahhh, my hand’s moving by… the wind!”
Worse, the vile aura around the blonde Elf’s right hand emitted an
elemental spell, slicing the string which held the protective talisman (the
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2003
5 yen coin) that hung before Yao’s chest.
The 5 yen coin looked like it was about to fall off. Yao saw this and
shrieked: “Ahhh! Why’s this happening?!”
In that moment, Yao let go of the reins and lunged for the 5-yen coin,
throwing herself off the Wyvern’s back.
“Look out, Yao!”
Itami was holding tightly onto Yao and was carried along by her.
However, Itami grabbed at the Wyvern’s body with his legs and barely
managed to stay seated.
However, Yao seemed to view Itami’s lifesaving hands as a nuisance,

and tried to shrug him off.
“Youji-dono, let go of me!”
“Idiot! If I do that you’ll die! Grab the reins!”
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2004
“I can’t! Without that, their curses will—”
“Stop struggling, you dummy! You’re sliding off, if that keeps up you’ll
fall!”
Itami was trying to hold onto Yao, while the latter was freaking out, and
so her body slowly slid down. He attempted to keep her in place by
embracing her slender waist, but Yao kicked and thrashed wildly,
twisting in his grip, until she was face to face with Itami.
However, that meant Itami’s face was buried in her ample cleavage.
“I, I can’t breathe…”
Yao’s thrashing was compounded by his breathing difficulty. Her waist

felt like it was going to slip from Itami’s arms. While he managed to
hang on with his thighs, the fearsome view below his head and the fear
that Yao might slip from his grasp at any moment only made him
scream:
“Ahhhh! The reins! Grab the reins! Hurry!”
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2005
The Wyvern’s reins hung within Yao’s reach.
However, Yao was frozen from losing her 5 yen coin. It would seem she
had not realized the gravity of her current situation.
“No way, no way, no way. Bad things will happen without that talisman!
I’ll slip! I’ll fall! I’ll lose my purse! I’ll have bad luck!”
“Idiot! I’m the unlucky one now!”
The Wyverns flew by their own will, ignoring the fact that their
passengers were not holding onto the reins. They soared through the air
high above the slopes, and then down into the deep valleys between the
steep cliffs.
After about 30 minutes, they reached a large clearing.
If the black mist was a lake, then the Wyverns had landed on the
lakeside. Everyone had dismounted safely, but Yao and Itami were in a
pile to the side, unable to stand. Itami was thoroughly exhausted and
panting heavily. However, nobody paid them any heed.
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2006
“This is it, Onee-sama.”
Professors Youmei, Urushibata and Shirai, as well as Kuribayashi

Nanami, were speechless as they beheld what was before them. The
cameraman set up his camera and began filming the tragic sight before
them.
“This, this is…”
This was the scene occluded by the black fog. They could see it from the
sky, but at such close range, they understood the severity of the
situation.
After dismounting from her Wyvern, Tuka had gone to one knee, staying
clear of the fog — well, it was less of a fog than mist or smoke — while
she examined the plants. Then, she gave a mournful cry.
“It’s terrible…”
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2007
“They’re all dead. Every living thing here is no longer alive…”
All the plants whose roots had been covered by the black fog had
withered away while still appearing green.
If their leaves had turned red and fallen off, it would have been
explainable as a natural process. However, the leaves were still green
even as they had fallen off. This was an extremely abnormal sight.
***
The black mist spread like ink. Tuka found the corpse of an insect on the
other side of the fog, and picked it up with a pair of twigs, as though she
were using chopsticks. The insect’s body looked fresh, as though it had
just died. It was still moist, even.
“Did it just die? Or is it that the bugs and the plants which die in this
black fog do not rot away?”
In other words, even the micro-organisms responsible for decomposition

had died.
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2008
Youmei, Urushibata and Shirai, who possessed knowledge of modern

science, studied what Tuka was holding up. “Radiation?” “No, maybe it’s
a gas,” they said as they hypothesised the cause of death.
As he heard those dangerous words, Itami hurriedly withdrew his Geiger

counter from his NBC protection gear pouch.
He pointed the device everywhere, and read out the values. “All
normal,” he said. Then, he took out a gas detector, and poked its head
into the black fog to test for toxicity. However, when he compared the
change in the detector’s color to a chemical defense field guide, there
was no proof that there was any toxic gas in the air at all.
Giselle pointed to a stone peak protruding from the sea of clouds and
said:
“I came here a month ago on Mistress’ orders… At that time, the fog
only extended up to there. But now it’s all the way here.”
“Could, could this be the Apocryph?” Rory muttered.
(TL Note: JP term is アポクリフ, as in the apocrypha)
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2009
“Apocryph?”
“Tens, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of millions of

years later, the gods will leave and humans will vanish from this world.
At that point the fog of the void will swallow the world and return it to
primal chaos. That fog is called the Apocryph.”
“But aren’t you and the gods still around, Rory?”
“Indeed. This is why this sort of thing should not have appeared yet. It
should be far, far in the future.”
As Rory said this, she fell to her knees, as though she had been dealt a
heavy blow.
“Urushibata-kun, what do you make of this?”
“At a glance, it looks like some kind of smoke…”
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2010
Urushibata advanced down the slope and reached out to the surface of
the black fog, but Giselle stopped him.
“Careful. If your hand goes in too deep, you’ll lose your fingers.”
As she said that, Giselle plucked a leafy branch from a tree that was not
dead yet, then thrust it into the fog and waggled it around. Then she
withdrew it and showed it to Urushibata.
The green leaves at the tip of the branch crumbled into powder at the
merest touch, as though they had been thrust into liquid nitrogen.
Youmei plucked several leaves and inserted their tips into the mist.
If it were some kind of vapor or fog, then there should be some sort of
ripple if he stirred it up. But the black mist remained still, like a shadow.
It stayed in place and did not move.
“VIsibility extends about four to five centimeters beneath the surface.”
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2011
Urushibata produced a convenience store’s plastic bag. He took out the

food and drinks from the bag, emptying it. Then, he knelt down and tried
to scoop up the black fog.
However, no matter how many times he tried, the black substance did
not stay within the plastic bag, even when the black smoke had entered
the bag.
“Umu. This is neither a gas or a liquid. In fact, it cannot even be

considered matter.”
“Indeed,” Shirai and Urushibata said as they heard Youmei’s words.
The three wise men cupped their chins, observing the black fog like
children gazing into a pond. The black fog filled the bag once they put
the bag in. But when they took it out again, the fog did not stay behind,
leaving nothing in the bag.
“Could this be something like a shadow?”
“A shadow?”
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2012
A microphone suddenly extended over. Nanami stood beside it, a smile

on her face as she awaited Youmei’s explanation. The camera hovered
beside her.
As they saw her face, the scholars nodded and began their explanation.
“We cannot be sure yet, but I believe this might be some kind of extra-
dimensional shadow.”
“Di-dimensional? Sounds like SF stuff…”
“Umu. It most likely sounds like pseudoscience to you. I too felt that
way. But that fact is that this is a perfectly legitimate branch of science.
They have used the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva to prove the
existence of the fifth dimension.”
“Ha, is that so… but still, can something which looks so fluffy and has
thickness like this be considered a shadow?”
“Umu. That is a good question. To we who live in the third-dimension,

shadows are flat surfaces to us; in other words, they are two-
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2013
dimensional.”
“Yes, yes.”
“However, since this appears to be a substantial — in other words,

three-dimensional shadow — that alludes to the existence of a extra-
dimensional entity of some sort.”
“H~m…”
Nanami nodded, as though she understood. Youmei smiled like a kindly

grandfather as he saw her reaction.
Then, she smiled and said, “I don’t get it.”
“Ah, you foolish woman! I’ve explained so much and you still don’t
understand!! Did all your nutrients go to your bosom instead of your
brains?!”
Youmei rapped on Nanami’s head as he scolded her roundly. Nanami
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2014
rolled around on the floor, clutching her head.
“Nooooooooo, I, I’m, sorry, But I really don’t get it.”
“Forget it, Professor Youmei. Calm down. There’s hardly any students in
this day and age who can understand without a thorough explanation. In
addition, this is the first time I’ve encountered the theory of a three-
dimensional shadow implying the existence of an extra-dimensional
entity.”
“Of course. I just came up with it myself.”
Urushibata and Shirai had nothing to say.
Kuribayashi Nanami had no idea what was going on, and looked at the
professors while asking, “What happened?”
After that, a great shout of “What are you going to do if you can’t
understand these things by instinct?!” echoed through the mountains of
Kunapnui.
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2015
***
The sun went down, and the night filled with darkness.
The investigation party had spent half a day moving around, and they
took their dinner together. The menu was the familiar combat rations,
and the curry rice which few people disliked.
The stars shone brightly in the clear sky after the rain stopped. However,
the ground was still muddy, so there was hardly anywhere to sit. Thus,
they used the interior of the Chinook as a dining hall.
Giselle wolfed down the curry rice in the bento box.
“It tastes so good! I love this stuff!”
In an instant, she had finished two to three people’s worth of food.
The girl in the white goth priestess’ outfit sat with her thighs spread on
the ground. That — combined with the way she was frantically devouring
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2016
her meal — was no longer crude, but had in fact abandoned every shred
of femininity. Hardy was a big eater, but at least she had class, the
difference between them was like the gap between the heavens and the
earth.
The fact that she’s so beautiful makes it even more of a shame. Those
thoughts ran through Itami’s head as he looked toward Yao.
Their eyes met, and she said, “Alright” before Itami could even speak.
Then she rose and started to prepare another portion.
Look at her, she can still eat. Heat up another helping, and pour coffee
for everyone. That was what Itami had been thinking. But Yao was
already in motion before he could speak, so Itami could only watch her,
his mouth opening and closing in silence.
“Eh, you can communicate with your eyes? That’s pretty amazing, hm~”
Yao smiled in response to Tuka’s barb, and proudly patted her chest and
the 50 yen coin which hung between it. She had been sighing like it was
the end of the world after losing the talisman Rory had given her, so
Itami had taken a 50 yen coin from his wallet and given it to her, saying,
“This is ten times more powerful than a 5-yen coin”. Yao perked up upon
seeing the coin; no, in fact, she came to life again.
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2017
“I can feel what Youji-dono wants to do from here.” Perhaps she was
getting carried away.
“Ah, really now? How nice.”
“She’s even calling him Youji-dono~”
“I think it’s time we drew closer to each other, so I’ve decided to call him
that. Ohhh, I can feel it now. Tonight, Youji-dono will have me spend the
night with him.”
Everyone stared at him, and Itami went, “No, no, it’s impossible!”
However, Yao seemed to be humming a tune as she prepared a pouch of

combat rations. Then she winked at Itami and said, “You seem quite shy,
Youji-dono.”
Having seen all this, Rory quietly said to Tuka and Lelei:
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2018
“It seems she does not know the difference between her fantasies and
reality. We must keep an eye on them tonight.”
“Correct.”
“Understood.”
Itami decided to change the topic to dispel the hostile mood in the air.
“It must be pretty rough being a god’s apostle.”
The spoon heading to Giselle’s mouth froze as she heard what Itami
said.
She quietly muttered, “It’s all your fault.”
“Why me?”
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2019
“Because of the Dragons. Mistress scolded me because of that. As

punishment, I was made to lead you people here to observe the black
mist…”
Giselle shrank as she noticed Rory glaring sharply at her, and hurriedly
switched to more polite language.
“...That’s what my Mistress said.”
“Did she not give you anything to eat? No rations or supplies?”
“Why would a god worry about how mortals ate? What that means is
that people have to feed themselves with their own strength. I ate the
grass and hunted animals to begin with. However, all the animals are
either dead or gone, so there was no prey for me.”
Giselle turned a teary eye to the side as she said this.
In that direction was the astronomer Shirai, who had set up his telescope
and camera. He was currently observing and recording.
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2020
“What… on earth is he doing?”
“He apparently wants to record the stars in the night sky,” Yao
explained as she topped up Giselle’s curry rice.
The cameraman, who was effectively Kuribayashi Nanami’s partner, was

helping Shirai out, due to the matter falling within his sphere of
expertise. Of course, he was filming for media broadcasts at the same
time.
Elsewhere, Youmei and Urushibata had set up a camping bed in the

cabin of the Chinook and were cheerfully drinking at it. Nanami was
holding a 1.8 liter bottle as she interviewed them, alternating between
buttering them up and listening to their responses. Everyone else
clustered around Youmei and the other academics to learn what they
had concluded from their studies.
“Ah, Youmei-san. How do you intend to conduct future investigations?”
Youmei stroked his chin as Urushibata spoke, and then replied, “Umu.
First, I shall have to liaise with MECST and arrange for a proper research
budget.”
(TL Note: MECST = Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and

Technology)
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2021
“But do we really have that much time?”
“We do. Granted, if the Apocryph is spreading, we will need to hurry our
efforts. If it hints to the Gate being the cause of it, then we must do
something about the Gate. That being said, we cannot waste time on
things like “we’ll worry about it next year’ and so on.”
“Then, can we say this Apocryph stuff appeared because of the Gate?”
Nanami seemed eager for a conclusion, to which Youmei responded, “I

cannot honestly say!”
“Don’t you know that the phenomenon of the Gate is one which I am
hard-pressed to understand? It is impossible to prove a relationship
between two phenomena which have not yet been fully comprehended.”
“So what was the point of this investigation?”
“It was simply to clarify the facts of what has already happened.
Analyzing these phenomena will require further study. In a sense,
realising that much is a breakthrough in itself.”
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2022
“Still, if that’s the case, does that mean there’s no need to close the
Gate?”
“That may be so, but it may not be the case. Deciding on

countermeasures lies in the realm of politics. Science may not be able to
give a concrete answer, but we can estimate the danger from events on
this side, and from there decide on what action to take. Take the Tokai
earthquake predictions for example. We do not know exactly when they
will strike, but we must still be prepared for them. This is a similar case;
right now, all sorts of strange phenomena like the observed stellar
displacement, earthquakes and this Apocryph are taking place. From
this we can conclude that something must be done. While we do not yet
have a clear picture of what is going on, it may be too late to act once
we figure it out.”
Urushibata nodded in agreement.
“Indeed. Thus, we must get funding as soon as possible. It would be a

great loss to close the Gate without performing further investigations.”
“Oi, Hazama’s boy. Where did the budget for this expedition come
from?”
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2023
Itami recalled the contents of the expense plan he had read earlier.
“Ah? Oh, it was a special expense from the Special Region resource
investigation budget.”
“Good, give the rest to us! We’ll gather all the equipment and recruit all
the academics we can find and get to the bottom of this!”
“Please, please hang on a bit. This isn’t something I can decide by

myself. I need to discuss it with my supervising off—”
“Don’t give me excuses, give me answers. In my opinion, this

investigation will not only advance extra-dimensional theory, but grant
new insights into the nature of dark matter. Will it not work if you phrase
this as an intellectual resource of the Special Region?”
“Ah, I’ll try that,” Itami replied as he scratched his head.
“This validates the theory of matter which can only be observed as

gravitational distortions…” Urushibata muttered.
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2024
“Indeed. If we can prove that this phenomenon is an extra-dimensional

shadow, we ought to be able to make a connection with the current
theories on dark matter.”
After placing his camera outside, Shirai returned, nodding and saying,
The thing about long exposure cameras was that they had to be left
alone once one opened their shutter, so there was no need for him to
actually stand watch over it for the whole duration of the exposure.”
“The presence of matter distorts space, and this distortion can be

observed in the form of gravitational phenomena. However, if space is
distorted through some other reason, we should be able to measure
some kind of gravitational phenomenon even if there is no actual
material presence.”
“Space distortion is gravity? What’s that all about?”
Using a gentle tone, Youmei began explaining to the silver-haired girl

who had suddenly cut in.
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He pulled out a rubber anti-slip mat, and had Shirai and Urushibata help
pull it taut, so its surface was flat.
“Over there, tighter… that’s it, that’s right.”
Kurata and the others were intrigued and gathered around the group. At
Kuribayashi’s urging ,the cameraman began filming.
“All right? Imagine this is space. As you can see, it is flat and
immaculate, with no distortions whatsoever. Now, if there were
something with mass here…”
As Youmei said that, he took a grenade from Itami’s vest and placed it
on the mat. Itami exclaimed “Ah!” as the old man snatched the grenade
away, but the ring had not been pulled out, so he decided to leave
things at that.
“Now, do you see how the mat bends in response to the presence of a
mass upon it?”
Indeed, the rubber mat had dimpled inwards where the weight of the
grenade rested.
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“This depression causes objects to fall down into it. In other words, this
depression is called gravity,”
Nanami tilted her head as she listened to Youmei’s explanation. She did
not seem to understand. However, Lelei’s eyes lit up, as though she had
realised something.
“So objects fall because of this distortion… this well. In other words, if
matter exists, it must be accompanied by some amount of gravity.”
“Umu. That’s right.”
This was the moment when the theory of gravity came to this world.
Youmei took out a silver orb from his pocket and tossed it onto the mat.
“Professor, why are you carrying something like that?”
“Pachinko is a science. Sooner or later, I shall devise a strategy for
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certain victory.”
“Pachinko was only a science 40 years ago when people launched the
ball by pulling a handle, right? Now it’s a game of probabilities where the
shopkeeper can fiddle with the numbers to do whatever he wants.”
“Your soul is bereft of romance.”
The silver marble ignored Youmei and Urushibata’s conversation and

slowly rolled across the mat. Then, it was drawn in by the dimple of the
hand grenade and finally collided with it.
“The existence of matter deforms space… so depending on the size of

the mass, it would be possible to open a hole in space?”
Youmei smiled as he heard Lelei’s starry-eyed question.
Urushibata began studying Lelei and muttered something along the lines
of, “This little lady is quite bright considering her age. I wish I had a
student like her.”
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“I say, I say, can I bring her back with me?”
Those words were directed at Itami, who replied, “As long as she agrees.
Don’t be mistaken; she’s a scholar in this world, and a magician.
However, exchange study procedures are a big pain, so she can’t go at
short notice.”
“Hoho, so you are a sage of this world and a magician? For the longest
time, I have been fascinated by magical phenomena. Why not intern at
my laboratory?”
“How sneaky, Professor Youmei. I had my eye on her first.”
“It doesn’t matter who was first. What matters is whose lab suits her
best.”
As Youmei kept up that conversation, he removed the grenade and the

marble from the rubber mat.
“Now, with nothing there, the surface is flat and without distortions. This
represents normal space. Now, if space were distorted for some
reason…”
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Saying so, Youmei reached under the mat, got a hold of it, and pulled
downwards.
The surface of the hitherto flat rubber mat dimpled into a depression.
Youmei rolled the marble in again.
“It is self-evident.”
The marble wobbled over the uneven surface, but it was eventually
drawn into the depths of the depression.
“This is why we can observe gravitational phenomena even in the

absence of gravity-generating mass.”
“Still, why didn’t we feel anything strange about the gravity when we
went there?’ Sasagawa asked. Youmei laughed in response.
“That is because the land is massive. The distortion is tiny in
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comparison; you could say it is like a little wrinkle in the surface. One
cannot tell the difference between those with one’s body, you know.”
As Youmei said that, he place the grenade back on the dimpled mat. The
depression caused by the weight of the grenade obliterated the
depression made by Youmei’s hand pulling from underneath.
“Space distortion? I don’t get it at all. Kinda weird trying to visualize it

with a rubber mat. And what’s this about opera-dimensional space and
whatnot?”
Youmei snorted at Kurata’s response.
“Aye, it’s too much to expect for you bumpkins to understand.

Wahahahaha!”
After clearing up the mats and returning to their places. Lelei and
Nanami continued asking questions of Youmei and Urushibata.
“The problem now is extra-dimensional theory. In the first place, proving

its existence is very difficult. We are bound by the X, Y and Z axes and
the temporal axis. So I find it nearly impossible to imagine another
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‘direction’ that is different from any of these.”
“What else could there be apart from the directions of left, right, up,
down, forward, backward, and the flow of time from the past to the
future?”
Youmei’s face turned bitter in response to Nanami’s question.
“I do not know. The mere postulation has taxed me to my limits. Of

course, I have some inkling of that, when considering the common
points of all the directional axes. But it is merely a theory which I cannot
prove.”
“Common points?” Nanami asked.
“The X, Y, Z and temporal axes. They extend infinitely in all directions

from an arbitrary point P. Thus, three-dimensional space encompasses
two- and one-dimensional space, and all this flows along the temporal
axis. Thus, any extra-dimensional spaces ought to possess similar
properties.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Lelei nodded. “When you phrase it that way, I can
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2032
understand it.”
“What, what did you just say?”
“Magic has always been a procedure which affects the third dimension
from the outside.”
“Wait, wait a minute, little miss. You mean to say you understand this?”
Youmei and the others leaned forward.
Lelei nodded. “This is essential knowledge for a magician. Beyond the

third dimension is the aether.”
“Aether?”
“That is what we call it,” Lelei explained simply.
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“Understood. Please, continue.”
“Very well.”
Lelei began her lecture. Beyond this world were various axes, called
aether, sether, kether, feither and so on.
“Saying that they exist outside the three-dimensional world is incorrect.

Strictly speaking, they coexist with the third dimension. However, we
have no organs with which to sense them, thus we experience them as
being beyond us.”
“...Coexist, you say?”
“Correct. The principle which governs the fall of a thrown object in the
third dimension can also be used to lift it.”
Lelei demonstrated by levitating a rope in the Chinook’s interior to show

them.
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“This phenomenon is created by manipulating the ‘false principle’ of

sether, which affects the ‘true principle’ of the third dimension. If we use
the example of the rubber mat and the marble, this would be like
pushing up the marble through the mat, thus causing it to float
regardless of gravity.”
“But how can you manipulate sether?”
“Like I said, the third dimension coexists with sether.”
“Assuming they coexist, how can you affect the other side of the
equation?”
“Sether overlaps with this location.”
Despite Lelei’s explanation, Youmei could only shake his head. “I cannot
fathom the crux of the argument.”
“The third dimension is encompassed by sether, kether, feither, and so

on. They are not separate existences. Thus, sether is here and so is
feither.”
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“Kuh, I regret to say I understood less than half of that. It would seem I
need to sit down and properly ponder this matter. However, I do
understand that you have explained certain principles and then
demonstrated magical phenomena. I cannot definitely conclude that
they are fifth- or sixth-dimensional axes, so I shall set that aside for now.
However, there is one thing I wish to verify. I have long considered the
existence of an axis called ‘possibility’. What do you think?”
“What do you mean by ‘possibility’?” Lelei asked, to determine the

definition he had in mind.
“How shall I say this… in science fiction, they are known as parallel
worlds, but how should I explain it…”
Itami — who had overheard this by accident — excitedly raised his hand.
“Isn’t that something like the Planet of the Apes or a world where
everyone’s dressed in a different color? Or maybe a world where cities
like Fuyuki, Narumi, Nekomi, Tomobiki-machi or Hinata exist?”
(TL Note: Nekomi is the city in which Ah! My Goddess is based. Similarly,
Fuyuki = F/SN, Tomobiki = Urusei Yatsura, but I’m not sure what Hinata
and Narumi refer to. Also, there is an old joke that monkeys are basically
humans with three fewer hairs; hence Planet of the Apes.)
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Lelei replied: “That is Naurtel, I believe. Within Naurtel, the world is

expressed as a line of sorts.”
“That, that would be…”
“Superstring theory?”
Youmei nodded to Shirai.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Wild speculation would be dangerous.”
“Within the world of Naurtel, these ropes are not alone. One could say
that they subdivide infinitely and extend from their source,
encompassing the higher and lower dimensions within them.”
Lelei looped the rope before them and brought both strands near each
other, so they touched near the middle. Itami and the others realized
that this was exactly how Hardy had described it. Lelei planned to
explain it in her own way.
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“The point at which the two ropes touch is called a Gate. Usually, the
Gate opens and closes in an instant.”
Youmei clapped his hands together in that moment.
“I see! So you are saying that when the Gate is held open, both worlds
are tangled together?”
Youmei reached out and grabbed the rope, pressing both strands
together tightly.
Shirai brought his face near them and said, “I see. So when the Gate is
held open, it implies that the worlds are forcibly tangled, so the tension
on the lines will continually increase, and it will be stretched…”
“Umu. It might be elastic, but how elastic can it be? The world will warp
because of that too…”
The professors tried to explain it in their own words. Nanami could not
follow them, and asked them to return to the original topic.
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“Then, professors. Do these many worlds really exist?”
“Well, about that… they probably only differ very slightly, on the level of
everyone missing just three hairs, from each other and tend to cluster
up.”
“Cluster up?”
“Let’s use coin tosses for a comparison. If we want to talk about

outcomes, then in addition to coming up heads or tails, you have to
consider that it might end up stopping at a 45 degree angle to the
ground, or even a 42 or 40 degree angle. However, under normal
circumstances, it will end up either facing heads or tails. This is because
the probabilities have clustered in that way… at least, that is how I
visualize it. How about that?”
Youmei looked around for approval, but Lelei shook her head.
“I did not quite understand that. Forgive me.”
Youmei told her not to worry about it.
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“Ignorance is not a sin. To academics like myself, the fact that we do not
know things is a powerful impetus to perform research. I have long
considered things like why is the separation between the Earth and
Venus’ orbit the way it is? Why is there no planet between Jupiter and
Mars, only an asteroid belt? All these things are the consequence of the
gravity of the various planets. Then, I have also considered that a similar
phenomenon might exist in the realm of probability. The difference
between the realms of probability will not be small, so there will be
marked differences between them.”
(TL Note: this sounds a lot like Attractor Field Theory from Stein’s Gate,
or atomic orbital models)
Itami and Nanami could not say anything in response to this.
“It is all right if you plebeians do not understand. However, I feel that
this is the reason why our world and the world of the Special Region can
coexist. Little miss, your name is Lelei, am I correct? I could use a
talented individual like yourself in my laboratory. Come learn the
scientific method with me.”
Youmei patted Lelei’s shoulder as he said that.
Lelei began pondering the problem. It would seem she was considering
an internship after exchange studies.
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Youmei nodded in satisfaction, and looked back at Kuribayashi.
“Very well, it is now my turn. I am in a good mood today, so I shall

attempt to explain the spatial distortion phenomena in simple language.
Surprisingly enough, this is not uncommon in daily life, so explanation
will be easy enough. Did you know I experience spatial distortion every
day?”
P182-184
“Really?”
“Nanami began babbling: “Do you mean places like the Sargasso Sea?
The Bermuda Triangle? Are those places really linked to another
dimension?”
“Don’t conflate this with the contents of trashy tabloids!” Youmei

growled as he knuckled Nanami on the head.
“Besides, these other dimensions don’t exist! We need a three-

dimensional model of space and time in order for us… for matter to
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2041
exist. We exist within the three-dimensional envelope created by the Big

Bang, and we have proven it. Even if there were another side, it would
merely be another three-dimensional plane on another probability axis,
much like this Special Region!”
Itami raised a hand to suggest an example he could understand more

easily.
“Isn’t that similar to how video game characters can only exist in
computers?”
“A strange example, but an accurate one. These characters are only

conscious of the world within the computer. A higher dimension exists
outside the computer, but the principles of the higher dimension still
apply within it, even if the characters within the computer do not realize
it.”
“I see,” Itami nodded, thinking of an MMO. game.
“Now, let us discuss spatial distortions. For instance, what I believe to be

flat land is actually the surface of a massive sphere, so surely it should
be spherical, no? However, the sheer size of the sphere means that I am
not conscious of that distortion. Similarly, the shortest point between
two points on the Mercator projection of the world is a straight line.
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However, compressing the surface of a sphere into a two-dimensional

projection would distort it, so in truth, the shortest distance between two
points is actually a curve.”
Haaah… the audience seemed somewhere between understanding and

confusion.
“Still, how can you conclude that space is warped after half a day of
investigation?”
In response to Kuribayashi Nanami’s question, Urushibata asked the

cameraman if he could replay the day’s footage.
“Sure,” the man said, and he put the video on the monitor LCD screen.
Youmei and Urushibata were fiddling with various sensors, and someone
said, “Forward a little”, and the image drew back. Then someone said,
“Oh, this is the spot”, and the image stopped.
“We tried a lot of methods, but this was the most direct way.”
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Everyone stared at the LCD screen.
They were looking at Urushibata and Youmei measuring how much

ground the black mist had covered. They did not know how far it was,
but they had already laid out 25 meters’ worth of tape measure.
“Is that it?” Kurata asked.
“I have no idea what this is,” Kuwahara said.
“Please tell us, Professor.”
Youmei ignored Nanami’s question and looked to Lelei.
“Do you understand, little miss?”
Lelei replied in a calm and logical tone.
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“If you’re measuring the distance between two points, the measuring
rope must be pulled straight. But the measuring rope in the image is
bent…”
Lelei looked at Urushibata and Youmei after pointing that out. Sure
enough, the screen showed the straightened measuring tape now
formed a gradual curve.
“Precisely. I originally intended it to be perfectly straight. In other words,

this tape measure represents the shortest distance between two points.
Under normal circumstances, it should be a straight line. However, as
you have just seen, it is clearly curved. Why is that? The tape measure
was not blown by the wind, nor was it stuck on something.”
Youmei smiled as he said this.
**
Lelei walked unsteadily into the tent she had been assigned and sat on
her bed.
She unconsciously took off her robes and hung them on a hanger, and
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2045
then hung it onto a spar within the tent. Then she took off her Wyvern-
scale armor and draped it on her knees, leaving her in her T-shirt and
shorts. Gazing off into the distance, she expelled the heat in her chest
with a heavy exhalation.
“Ahhh, what a pain in the ass! I can almost hear Hardy laughing at us!”
Rory took off her black Goth outfit as she uttered words which a member
of the clergy should not have spoken.
It was a complex garment of interwoven pieces of fabric held together

by knots and ribbons which passed through numerous metal loops.
Putting it on and taking it off was very tiresome. However, Rory nimbly
undid the ribbons and knots with practiced movements and slid the
outfit off. Clad only in her revealing underwear, she plopped herself
down on the bed.
“We need to close the Gate before the Apocryph swallows the world. The
problem is that not everyone thinks that way.”
Rory began combing her hair.”
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“That’s right,” Tuka said. She slid her legs free of her tight-fitting jeans
and continued, “There’ll be people who will say that the Apocryph has
nothing to do with the Gate. The ALC relies on the Gate for a living, so
there’ll be strong opposition.”
“Is that what she meant by watching what humanity would do, that
bitch!”
“Wouldn’t anybody want to do something after seeing that?” Yao asked.

“If it were me, I would definitely try to settle it once and for all.”
After Rory, Tuka and Yao shared their opinions, they all turned to Lelei.
However, Lelei simply folded up the armor on her knee and replied:
“We can’t convince the people who oppose it. Even if the Gate is closed,
it can be opened again.”
“Really?” Tuka and Yao asked in unison.
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“The Queen of the Underworld gave me this as payment,” Lelei said as

she produced the braid. “By using this, I can open a portal that links
worlds.”
“Hang on! If you use that, you’ll become one of Hardy’s minions, Lelei!”
“What is wrong with that?” Lelei — ever logical and thoughtful — replied
in an even tone.
After all, she might become a minion of Hardy after drawing on her
power, but that did not mean that she would become a worshipper or
priest of Hardy, and thus Rory’s enemy.
Regular priests received special abilities by venerating their gods. Under

those circumstances, opposing the god who granted them power was
heresy. However, Lelei’s body had been hijacked by a god and used for
her own purposes, so this was simply power that had been given as a
payment — perhaps even as compensation. Thus, even if that power
was directed at Hardy, she would not be blamed for it.
That said, to Rory, it was like a relative of hers using a weapon from the
enemy, and it deeply displeased her. To all the people of the world,
taking that weapon meant aligning themselves with the enemy. If Lelei
demonstrated that power, everyone would think that she was a minion
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of Hardy. Indeed, the problem lay in Rory’s perceptions.
“However, if that happens, won’t the Apocryph appear again?”
Tuka and Rory were caught up on different matters, and they worried
about different things.
“Indeed, that is so.”
Rory tried to persuade Lelei to come around, but Lelei banished that
worry.
“The solution has already been hinted at. This is happening because the
Gate has been left open. If we open it at appropriate times, there will be
fewer problems. One might call this a form of protecting the
environment. The important thing is not to accumulate distortion.”
“I see. Then, closing the Arnus Gate will not be a problem for the groups
who depend on it.”
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2049
“There’s a big problem there! Lelei, do you want to live a life of opening
and closing the Gate?”
Unlike Tuka and Yao, Lelei was a short-lived human. It would be a shame
to use one’s short lifespan as a Gatekeeper.
“I don’t want that either,” Lelei said as she shook her head. She
acknowledged that there were a pile of other problems as well.
“We don’t have a way to find Japan from the countless other ways.
Without that, we won’t know where to point the portal even if we could
open one. In addition, when we close the Gate there’ll be chaos in the
Naurtel to relieve the accumulated distortion. There is also a time
differential between here and there. It is possible that even if we open
the Gate again the next day, another year might have passed over
there.”
“That, that’s terrible! Youji would have become an old man and I would
already have ascended by then. Isn’t that a terrible thing?” Rory wailed.
Tuka and Yao expressed their agreement.
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After that, the hitherto silent Giselle spoke.
“It’s just as Mistress said…”
“What did she say?”
“Mistress said that humans would not be able to reach a conclusion. She
said that humanity would not be able to make a decision when their
future clashed with their desires. Because of that, the gods have to force
a conclusion through disaster.”
“Kuh,” Rory moaned in despair.
“Onee-sama, you should know what you have to do.”
Suddenly, Lelei’s hand stopped. It was small, but she noticed a hole in
the material of her armor.
She thought about it, and then continued in a stern tone.
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“...Youji will not be a problem. We will lock him up when the time comes
to close the Gate. I’m certain the Japanese government will trade him as
a condition of opening the Gate again. Because of that, being able to
open and close the Gate is a priority, and I hope I will be the only one to
do this. I hope everyone here will give me their full cooperation.”
Lelei laughed coldly, with a perfectly flat expression on her face.
As they saw her like this, Rory, Tuka, Yao and even Giselle could not
help but lean back.
They felt a chill down the spine from that emotionless smile on her face.
“What?”
What? It sounded like that. Rory and the others shook their heads while
saying, “No, it’s nothing~”
The hole Lelei had discovered in her armor was not a round bullet hole
punched through it, but a slit, like a buttonhole. It was roughly big
enough to admit her index finger. When she flipped it over, the scales on
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the breastplate were not damaged. Why was there a hole like this? How
surprising.
Still, this was not the work of a smith, but the production of the children
of Arnus. It might have been made with Wyvern scales, but they had
used the small, irregularly shaped or damaged scales which could not be
solid. Sometimes, one would find small gaps depending on the way it
was worn.
The fact was that the hole in the garment looked like it had passed
through the gap in the scales.
When had that hole appeared? Lelei tilted her head and rummaged
through her luggage, and took out a needle and string.
“Ah, Lelei-dono? If that is the case, I feel you will be in grave danger,
Lelei-dono.”
Looking back, she saw that Piña was speaking, and Hamilton was
combing the Crown Princess’ red hair.
“Why is that?”
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2053
“Because you will be drawn into the schemes of the Empire and the
Japanese. At the very least, if Zorzal-niisama hears about this, your life
will be in danger again.”
From Zorzal’s point of view, being able to close the Gate implied that
Japan had given up on plundering the world on this side of the Gate and
had retreated, so it would be a wonderful thing. It would be even better
if the Gate could not be opened again. Naturally, if someone had the
power to open the Gate, he would hate them. If that person were Hardy,
Goddess of the Underworld, he would not be able to do anything about
it, but it would be a different matter if that person were human.
“We cannot keep this secret.”
Lelei began sewing the hole in her clothes as she replied.
“Why is that…” Piña asked Lelei.
“This is because being able to reopen the Gate is the precondition that
the Japanese government and everyone at Arnus will have for accepting
even a temporary closure of the Gate. Without that, everyone will
oppose it. There won’t even be room for negotiations.”
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2054
Piña knew she could not persuade them by herself, so she looked around
for someone to help her. However, Tuka and Yao merely shook their
heads in silence.
Rory was feeling quite miserable too. Hardy had already foreseen things
would develop this way, which was why she had given Lelei that power.
She could sense that Hardy wanted to make Lelei the eye of the storm
as she threw the dice around her.”
“The official government of the Empire would certainly be against it.

Even if we could open the Gate again afterwards, Father… His Majesty
would certainly decree that the Gate not be closed. Even I would once
have opposed the closing of the Gate.”
“Why is that?”
Hamilton raised her head and answered Tuka’s question.
“This is because the military power of Japan, quartered as they are in

Arnus, is critical for the survival of the official administration at Italica.
Even if we were certain that the Gate could be opened again, the blank
period where we would be deprived of Japan’s military might during the
closure of the Gate would be unacceptable. It is a matter of life and
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death for us. Anyone who had been through the purges would be
begging Japan not to abandon them.”
“Are the Empire and Japan still at war? Aren’t they getting along quite
well?”
“Please understand. The situation has changed.”
“Then how about killing Zorzal directly?”
Rory hoisted her halberd, feeling that that would be a very simple
solution.
“Your Holiness. If you do that, Father will be the next to take Lelei-dono’s
life. The official government feels that Japan is necessary due to the
power of Onii-sama’s power. Without him, Japan will be a hindrance to
the Empire. So defeating Zorzal only means he will be replaced by
Father, and defeating Father will only mean he will be replaced by
someone else, and they will all attempt to assassinate Lelei-dono. This is
a matter of circumstances, not because they are Onii-sama or Father.”
“Then why not have Emperor Molt abdicate and become Empress, Piña?”
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2056
“Please give me a break. I have long tired of politics. If I became

Empress, then I would be the one to have to make the decision to
eliminate Lelei-dono. And besides, I hope you won’t force me to do
something I don’t want to do.”
Piña sounded very depressed as she said this.
“What a headache,” Rory groused, as though to speak for everyone else.
“Dammit, Hardy. How dare you repay kindness with treachery…”
From Rory’s point of view, Lelei had been singled out for her abilities.
Since the person who had singled her out was Hardy, it was more like
the goddess had cursed her. However, Lelei did not seem bothered by
this at all as she said:
“What else is there to be perplexed about?”
“What else… Lelei-dono, did you hear what we said just now? This is a
matter of your life and death.”
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“That’s fine. Youji will protect me. He will help me.”
Tuka laughed unhappily at this.
“Haha, so was that your objective? You’ve been spoiled ever since he
protected you in Londel.”
Lelei nodded gently to Tuka.
“As I thought.”
“I will not deny that. I do not deny it, but that is not all.”
“So it’s to keep Youji here by force?”
“I don’t think Father will abandon me and go back to the other side if my
life is in danger.”
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“I’m certain of it. If Youji won’t help me, there must be some reason for
it. It must be a painful decision, made after weighing me against
something even more important.”
“Still, just assuming, if things get to that extent, what happens?”
“I die with grace. That is all a wife can do.”
Lelei’s face blushed a faint pink as she continued stitching.
Rory, Tuka and Yao looked at each other, muttering things like, “She’s
amazingly reliable,” “Lelei’s a breathtaking woman”and so on.
Perhaps she had not realized it, but Lelei muttered, “What? I’m heavy?”
It would seem she did not quite get the meaning of the phrase.
(TL Note: Breath-taking woman derives from 重い女, one who gives
everything for her man when she falls in love. At heart, the base word 重
い refers to weight.)
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“Come to think of it Lelei, what have you been doing since just now?”
“I’m mending a hole. Mending holes is important.”
“Eh?!”
They had been talking about holes (portals) for some time now, but Rory
leaned forward to inspect the movements of the needle in Lelei’s hand.
Then, her eyes shot open, and her gaze shifted from Lelei’s hand to her
chest.
“...W-what?”
Rory suddenly reached out and lifted up Lelei’s T-shirt, gazing from her
flat tummy to the faint swell of her breasts to the skin near her throat.
This savagery was only possible within the women’s tent.
“W-what? What? What?!”
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Lelei pushed away Rory’s hands in a panic. Her protestations were also a
form of inquiry — what on earth are you doing? However, after sliding
her fingertips along Lelei’s pure white skin to verify that she was
unharmed, her lips curled up into a wicked, smug smile.
“Don’t you think it’s… gotten bigger?”
“...Eh, ehhhhh?!” Lelei yelped as she covered up her chest.
She had not noticed earlier, but Hardy’s gluttonous binge might well
have wrought havoc on Lelei’s figure. The others had called her a
breathtaking woman. What exactly did that mean? If that were the case,
she had to do something about it immediately.
Lelei privately resolved to go on a diet.
**
Elsewhere, the existence of the Apocryph had a major impact on Itami

and the other JSDF servicemen.
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They knew the appropriate countermeasure was to close the Gate, but
everyone here had worked hard to build relationships with the people of
the Special Region. It was not something they could accept by saying,
“Oh, so that’s how it is huh?”
“El-tee, what should we do?”
“What do you mean, what should we do?”
Itami was reading manga on his folding bed, and he was starting to find
Kurata very annoying.
“If the Gate closes, can we live here?”
However, the next thing that entered his ears wiped that all away.
“What, what the hell did you just say?”
Itami bolted upright, studying the earnest look on his subordinate’s face.
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“Ah, well, actually, I, uh, I’ve got a good thing going with Persia-san…”
“Oi oi, are you imagining things? It would be bad if you ended up
becoming a stalker because you got the wrong impression from her.”
“No, we’re pretty much in a relationship now.”
“There are girls who don’t want to be tied down by bonds, and they tend
to have one-night stands because of that.”
“That’s fine, because she’s not that kind of girl.”
This conversation took place within the same tent, so their words
reached everyone else even if they did not want to hear it. Katsumoto
and Sasagawa cheered, while Kuwabara smiled bitterly.
“Not bad, not bad at all! Woohoo!”
“It’s technically a violation of the regs… so don’t go spreading it
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2063
around.”
In response to this defeatist talk, Kurata replied, “Hey, I put effort into it
too.”
Everyone could attest to that. Every time he went down to Italica, he

sought her out and wrote letters to her.
“Still, you… you’re really willing to migrate to the Special Region from
Japan for a woman? Are you going to resign from the JSDF? What will
your family think?”
“Well, I don’t want to quit, and I’ll miss Japan. But I can’t bear the
thought of not being able to meet her again.”
“Ohhhh! That’s Kurata for you. Well done!” Katsumoto enthused.
“Well, I have to take my hat off to you. You’ve taken your love for
nekomimi that far, after all,” Sasagawa chimed in.
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2064
However, Kuwabara injected a dose of reality into the proceedings.
“How will you make a living here if you quit the JSDF? If you get mar…
no, if you live together, how will you provide for your partner?”
The words, “I’ll get married after this”, “We’ll have a kid after this” and
so on were strictly forbidden in 3rd Recon. Thus, everyone was careful
not to use those kinds of words
“How about signing on with House Formal? I’m sure I can apply my
knowledge from Japan in things like domestic matters or the military.
Maybe if I could spread what I know in a pioneer village or something…”
Itami halted Kurata mid-sentence.
“Well, that won’t work. Things aren’t that simple.”
“Why?”
“For instance, there are the JOCV (Japanese Overseas Cooperation
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Volunteers), experienced and skilled people who have a long history of

helping out in developing countries in Africa, East Asia, South America
and so on. But do you know how much time and effort it took for them to
get those results? Seeding the fields, building irrigation systems, even
tilling the fields took a long time period of encouraging and lecturing the
natives and making them understand the concepts behind them. If you
go in with the attitude that all you need for irrigation is to dig a ditch,
you’ll be finished. The water source will soon be clogged up by sand and
rocks. The reason why volunteer groups in Afghanistan and the Middle
East have so much success is because they have incredible willpower,
and not because it’s profitable to do so. It’s an incredibly bad
investment. Nothing at all like what you might have read in web novels
about pioneering and survival.”
“El, el-tee… you really thought this through, huh.”
“Ah, how shall I put this… I’ve already considered what you’re thinking
about.”
“Ahahahaha, as I thought.”
“I did some research into it. What I learned was that it was too much for
an amateur like me.”
www.asianovel.com
2066
“Still, the Arnus Living Community did it.”
“That’s because they adhered to the universal principle of buying low

and selling high and had good products to trade. They managed to grow
their business by making the most of the special privileges afforded to
them. It’s nothing special in the Special Region, and the traders did not
need to change their thinking. Thus, the world at large could take it in.
There’s people who want to become instant millionaires by playing with
stocks and market prices, but people will view hoarding or exchanging
large amounts of currency as troublemaking, so that’s not sustainable, is
it?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“I’m not telling you not to migrate. Do it if you want. But you should sit
down and calmly think about your strengths and talents. If you throw
yourself into this because you’re in love with a woman, you’ll most likely
regret it. Mar… no, putting your chop on a form isn’t the end. Life after
that will be hard, and your relationship might even end because of that.”
“As expected of a divorcee, your words drip with wisdom.”
“I was pretty shocked back then,” Itami sighed.
www.asianovel.com
2067
“You’ll get burned if you think you’re unstoppable just because the
Special Region is backward. Don’t look down on them.”
“Understood. Still, you’ve thought heavily about this. As expected of

you, el-tee.”
“It’s because I once said, ‘It’s fine, leave it to me’ or something like that.
I felt that it was important to make sure that there was a way for the
refugees to continue living even without me around, which is why I
thought so much about it.”
“Eh? Aren’t you staying in the Special Region, el-tee?”
“And why would I do that?”
“I mean… you’ve got the black Goth loli, the blonde Elf, the magical
girl… oh, and even the Crown Princess joined in too. From an outsider’s
point of view, they all look pretty serious.”
“Ahhh, well, I guess you’re right. I need to think about it.”
www.asianovel.com
2068
“Think about it… el-tee, things being what they are, do you even have
the luxury of thinking about it? Do you think you can run away?”
“I can’t?”
“Definitely not.”
Kurata and the others nodded. Even old man Kuwabara nodded.
“No way.”
“But I didn’t lay my hands on any of them.”
“Even if you didn’t do anything, if the girl gets serious about you, you
have to take responsibility for it.”
“Responsibility? I didn’t even do anything!”
www.asianovel.com
2069
“Aye. Still, this is what they mean by strict liability.”
The way he described it sounded like a traffic accident.
“But I’ve been divorced before.”
“What difference does that make?”
“That means anyone who knows my true nature will run for the hills.”
In response to Itami’s self-deprecation, Katsumoto gulped and asked,

“Don’t, don’t tell me you think the others don’t know who you really
are?”
Sasagawa mumbled, “It’s obvious enough that they completely

understand you. The hell are you saying, normalfag? Hurry up and
drown already!”
“Ah? Drown? Me? Why?”
www.asianovel.com
2070
“You should be drowning in women. Hurry up and blow your damn

bubbles as you sink!”
“Oi, oi, you guys are taking this too far.”
“El-tee, you’re the one who’s gone too far.”
Yes, it’s him, Kurata and the others seemed to say as they looked to
each other and nodded in unison.
“Why?”
“Why? Let’s take that blonde Elf for example. How come she’s so sweet
on you?”
“So you think she loves me because I helped her, like some kind of H-
game? You’re being too naive. Tuka isn’t an easy woman like that.
Sadly, I think she can only be at peace when she thinks of me as her
father. If I wound up in a relationship with her because of that, the
friendship we’ve built so far will go down the drain.”
www.asianovel.com
2071
“How about the platinum blonde Dark Elf?”
“Yao is my servant, so it’s different from that sort of thing. If not, how
could I end up with such a good woman? Taking advantage of our
relationship would be a form of abuse of authority.”
“Then, the magical girl?”
“Lelei is naive and romantic. She must be confused, like measles. If I

were to take advantage of that, could I even consider myself an adult?
Plus, how could such a smart girl be satisfied with me? She’d get tired of
me in no time.”
“How about the black Goth loli?”
“Laying hands on Rory is a crime, isn’t it? If we were in Japan, there’s no

doubt that I’d be charged with violating the Child Welfare Act and the
Youth Protection Ordinances. Well, her real age being what it is, the
authorities probably won’t convict me… but I still have to consider my
public image. Maybe if she looked a little older…”
www.asianovel.com
2072
“I see…” Kurata nodded. “Then, el-tee? If say, we were to go after one of

those four, what would you do?”
“Going by cliches, I would transfer the person in question to the 4th

Brigade. How about that?”
“To the frontline?”
The men looked at each other, convening a silent tribunal.
“What, what’s wrong with you guys?”
“Please be quiet, el-tee. Court is in session.”
Soon, they seem to have reached a conclusion. Kurata was the first to
speak.
“El-tee, put an end to it. The greatest sin for someone like you is being
indecisive.”
www.asianovel.com
2073
“That’s right, that’s right. Please show me your strength in going out
with all four of them at once,” Katsumoto added.
“If you assert yourself a bit more, you could end up with a harem. A
harem,” Sasagawa said.
Itami’s men patted his shoulders as he said this.
“The shift change is coming soon…”
Since she was female, they had selected Kurokawa to take one of the
earlier watches. The next man up on sentry detail would be called just
before the first one ended. Usually sentries were posted in pairs, and the
other member of this pair was one of the airmen.
“Oh, I’m up next.”
Kurata reached for his rifle as he put on his boots.
www.asianovel.com
2074
Sensing something in the air, Kurokawa asked Itami: “What’s wrong?”
“Ahh, see how much we’ve been talking about the Gate? Well, what
comes next is going to be pretty troublesome.”
Since he could not actually speak the truth, Itami decided to try and
bluff his way through. However, Kurokawa continued in her usual tone,”
Indeed. But El-tee? Do you really think you can run away from that
problem?”
www.asianovel.com
2075
Disclaimer
There is no guarantee the translation is 100% correct.
ASIANovel.com wishes to emphasize that this translation is for review

purposes only. We do not claim this intellectual property or any rights
whatsoever.
Under no circumstances would you be allowed to take this work for

commercial activities or for personal gain. ASIANovel.com does not and
will not condone any activities of such, including but not limited to rent,
sell, print, auction.
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Gate – Jietai Kare no Chi

Artist(s): Izuka Daisuke

Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Harem, Romance,

Tags: Nudity, Older Female Younger Male, Otaku, Parallel Dimension,

E-Book Maker: http://www.asianovel.com

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Vol. 3 : Chapter 8 ......................................................................... 1021

Year 20XX, Summer

It was recorded as one of the warmest days in history.

They assaulted the people who happened to be there.

Regardless of age or nationality, their objective was massacring the

The Prime Minister of Japan that time----Houjou Shinegori, declared in

“What is the situation beyond the Gate? What kind of natural

technology at? Their religion? What kind of governmental structure do

“During that period of time, many criminals were arrested.”

“However, using the word ‘arrested’ would be displeasing. Prisoners of

“Even if a government exist there, without conﬁrming the borders of the

“Although there had been suggestions to conduct peaceful dialogue with

was no way to communicate with them.”

We arrested those criminals… despite the language barrier, we still

“Many citizens harboured feelings of unease as to where the Gate would

“Thus, the government of Japan had decided to deploy its Self-Defense

The Chinese government released a statement that ‘the Gate is an

unnatural phenomenon’ and ‘should be investigated with joint

In the dim hall.

In order to process the confusing and heavy work of managing a

There were many types of Ministers; Prime Minister,Internal Aﬀairs,

As Marquis Casel, the leader of Liberalism group waved his toga, he

“Your Majesty! How are you planning to lead this country!?”

“Marquis… I have considered this situation. After this loss, the

"These stories of the heroines of this country, I hope that there is

"There is no such thing as a sure victory in a war. Should the general

The senators shook their head in disagreement with such a course of

clicked his tongue in annoyance.

Thus, the emperor continued his speech.

This expedition’s army had consisted of veteran soldiers, wise and

With suﬃcient supplies and intense training, coupled with an excellent

The general took on the duties of a commander, centurions perform the

Despite all that, it took only seven days.

Godasen, a member of the senators as well as a mage explained the

“Let’s just wage a war with’em!”

A bald knight, Marquis Podawan stood up, made a respectful gesture

“Even if we can do that, how are we going to defeat the enemies at

“Would they be so obedient?”

Marquis Casel is having a headache from Marquis Podawan’s irrational

“So whaddaya suggest we do, huh!?!?”

“You war maniac!”

Sensing the emperor had something to say, the arguing senators

“Although it seems a little rough,Marquis Podawan’s words was

Hearing these words, Podawan bowed respectfully towards the emperor.

“Now, the problem is what do we do? Do we watch helplessly as the

“An alliance army?”

The words of the emperor caused the senators to be in chaos.

“If you put it that way, then it seems to be a just cause.”

“But,it’s kind of……”

“Your-Your Highness?!?! The feet of Arnus hill would be littered with

In response to Marquis Casel’s words, Emperor Molt replied loudly.

The emperor made his decision.

Marquis Casel stared at the emperor with a dumbfounded expression on

The dark night sky was lit brightly by ﬂares.

The Kodou Rino Guwaban (Alliance army) started their attack.

In the sky were people riding on some sort of birds.