2

As Gabriel Miller made his appearance in the imperial chamber as Emperor Vecta, he viewed the artificial fluctlights prostrating themselves before him with a kind of wonder.

They were light quantum information, trapped inside a lightcube two inches to a side. But in this world, they were real humans with intelligence and a soul—even if half of the ten arrayed before him were monsters with grotesque appearances.

These ten generals, who styled themselves as feudal lords, the knights and mages behind them, and the army of fifty thousand stationed outside the castle were all units given to Gabriel for his use in battle. He had to use these pawns as he saw fit to vanquish the defenses of the Human Empire and capture Alice.

But unlike a real-time strategy (RTS) game in the regular world, these units could not be moved about with a mouse and keyboard. He had to lead them with speech and character and give them their orders.

Gabriel stood up from the throne without a word, took several steps, and glanced at a mirror set into the wall behind him. He saw himself dressed in a truly hideous outfit.

The features of his face and the nearly white blond hair were Gabriel’s as they existed in real life. But now he wore a crown of black metal with inlaid red jewels, a leather shirt, and trousers similar to black suede, as well as a luxurious pelt gown, also pure black. A slender, faintly glowing longsword hung from his waist, and there was fine silver stitching on his boots and gloves. On top of all that, a long cape the color of blood hung from his back.

To the right, about a step lower than the throne, there was a knight with his hands casually pressed behind his head, looking around.

That was Vassago Casals, who had logged in at the same time as Gabriel, dressed in an amethyst-purple suit of armor. He’d warned the man not to get carried away and do anything until they got a handle on the situation, but Vassago’s fingers were tapping away at the back of his head, expressing his desire to voice his feelings about such an incredible experience in his usual slang.

Gabriel shook his head and looked back at his reflection. For someone who was so used to wearing tailor-made suits, he looked rather uncomfortable now. But in the Underworld, he was not the CTO of a private military contractor.

He was the emperor who ruled over the vast Dark Territory.

And he was a god.

Gabriel closed his eyes, inhaled, and let the breath out.

Somewhere in his mind, the switch flipped to take his acting role from the tough, calm commanding officer to a merciless emperor instead.

His lids rose, and Gabriel—the god of darkness, Vecta—swept his crimson cape aside to view the ten generals imperiously. With a voice devoid of all humanity, he intoned, “Raise your heads and name yourselves. Starting with you at the end.”

A plump middle-aged man, who practically had his face rubbing against the floor, bounded upward with surprising agility and spoke in fluent Japanese.

“Y-yes, Your Majesty! I am the head of the commerce guild, and my name is Rengil Gila Scobo!”

He lowered his head again, and then a figure like a small mountain next to him budged.

At a full height, this creature was at least twelve feet tall, his torso crisscrossed with gleaming chains and a string of animal pelts around his waist. He lifted his abnormally long-bridged nose and said, in a bass that practically shook the ground, “Chief of the giants, Sigurosig.”

As Gabriel chewed on the fact that even this monster had intelligence and a soul, the third figure spoke in an unpleasant rasp.

“Head of the assassins guild…Fu Za…”

Next to the striking giant, this slight figure, frail and unassuming in a hooded robe, was of indeterminate age and gender. Gabriel considered ordering this one to show their face but then figured it was probably the assassin’s code never to give away appearances.

Instead, he focused on the next general—and had to keep himself from scowling.

A creature that seemed designed to define the word hideous was plopped down on the steps; its legs were too short for it to properly kneel. Its belly was round, bloated, and shiny, and around a neck that threatened to sink into its shoulders hung a string of what looked like small mammal skulls.

The head atop its body was about seven parts pig to three parts human. It had a flat, jutting nose, a large mouth exposing tusks, and beady eyes, but they gleamed with cruel intelligence that just made it that much more grotesque.

“Chief of the orcs, Lilpilin.”

The orc’s voice was high enough in pitch that Gabriel couldn’t be sure whether it was male or female, but he did not find himself curious in the slightest. An orc was bound to be an inferior unit. It would have no use but as a sacrifice.

Next to lift his head, in one smooth motion, was a young man barely more than a boy. His reddish-gold curls and tanned skin featured nothing more than a leather belt on his upper half. Below, he wore tight-fitting short pants and sandals. On his hands were a pair of gloves with square metal studs.

“Tenth champion of the pugilists guild, Iskahn!!” the youngster shouted. Gabriel found this a bit confusing. By pugilist, did he mean boxing? Was it possible to be a good soldier if unarmed?

His line of thought was interrupted by a sudden growling.

It was coming from another demi-human of considerable size, if not as large as the giant. This one’s upper half was almost entirely covered in long furs. He only realized that they were not clothing but his actual fur when he noticed that the creature’s head was that of a beast itself.

It looked like a wolf: extended snout, rows of sharp fangs like saws, and triangular ears. Its long tongue hung from its mouth and formed words that were hard to make out.

“Grrr…Ogre…chief…Furgr…rrr…”

Gabriel wasn’t entirely sure whether that was the ogre’s name or just more growling, so he merely nodded and looked to the next person. He was greeted by an awful, screeching voice.

“This one is Hagashi, chief of the mountain goblins! Your Majesty, I beg you to give the honor of first spear to the brave warriors of my clan!!”

It was a smaller humanoid, with a bald, monkey-like head sprouting long, thin ears from the sides. It was shorter than the giant, the orc, the ogre, and even the humans.

According to what Critter had said before the dive, there was only one law in the Dark Territory: Those with the power rule. So what was it about the goblin, which looked so weak, that gave it equal status with the other races?

They’d clearly be inferior soldiers even to the orcs, but this interested Gabriel. He stared at the mountain goblin’s face and came away with his answer. The ugly creature’s tiny eyes were swirling with ferocious greed and desire.

No sooner had the mountain-goblin chief finished his greeting than the leader next to him, a similar humanoid with a different color of skin, screeched, “Absolutely not! We will be ten times more useful to you than these bunglers! I am Kubiri, chief of the flatland goblins!”

“What did you call me, you slug slurper?! All that humidity has waterlogged your tiny brain!!”

“And being closer to the sun has dried out yours into a husk!!”

Before the two goblins could sink any further into argument, there was a snapping sound and a burst of blue sparks, sending the goblin chiefs screaming out of the way.

“You are in the presence of the emperor, you two,” said a sultry voice belonging to a young woman wearing a revealing outfit. Her outstretched hand had produced the sparks with a snap as easily as if her fingers were the flint of a lighter.

She got up slowly, leaning over to accentuate her full figure and bewitching beauty, and gave an affected salute. Vassago whistled softly, and Gabriel could not entirely blame him.

Her light-brown skin shone as if oiled, covered by just the bare minimum of black enameled leather. Her boots had high heels like needles. On her back was a fur cloak shining black and silver, over which her voluminous platinum-blond hair hung nearly to her waist.

The woman’s eye shadow and lipstick were brilliantly bright blue, and her eyes were nearly the same shade, narrowed coquettishly. “I am the chancellor of the dark mages guild, Dee Eye Ell. My three thousand mages—and my body and mind—belong wholly to you.”

It was quite an act of seduction, but Gabriel, who was never controlled by sexual urges, merely nodded in response. The witch named Dee blinked and seemed to consider saying something else but decided better of it and bowed again before kneeling.

This was a wise decision, Gabriel thought. Now there was only one general unit left to be introduced.

This man, who merely bowed in silence, was rather tall for a human and looked to be in the prime of his life. His full black armor glinted softly with countless scrapes and cuts. Faint scars were also visible on what Gabriel could see of his forehead and nose.

Without lifting his face, the man spoke in a rich baritone. “Commander of the dark knights brigade, Vixur ul Shasta. Before I pledge my sword…I have a question for Your Majesty.”

When he looked up at last, Gabriel saw that his features were as hard as those of the few “true soldiers” he’d met over the course of his life.

Unlike the other nine generals, this knight named Shasta dared to stare at him with a fierce determination of some kind. Even deeper, he asked, “What desire brings you back to the throne at this time?”

Ah, I see. Yes, they are indeed more than just simple programs. I ought to keep this in mind at all times, Gabriel told himself. He gave his answer coldly, playing the role of the merciless emperor.

“Blood and fear. Flames and destruction. Death and screams.”

When they heard his voice, hard like metal, the generals’ expressions tensed.

Gabriel looked at each of them in turn, then swept aside his fur cape to raise his arm to the western sky. Words of false conquest fell from his mouth, easy and automatic.

“…The great gate that protects the land to the west, overflowing with the power of the gods who exiled me from their celestial realm, will fall very soon. I have returned…to make my might known to all corners of the land!”

Critter had given him as much information as possible about the so-called final stress test that was approaching in a week of in-simulation time. He explained the topic in the same adopted, grandiose tone.

“The moment the gate falls, the lands of man will belong to the people of the darkness! My only desire is for the priestess of the gods who resides within that distant land! You have my blessing to kill and steal from as many other humans as you desire! This is the moment that all the tribes of the darkness have longed for—the promised time!!”

There was a brief, ringing silence.

Then a fierce, high-pitched bellow broke through it.

“Giieee!! Kill them! Kill all the white Iums!!” screeched the chief of the orcs, its beady eyes full of greed and resentment. The goblin chiefs picked up the cry next, thrusting their stringy arms into the air.

“Hooooh!! Battle!! Battle!!”

“Uraaaaa!! Battle, battle, battle!!”

The war cries spread to the other generals—and from there, to the officers lined up behind them. The black-robed figures of the assassins guild twirled and swayed like the tree branches their limbs resembled, and the witches of the dark mages guild cheered and shot sparks of all different colors.

The vast throne chamber was full of the primitive roar of war and blood.

And then Gabriel noticed that only the knight named Shasta remained kneeling and perfectly still.

It was impossible to tell from the statuesque figure whether this was simple military decorum or the manifestation of some other emotion.

“Damn, Bro, I didn’t know you could pull that off! Why didn’t you decide to become an actor instead?” Vassago said with a grin as he tossed the bottle of wine.

Gabriel snorted. “I merely met the demands of the situation. You ought to learn how to give a proper speech when the time calls for it. You’re in a position one step higher than that lot, remember.”

He popped the cork out of the bottle and took some of the ruby liquid into his mouth. It then occurred to him that this might actually count as imbibing alcohol in the midst of a military operation.

Vassago seemed to think it was a waste if they didn’t drink. He slugged the fancy vintage down as if it were beer and wiped his mouth afterward. “I don’t give a shit about orders or speeches—I just wanna kill guys at the front line. We’re on a dive in this incredible VR world, so why not take advantage of it…? I mean, look at this wine and that bottle. They’re practically real.”

“And in exchange, every wound you suffer will hurt and bleed. There is no pain absorber in this simulation.”

“That’s the best part.” Vassago smirked. Gabriel shrugged, put the bottle down, and got to his feet from the sofa.

The imperial chamber on the top floor of Obsidia Palace was far bigger than the executive rooms at Glowgen DS’s headquarters, and the enormous windows offered a full view of the night sky over the castle town below. It wasn’t quite as bright or colorful as San Diego’s, but that just made it more fantastic.

The generals who styled themselves lords had left to prepare for the coming war, and the fires of the supply train transporting materials from storage stretched down the road as far as the eye could see. He had commanded the head of the commerce guild to use the castle’s entire stockpile of food and equipment, so the soldiers would not starve or freeze anytime soon.

Gabriel turned away from the abundance of lights and strode to the corner of the room to place his hand on the purple slab of crystal there—the system console.

He made a few commands in the menu and hit the button to call an external observer. There was the strange sensation of time decelerating back to its normal speed, and then Critter’s high-speed voice came through the screen. “Is that you, Captain?! I just got back to the main control room to keep tabs on you and Vassago in your dive!”

“We’re already in the first night. I knew how it worked, but this time acceleration is a very strange thing, regardless. For now, the situation is proceeding as planned. Within the next day or so, I will have all the units supplied and ready, and in two days, we will begin marching on the Human Empire.”

“Fantastic, sir. Now, when you get Alice, you’ll need to bring her back to where you are and perform the menu option to eject her to the main control room. Then Alice’s lightcube will be ours. Also, this is something you should tell that idiot Vassago.”

Gabriel heard a muttered curse over his shoulder—Critter’s voice had been loud enough for all parties to hear.

“Since we don’t have full admin privileges, you cannot reset accounts. If either of you die while you’re in there, you can’t continue using those super-accounts. You’ll have to start over as a typical grunt!”

“Yes…I’m aware. I will ensure that we’re not fighting at the forefront for now. What is the JSDF doing?”

“Nothing, as of this moment. Doesn’t seem like they’re aware you guys are in a dive.”

“Good. I’m going to cut communication. I’d like to save the next one for after I’ve secured Alice.”

“Roger that. Looking forward to it.”

Gabriel closed the communication window, and the usual accelerated-time sensation returned with another slightly unpleasant shift. Vassago was still spitting and grumbling as he fought with the fasteners of his armor, until at last he had hurled all of it onto the floor and was standing in leather shirt and trousers.

“So, Bro…I’m guessing that if I wanted to go kick it downtown, that would be…not cool with you?”

“Have patience for now. I’ll give you a night to yourself after the operation is finished.”

“Got it. So no killing or women for now…Guess I’ll just get a good night’s sleep, then. I’ll take that room.”

Vassago disappeared into an adjacent bedroom, cracking his joints. Gabriel exhaled and removed the crown from his forehead. He put the ostentatious cloak and gown on the sofa and tossed the sword on top of them.

In the other VR games he’d played, removing a piece of equipment returned it to item storage, but this world did not have such a convenient feature. If he lived like this for a month, the room would become a pigsty, but he’d be leaving the castle in two days and returning only so he could log out.

Gabriel undid the top button on his shirt, opened the door on the opposite side of the room from Vassago’s—and froze, eyes narrowed.

In the bedroom, which was also frightfully large, there was a small figure prostrated next to a bed of almost comical extravagance.

He had ordered that no one, not even servants, come to the floor above the castle’s throne room. How could someone have defied the orders of their god?

He considered going back for his sword, then thought better of it and chose to enter the room, closing the door behind him.

“…Who are you?” he demanded.

The female voice that answered was a bit on the husky side.

“…My role is to attend to your bedside this night.”

“Ahh.” His eyebrow perked up. He crossed the darkened room toward the bed.

It was a young woman in a sheer gown, her hands on the floor. Her ashy-blue hair was tied up top with a decorative string. The shape of her body, subtly visible through the material, did not suggest the presence of any weapons.

“On whose order?” he asked, sitting on the sheer silk sheets.

The woman paused, then quietly answered, “This is…my duty, Your Majesty.”

“I see.”

Gabriel looked away and lowered himself onto the middle of the bed. A few seconds later, the woman got up and silently slipped to his right. “Pardon my intrusion…”

Even Gabriel had to admit that she had a striking, exotic beauty. Her skin was dark, but the shape of her cheekbones suggested a certain Scandinavian-style regality. As he watched her undo her clothing and pull at the string that held her hair up, Gabriel was even moved, in a way.

So artificial fluctlights will act to such an extent?

Even this woman was incomplete as a true AI. So what heights must Alice, the completed version, be capable of?

It was not that the woman was offering up her body that had so impressed Gabriel.

No, it was that he knew and foresaw that when her hair fell down, she would whip out the knife that glinted in the air overhead.

Gabriel saw it coming and had plenty of time to hold back her right arm with one hand and quickly grab her around the throat with the other, throwing her down to the bed.

“Rrrgh!!” the woman grunted, flailing wildly and trying to stab him with the knife. She was stronger than she looked, but not enough to cause Gabriel to panic. He immobilized the elbow of her dominant arm and held his left thumb hard against her windpipe to keep her in place.

Despite the obvious pain on her features, the woman’s gray eyes never lost their determination. Based on the ferocity of her expression, the clumsiness of her makeup, and her musculature, she did not seem to be an assassin by trade. So this act of rebellion had come not from the leader of the assassins named Fu Za but from one of the other generals—probably one of the humans.

Gabriel leaned closer to the woman and asked again, “On whose order?”

As she had done before, she rasped, “It was…my decision.”

“Then who is your commander?”

“……I have none.”

“Hmm.”

Gabriel considered this, emotionlessly and mechanically.

There was a limit to artificial fluctlights that Rath was trying to overcome, and that was their inability to defy any rule, law, or order from a higher person or body.

Compared to the people in the Human Empire with their many overlapping law systems, the Dark Territory seemed to be much freer, but at its heart, it operated no differently. It only looked that way because there was simply one law that ruled the fluctlights here.

And that law was “Take what you want with your own power.” It was survival of the fittest, where those with the greatest battle power ruled over the weak. If Rath’s test had gone as planned, the ordered world of the humans and the chaos of the dark lands would’ve clashed without Gabriel’s help, and the ensuing war would’ve provided the results they used to find that breakthrough.

But for whatever reason, before the project reached that stage, a fluctlight appeared in the human realm that broke through that limit. The informant at Rath did not say there had been a similar breakthrough on the dark side.

In other words, even the woman who attempted to assassinate the emperor with a mere knife was still a soul bound by the absolutes of law. Yet, when Gabriel asked—no, ordered—she did not reveal the name of her master. In other words, this woman prioritized her fidelity to her master more than the orders from Gabriel, her emperor and god. Or rephrased yet again, she thought her master was stronger than the emperor was.

In order for this operation to go smoothly, Gabriel—Emperor Vecta—would need to demonstrate his fighting ability to the generals and officer units so they understood that he was indeed the strongest being in the world. But he certainly couldn’t slaughter every last one of those generals. So what could he do?

No…in any case, he would need to eliminate only one of the generals: whichever one gave this woman the intent to kill him.

How could he expose the traitor? Contact Critter again and have him observe the generals from the outside? No, that would force him to fix the acceleration factor at one-to-one for a while, eating up valuable real-world time while he waited.

Instead, Gabriel gazed back into those steel-colored eyes and demanded, “Why did you attempt to take my life? Were you given money? Were you promised status?”

He didn’t put much thought into the questions themselves. But the answer he got was nothing like what he expected to hear.

“For good cause!”

“Oh…?”

“If you start a war now, history will lose a hundred—no, two hundred years of progress! We mustn’t go back to the days when the powerless were tortured!!”

Once again, Gabriel was mildly surprised. Was this woman really at the stage before the AI breakthrough? If so, was it this woman’s master who’d put those words in her mouth?

He leaned closer, staring directly into those gray irises.

Determination. Loyalty. And hiding beyond those things…

Oh. I see.

In that case, he did not need this woman anymore. Or more accurately, he did not need her fluctlight.

Following his decision, Gabriel spared not another word, squeezing harder with the hand he had around her neck.

He could hear her vertebrae cracking, and the woman’s eyes bulged. Her mouth opened in a silent scream. As he weighed down on her flailing limbs and mercilessly strangled her, Gabriel was filled with a different kind of surprise than before.

Was this really a virtual world? The sensation of muscle and cartilage being destroyed through his fingertips—the fear and agony exuding from her bare skin—all of it stimulated his senses in a more tangible way than the “real” world ever had.

Before he knew it, his body convulsed, and his left hand clenched on reflex.

There was a dull crunch, and the unfamiliar woman’s vertebrae snapped.

And then Gabriel saw it.

Protruding from the woman’s forehead, with her eyes closed and teeth gritted, came a radiant, colorful light.

It was the same thing—the cloud of the soul that he had witnessed when he murdered young Alicia.

Gabriel instantly opened his mouth to suck in the woman’s soul.

Bitterness born of fear and pain.

The sourness of frustration and sadness.

And then, upon his tongue, the indescribable nectar of Heaven.

A vague, hazy light flickered against the back of his closed eyelids.

Young children frolicking in the front yard of an older two-story house. Humans, goblins, orcs, too. They looked to him, faces shining and arms outstretched as they ran closer.

The image vanished and was replaced by the torso of a man. His chest was broad and strong, warm, and powerfully enveloping.

“I love you…my lord…”

The faint voice echoed and faded away.

Even after all the visions passed, Gabriel continued to clutch the woman’s corpse.

Sublime. What a truly sublime experience.

The majority of Gabriel’s consciousness trembled with pleasure, but the remaining bit of rationality attempted to add a kind of logic to what he’d just experienced.

The woman’s lightcube-encased fluctlight had made contact with Gabriel’s own through the Soul Translator. So perhaps, as her life (or hit points) reached zero, a fragment of the quantum data that was released flowed back into him through his connection.

But at this point, that rational reason did not matter to him.

At last, he had again experienced the phenomenon he’d dedicated his life to finding. He absorbed the final emotion, the last fleeting love the dying woman felt, and savored it to the fullest. It was like manna from Heaven amid the barren wastes of the desert.

More.

I must have more.

I must kill more.

Gabriel rocked back, shaking with silent laughter.

The ten generals and their various lieutenants were lined up, all bowing obsequiously, much to Gabriel’s satisfaction.

As he’d ordered, they had fully prepared for the march in just two days. In fact, it might even be possible that these general units were more capable military officers than the ones found lounging around the executive offices of Glowgen DS.

At this rate, they might as well be finished products. On top of their excellent management skills, they were utterly loyal. You couldn’t ask for anything more from an AI to be loaded onto battle robots.

And yet, it mustn’t be forgotten that the fealty of the generals was an effect of the very flaw in the artificial fluctlights that Rath was so concerned about. It was because the concept that the one with the most power should rule was etched into their souls that these ten were so blindly obedient to Gabriel—to Vecta. It also meant that the moment they had any reason to doubt the emperor’s power, any one of them could betray him.

That concern had already shown itself to be very real.

The woman who’d tried to sneak into his bed as an assassin two nights ago.

She had attempted to kill the emperor, the one with the highest authority in the land. In her heart, there was a master on a level higher than Gabriel. Someone whom she’d called my lord in her dying thoughts. And it was practically certain that it was one of the ten generals lined up before him now.

To her, this master was stronger even than Emperor Vecta. Which meant that it was highly likely this lord, whoever he was, secretly did not swear fealty to Gabriel, either. If he went into battle with such a unit under his command, the possibility of betrayal when he least expected it was undeniable, no matter how unlikely.

He had to find this lord from among the ten and eliminate him. That would be his final mission before their march began.

It would also display the emperor’s power to the remaining nine. Their fluctlights would eternally understand who was truly the mightiest of all.

At this time, Gabriel Miller did not consider even the most infinitesimal probability that he might be shown inferior in battle to any one of the ten units before him. To him, the Underworld was another VR world, one that existed as an extension of video games. He was still under the belief that all the units around him were nothing more than unusually complex NPCs.

The dark general, Vixur ul Shasta, knelt and hung his head as the words of his master echoed in the back of his mind. It was a moment from over twenty years ago in the sparring room of the headquarters of the dark knights brigade.

“The master of my master before him died instantly by way of beheading. Master’s chest was slashed, and he perished on the path back to the palace. But while I lost an arm, I made it back alive. It’s not much to brag about, I know.”

And from his formal sitting position on the polished dark floorboards, Shasta’s master had displayed his right arm, which was cut clean off above the elbow. The wound had been healed with herbs and bandages but nothing else. It was hideous to behold.

The cause of that injury, just three days before, was the dark knight’s oldest foe and the greatest swordsman in the world—or the greatest monster—the Integrity Knight commander, Bercouli Synthesis One.

“But do you know what this means, Vixur?”

As a young man of barely twenty, Shasta didn’t have an answer. His master had placed his good arm back on his lap, closed his eyes, and muttered, “We are catching up at last.”

“Catching up…to him, you mean?”

Young Shasta couldn’t keep the note of disbelief out of his voice; such was the overwhelming power of Bercouli’s combat. The sight of his master’s severed arm spraying blood as it flew through the air lodged into Shasta’s spine like ice, and the sensation still hadn’t melted after three days.

“I will be fifty this year. But I still feel as though I have not mastered swinging the sword or even my grip. And doubtless I will say the same when I die in another five or ten years,” his master said quietly. “Our lives are too short. We are not meant to reach the territory of a man like him, who has lived over two hundred years already. It is shameful to admit, but until we actually traded blows, a part of me was already resigned to this. But now that I have been roundly defeated and come back alive in retreat, I realize that I was wrong. It wasn’t a waste…Not my master’s attempt on his life nor all the other masters before him. Vixus, what is the ultimate sword technique?”

The question was so sudden that Shasta had answered without thinking.

“The Empty Sword, master.”

“Correct. After many years of training, the sword becomes one with the body. And the greatest of all techniques happens when one does not think to strike or think to draw or even think to move. That is what my master taught me—and what I taught you. However…it was not so, Vixur. There was something beyond it. And I learned this when that monster struck me down.”

There was a faint flush of excitement on the man’s weathered face. Without realizing it, Shasta was leaning forward in his formal sitting position.

“Something…beyond?”

“The opposite of emptiness. Unshakable certainty. The power of will, Vixur.” Suddenly, his master swung the stump of his right arm out. “You saw it happen. I swung level at the right. It was an Empty slash—the fastest attack of my life and completely unthinking. My first movement gave me the advantage over Bercouli.”

“Yes…I thought so, too.”

“However—however. When he put up his sword to receive the blow, which should have rebuffed it, he somehow pushed back my swing instead and chopped off my arm. Can you believe this, Vixur? In the moment, his sword was not even touching mine!”

Shasta was stunned. Then his disbelief set in. “That…that cannot…”

“It is truth. It was as if the path of my swing itself was pushed aside by some invisible force. Not arts. Not Perfect Weapon Control. There is only one way to describe the phenomenon. My Empty Sword lost in battle to the willpower he refined over two centuries. He envisioned the path his sword was meant to take so powerfully that it became unshakable truth!”

In the moment, Shasta could not believe what his master was saying. How could it be possible that something without form, like the power of will, could have that effect on a real sword—hard and heavy, something that truly existed?

But his master had expected Shasta’s reaction. He returned to a formal position atop the shining floorboards and quietly said, “Vixur, I give you my final instruction. Strike me down.”

“Wh-what do you mean?! When you just…”

Shasta couldn’t get the word survived out of his throat. Not when his master’s eyes were full of such fierce determination.

“Now that I have prolonged my life, you must strike me with your blade. After he defeated me with a single blow, I am no longer the most powerful figure in your mind. As long as I am alive, you cannot fight him on equal terms. You must cut me, kill me…and stand on the same level as Bercouli!!”

His master got to his feet and took a stance, as though holding his sword with the arm that was no longer there.

“Now stand! And draw your blade, Vixur!!”

Shasta cut down the master and ended his life.

And in doing so, he understood the meaning of his master’s words.

The invisible blade clutched in his right hand—the blade of will—produced a profusion of sparks when it intersected with Shasta’s, and it even cut open his cheek, leaving a scar that had never healed.

Face wet with tears and blood, young Shasta stood at the doorway of the secret that surpassed the Empty Sword—the Incarnate Sword.

Time passed, and five years ago, Shasta had finally challenged Bercouli, the head Integrity Knight and sworn enemy of the dark knights. At age thirty-seven, he sensed that his sword had reached the limit of what it could achieve.

His master had returned from the fight alive at the cost of an arm, but Shasta was not intending to come back at all if he lost. Shasta had never taken a disciple to be his sword heir. He did not want to burden a young soul with the fate of killing his master and being killed one day in kind. It was his decision instead to end the cycle of blood with his own life.

With all the willpower and determination he possessed—in other words, his Incarnate power—he met Bercouli’s first strike head-on and was not rebuffed. But even at that moment, Shasta sensed his coming defeat. He did not think he could summon a strike with the same power and weight a second time.

But as their swords locked, Bercouli just laughed and muttered, “A very good swing. No sword forged of desire to kill could stop my blade that way. Think upon that and come to me again in five years’ time, boy.”

The commander of the Integrity Knights created some distance and leisurely left the scene. It seemed like his back was open to attack as he went, but for some reason, Shasta couldn’t take the opportunity.

It took a long time for him to understand what Bercouli had meant. But after those five years, he now felt that it made sense. If Shasta had put nothing but murder and hatred into his swing in that fight, he would have lost the ensuing clash. The fact that he managed a draw for that single moment was because more than the desire to kill gave weight to his determination.

In other words, it was the gratitude to his forebears who had given their lives to pass down their skills, as well as a prayer for those who would follow in his footsteps.

It was why Shasta instantly decided to launch a negotiation for peace when he heard the news of the pontifex’s death. He was certain that the Bercouli he knew would accept the offer.

And for the same reason, he knew that when Emperor Vecta descended out of nowhere onto Obsidia Palace and decided unilaterally to prepare for war, he would have to kill the man.

Even as he knelt and bowed his head, Shasta was preparing the Incarnation he would put into his killing blow.

In his return after centuries of absence, the emperor appeared to be a young man with the pale skin and golden hair of a human from that distant realm. His size and features did not inspire fear or imply great menace.

But those piercing blue eyes alone spoke to the extraordinary nature of the emperor. There was a void behind them—an endless abyss that absorbed all light. This was a man who possessed an unfathomable, evil hunger.

If that void swallowed whole his Incarnation, the sword would never reach him.

If so, Shasta, the dark general, would die. But his will would be carried over to those who followed.

He had only one lingering concern. Because Lipia had not come to his room last night, he had not been able to express his will to her. Either she was too busy with the various tasks to be done before the journey, or she had gone to visit the special “home” she cared so much about.

If he revealed his plan to kill the emperor to her, she would insist on joining him and refuse to hear his reasoning against it. So in that sense, it was a good thing.

Shasta drew a breath and held it.

He reached out with his left hand to brush the sword he had taken off and placed on the floor.

It was fifteen mels to the throne. Two strong steps, and he would reach it.

He mustn’t allow his first move to be read ahead of time. His mind must be empty when he drew the blade.

His power of Incarnation was refined to the limit of what he could achieve, and he let it flow from his fingers into the sword. Then he emptied his body.

His left hand reached for the sheath.

But then the emperor spoke, almost incidentally, in a voice as hard and smooth as glass.

“By the way, an interloper snuck into my bedchamber the night before last. With a knife hidden in their hair, in fact.”

A murmur of muted surprise swept through the chamber.

Some of the nine feudal lords to the left of Shasta held their breath; others growled or sank deeper into their thick robes. More than a few gasps went up from the officers waiting behind them.

Shasta was just as stunned as the others were. He thought quickly, not budging from his combat stance.

Someone else had reached the conclusion that the emperor should be eliminated. Given that he was perfectly alive and well, that attempt had sadly failed—but which of the nine had sent the assassin?

It wouldn’t be any of the five nonhumans. The giants, ogres, and orcs were beyond question, but even the relatively small goblins would not be able to sneak to the top floor past the many guards.

Out of the four human lords, young Iskahn, the pugilist, and Rengil, the head of the commerce guild, could be ruled out. Iskahn’s entire purpose for living was to master the art of unarmed combat, and Rengil stood to gain enormous wealth should a war erupt.

Given the method of sending a killer to the bedchamber, Fu Za of the assassins guild was most suspicious, and to be fair, the man could be absolutely inscrutable, but the use of a dagger did not make sense.

After much research and experimentation in the ways of skulduggery, the assassins guild were masters not of arts or weapons but of a third means: poison. Fu Za’s clan were a people who banded together to survive because they were not blessed with a high arts-usage privilege or weapon-wielding privilege. They had their own rules, which stipulated that hidden needles and blowguns were the weapons of choice for administering poison. They did not use daggers.

For the same reason, the dark mage leader, Dee Eye Ell, on his left must also be ruled out. The woman was nothing but ambition, and she seemed like the type to consider climbing to the top of the land of darkness by killing off its emperor, but any of Dee’s assassins would use arts, not a dagger.

But that meant none of the nine other lords sent the killer.

Only Shasta, commander of the dark knights, was left.

But of course, he did not order this. He knew that when the time came to depose the emperor, he would give up his own life and sword to do it. He had never ordered any of his knights to perform an assassination, nor had he even spoken of his hidden decision…

No.

No…

It couldn’t be.

It had taken Shasta no more than the blink of an eye after the emperor mentioned the assassin to reach this point. He felt the tips of his fingers against the sheath growing cold.

The willpower in his hand abruptly shifted into something else: warning, unease, fear, and the dread of certainty.

It was then that Emperor Vecta made his second statement.

“I will not condemn whoever sent that assassin after me. There is nothing wrong with the use of one’s power to gain greater power. If you wish to stop me, then I welcome your skulking attempts.”

He gazed out upon the murmuring crowd in the great hall, and for the first time, he wore what might be called an expression of emotion: a faint smile on his pale lips.

“But only, of course, if you understand that your actions will be met with the appropriate consequences. Such as…this one.”

His hand stretched out from the long-sleeved black outfit and gave a signal.

From the side of the throne, on the right-hand wall from Shasta’s perspective, a door opened silently, and a little serving girl snuck forward. There was a large silver tray in her hands, holding something rectangular that was covered by a black cloth.

The servant set the tray down before the throne, bowed deeply to the emperor, and scurried back to the doorway.

In the tense silence that followed, Emperor Vecta reached out with the long tip of his shoe, a twisted smile at the corners of his mouth, and stepped on the cloth covering the tray to slide it away.

And then Shasta, frozen in place, saw what was underneath.

A cube of ice, pure and translucent.

And trapped inside it, laid to an eternal rest from which she would never wake, was the face of the woman he loved.

“Li…pi…”

His lips only formed the shape of the last a.

Even the chill over his body vanished, leaving nothing but an impossibly deep, dark void filling his chest.

Shasta knew about the orphanage that dark knight Lipia Zancale secretly operated. She took in children of all races without parents or siblings—children fated to waste away and die—and raised them herself. Shasta saw that action as a sign of hope for the future.

It was why he told his secret ideals only to Lipia. An endless dream in which the stagnant, ever-present war with the human realm ended, and they created a world of nurturing and sharing rather than slaughtering and stealing.

And all that did was cause Lipia to make an attempt on the emperor’s life, bringing about this hideous result. It was the emperor who’d killed her—but it was also Shasta. Of this, there could be no doubt.

For the span of an instant, a storm of unfathomable regret and shame tore through the emptiness in Shasta’s heart. That was all the time it took to transform into one dark, black emotional response.

Murder.

Kill him. Do anything you can to kill the man with his legs folded on the throne, smugly smiling down.

Even if it had to come at the cost of his own life and the entire future of the Dark Territory.

So which of these lords is the problem?

Gabriel surveyed the ten kneeling leader units before him, feeling just the slightest hint of entertainment from the situation.

The woman had loved her master with all her heart. When he had drunk the emotions she exuded on her death, that sweet flavor like nectar from Heaven, Gabriel understood not just her love but also the love her lord gave to her—as a kind of data pattern only, of course, a mere fact.

So he was certain that if he showed them the woman’s head, the one she’d called my lord would act. Then he just had to mercilessly eliminate the traitor unit, fostering the loyalty and fear of the remaining units. It was just like any other sim game he played in the real world to pass the time.

What a pathetic and entertaining bunch.

Given real souls, yet limited in their intelligence. No matter how many times he killed them, they could be regenerated at will. On the day he had the entire mainframe of the Underworld and its lightcubes, he would be able to satisfy the unbearable hunger that had plagued him since childhood at last.

Gabriel relaxed and waited with his cheek resting against an arm propped up on the armrest.

The distance between him and the units was a bit over fifty feet. It was enough distance that he could use the sword at his left side to block any kind of weapon from there.

Of course, system calls were insufficient to block a command-based attack. But Gabriel’s concerns in this regard had been wiped away before he even logged in.

Dark God Vecta’s super-account was set up so Rath’s engineers could control the Dark Territory directly. Therefore, his hit points—or life—were vast, his sword was the best, and most of all, Vecta had a certain kind of cheat code: He could not be designated a target in any kind of command-based attack.

Given all this protection, when the knight in black armor on the left end of the list of ten arched his back—

When the aura gathered around him like a pale shadow—

When his hand darted to the sheath on the floor like lightning, when his face suddenly lifted, the bold eyes in the center of it visibly glowing with a kind of inhuman red color—

Gabriel was unable to fully understand what was happening.

This world was not just a program being calculated on a physical server, but it was also a kind of living dream constructed from the same light quantum particles as the human fluctlight.

He didn’t realize that the pure, powerful hostility the knight in black exuded was traveling from his lightcube to the Main Visualizer, then through quantum pathways to the STL Gabriel was using to connect to the simulation.

Shasta’s bloodred eyes saw nothing but the emperor.

With the fastest movement he’d ever made in his life, he drew his blade.

From the sheath came the Divine Object his master had left to him, the long katana Oborogasumi, but it was no longer the familiar gray blade he had seen so many times. Now the thick night mist that gave the long blade its name was swirling fiercely around it.

Shasta did not realize that the logic of this transformation was the same as that of the Integrity Knights’ Perfect Weapon Control, which he had studied for so many years but never understood. But even if he did, it would not matter to him now.

“Shaaa!!”

Shasta hissed, infusing all the rage, hatred, and sadness of the world into one great overhead swing.