It Was Nothing At All

It really hadn't been anything at all.

The Empire.

Half the continent — seven-tenths of it, if you counted the unconquered territories it had swallowed whole. The single largest collective humanity had ever produced.

In truth, that held true even if you counted every living thing, not just humanity.

Search through all of history, and you would find no group anywhere that had ever claimed dominion over seventy percent of the world.

Not even the mighty Celestials and Demons themselves.

Not that they ever 'wanted' to, of course.

Just as hardly any human ruling over an anthill would declare, 'I am now the king of all worlds!', the Celestials and Demons each had their own Heavenly and Demon Realms. They had never bothered to invade this place they deemed inferior.

This world was simply a prepared battlefield.

A fitting stage — and a convenient pretext — for the two races to wage their ferocious war.

"...They should've beaten each other bloody on their own turf."

Why did they have to come crawling into someone else's land and raise hell here of all places?

Recalling the countless scenes of carnage I'd witnessed wandering the world, I shook my head and turned around to look behind me.

A luxury apartment overlooking the Han River.

For a long moment I gazed at the waterway — its surface calm and flowing, untouched by fire or stained with blood.

Returned to reality, I shifted my gaze back to the computer screen.

I was researching the Empire right now.

Under normal circumstances I would have gone to the Empire myself to gather information, or sought out someone who knew it well and asked them directly. But—

There are people who know it better than I do, right here.

The greatest collective intelligence humanity had ever created.

The internet.

When I first started looking, I'd figured there would be a fair amount — but this exceeded all imagination.

Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of entries. An overwhelming ocean of information.

Granted, seventy... no, eighty percent of it was meaningless noise, but there were a few genuinely useful pieces mixed in.

The most important one: the Eight Swords.

The birth of the Eight Swords was the birth of the Empire itself.

The Empire began as nothing more than an ordinary kingdom — until one day, its king received the choice of a god and resolved to ascend as ruler of the continent: Emperor.

Naturally, the surrounding kingdoms and the non-human races turned hostile, but the Emperor had the Eight Swords at his side.

In time, all of them except the Saintess would come to hold ducal titles, and each one carried enough power to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠topple a nation single-handedly.

In the end, the first Emperor — 'Imperium,' who had swallowed three kingdoms whole with those swords at his back — proclaimed the Imperium Empire and launched a conquest war that would span centuries.

The kingdoms and other races fell helplessly, one after another, until the victor of the continent was the Empire...

"...Hmm."

It was a post written a year ago by 'LongswordIsLife,' a ranker who'd been inside the top 100 at the time.

Plenty of posts about the Empire had appeared since, but true to form — the Empire was famously unwelcoming to outsiders — none of them contained anything special.

The one who demanded the closest scrutiny was Duke of Yellow Heat, Roverian Chen Imperium.

The most widely known of the Eight Swords under the banner of 'holy war,' and the strongest of them all — a man of the imperial bloodline itself.

All I had to go on were a few speeches and photographs, but the instant I saw him, I was certain.

It's him.

This man was behind it. Without a doubt.

"......"

I closed my eyes for a moment.

I reached for the memory of that day.

The magic formula had stirred, a small crack had split the seal — and something had descended.

Something vast, something I couldn't hope to handle now.

That overwhelming power hadn't wavered so much as a hair in the extreme ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cold, and it had carried off the bespectacled Saintess as casually as picking up a coin.

It was definitely beyond ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me. For now.

"...Beyond me?"

Had I really just dismissed it as 'beyond me'? 'Just' that much?

I shut my reopened eyes once more.

I remembered that day.

Death had been the only fitting conclusion.

My flesh torn away piece by piece, my spirit exhausted past all limits, and even my soul worn down to the brink of annihilation — in that moment, with defeat already sealed and no choice left but to follow after those who had departed, nothing remained but to go with them.

Compared to then—

Kiiing...

"Nothing to it."

It really had been nothing at all.

I examined the cylinder I'd taken from the bespectacled Saintess.

To the eye it looked like an ordinary plastic tube, but it was in fact a magic tool inscribed with extremely advanced spellwork.

Twenty-seven layers of enchantment.

That was a level of craft surpassing even a Grand Magus — not the sort of magic tool that could be thrown together casually.

By grading standards, it was at minimum a quasi-Mythic item.

If it was valuable enough for a Saintess of the Empire to carry all the way to the site of its installation, its worth needed no explanation.

"Hm...?"

Partway through dismantling it, I found something odd.

Magic tools are normally built around a mana stone as their core. This one was different.

"There's... no mana stone?"

Nowhere, not a single one.

The cylinder was nothing but a shell. A spellwork stripped of all physical substance was revolving around the mana concentrated at its center.

And that mana was different from ordinary mana — its cohesion, and the sheer volume it released, were extraordinary.

Normally, without a fixed anchor point, even the most potent mana would scatter away with time.

One of the Eight Swords is a mage, then?

Mages were so common in DeoEn that it seemed only natural — but if one of them operated at this level, that changed the conversation entirely.

Demons are born with power on the level of a Grand Magus.

And by the middle tier, a demon already surpasses that realm entirely, developing unique magic no one else has ever created.

In other words: the Empire possessed a mage at the level of a mid-tier demon.

That was a realm ordinary humans could never hope to reach.

They couldn't even approach it — even the most celebrated Grand Magi had failed to live up to the title when it counted.

But the Empire had done it. And I had no idea how far that power extended.

'The glasses... ah, you mean Healer. I don't know. A user I met about a month ago — apart from being a bit of an oddball, she was decent enough.'

'An NPC posing as a player... that's honestly kind of chilling...'

'A high noble title? She got it from a baron, to begin with.'

I'd asked IllegalIsBest — the mage I'd blasted away via Teleportation (Physical) — about the bespectacled Saintess's whereabouts, but there hadn't been much of use.

Just that, literally, she'd been playing along with a stage play. That was all.

The pieces came together, and certainty settled in.

Three weeks after Sgaredo's affair concluded.

I'm going to the Empire.

The three weeks passed quickly.

In that time, countless subjugation forces, kingdoms, and mercenary companies had thrown themselves at Sgaredo — and the result was a catastrophic failure.

No one could so much as scratch her. No one could stand fully upright before her.

That wasn't because the so-called 'Great Challengers' were weak.

Sgaredo's seal.

For the sake of the seal Lily had spoken of, and the hatchling's synchronization, the major forces had held back on purpose.

Once the full three weeks passed and the synchronization completed, every waiting army would come crashing down on the Snowy Mountain all at once.

"Nothing out of the ordinary since that day, I trust?"

"Fortunately, no."

The final day of the three weeks.

I sat in the audience chamber of Talikal, facing Dria over a cup of tea.

An exquisitely sweet tea with a wonderful fragrance.

Unlike me, savoring every sip, Dria left his cup untouched.

The news that the bespectacled Saintess and the Eight Swords had infiltrated Talikal had never spread beyond a tiny handful of people.

As far as the public knew, users who'd received an Empire quest had invaded — and I had stopped them. That was all.

The reason was to prevent panic.

The war alone had already filled three weeks of waiting with frustration and confusion; if people learned the Empire itself had come, the kingdom coalition and the raid itself could collapse.

Besides, everything had happened inside the Snowy Mountain, where the seal had already fallen. Silence the two witnesses — the mage and the archer — and it might as well never have happened.

The two swordsmen had been struck down before they saw anything, so there was no need to silence them at all.

Fortunately — or unfortunately — the Empire had shown no movement for two weeks.

"The Empire has stayed its hand until now, but once the subjugation begins, that will change. There must have been a reason they revealed themselves two weeks ago."

"Perhaps. But you needn't worry too much."

The bespectacled Saintess, the Eight Swords — even if the Duke of Yellow Heat himself came, it wouldn't matter.

I would be in Talikal.

"...You were unable to find Drak, then?"

"No."

In the end, Drak had not been found.

As long as I was here, Drak would never appear — and I had no intention of pretending not to notice a kingdom's doom just to summon him.

Above all, Drak wasn't a priority right now.

I have business with the Empire.

Tak.

"If anything, it may be for the best. Drak only appears at the brink of annihilation."

"No news is good news... truer words were never spoken. And yet — the Duke of Yellow Heat..."

The Duke of Yellow Heat.

The most brilliant sword of the Empire — and its greatest.

The opponent was far too powerful to dismiss with 'Drak hasn't appeared, so we're safe from ruin.'

If anything, Dria wished he would appear.

He knew Lily was strong — but he wished she were just a little stronger still.

Bluntly put: if the Duke of Yellow Heat took the field, even if Lily repelled him, everyone but Lily would be swept away.

The Eight Swords were more than capable of exactly that.

"In any case, once the subjugation is over, we'll arrange greater support, and as for Drak, we'll find some way to—"

"Your Majesty!"

"...What is it, Sword Shadow? I told you not to enter."

Dria rebuked the man who had materialized from the shadows.

But uncharacteristically, Sword Shadow stood there panting, and forced out his purpose through gritted teeth.

"The Grim Reaper... the Empire's Reaper Corps has crossed the border."

"...What?"

"And one of them—"

Sword Shadow's eyes turned toward me.

No way...

"Appears to be the otherworlder, Leo."