The Donation Angel
The Empire's plan had been simple.
Use the siege warfare system — accessible only to players — to grant Sword God and Leo a castle each, then unleash a war of conquest. An ambitious scheme, through and through.
And in truth, for the first hour of the siege it had worked brilliantly. The Empire scrambled from defense to defense, and not a single soul dared strike at it.
■ Angel — Lily Elbrit — ▶ □ Imperium Ⅰ — Sword God —
Deven Castle has fallen!
There had never been any such report before.
Pitua Castle has fallen!
There should never have been any.
Hapirt Castle has fallen!
"Hold the line! Hold it, no matter what it takes!"
"At once, sir!"
"But how in the world do you stop a flying spear—"
KWAAAAAAANG!!
Beep!
Chapenterium Castle has fallen!
Another castle shattered to pieces.
No — the castle itself hadn't shattered. Only the Core perched at its very top had been blown apart, and that alone was enough.
The knight commander of the count's house, charged with defending Chapenterium Castle, let out a groan of pure despair. No amount of fortification, no counterattack he could muster, changed a thing. The spear hurled by that phantasmal, untraceable intruder punched through every attack and every defensive barrier and flew straight for the Core.
He had ordered his soldiers to block it by any means necessary, but as someone who wielded power beyond that of a Top 100 Ranker, he knew better than anyone.
It cannot be blocked.
How, exactly, was one supposed to stop a spear that rivaled the Empire's own Swords? Impossible. Simply impossible.
"Commander! Part of the castle has been sealed off from entry!"
"Several soldiers were flung clear of the walls! Aside from the wounded, there are no casual—"
"Where is the support from the Eight Swords?! Has it not arrived yet?!"
"Th-that is..."
The soldier relaying the magical communications wore a troubled expression. Before he could even finish, the knight commander understood, and squeezed his eyes shut.
We're not the only ones suffering right now, are we.
Reports were already flooding in of castles falling all across the Empire. And the Empire, with the Imperial Family above all else, would throw its weight into protecting the regions most favorable to the throne.
The knight commander gazed at his fallen castle — a castle where, miraculously, no one had died — and laughed, hollow and empty.
"Looks like we're the ones getting conquered now."
Minaus Castle has been captured!
Another Core shattered, and the Empire's territory shrank by one more. Sixteen Imperial castles seized so far. In contrast, the Angel Guild had lost exactly one.
I rode Naphras's wind toward the next castle, mulling over my conversation with Leo.
'Wait, siege warfare doesn't only apply to players' castles, right? Sword God's castles, sure, but how are you capturing the other ones?'
'You can, though~'
'?'
'Hehe. You're right that sieges only cover players' castles. But siege wars basically work one-on-one.'
When two sides declared war on each other, only the opposing teams could break each other's Cores. Everyone else — bystanders, residents — could neither attack nor interfere.
The workaround was to hire the Empire's own soldiers as 'mercenaries' and field them — and that was where the problem arose.
'Compared to the number of mercenaries... there weren't enough castles?'
'Trueee. And each castle can only have up to three war declarations against it, y'know.'
For the Empire, which needed to crush everything in one sweeping campaign, whittling away at just the six castles held by Sword God and Leo combined simply didn't fit the picture. It didn't suit the prestige of the Golden Empire, the conqueror of the continent, either.
'So in the end, what the Empire decided was to fold its own castles into each guild's war roster. Yeah, it raises the risk factor — but it lets them finish everything in one go~'
The Empire had forced the plan through even while accepting the risk that their own Cores could be shattered and their castles seized in return. Of course, they'd assumed they could absorb the losses easily enough — and until I stepped in, there hadn't been a single problem.
Until I stepped in.
Arriving at the next castle, I spread open the siege map.
"We've taken nearly the whole northern region. Time to push on toward the center."
The west was almost entirely under Imperial occupation thanks to Leo's rampage, and the east was only just beginning to widen, little by little. The quietest region by far was the south, where negotiations with Leo were still underway.
"Well... fair enough."
I skimmed the chat while whirling my spear through the air. To be honest, no one in the north had managed to block so much as a fraction of my spear this whole time.
I hadn't even laid eyes on the Eight Swords — or even the Empire's famed Golden Knights, for that matter.
Then again, maybe they got smashed before I ever had the chance to look.
The moment a castle fell, I rode the wind straight to my next destination. My goal was never to rule a chunk of the Empire — it was to churn the situation into maximum chaos and flush out the Grand Demon Duke. Arne had given me the locations of every castle, but not where the Duke himself resided.
'Karia is always changing the "entrance" to her dwelling. I know the old coordinates, but the current ones are beyond even me. The place lies beyond the reach of Naphras's wind as well, so moving there directly will be difficult.'
A place even Arne — an Eight Sword, like Naphras was a Spirit King — could not find. I turned that fact over in my mind and took up my throwing stance.
If it couldn't be found, then...
I'd just have to make it come out.
The spear flew toward the Core of the last castle in the north —
"Hngh!"
KAGA-KANG!
With the shriek of deflected steel, the spear twisted aside and grazed the Core by a hair's breadth. Whether it was confidence from having blocked my attack, the young lord materialized right in front of me.
"At last, we meet!"
"...Who are you?"
"You dare forget me!!"
The man — who looked every bit the pampered young noble he appeared to be — brandished a silver sword curved like moonlight and roared with fury.
I glanced between the chat window and the man before me and smirked.
"Just kidding. Twin Moon Duke, Besk Lonhadia. I haven't forgotten you."
"Hmph! So you can use that head of yours after all. Witness the might of my—"
"How could I forget the man who brought me such a lovely gift?"
Thanks to him, I was wielding the White Savior so beautifully to this very day.
When I said that with a smile, Besk's expression twisted into something demonic.
"Y-you... insolent wretch. Arrogant to the very core. But this time will be different!"
SHAAANG! SHAAANG!
Gleaming silver weapons shimmered in Besk's hands. They resembled the Twin Moon Swords I'd seen back then — yet differed from them in some subtle, unsettling way.
"Did you acquire new weapons?"
"...Since that day, I have done nothing but train. It was an agonizing existence — but I endured it."
Out of nowhere?
Without warning, Besk raised his weapons aloft and began to reminisce.
"I was ambushed, yes — but in a way, it opened my eyes to my own hollowness. However off my guard I may have been, to be felled in a single blow while bearing the name of an Eight Sword... Yes. I was exactly what the world calls a fool who struts about trusting in his weapons."
CRACK!
"But under Lady Karia's guidance, I have changed! From this moment on, I shall face you with everything I have!"
"So what are those weapons made of, exactly?"
"Why, naturally, the Empire's sublime material — Metamor—"
THWACK.
Bonked squarely on the back of the head, Besk crumpled where he stood.
CLANG!
CLANG!
Weapons scattering from his limp hands.
I stood behind him before anyone could blink, scooped up the fallen weapons, and murmured quietly to myself.
"Now, what should I make out of these..."
Lonhadia Castle has been captured!
"...So Idiot Number Three lost, did he."
Somewhere in a space without end, hundreds of violet experiment tubes stretched on into the dark.
Tap. Tap.
The woman walking down the corridor — lit by nothing but the glow of the tubes — felt the signal linking her to a distant presence go silent, and pressed a hand to her forehead with a long, weary sigh.
"Tch. Do you have any idea how much I poured into that one? And utterly useless."
Tap. Tap.
She kept walking down the dark corridor. The tubes — connected not by wires but by veins of flowing mana — each held a single specimen: lifeforms of unknown nature, beyond counting. Some were so minuscule they were invisible to the naked eye; others were large enough to fill a tube entirely.
One of those lifeforms caught sight of its creator and hammered desperately against the transparent glass wall. Bang! Bang!
The creator turned her head.
Ggh— gkk.
In the darkness, a pair of violet eyes glowed brighter still, coiling around the creature and squeezing its throat shut until it could barely breathe. The lifeform begged with everything it had.
Please. Please let me live.
Keeeeeeee—!
FWOOOOM!!!
But the creator did not grant its wish. She who was both creator and murderer turned away without a flicker of feeling, then opened a violet window as though jotting down a record.
Specimen D-297C — DISPOSED.
Reason: insolence.
Fzzt.
The magical hologram — so like a player's system window — recorded the entered data and vanished without a trace.
Tap. Tap.
After walking for what felt like a very long time, she arrived at a space blanketed in magical security wards. She reached out and laid her hand upon the crystal orb at the center, entwined in mana-threads. Dozens of magic circles flowed down from her hand, and the wards peeled away one by one.
Inside stood a tube several times larger than any of the others — so vast that dozens of mana-lines fed into it at once.
Tap.
She took a single step closer and beheld her masterpiece.
Vrrrrrrmm...
Two horns and wings of deepest black. And above all — a spirit, bearing demonic energy.
She caressed the tube's glass wall, gazing upon it with rapture, and smiled.
"The experiment was never wrong. Soon, a new door will open."
And its beginning would be the Dark Spirit King — and the fall of every spirit in existence.