The Fire Queen
"Federica! Kill those bastards!!"
The man locked in a frontal clash with the giant robot bellowed the order.
"Sorry. My boyfriend's a bit of a hothead. Don't take it the wrong way. I'd rather settle this with words."
A breeze caught her full red hair and set it rolling like waves.
"……."
Kang Myeong-jin moved with deliberate caution. He quietly surveyed the surroundings, weighing their strength against the enemy's. From the look of him, he already knew a fair amount about Federica and the Thorn Rose Legion.
I rolled my eyes over the battlefield. The five-meter giant robot lashed out with mechanical tentacles bristling with vicious weapons and loosed missiles as it engaged the members of the Thorn Rose Legion. Setting aside the sheer number of women among them, their approach was solid and controlled.
That's because that man is holding the line so well.
He was a giant of a man, nearly two meters tall, all muscle and copper-toned skin. Wearing only light armor, he faced the giant robot bare-handed. The way he moved left no doubt—he was a pure brawler.
Whatever his Unique Trait is, he's filling the tanker's role without heavy armor and doing it cleanly. Not some ordinary thug.
That didn't mean the others were worthless. Every one of them was pulling their weight. They looked thoroughly practiced at fighting giant monsters.
"It seems we arrived a step too late. I'll acknowledge that."
Kang Myeong-jin spoke. He had clearly decided that picking a fight with the Thorn Rose Legion here would cost more than it was worth. I agreed with him. We were only six; the other side outnumbered us more than three to one. In the worst case, they might even have people lying in ambush.
"You're backing off easier than I expected. Thanks."
Federica smiled with her eyes. For a moment my gaze snagged on her. She wasn't quite on Elena or Ju Seo-hyeon's level, but she was still a rare beauty.
I started turning over ways to take Federica. The simplest was rape. Once a war broke out between legions… rape wouldn't be hard at all.
"In exchange, we'll deal with the mechanical monsters in the area."
"…Hmm. This zone belongs to our Thorn Rose Legion. Everything in it is our property. Don't touch a thing—just leave the zone. Do that, and we can keep a good relationship going after this."
"As far as I know, this zone still has no ruler."
"Becoming the ruler is only a matter of time. Look—our legion is already cooking that oversized tin can just fine. Two hours at most and it'll be over."
"Hmm. From where I'm standing, it looks more like five hours or longer. Until the Thorn Rose Legion formally claims dominion, this zone is free territory. I'll grant that you arrived first and are currently engaging the boss monster. That is all I'll grant. There is still a chance the Thorn Rose Legion fails. We intend to take what profit we can from this zone in our own way."
"And if I refuse to allow it?"
"Do you have that authority? Miss Federica is not yet the ruler of this zone."
"…Hmm. Do as you like. But once we bring that tin can down and claim dominion, I expect you to leave."
"Of course. At that point, I will acknowledge the Thorn Rose Legion as the ruler of this zone."
"The A-Plan Legion has grown faster than any other… I trust you won't do anything foolish."
Federica smiled and waved a hand. The gesture was elegant, but the meaning was unmistakable. Get lost.
With Kang Myeong-jin at the front, we began to withdraw.
"Federica!! I said kill them!!"
"Sorry. Santanu gets extremely sensitive in the middle of a fight. He doesn't mean it—please understand."
"Understood."
We pulled back as we were. Federica's gaze clung to us until the very end.
"Kang Myeong-jin. You seem to know about the Thorn Rose Legion… Are they that dangerous? Dangerous enough to abandon this zone?"
I asked him. The Thorn Rose Legion had never appeared in the original novel or the setting materials. We had zero information on them.
"They're one of the mid-sized legions operating near ours. Purely in terms of current strength, the Thorn Rose Legion sits above us. Federica, their master, is no ordinary woman. They call her the Fire Queen—and her reputation is as bad as it gets."
"……You're really just going to give up this zone? Something about this stinks no matter how I look at it. They tailed you and snatched the opportunity. The circumstances don't leave any other explanation."
"You're probably right. But we can't afford to act on emotion. In a full-scale war, we're the ones at a disadvantage. They will already have been preparing for a legion war. We take every scrap of profit we can from this zone and get out fast. The Thorn Rose Legion can wait until after that."
Kang Myeong-jin spoke with absolute certainty. He almost never made the wrong call in situations like this, so the rest of the legion—myself included—trusted him completely.
"We won't have enough time to farm trash mobs for profit, will we? From what I saw earlier, the Thorn Rose Legion was overwhelming that giant robot. Their clear should be finishing soon."
"It looked that way just now. But I checked them over—they don't have a single lightning-type ability user. The clear will take three hours at the absolute minimum. We squeeze every last bit of value out of this zone in those three hours, then we leave. Business with the Thorn Rose Legion comes after."
We tore through the Machine Park, taking everything we could get our hands on.
Moving without pause, three hours vanished in a blink.
A new ruler has been born in Zone 2,910, the Machine Park.
"We're leaving."
Kang Myeong-jin checked the notification window and spoke without a second of hesitation. We pulled spatial transfer scrolls from our coats and tore them open. In an instant, we were gone from Zone 2,910.
Three days had passed since the clash with the Thorn Rose Legion.
The A-Plan Legion had abandoned Zone 2,910. Protesting would have gotten us nowhere, and a legion war would have cost far more than it gained.
Lately Federica's face kept drifting through my mind. Every time I pictured that rose-red hair and her languid, seductive smile, my cock grew tight and restless. I kept turning over ways to put her on her back.
Should I put on the clown mask, barge in, and pick a fight?
Rape wasn't something you could just do on a whim. She wasn't some ordinary woman. She was the master of a mid-sized legion. Charge in carelessly and I might be the one who ended up getting wrecked.
That afternoon, Legion Master Kang Myeong-jin summoned me and the other officers to the conference room.
"There was a disturbance in the town this morning."
The town Kang Myeong-jin meant was the one outside Red Mist Castle in Zone 601, where the A-Plan Legion was currently based. A fairly large settlement had grown up beyond the castle walls. Steady development had brought it close to the size of a proper city.
"Quarrels among the residents aren't exactly rare, are they?"
Ji Yeongbin said. As the town grew and the population swelled, all kinds of problems cropped up. Fights between residents were commonplace. Kang Myeong-jin had even established a police force for that purpose. This hardly seemed like conference-level business.
"Outsiders are involved."
"…Not ordinary outsiders, I take it."
"Merchants and mercenaries from Zone 970—the City of Roses. They picked fights over not being paid what they wanted, over bumping shoulders with passersby. They're currently being held in temporary detention."
The atmosphere in the conference room went cold in an instant.
Zone 970, the City of Roses, was where the Thorn Rose Legion kept its headquarters. In other words, there was a strong chance this was a deliberate approach by the Thorn Rose Legion.
"They're building a pretext."
Yu In-ha—Yu Seo-hee's younger brother and the A-Plan Legion's mage—picked up the thread.
"A classic method. Stir up friction over trivial things, stack up small justifications, and eventually push it all the way into war. It's a well-known tactic."
The reason for stacking pretexts was reputation. Let your reputation hit rock bottom and you handed the surrounding legions every excuse they needed. In the worst case, a legion alliance could form and focus-fire you into the ground.
"So the Thorn Rose Legion is targeting us?"
Ju Seo-hyeon asked, seeking confirmation.
"It's still hard to say with absolute certainty. But considering our previous friction with them… it's close enough to certainty. We need to prepare for war."
War.
The heavy word settled over the room. Concern darkened every face. But no one suggested they should try to avoid the war.
The stronger a legion grew, the more inevitable wars between legions became. If you wanted to dodge war, you had to hand over everything you'd built with blood and sweat.
"Are we just going to sit on our hands and get dragged around by whatever the enemy does?"
I asked.
"We can't simply do nothing. Leave them alone and they'll start treating us like we don't exist. But this alone isn't quite enough to move on. The Thorn Rose Legion hasn't put their own name on this."
Kang Myeong-jin was right. On the surface, it was only merchants and mercenaries from Zone 970 causing trouble. The A-Plan Legion didn't have a strong enough pretext to step out and formally condemn the Thorn Rose Legion.
"For now, we prepare for war and watch how the Thorn Rose Legion plays this."
Quartermaster Kim Man-gi let out a long sigh.
"War preparations… I understand it's unavoidable. But this is going to tear a hole in the budget. And we've never fought a war on this scale before, so I don't have a clear sense of what we even need to prepare. Master, what should we be getting ready?"
"Acquiring war supplies won't be difficult. This isn't a war between nations. I have no intention of dragging a legion war out either. The critical factor is manpower. Look into the mercenary market."
The meeting continued on the subject of war.
I conducted my own separate investigation into the Thorn Rose Legion. Conveniently, I had a useful set of hands in the Black Pillar Alliance.
I met with Li Mei, spent a thoroughly enjoyable stretch of time with her on the bed, and then received her report on the Thorn Rose Legion.
"The Thorn Rose Legion. They're quite well-known."
"Well-known? I've never heard of them."
"Well-known in the underworld, the way we are. Federica, their legion master, comes from the Baches Family."
"The Baches Family?"
"A mafia organization from two years ago. At the time they had roughly the same strength as our Black Pillar Alliance… but internal division tore them apart. Federica was one of their officers."
"So she came from a serious background. But the past isn't what matters. The present is. Does the Thorn Rose Legion have any weaknesses?"
"They run a few shops in the shadows, but… nothing at a level that would actually cause them problems."
This place wasn't the modern world.
Unless a crime was truly severe, people let it slide.
And if a zone's ruler openly committed crimes inside their own territory, there was no real way to stop them.
"What about Federica's boyfriend?"
"You mean Santanu? He's also a former officer of the Baches Family. One of the lower-ranking ones, though."
"Their classes, contracted deities, Unique Traits?"
"Not everything, but I managed to dig up a few."
Li Mei told me everything she had learned. I crammed every scrap of information on the Thorn Rose Legion into my head.