Conquest
A red rain fell from the sky. Neither heavy nor fine, it soaked the people slowly. Those it wet turned their faces upward—and lost their sight at once.
“Aaaagh!”
A man’s scream tore through the air. As if set off by a chain reaction, the soldiers of the Caelon Empire dissolved into frenzy and fled in every direction. But this place was an ant-lion’s pit: their own ranks packed tight before and behind, left and right, boxing them in.
The force that had been their strength became, in an instant, nothing but an obstacle.
The rain fell again. Caelon knights flung up their hands to shield their faces and bodies; it made no difference. Those with shields raised them—and the metal corroded, melted, and vanished in moments. Knights lifted their swords to catch even a few drops; that, too, was useless. Mages unfurled defensive barriers, and wherever the rain touched them the wards dissolved into nothing.
Before long, hundreds of thousands on the field began to sink to their knees. They collapsed because the pain had broken them.
At some point the red sphere rose into the air once more. It drank the life force of those people, sucked up their blood, swelled larger still—then burst again, raining down upon the sky. The hour of merciless slaughter repeated itself.
“Stop… please, stop…”
Those who begged a little more life stretched their hands toward the heavens. The sight was almost like worship offered to a god.
The mass-slaughter magic Blood Shower poured from the sky without pause for more than an hour. McDeras walked out onto the rain-soaked field.
The rain touched his body as well and did him no harm. Blood Shower could not affect its caster.
A man sprawled on the battlefield, coughing blood, screamed at him as if the sound itself were a final blow.
“You will go down as the worst mass murderer in human history. Someday you, too, will die feeling as helpless as we do now…”
The dying fixed their eyes on McDeras and spat curses. A few of them, their bodies already melting, charged him anyway—as if their attacks could possibly land. McDeras cut their throats with an idle flick of the hand and kept walking.
Rain fell from the sky again.
With the patter of drops came a fresh chorus of screams. McDeras stood at the center of the field and let the rain find him.
As a child, the man had loved the rain. Now the sight of it brought him no joy. All he saw were the souls that had crumbled and died.
He took in every face twisted by agony. He did not let a single scream escape his ears. He had no intention of running from the responsibility.
Yes. I am a mass murderer who has killed countless people.
In this novel, I will beyond any doubt be recorded as the worst human being—and the worst butcher—in the history of mankind.
“…”
Another half hour passed, and the screams finally stopped. The sphere swelled as if ready to burst again, but Blood Shower did not deploy. There was no longer any need.
“M-Mom… the Caelon knights… they aren’t moving…”
Inside a Fibron civilian shelter, murmurs rose among those watching the feed from the battlefield. Then a boy shouted.
“We’re alive… we’re alive! We’re alive! We won! We don’t have to die!”
People who moments earlier had been shaking with the fear of death erupted into cheers. They exalted an unknown man and marveled at his greatness.
Joy and sorrow crossed on the same ground. Corpses of countless people littered the field, yet those who had nearly been trampled under them did not mourn—they roared with triumph.
It was a jarring sight.
What would be written as despair for some had become, for others, a hope that would stand through long ages of history.
Cheers rose from the battlefield as well.
“McDeras! Lord McDeras has done it!”
The Platin Imperial Knight-Commander bellowed, and Princess Brainy cried out in pure relief.
“Thank goodness… thank goodness…”
While everyone else celebrated, McDeras looked out over the dead and felt no ease.
He remembered the words the dying had flung at him.
He carved into himself the faces of those who had writhed in pain. He held their suffering in his heart. I am a monster. That is why I killed so many. And yet, because of it, the innocent dead were kept to a minimum.
His head pounded as if it would split. Not a single enemy remained on the field. Cheers wrapped the world around him, yet in McDeras’s ears a ringing and a chorus of screams went on without end. Clamping his hands over his ears meant nothing. The sound was not coming from outside.
This was a wound of the mind. This was not a movie or a novel—it was the reality into which he had been transmigrated. No matter how firm a person’s will, to commit slaughter on this scale and remain unbroken would have been the stranger outcome.
Looking at the lives that had poured out so endlessly, a question rose in him. Did I truly do the right thing?
He stood staring blankly toward the capital of the Caelon Empire when someone threw their arms around him from behind and held on hard.
“You weren’t wrong. Because of you, every person who lived under oppression will be saved.”
As if she understood exactly why he had frozen in place, Saintess Plimia locked her arms around his waist and clung tight. McDeras said nothing.
Her hands only tightened further around him. Watching from the side, Choi Yebin spoke in a low voice.
“If you hadn’t killed them, Lord McDeras, the ones who died would have been the people behind us. You know that. One side or the other had to die for this to end.”
Only then did McDeras turn and look at the people. Bodies riddled with wounds. People who had known full well they were marching into a hopeless battlefield and a death without promise, yet had not fled—held there by nothing but the will to defend their country from foreign invasion.
They were cheering for him. Pouring out gratitude, or words that amounted to the same.
The warmth against his body, the roar of the crowd, and even the Fibron knights who had fallen defending their homeland seemed to say it together.
You were not wrong.
“Yes. This was the best I could do—and the salvation of those who nearly lost their country.”
After a brief silence, McDeras raised his voice toward the Fibron forces at his back.
“Listen well, all of you. We have won the central battlefield. As you can see, the enemy has taken catastrophic losses, and whatever remnants remain, our strength now vastly outnumbers theirs.”
Then he shouted with deliberate force.
“We have won. We have protected life from the trash who trampled the powerless and used people like tools. But we are not the only ones whose lives are being stripped away. The civilians of the Caelon Empire, and the Saintesses, suffer under the exploitation of their own state. My goal is not merely victory on this field—it is the reclamation of every territory the Caelon Empire has seized. I aided you so that we might reverse the invasion, take their empire, and forge a true peace.”
“From this moment, I will bring down the Caelon imperial house. I will cut off the emperor’s head and tear out the foundation of their state, and I will work to ease the suffering of their people. So if any of you would follow me—lend me your strength. Even when we invade Caelon, do not kill civilians or Saintesses. Unless they are trained warriors, show as much mercy as you can. They are the weak, no different from you.”
Civilians bore no guilt. They had no sword to raise, no shield to hold, no magic with which to flee. He had entered this war only because he wanted to stop the pointless slaughter the Caelon emperor had unleashed—and, beyond that, to give true freedom to people who suffered under emperors and merciless powers, people like Plimia.
What worried him was the people of Fibron. Even civilians, from their side, would see every soul of the Caelon Empire as an enemy. Mercy for the civilians of a hated nation—would anyone truly want that?
The worry proved empty. They had a princess of upright will. She spoke to the knight-commander; the man nodded and raised his voice.
“By order of the Platin Imperial Knight-Commander! Follow Lord McDeras and seize the Caelon Empire! And—”
He cleared his throat and shouted again, as if driving the point home.
“We will save the common people who suffer under a vile leadership. That is how we repay the grace Lord McDeras has shown us. Do not ask for reasons. We repay a debt. That is all.”
McDeras’s aid had been a catalyst for them, and it had made the impossible real. A shoot of hope had begun to show.
He could not promise what the end would look like. But once a thing was started, it had to be seen through.
McDeras turned and shouted toward the rear.
“All forces—charge into the Caelon Empire. The objective is the imperial palace, and every knight who stands in our way.”
At the man’s single command, hundreds of thousands of knights advanced as one.
They crossed the borderlands, and the once-impregnable walls of the Caelon Empire came crashing down in an instant.
The conquest of the weak—who until now had only ever been invaded without the strength to resist—had begun.