Not Enough Effort
Effort is lacking! Not enough!!
Never in my life—not even in my wildest dreams—had I imagined a day like this would come.
That I, one of the Three Heroes of the Coalition, would set foot inside the Imperial Palace of the Empire.
And not under coercion, either. Of my own free will.
If this had been the past, I never could have accepted a situation like this.
But things were different now. He had accepted it. No—he had to accept it. The Empire’s superiority.
And more than that, he now understood exactly what course the Coalition had to take if it wanted to survive.
The Empire had many enemies. It was vast and powerful, and that only made the list longer.
To the west lay his own homeland, the Kingdom Coalition.
To the south sprawled dozens of islands and independent lords the Empire’s influence barely reached.
And to the east, the nomadic tribes arrived like clockwork every year.
In sheer numbers of powerhouses, the Empire far outstripped any single region.
Yet that same vastness meant those powerhouses were scattered across every frontier.
So the Empire never fully crushed any one of them—while still seizing every chance to press them flat when the opportunity arose.
And this time they had succeeded in crushing the Coalition. They would never let that advantage slip.
I can already guess how the Empire will play this. They’ll suspect us.
He had never set foot in politics, but that did not mean he was completely blind to the currents of power.
Grow strong enough, climb high enough, and the shape of the world starts to come into focus on its own.
From where Mathieu stood, the action he had to take was crystal clear.
“Your Majesty. Sir Mathieu Philibert of the Coalition’s Three Heroes has arrived.”
“Show him in.”
He had to bow. The Emperor was surely already suspicious of the Coalition.
Even if he wasn’t, it hardly mattered. One single pretext was all he needed.
The breakwater that had been the Three Heroes had already collapsed completely.
If the Empire felt like it, it could raise a tidal wave whenever it wished.
Of course the Empire would not move to devour the Coalition right this moment.
They knew full well that swallowing it whole could leave them with a nasty case of indigestion.
“Come forward, Sir Mathieu Philibert. Welcome to the Empire.”
As he stepped inside, the Emperor seated upon the magnificent throne filled his vision.
The master of the great power that ruled the continent looked every bit the part—solemn, sharp, and merciless.
“Mathieu Philibert of the Coalition greets His Imperial Majesty.”
“This is the first time I have laid eyes on one of the Three Heroes in person. You stand shoulder to shoulder with our own Imperial 10 Strongest, do you not?”
There was no mockery in the Emperor’s expression or voice.
He sounded purely, genuinely intrigued to meet him.
And that was exactly what made Mathieu feel a faint, bitter humiliation.
That pure admiration was more crushing than any sneer could ever be.
The very title of “Three Heroes” had already been shattered. Two of them had been reduced to cripples.
People said they could grow strong again if they simply put in the effort—but was it ever that easy?
Everything they had built with blood and sweat had been wiped away. Completely destroyed.
They had paid a price, yes, but human beings despaired when all their suffering turned out to be for nothing.
Warriors once equal to the Imperial 10 Strongest were now weaker than ordinary knights.
How could anyone live, speak, or act as if nothing had happened after that?
“Raise your head, guest.”
Only at the Emperor’s command did Mathieu lift his gaze.
His eyes met those of the real power-holders of every Imperial ministry standing below the throne—the ministers.
The Emperor’s loyal retainers. His faithful hounds.
Together with the Emperor, they were the core that actually ran the Empire.
And then, suddenly, Mathieu saw someone he had never expected to find here.
…Huh?
He was not mistaken. That young man was unmistakably him.
He had no idea why the man was standing here, but there was no doubt.
Kyle John Nassen?
He was not mistaken. Absolutely not. The youth standing there was Kyle.
From what he had heard, the man was a scion of the John Nassen family—no connection to the Imperial House whatsoever.
Intelligence reports had even said he had only been temporarily drafted for the war against external enemies.
So why was that young man standing in this place as if he belonged here?
This was the most secretive, most heavily guarded chamber in the palace, reserved for the Emperor and his closest confidants alone.
How could the son of a mere noble house be standing there as though he had always been part of the furniture?!
Mathieu swallowed dryly without meaning to.
He had forgotten—no, he had deliberately tried to erase it from his mind.
The moment he saw Kyle’s face, the defeat of that day, the nightmare of that instant, came flooding back.
The man against whom Mathieu had thrown everything he had, only to leave a few shallow cuts.
The man who had dismantled Mathieu’s trump card—something even the Imperial 10 Strongest would have treated with caution—simply by stepping aside once.
And his older brother and sister had crushed Mathieu’s comrades who had been high on amplifiers and berserkers alike.
The awe and terror he had felt before that overwhelming power still remained vivid.
Knowing a John Nassen stood right in front of him made cold sweat pour down his back like rain.
“I have urgent news to deliver. That is why I have come in person, as you have heard.”
The Emperor was not the sort of man to miss Mathieu’s sudden change.
Shake a man’s heart and you rob him of composure; rob him of composure and you seize the upper hand with ease.
With that advantage he would grasp the present situation in detail and exploit every scrap of it.
“…Yes, Your Majesty. That is correct.”
“Speak, then. What is this urgent news?”
Mathieu had intended to stall, or at least to secure some minimal guarantee of the Coalition’s standing first.
After all, what he was about to say was anything but good news for the Coalition.
But the moment the Emperor had put Kyle on display, every scrap of initiative had been stripped away.
Initiative? He could barely manage a single word without feeling the weight of it.
Back then the situation had been chaotic and he had been too rattled to dwell on it, but…
If he lost to Kyle again, he suspected he would end up in much the same state as his two comrades.
“….”
After a brief internal struggle, Mathieu discarded every carefully prepared plan.
Thud!
What happened next made the ministers start in shock.
A man of the Coalition—Mathieu Philibert himself, said to stand equal to the Imperial 10 Strongest—
dropped to his knees of his own accord before the Emperor of the Empire and bowed his head to the floor.
This man was not the Emperor’s vassal. He had come as the representative envoy of a foreign power.
Without an explicit demand from the Emperor, there was no need for him to kneel.
Moreover, a man of his strength would naturally possess enormous pride.
Seeing him behave like this, of course they were stunned.
“First, I wish to offer my apologies, Your Imperial Majesty.”
“What in the world has happened that you would force me to make an envoy kneel?”
“…The arrest of the hardliners I previously promised, and the recovery of those vile substances—every part of it has gone awry.”
“Gone awry?”
The corner of the Emperor’s eye lifted slightly.
Whether it was surprise or interest was impossible to tell.
“Yes. Traitors appeared within the Coalition and aided the escape of the hardliner leaders. In the process those leaders fled with all their research materials and finished products.”
A faint twitch.
At the words “research materials and finished products,” Kyle quietly turned his gaze toward Mathieu.
Excuse me, Sir Mathieu? That’s not what we agreed on.
“Strange.”
Still unaware of Kyle’s reaction, the Emperor spoke again.
“Traitors within your ranks. An awkward business, to be sure. But if you yourself had set your mind to it, they never could have stopped you, could they? And you have knights under your command as well. Your claim that you simply ‘lost’ them sounds rather odd to my ears.”
In other words: Did you deliberately let them go? Did you go easy on them because they were fellow Coalition men?
From the Emperor’s perspective it was a perfectly reasonable suspicion.
Mathieu shook his head and explained why the Coalition had been left with no other choice.
“In truth, the hardliners of the Coalition had been conducting yet another line of research.”
“Yet another?”
“Yes. It was…”
Mathieu hesitated, unable to continue at once.
What he was about to say was something the Empire would find both deeply offensive and threatening.
One wrong word and it could hand the Empire a perfect pretext to march on the Coalition.
“Speak, envoy of the Coalition.”
But he had already entered the Imperial audience chamber. He stood before the Emperor himself.
Even if he tried to hide it, the truth would surface soon enough. Better to reveal it first and ask for help.
“…In truth, they modified mana berserkers into something that drives monsters into a frenzy. And before they fled, they released those substances and set the monsters of the region on a rampage.”
“They set monsters on a rampage? Inside their own territory?”
“To be precise, near the border between the Coalition and the Empire.”
The moment the words left Mathieu’s mouth, the Emperor’s face twisted.
Every minister tensed and watched the Emperor’s expression with bated breath.
It was no small matter when the Emperor frowned.
And the news itself was so thoroughly unpleasant that their fear only deepened.
An incident on the border between Empire and Coalition? What did that imply?
That the hardliners had intended to use monsters—on top of the mana berserkers—to attack the Empire.
The plan had simply backfired, and now they were using the same weapons to keep the moderate faction of their own country in check.
“I believe we have just heard something extremely concerning. Would you not agree?”
The Emperor looked toward the Minister of War and the Minister of Special Affairs as he spoke.
The unspoken question hanging in the air—Shall we raise the army again and simply wipe the Coalition off the map?—was no mere illusion.
“Sir Mathieu Philibert. Is that truly the case? That they intended to use monsters?”
“There is such a thing as decency! There is a minimum line that must not be crossed! However strained relations between Empire and Coalition may be, to even contemplate using those horrors—!!”
Long ago there had been attempts to employ monsters in warfare.
They had all vanished soon after. The foreseeable results had been far too horrific.
Monsters did not distinguish friend from foe; they slaughtered indiscriminately.
They did not kill only enemy soldiers while sparing civilians.
They obeyed no orders. They simply continued the massacre until their own lives ended.
Thus every nation had tacitly agreed never to use monsters.
For moral reasons—and because if even one side crossed that line, everyone else would follow.
And if that happened, literal hell would unfold across the continent.
“If such a thing occurred, you should have informed our nation first, Sir Philibert!”
“Or were you trying to hide it for fear of harm to the Coalition?!”
Sensing the Emperor’s displeasure, the ministers raised their voices until the veins stood out on their necks.
Fail to ride this wave of outrage and they themselves might end up in an awkward position.
And so the audience chamber filled with voices condemning the Coalition—until a new voice cut through the noise.
“So.”
The John Nassen who had been quietly observing the entire scene finally opened his mouth.
“In the end you didn’t catch a single one of them? Those damn roiders?”
While everyone else was railing against the use of monsters,
Kyle John Nassen cared about none of that. His fury was reserved solely for the fact that the roiders had gotten away.