There Was... And Then There Wasn't
There was... and then there wasn't.
"Y-you! Just what do you think you're doing, Sir Mathieu?! Use the amplifier already!"
Gruchy Nicholas of the Western Kingdom Coalition's Three Heroes shouted in a voice raw with desperation.
Watching one of their own struggle so badly against some random young man—looking ready to fall at any second—was almost more than he could take.
Bernadotte Brun, another of the Three Heroes, seemed to feel the same. He pressed a hand to his forehead.
"Even at a moment this critical, Sir Mathieu insists on playing the lofty idealist. That stubborn fool!"
And in that very moment, Mathieu finally took a clean hit from Kyle and went sprawling across the ground.
He'd had plenty of chances to use the amplifier. Kyle had even stood there and waited for him midway through the fight.
If he'd seized that opening and taken it, even a warrior on the level of the Imperial 10 Strongest should have been well within his reach to defeat.
That Mathieu had stubbornly refused until the very end and lost for it filled them with a bitter, seething hatred.
"This won't do. We're intervening. From the looks of it, those people are the Empire's finest. If we don't put them down here and now, our army's morale will plummet straight through the floor."
"Agreed. Let's go, Sir Gruchy. Time to show those Imperial dogs what the Coalition is made of."
Without the slightest hesitation, the two uncorked their vials and downed the contents in a single gulp.
At first a cool, refreshing sensation washed through them—then, all at once, a searing heat flooded every inch of their bodies.
Something surged up inside them, thrashing as if it might explode at any second.
"Khh—!"
"They said thirty minutes is the limit. Let's go! In that time, we crush every last enemy the Empire throws at us and send those bastards crawling back to their homeland!"
In the past, war with the Empire had been a near-daily reality.
And in those battles, they had lost so very much.
Family. The seniors who had become Knights before them. The masters who had taught them.
Their pride as glorious knight-candidates of the kingdom, their beautiful hometowns—everything.
Grinding their teeth at the mere mention of the Empire was only natural.
They had been mere teenagers back then. The years had turned them into middle-aged men now.
But the fire in their chests—this rage—had never once died down.
If anything, it burned larger and fiercer than before.
Some said it was time to let go of the anger and the hatred.
That this path led only to mutual destruction—or rather, to the Coalition's self-destruction alone.
That as humiliating and galling as it was, they had to discuss peace with the Empire for the sake of the future.
They spewed words that sounded ready to hand over their own livers and gallbladders on a silver platter.
Peace? Now? Don't make me laugh.
We fight until we die, and if we all die, so be it. That is our fate—the Coalition's fate!
Baseless hardline rhetoric always finds an easier purchase than reasoned moderation.
People in a group are far more easily swept up by severity than by temperance.
Especially when anyone who dares disagree risks being branded a traitor on the spot.
And so, like it or not, the Coalition had marched toward a decisive battle with the Empire—though "decisive battle" was putting it generously.
Call it what it was: the Coalition walking alone onto the guillotine.
The Empire risked nothing even in defeat. The Coalition lost everything if it fell.
Which was why they had to fight with every means and every method at their disposal.
So cried the hardliners, and so cried their leaders, Gruchy and Bernadotte.
The result of that conviction was this: the unhesitating use of the amplifiers.
"Haaaaah!!"
"Kraaaah!!"
Power surged. Mana roared upward. If they didn't unleash this strength, they felt they would go mad.
Their hearts felt ready to burst—but they could still control it, just barely.
With enough focus, they could rein in the mana that threatened to overflow at any moment.
This is data the suicide corps bought with their own bodies. We cannot let their sacrifice go to waste!
They had given the relatively expendable the title of "suicide corps" and deliberately induced mana runaway in them.
It had been an experiment—a way to produce a more stable product.
Learn how it affected the human body, map the process, and refinement became easy.
The Coalition had selected its sacrificial lambs without a second thought and dressed them up as a suicide corps.
An act to make the heavens themselves weep with rage—but the Coalition, already dominated by the hardliners, was long past sanity.
Win, and nothing else mattered. Win, and nothing had happened. The victor never bears the risk.
Only the vanquished carry everything, and fade into history's back alleys!!
"Sir Bernadotte—get Sir Mathieu out of there and fall back for a moment. Then persuade him, or force the amplifier down his throat if you have to. Make sure he joins us. I'll hold them off!"
"Understood, Sir Gruchy. Hold on just a little—I'll be right back!"
Even their fellow Three Hero, Mathieu, was now someone to be forcibly dragged into their logic.
It was a thoroughly disgusting thing to do, but neither of them seemed to care in the slightest.
In their eyes, what they were doing was right. Inevitable. The only path left.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Or so they believed—until a woman appeared beside them out of nowhere.
When did she—?!
Gruchy and Bernadotte jolted and skidded to a halt.
They still had a little ground left before reaching Mathieu's side.
If they had already arrived, if the enemy had struck while they were gathering him up—that would have been one thing.
But to be intercepted mid-charge, with their momentum fully raised—
"Hmm. Looking at you two, you seem like you were originally very strong."
Lea stepped into their path, a gentle smile on her face.
The warmth at the corners of her mouth was the kind that made anyone who saw it feel better just looking at it.
Admiration shone clearly in her eyes—not mockery. Genuine appraisal, plain as day.
"And you've trained yourselves incredibly hard, too."
Blink.
She closed her eyes slowly, then opened them again, refining her judgment of the two men before her.
"But still—why on earth."
Blink.
"Would you make a choice like that?"
Whoosh—!
In that instant, Gruchy and Bernadotte dropped into combat stances without thinking and stumbled backward.
Every muscle in their bodies pulled taut. Cold sweat streamed down their spines.
When she closed her eyes and opened them once more, not a shred of goodwill remained in them.
What lived in the eyes of the woman before them was contempt—nothing else.
The warm smile was gone, replaced by a sneer. An ominous presence coiled and rose around her.
The beautiful woman was no longer there. What remained was a beast with eyes that flashed like drawn blades.
"Which one do you want, Brother?"
"The strong one."
"Don't even start. Then I won't yield either."
"...Fine. The one on the right."
"Then I'll take the left."
They picked their opponents the way children might bicker over dolls.
Humiliated, the two Three Heroes struck as one, as if they had planned it in advance.
Each launched a blade of sword-aura—one at Lea, one at Lia.
As powerhouses, as Knights, it was a thoroughly shameful act.
But men who had already gone this far had nothing left to hesitate over.
Defeat meant losing everything. If victory was possible, what wouldn't they do?
KRAAAANG—!!
A thunderous boom scattered dust and shattered earth in every direction.
The attack was so sudden that even Mathieu, their fellow Three Hero, startled and tried to push himself up.
"Th-that kind of—!"
It had been a perfectly executed ambush. Even powerhouses would struggle to react in time.
Mathieu himself hadn't sensed a thing. That was how potent the amplifier's effects were.
That much power, that vast mana, that overwhelming speed—all three in perfect concert.
Even knowing they were Imperial enemies, he found himself praying they were unharmed.
Oh boy. This is bad.
Meanwhile, Kyle—whose own brother and sister had just been ambushed—was fretting over something else entirely.
They're not going to take that lying down, are they?
If that ambush had come after his brother and sister had formally issued a challenge to duel—
Well, the fight would already have started, so they would have let it slide. He was sure of that.
They might even have laughed and applauded, saying the opening strike had been impressively sharp.
Unfortunately, neither Lia nor Lea had managed to issue a proper duel challenge yet.
These two had dumped filth on the floor before a real fight had even begun.
And once that happened, there was only one reaction those two would ever show.
Crack—!!
"Ghk—?!"
Before the dust had even settled, two figures shot forward like bolts of lightning.
Even as amplifier-boosted warriors on the level of the Imperial 10 Strongest, they couldn't react in time.
In a blink, one figure seized a throat and the other a head—then each shot off in the opposite direction.
Just in case their own thrashing might interfere with their brother's fight, or their sister's.
Or in case whoever finished first got greedy and tried to steal the other fight. So they opened the distance.
"KRAAAAAH!!"
As if to say he had no intention of being dragged off quietly, Gruchy—paired against Lea—let out a monstrous roar.
He clamped onto her arm and shoved with everything he had, and for the briefest instant, a spark of interest lit in the woman's eyes.
But that spark vanished within seconds.
"...Other than my parents and my brother, no one's ever put out this much force against me. Ah, I got my hopes up for nothing."
If this had been power he possessed on his own, her heart would have been pounding out of her chest.
She might have fought him until the sky darkened, until the night grew deep, until dawn came again.
But the strength this opponent held hadn't been earned through effort and training.
"Trampling a lady's pure feelings like that—you deserve a little punishment, don't you?"
Whoom—.
"Huh?"
He had pushed with every last ounce of strength, teeth clenched hard enough to crack enamel, forcing the woman back.
So why hadn't he moved her an inch—and why was he the one being slammed into the ground headfirst?
KRAAAAAANG—!!
One of the Coalition's Three Heroes—boosted by a fully researched mana amplifier—
—and Lea buried him in a full-force suplex.
"Ghk-hah..."
The last thing that entered Gruchy's fading vision was this:
"UAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"
His comrade and fellow Three Hero, Bernadotte—
"Pathetic."
—being swung around like a broom in the massive hands of an enormous man.