I finish this now.

Kyrie did not miss the opportunity. Because his status had once been lowly, opportunities themselves had always been rarer for him than for others. That meant once one appeared, he could never afford to let it go.

Doctor Adler’s side, where the Red Bone Blade had stabbed in and then torn back out as his body tilted away.

Kyrie forced strength back into his weakening steps through electric-arts bodily enhancement and kicked off the ground.

Rumble!

Thunderstep, followed immediately by a slash.

Shhk!

Doctor Adler’s head flew into the air.

That face, which had always behaved as though it knew every truth in the world, seemed incapable of comprehending even its own death, twisted only by the agony of Heavenly Thunderbolt.

“Huff… haa.”

Kyrie staggered while clutching his side.

“Kiri-Kiri? You got stabbed?”

Realizing the situation, Frey immediately sent Vane to fetch holy water.

Got him. No one’s stealing my Military Exploit now.

Carefully lowering himself so the wound would not reopen, Kyrie looked toward Valherios.

Prince.

The blond-haired, gold-eyed prince approached surrounded by sworn warriors and knights.

Thud-thud-thud-thud!

“I came intending to assist, but it seems that became unnecessary.”

Valherios dismounted and extended holy water toward him.

“Use it.”

Vane had not yet returned.

Kyrie accepted it fully prepared for the possibility that it might be hydrochloric acid rather than holy water.

He tilted the bottle slightly and wet his finger.

Huh?

For a moment Kyrie nearly failed to maintain his composure.

At minimum, this was made by a bishop. And not from some provincial backwater either—a bishop from a major city with a population above five hundred thousand.

The holy water Valherios had handed him was of a quality even Kyrie could not easily obtain.

Chiiiiiiik!

The moment he poured it over his side, steam exploded upward as the invasive corruption carried through the Red Bone Blade burned away.

“Gghhh!”

Kyrie suppressed the scream through clenched teeth.

“How spirited.”

Valherios smiled with satisfaction.

What the hell is this bastard thinking?

Kyrie could not understand Valherios at all.

Their relationship with the royal family had never been good.

We’re not close enough for this, are we?

That was true both as houses and as individuals.

House Astreos itself had historically maintained its sovereignty by constantly clashing against both the royal family and the Papal See.

Kyrie himself had fought deadly battles against royal-family sworn warriors from the time of Spiramentaon onward.

Even during the rebellion of Traisan, where Kyrie first began earning true fame, royal-family sworn warriors had assisted in kidnapping Andromeda.

Starting from the subjugation of the corpse-waste plains, he had openly clashed with Betelgeuse of the royal family, and during the attempted assassination of Peleus by the royal family and the Myriad Star Church, they had simply become outright enemies.

Drawing swords against one another right now would not have been strange at all.

“We were pursuing Doctor Adler as well. Thank you for avenging our men in our stead. My sworn warriors who died before me would surely thank you too.”

Valherios’s goodwill stemmed from a reason Kyrie never could have imagined.

Straightforward like Astreos, yet unexpectedly delicate in a way unlike Astreos.

Because from the very beginning, Valherios had never expected anything from Kyrie at all.

As Kyrie thought, Valherios truly was his enemy.

The one who had signed the operational order sending Betelgeuse and the sworn warriors to Astreos together with Saint Deneb had been Valherios himself. Regardless of the positions of their respective houses, they were personal enemies.

Losing the elixir of sacred radiance was truly regrettable, but there’s no denying he used it better than we ever could have.

However, most of Valherios’s preconceptions about Kyrie had now vanished.

He takes horrifyingly good care of his subordinates, and the moment I arrived he launched an immediate offensive and killed Doctor Adler himself. That determination not to force others to bear his burdens is impressive.

The Kyrie Valherios had imagined was a monster.

A Blue Knight born from a brothel bastard.

A monster raised from childhood as a combat machine through training camps and the academy, so starved for ambition that he even sacrificed one of his own eyes in pursuit of power.

I thought Astreos had simply raised another beast.

Valherios and the royal family had always despised the Astreos-style superhuman training camps.

Children forcibly separated from their families at young ages, dying under brutal training.

How was that any different from the tyrants of the Ancient Empire?

Those camps did not produce honorable superhuman warriors. They produced blood-crazed demons.

Judging from Kyrie’s actions alone, that suspicion had deepened severalfold into certainty.

Hungry for Military Exploits, he had volunteered for frontline border units despite his excellent grades and thrown himself into war.

He had captured Erica, the rightful heir of Rikenta, interfering in the succession conflict and attempting to plunge the Empire into chaos.

He had killed Traisan, Astreos’s adopted senior heir—the one person from Astreos who had at least been somewhat reasonable.

Yet the Kyrie Valherios saw in person was not a hated enemy, merely a political rival.

He distributed the elixir of sacred radiance from top to bottom among his soldiers. He treasured his stepsister Andromeda obsessively. He even upheld loyalty toward Erica, his political marriage partner.

He had risked his life advancing all the way beneath the feet of that gigantic doctoral-candidate fusion creature just to fire the Electromagnetic Railgun.

It was regrettable that they stood on opposite sides, but as warrior to warrior, he was someone worthy of respect.

“Has your side nearly healed? Good. If you are willing, I shall show you the best stepping technique for dealing with those creatures.”

And so Valherios impulsively extended a hand.

A strange encounter began in the middle of the wasteland.

Why is he acting like this? Why?

Kyrie attempted to initiate Telephone Conversation with Valherios, only to fail.

Telephone Conversation was fundamentally a supportive authority used between people capable of mutual communication—not an offensive authority for screaming into minds or reading thoughts. Using it became difficult whenever the opponent circulated mana.

Tyren of Terra had not directly used bodily-enhancement authorities and had also let his guard down, which was why it had worked then. That kind of luck would not repeat endlessly.

Especially not against someone currently using sword aura reinforcement.

“……When they unleash mental waves, your mind becomes washed white and your body stiffens. Therefore you must use swordsmanship that incorporates rotational momentum. Even if your strength momentarily leaves you, the motion continues through inertia. That solitary Blue Knight seemed to employ a similar principle.”

Tap-tap!

Valherios drew his sword before Kyrie and demonstrated the stepping technique.

He advanced with large strides while rotating his body.

Each step turned his body halfway around, and every half-turn of the body caused the sword to complete a full rotation.

“Exactly. Excellent. Astreos possesses similar techniques, so you will adapt quickly.”

Kyrie listened to Valherios’s praise with profound discomfort.

Surely he hasn’t gone insane. Split personality? In Rebellion he was so wary of me he couldn’t even control his expression.

He learns quickly and actually listens to my words. Frankly, this was never the sort of relationship where my goodwill should have been easily accepted, yet perhaps he intends to demonstrate the magnanimity worthy of supreme commander of the Elector Princes’ alliance army.

Valherios also felt strangely unsettled.

He is not a war-crazed monster at all.

Recalling alternately the letter sent by his father and the letter sent by Saint Deneb, he gave a bitter smile.

“Where do you intend to go now?”

It would have been better had those letters arrived a little later.

“Now that Doctor Adler is dead, we will proceed to the next city according to schedule. We’ll conduct search operations there, then wait for the Church army’s supplies to arrive. Hopefully they come on time this time.”

“I scarcely see any soldiers. It seems they have already moved on.”

“Well. Yes.”

“That complicates matters. I heard Grand Prince Regent Andromeda has been surrounded.”

“What?”

“No messenger has reached you yet? It seems the Grand Prince Regent Andromeda fell into a trap of the Hall of Purity while cleansing a city. The Hall of Purity apparently infiltrated merchant caravans entrusted by the Church with supply transport and entered the city that way.”

Valherios decided to repay his earlier regret through goodwill.

“Moving the entire army would take too long, so only this battalion will go. I shall supplement the lacking strength with my own forces.”

Since Kyrie and Andromeda were close, Valherios thought Kyrie would appreciate assistance in rescuing her.

You son of a bitch!

For Kyrie, it felt as though his mind had been bleached white by shock.

You’re threatening me using Andromeda?

Internally Kyrie unleashed every curse and profanity he knew.

This was absolutely intentional. Absolutely intentional. They deliberately allowed Hall of Purity bastards to infiltrate the merchant caravans just to endanger Andromeda. These deceitful bastards. Do they hate our house that much?

Most infuriating of all was the fact that even knowing all this, he still had no choice but to accept it.

“Thank you very much, Your Highness Crown Prince.”

“What are you saying? Speak more casually. I am merely a prince, while you are the supreme commander of the Elector Princes’ alliance army, are you not?”

Kyrie bowed deeply before Valherios.

To think Astreos would bow its head. Truly, one lives long enough to see strange things.

Valherios found himself liking Kyrie slightly more.

Enough that his heart tilted more toward his father’s letter than Saint Deneb’s.

“Your Highness! The enemy approaches!”

“Damn, there are way too many!”

The Free Cities Union city of Cophion was a wealthy and beautiful city of six hundred thousand inhabitants.

Its buildings of red stone were magnificent, and the river cutting through the wasteland was piercingly clear.

“Maces! Bring down maces from the heavenly world!”

Heavenly Thunderbolt.

KWA-GWAGWAGWAGWANG!

Today, every one of those buildings collapsed beneath lightning strikes, while corpses of doctoral candidates and Masters floated through the river.

“Y-Your Highness Grand Prince Regent! Infiltrators are pouring down the main avenue!”

“Is Sir Nereus not coming?”

“He’s the only reason Doctor-level enemies haven’t arrived yet!”

Andromeda continued her stand within Cophion Cathedral.

I have to endure.

Beneath that cathedral currently lay three captured Masters of the Hall of Purity.

They had been seized in a surprise attack before they could commit suicide and were now thoroughly saturated with hallucinogens and sedatives.

According to the torture specialists, another few days of drugs would make them talk.

A Master is at least middle-management level. This is our chance to uncover their base, strength, organizational structure—everything.

In such circumstances, no Astreos would choose retreat.

“I’m launching a lightning sphere, so move out of the way!”

“Y-Yes!”

But the situation was poor.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

No matter how many fully mutated doctoral candidates or ordinary infiltrators came, Andromeda did not fear them.

Even in the dry regions of the free cities, Andromeda could create thunderclouds in the middle of a desert, and a single lightning strike would kill anything.

“Five Bachelors approaching!”

The true problem was the partial-mutant infiltrators rapidly dashing between the stone buildings.

Flash!

Even when she called down lightning, buildings blocked it, and if she entered sword combat, she inevitably suffered under the combination of mental waves and swordsmanship.

As the strongest Blue Knight in anti-personnel combat, she had endured until now, but there was no telling how long that would continue.

Should I just unleash Heavenly Calamity?

Andromeda seriously considered vaporizing every living thing within several kilometers of the cathedral.

“Your Highness! You must not.”

“Please escape!”

That thought subsided almost immediately.

Not because the clergy of the Myriad Star Church in Cophion clung desperately to her feet after seeing her expression.

No. There are still hundreds of thousands of survivors. If word spreads that I killed them all, the Astreos army will never again receive cooperation from the free-city merchants.

Normally it would have been a perfectly reasonable decision, but now all six great houses, the royal family, and the Church itself had entered the conflict.

If Astreos lost public reputation, the other houses would benefit proportionally.

But I can’t retreat while abandoning these people either.

Standing upon the cathedral terrace, Andromeda looked down the main avenue.

Boing! Boing! Boing!

Masters and Bachelors with reverse-jointed legs ran across rooftops with their white robes fluttering.

[“-----!”]

[“--, --!”]

Every time mental waves erupted, the retainers and attendants blocking them stiffened and collapsed in sprays of blood.

Noona!

At that moment, Kyrie’s voice echoed inside her head.

“Kyrie?”

Telephone Conversation.

Andromeda looked toward the city gate at the far end of the avenue.

Rumble!

Kyrie leapt from his horse and charged toward the cathedral.

“The supreme commander!?”

“It’s Kyrie!”

“Kill the enemy of truth!”

“The experiment begins!”

Bachelors of the Hall of Purity swarmed toward Kyrie.

At that moment Andromeda resolved to unleash Heavenly Calamity.

Neither this city nor the reputation of the house mattered more than Kyrie.

It’s okay.

Kyrie’s voice halted that decision.

And then Andromeda saw it.

[“-----!”]

[“--, --!”]

[“-, ---!”]

More than a dozen Bachelors unleashed mental waves while charging him.

Bone blades and thorned tentacle whips struck from every direction.

Kyrie leapt with the crystalline holy sword wrapped in lightning reinforcement.

A stepping technique similar to Radiant Wheel, yet subtly different.

Even with his body stiffened by mental waves, he continued rotating forward.

Tskaaaaaak!

The arms and legs of every Bachelor flew into the sky.

Chapter 223

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