Nereus and Necron activated the Authorities of Physical Reinforcement and Neural Acceleration and took the lead.

With the riders under Kyrie added in, the formation totaled a thousand.

“Walk!”

“Knights, trigger your combat magi-devices!”

Blue Knights were posted through the column, ready to unleash the Authority of Area Imbuement on the signal from the two.

Contrary to the misconception, cavalry does not start by sprinting.

There are stages—walk (a plodding pace), trot (about a running human’s speed), canter (the first clearly fast gait), and gallop (all-out).

Gallop begins barely a hundred meters from the target.

Up to that point, you advance under arrows, stones, cannons, nets—every attack there is—taking it on armor and shield.

There is a reason the simple, brutal valor is revered.

Without mental armoring, you can’t endure this fear.

Vumm! Vumm! Vumm!

Magical pulses rose here and there.

Each Knight poured mana into whatever magi-devices needed pre-activation.

“Trot!”

The van entered the boulevard.

Now Gracus’s defensive line was visible in the distance.

Barricades rising like walls, cannons jutting off every terrace, net-throwers ready to cast at any time…

Nereus spurred straight at them.

“Canter!”

Thududududu!

The ground began to shake.

“Use Area Imbuement!”

“The enemy will start their riposte! Brace for shock!”

“Blue Knights—use Area Imbuement!”

A roar that could drown out a lion’s thunder-shout.

Even in that, the Blue Knights of the heavy cavalry read the field and used the right Authorities.

“Area Imbuement!”

“O Dreaming Thunder Star!”

Chzzzzzt!

Like raindrops striking ponds, ripples spread from points through the line.

Blue, red, yellow, violet—crackling electric fire took to weapons and to armor and barding.

“Area Imbuement: Physical Reinforcement!”

Necron’s voice crowned the final blessing.

Bzzzzzzap!

From Necron, orange current fanned backward in a narrow cone.

It pricked the nerves and muscles of the Knights, Navigators, Retainers, and warhorses following, multiplying strength and reaction speed.

It was the Imbuement-style application of Physical Reinforcement.

“Waaaaaah!”

“Pierce the enemy’s heart!”

“Crash what you cherish most against them!”

“O Dreaming Thunder Star, I am here!”

Surging vigor sent the cavalry’s spirit spearing into the sky.

Thwick! Thwick! Thwick!

The beginning hail of arrows, the cannons that could punch through man and mount, the nets flying in—none of it was frightening.

“Ghk!”

Even when a comrade riding beside you toppled from the saddle, you didn’t look back.

“Uraaaaaa!”

You watched only the back of the Blue Knight ahead and let your body give over to this roar and thunder.

“Gallop!”

Nereus loosed a lion’s bellow.

“Gallop!”

“Charge!”

“Charge!”

Every time warhorses bred for nothing but war hammered the earth, sparks spat from iron hooves.

At the points of couched lances aimed ahead, colored electric flames wavered like heat-haze.

There was a barricade up ahead.

We did not fear it.

I could see Nereus at the tip ramming his lance into the barricade.

Stacked brick and furniture weighed several tons—but a Blue Knight using Physical Reinforcement could shove several tons in place.

A warhorse bred and built for it weighed nearly twenty times more than such a Blue Knight, and it too was under the same Authority of Physical Reinforcement.

Kraaaaash!

The barricade burst into flying chunks.

Victory, victory, victory!

In my head, only an aria like the Constellations’ own guidance rang.

“Huh?”

Then a standard ahead caught my eye.

The governor’s standard.

Gracus.

Gracus’s Blue Knight, Ronius, swept back his curly hair and took position before the parapet of the Governor’s Citadel.

From the high ground where the Citadel sat down along the boulevard where the fighting raged stretched tiers of high Insula blocks.

Breaking into a modernized metropolis without an elder-tier Blue Knight was little different from piling a mountain of corpses.

If you posted cannons, javelin-men, and longbowmen on every Insula terrace and poured down fire, that alone could pin those fearsome heavy cavalry.

“Send more cannon shot and nets to Insula Thirteen.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Insula Twenty-Seven is at risk of collapse. Pull troops from that sector and redeploy them to Sector Three.”

“Understood!”

“Ask Lord Gracus to fall back slowly. I might manage Nereus, but taking his uncle Necron head-on is a load I’d rather not shoulder.”

“He won’t agree easily.”

He had crossed blades with Kyrie, but by nature Ronius was uncommonly capable at command for a Blue Knight.

“Tell him we bleed them while drawing them in slow. The unit commanders won’t die easily anyway, so in the end there’ll be a chance for single combat. And if he does get killed in the middle, it only proves they weren’t worth His Excellency stepping out for in the first place.”

“Yes! I’ll relay it word for word.”

In truth, Blue Knights suit the role of commander; Bio-radar lets them grasp the field in three dimensions.

There are simply few whose talent has blossomed that way.

Ronius watched as Necron’s heavy cavalry smashed against Gracus’s guards.

It was like a torrent of iron colliding with a mountain of stone.

A weak heart might die from the sound alone.

Gracus’s guards were slowly being pushed.

But the speed at which the heavy cavalry broke the next barricade, and the one after that, slowed step by step.

Just as planned.

“Fire!”

“Volley!”

“No need to force shots at Blue Knights! Those bastards sense with electromagnetic waves and dodge! Knights—just shoot Knights and we’re in the black!”

Cannons firing from terraces reaped Knights and Navigator-ranks with ease.

“One, two, three!”

“Throw!”

“Y-you dare!”

From side alleys, the combination of net-throwers, pikemen, and shield-bearers steadily forced losses.

Net-throwers snared Retainer- or Navigator-ranks and dragged them from their saddles; pikemen finished them.

If a counterstrike came, shield-bearers hurled their bodies to block.

“Good!”

“One more!”

Watching the boulevard awash with electric fire, Ronius thought of Kyrie.

I acknowledge you’re strong.

He pictured the gleam of that single eye against the black leather patch, the smile cold and feral.

But no matter how strong you are, if you’re not a direct-line pureblood, there’s a limit to what one Blue Knight can accomplish. In the end, organization and numbers decide everything.

They said that man was squaring off against Senior Heir Traysan.

In this great current, you’re just one slightly larger gear. So am I. So are you.

A madman.

I was the madman.

Bringing a princess in here, of all places.

“Chzzzt!”

“Kyaaah!”

A rat popped out from a crack in the wall.

Erica recoiled in a fright and nearly pitched into the water.

With my left hand I hooked her waist; with my right I seized the rat’s neck.

Pivoting in place, I set Erica back on the walkway and at the same time raised a spark in my right hand.

Bzzzap!

“Chik!”

The rat—thicker than my forearm—drooped, smoking.

“You’re fine.”

“R-rats, r-rats!”

“Got it.”

Splash.

I tossed the rat into the channel and rinsed my hand in the clear rainwater seeping down the wall.

“……”

As it sank, I saw it had six legs and two tails.

The tails were laced with dark red veins.

Maybe not just a city rat grown big.

“Move.”

“Right.”

Erica sagged her shoulders, too embarrassed now to even apologize.

We pressed on, and on.

Some corridors had collapsed; some gaps were long enough that jumping them was dicey.

We shouldered stones aside by brute force to open paths, pooled daggers to nail into the wall and make a temporary bridge.

A hot urge filled me—to seize that pig bastard Gracus no matter what.

Here I am, rolling in this underground.

A princess of Rykenta, trudging through this underground.

Realistically, rationally, reasonably, it was absurd.

I hadn’t known I’d do this either.

“To sit on the highest seat as emperor, must one also have crawled beneath the floor?”

I pictured the Thunder Star that could not be seen down here and murmured.

“Kiri-kiri?”

“No.”

We had been cutting through dark for hours now.

Thududududu…!

From far off came the tremor of hooves.

“It seems they’ve begun.”

“We must get up there as well. Otherwise, the last defeat will simply repeat.”

“I know. Run as we are. A few more kilometers.”

I pushed the pace harder.

“Here!”

After several minutes at the fastest speed short of using Thunder-Step, I stopped beneath the Governor’s Citadel.

Thanks to Bio-radar, I could guess the exact spot.

Up from here lay the inner court where the vault sat.

“We go up here?”

“Right. Hold on. I’ll find a way up. There should be a maintenance descent for the sewers on this side…”

I skimmed the wall with Bio-radar, hunting a door.

“No need.”

Erica shook her head, bloodshot-eyed.

Whssssss…

“Huh?”

“Mm?”

“Ah!”

Hair lifted in a place where there should be not a breath of wind.

“Lord Kyrie. Right now…”

“Whoa—whoa!”

Even Feijin and Frey, who’d been looking at Erica with pity a moment ago, changed their eyes.

“Handle the backblast yourselves.”

Erica stretched a hand toward the ceiling.

In her palm, I saw a tiny waterspout take shape.

Boom!

An instant later, a hole punched through the ceiling.

Easily a hundred meters of soil and rock lanced in one go.

Not drilled by rotation—simply shoved aside by overwhelming force.

“Aaaaaaah!”

“W-wha—?”

Even as the dust cloud burst, awe ran through me.

How much mana did that take?

How high would the Celestial Lightning Body’s value have to climb to do the same?

“Khak! Khak!”

On all sides Blue Knights and Knights gathered themselves.

“Come up slowly. I’ll hold until you do.”

Erica took my hand and lightly stamped the ground.

“Payment for catching me earlier.”

Wind-craft Authority—Flight.

Whooosh!

In seconds I shot up the vertical shaft.

Erica’s gold hair flared radiant in the backlight.

Even in those green eyes that had been flustered and watery this whole time, something like confidence returned.

Not bad, I was thinking when we surfaced.

The light was so harsh I closed my eyes for a moment and scanned the surroundings with Bio-radar alone.

The soil Erica had shoved aside lay toppled around us in a cylinder.

“W-what is that?”

“Something came up from below? Intruders?”

“Move! It’s where the vault is!”

Soldiers, white-outlined, dashed toward us in my inner sight.

I narrowed my eyes and fanned a discharge their way.

Bzzzzzap!

White lightning flashed; half a dozen soldiers hit the ground, rolling.

“I—intruders!”

“An intruder in the inner court!”

From other angles, soldiers who’d seen us blew whistles and beat drums to signal.

Rrrrumble!

“Yes! Intruders!”

Frey, every inch the Blue Knight, spammed Thunder-Step and came up.

“A fucking handsome, cute, fucking strong intruder!”

She drew her thunder greatsword and charged.

Thanks to the rope Frey had dropped, the Blue Knights and Knights following climbed faster.

“Start with the office! Turn the governor’s office inside out!”

We kicked and stabbed every enemy in sight and bolted in all directions.

“Kyrie?”

A Blue Knight under Gracus came running, urgent.

“H—how are you here!?”

He said my name with a face like he’d seen a ghost.

Curly light-brown hair, a squared jaw.

A face I remembered.

“I climbed with everything I had. Same as always.”

I answered once like an ordinary man, and once like a Blue Knight.

“Lightning.”

I dropped a Heavenstrike on his head.

Flash.

Chapter 95

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