episode_0064

Command 66.

The plan being secretly drafted by the Führer and the military high command within the Germania Duchy was so simple that it was almost embarrassing to call it a plan.

Before the Bretona Empire could take any preemptive action, they would swiftly occupy the weakened Holy Kingdom, secure its surrender, and maintain the situation.

The three nations considered the continent’s major powers.

If they could occupy the Holy Kingdom, one of those nations, in the shortest possible time, there would be room to prepare a later response against the Bretona Empire, which would move late.

While the kingdom’s attention was focused on border clashes, if they could theoretically launch a Blitzkrieg within six weeks and break through the capital─.

That day. The Holy Kingdom, which had not only lost its core forces to the 《Black Serpent》 at the World Military Expo but had also barely managed to contain a revolution and was being swept by a storm of purges, could be easily occupied.

It was a plan filled with nothing but pipe dreams.

It was a plan that no sane person could execute, and fortunately, the man named Gustadolph Whitley was mad enough to push through such a crazy plan.

Therefore, even when Ergo, wearing his skin, enforced Command 66 in the ‘Leader-nim’s Name’, no one within the Duchy dared to object.

Not even the Duchy commanders leading the large army group (Heersgruppe) that would immediately be deployed for the invasion were an exception.

Because rather than becoming a wretch who couldn’t even die from defying the Führer to his face, it would be many times better to walk into certain death on their own.

And in that situation, where no commander doubted it was military suicide─.

A man appeared, bearing a special order from the Führer, granted more independent operational command and discretion than an official commander.

A strange young man unknown to anyone who had served in the military for a long time, one no one had ever heard of.

“Well, isn’t the military a place where you just do what you’re told?”

The man scratched his red hair with a glib voice.

“It’s not like I enjoy doing this, but what can I do?”

He was a man with reptilian eyes eerily slit like a snake’s, with Snake Eyes.

“As you can see, I also received orders from above to just do it─.”

And beside the man with snake eyes was a beastman with a colossal, muscular physique, impeccably dressed in a suit.

“Tsk, leading someone and doing something isn’t my style.”

He was a man with the head of a lone wolf.

*

“Hand this country over to the Duchy? What on earth does that mean?!” cried Queen Charlotte, who had defended the country from the rebels calling themselves revolutionaries.

“I never explicitly told you to hand it over.”

“Then what is this?!”

“It’s just that you can’t expect my mercy in the face of the Duchy’s army that will now move.”

She believed there was only one course of action to take in the face of an irresistible evil, in the face of an unbeatable enemy.

To simply kneel, bow, and beg for mercy.

“That’s different from what you promised!”

As she knelt before evil, bowing and pleading for mercy, the mercy he bestowed was as sweet as a heavenly song.

“What’s different?”

Until she knew that performance had an end.

“─The promise to protect the kingdom from the revolution was kept.”

The man said so. And true to his word, he protected this country.

But it was not so in the face of the Germania Duchy’s invasion, which moved like a bolt from the blue shortly after.

“Beyond that, do I have an obligation to dedicate myself to this country?”

“……!”

“As I said, it’s your freedom to protect this country from them. As the ruler of the kingdom, resisting the invasion is up to you.”

The royal palace of Lutecia, the capital of the Holy Kingdom.

The place that had once almost burned to ashes at the hands of the revolutionary army was protected by the man. She had no intention of denying that fact itself.

“Holy Maiden-nim……!”

“How regrettable, Charlotte-yang.”

As a last resort, Charlotte turned to the Holy Maiden standing there. Of course, she held no expectations. Just as someone grasping at straws doesn’t put hope in the straws themselves.

She just reached out because it was there.

“I am merely a sword that carries out my Master-nim’s commands.”

But from the start, there was no such thing as a Holy Maiden.

“And this is my Master-nim’s new command.”

“……”

There was only the 《Black Saintess》. And the Death Sword accompanying her.

The eyes of the two female swordsmen there were, from the very beginning, tainted with blind loyalty toward the 《Black Serpent》.

“……!”

That was the reality faced by one of the three great powers that once dominated the continent.

A nation’s entire fate decided by someone’s single whim, and the ultimate helplessness of having to beg and fret just to change that person’s mind.

“Please, Sir Rain─!”

Therefore, Charlotte knelt again.

“What do you wish for? I can do anything! Truly…!”

Hanging on, stripped bare of all pride she possessed as a queen, no, as a woman.

─Without ever dreaming that even the Duchy’s army, which had started moving like a bolt from the blue, was acting on the man’s will.

“Is my body not enough?! Is everything in this country not enough?! I can offer everything! I will dedicate everything to you! I will dedicate my entire life to serving you! So, please…!”

Bestow mercy just one more time.

Charlotte swallowed shame and humiliation worse than death, and pleaded. Her knights watching the scene were no different.

Because the sight of their lord, whom they should serve, acting coquettish and flattering like a street whore, ultimately clinging to his pant leg and begging, was so humiliating that it would have been better to die.

Sir Bradamante, who guarded the Queen’s side, also bit her lip. So hard that her flesh tore and bled. But that was the best she could do.

What was most helpless was her own weakness, unable to do anything even as her queen endured the humiliation of becoming a street whore.

Then perhaps─.

“I beg of you, Sir Rain.”

Rather than ignoring and pretending not to see their lord’s humiliation, it was better to fall to the same low point.

Sir Bradamante also knelt. Not even caring that the man was the enemy who had killed the most proud knight of this country.

Just like Queen Charlotte, not even caring that he was the enemy who had killed the one she had loved and admired, her first love.

“Please, grant mercy for this country……”

For them, death was a trivial matter. Therefore, enduring shame and humiliation worse than death, in the end, they could only desperately flatter and act coquettishly, using everything they had.

At the same time, it was the privilege of only the weak, whether male or female, who gave up resisting in the face of an unbeatable enemy and submitted to reality.

Furthermore, instead of the foolishness of upholding justice and righteousness against evil to the very end, it was the outcome of the wisdom that chose a wise surrender.

*

“Heehee, Rain-nim’s decisions are truly chilling.”

Freya, a member of the Serpent bearing the name Mimang, chuckled and whispered.

After hearing the full story of what happened at the Holy Kingdom’s royal court, she flushed, seemingly entranced, and desperately comforted herself.

“Ah, indeed, the one to whom I, as a woman, have offered everything and sworn eternal loyalty…”

“……”

Before her, the female swordsman bearing the alias 《Death Sword》 remained silent.

She felt nauseous.

At the same time, she realized it was a miracle that all these emotions she was feeling, every form of ‘realization of life’ that should not be allowed to the dead, originated from the fingertips of that hateful woman.

What she realized after becoming a member of the 《Black Serpent》 was that they were all insane.

A group tainted with absolute fanaticism for the man called Rain Grey, for all the undeniable evils of the world.

They were not a mere criminal organization.

It was a cult.

A group of cultists tainted with fanaticism and blindness before their leader, the man Rain Grey.

“……What would have been the right decision?”

Therefore, Alina, the Sword Princess, asked again, as someone who had once belonged to a righteous group called the 《Knight’s Order》.

“A right decision, what do you mean?”

Freya tilted her head and asked back.

“The Leader-nim… called it foolishness.”

Alina answered calmly.

“Before us, who rejected the mercy he offered and fought to the very end, or before those outside of us who chose to persist in justice and resist to the very end.”

Regardless, she was the benefactor who had given her back all the life she had abandoned.

“But if Queen Charlotte’s fate was to choose ‘wisdom’ instead of such foolishness─.”

Wisdom and foolishness. Whichever was chosen, the ending was fixed.

“What on earth should we, what decision should we make before someone like Rain Grey?”

Even knowing that the words could be somewhat rude for a Serpent member, Alina asked.

She was somewhat prepared.

Before the woman who had given her back her entire life, that she could lose everything with a single word insulting her idol.

But what she was prepared for did not happen.

“Ohohohoho!”

Just laughter was heard. It was a truly unique laugh that no one else could easily imitate.

“Hahaha, hahahah!”

But that noble laughter was brief, and soon Mimang Freya began to laugh breathlessly, as if she truly couldn’t stop herself from laughing so hard.

The most primitive and vulgar form of laughter, devoid of formality or elegance.

“……What’s so funny?”

Freya laughed and replied to that question. The way she spoke was not her usual grand, formal tone.

“You ask what was the right thing to do? Well, there was only one answer from the start.”

“……What is it?”

“There was no right answer or hope from the very beginning.”

Freya chuckled.

“From the moment we met him, Rain-nim, our Leader-nim─.”

It was so natural and familiar, and with it, a chilling sneer, twisting the corners of her lips in a bizarre way.

“That was the reason for all misfortune, and the moment all destinies were decided.”

And Alina understood that her grand and verbose words were ultimately encapsulated by a single two-character word.

Upon understanding, Alina let out a hollow laugh.

Because everything she had agonized over until now felt foolish. Because she herself, who had ceaselessly asked ‘what the right choice was’ on the day her beloved childhood friends and comrades died, thousands of times a day, felt foolish.

It was a laugh filled with despair.