Chapter 254 - 218: Such Loyalty, Unity of Ideals

Radiant Calendar 1460, March by Iberian Time.

Hurst World.

Three-dimensional Golden City, Lunk Street, Lower City District.

Under the supervision of local Law Enforcement Officers, slave laborers transported cart after cart of corpses, while a five-thousand-strong force of the Hurst Defense Army marched in formation toward the streets of the Stereoscopic City’s deeper levels.

The sounds of battle rose and fell.

The acrid smell of gunpowder smoke permeated the air.

"Sir, the rebels on Lunk Street have been purged. The soldiers are now heading to the lower districts."

The one reporting was a well-equipped captain from the Hurst Defense Army, dressed in a dark green uniform. Unlike the Verne Defense Army, who looked like they were living a thousand years in the past with their leather armor and iron swords, these Mortal Soldiers were equipped with the most advanced firearms. Even their uniforms had undergone Anti-Magicalization, allowing them to somewhat resist the aftershocks of a Transcendent’s battle or the effects of Spiritual Energy.

The Hurst Defense Army numbered fewer than eighty thousand men, but their combat effectiveness surpassed even that of the Empire’s regular Infantry Legions.

Even the Infantry Legions from the Imperial Administrative Region stationed on Iberian World were not as well-equipped.

This wasn’t merely a question of technology, but one of wealth.

The Capet Dynasty’s treasury could only support these eighty thousand soldiers, so one can imagine the value of a single soldier’s complete loadout.

Matthias’s Power Armor was painted in the pure black of the Ash Guard. A deathly-white skull was painted on the top of his Full Coverage Helmet, the symbol of an Elite Formation within the Death Battle Group.

The captain reporting to him was, for the first time in his life, interacting with a true Emperor’s Angel—not one of those second-rate Free Knights. The mere conversation put immense pressure on him.

"Keep advancing."

Although Matthias was a veteran of the Death Battle Group, this was his first time participating in a counter-insurgency campaign within a Stereoscopic City. If the death and sacrifice on a grand battlefield could be compared to a sprawling tapestry of a meat grinder, woven from blood and bodies, then the horrific scene in Hurst’s Lower City District was far beyond anything he had imagined.

Long, narrow streets. A chaotic environment.

Every residence they searched held civilians who had met a gruesome end.

One could only imagine the brutal atrocities these ordinary people suffered when the Cult’s rebellion spread through the Lower City District. It was so horrific that even he, a veteran accustomed to mountains of corpses and seas of blood, had kept his brow furrowed the entire time he was clearing the area.

However, after seventeen days of bloody fighting, they had suppressed the Hurst rebellion with overwhelming force, personally shattering Kles’s conspiracy.

「Meanwhile, in a tower in the Upper City District.」

Inside the enormous, circular conference hall, twenty-one merchant leaders sat in their respective seats. Some were breaking out in a cold sweat, while others couldn’t stop their hands from trembling.

Every one of them kept their head down, not daring to look at Lady Catherine, who stood in the middle of the hall—or rather, not daring to look at the Emperor’s Angel and the Judge standing beside her.

The fate of the two merchant leaders who had tried to escape a month ago was the best warning.

To this day, they still remembered vividly how those two fools had threatened Reinhardt and the Judge after being captured.

The consequence was that the Judge, on the charge of blasphemy against the Divine Emperor, had them burned alive in the central plaza of the Upper City District.

Lady Catherine was different today. She wore a deep black Wizard Robe filled with dark red Energy Patterns, her flaxen hair was tied tightly behind her head, her hands were stained with blood, and her face was like ice.

"Some among you have betrayed the family, betrayed the Emperor’s expectations of us..."

Lady Catherine’s voice was bone-chillingly cold.

This was the first time she had spoken before the assembled merchant leaders since returning to Hurst and resuming control of family affairs. Though her words were laced with barbs, they also carried an offer of pacification and amnesty. However, the purge within the Capet Dynasty itself had only just begun.

After dealing with her family’s affairs, Catherine had wanted to find Robie and inform him that the Secret Order was urgently recalling him, but he had already departed from Hurst without a word, one step ahead of her.

Afterward, she found Reinhardt.

The two of them walked out into the long corridor outside the conference hall.

The dim sunlight of the overcast day shone through the window, illuminating her fair face.

Lady Catherine turned her head to look out the window. The once-prosperous Golden Capital, after seventeen days of spreading warfare, had long lost its former glory. The streets below were desolate and bleak.

"Although helping me suppress my family’s internal strife was an official cooperation, on a personal level, I still must thank you for everything you’ve done.

This world embodies the vision that the Lord Governor and I have for the future of the Human World. It cannot be buried by the conspiracy of that bastard Kles."

Every sentence Lady Catherine spoke was always laced with deeper meanings that required some thought to understand.

In other words, this dynastic Overlord rarely wasted words.

Even if this was just a simple conversation between friends, with no exchange of benefits.

Reinhardt removed his stuffy Full Coverage Helmet. Slender, metallic neural-link wires, flecked with droplets of blood, detached from the nape of his neck. ’From the sound of it, the Capet Dynasty is preparing to fully align with the Imperial Administrative Region.’

"What are your plans?"

"This is a chaotic era, Reinhardt. The fires of the Great Rebellion have burned away the Emperor’s legacy. If we cannot stand united, the Human World may return to the Dark Ages of ten thousand years ago.

Or even... worse than that era."

Lady Catherine rarely showed a vulnerable side. Or perhaps, as a dynastic Overlord, she simply did not allow herself to reveal her true thoughts to outsiders.

At this moment, her eyes, as she gazed out the window, were filled with anxiety and sorrow.

Regardless of her past identities—Alchemy heretic, dynastic Overlord, family matriarch, Cinderlands magnate... in this moment, she was merely a believer of the Emperor, one who sought, with a Mortal body, to unswervingly carry out the great cause of the Human World in a Cosmos filled with darkness and slaughter.

Perhaps it was this conviction that allowed her to stand beside Sedon, beside Reinhardt, as an ally.

Reinhardt looked up at the gloomy world outside the window. Even though the streets of the Upper City District were desolate and bleak, the lowest of Mortals were still there, tirelessly cleaning the bloodstains and debris from the streets.

"My mentor once taught me that no matter what our ideals are, we must fight for them if we wish to achieve them. The fires of the Great Rebellion cannot burn away the Emperor’s great legacy, Catherine.

Even if we sacrifice ourselves for it, someone will still raise the torch of our ideals to light the path forward for the Human World."

Lady Catherine turned her head to look at Reinhardt.

As if their topic had become too heavy, she shook her head slightly and teased, "If this were the sublime era before the Great Rebellion, you might have become the Empire’s greatest Knight."

At some point, Lady Catherine had quietly drawn close to Reinhardt, taking his arm and leaning gently against him.

The corridor outside the conference hall fell silent once more.

The two of them simply stood in silence, gazing out the window.