The Protagonist's Party is Too Diligent

In the epic poems about the lives of heroes, the battles of heroes are often described as "beautiful."

The swing of their sword is beautiful, their forward stride is beautiful, their resolve is beautiful, and their expressions, unflinching even in the face of pain, are beautiful.

But Sylvia's fighting could not be so simply described in such poetic terms.

Her battles were brutal.

There was little time to pay attention to the second floor from the first, but the gunshots, screams, and the sound of flesh being torn that echoed down from the second floor often drew unwilling glances upward.

Even when struck by a flying sword slash multiple times, she didn’t so much as stagger. As though she'd known it would happen, she twisted the brass plates of her armor to minimize the damage and continued to fight. Every step seemed calculated; she would stop just before a slash reached her, draw another gun, reload, and roll sideways.

At the Academy, such debates often came up.

If the heroes from ancient epics, armed only with swords, faced a modern battalion equipped with firearms, could they survive? No matter how strong they were, the students would joke that they couldn’t possibly avoid the machine gun fire raining down from a squadron of fighter planes or a steam-powered tank's shells.

In some ways, Sylvia’s fight seemed to embody the results of that debate perfectly.

But to Alice, watching the battle from afar, the situation didn’t look as simple as a mere "technological gap."

The armor Sylvia wore was cutting-edge, a piece of technology so advanced even the Empire's military hadn’t adopted it—perhaps they didn’t even know it existed. The firearms she wielded were masterpieces of modern industrial precision. Yet even with such weapons, fighting knights swarming from all directions was an entirely different matter.

Especially when it wasn’t a battle fought at hundreds of meters away but right in the middle of the melee.

In such a situation, what weapon you held in your hands wouldn’t matter much.

Sylvia dispatched her enemies without a single change in expression or even a blink.

Alice, too, had her own opponents to deal with, so she couldn’t keep watching for long. But every time she glanced upward, the number of enemies dwindled.

Even while bleeding from numerous wounds, Sylvia stood firm and unyielding.

—Alice had a vague sense of Sylvia’s abilities.

How many times had Sylvia been struck by blades in this loop? How many times had she fallen, and how many times—

"..."

At some point, the battle abruptly stopped.

The gryphon suddenly collapsed to its knees. The knights who had been rushing toward Alice and the others hesitated, caught off guard, and stopped swinging their swords.

“It’s not over yet! Raise your swords to the end—”

Whatever had happened above, even with the gryphon neutralized, the knights still had the upper hand.

No matter how skilled Alice and the others were, they were still students. They couldn’t hope to defeat a group of knights who lived and breathed combat in a fair fight.

But.

A burning hole opened in the chest of a knight shouting orders, and he fell forward, dead before he could even cough up blood.

Alice looked up toward the upper floor.

There stood Sylvia, her figure noble and unwavering despite the countless wounds covering her body.

In a steady crouched shooting position, she pointed a rifle almost as tall as she was downward and spoke.

“It’s true. This isn’t over yet.”

Her voice was calm, as though she truly agreed with that sentiment.

“If you want to end this, fight to the very last. But I recommend you simply accept your defeat... for now.”

Her tone, however, carried a clear declaration:

If you do not surrender here, all of you will meet the same fate as that knight.

Despite the cuts and bruises all over her body and the blood streaming from her forehead that partially blinded one eye, Sylvia’s conviction was so powerful that Alice couldn’t bring herself to doubt her words.

It seemed everyone else present felt the same.

The clang of a sword dropping to the ground broke the silence.

Then another. And another.

Until, at last, every knight of the Holy Nation present had dropped their weapons.

Sylvia stood tall, her gaze steady and unyielding as she looked down at them.

For a fleeting moment, Alice had a strange thought—that Sylvia wouldn’t look out of place with a pair of eagle wings sprouting from her back.

Good.

Realistically, the situation wasn’t one to be called “good” at all, but for now, Alice decided to think of it that way.

No one in their group had died, and no one had sustained permanent injuries either.

Their tight, pre-planned formation and focus on strict defense had paid off.

Of course, the strategy had somewhat fallen apart when Sylvia impulsively charged ahead. The gryphon’s wings hadn’t been cut, and Alice and Charlotte had been left behind below instead of leaping upward.

But there hadn’t been any need to sever the wings. Perhaps anticipating the possibility of losing control over the gryphon, the Holy Nation had already crippled its wings. Given the sorry state of the rest of its body, it wasn’t surprising.

Heh.

The thought made Alice let out a dry laugh. The king of beasts, an indomitable force, had still been enslaved by the Holy Nation, even if only one.

Was it a juvenile gryphon? Or perhaps it had been captured by sheer chance during its youth and raised to adulthood under their control? There was no way to know—

—No, there was a way to find out.

“Khrr...”

As Alice yanked out the blood-soaked bandage she had stuffed into the Cardinal’s mouth earlier, the man gasped for air.

With a flick of her fingers, she tossed the unpleasantly sticky, blood-and-saliva-stained cloth to the side and crouched down to look the Cardinal in the eye.

He didn’t spew curses or vow revenge, nor did he declare his refusal to speak. It didn’t matter to Alice if he did; she had all the time in the world.

“There are a few things I’d like to know. Would you care to cooperate?”

Her voice was calm, but the Cardinal only trembled, staring at her in fear.

Hmm.

Alice glanced at his leg. It looked like he could walk again—mostly. It wouldn’t hurt anymore, at least.

Of course, his severed arm wouldn’t grow back, but that was the cost of battle. Alice had lost a hand earlier in the fight, so the Cardinal could deal with something similar.

Deciding to interpret the Cardinal’s silence as agreement, Alice continued,

“Why were you stationed down here? If you intended to prepare for war with the Emperor, you could have chosen the border instead of Lutetia.”

To be honest, it would have been possible to align with Countess Crowfield. She was the kind of person who wouldn’t hesitate to betray the Emperor. Of course, silencing her during the cleanup process later would have been necessary.

"...That’s..."

The Cardinal started to respond but quickly shut his mouth.

He shouldn’t speak.

But he was just as afraid of staying silent.

His eyes reflected both emotions simultaneously.

"I..."

So, I decided to help the Cardinal come to a decision.

"I happen to know a few ways to convince someone. But if you’re asking whether I’m confident in my methods... that’s a harder question to answer. If I’m not careful... I might lose control. And if you were to pass out during the process, it would take some time before you’d regain consciousness."

The Cardinal’s eyes flicked toward Sophia, as though pleading for help. But Sophia only lowered her gaze, remaining silent.

"What will it be? A long conversation or a short one? You can choose. Now that the fight is over, I have no particular grudge against you."

Honestly, I found the idea of wrestling with him any further to be tiresome.

"..."

The Cardinal, still meeting my gaze, turned to glance at the knights. But they weren’t in any position to intervene. Their hands and feet were tightly bound, and their mouths gagged.

Eventually, resignation flickered in the Cardinal’s eyes.

"...The reason we were here is—"

But nothing in this world ever goes smoothly, does it?

Just as the Cardinal began to speak, blood suddenly gushed from his mouth, choking off his words.

Well, of course. The Holy Nation, which had a way to control the gryphon, would naturally know how to silence someone as well.

I let out a heavy sigh.

Again.