—A monster had appeared.
"ROOOOAAAARRR!!"
The war axe smashed into the ground, sending shattered rock fragments flying like bullets straight at Atou.
She evaded them with a whimsical, acrobatic motion, then swayed her Holy Knight's sword back and forth with a smile on her face as she fixed her gaze on Ice Lock.
(So, he's the power-type among the Heavenly Kings.)
Atou swung her tentacles to keep him at a distance while analyzing her opponent calmly.
How would she rate his strength?
This opponent's origin was an RPG. That meant he operated under entirely different rules and a completely different power balance from herself.
If she misjudged the situation, she'd undoubtedly suffer a painful wound.
But in the end, this opponent was a character from a game centered on individual combat.
Atou, who was accustomed to warfare on a military scale, could tell right away that their combat capabilities existed on fundamentally different levels.
In fact, the explanation Atou had received from Takuto before the battle was proving more and more accurate as time went on.
She spun her Holy Knight's sword and effortlessly deflected the war axe that came swinging down with enough force to split a skull.
Dancing nimbly, she dodged blow after blow as the deflected axe shattered the ground.
From the outside, it might have looked like Atou was on the defensive against Ice Lock's assault.
But the reality reflected in Ice Lock's eyes was far from so simple.
"Gyaaaah!"
"Guuh!"
"Pigyaah!"
While Ice Lock swung his axe trying to catch the dancing Atou, several tentacles extended from behind her.
He braced himself, thinking she was trying to overwhelm him by increasing her number of attacks—but incredibly, those tentacles shot out at blinding speed toward his subordinates watching from the sidelines.
Clicking his tongue, Ice Lock cut down the tentacles to stop them from reaching his subordinates, but Atou's Holy Knight's sword thrust into the opening he'd left. He frantically raised his axe to block.
(Guuh! She's trying to pin me down!)
Ice Lock groaned internally.
He understood her strategy perfectly.
Among the Fonkavun siege force, Ice Lock was the only one who possessed truly exceptional combat power.
In other words, once you removed Ice Lock and his demon subordinates, the rest were nothing but a rabble of common monsters.
If this position was held against them, the tide would turn rapidly.
Monsters that operated on instinct were terrible at military action. They lacked the intelligence to judge situations and take optimal action on their own. A monster army without a commander was inferior to even a herd of beasts.
That was why, to hold the line, you needed to target the brain first.
But Ice Lock prided himself on his abilities, knowing that this was easier said than done.
That was precisely why he recognized Atou as a genuine threat—the kind who could accomplish that feat single-handedly.
"You coward! Face me in a fair duel!"
"Oh my, coming from a servant of the Demon King? Please don't make me laugh—my swordsmanship gets sloppy when I'm amused."
Ice Lock's provocation didn't faze Atou in the slightest. His strength was one thing, but in terms of matchup compatibility, Ice Lock was in an unfavorable position.
...His demon subordinates were few. He had to prevent any further losses no matter what. A trace of anxiety crept onto his icy expression.
Atou, for her part, understood the nature of the Demon King's army and was prioritizing the elimination of intelligent demons.
A large-scale spell had already turned the battlefield into a cursed land.
Once the demons were dealt with, all that remained were weakened neutral-element monsters, and even the reinforced Lizard Bugs and Mortar's magic squads could handle that without much trouble.
The only concern was the enemy demons being strengthened by the cursed terrain—but as Takuto had instructed, Atou had moved accordingly, effectively keeping them pinned down.
Atou inwardly smiled with satisfaction, paying respect to Takuto's plan, which had been decisive despite not being fully prepared.
If things continued like this, the operation would undoubtedly succeed. But Ice Lock held the title of one of the Four Heavenly Kings for a reason—he was a superior demon.
He had no intention of letting things end like this.
"Ice Beast Soldiers! Come!"
At Ice Lock's summons, direwolves with bodies covered in ice-white fur materialized from seemingly nowhere.
From their blood-red mouths, unnaturally long tongues lolled out, and their sharp, jagged fangs and steel-like claws set them apart from ordinary monsters.
(So, unlimited summoning through skills. Very RPG-like, but troublesome.)
The summoned Ice Beast Soldiers charged at Atou all at once.
Atou, who had been scattering the surrounding demons just moments ago, faced the onslaught without the slightest agitation, directing her tentacles to intercept.
It had been a considerable time since she'd last fought Holy Knights.
The heroes of Eternal Nations grew stronger as time passed, and Atou herself had stolen various skills from her enemies.
These were tentacles that had only been cut down after being enhanced by divine punishment formulas.
Even summoned by the Heavenly Kings, the Ice Beast Soldiers were still nothing more than fodder monsters—they were no match.
"Gaaaaah! —Gyaaah!"
Tentacles with tensile strength surpassing steel pierced through the Ice Beast Soldiers' resilient fur and skin in a single thrust, snuffing out their lives.
As the monsters scattered into coins and vanished, Atou felt a sudden sense of something being off.
(...? Only two can participate in combat at once?)
Ice Lock had summoned a total of five Ice Beast Soldiers. She'd killed one just now, leaving four.
Yet for some reason, only two Ice Beast Soldiers ever attacked Atou at a time.
When one was destroyed, another would join the fray as if to fill the gap.
(Just like the game's settings, then.)
Just as Atou and the others were governed by the rules of Eternal Nations—a simulation game—her opponent seemed to be governed by the rules of a role-playing game.
Game characters were being transported. And from entirely different games, at that...
While wondering what on earth was going on, Atou decided she had more pressing matters to attend to and focused on the enemy before her.
"Why do you interfere?! You're one of the demonic race as well, aren't you?! Kneel before our Demon King, bow your head, and let us together proclaim dominion over the world!"
Swinging his war axe, Ice Lock shouted at Atou.
He couldn't comprehend why someone possessing such power would oppose them.
His words were tinged with something like pleading—in the end, this was the action of someone who had begun to foresee his own defeat.
But Atou, the Hero of the Mire who had brought ruin upon the world time and time again, couldn't care less.
She simply stared back with a blank expression, as though someone had spoken to her in a completely incomprehensible foreign language.
"Ah, you mean world conquest?"
"Precisely Da! We shall create a world for our demon race. Exterminate every last human, and spread our name across this land! A dark era of glory and prosperity shall dawn!"
Ice Lock spoke as though delivering a grand speech.
He was wide open—if she attacked now, she could effortlessly drive a tentacle into that icy skull of his.
That was the impression Atou got, but (come to think of it, aren't attacks during transformations or events taboo?) she graciously responded.
"I can understand the sentiment, but what exactly would you do after conquering the world?"
"Hm?"
The unexpected question stopped Ice Lock's thoughts in their tracks.
Atou sighed at his response and spoke in a dismissive tone.
"I'm buried under a mountain of work even now, you know? I devote every spare moment—even the time I'd spend talking with my king—just to getting through it all. And this is for a single country. ...And the world? What, are you that fond of paperwork?"
Atou asked.
World conquest sounded like grandiose talk, but as a means to an end, she could understand it to a degree.
After driving out every external threat, building the ideal world you envisioned was hardly unusual—every leader throughout history had dreamed of utopia.
But world conquest was a means, not an end.
What truly mattered was what came after achieving it.
Ice Lock was at a loss. All that came to mind regarding the aftermath of world conquest were theatrical abstractions—he'd never once considered anything concrete. Desperate to say something, he spun his mind furiously, only to realize there was nothing there.
And so Atou spat out with undisguised contempt:
"Hmm? Could it be—your character settings are shallow, so your actions and thinking tend to be one-dimensional? Ah, I suppose mid-game bosses in RPGs do tend to feel like 'defeat them and move on,' don't they."
The RPG Brave Questus was a relatively old type of game.
It had a long history—often called the progenitor of RPGs—and had been remade countless times with each new generation of gaming hardware.
Each iteration added some new lore, but fundamentally the story progressed by faithfully retracing its original settings.
One might call it the remnant of a bygone golden age: its narrative was exceedingly simple, standing in stark contrast to the information-dense Eternal Nations, which used its vast settings to build a rich world.
And so, the Ice-type Heavenly King, Ice Lock—
—had only the setting of "a power-type enemy with a warrior's temperament" programmed into him.
"What nonsensical drivel are you spouting?! What exactly are you trying to say?!" Ice Lock screamed.
He couldn't help but scream.
The words this girl had uttered—none of them even half made sense. But he understood perfectly well that somewhere within those words lurked something fatal to himself.
A searing sense of urgency engulfed his entire being.
As if to signal that panic, his icy heart accelerated its beating, and from his body—instead of sweat—a faint white cold mist began to seep out.
Atou, witnessing Ice Lock's confusion, let out another enormous sigh.
"You really are... stupider than I imagined."
"What did you saaay?!"
The massive war axe came crashing down. Atou clearly tracked the gale-force blow with both eyes, spun her sword once, and cut upward from a low stance to meet the attack head-on.
Giiiinn— A dull metallic ring rang out as sparks flew.
Ice Lock's eyes widened in shock, and a gruesome smile spread across Atou's face.
Having stolen both the keen observation skills and swordsmanship of veteran Holy Knights, Atou could gauge an opponent's technique and strength with just a single exchange of blades.
Of course, this was merely a final confirmation.
She had already seen through her opponent's capabilities from the earlier exchange.
In other words—if it was just this level, he was easy to handle.
He was stronger than the Holy Knight she'd fought before, but not nearly enough to give her a real fight in her current state. That was Atou's judgment.
"The Holy Sword Art. A divine technique born from Quolia to eliminate wicked beings like you. Impressive, isn't it? Terrifying just to look at!"
"Guh! How does