After confirming Isla's defeat, Takuto surrendered himself to the torrent of information flowing through his mind, his expression one of blank bewilderment.
Why? The word repeated itself over and over, and the question "Where did I go wrong?" rose to the surface only to fade away unanswered.
The entirety of Mynoghra's forces had fallen into disarray. Continuous telepathic messages from Dark Elves with communication privileges and subordinate units bombarded him with questions demanding judgment.
Listening to all of them without truly hearing any of them, Takuto settled into a kind of cognitive void that carried an almost serene quality.
...If he were an ordinary being, he would simply fade away from this point onward.
He might shut down his heart, curl up, and flee from reality just like that.
Or he might rage at everyone and everything, screaming himself hoarse as if trying to hide his own failure.
But Ira Takuto was neither of those things.
The top player in all of Eternal Nations did not possess a psyche that would crumble so easily.
Takuto quietly closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.
The entire process took a few seconds—slow, unhurried, natural, like a healthy person waking up in the morning and facing the morning sun.
But when he opened his eyes once more, there glimmered within them a light that was unmistakably different from before, carrying a certain savage intensity.
"What happened, Lord Takuto!?"
It was as if they had coordinated in advance.
A telepathic message arrived from Atou at the exact same moment, her aura saturated with shock.
Earlier, Takuto's attention had been directed toward Isla and the twin girls, so he had been unable to respond. This time, however, he calmly shifted his awareness and sent back his reply.
"Isla has been defeated. She was caught up in a death event."
"Such a thing—! Tch—!! That's it!!"
Accompanying her response, Atou let out a voice sharp with frustration.
In that instant, her mind recalled the attack she had received from the Ice Rock of the Four Heavenly Kings.
At the same time, she also recalled her own blunder—she had been so consumed by the excitement and confusion of battle that she had failed to report that critical event to her king.
Her face twisted with fury, Atou could not help but cry out.
But for her, now was not the time to confess her failure and accept punishment. What mattered more than anything right now was securing Takuto's safety.
"Isla's defeat is an emergency situation! We must change course immediately and return to the royal capital. I will arrange an escort—please evacuate from there at once!"
Isla's defeat meant that virtually no forces remained to defend Mynoghra's royal capital.
Of course, there were still the Dark Elf garrison units and various Mynoghra-derived units like the Long-Legged Insects.
But against ordinary monsters those might suffice. If a Four Heavenly Kings-class enemy appeared, there would be nothing anyone could do.
The situation was far more dire than imagined.
Sensing frustration and a sense of crisis unlike anything she had ever felt before, Atou set their course toward the Great Cursed Realm.
"About that—wait."
But it was none other than her own king who stopped her in her tracks.
"What do you mean, my lord!?"
Kicking up dust as she halted, she looked skyward and demanded to know his intentions. Her expression had already surpassed frustration and anger, contorted to the verge of tears.
But the words delivered by her king twisted that expression into something even more severe.
"Isla is dead. Regrettably, that is a fact. But the twins are still alive. Right now, they're rampaging southward through the enemy forces. They probably intend to avenge her."
"The twins!? What are you saying— but they can't possibly—"
"Isla used Throne Inheritance."
At that moment, Atou grasped everything Takuto was trying to convey.
One of Isla's abilities—Throne Inheritance—grants the Hero skill to a target unit.
Not only that, but the combat capabilities Isla possessed at the moment of her destruction were also inherited to some degree.
In other words, the twins now possessed abilities on par with a Hero.
The circumstances surrounding Isla's defeat remained unclear.
But at the very last moment, she had succeeded in passing on her power to her daughters, giving birth to a new Hero.
And Takuto was... thinking about securing that Hero.
In Eternal Nations, a unit with the Hero skill was far too important—something that could not be easily replaced.
Unlike regular units, you could not simply destroy one and immediately produce another.
Given that a threat had been revealed to exist in the world that absolutely could not be ignored, preventing any further loss of fighting strength was a matter of paramount importance.
"We can't lose the two of them here. The existence of Hero units has a massive impact on national operations going forward. ...More than anything, those girls are citizens of our country."
The logic was sound. The reasoning was valid.
And emotionally... it was understandable as well. But that was a judgment suited for peacetime.
It was not a decision that could be made while lost in the fog of confusion.
Atou, in that instant forgetting that the person she was speaking to was her own king, could not help but raise her voice.
"Then recall the two of them immediately! I propose we regroup at the royal capital, reorganize our forces, and then launch a counteroffensive!"
"That's not possible. I can more or less check on the situation, but my commands don't reach them."
"That's impossible! Units that cannot receive orders are useless! I formally request they be discarded!"
"Denied."
"Lord Takuto!!"
A critical situation. An extremely perilous one. Atou's anxiety grew with each passing moment, the worst-case scenario flashing through her mind.
She did not know what reasoning had led to Takuto's decision.
But to her, it looked like nothing less than a reckless judgment.
At the same time, Atou felt a near-despairing weight settle over her as she realized that her own blunder had pushed matters this far.
Even if they had detected the enemy army's advance on the royal capital, forgetting to report an attack that interfered with the System was an unforgivable error.
No—precisely because the situation was so dire, with a crisis bearing down on the royal capital, it was all the more critical a matter that should have been reported without fail.
She clenched her teeth until they felt like they might crack... and then she screamed.
"My great lord! Presuming upon your grace, I must make a report. In the preceding battle, I received an unavoidable attack from an enemy Heavenly King that interfered with the System! This entire crisis exists because of my delayed report! I will accept any punishment for this failure! That is why—please, I beg you, reconsider this decision!"
Atou made an agonizing choice. She chose to reveal her own failure here, concentrating all blame upon herself in an effort to break through the impasse.
Had she reported the System interference sooner, it was true that this situation might have been prevented.
But that report might have only further confused her king.
Worse still, it might have caused him to look upon her with disappointment—the one thing Atou could least endure.
And yet, she reasoned that by offering herself up as a sacrifice, she could ease at least some of the impatience and guilt weighing on her king, and somehow prompt him to make a calm judgment.
Thinking this, she screamed her words into the air.
But...
"I see. Thank you. Even so, please go. We've been entrusted with this by Isla."
There was not a single tremor of doubt in Takuto's response.
"I cannot allow you to place yourself and all of Mynoghra in danger out of sentiment! You are—you are everything to me, Lord Takuto!"
Her soul's cry did not reach him.
If things continued as they were, an outcome worse than anything seen so far could be anticipated.
That is to say, an unforeseen event—the System itself defeating the twins, and then Atou's own defeat.
Her own death meant nothing—she felt neither pain nor sorrow over it.
But for Atou, Takuto's death was a suffering more unbearable than anything else.
When the cause of it all lay with her own person, the terror of that envisioned future tormented her more than anything.
That was why, when she received those words... Atou felt as though she had been struck by lightning.
"Atou, this is an order. ...There's no one I can rely on but you."
"————!!"
With those words, the heat draining from Atou's heart left her feeling an icy calm.
It was not disappointment or despair—it was more like a zealot who had glimpsed the truth.
She had received an order from her king. If that was the case, then there was only one thing she could do.
Eventually, the expression of agony on her face gave way to one of something approaching acceptance.
"At your command, my lord."
She received her king's words.
"Thank you, Atou. I trust you."
Atou's change of heart—its reason lay in the fact that she had recalled and understood everything.
What kind of being her king truly was.
That she had always believed in his commands and pressed forward.
That Ira Takuto was the strongest player in all of Eternal Nations.
And that she, alone, had been the one lost in confusion and panic all along...
And above all, she recalled a certain trait of her master's—one worthy of absolute trust.
Atou's feet turned southward.
She had already received the full update of information from her king.
It seemed he had been observing the terrain through the twins' field of vision and had already grasped the state of the land. Perhaps because his connection to them had strengthened, a hazy awareness of the situation now surfaced in Atou's mind as well.
It appeared that a battle was already underway at what looked like an outlying forward base ahead of where the Demon King's army had gathered.
They had not confirmed the enemy's fighting strength. They had not confirmed the twins' fighting strength either.
The possibility that they would arrive too late certainly existed.
But Atou possessed something close to absolute certainty that if she went all-out from this very moment, she would reach them in time.
More than anything, Ira Takuto had given the command.
If that was the case, there was only one outcome.
Atou ran. Her footfalls carved into the earth, and the speed generated by her inhuman legs surpassed that of any horse.
The decision had already been made. And her resolve was set.
If so, then all that remained was to fulfill her duty with everything she had.
A fierce light of determination ignited in Atou's eyes, and her aura of malice intensified further.
At the same time, enemy monsters that sporadically lunged at her were scattered like chaff before her advance.
Her master's support was fully in place.
If that was the case, then no one in the entire world could stop her now.
Just then—
"Atou. There's one thing I need to tell you."
"...Yes, what is it?"
As Atou blazed onward along a pathless road, Takuto's quiet voice reached her as if he had just remembered something.
With her resolve already firmly in place, she concentrated her awareness as always, determined not to miss a single syllable of his words.
"Be very careful—"
But a flicker of puzzlement crossed her face.
Then it hardened into severity.
"The two of them have gone mad."
The situation was far more chaotic than she had anticipated.