The interior of the Arcadia shook violently.
Bartfeldt watched the sight of Luxion sinking.
"Fire the next shot immediately!"
A hole had been blown in the hull, and the internal explosion had been confirmed.
Even now he was watching it sink, but he still couldn't relax.
A magical creature reported the situation.
"The stored energy has been used up. It will take thirty minutes until the next shot can be fired."
"Tch!"
To sink Luxion, he had unleashed the Arcadia's greatest attack.
There was no mistake in that choice, but Bartfeldt remained uneasy.
"Does it really end this easily?"
Based on the information about Leon he'd heard from Finn, this felt anticlimactic, as if he'd been left hanging.
The magical creature shook its single eye from side to side.
"You're overestimating the weapons of the Old Humanity too much. Those guys, unable to beat us, resorted to weapons of mass destruction. They were incompetent."
Bartfeldt sank deep into his chair and took a deep breath.
"I see. So all that's left now is to take the kingdom."
Once they learned that Leon had fallen, the kingdom's morale would easily crumble.
Furthermore, the threat of the Arcadia would also be gone.
"――With this, our victory is assured."
The Empire had no enemies left now.
Just as Bartfeldt was thinking that, reports from his subordinates came in one after another.
"Your Majesty! That last attack put strain on the Arcadia's shield."
"If we continue taking attacks like this, we won't be able to maintain the shield."
"M-Moreover, the interior is taking strain too. We don't know what will happen if we fire the main cannon again."
Bartfeldt steeled himself.
(So it isn't over yet. The weapons of the old age still remain.)
"Send out my knights as well. Don't worry about reserves. However, Finn alone is to remain on standby."
One of his subordinates was puzzled.
"You won't send out the knight ranked first?"
Bartfeldt looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes.
"Insurance."
◇
In the standby room where every knight but himself had been deployed, Finn sat on the sofa.
Brave, beside him, was worried.
"Partner, don't think about it too much. You just have to defeat your own enemy."
"I know that, Kurosuke."
"That nickname 'Kurosuke' is the one thing you won't change, huh. Partner, you're stubborn."
When Finn smiled, Brave laughed too.
Into that standby room, Mia arrived leading her maids.
"Sir Knight."
"Ah, Princess Miliaris."
Seeing Finn salute, Mia looked down and clutched her skirt in her hands.
Watching her, Finn understood what Mia wanted.
Finn turned his gaze to the maids and magical creatures who served as Mia's escorts.
"Sorry, but let me speak with the princess."
The maids would not allow it.
"That is not possible. His Majesty has instructed us not to let any men carelessly approach the princess."
The magical creatures were the same.
"Not permitted."
"We will not allow it."
"What do you intend to do with our master?"
When Mia tried frantically to persuade them, Brave stepped forward and chased the maids and magical creatures out.
"Shut up! Partner is the man who has been serving as Mia's bodyguard! Don't lump him in with the lowlifes you're imagining! If you don't get out right now, I'll go on a rampage!"
Since it would be dangerous if Brave, the core of the perfect magic armor, went on a rampage, the maids and magical creatures evacuated the room.
Finn said to the maids:
"Wait outside the room. I'll explain to His Majesty myself."
Thus, only Finn, Mia, and Brave remained in the standby room.
Finn had Mia sit on the sofa and prepared drinks for her.
"What's wrong?"
Seeing him address her not as he would a princess but in his usual manner, Mia smiled.
"U-Um, Sir Knight! I-I... actually, I don't want to fight."
And then her smile quickly clouded over.
Recently the situation had been changing rapidly, and it seemed she couldn't keep up with it.
Tears spilled down in big drops.
"Even if you suddenly tell me I'm a princess, I don't understand. And I don't want to fight against the kingdom's people. They were all such good people."
Finn held that Mia's hand.
Her crying figure overlapped with his little sister from his previous life, and it pained his heart.
(I don't want to fight either. But――if it means obtaining a world where you can live happily, I don't mind straying from the path of humanity.)
Mia was different from the little sister he couldn't save in his previous life, but even so, Finn wanted to save her.
(Even if I'm the lowest scum, at least this child――)
Even if it meant killing a friend, Finn had a future he wanted to fulfill.
That was for Mia to be able to run around outside in good health.
"――Mia, you bear no sin. His Majesty and I will take care of everything."
"But――"
"It's all right. I'll protect you."
Mia gripped Finn's hand tightly and looked up at him with moist eyes.
"Sir Knight, I――"
Before Mia could finish speaking, Brave looked up at the ceiling and conveyed in a flustered tone:
"Partner! Something's coming from above!"
Finn immediately embraced Mia and threw himself to the floor.
◇
The skies above the Arcadia.
What was rapidly approaching from there was the Partner, which had broken through the atmosphere.
The Arcadia's command room was in an uproar.
Bartfeldt also stood up from his chair, gritting his teeth.
"From outside the atmosphere!?"
The magical creature gave off an air of having been outwitted.
"So that's what they did. But that much is within calculations."
Monsters were unleashed toward the Partner visible on the screen.
However, merely approaching the Partner caused them to be blown away, and they couldn't even slow it down.
The magical creature narrowed its eye.
"A suicide attack? That's a tactic those machines love."
The Partner was an airship over seven hundred meters long.
If a mass of that size was slammed down from outside the atmosphere, it would produce ridiculous destructive power.
Even the Arcadia wouldn't come away unscathed.
"Did they use boosters to climb to space? ――But it's pointless. That much we've already anticipated."
Bending its narrowed eye into a bow shape, the magical creature laughed.
If anything, it had expected them to drop a meteor or something, but as if they didn't have even that much power left, only a single airship had come from space.
The Arcadia's shield was deployed thickly at the point where the impact was predicted.
It abandoned the defense of other areas.
And then, despite the energy shortage, it fired the main cannon to intercept the Partner.
The Partner tried to dodge the main cannon's blast, but couldn't avoid it completely, and a hit to its side scraped away half of the hull.
"Oh? I thought they'd loaded it with explosives, but I guess not. Still, even a partial hit could certainly cause us damage."
Apparently the plan hadn't been a suicide attack loaded with explosives to land a single blow on the Arcadia.
However, this alone wouldn't be enough to sink the Arcadia.
Bartfeldt brought his fist down on the armrest.
"So the kingdom's army and even that space battleship in front of us were all decoys! You've gone and done it!"
The Partner closed in while spewing flames.
The Arcadia moved as well, but the Partner was equipped with an AI and pursued it.
And then, the magical creature bared its white teeth in a laugh.
"But it's useless. Our victory is unshakeable!"
When the Partner struck directly and caused a massive explosion, the Arcadia shook violently.
Bartfeldt clung to the chair's armrest to endure the shaking, then raised his face and called out to his subordinates.
"Status report!"
"Y-Yes! The Arcadia has sustained no damage."
"We endured it with the magic barrier."
"B-But, that impact just now caused the magic barrier to be deactivated."
The magical creature laughed.
"Hyahahaha! Have you rusted over the long years, you AIs? If you really wanted to sink me, you should have all charged in from outside the atmosphere together. Well, since you couldn't do that, you probably came up with this desperate plan."
It was laughing at the AIs' lack of resolve in their plan.
In truth, if Fact and the others had taken the strategy the magical creature mentioned, the Arcadia would have sped up and fled while moving.
Then it would simply intercept the charging spaceships.
"You never had any chance of winning from the start!"
Watching the triumphant magical creature, Bartfeldt wiped his sweat.
(That was a close one. But with this, Luxion and the Partner have been sunk. What's left is――hm?)
Of the spaceship and airships Leon possessed, two had been sunk.
The remaining Old Humanity spaceships couldn't fully demonstrate their performance either.
There were no more enemies for the Arcadia.
However, there was one airship that had still not shown itself on the battlefield.
Bartfeldt raised his voice.
"Find the Einhorn!"
Luxion, then the Partner, and the remaining one was the Einhorn.
The magical creature's eye widened, and it looked toward the rear of the Imperial army.
"An airship approaching at this speed!?"
There was an airship approaching from behind at unbelievable speed.
――It was the Einhorn.
◇
Inside the violently shaking cockpit of the Arroganz, his body sank into the seat.
"I'd really like to be spared the foolish development of getting crushed flat on impact."
Boosters had been attached to the Einhorn as well, taking a long detour to strike at the Imperial army from behind.
For that purpose, they had been enduring this grueling situation for a long time.
"Please endure it. This is the reduced version, you know."
"This is reduced!?"
Luxion was speaking normally even amid all this.
It was a machine, so naturally, but that irritated him too.
"Cleare, I've sorted through the information from Fact. The Arcadia no longer has any proper interception capability left."
"So sacrificing the Partner was worth it."
When he forced a smile through the pain, Luxion nodded.
"Yes. The Partner accomplished its final task. Master, it's almost time. Let us begin our work."
Hearing that, he bit down on something like a mouthpiece.
When Luxion began the countdown, the Einhorn felt shaking different from before, perhaps because it was being attacked from outside.
"Impact in――10 seconds."
◇
The Arcadia's command room.
To intercept, monsters and cannon fire were being directed at the Einhorn.
"Against a ship of that level!"
The magical creature was irritated.
Watching this, Bartfeldt sensed that the magical creatures looked down on this world's airships――and its technology.
"So it's a three-tiered formation."
First, the Luxion main body was discarded, then the Partner was discarded, and the true target was the Einhorn.
The Einhorn, fitting its name, charged at the Arcadia with its single horn pointed forward.
Toward the monsters attacking it, the Einhorn launched a container.
When hundreds of missiles burst forth from it, they blew away the surrounding monsters.
Even taking fire from the Arcadia and the Imperial army, it didn't stop.
On the contrary, the Imperial airships were falling one after another due to attacks from the Einhorn.
When Bartfeldt crossed his arms and braced himself, his subordinate shouted.
"Direct impact incoming!"
Immediately after, the Arcadia felt the greatest shaking it had ever experienced.
The magical creature's eyes turned bloodshot.
"You greasy machines!!"
However, Bartfeldt felt relieved in his heart.
(That's right. That's how it should be. Come at me with everything you've got. And whichever side survives――will live on as the ruler of this planet.)
To his panicking surroundings, Bartfeldt issued orders.
"Have the fleet deal with the kingdom's army. Recall my knights. I'll have them deal with the intruders."
What appeared on the monitor were the armors that had infiltrated inside the Arcadia.
Unmanned units led by six armors had their camera eyes glowing ominously.
Standing at the front was――the Arroganz.
Pointing its gun barrel at the camera, Leon spoke to Bartfeldt.
"Hello, you piece-of-crap Emperor of the Empire. You picked the fight, so I'm here to take you up on it. Make sure to serve me up plenty."
Saying that, when he pulled the trigger, the camera was destroyed and the feed cut out.
And, perhaps because they were destroying it from within, vibrations reached the command room.
Bartfeldt laughed out loud.
"That Finn kid is the same, but young guys really are an infuriating bunch. ――Very well, I'll take you on. Send the knights on standby to intercept. And recall my knights."
Bartfeldt furrowed his brow, his expression turning serious.
Beside him, the magical creature openly displayed its displeasure.
"They've infiltrated the inside of the Arcadia. Even during the war with the Old Humanity, we were never infiltrated. ――Bartfeldt, hurry up and throw them out!"
To the magical creature whose veins bulged in fury, Bartfeldt cast a cold gaze.
"I just gave that order."