Helel could control dragons.
Though Gargauth had wiped his kindred off the eastern continent’s face so thoroughly that his children were the only true dragons Simon had fought in over twenty reigns, he hadn’t exterminated the entire species. Survivors had fled west to Lore, Valne, Muse, and isolated islands. They were so endemic to the region that would-be Paladins going on dragonslaying quests inspired many songs.
On one hand, the news Simon received from Valne was quite frightening. Armies of brainwashed monsters, angels, and mindless soldiers had poured out of Lore’s mountains and advanced like a tide against the city-states. These forces enslaved all settlements in their path, fighting without regard for their safety or logistics. Anyone they captured was conscripted and either sent back to Lore for ‘reeducation’—an euphemism for brainwashing—or thrown at the next military objective in human waves. Refugees fled to the League’s eastern ports, and their mercenary armies struggled to halt the enemy advance.
On the other hand, Euphemia managed to hash out a deal with the Adventurer–backed with an actual Judge contract preventing any kind of backstabbing–who agreed to temporarily cooperate with them against a common foe after checking the situation for herself. Her Fast Travel Perk allowed her to slip past enemy lines to briefly infiltrate Lore and contact Voltobauta, which let Simon and his allies get a grip on the situation. He only had to take a look at her forlorn face to realize the situation on the ground was as bad as he expected it to be.
“It’s a nightmare,” Alcyone warned when she met with him and other imperial generals to compare their intel. “All of Lore…” The Adventurer tried to put on a brave front so as not to show weakness to the Overlord, but Simon had spent enough time with her in the Sanctuary to tell that she was shaken to her core. “My homeland is silent except for the sound of forges, factories, and quarries. They even put the children to work unearthing pre-Doom gizmos buried in the ground.”
“She has brainwashed everyone in the Holy Kingdom?” Simon inquired. If so, that could let Helel mobilize millions of conscripts.
“Not all. Some Class users have protection against mental influence and formed a resistance movement, but they can’t do much. The angels are obsessively unified, well-coordinated, and merciless.” Alcyone scowled. “Alphonse was brought to their sky-fortress, and I have no idea if he’s still alive–”
“Wait,” Dassein cut in, his eyes widening. “Their sky-fortress?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t believe my own eyes.” Alcyone shook her head, her skin paler than chalk. “That demon uprooted all of Serras from the ground using the Light Megalith’s power and turned the city into a huge warship filled with soldiers. All the manalith cannons Lore purchased from Muse to fight your empire were moved there.”
“They’re taking a page out of our book,” Simon guessed. “Since they lack an airship fleet of their own, they are putting all their eggs in one basket.”
“It will take time to equip and feed such a vast force,” Lauriane pointed out. “The knights of Lore are fearsome, but most conscripts will be easy to deal with. We might still have the advantage if we strike first.”
“I just… I just don’t understand how the Oracle could let this happen,” Alcyone admitted, her fists shaking with anger. “She didn’t even send reinforcements to help us! Did she leave us to die?”
“She hasn’t done anything since that foolish attack on Frightwall,” Euphemia replied with scorn. “It may be a blessing in disguise.”
She must expect us to pay Illusea a visit after this mess. And Simon fully intended to do exactly that. I wonder if Alcyone will help us after she realizes how much that short-sighted seer screwed us all over.
“Where is the sky-fortress?” Dassein asked as he grabbed a map.
“Moving to the southeast sea.” Alcyone traced a line pinpointing its movements. “Volto believes it will bombard his home of Portempête, then sweep up the other Valnean ports.”
Lauriane believed otherwise. “It would have made more sense to fly over the mountains if that were the case. Are they seeking to hide their advance somehow?”
It only took a single look at the map and the insight provided by previous reigns for Simon to figure out their plan. “It’s moving towards Cocagne.”
“Cocagne?” Lauriane raised an eyebrow. “You think they intend to strike us in a pincer attack?”
“The Lion serves the Maiden, and she wants to recover it,” Simon explained. Valravn spent a lot of resources attempting to free Mithras when he had a fraction of the forces available to him now. That particular Zodiac Fiend had to be exceptionally powerful. “Cocagne’s coasts are less defended than ours, and it will let them strike Magvolia from the south.”
“Then we'd best intercept this fortress, especially since Anna is likely to lead from it.” Lauriane turned to Alcyone. “Can you keep us informed of its movements?”
“I… I can do more than that.” Alcyone crossed her arms. “I’ve been to Serras, so my Fast Travel can let me teleport inside the floating city. I haven’t tried because I didn’t want to risk falling under the archfiend’s brainwashing, but ferrying a team inside is an option.”
“If the enemy is wise, they will have protected sensible areas with wards and alarms.” Lauriane steepled her fingers. “We could send a task force of saboteurs inside… or slip in a bomb.”
Simon considered his options when a possibility came to mind. Research showed that the angels had a crippling vulnerability to the Darkness element and heavily relied on Light magical attacks. He had the perfect weapon to target both of those weaknesses.
“I believe it is time,” he said after commanding everyone’s attention, “to remind this false sun to fear the endless night.”
—----------
He spent the next few weeks preparing for an inevitable confrontation with the Maiden’s forces. Simon alternated between practicing his Quickdraw and Underworld Hammer Techniques, smiting angels, and overseeing the front.
Nodens was bound to machines to serve as yet another weapon, and Simon recovered the Scream of the Soul book from his library for further study. It just annoyed him that so many of his plans, like tracking down his father’s hidden vaults and the Biographer Vassal Class’ researchers, had to be put on hold.
At least they managed to pacify Valendre, though at the cost of torching it from on high and leaving it a devastated, but angel-free wasteland. Mastemo’s Crestone and Zodiac Fiend crystal still remained unaccounted for, which bothered Simon. Surely at least one of them should have manifested themselves by now.
The Valnean League almost entirely collapsed during that period, as they lost their hinterlands to a horde of brainwashed thralls. Only the ports on the coast remained, and the wealthiest denizens were mostly focusing on evacuating to Muse or Cocagne rather than fighting a doomed battle. Voltobauta’s Portempête was the singular exception, largely because most undead didn’t feel fear and had nothing to lose except for their graveyard home.
Simon didn’t expect much to come out of it since the angels and possessed Paladin Vassal Class users were optimized to destroy them, but it hammered home just how unprepared Valne had been to an attack from the west. They always expected their doom from the other side of the Dragonsea.
Otherwise, Eole convinced Lady Junon and Vayan to allow the imperial army to use the Forbidden Keep and celestial stairway ‘under strict supervision,’ though they really didn’t have a choice in the matter. Simon paid close attention to Isabelle’s work during this period, and her idea to weaponize the floating islands was remarkably simple: use spells and machinery to reroute the flow of mana keeping them afloat, then simply allow the manaliths within to detonate on impact. Simon’s experience with Darkflight meant he could do it on his own, should he need to…
Otherwise, events more or less played out as Simon expected. The floating sky-fortress of Serras left Lore from the south and floated above the southern sea towards Cocagne, avoiding the coast and major ports. The plan had clearly been to stealthily cross the waters towards the eastern continent relatively undetected while all eyes were turned to the troops in Valne.
Since Cocagne was threatened, Remedia agreed to supply her few airships and aerial forces to the alliance, albeit with the caveat that they intercept Serras before it could actually reach her homeland. The plan thus changed to intercept the Maiden over the Dragonsea and sink her floating fortress with their own.
And Simon had an idea to increase its devastating potential even further.
The great Endymian armada eventually gathered on Cocagne’s shores on the first day of the new year to wage the great battle of the age. Dozens of airships, hundreds of naval vessels meant to serve as mobile platforms for aerial riders, and countless warbeasts traveled across the calm waters; among them was Vouivre’s mechanized corpse, which Lauriane had repurposed into Louis’ mount like Casval had been in a previous reign. He and Lauriane’s airship had taken the vanguard. Norbelle and her eidolons escorted the Cocagnian right wing, with Remedia and Filip being among the forces present, while Dassein guided the left one with Casval and Thalas. The latter had insisted on joining the vanguard to help rescue Anna—sharing Lauriane’s hope they could separate her from Helel—but the imperial strategists decided to keep him in reserve for a later stage of the operation.
Simon himself commanded the Malevolence alongside Euphemia at the center of the formation. Odette Kano, a possessed Lorimor, and Alcyone Hyades were onboard as well, ready to proceed with their plan of attack.
All of House Magnos’ forces were finally united against a common enemy.
“I spent so many years trying to keep Louis away from the throne because I feared he would throw us into another pointless war with Lore,” Euphemia commented as they observed their fleet from the Malevolence’s deck. “Yet here we are, waging one. The irony isn’t lost on me.”
“Things didn’t go as I had planned,” Simon conceded. He had hoped to lead the empire into an era of peace, at least until the Zodiac Parade began in earnest. “On so many fronts.”
Euphemia glanced at him with a hint of sympathy. “It wasn’t your fault. You acquitted yourself exceptionally well for someone who inherited his Class mere months ago.”
Simon scoffed at her words. He had spent figurative years as the Overlord, and he still had been unable to keep his empire in one piece. “Do you regret it? Our alliance?”
Euphemia pondered his question, and then shook her head. “No.” She took a deep breath. “I was wrong about many, many things, for so many years… but not this one.”
Simon meditated on her words when he and his wife tensed up. The horizon reddened with crimson miasma pulsating across the Dragonsea.
A baleful star swirling with evil arose in the west.
Alcyone had already provided a description of the enemy’s base, but her words didn’t do it justice. The enormous structure approaching them wasn’t exactly a warship, because it wasn’t a single mass; it was instead a miniature solar system, a crimson star around which orbited a city’s debris like planets dancing around their heavenly suzerain. Watchtowers orbited next to miles-wide districts uprooted from the earth and covered in ruins. The very clouds parted away from its approach.
Simon had briefly believed that Helel raised Serras from the earth using a similar mechanism as the Sanctuary did, but the truth was laid bare before him. The reddish miasma erupting from the baleful star at the center of it all—either the corrupted Light Megalith or Helel herself—warped reality itself for miles into a demiplane. Islands floated in the air because their archfiend had decided that they would.
The Maiden had materialized an open Abyssal Domain similar to Nodens’, without Abraxas’ help.
She’s stronger. The realization sent an awful chill down Simon’s spine. The Maiden was stronger in her base state than Nodens at his strongest. How powerful will she become when Abraxas shines upon her?
“Such power…” Simon heard one of the mages onboard whisper. They could feel it from here, even without Visionary abilities. Lorimor in particular covered his countless eyes as he recoiled from the star’s vicious light.
Moreover, this tyrant’s star was well-defended. Dozens of adult dragons of various colors and sizes escorted it, some of them being nearly as large as Vouivre, alongside swarms of angels. Serras’ watchtowers and buildings were no doubt staffed with thralls and the manalith cannons Alcyone warned them about.
Odette immediately activated Buddyguard and sacrificed ten million gold coins to summon Xenophon as a level 71 eidolon. It was a colossal sum to spend on a single soldier, but Simon’s experience with fighting Nodens in the Sanctuary had taught him that one high-level warrior was worth a thousand weaker allies.
Moreover, Xenophon’s contract was unique in that he was simply unable to disobey or act against his contractor’s interests. Tests had proved that he resisted all forms of mind-altering effects, and not even Norbelle could dismiss him by force. The Maiden wouldn’t be able to warp him into her service.
Alcyone may have no such luck, in spite of her equipment, but she had signed both a Judge contract and received a Contingency spell from Remedia that would teleport her to safety the moment she started to fall under the Maiden’s influence. She only needed to transport Xenophon inside Serras at the right moment and drop him like a bomb.
“Dragon threat level estimation?” Simon asked Lorimor and the other analysts on the deck.
“Level 58 on average,” Lorimor replied. His and the others’ Perks allowed them to provide a rough estimation. “Some rising as high as 67. Their most common weaknesses are Frost and Corrosion.”
Level 67 is nearly as high as Norbelle’s eidolons. Simon grunted in annoyance. It was like fighting an army of weaker Vouivres. They’ll each be a match for an airship’s worth of soldiers.
If he gave them the chance to fight.
“Proceed with the bombardment,” Simon telepathically informed one of his demonic minions lurking at the Sanctuary’s edge. He put on his Overlord outfit and issued his first orders. “Begin charging the miasma cannons.”
The Malevolence had been modified to incorporate a Zodiac-powered miasma cannon Simon designed with Devil Forgemaster. Adapting a prototype similar to the one Gargauth created to build his own weapon hadn’t been too difficult, though they had to use inferior alloys than what the Second Overlord used.
Crafting has its limits. The issue was that even if Simon’s Perks let him at least visualize the final weapon, actually building it required components, materials, and time he didn’t always have, forcing him to create a watered-down version. But war is the mother of innovation.
“Fire at will,” Simon declared.
The battle began with a bang.
The entire Malevolence trembled as miasma poured out of its two main cannons in vast beams of purple energy. The combined malice of the Scales, the Two-Tailed Fish, the Minotaur, and the Goatfish poured out in a massive torrent of evil that crossed the Dragonsea in a blink. The dragons and angels in the line of fire were vaporized as rays mighty enough to bring down the Lighthouse reached their master’s lair.
A barrier stopped the attack in its tracks.
A spherical shield of crimson miasma swirled around the tyrant’s star and deflected the beams. Simon had studied Astromancy with Anaximander long enough for the effect to remind him of those ‘magnetic fields’ protecting planets from solar energies. Did Helel’s fortress work the same way?
Either way, the attack signaled the beginning of the battle. The angels and dragons flew forward ahead of the floating fortress, their speed suddenly increasing manyfold. Their movements left the telltale afterimages of the Mirage and Hastened statuses.
The entire enemy army had been buffed.
“One For All.” Euphemia scowled in anger. “Maublanc is leading them.”
Simon had feared as much. “You think he’s under her control?”
“Or on his daughter’s side out of his own free will. He wanted her on the Crimson Throne, and she’s on her way to claim it.” Euphemia turned to their chief engineer. “How long until we can fire again?”
“Five to six minutes before the cannons cool down, Your Grace.”
Too slow, Simon thought as his vanguard advanced towards the incoming enemies. Louis led the airships and warbeasts from the front to intercept the enemy troops, though he didn’t use the extending sword trick he used against him in Magvolia. He probably hadn’t yet reached a high enough level to use that ability. Still, we drew the enemy forward.
“Time to blind this star,” Simon decided as he placed his hand on Xenophon’s chest. “Are you willing to be my champion?”
“It’s what I was hired to do,” the eidolon replied, providing the consent required for the magic to work.
“Then let this world cower in fear of your might, for it heralds the endless black night!” Simon chanted as he wove his Edict into existence. “Let the darkness endure so long as you linger in this world!”
Alcyone teleported the two of them away right as his magic plunged the universe into lightless depths.
A flood of darkness erupted from Serras’ ruins and then filled the horizon. The night fell upon the battlefield as his Edict rewrote reality for dozens of miles, denying the people the sun’s radiance. Helel’s star no longer glowed bright enough to blind the horizon, but it remained visible still, like a lighthouse in a storm.
Besides hopefully weakening the Maiden’s powers and those of her thralls, the magic should blind them to the second danger.
Simon looked up to the clouds above, to barely visible spots falling downward onto the tyrant’s star. The Sanctuary’s barrier had hidden the islands’ location from sight, so to most people the Forbidden Keep and the four other smaller floating rocks seemed to appear out of nowhere like meteors. Simon focused on his Dungeon core in the heart of Nodens’ palace, pulsating with power and waiting for his master’s call.
The Maiden’s star brightened in response to this challenge. Red miasma more potent than what Nodens could summon at the height of his power gathered in Serras’ heart, and Simon sensed a voice call out to him from his faint connection to the Light Megalith; words carrying a mocking echo of Anna joined with smug, godlike arrogance.
“Let there be light.”
A beam of destruction erupted from the shadowed star and set the heavens ablaze.
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