The Goran royal castle was in utter chaos.

They had even dispatched one of the three Swordmasters to buy time, but the lunatic they were facing just pushed forward without any regard for hostages or negotiations.

He was simply crushing everything in his path.

“Your Majesty... based on our predictions, he will arrive here in a few hours.”

“Bring me a plan! A plan!” the king shouted.

“Please evacuate for now. The gods will stop him.”

“Evacuate? Where would this king even flee to?”

The adviser didn’t know what to say. “That is...”

“Haah. Is there truly no way to stop that monster?”

“He is far beyond our expectations. Realistically, survival is impossible. If he arrives, dealing with him will be difficult. He won’t accept surrender, either.”

The king suggested, “Can’t we use that weapon we found?”

“It is a possibility, but... whether it can effectively silence him is unknown.”

“Damn it...”

“Please evacuate first, Your Majesty. We will escort you.”

The King of Goran rose from his seat. The nobles were all scrambling to prepare for escape.

In the end, the only ones affected would be those innocents who had been sacrificed by their noble greed. However, most of the high-ranking officials didn't care about that. The sudden collapse of the Goran Kingdom’s national fortune was their only regret.

Just then.

“Your... Your Majesty! We have a huge problem!” A knight who rushed in shouted, “L-look out the window!”

Startled by his cry, the king dashed to the window. His eyes shot wide open. “W-What is that?!”

He saw beings surrounding the capital in all directions.

“W-what are those?!”

“S... Spirit King...” A man who looked like an elementalist slumped down on the spot, trembling.

An enormous earth giant, hundreds of meters tall, had approached the castle walls.

It slowly raised its hand.

“S-stop it!”

They didn't know what it was trying to do, but leaving it alone would spell disaster.

[Contractor wants to take all the blame, but I'm not so keen on that. As his contracted spirit, I will share the burden of this karma.]

With those words, Gnoass slammed its fist into the castle wall.

Boom!!

At the same time, the earth shook, and then the ground beneath the entire capital turned into a mud-like substance.

“Argh?! W-what is this?!”

The ground surprisingly melted and began to wrap around everyone’s bodies as if it were alive.

“F-free me from this! Now!!! Save your king!”

The king yelled frantically, but the melted marble floor quickly bound the bodies of everyone in the room. The wizards tried to use magic to break free, but the unrestricted power of a Spirit King was far too much for those of a small nation to handle.

With their escape route instantly blocked, the nobles began to panic.

“Ugh. Aaaah! Save me! I don’t want to die!”

Amidst the desperate screams, the melting ground hardened, trapping them. Most of their bodies solidified as if they had turned to stone.

“Damn it! Ugh! I can’t die like this! Hurry up and undo this, you useless people!”

The nobles shouted furiously at the wizards and knights. Pushed to the extreme, their true nature as human beings showed. Yet, the king and the nobles weren’t the only ones driven to the edge by the fear of death.

“God dammit!! I can’t die like this! This is all your fault! If you hadn’t tried to use him, we wouldn't be dying so senselessly!”

Once one person yelled in rage, a considerable number of people turned their killing intent on the king and the nobles, blaming them as the cause of everything. As intense criticism and resentment burst forth, human nature began to spiral into the depths of madness.

Crack!

Somehow, a few of them managed to break free from Gnoass’s restraint and picked up their swords.

A knight, trembling, approached the nobles and shouted with tears streaming down his face, “You shouldn’t have messed with him! What were you thinking when you went after him?!”

“C-calm down! There’s a way for all of us to live!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!! He didn’t touch most of the territories, but he erased every single defensive stronghold on the way to the capital! Still, you think the capital’s safe? Think again!! We’re all going to die because of your ridiculous greed!”

“Y-you insolent wretch!”

“Insolent, my ass! What good is that when I’m about to die?!”

Slash!!

Starting with the knight beheading a marquis, the restraints on some of the knights loosened. The nobles hoped the knights who broke free would suppress the lunatic. However, most of the knights, who were victims themselves, rebelled against the Goran royal family.

“Die!”

A terrible scene of massacre and frenzy began.

The nobles begged for their lives, but nonetheless met their end at the hands of the rebellious knights. However, the terror of their predetermined death drove the remaining people into extreme panic.

Just then, a human-sized figure made of earth rose from the melted marble floor and spoke into their minds.

[Do you want to live?]

“Aaaah!”

[I asked. Do you want to live?]

“I-I want to live! I did nothing wrong! I was just working my shift like always, and now I’m in a war! How could my destiny be to die here?!” 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Gnoass spoke to the frantically shouting knight.

[Then run. The capital will be wiped off the map, but you will take as many innocent people as you can and escape.]

The trembling knight had tears streaming down his face.

[I can’t stop my contractor, and have no intention of even trying to do so. Goran will be erased from this map. But if you have even the slightest intention of saving those who were innocently caught up in this, you need to run away right now.]

Following its words, the people who had been swinging their swords like madmen began to look at each other, and then they all started frantically fleeing the royal castle.

Most of the nobles had been slaughtered, leaving only a handful.

After most people fled, Gnoass looked at the King of Goran.

[Because of you, my contractor has blood on his hands that he shouldn't have.]

It slowly approached the king with thudding steps, making him tremble in fear.

[I have a strong urge to tear you apart and kill you.]

Gnoass slowly reached out and grabbed the king by the head.

It was then.

“Put him down, Gnoass,” Davey said as he entered the reception room.

[Contractor...]

“Leave him. You can kill everyone else, but not him.”

It put the king down and slowly retreated.

“G-Grand Duke Davey O'Rowane. I... I was wrong! P-please show me mercy!”

Their final resort had yet to be fully prepared.

The king couldn't understand how Davey had arrived so quickly when, considering his original pace, they should’ve had plenty of time.

He shouted to buy as much time as possible, “Please! Just stop! There’s no need to go this far! I will compensate you. I will apologize if you want an apology! Goran will unconditionally surrender! So please!”

“It’s too late. You should have done that from the beginning,” Davey coldly spat.

“Do you intend to kill everyone here?! Will you become a mass murderer who has that much human blood on his hands?!”

Davey calmly looked down at him.

The fallen King spat up blood and shouted again, “Stop now! Any more damage...”

“That karma will be borne by you and I.” Davey slowly reached toward the king’s head. At the same time, the artifact in front of him began to shine.

The king’s demeanor then abruptly changed.

“Ha... let’s just die... yes, let’s all die together!” He threw his broken body to slam his head onto the artifact, activating it.

Whum! Whum!!

A massive energy wave began to surge from beneath the royal castle.

“Fufufu. This is a weapon of hell found in an ancient ruin. It’s a weapon of destruction capable of wiping out the capital and all nearby plains! I won’t die alone—I’ll take you with me!”

Gnoass slowly tried to move following the man’s desperate scream.

“Let him be.”

At the same time, a tremendous tremor started. If what the king said was true, an explosion would soon engulf the royal castle and the entire capital. Frankly, it’d consume the entire surrounding region.

It would be an explosion of immeasurable heat. He had activated a single absolute weapon, the only of its kind, using principles difficult to even grasp.

Yet the king, who had been waiting for the explosion, realized that no matter how much time passed, nothing was happening.

“W-what? How the hell...”

In his confusion, he saw a giant black dragon outside the shattered wall, holding a metal sphere the size of a human in its mouth.

“T-that is...!”

[A nice snack for me.]

Megarodria, the Azure Sky’s Storm Dragon King, loved highly concentrated radiation. It was one of its favorite snacks.

The weapon, said to have been found in ancient ruins, was a nuclear weapon that initiated massive nuclear fission using mana.

It was a weapon that shouldn't, and couldn't, exist in Tionis.

Perhaps it had flowed into the world when the dimensional rift appeared. No one knew.

“So this was why you were buying time? You mobilized innocent peasants to the battlefield just for this?” Davey asked with a scoff.

“W-what the...”

Even if it still needed more time, it was impossible for an explosion to not happen at all.

Yet nothing happened.

As the king was lost in confusion, Davey grabbed him by the jaw.

“Gaah. Grrr.”

[Contractor, just give me a little time.]

“What?”

[Most of the fortresses you wiped out so far were filled with soldiers and mercenaries, but most of the people in this capital are civilians.]

“This bastard forcibly mobilized those civilians. I’ve already killed hundreds, even thousands of innocent people.”

[Any more damage is meaningless. The warning is clear enough.]

Davey quieted down.

[Contractor, I know what you’re trying to achieve. You want to leave no room for negotiation. Do as you wish, it’s your choice to erase this capital from the map. However, there are still many here who haven’t been able to escape. Those who were too weak to flee; those who were abandoned; and the innocent weak. There’s no need to kill them, and it’s not what you want either.]

At that, Davey burst forth with mana.

At the same time, the clouds in the sky darkened, and multiple meteorites, as if just waiting to fall, began to appear in the sky.

[Contractor!!]

“Two hours. I know you can get them out of the capital with your power,” he said in a low voice before he sighed and turned away.

In the end, he couldn't maintain his ruthlessness to the very end, but Gnoass didn't mock him. He knew that Davey had already given a lot of ground.

Goran had hidden many countermeasures, but they no longer mattered. Whether one was a Swordsmaster or a common peasant, the wave of death would strike everyone equally.

Gnoass created countless copies of itself to lead the people out of the capital.

In the silent center of the capital and the royal castle, once not a single sign of innocent life could be felt, Davey snapped his fingers.

The King of Goran and the few nobles who had remained as survivors in the royal castle stared blankly as they witnessed the disaster descending from the heavens.

They realized they shouldn’t have messed with him. No matter how brilliant their scheme, they shouldn’t have chosen such a path.

With deep regret, they watched the meteorites of death fall onto their heads.

Despite being in the meteor shower range, Davey showed no signs of moving. He was completely calm, as if such meteorites couldn't harm him.

“King of Goran.”

The man didn’t respond.

“Don’t think that death is the end.”

Boom!!

As if all other sound itself had vanished, only the deafening roar of the meteors colliding echoed throughout the entire capital.

Eventually sitting in the ruins where everything had been erased, Davey sat on the wreckage and looked in the distance. “Goddess, did I go too far?”

A woman slowly walked toward him.

“Most of the people I killed were probably innocent. Most of them weren’t the direct cause of this. In the end, if I had only eliminated the true culprits, including the king... maybe there wouldn’t have been a need for this much damage. I keep thinking that.” His voice was heavy with bitterness

Goddess Freyja silently embraced him from behind and kept her silence.

“But I didn’t. I thought if I stayed lenient even when others crossed the line, I wouldn’t know when or how the people I love might get hurt...” he continued to mutter in an exhausted voice on top of the rubble.

Goddess Freyja slowly approached and simply looked at him.

[Perhaps you don't trust your people enough?]

Davey shook his head at her question.

“No matter how strong they become, no matter how great they become, I can’t help but worry. After all, they are the people I must protect. If there is any threat to them, I can become a monster even worse than a devil.”

That was what he believed a father and husband did for his family.