“Is PN Sword behaving himself?”

“Yes, Lord Road. No problems at all. He’s so docile it’s enough to shake my confidence.”

Sophie, the maid tending to the watchtower where Kenya was held, was delivering her regular report to Road over the comms.

Reina had escaped, and they’d even lost Takemikazuchi.

But as long as Kenya was secured, there were no real issues.

Even so, Road reinforced the defenses.

Every force in the imperial capital was deployed solely to ensure Kenya couldn’t be taken.

There had certainly been the option of killing Kenya.

“Got it. Do your best to… avoid making him too uncomfortable.”

But why hadn’t he been able to go through with it?

Road questioned himself once more.

Yet no answer came in the end.

As if to interrupt his thoughts, the maid posed a question.

“Lord Road, if I may?”

“Y-yeah. What is it?”

“Why restrain Lord Sword? In the short time I’ve cared for him, he doesn’t strike me as the ambitious type plotting rebellion. And with him around, surely this world war could…”

“…Heh. Is that how he looks to you?”

The maid was advising Road that Kenya didn’t seem like a man driven to rebel.

She even suggested that Sword Silfield, the Sword God, could seize victory in this world war.

“And to me?”

“No, it’s nothing. Keep up the good work.”

“…Understood.”

Road cut the comms.

Staring before him were 100 monitors displaying 100 battlefields.

“Kenya, you’re the only one. In the entire world, just you—the one person I respect, fear, and believe I can’t defeat.”

…

Meanwhile, at World Union headquarters.

“Another defeat?”

Xuanwu clutched his head as he held a meeting with Camille and numerous civil officials and military personnel.

“Current losses are around ten percent overall, Representative Xuanwu. We still have plenty of reserves. We should fight to the bitter end!”

To Xuanwu, who seemed disheartened, the military officials shouted for total resistance.

“We lost ten percent in less than a week! Their casualties are negligible by comparison!”

“Representative, that’s ten percent of the military. We have billions, tens of billions of citizens! Enact the National Mobilization Law!”

The National Mobilization Law—a draconian wartime measure once enacted by Japan, compelling every citizen to participate in the war effort. It granted the government sweeping control over labor, finances, resources, prices, businesses, power, transportation, trade, and even speech, regulating every aspect of national life to prosecute the war.

“…Is that the only path left?”

This law would forcibly conscript every citizen of the World Union into war cooperation, transforming lives across the globe the moment it was enacted.

No longer living for themselves, but for the war.

No luxuries allowed; everything converted into raw military power—a true total mobilization.

But what that truly signified was…

“But that means either we perish or Earthguard does. It’s the citizens who’ll shed the blood!”

“But Xuanwu, isn’t that our only option? Earthguard operates under the Emperor’s direct orders—everything’s decided top-down. They’re effectively already under national mobilization. Our democracy can’t match their speed.”

Camille urged Xuanwu to make the call.

Earthguard ran on Road’s top-down commands, with every decision made swiftly from above.

Not like the World Union, where even minor choices required meetings, debates, and resolutions.

At that sluggish pace, they could never keep up with a dictatorship.

Let alone when the dictator was Road Earthguard—his speed was on another level entirely.

Thus…

“Understood.”

Xuanwu made the bitter decision.

A resolution passed that very day, formalized the next.

Every nation in the World Union enacted the law, compelled to provide everything for the war effort.

There was public backlash, of course.

But with defeat meaning total annihilation, the citizens accepted it.

A true total war.

Hell, blood washing away blood, engulfed even ordinary folk as it spread across the world.

Even with that full might…

~One week later.

“That’s the first one.”

The border between Earthguard and the World Union had been breached, the nearest small nation to it utterly destroyed.

The forces that resisted to the end were annihilated; those who surrendered were hauled off to Earthguard as POWs.

Road had ordered no killing of those who surrendered—but if they resisted, there was no helping it.

Yet on the battlefield, you couldn’t always tell who was resisting.

Without clearly laying down arms, civilians would inevitably suffer casualties too.

And Road’s orders had condoned that.

Road descended from the floating airship Zeus onto the conquered little country.

He surveyed his surroundings.

Dead children lay there—and what seemed to be their mothers beside them.

Soldiers, of course, but hundreds of ordinary people as well.

Road clamped a hand over his mouth, desperately fighting back the urge to vomit.

(Still got that weak heart of mine… I decided, remember? No more wavering, ever.)

“I’ll take a short walk.”

“No survivors in the area, so that should be fine.”

Tears welled in his eyes, but unseen by anyone, he walked alone across the battlefield’s grim aftermath.

He stared unflinchingly at the child corpses before him, at the bodies drifting down the river—straight on, without blinking.

As if to comprehend what he’d wrought, to etch into his heart exactly what he was doing.

But with every such act…

“Am I really… okay with this? Is what I’m doing truly not wrong?”

His heart grew unbearably heavy.

The corpses of the dead gripped his back fiercely, refusing to let go.

Overcome by the weight, Road dropped to his knees right there, unable to rise for some time.

He hyperventilated.

Clutching his chest, wracked with agony.

“Hah… hah… hah…”

Still, he slammed his knee down hard.

Again and again.

Road pounded his own knee fiercely.

“What are you doing? Showing this pathetic sight to these remains? As if pleading it’s not your true heart. ‘It’s for the world—forgive me!'”

And Road rose to his feet.

“You resolved yourself to the world’s hatred, to falling into hell at the end.”

He stood firm upon the earth and returned to Zeus.

“Let’s go—next one.”

“Yes, sir!”

Road resumed command.

Just one nation fallen so far; he had no time to linger when he still had to kill multiples, hundreds of times more.

The floating airship Zeus once more claimed the skies.

Carrying the dominator of the world on its back.

“Commence advance!”

No one could stop him now.

The world’s enemy knew no defeat; that invincible army marched onward to annihilate everything.

The world despaired—and remembered.

The existence known as the Devil’s Brain, Road Earthguard.

…

At the same hour.

“Alright then, Kaguya, Reina, Tanaka. Ready?”

“Yes—let’s rescue Kenya and have him save the world.”

“Finally, I get to see him. Gonna squeeze him tight when I do. I’m Kenya-kun deficient—withdrawal kicking in…”

“Reminds me of what Zeke said. That Kenya-kun’s the boy with the power to change the world. This must be the moment—he’s the one who’ll do it.”

Harboring their varied sentiments, the three boarded a transport ship in Tokyo Bay.

The vessel was small—sized to carry a single KOG unit.

Leading it was a vivid red machine emblazoned like the Rising Sun flag: Kaguya’s favorite ride, Kagutsuchi.

Behind followed a pristine white mech—Kenya’s partner, Takemikazuchi, with Reina in the cockpit.

Isshin and Tanaka handled the transport ship.

Just these four set out as a party to rescue their captive Kenya.

Bound for the Earthguard homeland: the imperial capital, Valhalla.

“Come on, let’s go. Not exactly a princess in a tower, but time to save the world’s strongest hero—the one who’ll slay the demon king.”