Long, long ago.

A certain battle that took place in a distant, ancient time.

A vast and enormous prairie.

Two armies faced each other.

The eastern side was occupied by the underground army.

Groups of vampires with sharp fangs and pale skin, dressed in stylish formal wear despite being on a battlefield.

Leading them, the most arrogant among the various underground races, was a woman sitting in a palanquin with an open roof.

Eyes that appeared pink or red depending on the angle. The atmosphere emanating from her voluptuous body was very alluring, but at the same time, her face held an extremely lazy and bored light.

The western side was occupied by the heavenly army.

Armed with emerald-colored armor and swords, groups with their faces tightly hidden by helmets as if individual characteristics weren’t important.

Leading them, the most self-effacing among the heavenly believers who regarded absolute obedience as the ultimate value, was a woman with a gentle smile.

The woman’s face was gentle, but also cold. Her icy eyes revealed a mechanical light that carried out set objectives without any emotion.

Without anyone taking the lead, the armies on both sides clashed.

However, their battle was extremely strange.

When the heavenly army poured a rain of arrows onto an empty space, a group of vampires who had just transformed into a swarm of bats and were moving to that location were hit by the arrows and fell.

When the underground army waited at a predetermined point, the unprotected flanks of charging cavalry were completely exposed before them and crushed.

They weren’t looking at the current battlefield.

They anticipated the opponent’s next move and prepared countermeasures, then countermeasures for those countermeasures, and further countermeasures for those.

It was a dilemma arising from both being able to see the future.

Even if they tried to bring about the “best move” through their predictive abilities, if the opponent also read this and countered, that move would become useless.

After that, it was a struggle of command ability.

Creating multiple variables simultaneously so the opponent couldn’t easily respond, reading and reacting in time to the variables created by the opponent, whittling down the enemy forces to reduce the cards the opponent could use.

After struggle, hardship, and even more struggle, they rose from their seats and rushed at each other.

Wings were broken by sharp claws, eardrums burst from intense flute sounds, blood spears pierced internal organs, and emerald swords separated upper and lower bodies.

It was an incredibly fierce battle, but the faces of the two prophets executing it showed no emotion.

As if this too was just one of the endings they had known.

Thus, they perished together.

It was a kind of compromise.

At the same time, it was a kind of agreement.

The ideal would be to survive and kill the opponent.

But the skills of both sides were equal, and it was impossible to choose a unilateral “best”.

Therefore, both chose the “second best”, that was, to eliminate the opponent even at the cost of their own lives.

The underground lamented the death of their general, and the heavenly realm regretted losing a useful card.

But that was the end of it.

The war was not yet over.

There was still too much to do, and they couldn’t keep holding onto the dead forever.

Thus, the two prophets disappeared.

—But was that really true?

***

You frowned in front of the monitor.

It was because of the stuffiness felt in your chest.

There was no problem with your body outside the monitor.

The you here was a being that felt neither fatigue nor hunger.

The cause of the stuffiness was on the Tin Knight side.

Your limbs wouldn’t budge at all, and you couldn’t sense what was around you as you wished.

It was like being in a terrible sleep paralysis.

With one of your two bodies in such a situation, it seemed that an unpleasant sensation followed even in the body that should be fine.

Like sometimes when playing rhythm games, your thoughts themselves half-stopped and you focused only on the game.

Recently, you had been focusing most of your consciousness on “that side”, so the feeling was even more distinct.

After erasing that awkward sensation with light stretching, you looked at the monitor again.

The monitor was filled with something like a deep red mist.

It was quite an eerie sight, but you weren’t particularly scared.

No matter how much the red mist rippled, it had no effect on the system window, and the screen hadn’t completely turned off.

Your connection with the Tin Knight was safe.

This terribly quiet and lonely room was properly connected to the world where your companions were.

Knowing that, this situation wasn’t an object of fear for you.

The problem was how to resolve this situation.

Wondering if there was anything you could do, you manipulated the mouse and keyboard here and there, and the red mist thinned a bit, revealing the scenery beyond.

It was a war.

On a vast and enormous prairie, two different groups were engaged in a desperate struggle, shedding blood.

One side, emitting black and red mana, transforming into bats or wolves, manipulating blood, and flaunting regenerative abilities, was clearly vampire-like.

The other side, basically wearing full armor with slight differences depending on the type of troops, emitting emerald light from their bodies, was clearly paladin-like.

The faces of the leaders on both sides were blurred due to the hazy mist, but it wasn’t too difficult to guess what kind of feeling they had just from their silhouettes.

Judging by visuals alone, one side might seem evil and the other holy, but you didn’t particularly trust either side.

It was all too common for those with pretty and holy visuals to do rotten things inside.

The fight ended in a draw, and the remnants barely clung to life as they fled.

And to the place where the two corpses fell to the ground, those wearing white priestly robes descended.

They chattered among themselves with serious expressions, but because the red mist interfered not only with vision but also sound, it was difficult to hear the content fully.

“This is a ■■■■ affair. We’re ■■■■■ short on ■■■■■.”

“It was a ■■■■■ battle. Wasn’t there ■■■■■ damage to the ■■■■ itself?”

“Hmm, we have no ■■■■■, let’s ■■■■■ what’s left.”

“Don’t we need to ■■■■■ the remains of the ■■■■■■■■?”

“■■■ ■■■ a ■■■■ who couldn’t even ■■■■■ its role properly. Is there any ■■■■ to ■■■■ ■■? If an angel who ■■■■■ victory had survived, we should ■■■■■ it.”

“■■■■■■.”

They retrieved the soil from the ground where the leaders had fallen and something like a dark red lump of power, then returned to the heavens.

What came next was a single traveler.

The traveler looked at the traces of the old battlefield as if in admiration, then began rummaging around here and there.

He seemed to be searching for something useful.

After some time, the traveler bent over as if discovering something.

What he picked up was something strange about the length and thickness of a human forearm.

The luster, which seemed to be a mixture of emerald and red, was reminiscent of a jewel, but it seemed quite light for a stone, to the extent that the traveler could easily toss and catch it with one hand.

The traveler, apparently considering this unknown substance to be quite valuable, left for somewhere else with a satisfied expression, holding it.

Thus, only the prairie remained.

And, a long time passed.

The scars of the fierce battle disappeared in the flow of time, and other people came to that place.

Wearing clothes that looked quite high quality, they carefully searched the prairie and its surrounding environment for several days, and then began to create a base there with satisfied expressions.

At first, it was a small settlement with just a few houses, then a village where dozens of households lived together, then a huge city.

The city was quite an extraordinary place.

By extraordinary, it didn’t mean that some human, whether a powerful and strong royal or noble, started acting like a ruler while clearing their throat, only to have their head cut off by another throat-clearing human within 5 years.

It was extraordinary because such events—the head-cutter being beheaded by another human from behind, that human getting a dagger stuck in his neck while sleeping, the dagger-shanker dying while vomiting blood from drinking wine, and the new ruler who took the throne dying while bathing after being hit by a cheese flying through a broken window—repeated roughly dozens of times.

It was such an incredible mess that even you, who had experienced all sorts of chaos as the Tin Knight, couldn’t help but involuntarily applaud. You also thought about trying to throw cheese later.

After the confusion that was difficult to understand in detail through the vision still covered by red mist, though somewhat fainter than at first.

The city’s political system had somehow changed to something like a democracy.

Of course, it wasn’t a structure where all citizens had voting rights—only specially chosen people such as the wealthy and those who could manipulate mana had voting rights—but it was quite different from the monarchical nations you had seen thus far.

They chattered about all sorts of topics in the square every day, and they seemed to have a particularly strong desire and obsession for learning.

If someone was a promising scholar, they could receive some respect even if they had no money, weren’t male, or couldn’t use special powers like mana or holy power.

Of course, accumulating knowledge itself wasn’t easy unless certain living conditions were met, so it was almost impossible to rise to a high position with just knowledge alone.

Whether because of their political system, or just because luck favored them, the city prospered rapidly.

Sometimes other nations—about the size of a city—came to conquer this “rootless” city, but each time, the city repeatedly won victories.

Seeing their appearance, immigrants who couldn’t endure the tyranny of kings and nobles flocked to this city, or they too rebelled against kings and nobles and overhauled their nation’s system.

The luckiest thing for them was that the powerful kingdom that would have viewed them as the biggest thorn in its side had inexplicably collapsed.

You listened to the stories of the city residents.

Perhaps because the mist had thinned a lot, you could hear conversations more clearly than before.

“I heard a tremendous calamity struck the capital of the Ionian Kingdom. The river turned to blood, maggots swarmed everywhere, plague spread, dark energy covered the sky blocking the sun, and an army of corpses turned the royal palace into a wasteland.”

“What on earth happened to cause such a disaster? Did they attempt some suspicious magic in the kingdom and fail?”

“They say it was caused by just one witch.”

“Does that make sense? A mere witch erased the strongest nation of this era?”

“That’s the story that’s being told, what can we do?”

“So is the kingdom completely finished now?”

“Well, it seems those from the kingdom who advanced to the center of the continent are trying to go their separate ways. Some are trying to return to the kingdom, some are just settling down and trying to create new nations. Some among them might carry on the name of the Ionian Kingdom. Though even if it’s revived, it’s questionable whether it would be the same nation as before.”

“Anyway, it’s fortunate for us.”

“I think so as well. If they’re busy with their internal affairs, they’ll likely ease up on bothering us for a while.”

The powerful kingdom was split into several new nations, and in the gaps, cities that didn’t serve a king gathered among themselves to form a new country.

City-State Alliance Doria.

That was the name of the nation that arose on the place where the bodies of two mythical beings had been.

In your memory, it was also Sophia’s hometown.

You suddenly realized that you were standing in the center of the city with the Tin Knight’s body, not beyond the monitor.

However, it wasn’t perfect.

Like a ghost, no one recognized you, and you also couldn’t touch or interfere with anything.

Your senses were still blurry and stuffy.

But with the assistance from outside the monitor, you could at least move.

You decided to continue your exploration.

***

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