Neither Horizon Dawn or Illma Zoldia Road threw the first punch of this war. No, what sent the North section of Millian into Anarchy was the quaking ground and the beast risen from beneath the earth. Houses toppled, streets uprooted, and citizen panicky wailed as a dragon 140 meters long swatted everything aside. Without warning the beast spewed out fires turning the road below it to cinders.

The dragon roared, shattering all glassware in its range.

In the distance, the citizen of Millian watched the dragon rampaged. Some braver resident gathered to fire a few blasts of magic, only to see their best attacks fluttered weakly against the dragon scale.

It was a devastating blow.

…

On the faraway roof, Rem geared up to face the dragon. Behind him, Melody watched powerlessly while the beast of destruction swatted her favorite coffee shop to smithereens. She knew she didn’t have a chance. Facing a real dragon made her questioned why did she even bother trying to kill it. That was why in this world without hope, the figure of that boy shone brighter than ever.

How could he still dare to believe?

“I know this is the worse time to ask this question,” Melody asked with newfound respect. “But why do you think I'll fail as a ruler?”

“Wow,” Rem eyed the rampaging dragon and forced his fear beneath the veneer of calmness. “Do you know you should ask that question from the very beginning? You need to get more in touch with your introspection.”

“Fine!” Melody threw her hand up. “I'm an idiot. Just tell me why you are so gung ho against me taking the throne.”

Rem sighed.

“Truth is I never believe in monarchy. The idea of a person crowns by the divine to dictate how an entire nation should think fails because heaven is full of morons. The diadem, the throne, they're just decoration. Shiny confetti made to boost a mortal man’s pathetic ego. The nation isn't you, or the land or the stupid throne, but the people; that realization is what you are missing."

“The people?” Melody yelled. “I care about people! I’ve said that already!”

“Then what do they want?” Rem replied. “Did they beg Melody Solarmaria to sit on the throne or is that your ego talking?”

Again, Melody ran out of answers.

“They never want you, Mel,” Rem said. “Admit it. The people, therefore the nation, give zero fuck about their ruler’s birthright. I can sit on that throne, keeps my promises, and they will invent hundreds of reasons why I am the greatest emperor of the Demonic Continent. Being a ruler is a godforsaken career of juggling ungrateful masses and scheming moneybags at every waking moment. Hell, waking is an exaggeration. A crisis might strike 3 A.M., and you won’t have a choice but to get up. Trust me. No job is worth your peace of mind, privacy, and dooming your entire line to fight idiotically over a musical chair. Now tell me, do you still want to be an empress?”

Rem stopped talking and marched to face the dragon, leaving a sulking Melody behind.

“Rem,” Melody said his name for the first time. “You must hate nobility, right?”

Rem paused.

“Technically, things I like can be counted on two hands,” Rem admitted. “My world had done a bang-up job to make me hate everything.”

Rem was not kidding, and Melody knew it.

“Is it possible to beat this system?”

Rem sighed again.

“While it true I despise nearly all monarchy, I do respect a king. This particular king was a natural problem solver, expert on water control, and an agriculture innovator. He babysitted his nation for sixty years in total and united the shithole of a country into what it is today. Even I admire that monarch. The thousands of projects under his name, from economic invention to artificial rain, are economically and tactically brilliant."

“So it is possible-“

“Don’t get your hope up,” Rem quickly jabbed in. “Despite the king’s ability, his people were highly inflexible. Their law ran afoul with the information age. Long story short, a crisis the broke the country in half, and no one could stop it. The people learned nothing from the king's example. To satiate their warped perception of justice and royalty, they betrayed everything their monarch stood for. In the end, the king inevitably passed on peacefully as the nation took a downward spiral, proving that even the brightest among us powerless against human's stupidity.”

With that, Rem gave his closing statement.

“This is my answer, Mel. I don't know what it takes. I do know that successful Dynasty eventually ends in carnage. Given all of those great people eventually fail, what chance do you have?"

…

Illma observed the dragon with obsessive glee. The battlefield was a place to relish, to feel masses of ant crushed beneath her boot. Mayor Port registered his guest derange smile and silent prayed for salvation.

“Good,” Illma saw the dragon trashed another house. “Prepare to fire.”

Taku gulped and readied the men. He instinctively knew this was a bad idea, but going against Illma was suicide. The only thing they could do is take the beating.

That was when plumes of white mist erupted around them.

“What's happening?” Port coughed.

Below him, soldiers turned toward each other in panic. One the men fought through the dense fog and discovered a disk shape device exuding a cloud of white. His heart sunk as he recognized the concealment rune it.

Across the encampment, more disk surfaced. Illma and her supporters blinked in disbelief. Someone just pulled a subterfuge on an Untouchable. It was a suicidal declaration of war against the world order, one with no hope of victory.

"Who?" Taku nearly fell over at the thought. "Who would dare do this?"

Illma didn’t answer. Instead, she noticed the swarms of wrath flowing into the encampment. Then she heard the monstrous beast roared in her direction. The dragon unfurled its wings and rushed toward Illma's country house. The black wings, large and imposing as its enormous bulk, blew away all the settlements in proximity. Everyone witnessing the beast wept in silent horror as it began flew past them to reach its target.

For a split second, Illma traveled back in time to a lonely room where a little girl cried with only robots created out of broken children to keep her company. Illma clenched her fist. That little girl already died. Daddy taught her to be tough. Only status and power could crush all dissenter under her boot. If only daddy realized that sooner, mommy wouldn't die.

“Open fire at the dragon!” Illma screamed. Who cares if someone opposed her? She didn’t need to know their face. She only had to crush them.

Suddenly, Port stumbled beside and pointed to the distance. His face paled by raw fear.

Illma turned into that direction, and what she found scare her.

A figure in black stood in a cloud of swirling black smoke; his face was a white fedora and a mask. It unforgiving red eye glowed from the darkness like a will of hell god.

…

Earlier in Horizon Dawn camp.

Ebony spread the new gear on the table.

“I take the liberty to improve your gear,” the Duchess of craft spread the black, metal-plated leather vest and pants on the table. “After reverse-engineering your Anti-mage shell. I managed to develop and anti-magic alloy and plated it on your uniform. This suit can block magic up to B-rank and minimized the rest; quite a cutting-edge piece.” She flipped the cloth revealing the silver color. “1 mm of cross-weave Mithril-fibre lining to minimize the weight and maximize durability; very expensive in the current market.”

“And a hell to repair,” Cytortia groaned.

“Worry about that later,” Ebony continued, placing Rem’s revolver on the table. “I also tuned this. The mana-ignition system is ingenious by the way.”

“Thanks,” Rem took a revolver for a spun. “More onerous, but still perfectly balanced. What do you add to this?”

“Nothing much, just 100g of Orichalcum to the frame for stability and durability,” Ebony said. “I also added a stun-gun to the hilt for the close-combat. You activate it by flipping the hilt’s switch.”

Ebony then presented the gang the white mask.

“I've readjusted the mask’s plating, refined its mechanism, and added in some enchantment of my own,” Ebony said. “And let not forget this?”

Ebony procured a box of bullets, followed by a set of throwing knives.

“Anti-magic alloy cutleries and shells,” Ebony advertised. “Perfect this hellspawn evening.”

…

Rem nervously ignored Illma and eyed the dragon. He took a deep breath. It was a do or die moment; one mistake and the plan would blow up. Rem's expressionless mask hid his erratic breathing. To wait for the dragon, and cripple it, was his duty; there was no way he would back down.

The moment the dragon past the twenty meters mark, Rem turned and ran toward Illma’s direction. The Untouchable built her encampment from walls and watchtowers of wood and stone. And that was where Rem planned to bring her reality crashing down.

Rem dashed toward the watchtowers. It was a mad 450-meters sprint fueled by magic. Then the Signum artilleries began firing. Fiery trials erupted behind the encampment wall. One bolt landed on the house behind Rem, burning to oblivion. Another shot decimated a settlement beside him.

Rem gritted his teeth; 300 meters left.

He leaped to a roof of another house, narrowly dodging the deathly blitzes, and landed with a slide. Behind him, three stray bolts impacted the dragon, staggering the beast but only accomplish in annoying it.

The dragon screeched and sped up toward the encampment with new vigor.

150 meters until victory.

Rem somersaulted into the air and painfully landed on his back. Thankfully, his uniform absorbed most of the impact. He picked himself for the final leap of fate with a harsh breath. The dragon finally spotted a moving prey and unleashed its soul scorching fire. The flame burned everything behind Rem to cinder and sent a flash of heat down his backside, but he did not give in.

[Arrival of Dream].

A rainbow light flashed through the night, bringing a piece of a dream to reality. It was proof that tonight an untouchable evil won’t escape its reckoning.

75m reached. The plan was a success.

A gigantic great-sword blazed into existence in Rem’s outstretched hand. The boy landed on the nearby roof, cracking the tiles with a loud crash. He launched himself toward the dragon with a burst of air. He raised his legendary weapon high and met the dragon's flame head-on.

…

[Eas End

Rank: B

Ability:

Dragon Doom [A]

Anti-Dragon [Ex]

Dragon Warding [SSS]

???

Demerit:

Curse of Contamination [A]

Dragonic Restriction [Ex]

Origin: Legend of Asthur

Info: To combat Eas, the dragon who had spelled doom to five out of twelves continent of Asthur, the hero Ar’maskur forged Eas End out of 5.6 billion souls of Eas’s victims. [Eas End] was the most potent anti-dragon blade in the legend of Asthur; fueled by wrath a hatred of 5.6 billion souls. This sword could nullify the power of the dragon an even fell the strongest of their kind. However, the sword only showed its strength against a dragon base enemy, not to mention the corruption power of 5.6 billion wraths.]

Central cringed the moment the blade appeared.

“Rem,” Central whispered with concern. “Are you sure you can take the [Curse of Contamination]?”

“No… Choice…” Rem gritted his teeth as curses worth nine generations of his ancestral tree slammed into his eardrum. He wanted to puke, but he swallowed the bile down to do his job.

The heavily constipated knight tanked through the inferno of Sicilian Ghost’s fire. Eas End's [Dragon Warding] minimized the damage, allowing him to push through the flame without getting cooked. The boy, protected with his blade, slammed past a thin layer of evil spirit protecting the dragon. He swung his sword, taking out the dragon's right eye with a wet slash before landing on its wing. With a war cry in defiance of both the impossible odds and the billion voices screaming at him to die, he plunged the sword into the dragon wings. The artillery explosion went off somewhere on the dragon, shooking the dragon despite the damned spirit's protection and nearly knock Rem off. However, the boy dug his heel in, refused to back down, and plunge his sword into the appendages with a pained grunt.

The behemoth screamed.

With his very last stamina, Rem ran across the limbs, slicing the sword through its flesh, hacking it clean off. The corruption from Eas End finally overloaded his mind; as he fell with the black leathery wing.

But the dragon's roared woke him up. No, he must do more. They were counting on it.

“Central,” Rem whispered. “Activate [Dragon Doom].”

“Roger, my lord.”

Only 25 meters until F-U 1 succeeded.

…

The last one minute blew Illma’s arrogance to the wind. That thing must be a god in disguise, but that was impossible. Why would a god go against an Untouchable? Illma wanted to cry. Her world view was melting catastrophically before her very eyes.

How could this thing exist? How could it even arrive in Millian? Logic dictated that nothing below A-rank stood a chance of surviving the Signum-S4 bombardment, but that logic had its spine broken today. Whatever it was not only survived that bombardment but also made it through the dragon's fire and chopped off its wing.

Illma’s nearly collapsed to the floor. What the hell did she provoke? How could she survive a fight against a god?

Then she saw that thing swung its sword, emitting a wave of purple flashed which cleanly cut off the dragon tail.

Illma barely noticed the house which the limped figure crashed down. No, she only witnessed the dragon’s bulk fell from the sky. Without its wing, tail and right eye, the dragon could no longer control its flight. As a result, it crash-landed with its momentum being a director.

Illma realized then that she miscalculated. The dragon was too strong to be killed by a Signum-S4 artilleries, and the god with red-visor billed her dearly for that blunder. The dragon the size a galleon and weighting in several tonnes smashed into the encampment. The impact swept everyone and everything in its path with the noise of a hundred exploding powder kegs. Woods, stone, and people fly into the air barely able to denote up and down. Taku crouched down, praying the gods for his safety as the crescendo murder his ears. Mayor Port was sent flying like a plump, middle-age beachball.

Illma fell off the wall as everything around her thunderously collapse.

…

Plan F-U1, aka luring the dragon to Illma’s encampment and immobilized it there to limit the damage’s scope, was a success.

Damage count:

1) Rem incapacitated.

2) The dragon was critically injured.

3) Illma’s encampment 45% destroyed.

4) 2 X-cutions crushed. 30 soldiers and guards injured or decommissioned.

HD won the first round.