"So this is outer space... It's truly beautiful."
The tranquil void was extraordinarily beautiful. The galaxy stretched vast and boundless, while countless stars shone like silver lamps. Seen through the Honkai trans-spatial webway formed from violet-red lines, particles, and arcs of light, the stars flickered in and out of sight, revealing the immeasurable breadth of the universe.
During their rapid transit, the winding arms of the sea of stars rose and fell like waves of grass. The continuous interstellar clouds of the nebulae rolled onward like waves upon the ocean, some forming circles and others transforming into triangles... The sights were truly endless.
Having removed her heavy, gleaming silver armor, Artoria now wore a blue Western-style dress. She reluctantly withdrew her gaze. Traveling through such distant reaches of space was an experience she had never known before.
Within the bright and spacious hall, the glow of the universe and the radiance of the stars streamed inside, falling upon the Knights of the Round Table gathered before the windows. Some stood while others leaned against the walls, all looking down with complicated expressions at the colossal fleet extending to the very edge of their vision. Upon the thick armor plating, the Imperial double-headed eagle insignias gleamed brilliantly.
Beyond the portholes, vast numbers of Imperial Navy vessels were embarking upon their return journey, their purple-and-gold paint schemes proclaiming their identities.
At the center of the fleet, several Punishment-class Type-3 battleships measuring more than a hundred kilometers in length appeared particularly conspicuous. This was clearly a returning squadron of the Astartes Third Legion, the Black Marlin.
"Merlin, thank you..."
Artoria rose to her feet and solemnly thanked her court mage, who stood with his back to the floor-to-ceiling windows beside the sofa at the center of the private lounge, listening to an Imperial broadcast.
After viewing the real-time military intelligence displayed on the holographic screen and learning what several Imperial security forces had done, Artoria sincerely admired Merlin's actions.
The title of "first to surrender" was hardly honorable. Even if victory had been utterly impossible, she would still have hesitated in his place. Only Merlin could disregard the opinions of others so completely. Or rather, only a shameless man like him, utterly unconcerned with his personal reputation, could have done it.
Yet that very shameless man might have saved billions of lives in their world.
Perhaps the Empire wanted Merlin, Artoria, and the others to understand just how correct their decision had been, while also granting them a sense of superiority from receiving preferential treatment. The military reports playing across the holographic screen in the private lounge prominently featured scenes of rebellions being suppressed and resistance fighters being executed.
"Mommy, I don't want to die!"
"Lackeys of Satan!"
"Bitch! You'll die a horrible death!"
"Do you know what you are? You're worthless! A pack of cowards who only know how to hide inside armor! Fight me one-on-one if you've got the guts!"
"Don't kill me... Don't kill me! I'll do anything you want!"
"You bastard! Don't touch me!"
The ruins of a modern city resounded with chaotic shouting and thunderous explosions.
Thousands of Imperial soldiers stood in armed formation upon a cleared stretch of ground.
Bang!
The loudest prisoner had half his face pulverized by an iron fist. His eye socket split apart and his eyeball burst free, as though a dye shop had opened across his face, blooming in red, black, and purple. He was tossed aside like a dead dog and lay rigid on the ground, breathing out but no longer drawing breath in. Unable to move, he was clearly moments from death.
"..."
The brutality of the Imperial Army immediately reduced the captured resistance fighters to terrified silence.
"Go on, shout. Why have you stopped?"
With his hands clasped behind his back, an officer bearing the insignia of a field commander upon his chest wore the standard lightweight power armor of the Imperial Auxilia. His cold, emotionless voice emerged from his helmet. "Shut them up."
"Yes, sir!"
The soldiers carried an assortment of weapons as they approached the latest group of prisoners driven before them. Laughing cruelly, they selected every person who had cursed moments earlier, then expertly used knife pommels, rifle stocks, and fists to smash their teeth, mouths, and dental crowns one by one.
Beneath their individual tactical helmets, their faces were cold and solemn. Their eyes even revealed a pathological bloodlust and madness. They did not regard the people before them as members of their own kind at all, but as livestock waiting to be slaughtered.
"Raise weapons."
"Ready."
"Fire!"
Bang! Bang! Bang-bang-bang!
The sobbing prisoners had their hands bound behind them and were kicked to the ground before a large pit. At the officer's command, gunfire erupted. Hundreds of blossoms of blood and flesh burst open. Headless corpses with their skullcaps blown away were driven forward by the bullets before crashing helplessly into the bottom of the pit.
At one corner of the pit, Imperial soldiers periodically poured barrels of pale blue rapid-decomposition solvent over the bodies below. Amid wet gurgles, the piled corpses visibly dissolved.
One could imagine that, should this place ever be developed into a forest park, the vegetation would grow exceptionally well.
"Next group! Move!"
...
"Efficient and orderly killing machines."
The handsome, red-haired Knight of Lamentation voiced his assessment.
The Imperial soldiers' attitude of treating killing as a means of advancement and taking open pleasure in it unsettled him deeply. He was accustomed to the style of warfare practiced by medieval knights and nobles.
The continuously playing holographic screen repeatedly displayed the "regime-change operations" occurring in other worlds beyond their universe.
The other Knights of the Round Table wore similarly grave expressions. When they had previously answered the summons of the Swirl of the Root, they had already experienced the Imperial Army's madness firsthand. As a result, their entire group had once been annihilated, meaning their classless Heroic Spirit incarnations had been defeated and dismissed.
Observing every Imperial theater of war from an overarching third-person perspective was an unprecedented and novel experience. At the same time, they felt uncomfortable with the atmosphere of pure violence surrounding the Imperial Army.
War drove people mad, while capital alienated them.
The military merit peerage established by Selene combined both, creating madness and alienation within predetermined limits, under strict order and Selene's control.
It equated achievements in war with the acquisition of capital.
Anyone who enlisted, slew enemy commanders and soldiers on the battlefield, and expanded the Empire's territory would receive a corresponding noble rank based on their specific postwar achievements, along with matching estates, wealth, bonded households, and even official status that could transform their social standing. The more enemy heads they claimed, the higher their title and rewards became.
Even if they died in battle, their title would pass to the eldest direct descendant or a designated family heir. Although the system included gradual hereditary reduction, Selene had specifically decreed that the titles of ordinary soldiers would not be reduced in the second generation, only beginning to decline with the third.
After all, on an interstellar battlefield, some unlucky fool might be obliterated by artillery before ever seeing the enemy. He might fail to acquire enough merit for promotion. If he had only just received the most basic first-grade military title before dying, would his child immediately become untitled?
The merciful Selene naturally could not allow such a sustainable system of long-term exploitation to be disrupted.
After his death, his title would pass to his child in full. Only if that child died without earning any new merit would the title be reduced.
This minor policy favoring the lower ranks was the fundamental reason the Empire's colonial Servitor Armies fought so fearlessly, even fanatically.
After all, it genuinely benefited them.
In other words, even if each generation could advance by only one military rank, the father could die and the son could take his place. As long as the son earned new merit, the title would not decline. With luck, he could risk his life, rise another grade, and die, allowing his own son to inherit a second-grade military title. That grandson could then enlist, prevent the title from declining by earning new merit, risk his life to reach the third grade, and pass it to the great-grandson... The cycle could continue indefinitely.
They were truly gambling their lives to win wealth and status for their families and descendants. No empty promises were involved.
A brother could also replace a direct descendant, provided the soldier left such instructions in his will.
Every enlisted soldier, whether from the Servitor Army or Imperial Auxilia, benefited from this system. The rewards were tangible and visible.
There were also many smaller regulations. For example, the criteria for counting the beheading of soldiers from an established government's regular army naturally differed from those applied to civilian resistance fighters. The standards also varied between governments according to territorial size, GDP, military strength, civilizational development, and other factors. The intensity of space battles, planetary landings, field battles, urban combat, and positional warfare likewise produced different calculations, as did an individual's combat strength and official rank...
The standards were merely guidelines. The exact merit value awarded in each war was assessed and reported by the military adjudicators attached to the participating units. It was then reviewed, adjusted, amended, and uploaded through Servitor AI systems, signed by the theater commander, verified by the Imperial Ministry of War, and transferred to the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs. The ministry then distributed the orders to the relevant colonies, where the colonial governor's offices implemented them.
It might appear somewhat cumbersome, but this was military business and a matter personally emphasized by the God-Empress. Efficiency was extraordinarily high!
Any mistake in this area could result in dismissal and death at the very least. Punishing one's family and implicating the entire clan would not be considered excessive.
Officers, meanwhile, were judged by a different set of standards. Rewards and punishments were applied together. Merit was rewarded, failure was punished, and both were administered clearly.
The most basic rule was that commanders and field officers could calculate their merit only after subtracting the number of deaths among the troops under their command from the number of enemies slain.
Officers had to consider casualty ratios, the total number of enemies killed by their commanded forces, offensive efficiency, and the intensity and strategic importance of the campaign.
Otherwise, an officer with overwhelming personal strength could fight security campaigns alone, endlessly hunting heads and suppressing bandits for scraps of merit, no matter how small each reward might be.
Could the system spiral out of control?
The Empire possessed more than enough land, so there was no need to fear that promised rewards could not be fulfilled.
With Selene acting as the ultimate safeguard, madness was permitted only within approved limits. Anyone who dared step beyond them would be killed. It was that simple and brutal.
The Empire's advanced Honkai-based medical system also ensured that soldiers returning home from the battlefield would not suffer from nonsense such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Mental Seals, shared interests, family obligations, the subtle influence of faith, and omnipresent propaganda and reinforcement all created the distinctive yet contradictory mentality of formally enlisted soldiers within the Imperial military structure.
They did not regard enemies as members of their own kind. They could carry out massacres and issue Exterminatus orders without the slightest guilt. Yet once a conquered territory was formally incorporated into Imperial rule, military administration ended, civil officials arrived, and local taxation began, they would accept the newly conquered world's inhabitants as their own kind at an utterly unnatural speed, smoothly integrating new Servitor Army formations without the slightest hesitation.
Units that had been fighting to the death one moment might stand shoulder to shoulder in battle the next.
That was because the shared identity of the Empire's current citizens was not truly based on ethnicity, bloodline, or even culture and customs. It was based on the Imperial Empress, Selene.
Loyal to the Imperial Empress, worship the God-Empress, pay taxes. Fine, we are the same kind. Otherwise, all may be killed! Their heads may be claimed as military merit!!
Civil administration, criminal cases, penal law, judicial affairs... Those belonged to the assessment standards of civilian officials and were the responsibility of the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Artoria remained silent. Her gaze involuntarily shifted toward the oil painting hanging above the Imperial double-headed eagle ornament. "Iri..."
The painting depicted the upper body of a beautiful woman with long, elegant hair.
She wore a sacred white-and-gold gown that flowed along every graceful curve of her body, exalting a beauty that seemed born from the very ideal of womanhood. Her refined features were perfectly symmetrical, her beautiful silver hair carried a luminous brilliance, and her vivid scarlet eyes possessed a radiance far beyond anything a human could claim. She embodied all that mortals imagined a goddess to be.
Perhaps the artist had wished to emphasize the Empress' merciful, maternal, and sacred nature. The background of the painting contained a pure blue sky and white clouds, floating islands, and gardens. A halo shone above Selene's head, while a faint smile touched her lips and small winged angels circled around her. She possessed none of the coldness or oppressive presence Artoria had glimpsed from her in reality.
Because of this, the sight reminded Artoria of the artificial beauty who had resembled a spirit of pure snow. Her innocence remained unforgettable. At the same time, Artoria glanced from the corner of her eye at her resurrected knights and found a new reason to continue fighting as a knight.
Perhaps once I earn enough military merit, I will be able to make a request of the Empress...
"A 'king' who guides the people..."
Her sacred blue eyes regarded the woman in the painting with a complicated expression as Artoria murmured. At that moment, she could not help thinking that perhaps her own decision to conceal her sex while ruling as king had been somewhat unseemly.
"Not exactly, Saber... Mm, you have already been resurrected, so should I call you Your Majesty King Arth... Uh, Miss Pendragon? Rather than a guide, I believe ruler, sovereign, or overlord would be more appropriate."
Waver Velvet, the nearly invisible presence in the corner, spoke up. Halfway through, he remembered who presently held the title of Majesty and hurriedly changed his wording.
"Why was a third-rate magus like me even granted a place on the journey to the Imperial Capital?" Waver pulled a cigar case from his pocket with a trembling hand, then lit one with equally trembling fingers. The hand holding it continued to shake uncontrollably.
Thinking back on his recent experiences, his life had truly become a series of violent rises and falls. Every time he thought he was about to die, he either lost consciousness or was captured. The Imperial soldier who took him prisoner had even scanned him and assigned him a "combat power: zero" rating.
'Species: adult human male. Unarmed. Physically subhealthy. Extremely weak magical energy response. Waver's pitiful reserves had already been exhausted during the preceding emergency. Threat level: nearly zero. Assessment: civilian.'
Then he had been knocked unconscious with a rifle stock and carried away. By the time he woke, heaven and earth had changed.
"My apologies. I do not know how to comfort you, but I am no longer a king. I am merely a civilian. You may simply call me Artoria, Mr. Waver." Artoria paused for a moment and looked around.
"Mr. Waver, were any others summoned?"
"Probably..."
Creak...
"Oh! Isn't that Saber? Long time no see!"
A hearty male voice rang out. Beyond the opened door, two figures appeared, one in blue and one in purple, walking one behind the other. The words already on Waver's lips immediately died in his throat.
...
The Imperial Capital, Grand Imperial Palace, Schönbrunn Palace.
Selene withdrew her gaze from the trans-spatial webway.
It seemed Cú Chulainn had suited Fu Hua's tastes quite well, and she had taken their unfinished agreement very seriously. Because she had ultimately failed to fulfill her promise to fight him, she had actually exchanged every bit of merit she earned this time for Selene to resurrect Cú Chulainn. Did she simply want another fight, or had her habit of teaching others emerged again?
Shaking her head, Selene dismissed those trivial matters and focused on the pile of official documents covering her desk. Sigh... Perhaps they cannot truly be called trivial. With the Empire expanded to such an immense scale, even though she handled only strategic directives and summarized reports, the documents accumulated over time were still considerable.
Creak...
Selene had only just sat down and picked up a stack of accumulated documents from her desk when the doors decorated with gold and silver reliefs were pushed open by palace attendants. Sebas, who had remained behind in the Imperial Capital, strode inside carrying a folder, delight visible on his face.
"Milady... Oh?" Sebas keenly sensed that something about Selene had changed. Realizing what had happened, he congratulated her. "Your avatar has returned. It appears Milady gained a great deal from this journey."
Selene tilted her head. "Ah, it was acceptable. The spoils simply require far too many improvements."
"What is that?"