I'm a contradictory man.
Just as I cry out for peace and mercy while loving war more than anyone, it's much the same with the dwarves.
Of course, this one's too horrific to call love.......
'Like and dislike' would be the right way to see it.
"Big Brother, a good dwarf is a dead dwarf! Let's make that the base proposition and get the whole continent spouting it."
As befitted a bastard who once dreamed of a dynastic revolution, Veil loved provocative, propagandistic phrasing.
And he was good at it, too.
'Which is presumably why he even attempted a revolution in that Empire.'
He'd failed only because the current Emperor was monstrously strong; against most kings, Veil's plan might have succeeded.
In any case, Veil had his own reason for making a sensational slogan out of the dwarves.
"Isn't it the dwarves' fault in the end that the elves fire those horrific destruction beams? Only by creating a mood for exterminating the dwarves will the shape of the World War quiet down at all!"
The dwarves' indiscriminate bombing was truly horrific.
Enough that one could understand the elves flying into fits and creating large-scale destruction magic.
But.......
"Aren't the dwarves leeching off the fortress pretty useful? If you insist they all have to die, the fortress dwarves will become a problem someday."
At the time, I argued that not all dwarves were evil, so it shouldn't be done.
Even as hundreds of thousands died to bombing without landing a single sword stroke, I concerned myself with grand justifications.
Looking back now, it's a choice I can't help regretting.
Of course, having regressed, I can now set it right.......
"They're a bit mad, sure, but they're definitely good bastards. Big Brother, let's ask Yuria and just change the race of the fortress dwarves!"
In any case, Veil didn't set his view aside.
Advancing the outlandish logic that to protect the fortress dwarves one need only change their species.
"How can you seek to change at will what a father and mother handed down?"
I'm stubborn in my own right, so in the end I never granted Veil's opinion.
So many dwarves had lived in my mobile fortress, after all.
It began with the princess's gift.
But from the moment my name grew to world scale, the dwarven artisan bastards hiding all across the continent came to the fortress without so much as a warning.
Those bastards were tenacious, persistent, perverse, and hideous.
"Make armor that can withstand my monstrous strength. Do that and I'll let you live in the fortress."
Dwarves are stubborn and enormously proud.
Dwarven artisans never cooperate with one another.
Yet hundreds of them banded into one and worked day and night to make the arms of me, Mercenary King Jack.
"G-Gather, all of you!!! A masterwork....... history—. We must make a masterpiece that later generations will mistake for a Mystery when they dig it up!!!"
The dwarves were quite noisy.
But as someone who worshipped speed, I put up with that much.
Gather over a hundred of the dwarven race's finest artisans, and a production time measured in years would shrink to 'one month.'
"Kuhu—. Mercenary King Jack's armor, and the one who handled its little finger was I, the blacksmith Ropia!!!"
"Tsk, tsk, greenhorns. Compared to me, who made the pauldrons alone, you fall far short."
The bastards drooled as they boasted of the armor I would wear.
Regardless of age or sex, dwarven artisans were madmen who raved over my existence.
I seriously considered driving them out, but—.
"Armor that withstands one hundred percent of my monstrous strength......."
Though it was not a Mystery, the world granted it a name of its own accord, and my armor was named [Absolute Armor].
That was the moment I accepted them as company members in the true sense.
"What are you thinking about, Boss?"
As I sank into thought, Mel looked at me with a sly smile.
"Madmen who would keel over at a single word from me and shut themselves in the forge, drooling all the while."
"You secretly like them."
"In the end they never once betrayed my expectations."
Their artisan's spirit and obsession gave my Monstrous Strength Swordsmanship no end of inspiration.
Even Bone Reforging was formulated with reference to the dwarves' process of filtering impurities out of iron.
Above all.
"Don't the lives of artisans deserve respect?"
Later, when the mobile fortress was seized by the Empire, the dwarves all took their own lives at the same hour, declaring they would keep their fidelity to me.
Even if regressing had erased it, within the heart of me, Mercenary King Jack, a debt to be repaid had been born.
Even so.......
In this life, I'll say this:
"A good dwarf is a dead dwarf."
"Oh, Boss!!! Do you mean it?"
The me of my past life was feeble and could not repudiate the dwarven race.
In this life I must not be feeble.
It would be right to call it the duty of one who knows the future.
"I've got no intention of allowing such futile deaths, millions vanishing to a single bomb."
***
I, Mercenary King Jack, was one who took responsibility in war.
But sometimes, as now, acting alone was more useful.
Mel and I returned to the Kranel territory leading a single dwarven prisoner.
'A perfect assassination has become possible.'
Regression kept showing new facets as time went on.
[The Demon Sword That Would Be Strongest If It Did Not Break]
The soul lodged in my sword came with a highly unusual function, no less than Corpse Devouring.
Thanks to it, I'd pulled off a perfect assassination, one that went beyond the ordinary kind that erases witnesses and erased the evidence as well.
What remained was to finish the interrogation and prepare for war.
"Gurk......!!!"
The dwarf, minced thoroughly by Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation, let out a soundless scream.
And Mel continued the interrogation in a gentle voice.
"So this is where you're running the nuclear test for the first time?"
"Y-Yes! T-T-That is so."
I thought I might add one spectator here.
My greatsword with its feeble soul.
'If it's built to grow stronger through Corpse Devouring, it might try to climb over me someday.'
SWISH—.
I stood the greatsword against the wall.
Turning it so the gem faced exactly toward the dwarf.
Then I applied Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation to the dwarf once more—.
"!!!!"
A soundless scream rang out.
And—.
SHUDDERRR!!!
The greatsword leaning against the wall began to vibrate madly.
From the gem set in the hilt came the shrieking of the feeble soul.
The warning that it too could end up like that seemed to have landed well.
And as proof of it——.
TING—rrrolll.
The gem spat something out.
A small bead, yet with something familiar about it.
'A pure mana stone? No, the feel is a little different.'
A sword that vomits strange mana stones.
They said it was a Mystery buried in a mine; there seemed to be some connection.
In my past life I had shattered the gem and never had the chance to verify such a thing; if this was real, it was a most encouraging result.
Of course, I wasn't entirely pleased.
"You were hiding something again. Mel, I'll go educate this thing."
Handing the well-tenderized dwarf over to Mel, I attempted conversation with the sword.
The sword trembled but answered my questions obediently.
"I'll give you one chance, the first and the last. What's this bead?"
—M-My Source of Power....... I spat it out. T-That truly is all of it!
The bead, resembling a refined mana stone, bore the distinctive name 'Source of Power.'
A name even I, who had wandered the whole continent, was hearing for the first time.
"The Source of Power. What happens if you gather them?"
At most I assumed it would be some kind of mana reservoir.
But the answer the sword gave far transcended my imagination.
A secret dwelt in my sword that went past stirring interest and set me raving.
—If I gather Sources of Power to the limit, I become capable of a second-stage evolution.
"Evolution?"
The sword answered.
That it——.
—My form changes....... and my functions, too, greatly—.
That it was a sword that could transform.
It was already serviceable simply for being outrageously hard, and that it transformed on top of that was an answer that struck the very strings of my heart.
"Haaah......."
As a child, raised under a father who served that piece-of-shit god, I had nothing to call a taste.
I didn't know how to play at all.
Swordsmanship, training, and crushing strong enemies were the whole of the fun I knew.
But after meeting my comrades, much changed.
Meaning I too came to have things worth calling tastes or hobbies.
"Transformation—."
Among them, things that transformed and things I could ride got me especially excited.
'The mobile fortress, say...... or an Ancient Dragon.'
Both were fun things that moved and even transformed.
And so—.
"Does it grow larger when it transforms? What changes?"
Deep interest stirred.
It seemed that in this life I would keep this sword's jewel alive to the end.
—I-I do not know either.
"Then strive until you do."
I said this as I jammed the so-called 'Source of Power' back into the sword's hilt.
Adding that if it could not transform I would simply break it, so it had best strive to its utmost and reveal its true form.
By the time we had talked this far, Mel had finished the interrogation and came over.
"I heard something interesting."
My sensing ability was tremendous.
But it wasn't an ability that worked around the clock.
It only worked when I focused on what I wanted to hear and stayed conscious of it.
Which meant that when my mind was taken up by something as important as a transforming sword, I could miss a conversation happening right beside me.
Mel asked me without any explanation.
"What do you think, Boss?"
My comrades often assumed I was hearing every sound.
If I had to live with my detection active at all times, I might have gone mad long ago.
The sound of a tree breathing.
The feel of mana flowing through the air.
An instant is enough to sense all of it.
So I hadn't bothered to focus on Mel's interrogation.
"You don't need to explain all that just to say you got distracted by the sword transforming! Of course you love things that transform and things you can ride!"
Mel condensed and summed up my explanation.
Adding that in the world where Mel had lived, expensive vehicles were the symbol of the very rich.
"For you that's the Ancient Dragon or the fortress, right?"
"Ahem—."
Talk of hobbies still made me a little bashful, so I quickly brought up the main matter and changed the subject.
"Mel, what did the dwarf say?"
"That the Dwarf Kingdom's technology is the world's finest."
Only then did I learn the original purpose the 'Nuke' the dwarves built was meant to serve.
***
"Annihilate the land and build their own cities on the scorched earth—."
It was the notion of lunatics.
Humans live between earth and sky.
According to Veil's trashy books, this is called Heaven, Earth, and Man.
"Truly an impudent notion."
Nature is one vast law that must never be disregarded.
It is because nature exists that humans can live.
"Bastards who'd kill sky, earth, and people alike, and their goal is to build cities? This is the first I've heard of bullshit like this."
The dwarves' Nuke was a horrific weapon that brought only annihilation, ruin, and destruction.
Once fired, it was an irreversible catastrophe that left only results.
And yet.......
"These bastards don't seem to know anything about what comes after the Nuke goes off, do they?"
Heaven, Earth, and Man.
If you kill everything that lives, what remains?
Death.
Death, too, is a result.
Even if corpses vanish, vengeful spirits remain, and when nature dies, death energy overflows.
These become the power of all evil things.
"Doing it out of ignorance makes it even more vicious."
"Since it was none other than the dwarves who threw the evil gods their festival."
Black mages, necromancers, and followers who worship evil gods.
My father used to say:
"Jack, good exists in this world. Lord Tyra, the War God, is one who belongs to it."
Because good exists, evil exists.
Because light exists, shadow exists.
But I believe light too can become evil.
'At least that piece-of-shit god stays quiet; that much is fortunate.'
The evil gods called the continent's Three Great Churches were of a different order.
The Three Great Churches sought out the sites of dwarven bombings more diligently than anyone.
They used the pretext of purification and the enforcement of justice to grow their influence over a region.......
Wherever the bastards showed up, the commoners of the surrounding area were exploited enormously under the name of 'donations.'
In any case, Mel's investigation concluded that all of this was a product of 'coincidence.'
"That's why they poured it out even more recklessly."
"Tsk."
The dwarves' objective was to obtain land with the Nuke.
They were not satisfied ruling the southwestern land called the continent's mine, steeped in magical affinity and every sort of mineral.
They sought to encroach on the domain of the elves who rule nature and to invade the lands of humans who had been prospering on their own.
No doubt they had dreams of their own.
Fertile farmland.
A rich, self-sufficient life.
The most commonplace of justifications.
But their Nuke was far too powerful.
"Death is not the end. Even granting that they failed to consider nature's curse piling up afterward—."
I was certain the world's flow would be the same in this life too.
Hadn't I already confirmed it in this country through that scum Murphy?
"In the end the dwarves will fire a Nuke at the World Tree."
Elves and dwarves are sworn enemies.
Not a racial instinct, but the product of a chain reaction of revenge repeated over thousands of years.
In any case.......
"Even if civil war breaks out, the Kingdom of Alton won't be wiped out."
That was good news for me.
Speaking from the result, I gained the conviction that this petty kingdom could survive.
'So long as the civil war is stitched up quickly once it erupts.......'
An unfinished dwarven Nuke could be stopped.
To do that I would have to wage war from now on without a moment's rest.
I donned my armor and spoke to Mel.
"Time to go greet our guests."
***
A week had passed since we mustered the entire Kranel knight order and territorial army to prepare for the coming civil war.
We were gathered before the margravial castle to march out.
To greet our guests—.
"Y-Your Excellency! The knights who left with the merchant company have returned!!!"
We had estimated at least another week.......
The knights who had left for the Empire returned far sooner than expected.
They returned bearing news of friends most welcome to me, and they carried a sign I could confirm without hearing a word.
CLICK—.
For the first time in a very long while.
The piece-of-shit god's necklace responded.
[Find the War God's three Apostles and unlock the Authority.]
[Conditions met.]
At last it seemed I would see the true power of that piece-of-shit god.
Along with a sinister voice, my consciousness sank into a distant golden world.