The sun is setting. Red and orange are the most prominent colours to be seen streaking the clouds in the sky.

Such fiery sunlight is entering a small room through an open window. This room is filled with books, files and documents.

No bookshelves however. All of the reading items are piled around a man.

This man is reading one of the many documents. He is sitting on the hard wooden floor, his back against the wall opposite the window, so that he can take advantage of the sunlight to illuminate the pages he’s reading.

The man is wearing a grey, shortsleeved undershirt and beige, corsair pants up to his waist. The man is extremely well built. His eyes are quickly clearing each page of the document in front of him.

His eyes with purple irises and black slit pupils.

At the sides of his head are pointed ears, nearly hidden by long, golden hair streaked with red at the sides.

Additionally, a set of spiral horns appear on the sides of his head.

Is this a human?

No. This is a being named Alin. He is reading his documents in his room diligently, in preparation for an event.

A light-brown, wooden door opens to the left of Alin. Into the room walks a woman in a beautiful, black dress with long, white sleeves and a skirt going down to her feet. Her hair is long, blood red and unkempt.

She is quite beautiful. The figure of her dress shows her small-medium breasts, shapely thighs and a gorgeous rear. Her head has two cute, white horns on the sides, like dragon teeth, and a medium-length, white horn sprouting from the centre of her forehead, curving upwards.

Her ears are also pointed.

She has come to deliver some important news.

“Sir, our researchers have given high-probability confirmation.”

“Hm.”

Alin raises his eyebrows without shifting his gaze from his reading material.

“This morning, our atmospheric sensors detected their arrival. A few minutes ago, after conducting some thorough verification, our personnel in Celestial Detection confirmed that, in all likelihood, this is a 98% real event. They arrived in a western subregion of Enkel, called Ystria.”

“Alright, give me the details of the area later.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there an estimate of how many arrived?”

“The researchers haven’t been able to make solid estimates, however one of our magic physicists made an educated guess of over 200. Assume what you will.”

“Sigh, more of a likelihood that some will slip through our fingers then... For an active summoning facility, I can assume around... a thousand to two thousand holy knights, a dozen or so archbishops and... will there be...”

Without craning his neck to face her, Alin stares at Heliaye with anticipation. She feels his gaze pierce the eyes of her soul. She nonchalantly averts her gaze from his face, as if blinking first.

“Yes sir, it is doubtless that there will be a cardinal there... However, it may be too much to expect the pope himself. He likely wouldn’t use teleportation to reach there immediately. He might take about... three days to reach there himself. We have a general radius in Enkel where we can place him at the moment and from there to Ystria, assuming perfect travel conditions, three days is a conservative estimate. Five with poor travel conditions. Maximum a week.”

In a swift motion, Alin stood up straight from his seated position, gracefully enough to not knock the piles of books surrounding him across the floor.

“That’s perfect! How long would he stay with the heroes, you think?”

“Disregard him, sir. Frankly, it would be wise to disregard the Cardinal as well.”

“I know that they can eject at all times but still, depending on how we play things, we may be able to capture them.”

“That seems unlikely unless our assault team is small enough and skilled in covert operations.”

Alin slumps his shoulders at Heliaye’s honest assessment.

“Hmmm. Anyways, how many soldiers can we dispatch to raid the facility?”

“Most of our soldiers are still stationed at the southern Wilhem theatre, defending against the HSF Navy. It’ll take a few more days to annihilate their vessels.”

“The Enkel food and water situation must be getting more desperate, huh...”

“Furthermore, I moved a large number of soldiers to the northern Wilhem coast in order to guard against a bilateral siege. Right now sir, we don’t have enough available soldiers for a large scale assault against over 1000 holy knights, not to mention the archbishops and cardinals.

“How long would we have to wait for that business at the Wilhem southern coast to slow down, rough estimate in clear terms?”

“Approximately 2 weeks. Estimated casualties on our side, dead and injured, about four hundred to a thousand. Estimated casualties for the HSF assuming total annihilation, approximately three thousand to four thousand. The admirals and generals aboard the human vessels would have probably ejected by the end of it.”

“Fuck. Ok. What about teleportation?”

“Our quick travel technology has been improving but it doesn’t compare to their side just yet, so, in the best case, it would take our warrior mages working for two weeks straight to send the number of soldiers we’d need for Ystria.”

“What is the likelihood that our fine ‘heroes’ will be moved from the summoning facility by the time an assault can be launched?”

“The logistics required to transport that many of them to a new area would require at most a week of preparation. It’s a good thing they arrived earlier than estimated though, otherwise preparations might have already been made to roll them out today. After they leave the summoning area, our teams might not be able to track them throughout Enkel.”

“Hm.”

“Sir, they don’t know we can track the initial summon point yet, so now would definitely be the best time to strike.”

“Don’t patronize me, Heliaye, I got that part.”

“I apologize.”

“It’s fine. Alright then... what percentage of heroes is likely to escape in the best case assault?”

“I can’t say that right now. If a cardinal is there, it’s possible that all of the heroes can be transported if they use the cardinal’s teleport artifacts. However, it is unlikely that enough items will be manufactured and distributed to the heroes this early, especially if they have a number over 100. Assume that in the worst case, all of them could escape and in the best case, dozens could still make it out of there.”

“Sigh. Fine... Hey Heliaye... do you know why it’s so hard to find heroes who wish to defect to our side?”

“...I’ve been assuming that the humans have some kind of compulsion magic for their heroes. We don’t really know enough about the mark of the hero...”

“No, no, if they had magic like that, the heroes would all be perfect slaves without wills of their own... You may be a little young to know this but heroes aren’t just random people summoned from the other world. They’re all soldiers.”

“...huh?”

“Highly trained, elite of the elite soldiers... from that world. It’s one of the main reasons why they’ve given us so much... trouble in the past.”

“How... does that work exactly?”

Alin smiles brightly. He is fascinated by the heroes to some extent. He had spent a few hours yesterday reading his mother’s notes about the heroes and how they were summoned.

“That world has wars just like ours does. The proxy of Sapiora on that world formulated a method to get the heroes to side with the humans here. They offer the otherworlder soldiers protection from certain death in a battle over there, as well as total victory over the enemy battalion or company or whatever in that particular battle, in exchange for following the will of Sapiora and accepting the terms of his summoning proposal to them. The soldiers he’s picked are often highly devout people who keep their word.”

“Oh, so that’s why most of the summoned heroes were men...”

“Exactly, their societies over there are also highly patriarchal and force men onto the battlefield to do the fighting. At least that’s how it’s been for the last few summonings.”

Alin walks back and forth in the room while explaining these fun facts.

“Wow, more planning goes into hero selection than I thought...”

“Those monsters are pretty smart. Think about it. If you just selected random people who didn’t know what was going on, you’d get traumatized individuals useless in battle, ripped away from their families and friends, forced to live in another world. What you need are the already dead.”

“Huh...”

“Still, it’s ironic to me how meaningless the struggle of the heroes are. The gods they worship aren’t Sapiora, they’re the gods of their world... yet, they fight for Sapiora because they seek the approval and blessing of any higher power to fight for so long as they’re convinced of its authority... and as long as they can do whatever they want with His approval.”

“I agree, sir.”

“Ok, Heliaye, enough talk. Prepare my weaponry. I think it’s clear that the only course of action is for me to embark--”

“Hold on a minute, sir! D-Don’t be so--”

“Heliaye...”

Heliaye freezes at the pressure emanating from Alin. She falls to one knee and bows her head in solemn deference before Alin.

“I apologize, your majesty.”

“...don’t call me that... I’m sorry, I just... I-I have to know, Heliaye. I have to know where They are. If the cardinals or even those worm archbishops can give me a clue, we have a chance at victory but if... if we don’t... my mother would never forgive me...”

“I apologize, sir. I will accept my death.”

“Shut up, Heliaye... fucking hell... You know I didn’t raise you children to die for me, right? I raised you to live for me, and to die for this nation. Do the other generals also offer their lives to me just because I raised my voice?”

“...y-yeah probably, sir...”

Alin breathes in a deep sigh...

“Just remember the stakes here, Heliaye. If we don’t find Them, we don’t have a shot at victory.”

“Yes, sir.”

“My plan will be to launch a solo, covert mission to assassinate the heroes and to find Their location. The fledgling heroes and the holy knights are currently nothing before me but you know what’ll happen if even 50 heroes gain power... our total extermination.”

“...yes, sir.”

“I plan to leave in three days alone. Show me the map of the region.”

“Right away.”

Heliaye stands up, exits the room and returns with a map of the Holy Sapioran Federation, drafted about 20 years ago. She lays it out on the floor while moving Alin’s books out of the way.

The landmarks wouldn’t change too drastically in 20 years time, at least that’s the hope. It’s the best they have at the moment.

Alin looks at it in displeasure.

“Don’t we have spies to bring us more current maps?”

“None of them have ventured as far as Ystria, it never contained anything of importance. It’s a grouping of thick forests, too hard to trek. It’s been hard to justify bringing people through that area without them being assumed to be spies. Apparently, the Holy Sapiora Federation haven’t even developed the area or extracted any resources from there yet. This is the best we have for that area.”

“One thing after another... ok... so it should take me about two days to from here to there.”

“By foot... sir, you may not... you may not like this idea but... could you bring Herma with you?”

“What?”

“It might make it easier to travel there and escape if you had an aerial escort.”

“Haven’t I been clear? You want me to bring Herma for this? A high danger mission like this? Aside from the fact that they’d really only slow me down: Heliaye. I refuse to use Herma for espionage or escort missions. Dragons are a part of us, they’re not pets and not tools or weapons... Herma is my beloved...”

“Sir, what if we ask them? They may be willing to--”

“No, Heliaye... I will overlook this transgression, but do not bring it up again...”

“...I apologize. Sir... can you really do this yourself? I understand your strength... however...”

“...oh you of little faith. General Heliaye, I ask you before all that is holy, who am I? Call me by my full title this time.”

“...your majesty. You are the Immortal Emperor of the Supreme Azazelin Empire. Child of Heaven. Our beloved ruler.”

“And don’t you forget it. I will extinguish them. I will extinguish all of the ‘heroes’. By my authority as Emperor, I command you to make the necessary preparations, Divine General Heliaye. The time has come once again for me to enter battle.”

“Yes, your majesty.”