I Choose to Become a Tyrant
Amidst the rising flames, a silver mech appeared out of thin air.
"Is this your trump card?" Theresis drew his saber, pointing it at the figure engulfed in flames.
"Stellaron Hunter, Sam," Xia Yu waved her hand to disperse the flames, "executing cleanup operation!"
The next second, crimson flames erupted behind her, propelling the entire mech toward Theresis like a bolt of lightning.
Theresis directly raised his saber to block, but the very second they made contact, he was knocked back dozens of paces.
His cold, hard face finally began to turn serious.
This power... one wrong move, and he'd end up with broken bones and snapped tendons... How many years had it been since he encountered such an opponent?
Meanwhile, Xia Yu retracted her fist, opened her palm, and made a provocative gesture.
Theresis's strength was actually quite impressive; his sheer power alone was no less than Artoria's.
After all, he was a Sarkaz hero who was at least two hundred years old. Based on his deeds, he'd definitely be a five-star servant in FGO.
"This armor... Kazimierz? Columbia?" Theresis gripped his saber with both hands, starting to get serious.
This silver-white armor style didn't look like Victorian technology—they were far too fond of tall, imposing Steam Knights. It didn't resemble Leithanien either, whose Golden Chorus Guards were brimming with classical art, nor did it match Ursus's ruggedness.
Only the armor styles of Kazimierz were somewhat similar, or perhaps Columbia.
"Glamoth," Xia Yu's voice transformed into Sam's cold electronic tone, "Iron Cavalry of Glamoth."
"Never heard of it," Theresis shook his head, raising his blade forward for a heavy, mountain-cleaving chop.
The innate, raw stats of a Sarkaz made even this ordinary basic move unstoppable.
But when it came to being a stat monster, Firefly was the true expert.
Xia Yu merely raised her hand. The absolute speed brought by her absolute stats allowed her to move later but arrive first, directly reaching out and grabbing Theresis's blade. Instantly, countless sparks flew. The latter tried to pull his saber back, but the blade, tightly gripped by the steel hand, felt as though an entire mobile city was pressing down on it, completely immovable.
'Not good!'
Theresis realized his mistake. He shouldn't have been so anxious. When masters clashed, even the slightest error was fatal. If he had managed to pull his saber out, he could've changed his move and continued fighting, but he couldn't do it!
What this slightly wasted bit of time meant for an expert of this caliber... Theresis knew better than anyone.
He subconsciously let go of the hilt and retreated, but it was already too late.
The armored figure's right leg, carrying crimson flames, whipped toward his chest like a long whip. He only had time to cross his arms over his chest and abdomen before he was kicked and sent flying for a hundred meters.
"General!"
"Protect His Highness!"
Seeing this, the expressions of the Sarkaz mercenaries and his personal retinue drastically changed. They immediately raised their weapons and charged toward Xia Yu.
As warriors, they knew exactly what would happen if the general was quickly pursued and engaged in close combat after a momentary setback.
Especially since the general had also lost his saber.
This was exactly what a personal guard on the battlefield was for. When the main commander was losing a duel, they'd charge in and use their lives to stall the enemy powerhouse, giving their own expert a chance to catch their breath.
For example, the Thirteenth Primarch's Honour Guard, whose most practiced job was rescuing the father of their genes on various battlefields, incidentally using countless lives to stall the enemy's advance (laughs).
"Halt." Right at this moment, Theresa stepped forward, standing between the two sides. "This is a battle between my friend and him."
"She's right, stop," Theresis's voice came from behind the Sarkaz mercenaries. "This is my battle."
The opponent hadn't pursued him, so he wasn't looking too pathetic.
Well, he had been kicked into the ground, plowing a deep trench, and now he stood up completely covered in dirt.
His pinkish-white hair, identical to Theresa's, was covered in mud. Looking at her brother like this, Theresa couldn't help but burst into laughter.
Theresis, however, sighed, his face full of helplessness.
"How long has it been since I've lost my composure like this in front of you?"
"That would be during the Battle of Kazdel last time," Theresa reminisced, her gaze distant. "Back then, you crawled out of a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. You couldn't be called clean by any means."
"Last time was also a moment that decided the fate of the Sarkaz," Theresis walked up to the mercenaries. "Just like now."
"But can the mercenaries under your command really save the Sarkaz?"
"It all depends on human effort," Theresa smiled and stepped back behind Xia Yu. "Alright, Miss Firefly, I'll leave the rest to you."
"Actually, it wouldn't be a problem if they all came at me together," Xia Yu shrugged. "The Iron Cavalry of Glamoth... excels at group combat the most. Compared to a swarm covering the sky, this handful of people is nothing."
"But they're my people after all," Theresa clasped her hands together and blinked at her, putting on a pleading expression. "It'd be best if you go easy on them."
"The Sarkaz still have a lot to do after this. The newly built factories need people, the reclaimed farmland needs people, clearing the trade routes needs people, and the mines need people even more."
"We can't have Miss Bailu's orders arrive in Kazdel, only for us to have nothing but a bunch of crippled casualties left to do the work, right? That'd be too inhumane."
She spoke the most chilling words with the most merciful expression.
"Yeah, I got it," Hearing this, Xia Yu clasped her hands and cracked her wrists. "It takes a hundred days for broken bones and torn sinews to heal, so I'll try my best to go light on them!"
Then, with a flick of her leg, the saber Theresis had dropped flew toward him, and he reached out to catch it.
"Come on, let's continue," Xia Yu raised her hand and beckoned to him.
The two clashed once more. This time, Theresis went all out, and he finally avoided being subdued in a single move.
"You're very confident?"
In the midst of their battle, he even probed, "As a mercenary, what're you going to use to save the Sarkaz?"
His saber viciously cleaved onto her shoulder armor. Against any other opponent, such a strike couldn't be ignored so casually. Back then, Theresis had used this exact slash to decapitate Kal'tsit, the leader of the four-nation allied army.
But the armored figure in front of him didn't even sway, launching a punch right at his face instead.
Theresis had no choice but to pull his blade back to barely block the fist, and then he poured all his strength into another slash at her waist.
Still completely immovable.
"You might be strong, but no matter how strong you are, can you overpower a high-speed warship?" Theresis continued to attack while questioning her.
It was fruitless once again. Even though he was attacking with all his might—a single slash even cleaving the small hill behind the armored figure in half—the armored figure acted as if nothing had happened!
"Victoria can muster at least five hundred warships of various types from across the country," Theresis spoke again. "They even have more than double digits of the most advanced dreadnoughts... The Sarkaz have fallen too far behind!"
"Even if you win this battle, what can you achieve? When the fleets of other nations arrive, Kazdel will still be overturned!"
As he spoke, Theresis was secretly groaning in misery.
Where did his younger sister find this freak? Previously, he thought she came from Kazimierz or Columbia, but now he had completely ruled out those two countries.
They absolutely couldn't produce such high-level combat armor.
Theresis was very confident in his martial prowess. On this continent, the number of people who could block his slashes without a scratch couldn't exceed three.
If combat armor created by technology could reach this level, then the Sarkaz really could be buried.
After all, technology represents mass production and industrialization.
Of course, he wasn't saying all this just to mess with her head; he mainly wanted to figure out where this person had popped out from.
"You're so annoying," Xia Yu, listening to his questioning, completely ignored the slash aimed at her face and directly threw a charged punch!
He couldn't take it head-on! Seeing this, Theresis could only helplessly withdraw his saber to block the iron fist.
This combat armor was simply cheating. He couldn't break its defenses at all, yet the opponent could rely on it to launch attacks without any scruples.
It was too suffocating!
A deep scar was plowed into the earth.
"If we're fighting, then just fight. Why talk so much?" Xia Yu looked at Teacher Theresis leaning on his long sword and suddenly felt he was a bit pitiful.
Forget it, she wouldn't bully him.
Crimson flames surfaced once again, and the steel armor gradually dissipated. The young girl inside returned to the ground.
Then, she reached out and summoned two ice-blue energy swords.
"I won't bully you for your poor weapon quality," she waved the long swords in her hands. "Come on, let's continue!"
Anyway, Firefly's power was never something to worry about. It was the same whether she used the mech or not.
After all, her strength didn't come from the Sam mech, but from her sublimated and transformed heart. The mech was just a vessel. If it weren't for Entropy Loss Syndrome, she wouldn't be willing to stay in the mech all day.
Using the mech to fight was just a habit.
Hearing this, Theresis silently looked at the saber in his hand.
Although his saber wasn't some divine weapon, it definitely wasn't poor quality.
But recalling the opponent's practically peerless combat armor, he could only helplessly accept this fact.
"I still hold the same view, Theresa," Theresis looked at his younger sister. "The assistance of an expert is certainly gratifying, but she can't change the fate of the Sarkaz."
"Defeat my knight first before you say that," Theresa revealed a sly smile. "My dear brother."
"..." Hearing this, Theresis completely shut down and raised his sword to attack again.
Good news: without that iron shell, the opponent had to defend against his attacks.
But fortune and misfortune go hand in hand; there was also bad news.
Looking at those impenetrable twin swords, Theresis could only struggle to defend, completely unable to spare a hand to attack her.
This was the power of stats!
Xia Yu wantonly unleashed the inexhaustible energy in her body, her smile gradually becoming unbridled.
Absolute power brings absolute speed. Every strike of my twin swords is enough to heavily injure you. Do you dare not to block?
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sound of their clashing weapons echoed throughout the wasteland.
The Sarkaz on both sides just watched their hero get completely suppressed in the fight.
And by a seemingly frail little girl, no less.
Finally, during a heavy, powerful slash, Theresis's numb arm dragged him down, making his movement a fraction of a second too slow.
In the eyes of an expert, this fraction was enough to secure victory.
Xia Yu deflected the blade and smacked Theresis right in the face with the flat of her sword.
The latter was sent flying like a baseball, plowing a third trench into the ground.
She had held back. After all, Teacher Theresis wasn't a bad person; the siblings had just been forced into this situation with no other choice.
"...If I'd known, I wouldn't have taken this mission," Xia Yu muttered to herself. "So weak... I'd rather go slaughter a swarm; at least that's more satisfying."
"Miss Theresa, to what extent do I have to beat him for the job to be done?"
"Until he's convinced, of course," Theresa looked at her brother's battered state and laughed quite heartlessly.
"Although he's quite weak, I can still feel that he's not someone who can be subdued by force," Xia Yu shook her head at this. "Someone like him has firm convictions; just beating him won't yield any results."
"If you want to make him give up, you can only find the answer in the questions he asked earlier."
"The answer... the answer..." Theresa shook her head. "Finding an answer is simply too difficult. It's been two hundred years, and I still haven't found one."
"So, I can only use the most extreme, most terrifying method to achieve my goal," she looked at her brother standing up again in the distance and spoke to all the Sarkaz in the wasteland. "And that is to become the Demon King."
A black crown emerged above her head.
"Become the true Demon King!"
"Become a... tyrant!"
Before, she didn't have the power, but now that she had an expert who could swat her brother like a baseball, of course she'd shatter any obstacles with sheer force!
"Have you decided, Theresa?" Hearing this, Theresis asked.
The latter nodded silently. As a merciful Demon King, she originally didn't want to do this, but the Sarkaz were currently weathering a storm, leaving her no room for hesitation.
Simply put, it meant relying on unparalleled martial prowess to forcefully suppress the Sarkaz's hatred towards the outside world. She knew, of course, that this wasn't a good choice. The hatred wouldn't extinguish out of thin air; it'd only burn endlessly like a fire, stretching out under suppression until it erupted one day and burned everything down.
But Theresa had no other choice. If she didn't do this, a Sarkaz civil war was imminent. Compared to a hidden danger that might explode who knows when, she wanted these tens of millions of Sarkaz to survive.
"Miss Firefly," Theresa looked toward Kazdel City in the distance. "There are still thirty thousand Military Commission elites and three Royal Court Lords in the city."
"I have to beat them all up, right," Hearing this, Xia Yu smiled in satisfaction. "Alright, leave it to me."
"It's a pity I'm restricted from killing anyone, otherwise I'd just use scorched-earth tactics. It wouldn't be this troublesome."
"Actually, compared to turning this place into scorched earth, subduing them without killing a single person is the highest level of deterrence," Theresa quickly advised upon hearing this.
She was afraid the girl in front of her would get excited and start a massacre.
But it made sense.
Slaughtering her way through until the Sarkaz were terrified versus defeating an army without killing a single person despite facing so many Sarkaz—those were two entirely different levels of strength.
Of course, Xia Yu was also reluctant to start a massacre. Otherwise, if she killed these elites, who'd do the work in the ruined Kazdel?
Look at these Royal Court elite soldiers, each one big and burly; they were all great workers. They could do the work of an ox in the fields!
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T/N: If you spot mistranslation, do tell me.
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Shilling time!
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