Chapter 1

Blood, flame, and ruin...

The Demon lord stood upon the fractured remains of the rampart, a sword in hand, overlooking a city that still burned with the embers of war.

It was a tableau of hell on earth. Gargantuan demons ground houses into dust beneath their feet; wreath-flamed horrors set the city ablaze; hideous, tusky orcs gorged themselves on fresh corpses...

Above, winged monstrosities circled, emitting jarring, cackling laughter. In the shadows, unseen things licked blood from their blades. Beneath the earth, silent horrors dug ever deeper...

This was a carnival of demons, a chaotic dance of darkness.

"Urgh..."

A solitary soldier clawed his way out of the rubble below. Using his sword as a crutch, he twisted his head to survey the devastation. Then, as if seizing a final resolve, he charged up the broken wall, raising his blade against the Demon lord.

Clang!

The Demon lord swatted the soldier's sword away with a casual flick of the wrist. Yet, the man did not stop. Having lost his weapon, he raised a trembling fist.

Squelch!

The Demon lord’s blade pierced the soldier's breastplate, sliding through flesh and bone without a hint of resistance, skewering him completely.

He finally stopped. Drained of all strength, his fist hovered just half an arm’s length from the Demon lord’s chest, unable to strike.

"Demon... lord..."

A raspy, powerless voice echoed from within the helmet. "You... cannot... win! The Hero... will avenge... us! I will see you... in hell..."

With no patience to hear the rest, the Demon lord flicked her longsword upward, ending his life.

It was some time before a figure with azure skin, protruding fangs, and great bat-like wings descended. The demon knelt on one knee.

"Your Majesty. Your subordinate has successfully liquidated all resistance. I await your next command."

"Good. What are the casualties?" The Demon lord nodded, sheathing her sword.

"Under Your Majesty’s radiance and wisdom, humanity was fragile as glass! We lost only two High-Rank and thirty-seven Mid-Rank warriors to conquer this place. No resistance remains! This fortress, which has barred our path for thousands of years, has finally fallen! Your achievements are eternal!"

Ignoring the flattery, the Demon lord nodded with satisfaction. She had intentionally left the massive, slow-moving legions of Low-Tier demons behind, opting for a blitzkrieg with elites. Consequently, there was no cannon fodder to die.

However, conquering a city was different from holding it.

"When will the Ogre Legion arrive?" she asked.

"Your Majesty!"

The winged demon did not answer the question immediately. Instead, his tone turned admonishing. "You are the Demon King now; you are no longer human. Please discard those human slurs! Even if Grand Duke Gruen has offended you in the past, he is one of the Nine Dukes and has sworn loyalty to you. You should maintain basic respect!"

She looked at him, saying nothing. The air began to congeal, heavy with silent pressure.

He kept his head low, avoiding her gaze, but he did not retract his words.

Finally, the Demon lord withdrew her aura and asked again, "So... when does Gruen arrive?"

"Five... no, three days! They will arrive in three days!" He trembled, his body sagging with relief.

"Fine. Get out of here and repair the city defenses."

"Yes, Your Majesty!"

The Demon King glanced at him one last time. "You are very loyal..."

"For Your Majesty, I would die a thousand deaths!" With that, he turned and flew off without looking back.

The Demon lord turned her head, watching the setting sun slowly sink beneath the horizon. She let out a sneer.

"Humans... Demons... Heh!"

__________________

Charlo de Rose. Twenty-four years old. An Imperial Noble.

As the second son of the House of Iron Rose, he had displayed extraordinary talent from a young age. He reached the Third Rank of knighthood before he was even of age, and successfully broke through to the Fourth Rank at twenty—his coming of age ceremony—shattering the records of the Morris Empire and gaining widespread fame.

Normally, as a second son unable to inherit his father's Earldom, the path was clear: join the Imperial Knights, rely on his talent to safely cultivate to the Seventh Rank, pledge loyalty to the Emperor, and easily secure a Countship of his own.

But Charlo did not do that. Instead, he petitioned the Emperor for a Pioneer’s Charter and ran off to the desolate eastern borders of the Empire to become a lowly Baron.

At the time, everyone dismissed it as the petty willfulness of a pampered young master. They believed it wouldn't be long before Charlo de Rose turned his territory into a pigsty and ran back home with his tail between his legs.

After all, someone who reached the Fourth Rank by twenty must have devoted their entire life to martial cultivation. Where would he find the time to learn governance?

However, everyone waiting to see the joke was slapped firmly in the face.

Charlo de Rose not only managed his territory with immaculate order, establishing new systems and enacting reforms, but he also expanded eastward, driving out demi-human tribes and extending his borders to the Endless Sea.

In just four years, he rose from a Landed Baron to a Landed Viscount, receiving multiple commendations from the Emperor.

One had to remember that Charlo's older brother, waiting for their father to retire, was merely a Court Viscount. And a Court Viscount could hardly compare to a Landed Viscount with actual territory and armies!

Ironwood Territory. Inside Ironwood Keep.

Charlo read the letter in his hands, his brows furrowed deeply, his expression grave.

"What is wrong, My Lord? What matter has you so tense?"

A subordinate stood nearby, puzzled. He couldn't understand what could make this ruthless man—who wouldn't blink if a blade was swung at his eyes—look so nervous.

"The Demon King led a grand army and captured the Fortress of the Western Reach... The entire garrison fell, including two Ninth-Rank Knights and a Ninth-Rank Grand Magus! The Archduke of the West is sending distress calls everywhere!"

"Wha... H-How can that be? Oh gods... that is terrifying... Heavens above..."

Ignoring his subordinate's incoherent babbling, Charlo rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on.

"The Fortress of the Western Reach has stood on the western edge of the Empire for over five thousand years... It broke the armies of the previous five Demon Kings... yet it was lost in just a few days? What kind of monster is this new Demon King?"

Charlo gritted his teeth. "Damn it! My magic-powered steam engine has only just been developed; our firepower is barely equivalent to the 19th century. It’s fine against anything below the Fifth Rank, but against the Demon King’s main forces... It looks like we really have to rely on those feudal knights!"

Charlo de Rose had a secret known to no other—he was a transmigrator from Earth.

In his past life, he was a citizen of China. One sudden death later, he found himself transmigrated as the second son of the Earl of Iron Rose in the Morris Empire.

As someone who grew up under the Red Flag, he was utterly unsuited to this medieval world. His childhood was manageable, as he was sheltered, and initially, he only wanted to be a hedonistic young master. But as he grew older and saw more of the world, the discomfort gnawed at him.

He had tried to convince himself that this was a world of the supernatural. The noble lords really could live for centuries; they really were built differently. A random First-Rank Knight could don fifty pounds of heavy armor, swing a massive weapon, and carve through a crowd of a hundred people without running out of breath.

Not to mention the Empire's Knight Orders, composed entirely of Mid-Rank Knights and led by High-Rankers. When they formed a charge, any city wall without magical reinforcement would be trampled to dust, no matter how high or thick.

Therefore, initially, Charlo had no desire to do anything stupid like shouting, "Are Kings and Generals born with noble blood?" and starting a revolution.

But...

He saw the farmers who worked themselves to the bone, only to have eighty percent of their grain confiscated, leaving them skeletal and starving.

He saw slaves abused and slaughtered, killed casually just because they were slow to prostrate themselves when a knight rode by.

He saw commoners stripped of everything, or enslaved, simply because a noble was in a bad mood.

He saw their hollow, numb eyes. He saw their emaciated bodies. He saw their abject, groveling submission.

Charlo could not force himself to accept it. He could not blind his heart to things that challenged his moral bottom line!

So, he refused his father's suggestion to join the Knights and took a Pioneer Decree. If other nobles wouldn't treat people as humans, then he would!

Fortunately, on his first day in Ironwood, he awakened a Tech Tree System!

This system allowed him to use "R&D Points" to unlock technologies: firearm blueprints, gunpowder formulas, machinery designs, and so on. A matchlock musket blueprint cost ten points; a flintlock cost thirty. It had everything—cannons, ships, planes, rockets, satellites.

R&D Points were gained through combat and war. From a brawl between a few people to a national war involving millions—as long as victory was achieved under Charlo's command, he gained points proportional to the scale of the battle.

If this were a historical Earth medieval setting, Charlo was confident he could use this system to send every King, Noble, and Pope into space!

But this was a Magical Middle Ages!

The biggest obstacle wasn't the knights who acted like human Gundams, but Magic itself.

The system's technology was based on Earth's laws of physics. It contained absolutely nothing related to magic!

As far as Charlo could tell, aside from basic mechanics, this world shared almost no physics with Earth!

How did he know? Well, if you punched someone and your hand hurt, Newton’s Third Law was still there.

But the rest? Charlo had no idea. At the very least, a standard steam engine was impossible. Matter in this world was intrinsically linked to mana. Water could turn into steam, but that steam couldn't perform work effectively. Why? Because the weight of the steam didn't match the water! If you boiled one kilogram of water, the resulting steam weighed only one-tenth of a kilogram! The other ninety percent of the mass mysteriously vanished!

In other words—the water in this world wasn't the H₂O Charlo knew. Unfortunately, lacking lab equipment and not being a scientist himself, he couldn't determine the underlying principles.

But if he couldn't copy Earth tech directly, couldn't he adapt the principles?

Over the last four years, Charlo had aggressively recruited mages and studied magic himself. He successfully created mana-infused flintlocks, cast-iron cannons, and just recently, a mana-powered version of the steam engine.

"How goes the recruitment? What are our numbers?" Charlo looked toward his Minister of Internal Affairs.

"As of yesterday, we have 126 new recruits," Lawrence, the minister, replied. "Current active duty: 894 infantry, 225 cavalry, and 187 artillerymen. My Lord, the territory has been tapped dry of suitable recruits. Unless... you wish to conscript the serfs? or lower the entry standards?"

"If there are none, then there are none! Do not mention conscripting farmers or lowering standards again!" Charlo refused without hesitation. "The bar I set is already low enough: No theft, no robbery, no rape, no murder. Just those four rules! If they can't even manage that, how can I expect them to follow battlefield commands? If we have 1,400 men, then we fight with 1,400 men. Starting today, intensify the training. Especially the artillery—increase the weekly live-fire drill allowance by fifty percent."

"Very well. Your will be done." Lawrence bowed and fell silent.