This is a fucking disaster.

"-and even with two months to build up our defenses, we only withstood the barbarian attack for a few days," Senator Godasen explained to the assembled senators. "While we checked their advance at first, it took only two days for us to be driven from the Hill completely. And then it took only a few more days for them to drive us from the field entirely."

"What was the size of this barbarian force?" Some senator I didn't know questioned.

"A few thousand at most, but-" Godasen was drowned out by a choir of jeering and rancorous outbursts from the gathered senators.

This was simply a fucking disaster.

Even before I took my seat in the Senate Chambers to hear from the sole surviving general from Alnus Hill I could tell this was going to be a fucking disaster. Both Stilicho and Victrix had shared with me all the information the Senate had been told in advance of this hearing from survivor testimonies. A tale of powerful spellcasters raining down fire across the battlefield, towers of glass and steel, entire cohorts dying to unseen powers as they lined up for battle, metal wagons rolling beside metal elephants with unholy energies, of an entire battlefield that became a feast for carrion.

With a casualty rate reaching sixty percent I can confidently say this whole expedition was a disaster.

And it only got worse when the force from the other side established their own foothold in Falmart.

"You lost Alnus Hill from a few thousand barbarians!"

"General Kobalt had ten legions under his command! How incompetent are you to falter against such a pitiful force?!"

"Did you order your men to fall upon their own blades rather than fight?!"

"Senators, my men were wiped out by the cohort!" Even banged and bruised as he was from the battle at Alnus, needing a cane to even stand before his colleagues, Godasen still seemed to have enough fight in him to stand his ground against the constant jeering and shouting. "I saw rank upon rank being ripped to shreds by powerful magic as they marched forward! They even used great rods of explosive fire against us! I only stand before you today because I and a group of battlemages raised a barrier to protect ourselves from one such rod and I still nearly died. Believe me when I say I have never seen such powerful magic."

I wince as the senators start shouting over one another again, trying to clear my head and make sense of what the man was describing. Strip away all the hyperbole of a pre-industrial individual society trying to make sense of industrial warfare and it becomes very easy to figure out what happened. The legions had marched into a major urban center on the other side only to get pushed back by local military forces, who then launched a counter invasion of Falmart to control the single crossing point between worlds.

No wonder men died by the tens of thousands. Even ignoring the 'explosive rods' that fell from the sky or 'metal animals' controlled by 'unseen magic', simply marching men into machine gun fire would have quite the devastating effect on one's manpower.

Honestly, this whole thing looked like a strange reflection of what the Aztecs must have thought upon seeing Spanish weapons for the first time in the 1500s. Only instead of primitive single shot rifles, it's a society that has at least reached the capacity to use fully automatic weapons and armored vehicles.

And knowing my luck, the people from the other side of the Gate are probably commies because of course they would be. Seems something Being X would arrange for to piss me off.

But even before Godesan finished his testimony, eventually just walking off to the side when senators just started shouting at each other rather than asking him anything, many of the men present seemed to have their own genius plan to deal with the 'barbarians'.

I can't help but roll my eyes every time I hear someone say that word about an industrialized state. Yes, I know 'barbarian' is meant as shorthand for 'people not of the Empire', but its connection with primitive and backwards is something that is hard to disassociate from the word.

Still, that hardly stopped them from claiming they knew the answer.

Attack!

Retreat!

Loss of revenue!

Hold the line!

Pray for the apostles' deliverance!

All these cries became even more incoherent as each new voice tried to talk over the other. A choir of noise kept bouncing off the marble floor and walls to make some strange echo effect.

"Can you imagine if the legions fought with as much vigor as the senators argued," Gaius whispered beside me. The sole member of my retinue to be allowed in with me since demi-humans, slave or free, were barred from entry while the Senate was in session. "Even an apostle would fall before such a foe."

"I still can't imagine how you still have your head with how you talk," I quip back, eyeing the senate guards spread throughout the chamber.

"If anyone can hear us over this, they deserve my head as a prize," as always, the eunuch joked about his own mortality, casually saying a few more curt insults before returning to his papers. I still can't understand how he can concentrate with all this noise.

Sighing, I cast an eye around to see what the few people I could recognize here were doing.

Stilicho was one of the few quiet militarists, such as he wasn't shouting for an immediate counter attack, seemingly deep in thought. His silence was mirrored by several others who looked to him for some type of 'queue' to proceed.

Victrix was busy with another senator seated a row above him. From my vantage point it looked like he was trying to make some arrangement with someone from another faction. The senator in question constantly looked over his shoulder as if the mere sight of being associated with a populist would ruin him.

And the Emperor? Quiet, contemplative even, looking over the senate from his throne with a pair of praetorians. Credit where it's due, he wasn't giving off the impression he was hardly sleeping the past few weeks, though if I looked hard enough, I could see the faint bags under his eyes. But maybe that's because I knew how heavy they looked beforehand. Regardless, he looked like he was just waiting for the senators to run out of breath, or lose their voices, before saying anything one way or the other.

Yet just as I was getting ready to get up and wait outside, a voice silenced all the others.

"Shame on you, shame on every one of you!" A new voice boomed from amongst the rumblings from the other side of the viewing gallery, drowning out all the others around it.

In a flash of movement, a red-haired man descended down to the senate floor waving a gem topped cane like a conductor of sorts. "Do you hear me? Shame on all of you! Are you men of the Empire or boys playing at statecraft? What is this cowardness I'm hearing? Retreat? Withdraw? Senators, an enemy stands before us, has spilled our blood, taken our land, and I hear talk of enduring this dishonor?"

"You are confusing caution for cowardness, Governor Sygarius," a senator countered, glaring at the man. "Perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to label us cowards if your lands were under threat?"

Right, Governor Syagrius, Selene's father. The man who probably (absolutely) arranged Kati's death, and would benefit greatly from a weakened centralized military, is trying to shame people into marching imperial forces into machine gun fire. How odd.

Not really, since a weakened one is easy to overthrow.

"My lands are always under threat, Senator," the Governor rebuked. Despite not being a member of the body a governorship seemed to impart enough authority to grandstand before the entire Senate. At least enough for the guards to not throw him out. "Or have you forgotten; Soissons is the bulwark against western intrusions. Every year my domains face untold amounts of sacking and pillaging from beastmen and all manner of uncivilized demi-humans. Perhaps you are not merely cowards but so squeamish to the sight of blood you'd rather shut yourself away than defend imperial land?"

"How dare you!" oh that got a senator angry, the balding man standing up and pointing an accusatory finger at the governor. "Do you think I'll sit here and be lectured to by some fool from a backwater such as yourself! A man who lets savages take his own daughter as a war prize because he couldn't fight off his own barbarian incursions?"

"Haha… I may have been away from court for some time, but 'war prize' is a strange way to refer to a queen," It was subtle, but I saw the governor's grip on his staff tightened and the edge of his smile twitch.

That's right, Selene said her older sister got married to a barbarian king. The tomboy prefaced the phrase by saying Asterix wasn't like the 'other' barbarians and was a 'noble barbarian' who understood rule of law. I don't think she realizes how patronizing that sounds.

"But beyond that," he continued, pointing his staff at the senator, "I do believe you will sit there and be lectured from me. Or perhaps you wish to be lectured to by my associate?" Sygarius pointed to the looming form of his dragon-scaled champion in the spectator's row. Even without his blade I had little doubt the man could snap the plump senator's neck like a twig. "Though fair warning, he's not as understanding as I am."

"Enough Governor," Marquise Casel finally intervened in the argument. Being the First Senator, the Marquise did have jurisdiction over the flow of conversation on the floor. I bet he waited until his fellow senator was sufficiently chastised before actually stopping the argument. "No matter what point you wish to make, threatening a member of the senate is a criminal offense."

"But my dear Marquise, I've made no threats," Clovis defended himself and feigned ignorance, "I merely offered him another conversation partner while advising him of the risks. It would be negligent for me to do otherwise."

"Naturally," Casel didn't even pretend to believe him.

"Why, Marquise, I-"

"Enough," the Emperor calmly, but firmly, stated. Raising one hand to call for silence in the chamber. One by one, the voices of the senators died down. "While your input is appreciated, governor, I would ask you to return to your seat for the time being. This is a matter for the Senate to debate, not you."

"But of course your Majesty," giving an overexaggerated bow, the red haired man made his way back to the spectator seats.

"Very well then," the Marquise looked to an aid, "we shall resume our discussion on the-"

"There is nothing more to discuss," the Emperor stated, interrupting the First Senator. Looked like he was tired with the back-and-forth childishness as I was. "I have heard your concerns, senators, governor, and through it all I have reached a simple conclusion: we must attack."

'Attack?' I could barely believe my ears. The same man who was sleepless from the deluge of reports citing how his military forces were annihilated now wants to attack? Again?

No. There was something more to this.

"Attack? Your Majesty, even if we were to counter attack, we simply don't have the manpower available for such an action," Casel argued over the murmurings of the Senate. "As you well know, Northmen raid along the northern shores, eastern horse lords' mass for attacks along our territories bordering the stepp, the colonies buckle under increasing demi-human assault, and as Governor Syagrius has pointed out we are even beset from the west. Simply put, the legions and troops in the Battle of Alnus represented the sum total of all our available forces. Unless your majesty is suggesting we pull our forces back along every front, abandoning our frontier territories to attack, there is simply no way we can muster a force sufficient enough to launch a counterattack against this new foe."

"How dare you," a senator interrupted, "his Majesty is-"

"You are correct Marquise Casel," The Emperor interrupted his own sycophant. "Given our recent setbacks, we lack the immediate means to counter these barbarians ourselves."

"The loss of tens of thousands is merely a setback, your majesty?"

"It is. Compared to inevitable victory, even costly defeats are simply setbacks," The Emperor argued, though I can tell a PR spin was incoming when I see it. The emperor stood up from his throne and looked to the assembled senators, "Senators, I ask you this: When our legions were smashed in the Northern Wars by the berserkers, did their loss herald the end of the Empire? When Telta was sacked by the very same horde, did the Empire fall? When Rolf Kingsblood himself reached Sadera's very gates, intent to put every man within to the sword and drag our women and children back to the frozen north in chains, did we give into fear?"

"No!" several senators shouted in response to the Emperor's questions. Just a few at first, but by the last question the reply came in a thunderous choir. By the last one, the 'no' boomed across the chamber.

"No, we did not," he affirmed the senators' answer. "We were battered, we were bloodied, but we never broke. We faced Kingsblood's horde just outside Sadera's gates. My own ancestor cut through the barbarian lines and took the Northman's head. Our Empire proved itself stronger than that savagery. And as it was before, so shall we again!"

"Then how will we deal with this… setback of thousands dead and legions wiped out," Casel, as opposed to many of his colleagues, was still unmoved by the Emperor's speech.

The emperor grinned, "As one! We shall defeat this foe, but we must do so united. For these barbarians are not simply an enemy to the Empire, but to every civilized person across all of Falmart. Therefore, we must meet them with the full might of Falmart united under one banner; our banner! I shall call upon our client and vassal states to march beside our forces against the foe upon Alnus Hill. Together, we shall drive these barbarians back through the Gate and protect our lands from any further aggression!"

The chamber erupted into cheers.

The Marquise said something to the Emperor, but I couldn't hear what it was over the noise. I could only see that the emperor found it amusing.

The session of the Senate ended shortly thereafter, with a sense of relief and anticipation in the air as the senators exited the chamber. That the 'war' was as good as won.

Hmmm. I knew better. The issue at hand wasn't 'how are we going to win' it was 'how horribly are we going to lose'. They could throw half a million men at the Gate, an industrialized and entrenched foe will sooner run out of ammo then get pushed out of their defenses from such an attack. That is assuming they only have machine guns and hold back on using other weapons like poison gas to break any assault.

But my mind always comes back to the question of how technologically advanced these 'barbarians' are. Are they simply 'Great War' era with rudimentary tanks, or a post-twenty first century force with laser guided missiles, or even some science fiction army with standard issue hand-held railguns?

But I had my way of finding out. After all, I didn't come to this meeting just to listen to a bunch of people be flabbergasted over industrial warfare.

"Senator Godasson!" I picked out the wounded mage from the crowds, the senators in-between making way as they saw who I was.

"Your Highness," the man appeared to try and give me a bow, but the pain in his gut seemingly made him stop halfway. "You honor me with your presence.

"I heard what you said in the meeting," I noticed him grimace at that, "I just want you to know I think you did everything you could, given the circumstances."

"I am honored to hear you think so."

"But I did also want to ask you something," now came the tricky part. How to ask a question in an innocent way?

"How may I serve you?"

"I wanted to know if you had any of those g-…magic wands you mentioned the barbarians had earlier," caught myself almost saying what they really were. I already knew he had a number of guns recovered from the initial battle on the other side of the Gate. 'Had' being the keyword, since most were given over to the Imperial enchanters for examination of how such 'sorcery' worked.

My real question is if he kept any for himself. How complicated they were would be a good baseline for what kind of industrial base the 'barbarians' had.

"Apologies, your highness, but what interest do you have in such things?"

Ah, a question I planned for ahead of time!

"After hearing about what happened, I thought that maybe I could offer my own observations to the discussion," I replied with all the finesse I practiced for.

My reply seems to have been the right call, the senator smiling at my words, "When you put it like that, Your Highness, I might just have something that interests you."

------
------

The senator led me to his personal estate with my retinue in tow, unnecessary pleasantries were exchanged as the man had his whole family meet with me before he brought me to a courtyard where he had laid out the unknown 'magical artifacts'. In a little patch of garden sat a collection of crates and tables.

"These are the wands I spoke of," the senator reached into a crate for a bundle of cloth. He unraveled the cloth and placed the metallic object on the table.

It took me less than a second to realize what they were.

"Though I have judged these objects to not be cursed, I must ask you to observe the most extreme care with these things," he advised me, placing yet another beside the first gun. "Many auxiliaries, and even a few legionaries proper, were wounded and even killed by these contraptions."

"Interesting," I feigned surprise, watching the man place a total of five guns on the table. Three semi-automatic handguns and two revolvers. The rest must have been given over to the enchanters. "What have you learned so far?"

"Through careful examination, and firsthand accounts, I have determined that this contraption was built to shoot out hot pellets of metal at extreme speeds from here," he tepidly tapped the handgun's barrel, "though small, I can assure you they can tear through flesh and metal like a hot knife through butter."

"Fascinating," I hope my acting was better than before, because it is hard to act surprised and interested with something so mundane to my eyes. Without a moment's hesitation, I grabbed one of the handguns, ignoring Godesan's whisper for me to be careful as I examined it.

First thing that stood out to me was that the safety was on. Good thing too, I've heard enough stories in my prior lives about kids playing with guns to know what could happen when you play around with these things.

"As I was saying, how this is done, I believe, is through an internally created form of alomancy," the mage continued his 'explanation'. "The mage channels his mana through this foci, where a transmutation-like change takes place within. It it then rushed out as hot metal and-"

Click.

Godasen's monologue stopped when he noticed I ejected the clip. Given the shade of pale he was getting, you'd think I'd just killed his kid and said he was next.

"How seamless," Gaius quipped as he leaned over my shoulder to see what I was doing, "I hardly even noticed the switch. And you've had these things for how long, senator?"

Ignoring Gaius's quips, there seemed to be no issue with the gun. Hell, there were actually three rounds still in the clip.

I slid the clip back in, flicked the safety off, and aimed at the nearby tree. It felt so weird holding a gun again after over a decade. Weird, but not uncomfortable. Like riding a bike again after years of it sitting in your garage, even if you don't exactly remember what to do, muscle memory takes over.

Granted that isn't a perfect analogy since this body's muscles have never held a firearm before, but I think it's the thought that counts.

My actions aiming the gun got the senator's immediate attention, "Your Highness, please be careful-"

BANG

BANG

BANG

The senator all but fell onto his back at the sound of the handgun, as if he thought the rounds would somehow hit him rather than the tree I was aiming for. Though given his apparent understanding of firearms, maybe he thought that could happen.

I tsked as I saw the bullet holes in the tree. All were clustered around a 'center' point, but none hit said center.

My aim was off, there was no other way that my shots were so dispersed given the distance I fired from. Guess a decade of civilian life would do that.

"Remarkable," Gaius mused aloud, looking at the gun then to the tree.

"Kind of loud, isn't it?" Cordelia mumbled with a frown, her hare ears twitching with every shot. Remus covering his wolf ears next to her. Guess better hearing is a double-edged sword in this regard.

I ignore the spectators and the wide-eyed looks from the assembled servants as I eject the empty clip onto the table and reach for another pistol. Checking it over, I noticed that this one had its safety 'off' and had only a single round left. What a nasty surprise for the ill-informed.

"H- How, Your Highness," Godasen questioned, looking at the gun dumbstruck. "I used every spell I knew, every enchantment I had at my disposal, and it remained inert to me."

"These aren't magical," I cut off the senator's rambling, quietly turning the safety on and putting the gun down.

"Pardon?"

"I said it's not magical," I repeated. "I didn't use magic to fire off those rounds, and I didn't sense a bit of magic when I fired them off. Ergo, if there is no magic being used, it's not magical."

"R-Rounds? Your Highness those… things are hardly spherical," he looked at the shell casings on the ground. "More to the point, how did you know how to use that thing so quickly? I have examined them for many days and I never-"

"I want you to have these pieces you brought from the other side of the Gate ready for transport to my villa," I brusquely command. While I hate pulling the 'my dad's your boss' card on principle alone, I am prepared to use it here if he puts up a fuss. I need more time to investigate these firearms.

Thankfully, it wasn't needed. The man looked at me, then to the guns, then back to me, before sighing. "As you command, Your Highness."

As some of the senator's men moved to get a wagon for transport, I fished around in the crates to see if anything more was in there. It was everything I expected. Some jewelry, more firearms, a handful of batons, but one thing stood out to me: a torn metal canister. If I had to guess, it must have been a smoke bomb or a flashbang grenade.

On closer examination, I caught a label on the side of the canister with a word that made my heart stop. It wasn't the word itself; a warning was the least one could expect on a smoke grenade, but it was how it was written.

Warning

It was in kanji.

That… complicated the situation. Given that this Being X, I have no doubt now that the nation the Empire attacked was either Japan, Akitsushima, or some other interpretation of the far east nation.

"Beautiful isn't it," Godasen spoke up, noticing what I was looking at. "I admit, one of the first things I plan to do is ask one of the slaves what it means once they learn our civilized language."

"…What?" My mind just stopped. Ask one of the slaves. Oh no…

"One of the barbarians," he clarified. "I didn't really see the point in keeping any of them myself, but my wife thought some of the women looked exotic so we kept one as a maidservant. Not a good one mind you, but hardly the worst I've ever seen. The language barrier is a bit of an issue, but I am confident she will learn. I am almost certain she is literate in their language, so I hope to put her to use for organizing my study when she finally grasps the basics of our language."

"You took slaves?" Oh… fuck me.

"A number, yes," the senator nodded.

Oh fuck…

"And that number would be?" I could feel my blood going cold.

"Just under a hundred from our headcount," the senator recalled. "Most were carted off a couple of months ago, just after General Kobalt's vanguard was defeated. The rest arrived in the capital with my main forces. Taken to market just after I entered the city."

Oh fuck…

"Would you like to see one of them?" he asked with a warm smile that seemed totally at odds with the severity of the situation.

I don't even remember what I said, my mind just processing how bad this could get, but I was quickly ushered into a sitting room within the estate. A few minutes later, a pair of maids entered the room. Both were dressed as maids, but one of them, the older of the two, looked far less 'acclimated' than the other.

Her physical appearance also gave her away. Asiatic look, black hair, brown eyes, beautiful enough, bearing the marks on her neck and below her lip. The lip cut looked old, years old, but the bruising on her neck was more recent.

Doesn't take a genius to know where that probably came from.

"Quite exotic, isn't she?" Godasen asked, gesturing to the woman. "Haven't gotten her to understand proper words yet, but I have caught her trying to read some books and-"

"Pardon me, senator, but I would like to try something," I didn't wait for the man's reply. Clearing my throat, I spoke my mother's tongue for the first time in almost thirty years. "Hello, can you understand me?"

Even as I internally wince at my own pronunciation, I saw the young woman react. A blink, then she looks me in the eye. Surprise clear on her face.

She clearly heard Japanese, but maybe it was incomprehensible due to my accent. I tried to speak clearer. "I said, do you-"

"Yes,"

she quickly replied, surprised. Her voice is raspy, either from crying or lack of use. "Y-Yes, I understand you."

"Your highness, what was that?" Godasen questioned.

"Speaking her language," I ignore further questions and focus on what I am going to say to her. "Hello ma'am, name is-"

"Where am I?"

the woman didn't let me even give her my name, her hands clamped down on my shoulders. Pretty sure the guards, both the senator's and my own, would have beaten this woman half to death for casually laying a hand on a royal if I hadn't raised a hand to signal them to stop. "Please, kid, you have to help me. I- I don't know where I am. These people took me and… and they… P-Please, I just want to go home."

"I can't imagine what you must have been through,"

it seemed like the most courteous thing to say. "I want to help you, to go home and back to your life. But to do that, I need you to answer all of my questions."

"I- I don't understand,"

the woman rambled, looking as if she was on the verge of a panic attack. "These people abducted me and my boyfriend and I…I don't know where he is!"

"Please calm down ma'am,"

given her current emotional state, I decided to start slow then go right on asking questions about her world. "My name is Tanya, what's yours?"

"I- I… Honoka,"

the woman replied, still anxious. "How do you know Japanese? No one else here understands me. No matter how much I-I…"

"Miss Honoka, I need you to answer some questions for me so I can help you,"

I try and phrase it in a way that won't upset her.

"Help me?" She perked up again at the phrase. "You mean… help me get home?"

"Hopefully," non-committal as replies go, but it seemed to have the desired effect of reducing her visible anxiety. "But like I said, I need you to answer some questions so I can better help you find your boyfriend and help the two of you return home. Please." I have genuinely no idea if I could do that. Assuming she dated someone of similar age, he was probably sent to a mine to be worked to death. But to get the answers I need, I need a conversation partner who is calm (or as calm as they can be under the circumstances) and lucid enough to answer my questions.

I needed to know more about her Japan.

The woman, after some momentary silence, nodded and agreed and answered my questions. Location, date, some basic history, nothing too invasive, yet still critical to figuring out what kind of Japan was beyond the Gate. I can only imagine the strange faces the guards or the senator were making as I conversed in a, quite literally, alien language with another person. I knew I would probably have to answer some awkward questions of my own after all this was done, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

At the end of the conversation, after seeing the woman off and instructing Godasen to keep me informed of her status, I reached one simple conclusion of the Empire's fate.

We were screwed.

------
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"Ah, Your Highness, in a rush I see," Gaius noted aloud as the Princess walked quickly out of the senator's estate. He and the others had been outside overseeing the exchange of the materials while she went to meet with the barbarian girl.

Whatever happened must have lit a fire in her highness.

"We're going," was all the princess stated as she approached the carriage, the bunny girl lifting the last of the crates up onto the wagon for transit. As Gaius approached the carriage, Remus close behind, her highness turned to the pair, "not you."

"I hope this isn't a roundabout way of telling me I am no longer needed," a harmless joke, though it appeared her highness was in no mood for it.

"You're going to the slave markets," her highness commanded, not acknowledging Cordelia entering the carriage beside her.

"I assume this is out of more than simple altruism?" They already hit their monthly quota for emancipation.

"You will find all the slaves that entered the markets in the past month that have the physical features listed," She handed him a sheet of parchment with a list of physical characteristics. Exotic ones at that.

"Did the servant say something that touched you?" Sob stories had hardly ever moved her highness beyond what she was already doing in the past. But the listed features seemed distinctive enough to only just not be a task akin to finding specific grains of sand on a beach.

"More like what she said is troubling me," she countered, rubbing her face. "Remember that incident a few years ago in the west, along the border? Three citizens were killed by some raiding force, do you remember what the Imperial response was?"

"I must confess I don't even know the event you're referring to," saying there were citizens killed along the border was like saying that water was wet, the sky was blue, or that Akushko had three whores for every man. To say otherwise would be an abnormal thing.

"For the crime of three citizens, the tribe was destroyed by the local garrison," her highness continued. "All one thousand of them, all for killing three people."

"Three citizens," Giaus corrected.

"And we just killed a number of citizens from the other side of that Gate and enslaved over one hundred of them," her words were concise and cold. Even the hare girl was listening. "If the roles were reversed, that being a barbarian force killed hundreds of citizens and enslaved another hundred, what would our response be?"

"Your Highness, the Empire is far larger than any tribe," he knew where she was going with this line of thinking.

"And yet we lost ten legions, nearly one hundred thousand men, and inflicted nearly no losses upon them in turn," she explained her reasoning. "Given those numbers, any military force would push forward and inflict punitive damages upon the foes they see as invaders. Not because they had to, but because they could. Just as the Imperial military would do."

Now that she phrased it like that it does make more sense as to her concern. And if said slaves were here, in the capital, and the barbarians learned this while also knowing they can seemingly smash aside armies like one would swat a fly… oh my, the Empire seems quite woefully ill-equipped for the coming conflict.

Ah, now he saw it. Not true altruism, but a sense of self-preservation mixed with the tiniest dash of altruism. The best kind as far as Gaius was concerned.

"So, am I to buy as many as I can?" He asked. Her highness's funds, while vast by normal standards, were still finite; and bunny warriors were expensive. Moreso when the buyer knew an interested buyer was around.

"Just note down where they are for now," he could hear her foot tapping against the carriage floor as she spoke, a tell she had when her mind was racing with a dozen and one thoughts. "Who bought them, who sold them, who owns them, have it all nicely organized. I think we'll be needing those documents in the near future."

Ah, a pace offering then.

"I will see to it right away, Your Highness," with a curt bow, he watched the carriage and wagon roll away with the princess and her other retainers in tow.

"So… to the markets then?" Remus questioned his mentor, still processing what was said to them.

"The markets," Gaius agreed. The pair made their way with all due haste. For his part, Gaius felt a spring in his step he hadn't felt in years.

After all, when one's life is on the line it's easy to forget the aches and pains in one's joints.

------
------

Even under the darkness of a new moon, Majoran could see the battlefield clearly. Even after all he has seen, these invaders still show him something new every time he comes to blows against them. It would be refreshing, if it didn't result in the deaths of the majority of his men.

"Sir, sir!" a centurion raced to his side, catching his breath the man gave him a quick salute. "My Lord, the King of Elbe is…"

"Dead, no doubt about it," General Majoran sighed as he put down the spyglass. These barbarians had lit the night with their magic so even someone as far away as he was could see what was going on. The field was littered with corpses naturally.

The sight didn't even surprise him anymore.

The Lion was dead, by what manner even Majoran couldn't say. Torn to bits by fiery explosions? Ripped apart along the metal rope spooled out across the barbarian lines? Perhaps he was merely struck down by that unseen magic that killed most men who marched up that hill. The barbarians used so many strange and fantastical magics that he could hardly keep track of it.

Still, it was a shame. Of all the assembled client state nobles, only he seemed to take the threat of the barbarians seriously.

When the assembled leaders met, and Majoran laid out all the information his legions had gained on the barbarians, through the bloody crucible of defeat after defeat, he was mocked and ridiculed by said leaders.

None seemed to care that he commanded a depleted force of forty thousand, the broken remnants of what was left of the initial ten legions mixed with the minuscule amounts of manpower he could scrape up from border forts, local militias, and simple conscription. Nor did they take any of his warnings about unholy magic and metal creatures with any degree of seriousness.

No. All the others seemed to hear was 'the legion was bested by a few thousand barbarians'. They laughed and mocked the legion for hours on end.

Incidentally, the ones who laughed and mocked the loudest seemed to also be the ones who died first. Funny that.

But amidst all the jabs and mockery King Duran, the Lion of Elbe, sat across from him silent as the grave. He took each and every word the general said with the seriousness it deserved. A good man.

But Majoran's orders were clear. While he was to attack alongside the client states, he was to do his utmost to ensure said states suffered the brunt of the losses. If the client states knew just how weakened the Empire was in this region, that his force of forty thousand was all that remained of the legion in the area, they would inevitably revolt.

In that one respect, he succeeded: the client states would be reeling from the losses they had sustained from this battle for years to come. Sadly, his own forces were teetering on the brink of collapse.

The only 'victory' his men could claim was the successful retrieval of their standard from the battlefield. It cost three whole cohorts, men who used their bodies to cover the ones sent to recover the standard, but it was a victory.

Even victory is weighted in cohorts…

But that single 'victory' was hardly enough to maintain the integrity of his forces. Camp followers were deserting. Auxiliaries scattering. Even small groups of his own legionaries were skulking away from camp under the cover of darkness. Add in the new reports of brigands cropping up along the major roadways, looting everything they could get their hands on, and it didn't take a scholar to figure out where these bandits were coming from.

It was a damned disaster.

He watched with glassy eyes as another collection of fiery explosions lit up across the field. How many men did that just kill, he wondered. A hundred? A thousand?

The initial battle plan had been for his legion's forces, supplemented by what remained of the other allied kingdoms' forces, to march to the very edge of the barbarians' ranged capabilities. With torches in hand, it would be hard for the barbarians to miss such a force. And while they paid attention to his own force, King Duran and his men would skulk up the other side of the hill under the darkness of the new moon and launch a surprise attack against them.

But with the king dead, his attack turning into a complete route, what was Majoron to do?

Go back to camp, wait until morning, and launch yet another failed attack?

Was continuing this slaughter really the best course of action? He had just witnessed a force of over one hundred thousand men reduced to just under thirty thousand in a handful of days. While he wasn't soft by any means, such attrition made his stomach churn.

The sensible thing would be to withdraw while he still had any forces left to command and await new orders.

But if he left, he would be labeled as a coward for the rest of his days. His descendants mocked and ridiculed for generations to come for losing to 'mere' barbarians.

But if he stayed, he and all his men would die. Their deaths would weaken the Empire's hold over the region even more. Maybe even cause a complete collapse of Imperial control for the entire region. He had seen the ledgers; he knew how few men were left in this area. Add in these barbarians and the region would be out of reach for as long as they held Alnus Hill.

But if he withdrew and kept some of his forces intact, then maybe there could be the possibility of the Empire retaining some kind of control no matter how minuscule it might be.

It left him with two choices: his Honor or his Empire.

He did not fear death for he knew he would be welcomed into Emroy's embrace. But to die for nothing? To have not only his death, but the deaths of all who remained under his command, have no meaning? Or worse, to have their deaths lead to a worse fate for the Empire?

Honor or Empire?

Honor or Empire?

…

Damn it all.

"Sound the retreat," he told his legate, handing he spyglass to a nearby servant. For whatever reason, Majoran assumed the legate would voice some manner of complaint. Of how this was dishonorable. How it would stain the legion's honor for generations to come.

Instead, the man nodded before rushing to spread word of the order. As horns billowed out the call for withdrawal, a palpable sense of relief filled the air as the men started their march back to camp. Though they would get little sleep, he would march out of this accursed battlefield before dawn even breaks.

Many more legionaries would die before this conflict was over.

But not tonight.

------
------

If someone had told Hazama last year that he would lead an expeditionary force into a fantasy world following said world's invasion of Tokyo, he would have politely asked them to keep real world figures out of their fictional stories.

And yet, here he was.

Sitting in a prefab office going over an after-action report in another world.

"-we can confirm with certainty that the Imperial force has fully withdrawn from the area," Lieutenant Yanagida finished his report and took a seat. Behind the man was an overhead projection of the immediate area around their current position, Alnus if he recalled correctly. "And with the retreat of the other forces, I think it's safe to assume we have secured control over the Gate for the time being."

The Special Task Force assembled in the wake of the attack on Japan had two simple goals: secure the territory designated as the Special Region on the opposing side of the Gate and bring the people responsible for the unprovoked attack in Ginza to justice. While they had many officers of this Saderan Empire in custody already from their Ginza attack, the public demanded the ones who orchestrated it be brought to justice. Be it the Empire's military officials, its political leaders, even their emperor if it came down to it.

Still, he knew it was going to be more complicated than that even before taking into account the fantasy world with magic and monsters they were marching into.

"Sir, the Fourth Combat Unit is more than capable of chasing down any stragglers," Lt. Colonel Kengun spoke up. "If we don't, we might face another force like last time."

'Last time' being the First Battle for Alnus, when the expedition initially marched through the Gate to secure the Special Region side of it. Two months of buildup, two days of stalemate when the Imperials held off the initial JSDF advance, and five days of clean up after their fortifications were finally breached.

The biggest issue in that battle was how bottled up their own forces were. No air power to break up the fortifications, a constant hail of primitive munitions from all sides, and hidden pits wide enough to swallow an IFV whole were the biggest obstacles they faced. Progress was slow.

It wasn't until the Imperials seemingly ran out of munitions, having constantly fired upon them for two days straight, that the JSDF had their opening. After that, his men were able to actually dismount and the battle was seemingly over. Not that the fighting had stopped, but that the worst of it was over.

Five days later and the last of their fortifications being taken by storm, the Imperial army retreated.

A little over a month later, the Second Battle that they had just fought was far simpler: the enemy charged their lines and were easily beaten back by the JSDFs superior technology and equipment. So much so that Hazama knew his forces didn't even suffer a single casualty from all the battles. An unprecedented achievement when taking into account the enemy suffered casualties in the tens of thousands. The whole thing reminded the general of the European Western Front of the First World War, where men would race across no-man's land through heavy machine gun fire and suffer horrendous losses.

Only the foe they are facing is a pre-industrial medieval state with some magical irregulars.

"While I appreciate your enthusiasm, Lt. Colonel, I don't think that'll be necessary at the moment," Hazama replied to his subordinate. "The last time they broke off an attack it took almost a month and a half to launch another one. While I don't mean to downplay the situation, I believe we're safe for the time being from an imminent attack."

"Yes sir," Kengun accepted his reasoning.

"Sir, what about the other forces we saw alongside the Imperials?" Colonel Kamo questioned. "Do we know anything more about them?"

"Nothing concrete, but I have my theories," Hazama gestured to adjunct Yanagida to move to the next slide of the projection. "Given how distinctive many of these suits of armor look from the Imperial 'norm', I think it's safe to assume these are different nations entirely rather than variants of normal Imperial forces."

The image changed to a collection of images of various suits of armor and muddy banners lined up along the floor. Armaments were taken from the battlefield, some riddled with bullet holes while others were held together by duck tape on the inside. Each 'set' had little tags on the floor next to them to designate them.

"So, we're either dealing with one large nation with scores of puppet states, or a coalition of nations with the Empire as its leader?" Kamo thought aloud. "Just our luck."

"There is simply too much discrepancy in the designs for this to be one unified force," another officer, Major Higaki, agreed with Hazama. "One might be able to write off the distinct flags as regimental flags, or the armor as variants of normal Imperial troops like the General said, but add in such differing iconography on top of totally different color schemes and I can't think of anything else but an alliance of nations lined up against us."

"What could we have done to warrant a multinational response?" Kengun mused. "All we did was secure this side of the Gate to protect our own people."

"Perhaps alliance is too strong a word," Higaki corrected himself. "They could have been coerced through economic incentives, 'help us take the hill, or we'll embargo you'. Perhaps it's nothing more convoluted than them convincing everyone that we're the bad guys."

"Us?" Kamo was insulted by the insinuation. "We're hardly the slaving imperialists who butchered countless innocent civilians!"

"But they might not know that," Hazama noted, pointing his pen at the images of flags and armor. "The Empire had months to tell these people any number of things about us. Maybe that we're the slaving empire, that we're the real monsters. All these people would know for sure is that an imperial army marched through the Gate, and most of them didn't come back. Who's to say what happened to them, besides the Empire?"

With the General's words, Kamo's anger subsided and the man sighed, "when you put it like that sir…"

"The biggest issue is our lack of information of this world," Yaginda sighed to himself, rubbing the back of his neck. "We just don't know enough."

"But now that our position is secure as it is going to be for the time being, we ought to fix that," Hazama agreed with his adjunct. "Major Higaki."

"Sir," the major pushed up his glasses and straightened his posture.

"I want you to organize several recon groups to start exploring the Special Region in more detail," Hazama ordered.

"Anywhere in particular, sir?" The man took out a sheet of paper, noting several things down for later.

"For now, we'll start with the area just beyond our immediate vicinity for the moment," the general took a paper map the Intelligence Agency created with what information they gathered after the initial push against Alnus and what remains of maps they found from various imperial camps. It was obviously incomplete, with much of the area blacked out as 'Terra Incognita'.

To imagine he'd ever work with a map that had genuinely unexplored territory on it…

Taking a pen offered by Yanagida, Hazama made several large circles around the Alnus FOB. "Our initial forays should be close enough that we can evacuate our people should the worst come to pass, but further out than our recon teams have gone so far." He slid the map to Higaki, "more importantly, they'll doubtlessly make contact with the local population. It's imperative we establish friendly relations with them, both to facilitate future cooperation and to potentially refute any slander the Empire may have spread about us. I'll leave their makeup to your discretion."

"I'll see to it, sir," the major replied, making some notes on a stray piece of paper, he folded the map into his pocket.

"Good, anything else," Hazama glanced at the other officers with him, none raised an objection. "No? Then you're dismissed."

As his officers left, with Yanagida moving to follow them out, Hazama couldn't help but feel this mission was going to get far more complicated before it was over. He looked out a window, watching as the men went about their duties around the prefab buildings of the base.

Call it a gut feeling, but he felt that the JSDF had barely scratched the surface of what the Special Region had to offer.

Whether that was good or bad, only time will tell.