The two men gazed at the distant lighthouse. Alvarez was the first to speak.
He tapped the road beneath his feet with his cane. "Look, that lighthouse is very similar to the road beneath our feet—at least in color. There aren't many stones of this color. You said before that this material was...?"
"Concrete."
"How much do you know about this material?"
"It can be molded as freely as mud, but once it hardens, it has astonishing strength. You saw that fortress at Northern Territory Station when we arrived, didn't you? It had endured monster attacks and had even been bombed by airship bombs, yet it still remained remarkably intact... You haven't forgotten how powerful those bombs were, have you?"
Naturally, Alvarez knew. After he surrendered, not all his vassals had surrendered with him. Several lords, relying on the sturdy walls and castles within their territories, had intended to resist to the bitter end. The Expeditionary Force had brought him along to persuade them to surrender.
Thus, he had watched the Expeditionary Force's siege from start to finish.
Those soldiers had no intention of charging forward. They merely set up machine guns at a leisurely pace on nearby high ground, then called in an airship for bombardment.
The soldiers beside him had long since lain flat on the ground and urged him to do the same. Alvarez looked at the distant city walls and truly could not understand the point.
Unwilling to lie on the dirt-covered ground, he asked whether anything would happen if he remained standing.
The Expeditionary Force soldiers hesitated before telling him it should be fine, so he did not lie down.
He simply watched as the airship slowly approached through the sky, found its position, and dropped a bomb.
Just one bomb. It landed atop the