The Empire's Four Great Generals

Perhaps because he had too much on his mind, Pan Long slept uneasily that night.

He had one chaotic dream after another. One moment he was clearing stages in a game world; the next, he was in an anime world, caught up in adventures far beyond ordinary life. Then he found himself in the worlds of several famous special-effects blockbusters, chased by aliens, ancient people, robots, people from parallel worlds, Transcendents... He had no road to heaven and no door into the earth.

In the end, he even dreamed of horror-movie worlds. When those terrifying things that had once existed only on screens became real, he cried out in fright and swung both hands, ready to fight them to the death.

Then he woke with a start and found that broad daylight had already come.

What kind of rotten dreams were those?!

Pan Long sighed deeply. Perhaps having too much imagination was not such a good thing...

He rolled out of bed and looked through the window. There was not a single pedestrian on the street.

It seemed almost all the villagers had fled. Only the brave souls who had volunteered yesterday to stay behind and cover their retreat remained.

Luna Village was nowhere near as lively as it had been yesterday. It had grown much quieter. Apart from the Village Chief and a few others talking downstairs, the only sound was something like construction work drifting over from the village entrance.

"I just took a look from a distance. The Frees troops are restoring discipline, and it doesn't look as if they'll set out this morning. Quite a few of their tents burned down, and there are bodies along the roadside. Mr. Pan's attack last night caused them a lot of trouble."

"Shaking an entire army single-handedly—Mr. Pan is incredible! No wonder he bears the title of 'Dragon'!"

"Exactly. With his help, it doesn't matter how many of those bandits who call themselves soldiers show up. There's nothing to fear!"

"We need to work harder too. We can't rely on him alone. He's exhausted—he attacked the Frees troops at night and still has to fight during the day... We're so useless. If only we could help him..."

"Ah! It's a shame our Moon Goddess Church has been battered so badly that we can't even muster a small army. Otherwise, with an army fighting alongside him, we might have wiped out the Holy Legion last night. If we could kill that demon Seles, any sacrifice would be worth it!"

"Yes. What a shame!"

Pan Long smiled as he listened to them.

By the time he went downstairs, the hunter who had brought the news had left. Only the Village Chief and his wife remained in the hall, bustling about as they prepared lunch.

"Mr. Pan, how did you sleep?" the Village Chief asked with concern.

"Very well. I slept soundly." Pan Long glanced at the empty street outside. "Have the villagers all evacuated?"

"Yes. They set off before dawn, so they should be quite far away by now." The Village Chief smiled in relief, then remembered something. He took a pendant from a table drawer and handed it to Pan Long.

"Lily asked me to give you this. She said it still holds some magic and might be of help."

Pan Long accepted the pendant. He knew what it was without looking.

[Moon Goddess's Tears: accessory, magic defense +50% (minimum +20); healing received doubled (requires a follower of the Moon Goddess); healing spell range +2, effect +50% (requires Moon Sacred Mark); negates death once per battle (requires Moon Sacred Mark)]

It was one of the best pieces of healing equipment in the game. Unfortunately, it was exclusive to Lilina.

There were still plenty of followers of the Moon Goddess in this world, but Lilina was the only person with the Moon Sacred Mark. Only when she equipped the pendant could it unleash its full power.

Of course, on the evil route, players could use her as a biological CPU to create the Moon Sacred Mark-bearing magitech mecha "Lilina MK II." That mecha could equip the pendant too. It had no healing spells, but its combat strength was immense. Combined with one full-health resurrection on the spot per battle, it could charge into a crowd of enemies and cut loose.

It was just a little too inhuman...

To Pan Long, humanity was a serious matter—perhaps the most important matter of all. Only with humanity could a person be called human. Without it, a person was nothing more than a human-shaped Demon.

The Nine Provinces had never lacked Evil Fiends and heretics. Many people from evil sects committed acts even fiercer and crueler than Demons, acts that made them more hateful than Demons.

In fact, compared with Demons and ghosts, people from evil sects were often more despised. As far as the authorities were concerned, whether someone was human or a Demon mattered little so long as they paid their taxes. And as far as common folk were concerned, a monster was fine too, so long as it caused no trouble.

In this world, good and evil were what mattered. As for the distinction between humans and Monster... Pan Long had met few people in the Northlands who cared much about it.

People with unusual ancestry, or Monster blood, were nothing rare in the Northlands. An extra horn on someone's head, hands shaped like claws, or a length of tail was no great matter. Horns made helmets awkward, claws made eating inconvenient, and a tail meant cutting a hole in the back of one's trousers... That was all.

By contrast, the people everyone hated most were those who ate humans, killed to cultivate their arts, cruelly tortured innocents to absorb their resentment, took twisted pleasure in others' suffering, or gained supernatural powers and then looked down on ordinary people as ants...

The people of the Northlands had a straightforward way of telling friend from foe. If you ate and drank together, you were friends; if someone came looking for trouble and tried to snatch what was yours, they were an enemy. Simple and clear, without a shred of agonizing over it.

That "love between a human and a monster is forbidden by society" plot found in certain works of art from the world he had lived in before crossing over would never happen in the Northlands, at least.

Winning the heart of a Monster woman or man meant you had skill. Everyone would be too busy envying you to object! Horns on the head, a tail behind the back, scales on the face, sharp claws at the fingertips—those were all proof of an ancestor's irresistible charm!

Take Lilina, for example. If she was not the reincarnation of the Moon Goddess, then someone among her ancestors had won the heart of one of the Moon Goddess's incarnations and even had a child with her. That was how a descendant who looked almost exactly like the Moon Goddess and bore the Moon Sacred Mark had come to be.

Holding the precious pendant and thinking of that innocent girl whose fate had been so troubled, Pan Long could not help sighing.

"This won't do much in my hands," he said. "I can feel the immense power in it, but not everyone can wield that power."

"Surely it'll help a little," the Village Chief urged.

Pan Long thought for a moment, then nodded and hung it around his neck.

"Then I'll borrow it for now. Once we've won this battle and everyone has come back, I'll return it to her," he said with a smile.

The Village Chief smiled too, but there was little confidence in it.

Pan Long's attack last night had indeed dealt the Holy Legion a heavy blow. But as one of the Empire's four great legions, the Holy Legion did not rest on thugs and bandits who could be recruited by the horde from anywhere. Its true backbone was made up of fanatics of the One God Religion who had undergone rigorous military training.

As long as few of those fanatics had died, the legion had suffered no real loss.

What was more, only a small portion of the Holy Legion had come this time. Even losing every last one of them would not come close to breaking its back.

The Holy Legion was, in essence, the private army of Seles, the One God Religion's high priest known as the "Most Holy." As long as he lived, he could rebuild the Holy Legion in short order even if every soldier under him was lost.

Given the One God Religion's influence in the Frees Empire, assembling a legion was something it could do in a heartbeat.

Pan Long knew that too.

He also knew that, barring the unexpected, that modest-sized army was being led by the Most Holy Seles himself.

So... his plan from the start had been to kill Seles outright!

Once Seles was dead, the Holy Legion would scatter like monkeys from a fallen tree, unable to stir up any more storms. Moreover, Seles had made a deal with a Demon God from the Demon Realm and was trying to open a passage to the human world for him. If Seles died here, the plan to open that passage would come to nothing, and the human world would escape a catastrophe.

Of course, killing Seles would be anything but easy.

Not one of the Frees Empire's four great generals was a soft persimmon that could be squeezed at will.

That held true even for Seles, the weakest of the four.

The Frees Empire had many commanders, but its four highest-ranking generals stood as equals. Each oversaw a vital duty, making them pillars of the Empire.

First was Palante Romon, the "Whirlwind War God," a direct member of the Frees Empire's imperial Romon Lineage, younger brother of Emperor Romon XIII, and ninth in rank among the current imperial family. This Ninth Prince loved riding horses, and riding horses was what he did best. Every unit under his command was cavalry. With blitz tactics in a classical setting, he campaigned east and west, conquering one country after another and expanding the Empire's territory.

Next was Chris Romon, the "Defender of the Realm," uncle to Romon XIII. A veteran of three reigns now past sixty, he held enormous prestige within the Empire. Players nicknamed him "Old Farmer Romon." His daily routine consisted of pushing a wheelchair around every corner of the imperial capital, inspecting everything high and low, inside and out, left and right, down to the smallest matter. Give him a white feather fan, and he could cosplay Chancellor Zhuge, working himself to the bone—though in the game, he really did work until he died.

Then there was Enlit, the "Pegasus Knight," who led the Empire's only flying force. He went wherever rebellions and uprisings broke out, crushing them and stabilizing the Empire. Without this highly mobile firefighter, the entire Empire would drown in the vast ocean of people's war within a year or so.

And finally, Seles, the "Most Holy." He led the motley Holy Legion across the land, stamping out every faith but that of the One God. At the slightest provocation, he swung the butcher's blade, slaughtering whole villages and towns until neither chicken nor dog was left alive... Players agreed that, judging by his deeds, a title like "Disciple of Satan" or "Demon's Emissary" would suit him better.

Of the four generals, the hardest to deal with was Chris, the Defender of the Realm. Though the old man's hair had gone white, he was tremendously powerful: a level-90 powerhouse, stronger even than the emperor himself. He had few troops under his command, but every one of them was elite, all of them in ultimate classes.

In the game, the battle against the Defense Legion at the Southern Emperor Pavilion was the hardest fight to win head-on across every route. Unless you were on a second playthrough with a deep roster and could field more than thirty max-level characters, your only real option was a sacrifice gambit. You had to give up a teammate to lure the old general and the Defense Legion's elites into a valley trap, then cast a prepared earthquake spell to bring the entire valley down and bury everyone together.

Although Seles, the Most Holy, had the lowest level of the four generals, he was still level 50. To the fledgling protagonists, he was an impassable mountain. Even second-playthrough players could stumble at this stage if they failed to play carefully and deploy their forces sensibly.

And those were only the game's numbers. Judging by the story and character settings, the gap between the four generals' actual strengths could not have been so wide. Old Farmer Romon probably was not level 90, and the devil Seles was probably above level 50.

Pan Long did not know what level Seles was in this world. All he could do was err on the side of overestimating his enemy's strength.

For now, he would put Seles at around level 60.

His own strength was probably close to level 50. How was he supposed to kill a level-60 imperial general protected by a band of loyal guards and backed by an army?

Perhaps, Pan Long thought, he needed to look for Wisdom in the stories of another world's ancients...