"Such a waste."
"This blessed land is utterly wasted in their hands."
"Ah, to think... if my family had such fertile fields back then, even ten acres would've been enough. We wouldn't have had to sell our sons and daughters during the famine. My elder brother, whom I've never met, might still be alive—might still send word."
"Oh, come on, Joe. If they let you retire and go farm the land right now, would you do it?"
"Farm my ass! Serving as a soldier, eating imperial rations, earning titles, estates, and stipends—then buying a few mechanized constructs, some mutant slaves, and maybe hiring a few demi-human servants—that's about as good as life gets. When I die, my folks and my siblings will at least live comfortably."
"Forget farming. Win a few battles, and you'll have everything you need. Robbery's the easier way, always has been."
War—wasn't it just organized, systematic, state-sanctioned robbery?
"Bah! Can you mind your tongue? Watch how you talk! We're spreading the Emperor's gospel. Fighting in Her Majesty's name. Everything else is just... collateral—that's the benevolence of our divine ruler."
"Yeah, yeah, right! Old Baldy's got the right idea. True enlightenment!"
As their chatter filled the air, boom! boom! boom! a series of explosions echoed from the distance. A line of corrected artillery shells struck massive banana leaves, under which lay the scattered corpses of a dozen colossal toads. From the collapsed beast village ahead, a formation of tanks was firing furiously at the endless tide of charging amphibians.
"Men, silence and focus! The vanguard has located the toad nest. Our company's task is to deploy formation, establish a secure perimeter, and coordinate with allied forces to encircle and seal off the beast zone."
Hearing the gunfire, the subservient army captain clenched his fist and waved, signaling several soldiers—descendants of some feudal agrarian civilization—to stop squatting and examining the soil's fertility.
His command was relayed instantly through the platoon's comm channel.
Having come from the same agrarian civilization himself, the captain knew all too well how obsessed his compatriots were with land—especially fertile land.
Though the winds of the Empire had broadened their people's horizons, centuries of instinct were not so easily erased.
Thus, he barked orders for discipline and battle readiness.
Rustle, rustle.
The platoon spread out swiftly, demonstrating solid tactical training. The soldier called Joe didn't hesitate—he dropped the handful of dark, oil-rich soil tangled with decayed roots and sprinted forward with the rest.
Whirr—
Multi-barreled jungle-camouflaged support tanks crashed through towering trees. Engines roared as vehicles surged ahead, their treads grinding over fallen leaves and saplings, rolling up clouds of black earth.
The sunset still cast its golden glow across the land, but Mount Myōboku was now far removed from its once-peaceful serenity.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
The toads' spit-stones flew like bullets, clanging off the Titan's shield wall and sparking on impact—yet the Empire's line kept advancing unhindered.
Bang! Bang!
Alongside the stones came torrents of water projectiles, pelting the soldiers like a rainstorm as they seized the high ground at the canyon's entrance.
"Damn it! Why's the spit from these frogs so damn strong?!"
Since many of the smaller toads' projectiles lacked the kinetic force to trigger the platoon's tactical energy shields—but still packed a punch—many soldiers were knocked down or drenched, left looking like soaked chickens.
"That's not spit. It's ninjutsu. According to the data, this is Water Release: Toad Iron Cannon. Watch out for the large ones. The small fry may just sting, but the big ones—those are cannons. Even if your armor holds, the internal trauma will wreck your insides."
One unlucky soldier was blasted off his feet by a toad nearly his size. The paint on his armor was stripped clean, his joints dislocated, bones fractured. He spat blood and fainted instantly, carried away by field medics.
Though the Empire's troops were getting stronger overall—every recruit fierce as a lion—well, on average... everyone knew the truth.
Depending on the time each colony was brought under Imperial rule, the level of resource development, richness of natural deposits, industrial output, policy favor, original foundation, the local culture—whether fierce or refined—and even the competence of each colonial governor and instructor, the quality of the Sacred Selene Empire's largest auxiliary force—the Subservient Army—varied drastically.
In short, the phrase "uneven quality" barely captured it.
After all, one could hardly compare an auxiliary corps recruited from a fully urbanized, post-industrial world—long past the struggle for basic survival—to another drawn from some primitive, beast-haunted wilderness where men still fought monsters with spears.
The foundation was simply different.
Add to that those colonies blessed (or cursed) with magical energy, battle auras, or other supernatural powers, and the gap grew even wider.
If not for Imperial policy, even tourist worlds—no matter how weak their people—would still be required to field at least one regiment for the Holy Crusade. Otherwise, they'd have been excluded entirely.
That was the political correctness of the Sacred Selene Empire.
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
The continuous roar of tank cannons filled the air. The violent tremor and the recoil of discharged plasma rounds kicked up massive clouds of dust, engulfing the screeching toads that had leapt from hollows, burrows, and broken huts across Mount Myōboku's valley.
A storm of metal bullets, artillery shells, electromagnetic slugs, lasers, plasma clusters, and ion bursts poured over the croaking beasts. Some of the toads, massive as houses, tried to erect Earth Release walls or counter with wide-area Water Release attacks—or even oil and flame—but none of it could halt the balance of victory from tilting decisively against them.
In less than a minute, under the coordinated assault of several subservient companies, there wasn't a single croaking amphibian left within several kilometers of the canyon's waterfall.
The air was thick with the stench of scorched flesh. The ground was littered with heaps of mangled limbs and pulsing viscera, organs still twitching in the open air.
"Mount Myōboku is not a place for outsiders to run wild!"
A furious roar erupted from the swamp deep within the basin. The sound alone—nearly a sonic weapon—made the Imperial soldiers reinforcing their line tense immediately. They knew the main monster was coming. Orders rang out to load the heavy artillery, charge the plasma cells, and prime the magnetic coils.
Boom!
Stones and splinters rained down from above as a massive red shadow crashed to the ground—a gigantic toad, fierce in appearance, wearing a coat and gripping a giant pipe in its mouth. It looked every bit the gang boss.
Gamabunta was enraged. Mount Myōboku was a holy land of senjutsu—one even Konoha approached with reverence. Never before had it suffered such humiliation. Watching his kin slaughtered so brutally, the fury in his chest burned uncontrollably.
Swinging a single-edged blade tens of meters long, Gamabunta's bloodshot eyes gleamed with wrath as he roared:
"Humans! You will all die—!"
"Open fire!"
His hatred was met with a storm of flame and iron. Countless muzzles spat long tongues of fire, and in an instant, gunpowder smoke blanketed the battlefield. The light from the steel blossoms of the industrial age illuminated the canyon as deafening explosions roared like an ignited armory.
"Water Release: Iron Cannonball!"
Gamabunta reacted instantly, hurling a massive sphere of pressurized water—larger than any multipurpose vehicle on the field. But it was futile.
Whoosh—!
Against small toads and their "spit attacks," there was no need to waste high-grade incendiary or plasma weapons. But for a giant like Gamabunta—towering nearly thirty meters—such restraint was impossible.
In the face of his water cannon, returning fire from every direction—ground troops, reinforcements, and aerial gunships—merged into a single overwhelming barrage. The sky itself seemed to rain thunder as explosions overlapped in a seamless cascade, forming a moving web of fire that engulfed the leaping behemoth.
In moments, Gamabunta's hide and face were riddled with molten shrapnel, sparks, and arcs of plasma.
The outcome was clear.
In mere seconds, the beast's sage chakra-hardened flesh split open, blood spurting as he staggered and coughed up steaming crimson foam.
"Gamabunta! Fall back!"
"Combined Fire Release: Toad Oil Flame Bullet!"
Two more thunderous booms erupted as a massive emerald-green toad carrying twin blades on its back and another enormous purple-red toad—its face marked by a distinctive U-shaped black tattoo, a shield like an iron pan on its back, and a spiked trident in hand—leapt from a pit hidden deep within the giant banana forest.
Working in tandem, the first spewed torrents of toad oil while the second unleashed a Water Release barrier technique, charging with shield raised toward the grievously wounded Gamabunta—his body pitted and scorched, white bone and organs showing through charred flesh.
Whooosh—
The flood of toad oil surged forward, carrying debris and waterfalls in a roaring wave. A single spark ignited it, and in an instant, flames roared skyward. The inferno swept through a vast swath of the toads' wooden dwellings, turning them into a rolling wall of fire surging toward the Imperial army entrenched across the canyon.
"Hold formation!"
"Sync the Tactical Support Titans with the armored vehicles! Activate particle shields! All units with liquid nitrogen grenades—throw them! Dump all coolant, any suppressant or freezing agent—fire everything you've got!"
"Operator! Contact the Indomitable Blade command bridge! Request special combat reinforcement for Canyon Sector 231 of the Land of Fire! If possible, authorize long-range saturation bombardment!"
Even as the commanding officer shouted into the comms, a rolling thunder answered him.
"You there—no need to shout. I'm already here!"
In a blaze of red lightning, divine radiance erupted—filling the canyon with a sound like the heavens cracking open.
A knight clad in heavy armor, crowned with demonic horned helm, descended like a comet of clustered lightning. In a blinding flash, she struck the massive emerald toad still spewing black oil to feed the flames.
BOOOOOOM—!
A towering column of lightning erupted skyward, spreading outward in an expanding dome of destruction. Everything nearby disintegrated under the explosive shockwave, then was swept away by the hurricane that followed.
"Spread out!"
A rain of foul, steaming blood fell from above. Gamabunta's left eye was struck by a molten beam, the entire socket turning glassy and fibrous as his eyeball liquefied. He gurgled horribly, jaws gaping wide.
"As expected, battlefield kills really pay better. After persuading Ryūchi Cave to surrender and Father claiming Shikkotsu Forest, you toads of Mount Myōboku are all that remain. Not a wasted trip, after all..."
White and red fluid dripped from the split corpse of the enormous toad. Mordred removed her helmet, resting the royal sword on her shoulder. Swaying slightly, she mused aloud, calculating the military merit she'd earn for slaying such a colossal beast. Her lips curled into a smile.
Even though official commendations had to wait for post-battle tribunal audits, that didn't stop her from celebrating. If she recalled correctly, her rank promotion should finally be within reach.
A shame, though—slaughtering weaklings rarely earned full merit, and the bureaucracy always shaved points for "disproportionate engagements."
Grumbling inwardly about the system's stinginess, Mordred caught sight of the red and purple toads glaring at her with seething hatred. She smirked and kicked the corpse at her feet.
"Heh heh... you two over there, don't worry. Soon enough, all the glory and merit hoarded here will be mine! I'll use your screams and skulls as bricks for the foundation of the New Kingdom of Camelot!"
Whirr—!
Like a beast drawn to blood, she bent her knees and shot forward in a violent leap!
...
Elsewhere—Sacred Selene Empire Administrative Zone XIII, newly annexed colonial world No. 638059.
Within a cluster of star systems marked on the Celestial Orrery as containing unidentified God Tree coordinates.
A blizzard raged.
Hurricanes shredded the skies, hail shattered the ground, and endless frost devoured a palace as pale as the snow itself.
Fully armored, General Esdeath stood upon the budding apex of a God Tree still in formation.
"So this... is a nearly mature chakra fruit?"
Her deep, glacial blue eyes locked upon a bisected figure impaled in ice—the pale body of an Ōtsutsuki, lifeless but radiating a faint aura of power. The air itself froze around her.
"I'm speaking to you. This should be your clan's tongue, shouldn't it?"
The Ōtsutsuki guardian, his horned head twitching in defiance, clenched his fists. "Who are y—Aaaaargh—!"
Squelch.
"Wrong answer."
Esdeath flicked her wrist. The crystalline chains of ice constricting the Ōtsutsuki's neck tightened, their countless frozen spikes burrowing deep into his meridians—hardening, grinding, multiplying, melting, and freezing again.
Blood spattered outward, freezing midair into crimson beads. Bones cracked and split as proliferating shards of ice burst through them. Esdeath's control was absolute—she regulated every drop of fluid within his body, freezing and thawing it in an endless cycle that grew faster and faster.
It was, without question, the Ice Storm General's minor pastime: torture.
The pain—searing and primal, as if it rose from the soul itself—forced a muffled groan from the Ōtsutsuki's throat.
"The precise location and coordinates of the Ōtsutsuki high council—where are they?"
"They're..."
Crack!
Because he hesitated for even a heartbeat, Esdeath shattered the frozen cartilage around his ear with a flick of her finger.
"Where are they?"
This time, the guardian of the God Tree—the one who had been awaiting harvest—finally broke.
This woman was a demon. A devil. His fellow guardian had already been sacrificed to the tree; weakened and half-restored, he had watched her torture him to death with methods beyond imagination, his mind collapsing under the agony.
All he wanted now was release. And so, trembling and defeated, the Ōtsutsuki spilled everything—every secret, every coordinate, every scrap of information he knew regarding the high-ranking members of his clan.
Esdeath looked bored. She flicked her wrist, scattering the frozen blood from her gauntlet, and lifted her head, eyes gleaming coldly.
"Ice Thorns—shatter."
Squelch.
The Ōtsutsuki's upper half shattered from the inside out. Every fiber of flesh disintegrated, his golden Rinnegan embedded in his palm splintering apart as his remains crumbled into shards that burst into the wind, raising a swirl of frost and dust.
"Scan the area. Soul probe. Verify his intel."
"Yes, General!"
A sergeant of the Astartes XIII Legion—Ultramarines—stepped forward without hesitation, retrieving the horned head and boarding a nearby heavy gunship. A moment later, a transmission beam pierced the sky.
"You hoarded so long—sacrificing your own kin to nourish the God Tree, harvesting all life across this planet to sustain it for millennia—only to bear fruit at last..."
The blizzard howled like razors, whipping Esdeath's ice-blue hair through the air. She gazed at the lifeless planet beneath her feet, then at the gem-like chakra fruit glowing faintly in her palm.
"And in the end, it's served up on Her Majesty Selene's table."
Truly, it made one sigh—hoarding grain was never as wise as hoarding guns.
Esdeath knew perfectly well that among the countless coordinates marked on the Celestial Orrery, Selene had highlighted every single star system where a God Tree fruit was expected to mature within the next decade.
It was plain as day—Her Majesty intended to seize them all, the hard-won harvest of these 'old orchard farmers' who had tended their trees for a thousand years.
Yet Esdeath felt no remorse.
Naked, unrelenting survival of the fittest—wasn't that the tradition of the Partas bloodline?
The nearly ripened chakra fruit was breathtaking—like a massive crimson gem shaped like a celestial peach, glowing with a radiant light. It looked both edible and inedible, like an amber that pulsed faintly as though life stirred within.
I wonder... does it taste good?
...
Meanwhile—
In the Imperial Capital, within the Grand Palace—Schönbrunn Palace, the Outer Hall of State Affairs.
"Achoo! Ugh, such a nuisance... reorganizing the Space Marine Chapters... Huh? The fruit today is unusually sweet and delicious."
—
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