“Ha ha ha! Well done!” Even while tied up, Juana was overjoyed. Even if she hadn’t wanted the plan to work, she knew she’d be in danger if it failed. She cared far more for her own life than the lives of the kingdom’s people.
“Ah... You fired them, I guess,” the freckled boy whispered, his hands pressing against his ears trying to cope with his ears ringing from the explosion.
“Hmph! Such obviously feigned courage is unsightly, boy. Your beloved kingdom is nothing but a sea of flames now!” If Juana didn’t want to be seen as the villain, she really wasn’t doing herself any favors.
“Could you please keep your voice down? My ears are still ringing...” the boy said, shaking his head to check his ears again.
“Don’t be ridiculous! How could you be worried about your ears right now?! Don’t you get it?! All those innocent people in the kingdom are as good as dead after that bombardment! Your house and school are probably engulfed in flames! Your parents and friends are probably dead! Even if they’re still alive, they’re probably suffering, buried beneath rubble! It’s all because you let your guard down! You brought this failure upon yourself!” Juana was cursing Joshua with as heavy a burden as she could muster. She knew if she didn’t crush him then and there, he could become a thorn in the Western Empire’s side in the future. She was deliberately saying the most horrific things, things that made her sick just thinking about them, to use against him.
“Sorry, but you’re the one who gave the orders to fire the cannons, and that...tiny person down there is the one who carried out the orders. It has nothing to do with me. If the kingdom is a ‘sea of flames’ and all those completely innocent people really are dead, it happened because you gave the order and the tiny person resolutely went along with it. The choice and the responsibility lies with you two,” the boy replied.
He continued, “Infants who were only just born. Young people working hard toward their dreams. The kind shopkeepers and seamstresses. The caring painters. All those little children. You two deliberately stole their futures from them. It’s just all too cruel... I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Just thinking of how many families, lovers, and friends will be ripped apart by the cruel jaws of death... It’s just too awful...”
“Hngh!” The boy’s counterattack was brutal. The curse Juana had tried to lay on him was returned a hundredfold. Just how psychologically resilient was this boy?!
“L-Lady Juana...” The thumb-sized mage had his hand to his chest, as though Joshua’s counterattack had physically hurt him. He looked at Juana with a pale, worried expression.
“Wh-Why haven’t you readied the next cannon, you imbecile?!” If all the soldiers in the ship had been captured too, then Juana needed to take the lead. If she wasn’t able to completely wipe out the capital, they wouldn’t be able to send in reinforcements anytime soon.
“B-But... S-So many people are gonna d-die...” The mages working under Juana were all researchers who were entirely unused to this level of violence. None of them had steeled themselves enough to hurt so many people. The thumb-sized mage was very obviously shaken by what the boy had said.
“This is an order! Do it! It’s just a bunch of strangers! If you don’t do it, then we’ll be the ones getting killed! If you don’t fire right now, your elderly parents and little sister will be meeting that grim fate instead!” Juana threatened her subordinate, still tied up with her cheek to the ground. The thread still wouldn’t budge. But there was no mistaking that victory was hers. Even if most of her personnel were bound, she still had her cannons ready and a mage to fire them. The kingdom didn’t have any way to protect itself against cannons firing at them under the low visibility of night. They didn’t have any mages to help save people crushed beneath the rubble, nor any magic to help quickly put out the fires either.
“Nngh... Aaaagh! K-Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom!” The mage screamed like a man possessed and continued firing the cannons. He buckled under the threat to his family’s lives.
“Sorry to say, but there’s no lowlife depraved enough to attack a bunch of innocent civilians indiscriminately like that in the kingdom. I’m sure you’re aware, but there are people among the ones you’re firing those cannons at with elderly parents and adorable little sisters and darling families as well. And if you weren’t firing those cannons, they might still be alive.”
“Aaaaagh! Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom!” The thumb-sized mage cried tears of anguish that he was forced to do such a thing, but he had to close his heart off to use his magic and fire away. While the freckled boy was looking down on him pityingly, the words coming from his mouth were positively merciless in every way.
The boy’s country was being attacked, and they were the ones attacking it. So how did this boy have the wherewithal to launch such brutal verbal abuse at them? Juana couldn’t understand.
But Joshua knew that if they were aiming for the castle from Simmons Harbor, those cannonballs would have to pass over a certain manor. And that manor had a home security system that had been able to easily save the Eastern Empire from the owatas’ destruction. It was the greatest home security system in the kingdom...or perhaps even the world.