Dozens of giants charge straight at Atu. For anyone else, this would be terrifying—but for her, it’s nothing more than a nuisance. With a casual wave of her tentacles, every giant is instantly torn apart into chunks of meat.
Antic is both amazed and horrified by the display. It’s even more terrifying than the medic incident, and she can barely hold herself together. Sensing this, Atu tells her she can take a break if she wants—the frontlines are already under control. Antic gratefully accepts.
Afterwards, Atu sits down with Molter, and the citizens of Dragon treat her warmly. One even brings her a drink so she can relax. Molter admits he thought the townsfolk would be too afraid to approach her after seeing her true form, but surprisingly, they’ve adjusted well. The main reason? When Atu first revealed herself, Pippa compared her to an octopus, so now everyone just thinks of her as an “octopus demihuman.” Atu finds it a little insulting, but at this point, correcting them isn’t worth the effort.
Changing the subject, Molter asks how her plan to harvest abilities from the giants is going. Atu replies it’s been a great success—their skills are far better than she expected. Still, she can’t figure out how the giants gained such powers in the first place.
Just then, Atu senses something in the distance. A giant is approaching the city. This is one of the mysteries about the giants: no matter how hard they monitor, no one—not even Atu or Molter—can detect them until they’re already too close.
Moments later, Antic rushes in with news of the giant, but Atu calmly says there’s no need to worry—she’ll handle it herself. She dashes toward the battlefield before Antic can protest. Antic fears Atu is being reckless, but Molter reassures her: something as weak as a hill giant could never defeat Atu. He suggests waiting, though he admits it’d be boring to just sit back.
Molter joins in, pulling out his staff. Using his newly-learned magic, he casts Land of Ruin, summoning a dark mist that buffs allies and weakens enemies. Atu appreciates the support and takes full advantage of it. She draws her sword, channels the stolen Holy Sword Arts, and cleaves the giant clean in two.
It’s a routine victory—until something strange happens. The giant’s body vanishes, leaving behind a pile of gold coins. Shocked, Atu reports this to Takudo, who has no idea why such a thing would happen—this was never a mechanic in his Minera playthroughs. Molter is equally baffled; not only has he never seen this phenomenon, but no one even recognizes the symbols stamped on the coins.
Takudo then has an idea. He asks Atu to share her vision with him so he can examine the coins personally. After studying them closely, a memory clicks—these coins are identical to the currency from an RPG he once played, Brave Quest.
Meanwhile, in the far north, the Saint and her knights march through a city recently destroyed by Araino. As the knights investigate the ruins, their inspection is cut short—every one of them suddenly has their brains blown out.
The one responsible is Araino herself. But this marks the 17th time the Saint has faced her, and she still can’t understand why the woman just won’t stay dead.
Araino corrects her with a twisted smile. She has been dying—in fact, the Saint has already killed her 17 times. But that doesn’t make it any less unfair in her eyes. The Saint’s strength is overwhelming, while Araino’s own power, though formidable, never comes close. Each death is excruciating, and she resents it deeply.
The Saint cuts her off, saying she knows Araino is just stalling for time. Realizing she’s been caught, Araino acts. She seizes control of every corpse in the ruined city—including the knights who were just slain—and orders them to attack.
The Saint is disgusted by such grotesque sorcery, but it changes nothing. Raising her staff, she summons a massive storm of flames, reducing the undead army to ash in an instant. Without hesitation, she charges forward and drives her weapon straight through Araino’s chest.
This makes it the 18th time the Saint has killed her. And though she knows Araino will inevitably return, at least this victory buys her enough time to devise a permanent solution.
Meanwhile, back in Dragon, panic spreads through the guards. A massive army of giants has appeared near the city—far more than anyone has ever seen gathered in one place.
By now, Takudo has pieced things together: the attackers must have come from the world of Brave Quest. In that game, encounters are randomly generated, which explains why there were never any warning signs before the giants appeared.
Isla had considered the possibility of encountering enemies brought into this world the same way they were—but she never imagined they’d come from a completely different genre of game. The system of Eternal Nations is very different from Brave Quest, but Takudo has experience with both, giving him a decisive advantage.
Up on a nearby cliff, the masterminds behind the attack—Flammin and Ice Rock—watch the chaos unfold. They were granted complete freedom to do whatever it takes to conquer this land in the name of their demon lord. Their arrival in this world was fortunate: all the goblins and giants immediately flocked to their banner, swelling their demon army with overwhelming numbers.
But Ice Rock hesitates. They had devoted their entire lives to conquering Brave Quest—should they really abandon that mission to start over in this new world? Flammin, however, isn’t one for deep thoughts. He dismisses the concern, saying the only thing that matters is carrying out the demon lord’s will.
With that, the two prepare to unleash their forces on Dragon, intent on drowning the land in despair.
All the monsters charge at Ice Rock’s command, and he asks Flammin if he’ll be joining the battle as well. But Flammin says he’d rather sit this one out so that Ice Rock can have the honor of leading. Ice Rock thanks him, then leaps onto the battlefield. While he’s gone, Flammin begins working on his secondary goal for the mission.
On the battlefield, Ice Rock orders his troops to lay waste to the city. But suddenly, a thick black smoke covers the area, causing every monster to choke violently. Shocked, Ice Rock and his mage assistant Oslo realize they’ve never seen a spell like this before. Judging by the effect, Oslo deduces that it must be a spell meant to empower evil-aligned fighters, since the neutral monsters are suffering while the demons like himself and Ice Rock are actually getting stronger.
A moment later, Oslo is stabbed through the abdomen by one of Atu’s tentacles. With him taken care of, she turns her full attention toward Ice Rock.
Takudo has already mentioned something about a warrior of ice, so Atu assumes Ice Rock must be one of the Demon Lord’s Four Generals. Ice Rock demands to know how she figured out his identity so quickly. Atu explains calmly that she is a hero from the game Eternal Nations, serving under her glorious King Takudo. There’s no point in dragging it out—because she intends to kill everyone here soon.
Back at the city walls, Antic gathers the soldiers and orders them to fire their arrows at the advancing army. But their barrage looks utterly pathetic, so she changes tactics and commands them to evacuate the citizens—they’ll have to abandon the city. Just then, Moltar arrives. Amused, he remarks that Antic is already thinking of fleeing, but she insists it’s their only option. Moltar’s spell may have slowed the enemy, but it won’t hold forever. Once the monsters reach the walls, there’s no way they can hold them off.
Moltar understands her fear, but he assures her there’s no need to panic. Atu is already on the battlefield, and as long as she’s there, defeat is impossible. Soon, she’ll claim the enemy general’s head. Without a commander, the monster army will collapse into chaos, and Dragantin’s forces will finish them off with ease.
Antic is astonished by Moltar’s calm confidence, but when she looks out at the battlefield, she sees Atu tearing through the enemy forces with ease. Suddenly, everything he said makes sense, and she starts to realize just how powerful Minara truly is.
Meanwhile, Atu is absolutely humiliating Ice Rock. She evades every one of his attacks while slaughtering monsters left and right. Ice Rock can’t comprehend how she’s able to overwhelm him so completely without him landing a single blow. But she’s simply following the plan Takudo devised.
Brave Quest was designed as an RPG with small-scale combat mechanics, while Eternal Nations is a civilization simulator—giving its heroes far greater range and power than anyone from Brave Quest could ever match.
Frustrated, Ice Rock yells at Atu, demanding to know why she’s even interfering. Since she’s clearly evil-aligned, shouldn’t she also wish to serve the Demon Lord and conquer the world?
To be honest, there was a time when both Atu and Takudo considered world conquest. But they quickly abandoned the idea—because it would be far too much work.
She was already constantly buried in paperwork as it was. So why on earth would she want to manage the entire world? Honestly, Ira almost lost it at the word paperwork, because she didn’t even know that was a thing. She asked Ice Rock how they expected to run the world once it was conquered.
Then she joked that Ice Rock must have been one of those RPG characters no one bothered giving a proper backstory. Ice Rock had no idea what she meant by RPG. So Ira tried jogging his memory, reminding him of all the countless times he must have died at the hands of the game’s hero. After all, he was nothing more than a mid-level boss.
She mocked him, saying it must suck to exist solely to be defeated. And while she’d love to say she understood how he felt, she couldn’t relate to a loser like him. All the while, she was effortlessly parrying Ice Rock’s attacks.
Enraged, he declared that he would crush all who opposed his mighty demon king. But Ira laughed and told him the only true ruler here was Takuto, the king of Mynoghra.
She saw him charging up an attack and thought he was foolish for believing he could hit her with such a telegraphed move. However, when she tried to move away, she realized her feet had been frozen in place by Ice Rock’s frost. She hadn’t prepared for that at all, leaving her vulnerable as his axe came down.
The strike did heavy damage, and Ice Rock felt proud of himself. But only a moment later, Ira got back up and killed him instantly. She felt ashamed that a weakling like him had managed to injure her, though her wounds healed almost instantly, so it wasn’t a big deal.
Still, she complained about how unfair Ice Rock’s attack had been. How was she supposed to dodge a strike that froze her in place beforehand? After stealing his skill, she realized it was literally a guaranteed hit—meaning there was nothing she could have done.
Anyway, it was time for her to give her report to Takuto. But when she tried contacting him, to her horror she realized something was terribly wrong: enemies had gathered around Mynoghra.
