Campione: Strongest# 483: War Council

Creak—!!!

The prep room door was thrown open, hinges screaming in protest.

Lorelei Barthomeloi stepped in first, white combat uniform sharp against the dim room, carrying herself like a cold, untouchable queen as her ice-hard gaze swept across every face inside.

When her eyes passed over Haru's lightly smiling face, a flicker of annoyed reproach flashed through her light brown irises.

Lorelei paused for a heartbeat, narrowed her eyes slightly, and spoke in a voice as cold as steel.

"This room is now requisitioned as a temporary war council chamber. Anyone not directly involved—please leave."

As she spoke, her killing-cold stare locked onto Ryougi Shiki and the others, and everyone present immediately understood precisely who counted as "not involved."

"Hm?"

Shiki's brows knit, her black eyes suddenly blooming into something brilliant and terrifying as the gaze of death itself focused straight on Lorelei.

She had never been the type to "play nice," and being told to leave the moment someone walked in—especially in that tone—did nothing for her patience.

Lorelei's eyes sharpened in turn, a hint of surprise flickering there as she took in Shiki's stare.

A baton-shaped combat Mystic Code appeared in her hand in an instant.

Invisible wind began to whisper through the room.

The air went tight—one more step from drawing blood.

"Those eyes… oh? That's the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, said to descend from Balor, the evil eye king of myth, isn't it? Didn't expect to see those here on the far side of the world."

The voice was warm, almost amused.

It came from an elderly gentleman dressed like a nineteenth-century noble, who smiled gently at Shiki as if they were having tea instead of standing on the edge of a fight.

"…Oh?"

Shiki raised an eyebrow, giving him a faintly surprised look.

"I'm the representative of the Wandering Sea this time—just call me Gweira. And you, young lady?"

Gweira's tone was mild, the sort any kindly grandfather might use, the kind that made people feel like they were basking in a spring breeze.

"Ryougi Shiki."

She hesitated half a second, then offered her name out of basic courtesy.

Thanks to Gweira's interjection, the tension in the room snapped and bled away.

No one brought up "irrelevant personnel" again.

Even Lorelei, still not precisely pleased, let the issue drop—the title "Mystic Eyes of Death Perception" was not one she could afford to ignore.

Even a child, if they possessed those eyes, could hypothetically reverse-kill a Dead Apostle Ancestor.

In the end, that sort of power came with its own right to speak.

"It's been, what, over four years now? You're still looking as sharp as ever, Your Eminence."

Gweira removed his hat and bowed toward Haru, seated at the long table.

"So the Wandering Sea sent you again, Gweira. Not thinking about retiring?"

Haru smiled as he spoke to the old magus he'd met at the Clock Tower four years ago.

He'd always had a decent impression of the man.

For magi, "retirement" wasn't exile—it meant withdrawing from the front lines to spend the rest of your years buried in research.

In other words, a reward.

"The younger generation just… isn't cutting it."

Gweira shook his head, glancing first at Lorelei and then at the young representative from the Atlas Institute, expression faintly troubled.

Among the three great branches of the Association, his Wandering Sea was the only one that had fallen into a talent drought.

For someone who'd devoted his entire life to it, that was no small blow.

Following his gaze, Haru looked at the tall figure in uniform standing behind Lorelei—a girl wrapped in purple from head to toe.

Her almost floor-length purple hair was tied into a braid, but somehow didn't look old-fashioned; her outfit was a purple skirt with white trim, a matching beret perched on her head, and her long, straight legs were wrapped in purple thigh-highs.

With that fully violet ensemble and a face and figure both easily rated in the nineties, "beautiful" barely began to cover it.

"And you are…?"

Haru lifted a brow, eyeing the purple-haired girl with mild surprise.

Something about her seemed familiar.

Realizing he was addressing her, the girl froze for a moment, then stepped forward a little stiffly and took off her beret in a small bow.

"Acting Director of the Atlas Institute, Sion Eltnam Atlasia—at your service, Magician."

Haru blinked, then remembered.

Right—the tragic heroine who'd shown up in certain "Tsukihime-adjacent" stories.

Still, he was long past the age of getting excited just because a familiar name appeared.

He simply nodded with a small smile and asked the question on his mind.

"So, Atlas, huh? You've been changing representatives quickly. What happened to Peter, the one I met last time?"

"Mr. Peter has already fallen in the suppression of internal unrest."

Sion paused, then answered with a weary helplessness.

"Internal unrest?"

Haru's eyebrow climbed again.

"Let me explain, Your Eminence."

Gweira let out a long, tired sigh.

"Many of the Association's senior magi were conducting experiments to forcibly transform themselves into Dead Apostles. When the Dark Six triggered the mass-conversion ritual over the city, those experiments… backfired. It set off riots inside the Association at the same time. Thanks to that, a lot of the older high-rank magi are tied down—and quite a few are dead."

"…Of course."

Thinking back to how the Church had used the Dark Six as a stepping stone to claim hegemony, Haru's mouth twitched, his expression stuck somewhere between a grimace and reluctant amusement.

All three of the Association's great branches—and the Holy Church on top of that—had tried to exploit the power of Dead Apostles.

All of them had gotten bitten for it.

Truly fitting for a world named after the Crimson Moon.

"Hey, hey, hey—enough small talk. How about we start planning how to hit something?"

Narbareck spoke up, sounding thoroughly bored.

At that, everyone seated around the table rose and gave up their chairs to the three Association representatives.

Once Lorelei, Gweira, and Sion had taken their seats—

"Dawn. You're handling the specifics. You explain it."

Narbareck clapped her hands once, tone impatient.

"Yeah, yeah, got it, Director."

A brown-haired priest with spiky hair stepped in, a roll of yellowish parchment in hand and a helpless look on his face.

"An honor to meet you in person, Your Eminence."

The priest, Dawn, traced the sign of the cross toward Haru, voice steeped in respect.

"Dawn from the Technical Development Bureau? You're the one they sent?"

Haru gave him a narrow-eyed look.

If he remembered correctly, this was the guy in charge of researching all the "junk" artifacts Haru had tossed the Church from various demon worlds.

"Honestly, I never expected you to remember me. If it were up to me, I'd rather not be here either—but I didn't precisely plan on being personally appointed by the Pope to handle logistics."

Dawn gave a wry smile as he unrolled the parchment and spread it across the table, the sheet taking up most of the surface.

The material was similar to fine vellum, faint threads of holy power running through it—clearly a custom piece of Church thaumaturgy.

All eyes fixated on the surface.

It was essentially a three-dimensional map: mountains, rivers, forests, buildings, roads—all rendered in precise miniature, as if someone had shrunk the real landscape and pressed it flat.

The city the map depicted was unmistakable.

Tokyo.

"This is a segment of the continental chart drawn up by the Church's astrologers last year. Luckily for us, it only gets redone once every ten years, and the last revision was just made. The margin of error compared to present-day Tokyo shouldn't be too large."

Dawn's tone carried a trace of relief as he explained from Haru's side.

"If you'll look here—the red lights on the map mark humans who've already become Dead Apostles."

His expression hardened as he pointed to the almost completely crimson expanse covering Tokyo.

Everyone present drew a sharp breath at the sight, faces going pale in unison.

They all knew the 15 million people in Tokyo were effectively gone.

That had been an abstract number—words.

Seeing the city drowned in a sea of red dots made the loss land in a way that hit the gut.

"So it is a Tokyo map. Feels like staring at an RPG overworld."

Haru's mouth quirked upward, voice half joking.

"Really… you still have room to crack jokes at a time like this."

Tohno Akiha muttered under her breath, but the tension in her face eased just a little.

Most of the others relaxed a fraction as well—everyone except the ones with naturally frozen expressions (certain someones named Lorelei and Shiki).

If the strongest person in the room could still smile, then maybe the situation wasn't quite hopeless yet.

"The Church has mobilized practically all of its combat personnel. We've deployed 1.2 million knights, 500,000 monks, and 300,000 Executors—a total of 1.9 million clergy forming three defensive rings around the Tokyo metro area."

Dawn traced three concentric circles of white points encircling Tokyo on the map, his face grim.

The deployment had its shortcomings—the forces were spread thin.

Dead Apostles spread like a virus; let even one slip out, and it could turn into a city-level disaster.

They'd had no choice but to divide their troops.

"According to our seers and clairvoyant sisters, Tokyo itself is wrapped in a double Reality Marble—Night of Wallachia and the Forest of the Devouring Sea. We don't dare push in blindly. However, if they try to break through our encirclement, the knight orders will rip them apart."

Dawn continued his briefing in a steady voice.

The Church excelled at legion warfare, massed armies marching under holy banners.

Couple that with holy power being a direct counter to Dead Apostles, and even with a seven-to-one numbers disadvantage, the vampires weren't precisely eager to charge out and test their luck.

"Right now, you could call the situation a stalemate."

He finished his summary with that.

"The one blessing in all this is that the surface world still hasn't noticed anything is wrong with Tokyo. Everything's gone unusually smoothly so far—but using thaumaturgy alone, we can hold the information lockdown for three days at most. After that…

Our time limit is up."