Maxwell’s satellite phone rang almost immediately.

He glanced at the screen, the corner of his mouth lifting, and answered.

"Prime Minister Takahashi. Hello."

There was a brief silence on the other end. Then, in hesitant Federation Standard, the man asked softly, "And you are...?"

"Maxwell Kane," Maxwell said. "I’m currently in charge of the Atlas Federation."

"Oh... so it’s General Maxwell Kane." Takahashi’s tone turned instantly respectful. "I’ve heard a great deal about you."

Maxwell leaned back like he had all the time in the world. "Prime Minister Takahashi, everyone’s fighting to stay alive after the apocalypse. I’m surprised you’ve got the leisure to call me."

"Well," Takahashi said smoothly, "it’s been a long time since the end of the world began. Things aren’t as hard as they were in the beginning. It’s only natural for us to check in on each other, right?"

"Mm." Maxwell nodded to himself. "Fair enough."

"And how is the Atlas Federation doing?" Takahashi asked, dripping with concern. "Are things stable on your side?"

"Pretty great," Maxwell said pleasantly. "We’re watching TV right now. An apocalypse war movie. Really entertaining."

"...."

Takahashi’s voice tightened. "General Kane has refined tastes, I see. Still has time to watch television."

"In the apocalypse, you need ways to decompress." Maxwell’s eyes flicked to the big screen feed of Ethan’s massacre. "Speaking of—Prime Minister Takahashi, how are things on your end?"

"We were doing fine," Takahashi said, forcing the words through his teeth. "We survived the zombie assaults. But lately, we’re... not doing so well."

"Oh?" Maxwell asked, pretending he didn’t already know. "Why’s that?"

Takahashi sighed like a man carrying the weight of the world. "Recently, a group of Atlas Federation people came to the Yamato Empire. They’re like demons—killing, burning, destroying everywhere. In just a few days, they’ve already slaughtered over a million of our citizens."

"First we had zombies attacking our cities. Now we have demons massacring them. Our people are terrified."

Maxwell widened his eyes in exaggerated surprise. "Really? Prime Minister Takahashi, are you sure they’re Atlas Federation?"

"Yes," Takahashi said quickly. "Nine of them. I’m certain they’re from your Federation."

"Nine people," Maxwell repeated slowly, like he was doing the math. "A million dead in a few days? Come on. That’s not possible. Even if it were a million pigs, you couldn’t kill that many that fast."

He kept his voice steady, but the amusement in it was razor-thin.

"General Kane," Takahashi said tightly, "do you think I’d joke about something like this?"

"I don’t know," Maxwell said. "It’s just hard to believe. What you’re describing is absurd."

"It is absurd," Takahashi admitted, then pushed on urgently. "But it’s true. Their strength is—at least Tier 16, Tier 17. They have wide-area skills. They kill in batches—hundreds, thousands at a time!"

At first, Takahashi’s people had guessed Tier 15. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

After seeing Infernals get one-shot, they’d bumped that estimate up another two tiers.

Maxwell let out a short laugh. "Prime Minister Takahashi, I think the pressure of the apocalypse has given you hallucinations. How could there be Tier 16 or Tier 17 humans right now?"

He paused, then added sweetly, "Yamato still has psychiatrists alive, right? Why don’t you go talk to one? If you don’t have any left, I can send you one. Out of goodwill. It’s the least we can do."

"I’m not sick!" Takahashi snapped, voice rising.

Then he caught himself—remembering why he’d called—and forced the anger back down.

"I’m telling you the truth," he said, each word ground out. "Countless eyes have seen it. General Kane—this is the apocalypse. Human survival is already hard enough. We should be supporting each other. I hope you can contact them and make them stop. Stop the killing. Don’t keep adding to the sins."

"Stop the killing?" Maxwell repeated.

His smile vanished.

A cold, furious heat rolled up from somewhere deep in his chest, fast enough it almost made him dizzy.

"When you people ambushed us—and our allies—did you ever once think about ’stopping’?" Maxwell’s voice sharpened with every word. "When you were burning cities, looting, raping, abducting, carrying out massacres like it was a hobby—did you ever think about stopping?"

He leaned forward, knuckles whitening around the phone.

"Elderly people in their nineties. Pregnant women. Babies still in the womb." His tone turned brutal. "Did you ever hesitate?"

"Live dissections. Freezing people and stripping them down to the bone. All those extermination-level experiments." Maxwell spat the words. "Did you ever lose sleep?"

"And now you’re calling me to talk about ’sins’?" He let out a harsh laugh. "Do you even hear yourself?"

He didn’t give Takahashi room to breathe.

"What they’re doing doesn’t even come close to what you did," Maxwell said, voice low and vicious. "Not even one ten-thousandth of it."

"You..."

Ryuji Takahashi clearly hadn’t expected Maxwell to explode like that. It took him a long moment before he finally spoke again, voice small.

"Wasn’t all that... history?" he said. "It’s been so long. Shouldn’t we be past it by now?"

"Past it?" Maxwell’s laugh had no humor in it. "My father, my grandfather, my wife—they all died in that ambush. That kind of blood debt gets carved into your bones. You don’t ’move on.’"

He squeezed the satellite phone so hard his knuckles went white.

"If I could get to your side right now, I’d personally lead people over there and wipe the Yamato Empire off the map."

Maxwell’s voice dropped, cold and vicious.

"And you want me to contact them and tell them to stop killing?" He spat. "You’ve got some nerve. Do yourself a favor—stay home and wait to die."

He hung up.

For a second, the room was quiet except for Maxwell’s breathing.

Then he slammed a palm on the table, grinning like a man who’d just gotten something out of his system.

"God, that felt good. So damn good."

Maxwell came from a military family. A lot of his relatives had died in that war.

He’d hated the Yamato Empire since he was a kid, and after he became the Federation’s top military commander, his biggest wish had been to one day lead Atlas troops straight at Yamato.

But in peacetime, that day never came.

Then the apocalypse hit.

And somehow, revenge was back on the table.

It wasn’t him marching in person—but Ethan’s crew were Atlas Federation too. If they erased Yamato, it’d feel no different than if Maxwell had done it with his own hands.

And for years, he’d dreamed of pointing at the Yamato Prime Minister’s face and cussing him out.

Today, he finally got to.

The other people in the conference room just stared at him, a little stunned. Apparently, this was the first time most of them had ever seen Maxwell like that.

Gabriel was the first to break the silence. "General Kane... why’d you hang up? You could’ve let the rest of us get a few shots in too."

"Yeah!" someone complained. "You got your fun. Let us have ours."

Maxwell coughed, suddenly a bit embarrassed. "Uh... got carried away. Forgot."

Gabriel tilted his head. "So... call him back?"

"..."

Yamato Empire High Command.

"Bang!"

Ryuji Takahashi whipped the satellite phone down and smashed it against the floor.

"Maxwell, you bastard!" he roared. "You’ve gone too far!"

"Takahashi-san, please calm down!"

"Calm down?" Takahashi whirled. "He just screamed in my face! You want me to calm down?!"

He jabbed a shaking finger at the men in the room.

"This is because of you and your brilliant idea! You had me deliver my face right to them so they could slap it!"

One official swallowed and tried cautiously, "Um... Takahashi-san... I think maybe your approach was the problem. We were the ones asking for help. We should’ve lowered our stance."

"My approach?" Takahashi’s eyes went bloodshot. "I got called an idiot and I didn’t even dare talk back, and you’re telling me my approach was the problem?!"

Everyone instantly ducked their heads.

What they didn’t say out loud was: it wasn’t that he didn’t dare talk back.

It was that Maxwell never gave him a single opening.

After a long stretch of heavy silence, Takahashi finally forced his rage down, jaw trembling.

"...So what now?" he asked, voice hoarse.

"We try again," Takeo Kobayashi said, stepping forward. "We have to work through the Atlas Federation leadership. At least they’ll listen. Those people in the field won’t. They don’t negotiate—they just wipe out cities."

Takahashi’s face twisted. "If anyone wants to call them, go ahead. Don’t ask me. I’m not letting someone point at my nose and curse me out again."

Ichigo Ishikawa’s voice was flat. "Since it was your suggestion in the first place, you should be the one to call."

"..."

Takeo’s face stiffened.

Under everyone’s stare, he had no choice. He swallowed hard, pulled out a fresh satellite phone, and dialed again with shaking fingers.