Semi-Coercive Imperialist - Chapter 195

What Emotion Is.

Kairon became Sentinel’s deputy commander. But he did not step away from field work. He cast his intelligence network even wider and poured in his assets without restraint.

“The land prices in southern Hermes…”

Accordingly, the thing Kairon focused on most outside his official duties was investing.

“They went up this much? Hahah.”

He stared at the terminal screen and let out a dry laugh. Two commercial buildings and one mansion he had bought. In barely over a year, their value had skyrocketed to more than four times what he paid.

On top of that, every stock and bond he touched paid off.

“Haha… whew.”

But the real part started now.

The Zerpa Civil War and the Balkania-Mekerel War were only the beginning. A full-scale war that would swallow the continent would definitely come, and soon.

That was why Kairon needed more money as deputy commander. He needed more assets, so he would never have to ask the Imperial Guard or those palace bastards for favors.

His choice was mana stone.

He had already used all his remaining cash to buy mana stone bonds. He was planning to sell his Hermes real estate and other assets as well, then steadily pour everything into mana stone.

“War…”

If war broke out, he would of course stand on the front line himself.

He had prepared for that day long ago, and part of him was looking forward to it.

“…”

Kairon’s gaze settled on a pitch-black helmet at one corner of his desk. The newest tactical gear, newly invented by Maximilian’s company.

He put the helmet on with a curious expression.

Whirr.

As he fed mana into it, a soft mechanical hum sounded, and the visor slid down before his eyes.

“Oh?”

In an instant, his field of view widened, and everything in front of him converted into thermal data. Complex shapes and unnecessary visual information were stripped away, leaving only red and blue heat sources clearly marked in a combat-optimized view.

He did not need to press a button or touch anything.

When he lightly cut the flow of mana,

Click.

The visor folded neatly back up.

When he fed mana into it again,

Whirr.

It came down.

Click.

It went up.

“So this is that micro-mana, whatever, micro-mana responsive sensor?”

Whirr, click.

Whirr, click.

“…Oh.”

It was strangely addictive.

Whirr, click.

Whirr, click.

“So this is how it feels.”

Whirr, click.

Whirr, click.

Kairon kept raising and lowering the visor over and over.

Whirr…

Knock knock.

“Cough!”

At the sudden knock, he jerked and flung the helmet off.

“Uh, hm! Ahem. Y-yeah, come in.”

He brushed back his disheveled hair and cleared his throat.

A thought crossed his mind. No, wait, who dared knock without setting an appointment first? He was the deputy commander now.

“Who is it?!”

He glared over, ready to snap at whoever it was, but the moment the door opened, all of that vanished. A bright smile burst out first.

Kairon shouted the name and sprang to his feet.

“Yulian!”

After a long, long time undercover, Yulian had finally returned to Sentinel.

……

Yulian had stabilized Berkina, the drug state of the East. The drug cartel that ruled the underworld had clearly reorganized under a single “head” and transformed into a business structure.

From now on, low-grade drugs smuggled into the Empire would drop sharply.

If any lower group tried to distribute drugs inside Berkina, they would immediately be marked as enemies of the cartel and wiped out.

“You’re back, Sir Knight.”

In the Sentinel Order headquarters lobby, Tiana approached with a bright smile and greeted him.

“You got a lot tanner too.”

Yulian answered with a faint smile. Tiana glanced around, then lowered her voice.

“…Leon just got back from a mission too.”

Leon Askar.

Yulian’s biological younger brother.

But there was a big age gap between them. When Leon was still growing up, Yulian was living in the Empire Point dorms. By the time Yulian was commissioned as a knight and had a little breathing room, Leon had entered Empire Point instead.

So despite being blood brothers, they had a strange distance between them.

“No, it’s fine. I have a mission.”

Yulian shook his head.

“What? You got back three days ago, and already?”

“It was posted in the system.”

“Wow… take it easy.”

Yulian did not hesitate.

[ Knight Support Request ]

[ Accepted: Yulian Askar ]

Location: the outskirts of Imperial District 31. It had originally been a settlement built around mana stone mines, but after the mines were shut down, everyone left and it became a ghost town.

The Revolutionary Faction had hidden there.

Yulian entered in silence. A fierce fight was already underway between the Revolutionary Faction and the knights and soldiers sent in as the advance force.

Boom!

Mana clashed through the building wreckage. Stones rained down in a roar, throwing up clouds of dust. Yulian took one long step forward. He crouched beside a knight taking cover behind a wall.

“W-who are you?”

The knight flinched and tightened his grip on his sword.

“Yulian. Rookie?”

“Ah… yes, sir. That’s right. I’m Hermann.”

The rookie knight, Hermann. Neatly swept blond hair, crisp uniform, sharp posture.

Somehow he looked a bit like Maximilian, like a textbook Aran.

“Situation?”

“They seem to be Revolutionary Faction, but their firepower is stronger than expected.”

Boom!

A mana cannon fired from the rooftop of the opposite building and blew off the top of the wall they were hiding behind.

“I’ll open a path. Follow my line.”

Thud!

Yulian kicked off the ground. His body cut through the air like wind. Using collapsed debris as stepping stones, he leaped and in an instant drove into the building where the Revolutionary Faction had set up.

……

The engagement ended before nightfall. Most of the ones who fled were captured too. That was the power of a senior knight like Yulian.

“Take photos first. The scene and everything…”

Soldiers and police moved back and forth in a rush.

Most Revolutionary Faction members were killed on site. Only five or six remained, bloodied and kneeling on the ground.

“All of you are summary-execution targets, right? You’re all dead, right?”

Hermann extended his blade. He pointed it at the neck of one of his prisoners, a woman.

“…”

The woman simply closed her eyes. She looked as if she had already given up on life, not a trace of agitation.

Yulian watched her quietly, then

Tak.

He laid a hand on Hermann’s sword and calmly pressed it down.

“…Huh?”

Hermann looked at him in confusion.

“This group is larger than expected. They must have been acting on orders from above.”

He spoke while looking down at the kneeling Revolutionary Faction members.

“Keep them alive. They may have useful information. Send them to interrogation.”

In other words, do not kill them recklessly.

“Uh…”

Hermann worked his tongue uneasily. Yulian looked at him.

For some reason, an incident from years ago came back to him.

If it had been Maximilian, he would have ignored those words. He would have swung first.

But.

“…Yes. Fine. Whatever you say.”

Hermann smacked his lips and withdrew his sword. Yulian gave a small nod.

This one was not Maximilian.

There was no one like Maximilian except Maximilian himself.

* * *

I received the report in my office that Revolutionary Faction members had been transported to Sentinel headquarters.

I checked the list of knights who had joined the operation and scanned the identities of the detainees.

“…”

One face in the photos caught my eye. I stood without a word and headed to the interrogation rooms upstairs.

Creeeak.

When I opened the door and stepped inside, the knights and staff hurriedly saluted and greeted me.

I gave a light nod and looked past the glass.

Yulian was seated at the interrogation table. Across from him sat a woman in handcuffs, lips tightly sealed.

Someone I knew.

“Name: Revolutionary Faction.”

A young knight muttered while flipping through documents.

“Affiliation: Laura.”

“Her name is Revolutionary Faction?”

“Ah, sorry. Affiliation is Revolutionary Faction, name is Laura. She used to be a promising elite mage from the Imperial Sentio Magic Tower, but she was corrupted by subversive ideology and fled.”

He glanced into the interrogation room and added,

“We were going to execute her on site, but Knight Yulian insisted on stopping us. He said she might have useful information…”

I nodded.

“Oh, right. I’m Hermann, a year-0 probationary knight, newly inducted this term. It’s a true honor to meet you in person like this, Knight Maximilian. Hahaha.”

Hermann.

I repeated the name to myself. A name I knew very well, and a face I knew too well.

“Age?”

“Twenty-one. Oldest in my class.”

“You look older.”

“…Huh? Ah, yes, that’s true. Haha. I hear that a lot. People say I look five years older. Maybe it’s the part in my hair.”

Before regression, he had raced up the promotion ladder and become one of Sentinel’s power players.

I watched with my own eyes as a junior who joined two years after me rose past me.

Yes, it was inferiority.

“But honestly, she doesn’t look like she has any major information.”

Hermann sneered at Laura. Right then, Yulian stood and came out.

“Max.”

“It’s been a while. How’s the interrogation?”

It really had been a long time, but neither of us had much to say.

We just talked about today’s work as if we had seen each other yesterday.

“She won’t talk. Looks like she knows something, though.”

“Sir Knight! Then should I go in and rough her up a little?!”

Hermann asked, eyes gleaming. Yulian nodded tiredly.

“Thanks!”

Hermann went in, energized, and Yulian’s gaze settled on me.

“Max. Let’s talk for a moment.”

“Yes.”

I followed him up to the Knight Order rooftop.

The rooftop. A clean zone beyond the palace’s wiretapping reach.

“So you know her.”

Leaning on the railing, I went straight for the point.

“Yeah.”

Yulian did not seem to have any intention of hiding it.

“Remember? Operation codename Path of Dreams. Berkina. And… Ashton.”

Ashton. Yulian’s old friend, killed by Yulian in Berkina.

An Izenheim knight.

“Yes. I remember.”

He reached into his coat, pulled out a crumpled cigarette, and put it between his lips.

“That woman was Ashton’s lover.”

I stayed silent for a moment.

An elite mage and an imperial knight. And that imperial knight was someone who should never have been allowed to become a knight in the first place.

A romance that would sell.

“I allowed Ashton to exchange letters with her. Ashton told Laura the truth. He confessed that he had faked his identity.”

Even so, the two loved.

No, only one loved.

Izenheim used Laura and drew an innocent elite into revolution.

“So Ashton turned Laura into Revolutionary Faction.”

“…Who knows. Laura might have leaned that way herself.”

“Either way, joining Revolutionary Faction is a capital crime under imperial law.”

“Max. There’s one more clause after that, isn’t there?”

Yulian exhaled a thin stream of smoke and gave a bitter smile.

“If they are only minor participants, or if they actively cooperate with the investigation…”

“If they give names, their sentence may be reduced.”

I folded my arms.

“You want her to live.”

“I can’t say I bear no responsibility for how she went astray.”

Yulian looked at me quietly, then suddenly asked something else.

“That rookie, Hermann. Do you know him?”

“…Yes. I know him.”

“Then he must be worth watching, if even you know him.”

He looked down into the Knight Order courtyard below and smiled faintly.

“Yes. I’m watching him.”

He would become famous. Not just him, but his entire class.

I had turned Empire Point’s intake policy and training intensity into hell, but there were monsters who survived even under that harsh control and surveillance.

“…Why? Does he resemble me?”

At my question, Yulian gave a bitter smile, as if the idea were absurd.

“Max. There is no knight in this world who resembles you.”

Was that praise, or criticism.

Either way, it was likely a thoughtless remark.

* * *

Sentinel Order headquarters. With the recent explosion in budget and the reallocation of space, the second-floor lounge had become exclusive to year-0 and year-1 rookies.

“Hermann! Congrats!”

“Congrats!”

When Hermann came into the lounge, his classmates handed him gifts. It was their way of celebrating his safe completion of his first live-combat mission.

“Thank you, thank you.”

“Hey, how was live combat? Was it rough?”

The noble-born knight Claude, the commoner-born Miles, and several classmates who had lived through Empire Point together crowded around him.

“Come on, tell us.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

And for good reason, year-0 probationary knights were in emergency mode these days.

A new clause had recently been added to Sentinel Order regulations.

[ During the year-0 probation period, if practical combat performance falls significantly below benchmark, knighthood commissioning may be revoked. ]

“No, it was rough, but I was fine. And of course I killed people. Took heads.”

Hermann smirked as he toyed with the sword at his waist.

Everyone reacted with half relief, half envy at his easy answer.

“What was Knight Yulian like? I heard he’s insanely good.”

“…He was insanely fast, but kind of dull. Looked tired too. But more than that, I saw Maximilian in the interrogation room today.”

At that name, the rookies reacted at once.

Maximilian was only in his second year, but he was the most feared figure in the entire Order.

They said he had directly or indirectly killed thousands, literally thousands.

There was a reason people called him a monster.

“Seriously? What was he like?”

“Um…”

Hermann recalled facing him in that interrogation room.

The oppressive force that crushed the air just by standing there.

A presence that felt like it could crumple his shoulders.

“His presence was insane. I could barely breathe. He’s just different. Seriously different.”

He shook his head in something close to admiration.

“Ah, Knight Maximilian should’ve come to the field. Forget interrogation, he would’ve cut them all down.”

“…True. If it were him, absolutely.”

“So honestly, I’m kind of disappointed.”

Leaning back on the sofa, Hermann gave a crooked smile.

“Fuck, those Revolutionary Faction bastards. We should’ve slit every neck right there instead of dragging them all the way to headquarters, but some old man stopped it…”

He gritted his teeth and sprang up.

“…Anyway. Work hard so you don’t get cut during probation. I’m one step ahead now.”

He left the lounge at an easy pace.

……

Late in the pre-dawn hours, Sentinel Order interrogation room.

Laura sat with both hands bound.

Staring blankly at the gray wall, how many hours had passed like this?

Creak.

At some point, the door opened and a staff officer held out a tray.

“You’re to eat.”

Soup, bread, and meat, steam rising warm.

An unexpected meal.

Laura glared with guarded eyes, but her hunger beat her caution.

She lifted the spoon.

One bite, two bites, three bites.

One piece, two pieces, three pieces.

The warm food eased her body, and by the time she had emptied the bowl in a rush,

Clank. Creeeak.

The interrogation room door opened again.

“…!”

Laura’s eyes flew open. The handcuffs at her wrists clinked, and her lips trembled.

“Nice to meet you.”

Softly settled blond hair. Golden eyes catching pale light.

The top-priority assassination target designated by Revolutionary Faction leadership, and an extremely dangerous Class-1 threat.

“My name is Maximilian.”

Standing right in front of her, he smiled and asked,

“Did you enjoy your meal?”