Semi-Coercive Imperialist - Chapter 196
What Emotion Is. (2)
The Revolutionary Faction’s most secret base, Veil.
In that place that existed on no map, a meeting of those who never showed themselves continued.
“Was there an information leak?”
Rabbit Mask, Sensi.
At her question, the round table sank into a heavy silence for a moment.
“That isn’t important.”
One of the shadows answered. The figure’s face was hidden in darkness, and even the voice was distorted with mana.
That concealment was necessary. Oracle’s gender, and even Oracle’s age, could not be guessed. One of the leaders guiding the revolution was Oracle.
“Then what is important?”
Sensi asked Oracle.
“Choice.”
“……Choice?”
“For the cause alone, we must choose the more important people.”
Everyone seated at the round table suddenly fell into thought.
What was revolution?
It was the act of overturning the sky and remaking the world.
An altar built on someone else’s blood and bones, an offering that weighed sacrifice in the name of the cause.
“War is near.”
Oracle’s voice pressed down over Veil.
War.
The flames of ruin the Empire would ignite.
“The Empire’s oppression of minorities has already begun.”
The Imperial Civil Law was only the first step. Their madness would race down that track.
So those who had even their breathing room stripped away, those pushed and pushed again to the cliff’s edge.
In the end, to survive, they would have no choice but to gather under the banner of revolution.
“For them, revolution is not a choice. It is inevitability.”
People willing to throw themselves into revolution’s firepit just to live. They would become wildfire and spread across the continent.
“For them, we……”
Oracle’s gaze slowly swept across the silhouettes gathered at the round table.
“…only make the hardest choice in their place.”
* * *
The Sentinel Order interrogation room.
I looked at Laura sitting across from me. A blank sheet of paper and a fountain pen lay in front of her.
“Laura Espin.”
She slowly lifted her eyes and met mine.
“An elite who studied at the Imperial Sentio Magic Tower. From a pure Aran noble house that has produced mages for generations.”
A profile that could have guaranteed wealth and honor in the Empire.
I asked with a faint smile.
“You had no need to throw yourself into the revolution.”
“…Pure Aran.”
Laura muttered it with a mocking tone instead.
“Do you really think purity exists in the race called Aran?”
……Racial divisions.
Things like that were illusions in the end. Even blond hair and golden eyes, symbols of Aran, were only the result of genetic traits expressing themselves.
“That racial hierarchy you people shout yourselves hoarse over.”
If one traced humanity’s distant origins and the flow of endlessly mixed history, no perfectly pure bloodline existed anywhere on the continent.
That was something all humanity would come to accept in the future.
“It’s just violence written to suit imperialists’ tastes.”
Laura’s words were facts from the future.
“Is that so.”
I nodded without emotion.
The Revolutionary Faction’s banner was right. Their cause held a universal human truth. I understood the freedom and equality they advocated, but this world did not run on right and wrong alone.
“Then let me ask you one thing.”
I leaned forward.
“Why didn’t you refuse food and water?”
Laura’s eyes shook.
“Why are you still speaking your ideology here?”
What I wanted to ask came down to this.
“Why are you still alive and breathing?”
Life.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to bite your tongue and die?”
I gave a small smile and pushed the blank page toward her.
“But you’re not doing that.”
If she wrote down only her comrades’ names, she could live.
As if she understood what I meant, a faint smile passed over her lips too.
“You’re mistaken. My life doesn’t matter anymore. If you want, you can cut my throat right now.”
A resolute voice, but unnatural. Inside it sat a young, hardened emotion.
“…I see.”
I looked down at her quietly and spoke.
“Unfortunately, you are not assigned to me.”
The instinct I had built, filtering out subversives in my own way until now, told me this. This woman was definitely hiding something.
“Still, you’ll probably have to pray every night and wish desperately.”
Laura did not avoid my gaze.
“That I don’t receive the ‘case’ called you.”
I stood and reached a hand toward Laura. Her eyes squeezed shut.
Click.
I unlocked the chain connected to the desk.
“Now go down to the basement and get some rest.”
The prison beneath Sentinel headquarters. At least she could lie down there, so it was better than the interrogation room.
* * *
Near dawn, someone carefully opened the interrogation room door at Sentinel.
Yulian stepped into the empty room and sat before the mana recorder on the interrogation table. He took out the tape containing the interrogation from earlier and inserted it.
Clack.
When he pressed play, the voices of two people flowed out.
“An elite who studied at the Imperial Sentio Magic Tower. A pure Aran from a line of mages…”
Maximilian started it.
“Do you really think purity exists in Aran?”
Laura spoke dangerous words.
“Why didn’t you refuse food and water…… Wouldn’t it be easier to bite your tongue and die……”
Even knowing Maximilian, the clearest imperialist of them all, Laura answered like this.
“…You’re mistaken. My life doesn’t matter anymore. If you want, you can cut my throat right now.”
Yulian listened to that conversation in silence.
With his eyes closed, he sank into deep thought.
Ashton, once his close friend.
The reason Ashton’s lover Laura did not fear death, the cause she intended to carry out.
“……”
Yulian opened his eyes with a bitter expression.
Click. Whiiiiing.
He placed his hand on the recorder and fed in mana. Mana waves disturbed the tape’s mana-stone catalyst, scattering the core parts of Maximilian and Laura’s conversation.
At that moment.
“Huh?”
A sudden presence came from behind him.
Yulian calmly stood and turned.
“Sir Yulian?”
At the interrogation room doorway stood Hermann, a first-year rookie knight. He approached with an easy smile.
“What are you doing this late?”
Yulian looked at Hermann with deep eyes. The tail end of his thoughts lingered as he answered in an even tone.
“Nothing important. Why haven’t you gone home yet?”
“…Ah, me, well.”
Hermann scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
“It was my first real field mission, right? I wanted to do better. I couldn’t sleep anyway, so I came down to review the records.”
Right then Hermann’s administrative officer came in carrying a thick stack of documents in both arms. Yulian gave only a small nod to the greeting.
“Oh, and by the way. Aside from that woman Laura, it looks like we pulled almost all the information out of the other Revolutionary Faction bastards we caught today.”
“Did it go well?”
“Yes. They spilled everything.”
“Good work.”
Just as Yulian was about to walk past him.
“…Sir Yulian.”
Hermann called him from behind. Seeing Yulian’s profile, Hermann snapped a polite salute and smiled.
“Rest well, senior.”
“Good work.”
Step, step.
Yulian disappeared down the corridor. Once his footsteps had fully faded away, the smile at Hermann’s mouth receded like a tide.
“……”
With eyes gone cold, he looked at the mana recorder. The tape Yulian had just set down. He lightly turned it in his fingers, then, click, pressed play.
Whiiiiiiiing.
Only the sound of tape spinning came out, no voices at all.
“That’s strange.”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Hermann drummed his fingers on the table and muttered.
“There should’ve been an interrogation……”
He had clearly seen Maximilian interrogating Laura with his own eyes. And yet that record had been erased completely.
Tsssss.
Suddenly Hermann’s eyes turned blue. His blue-tinted retinas caught faint activated residue.
As always, a crime scene left traces. Marks that could not be hidden always remained.
“…So this works.”
Hermann smiled deeply as he thought.
Yulian Askar could become an enemy of the Empire.
* * *
‘……It’s been a while.’
I had once seen Yulian behind iron bars. Sentenced to death, abandoned by both his house and the Empire, waiting alone for death.
‘Max.’
A man worn down to the bone.
A man who carried duties and obligations that clashed with his nature, and still made countless efforts not to cast them aside.
Back then, death had almost looked like rest for Yulian.
‘I would’ve rather died by your hand.’
The man who said he hoped to die by me,
the man who had no lingering attachment to this hell called life,
the words he left me at the very end.
‘……May I ask you one favor?’
That favor, which became his final words.
“……”
I opened my eyes.
Before I knew it, morning sunlight was spilling in beyond the mansion.
My day began as usual.
I ate, got in the car, took documents from my aide, and went to work at the Order.
A routine of waiting for the coming war while also laying its groundwork. Preparing the greatest massacre.
We.
I arrived at Sentinel headquarters and stepped into the elevator. Tiana and Leon were already inside.
“Oh, Max.”
“Max~ hi.”
They welcomed me with smiles.
“Max. The year-0 rookies these days are insanely quick, huh? They haven’t even been in a few months, but they’re really proactive.”
Tiana chimed in at Leon’s words.
“Seriously, they are. Max, you know that guy Hermann too, right?”
Hermann von Berg. A knight from a provincial noble house.
In the past, he had lost his older brother, a soldier, after being caught in a Revolutionary Faction bombing.
“Yeah. I know him.”
“He’s been pushing really hard lately, not caring about senior knights at all. Honestly I’m worried. When zeal runs too far ahead-“
Ding!
My terminal rang. I checked the screen and frowned slightly.
[Emergency: In an imperial civilian residential district, a small explosion and skirmish occurred due to knight deployment.]
“…Speak of the devil. Looks like he caused something.”
Tiana gave a dry laugh. Leon did too.
“Well~ he’s at that hot-blooded age~”
I put the terminal away and said,
“I’ll go.”
“Huh? Really?”
“Yeah. I don’t have anything to do this morning anyway.”
Ding.
The elevator doors had just opened, but I pressed the button for the first floor again.
……
A civilian boarding house in Imperial District 23.
Two rookie Sentinel knights, Hermann and Mia, found very important evidence.
“It’s certain. This is Dominik’s forged ID.”
They had found traces of Dominik Baumann, a core Revolutionary Faction member and first-class wanted criminal.
Judging from the clues left all over the room, it was obvious he had used this place as one of his safehouses.
“Hey.”
Hermann looked down roughly at the bloodied boarding-house owner and her trembling son beside her, then jerked his chin.
“Talk.”
“……”
“I said talk. Where the bastard who stayed here went, what he’s done so far, and where he is now.”
Still, the owner only glared at Hermann with her mouth shut.
Hermann kicked her in the stomach with his combat boot.
“Ghk-“
“Talk!”
Mia looked at Hermann with uneasy eyes.
“If you talk here, it’ll be easier for you once you’re taken in. If things go well, you might even live. Huh? At least protect your son.”
Mia knew the source of the anger Hermann had carried since his Empire Point days, but what he was doing now did not help him as a knight.
“Hermann. Calm down first.”
Right when Mia grabbed Hermann’s shoulder.
The boarding-house owner spat out the blood in her mouth and sneered.
“…You’re a fake?”
“Fake? A fake-?”
Just as a laugh was about to burst from Hermann’s lips.
“Stop for a moment.”
Beyond the smashed front door, three Imperial Guard troops in pitch-black uniforms stormed in.
“We came in response to a report.”
“What report? This is Sentinel jurisdiction. Imperial Guard, step back.”
Hermann did not hide his irritation, and the Imperial Guards frowned at the sight of him.
“The explosion just now.”
It was a trap Dominik had left. Hermann had thrown himself and knocked the bomb outside, but it seemed it had struck the building across the way.
“The building right next door is private property owned by an Imperial Guard colonel. And……”
With oddly smug faces, the Imperial Guards pointed at the bloodied mother and son.
“…Did you inspect their genealogy?”
“Genealogy!”
Suddenly the owner’s son shouted.
“Our, our genealogy is right here……!”
The son pulled a crumpled document from his coat and held it out. The subordinate guard who received it put on a monocle-shaped mana appraisal device.
“…It appears genuine.”
Then the Imperial Guard let out a short laugh.
“Yes. As you can see, they are imperial citizens verified as pure Aran. Even if you’re a Sentinel knight, you can’t just do this to anyone without-“
Step.
Suddenly, calm footsteps rang up from below.
Step.
A neat sound climbing the stairs.
Step.
Everyone turned that way, and a man appeared through the gap in the door.
Maximilian Ebenholtz.
The three Imperial Guards hurriedly shut their mouths. They straightened and saluted. Quietly, they moved to the wall and cleared a path.
Maximilian walked in, crushing broken wooden planks underfoot, then asked Hermann first.
“What’s going on?”
“Ah, Knight Maximilian.”
“Start with the overview.”
“Yes, sir!”
The boarding-house owner’s eyes shook as soon as she recognized the name Maximilian, his very presence.
“We raided this place after getting intelligence that first-class wanted criminal Dominik was hiding here.”
Hermann hurriedly straightened his clothes while reporting.
“There were definite traces of him.”
“Traces?”
“Yes. A forged ID Dominik used, and encrypted communication records.”
He handed the collected evidence to Maximilian. Maximilian’s gaze swept the inside of the house, then landed on the owner and her son.
“And these two?”
“They appear to be Dominik’s collaborators. Also, look at this.”
Hermann handed him another letter with a grim smile.
“It’s a love letter she was trying to send to Dominik. Written by that boarding-house owner.”
Maximilian looked at her. A woman with wildly tangled hair.
Thump.
His heart beat.
He had known before arriving that they were Izenheim.
He was simply curious.
Could even Izenheim hold something like love as an emotion?
“I see. Is that your son next to you?”
“Yes. Hey, Imperial Guard. You, there, there, hand over the genealogy.”
Hermann waved carelessly at the Imperial Guard. Tense and stiff, the guard held out the genealogy.
Maximilian scanned that scrap of paper with indifference.
A flawless fake, no different from the real thing.
“…It’s you, isn’t it?”
Suddenly, the boarding-house owner kneeling on the floor looked up at Maximilian and spoke with a mocking tone.
“Maximilian Ebenholtz.”
Thump.
Below Maximilian’s collarbone, the virus had already been pulsing since the moment he stepped inside.
Proof that both mother and son were Izenheim wearing human skin.
So he drew his pistol.
Bang!
The mana bullet pierced the teenage boy’s forehead first.
In that instant, the boy crumpled down. Like wet grass, he slumped onto his mother’s shoulder.
“…Huh.”
“Uh……?”
Hermann, Mia, even the Imperial Guards, all froze at the execution before their eyes.
“Ah……”
The mother stared blankly at her son’s corpse collapsed on her shoulder.
Had she been so shocked her thoughts stopped, or did she feel no emotion at all.
Tick.
In that brief slowed time, Maximilian sharply observed her gaze and reaction.
Sorrow? Wailing? Rage?
None of that.
Izenheim.
They felt no emotion of mourning even at their own kind’s death.
Right. Looking back, even Jacob had only raged that I stole the “language of his kind.”
“……”
Reconfirming their nature, Maximilian casually twisted the muzzle.
Bang!
The second gunshot tore through the boarding house’s silence. Silver mana struck her skull. Thunk. Her slender body pitched forward onto the floor.
