Chapter 251: Pursuit (2)

The intellectuals the Empire needs. The intellectuals the Empire does not need.

And, needed or not, the intellectuals that must never be handed over to the enemy.

Salzmann belongs to the third category.

Before my Regression, a technology called the ‘Mana Nuclear Bomb’ existed.

The principle is this :

A mana stone’s mana is by nature locked within a stable crystal lattice, seeping out little by little over its lifetime. That mana stones can serve as sources of light and heat is entirely thanks to this ‘slow leak’. It would not be far wrong to call Magi-engineering the discipline of controlling that rate of extraction.

But there exists a variant with an unstable resonance core, of which refining ten thousand tons of mana stone might yield barely a handful. The element academia has named the「Critical Stone」disgorges every drop of its imprisoned mana in a single instant the moment one strong wave strikes its core.

The problem is that this release itself becomes another wave that strikes the neighboring cores, and the cores knocked loose strike the next ones in turn.

Therefore, it is chain-reactive.

Ordinarily, the variant’s density is so low that this chain effect dies out after a few iterations.

But gather high-purity「Critical Stone」beyond a certain mass, beyond critical mass, in one place, and the chain does not die down. Instead it feeds on itself, multiplying exponentially, and in an instant disgorges a city’s worth of mana from a single point.

That is the Mana Nuclear Bomb.

Salzmann’s two papers─「Chain Resonance of Mana Stones」and 「On the Critical Conditions of Mana」— were the two keys that would first throw that door open.

Though the man himself believes them to be nothing more than pure theory.

Which means, if Ezenheim is trying to smuggle these minds out of the Empire far earlier than in the original history, it is probably—

Because they, too, want to get their hands on the bomb far sooner than before.

Certain intellectuals I know of must not leave for anywhere, be it west or east.

This technology must be delayed as long as possible, or else held in our hands as the very last resort.

For a nuclear weapon deters war by its mere existence, and for that very reason is, conversely, the worst weapon humanity could ever possess.

“……Professor Salzmann.”

In the middle of a field where the train had stopped. Vehicles rolled up in clouds of dust and lined up beside us.

“You will be staying at the Special Detention Camp for a while.”

The word ‘camp’. Salzmann’s face went gray as ash.

“K-Knight Maximilian. I know nothing of this Blue Rose Society.”

The professor clutched at my sleeve.

“The lecture hall and the laboratory. That has been the whole of my life. I have never seen those leaflets, never so much as touched one. If teaching a single student is a crime, then how is a man supposed to be an educator in this country……!”

Listening to all this, I quietly pried his hand away.

“……Ideology spreads like pollen. From one flower to the next.”

For the sake of those who were surely watching from some hiding place even at this moment, I staged the lines and the scene. So that they could judge me easily, and see me easily.

“So there is nothing for it but to cut off the source. I ask for your cooperation.”

Salzmann’s shoulders collapsed.

“I—”

“You should think of your elderly mother.”

At that single sentence, the professor’s lips froze.

“Rest easy. It won’t take long.”

─Plop.

Then, without warning, a tiny droplet fell from the sky.

─Plop. Plop.

As the rain slowly gathered strength, my people came forward and took Professor Salzmann into custody.

Shaaaaaaa──

Water poured down as though the clouds themselves were melting.

I looked up at the sky without a word.

As I stood receiving the rain, an umbrella suddenly appeared over my head.

“Your hair is getting wet.”

Schatz Heizen.

“……Thanks.”

At the sight of her, I let slip a faint smile.

* * *

Shaaaaaaa──

The rain fell.

It was coming down in sheets.

Summer has arrived before anyone noticed, and rain like prison bars drills into the earth.

Patter── patter── [TL: The rain sound here, chujeok, is spelled identically to the chapter title, “Pursuit” in Korean.]

The sound of water mixing with earth, kneading it into mud. By tomorrow it will have swollen into a mire.

How quickly the seasons change.

“…….”

Former Sentinel Senior Knight Adria gazed out the window, thinking such thoughts.

「Office of Knight Adria」

A knight without affiliation can serve the roles of lawyer, prosecutor, and soldier only in a limited capacity. No power to refer cases to a Knight’s Trial, no authority of detention. For though it is the individual knight who wields the authority, the space in which that power operates is the ‘knight order’.

Even so, investigating suspicious cases on one’s own, or defending someone, remains possible.

“……The list, ma’am.”

Adria received the information from former Operations Officers who had left Sentinel alongside her.

A list of those who had collaborated with the Blue Rose Society.

The ones who had defiled the Empire’s ideology and insulted Sentinel.

“Tch…….”

The Empire stands on the verge of war. It is only a matter of timing; they will wage that war without fail.

This, then, is ideological censorship. Whether the blue rose is real or fake makes no difference to them. All the more so when the targets are Zestfall’s literati, who quibble over and pick apart every single thing the imperial house does.

The Empire might kill everyone on this list.

“For now, let’s move.”

The authority to defend and to investigate still existed in this office at least, and Adria still had strength enough to look after a few people.

…….

Shaaaaaa──

The residential quarter of Zestfall’s university district, drenched in pouring rain.

“Show them every courtesy──!”

In the garden of one mansion, the Georgen inspector—Gewin shouted from under his umbrella.

The target of the arrest was Professor Brandt of the Mana Wave Studies Department. His name was on the Blue Rose Society’s Registry this time.

Shaaaaaa──!

“Move it, move it!”

The rain kept growing heavier, and about the time a mist of water was frothing off the brim of his cap.

A car stopped in front of the garden. One of the Georgen men recognized the man stepping out and snapped a reflexive salute.

Gewin’s eyes went round as he looked at him too.

“Huh? Inspector Fried. Good day, sir.”

It was Inspector Fried.

He stood without so much as an umbrella and surveyed the scene. They were about to haul off not just the professor but his assistants and students wholesale.

“Sergeant Gewin.”

Fried called out to him. Gewin’s brow furrowed slightly.

“It’s Inspector now, sir.”

At the correction, Fried let out a hollow laugh.

“……What is this?”

“Ah, you haven’t heard, sir? It’s the Blue Rose Society.”

Fried glared at him and shot back.

“The Registry had these assistants’ names on it too, did it?”

Gewin worked his lips.

The sharp tone, the gaze looking down from above, the still-unbent posture. Every bit of it grated on him.

“Sir. As I said, I am no longer a sergeant.”

It had been a special promotion. Fried, on the other hand, had been suspended for savagely beating Niko Weber, and had only just barely been reinstated.

“Which means you cannot interfere with my work.”

“…….”

Fried said nothing for a while.

“My, how you’ve grown.”

Ha. He twisted the corner of his mouth, then merely nodded faintly and turned his back.

Gewin quietly watched those army boots tramp away through the mire—

“……Hey, you! Hands off the professor, load him in nice and easy!”

Then, all trace of a smile wiped from his face, he turned his attention back to the work at hand.

…….

Joshua’s detention was extended. It was thanks to the recent revision of the law, which had made a ‘second extension’ of the Sentinel’s detention authority possible.

“Have a seat.”

Summoned up from the underground prison, Joshua sat blankly in the interrogation room, his face visibly gaunter after only a few days.

Creeeeeak──

Then the iron door of the interrogation room swung open.

─Thud.

Someone came in.

Short hair. A woman. A knight.

Not Julian. Her hair is even shorter than Julian’s. Or is Julian’s long, for a man? He begrudges even the time it takes to get a haircut, after all…….

Joshua’s thoughts wandered where they pleased.

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Hannah Usar.”

Tap, tap. The knight squared the edges of the documents she had brought, then spread them all out on the desk.

“Well, we’re short on time, so I’ll get right to the point. This is the Registry of those who collaborated with the Blue Rose Society.”

Turned around, so that Joshua could see it clearly.

“Every one of them—”

Joshua stared down at it blankly. A page packed dense with ink. It was full of familiar names.

“is scheduled for the Special Detention Camp.”

“……What?”

While he sat stunned, Hannah added evenly.

“Your two sisters included.”

Clank!

Joshua shot to his feet, only for the chains to yank him back down into his seat.

Rattle! Clang!

Amid the convulsive shaking of metal—

“No!”

He screamed for the first time. His weakened vocal cords scraped raw, raising a rasp like blood in his throat.

“You people are chasing the completely wrong thing! We—”

“‘We’?”

A chilly smile hung at the corner of Hannah’s mouth.

“So now it’s ‘we’. And here you were insisting you acted alone.”

“…….”

Joshua’s expression stiffened.

“All this time you’ve been playing the pathetic little moron shouldering everything by himself, and now it’s finally hitting you that something’s gone fucking wrong, huh?”

“……What?”

“‘What’, he says. You brainless asshole.”

Bang! Hannah shoved the desk with her foot. The steel edge slammed into Joshua’s chest.

“Guh!”

“Listen up. Everyone written on this page dies because of you. Because you had to play the pathetic hero, saying ‘I’ll die alone’.”

She leaned forward, the knight’s face thrust right up to his nose.

“Every last person with even the slightest connection to you gets dragged in.”

Killing intent seemed to radiate from that contorted face.

“And this is how it ends.”

Hannah suddenly remembered the ‘diary’.

‘Back then, I nearly died a dog’s death just like this myself.’

‘All because of some vermin bastard exactly like this one, convinced he alone was right.’

“…….”

Joshua’s breathing crumbled into shallow fragments. He looked at Hannah Usar right before him, then at the names on the page. His eyes darted between the two in confusion.

“You seem to think you can carry it all yourself, but life isn’t a drill, you little shit. The world doesn’t work the way you imagine.”

Hannah’s voice, too, gradually settled into calm.

“No, it’ll grind everyone around you to pieces. Burn it all to ash. Do you understand now?”

Joshua’s body slid sideways, slumping.

“…….”

“…….”

In the empty interrogation room, in the silence of two shut mouths, only the sound of ragged breathing echoed.

How much time passed like that?

“……Now then. Once more.”

Hannah pulled her chair in and sat as though nothing had happened. The killing intent of a moment ago vanished as if it had never been.

“I ask you this as a fellow Aran.”

Her two hands came to rest neatly on the documents.

“Who is the ‘real’ collaborator who founded the Blue Rose Society with you?”

…….

The lawyer Oswin, House Head of the Mason family of jurists.

The man who had once defended ‘Oliver Müller’ had spent the past several days huddled in his office without even turning on the lights.

In the Oliver Müller case, the defense had won. Outwardly, at least.

But Oliver’s birth registration itself had been false, and because his mother had known and concealed it, he was executed in the end.

He won in the courtroom and lost at the gallows.

So it was as good as a defeat, and just as it had then, defeat would come now as well.

Oswin, who had been drowning in self-loathing and helplessness ever since that day…….

Knock, knock—

The sound of knocking bored into his ears.

He hauled his heavy body up and opened the door.

There stood Oliver Müller’s mother, Sarah.

“……Please, come in.”

Clack.

The parlor table.

The silence stretched long enough for the coffee in the cups to grow cold.

“……I hear Oliver’s teacher was taken as well.”

Sarah was the first to speak.

Word that Zestfall had frozen over.

Oswin dropped his gaze to his cup, and only after a long while did he open his mouth.

“Then there will be nothing to be done. This isn’t like last time.”

His fingers trembled faintly.

“This time it’s a case of insulting Maximilian, and Maximilian himself is rounding them up.”

The image of the human being called Maximilian, whom he had once faced. The portrait. The shape.

As time passed they had blurred together like a nightmare, like a brand, until now they had become a vast darkness lodged in his heart.

“If it’s something he means to do, we cannot stop it. You know that. He’s a monster.”

It is not that he is becoming a monster.

He already is one.

“…….”

Sarah watched him quietly for a moment, then laid her hand over his trembling one.

“But, Counselor Oswin. Even so.”

From inside her coat she set down a bundle of letters, filled with many different hand writings.

Pages the families of the arrested must have written through sleepless nights.

“Someone who has stood face to face with that monster, someone who can face him…….”

Sarah’s voice settled, clear and low.

“in all of Zestfall, it may be you alone.”

Oswin only bowed his head.

Sarah watched him in silence for a time. She simply stayed there, as if passing her warmth to him.

Then, quietly, she left.

The sound of the door closing came from far away.

“…….”

Left alone, Oswin stared at the bundle of letters for a long, long time.

At last, he picked up one envelope and tore open the seal.

He read one page,

then the next.

Reading,

and reading again, until the world beyond the window began to pale toward dawn.

Knock, knock—

At the sound of knocking he pulled himself upright.

Outside stood Adria.

“Os…… goodness, you startled me. What on earth happened to you?”

Oswin gazed blankly at his own reflection in Adria’s eyes. A face that had gone twelve days and nights without sleep, pitch-black shadows settled beneath his golden eyes.

“Is this about the Blue Rose?”

At Oswin’s question, Adria nodded.

“Yes. We’re gathering evidence independently, on our end.”

“What evidence.”

“……Evidence that their involvement was exceedingly thin. You know what I mean.”

Adria went on. It was an utterly natural line of thought.

If chipping in a few coins for paper, or lending space in a print shop, lands you in a concentration camp the same as the one who wrote the leaflets. If that is the law. Then what does the law exist for at all?

“Whether that logic will hold in court…… no. Will they even be brought before a proper court.”

The Sentinel of today was not what it once had been.

Organizations change, of course, but Sentinel’s power and authority had swollen to an exceptional degree. It had also been fitted to the ‘mold’ of a single man. His ideology had become Sentinel’s textbook, and admission required reciting that textbook from memory.

He was the imperialist of his age, and so Sentinel had become an organ of the Empire stronger than it had ever been.

So within Sentinel, no opinion at odds with his could exist. At least not among the ‘newly’ admitted knights.

However brilliant the elite, a young mind is soft. And ideology poured in while it is soft sets harder than bone.

A generation raised that way was becoming the organization’s hands and feet.

Would Maximilian, who was practically the organization itself, really choose to let those who defied him live?

Even so, Adria’s answer was simple.

“We have to at least try.”

* * *

A considerable number of people were confined in the specially prepared camp. Nearly every name written on the registry.

Even in the midst of all this, Julian was still away on assignment.

I thought I understood what that trip meant.

Julian is not a man of many words, but I suppose this too counts as our joint effort. Perhaps with Hannah in on it as well. Gears that mesh without colliding, without ever exchanging a word.

Quite the ideal organization.

“Yukia. How is Novak?”

I asked Yukia. I was quite curious about the new recruit’s abilities.

“Exceptional. Even among the Yaken, he’s fit to be my right hand.”

“Good to hear. I’m counting on you.”

I laid a hand on her shoulder and gave her a faint smile.

Yukia’s expression never changes, but a Yaken’s trust always answers from the heart.

Ba-dum-

A sound hundreds, thousands of times sweeter to hear than Ezenheim’s.

Just then, an Operations Officer came in.

“Sir Knight. Right now…….”

At the whispered words, I nodded.

“Let’s prepare a seat for him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Oswin Mason is coming.

He is, after all, the one intellectual in Zestfall who has no choice but to come to me.

Now, let me sort this out for a moment.

Zestfall’s intellectuals may never be able to side with the Empire. They are people whose thoughts and convictions have long since hardened solid— rocks that no Hall of Light will ever soak through.

So I will keep them locked inside the Empire forever, so that not a single line of Salzmann’s formulas or Brandt’s waves ever crosses the border.

But as for this Blue Rose affair, I intend to pardon them all.

There are three reasons.

First. This Registry is a death ledger written by Ezenheim. The moment I cut these names down, I become Ezenheim’s blade. Being made their tool is something I flatly refuse.

Second. A dead intellectual becomes a martyr, and a martyr begets a hundred successors. But a pardoned intellectual becomes a debtor. People who owe their lives to the Empire’s mercy. That debt will dull the tips of their pens, if only a little.

Third. A pardon requires a pretext, and that pretext is the real harvest.

‘You were played by a greater evil called Ezenheim.’

The moment the Empire proclaims this while releasing the intellectuals, Ezenheim’s existence and its crimes receive the Empire’s official seal, mounted for all the continent to see.

There is more to be gained by granting mercy than by swinging the sword.

So it is a very simple numbers game.

……For now, at least.

“So you’ve come.”

In the meantime, Oswin had made his way up to the knight order’s office.

“Welcome.”

I greeted him with a bright smile.

“Counselor Oswin. It’s been a while.”

To the man who had brought me the fitting evidence in my stead, I offered a handshake.

~~~

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