Chapter 258: When the Snow Falls (2)

WHOOOOO──!

A mountain range where the blizzard raged like the howl of some beast. The soldiers of Zerpha had found a deep cave and were catching their breath.

“Damn. Yaken sure know how to find a trail, I’ll give ’em that…… Ooh, this here’s gonna be tasty.”

He ladled soup made from a freshly caught deer into a mess tin. Steam curled up in wisps. Handing the steaming broth to the Yaken couple, the veteran asked,

“So then, did ya ever collaborate with the Republican Faction?”

His name was Gonzalo. A sergeant with icicles hanging from his mustache.

“No. We…… don’t know anything about politics.”

“Well, that’s how most Yaken are, ain’t it. So why’d ya run?”

“We just heard rumors that the Royalist Faction was killing Republicans and Yaken alike, so…….”

So they had joined the stream of refugees. Their destination had not been the Republican Faction, but an entirely different country, Prozen.

“Sorry to say, that ain’t happenin’. Even if ya made it to Prozen, those bastards wouldn’t take ya in, y’know? Nothin’ but stuck-up snobs, the lot of ’em.”

Just in case, they had put handcuffs on the wrists of both Yaken.

Feed them soup and keep them cuffed. It was only proper treatment for merchandise.

“Now start from the top and tell it straight. What exactly happened to ya?”

“…….”

The Yaken man glanced at his wife, hesitated a moment, then spoke.

“……We hired a broker together with our relatives. He said he’d take us to Prozen.”

While following the broker’s guidance, they had suddenly encountered a Superhuman. The Superhuman had claimed he was there to ‘guide’ them, but some of the group sensed something suspicious and caused an uproar, at which point the men revealed their true colors.

The broker had sold the Yaken clan to the Superhuman.

Everyone scattered, and while the two of them had survived, most of the others….

“That’s how we ended up drifting all the way here.”

Crackle- crackle-

The campfire burned inside the cave.

“Hm.”

Gonzalo raised his eyebrows as if it were nothing much and took out a compass.

“We’ll move once the blizzard lets up a bit. Rest here for today. We got food, we got soup, we got a fire, don’t we? Yer safe here.”

“……But is the Empire truly safe?”

The Yaken asked in a trembling voice. Gonzalo snorted a laugh and nodded.

“Told ya, didn’t I? Lyin’s like breathin’ for those Republican bastards. I’d bet the ones who spread that rumor and the ones who killed yer relatives were Republicans, every last one. The Empire wants Yaken, so they figure they’ll kill y’all off first.”

“…….”

The Yaken fell silent, seemingly lost in thought, and the soldiers sat around the fire trading idle talk before assigning a night watch and turning in.

─Whoooo.

Even as the blizzard raged on, the Yaken couple lifted their noses toward the cave entrance from time to time.

As if checking the scent of the wind.

…….

By morning, the blizzard had subsided. After crossing the frozen mountain ground, all six of them arrived at the command post for Zerpha’s Sector 7.

“Here we are. See? Told ya ya’d make it.”

It was a field command post established to maintain the encirclement. Gonzalo turned toward the two Yaken with a grin. The Yaken gave wry smiles in return.

“Right, let’s go~”

They approached the guard post together.

“Prisoners?”

One of the soldiers conducting the inspection asked.

“They’re Yaken, ya punks.”

“Ohh…… Really?”

The guards’ eyes instantly colored with envy. Two walking lumps of bounty money. Though the Yaken couple themselves now wore the faces of people who truly were being sold off.

“Look on the bright side, will ya.”

Gonzalo smirked, a cigarette hanging from his lips.

“If there weren’t somethin’ in it for us, we’d have no reason to help ya, would we? That’s the most trustworthy thing in the world. A man’s livelihood.”

They went through the procedures.

They deposited their rifles at the guard post and recorded their unit, their ranks, and the ‘personnel transferred’ entry—2 Yaken, one male and one female—in the transfer ledger.

The duty Adjutant skimmed the documents and led them to the commander’s office.

“You lot’ll stay here a short while, then head off to the Empire. Till then, just rest easy.”

Knock knock-

Gonzalo said to the Yaken as he knocked on the commander’s office door.

“I’ll head in first and get things started, so come in when yer called.”

He told them in a low voice, then stepped into the office first.

“Ah, Captain.”

With a sly grin, he sat down across from the field Captain.

“Sergeant Gonzalo. I hear you rescued some Yaken?”

“Yes, sir. That’s right.”

An orderly brought in coffee and documents. The Captain nodded and turned the pages.

“First off, congratulations. Do you intend to send them straight to the Empire?”

“Yes, yes. I’d appreciate it if you’d put me through to the higher-ups.”

“Very well. Have the Yaken come in now.”

The Yaken couple entered, guided by the Adjutant.

They sat down hesitantly, and the Captain gave a small snort of a laugh.

“You certainly look the part. If you two really are Yaken, you’ll be well treated in the Empire.”

“See? What’d I tell ya?”

Just as Gonzalo chuckled the words back at them.

Sniff.

The Yaken man’s nose twitched faintly.

Sniff, sniff.

“…….”

Gonzalo’s expression stiffened for a moment.

He watched the Yaken’s nostrils out of the corner of his eye.

Sniff, sniff. He was smelling something.

Then he looked back at the Captain, who was sorting his papers.

Then─ Gonzalo’s gaze suddenly shifted behind him.

Beneath a mounted deer head was a shelf.

On it, a row of carvings sat lined up.

A bird carved from wood, a tiger, and several other animals Gonzalo couldn’t name. The workmanship was crude, yet the figures somehow seemed alive.

It was one of the Yaken’s habits. Carving anything and everything with intricate precision.

“Hm…….”

Something was suspicious. It was the instinct of a soldier who had spent a long time surviving on battlefields.

How did this Royalist Captain have so many things that looked like Yaken carvings?

Sniff, sniff.

And why did the Yaken man keep sniffing at him?

“Captain. Where should we put the Yaken?”

“Place them in the temporary barracks beside the supply warehouse. It’ll take about two days to organize an escort.”

“Yessir.”

Something still didn’t sit right with him, but Gonzalo gave no sign of it and gestured with his eyes toward the glass jar on the desk.

“Captain. Mind if I take some of these candies?”

“Hm? Ah, go ahead.”

Gonzalo scooped up a handful and shoved them into his pocket.

Then another handful, and another.

Practically emptying the jar.

“…….”

The Captain stared at him in disbelief, but Gonzalo replied shamelessly.

“Haha……. Bringing in these Yaken was rough work, sir.”

“……Right.”

“Well then, hey! On yer feet!”

Gonzalo gestured to the Yaken.

“Let’s go!”

He stepped outside with them.

Trudge. Trudge.

Halfway across the yard, leading the two of them, Gonzalo slowed his pace.

“……By any chance, does that Captain give off the same smell?”

He asked in a low voice.

The Yaken man nodded quietly.

“Yes. Since we entered this place…… not just the Captain, but a few of the others as well…….”

“Wasn’t that smell somethin’ only those Superhumans had?”

“No…… I don’t know. It’s just, the same smell.”

“The Captain’s Adjutant too?”

“Yes.”

Something was strange.

The Yaken carvings on the Captain’s shelf.

The Captain’s smell, the Adjutant’s smell, the Superhumans’ smell.

The Yaken’s five senses, said to sense danger more keenly than any other race.

Gonzalo stopped in the snow and stuck a cigarette between his lips.

“……Nine o’clock tonight.”

Fwoosh. After barely taking a few drags, he dropped the cigarette where he stood.

“Come out to where this cigarette butt is. I’ll be waitin’ with my squad, packed and ready.”

At Gonzalo’s words and his gesture toward the cigarette, the Yaken agreed without protest. That meant they’d felt the same foreboding.

“For now, just rest. Don’t let ’em catch on.”

“Understood.”

“Off ya go.”

The Yaken went into the barracks, and Sergeant Gonzalo swept his gaze slowly around the field command post.

* * *

On a snowy day, the largest movie theater on the continent was completed in the Imperial capital.

It was a multipurpose building constructed on property seized for next to nothing from an Ezenheim businessman. It had been the first facility begun under the nationwide theater distribution plan, and the one into which the most effort had been poured.

Naturally, the first work scheduled to be shown there was Lenny’s documentary「The Thousand-Year Empire」.

“Congratulations, Sir Knight.”

I watched the opening ceremony from a distance.

There was no need for me to step forward and cut the ribbon myself. The ribbon-cutting ceremony belonged to the architect in charge.

As the hidden power behind the Empire, it benefited me more to keep my ownership discreet.

“Dieter. How profitable do you think it’ll be?”

Dieter Schmidt. It had been quite a while since I’d last seen him, but he looked exactly the same as before.

“It’s a new business, so it remains uncertain for now.”

When it came to dealing with the present, Dieter’s skill was what people would call historically exceptional, but he seemed to have little interest in predicting the future.

In that respect, we were quite compatible.

“It’ll probably become a decent source of profit.”

Film would become a fairly good industry. Both right before the war and right after it.

“Understood. I’ll verify it in due course.”

Compared to mana stones or automobiles, it was pocket change, of course, but that was precisely why I’d monopolized it.

First, I had established more than eight production studios. Their names and identities differed completely depending on genre, while the roots of their ownership all led back to a single place.

The films produced by those studios passed through my distribution company before being screened at theaters across the country that I also owned.

A monopoly gripping everything from production to distribution to screening.

With this, I could control public opinion and feed propaganda to people as though it were entertainment.

And it would serve as a painkiller too, one to numb the pain of the coming war’s scars and the exhaustion from the massacres that would ‘unavoidably’ be carried out.

“And there’s somewhere else I want you to come with me.”

“Yes, sir.”

The invention should have been finished by now. I had been waiting quite a long time for it.

“It’s in Highland. You’ve got time, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dieter didn’t ask why. He looked like the sort who wouldn’t complain even if I said we were going to hell, which actually made me want to explain it more.

Because I was excited too.

“I plan to find a drink and some food for people to have while watching movies at the theater.”

I was certain about the food. There was bread, sausages, and all sorts of other things, but the key was popcorn.

Even before my Regression, movies had always gone hand in hand with popcorn.

But in addition to that, there was one more thing.

That ‘drink’ was…….

* * *

Nine o’clock, when both earth and sky had been soaked in darkness.

Behind the temporary barracks next to the supply depot, where the Yaken were staying.

“Y’all bring yer gear?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

At Gonzalo’s words, they all showed their loads. One carried cooking gear including a pot, one carried camping equipment, one carried a sack stuffed with rations.

Each shouldered a pack with a near-full combat load, and Gonzalo handed them the rifles he’d quietly reclaimed from the guard post on the pretext of a patrol, one apiece.

“But, Sergeant…… are we really okay taking off on our own like this?”

“The Yaken say somethin’s off, don’t they? Play this wrong and our reward could get snatched. Ya wanna give up that money?!”

Even the youngest, scared as he seemed, shut his mouth at the word ‘reward’.

It was a lump sum they could never hope to earn even with several battlefield merits to their name, and securing it might even bump their Bloodline Grade up a tier.

“And once those bastards take our reward, what d’ya think they’ll do to us? Huh? ‘Course they’ll come after us next!”

“Uh, there. There they come.”

Soon enough, the Yaken couple approached the rendezvous point without a sound.

Their coats bulged too, as if they’d packed something of their own.

“Let’s move. Follow me.”

Six shadows slipped out of the command post, avoiding the sentry lights.

Keeping low, they slipped into the mountains behind the perimeter fence.

Shff— shff—

Fortunately, heavy snow had begun to fall. The accumulating snow would swallow their sounds and tracks.

“First, our destination is-“

Just as Gonzalo began to speak.

WREEEEEEE—!

A siren blaring from the command post behind them tore through the night sky.

“Th-they’ve noticed, haven’t they?!”

“Yep. That settles it.”

Gonzalo spat the words through his teeth.

The second-most senior man, Corporal ‘Ricardo’, asked.

“Settles what?”

“Think about it. What business does anyone have checkin’ on Yaken in the dead of night?”

Transferred personnel were normally counted during morning roll call. They weren’t even prisoners, so there was no reason not to just leave them alone and sleep. Why had someone specifically opened the barracks door at this hour, and why had they specifically sounded the siren?

It meant those bastards definitely had some kind of ‘business’ with the Yaken.

“Move. Run. Pop a candy in yer mouths.”

Gonzalo handed out candies by the fistful.

A fact learned from experience: having something sweet in the mouth made the body tire less quickly.

With a candy apiece in their mouths, the six began crossing the dark mountain range.

* * *

In ‘Highland’, a great power capable of standing against the Empire, there was a place called [Stinger Pharmacy].

Yes, just a pharmacy. Not even a particularly large one, merely a pharmacy run by a single pharmacist.

The reason I specifically remembered a pharmacy in this island nation was a certain drink I’d had before my Regression.

I had first tasted that drink during the war. It had come from supplies captured from the enemy.

To be frank, I fell in love with it after one sip. The taste had been a perfect match for my childish palate back then, and the impact was unforgettable.

From that point on, I paid a premium to buy it and drank it every night, and after the Empire fell, I even sold dozens of kilograms of wastepaper just to afford a single bottle.

“Highland really does get less snow.”

As old memories resurfaced vividly, I took in the scenery of Highland.

It was winter here too, but there was barely any snow. The people on the streets were also dressed more lightly than those in the Empire.

“Yes. That’s Highland’s climate for you.”

I had disguised myself as a businessman. Dieter beside me had done the same.

“I’ve always wanted to come sightseeing here at least once.”

……Because the next time I set foot on this land, it wouldn’t be for sightseeing.

“Let’s go.”

“Yes, sir.”

We got into the car waiting for us.

──Rattle. Rattle.

The car soon left the city behind. Our destination was the outer suburbs. If my memory was right, it should be there.

Of course, the only basis I had was a few lines from a newspaper article I’d read before my Regression, along with the chronology of that success story…….

Before long, a certain sign came into view.

“Stop here.”

“Yes, sir.”

We got out of the car.

It was a clear day, with the sunlight tinged blue.

Among the various shops lining the roadside stood the pharmacy I had been searching for, exactly as it had appeared in the photograph.

“……This is it.”

I looked up at it, feeling strangely emotional.

“This pharmacy, sir?”

“Yeah.”

With Victor keeping watch, I pushed the door open and went in. [TL Note: Victor appeared abruptly here. It’s unclear whether this is a typo for Dieter or an alias Dieter is using while the two are travelling in disguise.]

Jingle─

The doorbell rang. I quietly surveyed the interior.

A man sat behind the counter, half asleep. The smell of disinfectant filled the air, and medicines lined the shelves.

Then my eyes locked onto— an unfamiliar product name.

[ Vin Wine Cor ]

→Our newly developed restorative tonic!!!

It was exactly as I’d seen in that old newspaper. That pitch-black liquid of the old days sat there in its earliest form, bottled in a medicine vial.

Luckily, it seemed I’d timed my arrival perfectly. Not too late, and not too early.

“……Found it.”

I smiled and picked it up.

The damn thing’s recipe had never been made public. That made it impossible to reproduce, so no matter how much money I had, all I could do was wait.

Tap.

I set the bottle down on the counter.

“How much for this?”

The pharmacist jolted awake, then answered as though still yawning.

“Ah…… 50 Shillings.”

I stared steadily at him and shook my head.

“No. I’m asking how much the ‘rights’ to this entire drink cost.”

“……Pardon?”

“Have a read.”

I laid down the acquisition letter of intent I’d drafted in advance.

“……Pardon?”

The man still looked half asleep as he blankly repeated himself. His name was ‘John Stinger’.

The inventor of an indulgence that would one day spread across the entire continent.

“I believe you’ll find it an offer you can’t refuse.”

Yet the man himself, hounded by debt and illness, would sell those rights for a pittance and watch hollowly as the continent was dyed by his own black water, only to die deep in debt.

At least, that was how history had unfolded before my Regression.

“Uh…… ah, yes?”

A liquid I loved far more than any wine.

In other words, he was the great man who invented ‘cola’.

~~~

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