Chapter 260: When the Snow Falls (4)
The Imperial Navy cruiser,「Greif」.
The ship’s captain, Colonel ‘Navid’, received a letter from the Zerpha Kingdom Army. A small box accompanied it.
“Captain.”
The Adjutant whispered something into Navid’s ear, and Navid nodded, pushing the box deep into a drawer.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes, sir.”
They stepped out on deck together.
Four Zerphan soldiers stood on one side of the deck with two Yaken. Wrapped in blankets, they were laughing with the sailors as they communicated through gestures.
Navid summoned his officers.
“Ah, Captain.”
The officer who approached spoke first.
“We brought in an interpreter. They say they’re Royalist soldiers, and that Republican lackeys chased them until they crossed over here with the Yaken. According to their testimony-”
“No. It’s the other way around.”
“……Sir?”
“They are the Republican Faction’s agents.”
Navid handed him the letter from the Zerpha Kingdom Army. The officer stared blankly as he read through it.
Multiple Yaken killed. Armed desertion. Request for transfer of custody.
“We’re sending them back to Zerpha.”
“Uh…… Captain. This still involves the Yaken. Regulations say we should report this back home first and investigate the matter more thoroughly-”
“Are you the captain?”
Navid’s deep-set eyes glared down at him as if to crush him.
The atmosphere across the entire deck froze.
“This is Zerpha’s affair.”
He was famous for his commanding presence even within the Navy. And this was the Greif, a ship notorious throughout the fleet for its especially strict discipline.
“The Empire respects Zerpha’s sovereignty, and so do I.”
“……Yes, sir. Understood, sir.”
The officer saluted and withdrew. Colonel Navid stared steadily at the six people on the deck.
Before long, a transport ship would be readied, and they would be handed back over to Zerpha…….
* * *
A five-star hotel in Highland.
“……The future.”
I sat across from Dieter and continued. There was a glass of Cola for each of us on the table between us. At this very moment, it was the most precious beverage on the continent.
One newly discovered fact: squeezing in some lemon made it taste wonderful.
“The future I saw, you see. It was broken beyond repair.”
Dieter listened. He simply erased every unnecessary reaction from his face, whether agreement, pretense, belief, or even doubt.
“Humanity was destroyed.”
Inside the glass, bubbles of carbonation quietly rose and popped.
“Civilization was shattered.”
Had I come to trust Dieter enough to say such things aloud?
Or had Dieter become prepared enough to believe my words?
“Dieter. The reason I hate the Ezenheim is……”
The first Adjutant I gained after my Regression.
A man who had spent years at my side, helping me build my foundations without ever asking a single question, even though, looking back, we had never shared any particularly deep bond.
“Because they are humanity’s true enemy.”
Perhaps he was the only man capable of believing such words from me.
“The Ezenheim never originally existed in our history. They appear nowhere in the Empire’s thousand-year history. They simply appeared one day, several centuries ago.”
This was the condensed doctrine taught at Empire Point, and at nearly every other educational institution of the Empire.
“I don’t know their origin. I don’t even know where they came from. Whether they came from outer space, or naturally emerged somewhere beneath the continent…… But there is one thing I know for certain.”
Dieter listened to me in silence.
“They are ‘imitating’ us. That is the greatest weapon the Ezenheim possess. They can imitate every part of a human being, until they are almost identical to one.”
Dieter’s expression still did not change. If anything, that let me continue all the more calmly.
“In that future, they opened a ‘dimensional gate’ and summoned beings from the Otherworld, and we lost.”
Otherworld. Dimensional gate. Extinction. Human imitation. I calmly rattled off words that sounded like the ravings of a psychiatric patient.
“…….”
Even Dieter could not accept everything I had said without question. But neither would he laugh it off. Based on everything I had done over the past several years, he could at least take my words seriously enough to consider them for a moment. That was enough.
“Sir Knight.”
At last, Dieter spoke.
“May I ask you just one thing?”
Anything.
I set down my glass.
“What was I like, in that future?”
Not how the world ended, nor how the dimensional gate worked, but what had become of him.
“……You were the Empire’s Chancellor.”
I said, searching my memories of those days.
“I don’t know when or how it happened. At some point, you had simply drifted into that position. But it was the right place for you. You held the declining Empire together all by yourself.”
“…….”
“Even when off-the-books corruption scandals erupted, when impossible expenses came pouring in, or when a single person’s whim overturned the entire budget.”
The Chancellor who had simply continued calculating numbers even with a bankrupt treasury before him.
“You kept that place functioning somehow.”
And so the war had ended.
The victorious Allied Nations executed most of the defeated nation’s leading minds, but Dieter survived for quite a long time. Even though he had meticulously overseen the budget for the ‘Extermination Camp’ itself, making him practically a War Criminal among War Criminals.
“The Republic tried to persuade you. They wanted you to perform the same duties for them…… But you rejected every offer. You could have survived. I don’t know why you refused.”
Dieter lowered his gaze for a moment.
He stared at the bubbles forming in his glass of Cola, then—
“It was probably because it wasn’t fun.”
He answered, as though he understood himself perfectly.
“Taking hold of money in motion and carving out a path for it. Watching tens of thousands of streams of money and supplies fall perfectly into place at my fingertips. Seeing the needs of countless people for food and shelter turn into numbers, then deciding what those numbers should be. I love things like that.”
My eyebrows rose as I listened to Dieter.
“But in the Republic, consultation and debate would have been a daily routine, wouldn’t they?”
Only now did I feel as though I understood one small part of Dieter.
“Yes. Exactly.”
A world where moving even a single number required the legislature’s approval, where citizens’ voices poured in from every direction, and where politics attached itself to every policy involving the budget.
Because he already knew all of that, the future Dieter had refused their offer.
For a man who had already tasted what it was like to serve as Chancellor of the Empire and single-handedly manipulate its numbers, everything the Republic offered would have been nothing more than tedious, annoying, exhausting busywork.
“I am, at my core, an addict.”
The contradiction at the heart of Dieter Schmidt, something even future scholars who studied countless War Criminals had never managed to solve.
“I’m addicted to something far stronger than drugs.”
Perhaps this was the answer.
He was more rational than anyone, and at the same time, more irrational than anyone.
His ability to wield reason was exceptional beyond measure, yet he regarded that very reason with obsessive devotion.
“……I see.”
I smiled.
A man who threw himself into his craft and indulged in it like a madman.
If that was the case, then whether Dieter believed me or not had never mattered in the first place.
Because Dieter would go with me ‘to the very end’.
“That’s good to hear.”
……Dieter Schmidt.
What a strange man.
Perhaps both of us had been lunatics from the very beginning.
That was probably why we fit together so well.
…….
[ Maximilian : The future I saw, you see. It was broken beyond repair. Humanity was destroyed, and civilization was shattered. ]
Meanwhile, at Filty’s 「Outcast Studio」
Filty pieced the scattered pages back together in order.
[ Maximilian : Dieter. The reason I hate the Ezenheim is…… because they are humanity’s true enemy. ]
[ Maximilian : ……In that future, they opened a ‘dimensional gate’ and summoned beings from the Otherworld, and we lost. ]
A ruined future. Humanity’s enemy. A dimensional gate. The Ezenheim.
No matter how many times she reread it, none of it made any sense.
“……He’s got a serious case of……”
Madness, that is, and this Dieter fellow who swallowed that drivel whole didn’t seem quite normal either.
“But then…….”
Filty hesitated a moment, then dug out the depictions of the Ezenheim she had drawn in her comics long ago and laid them out on the table.
She found herself comparing Maximilian’s words with the suspicious appearances of several Ezenheim……
Then, without meaning to, her gaze went to a framed picture hanging in a corner of the studio.
“…….”
Everyone from Outcast was smiling inside it, their arms around one another’s shoulders.
Meden, Elze, Pain, Caden.
Her comrades who were no longer in this world, killed by Maximilian.
……No, that’s not right.
They had been sacrificed by the Empire.
I must not be afraid of Maximilian. There is no reason to fear him. Even he is nothing more than a ‘part’ of the larger body called the Empire.
And so the page occupying her attention right now was not the apocalyptic ravings of some lunatic named Maximilian.
“What’s Cola?”
The unidentified object that appeared on page after page of the comic. On the table in scenes where the two sat facing each other, in Maximilian’s hand as he muttered his bullshit.
Fssst. Fssst.
She wondered what that black water was, its bubbles fizzing up like sparking electricity.
It looked like he was guzzling the waste produced by boiling Mana Stones…… yet there he was, gulping it down while saying it tasted delicious.
“What is Cola?”
For quite a while, Filty tried to imagine its flavor just from its appearance.
…….
I returned to the Empire. Dieter left to inspect the sites for Cola factories that would be built throughout the Empire, Zerpha, and Canilan.
The mass-production system would be ready in no time. The factories themselves had been prepared long ago.
Rustle── Rustle──
Snow fell beyond the windows of my office at Sentinel. For the first time in a long while, I was peacefully working through a stack of approval documents, when……
“Sir Knight. The Western Coast District received this request for cooperation.”
The Operations Officer held out a letter. It was a document sent from the Zerpha Kingdom Army to a regiment on the western coast.
──────────
……It has been confirmed that Republican Faction remnants, having killed multiple Yaken, seized a fishing vessel and fled by sea toward your nation’s waters. As these individuals are grave criminals of our nation, we request that their custody be transferred to us…….
──────────
Any document involving the Yaken, particularly something this extreme, always reached me eventually, regardless of the route it took.
Because the Yaken are part of humanity’s fighting strength.
“……Republicans who killed multiple Yaken?”
The instant I read it, I knew.
Ezenheim.
They had finally realized what the Yaken were for and begun fighting back.
I clenched the letter tight in my fist.
…….
The captain’s cabin aboard the Imperial Navy cruiser「Greif」.
Captain Navid carefully removed his hat, placed it on the table, swallowed, and spoke.
“I-It was a communication from the Zerpha Kingdom Army, sir. They said the men were Republican spies who had murdered Yaken and fled…….”
Beside him, his Adjutant stood at rigid attention.
I asked Navid again.
“So you repatriated all of them? Two Yaken and four soldiers?”
“…….”
The middle-aged captain gave no answer.
For my part, I was quite angry.
They had reached Imperial waters, only for one of our own warships to carry them straight back.
Now I had been forced to go through another troublesome step for no reason.
“Answer.”
“……Y-Yes. We repatriated them.”
“Then tell me truthfully. What did you receive?”
The repatriation had been far too hasty, so the captain must have been paid accordingly.
“That…….”
The captain seemed to waver, but soon drew a box from his drawer. With trembling hands, he opened the lid.
Inside was a Mana Stone sculpture.
“…….”
I fell silent for a moment. Tears pooled in the captain’s deeply sunken eyes. Drop by drop. I watched the droplets tremble on the verge of falling, then drew my pistol.
Bang─!
The gunshot hammered against the steel hull.
“Gack!”
Navid doubled over. The bullet had pierced not him, but the Adjutant standing at his side─straight through the Ezenheim’s heart.
“……Give your statement.”
I shifted my gaze back to the captain as I spoke.
“Who gave this to you, how they approached you, and what they offered. Everything.”
Afterward, I rose from my seat and stepped outside.
Naval personnel stood in a single line along the corridor. The gunshot had left fear on every face.
I stopped in front of the man with the highest insignia among them.
“Major.”
“A-Adam Böben, sir!”
“Major Adam. Remove the body from the cabin, take the captain into custody, and send him to the Knight Order.”
“Y-Yes, sir! E-Everyone, move!”
The sailors moved in perfect unison. I left the warship, seeing fear, awe, admiration, reverence…… all those emotions mingling in their eyes as they moved past me.
* * *
A dark prison. An underground chamber where damp stains streaked down the stone walls and a bulb on the ceiling flickered.
The four Rangers sagged in their chairs, each bound tightly in place.
Swollen eyes, split lips, drops of blood scattered across the floor.
It was a room where the same interrogation and the same beatings had repeated for days.
“Sergeant Gonzalo. I’ll ask you again. Why did you kill the Yaken?”
At Captain Cesc’s question, a voice seeped out through scab-crusted teeth.
“All this…… jus’ to snatch the Yaken bounty fer yerselves…… pullin’ this shit…… nah, wait…… ya kill ’em, ya don’t get no bounty……?”
“Still haven’t come to your senses, I see.”
Cesc snorted and shook his head.
“Either way, you’re-“
Just as he reached for the fountain pen lying atop the interrogation report.
Crash─!
The door burst open as armed soldiers poured inside and leveled their weapons at the Captain.
“…….”
Cesc raised both hands without even realizing it.
Tap. Clatter, roll.
The fountain pen fell and rolled across the floor.
“……What is this?”
No soldier answered his question.
…….
“We…… are going to the Empire. That’s right, isn’t it?”
In the back seat of a moving car, Falcon, the Yaken, asked anxiously as he scanned the world outside the window.
“Yeah.”
A nameless Sergeant answered.
“But…… Mr. Gonzalo and the others, why…….”
“Who knows. Beats me.”
He gave a faint laugh. The smile reflected in the rearview mirror carried a certain chill, but at least there was none of that familiar fishy stench.
Shhhk.
The car came to a stop at a quiet fork in the road. The man stared straight ahead, leaving the engine running.
As though he were waiting for something.
“Excuse me…….?”
“Just wait. The people coming to take custody of you will be here soon.”
The Sergeant smiled. Falcon grasped his wife’s hand. Before long……
——Vrooom!
Vehicles approached from up ahead, kicking up clouds of dust.
“Ah, there they are……?”
At that moment, the man’s face suddenly stiffened. Perhaps they were not the vehicles he had been waiting for.
─Thud.
In an instant, soldiers came pouring out of the cars, bearing the royal family’s crest.
They were the newly formed elite of the Kingdom of Zerpha, the ‘Royal Guard Army’.
“……Huh?”
Why would the Royal Guard Army be out here, in the middle of nowhere?
The Sergeant’s whole face clouded over with confusion and unease.
…….
The garrison in southern Zerpha was thrown into chaos. The recently reclaimed south was commanded by a mere Lieutenant Colonel, yet faces normally seen only in the Royal Capital came pouring in one after another.
A Commander from Zerpha’s central command, the Kingdom’s Provost Marshal General, and countless other men with stars on their shoulders filled the corridors, while many more convoys had yet to arrive because the snowstorm had blocked the roads.
Every one of them was merely a backdrop for the single man seated in the place of honor.
“…….”
Captain Cesc’s head had already been severed from his body.
“……I’m sorry! I’m so sorry……!”
The Lieutenant Colonel could only repeat his apologies over and over.
Shff……. shff…….
Seated at the head of the room, Maximilian turned the pages of the deposition instead of answering.
They were the Rangers’ statements.
Tap.
After closing the final page, he spoke.
“Bring them in.”
The door opened, and Gonzalo and the Rangers, along with the Yaken couple, stepped inside.
They were battered from head to toe. The Military Police tried to force them to their knees by pressing down on their shoulders, but Maximilian raised a hand to stop them.
“There’s no need for that.”
He spoke in Zerphan.
Although he was one of the Empire’s greatest nobles, he was also the ‘only’ person capable of communicating with every citizen of Zerpha without an interpreter. That fact alone made him the most special and important person here.
“Gonzalo Pascal. Correct?”
“……Yes.”
At that, Maximilian walked over to Gonzalo, who couldn’t even bring himself to meet his eyes.
“You’ve been through a great deal.”
Offering him those strangely warm words, he laid a hand gently on his shoulder.
At the sight, the assembled generals’ eyes nearly popped out of their heads.
* * *
Once the commotion had more or less settled, we headed back to the Empire with the Yaken couple.
“Sir Knight. You could have left a matter like this to your subordinates or the other knights…….”
At the Operations Officer’s careful words, I chuckled.
“At first, I thought so too.”
Anger had surged up in me at the news of Yaken being slaughtered in large numbers, so I had come partly on impulse. But after learning about one man involved, it became something I had to handle in person.
──Gonzalo Pascal.
It was a famous name. One of history’s most notorious opportunists before my Regression, and at the same time, a brilliant commander whose name was written into the annals of war.
He had started out with the Royalist Faction, then defected to the Republican Faction. When the Empire occupied Zerpha, he distinguished himself on the Empire’s side, and when the Empire began to decline, he joined the Allied Nations and won three major battles.
Posterity’s judgment of Gonzalo Pascal cut both ways.
He betrayed his own side three times, and each time, he brought victory to the side he joined.
He always stood with the winning side, but he himself also had the power to ‘make’ his side win.
His eye for the battlefield, his instinct for seizing opportunities, and above all his exceptional ability to manage entire corps meant that everyone wanted him, yet everyone was wary of him.
“I’ve gained a general as valuable as the Yaken themselves. It seems truly capable people end up catching the world’s eye, one way or another.”
If so, then in this life, he would have no reason to turn his coat.
Because the Empire would not lose.
The opportunist Gonzalo Pascal would take the field with absolute, unwavering devotion.
“……That’s a relief, then.”
Watching the snow settle over Zerpha’s white fields outside the car window, I drew a glass bottle from my coat.
Fine bubbles seethed up through the black liquid.
Psssht.
The moment I popped the cap, the Yaken in the back seat eyed the bottle with keen interest. His nostrils flared slightly, too.
“It’s called ‘Cola’.”
I chuckled and handed him the whole bottle.
“Try it. I’m curious how it tastes to a Yaken.”
Falcon, the Yaken, drank the Cola. Gulp, gulp.
“Huh?”
He took such an enormous swig that even I was surprised. In an instant, Falcon’s entire face scrunched up, wrinkles twisting in every direction.
Watching him, I burst out laughing. The Operations Officer and Falcon’s wife laughed too.
On a snowy day.
Little pleasures like this weren’t so bad.
~~~
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