Chapter 266: ......Preparations
The incident came to an end.
Jane Blake returned to Highland as a Black Agent after recovering the bonds and eliminating the terrorists, wiping out every last person under Ilyich’s command.
There was no medal.
A Black Agent’s achievements always ended with one more line added to a document that would never be made public.
“I received the report, but……”
Intelligence Bureau Director ‘Z’ closed the file before asking. Outside the window, Highland’s characteristic gray rain pattered down.
“What exactly happened?”
The Director already knew she was hiding something.
“…….”
She could not answer immediately. A man named Caven lingered in her mind.
A man who had kept scripture and a greater cause close to his heart, yet asked her to keep the sacrifice of his comrades a secret.
“At that place…….”
But had that grotesque form merely been my hallucination?
Had it been an image conjured by oxygen deprivation in my fading consciousness as Ilyich strangled me?
“I saw Maximilian.”
The Knight named Maximilian believed that every Ezenheim was like Caven.
“And…….”
But even if what I ‘saw’ was real, I cannot conclude that every Ezenheim is the same.
One individual cannot be used to judge an entire species.
“……I saw a person turn into a monster.”
Even then, there was no change in the Director’s expression.
“I saw someone who either underwent a Mutation caused by a new type of Mana Drug, or possessed some ability of that kind.”
The Director did not doubt her. She was not the kind of person who would lie, so he simply took her words as they were and interpreted them accordingly.
“……people driven into a corner can do anything.”
Z held something out to Blake.
It was an intelligence summary.
“Concentration Camps are being built in the Empire. The Ezenheim must know perfectly well who is going to be imprisoned inside them.”
Numerous Concentration Camps of unknown purpose had been constructed throughout the Empire. First the railways were laid, then the fences went up.
“B. What do you think Maximilian intends?”
At the Director’s question, Blake suddenly recalled the face she had seen that day.
“……He probably……”
A man devoid of emotion. The expression he had worn after killing an Ezenheim. The way he had almost seemed pleased as he said she was someone who had seen ‘the same thing as him’…….
“No. I’m certain.”
Everything about Maximilian. The conviction in every gesture. The eyes of a man possessed by some ‘duty’ more dangerous than ideology itself.
“He is going to massacre the Ezenheim.”
…….
The Empire, Outcast Studio in the Underground City.
“…….”
Filty stared blankly at the page.
A manuscript page whose ink had not yet fully dried. A desk lamp illuminated it, while everything else remained swallowed in darkness.
“…….”
There was no doubt that she herself had drawn it.
And yet, she could hardly believe it.
“…….”
She had no words. All she could do was trace the drawing with her fingers.
The black pattern spreading down from the neck. Muscles turned inside out. Joints bent in directions they should never bend. The places where the whites of the eyes had been swallowed up.
“…….”
Every single hatch mark. Even the fibers where the tendons split. She had drawn every detail as though she had been looking directly at it while putting it on the page.
“…….”
Why did I……?
No, how did I know what any of this looked like?
“…….”
She looked down at the pen clutched in her hand. The ink had dried black on her fingertips.
“Haa…….”
She drew in a trembling breath and raised her gaze.
She pulled out a file wedged into a drawer on the shelf.
The file labeled [Ezenheim], containing the pages of all the ‘suspicious’ things she had drawn until now.
She took several pages out and laid them side by side, then placed this latest page at the very end.
“…….”
The true nature of those who had reacted strangely whenever Maximilian released those mysterious waves,
[Caven]
had become unmistakably clear in the presence of an Ezenheim named Caven.
***
The New Year. The Imperial Regular Army held its Imperial Regiment Banquet.
In the past, they had suffered such severe budget shortages that they could not even secure a proper venue for a social gathering. Now, they had rented out the entire grand ballroom of the finest newly built hotel in the capital.
“……Therefore, only those prepared to answer the Empire’s call are worthy of raising this glass today.”
Lieutenant General Litruman finished his toast.
“For the Empire!”
Everyone raised their glasses.
──For the Empire!
The shout filled the banquet hall. Their martial fervor left even the waiters looking strangely moved.
Perhaps it was because everyone here was ‘Aran’, with genealogies to prove it.
Afterward, everyone in uniform talked with faces full of pride, while Bernhardt and Adel wandered through the banquet hall without even a chance to sit, accepting drink after drink from the generals.
The treatment of the Imperial Regular Army had changed dramatically.
As the Imperial economy recovered…… or at least appeared to recover, sponsorship money poured in from companies benefiting from military procurement, and all of it was spent on the soldiers.
The structure left plenty of room for corruption or embezzlement, but under the Sentinel’s merciless scrutiny, no officer dared attempt such a thing. At the eastern border─ the pit where hundreds had been shot and buried had not even dried yet.
More importantly, they now received salaries and benefits generous enough that they had little reason to resort to corruption in the first place.
Official residences. Military vehicles and drivers. Dedicated hospitals. Military golf courses. Boarding schools for their children. These were things that became cheap when the state procured them in bulk, but were expensive for an individual to obtain.
On top of that, the military pension system had been reformed.
Years of service themselves now meant security in old age, making it a tremendous loss to throw away one’s uniform after being blinded by something as trivial as a bribe.
The body responsible for managing the pensions was the Dieter Association, backed by Maximilian.
……However, as everyone knew, ‘anything from a Knight’ did not count as a bribe, because anything given by a Knight was not legally considered a bribe…….
By the coming spring, radios had been distributed free of charge throughout the Empire. The same boxes sat in every village, every factory, and on the counter of every tavern.
Every local station broadcast censored programming under centralized control, spreading the same ideas and ideology.
Their reports either subtly altered and exaggerated certain facts, or repeated the same incident again and again from different angles.
Most concerned terrorism, crime, and agitation for strikes by Ezenheim people, as well as the grim fate of those who sheltered them.
In addition, Johann Georg invented a program called [Culture Show], perhaps the first radio variety program, which took sensational anecdotes useful for propaganda─or scripted them─and broadcast them to the public.
─Now then, here’s our first story for today. Ms. Helga from the Schwarz District.
Meanwhile, this was the orphanage in the Empire’s 42nd District.
Director Entikkan was working on the ledgers while listening to [Culture Show].
─One day, the key to Ms. Helga’s house went missing…….
These days, being a Yaken brought all sorts of support in the form of machinery and equipment, but he still preferred to keep the ledgers by hand.
──Knock knock.
Then came a knock late at night.
“Come in.”
“Director.”
A staff member entered and whispered something to him.
“……Let’s go.”
Entikkan went outside.
At the entrance to the orphanage, a Yaken security guard stood beside a newborn baby lying in a cradle.
Sniff, sniff. Sniff, sniff
He smelled the air and spoke.
“I can smell it. Definitely.”
He meant Ezenheim.
“Who left the baby here?”
“That, I don’t know…….”
Entikkan looked down at the child for a moment. The baby met his gaze with an innocent smile.
“……What’s going on?”
Another Yaken emerged from behind them. It was his niece ‘Erka’, who had passed the Knight Order’s open recruitment the year before.
The child looked not even a year old. Apparently sleepy from staying up through the night, Erka rubbed her eyes as she looked at the baby.
“Too bad.”
“What is?”
“We should’ve caught the parents.”
She continued calmly.
“Child abandonment is a crime.”
“…….”
“Did you know, Uncle? There were bastards in Zerpha who branded Yakens as Zerpha Republican Party members and slaughtered them, and apparently they were all Ezenheim.”
A Yaken serving in the Knight Order could access that sort of hidden information without much difficulty.
Entikkan remained silent for a moment before speaking.
“……Go get some rest. You have work tomorrow too.”
“Yeah.”
Erka turned away. Trudge. Trudge. As she headed back to her room, she somehow seemed much more mature than before.
Guess the Knight Order does that to a person.
Entikkan spoke to the security guard.
“Take the baby somewhere far away, leave it there, then hide and watch.”
“Just watch?”
Entikkan had hired a security guard who was exceptionally strong even among Yakens. There had, in fact, already been several suspicious incidents at Entikkan’s orphanage that appeared connected to terrorism.
“Yes. If they abandoned the baby simply because they wanted someone to adopt it, it’ll stay there. If not…….”
If they had abandoned the child for some completely different purpose.
“They’ll come back to retrieve it. Catch their scent.”
***
……That was what happened.
The police handed the case over to me.
The middle-aged Yaken who had been brought to the Sentinel seemed to have already been given all sorts of things. Beyond the glass of the interrogation room, there were cola and cigarettes in front of him, along with a completely emptied meal tray.
I stepped inside.
“Good to meet you.”
He flinched and started to rise, but I smiled and gestured with my hand.
“Please, stay seated.”
“Ah, yes…….”
The Yaken sat back down.
“‘Orban’, correct?”
“That’s right. Orban Denkun.”
I picked up his written statement.
“Could you go over your statement once more?”
“Yes, well, there was a suspicious baby left in front of the orphanage where I work as a security guard…….”
A child with a fishy, watery smell.
On Entikkan’s orders, he had secretly taken the baby somewhere else and abandoned it, then watched from a distance. Later, around the time dawn began to break, two male Ezenheim came to retrieve the child.
It was suspicious.
“That certainly is suspicious. The fact that they went out of their way to retrieve a child they’d already abandoned…….”
“Yes. So I tried to question them about why they had done it, but……”
They reacted violently, and a fight broke out.
Orban the Yaken killed both of them in self-defense and was arrested by the police.
“Did they smell like Ezenheim as well?”
“They did.”
He was a Yaken who could ‘smell them’. It was a rare ability even among Yakens, found in roughly one out of every two to three thousand. Of course, there were occasionally people who pretended they could smell them when they could not, but this man was genuine.
“I see.”
The autopsies determined that the men the Yaken had killed were Subspecies. Of course they were Ezenheim.
However, neither of them had been armed. That made the ‘self-defense’ portion of the Yaken’s testimony difficult to uphold.
……In truth, this Yaken’s testimony did not quite add up.
Much of it was probably a lie.
It was far more convincing that, rather than a fight breaking out by accident while he questioned them about why they had abandoned the child, he had been unable to contain his hostility toward the Ezenheim and simply killed them.
It doesn’t matter.
Your malice has made humanity that much better off.
“Um, sir Knight. Then what…… happens to me?”
“What could possibly happen to you?”
I smiled faintly.
“You’re not guilty.”
“R-Really?”
His eyes widened.
“Go home and get some rest. The case will be wrapped up shortly.”
“Yes, yes! Thank you……!”
Orban left with an armful of gifts, seen off by the Yakens within the Knight Order.
I spoke to the administrative officer.
“Order the local police station to close the case.”
“Yes.”
Quietly, I turned my gaze toward the window. Before I knew it, the branches had begun to bud with the coming of spring.
“Sir Knight!”
The intelligence officer in charge of overseas affairs came rushing over with an urgent dispatch.
“The end…… the end of the Zerpha civil war is in sight!”
***
The Zerpha Republican Party fell.
‘Badsel’, the Republican Faction’s largest stronghold, raised the white flag after a two-month siege. Frank and other key figures fled abroad to Prozen, while numerous other Republican Faction members were imprisoned.
Now, only the final act of the long civil war remained.
“Hah…….”
Major General Schweitzer sat before the map in his field tent and muttered as he ground out his cigarette.
“……Not a damn bit of fun.”
There had been few battles in this war that he had personally commanded. Because the Empire could not appear openly on the front lines, he had spent years hiding behind the Kingdom Army, offering advice and counting artillery shells for them.
At least the「Jeronika」bombing had been satisfying, but that was about it.
“Fuck, just my luck-”
Swish.
The flap of the field tent opened and someone walked in.
Entering without so much as a warning was an act of insolence that would have resulted in any ordinary soldier being made an example of.
“Good to see you.”
But the visitor was Maximilian.
“I came after receiving the telegram.”
Schweitzer was no longer surprised. This was simply how the man tended to appear.
“Congratulations, Lieutenant General Schweitzer.”
Lieutenant General.
That rank was his reward for this dull war.
“Kai Han will be a Colonel, then?”
“Yes. You know quite well.”
Maximilian walked over to the map.
“You’ve done well. With this, the Republican Faction rebels have been crushed.”
Tap. Tap. Tap. Schweitzer had identified nearly every strategic point in the nation of Zerpha and planted the Royalist Faction’s blue flags on all of them.
“Do you even know how many years I’ve been trapped on this boring battlefield?”
Schweitzer asked crookedly.
Maximilian answered with something else instead.
“The Empire will soon wage war against the rest of the continent. I don’t know whether it’ll be this year or next.”
In other words, it would happen within two years.
That caught Schweitzer’s attention. He slowly uncrossed his arms.
“You will be appointed commander of the 4th Armored Corps.”
Armored Corps Commander…… His eyes narrowed.
“There, Lieutenant General, you will take the finest tanks we can build and lead from the very front.”
Maximilian reached out and folded the map. A complete map of Zerpha, no longer needed. Soon, a completely different and far broader stage would likely be laid out in its place.
“You will sweep across the continent.”
The corner of Schweitzer’s mouth slowly curled upward.
“Then let me ask you, Knight Maximilian.”
Schweitzer had a deeply rebellious streak. He tended to distrust the very people everyone else considered great, and he scarcely understood the meaning of the word loyalty. But there was one thing that mattered most.
He believed he could go all the way with someone whose ‘disposition’ matched his own.
“Just how many people do you intend to kill?”
‘Maximilian doesn’t know me very well.’
‘I, Schweitzer, am a battle maniac at heart. I’ve spent years nurturing desires no one would ever accept. I’m more steeped in blood and gunpowder than anyone else…….’
“…….”
Maximilian fell silent for a moment, and Schweitzer waited for the number that would come from his lips.
‘Tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. A few million at most?’
‘No, knowing this Knight, perhaps he would start talking about some tiresome old-fashioned ideals instead. To hide his massacre. To preserve appearances.’
‘You’re fundamentally different from someone lowborn like me, and such naked language would hardly suit a nobleman of your stature—’
“──Tens of millions.”
At that single answer, Schweitzer’s expression froze.
The thoughts in his head, all those assumptions by which he had been judging the man, abruptly cut off.
“To cleanse the continent of its filth.”
Maximilian added with a faint smile.
“That is probably how many will have to be sacrificed.”
He made no attempt to hide his hostility, nor did he sound remotely like some exalted nobleman. His voice was dry and matter-of-fact, more like a butcher stating the weight of an animal he intended to slaughter that day.
“…….”
Schweitzer’s half-open mouth moved wordlessly for a moment. Then,
“……Ha, haha!”
A burst of mad laughter escaped him before he even realized it.
“Hahahaha!”
He laughed so loudly the field tent seemed to shake, and a certain general finally realized the full extent of how badly he had underestimated the man.
“Khahahahaha─!”
A mere battle maniac only wanted war.
The man standing before him wanted the continent itself to burn…….
“Hahahahaha──!”
Maximilian merely watched Schweitzer’s prolonged laughter with dry indifference.
~~~
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