Chapter 270: One Step (2)

The Empire was enraged.

At least, that was how it appeared.

At Volska’s audacity in deploying troops to the border. And at its audacity in persecuting the Arans.

Naturally, the demands escalated. A document bordering on an ultimatum was delivered to the Volska Embassy, demanding not only Genson but ‘every region where Imperial-descent residents make up at least 50% of the population’.

The print in the newspapers grew larger by the day, while the radio repeated the words ‘Aran compatriots’ hundreds of times every day.

At the same time, Yursled, a nation bordering the Empire to the east, hurriedly concluded security agreements with Prozen, Highland, and Valkania. Even though its former Prime Minister had died in the terrorist attack in Prozen, or rather, precisely because of that, it moved all the faster.

“They say Yursled signed some kind of defense agreement with Highland, Prozen, and Valkania…… those three countries. Put simply, they’ve decided to become their pet.”

Edmon received the news at a barracks in the east.

“But Colonel, isn’t the discrimination against Arans in Genson just unbelievable? Who the hell do those bastards think they are…….”

Lieutenant Colonel Bjorn folded his newspaper and scowled.

Edmon quietly looked down at his teacup.

“How dare they insult Pure Arans!”

Bjorn’s reflection wavered across the surface of the black tea. He was a noble-born Regular Army officer, well known for his connections to Georgen and various members of the Imperial Household.

The nobility had traditionally looked down on the Regular Army, but as conditions in the Regular Army improved, ‘transfer officers’ like Bjorn had begun appearing as nobles sought to ride that wave.

“As a Pure Aran myself, I feel like marching in there this very instant. Don’t you agree, Colonel?!”

Bjorn kept emphasizing Pure Aran. He was provoking Edmon. Everyone knew that Edmon was of mixed Prozen descent.

“…….”

Edmon picked up his coat and rose. The lieutenant colonel quietly followed his movements with his eyes.

“Uh, Colonel. Where are you going?”

“There’s somewhere I need to be. Thank you for the tea.”

Edmon nodded toward the tea set Bjorn had bought him and left without another word, while Lieutenant Colonel Bjorn watched his retreating back.

Hmm. He scratched his cheek in silence, then raised an eyebrow.

“Edmon has been away from his post rather often lately…….”

A faint smile spread across his lips as he murmured the words with suspicion.

…….

Tristan, a prominent figure in Highland, visited Volska at Prime Minister Gary Beaufort’s request.

He was a shipping magnate backed by the Highland government and a Royal Class figure in high society. Yet because he held no particular political office, he could conveniently be labeled ‘a private individual unaffiliated with the government’.

He was a mediator Volska had never asked for─in other words, a private diplomat. Yet if Volska refused to receive him, it would become the nation that had rejected negotiations.

He first met with Volska’s President, Robski.

“An absurd demand.”

Volska refused. They were ready to fight. Genson’s mountain fortress line was formidable, and several divisions were stationed nearby. It was not the kind of territory they would hand over after a single round of intimidation.

“It is true that many Imperial-descent people live in Genson. But Genson is one of Volska’s border fortresses. What nation in the world would accept a demand to hand over an entire border stronghold?”

The President and his ministers spoke in uncompromising terms.

Tristan quietly regarded his tea for a moment.

“……I believe the Empire’s position also has some legitimate grounds.”

In other words, that was Highland’s position as well.

When the interpreter relayed his words, the President’s brow furrowed. The face of the minister seated beside him flushed red as well.

“……What exactly do you mean by that?”

“If we examine Genson’s history, then while it is certainly a strategically important location, it was the Imperial-descent residents who developed the region. Moreover, were they not Volska’s own policies that sparked this incident? Closing schools, ordering signs replaced, laying off mine workers…… In effect, you handed the Empire its justification.”

Propaganda and agitation could sometimes work so well that even those on the receiving end failed to realize they had been taken in.

The Empire’s radio broadcasts reached Volska as well, and their claims had become so mixed into the Volska government’s own understanding of events that it was difficult to distinguish what was true from what was false.

Because the propaganda worked by twisting things that had actually happened, it was difficult to defend against even when the facts were known.

“Mr. President. What reasoning led you to deploy troops to the border in the first place?”

The President was momentarily lost for words.

They had deployed troops to the border because they had heard rumors that the Empire was moving forces toward it. It had been an entirely natural defensive measure.

But no one had been there.

No matter how long they waited, no one came.

A country that had parked its tanks along an empty border. That was how Volska appeared to the continent, and the Empire took photographs of the scene and circulated them every day.

“……This is no longer merely a question of Genson.”

The President began calmly.

“They now demand every territory where Imperial-descent residents make up at least fifty percent of the population. If we give them Genson today, what will they demand tomorrow? It will spread across the entire east, and then to the west. How can you be so certain your own country will not be next?”

Tristan merely smiled after hearing the interpreter’s translation.

“As I said, the Empire’s original demands were limited to Genson. Until Volska moved its troops, that is.”

Even as he spoke, his thoughts ran elsewhere. What did these Volska bastards, who made their living through smuggling and brokering deals, have to be so proud of? Bullshit from people who knew nothing about how the world worked.

“The view I can offer is that if Volska takes one step back, the Empire will likewise be willing to settle matters there…….”

Even so, the President and his ministers continued to make it clear that they could not accept the proposal.

After concluding his meeting with the Volska government, Tristan moved on to his next destination, ‘Genson’.

“You’re the one from the Genson Vigilante Corps?”

“Yes. My name is Lenhardt.”

The Imperial-descent residents of Genson welcomed him. They were Imperials living beyond the Empire’s borders, still using the Imperial language as their common tongue and maintaining Imperial customs in their daily lives. They escorted Tristan to the Vigilante Corps hall. A banquet had been prepared there, and so had the testimonies.

“Our children must learn the language at the root of who we are. The language of Aran.”

The Vigilante Corps Leader had already received a great deal of money from the Empire. The corps warehouses were already packed with Imperial-pattern rifles.

“Dozens of shops have been closed over something as trivial as a single sign. Twenty-three supervisors found themselves out on the street overnight…….”

One by one, they recited their prepared stories. There was a script, so their testimonies matched. And because their testimonies matched, they were believed.

“Sir Tristan. It’s already late. Why don’t you rest for the night and perhaps go hunting tomorrow morning?”

“……If I have the time.”

Tristan stroked his mustache as he accepted the suggestion.

Highland’s civilian envoy spent two days in Genson.

…….

The continent was changing. Driven by the logic of power that each nation believed in, or merely imagined to be true.

Prozen and Highland pressured Volska. Together, they proposed that Volska surrender the territory.

If Volska simply complied with the Empire’s demands, there would be no war. The Empire, too, knew the scars left by the previous war in the west. Surely it would not wish to repeat something so horrific…….

Such was their mistaken belief.

“……If the Empire receives that territory, will it truly stop?”

Jean Pierre stood at the lectern.

“If Volska gives up the land, then before long, ‘Yursled’, the final buffer on the eastern frontier, will be next.”

He had once been regarded as one of Prozen’s foremost scholars and a leading figure in his field.

“Has anyone here thought about that?”

Even when he asked, no one answered.

Tap. The sound of a dropped pencil rolling across the floor seemed unusually loud.

“…….”

Jean Pierre looked across the rows of seats, with empty patches here and there as though they had been gnawed away by rats.

Fewer than thirty students now sat in such a vast room. Faced with this situation, Jean Pierre was reminded anew that he, too, was only human.

He had meant to continue lecturing even if only a single student remained, but now that he had actually found himself in such a position, it was painfully lonely.

Anti-Ezenheim, anti-Mer, anti-Sled…… Racism and ideological conflict had reached their peak even in Prozen. Any call to remain wary of the Empire was immediately interpreted as ‘defending the Ezenheim’, or as ‘supporting Robrus’, and Pierre’s reputation had suffered because he had written several papers arguing precisely that.

“Well, then. You’ve all worked hard attending the final lecture of the semester. Always hold fast to your own principles and convictions, and keep moving forward…….”

With words that somehow sounded as though he were repeating them to himself, he concluded his final lecture of the summer.

“Haa…….”

Jean Pierre sat at the desk in his office.

The private room he had once had, more a study than an office, was gone. His research funding had been cut off.

Pierre had repeatedly warned of the Empire’s ambitions, but apparently such views did not align with the ideology of the current faction.

Still, the moment he sat down, he picked up his pen. He was, after all, only a scholar who studied people. With one particular man in mind, he began drafting an article.

At some point, Jean Pierre had become obsessed with a man named Maximilian. He was like a tidal wave, a man toward whom all of Pierre’s insights and instincts pointed. More Imperial than even the Empire’s own Emperor, he was a man who would never stop……. Pierre began writing down that assessment.

***

──「Continental Review : Imperial Ambition and Expansion」──

[Jean Pierre, Prozen National University]

……The Empire’s current demands concern a principle that goes beyond mere territory. The moment the continent accepts the principle that ‘land where Imperial-descent people form the majority belongs to the Empire’, that principle will transcend all borders. Beyond Genson lies the land west of Genson, and farther west there will inevitably be villages where the Imperial language is spoken…….

For the past several years, the Empire has put new roads and railways, standards and logistics, food and medicine into a form suited for war. Behind those efforts stood the Ebenholtz family, and the name Maximilian.

Maximilian Ebenholtz. With his own hands, he ruthlessly suppressed Genen, yet revived it as an arsenal. After executing hundreds of corrupt soldiers along the eastern frontier without trial, he restored discipline to the Imperial Army. During the Zerpha Civil War, he secured victory for the monarchy through ‘all manner of unofficial acts’. Through his actions, the Empire was purged of its flaws and honed into a more efficient machine.

……The war they have prepared is now merely a question of when. The more the nations of the continent comply with the Empire’s demands, the more freedom they grant the Empire to choose that moment for itself.

Appeasement cannot bring peace…….

────────

Jean Pierre’s article was published in the newspaper.

I was an avid reader of his. To face an enemy, one had to know him, and Pierre’s insight was always astonishing.

Though he was no Regressor, this scholar had managed to arrive at the truth about me, and though he was no Regressor, he had predicted the future.

But prediction could change nothing. From this point onward, it was an affair between nations.

The largest of all, and the most irreversible.

The end of the previous generation that the continent would soon face.

“……Sir Knight. We’re here.”

I had arrived at a fishing spot in a port village on the western outskirts of the Empire.

I got out of the car and trudged along.

Old men mending their nets. The briny tang of the shore and the salt-laden smell of the sea. Waves breaking white against the breakwater. Sunlight glittering across the water.

With several seagulls circling above crates of fish, the entire village seemed to breathe slowly at the pace of the sea.

It certainly was a fitting place for exile.

Walking along the road, I eventually reached the pier and spotted a familiar back.

“Looks like the fishing’s going well.”

I stood beside him. Anton Zefren did not turn his head.

“Horse mackerel bite well in summer.”

Fresh fish flopped about in the basket beside him.

“So it seems.”

Neither of us spoke for a while.

──Kree. Kree.

Seagulls prowled around Anton’s basket of fish as though waiting for an opening, while hot, damp wind rolled in from the sea.

Whooosh─

Every so often, droplets sprayed over the breakwater and glittered in the sunlight.

Then Anton asked, his eyes still fixed on the sea.

“……Maximilian. How is the Empire?”

At his question, my own voice from long ago seemed to overlap with his.

From that place that no longer existed. From the timeline where humanity had lost, when my voice had asked in return, ‘What is it like outside?’

Then was the knight named Anton trapped in this harbor?

“It is moving toward a place no one can understand…… and where no one can trust anyone.”

I looked at Anton’s profile. Beneath the shadow cast by his hat, the same gentle wrinkles still ran deep across his face.

“I heard they invented a medicine that saves lives.”

“……You mean Penicillin.”

Reutern I had ultimately survived. Thanks to that, the rich bastards had gone almost mad over Penicillin.

Efforts to find the mold by any means possible had nearly borne fruit as well, and a production line was now in place.

Mass production was clearly not far away.

“Cliff told me.”

He gave a dry chuckle as he lightly tugged on his fishing rod.

“Seems Cliff has switched from me to you.”

I watched him quietly for a moment, then asked.

“……Are you all right with this?”

This change in the Knight Order could not have been what you wanted.

“…….”

Anton Zefren was silent for a moment. By now, probably, no, certainly, the Revolutionary forces must have tried countless times to establish ties with him.

There was no better banner to rally beneath than a fallen heavyweight.

“You already know, don’t you? The owner of the tavern I frequent is actually a Georgen director.”

He gestured with his chin toward the hill.

“The landlady of a boarding house nearby is the wife of a senior Georgen official.”

Anton continued.

“They can write up false reports and send them in whenever they please. The name Anton Zefren is a prize catch. Reel it in properly, and it can earn them a promotion anywhere.”

In fact, several reports citing suspicious circumstances had already been filed. I had personally read many of them.

Before my Regression, Anton had been dragged into countless troublesome false accusations like these even after losing his position in the Knight Order.

But—

“I also know that you, Maximilian, have been blocking them.”

“…….”

Anton slowly reeled in his line as he gazed out over the sea.

“To answer your question about whether I’m all right with it…… yes. I think this is better, at least.”

Anton Zefren had not thrown himself into revolution, had not denounced the Empire, and had not plotted anything.

I listened quietly.

“Good and evil may depend on who’s doing the judging.”

The float dipped.

Something had taken Anton’s bait.

“But you can still tell which side is worse and which is less so.”

A thought suddenly occurred to me.

“There’s something I want to ask you.”

Could he perhaps──be ‘waiting’ for some day that had yet to come?

“What are you looking toward?”

His question somehow felt like a fishhook waiting for a bite.

Anton did not press me for an answer. Instead, he quietly reeled in his catch. A single horse mackerel came up on the line, but his hands remained unhurried.

Because a fish already hooked would not escape.

Because its destination had already been decided.

“…….”

Or perhaps I was reading far too much into all of this.

Perhaps he had merely tossed out the question without much thought, while I alone had sunk into deep contemplation over it.

“……The place I’m looking toward.”

The place I’m looking toward.

The place I, myself, am looking toward…….

***

The ambassadors of Highland and Prozen met Steller at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Steller merely listened to them in silence.

“Volska is taking a hard line, you say…….”

He repeated the words as he rose from his seat.

“What are you doing? Why aren’t you following?”

The two ambassadors followed him into a car without the slightest idea what was going on.

The car left the government district and sped down the road, while the wealthy neighborhoods of the Empire passed beyond the windows.

Before long, it seemed to glide into some unfamiliar compound, then came to an abrupt stop.

“Get out.”

Phew. Foreign Minister Steller, unusually for him, adjusted his tie for a moment as though nervous.

Not long afterward, when they reached the entrance, Steller said,

“Watches off.”

Only then did they realize where they had been brought.

They hurriedly removed their wristwatches and handed them to the aides beside them.

“…….”

“…….”

Without saying a word, they simply breathed and walked.

White walls and straight lines. A corridor without so much as a single thing that could be called decoration.

Guided onward by a servant, they eventually reached a room.

“……Oh.”

Beyond a wall made entirely of glass lay a garden, with sunlight resting inside the room as though it were another piece of furniture.

The aesthetic had already been shown in several magazines, but in person the study was even more beautiful.

“Welcome.”

A man whose outline alone shone against the backlight of the sun─Maximilian Ebenholtz.

Still seated, he gestured toward the space in front of him.

“Please, sit.”

Steller took a seat first and began.

“Knight Maximilian. These gentlemen tell me Volska is taking a hard line.”

He jerked his chin toward them in displeasure, and the ambassadors of Highland and Prozen flinched before hurriedly offering explanations.

“W-well, it is an issue on which such a stance is understandable. From Volska’s perspective, Genson is of considerable strategic value…… Perhaps the matter could instead be resolved by granting Genson autonomy…….”

Maximilian’s expression could not be read against the backlight.

Only his voice filled the study.

“The nation called Volska, to the Empire──”

Maximilian paused for a moment.

A heavyweight known as the power behind the Empire. His gaze occasionally flashed gold. It was the sort of gaze one could scarcely bring oneself to meet.

“Three or four days would be enough. Or its President could simply disappear before anyone even realized what had happened.”

He added the highly sensitive and chilling words as casually as though they meant nothing. But words spoken here would never circulate outside.

“Taking a hard line is something only the strong can afford to do.”

The ambassadors interpreted his words in the way that suited them. From his ambiguity, they strained to extract the meaning that ‘the Empire does not want war either’.

They took the claim that it could all be ended in three days as ‘therefore, there is no need to do it’, and the President’s death as ‘quietly, instead of through war’.

Because that interpretation better suited the ideology of their faction—

“……Yes. I understand.”

—and because, for them as well, believing that the Empire desired peace was far easier to bear.

“That is how it will be reported to the higher-ups.”

Foreign Minister Steller smiled. He seemed even more interested in the bonus that would come his way after this meeting, but whatever.

A suitably greedy man was useful to Maximilian.

~~~

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