WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 1

──────

To That Place

────Tick.

In an underground prison where not even a sliver of sunlight reached, I lay in the coldest, deepest cell. I could not feel time passing. I could not even tell whether it was day or night, yesterday or today.

Thud.

Footsteps approached with a heavy sound. Familiar yet strange, the steady stomp of military boots.

A voice as sharp as a blade.

“It’s already been a year.”

His silhouette beyond the bars was still solid.

Edmund Bwindol. Once, he had been my fellow knight. At some point, he became one of the Empire’s strongest enemies, and now he stood before me as a member of the new cabinet.

I asked him,

“How is it outside? Is the weather nice?”

“More than nice. Every single day is golden.”

Confidence filled his voice. Edmund had always been like that, but today he sounded especially energized.

“Oh. You got married too?”

“State affairs keep me busy. I think I will soon.”

When Edmund spoke to me, traces of the old days still slipped out.

He sounded uneasy about our difference in status, yet faintly sorry for me.

I gave him a smile with my eyes.

“Congrats.”

“......No need to congratulate me.”

Thirty-five. At that young age, he had succeeded in toppling the Empire.

My father, one of the Empire’s high lords, had been “justly” executed, his head hung in the capital. I ran for years and was eventually caught.

Even if their convictions were twisted, people who devoted their whole lives to loyalty still earned respect. A loser like me, caught while fleeing, got nothing but disgrace and filth.

The only reason I was still alive was Edmund’s lingering mercy.

“Maximilian. Keep watching from underground. Watch how we, who destroyed the Empire, soar.”

His voice was full of hope.

“Oh? Watch? I thought I was getting executed.”

“It’s better to keep you alive. Your father was a pillar of the Empire, so he had to be broken. You are nothing more than scratched jewelry. Fit to be kept as spoils.”

Spoils. I rolled the word around in my head. Living spoils. Weirdly stylish.

“Thanks. For sparing me.”

I meant it, in my own way.

Edmund gave a faint smile and turned away. He climbed the stairs, leaving me in this underground hole.

His voice echoed hollowly.

“Take care, Max. I’ll come by when I have time.”

Maximilian von Ebenholtz.

A name tossed aside like trash. My life had rotted in my father’s shadow.

All I could do was a little swordsmanship, a little fake handling of mana.

Still, thanks to that utter stupidity, I survived. In that sense, I could call myself the winner of our house.

───Tick.

How much time passed? The bars opened again, and Edmund appeared. A few more lines had been carved into his face.

It was only the second visit, but clearly years had gone by.

After living locked up, even the flow of time felt alien.

“......Oh, Edmund.”

I raised a hand to him.

“Yeah.”

“How many years has it been? Those guard bastards never tell me.”

Edmund stared at me for a moment.

“Three.”

“That long, huh. Is it different outside?”

“......It is.”

He did say it was different. But instead of confidence, subtle fatigue had crept into his voice.

“If it’s been three years, then you must be married. Maybe even have kids?”

“......”

He looked at me without a word. The eyes that once spoke of a bright future after the Empire were shadowed now.

“I postponed marriage. Too busy.”

“When were you ever not busy? Did she dump you?”

At my teasing joke, the corner of Edmund’s mouth twitched. He looked like he was forcing down a laugh.

“You haven’t changed.”

Somewhere along the way, the way he addressed me had turned more formal.

A subtle distance, or maybe respect.

“Ah, now I get it. You finally got a taste of how scary politics is, right? The revolution succeeded, but what came after was a headache, wasn’t it?”

“......”

Instead of answering, Edmund sighed.

“It’s more complicated than I expected. Still...... this is probably just part of change, right?”

He sounded as if he were asking me for advice. But I was a prisoner in an underground dungeon. I had nothing to give him.

“......Who are you asking that to right now?”

He nodded quietly and turned away. At some point, the sword at his waist was gone.

A former candidate for the Empire’s finest blade had let go of his sword.

That was how the world was changing.

──Tick.

I opened my eyes.

Thud.

Footsteps came again. This time, slower and heavier.

“......Has it been ten years.”

Edmund muttered to himself as he approached me. A tiny lamp on the wall lit him up. I nearly passed out when I saw his head.

“Edmund, where did your hair go?!”

“My hair?”

“Yeah. Did rats eat it?! Good grief, look at you.”

His thick black hair was half gone, his crown looked bare, and pale frost had settled on what remained. The wrinkles on his face had deepened so much he looked well over a decade older.

“Hair isn’t important.”

“Everyone around me who went bald said exactly that.”

“......You haven’t changed. You really haven’t.”

Instead of anger, pure amazement spread across his face. He looked like he was staring at something he could not understand.

“Your looks, your voice, all of it......”

“Really? Maybe because I never get sunlight.”

Without a word, Edmund dragged over a chair and sat down. He was dressed like a full politician now.

I asked him,

“Is it different outside?”

“......”

He stayed silent. The wavering lantern light on the wall lit his exhausted face.

“It’ll change...... no, I have to make it change.”

His face carried resignation, like someone who had accepted reality.

“Politics must be rough. Your face changed more dramatically than the world did.”

Heh. Edmund looked at me and laughed. One escaped laugh spread into a broad grin.

“Hahaha. Yeah...... yeah. Maybe so.”

“They say age makes people softer. Maybe it’s true. Looks like time beat you down for thirty years. Where did that solid knight go, and why is this old fox sitting here?”

“......Who knows. Probably rusting somewhere.”

Edmund smiled with a short sigh.

“......Maximilian.”

For the first time, he called my full name. Back then, my friends all called me Max.

It felt a little awkward, but not bad.

“Is it different in here?”
he asked. I shrugged.

“Who knows. I only trained in here. I stayed cut off from the world.”

“Can you even train in a place like this?”

“Do you think I can?”

Krahahaha. Edmund laughed loudly, and I laughed too. Once it started, the laughter filled the whole prison.

“Edmund.”

“The outside will change.”

“......”

Edmund’s face stiffened at once.

“Because the outside has people like you in it.”

I looked straight at him.

“Commoners worth far more than half-baked nobles like me.”

His brows bent sadly.

I never thought I would see this weak side of Edmund, this worn-out old politician.

“My father used to say this. ‘Edmund is worth far more than most nobles in the Empire.’”

“Duke Sebestian, that great old man.”

Edmund picked up my words.

“I still think of him sometimes. He single-handedly cut down over a dozen Revolutionary Faction elites......”

His sentence stopped awkwardly. He lifted his gaze quietly, like he was checking my reaction.

“It’s fine. He’s already dead. Not like he was a father I wanted to remember anyway.”

I said it flatly. My father had been the face of imperialism.

He led racial discrimination and segregation more than anyone, all for the glory of the Empire, and I had failed every expectation he had for me.

“Then...... ah. I’m out of time.”

Edmund rose from his seat. This visit felt unusually short.

“You’re going?”

“......Yeah.”

Edmund gave me a faint smile.

He climbed the stairs with a limp. Now he held a cane instead of a sword.

───Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

That regular clock sound woke me from sleep.

At some point, it had become an auditory hallucination that always flickered deep inside me.

It swallowed every sound of the prison and pounded at my insides like the shaking of a second hand.

Tick.

When I opened my eyes in the dark, I saw a faint shadow beyond the bars.

“Edmund......?”

I strained to see his face. “Aged” was too simple a word for what he had become. As if he had carried the world’s pain for years, he had become an old man.

“Max.”

He dragged over a chair and collapsed into it, leaning back with effort. He looked far weaker than the last visit.

I asked him,

“How many years has it been?”

“......Twenty.”

His phlegm-thick voice was close to a whisper.

“But you are still the same. Still...... almost exactly as you were when you were first locked in here.”

Shock and deep sadness flowed across his face together.

“No way. I must have gotten old too.”

I raised a hand and touched my face. My senses were so dull I could barely tell.

I asked the same question I always did.

“Edmund. How is it outside?”

“......”

Edmund did not answer for a while. His silence carried a heavy meaning.

“Max. These days, I keep thinking this.”

His voice cracked. It sounded fragile, like cracked glass.

“If only, if only the Empire had lasted longer, if only we had not destroyed it, then maybe humanity...... might have lasted longer.”

Humanity.

I frowned. For a worn-out old politician, that word was far too heavy.

“What does that mean?”

“The Izenheim. Remember them?”

The Izenheim. One of the many minority races the Empire oppressed.

“Yeah. Why?”

“The Empire was right. The Empire defined them as demonic mutants and kept them isolated completely. We...... we thought they were people to liberate and protect.”

Suddenly his face twisted with despair. Deep regret and self-loathing surged up.

“But the Izenheim...... they were the catastrophe. They weren’t human. Those damned bastards ruined the world.”

“Huh?”

The Empire discriminated against minority races. It treated them not as races but as subspecies. The basis was neither scientific nor magical.

It was a near witch-hunt policy, saying they were descendants of demons.

“What are you......”

Edmund bowed his head deeply. His shoulders trembled.

“I’m sorry.”

“Tell me clearly.”

“......The Izenheim. They were an alien species that devoured worlds. They were never human from the start. Remember the underground cities they dug? We thought they gathered there to survive, but they were developing the Dimension Gate. We were deceived by those devils.”

I asked blankly,

“......What?”

Had he read the wrong novel somewhere?

Edmund gave a bitter smile. His complexion was already corpse-like.

“Under the republic, they showed their true nature. They kept researching and finally called in extraterrestrial races. I’m sorry. If it had been the Empire, we would have crushed them under pressure, but we couldn’t. We couldn’t betray the cause we built. By the end, we finally tried war, but......”

He looked at me with tears in his eyes. Before I knew it, I asked,

“Did we get completely wrecked?”

“......With the Yaken tribe’s help, we held up somewhat at first.”

“Yaken?”

“Yeah. They had power that could fight dimensional devourers. But there was a limit, and as a last resort we tried a mana nuclear bomb, but...”

Edmund shook his head.

“It didn’t work. We, humanity, were completely defeated. I’m sorry.”

“......”

I still did not understand, but Edmund had already collapsed.

I had no choice but to believe a broken man’s words.

“No, no. You don’t need to apologize to me. Come to think of it, no meals have come down lately. Guess all the guards ran away too?”

For days now, not a meal or even a sip of water had come in.

Yeah, days.

To my senses, it had only been “a few days.”

“......That part is strange.”

Edmund’s deeply wrinkled eyes studied me.

“This underground prison was already recorded as closed and destroyed seven years ago. So I naturally thought you were dead. I didn’t even consider you might still be alive.”

The old man who had been Edmund stopped speaking with difficulty. He looked to be in severe pain.

“On a slim chance, truly on a slim chance, I barely found my way back in. And then you really were here...... Is this my hallucination? Something my guilt made?”

“Are you insane?”

“......Ha.”

At my curt answer, Edmund let out a hollow laugh.

“Max. It seems you were born with some talent even you do not know. That is the only way to explain this unreal situation.”

“Me?”

Edmund fumbled inside his coat. His fingers, little more than bone, trembled and dropped a rusted key.

Clang. Clang. It bounced twice and slid inside the bars,

Ruuuumble─!

A vibration shook the ceiling above. Edmund looked up.

“......I should go now. To accept the end that fits me.”

He turned his back slowly. His worn-out figure began to move away from me.

“Edmund.”

I stopped him as he left.

“I never hated you. Not even once.”

“......”

He said nothing. He only gave a faint smile and climbed the stairs. His slow form was soon swallowed by darkness and disappeared.

I picked up the key and opened the bars.

Thud.

The rusted lock that had trapped me for twenty years finally opened. I followed the narrow passage and climbed the stairs. I chased after Edmund.

And then──

I found a ruined world.

“......What, the, hell.”

The whole world was ash. Buildings had collapsed with only skeleton frames left, and traces of people remained scorched in places.

This underground prison was directly beneath the imperial royal residence.

That meant this was the capital. One of the greatest cities in the world had been shattered like this.

I found scraps of paper scattered over crumbling asphalt. The words printed on them were perfectly clear.

[Failure of the Mana Bomb]

[Prepare for the End]

[Izenheim, They Devour Dimensions]

[......Sentinel Order Defeated]

[The Summoning Ritual Was Performed......]

[Mana Collapses.]

What Edmund had said was recorded as reality. I stared blankly at those lines and muttered,

“What the hell did these idiots do?”

At that moment, I felt a chilling presence. I turned around in a rush.

There was a grotesque lifeform.

A monster with no eyes, nose, or mouth, no clear outline, only a barely held shape. It looked like a loofah, or drifting debris in empty air, but the “mouth” attached to it opened wide and bit at my face.

No, right before it could bite, everything stopped.

I did not know if I stopped, or the world did,

──Tick.

The ticking I had heard in my mind for who knew how long rang out loudly.

It was not a simple hallucination.

─Tick.

The world rewound. The grotesque creature moved away, the collapsed city began to take shape again, and the fallen buildings returned to their places.

The days I had lived rushed backward like film running in reverse.

My meetings with Edmund, the time in the underground prison, my father’s execution

Tick.

There I was, twenty years old.

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