WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 104

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What Literature Is

In the heart of the Empire, Johann's room had turned into a mess after going uncleaned for far too long.

Bundles of ink-stained paper lay piled on the floor like snow, while empty coffee cups and bread crumbs had taken over the desk.

"......"

Right in the middle of that chaos, the writer stared with hollow eyes as he wrote the final chapter of his novel.

With a trembling pen, he forced out each sentence.

[“The duty of a true noble. The bearing a noble must uphold. Have we forgotten it for far too long......”

Baltaras smiled sadly and placed a hand on my shoulder.

His hand was cold, but the warmth in his soul heated my heart.

“But someday, they too will finally understand. The privileges they enjoy are a heavy debt built on the blood and sweat of countless Aran people.”]

The Baltaras inside the novel was walking toward his end.

[“Paul, as you said, if I go there, I may die.”

Baltaras smiled. He looked like a man who had already sensed his fate.

“But even so......”]

Johann felt he already knew Baltaras's ending, yet he could not stop. He became Paul and watched Baltaras's back as he departed for the battlefield.

His hand moved on its own. The closing moment would not stop.

[......News of Baltaras's death came in a short letter. From far away, I heard of his solitary war. He fought a battle impossible for one man. Alone, he shattered countless armies. Yet what met him was the irresistible current of the age, a gigantic wave like corruption in its total form......]

Johann could not bring himself to describe Baltaras's death directly.

His pain was carried instead through the medium of a letter, in just a few short lines.

[Gazing at the Empire's nightscape that never went dark, watching our lives always recede behind us, Baltaras believed in a future that still held dreams. The path he pursued may have been the conscience all of us had lost.]

A hero more noble than any noble, yet murdered by the contradictions of the Empire and its aristocratic society.

[I thought, you were worth far more than thousands of those bastards put together. You were the one person who could look into a mirror without a speck of shame.]

[Only after your death did I finally think about what your faith could bring to the Empire.]

Johann's pen dug in so hard it nearly tore the paper.

[......Baltaras's coffin was buried in dark soil, but above that grave, we will finally greet a new morning.]

He could not place a period at the end of the final sentence. A thousand tangled thoughts circled in his head.

It was strange.

Before he knew it, he had written a cursed tragedy. A story too painful to read again.

In the end, he crumpled every page of the manuscript and threw it into the trash bin.

"Haa......"

An unknown emotion surged up from the bottom of his chest like a tidal wave.

For a long while, Johann held his face in both hands and fought to steady his breathing.

* * *

Empire, Sentinel Order headquarters.

As soon as I returned, I went to Kairon's office.

"You broke the encirclement in less than a month."

Kairon smiled as he flipped through the report.

"......As you'll see in the report, the Durkon Legion and the Berton unit played key roles."

It was my first time seeing Schweitzer's maneuver style in person as well. There was clearly a reason his legion was much faster than the others.

"Also, only the supply route has been opened. The civil war itself remains."

The Zerpa civil war was only beginning. The siege had been broken, but the Republican faction was still strong.

It would become a long war.

"True. But the palace doesn't seem to want to pay much attention to Zerpa anymore. They already look displeased that Durkon is stationed in Alcantara."

Kairon's grasp of the political situation still surprised me sometimes. Even as a Sentinel knight, he gathered scattered fragments of deep palace information with striking accuracy.

"Looking at the Royalist faction's current power map, they probably cannot even feed themselves......"

Most of Zerpa's agricultural land was occupied by the Republicans. Even so, before my regression, the Empire had only sent the Royalists leftovers, or food barely fit to eat.

I answered calmly.

"I plan to handle the supplies myself."

"......You?"

Kairon's eyes widened.

"Even for you, feeding half a country for free would be a burden. If the war drags on, that's a bottomless pit."

"For free?"

I tilted my head.

"When did I say I would supply them for free?"

Kairon's expression stiffened for a moment.

I kept speaking with a small smile.

"Sir Knight, I'm not a philanthropist."

A state was a far more reliable business counterpart than any individual.

I had no intention of letting this chance slip.

"Of course I'll put it on the books."

It was exactly what the Empire had done before.

The Empire had supplied trash, but I would supply proper food.

I planned to bill them with interest. If the Royalists won, that debt would tighten around their neck like a noose.

Kairon stared at me, then nodded.

"......I see. That sounds like you. Good work. I'll benefit from this too."

As overall commander of this expedition, Kairon took his formal credit on paper.

"Yes. Then I'll be on my way."

I gave a short bow and left his office.

For the first time in a while, I returned to my knight office.

"You're back!"

"We heard the news, Sir Knight."

I was walking through greetings from the staff officers when, suddenly, my steps stopped.

I stepped back.

Walked forward again, then stepped back again.

"......"

One spot felt off.

I glanced over.

Someone was sitting there far too calmly.

Tap. Tatatatatatatatat. Tarararararak.

A secretary hammering at the keyboard at astonishing speed, eyes fixed on the monitor.

"......Back from vacation?"

It was Yukia.

Without taking her hands off the keyboard, she answered flatly.

"Yes."

Yukia had returned. She was even speaking politely.

As if nothing had happened.

It was a good thing.

Still, I decided not to make a fuss. Yaken were like feral cats or wild dogs. Push too hard, and they tried to run.

"......"

Without a word, I entered my office and sat down. I took a small notebook from my coat.

Scratch. Scratch.

Crown Prince Alonso's writing was appearing in real time.

[The capital of Zerpa is overflowing with refugees. Poor subjects who came up to the capital to escape Republican massacres and seek the king's protection...... But the soil around the capital is barren, so food self-sufficiency is failing. There is little grain left in storage, and many subjects are starving. The generals debate invisible enemies within......]

"So you wrote a diary."

Crown Prince Alonso's self-pity was remarkable.

[Do not worry. Supplies will begin soon.]

I left efficient supply planning to Dieter.

Civilian and military supplies would be strictly separated, and distribution would be entrusted entirely to Lieutenant Colonel Kai Han. If I handed it to Zerpa's corrupt generals, those rats would skim it and sell it on the black market. That was obvious.

That aside.

"......What is Johann doing."

That problematic man, the one with unusually rare talent even among war criminals, still had no news about the manuscript.

I should go in person.

Not to pressure him, just in case something happened.

......

I visited Johann's rented room.

"You're here, Sir Knight."

Johann looked gaunt. He seemed not to have washed in a long time, and he looked grimy overall. Signs of daily life and writing were everywhere in the room.

"So you did write something after all."

"Ah...... no. I tried to write a manuscript, but it seems my talent is lacking...... I couldn't write a single line."

Impossible. This was the man praised even by Allied scholars with words like, even if he was a war criminal, his literary talent alone had to be admired.

My gaze naturally shifted to the trash bin beside the desk. Crumpled paper was stuffed into it.

"This looks like a manuscript."

I picked it up.

"Ah. Th-that was something I meant to discard-"

Before Johann could stop me, I unfolded the paper and started reading.

I skimmed from the first sentence, then quietly sat down in a chair.

"......"

My eyes moved across the page.

Johann's prose flowed into my sight.

Strange.

It was far better than I had expected.

The content was one thing, but the sentences themselves seemed to glow.

"......Ha."

I finished the manuscript in an instant.

When I came back to myself, dusk had already fallen outside the window.

"Johann."

"......Yes."

"You really are a genius."

It was praise without exaggeration, yet Johann's expression darkened.

"......It's too shameful. To give it such a tragic ending-"

"No. I love even that part."

I truly did. In one book, Johann had perfectly captured the duty imperial nobles ought to bear and the cruelty of the Empire's current nobility. At the same time, he fully preserved both artistry and the pleasure of a compelling story.

"But Baltaras...... dies. Betrayed, forgotten, and alone."

"It's fine."

The fate Johann worried about, Baltaras being killed.

For me, that made it better.

"Tragedy stays in people's memory longer, doesn't it?"

Even if Baltaras was modeled after me, I would not die.

I was no longer a man without responsibility.

At some point, a cause had rooted itself as my conviction. Day by day, it grew harder inside me.

Maybe because I had already killed too many people.

Because I had already taken too much, and piled up too much karma.

"You said this, Johann. Negative emotions stay more vividly in the human mind."

After doing all this, if I still failed to stop the end, I would have no face to show.

If I failed to stop it, I would remain nothing more than a devil at the edge of the world, committing atrocities.

So I had to live.

I had to survive and prove it.

"That is exactly why a noble like Baltaras has to die for the story to truly hit."

I carefully flattened the manuscript and set it on the table.

There was also the issue of the Emperor. The closer the Empire came to its final years, the more jealous he became. He also grew more superstitious.

No matter how popular and praised the hero became, he still died miserably in the novel. With an ending like that, even the Emperor's possible anxiety could be prevented.

"In the end, what moves people's hearts is a story made by humans."

This 「Baltaras」 would sell no matter what.

I would make it sell.

If I placed it in visible spots on bookstore displays and in the libraries of imperial barracks, it would spread by word of mouth and sell on its own. The quality was that high.

"......Yes."

Johann still looked embarrassed, but he nodded.

"And."

I held out another stack of papers to him.

"It's the first draft of my autobiography."

"A draft...... you mean?"

"Yeah. I want to write this with you."

At that moment, Johann's eyes lit up. The expression of shame he wore while talking about 「Baltaras」 flared up and vanished in an instant.

* * *

......Sentio, the Imperial Central Magic Tower.

"Yaaawn~"

Ezel yawned and stretched.

Lately, she had been staying holed up inside the tower often. The outside world was too noisy. News of war never stopped, and the political landscape shifted by the day.

It felt easier to bury herself in the silence of the lab and solve magical formulas.

"I should at least go for a walk."

So she left the tower for the first time in a while.

Step, step.

Half asleep, she wandered the streets, and before she knew it she was in front of a large bookstore.

"Huh?"

She spotted a familiar back.

A woman standing at the display table outside the bookstore, reading without moving at all.

It was Sonnet Kandel.

"Hello?"

Ezel approached and greeted her warmly.

"......"

No answer. Sonnet stood stiff as a statue.

"Hey? Sonnet-ssi?"

Ezel called again. Still no response, so she moved behind her and tapped her shoulder.

"Excuse me?"

"......Ah."

Only then did Sonnet turn her head. Her brow instantly twisted.

"You broke my focus."

Her voice dripped with irritation.

"......Huh?"

"......"

Ziiiiing. She glared as if she wanted to kill someone.

"Ah, sorry."

Ezel apologized awkwardly and glanced at the cover of the book Sonnet was clutching.

A pitch-black cover with a gold-stamped title.

「Baltaras」

Author: Johann

"Johann, huh...... there must be about fifty thousand authors with that name?"

Johann was the most common name in the Empire. There was even a saying: throw a stone and you'll hit a Johann. It was just a joke, but

"......"

Sonnet shot her a cold look, then went into the bookstore without a word, paid for the book, and walked off.

"Ugh...... what a piece of work."

Ezel pouted and picked up a copy from the display.

"What is so amazing that you get that focused......"

[The Empire's nobles bear duty. In the ancient Aran language, this is called Noblesse Oblige.]

Starting from that first sentence, which strangely clung to her tongue, she turned the page.

Then one page, then two.

Three, four.

Five, six.

Seven, eight......

Naturally, her field of view narrowed. All her attention sank into the page.

It was as if the letters were dancing. As if some magic was woven into the sentences, vivid images rose before her. The figure of the noble called Baltaras took shape.

A perfect noble without the slightest flaw. Yet in front of the young lady Chloe, he softened like a boy......

In an instant, she was pulled into the book.

"Hey. Hey, hey."

Then.

Someone tapped her shoulder.

"Ah, damn."

Ezel snapped and turned with a frown.

"Ezel. What are you doing?"

It was a fellow mage from the tower. A growl slipped out of Ezel before she knew it.

"You broke my focus."

"Uh, huh? No, I called you and you didn't answer."

"......"

Ezel glared at her colleague, then walked straight into the bookstore with the book, paid for it, and hurried home with quick steps.

She needed a quiet space, the kind where she could focus without anyone interrupting her.

"Jeez. What's so amazing about it......"

Faintly, she heard the tower colleague who had just broken her focus muttering those strangely familiar words while picking up a copy.

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