The Reluctant Imperialist - Chapter 112

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 112

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Path of Dreams

The Imperial Royal Opera House.

As the final stop on the imperial princess's schedule, this place had been the most famous opera house on the continent before I regressed.

Before I regressed, yes.

Which meant it was not there yet. Of course, it was still the best in the Empire, but in culture and the arts overall, the Prozen Republic was far more vibrant than the Empire.

Even Imperials had to admit that.

"Poor Jiro! How can your love be so empty!"

Still, this Royal Opera House was tied to a special story.

"Ah! It feels as if my heart is being seared by fire!"

I looked up at the VIP balcony. Imperial Princess Justine was there with her escort knight.

Justine did not look pleased. The VIP balcony had a restricted view, so it was not ideal for watching opera, and she preferred regular seats.

I turned away and resumed security checks, entering the corridor behind the stage that led backstage.

I spread my mana thin and swept the interior. To detect any possible enemy, I pushed my senses outward.

Thump.

My heart gave a faint tremor.

Thump.

The virus reacted. Izenheim.

Quietly, I walked toward it.

Thump.

The waiting area was bustling with staff carrying props and readying costumes.

In the middle of the chaos, one man walked by with a ladder on his shoulder.

He looked like an ordinary stagehand in plain work clothes, but my heart pointed straight at him.

"......"

I approached him and deliberately bumped his shoulder.

Thud.

"Ah, what the... huh, s-sorry!"

Irritation flashed across his face for a moment, then he hurriedly bowed.

I stared at him in silence.

Right now, I held authority over life and death. Anyone threatening the imperial family's safety was subject to summary judgment. If I killed him first and performed an autopsy, proof that he was a subspecies would come out.

"......"

I gripped the sword at my lower back and stared right through him.

"U-um, S-sir Knight?"

The man's eyes shook as he met mine. His lips turned blue, and all color drained from his face.

His fear felt vivid.

The Izenheim species mimicked human emotions better than humans did. That made them filthier, and far more horrifying.

"Johann!"

At that moment, someone shouted and ran over. I turned.

A man in heavy stage makeup. Leonard, a star of the imperial opera scene.

"Johann, what are you doing here? Hurry up! Aren't you getting ready?"

"I, I..."

"Go! Move!"

Johann was clearly a common name.

"Quit standing there like an idiot and go!"

Leonard shoved the Izenheim away. The Izenheim stumbled off like he was fleeing, and I turned to Leonard instead.

Leonard spoke first.

"Sir Knight. What are you doing here?"

"...I am on duty."

At my answer, Leonard frowned.

He did not shrink back even in front of a knight. He was probably from a prestigious knight family himself. A rare man who had chased his dream and become an opera actor, and someone with an unshakable core.

"I do not know what mission you are on, but this is disruptive during a performance. The staff are frightened."

Leonard was a gallant man from a noble house.

Justine was the Emperor's daughter.

Those two were exactly why this place became famous.

One day not far off, the princess came to the opera house without an escort and got caught in a terror attack. The one who saved her then was this opera actor, Leonard.

The two fell in love as if by fate. Rare in the Empire, and because it was the Empire, it became the romance of the century.

"Yes. My apologies."

I gave a faint smile and shook my head.

"I was too sensitive."

Leonard was assassinated. The culprit was presumed to be an Eastern Alliance spy, or the Revolutionary Faction, or a staged palace plot by those afraid of power decentralization, but the truth was never known.

After losing her lover, the princess went to extremes. The Emperor and Johann also used the incident for propaganda. It became the trigger that hastened the Empire's ruin.

Bang.

As if intermission had just begun, the waiting room door opened. Actors and staff poured out in a rush.

Thump, thump, thump.

From the staff pressing in behind me, I sensed at least three Izenheim.

"......"

This place had an unusually high number of Izenheim.

Probably because they were preparing for the terror attack.

I stared at them for a long moment, then turned back into the dark.

* * *

The Royal Empire Hotel in the imperial capital, under a sky gone black.

Professor Jean Pierre sat deep in thought.

The manuscript pages on his desk were blank. No, only one name was written there.

[ Maximilian Ebenholtz ]

In Jean Pierre's eyes, he had immense academic value.

A dangerous, and therefore fascinating, subject of study. As a scholar who dug into people, this was the first time he had felt such a powerful instinct that someone seemed likely to cut through an entire era.

It thrilled him, and terrified him.

Maximilian's appearance was certainly as rumored, exceptional. A face that most imperial nobles could never imitate no matter how hard they tried.

His linguistic ability had also exceeded expectations.

Imperial nobles trying to learn Prozen while drunk on vanity was nothing new.

Prozen mocked that trend among imperial nobles, yet with Maximilian, it was not shallow learning for show.

"In Zerpa too..."

Maximilian's name was there.

He had proven his military command ability there once again. In the western frontier's 7th Imperial Guard Battalion, he had entered the battlefield as a knight of a newly formed battalion and broken through the Republican forces' encirclement within one month.

Yet what drew the most attention was his restraint.

He had clearly broken the enemy encirclement. Most young commanders, drunk on that high, would recklessly push deep into enemy lines or pop champagne to flaunt their merit to the center.

Maximilian had not.

Even at the moment of victory, he stayed cold. Even in the middle of enemy lines, he never lost composure. He even handed the credit over to Major General Schweitzer and a lieutenant colonel.

"...Even in politics."

Western countries had been stunned by the new policies the Empire had drafted this time.

Foreign exchange controls, restrictions on profit remittances, and the radical tax collection concept called withholding tax.

The real reason Jean Pierre had come all the way to the Empire was to directly analyze the diplomatic fallout those bills would cause, and their impact on ordinary lives.

"Haah..."

Jean Pierre exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke.

"Only for the Empire."

The words Maximilian had spoken at the museum.

Jean Pierre turned over their true meaning in his mind.

"Would he really serve the Emperor?"

The current Emperor was a ruler with one of the strongest claims to legitimacy in the Empire's thousand-year history. He called himself a god, and his belief that "I am the state" was famous.

Still, did Maximilian think the same way?

Maximilian was the son of a loyal subject, but like Sebestian, no, perhaps even more than him, he possessed talent and ability on a wider scale.

And there was one eternal truth.

A person's ambition grew to fit the size of his vessel.

Could Maximilian's will really be satisfied with House Ebenholtz alone?

After organizing his thoughts into an outline, Jean Pierre wrote sentence after sentence without hesitation.

A biographical critique of a great figure, or a warning text to the current generation.

Whichever it became, Jean Pierre felt he would be consumed by the figure called Maximilian for quite some time.

* * *

The Sentinel Order had slipped into midsummer before we knew it. Built on terrain that took relentless sunlight, this place was now receiving Lorenzo Academy's window-unit air conditioners one by one.

"Opera terror attack..."

Inside the Order office, I sat in deep thought.

In the face of a greater cause, emotion was only an obstacle, and individual existence a trivial byproduct.

Yet Izenheim used even that. They consumed human emotion as a tool, the most inhuman beings of all.

So to deal with them, one had to become a monster worse than they were.

"If..."

I wanted to know how that other version of the story would have gone.

If that night, Justine did not meet Leonard at the opera house.

If instead of Leonard, she met someone else, someone like me.

If the future went off course, and she grew fond of me.

"...Could I."

Become Emperor.

...No, politics were not that simple.

Still, thoughts like this kept coming to me lately.

Emperor.

If I had been Emperor, not Ebenholtz, could I have walked this hellish road a little more easily?

"......"

I shook my head and forced the thoughts away.

Knock, knock.

Right then, my aide Yukia came in with a knock. She held out a sealed envelope.

"A sealed envelope from Knight Yulian."

Her polite tone was unexpectedly pleasant to hear. I took the envelope.

Yukia hesitated where she stood.

"Something to say?"

When I asked, she hesitated for a moment, then spoke.

"...I visited the grave."

"My father looked at peace."

Her voice was calm, but the corners of her eyes were slightly red.

I stayed quiet for a moment, then asked teasingly.

"Did you wiretap again?"

She gave a small laugh and shook her head.

"Not anymore. But... I want to ask about that fishy smell."

Izenheim. The true source of that rotten smell.

Then she placed another document down. A roster from Aternum factory, listing the people with that fishy smell.

I tapped it lightly and answered.

"...Later."

"When?"

"When the day comes that you can trust my words completely. Then I will tell you."

Yukia asked no more. She lowered her head quietly and left.

I opened the documents Yulian sent.

At the very top was a short line.

[ Preparations are complete. ]

Very much like Yulian, the conclusion came first.

Below it, it said that a new club in Berkina had become a city landmark in less than three months, and cartel executives came and went as if it were their own home.

Kalo had expanded his power in an instant. Thanks to Yulian's help, he had set up a new farm.

"......"

At last, it was time to use Ashton's corpse.

I rose and headed to Kairon's office.

On the Order's upper floor, I reached the door with the plaque "Senior Knight Kairon" and was about to knock out of habit.

"...Hoo."

I stopped. I took a deep breath. I deliberately disheveled my appearance. Loosened my tie. Lightly ruffled my neatly set hair.

Ebenholtz always kept calm and dignity. Because of that, this effect might work even better.

Bang!

I threw the door open without knocking.

The administrative officers in the lobby and the junior knights jumped up in shock.

"K-Knight Maximilian?"

"W-what is the matter, sir?"

Ignoring them, I walked straight to Kairon's private office.

Sensing the commotion, Kairon opened the door first.

"Max. What is it?"

As coldly as possible, acting as if I was barely holding back anger, I said,

"There is something I must tell you immediately."

Seeing me like that, Kairon nodded gravely.

"Everyone, step back."

After clearing out all the staff officers, we went inside and talked about the cartel. The moment the name Ashton came up, Kairon's face hardened.

......

We moved out at once. Not on a regular passenger plane, but on the Kanillan military transport aircraft I had prepared. We were four in total. Kairon brought two of his most trusted men.

Kuuuuuu.

The transport aircraft reached the skies above the Berkina border zone.

"We are dropping."

At my signal, the ramp opened.

We threw ourselves into the dark sky. Kairon and his knights followed in smooth formation. They were used to descent through training, and reached the destination through low-altitude flight.

Whoooooosh.

Inside the Berkina border, in a deserted forest clearing.

Yulian stood there.

"You came."

With a low sigh, he pointed to a duffel bag at his feet.

"I had a hard time recovering the body."

The zipper was half open. Through the gap, I could see Ashton, Egilon, horribly mutilated.

Kairon's face set hard. He knew Egilon too. They had been in the same Sentinel class.

"Egilon. He was an old friend."

Yulian spoke in a sunken voice.

"He left the Sentinel Order and rolled around in this sewer to protect the Empire's peace. And now he ended up like this."

I let out a breath and closed my eyes. Moonlight mana wavered around my body like heat haze.