WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 115

──────

The Meaning of Politics

------

Whoooooosh.

The knights who dropped from the transport ships cut across Berkina's airspace and landed smoothly at their assigned target points.

Tap.

The instant they hit the pavement, they pressed a button and released their wingsuits. Whirr. The suits compressed like fabric and folded flat against their backs.

There was no time to admire new technology. They followed their prearranged routes and entered the cartel capos' hideouts.

Destination, target point reached.

Mercenaries guarded the sponsors from every direction, but the knights had no need for hand signals.

Slice. Shhk.

They burst forward almost at the same time and slit throats in silence.

Then pushed deeper inside...

Thud!

At the dull impact from outside, Capo Costa opened his eyes.

"...?"

He rubbed his face and checked the clock. It was 3 a.m.

"...What."

A wide room draped in heavy red velvet. Costa rose from bed.

He loosely tied his robe and pushed back his messy curls. A cold, unpleasant chill ran down his spine.

"Mm...?"

The women beside him stirred awake, but Costa shoved them back down with an irritated gesture.

"Go back to sleep."

Still naked, he drew up mana. Iron Boar. True to the nickname, lead-colored mana wrapped his whole body and hardened it.

"..."

He raised a sharpened hand blade and yanked the door open.

The hallway was silent.

No one was there.

No guards. No subordinates.

"What the hell...?"

Costa tilted his head and turned around.

Something opaque flickered in the dark.

Shhk!

A flash sparked.

!

Costa's eyes froze wide open. His neck dropped clean off. Thud, thud, thud. His severed head rolled down the stairs.

"Boar slaughter complete."

The knight turned away from the fallen corpse. No need to take the head, no reason to leave a token.

Anyone who dared touch an imperial knight paid with death, and nothing else.

...

A hidden dark room in downtown Berkina.

In the VVIP room of a flashy gambling den, chips and cash were piled high across the table.

"Hoo..."

Kunta, a cartel capo, stared at his cards with bloodshot eyes.

His hand was good.

He ducked his face low like a mole, trying to hide his expression.

"...All in."

He shoved all his chips in, but the other man casually folded.

"Ah, I'm done for. The cards just won't come tonight."

"..."

A vein bulged on Kunta's forehead. Blood seeped from lips he'd bitten too hard.

"...Ah, and sorry. I have to get going now."

That bastard who should have just dropped dead even started getting up from his seat.

I had a full house!

"Have fun, gentlemen."

"Where are you going? We're just getting started."

Kunta slammed his cards down and growled.

"Come on... my son is waiting for me. It's his birthday today."

"So what. Who gives a damn when he was born."

"Ah, don't be like this. I already lost everything. I barely have anything left. I'm broke."

Kunta glanced at him. The bag that had been packed with chips was not even half full now.

"Please let me go."

The man gave a weak grin and backed away. Kunta glared at him with bloodshot eyes.

"If you leave, you're dead. We'll hang you in the market like a pair of shoes."

"It really is my son's birthday. If I leave now, I can still make it in time-"

With that pathetic excuse, the man bowed at a ninety-degree angle and stepped out.

"..."

Kunta kept staring that way for a long while. He shoved the cigarette deeper into his mouth.

Crunch. Crunch.

He chewed it whole, then jerked his chin.

"Hey. Kill that bastard for real. Cut his son's head off too."

"Yes."

The mercenaries followed without hesitation.

"Fucking bastard."

Kunta picked his cards back up.

"Then let's go. Deal."

Just as the dealer started to shuffle.

Creeeak.

The door opened again.

"Who the hell is ruining the mo-"

Slash!

A blade shot out of his mouth where his tongue should have been. His split face fell onto the table in two pieces.

"Wha-"

Before the mercenaries could even grab their weapons, knights flooded in through the door. They ran along walls, stepped on the ceiling, and cut down heads.

Shhk. Slice.

Refined slaughter, selecting and cutting down only non-civilians with exact precision.

The enemies inside were wiped out in moments.

"...Eagle. Operation complete."

Kairon shook blood from his sword and spoke.

...

At dawn, tinged dark blue,

Pellier, the boss of bosses, the Capo Dei Capi, opened his eyes.

He was different from the other capos. Not bloated and indulgent like Costa, not addicted to excess like Kunta.

Pellier's hideout stood at the highest point in the city, on a cliffside building.

The inside was built like a maze. Magic alarm devices everywhere. Traps in every corridor.

A fortress that reflected his paranoia to the fullest.

Still, Pellier did not like this fortress's top floor. Looking down from high places always felt good, but it was poor ground if an assassination came.

"Hm."

Pellier stepped onto a terrace on the middle floors. At his feet, downtown Berkina spread out in full view. A city where orange lights and heated darkness mixed together.

Far away, the sharp glow of a newly opened club shone.

"I should take that."

There was only one reason. Because I am Pellier. In Berkina, anything I want must become mine.

"Heh."

Pellier smirked and turned back. He stepped into the living room and opened a shelf.

Tap.

He sensed someone. His personal guard. A loyal man, formerly an imperial knight.

"...You're still awake?" the guard asked.

"I cannot sleep."

Pellier raised his brows and swirled his whiskey glass. Ice chimed clear and clean.

"Want a drink?"

"I'm fine."

Pellier pursed his lips.

"You could, though. Well, get some rest."

"Yes."

The mercenary just smiled and withdrew. Pellier went back out to the terrace and raised his glass. Looking out at Berkina in the distance, he murmured faintly.

...My world.

Mine.

Lost in reverie, he took a sip of whiskey, and then.

-----.

From the far side of the night sky, a bright light approached.

Cutting across the horizon... a meteor?

Soundless, leaving a short tail, a silver light moved forward.

"..."

Pellier stared blankly for a moment.

Maybe it was a revelation. Maybe a blessing watching over his future.

That was exactly how it felt.

Soon enough, he would kill Costa and Kunta and seize Berkina. He would become king of Berkina, grow so powerful that even imperial dogs could not look down on him...

---

A comet.

From afar, it looked like it would brush past this sky, then suddenly stopped dead in midair.

That alone was mysterious, but then its trajectory bent unnaturally.

The shape was heading

this way.

Toward me.

"...?"

In an instant, Pellier's vision was dyed silver.

A pure white longsword descending from the sky.

It was the last sight of his life.

-----.

Moonlight quietly split the terrace. A graceful strike carved a scar across the hideout building.

Krrrraaaash! The groan of breaking fragments swelled a moment later, and at the same time Pellier's head flew into the air.

Fwoosh...

Moonlight spilled in full bloom, and Maximilian landed atop Pellier's corpse.

He exhaled softly and said,

"Entry."

* * *

The three capos of the Parmano Cartel, the mercenaries they had hired, and hundreds including their second-in-commands and other executives were all beheaded in just six hours. Before a full day had passed, the return operation was already underway.

"How was the haul?"

Outside an airfield in the Empire's east.

Under a tree in steady rain, Kairon asked.

"It's solid."

I held up a Kanillan crystal chip taken from Pellier's vault.

Which companies the drug money had flowed into, who received tribute payments, all of it should be packed into this tiny chip.

"Some people call this a golden goblin, I think."

Unlike the slapdash records the other fools kept, Pellier's books were precise.

As expected of the boss of bosses.

"Can you trace it?"

"Yes. My administrative officer is competent. But to decode this properly, we'll probably have to go to Kanillan. The mana properties are different, so restoration in the Empire won't be smooth."

Some advanced products only worked in Kanillan. Mana wavelength and density differed by region.

The north and Kanillan in particular had unusually distinct mana environments.

"We'll get everything worth using out of it."

Kairon nodded, satisfied.

"Let's go."

"Yes."

We went into the airfield together. Around fifteen knights had gathered inside. The remaining units would return safely soon as well.

For this operation, we had already bought enough intelligence to map every enemy location and condition from the start, so the knights only had to swing their swords.

We did not win by fighting.
We fought while already winning.

"Uh, I have a question."

At the airfield, Year 0 knight Royce raised his hand awkwardly.

"This wingsuit... is it really issued to us? We don't have to return it?"

From the way senior knight Raynel coughed beside him, it seemed that question had been his idea.

I nodded, then looked around at the other knights and added:

"You can think of the wingsuit as a reward for everyone who took part in this operation."

Third-year Raynel poked Year 0 Royce in the side again.

"Sir, if we wanted to buy one separately, sorry, but-"

"At least two million."

A small wave of shock spread across the knights' faces. That was how cutting-edge the gear was. For someone who knew how to descend properly, it was strategic equipment that could multiply effectiveness three or four times over.

Rrrrrrrrr.

Right then, the vibration of the returning transports rolled in. Kairon and I went out to receive them.

"So Yulian handles the rest now?"

"Yes."

"Does Yulian understand what we intend?"

Kairon asked.

I stayed silent for a moment.

Yulian.

Even now, I still did not fully know what he carried inside. He always seemed one step ahead of me, as if he could see through every move I made.

Still, just as I did not know him, he would not know exactly who I was either.

What future I had seen, what cause I carried. How firm my faith in that cause was...

"Yes. Probably."

I looked at the transport ships landing and said,

"Now we just take what should be ours."

* * *

[Sentinel's Hidden Hero Meets a Tragic End]

[Atrocities of the Berkina Cartel......]

Jemion Daily's exclusive hit the entire Empire like a shockwave. They published mosaicked photos of parts of a knight's corpse, brutally mutilated by the cartel.

Imperial society erupted in fury, and Sentinel Commander Alberich also issued an unusual statement of mourning, anger, and regret.

Johann Goetze added his own spark while in his doctoral program.

--「Editorial: The Sacrifice of Pure Blood, and the Wrath of Aran」--

...We all saw it. How the Empire's noblest son was extinguished in the grip of low beasts. The wounds carved into his body as he devoted himself to us. The nail driven into the Empire's heart, the insult inflicted on all our souls...

The blood spilled by a single knight must never be in vain. What had he tried to protect? From the poison spread by drug cartels beyond our borders, he had tried to defend our Aran brothers and sisters, our pure faith...

------

Right on cue, news broke at full volume that the cartel's core executives had all been beheaded overnight.

[Sentinel, Representing Imperial Knights, Scorches Berkina Cartel Stronghold]

[Sentinel Senior Knight Kairon: "A Top-Secret Operation Was Already Underway"]

[Sword of the Empire Purifies a Den of Savagery!]

[The Path of Dreams... that one knight's life could not finish.]

Operation codename: Path of Dreams. All other details stayed top secret, but perfect retaliation had been carried out.

Naturally, the Berkina government protested fiercely. Not only them, hostility toward the Empire boiled across the entire Eastern Alliance.

But the cartel had touched an imperial knight first, and there were zero civilian casualties, so while Berkina deployed troops near the border, it did not escalate into armed conflict.

Instead, the Kalo Cartel rapidly absorbed the vacuum left by the erased Parmano and minor cartels. They spread massive bribes among local officials and eased anti-Empire public sentiment.

Then one morning.

On the desk of Imperial Guard Commander Goebel, who had come to work as usual,

a red-sealed document was delivered.

"...Hm?"

Commander Goebel had not worried about this incident at all.

The cartel had nothing to do with him. At least on the surface.

The laundering had been that perfect, and even if someone knew, he had been certain no one would have the nerve to drag him in. He had hundreds, thousands of disposable tails that could be cut off in his place.

But the document he looked at from his chair that day read:

---「Summons」---

Recipient: Goebel von Rosenberg

Sender: Imperial Sentinel Order

Our Order has detected illegal fund flows based on secret ledgers and other records obtained during the recent Berkina cartel suppression operation...

You are hereby summoned as a key witness on suspicion of financing an anti-state organization and accepting bribes. You are to appear at Sentinel Order Headquarters by 15:00 on October 30.

If you fail to comply, you are hereby notified that, under the Order's inherent authority, a compulsory arrest warrant may be issued.

-----

Brazen lines daring to summon the Emperor's Imperial Guard Commander.

Goebel fiddled with his monocle, then removed his hat.

"..."

Without saying a word, he read the full text again and pressed his fingers to his temple.

At the very bottom.

He looked at the owner of the handwriting.

[ Maximilian Albrecht von Ebenholtz ]

"Maximilian..."

As he quietly spoke that name,

"Heh."

an involuntary laugh slipped out.

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