WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 175

──────

Observation (2)

Within the Empire, no, perhaps across the entire continent, the underground city was the most rotten place of all.

The modified human standing before me, a being called Falkenrat, was proof enough on his own. This T24 Lab was also deeply tied to the hidden underbelly of the underground city.

"What kind of research is this place for?"

I looked at Falkenrat, seated across from me. His massive build made even the sofa look cramped, and yet a thought still crossed my mind.

Even if you forcibly tore apart a human body and bolted on machinery to turn it into a monster, it still could not match Sebestian.

At some point, Sebestian had become my only standard of comparison, so this freak in front of me was only mildly interesting.

“This is a laboratory meant to fulfill what the Empire, and His Great Majesty the Emperor, desire.”

I let out a short laugh at Falkenrat's voice.

"So His Majesty wants a monster like you?"

Even then, Falkenrat's half-human face stayed calm.

If anything, his prosthetic eye gleamed with pride, as if he wore the word monster like a medal.

Just like the old comic had described him.

"S-Sir Knight."

The lab director, who had been frozen stiff between us, carefully opened his mouth.

"I will explain. Just as your investigation uncovered..."

He swallowed and avoided my gaze.

"The victims of the Cross Killer were indeed all researchers from our T24 Lab. However, there were reasons we did not disclose that fact, so we ask for your understanding..."

The director was pale, and behind him, the researchers trembled with anxiety.

"Do you have a family?"

At my sudden question, he stammered in confusion.

"Sorry? Ah... yes. I have a wife, a son, and a daughter..."

People with families, yet they still dissected living bodies and forced mana into them without hesitation.

This was the Empire's everyday cancer.

"You have a family... how strange."

“Anyway. This is something we will handle on our side.”

Falkenrat raised his mechanical arm. At that signal, a heavily armed private force poured out from deeper inside the lab. In their hands were mana weapons you could never buy on the regular market.

"Sir Knight. Please sign these documents."

One of them shoved a confidentiality pledge and an agreement to terminate the investigation in front of me. They even bore an imperial seal.

"We just received word from the Imperial Palace as well."

It was probably not forged. For now, those bastards were still under the Emperor's protection.

"Sign?"

To me, it was only amusing.

They still had no grasp of where they stood.

Who stood above whom, how heavy the name Ebenholtz was, and above all, what kind of country this Empire really was.

They must have just forgotten for a while.

Drunk on such pitiful success.

I picked up the papers.

"Hm."

The issue was that it was still too early to kill them all and smash this lab to pieces.

Mason Industries and T24 Lab needed to become the fuse that would ignite Outcast. In the inevitable collision and chaos, I had to seize what I wanted.

If Outcast completed their regrowth after regression, they would become far more troublesome than anything like Mason Industries...

Still.

"Looks like you think an imperial knight is a joke."

I had no intention of leaving people at large who dared challenge a knight's authority.

I tore up their papers. Horizontal, vertical, horizontal again, vertical again, then scattered the pieces into the air.

“...You will regret this.”

"Regret."

Smiling, I gripped the longsword at my back and swung once.

──

Moonlight streamed, and one bastard's neck was cut clean through.

At the same time, my virus pulse fell silent.

"Pointing a weapon at an imperial knight is a crime punishable by summary execution."

Thud. Izenheim's head dropped. Even with their comrade dead, the rest did not point their guns at me. They lowered their weapons completely instead.

I rose from my seat.

"I do not care what kind of research you people are conducting."

Looking down at Falkenrat, I muttered:

"But I will be receiving your investigation data on the cross serial killer."

* * *

At the top floor of Mason Industries headquarters, the tallest skyscraper in the western Empire, Hector Mason stared at the sky beyond a wall of glass.

"A knight..."

"Yes. Maximilian, heir of Ebenholtz."

That brat of Ebenholtz. He played at being the Empire's sword and stirred up trouble in every direction, and he did look sharp enough. But in the end, he was still a green youth who struck trees without seeing the forest.

The world, the hegemony of this continent, was already in upheaval. Order would be rebuilt around capital and technology, and power would eventually cling to that side as well.

"The Mana Engine is close to completion."

A power source that replaced the human heart and emitted mana. If they could complete it, the Empire's knight orders would be reduced to scrap metal.

Those who trained mana while glorifying the extreme limits of the human body, the Iron Men, would lose to manufactured mana.

"Do not concern yourself with knights."

Now, enough results had been gathered. The test subjects had succeeded at last, so it was time to assemble biological parts that could endure engine overload.

"Recover them as quickly as possible."

Hector Mason did not have much life left. Ten years at best, five at worst.

He needed more test subjects, if only to create life-support machinery that could prolong his fading body.

There was no time to hesitate while trying to coax that young brat.

......

Outcast, in the Empire's underground city, was simply a mercenary group.

No proper formality, no command hierarchy, just bottom-feeding wolves that moved on impulse and necessity.

"...Bomb placement complete."

They had built their reputation by handling jobs that flowed in from back alleys.

"Countdown. 3."

Now they had left the underground and advanced to the surface.

They had grown stronger and begun striking back at the corporations and states that were their enemies.

"2."

This was a key attached research institute of Mason Industries in the western Empire. Countless explosives had already been planted along the outer walls.

"1."

Their leader, Meden, smiled.

"Detonate."

KWA-AAAAA──!

With a thunderous blast, one side of the institute collapsed in flames.

KUUUUUNG───!

A spectacular cloud rose, almost like a mushroom cloud.

The four Outcast members who took part in the operation stood side by side.

Meden with one hand at his waist, Elje stretching, Pain with his hands behind his back, each watching in their own posture.

Wiiiiiiing-!

"Let's go."

Just as the sirens began to wail, they fled to their base.

"Tavern Qwanda"

A proper hideout they had set up in the underground city with all the money they had earned so far.

The first floor was disguised as an ordinary tavern, while their real space was hidden belowground.

"...No. Ha."

Meden came down the stairs, saw the chaos before him, and pressed a hand to his forehead.

"Ah, damn it. Filty!"

The room was a complete mess, littered with scattered stacks of paper.

It looked like Filty, one of Outcast, had pushed her ability to its limit again.

"Hey, shit! I told you not to do this alone, aaagh!"

Super vision, Super-Vision.

That was Filty's supernatural ability.

She could see through to distant places.

In practice, she had used it to observe enemies, key figures of Mason Industries, in third person.

"I told you not to overdo it..."

Elje sighed, crouched down, and started picking up the sheets strewn across the floor. Meden lifted Filty from where she had collapsed over the desk and laid her on the sofa.

"She has been losing control more often lately."

Filty could not fully remember the scenes she observed while using her ability. So in an unconscious state, she fixated and transferred them onto paper in a specific format.

A kind of learned instinct.

"Ah, seriously, we can't just leave this. We need to recruit one more person or something."

Meden grumbled. Elje, meanwhile, said nothing and kept staring at the pages. She turned them one by one as she read...

"Guys. Gather up."

Her voice was grave.

Everyone came to her side and looked at the papers.

[ ──Step. Step. ]

[ T24 Lab. The silhouette of someone walking inside. ]

An imperial Sentinel uniform, blond hair, golden eyes.

A drawing that depicted exactly that scene.

In other words, a panel from a comic.

Rustle.

[ Moonlight seeping through a window gap. An imperial knight with the moonlight at his back. ]

Elje had never seen him in person, but his name was...

[ Maximilian: It means my words are the law. ]

And standing against him in open defiance -

[Falkenrat: Imperial knight. Do you even know who we are serving now, and what great cause we serve.]

The machine-human Falkenrat, repulsive enough to make you sick even as a drawing.

[ Maximilian: Do I need to know? ]

[ Falkenrat: ......I hope you will clearly state the purpose of your visit. ]

[Maximilian: The cross serial killer. Every victim whose chest was split open by that bastard came from this place, T24 Lab. Right now, more than that......]

Falkenrat, once feared deeply by Outcast, and Maximilian, feared across the continent, had faced each other and clashed.

[ Maximilian: I do not like your attitude. ]

The monster of Ebenholtz who had appeared in our episode.

Holding their breath, they gathered Filty's comic pages and read them in order.

......Over there stood Freya.

I watched her. My sight, my hearing, even the faint texture of wind against my skin, all of it focused only on her. She also stared at me, gripping her longsword at an angle.

A duel with real blades, not wooden practice swords.

Ssss──.

In the instant the wind brushed past, our distance vanished. Blade met blade.

───

A soundless, quiet clash.

Yet dust surged through the training hall, and I was pushed back three steps.

"...I lost."

A gap of half a step could divide life and death, yet I was still six times weaker than that.

"Maximilian. Why do you think you lose?"

"The mana gap."

"Right. Correct."

Freya nodded and stepped forward.

"But from what I see, no, even Sebestian would say this, your mana purity is exceptional. There are almost no impurities in it. Truly strange and fascinating."

She flicked a finger against the flat of her blade and continued.

"To refine mana, talent is only a prerequisite. Without talent, you cannot even begin, but that does not mean the speed at which the vessel fills becomes wildly different."

Mana refinement did not occur only inside the body. In other words...

"How cleanly you sharpen mana is accumulated and completed purely through time."

So once the vessel called talent was given, the filling rate was almost the same for everyone.

"But you... your mana is as pure as if you had tempered it for thirty or forty years beyond your age."

That line made me flinch inwardly.

Regression. Had she read the layers of time in my soul through mana density alone?

"Actually, I'm a regressor-"

"Don't talk nonsense. Do I look like I'm joking?"

"...No."

"Again. Why can you not break through me?"

Freya's eyes flashed cold.

"Because it is pure, but not flawless."

"...Flawless."

"Yeah. The moment mana is released, waste is inevitable. The mana you raise to 100 inside your body gets shaved down to 30 the instant it rides the blade and bursts outward."

A mana theory proven by actual arcane science. The phenomenon of mana colliding with nature's coercive force, with the laws of the world. Put simply, it was like air resistance.

"People think reducing that loss is an advanced mana technique, or a matter of precise calculation."

"Then it isn't?"

"No. At least not for Ebenholtz. We're not mages."

Freya tapped her chest near her heart.

"The biggest resistance that consumes our mana is not the world. It's hesitation."

Her voice sank heavily.

"An unshaken yet natural will. I told you, Ebenholtz embodies nature by its very essence. So if you imitate nature exactly, you do not need to be suppressed by the world at all."

Simply put, she was telling me to become air.

"If your sword, your mana, and your will align with that kind of transparency."

The ordinary branch in Freya's hand turned white with moonlight in an instant.

"That is what Ebenholtz calls flawlessness."

She rested her index finger on her lips and whispered in a low, cool voice.

"If in Chapter 3 you assimilated mana with your sword, then in Chapter 4, assimilate mana with your heart. Put only your purest will into your mana."

The union of mana with body and mind.

I took a deep breath and quietly settled myself.

Then.

"Sir Knight!"

A staff officer suddenly rushed into the training ground.

My focus broke.

"...What is it."

I was slightly irritated, but if he had passed through the front gate of Ebenholtz, it had to be important.

"Yes, Sir Knight, right now..."

Panting, he poured out his report.

Leutern II would meet Chief Secretary Grossman. The vague rumor that had spread through the Imperial Palace like wildfire had suddenly taken clear form and become confirmed fact. While the once-loose atmosphere in the palace tightened again like thin ice, the location of that historic meeting was...

Not a private chamber inside the palace, but my restaurant, Lilac Vita.

"...So? What do I need to do?"

I rubbed my brow and asked.

"Yes. There are many documents requiring approval."

Standing stiffly at attention, the staff officer handed me a thick stack of papers.

[Request for Full-Area Mana Detection and Toxic Substance Safety Inspection, Lilac Vita]

[Cooperation Notice for Crowd Control and Identity Verification Within 1km of the Restaurant on the Day of the Meeting]

[Approval Request for Outer Perimeter Security Deployment, One Platoon of Imperial Royal Guard]

[Sentinel Order, Approval for Security Deployment of at Least Three Knights......]

"..."

Ridiculous.

Still, judging from the officer's flushed face, he too seemed to mistake Leutern II for some major palace power broker.

"Oh. This must be really important?"

Even Freya widened her eyes.

"Well..."

They were mobilizing even the Imperial Royal Guard for a single meal.

They were acting as if it were a summit, but honestly, that was not bad for me. It meant Leutern was taking all the palace attention and pressure in my place.

"...Understood. Prepare it."

"Yes. We will prepare thoroughly to ensure there are no issues during the meeting."

"Right. And... do not be stingy with the budget."

For now, I should play along too.

After all, Leutern and Grossman, the Emperor's closest aide, were holding a meeting.

"We will do our utmost to produce the best possible outcome that satisfies everyone. Please approve."

I scribbled my signature across the papers held out to me.

The staff officer saluted and hurried back the way he had come.

"...This is why I hate central nobles. Two people eating and drinking, and they waste resources with this kind of spectacle."

At Freya's words, I gave a faint nod and smirked.

"Exactly."

I agreed a hundred times over, a thousand.

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