WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 2

──────

I Must Kill

One summer day, House head Sebestian of House Ebenholtz, asked as he signed papers.

"Where is Max?"

The knight standing before him, Edmund, answered.

"He should be with the military academy cadets."

"Is that so?"

"Yes."

"So he is just wasting time."

Sebestian stood and pulled the curtain aside. Sunlight flooded in. His heavy jaw tightened in displeasure. Everything his son did seemed to irritate him.

Edmund said,

"Still, he joined the finest knightly order. No favors were used in the process."

"He will be useful for propaganda."

Maximilian von Ebenholtz. Blond hair, golden eyes, pale skin, neat features, long limbs, even perfect proportions, a textbook specimen of what racial science called a "pure Imperial."

His looks alone made him a symbol of the Empire, but to Sebestian, that was all he was.

"Inside, he is nothing like an Imperial. The boy is too soft."

"......"

Edmund lowered his head in silence. If Max had been born into an ordinary noble house, he would have been above average, but Sebestian and the Ebenholtz line were far from ordinary.

No one earned the title "Bulwark of the Empire" for nothing.

"Enough. Go."

Sebestian scrawled his signature across the document.

"Yes, Commander."

With the approved papers in his arms, Edmund turned and left.

He got into the vehicle waiting outside the residence.

"Go."

"Yes, Major."

The adjutant in the driver’s seat adjusted the rearview mirror.

"Oh, right. I heard the young master got accepted into the Sentinel Order?"

Edmund held up the document he had just gotten approved.

"This is the approval item. In other words, a consent form."

"Ah. But can he really do it? The Sentinel Order is... they are not going to go easy on him just because he is House Ebenholtz's young master."

The adjutant watched Edmund’s reaction. Edmund was better suited to the Sentinel Order than anyone, yet he could not join. He was mixed blood.

He had been rejected by the Sentinel's pureblood doctrine, so he chose the Empire’s military instead.

"His father is the Mountain Lord. No need to worry."

Sebestian was not just any tiger, he was the king of the mountain. In fact, the Ebenholtz estate was surrounded by steep mountain ranges, so the nickname fit him perfectly.

"We are stopping somewhere on the way."

"Yes. Where to?"

"......The library."

As he said that, he quietly picked up a book.

Blocked by the wall of bloodline, Edmund naturally came to hold another dream.

A great dream called revolution.

* * *

Under the blazing sun on the training ground, I finished my morning run. Sweat soaked my whole body. The cadets hurried over and handed me dry towels.

"......Uh, thanks."

"No problem, sir!"

One word of thanks lit up their faces.

Three men, one woman. All of them were trainees from "Empire Point," the academy’s top track.

That meant they were prodigies gathered from all across the Empire.

Their assignment was to follow me for one week and learn by example. I had joined the Sentinel Order, and I was expected to accept that. It was also part of a full knight’s duties.

"Until this Friday, sir!"

"I see."

I wiped off my sweat with the towel and handed it back to the buzz-cut cadet.

He took it with both hands as if receiving something sacred.

At that moment.

───Crack!

A sharp pain stabbed near my left collarbone. I instinctively pressed my hand to my chest.

"Uh, Sir Knight, are you okay?"

The buzz-cut cadet flinched and studied my face.

"......Yeah, I am fine. My stomach just feels off for a second. I am going to the bathroom."

Acting like nothing was wrong, I quickly left.

Ebenholtz Castle was huge. Ridiculously huge. Even the nearest restroom from the drill ground was a five-minute walk.

Click.

I went in, locked the door, and yanked off my shirt. In the mirror, my sweat-soaked upper body came into view.

On the left side of my chest, close to my heart, a black thing was writhing.

It was not a stain or a mole. Like a living shadow, it pulsed faintly and squirmed under my skin.

"Haa......"

It looked like a cancer cell, maybe a parasite. I did not know exactly what it was, but I was sure where it came from.

Right before I regressed, in that ruined world, something called "dimension prey" had tried to devour me. This was part of it.

A fragment of that alien entity was alive inside me now.

"......Hold still, would you."

In its own way, it was precious. It was the clearest proof that I had regressed.

I had returned to the past, to when I was twenty.

The Empire fell when I was thirty-three, so that was thirteen years.

Then another twenty years passed before the world ended, so I had returned a total of thirty-three years.

Thirty-three years.

A staggering stretch of time.

I was still an immature scrap of a noble right up to my death, but no matter how hard I searched my memory, my time in the underground prison felt like only one or two years. It was far too different from the twenty years Edmund had mentioned.

Suddenly, Edmund’s voice, from when all his hair had fallen out, whispered in my head.

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

I took a deep breath and left the restroom.

Outside, the family butler Engi was waiting. A middle-aged man in his fifties with thread-thin eyes. It was a familiar face, and he smiled softly at me.

"Oh, Engi. What is it?"

"It is time for your lesson, young master. I suppose I should call you Sir Knight now. The professor of mana studies is waiting."

I was twenty now. I had even joined the Sentinel, the Empire’s finest knightly order. Even so, my private tutoring schedule was tighter than most cadets'.

It was all my family’s pressure. Father wanted me to honor the Ebenholtz name not only in appearance but in ability, so he had arranged private tutors in every field.

It had been useless.

"Really? Then tell those kids to come too."

I pointed at the trainees gathered on one side of the drill ground.

"Are you sure, sir?"

"Of course. I am not that petty."

Thanks to that, those kids hit the jackpot today. They were getting a top-tier mana studies class that cost over thirty thousand dollars per session, for free.

"Yes, understood. Please head there first."

"Alright."

I walked down the long corridor of the main house.

In this glittering place that would collapse in thirteen years, I thought about the Empire.

"If only, if only the Empire had lasted longer, if only we had not brought it down, then maybe humanity... might have lasted longer."

That was what Edmund, consumed by despair, had said, but the Empire had definitely been awful too.

The Emperor and the sycophants around him were rotten to the core, and most of the prestigious houses that claimed to uphold the Empire were trash.

Because I had been weak and incompetent, I broke away from their fanatical indoctrination relatively quickly. I came to see their filth clearly.

Imperialism was a fantasy, and the racial hierarchy they preached did not exist.

Still, I never dared stand against them. That too was because I was weak and incompetent.

The problem was this, like a broken clock that is right twice a day, their blind hatred and discrimination had been right about exactly one race.

"Izenheim...... They were the disaster. They were not human. Those damned bastards ruined the world."

I looked down at my own body.

It all felt like a midsummer illusion. Like a nightmare from a fever that had gone on far too long.

"Ah...... my head is killing me, seriously."

I placed my hand on my left collarbone.

Right now, the only thing proving my existence was this bizarre black mass writhing inside me.

* * *

"What is a mana circuit? It is a kind of biological organ and tool that lets humans sense mana inside their bodies and handle it quantitatively."

Wearing a neat uniform, the professor of mana studies projected a diagram of the human body in midair.

The complex veins and organs vanished, and simplified blue lines appeared in their place.

"The mana circuit is the channel that moves mana safely and efficiently through the body. By circulating mana through this circuit and concentrating it in specific areas, humans can display superhuman strength or use magic to control natural phenomena."

Blue mana particles flowed smoothly along the circuits.

The one large circuit that ran through the entire body was called the "mana circuit," and the branch-like offshoots around it were called "auxiliary circuits."

"As the circuit diameter widens, both the total amount of mana that can be moved at once and the circulation speed increase. On the other hand, the more auxiliary circuits you have, the finer your mana control becomes."

In the end, the mana circuit was what mattered. Its shape, length, toughness, every element mattered.

Knight or mage, you had to be born with a good mana circuit.

"In the past, there was also research into gathering mana at one point by setting a virtual center called a mana core, but the side effects were severe and efficiency was poor, so the method has now nearly died out. Now I will explain these theories in earnest......"

Formulas. Dense spreads of complex symbols and numbers. This was the self-enhancement type of magic used by knights.

Self-enhancement magic was pure memorization. You had to memorize it to use it.

Lazy as I had been, I had learned only a few.

The professor lectured passionately for forty minutes, and at least I did not fall asleep.

"......Then let us take a short break, and after that I will explain practical mana operation."

I rose from my chair and stretched. The four trainees came over at once and bowed.

"Thank you! Thanks to you, Sir Knight, we got to attend a truly valuable class!"

"Thank you!"

"Thank you!"

──Crack!

My left collarbone writhed again. This time it was not just pain, it felt like something was thrashing inside. I pressed down hard with my hand and forced myself to look calm.

"Yeah. No need to thank me. Just work hard."

"Sir Knight, may I go to the bathroom?"

The buzz-cut cadet asked with a tense expression.

"You do not need to ask permission every time for that. Just go."

"Yes sir! Thank you!"

The four cadets rushed off to the restroom. I stared at the places they had left behind.

Neatly laid-out writing tools. Notebooks filled with careful notes.

Nothing special. If anything, they were endearing for their age.

And yet, my stomach suddenly churned.

An unpleasant sensation kept rising, like something boiling hot inside my body.

"......"

The buzz-cut one, his name was Jacob, right.

I looked at his seat. I picked up the bag hanging from the chair and dumped out the contents.

Thud thud thud.

Writing tools, sketchbook, novel.

The novel caught my eye. I did not know why. I just picked it up and turned the pages. On one specific page, certain words had faint mana marks.

[Soon, re,union, pos,sible, then, ren,dez,vous]

[Com,muni,cation, pos,sible, this, way, pass, to, com,rades......]

It looked like a simple coded sentence, but it was a double trick. Beneath that mana, hidden deeper, I could see a sinister "trace."

A residue of cold, alien energy, completely unlike ordinary mana.

I placed my hand on that section. A chilling voice flowed into my mind. At the same time, the black fragment inside me writhed violently.

The alien language translated itself.

━Hungry. I must eat fresh hearts to replenish mana. The younger and purer the child, the better. I need their vitality.━

━You will be selected as an Imperial knight, so we will help you secure food whenever needed. Lexi will come to you soon. Follow her instructions.━

"......Urk!"

I yanked my hand away from the book. A splitting headache and a surge of nausea hit me, almost impossible to endure.

Izenheim.

That race was hiding here.

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