The Reluctant Imperialist - Chapter 26

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 26

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The Utility of Law (2)

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

The clock in the interrogation room kept ticking. I stared at it.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

I closed my eyes quietly and spoke to the thing inside my body.

Thump, thump.

There was no answer, but the virus was still pulsing.

Thump.

Tick.

One pulse per second.

The two rhythms lined up exactly.

Bang.

The door swung open. Adria finally came out of the interrogation room. She looked at me and smiled.

“Another one for your record, Knight Maximilian.”

Adria was a core operative of the Revolutionary Faction. She had probably moved first while I was drafting the initial report, but she could not have pulled anything major. Even she had to tread carefully in the heart of the Sentinel Order.

To them, Adria was hundreds of times more important than a liaison like Daniel.

“Thank you.”

“I probed him every way I could, but he won’t open his mouth.”

Adria had some degree in social-discontent criminal psychology or something along those lines. She probably got it so she could make first contact with the Revolutionary Faction in situations like this.

“Yes. I’ll take it from here.”

“Good. Get anything you can.”

Adria walked out, and I went in as we switched.

Daniel sat across the cold metal table in handcuffs.

“First... we found quite a lot of evidence at your place. Encrypted documents that need decryption, high-grade explosives, and more.”

“......”

Daniel said nothing.

Tap. Tap.

I drummed my fingers on the desk and watched him. From my own days as a detainee, I knew the most frightening weapon was always silence.

“......”

Sweat beaded at Daniel’s temples. His lips were dry.

I quietly straightened my clothes.

Then I spoke.

“The two people there were Revolutionary members too, right?”

One woman in her early to mid-thirties, one in her late teens. Two Izenheim women hiding beside Daniel.

“No!”

Daniel reacted sharply. I looked at him for a moment.

His violently shaking eyes were full of genuine shock.

“They are not Revolutionary members.”

His tone grated on me.

“Only I-”

“Who said you could drop formality?”

“......”

“Let’s keep basic courtesy between us.”

Daniel steadied his breathing for a moment, then continued in a crushed voice.

“......They are not Revolutionary members. They are immigrants who cannot even properly speak the Empire’s language. Their stay had expired, and they were supposed to be deported... so I used them.”

I studied Daniel’s face. The look he wore when he spoke about those two women. That noble impulse to take every crime onto himself.

“......That’s strange.”

When I thought about it, his behavior itself had been strange. He lost control and fired his pistol because I tried to open a hidden door. And though he was not Izenheim, he was consumed by a revolutionary obsession far too extreme for an ordinary Imperial citizen.

“Because of you, every worker in that factory is under suspicion now. By this point, some of them might already be getting tortured.”

Workers who knew nothing, who simply worked day after day to earn money and feed their families.

The Imperial police dragged them all in. Because Daniel built a secret room in the factory he inherited from his father.

“And yet you only care about those two?”

He used the factory as a shield from suspicion, and instead of worrying about the workers, he was desperate only over two Izenheim women.

“......”

Daniel’s expression froze over. I gave a dry laugh.

“What a fucking emotion. You talk grandly about liberation and revolution, but the only thing that really shakes your heart is just two people.”

It was not revolution. It was love.

Not a cause, but something intensely personal.

Even someone with misguided beliefs earns respect if they devote their whole life to loyalty. But a loser dragged around by petty personal feelings is covered only in disgrace and filth.

Only now did I understand why the Revolutionary Faction had looked at me that way before regression.

They respected Sebestian, and they found me disgusting.

“Unbelievable.”

I rose from my seat and looked down at Daniel. He lowered his head and clenched his fist tight.

“It won’t matter if you deny they’re Revolutionary members. The moment I point at them and call them Revolutionary members, they become Revolutionary members.”

Daniel raised his eyes. Resignation and rage mixed in them.

“Then I will not say another word.”

“...Heh.”

I laughed softly, stepped closer, and leaned over the table.

“Don’t misunderstand.”

I whispered in a low voice.

“I never needed information from trash like you in the first place.”

* * *

The Empire had a special judicial body called the Knight Court.

In truth, it was closer to a procedure than an institution.

The assigned knight submitted collected evidence records and a case analysis opinion to a judge, and the judge ruled guilt and sentencing based on those documents.

Complicated, time-consuming steps like defense counsel and jury verdicts were omitted completely.

The targets were usually people dissatisfied with the Imperial system, or anti-establishment figures who could become threats.

Investigative power, prosecutorial power, and influence over verdicts. That was one reason knights were called the Sword of the Empire.

I drafted the case opinion report for Daniel and the other two Izenheim.

The charges were conspiracy to incite civil war for the purpose of overthrowing the Empire, illegal stay, joining and participating in the Revolutionary Faction, and manufacturing and possessing illegal explosives.

My sentencing recommendation was death.

I scribbled it out with my own logic in place.

I stood from my chair. There was a window right behind it. A rookie knight’s office was fairly cramped.

After this case, we would probably get more budget, and the space would grow soon enough.

Performance as a knight mattered. Sebestian’s support was essential if I wanted to fully inherit Ebenholtz.

“......”

I placed a hand near my collarbone.

I thought about this virus, quietly pulsing.

The Dimensional devourers summoned by Izenheim. A fragment of them seeped into me and regressed with me.

We were together partly by force, but I still did not know what this thing wanted. I could not even tell whether it was truly sentient.

One thing was clear. This thing devoured Izenheim. It also helped me “vaguely” understand the world’s mana.

It seemed to be made of mana itself, but for now it might be some cosmic substance I still had no way to define.

There was only one conclusion.

I had to learn more about mana and uncover more.

* * *

Districts 40 through 44 of the Empire were slums, because they were underground city zones.

Right beside those underground cities, though, was an autonomous territory, as if the two stood back to back.

「Zestpol」.

It had originally been an ordinary District 39 of the Empire, but unusually creative mana-engineering companies, elite universities, and mage towers clustered there and drove explosive growth. In return for enormous taxes paid to the Imperial family, it was granted a high level of autonomy.

In one of its alleyways, I found a shabby mana shop.

[Mana Shop, Lorenzo Carione]

The Empire’s integrated identity information network, accessible through the Sentinel Order, was truly convenient. Anywhere in the Empire, if you remembered a name, you could find the person.

The exterior looked ordinary. If anything, the wood looked rotten enough to fall apart. It was enough to make you hesitate before entering, but the owner was no ordinary man.

He was a “very” high-level authority on mana.

Creeeak. I opened the frayed wooden door.

“......”

I looked around quietly. A bespectacled clerk stood at the counter, and the shelves held not only basic materials and herbs but also magi-engineered goods made by combining machines with mana stones.

One item caught my eye.

It was a machine like a waterwheel. In front of it stood a puppy-like boy.

“Did you make this?”

“...Ah, yes, sir!”

The boy stepped forward with a bright smile. His features were quite sharp. The clerk beside him shot this way a worried glance.

“It’s a mana-stone waterwheel!”

“Mana-stone waterwheel.”

“Yes, sir. If you put this somewhere with dense mana!”

The boy released mana. The waterwheel touched by that current began to spin.

“It draws in mana like a waterwheel draws water!”

My eyebrow twitched.

“Like this, it keeps collecting mana from the air!”

The wheel spun with the boy’s mana, and particles the size of sand grains condensed in the container below. Mana circulation and refinement. The mechanism and flow behind it. The principle formed before my eyes.

Was this also because of the virus?

“It makes mana stones!”

The boy held a dust-like mana stone on his fingertip. It quickly evaporated.

“Ah, you know this, right? Artificial mana disappears! But if you place it where natural mana is abundant, the mana stone does not disappear!”

Human mana and natural mana were different. Human mana could not be turned into mana stones or crystallized, but natural mana gathered underground, in caves, and inside glaciers, then became mana stones.

Which meant this mana-stone waterwheel was a natural mana-stone generator.

I looked at the boy.

“What’s your name?”

“Armand!”

Armand answered with obvious anticipation on his face. His cheeks were puffed up like buns, and his eyes sparkled like stars.

“The idea is good, but.”

I had a point to criticize. The joint section of the waterwheel that drew mana in. It had a defect. At least, according to the virus.

I flicked a bit of mana into that point.

KWAK.

The entire waterwheel exploded.

“...N-no!”

Armand looked like his world had collapsed.

“W-why would you do that!”

Sniffling, the boy bent down. I looked down at him as he gathered the shattered debris.

“This waterwheel only matters if it is used where mana concentration is high, but those are exactly the places where mana ruptures are frequent.”

The boy snapped his head up at me.

“Mana erodes matter. Put this waterwheel in a place with mana dense enough to produce natural mana stones, and it will not last even a day. In other words, it has no practical use. And above all...”

There was an even more important issue, but I said no more.

“...I worked so hard on it.”

Armand’s lips trembled as if he might burst into tears at any moment.

Then his face flushed red. He sprang to his feet and thrust out his palm at me.

“Please compensate me!”

“Compensate?”

“You broke merchandise that was for sale!”

“Armand! You brat!”

At that moment, someone rushed out and shouted the boy’s name.

Lorenzo Carione. With a thick beard and sideburns, he came out walking with a cane.

“What kind of rude way is that to speak to a guest!”

He looked like a strict mana merchant, scolding the boy on my behalf. At least on the surface.

But in truth, he was a genius professor who had suddenly gone into seclusion. A mage scholar with deep history, and one who despised nobles.

So yes, criticizing the boy was intentional to some degree. If I had not done that, he would never have shown himself to me.

“Are you the owner?”

I gestured to Lorenzo.

“...Yes. My apologies. He is my apprentice, and he has no manners. Boy, bow your head now!”

Lorenzo tapped the top of the boy’s head with his cane. But the boy did not bow.

“Boy! You still won’t bow?!”

“......”

Tears welled in the boy’s eyes, but he still did not bow. He clenched his teeth, fists trembling.

“That’s enough.”

I liked that refusal to bend. Status did not matter. Age did not matter. It was far better than rotten nobles bowing until their heads nearly touched the ground.

More than anything, he was a boy with exceptional talent. I could tolerate this much.

“Owner. I’m looking for the following items.”

I handed Lorenzo an order list. Rare mana books by major scholars, flasks and syringes for mana analysis, top-grade mana stones to feed the virus, and so on.

“...There are many items here that we do not have. I think they will be difficult for us to obtain.”

Difficult to obtain.

With a faint smile, I looked back at Armand’s flushed face and pointed to the wreckage of the waterwheel he had made.

“A machine that artificially produces mana stones could fall under a violation of Imperial Mana Stone Law.”

Lorenzo bit his lip without making it obvious, and Armand suddenly looked frightened.

“I wonder what they would say if they saw that.”

Like this, I would stop at nothing.

I had no intention of wasting time just to cater to people’s sensibilities.

“...We do not have them right now, but I think we can procure them. It will be around one hundred thousand dollars total.”

Lorenzo’s tone changed in an instant.

“That is good to hear. Thank you.”

I did not rebuke him. I thanked him instead and took out my wallet.