WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 3

──────

I Must Kill (2)

‘Weakling.’

That was the worst insult my father, Sebestian, could imagine.

Weakness. He despised anything frail and soft, and valued what was hard and unyielding.

I had clearly failed to live up to that expectation.

I was never a hard man. I was the type who bent rather than broke, and I had no desire to crush or dominate others with my own convictions.

That was who I was.

━I'm starving. I need to refill my mana by eating a fresh heart. The younger and purer the child, the better. I need their life force.━

━You will soon be selected as a knight of the Empire, so we will help you secure food whenever you need it. Lexi will come to you soon. Follow her instructions.━

But this, these whispers, could never have come from humans.

Had a demonic subspecies really mixed in among us, like Edmund said? Had I already passed the point where I could even question what “I” was?

Since when had they existed, and where had they come from?

But questions about their existence had to wait.

Right now, there was a threat in front of me.

Should I kill him with my own hands?

......There was no need.

Under Imperial law, a military academy cadet leaving this kind of impure coded message was already grounds for execution by summary judgment.

Right, at least I did not need to kill him now.

Just then, the cadets came in. I sat on the edge of the desk and scanned them one by one. My gaze stopped at the buzz cut.

For a while now, the black fragment inside me had been reacting to this one in particular.

“Your name was Jacob, right?”

“Y-yes, yes! I’m Jacob!”

The buzz-cut boy answered with a start.

Fifteen years old, still with baby fat on his face.

“Everyone except you, get out.”

“......Yes?”

“Get out.”

They all walked out in confusion. I even sent away the magic studies professor who tried to come in late.

Only Jacob and I remained in the classroom.

“Jacob.”

“Yes?”

I picked up the novel. His pupils shook with anxiety.

“You know what I’m about to say, right?”

I opened the book and read out the codes written on the page.

“Let’s keep communicating like this. Tell the comrades the same. Looks like we won’t be able to go back for five years.”

“Uh......”

Jacob’s eyes widened, then he lowered his head. A dry laugh slipped out of me.

How easy did he think I was, bringing this kind of thing here.

This was a place that could be called the very heart of pureblood nobility.

“You’re not an Imperial, are you?”

I could not claim only Izenheim were demons. To begin with, the Empire’s way of dividing races was extremely subjective and unscientific, and the Izenheim only had minor physical differences from other races.

The surest way to distinguish human races was to kill them and dissect the corpse.

Even that was impossible for ordinary people. Meaningful racial differences came from the structure of mana circuits and subtle traits of the heart.

As each race absorbed mana into the body and circulated it, they showed unique mana responses and circuit patterns.

That had been the strongest evidence that humans were once divided into elves, dwarves, beastfolk, and others, and it was the logic the Empire used to label them inferior races.

“If you were an Imperial, you wouldn’t need to exchange coded messages like this.”

The problem was these impure codes. This was a world where simply possessing a banned book could get you tortured for years.

If the Intelligence Bureau dug into what kind of life Jacob had lived, the fact that he was not a pure Imperial would come out quickly enough.

“They’ll probably investigate your entire background.”

He tried to control his expression, but his face had already gone pale.

I asked him.

“Which side are you on? Izenheim?”

There was no answer. Instead, the black fragment inside me became certain of his identity.

It was reacting to its own kind.

“Talk. At this rate, you’ll be detained and executed.”

“......”

Jacob still kept his mouth shut tight.

Then a chilling suspicion crossed my mind.

Was this situation really real?

What if the black fragment inside me, the bizarre Izenheim language I had just heard, even the regression I experienced, were all hallucinations? Some kind of psychotic delusion?

I needed to find out.

Was this bastard really one of “them,” or was this all in my head?

“Do Izenheim have a hobby of eating children’s hearts?”

──The air changed in an instant.

Jacob’s shoulders trembled. I sensed the shift, but up to that point it was still an ordinary reaction.

“Who is this ‘Lexi’ who’s coming to offer you a heart?”

In that instant, Jacob snapped his head up. At that moment, I knew for sure.

It was real.

Jacob lunged at me in one stride and grabbed my collar. His pupils split open grotesquely. Waves like tears of blood spilled out.

[You dare steal our language? I’ll tear your heart into shreds and devour it.]

There was language in that shriek, and I understood it perfectly.

Crack-crack-crack.

Jacob’s mouth spread wide. He still wore a human shape, but his jaw

Tick.

A second hand rang deep inside my heart.

Time slowed. The thing thrusting its maw toward me moved unbearably slowly.

I did not know why. It just happened.

There was no time to think. I focused my mind and forced my body to move.

It felt awkward, like moving underwater, but I kicked his solar plexus hard. Using the recoil, I spun and snatched the sword beside the desk.

I slashed upward at his neck as he reeled away.

Tick.

Second tick.

The slowed world snapped back.

Slash!

The blade cut through his neck. His head flew toward the ceiling. Blood burst from the severed cross-section and drenched my body.

The boy who had been Jacob collapsed limply.

Izenheim died like anyone else.

“Haa, haa......”

Squirm, squirm.

Then something wriggled near my collarbone. The same black fragment.

Squirm, squirm.

It crawled down the blood vessels in my arm to my palm.

“!”

Then it yanked me hard toward Jacob’s corpse.

Gulp gulp gulp-! My palm greedily sucked up the blood flowing from Jacob.

“What are you doing...... what the hell are you?”

Thud-roll.

In the middle of that, Jacob’s head rolled across the floor. I looked into his eyes.

Standing in the spreading blood, I thought.

Squirm, squirm.

A black virus alive inside my body. It was just feeding on something, but this thing was proof.

Proof that what I had just done was right.

Bang!

The classroom door flew open.

“Aaaaaaaah!”

A scream rang out. They were Jacob’s friends. The pounding footsteps of the guards rushed in too.

“Haa......”

I took a deep breath.

I had killed a fifteen-year-old Izenheim.

The charge against me, in truth, would not matter at all.

I was the only legitimate heir of Ebenholtz, and the son of Sebestian von Ebenholtz, Commander-in-Chief of the Empire.

That made me one of the highest-ranked people in the Empire, and part of a pure bloodline that had endured for five hundred years.

It meant I held a status where killing one member of a minority race would cause no problem at all.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried