WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Reluctant Imperialist
Chapter 44
──────
Drawing the Future with a Pen (3)
A grand jury was convened for Knight Maximilian von Ebenholtz.
Its purpose was to determine whether the punishments he had carried out in the line of duty were lawful.
After receiving his knighthood, Maximilian had killed an Empire Point cadet and a noble murderer. The grand jury was held quite late compared to when those incidents happened, and even then, it only happened after the case was dragged around the Imperial Court in circles.
Because no one dared to put Ebenholtz on trial in a grand jury.
“We will now proceed with Knight Maximilian’s grand jury.”
That was the judge’s opening statement. Grand juries were closed to the public by principle. Present were knights who would evaluate the circumstances and evidence, prosecutors, and around twenty citizen jurors representing all walks of life.
Aside from them, there were only the judge leading the jury and two or three reporters from specially designated media outlets.
Reporter Alphonse watched from the press seats.
“First review item: the summary executions of the Empire Point cadet and the noble murderer. We will begin by hearing the knight’s own statement.”
Maximilian von Ebenholtz. Golden hair, golden eyes. The textbook image of a pure Aran man as described by the Empire rose to his feet in full Sentinel Order dress uniform.
At a glance, he looked like a living propaganda mannequin.
“Under Imperial law, one was a murderer of a noble, and the other infiltrated Empire Point under a forged identity. Both were subject to summary execution. I judged that no trial process was necessary.”
That was how Maximilian defended himself.
The grand jury did not take long. After a few formal questions and answers, the result came down unanimously: lawful.
No one was going to deliver a different ruling while looking at Maximilian’s face, and Alphonse, present as media, had no right to speak.
“Then this concludes the grand jury.”
Maximilian gave a light nod and left the court.
Alphonse hurried after him.
“Hello!”
Click. He greeted him loudly and snapped a photo of his face. He did it on purpose to provoke him.
“I’m reporter Alphonse. I’m with the Zenith Times.”
Maximilian frowned slightly, then put on an easy smile.
“Yes. Nice to meet you.”
He showed no hostility and no irritation.
Image management, maybe.
“May I have a short interview? About Jacob Mack and the Sana case.”
“Sana?”
He tilted his head at the name.
“Ah, so the noble killer I killed back then was named Sana.”
Reporter Alphonse let out a dry laugh.
“Hah. You do not even remember the name of the child you killed?”
“Is there any reason I should?”
Alphonse’s expression stiffened.
“...Do you even know what that child, Sana, had gone through?”
Sana had killed a noble. But she had no choice but to kill him. That old bastard was human trash not even worthy of the title of noble.
According to the police investigation, numerous signs of abuse were found in the self-proclaimed victim’s mansion, and even his own bereaved family felt ashamed and rushed to bury the case.
“If you did not know, look for yourself.”
Alphonse held out an envelope he had prepared. Maximilian opened it without hesitation. Inside were dozens of photographs.
“He was a pedophile. A vicious one.”
Scenes too filthy to describe in words. Maximilian flipped through the photos.
“Even then, do you still think there was no room for leniency?”
Maximilian twitched one eyebrow, then nodded.
“Yes. It could not be helped.”
“...Could not be helped?”
“Under Imperial law, a commoner who kills a noble is subject to summary judgment, regardless of reason.”
“Through a trial-”
“Even with a trial, the result would have been execution. On top of that, the autopsy showed the child was Ain species. She was not Imperial.”
She was not Imperial.
Alphonse glared at Maximilian. Maximilian met his eyes without the slightest discomfort and replied.
“Reporter Alphonse. I also know Eashton was human trash. If he had not died.”
Maximilian stepped one pace closer.
“I would have cut him down myself.”
He looked down at Alphonse.
“But the child killed a noble first, and after that, it became a legal judgment. So do not lean only into emotional arguments.”
Maximilian smiled and held the document envelope back out.
“If you do, the world might collapse.”
“...What?”
Alphonse felt a chill at those words, words with a depth he could not read.
“I’ll be going.”
Maximilian got into his car. Alphonse shouted at him as he was about to leave.
“What about the two immigrants who got death sentences under your pressure?!”
He hurriedly pulled out the paper draft for the article he was going to publish that day.
“I’m talking about the paper mill case! A mother and daughter who are not Revolutionary Faction members, who were used by Revolutionary Faction members, and who do not even speak Imperial are about to be put on the gallows! Why can you not see that this is exactly what those Revolutionary Faction bastards want-”
Vrooooom!
Staring blankly at Maximilian’s rear bumper as it sped away, Alphonse spat on the ground.
* * *
Money, money, money.
The money kept growing.
The new equipment built from Lorenzo’s theory dramatically raised mana stone refining efficiency, and Armand’s waterwheel prototype was installed deep inside the mine. For faster communication and trade, we imported the latest information processing systems from the Kanillan Independent State.
“It’s mana fluid! Mana fluid has been found here too!”
Another nearby zone kept turning up new veins one after another, and Dieter opened new mana stone sales routes to Magic Towers and mana engineering companies across the Empire.
The company stabilized in an instant.
Still, mana stone meant vested interests.
Not only owning mana stone, but the right to sell it too.
Magic Towers and mages would buy mana stone at any time, but prices were decided through strict collusion.
Soon, those so-called mining houses would start throwing elbows.
Whether they were stronger, or Ebenholtz was stronger, we would see.
“Sir Knight!”
Armand came running out of the mine, face full of excitement.
“Look at this!”
“What is it?”
Armand had a mask on his face. There had originally been no child-sized safety masks, so because he practically lived in the mine, Lorenzo had one made for him personally.
“I found something!”
“Tell me. What did you find?”
“If we keep mining mana stone the way we do now, there’s way too much damage! You know that, right?!”
“Damage?”
“Yes! It gets damaged because the circuits inside the mana stone get torn.”
A mana stone was formed when mana seeped into ordinary natural rock over long stretches of time, creating a kind of mana circuit.
So if you mined it with a pickaxe, those circuits were bound to tear.
“How do we prevent that damage?”
“We have to change the pickaxe itself!”
“The pickaxe?”
“Yep! Look!”
Even the pickaxes currently used in the mine were special inventions that used mana to break bedrock.
“Right now, our pickaxes only focus on smashing mana stone with force.”
“That’s true.”
Armand brought over the pickaxe he had invented.
“This one! Its name is A-Kkaengi!”
“...”
It looked more like a club than a pickaxe. A fairly large, specially treated high-purity mana stone was embedded in it in a blunt shape.
“If you hit the vein with this, it resonates the mana circuits inside the mana stone. Then the vein does not get forced apart, it vibrates and shakes itself loose. Watch!”
Armand tapped a rock with buried mana stone as a demonstration.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
“...You do it for me!”
After swinging for a while, he must have gotten tired, because he suddenly handed it to me.
I brought it down hard.
Thunk!
The mana really did resonate, and the rocks cracked apart. Just like Armand said, it looked as if the mana stone itself had shaken off the bedrock stuck to it.
“It might take a little more force than the old pickaxe, but...”
“And the pickaxe itself will cost a lot more.”
“...Yes. That’s true.”
Armand’s expression fell a little.
“Does the purity absolutely need to be around this level?”
“Yes... that’s how you get strong resonance.”
That was the issue. Every club would need expensive high-purity mana stone. One of these would easily cost one hundred thousand dollars, and if one snapped, it would be a nightmare.
I looked at Armand quietly.
This kid was a genius. More than that, he was a genius who enjoyed it. A born scholar who loved invention itself. Lorenzo had not taken him in for nothing.
“The idea is good, but...”
He was not pure Aran, but the identity falsification for him was already progressing smoothly.
After a few years, Armand would be a perfect Aran on paper.
“Wait, Armand. You said it uses resonance, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then what about this?”
“What?”
I gripped A-Kkaengi’s handle.
“Add mana stone into the handle too, and carve circuits into it. Even with lower purity, increase the total amount and add a formula that amplifies resonance.”
I was an expert in mana. At least, the virus inside me was.
So if I passed the virus’s intuition to Armand as hints.
“Uh... oh! Whoa! I think that could work! I need to think about what kind of circuit to use, but I, I’ll think more too!”
He smiled brightly and ran off somewhere.
I spoke to Dieter beside me.
“Dieter. Push development of the new A-Kkaeng... club, like Armand said. Get Mr. Lorenzo to review it first.”
“Yes, sir.”
Armand was still young. To implement his genius more realistically, we needed Lorenzo’s help.
“And we need to build an airport.”
“I will coordinate with Hermes Province and find a site.”
“Buy as much land as possible. Military supply matters from now on. Aircraft, tanks too. We spend as fast as we earn.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Empire had to become stronger. Much stronger than it was now.
Strong enough to handle two fronts, east and west, at the same time, and crush both.
* * *
In my study, I was thinking about a new mobility doctrine for knights.
I was going to write a new doctrine myself, one that would replace the old manuals.
Of course, I was still just a pathetic year-zero knight, but there was no choice. If not me, no one would even try to change it.
“Deploying knights by land is extremely inefficient. Concepts like advance and marching are only leftovers from the age of riding horses.”
Thankfully, Why the Empire Fell explained in painful detail why knights had failed.
Knights were a long tradition of the Empire. So they always stood honorably at the very front line. It was terribly inefficient.
“But once they remain on the battlefield, they inevitably become direct targets for all kinds of lethal weapons, including guided missiles, bombardment, and snipers. Therefore, knights should stay one step off the front, then during engagement, drop directly from the air and strike core targets...”
That was far more efficient.
A knight was a human weapon on its own. Dropped into the middle of enemy lines, one would grind through defenses. Dropped into the rear, one would deliver the destructive power of a full unit alone.
The Empire had failed to properly use the most powerful weapon it had.
As I wrote the manual, I thought to myself.
I needed to propose an airborne training course at Empire Point, and the Sentinel Order needed to begin airborne training immediately too.
The cost... I could pay it.
I had money now. If we failed anyway, all of it would become worthless scraps of paper. So there was no reason to be stingy.
I kept scraping my pen until morning came,
and my operations officer delivered the weekly newspaper even earlier than yesterday and pointed to a rather interesting paragraph.
“Hmm.”
It was a small society article buried in a corner of page two.
Are We Being Toyed With by the Ghost of the Revolutionary Faction?
: Reporter Alphonse von Stauffen
Death has been decided in the paper mill case. Daniel Matteo, who confessed that he was a Revolutionary Faction member, and two immigrants (Fatima Muller, Maria Schulz) will all be executed.
At first glance, this may seem like a natural verdict, one that punishes traitors who threatened the Empire’s security.
But we must ask. Is this verdict truly just? If not, are we simply being swung around by the ghost of the Revolutionary Faction?
Among those who stood in the defendant’s seat were an immigrant mother and daughter who could not properly speak even the Empire’s language. Even when death was pronounced on them, they only stared at the courtroom with empty eyes, as if they did not understand what that meant.
(omitted)
No evidence that the immigrants joined the revolution has been disclosed. Whether it was never found or was found but not disclosed, we do not know. But that immigrant mother and daughter, who were used by Revolutionary Faction members, now face the extreme penalty of execution instead of deportation...
───────
I smiled.
Alphonse von Stauffen.
A reporter who could become a light in this dark world.
He gave me a small bite.
No, the newspaper company let him bite me.
I had expected it to some extent. They were a business that sold pens and sentences, but the very lofty Sebestian and House Ebenholtz had looked down on the press for generations.
It was probably about time to open trade with the press.
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