The Reluctant Imperialist - Chapter 48

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 48

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A Knight Descending from the Sky (3)

To Tiana, it felt like something had poured down from the sky. Through the dim blue dawn, a silver meteor flashed for an instant, then struck the ground with a monstrous blast of wind. Maximilian’s Knight Assault. Diving from high altitude, he severed Dune Kan’s neck in one precise strike.

Pshhhhhhhhhht!

Steam leaked from the headless body. Like air rushing out of a giant balloon, the bastard kept spewing mana for a while, then went limp.

“......”

A rare silence settled over the battlefield.

A knight had rushed down from the distant sky with his sword raised. A pinpoint strike meant to cut down one target and one target only. It looked as if a full moon had sliced through the enemy’s neck, and everyone stared blankly at Maximilian, wrapped in a silver shockwave.

“Move!”

Only then did Leon and Tiana snap back to their senses at Yulian’s order.

Emulen looked stunned. He clearly could not believe Dune Kan had just died right in front of him.

An enemy who lost focus on the battlefield was nothing but prey. Leon and Tiana struck at the same time, one from his left and one from his right, and cut him down.

After that, they launched a counterattack with the mercenaries.

The lower Gentra fighters, now without a center of command, either ran and died or resisted and died, and before long the whole situation was over.

“Ah...... I’m exhausted.”

Morning slowly brightened. Tiana rubbed her battered shoulder and looked around.

The harbor was a complete wreck. Countless containers had been ripped apart like taffy. Quite a few mercenary corpses were piled between the cargo.

“......”

Tiana looked at the headless Akarius mercenary. She swallowed a bitter taste, then turned back to Max. He was standing against a container.

“Knight Assault.”

She muttered to herself. Combining high-altitude momentum with mana and bringing it straight down in a literal vertical strike, an overwhelming assault. The phrase “the most destructive use of a knight” no longer sounded like hype. It sounded true.

This battlefield had been decided by that one variable alone.

While they stood there, Escal Company’s cleanup team arrived. When they approached the bodies of Emulen and Dune Kan, Yulian stepped in front of them.

“We will recover these two bodies and transfer them ourselves.”

Yulian quietly handed over his ID. They seemed to grasp the situation and nodded.

From their perspective, this was not a bad deal either. They should have all died and lost the cargo, but thanks to us, at least the cargo survived.

Rrrrrrrrrr!

At that moment, a helicopter landed with a roaring engine. One person stepped out.

Red hair tied high like a ponytail. A black cape flapping in the wind. Her neat Akarius dress uniform looked like it borrowed from knightly style, but the most noticeable thing was her worn sneakers caked in dust.

It was Ren, commander of Akarius Mercenary Corps.

She stood in front of the member whose head had been blown apart. From her pocket, she took out a small mana stone shard shaped like a four-leaf clover, tossed it onto the corpse, then flicked her finger.

Fwoosh!

Blue flames surged up and burned the corpse to ash in an instant.

“......What is she doing?”

At Tiana’s whisper, Max answered.

“Akarius rules.”

Akarius Mercenary Corps never allows the transport of dead members’ bodies. Burial and autopsy are banned too. It is written into their contracts. Even a member’s corpse is Akarius property in the end.

Ren watched in silence until the member turned into a handful of ash, then turned and boarded the helicopter again. Her face was hidden behind her red hair as she left.

“Move. We’re leaving too.”

At Yulian’s words, everyone got ready. They packed Dune Kan’s head and body, and Emulen’s left half and right half, into separate corpse preservation bags.

* * *

We received medals. It was for killing Gentra’s mid-level officer Emulen and red-grade wanted criminal Dune Kan.

Tiana and Leon received Gold Lion Third-Class Medals for the first time, and mine were upgraded to a Second-Class medal by combining three in total, including the two I had already received.

As operation commander, Yulian received a special cash reward. Two second-class Gold Lion medals were already shining on his chest.

“You just missed the youngest-ever record.”

“What youngest record?”

“Second-class medal.”

“Ah. The youngest record is probably......”

“Commander-in-Chief Sebestian.”

Right after being knighted, Sebestian had joined the Western War. He earned monstrous military achievements there, then got dragged into an imperial succession conflict and still led that to victory.

There had been no defeat in his life. Sebestian was a noble who had never failed even once.

“Max, your contribution was the biggest in this operation. I will write it that way in the report to headquarters.”

I nodded at Yulian’s words.

“Thank you.”

“Knight Assault also proved useful enough. I will propose opening an official program in the Order.”

“Yes. I will sponsor all related costs.”

Yulian stared at me.

“The Order leadership will review it positively. There is no need to spend your own money.”

I gave a bitter smile.

Unlike what Yulian thought, the Order was rigid. There were also people inside who feared strengthening military power, in other words, feared the Empire’s war capability increasing.

Anton was exactly that kind of person. People like him thought war was a cruel waste that killed future generations.

That was a very correct thing to say.

If not for Izenheim.

“No. The Order will only move if I do this.”

The higher-ups would absolutely nitpick with budget excuses, and I had no intention of letting time drag.

“That could be true.”

Yulian never tried to persuade me more than once. I did not know whether he gave up or understood what I meant.

He had always been that kind of man.

“Good work.”

“Yes.”

I came out to the parking lot, got in the car, and headed to the estate.

By the time I got home, night had already fallen.

I took a quick shower and lay down on the bed.

“......”

Sleep would not come. My eyes were wide awake.

For some reason, everything that happened yesterday felt like a dream.

I cut off his head.

No, did I really cut it off?

The adrenaline from that moment had surged too hard, and it felt like even my memory had gotten mixed up.

Still, one fact was certain.

“He wasn’t Izenheim.”

Dune Kan was not Izenheim, and Emulen was not Izenheim.

Among the enemies I would face from now on, non-Izenheim enemies would be far more common.

To cleanse one race, I had to tear through this whole world.

War.

In the end, a massive war would break out, and Knight Assault was only one way to use knights to win that war.

“......To survive.”

To avoid destruction, the Empire had to kill countless people.

One step, then another. We were moving toward that future.

When I cut down Dune Kan, I did not close my eyes.

Because now I knew a fear much greater than that.

* * *

Dieter secured an airborne training ground and a transport aircraft. Even for him, obtaining the aircraft took real effort, but one of the Kanillan stocks I had invested in happened to be an airplane development company, and with additional investment there as a condition, I secured one of their latest models.

I posted the poster I had prepared on the wall beside my office door.

[Knight Order Autonomous Study Group: Aerial Assault Club]

Even if the Order accepted the proposal, it would still take at least a few months to form an official curriculum. So before that, I planned to let the knights get a taste of skydiving.

Some senior knights might call it a mere hobby, or a childish noble wasting money, but rumors about our mission would spread fast soon enough.

Knights were a breed obsessed with self-improvement. Only people like that became knights in the first place.

If I waited a little, they would come on their own and ask me, “Please let us on the plane,” and once that started, I would choose people carefully.

My faction would start here.

“Nice.”

I looked at the well-made assault club poster and nodded with satisfaction.

......

These days, Knight Order officials were being summoned to the imperial palace every day.

It was a sign that the appointment of the new Knight Commander was close.

“I heard they asked in a casual way, like small talk. About Deputy Commander Anton.”

Kairon collected opinions from the knights. Not only Sentinel and other active knights, but retired former knights who had opened private offices as well, he contacted them all.

“Most gave honest answers. ‘He is an excellent man, but not someone fit to be commander’......”

Noble knights acted like they respected Anton on the surface, but inside, resentment had clearly piled up.

He was a fallen noble...... no, even that was too generous. The house had collapsed not one generation ago but two, and from his father onward there was no title. How could the son of a commoner be called a fallen noble?

He was practically a commoner.

“And this is what you asked for last time.”

A subordinate knight handed over the mission report Yulian had submitted to headquarters this time. Kairon skimmed it.

[......We faced crisis when red-grade wanted criminal Dune Kan appeared unexpectedly during the operation, but the aerial assault operation proposed by Knight Maximilian proved effective, allowing mission success......]

“Dune Kan?”

Kairon knew the name too. Dune Kan, a core Gentra combatant and vicious criminal wanted across the entire Empire.

“Dune Kan, and Maximilian killed him?”

“Yes. That is what it says. It is described in detail below.”

Kairon read again.

[......After high-altitude descent, Knight Maximilian executed a direct strike on target Dune Kan and beheaded the target in a single assault......]

Kairon fell into thought for a moment.

A knight falling from the sky. By a noble’s common sense, it sounded like absurd nonsense. It was not fitting for knightly dignity or appearance either.

Still, the one who pulled this off, Maximilian, was himself one of the Empire’s top-level nobles.

“There is a poster in front of Maximilian’s office right now. It says Aerial Assault Club, and if you apply, he will put you on the transport plane...”

“Then go apply first.”

“Yes.”

The knights under Kairon did not talk back.

Or maybe they secretly wanted to learn it too.

Probably that.

Since Empire Point, they had looked down on Maximilian endlessly, so hearing that he suddenly cut off a red-grade wanted criminal’s head would make them hungry.

......

Tiana looked at the crude poster on Maximilian’s office wall.

[Knight Order Autonomous Study Group: Aerial Assault]

Falling from several thousand meters was scary, but the Max she saw that day at the harbor had been undeniably powerful.

It was worth learning, and more than anything, she did not want to fall behind him.

She picked up one application form from the table beside the poster.

“Huh? Tiana?”

She turned. It was Leon. He already had a ballpoint pen in hand, ready to fill out a form.

“You too?”

It was not only Leon. Behind him, four or five more knights came rushing over to grab forms.

“W, wait, I was here first!”

Without time to think anymore, Tiana took position right in front of Max’s office door.

......

Kanillan Independent State.

Ren, commander of Akarius, replayed the harbor CCTV footage she had obtained this time all night.

“Hm......”

In her blue eyes, a silver flash diving from the sky reflected.

She had seen that mana light before, that moon-colored glow.

Sebestian.

But there was no way he had come here.

Click.

At some point, she paused the CCTV. It was an angle where the face of the knight who fell from the sky and killed Dune Kan could be seen faintly. The hair was black, but that was obviously dyed as a disguise.

“......Ebenholtz.”

Without a doubt, Sebestian’s son, Maximilian.

Knock knock.

Ren turned off the CCTV. Outside, it was already morning.

“Come in.”

Deputy Commander Jesik entered. He had a young brat with him.

“Commander. I brought one pretty promising guy.”

The deputy commander had high standards. Extremely high. Almost absurdly high.

“Promising, huh?”

“Yes. He has been cleaning the mercenary corps toilets for a month, but...... I crossed swords with him once, and he handled himself well.”

“What is your name?”

At Ren’s question, the boy answered.