The Reluctant Imperialist - Chapter 56

WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 56

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Favor (3)

Somewhere in the Gennen Autonomous Territory, I stood in the back alley behind a building identified as a revolutionary hideout.

“Move in.”

The moment I gave the order, Schatz and the investigators moved inside. It was nothing like before, no noisy mob rushing in and smashing everything. Using the layout we had mapped out in advance, they moved in from every direction with precision, leaving no escape route.

Soon, screams erupted along with the dull thud of clubs hitting flesh.

A little later, the subversives were dragged out of the building.

“Transfer them.”

I had them taken not to the Order, but to the branch office.

The evidence we seized included multiple banned books, letters exchanged with the Revolutionary Faction, and coded protest plans.

We brought in thirteen people total, but not one of them was Izenheim. That meant interrogation was needed.

“They are probably the type who desperately want to be used by the Revolutionary Faction. We call them young recruits.”

At Investigator Zendo’s words, I nodded.

“In a situation like this, what do you usually do?”

I asked, fiddling with my leather gloves.

“......”

They only stared at me in silence.

“Speak honestly.”

“W-we interrogate them......”

Zendo glanced at me and spoke.

“Interrogate?”

“To pull in more leads, we...... torture them. No matter how much we threaten them, they never open their mouths. They are vicious bastards.”

I thought for a moment.

“If torture is necessary, then we do it.”

Torture itself was, in truth, an inefficient interrogation method. That had been proven to some extent by the post-collapse book Interrogation Techniques.

But technical interrogation took time, so if torture was necessary, we would use torture.

Those hot-blooded youths might know Izenheim.

“Still.”

I did not trust the investigators’ current methods.

All thirteen people we caught today were in their late teens to early twenties. Their revolutionary discussions were only about protest plans.

They were, quite literally, youths soaked in revolutionary ideology, not people carrying major responsibilities.

“We need a new interrogation manual.”

“A manual...... you mean?”

“Yes. Your methods are too extreme.”

It had to be effective, but it could not endanger life.

One person came to mind. A violent criminal who loved torture. A madman who was later pardoned for that skill alone, joined the military, and was eventually assassinated by the Revolutionary Faction.

I left the branch office and got into the car.

“Run a profile lookup on Yamilia Cohen, then drive there. He is probably in prison.”

“Yes, sir.”

The staff officer checked his profile through the terminal in the knight vehicle and set the destination.

“We will head to Taran Prison.”

I never imagined I would live long enough to write a torture manual, but there was no helping it.

Those young recruits could not even imagine what kind of being the Izenheim they were desperately hiding really was.

......

Yamilia Cohen.

I met him in person. Long curly hair. Eyes so large they seemed to fill half his face. He looked unsettling from the start, and he stared at me blankly.

“What brings a knight to me......?”

I asked him about torture, and his eyes lit up like stars.

“There is one condition. It must never endanger life.”

“Of course, Sir Knight. That part is my specialty.”

“Also, it must not leave severe aftereffects.”

His expression darkened slightly.

“There is no torture that shows consideration to the target......”

“This is not consideration. This is efficiency.”

“Well, either way, if the goal is not to inflict pain but to extract information.”

He pulled a chair in and sat close to the table.

“First, the torturer must never bring personal feelings into it. If personal emotion gets mixed in, force control fails, and that can threaten life. Also, the method must be chosen completely differently depending on the target.”

He licked his lips and continued.

“Weak little types who cannot handle pain will talk as soon as you touch them. So many amateurs use water torture or just fry people with electricity, and it is unbelievably stupid. That is grotesque, uncivilized behavior from people who know nothing about human psychology!”

His heavy eyelids gleamed with madness.

“Torture that pushes someone to the absolute limit is extremely inefficient. Their mind turns hazy, their consciousness gets muddled, and they cannot even tell what torture they are receiving. Information forced out like that is not reliable either. If it buys even a brief escape from reality, they will say anything, lies or whatever. Then their brain can break, and they can die.”

“...So, what is your conclusion?”

“If you want to extract information as efficiently as possible without threatening life, you only need two things.”

Cohen leaned forward and whispered like a snake.

“First, a drug. I have a formula only I know, for now. It amplifies the senses dozens of times, keeps the mind clear, and keeps the subject alert. The dosage must be controlled with extreme precision. You need a perfect golden ratio. After injection, pull out a nail, whether from a finger or toe. One is enough for an immediate effect. You do not need to pull two or more. Because......”

For a moment, an ecstatic expression crossed his face.

“Ahh......”

“Talk.”

“Sorry. Well...... whether it is a fingernail or toenail, it hurts much more after it is pulled. Sprinkle salt on the wound. Then their expression gets very...... you can feel the pain in full detail. Because of the drug’s arousal effect, consciousness will not cloud, and they will not go into shock. If the target is tough and endures pain well, then from there you test endurance. Keep them awake for days-”

“That is enough.”

I held out a blank notebook and pen.

“Write everything in here.”

“Write what?”

“Your knowledge of torture. Including the ingredients and formula for that drug.”

Cohen suddenly looked sullen.

“...Do I get compensation for this?”

My brow furrowed.

“Are you trying to bargain right now?”

“No, no, not like that...... but this is still my intellectual property......”

“I will put plenty in your inmate account.”

“......”

He did not look interested at all. I frowned, and Cohen flinched.

It was irritating, but even this kind of negotiation needed a tailored approach.

“When the time comes to carry out a death-row execution, I will let you pull the lever yourself once. Is that enough?”

“!”

Cohen’s eyes, nose, and mouth all widened. Even his curly hair puffed up as if struck by static.

Then he quickly snatched the notebook and pen.

“You must, must keep that promise!”

Laughing like a lunatic, he began writing down his knowledge.

* * *

Gennen branch office.

Zendo received the manual. With the book tucked under his arm like a proper textbook, he returned to the interrogation room.

“......”

A young recruit was tied to the chair.

If possible, he wanted to bash the man’s skull in, but that old fist-driven rage was no longer tolerated.

Zendo first picked up the drug from the tray.

A transparent liquid in a syringe, exactly 2.39 mg. It had been prepared this way from the start to prevent even slight underuse or overuse.

Zendo removed the revolutionary member’s mask. A frightened young man flinched and opened his eyes.

“Under the Special Measures Act on Imperial Security, Article 3, Clause 13, for subversive elements with secured evidence, investigative agencies may use limited physical force for intelligence acquisition. In other words, all force applied to you from this moment is legal.”

Notice of Imperial law.

In the manual, this was written at the very front under Mandatory Procedure.

“Now you only need to give two names. No lies. Then this legal interrogation ends.”

“...Like hell it does.”

Young recruits were always like this. Young and hot-blooded. Sometimes you wanted to beat them to death, but now that was forbidden.

Procedure mattered most. All private emotion had to be excluded. The entire investigative agency was now under Ebenholtz control.

“You pigdog bastard. You like being raised?”

“Tch.”

Zendo blindfolded him first.

After injecting the prepared drug, he pulled one fingernail with pliers.

“......Urk!”

The bound man suddenly bent at the waist and convulsed. His whole body twisted, and he could not even scream.

After pulling the nail, Zendo left him still for a while, until the pain settled.

“......”

When he seemed a little calmer, Zendo slapped his cheek to bring him back.

“Hey. Just two names. No lies.”

“Khhhh......”

If he still could not hold himself up, then he had not come out of the pain yet, so Zendo gave him more time.

Zendo checked the time on the terminal.

There were no clocks in this branch office, and investigators were absolutely forbidden from wearing wristwatches. It was an order from Maximilian that was close to an obsession.

“Khhhhh......”

Right then, the young recruit let out a ragged breath. Zendo asked him,

“Got your head straight? I will repeat it. Just two na-”

“Fuck you!”

Zendo’s brows twitched.

No matter how hard this bastard thrashed, fixed standards had to be followed. No action beyond procedure was allowed.

Still half doubtful, Zendo picked up the salt jar and poured it over the bloody finger where the nail had been ripped out, almost dumping it.

“G, GRAAAAAAAAH-!”

Zendo was startled. The man writhed like a freshly caught fish.

“Ugh, AAAAAAAH-! Aah! Aaaah!”

“...What is this.”

He was dumbfounded.

All he had done was pull one nail and sprinkle salt. Compared to the tortures he had done before, this was the gentlest method by far.

“Kh, ah, AAAAaaaaaa... AAAAAGH-!”

The effect was more dramatic than any other torture.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-!”

“...So this is why people need to learn.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-!”

He was going to lose his voice.

“Huff, huff, huff...... khhhhhh!”

Listening to the young recruit’s groans, Zendo unfolded the statement record.

By manual, every step of this process had to be recorded without a speck of falsehood. If he violated that, it meant he had made a false report directly to Maximilian himself......

“Purge.”

For Ebenholtz, the meaning of purge needed no deep thought. No matter where you ran on this continent, they would catch you.

Zendo reviewed what he had just done and wrote the report as accurately as possible.

* * *

The effect was certain. The young ones did not even need to lose many nails. Most gave up two names by the second nail, and thanks to the Order’s profile lookup function, the truth of their confessions was quickly verified.

“...Are you sure this is alright, Sir Knight?”

In the branch office corridor, Schatz asked me.

“About what?”

“That you will release them just because they gave two names.”

The question carried a slight undertone. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but it felt like she was probing my intent.

Before regression, Schatz had been part of the Revolutionary Faction.

“Being tied to the Revolutionary Faction does not make all of them fit for execution. Most are barely Revolutionary Faction to begin with. They are just intoxicated by ideology. The younger they are, and the more they think they are special, the easier it is for ringleaders to brainwash them by exploiting that feeling.”

Daniel had been an extremely radical terrorist, and the other two had been Izenheim. Their position and circumstances were very different from these young recruits.

“More than anything, they are not subspecies.”

Gennen people were treated as a lineage racially close to Imperials.

Of course, that was an extremely political and social distinction, but I had no desire to discriminate against them.

My enemy was only Izenheim.

“What if they are released and return to Revolutionary Faction activity?”

“Then they will be caught again. They have already been identified. Even within the Revolutionary Faction, they will lose trust and be discarded.”

Revolutionary ideology had spread across the Empire like a web, but much of it was little more than student activism. People worthy of being called true Revolutionary Faction members never revealed themselves easily.

“The Revolutionary Faction has a very deep core. Torture is a means to find that core, not a punishment.”

Outside the window, I watched the young men being escorted away from the branch office.

“If they keep repeating this cycle of capture and release, someday they will understand what this revolution is actually for.”

Of course, they would not be released immediately. I intended to give them at least three months in detention to think.

That was the manual I had in mind.

“But this kind of leniency applies only to people at that level.”

The true core of the Revolutionary Faction probably was not operating in a place as small as Gennen, but Gennen was clearly one of their key bases.

“Especially among hardline independence factions, subspecies will be mixed in. When we catch them, I intend to kill them without fail.”

“Yes. I will remember.”

I looked at Schatz.

Jet-black hair and eyes even darker than that. Not a single emotion showed on her face. She looked completely unshaken. That was probably thanks to the duty training she had received at the Ebenholtz main estate.

Still, I could not be sure how deep Schatz’s loyalty ran. The only thing I had done was pull her out of prison, and her status was still only that of a limited-pardon convict.

She had become my person regardless of her own will.

That was exactly why I had to make an effort too.

Somehow, I had to win over this unreadable woman, this monster who would one day grow strong enough to stand against Duke Sebestian. I had to keep her from giving even a glance to revolution and make her loyal only to me......

“Schatz.”

“Yes, Sir Knight.”

“Is there anything you have wanted lately?”

“......?”

Schatz tilted her head blankly.

“You have been working hard, so a bonus......”

“Pardon?”

“...Never mind. Nothing.”

“Ah. Yes.”

“...A bag, maybe.”

“Pardon?”

“Mm...... no. I just meant you worked hard.”