WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Reluctant Imperialist

Chapter 68

──────

Clocking In (2)

──18 hours before Day of the Subjects

6:00

Beep.

I tapped my ID card against the Gigantes clock-in reader.

[Confirmed.]

The latest-model scanner read my card and flashed green. I had expected something analog, like punching holes in paper cards, but those palace bastards spared no expense when it came to systems for controlling workers.

I stepped into Gigantes. Thousands of pipes twisted together like blood vessels. Even the sliver of sky overhead was buried behind gray smog, and the whole complex looked like a giant maze.

“What kind of... layout is this?”

I walked while tracing the map I had secured in advance, but the real Gigantes had been expanded into something far more tangled than the blueprint.

Thud, thud, thud.

Each time the press machines slammed down and shook the floor, the hollow-faced workers moved like machines too. There was no life in their eyes.

Grease-soaked uniforms. Numb bodies that did not even flinch at supervisors barking curses. They were consumed like parts, not treated like people.

The reason for revolution was right here.

[Security Break Room]

Before I knew it, I had reached the security break room.

Gigantes was incredibly complex, but I was not worried about getting lost. That was thanks to the virus inside me.

My guess was that it stored every visual detail I observed as mana data, then projected it through my mind whenever I wanted.

A useful talent.

Still, I did not know whether the virus was on my side, whether it was truly a friend. It was a fragment from another world with no clear origin.

“......”

I stepped into the break room and fell silent. Calling this place a break room was a stretch. A few dented steel lockers and one long bench with peeling paint, that was it. On the moldy wall hung a framed slogan that stabbed at my eyes.

“Your sweat for His Majesty the Emperor forges the Empire’s steel.”

“Haa...”

A breath slipped out that sounded almost like a laugh.

What a damned place to end up in.

Me, you, all of us.

“...Hmm.”

I looked up at the break room ceiling.

Before my regression, no one ever revealed exactly how this terror attack had failed. Everything inside Gigantes was sealed as top secret, and only the identities of captured Revolutionary Faction members who were executed were made public.

So for now, I had to stay hidden and pick the point where I could step into their operation at the right moment.

As an observer, and a helper.

“Not around here.”

There was nowhere suitable to hide.

A hideout needed two things.

1. It had to be as close as possible to Gigantes’s heart, the “power source.”

2. I absolutely could not be discovered.

I left the security break room and walked down the corridor. Then a thought struck me.

“...You.”

I quietly spoke while placing a hand on my collarbone.

One property of a mana core was emission. If the virus sent out tiny mana waves like radar, maybe I could detect empty spaces beyond my sight through the echoes.

“Try sending me the information.”

For finding a hideout, this thing seemed more efficient than I was.

Sssssss...

Mana spread out beneath my feet. Beyond concrete walls, through gaps between pipes, hidden spaces and geometric structures formed three-dimensionally in my head.

“Hey! What are you doing!”

A sudden shout. I flinched and opened my eyes. A pig-faced supervisor was right in front of me.

I almost punched him without thinking.

“...Security.”

“Never seen you before. Show me your ID!”

I held out my card. The supervisor scanned it. Beep.

Valid identity.

“So you’re security, no shit. I can see that. Why are you loitering here?”

“I received separate orders. I’m to patrol this zone.”

“Ah, fuck. Then do it right. You were standing there with your damn eyes closed. I’ll let it slide since tomorrow’s a holiday.”

The supervisor flicked my cap, spat on the floor, and walked off.

“......”

I memorized that bastard’s face.

I closed my eyes again.

Just like before, mana spread from beneath my feet and traced the spaces in the dark.

* * *

──12 hours before Day of the Subjects

12:00

In the quiet noon interview room, orphanage director Entikkan looked at his niece Yukia across from him.

“Don’t worry about the shop. Tomorrow is a holiday.”

“......”

Breathing hard, Yukia scanned the room. No matter where she looked, there was no clock.

“What time is it?”

“Day of the Subjects. Did you at least know that?”

Yukia answered shortly.

“No. What time is it now?”

“...Look at this.”

Entikkan pointed to the documents spread across the table. Her gaze lingered on them for a moment. Report cards and awards from her academy days. Records filled with praise calling her a genius. One sheet lay over all of it.

[Disciplinary Committee Referral - Reason: Attempted Murder of a Fellow Student]

It was a ridiculous frame-up.

“...Why is this here.”

Yukia was good with objects. In fact, it went far beyond that. It was a supernatural ability that let her instinctively grasp an object’s structure and origin, then maximize its potential.

In her hands, even an ordinary stick or pebble could become a special weapon.

That was why she had opened a shop in the first place.

“Sir Knight pities the sight of your talent going to waste.”

“It’s not going to waste.”

“Then what are you right now?”

Entikkan looked over Yukia’s battered body. Her eyes were swollen, and her teeth were broken like a beast’s.

“Do you want to be exiled and go wandering again?”

Since childhood, Yukia had grown up roaming all over the continent with her father, because he worked as a guide.

“......”

Yukia looked at Entikkan in silence. Entikkan sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Knight Maximilian wants to keep you by his side.”

Yukia’s red eyes trembled.

“By his side?”

“Yes.”

Only then did she sense the weight in those words.

“He probably wants the Yaken tracking ability. The Imperials know about it too.”

The Yaken believed they were a race chosen by spirits and nature, and in truth, their five senses were exceptionally sharp compared to other races.

“......”

Yukia bit her lip, thinking. Entikkan swallowed a sigh.

This was basically telling her to become a hound for the Imperial elite, and given her stubborn pride, she would naturally refuse.

“Forget it. I should not have asked you-”

“I might do it.”

“...What?”

Yukia looked at her uncle and gave a quiet nod.

“I might do it.”

Her answer was not surrender. Her longing for revolution and her rage over her father’s death were honed sharp in her heart.

The place her hatred aimed for was the Empire’s deepest core.

The Imperial Palace.

“Pass it on.”

If she could stay by the side of this knight named Maximilian, she might be able to reach that core.

That was her calculation.

* * *

──6 hours before Day of the Subjects

18:00

I found an empty space hidden underground between Gigantes’s pipes and outer wall. I had no idea how it formed, but it looked like an old hideout built by workers long ago.

Someone had brought in a wooden box, and in one corner an old sleeping bag sat in a rotten clump, ready to crumble. Faded graffiti from workers of another era still remained on the wall.

I brushed it with my fingers.

“Ah, my back is gonna snap.”

“Suck it up. The kids are waiting at home~”

“You insane bastard. If they catch us messing around here, we all get fired.”

“Damn... lost the whole 30 dollars I won yesterday. My stomach is burning.”

“Anyone cover my weekend shift? I’ll give you a pack of smokes.”

Rough, crude handwriting. Full of curses, but soaked with a strange energy and smell of life that no longer existed in today’s Gigantes.

A smile slipped out on its own.

It felt like finding unexpected treasure.

“This really is like a treasure hunt.”

Money did not move me much anymore. I had too much of it, and I already knew those supposedly precious things were meaningless in the end. Traces of lives like these felt more valuable.

Creak.

I opened the dusty wooden box.

Rusty cans with labels too corroded to read, old newspapers yellowed with age, a smooth chess set worn down by hands, playing cards with corners rubbed away.

I could make out a date on one newspaper. It was from over sixty years ago.

Back then, even Gigantes had at least been a place where you could breathe.

Workers could dodge supervisors, gather together, play cards and chess in cigarette smoke. A time that still had a little room for leisure and warmth.

How had it fallen this far?

Looking for the reason, even thinking about it now, was pointless.

Everything old eventually breaks, and stagnant water always rots.

Tick.

Either way, I had found a place to hide.

I sat quietly in this burrow and listened to the ticking from deep in my heart.

Tick.

The absolute flow of time.

Tick.

Maybe this was the pulse of my soul.

* * *

──30 minutes before Day of the Subjects

23:30

Tick. Tick.

Time passed.

As Gigantes’s facilities slowly stopped breathing, Revolutionary Faction members slipped one by one into the underground darkness.

The operation name was [Steel Mole].

Under the single cause of revolution, they moved in strict compartmentalized cells. Even if this operation failed, the Revolutionary Faction’s roots would not be shaken.

“Installation is complete.”

With charges placed at every point, the leader, Tiger Mask, traced the blueprint and reviewed the plan.

“Not a single worker can get caught in this.”

The operation was already set.

First, adhesive bombs on the outer facilities would detonate, and Gigantes’s exterior structures would collapse inward. The steel wreckage itself would become terrain, limiting routes into Gigantes. The Revolutionary Faction would build barricades at those points, hold the line, and delay the Imperial Army’s entry.

Major roads leading to Gigantes already had mines and bombs buried as well, buying time before outside reinforcements could arrive.

During that golden window, the Revolutionary Faction would decisively destroy the mana ore vein in Gigantes’s underground core.

“Get ready.”

Then it happened.

Ding ding ding ding-

The signal announcing Gigantes shutdown rang out.

Ding ding ding ding-

It was the bell of revolution.

* * *

──25 minutes before Day of the Subjects

23:35

Ding ding ding ding-

I stepped out of the burrow for a moment to match clock-out time.

“Shift over! Tomorrow’s a holiday!”

At the supervisor’s shout, the workshop’s iron gates opened, and tens of thousands of workers poured out.

I watched them with my security cap pulled low. Their clothes were drenched in grease and sweat, but their faces were bright with excitement over tomorrow’s rest.

“Day of the Subjects, huh.”

“Damn, lucky them. We’re on duty.”

“They’ve got it easy. When do we ever get a break?”

“We work shifts anyway, idiot.”

The guards beside me clicked their tongues and grumbled.

Right then, an urgent order came through the radio.

“Ah. They’re coming now. Stand straight!”

In an instant, the mood among security changed. Voices vanished, discipline snapped tight.

“Line up! Clear the way!”

The supervisor moved them into strict formation, ranks on both sides of the road from the main gate. They were waiting for “them.”

Thud. Thud.

Heavy footsteps shook the ground. The guards swallowed and sweated with tension.

Thud. Thud.

Soon, with darkness at their backs, the Empire’s elite marched in with lofty confidence. A Royal Guard unit in pitch-black armor. They did not rest even on Day of the Subjects, because they were the Emperor’s hands and feet.

“......”

The Royal Guards looked overwhelmingly arrogant. Chins lifted, eyes forward, they walked as if conceit clung to them like mud.

Had I looked like that too, once?

Pretending to keep my head bowed, I studied them closely from under my cap brim.

“All right. Security resumes duty! Shift rotation!”

The supervisor rang a bell to signal the start of guard duty.

I moved back to the burrow to wait for the proper signal.

* * *

──Day of the Subjects, same day

00:33

Beep.

A tiny electronic sound rang out somewhere.

That faint signal woke detonators that had slept for a long time.

Booom-!

One burst of fire rose like a flare, and then the other charges began to detonate in a chain like falling dominos. Flames coiled around Gigantes’s outer ring.

Kraaaaaaash-!

The massive steel frame that had endured for centuries crumpled like taffy, and patched-together facilities blasted apart.

Rrrumble-!

Outer structures collapsed inward. Bent pillars bulged around and enclosed Gigantes.

Sssssss-

Inside the wrecked Gigantes, torn pipelines filled the chaos with thick steam.

From the middle of that confusion, one man walked out from underground.

“For the cause.”

Tiger Mask drew his sword. Dozens of shadows rushed in behind him.

The battle had begun.

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