Semi-Coercive Imperialist

Aftermath (2)

Drip, drip, drip.

On a bright afternoon under clear sunlight, I took a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

In a VIP room at the Imperial Central Hospital under House Bertem’s jurisdiction, Qwanda Snopf sat with an anxious face. The actual patient, though, was his little daughter asleep in the bed.

At my words, Qwanda let out a long breath, relief seeming to collapse out of him.

“Haa……”

Watching him, I thought about the strange instincts of the Empire.

The nobles of the Imperial Palace treated throwing people away after using them as something natural. Was it because they hated spending even a little money? Or because they valued a commoner’s life less than a fly?

Either way, it was extremely shortsighted.

“As long as she keeps receiving her prescriptions, she should live a long life.”

Still, those who sold out their own group, their own nation, even their comrades by stabbing them in the back, had to be treated in a way that matched what they had done.

Whatever their reason, if it benefited the Empire, they had to be rewarded clearly.

That was how humans justified their choices and sank deeper into the swamp.

“……Thank you, Sir Knight. Thank you so much.”

Qwanda’s eyes reddened as he kept bowing his head. He was a tavern owner from the back alleys, but also a sommelier with outstanding taste and smell.

In the future before regression, Outcast had forgiven him, but he had lost the daughter he loved instead.

“As I told you, this is proper compensation.”

The reason I recruited Qwanda was not only because he could appraise premium wine at my own Lilac Vita.

Elixir.

He had an inborn talent for analyzing and blending liquid components. Precise pharmaceutical work with liquids mixing mana and herbs naturally tied into improving stim pack performance, combat drugs that could overturn a battlefield.

Yulian had succeeded in Berkina. Black poppy and raw materials would pour out from the large farm he managed. I absolutely needed an expert who could refine all of that into perfect drugs.

I smiled.

“Mr. Qwanda Snopf. You’re pure Aran, aren’t you?”

I took out a document from inside my coat and handed it over.

It was a genealogy certificate for the Snopf family, officially issued by an Imperial government office.

“If you stand with the Empire, your child can grow up ordinary and happy without worries, aboveground instead of underground.”

Qwanda’s shoulders trembled as he received it, and he bowed deeply.

“Please raise your head.”

Looking out the hospital window at the clear sky, I added in an even tone,

“As a parent, you did the right thing.”

“-Nng.”

Right then, his daughter woke from anesthesia with a groan and opened her eyes.

“Daddy……?”

Qwanda hurried to the bedside and gripped her hand tightly.

“My baby, it’s okay. It’s all, all going to be okay now……”

I quietly watched the father and daughter.

For this child to keep living safely in the future, and for all humanity to achieve the peaceful natural death it longed for, what we had to do was very clear.

……

I met Princess Justine.

The place was that same hidden hideout, the one with the Arcane passage connected to her wardrobe. I came at her summons.

“……So what you’re saying is that one test subject is still alive?”

“Yes.”

The Princess stared at me coldly. The meaning in her golden gaze was still ambiguous.

“The Imperial Palace clearly ordered you not to get involved in Mason Industries.”

“Yes. I did not get involved. I only infiltrated their lab for a week and monitored them closely.”

“Are you trying to play word games with me?”

One side of her brow tightened. But I did not step back. My justification was solid, and physical evidence existed.

“To state the conclusion first, their research was impossible to reproduce from the start.”

The Mana Engine had zero general applicability.

It was the peak of inefficiency, killing tens of thousands just to find a few compatible subjects.

“Then why execute the test subjects? You disobeyed an Imperial order.”

“They were uncontrollable. Falkenrat was defeated by them, and Mason’s side did not even have the minimum capability to handle them. Rather than let them fall into enemy hands or the Revolutionary Faction and be used as uncontrollable weapons, I judged it was better to kill them on the spot.”

The Princess still seemed to doubt me.

“More importantly, Hector Mason was not pure Aran.”

At last, a strange light appeared in her eyes. More than anything else, she reacted fiercely to that one sentence I had just spoken.

“His grandfather was Mer, and his grandmother was mixed Edellem and Aran.”

I handed her a notebook containing Hector Mason’s genealogy and photos.

With that rotten personality of his, Hector was never going to treat his relatives kindly. My information network found his old family. The ones he had robbed of their assets gave testimony willingly.

“His real name was Yuzen May. Some of his relatives were living in the East.”

The Princess flipped through the documents and photos, especially the witness records from those relatives, and spoke in a low voice.

“……Hector Mason is not pure Aran.”

The Emperor’s logic was this. Even if they implanted impure mana circuits into pure Aran people, it could be tolerated as sacrifice for the Empire’s great cause, as long as the person overseeing the entire process was pure Aran. But if Hector was not Aran, that premise itself collapsed.

Then it became an unforgivable insult, an inferior breed daring to seize imperial subjects and use them as test material.

“Yes. But the facility called T24 and the research resources they accumulated are still valid.”

“Then?”

The Princess lifted her gaze to me.

“We need research targeting subspecies.”

Izenheim. The bastards we absolutely had to slaughter.

“At the moment, all we know is that their hearts are shaped differently.”

The corner of the Princess’s mouth shifted slightly. This was not her usual sharpness. It was faint satisfaction, deliberately restrained.

“So if we dissect them physically and in terms of mana, and analyze them systematically until we understand them better.”

I already knew the word she wanted.

“We will be able to eradicate them with maximum efficiency.”

* * *

At the same time, at Sentinel Order headquarters, Deputy Commander Kairon convened an emergency knight council.

“You’ve all heard the news about Maximilian.”

Kairon opened with a heavy voice.

Hector, house head of Mason Industries, had filed a formal complaint against Maximilian to the Imperial Palace. He raged that this was treason, defying the Palace’s order to halt the investigation, and the Palace was now reviewing the matter seriously.

“I couldn’t sleep yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or the day before that either. There was no way I could.”

It was sincere anger.

At the fact that a mere businessman had challenged a Sentinel knight, and at the news that the Palace had tolerated that overreach, Kairon felt something close to fury.

“We pursue what is right. And Maximilian’s actions were clearly right.”

Kairon slowly looked around the knights seated at the round table.

Raynel, Zionne, Cliff, Tiana, Leon, Hanna…… Many knights had gathered here across faction and status lines.

“Sentinel is, in the end, Sentinel.”

Not long ago, when the Order had faced the danger of division, Maximilian had united them with those words.

Now it was the Order’s turn to repay him.

“How dare he. How arrogantly a mere corporate chief laid hands on a Sentinel knight.”

Mason Industries had capital and scale counted among the top in Imperial history, and in the imperial west it held power and wealth near the summit.

Even so.

“Sentinel is the sword of the Empire. Those people are nothing more than rich merchants.”

Every Sentinel knight had to understand that clearly. As Maximilian had insisted, Sentinel had to recognize its own authority and absolute power.

And when the proper time came, it had to know how to use that power.

“Now we will mobilize every bit of strength we have.”

Bang!

Kairon slammed his fist on the table and declared,

“We crush Mason.”

……

Hector Mason, house head of Mason Industries, attempted a counterattack by mobilizing his massive connections and financial power, built firmly across the imperial west.

Yet every time he reached out, central power figures turned their backs one by one. Even the people who had confidently told him to trust them cut contact.

It did not matter how much he emphasized that this was a national policy project with full Imperial Palace support.

“These damned bastards……”

Hector breathed hard and glared at the man across from him.

There sat Valdemar, a central influential noble with deep ties to Chief Secretary Grossman, a close old friend who had long served as the sturdy rope connecting House Mason and the Palace.

“Valdemar. I’ll write down every one of these opportunists who betrayed me, so report them to the Palace and have them all sent away. Camp, prison, anywhere.”

“Uh…… no, well……”

Valdemar scratched his temple with a deeply troubled expression.

“Hector. I’m saying this for your sake. The current situation is……”

“What situation? Didn’t you say His Majesty was furious!”

“……Ah, he really was. For a moment. I heard his voice was raised. His Majesty’s anger is rare.”

For a moment.

That phrase, for a moment, caught in Hector’s ear.

“Then why?”

The Emperor was someone who could erase a person from existence with a single breath. Taking this chance to cut down that insolent sprout named Maximilian, if not with execution then with exile or discipline, and keeping Palace authority at its peak should have benefited him more.

“Someone who disobeys once can do it twice, three times. His Majesty knows that better than anyone, doesn’t he?”

“Well…… ahem.”

Valdemar coughed and continued carefully.

“Rumors are spreading through the Palace that you’re not pure Aran……”

At that instant, Hector’s expression hardened like stone.

Only for a moment.

Then he smiled again.

“Impossible. All bloodline certification was completed perfectly, and Imperial Central Office documents are fully prepared with no gaps. Obviously that brat Maximilian forged it. Daring to forge imperial official documents, that bastard truly wants to become a high traitor-“

“Do you happen to know a man named Epen May?”

“……”

Hector went silent. His pupils shook wildly.

“……Who is that?”

At Hector’s shameless question, Valdemar clicked his tongue and shook his head.

“Well, maybe his son? That man testified that Hector, you stole all your family’s money and ran away in the old days. Your old name was…… Yujin May? Yuzen May?”

A name he had lived a lifetime trying to forget.

He had thought he erased it cleanly over several passes.

Was a trace still left behind?

“Anyway. They submitted evidence about your bloodline. Things like family photos from your childhood.”

Hector’s pulse spiked like it would burst. Cold sweat formed down his back. He could no longer hold his expression.

“What……”

“Well, Hector, I mean this as your friend. Old friend. Can’t call us friends now, right? Legally, that doesn’t work.”

Hector stared at Valdemar with blank eyes.

“Anyway. As someone who used to be your friend, I want to ask first.”

Valdemar.

The bastard who had swallowed endless bribes and valuables from him all those years.

The bastard who climbed into central key posts with his money.

“Hector. What exactly do you think you are?”

And now he was throwing this bizarre question at him with such a cold face.

“What made you think you could go against Ebenholtz?”

“……What?”

“Get a grip.”

Valdemar fastened his suit buckle.

“You know, you’re just……”

A deep sneer sat at the corner of his mouth. Or perhaps it was sincere pity.

A trace of feeling for an old friend who got drunk on fantasy, forgot his place, ran wild, and invited ruin.

“You’re just a corporate owner. From birth, from your very foundation, you’re fundamentally different from Maximilian.”

A tradition built over centuries. A house so distant and elevated it had become one of the Empire’s symbols.

Everyone in the Empire knew their nobility. Everyone acknowledged their authority.

Countless nobles who respected Ebenholtz instead resented newcomers trying to rise from below and look up at their place.

Ebenholtz is accepted, but not you.

Ebenholtz is noble, but you are low.

That was simply the natural order of noble society.

“Hector…… no, should I call you Mr. Yuzen?”

Even if Mason Industries had ruled the top ranks of continental business for decades and scattered mountain-like money, it could never buy the weight of that history, bloodline, and authority.

“Ebenholtz is that kind of house.”

-That’s just how it is.

Obviously irrational, yet an undeniable truth.

“They touch the ceiling of this nation called the Empire. Who would dare covet the ceiling?”

If the Emperor was the sky, they were the ceiling.

“Take care. Thanks for everything.”

Valdemar stood up.

Leaving behind a stunned, frozen Hector, he turned without hesitation and walked out of the private room.

“……”

Darkness settled into silence.

Inside it, Hector only……

Sat there alone for quite a long time.