Semi-Coercive Imperialist

Chapter 200

Malice

Hermann clasped the mana stone handcuffs around Dominik's wrists.

Click.

"Dominik Bauman. You are under arrest on charges of plotting insurrection, endangering imperial security, and countless acts of treason against the Imperial House."

Hermann recited the knightly formalities.

Yulian watched him quietly. There was no agitation in his clouded eyes.

"Hoo."

Still pinning Dominik to the floor, Hermann raised his head. By then, a bright smile had already spread across his face.

"Wow. You're incredible, Knight Yulian."

He laid it on thick, as if truly impressed. In the narrowed eyes he turned on Yulian, thin mockery and heavy suspicion flicked like a snake's tongue."But tell me, what is that letter you're holding?"

Hermann held out a hand. Laura's letter, clenched in Yulian's grip.

"Would you mind if I checked it too, Senior Yulian?"

The smile at Hermann's lips deepened.

"......"

Yulian handed over the letter. Hermann took it almost like he was snatching it away.

"Thank you."

Hermann fixed his gaze on Laura's request in the letter.

If she died, she wanted to be buried beside Ashton. No revolutionary cause, no secret threatening the Empire. Just a plain, unremarkable last wish.

"Hmm......"

While Hermann read as if chewing each line and swallowing it whole, Yulian looked at Dominik sprawled on the stage.

"Cough, hack......"

A man wheezing like he was coughing up blood.

Once a promising elite of Sentio Magic Tower, now an executive of the Revolutionary Faction who had betrayed the Empire.

A brutal smell of death rose from his body.

Was it tuberculosis. Or cancer.

Either way, he didn't have long left, and Yulian knew the Revolutionary Faction's nature all too well.

They used even their own deaths.

If they could become kindling to open a new world, they would do it willingly.

They sacrificed themselves.

......

I stepped out into the Sentinel Order parking lot. In front of the waiting car, a staff officer politely opened the door.

Just as I was about to get into the back seat.

"Max!"

A voice suddenly called me.

"Max! Max! Max!"

"What......"

I frowned and turned that way.

"Max! Max!"

It was Leutern II.

What the hell was this bastard doing here.

I didn't even have time to wonder before he came bouncing across the parking lot.

"Max!"

Leutern flung his chest open and shouted my name.

"Max!"

This bastard was like some kind of animal.

"Max!"

Did he suddenly forget every word except Max.

"Max!"

"......Duke Leutern. Please calm down. What is the matter?"

I answered as evenly as I could.

"No, well~"

Leutern grinned lazily and dragged out his words, but I had no time to indulge him.

"My apologies. I have work to do."

I got straight into the car. As I fastened my seat belt and glanced to the side, Leutern was naturally seated right next to me.

"......"

I stared blankly at his face.

Click. Leutern buckled his own seat belt. He sat still, as if waiting for departure.

"......What are you doing?"

"Hm? Why?"

This man only asked back, puffing his chest out, and it made my head spin.

Vroooom.

The car pulled out.

Looks like the staff officer assumed this idiot was part of my party.

"Oh~ Max, this car's nice~ Is this the new model?"

"Yes."

"I've got a new one too. What's it called~ again."

"......"

I decided to just let him ride. Right now, even asking what he was thinking or why he'd glued himself to me felt like a waste of time.

"But Max. Where are we going right now?"

Leutern peered out the window as he asked.

"Knight business. It may be dangerous. No, very dangerous. Would you like to get out now?"

"Ah, I see~ It's fine. I didn't really have anything to do today anyway. Nice timing."

You fucking bastard.

I didn't show it. I clenched my teeth lightly and gave the staff officer an order.

"Get us there as fast as possible."

"As fast as possible? Sounds fun~ Let's go!"

Leutern's eyes lit up as he fixed his gaze on the scenery flashing by outside.

......

[ Yulian, I will not resent you for betraying me. ]

[ Ashton and I chose this path, so the ending we face is fully our own burden. ]

Laura's final letter.

The rookie knight, Hermann, read it while deliberately putting on a gloomy expression.

He pretended to be sad.

[ But borrowing the affection from those long-ago days when we laughed together, I have one last request. ]

[ If I die, could you please bury me in a sunny place not far from where Ashton sleeps? ]

[ We could not stay together in life, so at least in death I want to remain by his side. ]

"......Ashton, huh."

After finishing the letter, Hermann let out a deep sigh.

"Haa...... So she was that Knight Ashton's lover."

"You know Ashton."

At Yulian's question, Hermann folded the letter and raised his head.

"How could I not. The incident is even in Empire Point textbooks."

Hermann grinned.

"Operation Path of Dreams is held up to all Empire Point cadets as a tragic heroic tale that stirs the heart."

Yulian stared at Hermann. More precisely, he watched the wrinkle forming between Hermann's brows.

"Hoo...... Still, who would've thought that such an excellent knight's lover would be a Revolutionary Faction errand runner."

Hermann clicked his tongue as if regretful.

"I wonder what Knight Maximilian will think when he sees this letter...... very confusing."

He moved to hand the letter back, then stopped, pulled his hand away, and asked again.

"Ah, right. We should seize this letter as evidence, yes? It is an item the Revolutionary Faction left for Knight Yulian."

Yulian nodded without a word. Hermann was irritated by that silence, but he smiled and clapped.

Clap clap clap.

It seemed to be a hand signal. His staff officers rushed into the theater.

"Search everything!"

At Hermann's order, they tore through under the stage, between seats, the waiting room, the management room, everywhere, turning the whole place upside down.

Dust rose in cloudy sheets all over the small theater.

"......This is bad."

Dominik's voice came from the stage. He seemed to have briefly slipped free of the pain and settled into calm.

"This is bad......"

Unlike Dominik, who kept repeating that, Yulian simply watched all the chaos in silence, like an audience member watching a play.

......

Inside the moving car, I watched the scenery drift by outside the window and suddenly sank into thought.

Hermann von Berg.

A minor noble from the western Empire. A fallen house that had barely kept itself alive in a rough farming village. Hermann was known there as the second son.

But both his mother and father had died long ago, and even his elder brother, the first son, had died after being caught in a Revolutionary Faction bombing.

So the only bloodline left in House Berg was Hermann alone.

A familiar setup.

Isolation, where every trace of the past had been erased and no one remained to verify who you really were.

"......Oh. Nice view."

That bright voice broke my thoughts.

"This is why people need to get outside. It clears your mind."

I shot a glare at the seat next to me. I wanted him to shut his mouth, but Leutern II was busy pressing his nose toward the window and marveling.

"If I stay in the Imperial Palace too long, I get restless~"

Looking at Leutern like that, a thought surfaced in my head.

Simple and light.

"Duke Leutern."

"Hm?"

Leutern answered and puffed his chest out wide again.

What kind of peacock was this? I had no idea. But his bizarre behavior wasn't what mattered to me now.

"Do you get skin treatments?"

"......Huh? Ah~ well~ I do use top-grade cosmetics. Hahaha!"

Leutern chuckled and rubbed his own cheek.

He definitely had a youthful face. But no matter how much money you smeared on it, you couldn't hide the fine wrinkles that came with age.

Youthful.

Yes, youthful, but still marked with traces fitting that age.

"Why. Want a cosmetics brand recommendation too? Ah right, never use mana stone extract cosmetics. They make your skin bright red."

As I listened to Leutern's nonsense, I returned to my doubt.

"I'm fine."

"Yeah? Then why'd you ask."

Was the record saying his older brother died to the Revolutionary Faction really true.

"It's nothing major."

Was Hermann even truly the second son of House Berg in the first place.

"......You just reminded me of one friend who looked unusually old for his age."

A blank page with all truth covered over.

Across that empty space, one very reasonable hypothesis quietly rose.

......

"Yes. Nostalgia Theater. West, Camel District. Yes, yes. Requesting rapid support."

Hermann called for knight support through his terminal.

First-class wanted criminal Dominik had already been subdued and bound in mana stone handcuffs, and Laura's letter had been sealed as evidence.

"Mmm~"

Hermann stretched, looking refreshed now that his work was done.

"Ah, Knight Yulian."

Lowering the terminal, he gave a twisted smile.

"You'll put my name in the report too, right? Rookies desperately need results like this, one by one."

Yulian answered with silence.

"Thank you."

Hermann interpreted it however he pleased, and meanwhile his staff officers kept finding more and more evidence.

Under stage fixtures. Inside torn leather seams of audience chairs.

Then an urgent shout from one officer who had pried open a hidden double space in the wooden floor.

"Found it!"

Unknown symbols. Complex formulas. All kinds of forged IDs and letters exchanged by the Revolutionary Faction. The officer pulled out stacks of documents packed with them.

"Give me."

Hermann took several pages.

"......What is this. Cipher text?"

His eyes slid over the papers. He frowned and focused, then shook his head like he couldn't make sense of any of it.

"Ah, shit. What is all this...... Knight Yulian, do you want to look?"

He held out the evidence. Yulian took it and checked the threads of mana left on the pages.

"We'll transfer everything to Sentinel headquarters first. Then we'll have to ask the Magic Tower and several other places to decrypt it."

As Hermann wore a meaningful smile, and amid the noise of staff officers busily packing each newly found item.

"......"

Yulian's gaze suddenly fell on Dominik.

Blood-soaked, Dominik's eyes curved into a gentle arc.

A strange smile, as if to say, I know you.

"Pack everything, don't miss a thing!"

Hermann shouted at his officers and turned his back.

At that moment, Dominik's lips moved.

A silent whisper.

'......Mr. Yulian. You read it, didn't you.'

The final letter Laura had left for Yulian.

But that letter had hidden lines.

Mana had been densely pressed into it, engraved so only Revolutionary Faction members, or those who could read mana grain, would recognize the secret truth.

'That is Laura's final message to you.'

A cruel truth shaped by Dominik's lips.

'She...... hates you to death.'

A soundless curse.

Laura's trap.

'She plans to, even at the cost of her own life......'

All the evidence filling this place would probably point to Yulian.

The evidence Laura had painstakingly forged would be submitted along with Dominik's life, now all but spent.

It would become the greatest merit and raise one knight into the core of Sentinel.

'She wants you dead.'

Yulian nodded faintly.

He knew.

All his sins.

All his karma.

The crime of abandoning friendship and driving him into a death trap under the justification of serving the Empire as a knight.

From the moment he learned Ashton was a subspecies, he had used him, and in the end sold him to the cartel.

Ashton's miserable end was clearly his doing.

A wrong he had to accept, humbly, as his own.

'Sir Knight. In the end, the Empire will throw you away.'

Yulian's gaze slid sideways.

His eyes landed on Hermann.

"Handle everything carefully, no damage! Support will arrive soon!"

Just as Hermann's shout echoed through the small theater.

Creeeak.

The theater door moved first.

Everyone's eyes snapped there at once.

Beyond it, slowly opening in the backlight of pouring sunlight.

Leutern II stood there.

"What is this place~?"

Pushing aside the bright-faced man with his chest puffed out, Maximilian walked in.