Chapter 99: Your Faith (2) An empty office.
Lieutenant Colonel Kai Han set down his cap and stared intently at the situation mapped out before him. His gaze moved slowly along the contour lines.
Bertem was located in the western border region. It was separated from the Zerpa Kingdom by the towering Alberon Mountains.
If one wished to support the Royalist Faction from Bertem, there were only two options.
First, bypassing or climbing the mountain range. It was treacherous and time-consuming, but it allowed for reliable movement.
Second, passing through the canyon that cut through the mountains. It had the advantage of being the shortest distance, but tactically, it was the worst possible choice. Everyone knew that. Therefore, in the mind of any normal commander, the canyon was a route that simply didn't exist.
Did General Richter, his opponent, leave the canyon open precisely because he knew that?
The opportunity cost of an ambush in the canyon was clear. One would have to allocate significant forces, and if those forces were split between the canyon and the border, they would likely be crushed in an instant by the Imperial Army, which was backed by knights.
"Rock-paper-scissors."
In the end, it was an endless game of rock-paper-scissors.
However, Maximilian's mind was open, and he had cut through the Ouroboros-like cycle of worry with a single stroke.
Was it because he was young? Or was it innate?
...No.
It was neither.
Maximilian knew his opponent. He was as meticulous as his intelligence allowed.
Many in the world decried the 'Genen Suppression Incident' as a disaster caused by Maximilian's impulsiveness.
However, the Maximilian that Kai Han knew was quite the opposite.
He had no impulses.
There was a reason for every action.
Thus, Maximilian had tested him even while knowing everything. He had induced Kai Han to look up General Richter's past record.
The man named Maximilian was perhaps far more than this continent realized...
Knock, knock.
The sound of his adjutant knocking.
Kai Han looked up.
"Come in."
The adjutant entered and saluted.
"Lieutenant Colonel, sir. When shall we begin the sortie?"
"..."
He looked out the window without a word. Gray clouds hung low.
"A blizzard will strike soon."
While it was late spring in the heart of the Empire, it was still winter in Bertem. When the blizzard approached, visibility would be obscured. Footprints would be covered, and sounds would become muffled. It was the perfect weather for the enemy's reconnaissance to be compromised.
"When the snow starts, prepare to divert all military trucks to the route bypassing the mountains. Have them move with a small force instead. We must make the enemy miscalculate."
"...Miscalculate, sir?" the adjutant asked back.
"Yes. Vehicles can't enter the canyon due to the terrain anyway. Have the main force prepare with minimal gear."
In other words, the main force would be cutting through the canyon.
The adjutant's expression turned serious.
"Yes, sir! Understood!"
He ran back outside.
"Sigh..."
Lieutenant Colonel Han took a moment to catch his breath, then suddenly remembered the bag Maximilian had handed him. A bonus left at his feet. He pulled the zipper.
Zzzzip.
"...Huh?"
Kai Han had always thought of himself as a dull man who didn't startle easily. After all, composure was the most important quality for a commander.
Yet, his composure was shattered by a mere bag. His eyes nearly popped out of his head.
"There's... too much."
He hadn't even finished using the operational funds he'd received before, but this was a fortune several times that amount.
* * *
The rest area of the Bertem garrison base. Zero-year knights Lois and Dare Tan were sauntering around the interior with their hands behind their backs for no particular reason.
"Loyalty!"
"Uh-huh. Good work."
"Loyalty!"
"Ah, yes. Good work."
Receiving salutes felt better than they expected. The disciplined gestures of the soldiers... well, wasn't this kind of treatment exactly why they had become knights?
"Loyalty!"
"Ah, yes. Good work."
"Hey. Look over there."
Dare Tan gestured with his chin.
In a corner of the rest area, Hannah was scurrying along with a pile of books clutched to her chest.
"What's all that?"
Lois blocked her path. Hannah faltered and looked up at them.
"...Study materials."
"You actually brought those all the way here? Hah."
Dare Tan snorted.
She really showed her commoner roots.
Honestly, he still didn't understand why she was here.
"I didn't 'bring' them. There's a library here, too, you know? I borrowed them from there."
"...There's a library? In this backwater?"
Lois furrowed his brows.
"Yep, apparently so."
A rather friendly voice came from behind them. It was Leon.
The three of them instinctively straightened their backs.
Among the zero-years, Leon was famous for being Maximilian's closest confidant. After all, there weren't many people who called Maximilian 'Max.'
"There wasn't one originally, but they set one up recently for the soldiers' welfare. They even have a computer."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. But I think only officers and above can use it. The soldiers couldn't even look at it."
A computer, an information processing device packed with state-of-the-art magical circuits, was an extremely expensive item even within the Empire.
To think such a thing was in a frontier unit like this.
"Follow me. Max wants you."
Leon gestured. The faces of the three stiffened with tension.
Leon was easygoing, but Maximilian was intimidating.
To be honest, he was terrifying.
[Supply Room]
They followed Leon to the supply room. Maximilian was already seated.
He tossed some backpacks at them.
"Take them."
They looked like ordinary backpacks, but the insides were so deep the bottom couldn't be seen.
"They're Expansion Backpacks."
Lois and Dare Tan gave wry smiles.
"Ah, Sir Knight. We brought our own personal gear, so military-issue—"
"They aren't military-issue."
"...Huh?"
The two tilted their heads and checked the gear.
"O-oh?"
"Whoa!"
The artifacts issued to the zero-years were likely the highest-quality backpacks in existence, manufactured by the Lorenzo Academy.
Sometimes people who didn't know much about magic mistook Expansion Backpacks for some kind of infinite pouch, but in reality, they were merely items that used mana to expand the space between particles.
This meant the volume increased by two or three times, but the mass did not decrease.
Even so, they were so expensive that common soldiers couldn't even dream of owning one.
"Fill them up and bring them back."
"Yes, sir!"
What they filled the backpacks with was also a measure of the user's competence.
...
The supply room of the Bertem base.
Leon fiddled with a backpack and asked, "Max. You don't like them?"
"Who?"
"Those kids. The zero-years. We saw them a few times passing through Empire Point."
Lois. Dare Tan. Hannah.
Chiron had gone out of his way to organize this dispatch with these specific people.
"No."
I looked out the window. It looked like the blizzard was about to start pouring down.
"You don't? You mean you like them?"
"Yeah."
Lois. Dare Tan. They were weak nobles, of course. Their necks were excessively stiff, and they were steeped in a sense of privilege.
However, their potential was high. In the fallen Empire of my past, they were the ones who fought against foreign enemies until the very end before being executed—men who would never betray the Empire.
And Hannah, despite being a commoner, was far more talented than the two of them.
"I like them."
"...That's unexpected."
"They remind me of my younger self."
I gave a small laugh.
The me from the days when I was immature, arrogant, and took the world lightly. I couldn't help but feel a strange sense of kinship.
Just then, the zero-years returned with their backpacks. They were packed quite full.
"We are ready!"
Their voices were full of energy.
I gestured to them.
"Open them all."
"Uh... excuse me?"
"Gear inspection."
They seemed quite flustered by my words.
Well, knights usually didn't have their belongings inspected.
"Open them."
"Ah... yes, sir."
Lois opened his bag first. He tried to take things out one by one, but it was tedious. I grabbed the bag myself and dumped it out.
Clatter.
"..."
A bottle of fine wine, cigars, a spare set of silk pajamas, high-end chocolates, emergency rations, a mana stone flashlight... it looked like he was going on a picnic.
"Throw everything away except the chocolate and emergency rations."
"Ye-yes? Ah, but this—"
"Throw it away."
"...Yes, sir."
Lois lowered his head.
Next was Dare Tan.
He was much the same. There was another spare set of silk pajamas.
Seriously, why did they love pajamas so much?
"Burn all the pajamas."
"Ah, Sir Knight. If I don't have those, I can't sleep..."
Dare Tan bit his lip with a face that looked like he was about to cry.
"Do you still think you're nineteen?"
"Huh? Ah, yes. That's right, I'm nineteen..."
"What?"
I glanced at Leon. Leon gave a bitter smile.
"Based on his birthday, I guess he hasn't turned twenty yet."
"Hah."
This was why the aristocratic society had collapsed.
"...Just burn them for now."
I handed the damn silk pajamas to Leon.
"Got it."
Finally, I upturned Hannah's bag. Most of it was food, and there were quite a few medicines and tools prepared for potential emergencies.
Roll, roll.
But then, something large and blue like a ball rolled out of the bag.
It was a vegetable.
A cabbage.
"..."
Roll, roll. I looked down at the three heads of cabbage lying on the floor.
Roll, roll. Now there were four.
They were very fresh.
"Why are there so many cabbages?"
"...I'm sorry."
Hannah bowed her head.
"I'm asking why."
"I... I like cabbages..."
My brow furrowed instantly.
"Do you know what a knight's greatest weakness is? Tanks? Cannons? Magic? No."
Crunch!
I crushed a cabbage with my hand. The leaves burst, and fragments flew everywhere.
"My cabbage..."
Despair flared in Hannah's eyes.
"It's hunger," I said, brushing off the crushed cabbage bits. "A knight consumes mana and physical strength simultaneously. That means you need as much fuel as a tank."
Training and actual combat are very different. No matter how intense training is, it doesn't consume as much as the real thing. This is because mana is kept at a very sensitive, heightened state on the battlefield.
Therefore, the longer an operation lasts, the more a knight must constantly replenish calories.
"I'll give you thirty minutes."
I told them.
"Refill them."
...
The cafeteria of the Bertem garrison base.
The three knights were in the middle of preparing food. They were using their heads in their own way.
First, they melted a large amount of butter in a pot to make oil, added sugar, and then finely chopped meat to concentrate it. It was a massive nutritional bomb of a preserved food, something written in a food manual in the library.
"Hey, is this really going to work? We're not going to die if we eat this, right?"
Lois and Dare Tan asked. Hannah, who was adding finely chopped cabbage only to her own pot, snapped at them.
"Ugh, how many times do I have to tell you? It works."
"It better. If it doesn't, I'm feeding it to you first."
Stir, stir.
They cooled the thick paste, portioned it into containers, and packed them neatly into their backpacks.
Hannah suddenly fiddled with her backpack.
"...But these Expansion Backpacks are really nice."
It felt like leather but was as tough as metal, and it was lightweight. Was it a functional fabric treated with mana?
"Ah~ Hannah, is this your first time seeing something like this?"
"It is. So what?"
At Hannah's blunt reply, Lois shrugged.
"To be honest, it's my first time, too. It's way better than mine."
"...What?"
Click, click. Hannah fastened the buckles of her backpack.
"We'll have to return these once the mission is over, right...?"
"Of course, you idiot. Were you planning on keeping it? Just looking at it, it must cost over 300,000."
"Three... three hundred thousand?"
Hannah's eyes widened. Dare Tan chuckled and shook his head.
"Different, so different~ I guess because you grew up without much, you want to keep things like this. You'll go to jail if you do. Is this why commoners embezzle so often?"
"Ah, seriously. Shut up, will you?"
"Wow~ in the capital, telling a noble to shut up would get you fined immediately. I'll let it slide this time."
Just then, Leon spoke from behind them, banging on a metal plate.
"Sir Knights. Time's almost up~"
"Ah, yes!"
They grabbed their food and stood before Maximilian in the supply room.
Maximilian completely emptied the backpacks again to check the contents, and then...
"...Now, let's get ready."
He nodded with satisfaction and stood up.
"We will act separately from the main force."
* * *
Whirrrrrrrrrrr—!
Above the Bertem canyon, a bone-chilling blizzard swept across the land.
Visibility was blurred into white, and the sound of the wind muffled their eardrums.
"Can everyone hear me?"
I asked, placing a hand to my ear.
— Leon. I hear you loud and clear.
— Yes. Lois. I hear you well.
— Dare Tan. Same here.
— Hannah. I hear you.
This was also a plug-in type communicator developed by the Lorenzo Academy. Using the highest purity mana stones, the mana waves were not distorted even in a blizzard like this. Each one cost upwards of 300,000.
We climbed to the highest ridge above the canyon cliffs. Below, the winding canyon stretched out like a snake. Before long, the elite unit led by Kai Han would enter that place.
I slowly closed and opened my eyes.
Ebenholtz 2nd Form: Mana Assimilation.
I concentrated mana into my optic nerves. My pupils were dyed silver, and the world beyond the blizzard was revealed clearly, like a black-and-white thermal image. Above the canyon, minute traces of heat were holding their breath among the rock crevices and snow.
The enemy's reconnaissance unit.
— This is Kai Han. The main force is entering the canyon.
Kai Han's voice came through my ear.
"Main force entry confirmed. We will move forward, matching their pace."
— Yes. Confirmed.
— Yes, sir!
"Phew..."
— Confirmed.
I drew my sword.
The essence of this mission was simple: clear out the scouts stationed in the canyon so they couldn't return to their main force.
"I will now begin briefing the enemy's positions."
I maneuvered through the blizzard, pinpointing the enemies' locations.
Shring—!
Every time my longsword flashed, red blood splattered, only to be buried again by the pure white blizzard. The entire process was extremely quiet.
The extinction of sound. No undignified screams echoed out.
...
—56 hours elapsed.
The elite unit led by Lieutenant Colonel Kai Han cleared the canyon after a forced march.
"I see it! It's a house!"
At the lead scout's shout, the soldiers lifted their heads.
Beyond the blizzard, the faint outline of a village appeared. It was a border village of the Zerpa Kingdom. Scattered old wooden houses, smoke rising from chimneys, a ranch where cows grazed leisurely. It was a peaceful rural scene, but the soldiers had already reached their limit. Their breath was ragged, and their legs were trembling.
"Phew..."
Kai Han let out a sigh of relief.
Maximilian's strategy was correct. There were no enemy ambushes, and the blizzard had served as a screen to hide the main force's march.
"Now we need rest."
Leading exhausted soldiers straight to the capital would be a suicidal act. They desperately needed a place to fill their bellies and warm their bodies.
"All troops, set up camp on the outskirts of the village and stand by! Do not lower your guard!"
Kai Han approached the largest house with his adjutant. It was a house with a fairly large cattle ranch attached.
Knock, knock.
"Is anyone there?"
The door opened slightly, and a pair of irritable eyes scanned them. Seeing the Imperial uniforms, the person slammed the door shut.
Thud. The sound of a bolt being slid home came from inside.
"It seems... our uniforms aren't very welcome."
Just as the adjutant gave a bitter smile...
Crunch. Crunch.
Someone approached, treading through the snow.
"Is there a problem?"
It was Maximilian. Having finished his mission above the canyon, he had just joined them.
"...Sir Knight. The residents aren't cooperating—"
Knock, knock.
Instead of answering, Maximilian knocked on the door. There was no response.
He let out a light sigh and spoke.
"I'm giving you a warning."
Lieutenant Colonel Han's eyes widened. Maximilian had just spoken not in the Imperial tongue, but in Zerpa.
"If you don't open the door now, you will die."
The translation was difficult, but the tone of voice made it clear.
It was a threat.
Knock, knock.
"Three."
He counted as he knocked.
"Two."
Before he could count to one, the door opened slightly with a creak.
Maximilian reached out and forced the door open wide.
BAM!
The door was ripped open violently, screws and hinges clattering to the floor. The family inside let out gasps of terror.
"Nice to meet you."
Maximilian smiled and strode inside. A family of seven was gathered in the room. There were three young children.
Kai Han's heart pounded. To clear the canyon quickly, they had minimized their gear. Therefore, resupplying through local looting was only natural, but...
"We are the relief force from the Empire. Our soldiers are quite hungry after their march."
Maximilian looked around at them and said, "Sell us the cows from your ranch."
A moment of silence fell.
Gulp. The head of the household swallowed hard and gathered the courage to shake his head.
"...I can't. Those cows are everything to our family. I absolutely cannot sell—"
"Family. Even a small household like this considers itself a family."
"..."
Slide. Maximilian reached into his coat. The family flinched and backed away.
A checkbook came out in his hand.
"Nothing is impossible."
Maximilian wrote down a number with a fountain pen and tore it out.
"If there are a few cows you're particularly attached to, I'll leave those out. I'll buy all the rest."
Slap. He set the check down on the dining table. The man picked it up with trembling hands. The moment he checked the amount, his eyes widened as if they were about to pop out.
It was a sight Lieutenant Colonel Han was familiar with.
"Th-this is..."
"If the exchange rate is difficult to calculate," Maximilian added kindly, "it should be roughly 1.3 billion Zent in Zerpa currency."
One million Imperial Dollars was equal to 1.3 billion Zerpa Zent.
In a rural area like this, it was an unimaginable sum.
"This is the Empire's reward for the villagers who have so warmly welcomed the Imperial Army."
"Ah..."
"It's enough money to build a more proper family from now on."
The check fluttered in the man's hand. A tiny smile spread across his lips.
Maximilian looked at him for a moment, then gestured to Lieutenant Colonel Han.
"First, feed the soldiers."
Kai Han hid his smile and nodded.
"...Yes, sir. Understood."
Maximilian did not exploit civilians. If it was absolutely necessary, he always paid more than the fair price. He maintained his grace and did not lose his dignity.
Perhaps it was because the act of looting itself was not aristocratic at all...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Read 62 more chapters ahead on NovelDex!
https://noveldex.io/series/semi-coercive-imperialist
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━