Chapter 217

Semi-Coercive Imperialist

The Structure of Revolution

Lucen Auction. The most extravagant auction house on the continent.

Countless works of art and rare artifacts displayed beneath glittering chandelier light. I knew this hotel-like layout well.

"Oh, wonderful to see you! Lord Metis!"

"It's been a while."

Flattering voices came from every direction. The auction's general manager wore an oily smile for the imperial nobles, and behind him stood the curator who had once tried to sell me forgeries.

"How are things in the Empire these days?"

"Greater than ever. Oh, by the way, have you read that book that just came out......"

I ignored them and walked past, flipping through the auction catalogue.

The highest-purity natural mana stone in existence, and an artifact core capable of amplifying magical power.

In my previous life, I had intended to use it to propose--

"Hahahaha!"

A burst of rough laughter erupted from one corner of the auction hall. My gaze drifted sideways. Three men in civilian clothes. Their rigid posture and distinctive bearing alone marked them as Imperial Guard.

"Please head inside! The auction is about to begin!"

At that same moment, the air inside the auction house shifted in a strange, subtle way. The virus inside me detected mana.

Thud--

My heart. The presence of Izenheim.

I stepped back and pressed myself into the deep shadow.

Thud--

Then I spotted someone walking along the corridor, a robe pulled deep over their head. A face hidden beneath the hood. That silhouette was familiar to me.

Ezel Runselot.

Thud--

She was not Izenheim, of course. But somewhere inside Lucen, Izenheim were present.

"......"

I followed her retreating figure with both eyes.

The reason I had bothered to come to Lucen today was, in the end, her "defection."

"......Ha."

A quiet laugh escaped me. Past me had assumed the Lucen theft was purely the work of the Revolutionary Faction, but Ezel had been the one who designed the operation. At some point I hadn't even noticed, she had been moved by ideas of equality and freedom.

That kind of change was not something I could do anything about. She believed in the innate rights of all peoples, and there was nothing I could do to change that.

--Ezel.

A memory surfaced. A conversation from some distant time, iron prison bars cold between us.

--You knew I was going to propose to you with that diamond, didn't you?

The Empire had fallen, and I had finally been captured by the republican forces. Those were the words I'd said to Ezel then.

--......Huh?

She had been working so hard to keep a serious face while looking at me, but in that moment she reverted completely to the Ezel of childhood.

--What are you even talking about?

Back then I had genuinely believed she had stolen the diamond in advance because she was afraid I'd confess my feelings with it. What an idiot I was.

"Pfft."

A memory that still made me laugh, even now.

And yet all of it was gone. Meaningless time, erased. No matter what form it took, a happy ending was something we could never reach.

"......"

I leaned against the wall and breathed slowly.

Thud--

The Izenheim heartbeat stirring inside my chest set my body moving again.

* * *

The campus of Imperial Central University.

Moonlight Below, written by Knight Maximilian, had swept through every corner of university life. Students gathered in groups to analyze its passages, and papers supporting or expanding on the ideology embedded in the autobiography had already begun pouring out. Criticism and commentary pieces filled the campus papers day after day.

But dissent was shut out entirely.

A handful of students who pointed out the dangerous elitism woven through Moonlight Below were immediately branded reactionaries and met with ferocious condemnation. Some received anonymous threatening letters. Others were dragged outside their dormitories late at night and beaten by groups. The police never came. If anything, society seemed to approve.

"--Ah, here he comes!"

The grand conference room of the Imperial Central University humanities faculty. The dean and senior faculty members, along with several doctoral students, had gathered as if waiting for someone. The door swung open toward their expectant gazes, and a man stepped through.

Johann Georg Goetze.

The dropout who had once drifted on the margins, ground down by poverty and a difficult upbringing and a resentment toward society that had never found a proper outlet, had returned as Ebenholtz's closest confidant.

Clunk. Clunk.

Johann wore nothing more than a clean suit. No flashy accessories, no proud posturing with his chin held high. Just as Maximilian always did.

"......"

He looked around at them without a word.

The professors who had once dismissed and cold-shouldered him. The former classmates who had quietly sneered at his poverty and his ideas. They were now out front, clapping harder than anyone, welcoming him with open arms.

Bitter old memories flickered through him without warning, but he chose not to show any of it. It was time to cut loose from the person he used to be.

"The paper."

Johann set a thick folder down on the table.

A paper that took Maximilian's ideas from Moonlight Below, gave them scholarly form, unified the scattered and fragmented theories circulating throughout the Empire, and drove them forward as a single coherent body of thought. Put simply, it stripped away all the literary elements of the autobiography and extracted only the skeleton of its ideology, distilled to its essence.

"Oh, this is......"

"Knight-nim reviewed it personally."

At Johann's words, the hands reaching for the document stopped short.

"When you say Knight-nim......"

Every head turned carefully, reading Johann's expression.

Recently, a new dean and a wave of young professors had been appointed to the humanities faculty. Most of them owed their positions to the Imperial Guard's influence, or to connections with powerful nobles at the imperial court. Given that the humanities faculty dealt in ideology and ideas, rising to any important post was simply impossible once you fell out of favor with those above you.

"The one you're all thinking of."

They each had their own backers, of course. But Johann was different. He knew it himself. The person he served was qualitatively unlike those counterfeit nobles.

"I mean Knight Maximilian."

Everyone in this room probably already understood. Whether in private or in public, the standing to openly speak the name "Maximilian" aloud. The very fact that he could represent that name like this was itself a form of authority within the Empire that only a handful could claim......

......

Meanwhile, change had also come to Empire Point, the Empire's top military academy.

A new mandatory course called [Mental Conditioning] had been established. The directive had come down directly from the imperial household, and several officials had even been dispatched in person to Empire Point.

"Ah, good to meet you."

A Ministry of Defense official extended a hand to one of Empire Point's instructors.

"You were Knight Hanna-nim's teacher, weren't you?"

Phillips, who had been Hanna Usar's assigned instructor, had been appointed as the head instructor responsible for the newly established [Mental Conditioning] course.

"Ha. Teacher might be too strong a word. I was just her instructor during her cadet years."

"Oh, come on. When I mentioned I was coming here, Knight Hanna-nim said to please take good care of things."

"Well, is that so?"

A small, unwarranted pride swelled in his chest.

"How is Hanna getting on in the order these days?"

"Wonderfully."

The official answered with bright eyes.

"Her performance and results are far and away the best among her cohort of knights. She's living proof that even a commoner without connections can succeed in the Empire, as long as they have the ability -- and as long as they are pure-blooded Aran."

Phillips nodded with satisfaction. A student's success was always a teacher's joy.

"Yes. I'm truly glad to hear it. This way, please."

The two of them walked together to Empire Point's conference room, where imperial court officials and Empire Point instructors had gathered to discuss the curriculum and direction of the upcoming classes.

"The text we will be adopting as the primary material for [Mental Conditioning] is this one."

A hardcover edition of Moonlight Below sat at the center of the table.

Phillips continued as the person in charge.

"First, we plan to separate chapter one into its own dedicated course under the heading 'Knight Discourse.' Chapter one depicts the qualities a knight of the Empire must carry, an unbreakable will, a readiness for sacrifice, the noble values of the Knight Doctrine -- all rendered with considerable elegance......"

The instructors and officials nodded along.

What was it that Empire Point's cadets were after? In a military academy this grueling, at an age this young, suffering through the grind day after day until they nearly broke -- what drove them? The noble rank and honor of being a knight of the Empire. That was the only destination they kept their eyes fixed on as they ran themselves into the ground. Moonlight Below's first chapter, filled with the spirit and purpose of a knight's life, was therefore perfectly suited as nourishment for that drive and passion.

"Chapter two covers the true nature of the Aran. Chapters three and four deal with the hierarchy of races and the justification for it."

Phillips read through the structure of the book as naturally as reciting the alphabet.

"Those sections are theoretically quite demanding, so they should provide solid material for a rigorous examination."

"......Wow. We can't find a single thing to add. You've clearly read this book extensively, Instructor?"

The officials asked, sounding genuinely impressed.

"Ha. Not nearly as much as you all have."

Phillips answered modestly, though in truth he had nearly memorized every line in the book. He had bought it the day it was released and read it cover to cover. He had then purchased several hundred more copies out of his own pocket and donated them to his hometown.

"Also, Knight Maximilian-nim has given special permission for the autobiography's content to be reedited as a textbook."

"Oh, is that so?"

Grasping the true intent behind each word and sentence, adding annotations in the margins, pulling specific paragraphs and appending historical context -- all of it compiled into a proper textbook.

"Of course, the final version will need to pass Knight-nim's review......"

Phillips was a commoner-born pure Aran. So was Hanna.

But Jacob, who had tried to frame Hanna, had been a subspecies. He had been Izenheim.

"Personally, I think chapters three and four could be studied all year long and still not be exhausted. There's a great deal to unpack in those sections in particular."

Watching Maximilian and Hanna from a distance, Phillips had felt something swell in his chest. He had been a vocal supporter of the changes Maximilian had brought to Empire Point -- the elevation of instructors' standing, the abolition of discrimination between nobles and commoners, the exclusion of cadets' parents from interfering -- and through it all he had arrived at a firmer conviction in himself as a pure Aran.

"In addition, for the textbook editing work, we will be drawing on the paper recently published by Dr. Johann Georg......"

And so they prepared, together, the lessons on the ideology that future knights would spend their entire lives fighting for as their deepest conviction.

* * *

--Lucen's high-end auction will now begin!

The curtain rose in a grand hall where a massive chandelier swayed like a cluster of jewels.

I sat in the tiered seating and watched the crowd quietly. Ezel was in the VIP balcony seats, just as I had expected.

--Lot one! The legacy of the Romanov dynasty, the "Red Tears" tiara. Crafted from gemstones imbued with ancient magic......

The auctioneer's amplified voice rang through the hall, and I turned over a fairly cold-eyed thought.

Would it be better to just kill Ezel now?

Was I keeping her alive out of nothing more than petty sentiment and old attachment, letting a future threat to the Empire survive for no good reason?

......No.

Look closer, and it was actually the opposite.

The fact that Ezel wanted revolution was something only I knew, in this world, right now.

--Lot seven! The "Heart of Frost," excavated from the northern ice seas. This artifact was created by an unnamed spirit mage......

By now she was probably active as an informant for the Revolutionary Faction. At first it would be compassion and support for the poor, relief work for the persecuted. But when the Empire finally crossed the threshold and began committing racial massacres, she would turn to full-scale revolution.

For now I could keep her alive, monitor her movements, and still draw benefit from them.

--......Lot seventeen! The "Silver Diamond." There is nothing I need to say about this piece. The opening bid is five hundred thousand imperial dollars.

Lot seventeen was finally brought to the podium. The Silver Diamond. The highest-grade artifact catalyst on the continent, capable of storing mana in its most amplified form. Something I had never managed to acquire before the regression......

Maybe that was why.

Honestly, I still felt something for it.

--Bidder ninety-one, six hundred thousand imperial dollars! Oh, and before we know it, seven hundred thousand! A straight call for one million!

The Silver Diamond had its admirers, as expected. Fierce competition broke out in an instant among the nobles, mages, and businesspeople.

--Bidder one-thirty-seven, two million imperial dollars!

One-thirty-seven. Ezel raised her paddle.

--Bidder two-oh-eight, three million imperial dollars! Oh, and back to one-thirty-seven! Three-point-five million!

The numbers shot toward the ceiling.

--Two-oh-eight, five million!

Five million dollars. The man holding paddle two-oh-eight was a great merchant from the Prozen Republic. Ezel hesitated at that figure.

Before the regression, I had been close to Ezel, and I had raised a paddle for her.

--Five million! Three calls and it's sold. Five million, once. Five million, twice......

Paddle one-oh-one.

I picked it up. A dealer had drifted to my side without my noticing, and I said quietly:

"Ten million."

Ten million imperial dollars.

The dealer flinched but relayed the number to the auctioneer without delay.

--One, one-oh-one! One-oh-one with ten million! Ten million!

Every eye in the room turned to me.

False teeth fitted to my jaw, colored contacts in my eyes, my hair dyed and my skin darkened with tanning.

--Ten million. Ten million. Ten million. Yes, sold to bidder one-oh-one for ten million!

Felix Renoir, looking nothing at all like Maximilian, was revealed to the room.

That was as far as my plan went.

Through this incident, I intended to deduce the structure of the Revolutionary Faction.

......

The transport of purchased lots from Lucen was carried out under strict secrecy and heavy security. Sometimes by ship, sometimes by truck, sometimes by rail, and even occasionally by plane -- and every mode of transport always departed simultaneously to throw off any pursuers.

But the Revolutionary Faction had already pinpointed which route carried the real item. Precious intelligence passed down from the Veil, their revolutionary stronghold.

"......Arrived."

The comrades waited at the platform for the Mantra Express, the train line running toward the Empire. They had concealed themselves carefully and purchased tickets for different cars.

"......"

Celine Dubois -- editor-in-chief of the Jemion Daily and the woman who had operated behind the rabbit mask at Gigantes -- was among them.

She had arranged her schedule so that the trip overlapped with an official newspaper assignment, arriving at the platform naturally, without drawing anyone's suspicion.

But...... something was wrong.

Celine pretended to read a newspaper while scanning the platform.

Too many people with strange energy. Eyes too sharp and bodies too economical in their movements to be ordinary travelers.

She was watching them sidelong when--

--Rustle.

Someone brushed past and slipped a note into her hand.

She unfolded it, tucking it behind the cover of her magazine.

[ This is Prozen intelligence. ]

Prozen? Celine's brow creased slightly.

[ It appears intelligence reached them that the suspect in the assassination of Minister Louis Marceau is in Lucen. Do not engage. Just watch. ]

The assassin who killed Louis Marceau. The terrorist who had thrown all of Prozen into chaos several years ago.

"......"

But an unexpected thought came to Celine just then.

How had this information reached them?

The answer was simple.

There was a "comrade" inside Prozen intelligence, too.