The Central Army Commander tried to keep Kyle Ripley’s discharge application hidden for as long as possible, but the rumors had already spread rapidly.
That was inevitable.
Kyle, who had always been responsible for handling every unwanted task dumped on the Special Corps, was using his impending discharge as an excuse to go on strike.
More precisely, he was rejecting every assignment that had not come directly from the higher command or was not part of his official duties.
“Commander Kyle!”
A young officer hurriedly approached Kyle, who was leisurely drinking coffee and leafing through documents inside the unit headquarters.
Anyone could tell at a glance that something serious had happened.
“We received a message from the Security Corps. It appears that a problem has occurred at the place we previously supported. They have urgently requested assistance….”
“Ah! I am sorry, but we will not be able to support them.”
“…Pardon?”
“Tell them that I am far too busy dealing with the discharge procedures.”
Kyle spoke with complete ease.
The officer’s eyes widened, but he quickly recovered and continued.
“Then could we at least send some of the unit members…?”
“That will be difficult as well. Not because of me, but because of my subordinates.”
Kyle pointed to the discharge applications piled on his desk.
The moment the officer saw the thick stack of documents, he realized that they could not possibly belong to only one or two people.
“Surely….”
Remembering that most of Unit 6’s personnel had followed Kyle here, the officer looked at him with an expression that plainly said they were fucked.
“More than half of the unit has submitted discharge applications. I am already busy dealing with all of this. Try requesting assistance from another unit.”
“They all said they were busy….”
“Oh dear… How unfortunate.”
Kyle spoke as though it had nothing to do with him.
Normally, an urgent request could not be ignored so arbitrarily.
Then why could Kyle refuse it?
Because it was not truly an urgent request.
Now that he was leaving the military, he had no loyalty left to spare for other people’s circumstances.
“Is there truly no way you can help? The matter appears to be connected to an official from the central government….”
The officer tried to threaten him in a timid manner, but Kyle raised the shield of proper procedure.
“Get authorization from the higher command and come back.”
“….”
Kyle smiled brightly and waved his hand as though telling the officer to get lost.
The officer departed with a gloomy expression.
He would probably be thoroughly berated by his superiors, but what could be done?
Incidents like this would become commonplace from now on. He might as well grow accustomed to them early.
Of course, that young officer would not be the only one reprimanded.
“Commander.”
“Come in.”
At the sound of another knock, Kyle granted permission to enter.
Another young officer appeared, carrying an urgent request for support from yet another department.
Kyle gave him precisely the same answer he had given the previous officer.
In the past, he might have accepted the request to make someone indebted to him or to secure another extension of service.
But why should he concern himself with such matters when he was already leaving the military?
Naturally, those who intended to linger around the military as reservists after their discharge would have to work diligently until the very end.
Kyle had no such need.
None of his subordinates in Unit 6 wanted to remain in the military either, so they had nothing holding them back.
“Emergency! Unit 6 has gone on strike!”
The officers gathered in the room frowned at the words of Unit 1’s commander.
What they had expected had finally happened.
On the very day Kyle submitted his discharge application, a large number of Unit 6’s members had also requested discharge.
Normally, it would have been impossible for so many people to leave at once.
However, just like Kyle, they had repeatedly been threatened with honorable discharge.
As a result, there was nothing preventing them from accepting those offers now.
「Central Army Garbage Disposal Unit Goes on Strike!」
No matter how often people pointed fingers at them and cursed them, Unit 6 was reasonably famous.
They had taken on the cesspool alone and accumulated enough experience to clean up every mess thoroughly.
Now that they were about to disappear, it was only natural for everyone else to be irritated.
The situation inconvenienced both the other units within the Special Corps and the higher-ups who would now have to entrust their cleanup work to useless vermin.
However, these trivial inconveniences were not the true problem.
“Did you investigate?”
“Yes. There have been no signs whatsoever that anyone contacted him recently.”
The Director of the Intelligence Bureau, Grinnell, frowned at his subordinate’s report.
“What the hell is going on?”
It was absurd for someone as important as the Director of the Intelligence Bureau to concern himself with a mere lieutenant colonel.
However, Kyle’s public reputation had been deliberately distorted.
There were three principal reasons the higher-ups found Kyle troublesome.
The information he had accumulated while cleaning up their messes.
His unofficial disciples.
The connections he had forged on the battlefield.
Did people truly condemn Kyle merely because he was a dumping ground for unwanted work?
Of course not.
The official justification for demoting him into the Special Corps had been his repeated defeats.
A review of the major wars in which he had participated showed the following results.
Northern Fortress Defense Battle — Defeat
Eastern Grand Battle — Defeat
Eastern Ghost Forest Subjugation Operation — Defeat
Southeastern Monster Wave Defense Operation — Defeat
Southern Large-Scale Rebel Suppression Operation — Failure
Every major engagement listed there had ended in defeat.
Kyle had not held a high-ranking command position, so one might assume those defeats had little to do with him.
However, they provided more than enough justification to block his promotion.
They branded him an incompetent commander and buried him in the Special Corps, where the military gathered its failures and undesirables.
Someone in Grinnell’s position, however, inevitably knew what lay beneath the official record.
Kyle had spent nearly twenty years in the military, clawing his way from an ordinary enlisted soldier to a commissioned officer.
Could an incompetent man truly have accomplished that?
Many of the core members of Central Army Special Corps Unit 6—the unit mocked as the army’s dumping ground—were fiercely loyal to Kyle.
Their abilities were also anything but ordinary.
The same was true of the people who had been deliberately scattered throughout the military.
Most importantly, Kyle’s unofficial disciples were individuals whom even the military leadership watched closely.
Could a man capable of raising people like them truly be incompetent?
Even if Kyle himself possessed abilities that did not warrant such extreme caution, the people connected to him were already enough to cause a problem.
They had long since surpassed the level at which they could simply be crushed by force, as they might have been in the past.
Might makes right.
Just as the military’s old maxim declared, Kyle’s associates and unofficial disciples had proven that truth through their own strength.
They had begun rampaging across battlefields with monstrous power.
Perhaps they could have been dealt with when they were still weak.
Now that they had grown so powerful, however, touching them without proper justification would invite disaster.
They had become influential enough to make even the Intelligence Bureau uncomfortable.
How would they react when they heard that Kyle had suddenly applied for discharge?
“…This is driving me insane.”
Kyle’s case had been temporarily pushed aside because the empire was already in turmoil.
Now, he had chosen that exact moment to create another crisis.
The empire’s internal situation was a complete disaster.
Was the situation outside the empire any better?
Of course not.
The Eastern Front had entered a temporary lull, but no one would be surprised if fighting erupted again at any moment.
The Northern Front was barely holding after the collapse of its fortress.
The southeastern fortress was also in a precarious state.
Was it not said that people united when confronted by an external enemy?
“Which bastard came up with that nonsense…? Hah….”
The Director of the Intelligence Bureau frowned irritably.
As the empire began to waver, its internal affairs had only grown even more chaotic.
The central agencies were walking across a sheet of thin ice.
Then Kyle abruptly submitted his discharge application.
Could this truly be a coincidence?
Kyle had willingly acted as a Cleaner while forming connections throughout the empire.
Because he knew so much about the higher-ups’ corruption, several factions had considered making use of him.
However, Kyle did not merely know the secrets of one faction.
He knew the dirty secrets of nearly all of them.
That made him equally burdensome to everyone.
For that reason, the factions had reached a tacit agreement that none of them would recruit him.
But what would happen once these rumors spread?
Would they still honor that agreement?
“From this moment onward, investigate thoroughly whether Kyle has made contact with any outside party.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Send a message to the Central Army Commander. I need to see him immediately. We have to buy some time, at the very least.”
At the Director’s order, his secretary hurried away to make the arrangements.
Kyle had thrown not only Central Command but even the Intelligence Bureau into chaos.
Yet the man responsible remained completely at ease.
Since most of Unit 6’s personnel had submitted discharge applications, they inevitably had to begin the handover process.
“Beginning today, our unit will commence the handover procedure.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Organize all the information in your possession and submit your reports as quickly as possible.”
Kyle’s subordinates responded thunderously.
With relieved expressions, they immediately began preparing for the full handover.
Those who had doubted them until the very end finally realized the truth when they saw Unit 6 behaving as though they genuinely intended to leave the military.
Everyone watched Unit 6 begin the handover process with grim expressions, as though their good days had finally come to an end.
Meanwhile, Kyle compiled the information that had already been organized and went to report it to the Corps Commander.
The moment the Corps Commander read the report, his face turned deathly pale, and his hands began trembling.
The documents contained information that a washed-up lieutenant general who was merely waiting for retirement could never hope to handle.
“You… Why are you giving this to me…?”
“It would be cleaner to hand it directly to the next commander of Unit 6, but I believe the contents would be too burdensome for that person to handle. That is why I brought it directly to you, Corps Commander.”
Cold sweat poured down the Corps Commander’s face.
Kyle had gathered every matter the Corps Commander had dumped on him because he did not want to handle it himself, then brought it all back at once.
“In addition to this, I will submit further reports once I have compiled all the information possessed by the individual unit members.”
“No….”
The Corps Commander stared at him in panic.
If used properly, the information could become a weapon that might extend his military career beyond the rank of lieutenant general.
However, one wrong move could cost him his head.
Still, it was not too late.
‘If I tell him to deal with it himself right now….’
Just as the thought crossed his mind, Kyle spoke as though placing a final period at the end of the matter.
“Ah! Before coming here, I told everyone who had sent requests to me that they should obtain your authorization first. I also informed them that I would report all of my previous duties to you, so they will likely contact you directly from now on.”
The Corps Commander trembled as he looked at Kyle’s radiant smile.
Kyle wore an innocent expression, as though he had no idea what he had done.
However, every part of this had been meticulously calculated.
Kyle had no intention of remaining burdened by these matters even after his discharge.
He planned to dump all the evidence and everything else he possessed onto the Corps Commander before leaving the military.
It would certainly be a problem that Unit 6 knew about their corruption.
However, the information now sitting in the Corps Commander’s hands would become a far more immediate concern.
Their priorities would inevitably shift.
That would give Kyle more than enough time to flee to another country or hide in the countryside.
“I retained these materials because you ordered me to do so, but with the handover approaching, I believed it was now proper to report them.”
“….”
Kyle explained how far the handover procedure had progressed, then left the Corps Commander’s office.
As he returned to Unit 6, officers rushed frantically through the corridors.
The cesspool that Unit 6 had carried alone was beginning to spill outward, and everyone was desperately running around trying to deal with it.
They would now pay dearly for all the comfort they had enjoyed until now.
Kyle and his subordinates, on the other hand, intended to enjoy some comfort of their own until their discharge.
After spending the next month or two completing the handover, Kyle could prepare for his departure, take his accumulated long-term leave, and then leave the military for good.
It would not last long, but he intended to enjoy every moment of peace until then.
Although the unit members were busy with the handover, they all wore broad smiles simply because they had no outside assignments.
That was only natural.
Unit 6 had never enjoyed the rest that every other unit took for granted.
Few things were more miserable than being the only person denied something everyone else received.
Now that the situation had been reversed, they could not help but rejoice.
Kyle watched his delighted subordinates before entering his office and sitting in the creaking chair.
“This is nice.”
Seated in the commander’s office, Kyle gazed leisurely through the window at the sky.
Since arriving here, he had never once experienced such peace.
With a more relaxed expression than ever before, he stared blankly outside and sank into thought.
“What should I do from now on?”
Like most people preparing to leave the military, Kyle found himself contemplating the ordinary question of what he would do afterward.
It should have been frightening.
Yet Kyle’s expression had never looked brighter.
Of course, unlike Kyle’s innocent smile, the dark clouds hanging over the empire were about to grow even heavier with the news of his discharge.