Gaston Philippe.
This fucking idiot of a bastard had no ability at all, yet he’d strutted around trusting in nothing but the fact that he was of the Empire’s pure bloodline.
―You thought you were one of us now, just because we were friendly to you?
―You bastard. How long are you going to keep milking that measly admission of yours? Read the room.
And so on.
His drunken habit of sneering at me whenever he got the chance stung to the bone.
The military academy made equality a school rule, but it was so unequal that equality had to be set down as a rule in the first place.
If the inequality had ended with drunken ramblings, I wouldn’t have gone so far as to kill him like this.
He was the bastard who’d egged on the Emperor’s madness and cemented racism. The bastard who’d made himself the axis and led the twelve lords to create the ‘Round Table of Thirteen=Purification Alliance,’ putting agitators against foreigners to work and justifying the massacre. The captain of the twelve assassins he’d sent to kill me so he could embezzle my family’s fortune forever.
‘That’s it. Like this!’
‘This is how I’ll kill them. All...... every last one of them!’
Unmistakably, this was assassination.
Once I’d killed him without anyone knowing, what I had to do, and how to do it, came to me on their own.
In the past, I’d trusted Gaston Philippe and let my guard down.
I’d believed the Achilles’ heel of his that I held was absolute.
After my regression, Gaston Philippe trusted me and let his guard down.
By putting on a mask of loyalty, I’d made him depend on me absolutely.
Having paid him back in his own way, I knew how to live without needing to agonize over it. I’d realized the purpose of my regression.
Assassination—yes—was the beginning of treason.
I, in this life, would live as a traitor.
The Purification Alliance had been a human error. As those human errors studied together here and grew bloated, it expanded into a system error.
By removing the human errors, I had to prevent the system error.
In a way that would never be discovered, like today, I would find every member of the Purification Alliance and kill them all.
The human errors who would form the Purification Alliance and slaughter five million people must not survive on this earth. The future must never repeat itself.
With the face of someone who knew nothing of death, I stood on the stairs and climbed up, one step at a time.
I saw my father, openly relieved, giving a small nod.
Next, I saw my mother, young, lovely, and vibrantly alive, smiling brightly.
Shifting my gaze, I also saw the large crowd of freshmen who’d reached the Grand Field first. After that, I saw the dozen or so who’d come up with me. Those who’d barely made it, like me, were low-grade mana holders. People with no means whatsoever of finding out what had happened in the lake.
On the lakebed where Gaston had sunk in death, one or two others had already sunk as well.
***
Stepping over the bitter tears of the forty percent who had been eliminated, the consolations of their families, and the corpses of the four carried out―three, in the past―the military academy held its entrance ceremony.
It was a solemn ceremony, brimming with resolve.
The oath always included some line or other about loyalty unto death.
After the ceremony, the three of us arrived at the restaurant of the most expensive hotel in the imperial capital. To celebrate my admission into the military academy with excellent (?) grades.
We pulled up at the main entrance and left the car with the bellboy. As we were about to go inside, a commotion broke out at one side of the driveway.
“I saw Viscount Jost go in here, I did! Please, let me in to see him!”
From the rounded accent of the man demanding entry, his frizzy, curly hair, brown skin, and deep double eyelids, he was from the Kingdom of Beiruden. His gaunt frame in his mid-forties, sunken eyes, rough hands, and shabby clothes gave a good idea of his social standing.
The man stopping him had black hair, black eyes, and a brawny build. He was unmistakably a Charleturean.
“No entry, you see. Please, just go on home now.”
“I fixed up Viscount Jost’s mansion for six months without a day’s rest, I did. Fixed the roof, swapped out every last sewer pipe, and painted all the inner walls of the annex fresh. But never mind wages, he’s not even paid for the materials. What am I to live on?”
“Not even a small disturbance is allowed at the hotel, see. If I upset the honored guests, I’m the one who’ll take a beating, now.”
The one stopping him was pleading, and the one trying to get in was pleading too.
The one stopping him was a Charleturean, and the one trying to get in was a Beirudenian.
Both foreigners, already distinguishable by their looks and their way of speaking.
Watching two foreigners at the bottom pitted against each other for the sake of the imperial nobility’s dignity made me sick to my stomach.
“Please, let me in. I’ll plead quietly and come right back out. Saying he’ll pay, he’ll pay, then not paying a single day’s wages, let alone materials, and eating at a hotel—it’s too much. My little one is starving to death as we speak. Please, please, just let me see hi— AAAAGH.”
A man who appeared to be Viscount Jost’s knight kicked the jaw of the foreigner kneeling and begging, sending him flying.
“Get lost. Next time, I’ll slit your throat.”
The knight turned and walked off, leaving the foreign laborer sprawled on the ground.
The hotel guard, a Charleturean, glanced warily at the knight before helping up the Beirudenian who’d begged to be let in. Both kept their mouths shut, hushing each other.
As I’d just seen, appearance distinguished people first, and the language that followed confirmed the distinction.
Distinction led to discrimination, and, just like that knight, to violence, yet the system didn’t punish the knight.
As the system cemented distinction, it became dehumanized.
‘Right. Massacres don’t happen overnight.’
It was a scene I must have seen in the past too, but it wasn’t in my memory.
No—the past me would have ignored the commotion and gone straight in the moment I got out of the car, so I wouldn’t have seen it.
“Let us go in.”
Only after watching the scene to the very end did my father turn around. Keenly aware that his position didn’t allow him to step in, he kept his lips pressed firmly together.
I hadn’t known. From this point on, discrimination and cold treatment toward foreigners had begun in the Empire. That discrimination ripened and spread into anti-immigrant sentiment, then became fixed in persecution, plunder, and violence. At this point, I should have stopped the plunder and discrimination beginning across society.
To complete this discrimination and plunder, Gaston had founded the Purification Alliance. By framing me, who’d always been a thorn in his eye, for treason, he must have found his reason for the massacre.
‘Karl Jost.’
The second son of Viscount Brendan Jost.
My classmate at the military academy.
He didn’t hang around with Gaston’s crowd. Nor did he form a crowd of his own.
Was it at eight? A prodigy who blossomed in magic at a relatively young age.
He found everything tiresome, slacked off, and skipped classes often, yet before anyone knew it, his magic power would have risen. The owner of a diabolical talent.
After graduating from the academy, he became the strongest on the continent and ascended to Constellation one step ahead of me.
The guy I’d once been jealous of, wondering why such outstanding ability had been given to a bastard like that.
And now his family was inside this very hotel. Viscount Jost owned a very solid shipbuilding company and a silver mine, and he was active in central politics as well. There was no way he was short of money.
Foreigners’ labor could rightfully be used without pay. That must have been how he thought.
Not a single newspaper reported on this rampant discrimination against foreigners. If politics wouldn’t act, then at least the press should do its job.
I have to have the press.
A press with power.
‘Son of a bitch.’
As I cursed Viscount Jost inwardly, my resolve hardened.
Our family walked across the lobby and stood in front of the elevator.
“Professor, you’ve arrived? Oh my, young Eigenhardt, congratulations on getting into General.”
The hotel’s director came running into the lobby and bowed his head before my father.
“Ah, there is something I wish to tell you, so this is good timing. Let us talk for a moment. Dear, please wait a moment.”
“Yes, go ahead.”
My father put a hand on the director’s back and went into the office beside the front desk. The talk ended fairly quickly; the director headed toward the entrance, and my father came back toward the elevator.
“Dear, you handled it well, didn’t you?”
“It just so happens our hotel needed repairs here and there.”
“Of course.”
From my parents’ conversation, I could guess the situation.
There was a side of their lives I hadn’t known.
***
The elevator doors opened, and our family, having swapped our feelings for calm expressions, pressed the button for the 55th floor.
Arriving on the 55th floor, I scanned the list of reservations written on the panel at the restaurant entrance. Even if Viscount Jost was here, there was nothing I could do, yet I checked the list anyway.
You could say I wanted to see that mug of his.
They were in Window Room 3.
The cost of today’s single meal likely exceeded a month’s wages for the laborer who’d repaired their mansion.
The more I chewed on the thought, the more bitter my mouth tasted.
In the past, I hadn’t tried to see this bare face of the Empire.
As we crossed the room toward the window-side VIP room, the general manager ran over and blocked our way.
“Professor Hubert, you’ve arrived. Young Drowpis, congratulations on entering General Military Academy.”
The general manager hesitated, wearing a forced smile.
It meant something uncomfortable had happened here as well. So instead of thanking him aloud, I silently bowed my head.
“It seems Marquis Leo Herzl has arrived.”
My father had seen a car bearing the crest of the House of Marquis Leo Herzl at the entrance, so he guessed and asked.
“Well...... Yes, he has. He wanted the window-side VIP room.”
“Of course you must give it to him. Then where will we be seated?”
My father asked with a face that showed no hurt whatsoever. His voice held no anger or disappointment either. He was the very picture of a CEO who put the customer first.
“We’ve prepared a place by the window on the opposite side. We’ve put up partitions instead. Mr. Klam’s family has already arrived.”
“Excellent.”
This meant all ten personal rooms in this hotel restaurant had been taken by the Empire’s high nobles and the local magnates who’d come up from the provinces. It was the day of General Military Academy’s entrance ceremony, after all.
My father had extracted nuclear energy from the elemental magic arts and laid a supply network like blood vessels beneath the Empire. For the convenience of the Empire’s citizens, he supplied energy through that network.
The people of the Empire, who had used wood-burning stoves and mana batteries that had to be swapped out daily, came to use the energy my father supplied.
There was no risk of fire and no smoke stinging their eyes. No inconvenience of blackouts from drained mana batteries. It also cost half as much as the wood-burning stoves that poor commoners mostly used, so it was economical too.
The people of the Empire paid monthly according to how much magic nuclear energy they used. If they fell three months behind, their energy supply was cut off, but no one complained. Rather, they worried that one household might get the supply cut for the whole area.
In other words, every citizen of the Empire was a customer of my father’s company.
Which meant that even at this moment, money was pouring into my father’s pockets.
The system in which production and supply became wealth was run by <Puffer Solar>, the energy company my father had founded. Armand von Klam was the head of Puffer Solar. He was an immigrant and also my father’s disciple. He’d probably been seated in the VIP room before being pushed out.
“The food will taste the same.”
My father tightened his grip on my elbow. It was a desperate gesture asking me not to resist. I put my hand on the back of his and patted it. To reassure him.
It was saddening, though. That my father—the richest man in the Empire, the authority on the elemental magic arts, and a major shareholder of this very hotel—had reserved a room and still been pushed aside by the Empire’s nobles.
In the past, unable to bear this inequality, I’d stormed out of the hotel.
Saying it would be better to eat at home.
That caught Gaston’s eye.
Gaston followed me out to the lobby, suggested I join his family, and pulled me along by the shoulder.
―Whoa, whoa. Calm down. My future aide, let’s eat together and talk about a constructive academy life.
His words were sweet. I also wanted to live up to the shining look in my mother’s eyes, since she secretly wished to sit across from the duchess. Wanting to use him as a stepping stone into the center, I let him talk me into it and went up to the room.
First in theory and practical, top twenty percent in the interview.
Even though they’d pushed me down in the interview, I was first in the overall admission rankings. Everyone knew why I wasn’t first in the interview, but during the meal, Duke Michiel de Philippe said something off the mark.
―The academy recognizes a character that stands out. Have faith and wait. Surely the professors are not so incompetent?
What I’d taken as praise was a warning that, as a mere outsider, I shouldn’t get above myself. It was also a signal that good things would come if I lined up behind his son and pushed him forward.
―Did you do separate training to raise your mana sensitivity?
―No, sir.
―Then you must have been born able to open and work your circulation pathways.
―.......
―Professor Eigenhardt, how about researching ways to share mana?
The point he was driving at was a suggestion to research using me as his son’s mana reservoir.
I failed to catch something that easy.
―Black hair and black eyes. Very exotic. And over 190 centimeters tall, too. So attractive it is almost enviable.
It was a disparaging remark, calling me a barbarian, a savage, uncivilized race. In the past, since it was offered with apparent goodwill and even carried envy, I’d let it pass without a second thought.
Some things only become clear in hindsight.
Whether or not he’d heard that I’d volunteered to be his son Gaston’s aide, and that it was with my help that his son had climbed the stone wall and crossed the artificial lake, Duke Philippe watched me with favorable eyes throughout the meal.
My breakneck promotion to captain might also have been thanks to that.
I’d thought that, since I’d gotten his son into the military academy, Duke Philippe would at least pay for the meal, but it was my father, honored to share a table with the duke, who paid.
Money couldn’t beat power.
In the past, Duke Philippe had been so arrogant; today, he was holding the funeral of his youngest son.
What happened every year had simply happened.
―Oh my, why him of all people!
―How awful!
―Tsk, tsk, tsk.
I recalled the sighs that had poured from the stands when the Ether Lake was cleared away.
A third-time applicant had held on in the artificial lake, determined to get into the military academy no matter what, and sank as a corpse. Several of the Empire’s daily newspapers printed this as free papers and handed them out as extras.
The eldest son of a high-ranking knight, the second son of some aide to a member of the lower house, and the eldest daughter of some local merchant who was an imperial citizen had also died, but their deaths were pushed aside.
Lungs that burst after being devoured by mana.
Cause of death: drowning.
This alone was the truth of Gaston Philippe’s death.
***
TL Note: In the raw, the Beirudenian laborer speaks in a Gyeongsang-style regional dialect and the Charleturean guard in a Gangwon-style dialect, marking both as provincial outsiders. A light rustic cadence is used here to reflect that.