Semi-Coercive Imperialist

Chapter 210

Imperial communication lines were installed across Mekerel's northern mountain range. State-of-the-art gas masks to counter chemical weapons and vast quantities of arms were supplied along with them.

Thanks to the Empire's invisible hand, Mekerel's northern front, which had been teetering on the verge of collapse, was fortified into something solid.

Yet in the middle of that fierce stalemate, Balkania did something strange.

They massacred civilians in the Mekerel city of Judas, which they had occupied.

To me, it felt like a signal.

A prelude heralding that the continental war was not far off, that humanity would soon clutch its own madness and plunge into its own abyss.

We would move toward the extreme now.

When people stop seeing other people as people. When humans treat humans as something less than human, massacre becomes justified.

But skin color cannot be the standard for that. Hooked noses, blond hair, golden eyes, appearances like those cannot be the standard either. Racial difference, religious difference: neither can ever serve as a legitimate reason to exterminate one another.

And yet there was no helping it.Because otherworldly species that imitate humanity exist, we must make use of our own madness.

Correcting every moral imperative and every point of human ethics is only possible if we survive.

Because in a world that has already perished, you cannot even possess the lips to argue right from wrong......

-- Rumble, rumble, rumble.

Inside the transport ship returning to the Empire, I was reading a book.

Rustle. Rustle.

It was the scripture I had stolen from Rondor. Unfortunately there was nothing like Izenheim ciphers, just pure doctrine written out plainly.

"What are you reading now, Max?"

Leon across from me asked with curious eyes.

"The Izent scripture."

"Hmm~ But Max, that surprised me."

"What did."

Leon smiled.

"The Izenheim in Rondor. I figured you'd kill them all."

I lifted my eyes from the book.

I looked at Leon and smiled faintly.

"I will kill them."

Thud!

The interior of the transport ship lurched heavily for a moment.

"It just isn't time yet."

Not yet. Even wiping them out requires public opinion on our side. There was no need to sweep away a settlement that could be quietly buried without any burden the moment war broke out, and damage the Empire's image by doing it now.

"Fair enough~ What's the scripture like, anyway? Anything useful in it?"

I dropped my eyes back to the page.

"The way I see it...... the very foundation of the religion is thoroughly twisted."

The doctrine they follow, the way they view the world and life, is completely different from the Empire's mainstream faith.

"Yeah? Genuinely rotten things, aren't they."

A sudden thought struck me.

Perhaps they had deliberately created the reasons for their own persecution.

"......That's what I'm thinking too."

Monsters who can exploit even their own deaths are capable of anything, truly anything, to achieve their ends.

* * *

......The Empire is changing. At the very least, it is far stronger than it was before the regression.

Military power has already taken shape, and internal cohesion has hardened.

Above all, a powerful knighthood now stands firmly enough to check the Imperial Guard's abuses head-on.

But there was a fairly important fact that would shake the Empire's very foundations, and I had overlooked it.

Dieter Schmidt.

The genius who, before the regression, had become chancellor and single-handedly steered the Empire back from the brink of collapse was now my right hand.

Turned the other way around, that meant there was no Dieter inside the Empire's domestic affairs right now. There would not be in the future, either.

The state of the Empire's current finances, as Dieter had assessed from the outside, was festering to the core.

Bills of exchange circulating through the market were sustaining the military-industrial sector, but the scale of that debt had already ballooned far beyond what the Empire could handle.

All the money flowing through the various industries that looked so prosperous was bills of exchange as well.

Meaning in practical terms, none of it was real.

But every one of these crises, in the context of "war," could function as yet another weapon.

"We can propagandize this as an economic attack by foreign capital."

In the secret room set up inside my mansion, Johann Georg said.

Building on Dieter Schmidt's meticulous financial analysis, Johann constructed the propaganda framework for manipulating the public.

The collaboration of two geniuses who would be counted among the greats of imperial history felt to me like a perfectly tuned orchestra.

"We will actually manipulate the origin of some of those bad bills of exchange to make them appear to be foreign capital."

Dieter, seated beside him, adjusted his glasses and added.

The Empire's internal economy was balanced on a knife's edge, propped up by bills of exchange the Empire itself guaranteed.

But if a portion of those bills' circulation chains were cleverly linked to shell companies set up overseas?

"Greedy foreign capital is trying to collapse the Empire's economy."

It did not even need to be on a massive scale. People believe what they want to believe.

If you want a spark of propaganda to ignite national outrage, a very small grain of truth is enough.

"That kind of narrative will come together naturally."

Johann said with a slow smile.

The maturity dates on the bills of exchange and the timing of the war the Empire would start were almost perfectly aligned. War was unavoidable, necessary to pay the debts and silence the discontent festering inside.

And on top of that unavoidable war, the justification of "foreign scheming by powers who fear the Empire" would be layered over everything.

"We will also need full-scale military agitation to support this."

Johann's eyes flashed.

"For the cause that will arrive before long......"

We called this war a "cause." I agreed. There was no greater ambition than the survival of humanity.

"The war's first flashpoint will probably be Bolska."

I pointed to the map.

Bolska. A neutral nation that shared a border with the Empire's northeastern frontier but did not belong to the Eastern Alliance. At the same time, a country that maintained diplomatic and trade ties with various western nations, making it a haven for smuggling, money laundering, and front-company trading across the entire continent.

Even in the history before my regression, the first shots of the continental war had rung out from Bolska.

The terms of the non-aggression pact the Empire and the Eastern Alliance would eventually sign involved slicing Bolska's territory cleanly in half and dividing it between them.

"Yes. Then we will send agents into the Bolska military as well."

The wheel called war was slowly turning toward us.

Beep.

Right on cue, the terminal chimed.

An interesting report from Schatz, one of my closest aides who had not been present at this meeting.

"......I'll head there shortly."

It was news I had been waiting for, in my own way.

* * *

Arthur Winston, a council member from Hailand, an island nation and a great power rivaling Prozen, had arrived at the Empire's western border.

He stepped off the platform with his family and met the companions he had contacted in advance.

"Ah~ It's been a while."

Steven, a Hailand professor who frequented Imperial Central University, and Lieutenant Colonel Collins, who would be joining the trip.

"Good to see everyone."

Arthur Winston and his family exchanged warm greetings and climbed into the vehicles waiting for them.

"Sir Arthur. What is the schedule?"

Lieutenant Colonel Collins asked from the driver's seat.

"Nothing special, really. Just retracing an ancestor's footsteps and heading home."

Arthur Winston's reason for coming to the Empire was clear. He was here to write a biography of his late grandfather, a war hero of the old days.

"You're an important man, Sir. Is it really all right to come to the Empire this unguarded?"

Collins asked with a half-joking tone.

"I'm just a private citizen who has stepped away from politics, aren't I. For now, I plan to live as a writer."

He intended to see with his own eyes the old battlefields his grandfather had crossed, take photographs, and include them in the biography.

Lieutenant Colonel Collins gave a quiet laugh.

"Oh, by the way. Professor Esenbach says he'd like to invite Sir Arthur to his estate."

"That's very kind of him."

Arthur Winston raised an eyebrow with interest.

Esenbach was one of the Empire's most distinguished intellects, mild in temperament and well-connected with scholars from other nations.

"First, you'll need to spend a night at the western hotel. You should rest off the travel fatigue."

"Let's do that."

The vehicle carrying the group left the platform and arrived at a high-end hotel in the western city center.

Click, click.

His daughter Sara took several photographs of the scenery beyond the car window with her camera.

[Cruzio Hotel]

The hotel lobby. Arthur Winston noticed eyes sliding over them from around the room, but he put it down to curiosity at foreigners and turned away without concern.

They followed a staff member's guidance and rode up to the top floor.

"Oh. Spacious."

They arrived at the room and began unpacking their luggage.

"Dad. Can we go somewhere like a museum later? I heard there's a really beautiful new place in the central district."

His daughter Sara tugged at Arthur's lapel and pleaded. Word of the Arte Museum in the imperial capital had spread even to Hailand recently.

"Unfortunately we don't have time for that. The Empire is a more dangerous place than you'd think."

Arthur stroked his daughter's hair and soothed her.

"Ugh...... still though......"

"If you behave, who knows."

"......Yes sir!"

After that, he had just showered and was settling in for a short rest when ,

Knock, knock.

An unexpected knock broke the silence of the penthouse.

"......?"

Arthur walked over with a puzzled look and opened the door. Outside stood imperial soldiers in dark uniforms, their faces expressionless.

Imperial Guard agents.

Arthur hesitated, then asked with composure.

"What is this about?"

"Identification."

The agent jutted his chin up and clipped the word out.

"Identification. Hand it over."

"I'm not sure...... what this is about."

The agent's imperial and the Hail language Arthur spoke crossed each other and drifted into the air between them.

"I said hand over your identification!"

"What in the......"

Just as Arthur's temper was about to flare at the soldier's rough tone, Lieutenant Colonel Collins stepped forward quickly from inside the room. Fluent in imperial, he volunteered as interpreter.

"They're asking for identification, Sir Arthur."

"Ah."

Arthur produced his passport from his breast pocket and handed it over, but the agent who took it immediately fixed a hard stare on Lieutenant Colonel Collins, who had just responded in imperial.

Closely cropped hair, rigid posture, sharp eyes.

A soldier never fully hides their bearing, even out of uniform.

"You're military, aren't you."

The agent looked Collins up and down and twisted the corner of his mouth. Collins did not bother lying.

"......I belong to the Hailand military. This time, however, I am accompanying him purely as personal security."

"And how are we supposed to believe that?"

"What are you talking about?"

Collins's brow furrowed.

"I'm asking how we're supposed to know whether you're a spy who came to surveil our military facilities, or an agent who came to survey the terrain and smuggle it out."

"......Do you people even know who this man..."

"Doesn't matter."

Click, click.

The agent snapped his fingers, ignoring Collins.

"We're searching the room. Move."

Five or six more agents materialized behind him. They stomped across the carpet in their military boots and pushed their way in roughly.

"What on earth is the meaning of this?!"

Arthur Winston's face flushed red with anger, but the agents paid him no mind.

They upended the family's travel bags, sliced open pillows and bedding with knives, and left the room in ruins.

His daughter Sara and his wife screamed.

And then.

"Found something!"

One agent pulled something from Arthur's document bag and shouted.

Detailed maps of the western front's terrain from the old war, along with photographs of military deployments. Materials Arthur had copied from the Hailand archives to write his ancestor's biography.

"Ha, you little bastards. Knew it."

Spies disguised as tourists. The agent waved the map around and let out a spite-filled laugh.

......

The Esenbach family estate, in the wealthy district of the imperial capital.

"......Hmm."

Arnold Esenbach, a scholar of continental renown, sat in his study waiting for a guest who had not arrived, tilting his head with mild puzzlement.

Two cups of now-cold tea sat on the table, and he was already on his third volume of specialist reading to pass the time.

"He's not the type to be this late......"

Arthur Winston of Hailand.

A different nationality, yes, but someone Arnold had built a friendship with through academic exchange, a man of thoroughly punctual character.

There was no way someone like him would break an appointment with no word at all.

"Father!"

Bang.

The study door flew open and Arnold's son rushed in with desperate urgency.

The usual composure was nowhere to be found. His face had gone pale and he was gasping for breath. Looking at him, Arnold felt something ominous settle in his chest.

"Sir Arthur Winston and his party...... have just been arrested on suspicion of espionage and taken away by Imperial Guard agents!"

* * *

Before the regression, there had been an incident like this.

Arthur Winston.

A distinguished noble of the western kingdom of Hailand. He was no more than a council member now, and had even temporarily withdrawn from his faction, but he would later rise to become Hailand's prime minister and the linchpin of the western coalition.

Back when he had not yet held power, during his time as a private citizen, he had once come to the Empire with some talk of writing an ancestor's biography.

But his purely innocent intentions ended up being mistaken for those of a spy by a certain Imperial Guard officer, blinded by excessive loyalty and obsessed with producing results.

-- Several Hailand nationals have been arrested and taken to an Imperial Guard facility.

Information passed through Schatz's intelligence network.

In reality, Arthur Winston had been abducted from the hotel, subjected to severe beatings and torture, and was only released through the Hailand government's fierce protests before being expelled back to his home country.

Looking back on it now, it was a truly absurd blunder.

This incident led Hailand to become deeply wary of the Empire, and Arthur Winston's political profile rose sharply.

He also became an anti-imperialist to the marrow of his bones, driving Hailand's military buildup and spearheading the formation of an anti-imperial alliance.

It was an incident where the Empire handed a political gift to its own enemy.

"How long?"

"Five minutes and we'll arrive."

Right now, I was on my way to meet him in person, after he had been taken away by the Imperial Guard.

"......"

Watching the imperial scenery flow past outside the car window, I sank into deep thought.

A dilemma about a choice.

Arthur Winston, who would become a serious future problem for the Empire. Was it right to kill him here and now, and rid myself of that threat?

Or.

Was it right to let him go safely, with proper courtesy, and deal with him in my own way?

"Sir. We're here."

The car stopped. The agent stepped out first and opened the rear door for me.

Staring at the Imperial Guard building spread out ahead, I let out a long breath.

This time...... I was genuinely conflicted.