Semi-Coercive Imperialist

A cold, dark night in Lobrus.

Yelena Yumanov, former People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, now Maksim Voronin, director of Labor Reeducation Camp No. 17.

She sat in the warden's office, where the fireplace burned, reading a newspaper.

「The Titan Tragedy, an Omen of the Arrogant Empire's Fall?」

The paper celebrated the sinking of the Titan.

They mocked and condemned the Empire, yet an even crueler purge continued at Lobrus's heart. Even Warden Petrin, who had taken it upon himself to act as Yelena's guardian, had grown noticeably more hollow lately.

Crackle crackle.

Yelena stared blankly into the fireplace, then picked up another sheet of paper.

There were a little over a hundred Izenheim prisoners held here. Yet their strange religious rites continued even within the camp. Under the Party's tacit indulgence in the name of "respecting religion," those creatures alone maintained an unsettling peace.

No matter how she thought about it, Yelena could not accept this situation.

A Great Purge had happened because of nothing more than their religion? Her father had been killed, and House Yumanov had been exterminated, to carry out the doctrines of that faith? Countless comrades who had devoted their lives to the state had been dragged to the guillotine for it?

Lobrus had revered labor and called itself the leader of the East. She did not want to believe that every value the nation stood for had been defiled for such a reason.

Still, no matter how hard she tried to deny it, she could see no other answer.

Then she would have to go back to the beginning.

The blade of the purge had fallen from above. The instruction to respect religious practices had also come from above.

Approval from the very top.

Only one name sat at that peak.

The Supreme Leader.

Yelena clenched the registry in her hand. Crrrunch. The paper crumpled.

"Disgusting."

Hatred had crept into her low voice.

How absurd.

There had once been days when she called the Empire's racists savages and took pride in her own morality. She had said that the vile act of dividing people by bloodline was proof that the Empire would fall.

But perhaps people only revealed their true nature once the fire reached their own feet.

Johann Goethe, one of the Empire's foremost scholars, had written this of Izenheim in his book, 「The Thousand Year Empire」.

"A plague skilled at stabbing others in the back, consuming their lives through schemes, and gnawing away at the foundations of civilization."

That was right.

A plague.

Disease had settled in the head of the body called Lobrus, rotting away the nation's limbs one by one. The name Yumanov had been cut away in the same fashion.

Crack!

A log collapsed in the fireplace, sending sparks flying.

The pride of Yumanov, which she could not let go of even after losing everything.

If hatred required qualification, then she had more than enough.

The dying embers had found fuel called revenge, and from the depths of her being, they began to blaze again......

* * *

Language and history, culture and art, science and technology, and refinement.

I studied them without end.

I filled my time with self-improvement. I forced the foundations of civilization humanity had built over thousands of years, the things I must never forget, the values we had to preserve, into my head, perhaps into the "virus" as well.

Using the Expo as an excuse, I toured Prozen from place to place. I read books banned in the Empire, looked over buildings weathered by time, and witnessed a kind of freedom the Empire did not possess.

Even so, Pablo's painting kept surfacing in my mind.

Pablo Suarez Diego José Francisco de Jeula Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad y Sovakin.

His name was so long, with every baptismal name and ancestral name strung together, that I doubted even he remembered it all. Yet posterity simply called him Pablo.

The greatest and most controversial painter of the postwar era.

He overturned the foundations of painting and opened the horizon of modern art. The wave of dismantling and reconstructing subjects spread beyond the canvas to sculpture, architecture, design, and every aspect of people's way of life, throwing open the door to a new age called abstraction.

Before the regression, one of his greatest themes had been antiwar art.

Of course, he was not someone who only advocated against war. It was simply one of his many styles.

Pablo's ideas were closer to those of the East, but the East despised his boldness as decadence, while the Empire mocked his abstractions as the scribblings of a madman.

Even so, nearly every intellectual on the continent was captivated by the tip of his brush.

That would not happen for another ten years or so.

He was simply too far ahead of his time.

And now, the things I had done were being painted onto the canvas of that master.

Pablo's work had changed.

Before the regression, his most famous work had depicted the Empire's bombing of a civilian city during the Zerpha Civil War.

But that future had been erased because of me.

As history shifted, the place of the civilian bombing was left empty, and the Guernica Mine filled that void.

The same painter. The same anger. The same masterpiece.

Only the subject of history nailed to his canvas had changed.

Perhaps it would continue this way.

The countless things I would do as I moved forward would become inspiration and material for countless artists.

Because the name Maximilian was now history in itself.

The problem was how I felt.

When I faced Pablo's canvas, a strange urge rose within me.

The urge to erase it.

It was the temptation of censorship, one shared by every dictator, emperor, and conqueror throughout history.

I looked directly at that urge. I chose not to deny that the same aspect lived within me.

Then should I leave them alone?

Should I leave Pablo, and the other painters and writers who would soon emerge, alone?

......The answer had been decided from the start.

Once I achieved what I wanted, I would be wholly exposed to the judgment of those who survived.

If we won, then after my death, they would each put the man I had been on display and survey him in their own way.

So I could never expect to be understood.

No matter what I held inside. No matter what cause I had swallowed. No matter how deep the solitude I endured.

The only version left for posterity would be the side of myself I had shown them. I had to choose to bear it, no matter how hideously that portrait might be painted.

I would not make excuses, even after victory.

The record belonged to humanity.

Inside the Empire, of course, it was different. There, I would break pens when they needed breaking. Until my grand ambition was complete, the pens within the Empire were dangerous.

But outside the walls of the Empire......

Could I not leave them free for a little while?

One day, after we won, humanity would have to walk out of this age of disgust and hatred and set out once more in search of the right values.

At that time, we would not need the records of the victors. We would need the brushes that bore witness to this era.

A painting like Guernica.

A painting that accused me could one day become a painting that healed humanity.

Then I had to let my indictments live.

If only to leave behind the foundation for peace.

Crunch.

As I bit into the elegant cuisine of Prozen, I thought about that.

It was delicious.

Prozen's food was certainly a step above the Empire's.

Even in this capital alone, there were five or six restaurants that rivaled my Lilac Vita, where I had spared no expense on the finest ingredients and talented chefs.

"Thank you for the meal."

I asked the chef who came to see me off whether they had any interest in working in the Empire, but they answered only with a smile.

Afterward, I stepped outside and walked through the crisp autumn air.

"Um, excuse me......"

Someone stood in my path.

To be honest, I had sensed them following me long ago.

"N, nice to meet you! We are university students, students from Prozen National University, um......"

Their Imperial language was clumsy and hesitant.

"You may speak in Prozen language."

There were five or six young people, neatly dressed, with eyes that looked somehow starved.

"Ah, yes! Um, we heard that a knight had come here, and......"

One of them carefully pulled a book from inside their coat.

It was the Prozen language translation of my book, 「Moonlight Below」.

"We've read this book hundreds of times. You are our hero, sir!"

Freedom was Prozen's greatest strength and greatest weakness.

Literature and art without censorship. The freedom to read and write anything.

Yet through that same freedom, poison that would destroy the country from within spread without restraint.

It was a contradiction born of the times.

"I see. I'm honored."

I accepted the book they held out. The cover, worn smooth by many hands, gave me a strange feeling.

"N, no, we're even more honored! And so, this passage......"

With trembling hands, the young man opened the book.

The page was battered with creases and underlines.

"‘Order is not built through coercion. Order is born from the thirst of those who long for it.’ After reading that passage, we could not sleep."

Tremors mixed into the young man's voice.

"Sir. Look at our homeland. The parliament spends all year grabbing each other by the collars, factories stop because of strikes, and the streets are soaked in indulgence. And in the middle of it all, Izenheim drains ordinary people dry with their money games."

The other young people nodded fervently.

"The filthy ideas of the East are seeping into the workers, but the government does nothing. Everyone knows this country is rotting, but no one even feels thirsty!"

The young man at the front finally spoke the words.

"Sir. We...... honestly envy the Empire. If Prozen is to be saved, shouldn't we become like the Empire? Shouldn't a force of Iron Men like the Sentinel pour in and take the heads of those damned parliamentarians......"

It was a dangerous sentence.

To say it in the middle of a public square put him half a step away from treason.

"......"

I let the silence linger for a moment.

"Thirst only has meaning when you endure it. Until the proper season comes."

As I said that, I took a fountain pen from inside my coat.

"Winter will deal with rotten trees on its own. If an axe acts impatiently, the forester will only catch it. Your task is not to glare at the tree, but to sharpen the blade of the axe."

The ideas these people carried would help the Empire.

I also hoped the war would not drag on.

I wanted to end that exhausting war and terrible history as quickly as possible, then focus only on those we had to cut away.

"Build yourselves up. Learn. Find your comrades. Take your places. In government offices, in the military, in newspapers, in schools."

Scratch.

I wrote a short message on the title page of 「Moonlight Below」.

"And wait."

"......For the time to come?"

I smiled faintly.

"Yes. Your thirst will complete that time."

I handed the book back to them.

[ Keep your thirst, until the proper season. ]

[ Waiting for the day we meet again. ]

[ Maximilian Ebenholtz ]

The words were written in Imperial language.

Henri's hands trembled like an aspen as he received the book.

"Well then, I'll be going. It was good to meet you. I'm glad to find comrades in Prozen."

I patted each of the young people on the shoulder once. Each time, they nearly bent at the waist.

They probably would not sleep tonight.

And a few years from now, some of them might be standing somewhere in Prozen's government offices or military barracks, hands poised on door handles.

* * *

Winter came.

Cold snowflakes covered the continent, yet construction on the national pavilions continued in Prozen's capital.

My daily life, on the other hand, swung between extremes.

One night, I put nearly every Izenheim recovered from the Titan before a knight's trial and had them hanged. The next day, I visited artists I supported and checked on their progress. Then I supervised construction sites in Prozen.

It was a rather breathless routine.

"It's almost complete."

At the Ebenholtz estate, Imperial Guard member Yulian Spel presented their completed invention to me, the mana stone projector.

It was the light that would become the heart of this Expo and the pinnacle of the Imperial Pavilion.

For security, every component had first been completed in the Empire. The plan was to assemble it only after arriving in Prozen.

"Let's see it."

I knew the greatest height this light would reach. I was also sure of the visual shock and awe its artistry would bring to the public.

It would happen.

For a brief moment, Prozen's capital would be colored by the Empire.

It had already been a wildly successful creation in the future before my regression.

"Yes. I'll activate it."

Click!

Spel pulled the lever. The mana stone lens hummed low and emitted light.

If fired into the night sky, the whole city would see it, so this was a test at reduced output, angled toward the estate wall.

......

Even so, a pure white flash that swallowed sound itself tore through the darkness.

A beam without the slightest tremor, straight as if drawn with a ruler.

The night seemed split in half where the ray passed.

"At full output, the vertical beam rises to a maximum altitude of ten kilometers. Depending on weather conditions, it will be visible from dozens of kilometers away."

I already knew this invention.

It was a memory from before the regression.

[ The columns of light fired straight up by over a hundred mana stone projectors reached the clouds and joined into a ceiling. A sanctuary without walls or a roof. Even in villages dozens of kilometers away, people saw those luminous columns rising over the horizon......

There is no hesitation in classifying this light, which has not a single wall, as architecture. Humanity's architecture had always been built from stone only because it had not found a material better than stone. ]

「Excerpt from Fifty Buildings That Had the Greatest Impact on Human History」

Imperial Guard member Yulian Spel had invented the mana stone projector itself, but the architect who used it as art after the war had been someone else entirely.

This time, though, I would use their invention according to my own will.

"Good. You've worked hard."

I clapped softly and smiled, and Spel's face, which had been tense until then, quickly filled with joy.

"Th, thank you!"

......

Back in Prozen.

An Imperial minister visited the Expo construction site.

"I've heard that His Majesty himself may attend the opening ceremony."

"I'm greatly looking forward to it."

Despite those words, he probably would not come.

The Emperor had a terrible complex about his appearance. Rather than display his ugliness in the middle of Prozen, he would choose to send Princess Justine in his place.

"I hear Duke Leutern will be coming as well. There has already been no end of fuss over what he will wear and all that."

"Ah, is that so."

Damn it.

That bastard was coming, one hundred percent.

I wished he would not.

At my complicated response, the minister cleared their throat and watched my reaction.

"But, sir, there are some troublesome matters you need to deal with first. Have you seen them?"

"Troublesome matters?"

"Yes. Please, follow me!"

The minister strode toward a corner of the city center.

It was a street I had never visited before.

Thump.

The virus beneath my collarbone pulsed with unusual force.

"Look!"

The minister pointed.

Where my gaze landed stood a building too shabby to even call a national pavilion.

"It's the Izenheim Exhibition Hall. Those mixed-blood creatures without a country dare to call themselves a nation and claim a spot here."

"......"

Thump.

A race that was not human dared speak of a nation and build a national pavilion.

Thump.

Looking down at the Izenheim gathered around the exhibition hall like a swarm of ants, I smiled quietly.

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