Chapter 42
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 42
The First Rebellion of 3518.
It was a year buried in the distant past—over two hundred years ago. To someone like me, who hadn't yet lived a full century, it felt impossibly remote.
Kinuan told me there had been a rebellion in the Empire in 3518.
"I've never heard of it. Is it a piece of history the Empire's been hiding?"
"They don't hide it, exactly. But they don't teach it either. Unless you go looking, you'd never have any reason to know."
I hesitated, unsure whether I should hear more. Kinuan seemed to sense the conflict inside me, and he waited a moment.
"...An Akies Victima user is very likely connected to the Rebels—no, the terrorists—in one way or another. After all, that's where its roots lie."
I spoke only after weighing my words carefully.
"That's why the Empire tracks the whereabouts of Akies Victima users and keeps a list of them. But even Investigator Jillian Campbell probably only knows that Akies Victima is tied to the Rebels. He doesn't know it's a combat style created by Noel Mulrizka."
The connection between Noel Mulrizka and Akies Victima was classified. I chewed on that.
"Is it really so important that Noel was the one who created Akies Victima?"
"To be precise, what they want to bury is the fact that Noel was a brilliant combat theorist who left behind a lasting legacy. Being the leader of the Rebels is a mark worthy of the Empire's deepest contempt. And yet, the combat theories Noel established—Akies Victima among them—still heavily shape the Imperial Army to this day. He is both one of the greatest contributors to the Imperial Army and its worst criminal."
At Kinuan's words, several questions surfaced in my mind at once.
"Akies Victima isn't the Empire's standard combat style. Its core philosophy is completely different."
"As I said before, Akies Victima was just one of the combat styles Noel created. It was also his final masterpiece."
I found myself growing curious about this man, Noel Mulrizka.
He created multiple combat styles on par with Akies Victima?
It was hard to believe. Kinuan hadn't called him a genius for nothing.
"If he hadn't been a traitor, the Empire would probably worship him as a great hero."
Kinuan didn't deny it. He simply smiled. Even as the words left my mouth, I realized how subversive they sounded. A traitor and a hero.
Kinuan seemed to consider where to begin. Then, slowly, his lips parted.
"From the day our human ancestors first crushed a rival's skull with a rock in the African wilderness... all the way to the era when we explored galaxies beyond the solar system—through all of it, we humans fought with the flesh and blood we were born with. Thousands of years passed like that. And then, at last, the age of the post-human arrived. Ushered in by advances in biotechnology and machinery."
We had surpassed the biological limits we were born with. But these days, we didn't use grand words like post-human to describe it anymore. After all, even that fell within what was now considered the "standard human range."
For humanity in the past, though, it must have been different. In an era when everyone was purely organic, a human who enhanced their brain's nervous system and swapped their limbs for machinery would have looked like a post-human—or a monster.
"Just as the arrival of firearms reduced cold-weapon combat styles to mere decoration... the combat styles of the organic era became obsolete in the age of the post-human. Cybernetics didn't wait for humanity to catch up. It advanced at a breakneck pace. With every leap, combat methods shifted again and again, until eventually humans could dodge bullets."
"A new combat method and theory were needed."
"There was a transitional period spanning several centuries—from replacing mere parts of the body to full-body prosthetics. In that time, countless combat methods and theories rose and fell. And then, as if to synthesize all of them into one, a genius appeared. A genius the era itself had summoned."
That was Noel Mulrizka. An inevitable figure who closed out the transition and ushered in an age of stability. Such people appeared in every field. A great mind who emerged when era, luck, and talent... all aligned perfectly and converged on a single point.
"Even the Ballistic Control you learn in the Imperial Guard was created by Noel Mulrizka. Before him, dodging and deflecting bullets was a feat only legendary soldiers and mercenaries could manage. It belonged to those who'd crossed countless battlefields and death lines, honing their sixth sense and instincts to the absolute limit. Noel theorized it, systematized it, and made it something even an 'excellent soldier' could learn."
This was astonishing. To think Ballistic Control had already been established two hundred years ago.
Kinuan listed off a handful of Noel Mulrizka's achievements. Even as a partial list, there were many combat styles and theories I recognized. Even the golden ratio for optimizing agility based on the output, volume, and weight of cybernetic prosthetics traced back to Noel's formulas.
"For reasons and motives no one knows, Noel Mulrizka—then a non-resident advisor to the Imperial Army—turned against the Empire. But an all-out war was out of the question. The Imperial Army was already far too powerful. So instead, Noel created an entirely new combat style with a completely different direction, one built specifically for irregular guerrilla warfare. That is Akies Victima."
Only now did I fully grasp what made the Akies Combat Style so unique. If it had been designed for guerrilla warfare, then everything I'd once perceived as its weaknesses practically ceased to exist.
"Brain dysfunction meant nothing to them. They could die at any moment, and not one of them fought expecting to live a long life. And since they were an irregular force, they wouldn't have unified standards or equipment. They needed a flexible combat style that could adapt to each individual's situation and environment. They couldn't build training centers to raise the overall quality of an army, so they had to rely on a highly capable few..."
I poured out my thoughts, then fell silent. Kinuan wasn't finished.
"Noel took only those compatible with Akies Victima as his close confidants and officers. That elite few served as the core—the head of the Rebels. The rest, the rank-and-file, were just a tail that could be cut off at any time. That's how Noel's Rebels resisted the Empire. Even when they seemed wiped out by the Empire's massive sweeping operations, the handful of confidants who'd mastered the Akies Combat Style always survived somehow, scattering across the Empire to wage localized skirmishes and guerrilla warfare. And since people fed up with the Empire were everywhere, recruiting 'expendable' soldiers was easy."
The Rebels were like weeds—no matter how hard you trampled them, they sprouted anew. By its very nature, an Akies Victima user would always find a way to survive. Because they could fight without high-performance prosthetics, disguising themselves as ordinary citizens would have been simple.
Think about it. Who would suspect someone with a non-combat prosthetic of being a key figure in the rebellion? Even if they were stopped during a random inspection by four or five soldiers in combat prosthetics, an Akies Combat Style user could slip away without breaking a sweat.
The picture painted itself in my mind. Akies Combat Style users scattered across the Empire, striking at key imperial facilities. If their tail was caught, they simply threw their locally recruited subordinates out as bait and escaped to another region. Since they maintained a high level of combat ability even without high-performance prosthetics, tracking them would have been nightmarishly difficult.
So how had the Empire ever rooted out the Rebels?
...Soon, a chilling thought crossed my mind. I wondered if my guess was right.
"How did the Empire put down Noel's rebellion back then?"
"Since they couldn't tell them apart, they killed everyone who looked suspicious. I heard that back then, if you didn't have someone to vouch for your identity, you were as good as dead. As the Empire adopted increasingly brutal measures, even the Akies Combat Style users were picked off one by one. Civilians started reporting any outsider as a possible rebel out of sheer terror. If they didn't, their entire region could be wiped out in a mass slaughter."
I didn't ask how many innocent people had died. The number would surely dwarf anything I could imagine.
"Is that how Noel died too?"
"By private execution."
The treason of Noel Mulrizka, a key contributor to the Imperial Army—and the Empire's mass slaughter that followed...
And from the perspective of the Imperial Army, which had been badly burned by irregular guerrilla warfare, keeping a separate watch on Akies Victima users was only natural.
This was information that could never be allowed to leak. Especially since Noel Mulrizka's legacy still ran through the Imperial Army's very foundations.
I narrowed my eyes slightly. Then I lifted my chin and looked Kinuan dead in the face.
"Is the reason the Imperial Guard Captain sent me here... because he believes you—Instructor Kinuan—are connected to the terrorists?"
Kinuan clapped his hands together lightly, twice.
"Bingo, Luka. If you can find or dig up evidence that I'm colluding with Nemesis, you'll rise straight into the core of the Imperial Guard in an instant."
This was absurd. How could an Imperial Guardsman—a highly regarded instructor, no less—be colluding with terrorists? And if the Imperial Guard Captain suspected him so deeply, why was he leaving Kinuan free to walk around?
I fixed my gaze on Kinuan. I couldn't see the depth of him, couldn't find where he ended. And yet he seemed to know everything about me.
"I don't believe you're colluding with terrorists, Instructor."
"You might not. But the Imperial Guard Captain thinks otherwise. Let me give you a little tip for your career: try looking into the traces I left during my time in the Lower District."
Kinuan's words sounded almost like a taunt. I furrowed my brow.
"I'll report everything I heard today to the Imperial Guard Captain."
"See you next time, Luka."
Kinuan rose to his feet and personally opened the door to see me out.
Once I stepped out of the Training Center's main building, I stopped walking. I drew a deep breath, trying to steady my emotions.
...To put it bluntly, every last one of them was looking down on me. The Imperial Guard Captain and Kinuan were both using me to probe each other's intentions.
It was dangerous. If things went wrong, there was a very good chance I'd be 'expended.'
But I wouldn't let myself be thrown away over something like this. I hadn't clawed my way all the way up here just for that.
* * *
The next day, I logged onto the Network to dig into Noel Mulrizka and the First Rebellion.
Upper Command would see my search history, but I didn't care. They already knew I'd waded pretty deep into this anyway.
Naturally, there's barely any record or information.
There was only a brief mention that a major rebellion had broken out in 3518 and that the Empire had crushed it. That was the extent of what someone at my level could access.
It was glaringly obvious they'd scrubbed away every record concerning Noel Mulrizka in particular. He appeared only as a fleeting note—the ringleader of the rebellion. Nothing about him being a combat theorist or a contributor to the military. I couldn't even find a single ordinary photograph of the man.
After two hundred years of erasing his traces, nothing worthwhile would be left.
It was the same with Akies Victima. It was listed as nothing more than another third-rate combat style of unknown origin.
Just as I thought—official channels are a dead end.
To dig into Kinuan's background, I'd have to go to the Lower District.
I requested an audience with the Imperial Guard Captain, and in less than twenty minutes, approval came through. For any other cadet, it would have taken a day or two.