Chapter 461
Chapter 461
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 461
Chapter Title: Chapter 21. Another Solo Play (20)
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....I had a dream.
The sound of walls and buildings crumbling.
The sound of flames and screams mingling as they burned.
And.
‘I can’t understand this. No, I can’t accept it!’
My voice, genuinely angry at someone facing me.
Even though it was just her back, the faded red hair tied up allowed me to guess who she was.
‘It could have been avoided! It didn’t have to end like this for you—it could have ended well without you having to go this far!’
‘...How strange. For someone as clever as you to fail to understand the same point after I’ve repeated it several times.’
Red hair.
A dignified, voluminous yet unflashy dress.
The Iron Empress Dowager, praised for restoring order after the chaos and ushering in the empire’s golden age.
‘Hyde.’
‘Your Majesty the Empress Dowager!’
‘Hyde?’
‘Your Majesty the Empress Dowager!!’
‘...Hyde.’
‘Damn it! Lucilla! Cut it out!’
Lucilla Aedran Baltin.
Lucilla. Our red-haired companion from that arduous journey.
‘So in the end, it comes to this, and now you call me by name, Hyde. When we have so little time left to face each other. If I’d known it would end like this, I wouldn’t have accepted your oath of loyalty.’
‘No time for this! If we don’t get out right now—’
‘And get crushed under the collapsing palace? Of course.’
‘...Lucilla?’
‘It’s the palace my beloved husband built just for me. Could there be a more romantic grave?’
‘Gainax. If only he hadn’t been born with such a short life span, he would have been a fine man.’
Even in her final moments, she never lost her characteristic brightness.
As her knight, I could tell that Lucilla had chosen this place on purpose.
‘...Why?’
‘Because I have to. A great war with the Teldrat Empire is coming soon. You and I—we tried every means possible, from light to shadow, to stop it, but the best we could do was delay it by about twenty years.’
‘That’s why I’m asking why you’re doing this here! I found out everything! The nobles opposing the emperor are plotting a coup! They’ll start with the empress dowager’s palace—who holds real power in the empire—and push all the way to the imperial capital! I told you everything! Run! Prepare!’
‘Yes, you handed over all the evidence. Thanks to you, the imperial guard is defending the capital ironclad. And the death of the most revered empress dowager will let the whole world know that every noble opposing the emperor faction planned it. All thanks to the coup evidence you provided.’
It was exactly one week after I, having fully regained my old memories, confided my plan to Lucilla.
‘You know the empire’s buried in peace and complacency right now. The death of a beloved empress dowager will help shake off that flabby inertia. It might even rekindle the fading chivalry and make the nobles loyal to the imperial family again.’
‘I’ve lived a long life. Fifty years since that journey in our youth. If piling a few boulders on this old body of mine can sound the alarm for the empire and prepare it for the massive war ahead, could there be a better end to my life?’
‘...No way.’
‘The rift between knights and nobles, the empire’s internal strife, and countless other political conflicts will all vanish starting today. By my rough estimate... our empire’s lifespan has just been extended by four or five years, hasn’t it?’
Lucilla listened calmly to my verbose, grandiose plan, then calmly prepared for her end.
‘Because you’ll come back. So that far in the future, when you stand here again, the empire will still be here.’
And so, to awaken the empire buried in material abundance and peace—with her own life, to prepare for the coming war. Amid my flippantly glossed-over plan, to buy just five extra years until my return.
‘You’re saying this to my face right now? That you’re going this far just for me—for a future that hasn’t been decided yet?’
‘Because there are those who came this far for a future that hadn’t been decided yet.’
‘Lucilla.’
‘Take care of my sons. They bear the emperor’s name, but they’ve yet to spread their wings properly under my shadow. For the great war ahead, they’ll need your help.’
‘Please.’
‘...This is an order as empress dowager. My knight, the shadow blade Hyde. Leave me here and escape.’
Crunch—
Boom.
The palace, struck by magitech explosives, let out its death rattle of rock and metal.
‘...Go, Hyde. My old friend who shared time with me, my knight who served me for so long.’
Amid the pouring debris, I saluted her as a knight.
First as a longtime friend.
Then as the empress dowager I truly revered.
And finally, once more as an old friend.
‘I’ll wait. Until the very last moment.’
‘You and the hero will surely reach it.’
Boom!
....That day, the empress dowager’s palace collapsed in the nobles’ coup.
Her son, the emperor, flew into a rage and, using the evidence left in the palace, erased every involved noble and their houses from the empire.
The empire plunged into grief over the death of its revered empress dowager, and knights who had been leaving due to conflicts with the nobles turned toward the capital as if by magic.
It was the moment the imperial family’s authority and power, which had faded since Emperor Gainax’s death, stood at its peak. The magitech empire declared war on the western empire.
I headed to the battlefield. The fiercest one, where airships, magic, magitech engineering, and auras clashed.
Just as Lucilla wanted—so that far in the future, the empire would still stand here.
And so, the empire survived.
Until now, when I finally arrived here.
****
Thud....
Boom—
.
.
.
.
I bolted up on instinct, but it took a moment to realize I’d woken.
Boom— boooom—
Heavy noises echoing like in a dream.
Pitch darkness where I couldn’t see an inch ahead, forcing me to grope forward.
‘They’ve already started? Did I sleep too deeply?’
No sunlight made it hard to gauge time, but it didn’t seem so. I’d never once misjudged the span between falling asleep and waking in my life.
I always rose at six in the morning, and even forced awake now, it wasn’t six yet—which meant at least five hours remained until Cawld’s scheduled “twelve hours from now.”
Kablooey!
Thanks to memorizing the building’s layout on the way in, I could move swiftly despite the blindness.
Amid the mutants’ bustling growls, Cawld waited for me at the far end of the canyon building as promised yesterday.
“You’re quick.”
“They’ve already started engaging?”
“It’s an assault. More precisely, our legion barely moved when they reacted instantly.”
“But wasn’t this canyon surrounded by the mutant legion?”
“That surrounding legion moved. The moment the outer forces besieging the capital shifted, the emperor’s troops from the servant city charged this way. As if they’d planned it—they were all massed in one spot.”
“I see.”
In a way, this was another butterfly effect from me. Destroying the Temple of Mercy had drawn the emperor’s scattered forces in the servant city toward it, letting them charge here sooner than expected.
“Just as we clan heads can directly command our kin, the emperor can directly command his cursed underlings. Hitting them by surprise is practically impossible.”
‘...Which makes infiltrating this canyon—beyond the emperor’s curse—even more crucial.’
“It’s a one-time chance. To reach the canyon’s end, we must slay the darkness’s core blocking it, and the moment we do, this place falls under the emperor’s gaze.”
Cawld growled in affirmation of my words.
“Rested enough?”
“Plenty.”
“And your kin here?”
‘...They’re fine too. Thriving, even. Though from their view, you’re no different from invaders.’
Before sleeping, I’d stopped by the empire refugees gathered in this canyon.
I’d expected them to be cowed. From their perspective, the mutants’ assault on the empire had forced them here, and now they had no choice but to beg for scraps from those same culprits to survive.
---------
‘Oh my goodness! A knight come from the capital! It’s humble, but please, come in! I represent the people here—sort of like the village head.’
‘Ah, yes. Village head... so there’s a village?’
‘Not quite a village—just folks who’ve gathered here willy-nilly. His Majesty the king needs someone to consolidate human opinions, so humbly, I’ve taken that role. I used to be a stablehand for the Baupallas house.’
‘A noble house stablehand...’
‘Yes, I know it’s beyond me. We have nobles who owned grand estates, knights who can cleave stone pillars with one sword stroke, scholars famous enough to build a house from the books they’ve read. But to our great honor, His Highness Cawld wished for me to do this.’
‘...Why?’
‘Who knows?’
---------
But contrary to my expectations, the people here weren’t cowed at all.
---------
‘Hungry? In mutant culture, meals and battle happen together, so offering food can seem rude. Newcomers eat alone and quietly join in—that’s the custom here, so they often struggle to fit in.’
‘No blacksmiths or magitech engineers, but the warehouse might have what you need. Magitech gear’s pricey, so plenty came in the nobles’ luggage when they fled.’
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‘...To them, you’re invaders no different, yet they weren’t scared or intimidated—they’re trying to understand you and genuinely blend in. Honestly, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.’
“I felt the same. Until I groped their faces in this sightless place.”
‘Faces?’
“Have you seen the flesh lumps breathing on the way here? Humans twisted by the emperor’s curse.”
I had. Burned into my mind, crystal clear.
But so what?
“They hid in this canyon before us.”
“Right.”
“Meaning they came down here bearing the curse rampant in the capital.”
‘Uh...’
“And this place has no divine power or protections.”
‘Ah.’
The biggest reason even nobles, commoners, and abandoned wounded knights accepted them.
“My eyes can’t distinguish their crotches. But they’re utterly unlike the humans in books.”
It was because those briefly exposed to the curse’s fog had warped somewhat into flesh piles. That’s probably why they’d fled into this pitch-black darkness without seeking a temple.
“So you took them in? Because they couldn’t pass for human anymore?”
“His Majesty just said, ‘They’re pitiful.’ The one who endured the most brutal era with humans said that—who are we, who’ve inherited hatred without living a fraction of it, to drive them out?”
Boom—
Another massive boom echoed from afar.
‘...The reason I tell you this now, in this dire moment, is so you know. Your decision has taken from those humans the last land where they could cling to their humanity.’
“When the canyon path opens, this darkness vanishes. They’ll have no choice but to face the selves they’ve ignored. No human tormented by the emperor’s curse could accept their red-melted faces and grotesquely twisted bodies. The moment this darkness fades is when their inner lives as humans end.”
‘...’
“My queen accepted them, so they’re our pack now. I wanted more time for those humans to adapt to a non-human life, but it can’t be helped.”
I couldn’t see, but I felt Cawld’s head turn toward the way I’d come.
“I think half will stay sane.”
‘Half...’
“There are twelve hundred human refugees here.”
Even in the darkness, I squeezed my eyes shut.
Six hundred. Equivalent to several small villages, decided by my choice.
Perhaps this was part of why Cawld prolonged the war.
“It’s the result of your choice. Anyone deciding something great must accept all its consequences—I wanted to tell you that.”
‘...’
“Even good kings can’t stop war. If you want to change the world, accept it.”
Grind.
Clank!
With his words done, I heard Cawld move.
‘Pure metal sound, no impurities. That length... spear? No. The resonance means substantial metal... shield? Or greatsword?’
“You wield a sword too?”
‘...What comes second to histories in imperial noble libraries?’
Shing!
As I asked the one heading to his queen’s side, his footsteps halted, and a chilling sharpness approached, palpable even from afar.
‘...Come to think of it, I forgot to mention. The core of the ancient curse generating darkness inside the canyon—you handle it alone.’
‘Why go that far?’
“Because you can.”
Cawld recalled first meeting Hyde. His hand to the scabbard reacting to his presence, the instinctive stance.
“Just as there’s no half-completed self in the world, there are no half-baked aura knights. It’s either possible or not—nothing in between.”
‘Then what am I?’
‘...Denial. Rejecting your own completed form. Like the humans here denying their changed selves.’
Cawld had seen the stance Hyde took. In the empire’s temple of wisdom, gathering all knowledge—even in its deepest recess, a precious ancient record enshrined there.
“If the sword you wield is truly that, we’ve no need to interfere. Those heading to the capital with you will clean up the canyon and join later.”
‘No, even for preserving combat strength—’
“If you can’t handle something that drove you into hiding under the emperor’s curse, there’s no point in this full assault.”
‘Th-that...’
“Then, see you at the capital.”
Cawld left without waiting for a reply.
No time to mull his words—the thumping footsteps and the cursed army’s chants praising the emperor grew near.
....Ptoo!
“No wonder I had such restless dreams.”
I stepped toward the canyon’s depths.
The all-out war had begun.
From now until reaching the capital, I probably wouldn’t sheathe my sword.
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