Our Nobles Have Changed! (2)
There were few commoners among those who openly cursed the rebels while fighting them.
Rather, it was the nobles who spat venom with such terrifying force that the kids from the commoner division actually shrank back in intimidation.
“Wh-what the hell are these things?”
“You trash not even fit to be called vermin dare to look down on the Empire’s nobles and come charging? You’re all gonna die!”
Wow. They were completely steeped in rage.
It was rage that should originally have been directed at me. Since they couldn’t aim it at me directly, that displaced fury naturally turned toward those rebels.
Bang! Bang-bang!
The magic students unleashed their trained magic bullets in perfect unison.
Slash! Whoooosh!
Those who handled swords and bows swung their blades and loosed arrows at the enemies without a shred of mercy.
“Th-this can’t be. How is this even possible…”
“So it was you after all?”
Who would have thought that knight would make it all the way here.
Ugh. Tsk tsk tsk. This just proves how useless he is.
“O-Olivia Lapa Ashtar, my lady!”
Oh. It was the fake Fram.
The childish rebel bastard playing at being a noble.
He appeared with a mask over his face, drawing his sword.
“What?”
“Don’t tell me you knew all of this…”
I flashed a grin.
Yeah. Yeah. So you’ve finally figured it out.
There’s a limit to how much you can look down on nobles. No—more precisely, how much you can look down on me.
“Didn’t I tell you? You never grasped the meaning of my words, did you? I told you to know your place and behave, yet here we are. Truly regrettable, isn’t it?”
I needed to mock him a little for this.
“Exactly w-when did you…”
“I knew from the very beginning. Hey, aren’t you looking down on us way too hard? Did you seriously think the nobles would just roll over for loser anti-imperialists like you?”
Until recently, they probably would have.
If it hadn’t been for me, a sea of noble blood would already have been spilled here.
They had received basic combat training, so not everyone would have died, but still…
“Grrrk. Th-this can’t be. How could our great cause end in failure against these rotten noble bastards!”
Worse than the rotten nobles themselves.
If both sides are rotten, you pick the one with actual power. That made my choice the Empire’s nobility, hands down.
“That’s exactly why you’re only this much. You curse the nobles for being rotten while being more incompetent and less hardworking than they are, so of course you’re getting crushed here.”
“Grrrk. I won’t let this slide!”
Oh, is that so?
“If you won’t let it slide, what are the likes of you going to do about it? Come on, say it.”
Clang!
“Grrrk. You rotten noble bitch!”
“That’s precisely why you’re all brainless. You don’t even realize whose hands you’re dancing in, yet you think rebelling against the Empire makes you some kind of enlightened citizens. But what can you do? In the end, you were nothing more or less than complete idiots.”
Thwack!
“Gah!”
“As a Saint I would have shown mercy if I could, but uneducated fools like you are better off vanishing from society. It’s convenient to work the strong ones like slaves. Trash like you absolutely are not.”
They were useful, at least.
“Grrrk. You know nothing!”
“What happened to the real people of the Fram family?”
Normally I would have dug into it beforehand, but I was tired of that sort of thing now.
When I was with the hero party I had handled every single task like that by myself. So now I was going to do it this way.
Besides, for anti-imperialists this kind of thing was practically an achievement; they weren’t likely to hide it.
“I killed them all for the greater cause! Three years ago I wiped them out and pretended I was the sole survivor!”
I see. So that was it. Makes sense.
“So it made becoming a knight easier, then.”
“What?”
“With skills only this mediocre, there’s no way you could have become a knight otherwise.”
Not just anyone can become a knight.
Status aside, you need the actual ability to back it up.
No matter how rotten the Empire is, the houses that raise knight orders have the foundations for it, and there are military families as well.
They prioritize soldiers for the sake of their own honor.
“Damn bitch!”
“Don’t start with the ‘bitch this, bitch that.’ You’re worse than any such woman.”
Thwack!
I struck him once and sent him sprawling.
If he went down from something that light, he clearly wasn’t a real knight.
Yet this bastard scrambled right back to his feet.
I had controlled the force, but I hadn’t hit him so weakly that trash like him should have bounced up so easily.
“You think I’ll go down that easily?”
“Oh, so he really is a Main.”
Looking closely, black energy was rising from behind this piece of garbage.
Definitely a Main.
Was this what they meant by a caterpillar putting on airs?
Stomping vermin wasn’t usually my style, but maybe I’d thrash him a little today.
“That’s right! To bring down the Empire! For a new world!”
“Ugh, is that so?”
What a complete load of crap.
He laughed like a maniac, wielding borrowed power as if it were his own and reveling in it, but what was that “new world” supposed to be in the end?
Not being ruled by rotten human politicians, but being ruled by demons who weren’t even human and only knew how to hunt humans down.
There had been people in the past who sought coexistence between humans and demons, but the current demons certainly were not that sort. If they were, the kingdom’s population would never have been carved down so savagely.
So I mocked him.
“Is that new world supposed to be a country of demons?”
“What… such nonsense! It’s a new world! A world where we commoners are the masters, not the demons!”
A world where commoners are the masters.
That had always been the goal of every rebellion that broke out in the Empire—no, in any monarchical or noble confederation state.
The words themselves sounded nice enough. A world where commoners rose up as masters. An equal world for everyone.
But here’s the thing.
Such a thing was absolutely impossible.
It might be fine for the revolutionary generation. But as time passed they would inevitably become the new rulers—stagnant water.
That didn’t mean the water change itself was bad. Even for that brief era, the world would certainly progress in a better direction.
But when the other party was a Main, it was a different story.
“No, so the ones who gave you that power are Mains in the end, right? If you topple the Empire, then what happens?”
“Hmph! Those Mains said they had come to their senses and were helping us!”
You believe that?
I would rather entrust a fish shop to a cat.
“Bullshit.”
Crack!
I drove my fist straight into the solar plexus of the fake Fram who was smugly transforming into a Main right in front of me.
“!!”
“What kind of idiot would follow the grievances of weaker bastards as some grand cause? Does your brain even work? You’re the ones being played by the Mains.”
“Don’t make me laugh! Kyaaah!”
He charged again, so I stomped him flat.
This bastard treated people like water.
No—if he hadn’t been the type to treat people like water, he never could have done something like this in the first place.
Lately my own intelligence seemed to have dropped quite a bit as well.
I brushed my hair back with one hand and ground my heel thoroughly into the fake Fram.
I was starting to look ridiculous.
He actually thought turning into a Main against me would be the end of it.
“Hey. Lately I’ve really had enough of this world.”
“Grrrk. What the hell kind of nonsense is that.”
Nonsense? Yeah, it was nonsense.
“There are way too many idiots like you. The hero party, the Demon King and the Four Heavenly Kings, the corrupt nobles, and anti-imperialists like you who don’t know their place yet keep whining and thrashing about. I just want to blow the entire world to pieces.”
I was sick of it. I wanted to kill the trash right in front of me.
Well, of course I did. This world had far too much trash.
The sight of trash that didn’t even know its place charging in was genuinely irritating.
I also wanted to kill those blockheads who had ranted about resurrecting a god.
“H-hiiik.”
Ah, I was starting to want him dead for real.
Why did only guys like this keep showing up?
Crunch. Crack.
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
Did these morons come before me just to prove their low intelligence?
Why did they deliberately showcase their deficient brains just so they could get themselves killed by me?
I simply could not understand it.
“Hey, see over there?”
I pointed toward the blood festival unfolding deep inside the dungeon.
Naturally that blood belonged to the rebels. The anti-imperialists’ blood.
The nobles’ rage against the rebels who had made their lives so difficult was putting on this festival.
“Rebel bastards! Die!”
“We are the nobles of this country!”
The nobles were cutting down the anti-imperialists with high spirits, while the commoners only offered half-hearted support from the rear.
The commoners’ skills had improved considerably as well, but they seemed worried they might get caught up and killed in the nobles’ momentum, so they hung back.
“Th-this damn…”
“Do you get it now?”
“H-how are th-those guys clinging to the nobles? Why!”
Ah, you mean the commoners? That was simple.
“It means not everyone is an idiot like you. Think with a shred of common sense. Even if they’re commoners, they’re capable elites. They got into Atellina through their own ability. After graduation, no matter how poorly they do, their path as commoners is rock-solid. Who the hell would want to join losers like you?”
It was simple logic. The commoners currently at Atellina already had solid futures ahead of them. Even if the nobles acted like assholes at school, anyone who knew anything already knew nobles were assholes. Moreover, for the sake of their own dignity the nobles did not put commoners down inside Atellina.
Last time those particular ones had been the weird ones, and even commoners with plenty of grievances just muttered “ugh, that bastard’s at it again” and let it pass.
“You’re a Saint, so how can you—!”
“It’s precisely because I’m a Saint that I’m doing this. Are you kidding me? You’re a demon’s pawn. Should a Saint just sit back and watch?”
Was this guy actually brain-dead?
How thoroughly had the demons brainwashed him?
What kind of nonsense had he listened to that he would seek help from a Saint while serving under demons?
“Even if we truly are being used, shouldn’t you save us? Moreover, the New World Group desires coexistence between humans and demons! We who have fallen into misery will bring peace to the world through coexistence with the demons!”
Oh, coexistence between loser humans and demons.
“Coexistence of humans and demons. A world of commoners. Fuck, now you’re talking about an era where suffering commoners and demons achieve harmony.”
“The Demon King is already dead, so it’s not impossible!”
“Theoretically it isn’t impossible. In practice, succubi desire coexistence on the condition that they receive a bit of essence.”
For succubi, humans were more suitable for harvesting essence than fellow demons.
As long as it didn’t reach the level of death by exhaustion, humans wouldn’t die, and someday coexistence between humans and demons might become possible—how many such theories had floated around for thousands of years?
Yet the reason it had never happened until now was because there was a reason.
Aside from the fact that neither side trusted the other, once a Demon King appeared everything turned to ash.
On the human side, if a hero appeared they would counterattack the Demon King to avenge all the beatings they had taken.
Among those ideas, talk of coexistence between humans and demons was nothing more than the delusion of idiots.
This guy right here proved it. Fake Fram.
I ground my heel thoroughly into Fram’s leg.
Having no capacity for thought and low intelligence, he could only learn delusions.
“Kgh. I already know everything! That even you, a Saint, are embezzling money behind the scenes and raising an army inside the church!”
I had been wondering when that line would finally come out.