Diversionary Operation (2)
I headed down to the Plant Knight Order’s dungeon alone.
Just in case, I stopped Celia when she tried to follow.
Here, I had to deal with the fake Fram by myself.
I had no intention of letting him live. I simply wanted to trample him as much as I pleased, quietly, alone, without anyone watching.
This time I planned a mental assault rather than physical violence.
So I left Celia to guard against any possible intrusion by Ryler.
“S-Saint!”
The nameless half-Main trash shoved into the corner of the cell was trembling all over, no doubt from the memory of being beaten by me.
“Yeah. As you can see, I’m the Saint.”
“Did you come to mock me?”
He’d have to be worth mocking first. I was already sick of wasting attention on brainless bastards one by one.
That said… I was in the mood to run a little wild myself.
So rather than simply mocking him, I intended to grind his mind far more thoroughly underfoot.
“There’s no reason to bother with the likes of you. Right, then—why did our oh-so-great, oh-so-pathetic knight turn into an anti-imperialist?”
“The lord of the region where I lived destroyed my happy family! He used a Main to steal my mother, and my father died trying to take her back from that lord!”
Ah. Cases like that weren’t uncommon.
Every country had its share of corrupt lords. There were always a few who used their power to take pretty women for themselves.
Even back in the Hero Party days, with Ella or Siria—some idiot lords who failed to recognize them would try something, only to get the stuffing beaten out of them instead.
That was probably why this one hated nobles. He’d taken his revenge already, I was sure.
“So you got your revenge?”
“Yes! I killed the lord, and I killed my mother too, once she could never be human again!”
Of course he had.
If she truly couldn’t be restored to humanity, there was only one possibility. And if the victim was a woman the lord had targeted…
“Judging by the scenario, your mother was turned into a succubus. The work of a lord who colluded with a succubus, no doubt.”
“That’s right!”
If a lord had gone so far as to shatter a household, this nameless bastard’s parents must have resisted to the bitter end. So the lord had used force, and the mother had been fully succubized to make her completely his. Ruin, in the end.
“Then that should have been the end of it. Why all this nonsense?”
“I did it for a greater cause.”
A greater cause. A greater cause. He talked a good game.
Men always said it. For the cause. For the realm.
And not a single one of them ever actually achieved that goal.
In the end they were all like the trash in front of me—men who never lasted long.
“Well, asking something like this of a thoughtless bastard who pulled a stunt like yours is pretty funny in itself, but…”
There was something I genuinely wanted to know.
Something I felt I absolutely had to ask.
Crack.
I stomped on his ankle all over again.
There were limits to how much you could ignore a person.
“Gyaaah!”
“For the sake of that pathetic cause of yours, you wiped out the entire Fram family—people who had done nothing wrong?”
Pitiful bastard. The kind who never even knew who he was really fighting for.
I had seen the same thing in the Kingdom, and now I was watching it here. It made me angry.
In the Kingdom I’d been constrained by the Hero Party. Here, I could do what I wanted. That was the only difference.
“All nobles are trash!”
“Watch your mouth. Did the Fram family steal your mother?”
“!!”
No. The Fram family hadn’t taken his mother.
“Did they kill your father?”
“Th-that… e-even so, all nobles…”
“If every noble truly were trash, this enormous country would have fractured long ago, you idiot.”
No matter how successful a nation, no matter how much magical civilization propped up its population—if the leadership were pure garbage, the Empire would have split apart.
That was simply how I saw it.
“Shut up!”
“I’ll say more. The Fram family, under Plant, was famous as a house of knights among knights who helped the common people.”
“!!”
What was he so surprised about? Had he truly not known? At the very least, shouldn’t you learn a little about the family of the people you planned to kill?
“And yet you, chasing some childish great work that would collapse at the first real push, decided to vent your immature whining on the world by wiping out the Fram family—who had done nothing wrong.”
“Shut up! Shut up!”
As if I would stop just because he told me to.
No—I was going to torment him just like this, this way and that way and every other way.
They said you reaped what you sowed.
“All right, then. Let me rephrase the question. Was Fram your enemy?”
“S-s-shut…”
The way he stammered told me even he couldn’t answer.
How pitiful.
“How is what you’re doing any different from what the nobles do?”
“!!”
From here on I would thoroughly shatter his mind.
I would break this idiot whose intelligence had already hit rock bottom and see what lay underneath.
“I’ll ask again. So—is the Fram family your enemy?”
“Did the Fram family do anything that deserved death at your hands?”
“Do you truly believe what you’re doing is just?”
At my words he finally began shaking his head, then started slamming his skull against the wall over and over.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut uuup!”
Blood ran from his head, but nothing changed.
I simply spoke to him in a calm, cold voice stripped of every emotion.
“You can’t answer. Very well. Then I’ll ask.”
“What? You think I’ll answer?”
He kept ramming his head into the wall, declaring he would never speak.
I didn’t stop him.
A fool was simply doing foolish things.
But he had already left humanity behind. Even if he bashed his skull against the wall trying to die, even if he tried to erase his sins through pain, it all came to the same thing.
“If you still have even a scrap of conscience, and if you don’t actually intend to hand the human nations over to the demonkin—no. If you can still turn that brain of yours even a little right now—how about answering?”
“Even if I’m wrong, it’s still a fact that the nobles are corrupt!”
A madman. Still fighting to the end. To the bitter end.
Would he only speak if I cracked his skull open right here?
“Who’s behind you? Just Mains? If you talk properly, I can even kill you without pain. I’ll ask again.”
At my question he thought for a long time before finally nodding.
“Y-yeah. Just a Main. I don’t even know the name.”
“I don’t expect much from a low-ranking piece of trash like you. But at the very least you should have felt something. If you didn’t even manage that, you’re just a complete idiot.”
“Kh…”
So he was an idiot, then.
“In that case, is there anything else you’re trying to accomplish? You’re not just one or two people, so I doubt you planned to stop at Plant.”
If they had truly only targeted us at Plant, it would be strange.
No—the work they had already done in Plant alone was worth a decent evaluation. But even so, it was too sloppy.
If they were going after Aetlin or the students, at least mid-level officers should have shown up.
“I-I don’t really know that far either. Wh-what I am sure of is they said they were going after the Imperial Capital too!”
“The Capital?”
Targeting the Capital—what kind of insane talk was that?
There shouldn’t be any anti-imperialist force in this area strong enough to threaten the capital.
“Y-yeah. That’s why we had to do our part well.”
So they intended to attack the Capital at the same time?
Or were they going to strike the Capital after seeing how things went here?
No. As anti-imperialists they would already know the Capital’s situation perfectly well.
And yet they still planned to attack—meaning they were confident.
In that case, a simultaneous strike made more sense.
Declaring they would hit the Capital meant they had the confidence and power—or at least a strategy capable of achieving a minimum objective.
Having the Plant family show up at a time like that would be a nuisance. The Ashtar family, thanks to the new border at Crad Castle, had no reason to deploy troops to the Capital either.
If the anti-imperialists were targeting the Capital…
There was only one answer.
“The provincial nobles.”
It would make sense as the provincial nobles’ final attempt.
The provincial nobles cooperating with the anti-imperialists and the Mains to overturn the Capital.
“But they got crushed spectacularly.”
“I’ve said everything I have to say now!”
“So what?”
“Kill me already!”
Kill him, he said. Well. At least he could still talk.
So why start something like this in the first place? Tsk tsk.
Still, watching him beg me because he couldn’t even die on his own was almost a little pitiful in its own way.
“Guilt starting to creep in, is it?”
“Don’t ask any more. Just… let me rest…”
Guilt deep enough to make him want to die. Yes. That was possible.
“You want me to kill you?”
“Y-yeah.”
If he wanted to die, I ought to kill him. But I had no intention of doing it myself.
“I’m not the one who’s going to kill you.”
“What do you mean—”
As if I would ever grant him a peaceful death.
“Celia mentioned she needed a new teddy bear around now.”
“A new teddy bear? What the hell does that even mean? And who’s Celia—”
Celia was just Celia. She simply loved teddy bears a great deal.
“You know of Celia, the next Magic Tower Master, don’t you?”
“I know of her, but what does that have to do with—”
“Celia likes making teddy bear dolls out of regenerated materials.”
Enough that people called her a teddy-bear fetishist.
The materials varied—demonkin, monsters, and so on. Naturally, humans were included.
“Y-you mean… p-people? That’s heresy! That’s the sort of thing only black mages do!”
Was that something a man who had joined hands with Mains should be saying? He was badly confused.
“Once you’re dead, you’re not a person—you’re a corpse. Celia only uses the dead.”
“Even so, there’s such a thing as human decency!”
He really was stupid beyond belief. If he understood the state of his own body, he would never say something like that.
“Is that something a man who colluded with Mains should say?”
“If no one finds out, it’s not heresy. Besides, you’re already not human even while still alive.”
His face twisted and warped hideously.
A half-finished Main. The one who had given this bastard power had clearly intended to use him as a disposable tool.
“!!”
“Well, I’ll leave you to Celia.”
“You said you’d kill me without pain.”
Ah. Right. I had said that. But I didn’t feel like it.
Why should I keep a promise? Promises existed to be broken.
The mere fact that I had wasted time on a rebel like him meant I wouldn’t feel better even if I sliced the flesh off his bones right here.
So for the finale, I intended to make this nameless bastard as miserable as possible.
“I’m a noble of this country. Why would I make a promise with a lowly rebel like you? Over something involving the Capital, no less? Even speaking with you disgusts me.”
“You damned noble womaaaan!”
“Sorry, but who are you again?”
I didn’t even know his name. He had nothing to do with me.
The rest was up to Celia—whether she turned him into stuffing or not.
With that, I left the dungeon.
“Can I use that one as a teddy bear?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Who was I supposed to be doing favors for by letting him die comfortably? Absolutely not.
“Heh heh. Perfect. Unexpected materials, even.”
“Is the Magic Tower fine with that?”
I had said those things earlier to drive him into despair, but in reality the Magic Tower strictly forbade heretical practices.
“Well, legally speaking, there’s no problem with that, is there?”
“True. Then I suppose we need to clean this bastard up and head to the Capital.”
Honestly, I didn’t think that Emperor would fall so easily. But the Empire’s reputation was on the line. What if, against all odds, an infiltration actually happened and a battle broke out?
We had to go protect it, at least.
“The Capital? We do need to go, but is it urgent?”
“Looks like there are people targeting the Capital.”
“What a bunch of lunatics.”
They looked like lunatics to me too.
Even without me they would have failed, and yet they still intended to go through with it.
They probably had something they were counting on—among the Mains, no doubt. But to be perfectly clear: as long as I was in this war, it was useless.
There were the Church nuns as well.
And Bernoa was there too.
“I’ll take a teleport and go ahead. Leave the students with Ryan and Ryler—the father and son—and we should head out.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Even if they had something to rely on, they needed to understand that an absolute enemy existed.