Rivelt Territory (6)
Their agitation was swelling the ranks of anti-imperialists, sure enough. But Empire citizens who actually felt the absurdity of their daily lives enough to convert? Those you could count on one hand.
Some of these wretches had simply been unlucky—one bad break after another until they wound up in this mess. Fine. I still classified them as losers.
Revenge? That I could understand. I wouldn’t even blame them for wanting it. But to get so thoroughly steeped in this garbage…
The world was full of people who had it hard. Yet these fools acted like only their suffering mattered, ranting about resurrecting some god whose very existence was dubious at best.
“You bitches! How dare the Empire’s rotten noble scum even speak His name! Heaven itself will not forgive this!”
Well, the talk was smooth, I’d give them that.
Talk was all they had, though. That was the problem. These bastards couldn’t even cast real magic right now.
Proof enough was the way they were trying to fight with demonic energy instead. At the start they’d been preparing their spells with plenty of swagger; now the panic was written all over their faces.
Yeah. Exactly the kind of thing I loved.
Idiots puffing themselves up like they’d seen the light, strutting their power—only to crumple the moment they met something truly overwhelming. They flailed and strained, but nothing came.
I laughed right in their faces.
“Bunch of clowns. You should’ve known your place.”
“Don’t tell me you—”
“Wondering why your magic won’t work?”
They were slow on the uptake. Stupid bastards.
“What the hell have you done?”
When someone asks what you’ve done, the polite thing is to answer.
“Simple. You lot who claim to serve a god are just weaker than us. Weaker than the ‘corrupt nobles’ you hate so much. You amateurs.”
Celia flipped open a black-leather-bound book that had been lying on the round table. The contents were both fascinating and mind-numbingly dull.
“‘Doctrine bestowed by the Primordial God.’ What a load of crap. This god comes back, resets everything, and saves humanity? Hilarious. ‘Set all things right and bring equality’? The kind of trash who falls for lines like that is always the same type.”
“!!”
“Ah, why bother wasting breath? I already called you losers. No matter what you try, you’ll stay losers.”
I hated losers like that. Weaklings huddling together, thrashing around for any scrap of power. Cooperation was fine. A new world sounded great. But the punchline was always some faceless religious god no one could even define.
“Hmph! In the end it’s you who know nothing of the lower classes’ lives!”
“Hey, use some common sense. Why do you think this ‘corrupt’ Empire has lasted a thousand five hundred years? Even now—supposedly the peak of its rot—they’re pouring everything into new weapons. And Ashtar, the same house that got smeared by the succubus incident, is riding a full-scale expedition into the Demon Realm straight into its golden age.”
Reciting the accomplishments of the very nobles they despised was the perfect way to twist the knife.
Their faces flushed purple; they looked ready to charge any second.
“Bullshit! In that case—!”
One of them actually lunged.
And somehow my hand closed around his face.
I hated grabbing old men, but luckily this one was a middle-aged guy who still trusted his own strength. He’d clearly decided that because I looked like a woman, raw force would be enough.
“Throwing your body at me to die? Not a bad idea. The final stage of every loser is the fanatic willing to throw his life away. Very memorable.”
Crrrk—
I squeezed a little. The poor bastard’s face began to warp. That was their level—no body reinforcement, so even a light pressure on the skull made it start to crack.
“Gyaaaaaah!”
Watching him, my tongue suddenly itched. I normally hated speeches and lectures. Right now, though, as a member of the so-called noble trash, I had something I needed to say—even if I had to act high and mighty while doing it.
I flung the greasy wretch aside and spoke slowly.
“You know, cutting me off mid-sentence is starting to piss me off. Listen carefully. Do you really think there haven’t been losers like you for the past fifteen hundred years? For whatever reason—people who believed a god would save them, or fools who called themselves gods and led packs just like yours. They all lost in the end. That’s why the Empire still runs on the exact system you losers keep cursing.”
“Shut up!”
See? Tell them the truth and all they can say is “shut up.” No logic, just raw emotional reaction to whatever pain they’ve suffered. That’s why I call them losers.
I’m not kind. I’m not nice. So I don’t soothe or coddle failures like these. They look incompetent and pathetic.
They can’t even stand on their own, so they latch onto a cult—and then all they can do is parrot “shut up” like brainless birds.
Might as well explain why their grand plan was doomed while I was at it.
“Don’t get mad—just listen. You’re not going to put up a real fight anyway. To topple the Empire, people like you need large-scale agitation from the inside and control of public opinion. So why, despite all the ‘the Empire is rotten’ talk, have you never managed to pull off your so-called great cause? Want to know?”
“As if those idiots would understand.”
Celia was right. I shook my head. Anyone who understood that wouldn’t have become fanatics in the first place.
So I scolded them freely—as an imperial noble, as Ashtar, and as a man who once slaughtered his own kind.
“Exactly. That’s why you’re in this state. Listen well. It’s because the majority of Empire citizens are satisfied with the current system. Most commoners are farmers. They have Blessings, so even when their grain is requisitioned for military supplies they grumble for a bit and then recover. And it’s not as if the lower classes have zero path upward. If you’ve got more power than sense, you can always become an adventurer. What about the soldiers? The Capital Army is loaded with support. Noble armies get everything they need because the nobles themselves will spare no expense to protect their own territories. The Empire is rich enough to afford that kind of luxury.”
In short:
“What you’re doing is useless. Like always, your kind will lose again, and the rotten imperial system will endure.”
That was the truth. The Empire would win; every last fanatic would die. History repeating itself.
The Empire had survived the Demon King’s threat to the very end. It had survived every bizarre cult that rose against it. That was why a wastrel emperor could sit on the throne right now and why new weapons were still being developed.
“We must escape this place!”
“Leave those two here and run?”
“There will be other chances. We have not been defeated yet. Now is the time to flee!”
“Ah, I’m feeling generous. You want to run? Fine. Go ahead and try.”
The sight of them scrambling to escape was so funny I almost couldn’t speak. So they had spatial magic prepared after all. That made things simple.
Yes, I was generous. I could give them one chance to run.
“What—how is this—?”
“If you can actually escape, that is. Celia. Catch them.”
If they managed it, then and only then would I call it a real opportunity.
They tried to force magic through demonic energy and failed—like goblins trapped in a cage.
Crack! Smash! Thud!
While I watched, one of them vanished from sight.
I casually tracked the remaining trace of demonic energy and found him in a corner, frantically preparing something.
Oh? Hiding his presence and trying to slip away in the middle of the fight. So one of them actually had skill. He’d already drawn a massive magic circle, ready to punch through.
If the formula had been long and carefully prepared, even I might have struggled to break it.
Maybe these old men had hidden the circle just to get that one person out.
Too bad for him—once he entered my field of vision, he was finished.
I seized the right arm of the man trying to dive into the dimensional rift through the circle.
Crrrk—
Oh? Not pulling free so easily? What was this—trying to have a contest with me?
He was smarter than expected. He knew that getting caught meant he was fucked.
Normally at this point a person would try to yank free. Being caught was terrifying, but people rarely chose to sacrifice their own arm. Nobody wanted to end up a cripple, and they could never be completely sure they would die in our hands.
“Gyaaaaaah!”
Stubborn bastard.
“If it hurts, why not just come out quietly?”
Look at this little shit. Keep it up and you’ll really be fucked. His right arm began to stretch.
“Khh… gyaaaaah!”
Crack!
In the end, even with flesh tearing and bone ripping free, he preferred the humiliation of capture even less. He slipped into the magic circle anyway, leaving his arm behind.
“Wow. What a vicious bastard. Just hands over his arm and bolts.”
I looked at the lonely right arm still gripped in my hand—a body that no longer had a body.
Judging by the skin, he was about my age or a little younger. Thoroughly vicious either way. I had no choice but to burn the arm to ash.
“Is it alright if we don’t catch him?”
Celia asked once she’d finished thrashing the rest of them.
“Doesn’t matter. Having one of them escape and spread the word will make things more interesting later.”
“What if they prepare even more viciously next time?”
Prepare more viciously? Was that even a serious question?
Impossible.
“Trash at this level can prepare all they want—it won’t matter. Only people with a real, solid foundation can turn desperation into strength. Fanatics who got brainwashed by some pathetic doctrine about a primordial god? Trying hard won’t make them stronger. If anything, more of them will desert.”
They believed they were the strongest because they served the gods. Someday their god would descend and watch over everyone.
Some of them would even throw their lives away for it. But that only happened when the cause was worth dying for.
Right now they had nothing prepared. This was only my guess, but at the very least they didn’t have the Demon King card. The fanatics from the Ruined Land who’d ranted about resurrecting a god? I’d already slaughtered every last one of them.
In front of me, anything these people tried would just look cute.
And I planned to grab one of them for interrogation anyway.
That alone meant the one-armed bastard could run wherever he wanted and shout the news—it would already be too late.
“Anyway. Are the rest of them all dead?”
“I left only the oldest one alive. Respect for the elderly, you know.”
Looking at the old man she’d captured, “respect for the elderly” seemed to have involved bruising half his body black and blue.
She’d beaten him half to death. In her own way she was probably being gentle, but still—did she have to thrash a person this thoroughly?
“Sounds more like elderly assault than respect.”
“What does it matter? He’s not my grandfather.”
“Fair enough. Just a senile old man.”
Even if he had some pitiful backstory, that was all it amounted to.
He’d gone senile, joined something as weird as the New World Group, and, being the oldest, stepped forward to try stirring up the younger ones.
As someone who had sat at the round table, he was probably a big shot among the New World Group cells that had been lying low in Rivelt territory.
“Cough… You think I’ll talk? Don’t be mistaken. If any of us try to reveal secrets—”
Yeah. You might die. So you don’t have to talk.
I had plenty of other ways to find out what I needed.