New Weapon Experiment (1)
Most wyvern knights enjoyed the patronage of noble houses. Raising a single wyvern knight required staggering sums of money, after all.
And every knight who had accepted such patronage had already left the West.
Yet roughly two hundred wyvern knights still remained.
With the advent of new weapons, there was no longer any need to hold the western border—and yet they lacked the political foundations that would let them simply pack up and leave. Most of them had spent their careers focused solely on quietly guarding the frontier.
"Even if we head for the capital, what would change?"
Men who had taken up the lance to protect people looked upon the empire's present state with deep skepticism.
The empire was collapsing. The crown prince was incompetent; the nobles were corrupt. Anyone who mattered already knew it.
What was there to do in the peaceful center while everything slowly rotted away?
Their status as wyvern knights would ensure they received decent treatment, of course. But they had never become knights for the sake of good treatment.
If they had wanted wealth and honor, they would have joined the Western Reserve.
"But staying here doesn't give us anything to do either, does it?"
"That's true enough..."
The times had changed. No one felt that truth more keenly than the wyvern knights themselves.
The battlefields of the new age had no welcome for knights.
Before the war machines of the new era, wyvern knights were powerless. In the conquest of the western plains—the long-cherished dream of their order—there was no longer any place for them.
"What if we went north instead?"
"I doubt the north is any different. I hear the monster wars are over up there too; the mood's grown quite warm and cozy."
Even the north, the last theater of real fighting, was slowly settling into an age of peace.
Leaving the empire entirely had never been an option. They were knights of the empire's citizens.
They knew better than anyone that chivalric honor was often an illusion and that few positions were more entangled with power than a knight's. Still, they wanted to keep the spirit of knighthood alive.
"Hah... it's hard to see any future for this empire."
In the council chamber of the Western 23rd Knight Order, twenty knights sat in an atmosphere that was more than dark—it was bleak.
As men of some education, they understood exactly how rotten the empire had become, and the knowledge that they could do nothing but watch it fall only deepened their gloom.
"At least the West we tried to protect is still standing. Small mercies."
In truth, the West had hardly been "standing." For fifty years it had been sinking by degrees; under Charles Raymonds it had finally broken.
The war between South and West that had been decided in a single week had shaken even the wyvern knights to their core.
At first they had resisted fiercely and considered intervening... yet in the end the people were living better.
"A full year has already passed since the conflict between West and South ended."
In that year a great deal had happened, and the face of the West had been utterly transformed.
Daily life for the western people had grown markedly more prosperous. Once the murderous taxes of the corrupt nobility vanished and the threat of barbarian tribes that had constantly eyed the outlying territories disappeared, vitality returned to the provinces.
The West alone seemed exempt from the empire's collapse.
And everyone knew exactly where the cause lay.
"Kyle Leopold. The man really does seem to be someone special."
The South under Kyle Leopold's rule was a different country from the South that had existed before him—especially to outside eyes.
Ten years earlier the South had been visibly fractured. Corporate magnates, the Southern Grand Ducal court, and the assembly had each shouted their own opinions while laborers cried that they were dying. The South of those days had been infamous for its poor morale.
Anyone who announced they were going south to make money was sent off with worried farewells: "Come back alive." Its political voice had been correspondingly weak.
Until recently, the South had simply had no power.
"In only ten years, so much has changed."
The once-floundering South had found strength. Suffering laborers vanished; growth acquired a clear purpose. Military power expanded day after day. Once the South's inefficient systems were cleaned up, its factories began operating at peak efficiency, churning out goods and weapons at an absurd rate.
"A completely different picture from the crumbling empire."
"You're not wrong."
Old nations fall. Old dynasties forget how to innovate; old aristocrats think only of protecting their own power.
Fine cracks spread through the foundation of what once seemed solid. Leaders who care only for covering the outer walls pass the bomb to the next generation—and when that bomb finally detonates, everything ends.
In the knights' eyes, the empire stood one step from that detonation.
And the South? It seethed with the vitality of a new dynasty.
That was why the knights could not shake a lingering regret.
"If only a man like that had been guiding the empire..."
They were thinking exactly that when Kyle himself appeared before them.
"A pleasure. I am Kyle Leopold—Southern Grand Duke and currently serving as policy advisor for the West."
Until the air force was ready, he needed a unit that could annihilate strategic targets from the sky.
So he carved out time from his packed schedule and came in person. These were talents far too precious to risk losing by sending a subordinate with a perfunctory summons.
"Ah—welcome, Your Grace. I am Roen, Knight Commander of the Western 23rd Knight Order!"
"A pleasure. I am Kyle Leopold—Southern Grand Duke and currently serving as policy advisor for the West."
That was why he had journeyed all the way to the western knight order himself.
Men who had abandoned politics to remain on the frontier and protect the people would never be swayed by the usual political flourishes. The circling, ornamental speech of the nobility would be equally useless.
These knights were the only healthy remnant left in a West whose upper ranks had completely rotted. So he drove straight to the point without hesitation.
"What brings you all the way to this humble place, Your Grace?"
"To give you another chance to fight for the citizens."
"A chance, you say?"
These were knights who had continued to protect the people in silence even when everyone else chased power and the knightly orders began to take on the color of political commissars. Naturally their goal had never been wealth or renown.
"Yes. We will almost certainly be entering a conflict with the East before long."
The knights, being reasonably educated men, had already half-sensed it. Every face tightened slightly.
"You mean to start a civil war within the empire?"
"If necessary."
"Then we cannot help you. We are knights who protect the citizens—not power-mad men who would plunge them into suffering."
It was more or less the reaction he had expected. Showing not the slightest surprise, he simply asked back:
"Men who would plunge the citizens into suffering?"
The ones currently inflicting the greatest suffering on the empire's people—and the ones who would inflict still greater suffering—were not him.
They were the incompetent upper ranks who would destroy this empire. They were the true enemies of the realm.
"Indeed. There are many who would plunge the citizens into suffering. Especially on the far side of the Arbel Mountains."
"..."
"You already feel it yourselves. This empire has no hope left. The thousand-year dynasty has reached its end."
In a nation that still possessed a living emperor, such words were unforgivable. Yet the knights, who felt the truth of them in their bones, could find nothing to say.
"I have always stood with the suffering citizens."
Even if, at the very beginning, it had been simply to keep his own neck off the gallows.
Regardless, he had always stood with the people.
"This time is no different. I will fight for the citizens who suffer in a collapsing empire. Have you not seen with your own eyes how the crumbling West has been transformed?"
"...We have."
After a brief hesitation, the knights finally conceded the point. No one had felt the change in the West more clearly than they.
"Which is why I ask you this."
To turn their hearts completely, he drove home the decisive blow.
"For whom do you fight?"
"..."
"For an incompetent, corrupt state? Or for the people who suffer under it?"
"We..."
There was only one answer they could give.
"...We fought to protect the citizens."
In that moment the hearts of the western knights were decided.
Weapons suited to the new age of knights.
In truth, they were already largely prepared.
"Design Bureau reports that every weapon Your Grace ordered is ready for testing."
"Good."
Whoever rules the sea rules the world. That law of the world had not changed since the Age of Exploration began.
And so he took a keen personal interest in the weapons that would dominate the sea—so much so that even after the battleships were launched he continued developing and testing new ones.
Submarines for stealthy surprise attacks.
The weapon those submarines would use: the torpedo.
Depth charges to sweep the sea monsters from the ocean floor.
Naval mines for maritime blockade.
There was only one place where every one of those weapons could be thrown into the fray without complications.
The South's long-standing tumor: the pirates.
"I authorize the experiment."
At that order, the submarines waiting in the docks put to sea in unison.
The following dawn.
Off the reef cluster the pirates used as a base—
Kuuung—
With the sound of compressed air driving a torpedo free, a trail of pure white foam cut across the dawn sea.