Chapter 184: Aftermath (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 184: Aftermath (3)
The fall of Mason Industries happened in a flash.
Every tie it had to the Imperial Family and the political sphere was severed—snipped clean as if by scissors. Immediately after, the Sentinel Knights stormed the headquarters without a warrant, confiscating every crucial document.
Soon after, every powerful figure, corporation, and noble family with even the slightest connection to Mason Industries received a single sheet of paper.
[Sentinel Summons]
One by one, they were dragged into the Knights Order for grueling interrogations. The Order dug up every last one of their crimes, referring the worst offenders straight to the Knight Court. As rumors of the purge spread like wildfire, anyone who might have offered "favorable testimony" for Mason Industries conveniently vanished.
“...Damn them all to hell.”
But Hector Mason had already prepared for the worst.
He had scraped together a massive slush fund, liquidating assets into cash dispersed across dozens of borrowed-name accounts. He had also struck a secret deal to hand over all of Mason Industries' core magi-engineering technology to the Eastern Union.
His country had betrayed him first; he would gladly return the favor.
No, he would become their greatest enemy and burn the Empire to the ground.
“Sir, we’ll be arriving shortly.”
Hector was escorted by his fiercely loyal private soldiers. Promised new wealth and glory in the Eastern Union, their devotion was absolute. Soon, their Eastern counterparts would meet them at the rendezvous point.
Bwooooooo—
The low, mournful blast of a ship’s horn echoed through an eastern port of the Empire—a place where crashing waves and deep darkness tangled together.
Hector gazed out the car window at an old cargo ship docked quietly in the night.
“We’re here.”
“Yes, sir. The perimeter is clear. You may exit.”
Flanked by his soldiers, Hector stepped onto the deck.
He hadn't been caught. Of course he hadn't. There were nine rendezvous points in total. He had leaked false intelligence to throw off the Sentinels’ pursuit while slipping away to this, the ninth point.
“Hoo...”
Hector exhaled a long, deep breath. Now that he had shaken off the Empire, it was time to plan his next great undertaking—
“...?”
Just then, a deep shadow in the corner of the deck flickered. The hazy darkness seemed to coalesce into a shape. Hector frowned, his eyes locking onto the spot.
Step.
A distinct footfall rang out as the shadow solidified into the figure of a woman.
“...A pleasure to meet you.”
A cold sea breeze swept across the hull, scattering her short black hair. Her eyes, damp with mist, were as dark and still as obsidian.
Hector flinched, taking a step back. His soldiers immediately surrounded him, drawing their swords and guns.
“Who are you? The owner of this ship?” Hector demanded.
Even looking right at her face, he clearly didn't recognize her.
The fact that he had forgotten made Schatz smile. She wasn't the least bit fazed.
“My name is...”
True to his word, Maximilian had kept the promise he made at their very first meeting.
He had prepared the perfect stage for her.
“Schatz Heizen.”
Schatz stated her name in a low, even voice. Only then did Hector’s eyes waver.
Heizen. He certainly remembered that name.
“...Arthur Heizen’s daughter.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
The moment the words left her lips, Schatz moved. Crack! A searing blue electrical current erupted from her fingertips.
Chwa-rurururuk—!
In the next instant, she surged forward like a thunderbolt. The soldiers were torn to bloody shreds in a flash. Amidst the scattering limbs, Hector’s eyes widened in blank, uncomprehending terror.
“Hmm...”
Schatz looked down at him, genuinely pondering.
What was the most effective way to torture a man?
Was it the electricity itself? Or perhaps the intense, searing heat the electricity produced?
“W-wait! Just a minute!”
Hector frantically threw a hand up toward her.
“How much? How much do you need?!”
Even now, at death's door, Hector tried to buy his life.
“I’ll give you anything! No, better yet, let’s go into business together! With your abilities and my connections, we could rise to the very top of the East! I’m serious!”
To Schatz, he was the very picture of vulgarity.
A stark contrast to him.
While there might be true nobles and false ones in this world, this man was worse than a fraud.
That was exactly why he could never truly become a noble.
Step.
Schatz took another slow stride forward.
“W-wait! It was a misunderstanding! Your father and I were once close friends! We shared the same goals! Do you have any idea how much I paid Arthur?!”
Friends.
Schatz let out a soft laugh. Bzzzt! With a hand crackling with lethal voltage, she clamped it firmly over Hector’s mouth.
If she let his pathetic words provoke her into losing her composure, the quality of the suffering she planned to inflict might diminish.
“Mmph, mmmph!”
“Listen closely.”
“Mmmph-ub!”
“You will not die a peaceful death.”
Murderous intent chilled her obsidian eyes.
The most perfect revenge was torture.
To burn the skin and flay the bones with agony that brought a man to the very brink of death, yet never let him cross over—keeping him breathing only to repeat the process endlessly. To inflict a pain far greater than death itself.
If revenge felt empty and hollow, the problem lay not with the revenge itself, but with its depth.
That was Schatz’s philosophy.
“Mmm, mmmph-ubbbbb—!”
The sickening hiss of burning skin. The foul stench of flesh cooking in the heat.
Hector’s muffled screams drowned beneath the acrid smoke billowing into the night air.
* * *
In a remote mountain village in the Eastern Union.
Karl May—born Yujen May, the son of Epen May and nephew of Hector Mason—stared, captivated, at the stacks of banknotes piled on the desk before him. The sheer weight of the money pressing down on the shabby wooden planks left him speechless.
“All... all of this...”
Imperial dollars and Robrus currency. Cash from two great nations accepted anywhere on the continent, alongside stacks of bearer bonds.
For a man who had lived his entire life as a dirt-poor farmer, it was an astronomical sum he couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams.
“This is the sum calculated by adding compound interest to the family fortune Hector Mason stole when he fled forty years ago,” the visitor—Schatz Heizen—stated, her face impassive. “And the rest is your reward for reporting the evidence of Hector Mason’s bloodline.”
Karl May stroked a bundle of cash with a trembling hand before belatedly looking up at Schatz.
“Th-thank you! Thank you so much!”
Ebenholtz’s treatment of informants was impeccable. They were never shortchanged, and their safety was thoroughly guaranteed even after the information was extracted.
This was the ‘soil’ that Maximilian valued above all else.
The absolute trust that if you cooperated with Ebenholtz, you would never be betrayed.
Rooted in such solid faith, Ebenholtz would cultivate the ground needed to endlessly absorb all the continent's deepest secrets.
“I’ll be on my way.”
“Yes, yes! Thank you! Travel safely! Thank you—!”
Schatz, for her part, was simply grateful he had survived.
Everyone else in the May family had died under sudden, mysterious circumstances—undoubtedly Hector’s doing. Karl had only survived because he lived in this isolated rural village.
“Will you be returning to the Empire now?” one of the investigators from the Genen Annex asked. She looked at them and considered for a moment.
She had amassed quite a few subordinates of her own by now. There were probably hundreds of them under her command.
“...No.”
She shook her head.
“I have somewhere else to be. You all head back.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Schatz got into a car by herself.
This time, she was completely alone.
This was her own final mission, one she would not report to anyone.
She knew the real reason Hector Mason had kept her alive all those years ago instead of killing her outright.
It was because of an ‘original’ document concerning the Mana Engine that her father had hidden away.
And she knew exactly where that place was.
* * *
Meanwhile, Mason Industries was quietly being dismantled.
First, CEO Hector Mason was summarily convicted of high treason in absentia, and the corporations under his umbrella were scheduled to be broken up in a manner that would minimize the shock to the western economy.
Quietly, as if nothing had happened at all.
The name Hector Mason was erased from all Imperial records and history. Easily replaced.
—As the shields of the Empire, as the Emperor’s sword, do you swear to devote your souls to the glory of the Empire?
Spring had returned to the capital.
It was the Sentinel Knights’ induction ceremony.
—The Empire will remember your loyalty and reward your devotion with glory. For His Majesty the Emperor...
Commander Alberich’s voice echoed across the grounds, though it had grown noticeably weaker than it was three years ago. The senior knights stood in formation beside him, watching the new recruits on the platform.
“Vice-Commander, look over there,” whispered Reynel, a knight who had recently been promoted to a senior rank, pointing toward the stage. Chiron followed his gaze.
“That new recruit is Lucas Limperk.”
Lucas Limperk. The son of the former judge, Klaus Limperk.
He stood at the very front of the platform, securing one of the top three positions in his class.
“Ah, so that’s the kid? The one Maximilian has his eye on.”
Chiron let out a smirk.
The one Maximilian has his eye on.
In this day and age, that was a more reliable backing than any noble halo.
“Yes. I checked his Empire Point scores, and he is certainly outstanding,” Reynel said with a small smile.
“I suppose grades are the key qualification, then.”
“Indeed.”
To catch Maximilian’s eye, one needed exceptional grades above all else.
In other words, one needed undeniable ‘talent.’
Lucas Limperk had shown particular promise in descent, combat, and ideology. News of what Maximilian valued would now surely spread throughout Empire Point.
The standards for admission always shifted according to the proctor's tastes.
“However...”
Chiron glanced around the ceremony grounds, tilting his head.
“Maximilian isn’t here today?”
“Oh, you’re right.”
Reynel scanned the crowd as well. Tiana, Leon, Hannah Usar, and the rest—all the first and second-year knights were in attendance. Only Maximilian was absent.
“Well, he must have something else to attend to.”
...
Somewhere on the outskirts of the Empire.
A forgotten hometown, recorded only as ruins on modern maps—a place that could now only be described as ‘somewhere.’
Schatz Heizen arrived in that desolate land.
The village had long lost its original form; only faint traces remained.
“...”
The clear stream still babbled as it always had, but the washing stones where the village women used to gather and laugh were gone.
The foundations of old houses had been reclaimed by nature, buried under mounds of earth, and overgrown weeds swayed in the wind, brushing against her thighs.
Standing alone in that bleak landscape, Schatz forced herself to superimpose warm memories of the past over the ruins.
Her father’s hometown. Her mother’s hometown. Her hometown.
But this place had been thoroughly trampled and burned to ash by Hector Mason’s private soldiers for one reason alone: it was Arthur Heizen’s home.
Schatz walked slowly through the weed-choked entrance to the village.
She knew the object she was looking for wouldn't be in these main ruins.
Hector Mason had already excavated the entire area and found nothing.
Schatz, however, knew exactly where to look.
That secret place where she used to play hide-and-seek with her father as a child.
Their own secret hideout, quite far from the village proper.
She walked until she reached a small opening on the hill behind the village.
“...It’s here.”
An unconscious smile spread across her lips.
It was a small animal trail formed by a canopy of tangled thornbushes. A narrow passage that required an adult to bend over deeply to pass through.
Schatz lowered her body. When she was a child, she had only needed to bend her knees.
Now, the grass and dirt brushed against her stomach.
Rustle...
After crawling on all fours for some time, the path finally opened up, revealing a small, shelter-like clearing.
“It’s... just as it was.”
A wave of emotion washed over her, making her heart tremble. Schatz gave a bitter smile and walked over to a distant tree, sitting at its base.
It was the very spot where her father used to read her fairy tales.
Relying on her memory, she began to dig.
Scrape. Scrape.
Old memories surfaced with the soil.
She cupped her hands like a mole, digging until dark dirt packed tightly under her fingernails. Scrape. Scrape.
She dug and dug until her fingers finally struck something hard.
Schatz pulled the small box from the earth.
Inside, undoubtedly, was the ‘original’ that Hector had searched for so desperately.
“...”
But why had her father hidden the original instead of destroying it?
As far as Schatz could reason, he had done it solely for her sake.
He knew that as long as this existed somewhere out of reach, Hector wouldn't dare kill her.
—Now... if only the Mana Engine is completed...
Suddenly, Falkenrat’s voice echoed in her ears.
She remembered his eerie tone as he murmured those words, his face rapt with terrifying ecstasy.
—Faced with the temptation of such overwhelming power, even the Maximilian you serve will inevitably be swayed.
The Mana Engine. An infinite power source that could replace the human heart.
What if this original truly proved the ‘feasibility’ of its creation?
—He won't be able to resist. It's the ultimate technology that could permanently eradicate the filthy alien bloodlines he despises so much from this continent.
Maximilian believed the Mana Engine was a technological impossibility.
It was precisely because he believed it was a pipe dream that he had ruthlessly crushed Hector Mason.
—Schatz Heizen. That arrogant knight will choose the ‘power’ we offer over the loyalty of a single hunting dog like you.
But what if the Mana Engine was truly possible?
If it could be realized at the cost of countless lives, and if Maximilian could possess that godlike power...
What choice would he make?
—In the end, he too will become a monster who gazes upon the same things we do.
Clutching her father’s box to her chest, Schatz was lost in torment.
Whatever was inside this box, it must never see the light of day. It could not fall into anyone’s hands.
Not even Maximilian’s—
Rustle.
The faint sound of someone stepping on the bushes behind her broke the silence.
Schatz’s head snapped around.
“...”
Her eyes widened, her dark pupils shrinking in sheer shock.
“Why look so surprised?”
It was Maximilian.
He had literally walked straight through the dense thornbushes to get here, yet his clothes and skin were completely unscathed.
“If you move in the most natural way, nature has no cause to harm you.”
That was how Maximilian had once explained his pristine condition. Schatz held her breath, staring up at him.
Step. Step.
Maximilian approached, his face set in the stoic mask of a knight.
Had he been following her this entire time?
Schatz quickly hid the box behind her back and rose to her feet.
“...Schatz Heizen.”
Maximilian called her name and held out his hand.
His gesture, his piercing gaze, his empty palm.
Schatz knew all too well what it meant.
It was a silent, absolute command to hand over her father’s legacy. The original.
Whoosh—
An aimless wind swept through the clearing, stirring the heavy hem of Maximilian’s coat.
There, in the secret hideout filled with the warmest memories of a father and daughter, Schatz Heizen stood frozen, torn by an agonizing choice for a long, long time.