Rather Than Be Discarded, I'll Kill the Emperor (1)

I died under the wheels of a truck and woke up in another world. No sooner had I settled into this borrowed body than I was thrown onto a battlefield straight out of hell, and for a full ten years I fought on that battlefield without pause.

It was a pandemonium where a friend I'd been laughing with only the night before would take an arrow through the skull and die without so much as a groan. A hell where the man who swore he'd confess to the girl he loved and marry her when he got home was the first to catch an arrow in the head.

Struggling tooth and nail to survive amid that tragedy, piling battle honor on top of battle honor — and at some point, people had begun calling me a war hero. When I first arrived, I'd been a green second lieutenant from a minor noble house; by the time I came to my senses, I had risen all the way to division commander, toasted as the greatest war hero the Empire had.

Judged by that stretch alone, I had lived the life of a textbook hero in a standard otherworld reincarnation story. But—

"Fuck. The bastards at the General Staff never hand down anything but dogshit operations."

From the moment I was dropped into this world, I had been fed exclusively into the most gruesome frontlines and the most hopeless operations. An enemy force half again our numbers counted as a decent day; at the worst of times, I was made to fight opponents three times our strength. In an Empire that measured men by blood alone, a unit commanded by someone like me — with no great house to lean on — was always thrown into the most dangerous ground there was. That I had climbed this far was only because I kept crawling back alive.

"Honestly, there were more times than I could count when I wanted to throw it all away and desert."

If I ran, every man under my command would be turned into meat shields for the Empire and slaughtered in its name. That was something I could never bring myself to ignore. The man who talked about the warm meal his wife would have waiting when he came home. The boy whose mother counted the days until he returned. The soldier who'd gotten a girl pregnant before shipping out and swore that, now he was going to be a father, he simply had to make it back alive.

They had fought looking to me alone, trusting me alone — when I was a platoon leader, again when promotion made me a company commander, and again as a battalion commander. So I couldn't run. I had to keep fighting, for the sake of the men who believed in me, the soldiers who wanted nothing more than to go home, so that I could send even one more of them back to their families safe and whole. And I was afraid that if I abandoned that duty ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and fled, the guilt of it would gnaw at me for the rest of my life.

"So in the end, it's come true — they say the last one standing is the strongest."

I was muttering that to myself over a stack of paperwork when my adjutant, Lieutenant Colonel Erika, approached and spoke.

"Sir, Field Marshal Albrecht has just captured the royal castle of the Kingdom of Buyargo and taken both the King and Queen alive. This war has ended in victory for the Imperial Army."

The word victory pulled a hollow laugh out of me. A thousand feelings crossed at once. Relief that the war was over — the fleeting thought that I would never have to lose another of my men — and yet I could not celebrate this victory with anything close to a pure heart.

When I had first arrived in this world, the Empire had been robbed of nearly eighty percent of its territory, and it was our division that had played the greatest part in turning the counteroffensive against the Kingdom of Buyargo into a success. And in the end, it was Field Marshal Albrecht and the high nobles under his command who claimed the last and largest ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠share of the glory.

"That pig Albrecht sent us in first for the assault on the kingdom's capital and let two thousand and forty-one of my men die — and now the greatest honor of all, the capture of the royal castle, goes to him alone."

In this war alone, 2,041 soldiers of my division had been killed or grievously wounded in the taking of the Buyargan capital. They say a unit that loses more than thirty percent of its strength is annihilated; we had fought to the very brink of annihilation. And for what? To serve as meat shields so that units led by other pedigreed noble lords could rack up merits of their own. My division had already bled through more than five battles of this kind, and every single time, the highest honors had gone to the high nobility.

"We were the first up the walls. We opened the gates. We cut down every soldier holding the ground inside them. And the greatest merit of the day goes to the units led by Field ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Marshal Albrecht and their lordships the counts and dukes. It's always been this way — you'd think I'd have gotten used to it by now. I just can't get used to it."

Tears dripped one by one from my eyes. It was galling, having the credit stolen — but what truly burned was thinking of the men who had died for their betters and then been robbed of even that.

"Colonel Dripin. Lieutenant Colonels Albert and Roen... First Lieutenant Sebastian, Sergeant Major Hobert, Master Sergeant Brandel, Staff Sergeant Flandel."

Colonel Dripin had come from a perfectly respectable noble family — until he disciplined a count's son who had been abusing his soldiers, and was cast out to my division for it. A doting father to his core, he'd told me day after day that once the war ended he would retire, draw his pension, and spend every waking hour playing with his darling little girl.

Lieutenant Colonel Roen had been assigned under me just after I made Captain — an officer with no family name behind him, who spent every spare moment writing letters to his fiancée back home. The woman had waited more than seven years for her husband-to-be to return.

Sergeant Major Hobert had fought ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠beside me since the days I was a rookie platoon leader. Half in jest, he always said that once the war was over, he'd introduce me to his daughter.

"Every one of them was glowing with the hope of going home to his family after this battle, after this war. They should never have been allowed to die like this... to be made to die so wretchedly, and then robbed of every last bit of the credit besides. God, I'm a useless man."

Erika, who had been listening, spoke up with care.

"The fault is not yours, Major General Kruger. You have done nothing wrong."

Truthfully, I knew that. The ones who kept forcing our division into one unreasonable order after another were Field Marshal Albrecht and the Empire's goddamned Emperor. They were the bastards who kept handing down commands that amounted to strapping bombs to our chests and hurling us into the enemy's lines. And yet, reason aside, the same thought kept circling my skull — that if I had only done a little better, I might have sent them home to their families after all.

"Thank you for saying that, Erika. Truly, I'm glad to have you here."

"You don't say that to Major Sophia or to Clerk Chloe as well, do you?"

"We're not even in love with each other — isn't that going a bit too far?"

"I am sincerely in love with you, Major General Kruger. Whenever you're ready, I only ask that you give my heart an answer."

Having deliberately lightened the heavy air, Erika handed me a single-page secret letter.

"A courier has just arrived from the Imperial Household. He asked that this be placed in your hands personally, Major General."

"Did the courier say anything else?"

"Only that His Majesty has rendered his answer to your request."

"Give it here."

I took the letter from Erika. Within, it read:

"Goddammit."

My 13th Division had dragged the Empire back from the brink of ruin more times than I could count. The Emperor and his nobles wallowed in every luxury and splendor the realm could offer — and yet they would refuse the men who bled to protect their rice bowls a single hectare apiece, a plot of land just large enough for one family to live in modest comfort? Where the hell was the sense in that?

That mad bastard of an Emperor.

On its face, what followed might have passed for the Emperor honoring our division's record. Even without the land, being made an Imperial Guard division meant being elevated to the standing of the Emperor's own personal troops. But the Emperor and the imperial nobility did not regard commoners as human beings at all. For men like them to confer such an honor on the soldiers of the 13th — to feign acknowledgment of their devotion while taking us into the Imperial Guard — could only mean one thing: a division that was, in effect, a company of the nation's saviors was politically burdensome, and so every last one of us would 'die a glorious death' in the coming war against the Kingdom of Haring. A dead 13th Division leaves behind nothing but a corpse with an honorific attached.

A minor noble with no title of my own, made a Count and granted a county — honor and wealth delivered in a single stroke. Erika, born the Emperor's illegitimate daughter and shunned her whole life, recognized at last with the formal standing of an imperial princess and given to me in marriage. By any measure, the Emperor had rewarded his war hero handsomely. And in the very same breath, he retired me from the army so that I could never turn that glory into political power.

That much, on its own, was more than tolerable... The problem was what the Emperor had answered before it.

"Leave all my men to die, and live out my days in comfort..."

I suppose I could — if I were a cold-blooded monster, void of blood and tears alike. But I am not that kind of man. Ten years of total war had already reduced our Empire to a scorched wasteland. If that mad bastard of an Emperor were allowed to keep the war going, it was as good as certain that not only my soldiers but their families as well would be fed to it as sacrifices.

I have to stop this.

"Erika."

"Yes, sir."

"Assemble every officer in the division."

"Understood, sir."

And then, before the assembled officers of my division, I declared rebellion.