Chapter 232
Chapter 232
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 232
Chapter Title: The Age of the Manufactured Hero (3)
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-Pi-ri-ri-rik. Boom!
Fireworks burst into the sky. To be precise, they were magical fireworks. A simple yet flashy festival spell, adapted from a signaling magic.
Fernandez stood at the palisade boundary, gazing up at the display. The banquet had left him twice as exhausted as any battle. The stars of this party were Kirhas and Erbe—and himself. Their feats from the recent battle had been all too prominent.
That was why he had slipped out to stargaze instead, only to catch the fireworks. Brilliant noise bloomed into multicolored flames, spreading wide across the heavens. Their glare blotted out the stars.
“Such a pointless waste…”
Nearly all mages fell in love with the night sky in some way. The mana flowing between stars, the halo of light reflected by the moon. The deep night belonged to mages.
Yet the Empire’s mages were lighting up that sky with fireworks. Feizashi grumbled, clearly displeased.
‘It’s a kind of warning signal.’
“That’s exactly why it’s pointless.”
‘Not every mage can observe mana flows with their eyes, after all.’
The fireworks served as a report to command: this sector was fully under allied magical control. They also acted as an alarm to ward off enemy magical forces. They weren’t just celebratory spells fired into the sky.
The effects were manifold. They even reassured frontline commanders, who otherwise had to brace for sudden barrages of enemy attack magic over the banquet hall.
Fernandez quietly closed his eyes and sipped his champagne. A gentle breeze rustled through. A warm spring wind… Focusing his hearing brought a chorus of sounds.
The clamor of laughter and chatter from the banquet hall, the pops of fireworks, the whisper of grass bending in the wind. And then, deeper still, into more secretive realms…
* * *
“We must kill that Fernin fellow first.”
“He’s just a spry pup with good instincts. Wouldn’t it be more rational to strike Duke Erbe first?”
“Strike Duke Erbe first? He claimed the greatest merits in the last three battles. This isn’t something we can just sweep under the rug. Too many people witnessed those moments for us to hush it up.”
In the command tent, a handful of knights and nobles who had slipped away from the banquet gathered. Dark expressions clouded their faces as they stroked their chins or clutched their foreheads.
The plan had gone awry. The Emperor’s intent had been to swallow the Great Wilderness using the Empire’s mighty legions, then seize Revue by force once the war wrapped up. The pretext was already secured. They had gathered evidence that Duke Erbe had colluded with demons—or their minions, at least.
The problem was how dazzling Erbe’s feats had become. Launching a full-scale campaign against him to devour Revue would invite political backlash: the Emperor and court nobles coveting Erbe’s glory to justify the attack.
The Elector Counts wanted Erbe’s downfall. But they didn’t wish for the Emperor’s triumph, either. With the Emperor dispatching legions personally, every Elector Count’s gaze would surely fix on Revue.
In this chain of events, the Emperor needed an ironclad pretext. Yet the bumbling display of the Imperial central army—and Erbe’s valiant exploits—were cracking that pretext.
“The Great Chieftain’s concubine practically turned the tide single-handedly.”
“You mean antagonize the beastkin as a whole? Haven’t you seen how Hearttaker dotes on him? His Majesty never ordered us to make enemies of every beastkin.”
“Is the Great Chieftain the only one among those beasts?”
Sir Revans, Knight Commander Bernard, flashed a cryptic smile. The other nobles began to murmur at his words.
“Rival Great Chieftain, Cherad Blondetail? That beast is on a streak of consecutive defeats, isn’t he? I hear most of his underlings have already turned on him—or are gearing up to.”
“Even so, he still commands nearly half of Hearttaker’s forces. And he’s allied with the Lavirata dynasty. Wars don’t flip in an instant, do they?”
“Kill Hearttaker and ally with Cherad? Wasn’t His Majesty’s will to crush Lavirata and subjugate this wilderness?”
“Think of it as symbiosis.”
Bernard grinned as he spoke. Even amid defeats, the beastkin tribes following the rival chieftain were no small number. Cherad Blondetail had nearly conquered the wasteland alongside Lavirata.
In their view, Cherad and his legions weren’t incompetent. No fool could seize such a vast wasteland. The Empire’s forces were simply overwhelming.
Indeed, before the Imperial legions arrived at Revue, Hearttaker’s troops had suffered only scattered losses and retreats. Fernandez had seen them on the battlefield firsthand: not rabble, but all the more credible for it.
Cherad’s ability to rout those elite troops battle after battle.
“Starting now, we lose every engagement. In ways that minimize damage to our main force.”
“How far do we retreat?”
“To Revue.”
Revue was the capital of the western Imperial province. Pulling the front line back to its doorstep meant abandoning all the smaller cities beyond.
But in that process of defeat, Duke Erbe and the beastkin tigerfolk would suffer irrecoverable losses. If the Imperial main body grew reluctant to fight, the pressure on the front would inevitably ease for them.
“Ally with the rival chieftain, sever Revue’s strongest ally, and shatter Duke Erbe’s power entirely! Ha ha ha!”
“Brilliant scheme, brilliant!”
“Ha ha, as expected of Revans Knight Commander. Truly impressive!”
The nobles burst into laughter at Bernard’s words. Though things veered from the Emperor’s intent, the war raged on, and they were mere reinforcements at Erbe’s request—not the main body.
From the start, hadn’t Erbe’s legions fared far worse than expected? Most of his vassal nobles had deserted, and Revue’s own forces were negligible.
“Shouldn’t we seek His Majesty’s approval for this?”
“…This stays between us. I trust you’ll keep silent.”
“What else is there? Speak!”
“Ironside is embedded in the legion.”
The nobles’ faces hardened coldly. Ironside. Ostensibly an intelligence agency, but their operations leaned far more toward assassinations and political intrigue than mere spying.
None among them had the magnanimity to laugh upon learning the Emperor distrusted them—had slipped a leash, or a dagger, right under their chins.
“Don’t freeze up like that. I didn’t know until we set out, same as you. Why do you think Ironside revealed themselves to us?”
“His Majesty wants the Duke assassinated directly?”
“No. His Majesty wishes to hear our strategy firsthand. Right at our side! This humiliation, these defeats—they mean nothing. Once His Majesty grasps every detail, he’ll reward us by merit!”
The nobles’ expressions brightened at Bernard’s words. Even knowing the Emperor’s assassin lurked nearby, watching. As long as they proved useful, he wouldn’t dispose of them—and he’d duly honor the merits to be distributed among high nobles.
Fireworks boomed beyond the tent. Bernard clapped once to draw attention.
“Now, let’s return. Linger too long from the banquet, and suspicions deepen, no? Ha ha ha!”
* * *
“You’ve been gone too long already, Baron.”
Fernandez opened his closed eyes and smiled. In the dark night, in a deserted alley, the black halo faded. Augmenting Demonica hearing with magic made ensnaring the entire camp in his intelligence net child’s play.
He had managed it a year ago amid the beastkin tigerfolk horde. Fernandez patted the scorching bronze throne and rose.
Amid the tents, the joy of victory mingled with the raucous songs of drunken revelers. Thanks to the Empire’s bountiful supplies, Revue and the tigerfolk raised their cups in delight.
All recent victories were theirs. They had every right to celebrate. Fernandez watched a bellowing tigerfolk warrior with a bottle to his lips, grinning.
‘At least the Imperial bureaucracy serves some purpose.’
-Those supply lines will fall straight into enemy hands once the war ends.
‘What are you saying? They’ll end up wholly in our control.’
The Empire’s supply network procured goods from nearby fiefdoms using vast central coffers. Meaning, as long as the Empire maintained those lines, Revue’s local economy would boom.
Revue was an outpost. The Duke grieved that fact, but it was inevitable. Revue existed to devour war and soldiers’ blood, a machine fueled by such.
It couldn’t hope for the vigorous growth of the Fifty Years’ War era, but reclaiming past glory wouldn’t take long.
Once this matter resolved. For now, better to excise the不安 elements. Smiling, Fernandez strolled between alleys and tents.
Soon, a figure appeared. Baron Bernard. Oblivious to Fernandez’s approach, he fiddled with some trinket.
“Is that the Emperor’s messenger spell?”
“…!! Who’s there!”
“The man you sought to kill.”
Fernandez stepped from the shadows. Bernard’s face twisted in panic, then hardened into a glare.
“Fernin… I’d heard you had sharp instincts. Ha ha, didn’t expect you’d track me here.”
“Not Ironside, it seems… Ha. So the Emperor suspects even them?”
Paranoia bordering on delusion. Ironside was run by the Emperor’s own son, and the Emperor commanded the loyalty of countless knights in the central war ministry. As a lifelong position, with no external foe able to topple the Empire in one generation, his thoroughness verged on madness.
Frenzied to pass the throne to his children, yet wary of power concentrating in their hands? No sane mind worked that way.
The throne demanded exquisite political engineering among the Elector Counts. No fool or madman ascended it.
Thus, his actions held their own logic. What was it…? Fernandez scratched his chin, pondering.
‘The Emperor holds a lifelong throne, the Empire stands firm, and he seeks to bequeath power eternally to his house…’
-Yet he fears his own child’s power…
‘This bastard’s a vampire.’
-Or at least a long-lived. A profoundly heretical one.
‘Could be someone capable of generational swaps like King Gaimern.’
-Whatever it is, he’s filthier than a sewer rat.
All humans perished. Human lifespans barely topped eighty. But if the Emperor endured beyond, he’d draw suspicion from Elector Counts and Church alike.
Yet if Imperial power vested in his house, and he concealed his immortality… Seizing the impossible human dream of Eternal Kingship wasn’t far-fetched.
‘And those Ironsides who ambushed Revue were vampires too.’
-Things are getting interesting.
Gripping his sword hilt, Fernandez advanced a step toward the snarling Bernard. Just shy of longsword range, he grinned.
“Which bloodline has the Emperor allied with?”
“…What?”
“Goldenbug bows to the Sultan, so not them. Franzrit are extinct. Slim pickings left—wonder which.”
“You bastard… What are you?”
Bernard swallowed his shock, thinking. Where did the intel leak? A spy in the tent, from his words. But the Emperor’s secret was paramount; Bernard hadn’t breathed a word to anyone since arriving at Revue.
Even deduction needed such intel. All this man could’ve seen was Bernard’s secret missive to the Emperor. No question from that scant info alone.
Must kill him. Bernard’s face set rigid. Killing intent sharpened, grazing Fernandez’s throat.
“Where’d you send it from? Kirjat? Apotajar? Shild?”
“I’m the one asking questions. You don’t know your place?”
“You’re the one clueless, whelp. I’m Knight Commander of Revans—and I’ve more years on battlefields than you’ve lived!”
“Impossible.”
Fernandez scanned Bernard’s face and build, then chuckled. Late forties at best. Peak knighthood: honed skills at their zenith. Muscle waning, replaced by technique and experience—prime for a cavalry officer.
Even if he’d gripped a sword from birth and fought nonstop, those years couldn’t exceed Feizashi’s age.
“Well, I’ll give you a chance to prove it.”
Fernandez placed a hand on his hilt and smiled. Prove your worth, and I won’t kill you.