Chapter 100. Suppressing the Coup.
Chapter 100. Suppressing the Coup.
When it was all over, only our party remained in that place, along with the cold corpse of the Operations Commander, his soul ripped out, dead. At that moment, the President approached cautiously and asked.
"What do you intend to do with the Operations Commander's close associates?"
"They didn't know about the Operations Commander's ability."
"Then they..."
"However, they already knew the commander was killing people from other groups."
"I'm not sure if the survivors here can accept that."
"We've secured enough evidence. He used soldiers with no connections who were protecting them as material for undead. Of course, those who stood by will simply be expelled."
"Yes..."
With Chaeyeon's help, I turned the corpse into a pile of ash on the spot and slipped outside. The soldiers who had been on guard duty were merely knocked unconscious, so they'd wake up on their own in time.
'So an object like Leiral's Magic Book has made its way to Earth... I guess I wasn't wrong about the mana growing denser than before...'
Even after we left the building, the early morning hours were still deep, so we took care to avoid patrols and all returned to my room.
"Tomorrow, we'll gather everyone and blow this wide open."
"Representative... what do you really intend to do if there are people who can't accept this?"
"Then we'll go our separate ways. We're not volunteers. I'm not going to drag along people who don't want to come."
"Yes, it's already late, so we'll take our leave..."
Maybe it was because he was the President, but he wore an expression that said he wanted to say more. He didn't, though, and went out. I had a rough idea of what he was thinking, but I got the feeling that since I was the Representative, he was deferring to me.
And so, the chaotic day passed, and morning came. Some people came to visit early in the morning, and the most unexpected ones were Yuna and Yuto, who showed up together.
"Representative! Did you sleep well...!"
They were such unexpected visitors that I briefly thought they might have come to the wrong room. First, I told the two of them to come inside and asked.
"So, what's the matter this early?"
"Something you said yesterday kept circling in my mind, so I came."
I thought to myself about what I could have possibly said to make this kid worry so much, but I couldn't figure it out at all, so I asked. And the girls by my side, as if their curiosity had been piqued as well, pricked up their ears and listened carefully to what Yuto was about to say.
"What did I say?"
"I heard you said you showed mercy to someone during a fight and let them live. That's why I came."
'Hm... It was just a passing remark, but was saving Leiral what stuck in his mind the most?'
"So what are you so curious about that you came looking for me at the crack of dawn?"
"You told me never to show even the slightest mercy to an enemy. That such mercy would become another blade and come flying back."
"Right."
"I've always lived with that thought, but it's just so contradictory to what you said yesterday..."
It was plenty understandable that he'd find it contradictory. But Yuto and I had fundamentally different starting points.
"Are you overwhelmingly, absolutely stronger than anyone else?"
"What?"
"I am strong. On Titan and on Earth, I am an overwhelmingly dominant powerhouse. Showing mercy like this is the privilege of the strong."
"But...!"
"At the time, I was so strong that no matter what he did, he couldn't have hurt me in the slightest. And he didn't cross a certain bare-minimum line."
"A line..."
The standard I set is simple. Whether he commissioned assassinations or accepted them, at the very least, he didn't kill children. Leiral, too, killed only the leadership in the process of taking that seat himself, and at least didn't forget a basic level of human decency. In the first place, plenty of people challenged me, and I didn't actually go around slaughtering all of them.
"Besides, do you have the luxury of showing mercy to someone right now?"
"..."
He fell into silent contemplation for a long while. Then his older sister, Yuna, asked another question.
"I'm asking because I'm really curious! Why do you make an exception for children...?"
"Nothing much. It's just that they remind me of my own past, that's all."
Unlike me, who was raised in state care and made it to adulthood, orphans on Titan truly roam the streets, rummage through trash cans, and struggle just to survive another day. Without any safety nets — no food, no clothing, no shelter — death is deeply familiar to them. Sometimes they even use the dead's corpses as food.
"I don't care if you think I'm being inconsistent. That's just how I see it."
"No, it's not..."
While I was talking with them, the rest of the party had woken up one by one, finished getting ready, and gathered in my room. Then the commander of the 1st Fleet spoke to me.
"Anyway, you mentioned you wanted to gather people, but given the nature of the military, it's very likely they'll reject such a request from an outsider..."
"It doesn't matter. Don't we have a public face?"
I said that and looked at the President. And to be honest, it didn't matter even if not everyone gathered. I could just play the evidence video so that a reasonable number of assembled people could see it. Then they'd become witnesses themselves and spread the rumors everywhere.
"In that case, I'll try calling people together using the communications room. Around what time were you thinking?"
"Let's use the morning hours, before lunch."
The commander of the 1st Fleet began spreading rumors through his old connections, subtly letting people know there'd be an important announcement from the President. Naturally, the command staff who heard this began to fall into confusion.
"By the way, where on earth has the commander gone..."
"We don't know either. Since this morning, we don't know where he went..."
"Isn't there some issue with the President?"
"That can't be... How could something happen here without us knowing?"
As the rumors spread rapidly, we went into the communications room with the President leading the way. I'm not sure if this was typical military-style processing, but when the President asked, they set everything up without a word of complaint and prepared for the broadcast.
"My dear fellow citizens, this is President Min Seok-woo. I must urgently..."
His way with words definitely had the persuasive appeal of a politician, earnestly pleading for people to gather. At that, the sound of stirring spread through the command headquarters, and people began to gather one by one at the open field used as a parade ground. Not all of the survivors had seen the President's face directly. Maybe because of that, the murmuring could be heard all the way up to the podium.
"The President was alive?"
"I did hear soldiers say they saw him with their own eyes..."
"Wasn't that just a rumor?"
To quiet the commotion, I started tapping the microphone on the podium. Before long, people began focusing on the podium, and for a good hour or two, we laid out everything that had happened so far. People's emotions shifted through various stages—doubt, anger, acceptance, shock—as they focused on the speech.
Naturally, there were bound to be doubters. To ease their doubts, we had prepared one video. It showed conversations with me, the plan to stage a coup, and scenes of the people from Jung-gu Office being ruthlessly slaughtered. Some people with weak stomachs vomited on the spot.
After all the footage ended, the President took a sip of water and began taking questions from people.
"Then, where on earth did those zombies come from...?"
He looked at the person who asked the question with sharp eyes and began to tell them the tragic truth.
"He used soldiers and survivors with no connections to make them into zombies..."
Those who had been close to the victims — the ones who did have ties — mourned openly as well.
"Th-then, where is the Operations Commander, the root of all this evil, right now...!"
"In this situation, which is tantamount to wartime, he was dealt with according to military law..."
Everyone realized that the Operations Commander was dead. And some members of the command staff, who had been feeding off the scraps while such terrible things were happening from the very beginning, couldn't shake off their anxiety. Naturally, the arrows of fury began to fly past the now-absent Operations Commander and toward them.
"Then what about these bastards!!!"
"They didn't know that the Operations Commander was controlling the zombies and sacrificing people either. It was all his own arbitrary doing."
They felt relief at the President's words, which slightly defended them, but then expressed shock at what he said next.
"Therefore, while they won't be dealt with under military law, they will be expelled."
Expulsion.
With the apocalypse upon them, being expelled from a group was a punishment practically no different from death. Consequently, they began to protest as well.
"Mr. President...! Isn't this too much? We had no choice...!"
"Is that so... Then were the other officers cripples, that they couldn't live sharing equal rights with the other survivors?"
"..."
At the President's unfamiliar, powerful wording, they fell completely silent, as if they'd been struck dumb, hanging their heads with the expression of people who knew it was all over.
Other questions poured out, mostly about the future and how they were supposed to live going forward. Since only the command had effectively changed, he said that wouldn't change drastically from the usual, and he added that if the people from Jung-gu Office were alright with it, they would live here together from now on.
Far from opposing it, the people at the command headquarters were, if anything, quite pleased about strong Awakened joining them. We explained everything, the questions ended, and we came down from the podium and all went back into my room.
"Phew... I can never quite get used to standing in front of people."
"Still, you appear on TV often enough."
"I still can't get used to it, and I'm nervous every time."
"Everything's over now. I should go back to Jung-gu Office."
"You plan to go alone?"
"Yes, it has to be that way. We can't operate a helicopter right now, and I need to talk things over with them. If it goes well, we'll have to ask our village to send a pilot over."
"Then as soon as I receive the radio transmission, I'll put in a request to the village. So, are you leaving today?"
"Yes, I'll leave right away this evening."