Episode (3)

An old manor somewhere in the Empire.

Yelena Ilinachina Yumanov, who survived the purge, sat on the balcony and quietly drank her coffee. Lately, for some reason, the wind from the East tasted metallic, as if it carried blood.

-Tok.

When she set her cup down, the waiting servant approached without a sound and asked what she wanted. The servant's manner was solemn and formal, asking whether to brew more coffee or clear the cup away.

"Please take it."

The servant bowed and stepped back.

"......"

Watching that retreating figure, Yelena felt a strange sense of deja vu. Every servant in this manor was from the Eastern Sled tribe or mixed-blood.

Was this Maximilian's consideration, placing people of her own bloodline around her so she would feel at ease? Or was it to comply with the [Imperial Civil Law for the Protection of Aran Bloodline], which stated that Arans could not serve inferior races?

Probably both.

"Hm......"

Yelena's daily life was free now. She had far more room to breathe than when she held power as Lobrus's People's Commissar of Internal Affairs. It was thanks to Maximilian's meticulous, flawless treatment.

-Step.

Then she sensed someone behind her.

"You've arrived."

It was Schatz. Yelena handed her a stack of documents she had prepared beforehand.

"I've organized everything I know about Lobrus military secrets and shifts in power. I am not sure whether this information will still be useful to the Empire."

With the purge now in full swing across Lobrus, the entire command structure might be replaced.

"The knight will decide that."

Schatz tucked the thick bundle under her arm and asked,

"I heard you intend to return to the East."

"......Yes."

Yelena answered in a low voice.

"I asked for a suitable cover identity, and they prepared it perfectly."

The perfect disguise was changing her sex itself. Yelena had trained her mana and body for years, so in terms of frame and bone structure, she could convincingly pass as a slender man.

"What do you think?"

Yelena lowered her voice and imitated a man's tone.

"I sound like I was born a man, don't I?"

"Yes. It sounds natural."

At Schatz's reply, Yelena gave a faint smile.

"For now, I plan to travel through the Eastern Alliance and work as a lawyer. The information I gather there should help you as well."

Schatz nodded.

"The knight told me to pass this on: if you ever need help, contact us through mana parchment at any time."

"Very well."

Then Yelena stared straight at Schatz's face.

"By the way, Ms. Heizen, are you a pure Aran?"

"......Yes."

Schatz answered shortly.

A pure Aran.

A bloodline that once felt obvious, or meaningless.

But these days, Schatz felt a strange pride in the fact that she was Aran.

Probably most of the Empire felt that way now.

Even people in the lower classes lived with the certainty that they were great imperial Arans, and therefore better than the inferior races of East and West.

"My family line is verified as pure Aran back to my great-grandparents."

Maybe this was the society Maximilian wanted.

* * *

Mason Industries laboratory.

"They say she is an extremely important test subject. In the past, she voluntarily took part in human experimentation, absorbed massive company assets, then broke faith and duty, ran away in ingratitude, and was captured recently.

Now it is time to fulfill the contract that was temporarily suspended."

"What kind of experiment was it?"

At my question, Miro hesitated for a moment.

"......Well. I was only a university student at the time. But according to what came down from above."

Even Miro seemed not to know the details. Not surprising. That experiment had been conducted at T24 to begin with.

"They implanted circuits into an ordinary person with no natural link to mana, then injected artificial mana. That alone let her handle mana at roughly the level of an average knight."

Why Mason Industries was obsessed with the Mana Engine.

The truth was, the total amount of natural mana a human could handle was tiny compared to mana-stone output. The difference in sheer volume was impossible to overcome.

"They spent tens of millions on that one subject alone."

Imperial trains ran on low-grade mana stones. For a human to move the same train, even dozens of high-ranking knights could not do it without a catalyst.

The Mana Engine was the alchemy born from that gap: binding a human body to the driving force of mana stone.

"Then."

I looked through the glass at Elje, strapped to a restraint chair.

"All I need to do is analyze the mana waves emitted by the subject?"

"Yes. We will handle the physical stimulation."

"Sounds interesting."

"......Does it? Please keep personal feelings out of it, if possible."

Miro offered that advice with a blank expression, and I fell silent for a moment.

Elje. One of Outcast's protagonists.

Back when I had lost everything, they gave me pure joy. While I was reading that comic, I could escape my miserable reality.

I still missed that freedom from those days, even now, after the whole world had regressed.

“What the hell are you staring at, you bastards?!”

Elje threw her head up and thrashed. Her temper was exactly as it had been in the comic.

I checked her vital signs and the condition of her mana circuits.

"Then let's raise the voltage first."

Miro pulled the lever up.

Ghk-!

Pain generated mana. Values from her emitted mana began filling the monitor. The virus detected those waves, and just as I gripped my pen,

I felt a stare stabbing the back of my neck.

A blood-stained gaze, as if someone far away were straining to the limit to observe this place.

Pazzzzzik-!

Filty, Outcast's cartoonist, had locked onto this location.

After Elje's abduction, they would not spend long planning an operation. They would move at once. That recklessness was their identity.

----!!!

Elje's scream grew sharper.

I activated the timer inside my body.

[ 24 : 00 : 00 ]

The episode had just begun.

......

Hideout in the underground city.

Filty stared into empty space and drew like a madwoman.

"......Found it."

Her page vividly depicted what was happening inside Mason Industries.

[Gert: So all I need to do is analyze the mana waves emitted by the test subject?]

[Miro: Yes. We will handle the physical stimulation.]

[Gert: Sounds interesting.]

[Miro: ......Does it? Please keep personal feelings out of it, if possible.]

Meden looked down at the faces of the two researchers drawn in pen. Beside him, the huge man Pain clenched his jaw hard.

"Gert, Miro... memorize those bastards' faces. We'll kill them."

At that murderous voice, Meden answered quietly.

"Elje comes first."

They had the location.

An operation plan? They never did that. Outcast was always like this.

"Meden! A message came from Onyx. They said they'll help."

Kade relayed the news he had received through mana parchment.

Onyx was another T24 victim group. An armed organization discarded as waste after failed human experimentation, they hated the Empire and Mason Industries as deeply as Outcast did.

"Good enough. Everyone, get ready."

They went up to the first floor of Tavern Qwanda. At the counter where Qwanda used to welcome them every day, only empty silence remained today.

Meden looked at it with bitterness, then nodded toward the door.

"......Let's go."

Outcast came up from the underground city and got into a car. Filty stayed curled up in the back seat, drawing without pause.

The conversation her comrades had just shared, the torture taking place inside Mason Industries......

"Filty. Rest now."

Meden reached out to her.

"Mm......"

Pale-faced, just before she set her pen down, Filty wrote one final number in the corner of the last panel.

[ 23 : 00 : 00 ]

......

"How is it?"

Miro asked, pointing to the values on the monitor.

The mana waves Elje emitted were clearly far from ordinary.

"Yes. She definitely seems like a successful subject."

But they were mistaken.

This experiment was not successful because Mason's technology was superior. It succeeded solely because of Elje's unusual traits and compatibility.

In other words, it was nothing more than chance and talent overlapping.

They had no scalability.

Those bastards killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of children on operating tables, and by chance found only five or six who could endure implanted artificial mana circuits.

But the talent required for the core of the Mana Engine, enduring the overflowing mana "heart," had to be thousands of times rarer than that.

Maybe even if they searched this entire continent from end to end, they would not find a single person.

"It's done."

I diagrammed Elje's mana waves and handed them to Miro. He took the pages in a hurry and smiled brightly.

"......This is definitely different. Everyone, come look at this!"

At Miro's shout, dozens of researchers scattered across the lab gathered around. They huddled over the wave pattern I had handed over, murmuring like chicks and burning with excitement.

"......"

In this storyline, all of them would probably die tonight at the hands of Outcast, who would come to rescue Elje.

Still......

I found them too valuable to lose.

Researchers who could experiment on thousands, tens of thousands, of children and feel nothing.

People who could delight in pure research results without even a trace of guilt.

People who simply carried out orders from above as routine.

I needed people like that.

With their hands, I had to dissect Izenheim.

"Dr. Gert! Look at this too!"

Researchers smiling brightly. Maybe they were thinking about bonuses or vacation, maybe they were simply pleased to have carried out upper management's orders.

Watching them, I checked the timer inside my body.

[ 16 : 15 : 37 ]

There was not much time left.

......

Night deepened, and the Mason Industries research institute was wrapped in dark fog.

"A-3 sector. No issues."

Mason Industries security maintained strict watch.

Even so, they politely refused intervention from the imperial police or knightly orders, handling everything with company forces alone. Already under the Emperor's protection, they had no reason to risk leaking research data by accepting outside help.

"A-4 sector......?"

At the silent outer perimeter of the institute, just as a guard peered toward one spot,

a figure appeared soundlessly from the dark.

Ssswick-!

A flash flickered. The guard's throat was cut.

Thud. Thud-thud.

Without time even for a scream, the severed head rolled across the pavement. Then, one by one, every guard fell with face and body split apart.

A silent infiltration.

Outcast's operation had begun-

-Mason Industries building, top floor. Falkenrat's quarters.

Through the radio signals linked to his prosthetic eye, Falkenrat could feel the outer security signals dropping one by one in real time.

“They're coming......”

But he did not panic. Instead, he wore an amused smile and killed time. He was simply waiting for the cute little pests that were about to arrive.

To him, this entire situation was a game. Nothing more than vermin performing tricks.

He would enjoy watching those pigs and dogs crawl to their deaths, then, when the time came, crush them all and capture them alive as test subjects.

Crack!

With a dark grin, Falkenrat flexed the joints in his mechanical arm.

[ 12 : 00 : 00 ]

......

In the lab, I returned to my desk for a moment. I pulled over the long fishing-rod case I had left there.

"Dr. Gert, do you like fishing?"

A passing researcher asked in a friendly tone.

"Yes. I enjoy it now and then as a hobby."

I replied with a faint smile.

"Fishing... I tried it once, but it really wasn't for me......"

Researchers lived ordinary lives, and behaved in ordinary ways.

People who routinely carried out evil orders from above, then routinely became war criminals.

There were many war criminals like this before regression too.

"I'm stepping out for some air."

"Yep. You've been working hard lately!"

I walked into the corridor.

Leaning against the emergency stairwell door, I sank into thought.

"......Outcast."

Outcast. They were people who could never cooperate with the Empire.

Because they were victims of human experimentation carried out under imperial tolerance, no, under an unspoken agreement.

But if I left them alone after regression, they would grow more dangerous day by day.

Eventually each one would become a resistance force close to a disaster, beyond anything the Empire could control.

So the true purpose of this "episode," what I had infiltrated Mason Industries to draw out, was......

Those who gave me a fleeting happiness when I was a fugitive, those who gave me joy that made me forget reality.

To gather them here and execute them.

Click.

I slung the fishing case onto my shoulder and let out a long breath.

[ 06 : 13 : 00 ]

The timer inside my body kept moving.

---Koooong!

An explosion thundered not far away.

"......"

I climbed the stairs. Walking through panicked researchers, I returned to that same lab.

"Mr. Miro."

Senior researcher Miro was still focused on analyzing values and waveforms.

"Yes. Yes. Come here."

"It sounds like something happened outside."

"Uh...... yes. Maybe some issue came up during research-"

Boom!

"-That's probably all. Don't worry. It'll settle down soon. This is daily life at the institute."

Kwaaaang!

Contrary to his words, the noise kept growing louder. More violent.

Outcast was pushing inward.

"Mr. Miro."

I stepped in front of him, almost blocking his way. I slammed my palm onto the research data, fixed him with my eyes, and lowered my voice.

"That woman's comrades have stormed in."

"What? What are you......"

People with a bizarre sense of mission who stayed here to keep researching, only to be wiped out by armed groups, including Outcast. People who carried out upper orders and lost the one thing that mattered most, their lives.

I needed people like that.

"If you want to live, go up. Not down. Up."

For now, I could postpone their crimes of experimenting on human bodies and torturing people.

If you could be of any help to humanity's future, even a little, then no matter who you were.

Even if those were a guiltless monster's hands, I would accept them.

"......"

Miro looked at my face with ordinary eyes.

Kwa-dududuk-.

From even closer now, ominous signs surged in.