Episode (5)

......On snowy days in passages between sewer lines, and on rainy days beneath overpass shadows, I used to doze off clutching my empty stomach.

In that free world where the concept of "Aran" had disappeared, where the Empire had become a republic, and where every race, Sled, Mer, Edellem, Izenheim, East and West alike, lived in harmony,

I read their story from the very bottom of that world.

"Hey. You sure about this? You're trading this for that scrap of paper?"

The homeless man lifted a loaf of bread and a bottle of liquor and grinned. Those were priceless to people like us, and I traded them for a comic book.

[ Outcast: Continental War Arc ]

Outcast, now fully entering the continental war as part of the Revolutionary Faction. Story after story of them assassinating the Empire's key forces and sabotaging its legions.

"Heh heh. This booze is good."

No matter how many enemies they killed, more kept appearing, and at last, the force called "the knight" revealed itself. My old comrades, Kairon and Raynel, appeared too.

Then,

[ ......One day! Sebestian noticed Filty's gaze! ]

The biggest hook left on the final page: Sebestian's back, drawn like an obvious final boss.

I had once been an imperial noble crushed by them, but in truth, I was garbage discarded by the Empire, so I felt a strange catharsis.

"Ah......"

I carefully tucked the newest issue I had barely managed to get into my bag. The pages were always ragged, torn in places. Deep down, I wanted a clean volume, but that was a luxury for a fugitive.

"Wow, can you believe there are still idiots saying this kind of insane crap in this day and age."

By a burning drum fire, a homeless man snickered over a newspaper. I picked up the article he threw on the ground. The headline was about a politician's racist remarks.

[Minister Mekin's leaked recording, "The entire media is controlled by those Izenheim bastards. This is a disaster. It can't stand. Even the news pages are completely owned by Izenheim, and their editorials dominate everything. Entire Times and Jemion Post have also fallen completely into their hands......"]

After that recording, every public figure and media outlet in the republic swarmed him, denounced him, and buried him.

Anti-discrimination was codified into law, and the genocide committed by the old Empire was printed in textbooks as a warning to all humanity. A firm resolve took root, never to repeat that tragedy.

That was how humanity would unite and move toward the future.

I too, as one of the Empire's remnants, sincerely believed in the peaceful future they would build.

Their choice was clearly right.

If not for Izenheim.

──────Whiiiiiiish.

Pain's face, floating in the air, slowly sank, and his huge body collapsed first. His neck and torso separated and toppled, blood sprayed out, and by the time even his heart stopped,

my virus had stopped pulsing too.

Pain was Izenheim.

"You son of a bitch...!"

A slow, viscous scream drifted in. I turned my head toward it. Kade. He released a mana wavelength. Its frequency broke my disguise first. Black hair turned gold, and my black eyes dried out like a desert.

After spitting out even my dentures, I moved.

"Paiiiin...!"

Kade charged in, out of his mind. His mana disrupted all wavelengths. The supernatural ability he had used to kidnap high-ranking imperial officers, collapse their minds, and rip out information by directly disturbing neural pathways.

Best not to let it touch me.

I twisted my upper body by a hair's breadth. Let the mana wave slide past me, then regripped my longsword.

Then a single leap. I traced a trajectory that would split him in two.

Chaang!

Someone forced his way into my sword path.

It was Meden. The protagonist. Using his Aura Body-hardened left arm as a shield, he blocked my longsword. The blade of Ebenholtz bit into his skin and scattered white mist.

"Kraaaah!"

Meden shoved me with all his strength.

I let myself be pushed.

"......"

The space settled for a moment.

A lull followed, broken only by breathing.

"......You."

Elje glared at me. Her eyes were full of multicolored hatred. Meden was the same. Kade too.

They were too much like people from a comic.

I only faced them, with no emotion on my face.

"Ha. Haha. Ha. Haha."

Suddenly, a bizarre laugh came from behind me.

Falkenrat.

The machine-human that Elje's ability had torn apart was already rising again before anyone noticed.

"......This. This power. Is. Empire."

His red artificial eye flickered like mad. Blink, blink. Like a broken lamp.

"This is. The great Empire."

Pssshhh, acrid steam burst from his severed mechanical arm. The mana stone in his circuits reacted. Repairs were happening naturally.

That was the nature of Falkenrat's innate mana. He truly had the qualities needed to fuse with machinery.

"We are Empire."

Pshhh! He vented mana-stone residue and cackled grotesquely.

"Vermin like you. No matter how hard. You struggle. Cannot escape. Power. Power. Power......"

Falkenrat kept spewing nonsense. A long rant about the Empire. He seemed to think I was on his side.

"You are just fertilizer. Crushed beneath Empire's feet. The Emperor wants us."

I had no reason to keep listening. I did not want to either.

I twisted my longsword. My foot bit into the road surface.

──Tick.

Super Acceleration. I moved inside floating time. I chose to destroy him first. I had never intended to leave that monster alive.

──.

In that instant, I reached right in front of him. My longsword pressed into the biological gap between his shoulder and clavicle, the part not covered by mechanical armor.

"What......"

Falkenrat's red eye bulged as if it would burst.

"Trash like you is not the Empire."

I twisted the sword in my grip.

"You're nothing but a filthy lump of scrap."

Then I fired Sword Aura. Falkenrat's body exploded into dozens of pieces. Metal and flesh flew apart.

He would not stand again.

Whip.

I lightly shook oil and blood from my sword, stood straight as a knight again, and calmly surveyed the area.

"Under Articles 14 and 31 of the Imperial Criminal Code."

As I continued, for a moment,

a very brief moment,

"for committing acts of terror,"

my voice trembled very slightly. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

I showed nothing on the surface, but deep inside, an unfamiliar hesitation rose.

"and for being caught in the act after shooting innocent Arans......"

To me, they were heroes from a comic who had helped me endure day after day in hell.

They had given me a reason to survive today, tomorrow, and the next day, people my past self had admired.

Maybe they were fragments of humanity still clinging to my soul.

Bang!

A gunshot rang out from behind me.

Onyx, the armed group that had joined to help Outcast, opened concentrated fire on me all at once.

"Run, Elje! Meden! We'll hold him!"

Tatatatata!

I deflected the incoming barrage with Spherical Aura Guard and threw my longsword.

Bwoooong!

The mana-filled blade spun like a helicopter rotor and tore into the Onyx men.

──Kwaaaargh

Their torsos and limbs were shredded apart. Chunks of bodies scattered in every direction. Screams and howls. Blood and flesh. Human bodies torn into meat and spilling down.

They had no power to stop me.

Whoooosh.

My sword came back through the blood rain like a boomerang. I gripped the hilt tight.

I took a deep breath.

"Under Articles 14 and 31 of the Imperial Criminal Code."

Now it was finally time to erase the past.

"I judge this reactionary group, which committed terror and massacred large numbers of Aran people."

Before the cause I carried, my private feelings were a luxury.

"As a knight of the Empire, I hereby carry out immediate judgment."

I sprinted across the road. As if resonating with that movement, Kade rushed me first.

Shhk!

Kade was fast. He could alter even his own nervous system, allowing him to reach inhuman speed. So he tried to match my speed, cut in, and strike me directly with a mana wave.

That was how he fought, but I stepped back. I formed a mana platform under my feet, stepped on it, and retreated half a step. The distance between Kade and me widened. Wind spun uselessly between us.

I thrust my sword straight.

──!

The blade pierced his heart. The mana that had flashed like electric current went out in an instant.

Meden charged right after. It had been meant as a timed combo attack, but Kade died too early.

Meden roared and raised Aura Body. He hammered me with punch after punch. I redirected his fists along the flat of my blade.

Chang! Chang! Chaaang!

Meden's fists rushed in like wind. But Ebenholtz's boundary stayed still. The longsword linked one motion to the next. With Flawlessness, it deflected impurity. Meden's mana was impure, because his body had taken in mana stone.

Chaang! Chaaaang!

He could not endure my blade. Then, in a single moment, the silver of Ebenholtz flared, and everything below his right elbow flew off at once. The body portrayed as invincible in the comic was cut by my Flawlessness.

"──Kh!"

Even then, Meden did not retreat. He swung his remaining left arm. I ducked it and, at the same time, slashed upward from below.

──.

Without a sound, Meden's left shoulder was cleanly severed too.

Having lost both arms, he still tried to bare his teeth at me, but someone's mana grabbed him.

Whiiish.

Elje. She pulled him toward herself.

She had admitted defeat.

"Meden."

Leaning against rubble, Elje held Meden tight.

"You can stop now......"

Meden looked up at her blankly.

"......"

I watched them. Sword lowered, one step, then another, I walked toward them.

Elje did not avoid my gaze. She did not run either.

"Do you think you're right? Do you even know what the Empire... what the Empire has done?"

She asked me. Her resentment toward the Empire, her hatred, her violence, and her collapsing helplessness were all tangled together.

"I know."

I lowered my blade and answered. Elje clenched her teeth.

"And even knowing that-"

"The Empire is neither good nor evil. This is simply the best option."

It simply existed for survival.

To survive, the monster called the Empire was necessary.

Good and evil. Right and wrong. Moral values like that were meaningless before the premise of humanity's survival.

"Mason is the best option? Are you insane? You pretended to be a researcher, didn't you see it, you idiot?!"

"Mason Industries will fall."

Elje and Meden's expressions wavered at my words.

"I obtained evidence of human experimentation that is illegal under imperial law."

As a knight of the Empire, I would destroy this cradle of mad experiments myself.

As the heir of Ebenholtz, I would show Hector Mason what a ceiling looked like.

"Bastards like you will never be made again."

"......Wow, that's real good news."

Meden moved his bloodless lips and let out a dry laugh. Elje gave an empty smile too.

"People like us not appearing anymore? I really hope you pull that off, Sir Knight."

I stepped into their immediate reach.

"Before the end......"

My senses suddenly caught another gaze watching this place from far away in the dark.

Filty.

Was her Super-Vision recording this moment too?

"Do you have any last words?"

Meden and Elje looked at each other. Meden had no arms left to attack me. Elje's mana was exhausted. Resistance was impossible.

Soon both of them nodded.

"Yeah. I do. It's a little awkward saying this to someone I just met."

Meden looked at me first and smiled brightly.

The story itself treated him as its most handsome man. Even covered in blood, that evaluation did not fade.

"Fuck off!"

Hearing Meden's shout, Elje smiled the same way. She raised her middle finger.

"Go fuck yourself, you pathetic slave of this shithole Empire!"

I looked down at them quietly.

Without realizing it, joy touched the corner of my mouth. A real smile rose from deep inside my chest.

"......Right."

If possible, I wanted to show them a future where Mason Industries completely collapsed.

But that was not allowed.

If Elje and Meden survived, the Empire would put them on an experiment table again. For people whose lives had already been destroyed by the Empire, that would be an insult worse than death.

"......"

I scanned the area.

The machine wreckage of Falkenrat split in half. Pain's headless body. Kade, dead instantly with his heart pierced.

Meden and Elje, as if they had already sensed death, eyes closed, holding each other.

They accepted death calmly, without a word.

"You worked hard."

Because I understood their banner, and the meaning of freedom they had longed for so desperately.

I swung my sword without hesitation.

I beheaded them both.

───.

Moonlight briefly swept over the ground.

Silence settled across the area.

This was enough.

I stepped back a couple of paces and looked down at my own hand.

And then......

"Hey. You punk. Which one of those Outcast guys do you like most?"

Suddenly, the voice of a homeless man from my fugitive days drifted into my ears. A terminal cancer patient who had been an Outcast fan like me.

"......Which one most?"

"Yeah. Pick just one."

Recalling memories of a past that had vanished, I sat down on broken concrete rubble.

"Why pick? They're all great."

I raised my face and looked at the night sky. A crescent moon. A faint arc wrapped in fog seemed to face me.

"Aw, that's no fun. Come on, pick at least one."

The days when I could like someone purely, for no reason at all.

Even though I could be caught and killed the next day, my heart had still been free.

"......Then it has no meaning."

Back then, I did not know this world would end, and I was not carrying this damned burden.

Even so, strangely enough, I struggled to stay alive one more day.

"If not together......"

I closed my eyes quietly. The night wind curled around me, as if clawing at a loss I could not explain.

"It has no meaning at all."

At some point, I seemed to have come too far.

The road back had sunk into darkness, and my hands were stained with too much blood.

But,

Believe, Maximilian.

This alone is your path.