The Meaning of Disposition (2)

The eastern frontier. A mountain region swept by wind heavy with mud and gunpowder.

“......”

Lieutenant Adel stared blankly at the cold body hanging from a thick branch on the hill behind camp.

Whiiiiii...

A bloodless face swayed in the wind. He silently met that gaze, those eyes still wide open and fixed on empty air.

“Hey. What are you doing? Bring him down, now.”

Lieutenant Bern waved from the side, annoyed, and soldiers rushed in and cut the rope.

The dead man’s name was Manuel. Rank: sergeant. He had been an NCO in Adel’s Fourth Platoon, and Adel could only stare.

‘Platoon leader.’

Even as a corpse, he still seemed to be calling out to him.

It had only been four days ago.

‘Platoon leader, are you really going to leave this alone?’

That day, Adel and Sergeant Manuel decoded the suspicious mana wave they had intercepted.

‘Look at this!’

It contained specific coordinates, a time, a quantity, and coded slang pointing to something.

Their guess was smuggling records: military supplies and mana stones diverted from the unit and sold to the enemy.

‘They’re selling supplies to an enemy state!’

Anything that crossed the border escaped imperial surveillance and accounting audits completely, leaving no trace and no tag. Report it as damage, loss, or normal expenditure, and that was the end of it.

‘We have to report this to higher command right now!’

‘...No.’

Back then, Adel shook his head, face rigid.

‘Not yet. We need more evidence. Until we know exactly how far up this goes, we can’t move carelessly.’

‘Platoon leader, this communication record with an enemy nation is evidence by itself.’

Manuel had been furious.

Probably because he was a real soldier.

“......”

Adel had felt sorry for him.

An adjutant assigned to a commoner officer like him, forced to cling to a rotten rope whether he wanted to or not.

Maybe Manuel had also wanted to expose this corruption, grab a better rope, and climb.

‘...Not yet.’

Adel had been unable to give him any advice.

‘We need firmer proof.’

Physical evidence, something more important than records.

Maybe because of Adel’s words, Sergeant Manuel had moved to get it.

And as a result, he was found as a corpse today.

“Lieutenant Adel!”

A shout from reality snapped him back.

Adel jerked his head up.

“What are you doing right now?”

What entered his view was a major’s uniform. Name tag: Joachim.

Adel gave a crisp salute.

“Loyalty.”

“You call yourself a platoon leader, and you couldn’t even manage one subordinate, so this ugly incident happened? This unit is a mess.”

Major Joachim shot the words at him coldly. Adel bit his lip and lowered his head.

“...I apologize.”

“No need. You’ve already been referred to the disciplinary committee. More importantly.”

Major Joachim stepped close to Adel and whispered in a secretive tone.

“Before that bastard died, did he leave you any other message?”

A cold, sticky probe, as if trying to dig something out of him.

“...What do you mean?”

“No, you’re the platoon leader, right? Before he killed himself... looked like he said something to you?”

“Major Joachim.”

Suddenly, someone placed a hand on Joachim’s shoulder and stopped him.

It was Lieutenant Colonel Eaton.

“Major. What exactly did you mean by that?”

“Uh... just procedure. Procedure.”

Meeting Eaton’s eyes, Major Joachim quietly shook his head. He rubbed the back of his neck and added, almost like an excuse.

“I was asking about Sergeant Manuel’s condition before he took his life. Judging by the situation, this lieutenant was the last person to see him.”

“There’s no need to investigate that right now.”

“That’s true, but...”

“Then step back.”

Eaton’s stare sank heavily. Joachim’s eyebrow twitched.

“Yes. Well... loyalty.”

Joachim stepped away with a sullen face, and Eaton asked Adel with his eyes.

The look asked if he was all right.

“...Thank you.”

Even if his maternal line was Zerpan, Lieutenant Colonel Eaton was upper class.

So he probably knew little about a mere commoner like him, but Adel knew what kind of man he was.

A proper commander who never bent to outside pressure and valued his subordinates.

To that man, Adel forced himself to answer calmly.

“...It was my failure.”

He clenched his fist and bowed his head.

“As platoon leader, I should have understood what burden my subordinate was carrying first...”

He could not finish the rest.

Lieutenant Colonel Eaton watched him for a long while.

* * *

Before war, the most important thing is establishing military discipline. With slack discipline, we cannot handle the fortified terrain in the East and the West’s military strength at the same time. For the Empire, no, for humanity, a two-front war is not a choice but a necessity.

Thankfully, thanks to the Empire’s new policies and massive capital investment, the regular army’s treatment and status have finally risen above their old pathetic level.

But the Imperial Guard’s influence is still threatening.

And on top of that, I had restored the authority of the Sentinel Order.

Even so, I still could not completely suppress the Imperial Guard.

The Order had become much stronger than before the regression, but the Imperial Guard had also gained new badges in their own way.

Perhaps that was only natural. The Imperial Guard is an institution in which the Emperor implanted and cultivated his direct power.

Behind them, in the end, stands the Emperor himself.

“Maximilian. So you acquired Mason Industries’ research complex. The deficits and debt were worse than expected, weren’t they?”

In a shabby hideout, Princess Justine wiped her mouth with a napkin and spoke casually.

“It was necessary.”

“Do you plan to pay that debt?”

“Yes. Most of it will end up transferred to the Imperial Household.”

In front of her was a top-tier full-course meal I had personally brought from Lilac Vita. Thanks to Industry’s new invention, a mana-stone warming box, every dish was kept at a perfect temperature as if it had just come out of the kitchen.

“Honest. I’ll forgive fifty percent.”

The princess gave a small grin. She was generous in her own way.

“Is the research progressing?”

“For now, we’re focused on analyzing Izenheim hearts.”

Izenheim bodies, and the heart at the center of their deformed mana circuits.

We started by steadily studying the hearts we had stored so far.

“But.”

The princess toyed with her knife and looked at me.

“Even among subspecies, you react especially strongly to Izenheim. Is there a specific reason?”

“Wouldn’t every Aran on the continent be the same?”

At my calm answer, the princess raised an eyebrow slightly.

“True. You’re not wrong. Those bastards bear original sin.”

She raised her wine glass and spoke quietly.

“As you know, we are preparing for war.”

The bloody future approaching soon.

A cause we all know, and one that is absolutely necessary.

“But the regular army’s discipline still falls short of my standards. Too many stupid, corrupt idiots are still obsessed with fighting over their own bowls and stuffing their bellies.”

“...And the Imperial Guard?”

At my question, the princess smiled crimson.

“The Imperial Guard belongs wholly to His Majesty.”

She cut a small piece of meat, put it in her mouth, and added,

“They are loyal dogs. Dogs that don’t think deeply. Whatever His Majesty wants, they will force it through by any means necessary.”

I could not deny that.

The Imperial Guard stops at nothing. A pack of lunatics who throw morals and humanity in the trash. Fanatics who would throw even their own lives into the furnace for the Emperor’s command.

“But you’ve been helping fill the bellies of regular army generals.”

“...It was necessary.”

I disliked that blind madness of the Imperial Guard.

“Then what about Your Highness?”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

We need control. A more precise system, and conviction in what we want to achieve.

The Empire was defeated because it failed to control the wildfire called madness.

“Between me and the Imperial Guard, who do you think better suits Your Highness’s great cause?”

“......”

The princess looked at me for a moment, then set down her fork and knife with a sharp clink.

Her eyes turned cold.

“A foolish question. I don’t believe in process. I judge only by results.”

What the princess wanted from me was someone willing to ignore means and methods.

An almost religious attitude devoted solely to her.

“...Yes.”

Then could I one day earn her trust?

But if one day I come to hold her certainty in my own hands.

“I understand.”

At that point, would I have any reason to keep her alive?

* * *

Lieutenant Adel Festo of the eastern regular army was referred to the disciplinary committee and locked in the guardhouse. Officially, it was for neglecting control of his platoon.

Drip. Drip.

A damp solitary cell where raindrops fell.

He sat there alone.

Step.

Then quiet footsteps echoed.

Someone approached from beyond the bars.

“Hey, Adel.”

It was Bernhardt, a fellow officer from his class. His usual sloppy attitude was gone, and he glared with sharpened eyes.

“You know something, don’t you?”

Bern slammed the bars.

“You know, you bastard. If you don’t talk, you’re dead.”

It probably wasn’t a bluff. Sergeant Manuel’s death proved that.

The only difference was this: whether he talked or not, he’d be kicked out of the military anyway.

No, would he even keep his life?

“Hey, hey. Look at this. Look.”

Bern shoved a thick stack of papers through the bars.

“These are all statements from your platoon men.”

Fsssh. The papers spilled into the cell, and Adel silently picked them up.

[Statement]

- Witnessed Lieutenant Adel diverting supplies for personal use.

- Under Lieutenant Adel’s coercive orders, Sergeant Manuel complained of severe stress.

- Embezzled company budget funds to pay gambling debts.

- Repeated verbal abuse and cruel treatment toward platoon members...

“You fucking skimmed from every possible place, huh?”

At Bern’s mockery, Adel clenched the statements in his fist.

“Pfft. Oh wow, you mad? Then listen, bastard.”

Bern stared down at him and pushed in a pen and a document.

It was an incident report form.

“Write this. You think licking Lieutenant Colonel Eaton’s ass is going to save you?”

He spat the words coldly.

Bang! Bang!

He hit the bars and forced Adel to look at him.

“Write it already! Put down everything you saw, leave nothing out. Don’t know what exactly you saw, but still.”

“......”

Adel quietly looked at the document. A deep sigh slipped out between his teeth.

“Damn, you’re suffocating. Write everything. I’ll be back in a bit. If you don’t write, you might actually get shot.”

Bern left.

Left alone, Adel stared blankly at the damp pen and stack of paper.

‘...If I’m going to die anyway.’

Once he made up his mind, he picked up the pen and scribbled over the blank pages. To be exact, he split it into two sheets.

One was a statement saying he knew nothing.

The other was a Whistleblower Letter exposing every sin of this eastern army.

Then it happened.

Step.

The door to the guardhouse corridor opened, and someone’s heavy footsteps rang out. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

A man appeared as if he had seized the darkness itself and walked toward him.

“......”

Facing him through the bars, Adel spoke in a stiff voice.

“Lieutenant Colonel Eaton. I have something to tell you.”

......

“Change the frequencies starting tomorrow.”

Inside the office of the commander of the 7th Armored Grenadier Brigade, over a dozen field-grade officers had their heads bowed in a line.

Brigadier General Juken gave the order irritably.

“You morons. How the hell did you manage things so badly that internal communications got intercepted?!”

At this imperial front line, the top brass had been holding a secret feast for a long time. They siphoned off military supplies and smuggled them to the Eastern Alliance, then split the profits and stuffed themselves.

The corruption had gone on so long that it became routine, and they no longer even felt guilty. To them, it was just a deserved bonus.

Bang!

The office door opened and someone came in.

“Brigadier General.”

It was Major Joachim. He stepped up to Brigadier General Juken and held out an envelope.

“Lieutenant Adel’s Whistleblower Letter.”

A letter Adel had written in the guardhouse and tried to send out secretly, only to get caught in inspection.

“Would you like to check the contents?”

“No need to check.”

Without even looking at it, Brigadier General Juken waved his hand.

“Burn it now. And put that bastard on military trial and execute him immediately.”

Even for a frontier zone, there had been too many suicides in the unit lately. If they kept processing them as suicides one after another, upper command would grow suspicious. Better to frame him as the main culprit in embezzlement and abuse, then execute him legally.

“Yes. Understood. Loyalty!”

Major Joachim bowed and left the office.

Thud. Thud.

Clutching his pounding heart and pretending calm as he exited headquarters, a smile slowly spread across his lips.

“Hoo...”

Thud. Thud...

Instead of burning the Whistleblower Letter, he changed direction and moved to a deserted barracks in the rear.

Keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible, he met a certain “agent” in secret, someone waiting there.

“My apologies for making you wait. It couldn’t be helped. I had to avoid suspicion...”

The major apologized with far more respect than he had shown Brigadier General Juken just moments earlier.

The person receiving that apology held only the title of “practical officer.”

Even so, Major Joachim knew.

Compared to some eastern brigadier general like Juken, the rope he was trying to grab right now led to someone far stronger, far more valuable.

“The item first.”

“Ah, yes. Here it is.”

Joachim handed over a thin paper envelope.

Hands brushed, and the envelope slipped into the other agent’s inner pocket.

“Then I’ll take my leave.”

“Yes. Travel safely. Loyalty!”

Major Joachim saluted.

And so, the Whistleblower Letter that should have been burned rode the darkness out of the eastern military zone,

traveled the roads to somewhere farther away,

to somewhere deeper in the center...

“Sir Knight.”

Inside an office of the Sentinel Order.

With the practical officer’s voice full of utmost respect, that very Whistleblower Letter was placed intact on someone’s desk.

If one had to describe him in words, he was a precious man.

No, calling him merely precious would itself be discourteous, a noble among nobles.

He slowly reached out and picked up the envelope.

Rustle.

The envelope opened, and papers unfolded with a soft brush.

The densely written lines settled into his flawless golden eyes without a speck.

“......”

As he read the document from start to finish, a faint curve slowly formed at the corner of his mouth.

He set the letter down and spoke in a low voice.

“Let’s depart.”

Maximilian Ebenholtz.

He nodded, deeply satisfied.