Chapter 284

On the outskirts of Hailand. A morning after the smog had cleared. Bridges shimmered green over the sea, and spires shook off the last traces of mist.

“...”

I stood by the roadside, looking out over Hailand.

“The scenery isn’t bad once the smog clears.”

It was Hanna.

As she took off her coat, she asked,

“Is it all right not to keep watch? The letter was delivered.”

“It’s fine.”

I answered without taking my eyes off Gary Beaufort’s villa in the distance.

“If he kills himself even after receiving that letter, then that’s simply the kind of person he is.”

It was only a letter, but the weight of the name that had written it would not be so light. A letter from a famous person was bound to leave an impression.

I had memories like that from long ago too.

“Hanna.”

I turned to her.

“Yes?”

“What do you think of the Empire’s Bloodline Act?”

“I think it is an entirely proper distinction.”

She answered immediately.

“Then what exactly does bloodline distinguish?”

Hanna grinned, as though she had already memorized it all.

“The Izenheim bastards have hooked noses, wet eyes, long fingers, and their noses twitch when they smell money...”

I shook my head.

“Those stereotypes apply equally to the Mer. No, historically speaking, they run even deeper with the Mer. They have been despised that way for far longer...”

The symbols of the Mer had originally been beards and hats. Their emblem was a pattern of six overlapping circles.

All kinds of “ugly” features had first been attached to them.

Because they earned more money than us, calculated profit and loss faster than us, and lived more tenaciously than us.

At some point, the Izenheim inserted themselves into it. As though disguising themselves as the Mer, they borrowed the Mer’s faces, rumors, and even false accusations.

“The Mer follow the Mer faith. Their doctrine is quite honest. Do not cheat the scales, do not conceal defects, do not steal another’s judgment... Of course, not every Mer follows that doctrine.”

Before I returned, the group devastated by the Empire was, in truth, the Mer even more than the Izenheim. The Izenheim had gathered together and resisted in their own way, but the Mer had suffered while scattered apart.

Everything they had built, their financial assets, workshops, patents, and schools, was taken from them. More than half their population was massacred by the Empire.

Naturally, the Izenheim swallowed the vacant places.

“I think history matters even more than bloodline.”

“History...?”

“Yes.”

I looked into Hanna’s eyes.

“History is the record of humanity.”

“That’s right!”

Her voice suddenly rose.

“You also treated history as incredibly important in Moonlight Below.”

“...Yes, that’s right. Throughout the Empire’s thousand-year history, historians have fairly recorded what they saw and heard.”

The words humanity had written down were clues to the otherworldly species known as Izenheim.

“The Izenheim suddenly appeared in that history.”

Intruders who abruptly emerged somewhere on the continent, calling themselves Izenheim in order to form a people and a collective with their own kind.

“...Subhumans.”

Hanna repeated it with striking seriousness. Her expression suggested she was writing down every one of my words in her mind.

“That’s right. They plunder the foundations of the Empire and human civilization...”

“And commit fraud.”

Hanna added.

Well, it seemed she had suffered quite a bit at their hands too.

“Yes, they commit fraud too. But ultimately, they will bring the continent...”

I swallowed the word destruction. Even if Hanna’s ideology had been tempered for years, it was still too unbelievable a word.

“They are subhumans who will bring the greatest harm to this continent.”

Demons mixed among people.

Erasing them was my calling.

“I was weak and soft-hearted to begin with, but...”

“You don’t look that way at all.”

“...I used to be.”

Weak people found it difficult to make decisions.

That was precisely why, once they made up their minds, they never looked back.

“The reason I changed like this is the Izenheim. They created the monster called me.”

“...”

Hanna was silent for a moment.

“Then... what did you see, Sir Knight?”

The question came after much deliberation.

What she meant was likely different from what I meant, but I answered clearly.

“A disaster the continent has never experienced.”

A ruined world. Humanity scattered and fragmented beyond repair.

But I could not explain such things...

“I only ask you to have faith.”

Hanna stared into empty space with an odd expression.

Sunlight glittering over Hailand’s river suddenly illuminated her smile.

“...Sir Knight, you burned Jacob’s diary. I heard it from the instructor. If it had not been for you, would I have been executed because of that false accusation?”

Probably.

Hanna, you had not existed on the continent before I returned.

“I hate the Izenheim as much as you do.”

An unusual ripple ran through her voice as she spoke.

“I too have the right to hate that race.”

A sound from my distant past. The voices of those called “war criminals.”

Hatred and hostility. Eyes filled with conviction.

Those people, firm, unwavering, and never doubting anything within themselves, overlapped with Hanna.

“There must be a reason for the fishy smell the Yaken detect.”

Had Hanna Usar somehow become a person of a generation suited to war?

...Perhaps.

Perhaps we had all already become that way.

* * *

Gary Beaufort remained in seclusion for some time after that day. Rumors of suicide, convalescence, and exile circulated, but he was alive.

“...What did you say?”

I no longer had time to worry about Gary.

Schatz had suddenly come to see me.

“It seems the research institute has found a way to distinguish Izenheim from other races...”

The Sentinel Knights’ office.

The moment I heard that, my body moved on its own.

Underground. An unnamed research institute. A place I had preserved even by paying off Hector Mason’s astronomical debts.

“Sir Knight Maximilian.”

The lead researcher guided me into a room.

“It’s this fellow.”

A new researcher named Bernd. A twenty-five-year-old young man with dark circles beneath his eyes.

I asked him urgently.

“You distinguished the Izenheim?”

“Uh... well... I doubt its practicality...”

Why was he speaking so slowly?

“Practicality?”

“Yes. It cannot distinguish them while they are alive... but when they are dead...”

“It can?”

“Yes... I found a few differences.”

“Is it the shape of the heart?”

The Izenheim had differently shaped hearts. But that was one form of magical mutation, also found among Dromon, Elena, and even certain humans who had cultivated magic in unusual ways. Until now, an autopsy could not clearly distinguish them.

“It is similar, but not that.”

The researcher brought out an Izenheim corpse. Its chest was open, and it had been frozen. Georgen had sent it.

“Some Yaken describe the Izenheim as... having a fishy smell? Like fish...”

The conflict between the Yaken and Izenheim was nothing new.

In truth, I had encouraged it.

The Izenheim would now certainly try to kill the Yaken, and the only way to protect the Yaken was to make them wary of the Izenheim themselves.

“So I measured the water content of their hearts.”

“Water content?”

“Yes. Fishy smell, water.”

“...”

My mind went blank for a moment.

It’s Darkest Beneath the Lamp. It truly was.

I had heard the Yaken describe them as smelling fishy all along.

The Yaken had always spoken only truths and clues.

“At first, I examined the entire body... but total body water was similar in almost every race...”

But the heart alone.

“When I tested the heart’s water content... independently...”

“Was the result different?”

“Yes.”

My heart shook at his answer.

“If we cut a section from the heart tissue and measure its wet weight, then dry it in an oven and measure its dry weight... the difference is the water content.”

Bernd pointed to the scales and oven beside him. They were ordinary instruments.

“After a person dies... it takes about three days at room temperature for body water to diminish significantly... so the test must be conducted within that time...”

“Get to the conclusion.”

“Yes. An ordinary human heart has a water content between 74 and 79 percent... but Izenheim hearts are between 82 and 86 percent. All thirty-three corpses we have autopsied so far.”

“Can that be considered significant?”

“Under some circumstances, yes... though patients with myocarditis can also show numbers that high.”

“But an entire race would not all be like that.”

“Yes.”

He handed me the documents.

One chart showed every other race with heart water content in the 70 percent range.

The Izenheim, in contrast, were in the 80 percent range.

Of course, these facts could not be used to accuse the Izenheim of being otherworldly species. Their rebuttal was obvious.

‘A mutation caused by magic. Even so, we are the same humans.’

But what mattered to me was that I could clearly distinguish them.

Even if it was only from dead corpses.

“...Bernd, was it?”

My voice trembled unbecomingly.

“Yes...”

He spoke slowly, but he was a young man I wanted to embrace.

After returning through decades of time, after amassing an endless budget and putting in endless effort, I had finally grasped a highly meaningful clue for humanity.

I had acquired evidence.

Some would dismiss it as the logic of discrimination, but for me, it was the first science capable of identifying Izenheim.

“If there’s anything you want, tell me.”

“Uh...”

Bernd blinked as though thinking deeply.

“Hmm...”

After spending his youth handling hundreds of Izenheim corpses in this research institute, placing their hearts on scales and drying them in ovens, his wish was...

“Perhaps a house somewhere around the Capital’s Tenth District...”

So ordinary.

* * *

One day in January, at the end of winter.

[ Gary Beaufort Announces Resignation ]

Gary Beaufort finally resigned.

An affair with a married Imperial woman, who had even committed suicide. It had become too viciously entangled to dismiss as merely a scandal.

Damian had been named the next prime minister, but he likely would not last long.

Gary Beaufort had been born into a prestigious family that had produced politicians for generations. He had followed nothing but the path of an elite among elites, one of Hailand’s great pillars.

Damian was not like that. A legislator from a reasonably well-off family who had entered politics in an ordinary way. He was no more than the shadow of the tree called Gary Beaufort.

In that regard, it was vaguely similar to the Empire’s nature.

They would accept an Ebenholtz standing above them.

But who exactly were you?

...The political situation shook like that.

In Hailand’s Common Hall, people reflected on the Genson Agreement. Sympathy for Bolska began to rise.

Probably, no, certainly, Izenheim had manipulated public opinion.

Prozen had shown concern for the Genson Agreement from the beginning, so Genson’s peace had fallen into “shameful history” only four months after it was signed.

Gary Beaufort left me a letter.

[Sir Maximilian. I received your letter well. I will not write what your letter meant to me, because I feel that writing it down would somehow make it smaller...]

[I am grateful for your proposal, but I do not think we will be able to meet again for a long time. I can no longer show my face before people, while you will stand before even more people in the future.]

Beaufort’s handwriting was remarkably neat.

Perhaps because I too was unavoidably born an aristocrat, such small things caught my attention.

[I have only one thing to write. I worry about what the Empire is doing, and intends to do, to minority races. I worry even more that this concern may one day take the face of war and stand before the continent.]

[If you could show other people, other races, the character, consideration, and courtesy you showed us, I believe the continent would be colored more brightly.]

[You may laugh it off as the futile wish of a man who has stepped down.]

I smiled faintly as I read those lines.

[...Someday, after more time has passed, when the continent has settled and can truly love peace.]

[On that day, I will come to Lilac Vita first...]

“I received it well.”

I carefully folded the letter and placed it in a drawer.

“Thank you, Sir Stanley.”

Stanley, Hailand’s ambassador to the Empire, had worked hard going back and forth between the Imperial family and my residence during the Genson Agreement. He would soon be recalled to his homeland.

He was already being insulted as “the Empire’s lackey.”

“...I’m sorry.”

Stanley lowered their head instead.

“Sir Knight. Arthur Winston and his group simply refuse to let go of the assumption that the Empire will start a war. They treat it as though it were a myth.”

“It’s all right. Some things do not go as one wishes, no matter the effort.”

Hailand was a great power. Though an island nation, its territory was far more extensive than Kanilan’s. The pride that it could stand against the Empire was inherent to the nation itself.

That meant it was an opponent that would need to be defeated in battle, sooner or later.

“Still, Sir Stanley, please pass this along. Do not make it public. Say it is a small message from Maximilian.”

“Yes.”

I chose my words for a moment.

Since these words would be delivered to Hailand’s legislators, I had to be somewhat careful.

“...I greatly regret Prime Minister Gary Beaufort’s resignation.”

“I, I would like to be included in that.”

Stanley suddenly interrupted.

“?”

I tilted my head. Stanley insisted on adding a line.

“I greatly regret Prime Minister Gary Beaufort’s resignation and the ‘recall of Ambassador Stanley’...”

They seemed to have a strong sense of self-regard.

In any event.

“Yes. I greatly regret Prime Minister Gary Beaufort’s resignation and Ambassador Stanley’s recall.”

“Thank you.”

I continued.

“I believe the Empire will now find it difficult to speak with Hailand.”

“...”

Stanley wore an inscrutable expression. It seemed like their wish for matters to fall apart without them conflicted with their wish for their homeland to remain safe.

“You know it too, Sir Stanley. Damian is a puppet, and Arthur Winston is gaining popularity again.”

Arthur Winston had predicted the Empire’s ruthless Bloodline Act and stressed the Empire’s aggression for years.

He had effectively been selected as Hailand’s next prime minister, just as he had been before I returned.

“And now our Ambassador Stanley is leaving as well.”

“Hup!”

Stanley could not suppress a laugh at the respectful way I addressed them. After letting it out once, they composed their face into a gloomy expression again.

“The Empire will no longer want to speak with anyone.”

“...”

War would break out before year’s end.

But even I did not know how that war would unfold. The Izenheim wanted war in the first place.

“Yes.”

Stanley nodded resolutely.

“I will convey everything unofficially.”

As they rose, bowed politely, and prepared to leave.

“Sir Stanley.”

I stopped them for a moment.

“Yes, Sir Knight.”

“I hear that in Hailand, they call you ‘a diplomat who cares only for the Empire.’”

A photograph had been taken of Stanley leaving Lilac Vita drunk, and the restaurant’s enormous bill had appeared in the newspapers. The public and columnists had fiercely criticized Stanley.

So, to someone already wounded by such disgrace.

“Do not concern yourself with such insults.”

I offered a gentle sentence.

“You did the right thing, Sir Stanley.”

The Empire had no intention of losing.

It would wage a greater war than before I returned, and it would win more decisively.

And when that day came.

You, who had wanted to speak with the Empire instead...

“History will reevaluate you.”

“...”

Stanley looked as though they might cry.

“Thank you!”

Wiping away real tears with their sleeve, they ran out crash, bang like some cartoon character, trying to hide their tears.

“...They are an interesting person.”

Schatz emerged from the darkness in the corner of the reception room.

I answered with something like a sigh.

“Most people become interesting in front of me.”

People who were not at all ridiculous by nature.

Even people with dignity and authority, conviction and will, lost most of their weight before me.

“That is why I must be even more careful.”

I was wary of myself.

The moment I became intoxicated with myself, I would become an ordinary person in power.

And the moment I became an ordinary person in power.

I would lose to them.