Chapter 71
The most important thing in war is legitimacy.
It was a principle that naturally held true in any world where human beings gathered.
And in a monarchy, the most important form of legitimacy was, naturally, its head of state.
Eastern Grand Duke Edward.
"If we fail to deal with that bastard Edward, people may appear who try to use him to start a rebellion or overthrow society in the future."
No matter how disastrously Edward had ruled, the prestige of the grand ducal house that had ruled the East for a thousand years was by no means insignificant.
If we went after Edward too late and he escaped, it would become troublesome in all sorts of ways.
Well, that would be true even if no rebellion actually broke out.
As long as Eastern Grand Duke Edward remained alive, the Center might make political moves to destabilize our eastern territories later.
And I was not the sort of person who left a weakness at his back.
That was also why I had left so many things unattended and deliberately crossed the midnight sea on a wyvern.
Edward had staked everything on the shelling never beginning. If it actually did, he would definitely try to flee.
For that purpose, a carrier was following behind the fleet.
On the deck of the SDS Horizon, brightening beneath the light of dawn, heavily armed heavy infantry stood in formation.
Every one of them was among the South's elite forces, possessing combat power of sixth tier or higher.
Having been transformed into thoroughgoing combat machines, they gave a perfectly precise salute the moment I dismounted from the wyvern.
After saluting them in return, I asked the carrier's executive officer, who had come up beside me.
"What time is it?"
"It is 5:13 a.m. There are two hours and forty-seven minutes left before the fleet's bombardment begins."
"What about the airborne equipment?"
"Everything is ready. We can depart immediately as soon as you give the order!"
A strange tension hung over the carrier. The source of that tension, which even the light, refreshing dawn air could not dispel, was the personal guard's heavy infantry lined up along one side of the deck.
The heavy infantry, already carrying an abundance of heavy equipment, also had large packs strapped to their backs.
"Good."
Ordinary parachutes would not be able to completely cushion the landing impact of soldiers who were practically human tanks, but it did not really matter.
Knights could endure 20mm autocannon fire by wrapping themselves in aura. No matter how fast they fell, those superhumans could withstand that much.
"We'll set out in an hour."
In that respect, this decapitation operation was a good opportunity.
Although the East was deep in enemy territory, most of its soldiers and civilians had already left, so there was not much of a threat to speak of.
We had to practice now if we wanted to use airborne troops in our later fight against the Center.
The greatest weakness of airborne troops was their lack of firepower, but if we used members of the personal guard, there was no need to worry about that.
They were the sort of people who could carry even an 88mm field gun with their bare hands if necessary.
Exactly one hour later.
Beneath the brightening blue sky, the SDS Horizon began picking up speed. The deck had been aligned with the direction of the wind to launch the swift wyverns.
At the same time, the wyverns in the first row spread their wings and began to take off.
It took only a little over three minutes for all twenty wyverns to become airborne into the headwind.
The wyverns rapidly climbed higher, soaring above the brightening dawn and past the low, ominous clouds into the deep blue sky above.
After a while, the sound of cannon fire reached us from below.
It was a muffled sound that seemed to spread as if heard underwater.
"That bastard Edward must be coming to his senses by now."
I muttered quietly and looked down to see a dense carpet of ash-gray clouds.
The wyverns circled above them until the shelling stopped. By the time the repeated roars of the naval guns and the sounds of the city collapsing were beginning to grow familiar,
at last, every sound in the sky vanished.
What remained in the place of all those sounds was the peculiar stillness of the dawn sky. The rising sun was visible far across the sky.
That was the signal.
"Begin descent!"
Every member of the personal guard's heavy infantry who had been hanging onto the wyverns' backs threw himself toward the soft blanket of clouds below.
***
Fwoom-!
As the parachutes opened with a sound like a blow against the air, the bodies that had been falling at a terrifying speed began to slow gradually.
The parachutes that opened beneath the gray clouds drifted like dandelion seeds.
However, even parachutes could not completely reduce the falling speed of the heavy armored infantry.
The ground began drawing near at a dangerously fine speed, balanced precariously between a crash and a landing.
Only then did I notice something strange.
'Water mist?'
Water mist was the magic of the Eastern Grand Ducal family. Mist this thick meant that a battle had taken place.
There was only one enemy the Eastern Grand Duke would have had to fight with all his strength.
"Ha, so in the end, it was internal strife."
I muttered quietly as I cut the parachute cords, intending to land cleanly amid the dense water mist.
As soon as the cords were cut, the magic circles embedded in the parachutes activated. When the canvas burned away to ash, the parachutes that had filled the sky moments ago vanished as if they had never been there.
And so, in the quiet water mist,
a man's voice came through.
"Yes, we're returning to the Imperial Center. We'll take Aria and leave. While those stupid, barbaric men beat each other bloody, we'll live quietly somewhere peaceful."
Edward was too busy muttering to himself to even notice what had landed right in front of him.
"Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
Judging by how he froze solid when I suddenly appeared in front of him.
I slowly approached. As the thick water mist cleared, the sight of him revealed was utterly wretched.
"Hmm..."
Edward stood in the middle of a place strewn with the corpses of nobles. Traces of magic covered his body, and fallen mages lay around him.
I had brought the personal guard myself to subdue him, but it seemed there would be little point.
"You look like you have a lot to say."
The confusion in Edward's eyes suggested that he had quite a lot he wanted to say.
With a casual gesture, the guards lined up behind me dispersed around us all at once. That created a space no one would be able to reach for a while.
Only then did Edward recover from the shock and slowly open his mouth.
"What on earth have I done to earn such a grudge from you that you would go this far?!"
Shouting in a voice full of grievance, Edward looked like a man on the verge of collapse.
"Haven't you already destroyed my fleet and my power as well?! What more do you want that you've come all the way here in person to confront me?!"
If he put it that way, I did not really have anything to say.
The 'Kyle Leopold' from the original story might have, but... I did not harbor any particular ill will toward Edward.
If anything, I felt nothing but gratitude. Thanks to Edward, I had swallowed up the East this easily and completed half of my plan.
"That's a difficult question."
"...?"
"I don't actually have any personal grudge against you."
Edward's expression turned blank with incomprehension. It was the expression of someone who had encountered something he could not understand.
"Then why, then why are you doing this...?"
"Just because."
"What?"
"To prevent the Empire from collapsing, we had to swallow up the East. The fact that you were harmed in the process... was simply because you happened to be sitting in the position of Eastern Grand Duke."
Since he was someone who could not put up any proper resistance even if left alone, I spoke honestly as I prepared my magic.
However, Edward seemed unable to accept that answer.
***
"Just... because?"
Edward had lived his whole life believing that he was special. From birth, he had been a noble, extraordinary, and brilliant man.
For someone like him, the answer 'just because' was utterly unacceptable.
Wasn't 'just because' something meant for ordinary people who merely let life carry them along?
"Just because?"
He was not someone who deserved such treatment. It was utterly unforgivable for the likes of Kyle Leopold, who had been rejected after hitting on women, to regard him as an ordinary man.
Without even realizing that he had dropped the honorific speech he habitually used, he screamed and activated his magic.
His water magic, already at its limit, barely answered his will and whipped into a frenzy.
"I am a special person!"
A water-blue greatsword, created by squeezing out every ounce of his strength, rippled in his hand. With his eyes rolled back, Edward charged as if he intended to split Kyle in half.
Watching him quietly, Kyle Leopold drew out his golden mana and spoke.
"Ah, I've made up my mind."
Kiiing-!
As a sharp activation whine rang out, Kyle continued.
A man who mistakenly believed himself special. A fool who mistakenly believed he was different from the already-failed Charles Raymonds. The ending reserved for such a fool had already been decided.
"I'll send you to join Charles Raymonds."
And a golden flash filled every direction.
Before Edward lost consciousness, the last thing he saw was... his own limbs flying in all directions.