Chapter 13
After running and running for what felt like ages, I arrived at a clearing in the forest.
Leaving footprints in the pure-white ground, I walked to the center of the clearing, then bent over and braced my hands on my knees.
Hot breath poured repeatedly from my mouth.
‘I feel like I’m going to throw up…….’
After running at full speed for several minutes, I felt dizzy.
I didn’t want to run this much, but I had no choice.
I thought putting as much distance between Selvia and me as possible was the top priority.
‘It would be a disaster if the princess heard me ask for asylum…….’
It was in the princess’s nature to execute traitors no matter what.
So my best option was to disappear like a ghost before the princess found out.
“How far are you going to run, you son of a bit…….”
“Huff…….”
As I caught my breath, I heard the voice of an Allied soldier.
When I calmly turned around, the six soldiers I had seen earlier were approaching while panting.
Since they weren’t pointing their guns at me, they seemed willing to talk.
I didn’t want to fight either, so I exhaled heavily and raised both hands.
“……Let’s calm down and talk for now. I’m Lieutenant Daniel Steiner, deputy operations officer at Imperial General Staff Headquarters. State your unit and names.”
Good. By introducing myself, I had naturally mentioned my affiliation and rank.
Having heard that I was an operations officer at General Staff Headquarters, anyone who wasn’t an idiot would have realized that I had strategic value.
But oddly, the Allied soldiers merely frowned as if they were annoyed.
“Enough. Where is the princess? Depending on your answer, we may let you live, so choose your words carefully.”
“……The princess?”
My thoughts froze at the word princess from the Allied soldier.
How did that guy know that the person traveling with me was the princess?
Selvia wasn’t a fool. She wouldn’t have gone around announcing that she had come to the Northern Front disguised as a war correspondent.
Therefore, only a handful of people knew that Selvia had come to the Northern Front.
Those few were people Selvia had judged trustworthy.
Given Selvia’s painstaking care in selecting capable people, there was no way they would have been working as spies.
Then who had used this information to launch the attack?
As I racked my brain, a faint realization dawned on me, and I groaned softly.
‘The prince.’
Things were different when it came to family.
They could observe Selvia’s every move from the closest possible vantage point.
In fact, I knew that Crown Prince Arno von Amberg had had several major quarrels with his younger sister Selvia over the succession to the imperial throne.
Apparently, their quarrels had not been merely for show.
‘Trying to assassinate his own younger sister. What a madman.’
I clicked my tongue and lowered my hands.
Now that I knew the truth, there was no longer any need to surrender.
The soldiers in front of me weren’t affiliated with the Allied Nations.
They were the prince’s assassins, disguised to make it look as though the princess had been attacked by the Allied Nations.
Realizing that all of this was the prince’s self-staged drama, my head cooled completely.
“Did the prince order you to do this?”
The soldiers flinched at my words. Thanks to that, my guess became even clearer.
“Now that I look at you, those Allied uniforms are awfully clean.”
“……What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Veteran soldiers are normally sent for guerrilla warfare and surprise attacks behind enemy lines. Sending recruits drastically lowers the odds of success. Yet all of you are wearing uniforms as new as recruits would. Does that make sense?”
If you wanted the disguise to be convincing, you should have made the uniforms look like they belonged to battle-hardened veterans.
The soldiers couldn’t refute my observation, but soon let out hollow laughs.
One who appeared to be their squad leader stepped forward.
“You really are an elite, just like the rumors say, if you noticed that right away. Then you know the situation well, right? Join us. We’ll guarantee you a path to success.”
“Us? You mean the prince?”
“……Use the proper honorific. It’s His Highness the Crown Prince.”
Seeing the soldier growl, I couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief.
The soldier frowned at this.
“What’s so funny?”
“I pity you because you look like you’re clinging to a rotten lifeline. The Crown Prince? That bastard doesn’t have what it takes to become emperor. The princess will become emperor. Not that incompetent bastard.”
From the standpoint of someone who knew the future, I had offered sincere advice, but the soldiers clearly didn’t appreciate it. They scowled and gripped their guns.
“Thank you for being honest. We don’t need to continue this convers—”
From now on, it was a contest of speed. While the soldier was speaking, I drew my revolver from its holster.
At the same time, I concentrated mana in my central nervous system to accelerate my nerves.
In an instant, my field of vision expanded dramatically and my pupils contracted.
What appeared in my vision was a world flowing in slow motion.
The flustered soldier tried to raise his gun, opened his mouth to curse, and several others charged at me. Everything appeared like a slow-motion film.
I took a deep breath, raised my revolver, aimed at their heads, and pulled the trigger.
The gunpowder exploded, and the bullets being fired looked unreal, as if they were gliding through a zero-gravity space.
But the bullets steadily moved toward the soldiers’ heads.
The instant I moved the revolver’s muzzle to finish off the last soldier, the neural acceleration wore off, and the world returned to its normal speed.
“Bang─!”
Five gunshots rang out almost simultaneously, and the soldiers’ heads burst one after another.
The soldiers collapsed with a thud without even being able to let out much of a scream.
But there was one last man. The soldier I faced as the neural acceleration ended was still charging at me.
“You son of a bitch─!”
I wanted to aim, but my hand began shaking violently.
My body was being strained by the recoil from using neural acceleration.
This was a useful ability that had allowed me to graduate at the top of my class at the military academy, but its drawback was clear: it placed a severe burden on my body immediately after use.
‘Damn…….’
My head throbbed, and my body refused to obey, as if I were sinking into a swamp.
But if I didn’t kill that bastard, I would die. I forced myself to concentrate and pulled the trigger.
Bang! The gunshot rang high into the sky, and the arm of the soldier charging at me exploded.
I had failed to aim. Even as the soldier screamed over losing his arm, he didn’t stop charging.
Immediately afterward, the soldier who reached me put his weight behind his body and shoved me.
“Ugh!”
I fell backward and was buried in the snow.
The soldier climbed on top of me, pulled out a military knife, and tried to drive it down into my head.
Judging it dangerous, I reflexively grabbed the soldier’s wrist.
“Fuck! You bastard! You demon! Die!”
Spittle flying, the soldier spewed curses indiscriminately.
But I didn’t have the strength to hurl curses back.
All I could do was grip the soldier’s wrist with both hands and push him away.
“Nngh……!”
But it didn’t work. My hands had no strength.
I could see the tip of the knife drawing closer to my eye by the second, but I couldn’t stop it.
Fear coursed down my spine.
‘……What? Am I going to die like this?’
They say people usually see their life flash before their eyes before dying, but all I felt was emptiness.
I wanted to deny death, but the strength kept draining from my hands.
That was when it happened.
Bang!
With the gunshot, the side of the head of the soldier pinning me exploded.
The soldier soon toppled forward and collapsed onto me.
I hurriedly took the dagger from him, then plunged it into his neck.
I had delivered a coup de grâce, just in case.
After that, I shoved the soldier aside and slowly raised my upper body.
After steadying my ragged breathing and turning to the side, I saw a group wearing Imperial uniforms and gas masks.
‘The Imperial Central Army…… Among them, the Imperial Guard?’
If they were the Imperial Guard, I could roughly guess who had sent them.
Sure enough, Selvia was running up a step behind them.
Seeing the worry written all over her face, I felt guilty, as though I had done something pointless.
Selvia, unaware of my feelings, came right up to me and knelt.
“Are you all right? You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”
I nodded.
“I’m not hurt, thanks to the Imperial Guards’ help. So…….”
When my voice trailed off, Selvia lowered her gaze as if she had realized what I meant.
“I’m sorry. I never meant to deceive you. It’s just that I didn’t think I could find out what kind of person you were if I approached you as a member of the imperial family, so I disguised myself as a war correspondent.”
Sorry, but I had known from the beginning. Still, I decided to pretend that I didn’t know for now.
“So, have you learned much about me?”
I said it to lighten the somber atmosphere.
“Of course.”
Selvia seemed to have taken my words seriously.
“First, when planning the operation, you rejected the opinion of your superior, Captain Heinz, and developed a new line of reasoning. The fact that it was sound shows that you possess an unyielding core that refuses to submit to authority and an eye that sees through the battlefield.”
I had just blurted that out because I wanted a dishonorable discharge.
“At Edelcral Gorge, you immediately recognized Colonel Jeremy, who was disguised as a soldier. Otherwise, it would make no sense that you managed to kill Colonel Jeremy with your first shot.”
It does make sense. I shot a soldier, and it turned out to be Colonel Jeremy.
“Finally, you possess a spirit of self-sacrifice strong enough to devote yourself to the Empire’s people at any time. After all, you threw away your life just to save a mere war correspondent.”
I only ran off after making something up because I thought it was a chance to seek asylum. What are you talking about?
None of that was right, but looking into Selvia’s earnest eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to deny it.
If I told her the truth, I’d be executed in the first place.
“Lieutenant Daniel Steiner.”
Selvia gripped my hand and solemnly declared,
“I dare say, on behalf of the imperial family, that you are a treasure born of the Empire.”
I felt like I was going to die from how burdensome this was.
The princess’s misunderstanding was free to run wild.