86 - Volume 8 - Chapter Pr

The places the Eighty-Six venture… The places to which I lead them… 

At some point, and until this very day, I might have forgotten about them. 

—VLADILENA MILIZÉ, 

MEMOIRS 

PROLOGUE 

THE RED DRAGON 

“About the information you reported to have received from Ms. Zelene.” 

Seeing Ernst like this, Theo thought the Federacy’s temporary president somehow reminded him of a fire-breathing dragon that had grown resigned and tired of the world. 

They were in the Federacy’s capital of Sankt Jeder, in the living room of Ernst’s estate. The man was, as always, clad in a standard-issue business suit. He sat on a sofa, facing a table surrounded by Theo, Shin, Raiden, Anju, Kurena, and Frederica. 

The black eyes behind his glasses were those of a father enjoying his day off. They were not, by any means, the gaze of the president of one of the largest countries on the continent, who had just obtained the means to disable the mechanical threat sweeping over the land with one fell swoop. 

Yes. 

The Legion could be stopped. 

The method involved a hidden headquarters capable of broadcasting a shutdown signal, and a member of the Adel-Adler royal bloodline, who possessed supreme command authority over the old Giadian Empire’s army, including the Legion. 

With the fall of the Empire of Giad, the latter of these two keys was publicly considered lost, but as long as one could gather them both… 

Zelene entrusted Shin with this information, and he chose to prioritize sharing it with Frederica, the other four who knew her true identity, and Ernst. He told no one else. 

Not even Lena. 

The more people who knew about a sensitive piece of information, the more likely it was to leak. As the final empress, Frederica already carried the risk of becoming a banner under which loyalists to the Empire might try to overturn the Federacy. And now she had also been given the added value of being the sole key capable of sweeping away the shadow of war that was the Legion. 

Still, Shin had to report this to Ernst. This was information that would go on to influence the future of humankind, and Shin choosing to hide it at his own discretion would surely be seen as treason. 

So, he’d found some excuse to return to Sankt Jeder and, after some consideration, entrusted Ernst with this information. A few days had passed since, during which Ernst carefully scrutinized these findings with military and government officials who were aware of Frederica’s situation. 

“I’ll start with the bottom line…,” Ernst said. “You are to go to your next dispatch site, as previously planned.” 

“What…?” Frederica’s large eyes widened further with shock. “You petty paper pusher! Why?! You have me, your empress, by your side. You need only retake the hidden headquarters! Why do you not give the order?!” 

“This thing ‘I need only do’ is more complicated than that. We know absolutely nothing about this hidden headquarters.” 

Frederica looked at Ernst as if dumbstruck. He, however, simply smiled. 

“The Federacy inherited many things from the Empire, territory included. But when all is said and done, we were enemies of the Empire who devoured it from the inside out. And the people of the Empire wouldn’t tell their enemies of a hidden headquarters, now would they? Nor would they reveal its existence to allies of theirs who have no business in that headquarters.” 

And since it was an Imperial military base, it was likely nestled deep within the old Empire’s territory, probably in land occupied by the Legion. The Federacy no longer had the military power to investigate all the possible sites within the Legion’s territories by brute force. 

“And to add to that…there’s the place you will be dispatched to. The situation there is, believe it or not, more urgent. We’ve discovered what we believe to be the hints of a second large-scale offensive in the base you’re scheduled to attack.” 

Silence settled over the room. Someone swallowed nervously. The large-scale offensive. The attack that drove the Federacy’s western front to the brink of collapse and toppled the Republic in the space of a week. A tidal wave of mechanical soldiers whose fearsome designations matched their blood-chilling appearances. The Legion. 

And that tidal wave was rising once again. 

“That base must be eliminated at all costs. And as you go about storming it, I want you to retrieve certain information from within.” 

“Certain information?” Raiden furrowed his brow. “What kind of information do you expect us to get out of the Legion?” 

“The Merciless Queen is Major Zelene Birkenbaum of the Imperial army. The Morpho’s control system was the leader of Empress Augusta’s royal guard. And the Admiral in the Charité Underground Labyrinth in the northern Republic was also someone affiliated with the old Empire.” 

Heil dem Reich. 

The final words of the faceless ghost who had possessed the Admiral called out continually. Shin narrowed his eyes in realization. 

“So former Imperials were turned into Shepherds.” 

“That doesn’t really surprise me. The Legion were originally weapons of the Empire, after all. The inner circle of the Imperial faction would certainly know about any hidden headquarters the Federacy has no information on. And so, since they’re Shepherds, we can gather that information from their central processors…or at least, I hope we can. We’ll only know once we try.” 

The Legion’s central processors were protected by firm encryption that still hadn’t been cracked. Theo had to wonder if all this wasn’t too shrouded in uncertainty when Kurena parted her lips to speak. 

“Can you really do that? There were only about a hundred Shepherds in the Eighty-Sixth Sector alone.” 

Millions had died on that battlefield over the last nine years, and no one was allowed to properly dispose of their remains. That was why the Eighty-Sixth Sector produced countless Legion that had taken in human brain structures—the Black Sheep and Shepherds. But even so, there were only a hundred or so Shepherds that properly maintained the intelligence they had in life. 

Machine-gun fire could easily shatter the human cranium. Tank shells could blow the human body to bits. Intact brains would be a rare find on a battlefield where such ammunition whizzed through the air freely. 

“Yes. This is only one of several threads we’re investigating in tandem. We’re trying to find other means of doing this… Both myself and the generals don’t think every single commander unit out there is necessarily a former Imperial.” 

But one or two might have been a Shepherd. And given the importance of this base, one of them might have been stationed there. That was what the Federacy’s top brass were thinking. 

“We can tell if that’s true because we have Shin on our side, but it all feels so vague…,” said Anju, looking up at the ceiling in a confused manner. 

Everyone else reacted similarly. Frederica alone moved her gaze from Ernst to Shin in a fidgety manner, while Shin closed his eyes like an indifferent guard dog. 

“…However, there is one dead member of the former Imperial faction who definitely became a Shepherd and is sure to know about the hidden headquarters.” 

He wasn’t a high-ranking officer, but he did serve as the empress’s loyal knight. Even after death, he remained trapped within the Morpho’s central processor… 

“Kiriya Nouzen. What if I were to tell you that his ghost is inside that base?” 

“…!” Frederica went pale. 

Even Shin hardened his expression at those words. It was him, after all, who had destroyed the Morpho. 

“…I defeated him a year ago. I’m sure of that. And there can’t exist multiple units of the same Shepherd. We can’t rely on a ghost that doesn’t exist for information.” 

“Don’t they at least have spare units? And even if it’s not him, that base is a key position for the Legion’s large-scale offensive. There must be a considerable number of commander units set up there.” 

Shin fell silent, clearly displeased. He didn’t like what Ernst was suggesting. Having heard the final cries of his Shepherd brother for as long as he did, Shin saw the mechanical ghosts as human in their own right. The idea of them being read for information like machine parts didn’t sit well with him. 

“Well, either way…as you can see, even if we have a method of shutting down the Legion, it will take time and effort to achieve it. So we’re not going to ignore Frederica’s safety and hurry to deactivate them. You don’t have to worry, Shin. None of you need to worry. That said, there is a group that concerns me more than the headquarters’ position or the remnants of the Imperial faction… Anyway, for now, we’ll be focusing our efforts on the recovery operation and manipulating intelligence to keep Frederica’s existence hidden. We can’t begin the shutdown operation until we’ve done that. After all…” 

The justice the Federacy pursues does not allow it to become a country that sacrifices children. 

“You would speak of justice, even as you watch countless many of your people die!” Frederica said, getting to her feet. “How can my life alone compare to countless millions of the Federacy’s people? To the untold billions across humankind?! Why can you not see…?” 

“If we are to enable that kind of atrocity, humankind may as well be destroyed,” Ernst said menacingly. 

Frederica froze up in fear. Theo shuddered as well. Ernst had once said something like this before. That was his reasoning for why the five of them hadn’t been disposed of by the Federacy. 

If we have to kill children because they’re unfamiliar to us… 

If that’s what humankind has to do to survive, then we deserve to be wiped out. 

“Besides, I never liked the idea of sending you Eighty-Six alone to turn the tide of the war. If you want to fight, too, so be it. But sacrificing you alone to win the war? No. That’s wrong. And if a day comes where I stop feeling that way…” 

“I don’t like this, Ernst.” Shin cut into his words. 

He had the serenity, sharpness, and strength of an old, unbroken blade, shining on a moonlit battlefield. 

“I don’t think humankind ought to be wiped out for that. My wish won’t come true if they do. Stop saying humankind ought to be destroyed whenever things don’t go your way. It’s unpleasant.” 

For a moment, it felt as if Ernst’s pitch-black eyes clashed with Shin’s bloodred gaze. The smile of the umbral void seemed to meet the crimson, flame-colored eyes and bounce off them. 

“…Briefing acknowledged. We’ll accept the order to seize the central processor. I want to end this war as much as you do. But I won’t let you wipe out humanity.” 

Nor would he choose a path that required sacrificing Frederica. 

Frederica fell silent, looking like she was on the verge of tears. Next to her, Raiden watched on wordlessly in agreement, and Anju nodded with a kind smile. Kurena’s expression was a bit anxious, though. 

Since the living room didn’t have a mirror, Theo couldn’t tell what expression he was wearing right now. But somehow, he knew…had it been before, had it been Shin as he was in the Eighty-Sixth Sector, he probably wouldn’t have said those words. He couldn’t have said them. He didn’t care for the end of the war or have any wishes he wanted to see granted. 

Those were things that didn’t exist in the Eighty-Sixth Sector. 

It truly made Theo understand…that Shin really had left the Eighty-Sixth Sector.