Sentinel......

──Imperial Central District 14.

I was searching the blast site. Sonnet kept wandering around inside too. She moved quickly from place to place, peering into every corner, half inspecting and half sightseeing, then suddenly crouched in front of a pile of broken concrete.

It got on my nerves for no reason.

“Ms. Sonnet. If you came because of real estate, we should stop here-”

“Hm?”

Sonnet’s eyes suddenly widened.

“Sir Maximilian.”

As she called me, she picked something up with her gloved hand.

“What do you think this is?”

“What......?”

A piece of metal about the size of a palm. My brow twitched. I had definitely searched this site top to bottom. Even my virus senses had not found it, so how did Sonnet?

“That was there?”

“Yes. It was right here.”

I walked over and took the metal from her. She stared at me with an expressionless face, then stood and started walking back toward the exit.

Click. Click.

She looked like she was suddenly heading home.

“......Ah.”

Then she stopped again.

“About that line, ‘a knight does not abandon comrades’......”

She turned back to me and asked,

“May I ask why Anton was excluded?”

Maybe she had recognized Anton’s value too.

I gave a sigh of a smile.

“This was the way to protect Anton.”

“......”

Sonnet stayed silent. Her eyes asked for more. I looked down at the metal in my palm. I still did not know what it was, but she had handed me a very suspicious piece of evidence, so I should return the favor.

“Someday, far in the future, when the Empire is a little more peaceful.”

I spoke of that future.

I did not think about failing, or humanity losing.

We would save our world, our home, from destruction with our own hands.

After we swept away the great evil called Izenheim.

“The day will definitely come when we need someone like Anton Jefren.”

The era I wanted.

Even if we fought, cried, laughed, and raged, the future that continued after all that would still need him.

“This is preservation for that day.”

A man like Anton could soothe that generation.

“......”

Sonnet looked into my eyes as if trying to measure my true intent.

Then she nodded with the same blank face. She pushed up her gold-rimmed glasses.

This time, it was not her middle finger.

Click. Click.

I watched her back as she left the scene.

Then I looked down at the metal fragment in my hand again.

“──It’s a detonator.”

At the separate Sentinel external knight office in Imperial Central.

At Yukia’s words, I frowned.

“Detonator?”

“Yes.”

I had transferred every piece of debris the police collected from the site and asked Yukia to analyze it. Over hundreds of parts and shards, she set down the “detonator.”

“This tiny primer was attached to the core of the condenser. I think someone sent a signal from outside and intentionally caused the explosion.”

“......Are you sure?”

“Yes. The detonator is heavily stained with mana from the moment of the explosion. We can send it to the Magic Tower for analysis.”

A detonator.

A new phase in the Cliff case.

“So the whole incident was manipulated......”

I was not a man who followed principles. I was not a man obsessed with doctrine either. I was simply a man who pursued his goal. Cliff was only one part of that.

A split in Sentinel benefited the Revolutionary Faction and Izenheim.

If knights were pushed aside by politics and factions, denied proper treatment like before my regression, then degraded and betrayed by their “fatherland,” there would be no reason for them not to board the ship called revolution.

“That could never be allowed.”

Every knight in Sentinel was a major force for the coming war. Throwing away one of them was no different from throwing away all of them.

A knight’s authority, and the Order’s strength, had to be absolute.

No matter what incident happened, no matter what accident they caused, it had to be smoothed over on Sentinel’s name alone.

Just as the Imperial Guard once did. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

“Yukia. Request analysis from the Magic Tower.”

From now on, the Order itself would function as the basis.

* * *

......Recordings and wiretaps were surprisingly useful in life.

Even more so for Sonnet Kandel.

She had bribed one of Kents’s close aides a long time ago. So much of what he said reached her.

In fact, that was very common in the Imperial Palace.

That was why everyone should act on the assumption that everyone was being wiretapped by everyone else.

Of course, Kents had lived that way too. Until what he wanted stood right in front of him. Until success was so close that he grew dull, like a drunk.

“Use that bastard Cliff. He is the commoner most loyal to Anton. Bribe an informant and pass the intel.”

Kents’s scheme to use Cliff, Anton’s loyal follower.

“Once he deploys, a major disaster will happen. The press can handle that part. Emphasize the need for control rather than the Order’s incompetence, and stress that Cliff came from the lowest commoner class. Then inside the Order too......”

Sonnet heard that lovely plan first, and the moment Cliff deployed to District 14 and the explosion happened,

KWAHHHHH───!

Before Kents’s group could dispose of the evidence, she pulled out the detonator debris and swapped it......

“......”

Inside the moving car, Sonnet stared at the darkness outside the window and sank into an oddly “aristocratic” thought.

Had anyone ever grabbed me by the collar in my life?

For a woman raised in the Imperial Palace since childhood, the answer was no. If someone grabbed the collar of a Kandel, or an Ebenholtz, that person would vanish from this world the next moment.

“How interesting.”

Maximilian had gone through that humiliation and still said he would protect Cliff.

Yet that same man had become a racist who hated subspecies to the core.

A man she could not understand at all.

She took out a small magic recorder from inside her coat and turned it in her hand.

As a vicious record maniac, she recorded and collected almost every moment she saw, heard, and lived through, in text and voice.

Not just a list of incidents, but obsessive archives by person, by date, by expression, by every conversation, all perfectly sorted by time.

More than a hobby, it was a calling.

“......What do you plan to do now?”

Her guard in the driver’s seat, Ruben, asked carefully. He was her trusted aide, who had served as her hands and feet since the palace.

“I should deliver this recorder to Cliff.”

A recorder containing Maximilian’s thoughts about Anton. Sonnet brushed it lightly.

“Why are you helping Ebenholtz?”

Ruben asked again, puzzled.

“......Who knows.”

The reason she had given detonator evidence to Maximilian, evidence that could let her seize and shake Kents Bertem.

“Maybe I’m just.”

She paused for a moment. Quietly watched the lights filling the imperial night streets.

“Someone who has to repay a debt.”

Back during the Head-Eater incident, Maximilian had covered up Jun’s involvement and protected House Kandel’s reputation.

A very large debt from that day.

“It’s settled today.”

Now she and he were equals again.

Sonnet quietly closed her eyes.

* * *

“......Whether this was palace trickery or divisive manipulation, it no longer matters.”

Shhhhk-

Senior Knight Jerome drew the curtains. The interior of the mansion fell into shadow.

“That is where Cliff’s heart is now. In that state, with his reason blurred, fragments leaked from the Palace gave him justification.”

More than whether a rumor was true, what mattered was the mind of the one who accepted it.

“Maximilian may really have attacked Sir Anton, or he may not have. Either way, it does not matter. We cannot pin down a clear truth.”

Because if Maximilian himself said, “It wasn’t me,” that too would break the palace’s unwritten rule.

“Whew. Anyway.”

Tiana leaned back in her chair. Her eyes swept over the people in the room.

The remnants of old Anton’s side had gathered in Jerome’s mansion. They were discussing the Cliff incident.

“......So those palace wiretap rumors were not just rumors?”

Jerome nodded. That was why he had invited knights to his own mansion on purpose.

“Unease. After more than ten years as a knight, sometimes strange coincidences happen one after another.”

Moments when the core of a case he was secretly investigating seemed to leak somewhere.

“Usually you suspect insiders. I did too.”

Around his fifth year, Jerome had even tailed his own working officers and clerks.

“But when I traced in detail which side benefited from those leaks, it all led to one point.”

The Imperial Palace.

So around his seventh year, Jerome intentionally fed bait. Inside Sentinel, he discussed an investigation into an illegal gambling ring backed by a palace noble.

That information leaked exactly as expected, and the Imperial Guard cut the ring’s tail first.

“......Honestly, I have one suspicious point too.”

Tiana rubbed the side of her nose as she spoke.

“Where and how did Knight Cliff get intel on District 14? Illegal mana stone was not even his specialty to begin with.”

Jerome and the other knights looked at Tiana.

“Also, illegal mana stone production was happening in District 14, not even a lower district. And that block was packed with civilian shops. Isn’t that suspicious?”

Illegal mana stone “production” was usually done in lower districts. Statistically, that was 97 percent of cases. Naturally, it drew less attention from the center.

“What if someone leaked information on purpose and lured Cliff there?”

Jerome fell into thought for a moment at Tiana’s words.

“Cliff was a knight who never avoided a mission.”

He had deployed simply to carry out his duty.

“......And he was a veteran. A knight at Cliff’s level would instinctively avoid unstable, dangerous mana substances.”

With a volatile explosive like a mana condenser, a knight’s senses should have avoided it.

Yet Cliff deliberately fired sword aura at it, and a chain explosion followed.

“It is possible this was manipulated by an outside force.”

That was Jerome’s conclusion. Tiana nodded.

“Oh, and also. I do not think Max attacked Vice Commander Anton.”

Several knights flinched at her calling him Max.

“He is not the type to talk behind someone’s back in the first place. Doesn’t his whole path prove that?”

“......That would not be a noble way. If he had to say something, he would kill from the front.”

At Year 8 Knight Rupton’s comment, everyone gave a bitter smile.

Jerome sank into deep thought for a moment.

As he had said, he seemed to grope for what could not be seen. Eyes closed, thinking.

“I will meet Deputy Commander Kairon.”

He suddenly stood up.

In the imperial center, spring warmth had started to bloom along the streets.

A public hearing opened for the new Executive Affairs Minister post and Kents Bertem’s confirmation. Unlike Anton Jefren’s time, the mood in the grand hall was already full spring.

Warm and relaxed, like a festival.

“Hahaha! Congratulations in advance on your nomination as Executive Affairs Minister, Duke Bertem.”

Kents Bertem, in a crisp suit, pretended to be modest, but could not hide the smile at the edge of his mouth.

“After the hearing, I have reserved Beat Gigas.”

“......Ahem. Is that so? Well, very well.”

High-end restaurants had sprung up everywhere after the massive success of Lilac Vita. But people said none of them could match the original.

If he became Executive Affairs Minister, he would be able to go to that Lilac Vita too.

“Everyone, please take your seats.”

At the appointed time, palace nobles and key figures all sat in their places.

The gallery was packed. Knights, businesspeople, soldiers, nobles......

Kents Bertem strode among them with dignity and climbed to the candidate seat at the center of the podium.

“We will now begin the public hearing for Executive Affairs Minister candidate Kents Bertem.”

The chair declared the opening.

Palace officials and lawmakers moved through their prearranged Q and A. Smooth, formal questions passed back and forth.

“Candidate Bertem?”

“Yes.”

One lawmaker asked.

“The newly created Executive Affairs Minister position includes practical control and budget authority over the Knight Order, which until now has maintained independent status. I would like to hear your views on this.”

“Yes. That is an excellent question. As seen in the recent explosion tragedy in District 14, the Knight Order also clearly needs proper guidelines and harmonization......”

He did not directly slander the Order. He just blurred the wording.

No need to stir their useless resentment.

“......In other words, I dare say that for this position of Executive Affairs Minister, which must connect the Empire’s institutions, civilians, and the Knight Order, I, Kents Bertem, am the best fit.”

“Hmm. I wonder what qualifications exactly support that, and what philosophy you hold.”

“Everything is based on trust and mutual respect. We honorably treat the Knight Order, the Empire’s blade, while staying within the framework of law......”

Right as Kents was pouring out the script he had prepared.

A stir suddenly rose in the audience.

At the very back of the hearing hall, from the press seats, strange whispers spread like waves.

A few reporters rushed out in panic, then before long someone ran back in, out of breath, handed a certain lawmaker a book, and flipped it open to a page.

The lawmaker’s brow twitched slightly as he received it.

That was not all.

The reporter who brought the book showed it to one person, then another, and another...... The murmuring spread through the entire hall in an instant and went out of control.

“Order in the hall! What is this disturbance?”

The chair shouted, but the room was already writhing beyond control.

In the end, even a minister seated near the podium received that “book.”

“It’s fine. We will continue.”

Kents forced an easy smile.

He cleared his throat and tried to continue speaking.

“......‘Candidate Anton remained unmarried his entire life, but he did have a lover with whom he was deeply involved in the past.’”

A reading voice came from somewhere.

Words once spoken to Anton in a secret room inside the Palace.

The back of Kents’s neck went rigid.