186. Great subjugation (1)
“Schlus Heinkel. Come back.”
“You have already submitted an artifact that has been used for testing.”
“I know. Please come back anyway.”
“May I ask why?”
“I refuse.”
“Rejected…”
Ludwig is blocking me.
I asked why, but I was denied an answer.
So I had no choice but to guess the reason myself.
If I said it was because I was on the same side as the forces that were hostile to me, that would be a reasonable enough reason.
“What’s going on out there?”
“If you don’t know, you still shouldn’t go, Schluss Heinkel. Follow orders.”
“The head professor has no command over me.”
“If you don’t obey the order, I will expel you.”
“Try it. If you can.”
“·······.”
Ludwig is a perfectionist and a thorough principled person.
I am by no means an exception to that.
In other words, he is not the kind of person who uses the power of the head professor to expel him for reasons not specified in the rules.
“Schlus Heinkel.”
“Yes.”
“You will regret it.”
“·······.”
This is the path Iris told me to go.
There is no guarantee that you will not regret it at the end, but at least it is certain that this path is the best.
“The Count of Bermanstein seems to have a very long tongue. If you want to stop it, use your skills.”
“This bastard…”
I ran out of the building, leaving Ludwig behind me with a twisted expression.
Even after provocation, there was no such thing as a barrier that suddenly opened and blocked my path.
Anyway, Ludwig seemed to want to let me go.
“Ah…”
There was a reason why Ludwig said ‘.
I had to stop before I even reached the front door.
Sergei stood in front of me grinning.
It may look like he’s just standing still, but hearing the sound of internal circuits spinning violently from inside Sergei made it look different.
“Professor, get out of the way.”
“Ehh? What do you mean by Vicky? My sides are wide open.”
Physically speaking, it might be.
However, no matter how much I ran the simulation in my head, I could only see a future where I was about to pass by and was struck on the side by Sergei’s charge and rolled on the ground.
I immediately drew my right arm back and prepared to draw the bar.
“I’ll put it in plain language. If you go, you’ll die.”
“By whom?”
“Saying that would make things difficult. So please, would you mind staying at the Imperial University quietly? We will take responsibility and guarantee your safety.”
“Who guarantees whose safety?”
“What…?”
“If I betray the professor, I will no longer be guaranteed safety. I will propose a rematch.”
“Big······ kuhhahahaha!”
Sergei burst into laughter and his pride was hurt.
I was talking seriously in my own way.
Sergei is definitely much stronger than me.
But if it’s not just sparring, but actually fighting to kill, the story will be different.
There will be a very slight chance of winning.
“Let me abstain.”
“Yes?”
“Go and die or whatever, do as you please.”
“·······.”
Sergei stepped aside, raising his hand.
You say you get out of the way so easily?
The intentions began to be questioned.
I wondered if he was trying to catch his guard and suddenly rushed in to handcuff the mana control.
I passed Sergei completely unguarded.
But Sergei never attacked me.
“Ah! This is not my advice! Someone said watch out for the sky!”
“·······?”
Sergey exclaimed in an exaggerated voice.
It seems that this is information that should not be disclosed carelessly.
Heaven.
I didn’t have any guesses, but since Sergei risked what he said, it must be helpful advice.
I decided to listen carefully.
“Advice. Thanks.”
“·······.”
I nodded to Sergei and headed for the front door.
First of all, grasping the situation was the first step.
I had to check what a dangerous situation was going on outside that Sergei himself would stop me.
***
“I must have brought a tiger cub.”
Sergey sat down on his bench and let out a sigh.
Until now, there was not a single person who stood proudly when I stood in the way, burning with the will to fight.
No matter how high the nobles were, they were bound to at least flinch and be surprised.
But isn’t Schluss Heinkel trying to attack?
It wasn’t something like recklessness.
Because Schluss Heinkel wasn’t one to fight a no-win fight.
“It must be a mess outside by now.”
Sergei imagined the situation outside and closed his eyes tightly.
There must be smoke rising here and there and blood flowing.
Today was the day the great subjugation began under the direction of the emperor.
Imperial police and counterintelligence agencies have incur the emperor’s wrath with a series of failures.
The Imperial University was attacked twice by fanatic religious groups while the kingdom’s spies were not completely identified.
Even one of them was a huge threat that the entire Imperial University could have been annihilated had it not been for Schluss Heinkel.
Therefore, the emperor judged that the group of xie jiao was excessively influential in the system, and took an extreme measure.
It was an order to raid and arrest all groups and individuals that were being watched as suspicious, and to shoot them if they resisted.
Of course, there must be innocent citizens among them, so the imperial police couldn’t carry out a great subjugation directly.
So, at an astronomical cost, the crows of the system were temporarily hired in bulk.
I decided to clean the crow’s hands and clean the dangerous factor.
“Haaa. It’s going to be even more messy if he goes.”
From noble mtl dot com.
But what if Schluss Heinkel gets stuck in the middle?
Strictly speaking, the client of the crows is the emperor.
In that case, Schluss Heinkel, a knight under the direct command of the emperor, would have priority over the crows over the imperial police.
Will Schluss stay still when he sees the crows randomly capturing and killing ‘innocent-looking’ civilians?
As long as you stop the crows, you’re lucky, but if you go into battle with the crows, a catastrophe will happen.
This time the emperor had a very good reason to purge the Schluss.
“Is there a reason you have to leave?”
I’m sure Schluss isn’t blind either.
He didn’t reveal the reason, but he must have noticed at least that it was a situation where he couldn’t go around if the professor stood in front of him.
Nevertheless, Schluss chose to leave.
Sergei was well aware that it wasn’t just because he was stubborn.
There must have been a reason.
“Good luck.”
The price for ignoring all warnings will be paid from now on.
It was entirely up to Schluss to handle that.
Still, it was questionable whether he understood it properly, even though he did give me some advice in case it wasn’t leaking confidential information.
If he didn’t understand it, it wouldn’t be strange if Schluss died without being able to recognize his shape…
.
.
.
A cafe in the old town.
Amid the smoke, Erik struggled to clear away the splinters and stood up.
The cafe was completely destroyed and collapsed.
“Damn it…”
Eric tried to rewind his memories as he touched his head in pain.
He even remembered that he had cornered an agent whose activities had been unknown and interrogated him.
Then he suddenly uttered a strange prayer and his body turned red hot.
Feeling strange, the Hurt Locker screamed at me to lie down.
As soon as Eric instinctively put an improvised barrier around him, an explosion broke out…
I don’t remember what happened after that.
Suddenly, my vision swung around and I lost my mind, and when I woke up, I was at this point.
“Heart Locker······. Heart Locker······!”
Eric staggered over and pulled out the fallen debris.
From the inside, more and more wretched corpses were pulled out.
‘Could it have been annihilated!’
Irritated, Eric started digging through the rubble recklessly.
Not caring if his fingernails were broken and his fingers were torn and stained with blood, he continued to dig up the corpse inside.
“What are you doing, chief? There won’t be any survivors in it. It’s just before the explosion.”
“Ha… You thought you were dead…”
Eric’s legs gave out from his collapse.
From behind the Hurt Locker, Emilia also appeared in a normal state.
Anyway, the two of them seemed to avoid the explosion by opening a barrier separately.
“This is the self-destruct weapon that attacked Imperial University…”
The three looked around and sighed.
There were as many as 10 agents of the intelligence service gathered at the cafe for the meeting, but all but 3 were blown up.
It was made in haste, but it had this much firepower even after breaking through the barrier.
If it wasn’t for Eric’s quick response, the Hurtlocker thought, there probably wouldn’t have been three people in this world.
“Wouldn’t it be better to evacuate for now? The Imperial Police will rush in because of the explosion-“
Quang!
Before Emilia could finish her words, an explosion resounded from far away.
After that, one more time.
And again…
An explosion continued to reverberate, and black smoke rose from all over the old town.
The mouths of the three people who were watching this dropped wide open.
“Heart Locker! Didn’t you say there was a crow call earlier!”
“Yes. It was a call to all crows in the island.”
“My God. It seems that the Imperials have finally gone mad.”
“Yes? What do you mean?”
“It’s being wiped out, right now…!”
Eric’s voice trembled.
I expected that a day like this would come someday.
In order to catch the spy, the empire will destroy the old city once and for all, regardless of means and methods.
One of the expected methods was to borrow the crows’ information and power.
In addition, by using the crow, it was possible to explain that it was caused by an unidentified client, so it had the effect of hiding the fact that the empire had mercilessly arrested and killed its own people.
“Use escape route number 3.”
“Yes.”
The ones exploding now are Asylum’s suicide bombers, but it’s not just Asylum that the crows have swooped down on.
Soon we had to flee before the crows came to arrest us too.
The three of them calmly headed for the sewers through the alley.
Kooung······!
“Oops.”
Something jumped from the roof and blocked my way.
It was the same for the back.
Eric was immediately able to guess the identity of the black hooded figure.
They were fanatics of Asylum.
Nevertheless, Eric decided to pretend he didn’t know.
“Everyone, who are you?”
“·······.”
“Will you get out of the way-“
“Okay, boss. I don’t intend to talk to them. Grab a knife.”
“Damn it.”
Hurlocker annoyedly raised the dagger to Eric.
Then, those wearing black hoods pulled out swords from their arms.
There was no room for conversation.
The only option is battle.
The three stood back to back in an increasingly tight siege.