Frederica hurriedly turned her head and looked around. She happened to lock eyes with me as I was coming down the city hall stairs.
Dressed in a neat uniform, holding a coffee cup in one hand, I looked at her and smirked.
"......!"
Frederica's mouth fell open.
She jumped down from the tank and ran to me. Her usual cool-headed composure was nowhere to be seen, and her face was flushed with excitement.
"C-Colonel! Th-there, my tank...!"
"I told you yesterday. I'd take care of it."
I replied nonchalantly, taking a sip of coffee.
"Turns out that mechanic was quite skilled. He tinkered away all night, fixed everything, and disappeared. I wanted to thank him, but alas, it wasn't meant to be."
"T-that, how does that make any sense?! A copper gasket, heat-treated bolts... No, how did he even remove the transmission in the first place? That difficult work, all alone, in just one night...!"
"There are things in this world that can't be explained, Major. What's important is that your beloved steed can run again."
I cut her off, pretending not to know.
Frederica stared at me intently. Her eyes shook violently.
*Status Analysis.*
[Name: Frederica von Kessel]
[Status: Loyalty Drastically Increased]
[Emotions: Thrill at the incomprehensible, deep gratitude, and intense curiosity about the man named Max Jaeger]
It worked.
For a gearhead obsessed with machines, perfectly tightening a single screw was more effective than a hundred words of praise.
"Thank you..."
After a long while, she opened her mouth. Her voice trembled thinly.
"Truly... thank you. I won't ask how you did it. But this debt... I will repay it with my military life."
She saluted with complete sincerity.
"I'm glad you won't forget. I plan to run it hard going forward, so take good care of it."
"Yes, sir! I will keep that in mind!"
*Good. With this, I've firmly seized armored combat power as well.*
I turned around with a satisfied smile. Whether it was the side effect of pushing [Materiel Conversion] too far, my nose tingled slightly, but I hid it and lightly wiped it with a handkerchief.
*
After Frederica left, I returned to the office.
The civil petitions I had been putting off came flooding in.
"Colonel! Resistance movement detected in the Sector 3 sewer! Shall we search it?"
The military police captain ran up. Without looking up from my documents, I signed and answered.
"No need to search."
Instead, I looked at the [Minimap]. The city's underground pipe network was spread out in 3D. Five red dots crouched within the spiderweb-like maze.
"Sector 3, Manhole 4. Fifteen meters to the left from the entrance. Go and raid them."
"Huh? B-but that's a closed-off sector..."
"Go when I say go."
Thirty minutes later, the military police captain returned with a soot-stained face and saluted.
"Secured! They were about to light the fuse! How did you know?"
Next came a portly merchant rubbing his belly.
"Oh my, Commander! This is unjust! My warehouse is empty! Not even enough flour for a rat to eat, and you speak of requisitioning!"
He even teared up, trying to grab my pant leg.
*Status Analysis.*
[Name: Gaston]
[Affiliation: Soissons (grain wholesaler)]
[Status: False acting, Greed]
[Emotion: Anxious that the 500 sacks of flour hidden in his house basement will be discovered.]
I tapped the desk and said, "Mr. Gaston. In your house basement. It seems you've hidden something rather interesting."
"S-something interesting, you say...?"
"Yes. For example..."
I smirked.
"Well, 500 sacks of flour, perhaps?"
Gaston's face turned as pale as a sheet of paper.
"H-how did you...!"
*Enchanting Eloquence.*
"Choose. Either pay voluntarily and be lauded as a patriotic merchant, or hang at the fuel station for the crime of hoarding wartime supplies."
[Skill stimulates the target's fear, forcing a compromise.]
"I... I'll pay! All of it!"
Next.
"The railway union has declared a strike! They're refusing the Imperial Army's request for transport cooperation!"
The workers' representative came in huffing.
"We are not slaves! We won't turn a single train wheel without a wage increase!"
I rose from my seat and approached him. Then I whispered softly into his ear.
"Mr. Pierre. You haven't spent all the bribe money you got from the Republic spy, have you?"
[Status: Shock, terror that his secret has been exposed.]
"If your comrades outside knew you weren't a pure labor activist but a spy, what do you think they'd do to you?"
"...I'll return to work immediately."
Scarcely three days.
While the sun rose and set three times, the office of the Soissons City Hall became eerily quiet.
The mountain of stacked documents had all been processed and disappeared, and the phone that had been ringing without cease had gone completely silent.
"H-huh...?"
Hanna said with a blank expression. She was looking at the empty approval bin.
"E-Excuse me, Colonel... I'm sorry. I must have dozed off and left some documents somewhere. I'll go down right away and..."
"Left somewhere? I even processed the sewer maintenance proposal you brought thirty minutes ago."
"B-but," Hanna said, as if she couldn't believe it.
"I heard that administrative work in occupied territories usually takes at least a month just to stabilize... But it's only been three days. Is it even possible that you finished all the administration for a population of fifty thousand alone in three days?"
"What's impossible about it? It's all about know-how."
I approached the window while turning off the system windows floating in the air. Rubbing my stiff eyes from working all night, I drew the curtains. Then came the view of Soissons through the window.
The black smoke rising from everywhere had disappeared. On the streets, Imperial Army trucks were distributing bread to the citizens, and shops were beginning to open one by one. The military police were now directing traffic instead of pointing guns.
The city, which had been a cauldron of chaos and disorder, began to turn like interlocking gears. Very smoothly.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong.
[You have drastically improved occupied territory treatment in a short period of time.]
[Reward: Acquired massive experience points.]
Ding!
[Level increased to 21!]
[Available skill points: 2]
It was a satisfying notification sound.
I immediately raised the level of [Materiel Conversion]. It was now Level 4.
*
For a week, a strange rumor circulated in the Soissons underground maintenance hangar.
It was a rumor that a ghost appeared every night, fixed the tanks, and then vanished.
At first, the maintenance soldiers treated it as nonsense, but each morning they couldn't hide their shock at seeing gun barrels and engines gleaming like new.
"This... is art."
"The tolerance is close to zero. Even those Imperial ordnance factory guys can't machine it like this."
Senior maintenance officers with more than ten years of grease under their nails would gather every morning in front of the maintenance area, murmuring among themselves. They clicked their tongues at the vehicles I had fixed overnight.
"There are no weld marks. It's not like molten metal was poured into a mold, the steel just... looks like it was born this way, smooth from the start."
"Last night the piston was definitely cracked, right? But this morning a new one was fitted. A brand-new one, gleaming with factory-fresh oil."
"How the hell did he do it? Ever since Lieutenant Colonel Jaeger's unit arrived..."
One sergeant exhaled cigarette smoke and muttered.
"That gentleman, I heard he's got a 'special route' or something."
But his fellow maintenance officers were skeptical.
"Special route my ass. Is this the center of the capital? What route could get parts from the homeland ordnance factory to the middle of enemy territory? And overnight at that?"
"Hey, I know it doesn't make sense... but that's reality, isn't it? Did he open up some black market or something?"
"Talk sense. You're telling me black market parts are Imperial Army standard issue, and special A-grade with zero tolerance at that?"
The maintenance officers clicked their tongues. Their heads couldn't understand it, but the results before their eyes were perfect. That cognitive dissonance left them in a strange mood.
"But honestly. Since our 1st Armored Battalion was founded, have you ever seen tanks in such perfect condition?"
"No... Just a week ago they were falling apart and breaking down during Operation Sickle, total scrap metal."
"Now even the engine sounds different. Not just healthy—it's almost scary. Tanks that shipped out over a year ago smell like new cars."
Silence fell over the maintenance hangar for a moment. Only the low rumbling of idling tanks lingered.
"So... the rumors are true? Like some kind of alchemy..."
"...…"
No one could answer.
"Hey, enough useless talk and get me a wrench. Whether the higher-up performs magic or makes a deal with a goblin, we just need to make them roll."
"Yeah, let's just work. Anyway, if we fall out of Colonel Jaeger's favor, we're the only ones who lose."
The sergeants scattered in a hurry. But it was unavoidable that the backs of their necks seemed chilly as they turned to look at the tanks.
"Ha, still... this is pretty creepy."
Thus, among the members of the 1st Armored Battalion, my evaluation was changing from merely a competent commander to something you shouldn't touch.
But the occupation of Soissons still had a long way to go.
"Reporting."
Hanna entered the office with a stiff expression.
"An accident has occurred at the fuel station. A tank that finished refueling and the combat group commander's armored command vehicle are showing starting failure symptoms."
"Starting failure?"
"Foreign substances were mixed into the fuel. Sugar and water, deliberately blended in."
I stopped my pen. Sugar and water. A recipe with clear intent to destroy the engine.
"The culprit?"
"The transport truck drivers are under interrogation, but it seems connected to the Central Post Office."
The Central Post Office. The face of Madame Bernard flashed through my mind.
"Hmm."
I rose from my seat.