A week passed.
I received the smart watch Aron had mentioned.
According to Aron, this smart watch had originally been made exclusively for Academy cadets.
So he’d simply bought a smart watch sold on the market and sent it to me.
He said he’d cracked the device’s security vulnerabilities just in case, but honestly, I didn’t really understand what he meant.
Was it like jailbreaking a smartphone?
For the first time in a while, I put a smart watch back on my wrist.
It felt uncomfortable, yet reassuring.
It was a little different from the Academy’s smart watch, so I’d probably need some time to adjust.
Most of all, Ailee, who had used the smart watch automatically for me even when I didn’t operate it, was no longer here.
That sounded a little strange.
The artificial intelligence Ailee was no longer here.
Ailee’s condition was improving quickly.
For the first three days, she couldn’t even eat thin rice gruel properly and kept throwing up, but now she could chew and swallow to a decent extent.
Walking was still too much for her, but she could move her arms somewhat now.
“Ahh.”
“Ailee, you can scoop it up and eat by yourself now, can’t you?”
“Affirmative. Is that why you dislike it?”
Her manner of speaking was the same, but the content of the conversation was Ailee herself.
When I quietly scooped up some gruel and held it out, Ailee gulped it down.
Things had been like this lately.
I’d take her out for a bit in her wheelchair, eat with her around the time she got hungry, and keep moving her stiff body so she could build even a little muscle.
Overall, what I was doing wasn’t all that different from what I’d done since coming to this world.
Everything was going smoothly.
Aside from Ailee gradually getting better, it had been a week with nothing special happening.
At most, Ian had recovered and started living in the hangar, and Clemens had been going around to check on the suppressant being made in the south.
If there was anything a little different from usual right now, it was that Perez had come by to check Ailee’s condition.
No, but this wouldn’t do.
Something special had to happen.
“Mr. Perez.”
“Yeah?”
“Is there still no contact?”
“None.”
Tsk.
Perez clicked his tongue.
There was no word from Darka.
My thoughts grew complicated.
“It’s rare for there to be no contact at all for a week. Normally, he’d at least send information on the secured Titan. I can think of about two possibilities.”
“Two?”
I could only think of one.
Perez gestured into the air.
A hologram appeared.
This was where the south differed hugely from the north.
In the north, I hadn’t even seen a hologram, but the Southern Liberation Army used holograms as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
They even had simulation equipment in the training room.
At this level, didn’t their technology rival the Empire’s?
“First.”
A credit icon appeared as a hologram.
“Darka Sinis took your money and ran.”
That was what I thought too.
Honestly, no matter what reason I considered, that seemed the most likely.
Considering Perez’s blunt personality, he was surely thinking that was the most likely case as well.
“You said the credits you have are in the hundreds of millions.”
“Yes, hundreds of millions.”
“He gains hundreds of millions of credits and gives up on a traitor to the Empire. From the perspective of an Imperial noble, there’s no better bargain. Isn’t that right?”
He was right.
If I were Darka Sinis, what would I have done?
Even if I didn’t intend to swallow all of the money outright, I probably would have tried to pocket some portion of it.
That was the position I was in.
Without the bank manager’s help, I couldn’t lay a finger on my own money.
Darka must have thought at least that far.
He could throw away trust to obtain credits.
“I think that’s right.”
After hearing my answer, Perez shook his head.
“Don’t conclude that yet. There’s still one left.”
Was there an answer more realistic than that?
Beep.
Another hologram appeared.
“The other possibility. The communication failure that happened when we contacted Darka was actually real.”
It was a communication failure icon.
“Huh?”
Now that I thought about it, it was possible.
The timing of Darka’s communication going bad had been so perfect that I hadn’t even considered it.
Even though the noise and silence that occurred during the call had been real.
“Question. Even if that is the case, is there not no way for us to resolve it?”
She was right.
There was no way for us to resolve it.
Among us, Ran had at least been continuing to attempt communication, but there was no signal being caught.
The south had too many communication signals from the surrounding clans.
Filtering them out required far too much effort and labor.
“Anyway, Deep. If contact comes, I’ll let you know immediately.”
“Yes. Please do.”
Perez rose from his seat.
Beep.
At the same time, an alert rang from my smart watch.
It had been a while, so I was a little glad to hear it.
I opened the notification.
“Oh.”
Darka Sinis.
I’d naturally assumed it would be Aron, but it wasn’t.
How had he found out this smart watch’s contact information?
No, there was something more important than how he’d found my contact information.
“It came.”
“What came?”
“The request.”
“Request?”
A request from the Sinis family.
They would prepare my identity on their side, so I was to join as a mercenary.
I would hear the details of the request directly at the Sinis count’s household.
Beep.
I closed the message and looked at Perez.
“He told you to come, I assume.”
“He told me to come.”
“Come. I’ll give you a ride.”
Perez jerked his chin.
For some reason, he seemed amused.
“Uh.”
It was a sports car.
“Huh?”
Vroooooom!
The muffler had been tuned.
“Put on your belt.”
“Um, the thing is.”
“Put on your belt.”
“I think I can go separately.”
“Put on your belt.”
Fuck.
***
“Uuurgh!”
I hadn’t known I got motion sickness.
I’d ridden Titans so much, but except for the early days when my body had been in poor condition, I’d never once gotten motion sick.
I should have kept in mind that carsickness and seasickness were separate things.
No, was motion sickness the problem?
If someone drove a car like that, wouldn’t it be stranger if your stomach didn’t churn?
“Refreshing.”
“Urk!”
Of course, the road conditions were a problem too.
Most of the south was jungle.
It was an environment where roads could easily be ruined if they weren’t continuously maintained.
The road to the Sinis count’s estate was paved, but it hadn’t been maintained all that well.
That meant the relationship between the Sinis count’s household and the Liberation Army was exactly at that level.
If they frequently came and went, the road would have been well maintained.
But if they never came and went at all, there would be no need for a road.
They traveled back and forth occasionally when necessary, but they were not friendly to each other.
That made me understand even more clearly why Perez had set off in such high spirits.
He was just excited because it had been a while since he’d been able to drive a long distance.
“Follow me. I’ll explain the Sinis count’s household on the way.”
Once I’d managed to settle my stomach a little, an attendant came to guide us.
I followed the attendant together with Perez.
The atmosphere was quite different from the western front or the northern front.
Soldiers weren’t seen as often as on the western front, but it also wasn’t as bleak as the northern front.
What was unusual was the attendants.
It was a front line, yet attendants were walking around.
Rather than a front line, it looked more like a territory.
Come to think of it, that made sense.
The Sinis count’s territory was being managed in his stead by the Otto viscount’s household.
This was the front line directly managed by Count Sinis, so in a way, this place was closer to being the Sinis count’s territory.
“How much do you know about nobles?”
“As much as I need to.”
Perez nodded.
“From the Empire’s perspective, the south is a borderland. Local powers called clans are everywhere, and there’s little to gain here, so they judged there was no need to send a duke.”
I felt like I’d learned that in Academy history class too.
“That was the beginning of Count Sinis, who took responsibility for the south.”
A count.
He didn’t hold the title of marquis, so he couldn’t be called a frontier marquis, but he had far too much power to be treated as a mere count.
If I had to describe it, he felt like an ambiguous grand duke of the south.
Since this wasn’t a romance fantasy, I could let it slide, but wasn’t the frontier marquis position usually in the north?
“As soon as Count Sinis appeared, he preemptively occupied the land where the Imperial Army would be stationed and swept up the surrounding clans in one stroke. The current front line is based on the land secured back then.”
“You know a lot.”
“It’s the history of the land I live on.”
We stopped in front of a large door.
It was a wooden door.
Wood wasn’t a material commonly used in this world, but the south could be treated as an exception.
After all, the surroundings were full of trees that had been hit by radiation and grown like crazy.
“And now, on that southern front, he has decided to sweep up the clans once again. It won’t be an ordinary matter. Do you know that the Empire’s movements have been aggressive lately?”
“Roughly.”
“The victory on the western front was the turning point. The west, which had held the advantage through drone commando tactics, was pushed back. It’s a favorable situation for the Empire.”
I feel like that’s because of me.
“Yes. Just as you’re thinking, it is because of you. Your thoughts show well on your face.”
“…I’ve never really thought about the Allied Forces’ position. I wasn’t in a situation where I could.”
“You don’t need to feel sorry toward me. We don’t particularly like the rebels in the west and east either. They cause too many civilian casualties.”
Civilian casualties.
Come to think of it, the Liberation Army’s goal was to liberate more artificial intelligences.
To put it more simply, it was to save many lives.
It was only natural for them to care about civilian casualties.
“Anyway, the Allied Forces’ strength has begun to move asymmetrically. The Empire intends to use this opening to extend its influence widely.”
“You see the Sinis count’s movements as part of that too?”
“It may be, and it may not be. You can’t be certain of anything. He’s a politician, a noble, a merchant, and a general who has occupied the south for forty years. Don’t try to read his thoughts.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s an old monster.”
“Have you finished your conversation?”
At the attendant’s words, Perez nodded.
Thud. Thud.
“Lord Daniel. Your scheduled guests have arrived.”
“Tell them to come in.”
The door opened, and we went inside.
“Let’s skip the greetings. Sit.”
It was a little unexpected, so I froze for a moment.
“Then I’ll sit.”
He was a grandfather.
No matter how I looked at him, he really was just a grandfather.
He looked so affable that it threw me off.