Chapter 89: Chapter 89

Five minutes. Only five minutes.

The time it took for the makeshift assault guns and the colossus frames prepared by the Liberation Army, along with fifteen hundred defenders, to be butchered.

"This... This can't be happening...!"

Staring at his subordinates' corpses that had turned into flesh in an instant before his eyes, Unt-who had been their boss-shook in despair.

"Commander. All company members have completed the charge. Disarmament finished."

- Drive all the survivors to the wall.

From the cockpit of the colossus that Glaepnir held while speaking, dark-red blood dripped in drops.

Watching the steam venting between the armor plates of the colossus, the survivors could not shake off the hands of the Penal Corps members dragging them away.

Having dismounted from the colossus, Yaan looked at the survivors-including Unt-and asked that.

"The remaining personnel number roughly one hundred and twenty. Liberation Army members total sixty. The rest are territory folk."

"Then pull out the Liberation Army personnel, and kill the rest."

The one to hurriedly speak up at Yaan's words without a moment's hesitation was Unt.

"We're just territory folk who joined in-those guys are the real enemy! Why leave them alone and try to kill us!?"

At Unt's shout, Yaan looked at him and answered.

"These are hostages. We'll extract information, then kill them. You have nothing to extract."

As Yaan raised his hand toward the soldiers, Unt stopped him again.

"We're clearly the territory folk here! Citizens of the Empire! No matter that you're a knight, killing us on a whim violates Imperial law...!"

"What, a criminal brat citing the law?"

As he spoke and approached, Unt looked at the brand carved on the shoulder of Yaan's uniform and muttered in panic.

From the start there was no room for negotiation.

Realizing that, Unt fell to his knees on the ground and began to bow his head like mad.

"P-please, spare my life! If you just let me live, I'll do anything you say!"

"Hah, listen to yourself."

Saying that, Yaan quietly chambered a round in his pistol and aimed it at him.

"You've got the premise wrong. If you want to live in my territory, you'll do everything I say anyway."

After saying that, Yaan pulled the trigger without hesitation.

With the gunshot, Unt's body collapsed on the spot.

With that as the start, the machine guns of the Penal Corps surrounding the territory folk-no, prisoners-blazed in unison.

The screams were short. A barrage from ten machine guns firing at once had more than enough firepower to shred one hundred and twenty people into meat.

'The cleanup after the "work" fell to the Liberation Army survivors.'

"How... How can a human do this...!?"

"They killed every last territory folk...!"

The Liberation Army survivors shuddered as they watched the Penal Corps, who had caused this carnage without batting an eye.

"Did we really have to go this far?"

"The original population of the territory we reported was five thousand. Excluding the fifteen hundred who joined the Liberation Army and the several hundred in the lower villages, the rest were killed by the Liberation Army and these guys."

Saying that, Yaan kicked Unt's corpse aside, pulled a cigarette from his pocket, and put it in his mouth.

'And there's no guarantee that none of these guys received orders from Belkuth beforehand.'

While the Liberation Army survivors cleared away the corpses inside the keep, Yaan finished his cigarette, parked Glaepnir to one side of the territory, and went inside to sleep.

The rumor that the new lord of the Verkut territory, Yaan Verkut, had killed five hundred territory folk on his first day spread throughout the entire Empire in less than three days.

The only train heading to the Verkut territory is a prisoner transport train that gathers convicts from across the Empire.

After more than a month of being jostled on the train, the prisoners stepped down in pain and began to line up.

Normally, fights with the wardens or escape attempts would happen, and prisoners would form cliques, so the wardens stay on maximum alert at the station.

"Why are these guys so quiet?"

"Right. They look like they're heading to their deaths."

Yet the prisoners on this train were strangely silent.

Some stared ahead with dead eyes.

Others muttered apologies over and over and collapsed as their knees gave out.

"Hey, did the newbies not hear? News about the lord here."

The one to interrupt was the head warden.

"Yeah. Yaan Verkut. A knight from the Penal Corps."

Hearing that name, even the wardens' faces turned pale.

They finally realized where every prisoner here was headed.

"The moment he took office as lord, he killed all five hundred prisoners..."

"Right. Joining the rebels is a death sentence, but I never thought he'd actually kill them all."

"All of these guys are going there?"

"They have to replenish the labor force of the dead territory folk, right? They're scraping prisoners from across the Empire."

Hearing that, the wardens looked at the prisoners with pity.

"Unless something changes, they won't be coming out alive."

"Death might be the better option..."

Leaving the wardens' worries behind, the prisoners boarded the convoy trucks and set off for the Verkut territory.

Eventually they arrived at the Verkut territory management office set up below the keep.

"Number 1472. Crimes: theft and robbery... Fine. Next!"

Hundreds of prisoners moved obediently at Dandel's orders, meekly enough to seem odd considering the crimes they'd committed in society.

"Number 657. Crime... killing an officer?"

"The officer went into a civilian village and... did unspeakable things. So..."

After checking the prisoner's profile, records from Kimok, and belongings, Dandel nodded and spoke.

"Fine. Stand by on the side."

Thanks to two Penal Corps members with loaded guns, identification and sorting were astonishingly quick.

"Isolate forty felons and persons of interest. Light offenders go to re-education. And these people..."

Having finished sorting, Dandel grinned at the prisoners fidgeting behind him.

"All right. From now on, change into these clothes and gather in the training yard! Move out!"

Those Dandel had selected were people imprisoned not for harming others, but for crimes against the Empire.

Political prisoners, as they're called. From them, only fifteen- to thirty-year-olds were chosen-twenty in total.

They would serve as new recruits to defend the territory.

"We'll start with that group."

Watching Dandel drill the twenty recruits mercilessly in the training yard, Yaan sighed quietly under the gazes of the stewards awaiting his orders.

"Are you sure, my lord? Turning the entire territory into a military stronghold..."

"Yes. The surrounding terrain seems more suited to training than to clearing."

The steep slopes, complex terrain, and temperatures that changed day by day were fatal factors in the lives of the territory's inhabitants.

But the function Yaan envisioned for this territory was not as an estate generating profit through farming or livestock.

Having received the territory-reform plan completed with Cain's help, the stewards asked Yaan again, uneasy.

"This territory is little more than a prison to hold convicts. His Imperial Majesty even exempted the territory's tax rate on the pretext of support."

"That doesn't mean you need to abolish the territory's tax rate entirely. If this happens, there'll be a huge problem with finances...."

Although the land had been delegated by the Emperor, the territory was unequivocally the lord's asset.

Eliminating the territory's tax rate was tantamount to abandoning the territory as an asset, so the stewards managing the territory could not help but show displeasure.

"Don't worry about your salaries. House Lorenz will take responsibility."

"That's not our concern, my lord...."

"The supplies coming from the army alone will be sufficient."

The lord's chamber prepared in the keep was, in truth, far too spacious for his own use.

After saying that to the uneasy stewards, he took out the Lorenz family seal, and only then did the stewards finally relax and begin voicing their opinions.

"If there's no tax rate, it might be best to leave the pioneering entirely to the settlers' discretion."

"With this amount, we can support them with farming tools, and because whatever they cultivate becomes their asset, their motivation will be high."

"If we hire locals as construction workers, the inhabitants' standard of living will rise, and most importantly, the number of inhabitants leaving the territory will drop dramatically."

"But to do that, the amount of money needed to withdraw all at once...."

The stewards who had been discussing the construction's detailed plans and alternatives commissioned by Yaan showed reluctance.

"For the construction funds, use this."

The stewards' eyes went round at the construction funds Yaan produced, and they began to stammer.

"W-With this amount of money...."

"It's enough to launch a state project! Who on earth provided this fortune...?"

The imperial crest stamped on the gold bars stacked in the middle of the table left no room for doubt.

"It's the Empire's 13th Prince."

'Prince Klaus, having received the letter titled 'Funding Request Report for Verkut Territory Reform,' could not help but snort at the memory of Yaan's expression.'

"He barges in out of the blue and says he's reorganizing units and wants money? And he wants all of it now? He must take imperial princes for fools. What do you think?"

Klaus asked in disbelief when he received Yaan's report, but Yaan's expression remained perfectly calm.

"It's a unit capable of infiltrating the Alfraian fortress alone, so isn't this level of investment warranted?"

"The fact that it's not wrong makes it even more infuriating."

Prince Klaus grumbled the whole time he filled out the documents, yet he readily provided the funds equivalent to a year's unit operating budget.

The fruits of countless past operations and missions seemed finally to ripen.

"Ha, you pulled off all this in a month? There's no one crazier than you!"

Watching the dwarf Brak begin unpacking while reviewing the detailed plans the stewards had prepared, Yaan spoke to him.

"How is the maintenance yard?"

"Ha! It's the same facility as the capital maintenance yard. As much as we bring in new equipment, its actual efficiency surpasses the capital's. But why deploy such a facility on the border?"

Watching the dwarves who had traveled the long road from the Church State to build the colossus maintenance yard on one side of the territory, Brak asked.

"It was His Imperial Majesty's order."

Saying that, Yaan placed a small cigarette paper on the table facing Brak.

"This... isn't this the one from the central front?"

"Delta Colossus. There was intel that the Rubra Liberation Front uses it."

Hearing that, Brak twisted the corner of his mouth as if he finally understood.

"So Alfraia will be cleaned up by Lorenz, and I'm to clean up the colony?"

Saying that, Yaan looked out at the territory under construction.

His gaze crossed the border toward the Empire's colony of Rubra-Vailsar.