Chapter 94: Chapter 94

"Ah, Company Commander, you're here?"

The next morning, at the crack of dawn.

As soon as I entered the office, the first thing I saw was Dandel, who had hastily risen from amidst the piles of paperwork.

Seeing Dandel in the office at this early hour, barely minutes after sunrise, Yaan asked in puzzlement.

"Why are you sleeping here?"

"Haha, I was just showing off in front of the rookies, and ended up..."

As he spoke, Dandel's eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion, his face haggard.

'The sleepless training should have ended yesterday...'

Looking at Dandel, Yaan pulled out a few sheets of the paperwork stacked in front of him and began to examine them.

Even on the verge of collapse, the documents were processed flawlessly; Yaan let out a low sigh.

"You stayed up all night handling this?"

"I'm fine. I managed to rest for about two hours, so let's review the next schedule..."

As he spoke and tried to rise, Dandel lost his balance and nearly tumbled over.

Had Yaan not grabbed him, the stacks of paper on the desk would have scattered and made a complete mess.

"Are you okay? Seriously?"

"S-sorry. In just a little while, I'll be fine..."

Speaking thus, Dandel tried to straighten his posture, but Yaan frowned as he watched him.

His shirt buttons were undone, and the cuffs were so frayed it was impossible to tell when he had last changed.

From a distance he might have looked fine, but up close, something about Dandel seemed off.

"Yes, Company Commander."

"I'm giving you an order. Go and sleep."

"No, I'm really fine. I'm okay, so..."

Yaan shook the shoulder of Dandel, who kept repeating he was fine, forcing him back to his senses, and looked at his face again.

"Ah, j-... Company Commander."

"You're still carrying the dead with you."

The forced smile on Dandel's face cracked. His frozen expression soon gave way to deep regret.

In this regard, Irene, who had burst into tears on the spot, was better.

Honest with her emotions, she had poured them out there and then, and afterward could at least sort herself out.

"Do you really think it's all your fault?"

But the young man before him was different.

He believed even the grief he sent toward them was a sin, buried it, and threw himself into his role.

Oblivious to the buried feelings slowly eating him alive.

"You think their deaths are your fault? That if you had trained them harder, worried with them more, you could have saved a few? Is that what you think?"

Dandel, looking as if he had been struck to the core, only hung his head, trembling with clenched fists.

"It's a company commander's order. Go in and sleep."

"If I have to say it again, it'll be a firing squad. Shut up and sleep."

At Yaan's low voice, Dandel's body crumpled. Whether from exhaustion or guilt, his body had already reached its limit.

In a voice barely above a whisper, Dandel clutched his head. He looked ready to break down at any moment.

"Every time I close my eyes, whenever I dream, they appear. The happy times, the conversations we shared, the memories of going through thick and thin...! They repeat endlessly, like madness!"

Tears rolled down the face of the hunched figure.

"When I first commissioned, when I first stepped onto the battlefield, and even now! If only I had done better... because of me...!"

"This son of a... look at you..."

Unable to hold back, Yaan swore, grabbed Dandel by the collar, and hauled him up.

It was the first time Yaan had ever lost his temper with his aide to this extent.

Slamming Dandel roughly against the wall, Yaan stared into his face.

Yaan's eyes, filled with fury, glared at the tear-streaked face of Dandel.

"Don't get ahead of yourself. Dandel Klaus."

"If you'd done better, they would've lived? Is the battlefield we've crossed really so forgiving? Was the front the 87th Independent Company walked through something you could handle with a bit of training and a few tests?"

A battlefield where we lived cheek-to-cheek with death, our bodies draped in violence and savagery.

There was not a single safe place.

"The soldiers you trained were elites I recognized, and that's why they were sent into live combat. Don't insult their deaths by using your guilt as an excuse."

At Yaan's words, Dandel closed his mouth, about to say something more.

Even while blaming himself, he had known it too.

If the front could be survived with a bit of training, they would never have been sent in the first place.

"And, because of you?"

Yaan's rebuke did not end there.

"Don't make me laugh. I'm the one who tested your training, who took them to the front, who threw them into the Penal Corps. Regret or lament their deaths- that's my burden, not yours."

Twenty-six soldiers lost in a single battle.

When he first commissioned, most of those who had shared drinks with him at the campfire on the Kerdan front were now gone.

Comrades vanished overnight.

And those left behind, staring at their empty places. A burden far too heavy for a newly commissioned twenty-year-old officer to bear.

But he could not break here.

He had to rise above these deaths and accomplish what he could not.

There was only one way Yaan could act, as time ran short to simply watch.

Take the responsibility from him.

Strip the weight of death he had shouldered himself and return it to where it belonged.

To Yan Verkut. To himself.

"It was my decision that killed the twenty-six Greyhound soldiers. I gave the order, and you merely followed it."

"No, Company Commander! I, I...!"

The wooden wall of the office resounded loudly once more.

As it was a top-floor room, no one would notice.

If anyone did, it would only be Ren.

"Repeat it. The one who drove the twenty-six Greyhound soldiers to their deaths is Company Commander Yan Verkut."

"Repeat it, you bastard-!"

Yaan's shout filled the office.

Had the doors been open, it would have echoed throughout the keep.

Turning at the soft, clear voice, he found Ren there.

"The lower floor. It's stirring."

At those words, Yaan clicked his tongue.

The shout had been loud enough to surprise even himself; others would certainly be no quieter.

"The order stands. Whatever your schedule was today, cancel it all. Hole up in your private room and sleep. Forget everything, even dreams."

"If you crawl out of that room, I'll really kill you. Now go."

With that, Yaan released Dandel's collar. Dandel, wiping his ruined face, saluted and left the office.

Not long after watching that, Yaan let out a deep sigh and slumped into his chair.

"Me. Did I interrupt?"

"No, you did well. If it had gone any further, I might have lost my mind too."

"Not like we're sane already."

Watching Yaan force his subordinates to blame him for their deaths, Ren offered that assessment.

"Whether it's me or that guy, the core isn't much different."

With a bitter laugh at those words, Yaan sank back against the chair's backrest.

"So, what brings you here?"

"Maintenance yard status report. Both Frames have finished repairs. Extra Rail Cannon rounds came in too."

The new equipment started up without any particular issues.

There had been concerns about steel contraction in midwinter, but it didn't seem to affect the dwarf's work.

"I've finished screening personnel on this side too, so the roster looks decent."

After speaking, Yaan deftly pulled a single sheet from the stack of documents and studied it.

A recon team consisting of five company members from the colonies and himself.

And after confirming the roster of the twenty-member support team, Yaan finally looked at the name at the very bottom and the note attached there.

Looking over the documents containing the background checks on the new recruits he'd asked Dandel for, Yaan twisted his lips.

"Fine. I'll need to dig into this one a bit."

At the front of the pile, Marek's face stared back at him, and Yaan spoke after reading the caution note written beside it.

Prince Veric's departure was set for two days later.

The snow that had begun falling in northern Kelt was growing heavier by the hour.

"If there's even one, it's easy, but with two, it's much better! Hahaha!"

The morning of the scheduled departure.

Though they needed to hurry toward Rubra-Vailsar, Prince Veric had called Yaan to clear the snow from the Verkut territory first.

Two hours had passed since they'd begun the unscheduled snow removal.

Only after Glaepnir and Prince Veric's Equites had neatly cleared it away were Yaan and the 87th Independent Company able to board the train to the colony.

"You're not worn out from just this, are you, Sir Verkut!"

"I'll be fine until we reach the Governor-General's office."

With that, Yaan looked over at the vehicles loaded into the freight car alongside the colossus.

Unlike Vailsar, where most transport was by rail, Rubra-Vailsar relied mainly on road traffic using vehicles.

Unlike the homeland, where routes spread like spiderwebs, Rubra-Vailsar had only two main lines extending from the Empire.

"Well, we should start seeing it soon."

Prince Veric, gazing out the window, grinned, showing his white teeth.

"See what, Your Highness?"

"Look out the window."

At Prince Veric's words, Yaan turned his gaze out the train window with a puzzled look.

And what he saw there....

"Magnificent, isn't it?"

Wheat fields stretching to the horizon.

Every visible part of the land was covered in golden wheat without exception.

A sight only seen in Rubra-Vailsar, the continent's largest grain-producing region, where 80% of the land was plains.

"Amazing. Just over a mountain and it was the dead of winter."

"Now you understand why I was so excited to see snow in your territory? It never snows here."

Speaking thus, Prince Veric gazed out at the wheat fields stretching to the far end with a satisfied look.

Here and there in the wheat fields, skeletal colossi were harvesting the wheat using massive farming tools.

"No wonder the Imperial Army's supplies never run dry."

"The amount of resources extracted from the colonies is beyond imagination. Though thanks to that, the locals' discontent grows by the day."

'Extraction.' From Prince Veric's lips came words that no Governor-General overseeing the entire colony should utter.

"I believe the Empire uses the term 'impressment.'"

"Ha, are those His Imperial Majesty's words?"

Recalling Emperor Cardias, Yaan nodded.

Neither Klaus, Gard, nor Veric before him.

None of them referred to his father as father, no, not even as His Majesty.

"Changing the term doesn't change the reality. The Vailsar Empire to Rubra-"

Yaan cut off Veric's careless words.

Any further, and it would truly be something an Imperial prince should not say.

"...Right. I suppose so."

Rubbing his neck, Prince Veric gave a bitter smile as he looked at Yaan.

From the moment they arrived at the colony, it felt as though the cheerful giant's frame had instantly shrunk.

To be continued in the .