Take Care of This, Then Sleep

Crack!

In a single motion I drove a palm-heel strike up into Patrick’s chin — the one standing closest.

Multiple enemies. So you destroy the leader first and collapse the situation from the top.

“Ngh!”

Patrick had been looking somewhere else when I was right in front of him.

He hadn’t raised his magic defense in time.

I had put the Telekinetic Fist behind it — the impact would have felt like taking a hammer to the jaw.

“Hh, ugh.”

Patrick staggered back and reached instinctively for the sword at his hip.

As if I was going to stand here and wait for him to draw it.

Thud!

I swept his legs out from under him with a low kick.

“Aagh!”

He went down with a cry, one knee hitting the ground, and managed to yank the sword halfway out even as he fell, but I had already read it.

I caught his wrist before the blade cleared the scabbard.

“Let go, let go!”

He tried to flood his arm with magic — far too late.

In a clinch this close, a weapon was nothing but a liability.

Crack!

I drove my forehead into his face.

Telekinesis amplifying the force behind it.

“Nnngh!”

Crunch.

The sound of his nose breaking came through clearly.

A second tier elven warrior — that at least told me he could use a magic blade.

But throwing out a finishing move in the middle of a fighting game and expecting it to connect on someone who walks right into you?

Getting locked in this tight and tapped lightly was enough to shut it down.

“Don’t know, don’t go.”

Patrick lurched backward, and I grabbed his collar before he could fall, then headbutted him again.

Crack! Crack!

Two, three times.

“Ngh, ugh, uh……”

His eyes rolled back. I crossed my hands over his collar and cinched it tight.

A light choke.

“Hk, hhgh, ugh……”

His airway cut off, he thrashed for a moment and went limp.

Not dead — just out.

I grabbed him by the head and stood up.

“Wh, whaaat?”

“What, what is that?”

“What is he? What is that?”

The four remaining elves went rigid.

“Th-this guy……”

“Let him go! Now!”

I dragged Patrick by the head and walked toward them.

The remaining four exchanged frantic looks — and drew their swords as one.

“Put those away.”

“Where do you get the nerve, human?!”

The one with the long hair lunged without preamble, slashing at me.

I shoved magic into my legs, and in the same motion flung Patrick at him.

Fwip!

“Whoa!”

He stumbled back, nearly running himself through trying to avoid his own companion.

Thud!

I was already moving — I stepped onto Patrick’s chest as he hit the ground and launched off him.

The long-haired elf’s eyes went wide.

Crack!

My drop kick caught him clean across the face.

I landed lightly, telekinesis correcting my balance in the air, and snatched up the sword he had dropped as I rolled forward.

Swiiish!

“Ngh!”

“GAAAH!”

Staying low, I swept the blade across the ankles of two more as I drove in.

Cutting the Achilles tendon from a low rush — still worked just as well as it ever had.

“Wh, wha, what is happening?!”

“……”

I rose and looked at the last one.

He had been backing away — now he stared at his own hands, then hurled his sword into the grass.

He had enough sense left to realize holding it wasn’t going to help him.

“Why’d you throw it? Keep it.”

“D-don’t come near me.”

“Then cut off one of your own arms.”

“……What?”

“Do I sound like I’m joking?”

I said it cleanly and kept walking.

I showed mercy to my own people — to those I regarded as citizens of my empire. A son who misbehaves, you can let off with a smile.

Enemies were a different matter.

I had fought in brutal wars. Once it started, I had no trouble going as far as it needed to go.

“I’m being generous. Neck or arm. I’m offering the arm.”

As I stepped closer, the last elf scrabbled to pick his sword back up.

“D-don’t — don’t come closer——”

He could feel it. That I would actually do it. That both limbs were on the table if he didn’t move first.

His face crumpled — and in the end, he pressed his hands together and begged.

“……P-please spare me.”

“You’ll be fine. You won’t die from losing an arm.”

“……Please!”

I raised the sword and brought it down — and the elf screamed and went limp before it arrived.

He had passed out cold.

I stopped the blade just short of him and clicked my tongue.

“Couldn’t hold on.”

Fair enough, I supposed. The empire had known no war since I built it.

The gap between someone who had crossed life and death every day and someone who had grown up in peacetime was just too wide.

Time to clean this up.

“Garul! Come here!”

“Yes, sir.”

Garul came at a run. His face was tight — he couldn’t quite meet my eyes.

“Anyone on our side hurt?”

“Ah, that……”

His gaze drifted involuntarily to the elves scattered across the grass before he caught himself and straightened.

“No, Young Master. Everyone’s fine.”

“These ones are people too.”

“……”

When I said it with a slight smile, Garul exhaled — some of the tension going out of him.

He had been frightened of me. The humor landed and eased it.

I moved straight to orders.

“Tie them all up except the one called Patrick. Set guards — soldiers and knights. Lock them in a room and post people with swords directly outside the door.”

“Understood.”

“If any of them raise their magic or try to cut through the ropes, end them on the spot. That’s an order.”

“……”

Garul hesitated. I cut it short.

“This isn’t excessive. They know how to use magic blades, the moment they see an opening, the guards are dead. When they come around, warn them yourself and relay the same order down to the soldiers and knights. Pick experienced people for the post.”

“Yes, understood.”

“Garul, I trust you. So trust me and do it right.”

I put a hand on his shoulder.

The complicated look on his face smoothed out.

Librata’s patron house had just had five of their own knocked flat by me. A complicated situation — but I had boiled it down to something simple.

Trust me and follow.

“Yes, Young Master. Understood.”

And with that, Garul’s aura shifted — the green of genuine loyalty rising off him.

I took it in as I walked, replenishing what I had spent.

I left the handling to Garul and turned to Roderic and Heinkel, who were standing to one side.

Roderic’s expression was somewhere between stunned and unsettled.

I had been completely one-sided — what might have looked excessive to an outside eye.

“Better to go all the way than leave room for complications.”

“……Mm. Right.”

Once I spoke in my usual tone, some of Roderic’s tension eased as well.

I got straight to it.

“Roderic, go to the count and run cover. Take Amelia with you. Have her quietly settle anyone inside the manor who saw this.”

“What? Shouldn’t we report to Father and take his direction?”

“I have a plan for how to deal with this. For now, keep the count out of it and manage it from the middle.”

“……Mm.”

Roderic was the count’s eldest son.

He had the authority to make that work.

“All right. I’ll handle it.”

Roderic moved off, Amelia steadying him as they went.

I turned to Heinkel.

“You, dig into the elves’ situation.”

“Yes. Even by elven standards, sending thugs like this caught me off guard.”

Heinkel’s face had twisted with something close to disgust.

Anyone with any sense in Karakas understood the value of food — how hard-won it was.

Before I built this empire, people had starved to death regularly.

Ruining food someone had set aside was not something people did lightly.

I pressed on.

“Second tier warrior, but their reaction speed was terrible. Is this what elves are like these days?”

“High magic, poor adaptability in close contact. Post-war generation, I’d say.”

“Post-war?”

“Many warriors fell building the empire. The elves lost plenty of first tier and special-tier fighters as well. The ones I just watched are the replacements, raised to fill those gaps.”

In other words, opponents who had never fought against someone who’d been standing at the front of that war.

No wonder they couldn’t keep up.

“So they’ve been throwing their weight around without ever actually getting hit.”

“They know now.”

Heinkel changed course.

“How much do you know about the elves’ internal politics?”

“Four clans. Black Lily, Grey Cosmos, Purple Peony, Blue Rose. Unanimous consensus as the base rule, but unanimity between people is nearly impossible, which means elven foreign policy has always moved at a crawl.”

“Yes. Except that balance of mutual restraint has broken down.”

“Because of Sirik Karakas’s marriage?”

One of my wives as emperor had been an elf.

Heinkel nodded.

“The Blue Rose, which produced the empress, gained dominance over the other clans. That created friction, and then the first emperor died. A backlash followed.”

“……”

“The clan relationships fractured and haven’t recovered. Various disputes have been festering ever since. That’s probably why they sent fools ahead on a matter this important, the clans can’t agree on who to send.”

I put it together.

“Noted. Dig deeper. Leave out whatever would get you killed, and report the rest.”

“……You’re all right with that?”

“You think I’d ask someone who brought me wine to go off and die?”

Heinkel let out a long breath.

The tension that had been holding him went out of him all at once.

He glanced at me carefully, then said,

“……Watching you take them apart just now, I won’t pretend it wasn’t satisfying.”

“Too much?”

“No, not that, it’s just……”

He thought for a moment.

“You were laughing and joking one minute and then that the next. It’s — hard to calibrate to, if I’m honest. Everyone was thrown off.”

“Get used to it. It’ll keep happening.”

I said it as a joke and turned away.

“I’m moving. Feed me information as it comes in.”

Quick groundwork laid.

I grabbed Patrick and dragged him over the grass.

To the annex.

To a suitable tree in front of it.

I bound him to it with the rope I’d brought over.

“Hey. Wake up.”

“……”

“Not waking up?”

I slapped his cheek with my palm.

Twice. His eyes flew open with a start.

“Hk, hah!”

“Feels strange being tied up? You’ll get used to it.”

“……”

“You’re not cutting those ropes right now. Good. Know that if you do, you’re cutting your own lifeline.”

“Wh — the others? My friends?”

“Last I saw, alive. Can’t speak to right now.”

Patrick ground his teeth and stared up at me.

But the aura bleeding off him was black.

He could glare all he wanted — I had already broken him.

“Ngh……”

A second tier warrior — he knew what the gap meant.

He had been armed. He had been beaten barehanded. Utterly.

Coming back from that and winning was not something he could calculate a path to.

“Answer me. Name.”

“……Patrick.”

“Whose son?”

Elves placed enormous weight on bloodline.

Patrick hesitated — but held my gaze too long and broke first.

“Son of Corcas.”

“Why did you come to Librata?”

“……To investigate. An incident had occurred.”

“The elders wouldn’t have sent just you. Who is the actual investigator?”

“……”

Patrick went quiet.

He was frightened of me and still wouldn’t say. Someone he was more frightened of?

“Different question, then. You’re a forward party — you came ahead of the investigator. Why?”

“……We were told to establish pressure first.”

“What?”

Not what I had expected.

Patrick hadn’t just been acting up on his own.

“Someone gave you quiet orders to rattle the cage at Librata before the investigator arrived? Who?”

“……”

“Talk.”

When I pressed, Patrick squeezed his eyes shut.

But the black aura bleeding out of him grew darker.

His voice came out shaking.

“……First tier warrior. It was Lord Berk’s orders.”

A name I didn’t recognize.

If this person had made a name in the war against the Seven Sin God, I would have remembered.

Patrick continued.

“He said, make sure the humans don’t dare breathe a word……”

“And now you’re the one squeaking. Ought to get on with it.”

“……”

“Not going to?”

“Sq, squeak……”

At my direction, Patrick’s voice came out in a faint, shrinking noise.

I ran through it.

“This Berk, not the investigator the elves sent officially. And the name of the actual investigator is something you absolutely will not say?”

“……I’m, I’m still an elf.”

Patrick pushed back, weakly.

“If you kill me without cause……”

“Under imperial law, threatening someone with raised magic is grounds for self-defense. Lethal if necessary. And you committed lèse-majesté.”

“What?”

“You spoke disrespectfully about Sirik Karakas. Said he was just a dead human.”

Patrick had meant it as a dig at humans in general — diminishing the first emperor to make the point.

But the Millennial Empire had a law against it.

Speaking with contempt toward the emperor — toward me — was an offense that could be punished with immediate execution, no questions asked.

The court officials of the early empire had unanimously insisted on it.

By modern Earth standards it was unthinkable — but the empire itself was an unprecedented political structure, and establishing imperial authority had required it.

Reasonable grounds had existed. The law still stood.

“Th-that was……”

“Don’t worry. People say rude things about emperors. I can also kill you for it.”

Patrick shook violently.

Pure terror.

“P-please. Please spare me.”

“Say it again.”

“P-please spare me. Please……”

The black aura pouring off him grew deeper.

I pressed my hand to his head and drew in the mental energy.

“AAAH, please, I’m sorry, please.”

Patrick convulsed like a leaf in a storm.

He was certain he was being tortured. I was simply absorbing — nothing more.

The complete despair of a broken man feeding directly into me.

Something opened deep in my mind, clear and wide.

The second psychic ability — unlocked.

“AAAH!”

I pulled my hand away and stepped back.

Patrick seemed to realize he wasn’t dead. He sagged against the tree, gasping.

Yellow liquid ran down the bark.

He had wet himself.

I stared at it for a moment.

Patrick was heaving for breath — the absolute release of someone who had been certain they were about to die.

“You’re an elf and you’re watering the tree for it?”

“……”

No answer. He couldn’t manage one.

I checked my mental reserves.

Fuller than before. The second psychic ability was back in my hands — the one I had used in my previous life.

Time to test it.

I turned and looked at the annex.

Focused.

Staring at the wall with intent——

Creak.

The annex door swung open.

Out stepped a man in a nightcap, sleeping clothes, and slippers — despite the fact that it was well into the afternoon.

The elf Melius.

Librata’s liaison to the elven community, and the closest thing the two sides had to a formal bridge.

His face was arranged into a comprehensive frown. He looked at me, then looked at Patrick tied to the tree.

His expression didn’t change much.

“Hey, you’re finally up?”

“Still tired.”

“Then take care of this first, then go back to sleep.”

I’d had to wake a sleeping man — but this was his people’s business.

Might as well have him sort it out.