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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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A small black helicopter cut through the gray sky.
“It’s a mess.”
“It really is.”
The two women aboard the helicopter sighed bitterly as they spoke.
The Republic of Bostania seen below from the window was desolation itself.
The occasional visible highways were lined with the clear sight of completely burnt-out and abandoned vehicles.
Already being winter, with no decent greenery, the landscape of the Republic was nothing short of a ‘land of death’.
To think that the first foreign country they visited would look like this, it was another moment when Lea’s dream was trampled, and looking at Lea’s face, Charlotte spoke up.
“There’s something my father used to tell me.”
Charlotte recalled words her father had once said to her.
Beyond that sea, in the Republic of Bostania, milk and honey flowed.
He had said it was a beautiful country that preserved the history of human culture and technological development, with skyscrapers as tall as mountains lined up like mountain ranges.
Even then, after the existence of Titans had been reported, her father had gone so far as to say, without a shadow of doubt, that the Republic would be the main force in defeating the Titans.
So when the end of the war was first declared and news about foreign countries across the sea came in, Charlotte had even harbored vague fantasies about the Republic of Bostania.
“It really was like he said. It was beautiful. Saint Francis. It had a charm you couldn’t see in the Empire.”
“Huh?”
“But then…”
It sounded as if she had been there before, but hadn’t they never had contact with foreign countries even during the several regressions?
Lea, who had initially found it strange, suddenly realized something.
“Ah…”
Lea immediately swallowed her question.
After all, it was Charlotte herself who had completely destroyed the Republic of Bostania.
“Shit.”
Charlotte suddenly cursed.
Her hand, placed against the window, was trembling.
Lea firmly grasped Charlotte’s hand.
“It’s okay, Charlotte. It was necessary. At least the Commander won’t regress again without knowing anything.”
“Is that really true, Lea? I can still see the countless people I killed flashing before my eyes…”
“Don’t think like that, Charlotte. If the President hadn’t played his dirty tricks in the first place, you wouldn’t have had to do such a thing.”
He had planted Titans in the Saint Francis subway, which was virtually the backbone and main transportation route of the Republic.
Just to bring down the Republic.
“Oh, thinking about it makes me angry! That fucking crazy bastard, that warmonger!!”
Lea rarely cursed, but now she exploded in anger.
At her unexpectedly fluent cursing, Charlotte’s eyes, which had been losing their spark, came back to life.
“You…”
“That’s why I told you not to curse often in front of me. What are we going to do about this?”
Lea burst into laughter at Charlotte, who was looking at her with an expression like a startled meerkat.
It was all in the past anyway.
There was neither the luxury nor the reason to apologize and regret the countless blood on her hands now.
They were just looking forward and moving on.
If only they could perfectly implant the worst-case scenario that would come to this world after the war into Akasha…
Their hero would use that as a stepping stone and, without fail, lead the Empire—no, humanity—towards a better future this time as well.
Dedicate your life for humanity.
The value that Luthers always emphasized.
Lea Gilliard and Charlotte Evergreen had come this far solely for that purpose.
“You’re so stupidly kind…”
Charlotte, realizing Lea’s true intentions, looked at her and laughed helplessly.
Then she clenched her trembling hand into a fist.
“We’ll be arriving soon, so get ready. Unless you want to die painfully from radiation exposure.”
In response to her deliberately grumpy words.
“That might not be so bad either.”
Lea’s gentle reply came back.
Soon, the view of the completely ruined city came into the window.
Saint Francis.
They had now arrived to search for the remnants of the ‘Titans’ that remained there.
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“Why are you two here…”
Heinz Bismarck’s face turned as white as if he had seen a ghost.
It was no wonder, as both of them had suddenly disappeared quite some time ago.
Especially Charlotte, who had become the most wanted criminal with the highest bounty since the President’s inauguration.
If he were to turn her in right now, he could receive a reward far beyond what was appropriate for a soldier’s status.
Moreover, both of them appeared to be unarmed on the surface, so it wouldn’t be difficult to subdue them at all, but Heinz had not the slightest intention of doing so.
His face, which had rarely brightened since being dispatched, suddenly lit up, and Heinz ran towards the two women, shouting.
“Hey!!! You guys—!!!”
Perhaps not expecting such a reaction, Lea and Charlotte were momentarily taken aback.
Before they knew it, Heinz had quickly approached and hugged them both tightly.
“Do you know how worried I was!? Lea suddenly submits her discharge papers and disappears! Charlotte becomes a wanted criminal!!”
“Th-that, that’s… First, could you… let go…”
While Charlotte twisted her body at the sudden skinship, Lea was only surprised for a moment before she too embraced Heinz in return.
“Have you been well, Heinz?”
“Well? Damn it! Just when I thought I was finally getting away from the battlefield, I had to be dragged to this far-off foreign country!”
Heinz shouted, huffing and puffing.
It was 100% sincere, without a hint of exaggeration.
This was the side he showed to people who also came from the Graveyard.
At least in front of them, he didn’t need to act with the dignity of a brigade commander or be mindful of his status as a distant relative of the President.
“Lea you seem to have lost some weight, and Charlotte…”
Only then did Heinz’s gaze, which had been caught up in the excitement of the reunion, fully take in Charlotte’s appearance.
“You, what happened to your eye?”
“Ah… this, you mean.”
It was an eye patch that anyone would find suspicious.
It certainly wasn’t worn for something like an eye infection.
Charlotte shrugged and removed the eye patch.
Unlike her still blue left eye, her right eye appeared cloudy and had lost its color.
“…!!”
“Various things happened. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to explain everything in detail, but take this.”
Before he could even be surprised, Charlotte handed Heinz a terminal device.
“What’s this?”
“You must have heard the rumors about Titans in Saint Francis.”
“Charlotte, how do you know about that…!!?”
“The rumors are true. Well, half-true to be precise.”
Heinz hurriedly checked the contents stored in the terminal.
The photos, which appeared to have been taken by entering the city directly, showed several Titan corpses sprawled near a subway station.
He looked at Charlotte and Lea alternately with wide eyes.
“This, this is…”
“It’s too early to be surprised. Why don’t you keep swiping to the side?”
At those words, Heinz manipulated the terminal as if entranced.
The photos that followed showed the landscape of Saint Francis, which had become a complete ruin.
The date written in the bottom right corner was today.
“Did you two go in there today and come back? Are you… some kind of special forces? Directly under the President?”
“If we were, we wouldn’t have approached you like this. We wouldn’t have been wanted in the first place.”
“Then does that mean you really did commit the nuclear bomb terrorist attack on Saint Francis?”
The joy of meeting his long-lost comrades had disappeared, and Heinz’s head was now filled with countless questions.
“Keep swiping.”
Charlotte merely nodded her head with an emotionless voice.
It was an image that instantly brought to mind the Ice Witch of the old Graveyard.
Even in his confusion, Heinz’s lips twitched slightly.
“What… Why are you smiling, it’s creepy.”
“No, it just reminded me of how you used to be—”
Heinz’s hand, which had been swiping through the photos on the terminal, suddenly stopped at one particular image.
“Wait a moment.”
A giant test tube filled the screen.
Heinz’s face contorted as he recognized the being contained in that test tube.
“No way.”
“The ‘no way’ is exactly that ‘no way’.”
Heinz’s finger swiped the screen one more time, this time it was a photo taken from a different angle.
Even at a glance, there were over twenty test tubes.
Moreover, one of the specimens was a ‘Queen-class’, the most difficult type of Titan to deal with, which was essentially an advance production base for small Titans.
He urgently checked the date, it was from about 3 months ago.
It was the date when a nuclear explosion was observed in Saint Francis.
“Then you really detonated the hydrogen bomb, and the reason you detonated that bomb was…”
His voice trailed off, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying with his own mouth.
“Yes, that’s right.”
But there was no twist, which made it all the more serious.
“This is a photo from inside the Armaments Bureau. Wait, are you saying the Empire is involved? Shit… There are really test tubes here too?”
Heinz’s mind started racing quickly.
Charlotte Evergreen, had become a heinous criminal.
Saint Francis, which had suffered a nuclear terrorist attack, had Titans sleeping beneath it.
Similarly Titans were being managed underground in the Armaments Bureau.
And the Holy Cross Brigade.
As the complex puzzle pieces came together, the final piece fell into place.
He shuddered as the realization pierced through his entire body.
“The President, that son of a bitch.”
It was a single phrase, but one that carried many implications.
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