231 - Memories Of A Certain Ghost (2)

I walked with a cane.

I had never imagined I would spend my days like this at my age.

I had always thought I would only need a cane to walk after I retired, but life never went the way one expected. As I walked down the corridor of the field hospital, I lamented my own ill fortune, for even the Empire’s medical technology had not been enough to heal me completely.

“Had it shifted just a little more, perhaps…”

In numbers, it was a mere two centimeters.

I did not want to believe I had been deliberately shot through that spot, but elves were enemies who could very well possess the skill to do exactly that.

“What a troublesome foe,” I grumbled, then remembered where I was and closed my mouth.

This was not the sort of place where I should say things that might stir anxiety.

There seemed to be no sign that anyone had heard me, so I let out a relieved breath and continued walking with my cane.

My return to the front lines had become hopeless, but I had no complaints if that served as a cornerstone for victory.

The information I had learned this time had already been sent to the upper command.

If possible, I wanted to take part in organizing a unit and drafting operations against holy sword wielders, but… I was not of a rank where that would be permitted.

(If only I could return to the front lines…)

Vexation unconsciously made me clench my fist tightly.

I had been shown my own powerlessness to an unbearable degree.

Every time I recalled that battle, I questioned my own capacity as a commander.

“What elite?” I said, ashamed of myself for failing to produce results.

Some time after that, one man appeared before me.

The man called himself “a researcher of cutting-edge technology” and introduced himself as Dozel Baumann.

“Captain. With our research, we can send you back to the front lines once more.”

Those words must have sounded like gospel to me at the time.

Without a trace of doubt, I took Dozel’s hand.

That was the beginning of hell.

“One cannot wage war while sane.”

When I learned of the Empire’s dark side, I properly understood the meaning of those words someone had once spoken.

This Empire had never possessed any value worthy of offering my loyalty.

What I had held was merely an ideal, and I felt anger, disappointment, and despair at the reality that proved to be so hideous.

A nation, without exception, harbored darkness.

But that darkness was so deep that I could not understand it.

(Then what should I do?)

Had everything I had done been wrong?

Was it wrong to take up a gun and fight for the nation, for the people who ought to be protected?

No. That alone was absolutely not wrong.

I was not so green that I did not even understand the meaning of war.

The root of this war lay in the surrounding nations regarding the Empire’s overly advanced civilization as a threat, then joining hands out of fear.

Thus, this war had a strong nature as a struggle for survival, and it was the worst possible case, one that might continue until one side perished.

“If we do not destroy them, we will be destroyed.”

It was a trite slogan, but even so, it accurately captured one side of the truth.

Fighting was not wrong.

The problem was the nature of the sacrifices.

I remembered the reason I had chosen the battlefield as my place.

(Yes, to prevent lives from scattering pointlessly. To keep even one more person alive, I…)

No matter what position I took, my will would not change.

Rather than live a life of clinging to ideals and merely voicing complaints and dissatisfaction, I had decided to use this life to change things.

But even that resolve was all too easily blown away.

The Chimera Project—an experiment to create human weapons that incorporated parts of monsters through genetic modification technology.

Based on that data came the Genetically Enhanced Soldier Project, which strengthened humans using monster genes.

I had been told that the culmination toward which these would proceed was the Ultimate Lifeform Project, and that this research existed to create a race beyond humanity—superhumans.

Naturally, experiments like this were inseparable from human experimentation, and I could only know of the ever-increasing deaths as numbers.

I could not touch the crucial parts, and as someone who had been chosen to become the first superhuman, I could not even interfere with their research.

“Is this truly all right?”

In days when questions simply kept piling up, I was finally summoned by the upper command.

Three months had passed since I withdrew from the front lines—and I expected that report had finally caught their attention.

What needed caution was a few outstanding individuals.

And unit formations meant solely to defeat them.

I had scribbled down every concrete proposal I could think of, and I expected that one of them was going to be put into action.

However, the reason they summoned me was to remove me from the Ultimate Lifeform Project.

In summary, the order was, “An elite should behave like an elite,” and I appealed directly against it.

And then, I learned the reality of this country.

The upper command was rotten to the core.

With the same mouths that loudly cried treaty violation, they abused prisoners and satisfied their own desires.

“Elves are rare, you see. They sell for a high price in any country.”

There were treaties concluded between nations concerning the treatment of prisoners, and I could state with certainty that the sight before my eyes clearly violated them.

(Had I… had we truly been fighting for something like this?)

Why had the present situation not been broken through?

Why did the war not end?

Why were the people here laughing while soldiers were still dying even now?

The answer was here.

This country was beyond saving.

Because of the overwhelming difference in technology, they did not imagine for even an instant that they could lose. Its leaders regarded this as an opportunity and prioritized their own desires and purses over the lives of their soldiers.

While despair crushed me, there was only one hope that made me stand back up.

The words I had heard that day came back to me.

“If this project is completed, Captain, there will be nothing you cannot do.”

The laughing researcher’s words might have been an exaggeration.

But if I could obtain that much power—there was only one thing I desired.

(I will change it. I will change it, no matter what!)

I would smash this rotten foundation and establish a new order upon it.

I would squeeze out the pus, and the Empire would be reborn into the ideal nation.

For that purpose, I would even play the madman for now.

“…A dream, was it?”

So I still saw such things even in this form, I thought, then let out a breath and raised my body.

It was not the form I had wished for.

However, the power I had obtained could only be described as immense.

Although I had obtained this power in that era, I mishandled the final step.

I regretted not acting sooner.

Because of the incompetent upper command, the war brought about the collapse of the western front, and only after several cities were burned did they finally realize the gravity of the situation.

As a result, I became a test subject for the Ultimate Lifeform Project in a form different from what had been planned.

It was an evolved form of the conventional genetically enhanced soldiers, which valued combat ability alone—a monster’s form that bore no resemblance to the earliest version that had been completed as the final form.

It was not that I had no regrets.

But this, too, had probably been necessary.

“Even if the era changes, I will never let your deaths be in vain.”

If soldiers fulfilled their duty and devoted their loyalty to the nation, then the nation had to repay them for it.

Even after the Empire perished, its subjects moved south and established a new nation.

Had there truly been meaning in the battle we had fought to protect them?

I would confirm that eventually. For now, I only had to do what needed to be done before me.

Two hundred years—how much influence that passage of time had caused, I did not know.

Because he belonged to a race called a long-lived species, when I heard the report of his survival, I supposed that he and I had been fated to face each other.

I walked through the forest that had once been called the most prosperous Empire on the continent, now without even a shadow of that glory remaining.

Westward, simply westward I walked, and at last, I was reunited with that man.

“Sword Demon…”

Even when I saw his aged form, I did not feel the weight of two hundred years.

Comparing the aging of elves to that of humans was itself strange, and understanding such a sensation would be stranger still.

However, the holy sword in his hand, the one I had seen that day, showed that the old man was the enemy I had to defeat.