9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 156 - Idiots and Fools (4)

“Does that make sense?”

When Georg asked in exasperation, Nina casually shrugged her shoulders.

“What wouldn’t make sense about it?”

“You really didn’t think people would find it strange? If you carelessly splash ink all over letters and send them, people are bound to get suspicious. No matter what, wouldn’t His Excellency the Supreme Leader know that much?”

“Why are you taking it out on me?”

Nina’s attitude was as chic as ever.

From their first meeting, there had been something that caught the eye about her—she seemed not like a peer but like an adult who had weathered all of life’s storms. It was the same now.

“Think about it, kid. Would His Excellency the Supreme Leader have done all this himself? He would have left it to frontline civil servants. Are they as brilliant as the Supreme Leader? Are they overflowing with passion?”

“No.”

Georg readily accepted this.

Schufaben’s source of all evil and a demonic existence crawled up from hell. That was what he felt about Supreme Leader Friedrich Kruger.

Like an insurmountable wall, and complicated in many ways.

Then last July, when he went to the airborne fortress to save Lucas.

For the first time, he was able to define the Supreme Leader in a single word.

‘Absolute ruler.’

Someone for whom it was utterly natural to reign over others.

When their eyes met, what he felt were boiling hostility and bone-chilling terror. Such overwhelming pressure that he worried how on earth they could drag such a person down to hell.

Later, when they talked about it, it seemed the other brothers and sisters had similar experiences.

There was no way someone who seemed so thoroughly capable of crushing others would have conducted such sloppy censorship. As Nina said, something must have gone wrong in the middle.

“Ah, I see.”

Georg suddenly muttered.

An old memory came to mind. To be precise, from the time when Lucas had quit his civil service job and opened a tavern, keeping everyone busy.

“Do you know how rotten the civil service organization is? It’s really suffocating there. They torment people while spouting about loyalty to His Excellency the Supreme Leader, but then they gobble up bribes like nobody’s business. They’re all blockheads who can’t do anything without behavioral guidelines.

But you know this is all Kruger’s own doing, right? The civil servants treat behavioral guidelines like they’re the Bible or something, but shouldn’t they be ashamed of themselves? I guess they don’t even know why those guidelines came to exist.”

At the hideout, after taking a sip of beer, Lucas was overly excited, whether from intoxication or something else.

“Why did they come to exist?”

When Georg asked, Lucas got even more excited and continued babbling.

“It’s obvious. Because civil servants are blockheads! Why did they get filled with blockheads? Because of the revolution and coups. Georg, do you know who the enraged masses killed during the revolution?”

“The royalty and nobility.”

“Correct! Then next, after Kruger overturned everything in a coup, who did he oppress?”

For a moment, childhood scenes flashed through his mind, making him feel nauseous. The men in black uniforms who had stormed into his father’s newspaper office, the people being dragged away.

“Anti-government forces and revolutionaries.”

“Right, you’re smart. Now do you get it? The intellectuals were completely swept away. During the revolution, the nobles who had monopolized knowledge, and during the coup, the revolutionaries who at least had working brains were massacred. And Kruger stuffed complete blockheads into those empty positions!”

Lucas’s word choices were becoming increasingly extreme. This happened sometimes, so no one paid attention.

“So can things work or not? I don’t know if it’s because there really was no one else to put in so they had to reluctantly accept even morons, or if it happened because they were so obsessed with loyalty tests, or if he deliberately picked only those who would obey him well, but anyway, all the current civil servants and Ossel are morons who can’t tell heaven from earth, and they’re all rotten to the core!!!”

“So what’s your conclusion? What are you trying to say?”

“Hieek!”

When Erika poked his cheek with a cold beer bottle, the fuming Lucas suddenly calmed down.

“Conclusion? I’m happy to have escaped from that hellish organization. How wonderful.”

“Really pointless.”

“Ah, and the fact that them being thoroughly rotten is good for us. That’s the conclusion.”

“Makes sense.”

“You’re right, aren’t you?”

“We were able to make deals with Ossel thanks to corruption too. Right?”

Richard, Oscar, and Daniel each added a comment.

And so it flowed into an ordinary night, ordinary conversation.

‘I see. I just need to take advantage of it.’

He had experienced civil servant incompetence plenty.

They had separated him from his little brother Theodore, pestered him about taxes whenever he least expected it, bullied the street children, and yet when they saw Ossel they couldn’t stand up straight and cowered pathetically.

That was civil servants.

Georg, who had been standing there blankly for a moment, suddenly looked at Nina.

“Hey, are you going home now? Want me to walk you?”

“Why? There’s no need.”

Nina asked back while dramatically wrapping her torn and hole-riddled muffler around herself.

“Because the night streets are dangerous. Especially for girls.”

“Nonsense.”

Nina, who had been about to turn away with a snort, opened her mouth again.

“I don’t know what you’re scheming, but be careful with yourself. What if you get caught?”

“……!!”

“See you next time.”

While Georg stood there speechless and gaping, Nina disappeared.

“Ha.”

A hollow laugh escaped his lips.

From when she had first pushed into Georg’s gang’s territory a few years ago and started selling newspapers, Nina had been his headache.

Since their first meeting when they grabbed each other’s hair and slapped each other’s faces in a fight, they had continued bickering, and though they eventually succeeded in coexisting through negotiation, she still bothered him.

“Tsk, what’s so good about such a rough girl.”

Grumbling, Georg slowly left the tavern. Originally he had dropped by as part of information gathering, but today he had heard an interesting story from Nina, so there was no need.

He was scheduled to meet Erika and Oscar tomorrow. Thanks to having a story to tell them, Georg’s steps toward the apartment were light.

***

Redan Company headquarters at midnight.

The top floor corridor, always dry and comfortable thanks to magical management.

Thick curtains were drawn over every window, preventing even moonlight from entering, but the dim space was far from the eerie atmosphere where ghosts might appear. It was beautifully decorated like an art gallery.

When he opened the office door, the gentle lighting of the magic lamps was dazzling.

“Georg’s here.”

Erika and Oscar greeted him with smiles. They had already started organizing, with papers, quill pens, and ink scattered on the table.

“It’s been a while, Oscar. Sister Erika.”

“Has it been a month? Isn’t the outside air cold? Come warm yourself by the fire.”

“Have a sandwich too. I bought it from Mr. Koch’s shop during the day.”

“Thanks.”

Georg warmed himself by the hearth and filled his stomach with a sandwich packed with meat and vegetables.

“Sister, I heard some useful rumors today.”

“Really? I had something interesting happen too.”

“Oh, me too! I discovered an intriguing fact!”

The three of them shared the information they had gathered over the past month.

Ration canil was leaking from somewhere and flowing abundantly through the black market.

Letters from the battlefield had started being censored recently.

People sensing ominous signs had begun to flee.

Erika briefly wrote down the stories. As she listed facts and inferences, it wasn’t difficult to deduce how things were currently unfolding.

“I don’t know if it’s really civil servant incompetence like Georg said, or if it’s Kruger’s intention. Either way, people will be trembling with anxiety. More people like Professor Schiller will sense something ominous.”

“And as canil addicts increase, everyone will feel in their bones that something is going wrong.”

“Sister, that professor said a general mobilization order would be issued. Is that really going to—”

At that moment the magic lamps went out and the room was plunged into darkness. Only the crackling hearth fire provided dim light.

A few seconds later the lights came back on, but somehow it felt a bit dimmer.

“Yes, it’s really going to happen. Just look at this.”

Erika pointed at the unsteadily flickering magic lamps.

“Does it do that often?”

“It’s gotten much worse lately. Not in your apartment, Georg?”

“We’ve always been like that.”

This world’s civilization was built upon the blessing of mana.

That meant without mana, humanity would become helpless fools.

From these small magic lamps to massive machines, everything used mana stones as their power source.

However, Schufaben was currently suffering from a mana stone shortage.

The ambitiously conquered lands of Cortana were utterly useless, continental nations had imposed export restrictions, and the small amount of mana stones produced in Schufaben were all sent to the battlefield.

From a few months ago, mana stone production and distribution began receiving strict government control.

According to rationing orders, civil servants went around distributing mana stones to every household and company once a week.

Even those were gradually declining in quality, to the point where now even these small magic lamps often failed to function properly.

“Right. Without issuing a general mobilization order, there’s no way to continue the war.”

Oscar wore a serious expression.

“This could be really bad, you know? Our company’s capital gets confiscated, Georg and I get dragged off to the battlefield, and Erika, you get assigned to a factory to swing hammers.”

Georg shuddered at the gloomy future Oscar painted. He absolutely did not want to go to any battlefield.

Lucas’s letters that came occasionally were quite horrific.

“Don’t go too far with that.”

Erika cut off their delusions.

“That would be the worst-case scenario. We have to prevent it somehow.”

“Right, we have to, but…”

Oscar fell into contemplation while staring at the hearth fire, then suddenly asked an unexpected question.

“That guy Lucas, he can’t write letters for a while, right?”

“Right. He said he’s moving to Rubellia now, and he’ll be too busy.”

“Then how about discussing it with the Great Desert side? Our shares are just a facade anyway, it’s actually a Fael company. It would be troublesome in many ways if it gets seized.”

“I was planning to anyway…”

Erika suddenly closed her mouth.

“…….”

“What’s wrong, sister?”

“Actually, I have a method in mind. It’s a bit dangerous, but,”

“What is it?”

“We’ll need the elves’ help after all.”

Her sparkling eyes were filled with certainty. Just like Lucas.

***

“Aaaaaaahhhhh!”

Ah, there’s that sound again.

Ralph rolled over while covering his ears with his pillow, his movements quite nonchalant.

Private Albert Schiller, who occupied the bed to his right, had been screaming at all hours, and now Ralph had become so accustomed to it that he would stuff cotton in his ears at the first sign.

The people sharing the same ward complained constantly but couldn’t bring themselves to bother Schiller.

Even while cursing up a storm, when they saw his completely severed leg, they would hold their tongues.

Patients with more serious injuries were practically corpses, so they couldn’t even dream of showing off their wounds.

Ralph, who had rolled to the left, stared at the empty bed.

It was where Corporal Wolf had been lying until just a few hours ago. He had seemed the most normal person in the ward, but suddenly started foaming at the mouth and convulsing, so he was carried away.

The military doctor who had been pressing down on Wolf’s body while injecting sedatives into his veins looked around at the terrified patients and smiled kindly.

“It depends on constitution, so don’t worry too much.”

Did that military doctor Richard Enke know that his words made the patients even more anxious? Ralph was genuinely curious.

Drowsiness crept in. As his consciousness faded, Albert’s screams also became muffled.

“A reply came!”

“Waaaah!”

Faint sunlight stung his eyes. At the sudden commotion, he opened his eyes to see a soldier grinning while pulling letter envelopes from a sack and handing them out.

“Private Ralph Brandt. Is that you?”

The soldier handed Ralph an envelope too. As he trembled with excitement and was about to open it, he glanced at the unnaturally quiet right side.

Private Schiller was staring at his letter.

***

Now my life is over.

Albert thought so.

Getting shot in the abdomen and nearly bleeding to death had been fine. The scar running vertically from beside his left eye to his cheekbone even felt like a medal.

But when he had to have his leg amputated not even on a battlefield, for a reason he couldn’t tell anyone about, he really felt like he had been thrown into hell.

They said it was canil side effects.

That his ability to rampage fearlessly, the inexplicable elation and intoxication he had felt, was all because of that drug.

That if he gradually reduced it, there wouldn’t be any more flesh rotting, so he should rest assured.

He had almost lunged at the military doctor who explained this with a kind face so calmly, but he was too weak and failed.

Time passed in a blur.

Albert, steeped in canil and painkillers, was half out of his mind, and when he occasionally regained his senses, he would either cry endlessly or stare blankly at the ceiling.

In his head, memories from long ago to just a few days ago swirled around mixed together.

He had received a children’s medal in the Kruger Youth Corps. He fought with his father every day. He liked singing, but whenever he sang his own compositions, all his friends would giggle.

As soon as he became an adult, he enlisted in the military. He went into battle as a machine gun assistant and fired bullets wildly at the barrier protecting Hakleon.

He had been happy. Really, truly happy.

“Aaaaaaahhhhh!”

Clang!

When he came to his senses, it was after he had been staring intently at a mirror and then thrown it away.

The face reflected in the mirror.

Brown disheveled hair and a strong jaw, a healing scar split along the glass fragments.

Albert cried a little more.

Then he pulled out a letter that had been crumpled up and shoved in his hospital gown pocket.

「We are going to the Great Desert. Find Managing Director Erika Brightner of Redan Company.」

Staring at the short sentence that was more like a note than a letter, Albert finally regained his clear mind.