9th Grade Civil Servant In Another World Chapter 210 - Fire (3)

When Christian and Tom arrived in Lüdelheim, pushed along by Ossel, students who had been detained across the country and missing were also released and dropped off in Lüdelheim.

The comrades, elated at reuniting, rallied around Christian. While Tom moved to find the White Raven Order, they stormed into Lüdelheim Comprehensive University.

It was right after winter break had begun, but given the current state of affairs, there were quite a few students still on campus. However, no one noticed Christian and his comrades. The school was like their home, after all. They knew every hidden side door and back path.

They infiltrated the campus separately, keeping their distance. Even when they encountered someone, they weren’t discovered. Everyone’s appearance had changed considerably after long imprisonment.

Their identities were exposed only after they entered the humanities building.

“As expected, this place is unchanged.”

“Senior?!”

The moment they flung open the club room door, the students who had been huddled together anxiously discussing trivial matters about the current situation leaped up in shock.

The missing student council president and his comrades had suddenly appeared without warning!

Christian was momentarily speechless, looking at the younger students frozen in an instant.

Just a few months ago, they had spent nights here discussing how to turn this country upside down. The kids who had believed in and followed him must have suffered unspeakable hardships when the protest leadership collapsed.

“…Senior.”

A female underclassman who had barely escaped arrest approached with a complicated expression. Christian smiled at her and slowly opened his mouth.

“We have work to do, don’t we?”

They mobilized all their connections to spread rumors and organize protesters.

Christian led his comrades out of the building. Everyone was carrying banners and placards.

“Everyone, I stand here to reveal the truth!”

When he shouted loudly in the square, chaos erupted instantly.

After Ossel was disbanded, the police took on Ossel’s work as well, suffering from overwork. But they had been diligently monitoring the university by splitting their limited manpower, and plainclothes police with clubs appeared before his speech was even finished.

“These reactionary bastards!!”

“If you don’t stop immediately, we’ll throw you in prison for sedition, urk!”

Christian’s followers, who had come after hearing rumors, surrounded the square. The police trying to push in numbered only about ten. The students protecting the protesters numbered in the dozens to hundreds.

They were completely outmatched.

Christian watched the police being trampled by the encircling students and momentarily stopped his speech in confusion. But soon something boiled up in his chest, and he shouted until his throat would burst.

“Schufaben has been defeated! Schufaben has been defeated!! Schufaben has been defeeeateeeeeed!!!”

***

The protest that started with dozens swelled to hundreds as they crossed the school and became thousands when they passed through the university district.

“Everyone! Please listen to the truth!”

“Everyone! Please end the war!”

Anti-war and peace.

Anti-dictatorship and freedom.

The wave of students carrying hastily made banners and raising their voices swept over Lüdelheim.

Lüdelheim citizens were already accustomed to ‘protests.’ Even so, their protest was sudden, clumsy, and astonishing.

‘We have been defeated!’

That unbelievable voice they didn’t want to believe spread everywhere.

Give us bread, stop harsh conscription—it was different from such simple cries, a powerful declaration.

‘Defeat.’

Everyone turned to look wherever the students passed, bursting into laughter and tears.

“Lies! It’s a lie!!”

Someone screamed and ran out, while others followed the protesters as if entranced.

“We have already lost! Please stop the war!”

Leaving the agitated crowd behind, Christian at the front shouted over and over again.

Cries from people everywhere mixed and echoed. Loud enough to drown out any single voice.

The protest procession, which had left the university district and filled the main road toward District 1, had grown so large that its head and tail stretched far apart. The crowd, now big enough to separate, shouted whatever they had been keeping in their hearts, even without slogans.

“I’m sick of fighting! I want to live in peace!”

“My child is starving!”

“Save my daughter!!”

Before them as they marched fearlessly, the existence all protesters feared most appeared.

The mounted police.

Large black horses. Uniformed police mounted on them. The cavalry unit densely filling the wide street was like a solid fortress wall.

“Crush the reactionaries!!”

Without even a rallying cry to boost morale, just someone’s command, hundreds of horses charged with earth-shaking thunder, terrifyingly.

“Everyone get away!!”

The snow-covered street instantly turned into hell.

Police swinging batons from horseback, crushing people with hooves. It was a simple strategy, but it had never failed before.

“Aaaah!”

“Run, run…!”

People with split heads and broken bones screamed in agony.

“Are those kids ready yet?”

“Just finished preparing, senior!”

Just before the protesters scattered completely, a blue light suddenly shot up toward the sky. Dozens of people in blue cloaks at the front held hands and chanted spells.

They were magic department students.

In Schufaben, mages are bound to the state from the moment they’re born.

Naturally, they grow up unable to even glance at protests. Most are supposed to be too absorbed in research to care about politics anyway. Or rather, that’s how they should be made.

There are unusually many eccentrics and rebels among mages. Knowing this, the Schufaben government had traditionally controlled and oppressed mages particularly harshly.

But human aspirations don’t break easily. Rather, the more they’re suppressed, the higher they bounce back. When Christian organized protesters, the first to run to him after the humanities department were his friends from the magic department.

A blue barrier enveloped the protesters.

It couldn’t protect everyone, but at least the head and flanks that were easy targets for the cavalry. The police, blocked by the solid barrier, didn’t know what to do.

“What should we do?”

“How should I know! Report to headquarters!”

Not missing the police’s hesitation, the protesters advanced again.

The protesters were slowly pushing back the police when suddenly a huge shadow covered the pale winter sun. Looking up in surprise, an unimaginable creature was flying there.

“Everyone!! We are the White Raven Order!!”

As the magically amplified voice echoed, thousands of papers poured down like heavy snow from the massive green dragon’s body.

Defeat reports, Eastern Front casualty status, Cortana’s independence declaration.

All were evidence supporting the protesters’ claims.

***

A few hours earlier.

Georg and Nina had rushed to District 5, the media holy ground.

The street full of newspaper companies bustled with reporters and errand boys running frantically for some urgent reason. Since they wouldn’t print truthful news in newspapers anyway. The two people avoided those running around as if their pants were on fire and pressed forward. At the corner of an alley, there was a building wrapped in particularly cold silence.

A newspaper company that had completely collapsed when its owner fled in the night not long ago.

That owner who had stolen wages from Nina and other newspaper sellers. Whether it was someone with a grudge or who knows what arsonist, the building had been properly set ablaze, bankrupting and driving him away.

Georg and Nina climbed through the broken window into the building that still reeked of smoke.

“I spotted it before. It was too big to move to Ian’s place, so I gave up on that plan.”

“So you should exercise and build muscle, achoo! Aaaaachoo!”

Nina started sneezing frantically. Georg waved newspapers to blow away the ash around them.

“You okay?”

“Ugh, fine, let’s hurry.”

Going downstairs, there it was. A printing press that hadn’t been seized by creditors yet.

“Well, this old broken printing press isn’t worth much money. Here, so like this, huh?”

“Move over, kid.”

Nina pushed aside the struggling Georg and pulled a mana stone from her worn bag. The White Raven Order had scattered on individual missions, taking necessary supplies from Ian’s mansion.

When she fitted the mana stone properly, the dusty printing press began to turn.

“Nina, you’re the best!”

Georg surprise-kissed Nina’s cheek and got punched for it.

“What are you doing, hurry up!”

Then Georg’s expression became serious too.

Working hard together, they operated the rattling printing press. Though their skills were learned over shoulders, it was sufficient to produce crude printed materials like this.

The thousands of flyers they printed in an instant were delivered to Oscar and scattered over the protesters’ heads.

“Everyone! The White Raven Order wants only freedom and peace. For true liberation of the people! We will fight alongside you!”

With the dragon’s sudden appearance, the crowd fell into confusion, but soon gained strength and began responding.

“We want freedom!!”

“We want peace!!”

White Raven Order was an extremely criminal organization.

Just a few years ago, everyone thought so.

Even now, many still feared and detested the White Raven Order. Mainly victims who had lost family or friends to the White Raven Order. Of course, most of that was the work of criminals impersonating the White Raven Order, but ordinary people couldn’t know that.

However, as the war deepened, perceptions began to change gradually.

The White Raven Order judged the minions of the dictatorship that oppressed the people.

They collected ration cards floating around gambling halls and distributed them to those in need.

They left money and food at the doors of people starving to death and departed.

They exposed ration embezzlement and opened warehouses where supplies were stockpiled.

However they managed to do all this without being discovered, people’s perceptions changed.

“Good, the tide has turned!”

“Hey hey, Oscar! Don’t get too excited!”

Oscar, who had been cheering while looking down at the protesters from atop the green dragon Elizabeth, was enthusiastically celebrating. Ian was skillfully operating the cockpit controls beside him, scattering flyers.

“Now we just need the broadcast station to work out well. We can escape if necessary, but that place is really dangerous, oh! Success, success!”

“I told you not to get excited!”

Static flowed from the radio attached to the cockpit.

“Breaking news. Subversive forces have appeared, so citizens should evacuate immediately and prioritize personal safety… Aaaah! Who are you!! Aaaaah!!”

“Citizens of the nation, Schufaben has been defeated. I repeat, Schufaben has been defeated. We are the White Raven Order. We have come forward to tell you the truth. What we will now broadcast is actual recorded broadcasts from the Eastern Front. Everyone, please listen to the voice of truth.”

The radio announcer’s voice was cut off with screams. After crackling sounds, Emma’s familiar voice came through, then Sophia Kohl’s youthful voice.

At that moment, in Lüdelheim District 1. The national radio broadcasting station.

“Mmph! Mmmmph!”

The broadcaster who had aided Kruger for over twenty years was tied up completely and sprawled on the floor.

Emma had taken the broadcaster’s place. Daniel sat beside her, writing scripts in real time for her to read word by word clearly. Beyond the booth glass, Erika nodded silently, and the trembling staff played the records she handed them.

It was Sophia Kohl’s broadcast recording.

Sophia’s broadcasts were more widespread than expected.

People in Schufaben’s eastern border regions, very close to the battlefields, had secretly listened on illegal radios, and records from there had circulated among the upper classes, dissidents, and university districts.

Some of the records now playing had been collected by Daniel traveling the border regions, some obtained by Richard through underground channels. And some had been sent by Johann.

The records secretly stored in Ian’s mansion warehouse finally saw the light of day.

“Are you living well? Are you happy sending your sons and daughters to hell and dreaming of continental unification and empire?”

Sophia Kohl’s voice echoed in every household across the nation.

“Or are you merely surviving? Unable to utter a single word of complaint, hiding the fear of death behind happy submission, wearing smiling masks over crying faces, enthusiastically cheering for war while just barely surviving?”

The reality of the Eastern Front, Lüdelheim’s protest situation, Ferint’s secrets, and the facts about Ossel’s dissolution flowed out.

People who heard the radio rushed out of their homes and workplaces in bewilderment, only to encounter crowds walking and singing while holding banners. They silently extended their hands to those who couldn’t suppress their boiling anguish and wandered lost.

Thus the protest scale grew explosively larger.

The flyers Ian and Oscar had scattered were copied and re-copied somewhere, spreading throughout Lüdelheim. Christian and the students fought police units throughout the night, advancing toward District 1.

“Let’s go!”

“Let’s go tell the Supreme Leader our voices!”

The protesters, in a kind of frenzy, marched toward the main road chanting slogans in unison.

Since they couldn’t get mana stones, they carried torches delivered from somewhere. Thousands upon thousands of flames burned bright like stars, illuminating the night sky. The faces lit by firelight were somber yet bright, frightened yet brave.

Christian had simply wanted to tell everyone the truth.

Whatever happened after that, he considered controlling the people’s will beyond his authority. He thought letting himself be carried by the tide was best.

And the people chose.

To advance to District 1 and make the Supreme Leader hear their voices. To appeal to the dictator with all their might.

It was truly a naive goal. The pitiful faith of those still not free from the lingering effects of brainwashing.

But it was their choice.

Christian made no interference.

At dawn, the protesters reached the boundary of District 1. Cross one street and they’d enter Schufaben’s administrative center. It was a bit further to the floating castle, but it wouldn’t take long.

And what blocked them at the boundary was an endless human wall.

People in police uniforms who neither rode horses nor wielded clubs, just standing silently.

And countless gun barrels aimed at the citizens.

“Take aim—.”

“Fire!”

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

The bullets pierced through the people.