Chapter 171 : Hands Up!
Chapter 171: Hands Up!
Golitsyn, slumped on the ground, looked up at her. He knelt properly again, trembling as he took out an inconspicuous silver medal from the inside pocket of his coat. Perhaps this was the most insignificant honor he had received in all these years.
At the very last moment before handing it over, Golitsyn pulled his hand back, covered his face with both hands, and broke down crying. A trace of complexity flashed across Mitia’s face as she walked past him toward the exit:
“Explain everything clearly, and I will let you die with dignity... according to Uruk customs. You should understand—what I have always restrained is myself, not you. I have already shown you enough mercy.”
Golitsyn spread his palm and stared blankly at the medal resting in it. On the front was engraved a male eagle with wings spread, ready to take flight—the Youth Army Har Second-Class Merit Commemoration Medal. On the back was carved the date: Year 3233.
No First-Class Gold Merit Medal recipient had survived the Har Meat Grinder, and it was only because he had been wounded and achieved notable battle results that he received a silver commemorative medal.
All of them had been personally engraved by Mitia using magic. Each piece carried subtle differences, and it was also the only time she had used her family crest to create honor medals.
The nation was founded in 3249. Now it was 3262—thirteen years since the founding, and a full twenty-nine years since that war.
At the age of twelve, after both parents died and he could not even beg for food, he nearly starved to death by the roadside. He was selected by the passing Marquis Ackerman and taken in to be raised within the Uruk Youth Army, while also receiving the leadership of the marquis’s son.
When he was fourteen, Ackerman’s granddaughter Mitia took over military command. Five years later, Astal declared independence, and the Har Defensive Counteroffensive War broke out.
From the age of twelve to his current forty-eight, through three generations of Astal, he had always been a follower.
He knew very well that if he placed this medal in front of Mitia, there was a chance she would show mercy out of old sentiment and spare him.
Yet at the final moment, he could not extend his hand. It was as if an invisible, youthful hand pressed down on him with crushing force.
The Uruk Youth Army had always been fierce in style, united, and high in morale. It was the first legion Mitia reorganized into qualified volunteer soldiers, and also the source of all frontline commanders and combat officers in later legions.
Frontline commanders—every time the charge horn sounded, it was always the commanders who led the assault. Their casualty rate had always remained extremely high.
So-called comrades were those whom you personally watched fall. There was no time for rescue, no time for grief. You stepped on their shoulders to complete what they had wanted to do, standing upright on this battlefield in their place.
The reason he survived and lived to this day was because he had been younger back then—the younger brother raised under the watchful eyes of the older soldiers in the army. During the war, he had been protected and shielded from bullets countless times.
The Uruk military had always maintained the tradition of “keeping the young.” “Young” represented youth and vigorous vitality, and was also a way of preserving continuity and inheritance.
The Youth Army comrades had used their lives in relay through the flames of war to leave behind their youngest batch of comrades, allowing Golitsyn the chance to climb step by step to his current position.
If he truly placed this medal before Mitia, he would not only betray the people, but also fail the expectations of those elder comrades at the moment of their deaths.
Nor would he be able to face the young self he once was.
It would be exactly as Mitia had said—no honor, no belonging. Everything from the past would be denied by his own hands, and he would become nothing at all.
Anna, her hands folded over her abdomen, watched this scene coldly. If Golitsyn had truly dared to leave himself without even that last shred of dignity, she would not have minded inviting real Uruk veterans to come and clean house.
There were many veterans who had been disabled in service and were now spending their old age in peace back in their hometowns. Which of them, if honor were truly weighed, would be inferior to him? Quite a few of them had once been Golitsyn’s commanding officers.
According to Golitsyn’s own confession after surrendering, after losing his reproductive ability due to injury, he and his wife adopted two children. The children were from Ankargas State.
At the children’s request, Golitsyn took care of their collateral relatives and arranged for them to enter the system for work. Later on, as more and more such collateral relatives gathered within the same region, it was like the division of cancer cells.
Clans themselves were networks of various blood relatives, and those relatives had their own collateral bloodlines. One pulling another, they naturally formed localized groups.
With Golitsyn stationed at the center and issuing remote commands, the two most important positions in New State were replaced with their own people, forming a massive organization that had stakes driven deep from bottom to top into every department and civilian industry.
Over ten thousand at the top level, hundreds of thousands at the mid-to-upper levels, and millions of grassroots civil servants—under normal circumstances, such a situation would be extremely difficult to investigate.
But that was under normal circumstances. What Anna was doing now was anything but normal.
“Integrity Inspection Agent! Hands up!”
“Do not attempt any resistance!”
Before long, Minister Lawrence was also arrested by the Integrity Inspection Department inside the Ministry of Justice office. In front of numerous leaders and staff of the judicial system, Lawrence was taken away in an extremely humiliating manner.
The signal released by this was unmistakably clear. For such an important high-ranking official to be treated this way meant that the chain of evidence was absolutely solid—there was no possibility of overturning the case.
The Integrity Inspection Department and the fully armed Internal Affairs Department, clad in mecha, launched a joint operation. Following the confessions of Golitsyn and Lawrence, they traced the line downward, arresting large numbers of officials and merchants in the capital.
At the same time, even more related individuals were taken away for unconditional investigation. Anyone within a ten-clan radius of relations was swept up in one net—arrest first, interrogate later, cross-examining testimonies.
Evidence? What evidence was needed?
Question their betrayal of the people. Question their loyalty to the Empress.
Those two accusations alone were enough for all Alliance Citizens to unconditionally accept investigation. Anyone who dared resist would immediately suffer social death on the spot.
Power had always been public authority, delegated downward by the Empress as its representative. Retrieving it was only a matter of a single sentence.
In the era of nobility, they still had private troops and could argue loudly with the central authority. In this era, once stripped of the public authority granted to them, they were nothing at all.
The trains heading toward Ankargas had barely even arrived when the purge across the entire core region of the Alliance expanded at an astonishing speed.
Black buses painted with inspection insignia, white-star mine-resistant wheeled armored vehicles of the Internal Affairs Department, and special-duty mechanical soldiers crisscrossed Alliance territory. From time to time, figures wearing black hoods were hoisted up and thrown into the buses.
‘Let go of me! I am a hero personally commended by Her Majesty the Empress! I fought for Seris! I bled for Her Majesty! I want to see Her Majesty!’
“Shut up! This is exactly Her Majesty’s will!”
The older ones immediately went limp in the legs and stopped speaking. Instead, it highlighted the loud clamoring of the person beside them, who was clearly a young man by build.
‘Let go of me! What right do you have to arrest me! Do you know who I am! My father is—’
Seeing this, a special police officer beside him reversed his grip on the gun and slammed the butt hard into the man’s mouth. The noise stopped instantly, and he was tossed into the bus like a dead dog.
As for the newly incorporated New State, there was not even a trace of special police to be seen. Everyone was notified to take leave at home. The army directly entered the cities to take over affairs across the states, waiting for the arrival of the Black and White Twin Evils.
Anna’s secret intelligence department had always hovered indistinctly behind the two departments. The moment anyone attempted to reach into their ongoing work, she would immediately trace the line in reverse and uproot them completely.
Anyone who still dared to reach out at such a juncture—even if there were no major problems—had definitely done something shameful. They could be interrogated however one wished.
This left many officials who had not yet been arrested in constant panic. Even more people simply chose to turn themselves in, hoping for lenient treatment.
As for how extensive the corruption truly was, no one could say for sure. For many, this did not even count as corruption at all—it was, at most, a return to the Ovinia era.