I, who was eager to retire, became an Imperial General.

Chapter 47 Dragon Hunter

Upon hearing this answer, John's anxiety finally subsided.

Ah, very good. Following Wendy, a loyal Imperialist, another famous dragon hunter has arrived.

That's wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!
John had a smile on his face, but his heart was filled with indescribable sorrow.

Looking at Siegfried, who seemed to want to say something but hesitated, he could almost predict what the guy was about to say.

"Commander John, I think..."

"No, you don't!"

Before Siegfried could utter the villainous declaration, "Sir, I want to join the Empire," as he would in the game, John interrupted him.

Without saying a word, he placed his hand on the other person's shoulder and solemnly advised them:
"Promise me you won't become a soldier. The battlefield is not where you should be. Think about your wife and children. Can you bear to part with your lovely son... cough cough, and your respectable father?"

"As for Stone Village, you don't need to worry. The reason I came to Longyan Territory this time is because I was instructed by the high-ranking officials of the Empire to rectify the chaos here. So Stone Village will get better and better in the future!"

"On this point, I can assure you. Besides, fighting is the job of Imperial soldiers. As a civilian, you only need to protect your family."

"Therefore, don't make decisions you'll regret in the heat of the moment. The real battlefield is bloody and cruel; you can't gain anything meaningful from it except harm."

“I don’t want you, a civilian, to die on the battlefield, so I will not grant your enlistment request.”

John looked at Siegfried with a complicated expression, and after saying this, he couldn't help but sigh inwardly.

He genuinely didn't want Siegfried to follow the same path as in the game's storyline.

After all, the other party was one of the few characters in the Imperial camp that he felt regretful about.

As an Imperial faction character who appears in the mid-game, Siegfried's early life was unremarkable, but his later life was filled with tragedy.

Forced to join the Imperial camp by the nobles of the kingdom, Siegfried, with the added power of the Wild Hunt gained through mutation, carved out his own name in the Imperial Army, which was controlled by nobles.

But while power brought him glory, it also brought him disaster.

After discovering that he had mastered a unique magic formula and possessed the ability to attack over a wide area.

Faced with the overwhelming force of the allied forces' level 5 Magic Workshop, which could weaken magic by 90%, the Leviathan, a cataclysmic biological behemoth created through biological modification and fusion technology, and the Damocles, a sky behemoth built with Heim alchemy technology, capable of completely destroying a city with a population of one million in just one minute, the allied forces were completely overwhelmed.

The Empire, already weakened by defeat in the Battle of Walden and the depletion of its magic lake, which prevented it from creating new Imperial Magus Soldiers, could only eke out a living under the absolute crushing force of this military might.

The empire's once vast number of magical soldiers were being consumed at an alarming rate in the face of this war with such a disparity in military equipment.

At this time, the imperial leadership also realized the terrifying power of the Allied forces' advanced military equipment and wanted to catch up, but unfortunately the Allied forces would not give the empire any breathing room.

Just as the empire was suffering defeat after defeat and its leadership was preparing to accept defeat and surrender in humiliation.

The information that Siegfried was a mutated mage whose unique spells could ignore the suppression effect on the magic workshop was presented to Duke Mosilis, who was then the Grand Marshal of the Imperial Army.

After submitting Siegfried's test report to the Imperial Magic Research Society and analyzing the data, it was determined that the magical symbiotic factors in Siegfried's body could be transplanted into ordinary soldiers through modification experiments, so as to achieve a large-scale number of symbiotes to fight against the Allied forces.

Therefore, Duke Mosilis, who had been driven to the brink of defeat by the Allied forces, did not hesitate to unite with Chancellor Wolff, who, due to the Empire's successive defeats, had no desire to contend for power with Emperor Wilhelm.

Through secret discussions, these two powerful figures, who respectively held military and administrative power in the Imperial Army, quickly finalized a plan called the 'Imperial New Magician Combat Legion'.

The key figure in this project was Siegfried.

In order to get Siegfried to participate in the experiment, Duke Moses took advantage of the fact that Siegfried, then a colonel and commander of the 1st Army Corps, was away at the front to fight, and had his family massacred and the blame placed on the Allied forces.

Therefore, after learning that his family had been slaughtered by the 'Allied Forces', Siegfried, under the influence of hatred, resolutely agreed to the invitation to become an experimental subject and became the mother of the new Imperial Army, which is the new magician combat legion.

He also became the empire's most steadfast anti-Allied leader.

To ensure the activity of the symbiotic factors and improve the success rate of the experiments, after discovering that bone marrow transplantation was far more effective than ordinary cell transplantation and could create a stronger new army of mages, the New Mage Research Laboratory, with the permission of Duke Mosilis, began to conduct inhumane transplantation experiments on Siegfried. They successfully created 12 Grand Mages far surpassing the ancient magic system, and after fusing with Siegfried's bone marrow, each mastered a unique spell, collectively known as the Twelve Protectors.

These twelve individuals were also the main force of the 'Allied Special Operations Department' in the later stages of the Empire's fight against the female protagonist Anna Splinter, representing one of the few remaining shining moments of the Empire before its complete demise.

After the creation of the Twelve Protectors was completed, he had been drained of his value. Due to the experiment, his prefrontal lobe was removed, causing him to lose most of his emotions. Furthermore, while fighting against Serbia on the front lines, he shot out the Serbian's right eye with an arrow. Enraged Serbia then severed his left hand and pierced through the right half of his head.

Although he barely survived thanks to treatment, Siegfried lost his memories of the past and was eliminated because he lost his ability to fight.

Perhaps considering his contributions to the empire, Duke Moses did not go too far. Instead, he put Siegfried in a nursing home, intending for the 52-year-old, but 90-year-old Siegfried to enjoy his final moments in peace.

Unfortunately, facing an allied force whose military, economic, and political strength had reached its peak, even with the creation of a new legion of mages capable of ignoring anti-magic technology, the Empire could only barely slow down the pace of defeat and did not achieve the anticipated turnaround.

Siegfried's ultimate fate was to see the Allied flag on the Damocles' spaceship in the sanatorium, which reminded him of his lost memories. Fueled by hatred, he resolutely chose to burn his last bit of magic.

Using his teeth and right hand, he drew back the long-forgotten bowstring and fired a final arrow, blinded by lies and hatred, at the Damocles Skyship, the Allied Forces' most powerful air combat machine, which had arrived over the Imperial capital, Elenor.

It successfully pierced through the outer defenses of the spaceship, but was stopped by Captain Anna's slashing technique called "Equality of All Things".

He ultimately stood as if he were still in the posture of the bowstring as he walked toward death.

This is Siegfried's final fate in the original game storyline, and one of the few villainous characters that John found hard to accept.

Knowing Siegfried's future fate, John didn't want this unfortunate fellow to join the Imperial army.

Although the empire has now acquired a new magic lake, which can produce a large number of magic soldiers and continue its original glory.

Ultimately, however, as time goes on, magical soldiers will only become obsolete.

Faced with the Allied forces that have developed a technology that can not only greatly defend against magical attacks but also unleash the Damocles spaceships capable of destroying a city in an instant, unless he can influence the direction of the Empire's development, even if he can know the future, he cannot change the Empire's fate.

If he really agrees to Siegfried's request to join the army, then not to mention ten years later, it will probably be within two years that the Empire will be forced to relinquish the territories it had previously conquered due to the third stage of its attack on the magic workshops and the attack of the Scorpion One anti-magic giant, a masterpiece of early biological modification technology.

Meanwhile, Siegfried, who has already joined the army, will likely be discovered in advance by Grand Marshal Moses, who will then propose that damned plan to build a new imperial army, thus leading Siegfried down the same path as in the story.

At that time, whether or not to protect Siegfried, the officer who had recommended him for enlistment, would become a difficult question.

If he were to refuse Duke Mosilis's advice out of conscience, John could foresee, even now, the terrible retribution that awaited him.

After all, Duke Mosilis's reputation as the "Crazy Blood Lion of the Empire" was well-deserved; he wouldn't care about public opinion like the Allies did.

At that time, he had probably already retired due to the failure of the 'Dormammu reforms'.

If the other party really wanted to mess with him, it would be as easy as crushing an ant.

John would never sit idly by and wait to die. So, without a doubt, under the threat brought by Moses, John knew very well that he would choose to confront him head-on.

But the price of doing so was returning to the staunch royalists, and then, along with His Majesty William, whose ministers were all idiots who opposed him, and Dormammu, the unfortunate old man who had spent most of his life sitting on the sidelines, he was doomed to perish.

This is clearly contrary to his desire to live a peaceful and comfortable life as a dog.

"So, for your own life, and for my peaceful retirement, Siegfried, please don't come here to die. I'm begging you, okay?"

Looking at the silent Siegfried before him, John sighed with a heavy heart.

He is very troubled right now.

Some even hope that they cannot predict the future.

Because in that way, he wouldn't feel so powerless.

……

(End of this chapter)