NOVEL WEB Chapter 90
Daniel’s bold question left the officer confused.
‘He doesn’t know Daniel Steiner?’
The war hero of the Empire and the man who made waves worldwide with his total war speech was none other than Daniel Steiner.
Even someone across the sea in Belanos had to know about Daniel Steiner if they had ever read a newspaper or listened to the radio.
And yet, here he was, claiming not to know who he was, which only fueled the officer’s suspicions.
‘Moreover…’
The man in front of him matched the description of Daniel Steiner provided by the higher-ups.
Though his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses, his features were an exact match for the portrait of Daniel Steiner.
The officer, switching his gaze between the portrait and Daniel, finally managed to speak up.
“…If possible, could you take off your sunglasses? I won’t hold you any longer once I’ve confirmed your identity.”
Daniel let out a low hum of agreement.
He expected the officer wouldn’t back down easily, and his head was starting to ache from the pressure.
‘If I take off the sunglasses, my identity is exposed. But…’
Let’s think from the officer’s perspective.
Could a junior officer just haul a regular citizen of Belanos if he just looked somewhat similar?
Even if he had the authority, he wouldn’t act without the higher-ups’ approval first.
‘The Empire adheres to international law after all.’
If he insisted too strongly, the officer would radio for permission to detain him.
Daniel thought he might buy some time and then find an opening to escape.
He raised his hand.
“I told you, didn’t I?”
He held onto the sunglasses and slowly brought them down, glaring at the officer with a chilling expression.
“I said I’m not someone you know.”
The officer locked eyes with Daniel and felt as if time stopped.
It wasn’t surprising; the sharp gaze resembling a wolf matched precisely with the one depicted in the portrait.
Startled, the officer instinctively raised his hand in a salute, but then froze at a sudden thought.
‘Wait a minute. Insisting he’s not who he says he is…’
Surely, there must be a valid reason for this.
The officer, gulping hard, rifled through his head for Daniel’s achievements.
The key figure behind the Nordia invasion operation.
Holder of the National Order of Goryeo Medal, the Empire’s second-class order.
Holder of the Golden Cross Medal, the Empire’s first-class diplomatic order.
The youngest officer of his rank.
A key figure who ended the fight for the imperial succession rights.
A great orator who united the people with his total war speech.
Just listing these accomplishments was enough to leave anyone speechless.
Daniel had accomplished what most people wouldn’t even dream of in a lifetime.
Truly, Daniel Steiner was a genius staff officer.
His enemies could hardly even guess his thoughts.
‘He’s obviously hiding his identity as part of some operation I’m not aware of.’
The officer, realizing everything, bowed his head instead of saluting.
“I think I understand what you mean. Then I’ll take my leave.”
With a slight tilt of his military cap as a sign of respect, the officer turned to leave.
The soldiers, too, bowed their heads toward Daniel and began to follow the officer out of the inn.
Daniel watched the scene unfold with a puzzled look.
‘What’s going on? They’re just leaving?’
Though he couldn’t quite read the officer’s thoughts, it certainly wasn’t a bad outcome.
With a sense of relief washing over him, Daniel hurried up the stairs and entered his inn room.
‘There’s not much time. Now’s my chance to escape. The officer has gone, but they’ll still be on high alert.’
The officer would definitely report the person matching Daniel Steiner’s description to the higher-ups.
If that were the case, it wasn’t hard to predict that someone with a higher authority would come with soldiers to verify.
Daniel thought about escaping before they arrived and then turned his gaze out the window, stopping cold.
“…”
In his line of sight were four massive amphibious assault ships anchored at the harbor, looming over the supply vessels beyond.
The scale of the fleet made the Tentarvahem harbor seem tiny, and Daniel let out a despondent sigh.
‘They sent this huge fleet just to find me?’
He had expected maybe a single ship would come, but now he felt an unshakeable fear.
‘…Are they insane?’
He simply couldn’t understand the obsession of Selvia towards him.
Moreover, no matter how he thought about it, there was no way he could escape through that blockade.
*
In the early morning, Prime Minister Lowell Tailwis of Belanos was scratching his head in his office.
‘Why did this have to happen in our territorial waters…?!’
Ever since an Imperial diplomatic vessel was sunk in Belanos’s territorial waters, Lowell hadn’t been able to sleep due to the endless demands and statements from the Empire.
He nearly fainted when he received notification from the Empire to “open the borders.”
Opening the borders meant allowing the Empire’s military to be stationed in Belanos.
For a neutral nation, that was something they could never accept, but with the incident occurring in Belanos’s waters, he had no justification to refuse.
Thanks to that, the Empire’s fleet had entered Tentarvahem harbor without bloodshed and had begun its operations.
With the Empire successfully stationing its troops, Lowell feared what further demands they might make next.
To avoid that, he had ordered the Military Intelligence Agency to quickly find out who opened the territorial waters to the terrorists.
The goal was to take the culprit and hand them over to the Empire to distance themselves from its influence.
‘If we don’t find the culprit first, and the Empire does…’
They might criticize Belanos’s incompetence and request a list of military personnel, attempting to intervene in internal affairs.
That was something Lowell desperately wished to avoid as he closed his eyes and prayed to God.
Knock knock—
Woken by the knocking, Lowell said, “Come in.”
The door to his office opened, and the Director of Defense Intelligence entered.
The director saluted with a tense expression and walked to the center of the office.
“Sir, we have successfully located the culprit in collusion with the terrorists. It is Colonel Edvol, the commander of the Navy’s 12th District.”
That was music to Lowell’s ears.
His face lit up as he clenched his fists in joy.
“Thank goodness! How did you track him down?”
The director hesitated for a moment before finally speaking up.
“I’m sorry, but it wasn’t the Military Intelligence that found the culprit. Edvol came to us and confessed.”
“…He confessed?”
“Yes. I’ve heard he came to Military Intelligence looking dazed and confessed to his crime. But there’s one strange point…”
After a pause, the director continued.
“According to Colonel Edvol, a shadow organization of Daniel Steiner came to his home. He claimed he was threatened and begged for his life, terrified.”
Silence fell between the director and Lowell.
Lowell swallowed hard, feeling as dry as a desert.
“So… you’re saying the military didn’t find the culprit, but rather Daniel Steiner’s shadow organization did? They threatened Colonel Edvol into confessing?”
“That appears to be the case.”
According to the director’s words, it suggested that Daniel Steiner had not been hiding quietly after surviving the sunk vessel.
Instead, Daniel had been active around Tentarvahem, disguised under the pretense of his own death.
Realizing this, Lowell began to breathe heavily.
‘Oh no…’
Lowell knew that his daughter had recently invited a guest to their mansion.
Most of the mansion’s servants were his people.
Having been busy for a while, he hadn’t paid much attention to that unexpected piece of news. But now realizing that Daniel Steiner was alive and had been active sent cold sweat down his back.
With a foreboding feeling washing over him, Lowell hurriedly reached for the telephone on his desk.
Picking up the receiver, he frantically turned the rotary dial.
After several rings, a voice finally came through on the other end.
— Dad? Why are you calling at this hour?
It sounded like his daughter, just waking up.
As he tried to organize his thoughts to say what he needed to, Lowell kept his voice steady.
“Leff, listen carefully. I have a question about the man you invited.”
— Who? Oh, you mean Ribellard? He was a nice guy. Had a great sense of humor.
“That’s not what I’m asking! The description… I mean, do you remember the description of that man when you first met him?”
The Empire had discovered Daniel Steiner’s uniform on the coast and subsequently investigated a shack.
To be precise, they had tracked down the owner of the shack.
The owner was an old man living near the coast, who had been keeping records of items or clothing discarded at the shack.
After receiving that document, the Empire cross-checked it and found that sunglasses, a hat, and several clothing items had gone missing from the shack.
The Empire had shared that information with the government of Belanos in real-time, which meant Lowell knew exactly what kind of outfit Daniel was wearing in Tentarvahem.
Thus, Lowell wanted to verify if the person who had interacted with his daughter was indeed Daniel Steiner based on the description.
— Why on earth do you want to know that? You’re not planning to do anything about it now, are you? I thought it was fine since he seemed like an illegal immigrant…
Leff whined but tried to think back.
— Um, well, he was wearing a fedora and sunglasses. And he had on shabby cotton clothes that were brown on top and gray on the bottom. It looked like something an old man would wear, but surprisingly, he pulled it off pretty well. I guess he’s good-looking?
As Leff described him, Lowell’s hands began to shake.
It matched the information the Empire had provided.
‘So Daniel Steiner is… not only independently searching for the culprit but also interacted with my daughter?’
Including the child he was keeping a secret.
With the intentions of Daniel unclear, panic washed over him.
In the thick silence, just as he was trying to hide his fear, Leff’s voice broke through.
— Oh! And what was it again? He said something like “You should pursue correct politics” to pass on to our damned father.
That instantly made Lowell’s heart sink.
It was unmistakably a threat directed at him, the Prime Minister.
After a few breaths, he reluctantly admitted and slowly set down the receiver.
“Wrong.
Having hung up, a gloomy light filled Lowell’s eyes.
“You’ve gone too far.”
Clenching his teeth, he couldn’t help but sob.
“We’re not dealing with the Empire…”
His sobbing felt like the remorse of one who had given up everything.
“Our true enemy is…”
With his eyes closed and grasping his head, Lowell finally released a voice full of frustration.
“Daniel Steiner. That devil himself…”