Chapter 271
Chapter 271
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 271
Chapter Title: Chapter 14. One Empire, Three Legends (30)
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Originally, I had planned to sync up with some sturdy noble allies at this banquet—like a solid lifeline—then ride that connection straight up to the capital and sort out the poison from the cure while staring down the imperial faces.
But this incident was far beyond that scale.
A witch who had accumulated power through masses of sacrificial victims across repeated reincarnations. Her opponent was the Empire’s 500-year history itself. The power inherent in the word [Emperor] within the Empire, forged from worship and reverence bordering on faith.
‘Kepplak Naidim. Tanned skin, square jaw, low hook nose! Sure, he’s dressed up Empire-style, but this guy never looked like Empire stock to begin with! Damn it, the fifth son! Must’ve slipped out and knocked one up by accident! Wasn’t even Empire-born from the start! That’s how he stayed so grounded amid those [idealistic] nobles! This wastrel wouldn’t know the Emperor’s name, let alone revere him!’
A situation where everything was opaque. I had to press forward, using the few revealed facts as my beacons.
The banquet hall’s bizarre atmosphere. The doll-like nobles’ mood had flipped at the mere mention of the Emperor.
Which meant their original vibe had to stem from its polar opposite: the witch.
The atmosphere had shifted, but their behavior hadn’t changed—aside from their extreme worship of the Emperor. They remained desireless, prioritizing the Empire and the imperial family they served: the state of “good nobles.”
The influences of the witch and the Emperor repelled each other, yet produced the same effects.
.
.
.
.
The power they wielded was the same? The Empire’s 500-year history—that near-divine power—was something the witch possessed too?
[Sure about that?]
‘....It’s not fact. It’s inference. Accuracy under 60%.'
My thoughts leaped endlessly, spreading out, but the gaps were too vast. No matter how hard I racked my brain, I couldn’t judge what was right or wrong.
Midway through, an oddly nagging sensation. Tuk, tuk.
If my assumption held, this was an impossible contradiction.
‘If the Empire is unconsciously linked under the Emperor’s name. If the Emperor is essentially a god within the territory—why leave the witch’s malignant seed in the Empire? Why allow it to push right up to the imperial doorstep? How is the witch even opposing such ancient power?’
I had no idea. The more I unraveled, the deeper into a pit I seemed to fall.
‘....Enough. More thinking will just stack up forced assumptions. Trust your head. If you can’t grasp it now, it means the info isn’t there yet. Don’t waste time pointlessly. There’s no time. No....!’
A situation unsolvable by thought alone. That meant I had to move, one way or another.
“Lucilla, how are you holding up?”
“Um.... A bit better, I think.”
“Anyone else feel off from their usual selves?”
We were in the middle of the street just outside the banquet hall, but grasping the situation came first. No—if my prediction was right, it wouldn’t matter much where we went from here.
“Um.... I actually felt kinda weird in the banquet hall too.”
“Aldrich? What exactly?”
“Yeah. As a soul sorcerer, I’m sensitive to curses and such, so I figured I’d be fine.... But I got swept up in the hall’s atmosphere more than I should’ve. Before I knew it, when they approached, I was thinking stuff like, ‘Talk about inheritance for lost houses and lands—noble society’ll bite even if I’ve been out of it forever.’ And I’ve never breathed a word of that past to anyone but you lot in my life.”
“Damn it.... Yeah, makes sense. Aldrich, you were an Empire noble too. Lucilla. One word that comes to mind with ‘Emperor.’”
“Uh.... Supreme? Sage God?”
Damn. Just as I thought.
“Lucilla. You’ve tagged along with plenty of Empire-bound caravans, right?”
“Yeah. The Aedran house mostly shuttles between the Empire, Teldrat, and Lordric.”
“So you know how massive the Emperor’s name carries in the Empire.”
“Y....eah. Even the neighborhood kids go around singing songs that show respect for the Emperor?”
Lucilla had only sensed something off.
Aldrich had gone as far as plotting actions, even scheming to insert himself among them.
The degrees varied, but it clearly hit Empire natives hard.
“Notum, Yggdrasil. How far into the holy lower city have you been?”
“Just around the banquet hall. Guards started glaring if we tried going farther.”
“Damn. Capital guards aren’t your average joes....”
“Professor, hate to interrupt your thinking, but don’t keep it to yourself—share with the group. What’s going down in the capital?”
Only then did the Professor realize he’d been muttering to himself without briefing the others, and he continued with a concise explanation.
“Simply put, the force that makes the Empire the Empire seems concentrated in the capital right now.”
“Force?”
“Yeah. Just like us mages override phenomena with powerful personal insight, the Empire’s entire populace of subjects has turned the Emperor into something close to the ideal monarch from legend—through their unwavering faith in the ‘Great Emperor.’”
The foundational knowledge for understanding GG.
A world where belief overrides reality.
Within the Empire, the Emperor’s authority was absolute, extending from the capital’s great nobles to the fringe provincial ones, preventing them from exploiting the populace or hoarding wealth unchecked. The robust reign of a strong monarch reinforced that faith in turn.
That cycle had repeated for 500 years in the Empire. The phrase “the Emperor is the Empire” became literal reality.
“The Emperor is the Empire....”
“Everything from here is speculation. Right now’s a battle for the throne—the era when that great power passes to the next generation. With the power’s source shifting, it’s gotta be unstable, right? The image tied to the word ‘Emperor’ changes, after all.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“No clue how she pulled it off, but the Emperor didn’t block the witch with that insane power for some reason. Meanwhile, the witch slipped in. You felt that banquet hall flip like a pancake, yeah?”
“Um.... I’d stepped out by then, but yeah—definitely felt my hair stand on end.”
“Both are forces that ‘make Empire folk do their duty as imperial subjects.’ Felt different ‘cause the sources differ.”
Not puppets without free will. Just unconsciously devoted to what they ought to do as Empire citizens. They’d still chase personal desires, even pull off illegal stuff sometimes.
But under the giant hand moving the Empire like its own body, they’d unconsciously veer toward contributing to the Empire’s growth.
[That’s straight-up Big Brother leveled up to Big Emperor. Hey, I’m feeling it too. Witch side. Been itching somewhere since earlier.]
‘What?’
[You. Been antsy all day, right? Like you gotta block something, dunno what.]
‘....No way?’
Come to think of it, yeah. Even during the daytime talk with Hyde about the oracle, that weird urgency to do something had hit hard.
[Yep. That’s it. Impulse. Felt it in the banquet hall too—then poof, gone the second the Emperor’s name dropped. Came out, antsy again. Like flipping a coin: land Emperor, it’s ‘Ooh, Emperor! Gonna serve the Emperor!’ Flip to witch, it’s ‘Aaah, gotta do something! I’ve got stuff to do! Right now!’
‘That’s....’
[To me, they look similar. Aldrich’s backstory. Those mansion servants too. Kicked off with one murder, but by the end, everyone was a killer. Something kept egging their minds on. Stay put and you’re done for. Stay and you die. Stay, stay! Gotta do something! —Anxiety egged ‘em on, and the three murders set it off. Get what I mean? It’s ‘Gotta do it for the Emperor!’ with the ‘Emperor’ keyword yanked out. Just ‘Gotta do it’ looping in their heads, mechanically craving some vague goal. Like you today.]
Spot on. That odd palpitation. The inexplicable anxiety. It’d started right after entering the capital. If that was true...
‘Meaning it’s happening here too?’
[What’s stopping it? If the witch really is that fallen saint of light from ages ago. She’d react to a saint of light right up in her grill. No idea what she’s waiting for.... But if she senses a threat closing in, she might trigger it early.]
Boom. Just like at Aldrich’s mansion that day.
Hyde’s voice echoed through my head like a reverberation.
Squeak—squeak—squeak—
Between my thoughts, the sound of a broom sweeping the pristine street pierced through.
A maid mechanically sweeping a stone path without a single fallen leaf or speck of dust.
Stepping in time with the sinking sun and dusk, a lamplighter igniting the lamps precisely as the shadows touched them.
“Professor. Sun’s setting.”
“Yes.”
“Faint, but the curse’s aura is closing in too. I can feel it now.”
“Yes.”
“You listening?”
I couldn’t focus on Aldrich’s words. The intensifying premonition tracking the dying sun. The moment scattered facts converged into one answer: enlightenment.
“Trigger....”
“Hm?”
“Trigger. The spark for the Telldmeyer house tragedy! The anomaly that exploded the anxiety and impulses! Damn it all!”
The sun had set by now, shadows stretching beyond the holy lower city’s walls—walls too artistic to even call defensive.
Grand marble slabs erected, the Empire’s history and myths carved into reliefs at their centers: beautiful walls.
In the morning, sunlight had pierced the holes, etching the Empire’s history in light on the ground. But now, at sunset, the shadows creeping beyond those walls carried a wholly different gleam.
Ominous and writhing, blaspheming the myths in some form.
Step. Step. Step. Step.
“Inspection. Sword. Gate. Holy lower city. Night passage requires. Valid reason and permit—”
The guards hadn’t budged all day, but now they marched in step toward us.
Ting-a-ling! Ting-a-ling!
“Please serve us.”
“Shoes are dirty.”
“Clothing seams.”
“Meal.”
“Bath?”
“Please, serve us?”
Crash, crash-crash!
From the mansions filling the city, the ring of summoning bells echoed as uniformed menservants and maids filed out in rows.
No hint of aggression or slyness in their movements, but the eerie zeal pooling in their eyes forced our group to step back.
“Not mind domination. No signs of that scale of black magic....”
“No. It’s the result of cleanly severing just the ‘Emperor’ from the deepest behavioral imperatives ingrained in every imperial subject’s unconscious. No malice. No orders. They’re just moving on their own.”
They were lost in confusion too, no doubt.
It wasn’t the kind of force you could resist. It was the bedrock keeping the Empire as the Empire. An impulse etched into their souls.
But with its direction castrated, the confused servants were charging out to do anything.
Some toward their masters’ locations.
Some toward their usual workplaces.
Some.... toward the anomalous. Outsiders. Anything out of the ordinary.
And the tiny spark igniting that malice-free chaos was.
Clop clop clop clop.
“Oh my. If it isn’t the Saint and the Lady Aedran’s group.”
A noble returning under the ministrations of entranced servants. Marquis Belpatié, his eyes similarly glazed. Definitely the banquet host marquis.
He parted the guards and servants, looking utterly serene—as if blind to the bizarre events unfolding across the city.
“Deeply disappointed. Thought you a master of protocol, yet you fled the hall without so much as a goodbye. Was my banquet so lacking? No—as a protocol expert, that rude exit must’ve carried intent.”
The sun had dipped, streetlamps’ glow oddly failing to pierce the deepening dusk. And now it was clear as day: the two auras wavering over Marquis Belpatié’s head. The Emperor’s golden aura. The witch’s violet aura.
And finally, I understood. The progression of this quest tangled between the Empire and the witch.
“Huh, Marquis! There’s been a misunderstanding! At the time, Lady Aedran’s condition was so poor—”
“Yes. It seems the Saint’s group has no intention of serving His First Imperial Highness.”
The conclusion from his self-answered question. Riding those words, violet aura swallowed the marquis’s head. At the same instant, a similar violet hue spread to the guards and servants clustered around him.
A checkerboard game. Flip one, and all adjacent squares take its color.
“Invaders. Foreigners who entered the capital with ill intent.”
At the marquis’s icy declaration, uproar ignited amid the crowd—where bizarre fervor and daze had mingled.
“All men, ready spears! Defend the city from the invaders!”
“Invaders! Protect the houses! The mansions! Master!”
“Kill them!”
“Th-this! Water Wall!”
Shwaa!
Ottoman threw up a wall of water to block the blindly charging servants, shouting urgently.
“No clue what’s causing all this, but one thing’s clear: we gotta move now! What’s the plan?!”
“For now, force our way through. No one dies. The instant casualties appear, ‘survival instinct’ gets tacked onto that directionless impulse—and the Telldmeyer tragedy repeats!”
“Where to?! Even we can’t punch through endless knights and mages to the capital!”
“No. Next target is.... over there!”
The Professor pointed to another carriage heading for a distant mansion. Surrounded by servants itching to act, guards muttering about escort duty.
“Lucilla! While we hold off these lunatics without hurting ‘em, you convince that guy!”
“P-Persuade him? In this mess—who even is that noble....”
“Fail, and we gotta kill everyone here and march up! Every standout noble around—not just him, every one heading to the capital!”
A game. The entire capital was one massive board.
Amid the spreading chaos. Nobles were the tokens. Still colorless, dazed with coexisting Emperor-witch powers.
The noble confronting us head-on was now a violet token. Hostile. Bent on blocking our path to the Emperor.
If he reached others and conveyed his will successfully, those nobles and their groups would turn violet too.
‘Thoughts paralyzed by excess impulse and confusion. Ideologies and urges spreading like a plague.... What kind of thinking, what intent designed something like this?’
For a split second, the witch’s words Aldrich had mentioned flashed in the Professor’s mind.
[I was just born this way. Couldn’t be helped. I’ve decided not to hold back anymore.]
“....No time. As fast as possible—turn as many nobles as we can to the ‘friendly’ side and advance.”
“Water orbs! Damn.... They’re coming up from the servants’ district too. Friendly side—where?!”
“Where the Emperor is! If that’s impossible, where those closest to the Emperor’s name are! Where the witch’s influence is weakest!”
Boom!
The Professor batted aside a guard’s spear tip slicing through the water barrier and bolted toward the next noble.
Hoping that the capital proper, Allamperia, held stronger sway from the Emperor than here.
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