Chapter 72
Chapter 72
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 72
Chapter Title: The Purpose of the Miracle
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“I met the Saint like this...”
Slowly, I recounted everything that had happened after leaving home. The Emperor listened quietly. The story of going to Larphentia. The tale of being pelted with stones by its residents. And the story of receiving kindness from the people at the orphanage.
As he listened, the Emperor pondered various things inwardly.
‘I’ll have to tell the Finance Minister to deliver sponsorship funds to those men named Ralph and Clark. For people like them, offering government positions wouldn’t be proper compensation.’
Even so, the Empire still had many good people. Of course, in any era, for every wicked soul, there are those with warm hearts. That warmth had saved his daughter today, but how could the lives they touched be limited to just one person?
Such people would refuse awards anyway, so he planned to support them anonymously with a large sum instead of formal honors.
He pulled out a pen and jotted down the names Ralph and Clark, then continued listening to the story. It was quite a mystical tale. The Emperor found himself inwardly marveling several times as he heard it.
“It was truly an incredible power. That Lineage Sapling...”
Seeing the princess speak of the priest named Kyle, and hearing the story,
the Emperor fell deep into thought. A miracle powerful enough to propel an Expert straight to Master in one go. He immediately understood why the girl was so excited.
The truly precious things couldn’t be bought with money.境界 couldn’t be attained by throwing cash around.
There were countless people in the world who would do anything for it. Raising one’s境界 would make pledging loyalty to the Emperor a trivial matter. Gathering such people wouldn’t be difficult at all.
‘But that’s not it.’
The desires that possibility could awaken were enough to consume a single person, but the old man, with little time left to live, didn’t succumb to temptation. He looked straight ahead, confronting what lay hidden within.
Thinking about it, his life had always been a battle against desire. Under the name of the Empire, the Emperor had completely forsaken personal pleasures.
He had even scrimped on meals, surviving on thin gruel to save money for Ardein’s military funds. It wasn’t that the Empire lacked money. It was just that there were so many places it needed to go.
National affairs were money-devouring ghouls. No matter how much tax revenue came in, demands poured from every direction, leaving no room to breathe. To allocate funds for the military, he inevitably had to pull from elsewhere, causing shortfalls that erupted into problems. To fix those, he had to increase revenue.
That was why he had freed the imperial slaves, turning them into freemen, reformed farmland to make serfs into smallholders, and developed mines to extract gold and silver. Only through such measures had he sought to rebuild the Empire’s wealth-generating capacity.
There had been some results, but dissatisfaction had piled up greatly in various regions.
Even before his ascension, the Empire had begun springing leaks everywhere, and cooperating with influential figures had been not a choice but a necessity. Reforms were beyond even dreaming of; he had managed only improvements.
But that was something. Throughout history, those who already possessed wealth and power didn’t easily yield it without institutional pressure. Merely trimming them to avert the worst crises was achievement enough for his reign.
In any case, as long as he lived and kept watch, the Empire teetered but did not sink. Whether it would after his death was another matter.
‘He said he was going to the North Pole to find the meaning of cycles. The North Pole... I see.’
That was why he could view ‘Kyle’ objectively, with eyes unclouded by desire.
And whatever unknown entity lay behind him as well.
‘If a god gave such an oracle to its Saint, there must be a reason for it.’
From the story, this unknown god was neither a personal god nor an Ancient God—something nebulous, hard to pin down.
It wielded angels, unmistakably marking it as a personal god, but rumor had it that the angel appeared as a giant cradling the night sky as it came to them.
‘I can’t know the reason, but I can guess at its intent, just a little. Ardein. How could you miss this?’
And that god had lifted the curse of the Ancient Gods upon the vampires. It had resolved the punishment of the sun laid upon them. The Emperor didn’t find it all that strange that this being’s stature might surpass the Ancient Gods. He didn’t consider the Ancient Gods true gods, after all.
“This fruit is what allowed them to walk under the sun. The Saint called it Firefly Crystal Fruit. He says that swallowing this fruit restructures the body, purging all the bad parts and leaving only the good ones in a new flesh. I brought one for you, Father.”
Watching the princess offer him the Firefly Crystal Fruit, the Emperor noticed her cheeks flushing red again. Every time she mentioned Kyle, she seemed unable to hide her excitement. He grew quite curious about how his daughter truly felt about him.
Was he an object of affection? Worship? Or merely a tool for use?
Likely a tangled mix of all three in equal measure. Her flushed cheeks suggested a woman in love, but whether it was love or a longing for a superhuman army, even the Emperor couldn’t quite tell.
“If used well, this fruit alone could create a superhuman army loyal only to the imperial family...”
His daughter passionately spoke of the superhuman army, holy power that regenerated limbs, and the clay oven that could bake mud to feed an entire force. Truly, she was born a soldier and general.
She viewed everything through a military lens. Securing that priest would bring immense power to the imperial family—especially military might.
Watching her rant about how they must somehow make him the imperial family’s strength, the Emperor finally spoke, interrupting her. Her thinking wasn’t wrong, but she clearly failed to see the bigger picture.
“Child.”
Indeed, Ardein suited the role of general more than Emperor.
It was such a simple realization—why hadn’t he seen it before?
“If what you say is true, the god that priest serves is neither a personal god nor an Ancient God. Then it must be a true god, right?”
“Yes. But why do you ask...?”
A puzzled expression crossed her face as she answered. Weren’t all gods gods? True gods and false gods—what distinction was there? The Emperor gazed at her and quietly spoke.
“Ardein. Do you think the Ancient Gods are gods?”
“Of course. They are the laws of the universe, beings infinitely above humans.”
“No. They are not gods. We merely call them that because we see them as such; at their core, they are the laws of the universe. If beings far more advanced than us fully comprehend and grasp every detail of those laws, would the Ancient Gods be gods to them? No. They would be mere laws, exploitable at will.”
Seeing the princess struggling to grasp his point, the Emperor slowly rose from his seat and clasped his hands behind his back.
“It’s only because our level is so low and lacking that we can’t even comprehend parts of those laws, making them seem godlike and grand to us. So to us, they are true gods. But we can’t assume that for everyone.”
Why did lightning strike from the sky? What powered the sun to shine so brightly? To some, these were mystical, auspicious phenomena; to others, mere matters explainable by theory.
By drawing the mysteries around us into the realm of understanding, eventually even the so-called Ancient Gods would become comprehensible. The laws of the universe would be fully seen through, grasped in every detail.
Such a day was far off, not just in the Emperor’s time but even by the Empire’s end. Still, thought experiments were possible. If beings existed that fully understood the universe’s laws, the Ancient Gods would be nothing more than tools at their disposal.
The current continent, ignorant of the cosmos, revered them as gods out of awe. Even the Ancient Gods were like that.
As for personal gods, the continent actually knew more.
“They aren’t personal gods either. We already know examples of humans being deified. We know their power stems fundamentally from faith and belief, and we’ve grasped much of it already. Beings we can comprehend can’t be called gods. That’s my view.”
The Emperor knew that the Three Main Gods and the evil god Oberta had once been human. What was so special about entities deified by gathering human divinity?
The Heavenly God Aldehir was slightly different—not human-born, but still born from human aspirations. Where there were people, there were gods. The five divine beings worshipped on the continent were such existences.
“Even called the Three Main Gods, they’ve merely accumulated faith over long ages to earn the title of ‘High Gods.’ The longer they gathered belief, the stronger they became. The Demon King in the North Pole would be far harder to understand than them, wouldn’t he?”
Even as High Gods, humans could comprehend the source of their power. How could that be divine?
It was talk the Emperor couldn’t voice carelessly outside, but alone with her, he could. If Grand Bishop Armata heard, he’d foam at the mouth and curse the Emperor. It was that radical.
“But the one that Kyle serves is utterly incomprehensible from start to finish. Do you know why that god calls itself the God of Hope?”
“...I don’t.”
Ardein, who had never considered such things, broke into a cold sweat as she answered.
“We’ve heard that a god we can’t understand gave its Saint the Lineage Sapling. That sapling’s effect brings future power into the past—transcending time itself.”
“Yes.”
“And that god issued an oracle sending the Saint to the North Pole. The Saint concluded that the one who best understands the god’s will is there, which is no different from a divine command. Do you follow so far?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must also understand what that Lineage Sapling you spoke of was sent for.”
Uh... I don’t?
Ardein couldn’t bring herself to say it and fell silent.
“What awaits in the North Pole? Grimudo.”
The Emperor pinpointed the crux and explained point by point.
“That Lineage Sapling was likely a miracle sent with Grimudo in mind. Not for raising the superhuman army you described.”
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