The Imperial Palace (2)
After leaving the cleanup of the slain monsters to the Imperial Family, the carriage set off once more for the imperial palace.
Selena was seeing the power of the runes for the first time, so even after we arrived at the palace she kept stealing glances at me.
I hadn’t intended to hide my power in the first place, so I’d shown my hand early, but the look she kept sending me clearly said, Explain what just happened right now!
I briefly considered ignoring her, but since we had the academy in common, I decided to speak first.
“Is there something you’re curious about?”
As soon as I asked, she looked genuinely startled.
She blinked in obvious surprise, then asked, “...What you just used—was that some kind of word magic?”
I fell silent for a moment.
Rune power was not the sort of thing that could be understood through a simple explanation.
I needed to smooth it over somehow, but unfortunately, Selena was not the sort of person an awkward excuse would get past. I was just about to cut the conversation short when she beat me to it.
“At first, I thought you were human. But now I get it.”
“...Pardon? What exactly are you talking about?”
“You’re not human, are you?”
What?
“Of course I’m human.”
“Human? Have you ever seen a human use word magic?”
“I’m sure there are a few.”
“No, there aren’t! Well—fine, maybe there are! But at most they can make a flame or two. There’s no such thing as killing monsters just by speaking to them!”
Strictly speaking, rune power did fall under the category of word magic.
Once you reached Unity, the final stage of the runes, you could manifest its power through sheer will alone, but by that point it was more accurate to call you something closer to a demigod than a human.
Rune power was a force that twisted causality, and without language as its medium, it simply could not be expressed. That was why it required an activation word, and from that moment on, if one had to define its category, it became word magic.
But...
How am I supposed to explain this?
There wasn’t really any way to explain it properly.
More than that, I couldn’t be bothered to walk through it point by point.
But if I left it alone, her misunderstanding showed no sign of fading.
“...So you weren’t human after all.”
What was worse, Rudine, who was sitting beside me, was being thrown off by Selena’s words as well.
She had even started muttering strange things under her breath.
“So that’s what she meant when she said you were the master of demons.”
“What? Master of demons? Hey, what did you just say?”
“The other day, in some ruin of a collapsed temple, that rotten old tree said Luke was the master of demons...”
“Master of demons...”
Selena stroked her chin and muttered to herself.
Then, as if she’d suddenly realized something, she widened her eyes and exclaimed, “Ha, hahaha...! Now I get it. You were a dragon, weren’t you?”
“A dragon?”
“Yes! Dragonkin! What you used just now was dragon speech, wasn’t it? It has to be. Damn, that makes sense. You were suspicious even at the academy. I thought I was going to lose my mind watching you pull insane crap for five straight years, but now I understand. You just weren’t human at all, were you? But weren’t dragonkin supposed to be extinct?”
“They are extinct.”
“Then how?”
She stared at me as if she truly couldn’t make sense of a single word I’d said.
I let out a dry laugh and answered, “I’m human.”
“Ah, I see. It’s a secret.”
...None of this is even remotely getting through.
It was almost impressive, really. I almost had to wonder if we were actually having the same conversation.
Dragonkin, my ass.
Dragonkin had been wiped out long ago by the Outer Gods, just like the elves.
They were one of the lost races you only read about in ancient books.
If you searched hard enough, you might still find traces of dragonkin scattered across the continent, but at least as far as I was concerned, they had nothing to do with me.
Just then, I spotted armored knights approaching from far ahead in neat rows.
“Are you Luke Richter?”
“I am.”
The man at the front checked our group at a glance, then nodded and turned away.
“This way, please.”
I followed him into the imperial palace.
Selena was still muttering nonsense behind me—something along the lines of, “Well, of course. There’s no way he was human.”—but I simply shut my ears to it.
She didn’t look entirely sane to begin with, and when a madwoman starts talking, ignoring her is usually the wisest course.
The knight led us, naturally enough, to the entrance of the imperial palace.
As I climbed the stairs, a servant waiting by the doors hurried over to confirm my identity.
“Presenting Luke Richter, second son of the House of Richter!”
Creeeak—
With that thunderous announcement, the tightly shut doors of the imperial palace swung open.
Every gaze inside turned toward me at once.
Whispers about me rippled through the hall like waves, but I ignored them and walked on.
That was when I saw a familiar face.
It was the Imperial Chancellor, the very man who had first sent me to Blackmore.
“Luke Richter, you’ve come.”
“For the glory of the Empire.”
“Enough with the formalities. Come this way. His Majesty is waiting.”
I followed the chancellor through the corridor leading deeper into the palace.
We turned this way and that, passed through the main hall, and finally arrived at the reception room.
“Your Majesty, Luke Richter requests an audience.”
“Show him in.”
Creeeak—
The chancellor stepped through the open doorway with measured, disciplined strides.
He was the very image of a nobleman, composed to the point of perfection.
“Everyone accompanying Luke Richter is to wait here. Selena, that includes you.”
“Rudine, wait here for a moment.”
“...Okay.”
“I’ll be waiting, Lord of the Sixth Seat.”
At the title, the chancellor’s eyes narrowed.
Then he lowered his voice just enough that only I could hear him.
“Have they already promised you a lordship?”
“They’re just saying what they want. You needn’t take it too seriously.”
I smiled innocently and followed after the chancellor.
How long had we walked?
At last, my eyes met the emperor’s as he sat at the far end of the reception room.
Red hair, gold eyes—the unmistakable traits of the imperial bloodline.
A massive frame, a crushing stare, and an air of overwhelming authority.
The one and only Sun of the Empire: Emperor Termier Eckhart.
In practical terms, he was something like my boss.
I immediately performed the proper imperial etiquette, bringing one arm to my chest, dropping one knee forward, and bowing at the waist.
“I greet the Sun of the Empire.”
“That will do. I’m sorry to summon you when you must already be tired from all the work you’ve had to shoulder. Sit here.”
The emperor smiled warmly and invited me to have some tea.
I sat down and sipped at the cup while watching his expression.
Even I, someone without mana, could feel the pressure rolling off him enough to break into a cold sweat.
It wasn’t mana. It was the unique charisma carried only by imperial blood.
“You’re probably wondering what this is about.”
I wasn’t particularly wondering.
I already knew exactly what it was about.
Still, I couldn’t very well say that outright, so I put on a suitably clueless face.
“Yes, I’m curious.”
The emperor gave a quiet snort and continued in a low voice.
“A woman came to the imperial palace a few days ago.”
“...”
“Arkan. One of the six heavens of the continent, and the woman who sits at the very top of the Monarch Assembly.”
“I see.”
The emperor tapped the table beside him twice with his fingertips.
“I knew her. We weren’t close enough to call each other friends, but as fellow travelers on the same path, we respected each other’s territory.”
“...”
“And then, after appearing again for the first time in decades, she said this to me: she had come across a talent she wanted, and I was to hand that talent over to the Monarch Assembly.”
I wanted to smack my own forehead.
So she really had gone to the palace after all.
No, I had known she would come looking for me.
I just hadn’t expected her to do it so bluntly.
“So I asked her.”
The emperor’s voice flowed on like water.
“Your name came up.”
“...I see.”
“She began insisting, right in front of me, that you absolutely had to be placed as the Sixth Lord.”
“...”
“As a civil servant, you belong to the Imperial Family by default, so I trust you know her demand was an outrageous overreach.”
“Of course.”
“The proper response would be to refuse her outright.”
The emperor took another sip of tea, his voice cool and measured.
Yet his face still wore that same gentle smile as he went on.
“Perhaps she knew that, because she made me an offer instead. Would you like to hear it?”
“I’m listening.”
“She said she would break neutrality. She would overturn the Monarch Assembly’s policy, which had been upheld for centuries, and establish a relationship of highest priority with the Imperial Family.”
“...”
“On top of that, she even handed over a Grand Lord’s token. She swore that just once, the Monarch Assembly would aid the Imperial Family with absolute commitment.”
“...”
“The oath of a Grand Lord is never light.”
Where our eyes met, sparks of cold electricity seemed to jump between us.
The emperor gave a faint smile.
Then his expression hardened.
“What did you think when I first sent you to manage that cursed land?”
“...I thought it was odd.”
“Why?”
“Because Blackmore isn’t the kind of place one civil servant can manage alone.”
“True enough. It isn’t a place a normal civil servant could ever handle by himself.”
The emperor looked at me with a mildly indifferent expression.
“But you were never a normal civil servant, were you?”
What?
“I heard enough about you during your academy days to make my ears ring. There was no way I couldn’t know. Reports were coming in at every opportunity, and every single one of them was overwhelmingly favorable to the Imperial Family. Thanks to you, we’ve caught more than a hundred spies so far, and you’ve uncovered over ten million gold coins in embezzled funds. And that’s not all. That scholarly workshop that turned the academic world upside down—wasn’t that your alias? According to the dean, your papers alone brought forward scientific progress by at least several centuries.”
“...”
None of it was wrong.
It had all been the optimal route for a bastard with nothing to his name to graduate top of the academy and land a civil servant post with a free pass.
Of course, the process had been noisy as hell, but honestly, I hadn’t cared all that much.
And yet everything I’d done had piled up into a snowball and come rolling back at me like a boomerang.
“After quite a long meeting, we ultimately chose you as the administrator.”
“...”
“Even then, I was only half-convinced. But once you entered Blackmore, you annihilated the Shadow Society, purged the Empire’s tumors, and hunted down a total of three thousand five hundred and sixty mana beasts.”
Had I?
When he put it like that, it sounded absurdly grand.
“Luke Richter.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“What do you think about becoming the Sixth Lord?”
“...”
I was at a loss for words.
But the emperor’s eyes were already brimming with some nameless expectation.
“Your Majesty, I...”
“As a rule, civil servants cannot hold a lordship as well, but what does that matter? I’m the Emperor of the Empire, and I say it’s fine.”
“...No, I don’t really have any intention of becoming a lord...”
“Ho ho. There isn’t another talent like you. I have very high expectations for you. Special inspectors are ordinarily assigned a new post every five years, but I’m thinking of making an exception for you. Besides, Blackmore is Imperial territory, isn’t it?”
“Pardon? No, I’m perfectly satisfied with my current position...”
“Then we’ll make you the lord of that land. Arkan said the same thing, in fact. A lord rules a lordship, so why not make the Sixth Lord’s lordship Blackmore?”
“Your Majesty, I am more than satisfied with my current position, and I have even less interest in becoming the Sixth Lord. I plan to retire at a proper time and live an ordinary life—”
At that moment, the emperor slammed his teacup down onto the side table.
“Retire?”
“...Yes?”
“I’m afraid there’s no such thing as retirement for a lord.”
Damn it, what?
“I look forward to working with you. Sixth Lord.”