The Imperial Palace
In general, when people speak of an imperial family, they mean power.
The personal authority of the sovereign is absolute, and the sovereign’s will is law. It is, quite literally, the purest expression of feudalism.
The world I’d possessed also wore that familiar shape.
On paper, the imperial family stood at the very top, but the nobles were granted their own lands and ruled them independently. In other words, it was the sort of tired old feudal system where the relationship between nobility and throne was, in essence, lord and vassal.
Of course the nobles were allowed a fair amount of autonomy and privilege, which meant that real power was scattered in all sorts of directions.
Which meant one thing.
They were bound to clash sooner or later.
The imperial family wanted centralization; the nobles wanted to preserve the power they already held.
So the shape of their conflict was easy enough to imagine.
Control over magical resources, military strength, the Academy, commercial interests...
Outwardly, peace was maintained, but the shadow war and political checks between the imperial faction and the noble faction had never once ceased since the founding of the Empire.
They were only quiet because neither side had managed to land a fatal blow.
Luke Richter was an illegitimate son.
Born the bastard child of Count Richter’s house, I had no place in noble society. Since this was a barbaric world where even civilization itself had barely taken shape, retiring to farm somewhere was never really an option, so I aimed for the one stable route left to me: government office.
If I was going to survive, I’d need to eat the nation’s rice, however bitter it tasted.
In any case, the end of the world would be stopped by the novel’s original protagonist, so all I’d intended was to work comfortably in some well-treated public post and retire peacefully into old age.
Which is why I’d gone along with the imperial family like a lunatic.
Poking around the nobles at the Academy without a shred of tact, quietly leaking pieces of the original story to the imperial side one after another—all of it had been deliberate.
If I wanted to survive between the imperial family and the nobles, who were constantly keeping each other in check, I needed insurance like that, especially when I had neither power nor backing.
And yet.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no retirement for a territorial lord.”
What was that supposed to mean?
No retirement?
That was no different from my last life at all.
“I’ll be counting on you from now on, Sixth Lord.”
“……”
I was at a loss for words.
I couldn’t possibly not ask.
“Um, Your Majesty?”
“Speak.”
“As you know, I come from Count Richter’s house.”
“I fail to see what that has to do with anything.”
“It has everything to do with it. Count Richter’s house is one of the very hearts of the noble faction, isn’t it? And I’m a bastard. Doesn’t that mean I have no legitimate standing, but plenty of pointless baggage tangled around me?”
The Emperor stroked his chin.
“Continue.”
“Think about it. If you want to make a bastard with nothing to his name into a territorial lord, you’d have to grant him at least a count’s title. Do you really think that’s easy? No matter how much the imperial family has the right to bestow titles, custom exists for a reason.”
“That is true.”
“The backlash won’t be small. I’m, after all, just a bastard born to a commoner’s line.”
“Hmm.”
Legitimacy of birth was one of the few pressure points the noble faction couldn’t ignore.
Without question, they’d be popping veins and making a nuisance of themselves before the imperial family for months on end.
I laid out, with all the desperation I could muster, the trouble he’d be courting in the future.
“Besides, if I become a lord, not only Blackmore but also the neighboring territory of Shylock will come under my direct control.”
Shylock and Blackmore were strategic strongholds straddling the border between the Empire and the principality.
Although they were currently administered by the imperial family, turning a place tangled so deeply in competing interests into imperial territory and appointing a lord there would mean accepting conflict with the principality.
And even then, there was no guarantee the local residents would accept a new lord.
“I understand that Your Majesty needs the Monarch Assembly’s support. In the current climate, with the imperial family and the noble faction locked in sharp opposition, the support of a third power like the Monarch Assembly would completely tip the scales. But it will cause even more trouble than that. The noble faction will seize on the issue endlessly, and wouldn’t the principality also take deep offense at the imperial family?”
I tried to persuade him without even blinking.
It was, if I’m being honest, a meaningless effort.
If the Emperor decided to do it, no one would be able to stop him in the end.
Still, it was true that this would be a headache.
So I was gripping the issue tightly when—
“Your Majesty!”
Knock, knock.
A clear knock sounded at irregular intervals.
The Emperor said, looking mildly bored, “Come in.”
The door opened, and a man entered.
Judging by his clothes, he was part of the Special Forces, but the badges on the front of his uniform suggested a fairly high rank.
The man stepped into the reception room and said,
“…What was that?”
“The Prince of the Principality, who had been collapsed, has awakened...!”
It was a report that the prince, who should by now have been suffering from the poison and hovering at death’s door, had somehow pulled through against all odds.
And the moment I heard it, I couldn’t keep my face under control.
Because the prince had been baited by the Holy Order’s scheme and poisoned with Formless Poison.
The Holy Order had attempted the assassination in order to expand its influence over the principality, planning to remove the prince and install a successor who would support them.
The principality was the one place where the Holy Order had never managed to gain a foothold.
And yet...
How?
Formless Poison was a supreme toxin impossible to neutralize.
No purification art worked on it, and there was no antidote.
The only way to save someone poisoned by Formless Poison was to erase the poison inside the body itself with overwhelming divine power.
There was only one person on the continent capable of doing that.
“A young woman is said to have healed the prince.”
“Who was she?”
“Elfride Trivia, a woman claiming to be the saintess of this age.”
Dammit.
Why are you here?
“A letter also arrived for Baron Lumore.”
“And what happened there?”
Kenneth Lumore.
The owner of the Lumore Merchant Guild, the richest merchant house in the Empire, and a noble known for his considerable clout.
The reason even a mere baron held such power was that the Lumore Merchant Guild was the largest trading company in both the Empire and the principality.
At the same time, it was also the financial artery of the noble faction.
There was no way such people would have warm feelings toward the imperial family.
“...A few days ago, they were attacked by a magical beast.”
“Did he die?”
“He returned unharmed, apparently. Both arms were torn apart, his legs were torn apart, and even his only child was on the verge of death, but they say he was saved by a young woman...”
“And the young woman’s name?”
“Once again, Elfride Trivia. The same girl. Baron Lumore tracked her down after asking around, but there was one strange detail...”
“Speak.”
“She said that none of this was her own will, but the will of a man... and that man’s name...”
At that instant, gooseflesh rose all over me.
Wait.
Wait, hold on.
“Luke Richter, she said...”
“...!!”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“I’ll have a title granted to you before long.”
The Emperor said that, and then dismissed me.
As he spoke, unmistakable delight shone on his face.
He’d gained the Monarch Assembly’s support, and on top of that, he’d saddled the principality—who normally kept things cool and distant—with a debt. Of course he’d be pleased. But I wasn’t.
“Dammit.”
I’m done for.
……
One side thinks I’m a dragonkin.
One side thinks I’m some vending machine you can press and get anything you want out of.
One side thinks I’m a god—Kahbila, or whatever, a god who already vanished somewhere and ran off.
And to make matters worse, now I’ve become the Sixth Lord as well.
Dammit. And Kahbila is a goddess, too.
I feel like I’m going insane.
As if it even mattered what gender a god had, and yet it still pissed me off. Deeply.
“This way.”
As soon as I came out of the imperial palace, Balcan, who had been waiting, led me onward.
There was a carriage waiting there, along with Rudine, who had been expecting me...
“Done?”
The Great Lord Arkan.
She was standing in front of the carriage, waving at me.
“I heard you caused trouble in the principality, too?”
“……”
“I didn’t think you’d actually be able to cure Formless Poison. I suppose it was worth crossing all the way to Kalmash to get you there.”
I held my tongue.
Instead, I glared at her as though I meant to kill her.
She laughed brightly, as if she had no idea why, and seized my hand.
“Come on, let’s get going.”
“...Where to?”
“Where else? We’re going to the principality. You saved a life, so don’t you think it’s time to collect your due?”
Ah. So that’s what this was.
I didn’t even have the energy to answer, so I just ignored her.
“Ah, but before that, there’s somewhere we need to stop by.”
“……”
“The grimoire Grimoire—the forbidden book you gave me after killing that true-blooded bastard, remember? Do you know what was written in it?”
“...What is it?”
Arkan smiled.
“A Holy Scripture.”
“...What?”
“The original text, lost thousands of years ago. Turns out it was much closer than expected.”
For a moment, I just stood there dumbly before finally snapping back to my senses.
A scripture. The word makes it sound like some kind of Bible-like thing, but its essence is rune.
In the end, the medium is language, and because it contains fragments of authority within language, it’s no different from a rune.
The only difference is whether the shell is a book or a stone.
And the rune you could obtain by acquiring a scripture was...
The Space Rune.
The Space Rune.
A sacred relic embodying a fragment of Kahbila’s other authority, space.
Arkan’s eyes curved into a crescent smile.
“You’re coming, right? Sixth Lord.”