The Thalianum Depletion Crisis (1)
After the emergency imperial council adjourned.
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Fuck this. Fuuuuck.”
“Minister, please calm down.”
I was throwing a full-blown tantrum inside the private bedroom the palace had prepared for me.
—Whoosh! Whip!
Riel was hanging onto me so I wouldn’t completely lose it, but that did nothing to cool the rage boiling in my chest.
Thalianum Depletion Crisis
📍 Depletion Status: 0.5%
⚠ Warning: Upon complete depletion, the Empire will automatically receive the Thalianum Default Debuff.
“This fucking piece of shit—this onion of a shitpile that just keeps peeling and peeling and never fucking ends!”
The bastard had been dead for ten years already, and the messes he’d left behind were still crawling out of the woodwork one after another!
“Riel, does this make any goddamn sense to you?!”
“Weeell… maybe try calming down first?”
The worried look in her eyes as she spoke finally let me wrestle my temper back under control. I decided to exercise superhuman patience.
“Haaah…”
“Here. Water.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
I sank onto the edge of the bed and gulped down the water Riel handed me. Then I dragged my hands through my short, bristly hair and clutched my skull, replaying everything that had gone down in today’s emergency council.
“Do you truly believe this is acceptable, Minister of the Executive Ministry?”
“…”
The same bastards who never listened to a word I said on a normal day were now pouncing like they’d finally caught me red-handed. One of the surest ways to make a man want to commit violence.
Not that I could just charge in swinging.
“Regarding the current Thalianum depletion crisis, the Executive Ministry is already exerting every possible effort—”
“I am merely reminding the Minister that his responsibility in this matter is extremely grave!”
“Your Majesty, the Minister is shirking his duty and offering no solutions in this critical hour!”
I watched the dazzling team-up of our illustrious high officials and assemblymen and decided, for the moment, to simply observe.
Besides, I didn’t even need to step in myself.
“Now see here, Assemblyman Taleman! Word of this only reached us the day before yesterday!”
“Hmph. Even so, that was more than enough time to prepare countermeasures!”
“Preposterous!”
The assemblyman trying to snipe me, and the opposing faction that automatically threw up a full-body shield on my behalf—they were doing the work for me.
“What outrageous nonsense in a sacred imperial council!”
“You’re the one who started the nonsense!”
“What did you say?!”
“Are you finished talking?!”
Except the “shield” turned out to be more of a blunt instrument they were swinging at each other.
—Crash! Bang!
Before long they were one shove away from an actual brawl, and I found myself stuck playing peacemaker, prying the two of them apart.
I’d been planning to just sit back and eat popcorn…
Prevent the brawl in the imperial council.
📍 Current Progress: 0%
Ah, for fuck’s sake.
Thanks to the quest, I had to kick my own beautiful spectacle to the curb.
Anyway, that wasn’t the important part.
My role in the council wasn’t wrestling referee—it was solution-provider. So I offered what I considered a reasonable plan for the current mess and tried to steer the room’s atmosphere in a productive direction.
“First, the cause of the depletion has not yet been identified.”
“Do you expect us to accept that?!”
“Minister, that sounds an awful lot like the Executive Ministry refusing to take responsibility.”
And of course the assemblymen were ready with sincere, relentless tackles at every single sentence.
“Your Majesty, is this not precisely the result of excessive power concentrated in the Executive Ministry?”
“Indeed! The very idea that the Executive Ministry should handle resource issues inside the Empire is absurd to begin with!”
The assemblymen’s tackles came with a side of full-court press from the ministers and vice-ministers of other departments.
“Heh heh heh.”
“To laugh so freely during an imperial council—show some respect!”
Even smiling was off-limits. A fresh wave of melancholy rose in my chest.
“Given the circumstances, I believe we must hold the Minister of the Executive Ministry accountable and relieve him of his post.”
“H-hey now—”
“Is that not correct? Is that not precisely why he sits in that seat—to prevent things like this from happening?”
But it seemed not everyone in the room was a complete villain.
Oh my. What a wonderful person.
Here he was, fighting so hard for me—the poor soul forcibly employed and worked to death by this black company… no, this black palace. Which meant this was the perfect chance to resign, collect my pension, and start living the carefree happy life of my dreams.
“I see. So that’s how you feel.”
I deliberately bit down hard on the bait the assemblyman had thrown.
The quest nagged at me, but after years of overwork I simply couldn’t face another round of it.
And so I was already filling my head with visions of submitting my resignation, right here and now, to Her Majesty the Empress behind the curtain—
“W-wait, uh…”
“…?”
For some reason the blood drained clean out of that bold young assemblyman’s face. He even started stammering. I was about to ask what was wrong.
I was going to ask, at least.
“That will be quite enough, all of you.”
“H-Your Majesty!”
If Her Majesty the Empress, who had been listening silently from behind the lowered curtain, had not chosen that exact moment to speak.
In this thoroughly hierarchical empire (by design), who would dare talk back when the Empress herself opened her mouth?
No—who would dare speak at all before she finished?
The Empire was the Empress, and the Empress was the Empire.
As expected of Her Majesty. Completely different from that idiot Predecessor Emperor.
Maybe it was because she was fundamentally different from that natural-born moron of a Predecessor. With a single sentence she seized the chaotic atmosphere of the council and bent it to her will. I couldn’t help nodding inwardly in admiration.
There’s no way our super-intelligent Empress fails to read my heart.
In other words, this was her strong will telling me to take responsibility, resign, and go suck on that sweet pension, right?
The thought alone sent fresh energy surging through a body that had been drowning in fatigue and irritation only moments earlier.
Prevent the brawl in the imperial council.
📍 Current Progress: 100%
Reward: Physical fatigue has been relieved!
…Okay, so it was the quest and not my thoughts. Whatever.
As expected of Her Majesty! I believed in you!
How could a loyal subject fail to uphold the will of the supreme dignity herself?
And so I resolved to accept Her Majesty’s opinion, resign from this fucked-up empire, collect my pension, and immediately set out on the path of a runaway ninja.
Or rather—I was going to.
“This matter is not the fault of the Minister of the Executive Ministry. I ask that everyone refrain from further remarks on that point.”
“W-we shall bear it in mind, Your Majesty!”
…Eh?
Your Majesty, are you seriously backstabbing me right here?
I was so stunned I nearly regressed into baby-talk inside my own head.
“Then, Minister of the Executive Ministry—begin by presenting a solution to this crisis.”
“…Yes. Understood.”
If the Empress’s next words hadn’t snapped me back to reality by pure instinct, I might have actually done it.
“Ahem. First, in order to extinguish the most immediate fire, we have already arranged to secure emergency stockpiles from Thalianum-related corporations within the Empire as well as from neighboring states.”
“I see. How much of a buffer will that provide?”
“The exact figures will depend on subsequent negotiations, but measured against the Empire’s total consumption, it should cover roughly one to two months.”
I finished the briefing while clinging to my sanity with both hands. A brief silence answered from behind the curtain.
Then, a moment later:
“…Very well. Confer with the Ministry of Finance afterward and secure as large a quantity as possible.”
“I shall bear it in mind, Your Majesty.”
Hearing that we could at least put out the immediate blaze, a certain lightness returned even to Her Majesty’s voice.
But the problem didn’t end there.
Once the conversation shifted from political posturing to actual practical discussion…
“Haaah… well now.”
“This is…”
The deeper we dug into the root cause of the crisis, the colder the atmosphere in the chamber became.
“…For those reasons, to summarize: thirteen years ago a warning of Thalianum depletion was issued. The Resource Ministry’s project for new exploration and development of Thalianum deposits was, for reasons unknown, redirected mid-course into rare-earth and crystal-powder ventures. That is judged to be the cause.”
“Thirteen years ago… that would have been…”
“Quiet. Hold your tongue.”
“Surely not…”
“…”
It was a story the Vice-Minister of Resources, who was delivering the summary, could never bring himself to say aloud.
But every single person in that room—including Her Majesty the Empress—understood it perfectly.
…That son of a bitch Predecessor Emperor.
The root of every evil currently plaguing the Empire.
Once again, the shit the Predecessor Emperor had taken was flowing back upstream into the Empire.