He Would Not Become the Demon King
"I know you insulted me, and that you slighted your own fiancée! You will take the punishment owed for it, and you will take it gladly!"
The situation was, in its way, rather curious. The Crown Prince had not allowed him so much as a moment to think. He simply drove the charge home, and with that the breaking of the engagement was as good as settled.
Judging by the air in here... he's already caught her with someone else, hasn't he?
Revnil Rophenheim, head of the House of Viscount Rophenheim, took the measure of the circumstances at a glance. The reason he was fated to darken into the Demon King was perfectly clear, and so even a spectacle like this one he understood at once.
The Crown Prince struck first, to overturn the scandal before it could overturn him.
In all likelihood the Crown Prince had meant to take his fiancée from the very beginning. He had only been caught in the affair by accident, and so now he intended to drag Revnil's honor through the mud and seize the title along with it.
An annulment is an annulment. Being driven out of the Imperial Capital hardly matters. But I can't become the Demon King like this.
A Demon King was, at root, the villain set opposite the protagonist. The role might warp in any number of ways according to the story and its setting, but its foundation as antagonist never disappeared. That was why a narrative of corruption had to come before the fall — and as things stood, he had no way to fulfill it.
I already know the truth. I'm not even the fool who had his fiancée stolen out from under him. How is a man like me supposed to darken?
Revnil was certain the story had already snarled. Because he knew he was the one meant to become the Demon King, the fact itself had been rendered meaningless. Knowledge of the future had cleanly erased the possibility allotted to him.
One might think that with no Demon King, all the better... but a Demon King has to exist in the end.
The Demon King's existence was imposed as inevitability. It was the natural order of this world, fixed in place like a law of nature. Even if he himself were removed from the role, someone else would awaken as the Demon King.
If they're weaker than I would have been, I can breathe easy. If they're stronger, that's trouble of another kind.
But there was nothing he could do about it. He might foresee a great many things; the coming of a Demon King was the one matter he had no way to counter. Better, then, to lay preparations against it while he still could.
First, I suspect, the imperial house itself has to fall.
Settled at the present stage, the verdict was simple. An empire this rotten could never stand against a Demon King. The Crown Prince was already stooping to sordid little tricks, all for the sake of stealing a nobleman's fiancée, and there was no need even to mention the Emperor or his officials. The foundations of the Empire were already giving way.
Then the choice left to me here is...
"Even so, before you are a criminal, you are head of a viscount's house. I will grant you a choice. Will you be stripped of the title and banished from the Imperial Capital? Or will you keep it, and rot in a cell for the rest of your life?"
Revnil saw through the offer at once. It was the Crown Prince's compromise. The grounds for charging him were thin, and if anyone dug deep enough, the Crown Prince's own guilt would come to light. The prince meant only to tune the punishment to a convenient pitch and walk away with the fiancée.
Once the title is gone, the manor and the lands go with it. Coin and valuables are about all I can still salvage.
Before he answered, Revnil finished a swift reckoning of loss and gain. What he had to do, and where he had to go, he had already decided. All he needed now were words that could wound not only the Crown Prince, but the imperial house itself.
"...Then, before I leave the Imperial Capital, permit me to say two things. My fiancée cannot bear a child. You are welcome to confirm it whenever you wish."
"Wh— what did you say?"
The Crown Prince flinched, dismay written plain across his face. Revnil, however, still had the sharper truth in reserve.
"And last of all... I am given to understand that Your Imperial Highness suffers from hair loss. I imagine you are wearing a wig. I shall pray that, in time, your hair may grow again."
"You—! What nonsense is this!"
"Then I shall take my leave. Surely, having taken my title and my domain, you would not still lay a charge at my feet?"
With the last of the truth spoken, Revnil walked straight out of the imperial palace. The Crown Prince would not be marrying that fiancée now, and for some while he would not climb free of the scandal. In the interval, Revnil would have to draw out, carefully and without haste, an opening for rebellion.
Becoming the Demon King is a lost cause... I'll have to make a new emperor instead.
Revnil was cutting across the heart of a snowfield. A good while had passed since he crossed the border of the Northern Region. Snow was falling, lightly, though not enough to swallow a man's legs. Even so the cold had worked its way down into the bone, and fields of snow closed in on every side.
I've brought everything worth bringing.
Before long the Empire would tear into four: the grand ducal house of the North, the Barbarians of the Eastern Wastelands, the Revolutionary Army, and the imperial house. Sooner or later, he would have to choose one of them.
The one worth throwing in with is the Northern Grand Duke.
The present Northern Grand Duke possessed a martial strength that did not bend, and the might of the Northern Army was nothing to dismiss. That was why no one, in the end, had been able to halt its march south.
But if you look only at how it ends, it isn't a good choice.
The Revolutionary Army had occupied the Imperial Capital and driven the Emperor and the nobility fully to the wall. The barbarians had seized the Eastern Region in a single stroke, only for infighting to bleed their strength away just as fast. The Northern Army had suffered losses no one expected, dealt by the Demonic Beasts that came pouring over the frontier.
The Northern Grand Duke fights on alone, and in the end she meets her death.
Her personal strength was so far beyond the rest that she did not fall easily, even by herself. The soldiers under her command, however, died or came apart through defeat after defeat, and so she lost both her authority as Northern Grand Duke and her right of command, and collapsed.
This has to be handled according to a plan. Taking the east or the south would be best, but...
Revnil had already sketched, in rough outline, the Northern Army's line of advance and the points it ought to seize. Before, the headlong march south had wasted no small amount of time and forced battles that need never have been fought. If those same mistakes were not repeated, key positions and supply bases could be taken far more swiftly.
Taking the south from here is impossible. There might be a way, if we go by the east.
Name the wealthiest lands in the Empire, and they were the Imperial Capital, the Eastern Region, and the Southern Region. The capital drew money and goods into itself because the Emperor and the imperial house sat there. The east ran rich on the flow of coin through commerce and mining, and the Southern Region, the Empire's breadbasket, held vast stores of grain. For anyone raising a revolt, the advantage came only once the east or the south was in hand.
The Northern Region won't grow so much as a blade of grass... and the west has nothing worth taking.
The Northern Grand Duke had never weighed such things with any seriousness. She had been obsessed with the march south alone, determined somehow to seize the Imperial Capital. Had she reached that goal quickly, a firm advantage would have followed; tangled instead in problem after problem, she had only watched the losses grow.
This is where I have to step in.
Revnil's purpose was thoroughly realistic, and perfectly clear: assist the Northern Grand Duke, and see the optimal strategy carried out. With the Northern Army's present might, every enemy could be made to draw back.
If I can't become the Demon King, then I'll have to become the Northern Grand Duke's strategist.
A vast snowfield lay draped across the Northern Region, and snow-covered mountains trailed down in broken ridges. Snow was certain to fall before three days were out, and when a blizzard came driving in, no one could step outside lightly. The cold cut clean through a coat; breath poured out without end; feeling dulled; and the snow kept falling. To survive in the Northern Region was a grinding labor, and little else.
I have to decide, and soon.
She remained in her seat, turning the same problem over and over — black hair bound back, turquoise eyes vivid and yet melancholic, a countenance cold and closed. Generation after generation, her house had been set down on the frontier of the Northern Region and made to fight there without end, while the Emperor and the nobility treated that duty as something owed and answered her and the Northern Army with nothing but scorn.
The supplies they send keep dwindling. Do they mean for us to starve to death out here?
From the beginning it had not been she alone. Her forebears, too, had distrusted the imperial house without cease. The founding emperor, at least, had recognized why the Northern Army was necessary and supported it without stint. But the more the throne passed from hand to hand, the more thoroughly the danger of the Northern Region was forgotten, until at last they grudged even the provisions issued to the Northern Army.
If I take the whole of the army and charge like this, is there even a chance?
She was weighing a choice with no middle path. Succeed, and at the very least they would not starve to death on barren ground. Fail, and would the death even be an honorable one?
Marching on the Imperial Capital with no plan at all...
"Your Grace. Revnil Rophenheim requests an audience."
"...Show him in."
The name alone was enough. She gave her permission at once. A letter from Revnil Rophenheim had arrived not long before, and what it contained had been too unusual to ignore.
"...I am honored to come before Your Grace."
"All of you. Withdraw."
Chereha Yenimehinna, head of the Grand Ducal House of Yenimehinna, gave the order the instant she stood face to face with Revnil Rophenheim. She knew what judgment he had received in the Imperial Capital. But if the finer circumstances were taken into account, it would not do to leap to prejudice.
"I know what was done to you. They say you laid the Crown Prince's shame bare to his face."
"I spoke only what was true. And His Imperial Highness was the one who envied me first."
"And so... you slandered your fiancée as well?"
"That, too, was the truth. I do not consider it slander."
He answered with perfect calm, as though none of it mattered. Interest kindled in Chereha, and she rose from her seat.
"Speak, then. Why are you trying to incite me?"
"The imperial house is losing the hearts of the people. The Emperor is incompetent, and venal ministers look only to their own gain. The nobles split into factions among themselves and plunder the common folk without hesitation. Even so — can this Empire truly prosper?"
"Even if what you say is true... legitimacy in this Empire belongs to the Emperor and his line. You attach yourself to me, and then what?"
Chereha took up the sword on its stand at once. In a single motion she drew it and leveled the point at him.
"Kill me here, and I will bear you no grudge. But a regret would remain with Your Grace. Would it not?"
"Regret? Why would I feel any such thing?"
"Should Your Grace merely set your mind to it, you could pull the Emperor down. There are not many who dare think as boldly as I do. You hesitate, do you not, because you have no comrade or retainer you can trust?"
At that answer Chereha lowered the sword, belatedly. She slid it home in the scabbard, a faint and unsettled expectation closing around her.
"...I will give you a chance. Once I have heard all of it, I will decide whether you die."