Why Are You Calling Me Again?
I had forgotten something truly important all this time. Shockingly, even after becoming the Saintess, I had never once met the Emperor in person.
“Now that I think about it, I was appointed Saintess and yet I’ve never seen the Emperor even once.”
“That might be exactly why she’s calling for you now.”
I let out a sigh at Claire’s words. Should I have gone to see her earlier?
“Hmm. Should I have visited beforehand?”
Come to think of it, wasn’t this completely fucked?
The Emperor wasn’t some ordinary woman. She was far from it.
—So you’re saying you’re actually a grand mage?
—No, I keep telling you I’m just a mage.
—You’re a master in every damn field. That makes you a grand mage, doesn’t it? Can you create a universe?
I had never actually acted as a grand mage, so I never called myself one. But the Emperor had mockingly referred to me as a grand mage anyway. That crazy bitch once asked me if I could create a universe.
Magic uses mana to create all sorts of things. In theory, creating a universe wasn’t impossible. But if I had answered her back then, there was no telling what else she would have made me do, so I kept my mouth shut. She had always been an eccentric woman.
More than anything, her mental age didn’t feel like that of someone who had given birth to four children. Even her appearance suggested as much. It was as if she had been cursed. No matter how superior the Armenia bloodline was, it didn’t stop aging entirely. Yet she showed no signs of it.
Meeting her as Olivia might actually be interesting. Who knows? Even if she was the Emperor, she probably wouldn’t treat the Saintess too rudely.
I entered the imperial palace together with Claire. This was my first time stepping into the imperial palace since becoming Olivia. I had visited during my time as Noah, but the circumstances then and now were completely different. Back then, I had been received as a member of the Hero Party. Now, I was being received as the Saintess.
“Seeing the imperial palace again makes me realize just how insanely huge it is.”
The imperial palace was where the Emperor resided, but it also housed every department and assembly that made up the empire’s government. At its center stood the palace where the Emperor lived. Every convenience for the Emperor was provided there. Originally, before the assembly was established, the Emperor had exercised power directly from the imperial palace. Now, only the court attendants who served the Emperor and the Emperor herself remained.
“The imperial palace alone has stood for hundreds of years. It may look peaceful now, but decades ago there were fierce succession struggles over the throne.”
So Claire knew the history of the imperial palace too. No wonder the place was so massive. It looked like even if the imperial capital fell, as long as the imperial palace had troops, they could hold out until reinforcements arrived.
“Welcome, Saintess Olivia. From here on, we will escort you. We ask that your attendant wait outside.”
As soon as I entered the imperial palace, the maids sent Claire away and led only me inside. But I still couldn’t see the Emperor anywhere. The maid simply took me around to show me the palace.
Suddenly, the maid began to seem suspicious. Did it make any sense for the Emperor to summon the Saintess when she wasn’t even in the palace?
“Where is Her Majesty the Emperor?”
When I muttered to myself, the maid carefully lowered her head.
“Her Majesty is not here at the moment. Please wait.”
The maid guided me to a sofa. Hmm. It seemed like she was messing with me. Given that it was the Emperor, it was entirely possible. At her age, shouldn’t she start acting her age?
“Um. When will Her Majesty arrive?”
“Who knows? She should be able to grant you an audience before the sun sets.”
In other words, she would show up right as the sun was going down. This nameless maid suddenly began drinking tea by herself. From the scent, it seemed to be tea imported from the East. After taking a sip, she carefully opened her mouth.
“What kind of room do you think this is?”
“Who knows? Even as the Saintess, I’ve never been to a place like this before.”
Noah had been here before. That Emperor had always been capricious as hell. This room was the Hall of History. On its walls were recorded the names of countless emperors, renowned ministers, and loyal subjects from the empire’s fifteen hundred years of history, along with their achievements written in meticulous detail.
I narrowed my eyes at the maid who had led me here. She smiled brightly. It didn’t suit her at all.
“That’s right. It’s normal for most people not to know.”
“So what kind of room is this?”
I had to pretend I didn’t know even though I did. Noah had been here, but Olivia hadn’t.
“It is the Hall of History.”
“Then those names and the sentences next to them…”
“They record the names and achievements of emperors and famous subjects, beginning with the founder. At first they were lightly engraved with mana, but as magical studies advanced, they were coated with another layer of mana on top.”
“I see.”
“Would you like to know what’s even more interesting?”
“What is it?”
That you’re the Emperor? Did she really think she wouldn’t get caught with that face?
“We perform maintenance on it every time, yet this wall looks completely different in quality from the other walls in the palace, doesn’t it?”
Hmm. It did look different.
“Yes.”
“Before the empire was founded, a confederation of kingdoms existed on this land. In particular, the Hall of History where we stand now was originally the bedroom of the king and queen of the Kart Kingdom, the leading nation of the confederation. When the founder conquered the Kart Kingdom, she destroyed the entire royal palace except for this one room.”
Why was she suddenly telling me this history lesson? It wasn’t bad to listen, but every single thing I heard felt like it could be used as a weakness later. She was probably going to say something like, “You’ve learned too much.”
“So by carving the empire’s great history into this room, they’ve been mocking the fallen royal family of the Kart Kingdom all this time. Is that it?”
“Exactly. The founder was mortal enemies with the king of Kart and feared the power of Kart’s ancient history. That’s why she covered this room with the empire’s history and made the queen of Kart the empress of the empire.”
It seemed that in the early days of the empire, the Armenia imperial family had been closer to a nomadic tribe. But was this something I really needed to know?
“I heard the founder and the king of Kart were enemies at the time, so I suppose it was only natural.”
“Surprising. I thought you would call it barbaric.”
If you dug deeper, it was indeed barbaric. Before founding the empire, the Armenia imperial family had been the chieftains of the Ban tribe. The Ban were one of the barbarian tribes. They had united the barbarians and seized the opportunity during what was essentially a warring states period on the continent, ushering in their golden age. They had founded an empire, but they lacked legitimacy. So what Elfric chose was to absorb the existing Kart ruling class into the Ban tribe by mixing their blood. Then, to secure legitimacy, Elfric married into the noble houses that had intermarried with the Kart royal family for generations—the Armen family. The woman from the Armen family had been the queen of Kart. In exchange for making the former queen of Kart the empress of the empire, Elfric merged the Armen family—the empress’s house—with his own surname, Pony, to establish the Armenia imperial lineage. Although the kingdom had fallen, the queen had essentially become a co-founder of the empire alongside Elfric.
“Throughout the continent’s history, it’s not just the empire that has plundered the possessions of the defeated and made them their own. If we criticize the empire for that, the same could be said of every other nation.”
“That is true. Then how has the minority Ban tribe managed to maintain power for over a thousand years? Normally, it would be impossible for a small group like the Ban to avoid being outnumbered by the subjugated population.”
I deliberately didn’t answer. Even for a maid, that question was pushing it too far. It wasn’t a history that could be casually mentioned. The Ban tribe had mobilized even the surrendered families to carry out massive massacres, completely eradicating the male lines of the local ethnic groups that might pose a future threat. After several generations, the blood of the Ban tribe and the local peoples had mixed, giving birth to the current imperial ethnicity.
Asking me to say such things out loud? There was a limit to playing along with jokes. I hadn’t come here to discuss the ancient history of the empire. I had come to meet the Emperor.
I looked straight at the maid.
“Sigh. Your Majesty. How about we stop the games here?”
“What are you talking about?”
She was still going to pretend?
“I am from the Ashtar family. I already know that the group of nobles who dared lay hands on Your Majesty’s body were executed.”
I had no idea why the Emperor was acting like such a maniac. At my words, the maid clicked her tongue, then grinned.
“Not fun at all.”
“Isn’t this enough probing? Why would you make the Saintess speak of taboos the imperial family wants to erase?”
That taboo was something only the central families of the current empire knew about. But the massacre that occurred during the empire’s founding was tied to the imperial family, so it could never be spoken of openly.
“You should speak properly. Now that you’ve become the Saintess, shouldn’t you have come to see me on your own?”
I could concede that point.
“The Church is an independent institution. And doesn’t Your Majesty dislike such bothersome things?”
If I had come to see her directly, she probably would have told me to get lost because it was annoying. So why was she summoning me now?
“My prospective daughter-in-law is too boring, that’s why.”
“Prospective daughter-in-law? I have broken off my engagement with Lord Aslan. Moreover, I am the Saintess.”
Now that I had become the Saintess, marriage was no longer an issue.
At my words, she smiled bitterly as if disappointed.
“Ah, that’s right. You are the Saintess now. So I’m curious. Where did you obtain that divine power?”
Ah, so the Emperor had known Olivia. It seemed she hadn’t seen her even once after Lily began to seduce her, but this woman had known Olivia. After all, she had been her prospective daughter-in-law. It would have been strange not to know.
I radiated light from my hand. Yes. This was the very divine power that the imperial church so desperately clung to.
“You mean this?”
“Yes. That.”
“I can just make it.”
If I just made it, everything worked out.
“Can something like that be created so easily?”
“Yes. Well.”
“Even though I am the Emperor, I have to believe in something like that.”
If you’re so annoyed, why don’t you try mana fusion yourself? I really wanted to say that, but since she was the Emperor, it was impossible. There was no telling what this maniac was thinking inside. If things went wrong, she might try to have my head cut off. There was no chance I would actually die, but I couldn’t forget that I was from the Ashtar family. Wasn’t that why she had chopped off the heads of all those nobles? She had deliberately provoked them by appearing in a maid’s outfit. In any case, by laying hands on the Emperor’s body, she had created a justification that even the assembly couldn’t criticize, allowing her to ‘legally’ slaughter the nobles.
“Isn’t seeing it with your own eyes enough?”
“Yes. That should have been sufficient.”
“You couldn’t have called me just for that. What is Your Majesty’s true intention?”
This person didn’t seem to have come for nothing.
“Olivia. Do you know about curses?”
“You mean black magic?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been cursed, Your Majesty?”
Had she really been cursed? When I asked seriously, she stared at me for a moment before nodding.
“Yeah. I have.”
“What kind of curse?”
“A boring curse.”
“Pardon?”
Was that even something you could call a curse?
“Isn’t it? I am bored. Then shouldn’t the Saintess help me as a Saintess?”
The Emperor yawned with a bored expression. In short, she was asking me to play with her. Even though she was the Emperor. And wasn’t she already thirty-five or thirty-six? At that age, she should have outgrown the age for playing around.
“Even if you say that, aren’t you just asking me to entertain you?”
“Oh? You caught on?”
“Your Majesty. I am, after all, a student at Attelina. Shouldn’t I be diligent in my studies?”
A Saintess was a Saintess, and a student was a student. There wasn’t much for a Saintess to do anyway, so I planned to focus on my studies. I was worried about running into Seria again, but in a situation where I needed to use the empire as a foothold to strike at the Four Heavenly Kings, there was no need to pay attention to provincial nobles.
“For someone who says that, you pretty much destroyed everything on your first day as a second-year. Swordsmanship, archery, and magic—all paralyzed on the first day, I hear.”
“Well, that’s because…”
Those bastards had come at me first.
“I heard you excelled in swordsmanship, magic, and archery.”
“Well. Yes.”
Denying it wouldn’t work with this person anyway.
“Then teach me magic.”
“Um. Shouldn’t magic be learned from a professor rather than me? For example, someone like Adran from Attelina.”
Adran would make a suitable teacher for the Emperor.
“Even so, isn’t a former daughter-in-law better than a professor?”
“No matter what you say, I have no intention of getting engaged to Lord Aslan.”
It was absolutely impossible. Even if the sky split in two, even if I were alone with that guy in the world, it was impossible. Noah and Olivia were one and the same. It was physiologically impossible.
“It seems my son caused you quite a bit of trouble. Don’t worry. I wish to learn from Saintess Olivia, not from my prospective daughter-in-law Olivia Lapa Ashtar.”
She made it sound reasonable, but why? Was there any reason for the Emperor to learn magic?