The Empire's Fragile Peace
In the original story, the West had already fallen into her grasp. Of course, she hadn't fully secured it yet. She had simply installed a puppet government that listened obediently to her commands.
Now it was time to use that foothold to lay railroads across the West, build factories, construct hospitals and schools, and erect all manner of facilities. The goal was to make the people of the West intimately familiar with the South.
Once they tasted the comforts of modern civilization, returning to the old ways would not be easy. In time, even if the Empire tried to intervene, the citizens themselves would likely resist.
Launching the modernization of the West proved surprisingly straightforward. The corrupt nobles who had dominated official posts had all fled, leaving the region in a severe manpower shortage.
"Your Grace, a support request has arrived from the Western Ducal Palace."
"What does it say?"
"They report a critical lack of personnel to operate the administrative and judicial systems. How should we respond?"
The question required no deliberation whatsoever. I answered without hesitation.
"Send them our very best personnel from the South. Without exception."
The Western puppet government had requested manpower support, and we responded by dispatching a flood of specialists.
Naturally, the experts we sent immediately began calling in our own corporations to the West. And so, an industrial boom began to take root there as well.
Rail lines were the first to appear, followed by steel mills and textile factories sprouting up one after another. The efficiency of the magic stone mines also rose dramatically.
Mining with explosives proved far faster and safer than the traditional manual labor methods. As for the cost? The warehouses of the corrupt nobles were practically bursting with wealth. The fortune these parasites had hoarded over the fifty years since Kaiser III's reign was truly staggering.
"No wonder the Empire is collapsing. They kept all that wealth locked away in warehouses instead of using it."
Even so, the Empire was undeniably a formidable nation. For it to have survived fifty years of these nobles lining their own pockets spoke volumes.
In any case, one month after the occupation, the West was beginning to regain its vitality. The "Peace of Our Time" that the Crown Prince and I had agreed upon played no small part in that.
Peace of Our Time. A phrase I had heard often in my previous life.
"The Empire is even more incompetent than I imagined."
Still, the original Munich Agreement version of "Peace of Our Time" had served a clear purpose. During the time bought by that agreement, the British Royal Air Force had swelled nearly tenfold.
In exchange for sacrificing the Sudetenland, Britain had reorganized its shattered military and gone on to win the Second World War.
...Of course, it didn't seem as though our Crown Prince had put that much thought into it.
According to the intelligence department, the Imperial Army's scale had barely changed in the past month. In return for handing over Sarscen and partially acknowledging our authority in the West, all the Empire had received was an incomplete peace that could shatter at any moment.
"I expected at least some attempt at intervention. I didn't think they'd choose to simply observe."
Well, that suited me perfectly. It had revealed one crucial truth.
"The Empire fears civil war far more than I anticipated."
And in situations like this, the one willing to bite the hardest usually won. Just like Europe in the 1930s.
The memorandum I had sent the Crown Prince promising "I will not expand my territory any further"? Who would actually believe that? Even the nobles who claimed to oppose civil war wouldn't swallow such nonsense. With even the capital hesitating to intervene, nothing could stop me now.
Southern public opinion? There wasn't a soul in the South who wouldn't welcome a Grand Duke who had succeeded in Tagaap and won the war. The intoxicating taste of victory had translated directly into overwhelming support.
The military? The military had begun as my own hunting dogs, created specifically to deal with corrupt businessmen. No one who would dare defy me had ever been allowed to join its ranks.
The business community? I was the one spearheading the massive modernization projects in the West. There wasn't a single entrepreneur bold enough to oppose me. One could say every major corporation in the South was now entangled in my plans.
The parliament? It had never been an institution with any real power. After the Labor Standards Act was introduced and the voice of the working-class commoners grew stronger, it had become little more than a polished facade that pretended to say, "We're trying to start something like democracy here."
In reality, it was nothing but a rubber stamp that raised its hand in approval of every proposal sent down from the Grand Ducal Palace.
"However... there is one side that still concerns me."
The East of the Empire.
Unlike the Crown Prince, whose head was apparently filled with flowers and who had brought forth this "Peace of Our Time," Edward, the Eastern Grand Duke, would clearly never accept the agreement.
The man operated on the fundamental belief that "If it were me, I would do it differently." True to the character who would later spark a civil war within the Empire, Edward was steeped in a sense of elitism and superiority.
The problem was that the East was essentially the South's lifeline. More than two-thirds of our export goods bound for the Empire traveled via Eastern sea routes. If those routes were blocked, our own throat would be squeezed shut.
I hadn't called the Belfort Archipelago the "South's right to survival" for nothing. Without securing the sea lanes near the Belfort Archipelago, we would eventually be forced to live under the East's thumb.
"In that case, we'll have to support the navy in this year's second-half budget."
We needed to create more countermeasures. Naval guns couldn't inflict proper damage underwater, so it was time to develop entirely new armaments that I had never revealed before. And the ships to carry those new weapons?
We could simply build them. The shipyards that had been constructing large coal carriers and steamships had now gained experience building warships as well.
In the end, every issue related to the East could be resolved with a simple conclusion: "Throw money at it!"
The one variable I could not control at all lay elsewhere.
Aria, the heroine of Mona-joh. She was the woman destined to bring ruin to the Empire.
She had seduced the Crown Prince and the Grand Dukes, triggering a civil war within the Empire. She had even used the Western Grand Duke as her hunting dog. The body I had possessed—Kyle Leopold—had been used by Aria and driven into exile in the South.
Naturally, if the heroine was taking such extreme actions, Mona-joh could not possibly be an ordinary romance fantasy novel.
Because it was, in fact...
"A trashy revenge drama."
I closed my eyes and recalled the plot of Mona-joh.
The heroine Aria had lost her parents to the Empire. Her father had been assassinated while investigating corruption in the Imperial Army, and her mother, who had raised her alone, had been toyed with by corrupt nobles before being discarded to her death.
That was why Aria hated the Empire. She wished for the very existence of the Empire to be erased from this world.
A beautiful girl who came to the capital out of hatred for the Empire, determined to destroy it. At first, she felt no genuine emotion toward the male leads. She had approached them deliberately, purely as tools to achieve her goal.
However, as the male protagonists who had been nothing but pawns in her plan began to approach her with sincere feelings, she gradually developed affection for them. In the end, after the Empire's fall, she ended up with them.
Under Aria's hand, the Empire was thoroughly dismantled. It split into five factions and descended into civil war.
Weakened by that conflict, the Empire was carved up by great powers—including the Republic—much like the Qing Dynasty had been.
What finally destroyed the half-dead Empire was the monster wave. All that remained where the Empire once stood was ash.
In the end, Aria got what she wanted. The Empire was destroyed, her revenge was complete, and she lived happily ever after in a peaceful place with her harem. It was a happy ending.
"Though it wasn't for the countless innocent citizens who were sacrificed in the process."
Aria, who had been enraged by the sacrifice of her own innocent parents, had gone on to kill countless other innocent lives. No matter what her backstory was, such actions could never be justified.
Naturally, the comment section had exploded with debates over whether that ending was right or wrong, and I too had left a long, furious comment in my rage.
...And the very next day, I was possessed.
"I absolutely cannot allow that ending to come to pass."
If she had wanted revenge, she should have found the actual perpetrators and killed them. The moment she turned that hatred toward the Empire's innocent citizens, Aria became no different from the very perpetrators she despised.
The problem now was the future facing both the South and the Empire. The Empire had lost its former overwhelming power.
It was entirely possible that either the Northern Grand Duke or the Eastern Grand Duke might declare independence and abandon the Empire at any time.
On top of that, countless hyenas were already circling, eager to devour the massive carcass that was the Empire. And finally...
The monster wave that would surge down from the North and sweep the entire Empire away.
It was as if the world itself desperately longed for the Empire's destruction.
"Still, it's not entirely without hope."
This world no longer followed the original plot of Mona-joh. After all, I had personally shattered the Western Grand Duke—the one who had done the most damage to the Empire in the original story. From now on, my knowledge of the original work held almost no meaning.
I no longer knew what results these changes would bring. But that was fine. At the very least, I could be certain that the future would be far better than the hopeless ruin the original Empire had faced.
"Lucilla."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"It seems the 'gift' I sent to the Empire should have arrived by now."
The most miserable end I could possibly give to Charles Raymonds. I wondered what thoughts would go through his head when he realized he had been treated like a discarded hunting dog.
And what expression would Aria make when she realized her plan to destroy the Empire was beginning to unravel?