112. The Empire's Ministers 2
112. The Empire's Ministers 2
Most of Godrin's worries had been resolved by Allen's presence.
Of course, plenty of unresolved uncertainties remained, but at the very least, it was now certain that the company would not collapse from within.
Having secured the strongest Vandel of all time, Allen's group hoisted the old man onto a carrying frame and headed back to the studio.
"...What's with this carrying frame?"
"Don't go thinking we'll treat you like royalty forever just because you're old. I'm your boss now."
Thwack.
In that brief moment, Allen attempted a little workplace tyranny, but the old man was merciless with him.
Allen might hold the purse strings, but by this point, in the old man's mind, Allen was simply a fool trying to throw his weight around.
So with Allen's consciousness split once more, Godrin placed him on the frame and entered the studio.
Before introducing himself, however, the old man inevitably hesitated for a moment.
It was easy to forget, but he was a goblin.
The film industry had always treated demi-human races harshly.
Even when he was the Third Vandel, people had looked at him as if to ask, “A mere goblin dares?”
Moreover, the Vandel Series was a series infamous for being run into the ground by minority races, including imps.
If a goblin now had the nerve to shove his face into that very series, no treatment he received could be considered surprising.
But he chose the frontal assault.
It was not as though he could spend his life nursing an inferiority complex over being a goblin; more importantly, he trusted Allen.
And the result exceeded all imagination.
"Demi-human? Demi-human??? The Third is a demi-human???"
The moment he revealed his identity, the set exploded into a clamor.
Those words dragged the old man's trauma out from the deepest recesses of his heart, the trauma of a man who had once holed himself up in a back room.
Just as he could read Allen’s thoughts, reading human emotions was easy for Godrin.
And the hatred and condemnation of hundreds was a thing more brutal and keener than a strike that could split the earth.
He was the one who had set down his sword, fearing to read the inner thoughts of people.
The thought dominated his mind: the day he learned that the crew and fans spoke politely on the surface but loathed him within, he would never be able to stand upright again.
He desperately suppressed his ability.
But just as one must not think about sleep in order to fall asleep, his attempts only made him peer deeper into people's hearts.
Godrin finally squeezed his eyes shut against the true feelings flooding into him, but what reached his heart was...
Fervent excitement.
- A demi-human! That's romantic as hell!
"...Huh?"
Demi-humans and romantic spirit.
Godrin muttered unconsciously at the combination of utterly mismatched words.
Instinctively, he read the thoughts of the person standing beside the one whose mind he had just read.
There too, he found the words “romantic spirit.”
And in that camera team, and in the props team, and among the actors.
Demi-humans had become symbols of romantic spirit.
It was a reaction he could never have imagined back in the days when Godrin had worked as a goblin actor.
As he stood there stunned, a demi-human actress named Skadi approached him.
When he heard that she was the lead of the Archer Hero Series and a leading actor at this studio, Godrin seriously wondered whether he had crossed into a parallel world without noticing.
And then, when he heard from Skadi's own mouth that the cause of all this was a magical girl, he could only burst into a helpless laugh.
'Heh heh... I dismissed it as just some drama for little girls and never even glanced at it, but that was nothing more than the prejudice of an old man left behind by the times.'
He could only be grateful for the changed perception of demi-humans brought about by Scapul—or, more precisely, by this studio.
Yes.
This was exactly what he had wished for.
Not ruining a work like Simon had, but something like this—he had wanted everyone to smile and welcome goblins warmly.
"Heh heh heh..."
He laughed for the first time in a long while.
With gratitude toward the fate that had led him to this company.
And toward the hopeful future forming in his mind.
He laughed out loud for the first time in so long he could not even remember the last occasion.
Amidst that laughter, he took in the sight of his boss.
Allen was discussing Godrin's weapon with the props team.
So this was how a knight felt upon finding a place worth dying for, he thought, as the swordsman’s lost mindscape filled his heart again.
*
Meanwhile, after finishing the discussion about Godrin’s weapon, Allen gave Ailey one final warning.
"Oh, and for reference, the old man's memory seems to come and go, so don't make it too complicated."
"Huh? He looks perfectly spry to me..."
"When a person's lived hundreds of years, you never know when dementia might suddenly set in. Dementia doesn't care about your level, your race—noth—."
Thwack!
Ironically, the first target the Sword Saint, returned after decades, swung his blade at was the very benefactor who had returned that blade to him.
*
While new winds blew through Bon Voyage Studio, the fifth chapter of Liam Walker was released.
Just as Allen had feared, the public's reaction was quite dramatic.
- Do you have to take absolutely everything from Liam?!
The audience was in agony over the death of Ras.
Although Ras had appeared only three times across the first five installments, those three appearances were more than enough to engrave his existence in people’s hearts.
Even though their first meeting had begun with a misunderstanding, as they overcame countless adversities together, Liam and Ras became family to each other.
To Liam, who had longed for family his entire life, Ras's existence was not simply that of a godfather or an uncle—it was no different from his own father.
And that existence had died right before Liam's eyes.
Already, throughout the series, whenever Liam grew even a little close to someone, people tended to die, and so fans had half-jokingly given him the nickname "Reaper."
Now that nickname had become reality.
It was enough to make the faces of fans who had joked that Liam was a Reaper twitch.
This alone had reduced the audience’s HP to zero, but the film did not stop there.
A spoonful of editing, evoking a subtle pathos the moment Ras died.
Two spoonfuls of Liam, broken and devastated after losing Ras in the wake of Colson.
Just as people were sinking into grief over this, immediately afterward, as if mocking Ras's sacrifice, Agion executed Plan B, completed the ritual, and threw his body into the portal.
Agion, who had achieved everything he desired, and Liam, who had lost everything he possessed.
Seeing this, Liam collapsed for the first time in the series.
When fans watched Liam let out a hollow laugh before sinking to his knees and weeping, their own hearts gave way.
It was the beginning of Dina-Riv Syndrome, Season 2.
Humans were fragile creatures who could not endure without someone to blame, so once again people began looking for a sacrifice to prop up their shattered minds.
And this time, the sacrifice was Nikolai.
- Krrraaak! Nikolai of Darkness has awakened once more...!
- Have you no human heart?!
- You call yourself a human being after this?!
For the record, that last line had come from Nikolai’s own flesh-and-blood sister.
He had known since the magical girl cosplay days that his older sister was prone to severe over-immersion, but calling him at six in the morning to curse him out like that—that was a bit much, Nikolai thought.
Nikolai had suddenly been branded the world’s greatest bastard.
People in this world were supposed to be used to tragedy!
Fine, getting overinvested when a pretty girl was broken was one thing, but a healthy man facing hardship should at least have been tolerable!
Nikolai honestly confessed how he felt to Allen and Leon.
Allen clapped Nikolai on the back and consoled him.
"The destiny of artists who are ahead of their time has always been like this."
"What did you do at times like this, Boss?"
"It’s not that you made a bad film. This is simply your style. People keep watching your films because they like the way you do things, so just keep going as you are."
With Allen patting his back and pumping confidence into him, Nikolai recovered in no time.
He immediately rallied and burned with determination to write an even better story; at a glance, it looked like a scene from a youth manga.
Leon, watching from right beside them, could not smile at the heartwarming scene and instead clutched his forehead as a headache set in.
'I never imagined Nikolai was normal from the moment he and Allen hit it off, but...'
Leon had suspected it since the Dina and Isis breakdown scenes, but Nikolai’s artistic sensibility was twisted in its own way.
His philosophy—that a beautiful flower blooms in the midst of adversity—was plainly on display in Liam Walker too.
'This man... He’s the sort who enjoys putting his protagonists through hell.'
That did not make it wrong.
There were as many authorial tendencies as there were works in the world.
Just as there were authors who wanted the protagonist to be happy-happy-happy, there were also authors who put their protagonists through hell.
And since this was a matter of personal taste, Leon could not bring himself to scold Nikolai for it.
But as a ruler of a nation, he did have one thing he wanted to say.
'If this is how it's going to be, couldn't you at least not make it so good...!'
Every time a single film was released, an entire nation was thrown into upheaval. That was not a particularly pleasant sight for a ruler.
If everyone had been excited, that would have been one thing, but when an entire population sank into collective depression, it was only natural for those responsible for managing it to develop ulcers.
On the other hand, if he tried to suppress their creative urges, there was no knowing what kind of balloon effect it might trigger.
This was a lesson he had learned after the situation had escalated when he had tried to suppress Allen by freezing his bank account.
At worst, they might go cause trouble in another country instead.
In that light, it might be far better if they caused a level of trouble that could be managed within the borders of the Empire.
Leon clutched his smarting stomach and called out to Allen, who was talking nonsense with Nikolai.
The situation had already happened, so arguing now would accomplish nothing.
Leon was an exceedingly efficient man, so he opted instead for a swift cleanup.
Fortunately, the Allen he knew was a person who, though he caused trouble, was exceedingly skilled at managing the aftermath.
But it still would have been preferable if he had never caused trouble at all.
Leon, having called Allen out, immediately demanded a solution.
"How are you going to fix this? You said you had it prepared in advance last time."
Fortunately, Allen was no fool.
Taking the past incident as a lesson, he had already prepared a countermeasure even before Part 5 was released.
In response to Leon's demand, Allen answered with a cool smile and a thumbs-up.
"Just leave it to me."
Watching him, Leon murmured with a faint smile.
"Yeah, real reassuring, you bastard."
*
To a world groaning from the poison of Part 5's devastation, Bon Voyage Studio swiftly administered the antidote.
- Rise, my child.
A trailer appeared the very next day after Part 5’s release.
From the trailer's opening moments, the First Vandel showed himself, extending a hand to Liam.
Then the successive Vandels flashed across the screen in a series of very short cuts.
Scenes of Liam laughing, crying, and fighting alongside them sent the fans’ anticipation soaring.
Near the end of the trailer, when anticipation peaked at the sight of Agion unleashing his Mystic Eyes, Allen administered the antidote he had prepared.
A collapsing sky.
Amidst the despairing people, an elderly man with slightly yellow skin holding a sword revealed himself.
The old man, his turban blown away by the wind, aimed his sword at the collapsing sky and murmured.
- I simply... wished to cut the sky.
The trailer ended with the sky splitting along the path of his strike.
This was Allen's antidote.
Since Liam could not hold individual fan events like a magical girl, Allen buried the grief under overwhelming dopamine instead.
And as Allen intended, people recovered their energy in an instant.
The ingredients that lifted them back to their feet seemed to contain a significant amount of adrenaline along with the dopamine, but in any case, people dusted themselves off and got up.
Thus, the world regained its vigor.
However, as much as people regained their vitality, there was one group whose mood grew somber.
A point worth noting: this group was not one that particularly wished for people's misfortune.
If one had to classify them, they were beings positioned opposite the cultists who pursued human suffering—they were on the side of justice, sincerely desiring people's happiness.
"Hoo... This State Council meeting will come to order."
It was the upper echelon of the Empire.
The Chancellor rubbed his sunken eyes and announced the agenda.
The agenda concerned the punishment of the Dean, who had dropped an enormous meteor into the middle of the ocean for filming; the goblin Sword Saint, who had cut it apart and turned it into an island; and Allen, who had ordered them to do it.
Whether it was right to convene an emergency State Council Meeting over a mere trailer was debatable, but the international situation that had suddenly changed drastically because of it left no choice.
The incident began with a sudden, massive explosion in the middle of the ocean.
When an unidentified explosion was detected far out at sea, the entire world tensed up.
Was this the birth of a new Dragon King?
Or had a monster unknown to us broken its seal somewhere?
Amidst a flurry of speculation, all that the intelligence agencies of every nation could dredge up was that a new island had formed at the spot and sword scars had been discovered all around it.
Beyond that, they couldn't even get a guess as to who was responsible for causing the incident.
It was while every nation was held in tension, merely gauging one another's reactions, that the trailer for Liam Walker Part 6 was released.
Showing Agion dropping a meteor and a Vandel slicing it.
'Weren't those people supposed to be retired...?!'
The moment he learned that the parties involved were, of all things, Imperial citizens, the Chancellor's stomach went past burning and began to twist.
As far as the Chancellor knew, the Empire's military and intelligence agencies were by no means incompetent.
They never took their eyes off individuals who posed a risk of overthrowing the state, not for a moment.
The Empire had installed most such individuals as dukes to make them friendly toward it, and it worked to leave the best possible impression on those who had no interest in the Empire.
With apologies to Dean Heinkel and Godrin, however, the Empire judged both old men to be strategic-level individuals who had already been neutralized.
Deeply disheartened, Heinkel had stepped down to the position of Dean because he wanted to focus on training Heroes, while Godrin had broken his sword after a certain incident.
Therefore, the Empire judged that they had been completely neutralized by around ten years after they went into seclusion.
But those old men had resurrected without any warning.
And the moment they resurrected, they altered the terrain...!
When the news arrived, the one frothing at the mouth most fiercely was the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Let's think about this logically.
You go to sleep for one night and wake up to find that two nuclear weapons just clashed.
There were no casualties because it was in the middle of the ocean, but could there be any national leader who could take that in stride?
The Empire itself, along with every nation sharing its borders, fell into collective panic.
- 'Are they still upset about that border skirmish recently?'
- 'Has the Emperor suddenly gone mad again? Or has the Empire just gotten into a bad mood again?'
- 'Don't tell me a magic stone vein was discovered in our country?'
The thoughts of foreign leadership ran mostly along these lines.
The moment they grasped the facts, they contacted the Empire.
Whether by dispatching envoys, contacting through hotlines, or offering tribute.
They were working day and night to somehow discern the Empire's intentions.
Naturally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose primary duty was dealing with foreign nations, was currently on fire.
And the Chancellor was no exception.
Thanks to this, it had been weeks since the civil officials had been able to leave the Imperial Palace.
Racking his memory for the taste of home-cooked food, the Chancellor proceeded with the State Council Meeting on the matter.
The first place he pressed was the military.
"What have you been doing all this time?"
Of course, the military were also suffering comrades.
But separate from that, it was a fact that they had failed to do their job.
At the Chancellor's pressing, the commanders and the Knight Commander slammed their heads onto the table.
The Deputy Director of Counterintelligence slammed his head down, showing the few remaining hairs on his crown.
The civil officials kept grilling the military, and questions and answers flew back and forth.
The meeting gradually grew more heated, and around the time the military officers' heads looked ready to split the table in two, the Chancellor discovered something strange.
The more he talked with the military, the odder the sequence of events seemed.
With flashing intuition, the Chancellor re-examined the reports that had come up so far regarding this incident.
After examining those reports, the Chancellor finally realized that outside manipulation had influenced the entire process.
Unnatural traces, as if every report coming up from the military had been intercepted and prevented from reaching the Chancellor.
The Chancellor's mind spun quickly.
Candidates capable of tampering with the reporting system between the military and himself passed through his mind.
'His Majesty the Emperor, His Excellency the Guardian Duke, the Counterintelligence Department...'
With an ominous premonition, the Chancellor turned his head and questioned those candidates.
And so, the shocking truth was revealed...!
"I permitted it."
All of it had taken place with the Emperor’s permission.
Before having the two clash, Allen had already filed a report regarding their return and the scheduled clash through the Counterintelligence Department.
The Emperor had agonized at first, just as the Chancellor had.
As ruler of the nation, was permitting this really right?
But Allen's subsequent temptation.
"Don't you want to see the strongest Demon King and the strongest Hero clash once more? And at full power, at that?"
Before that temptation, the Emperor knelt.
(It took him about five minutes to decide.)
There were no casualties anyway, were there?
The sea level had only risen slightly and the world had trembled for a moment; it hardly counted as damage.
The Eastern Fortress and mountain range had suffered damage, but that was a price worth paying.
(Incidentally, diplomacy was not the Emperor's main duty in the first place.)
And so, the Emperor did it.
However, telling the Chancellor or the Minister of Foreign Affairs would obviously lead to a barrage of pleas to reconsider, so the Emperor tampered slightly with the reports headed their way.
While the Emperor, the final boss of civil officials, muddied the reporting channels on that side, the Guardian Duke, who had joined the Emperor's will, kept the military side in check.
The Guardian Duke, too, had done so out of loyalty to the Emperor alone and never from personal interest.
It took him a full 10 minutes to decide to act, which proved it.
Through the obstruction of the highest-ranking civil and military officials, they kept the bureaucracy from reaching the truth until the trailer’s release.
And these two men received the Part 6 Director's Cut as compensation.
Having grasped the entire situation, the Chancellor glared at the two humans with ax-sharp eyes.
The Guardian Duke, having a bit of a conscience, avoided his gaze, but the Emperor met it confidently.
"Isn't this a good thing for the Empire anyway?"
The Emperor’s argument was as follows.
The incident occurred far out at sea, so there were no casualties.
Moreover, the Empire had secured two individuals with the strategic power of dukes, strengthening its national power even further.
Other countries?
It would undoubtedly sting for them a little, but it was nothing the Emperor, the master of the Empire, needed to care about.
If anything, they were the ones who needed the Empire, so they could grovel on their own.
Since it was nothing but good for the Empire and no one was harmed, his point was, was there really a reason to deal with it?
At the Emperor's attitude that no Imperial citizens had suffered damage, the Chancellor forgot even his manners and couldn't help but ask.
"Do the Interior Ministry and Foreign Ministry not count as Imperial citizens?"
No one had been harmed?
Were we, working overnight for days on end, not people of the Empire?
To the question bearing that meaning, the Emperor answered confidently.
"That was always your job to begin with."
Watching this figure who felt not even a shred of a guilty conscience, the Imperial Seal caught the Chancellor's eye.
For a seal, it had a large, heavy-looking handle, as though it symbolized the Emperor’s authority...
'That looks really quite suited for swinging.'
The Chancellor seriously pondered.
If he cracked the Emperor’s skull with the Imperial Seal right then, would posterity judge it as treason or as a courageous decision that saved the nation?
The Chancellor barely suppressed the rebellious spirit blossoming in his heart and proceeded with the meeting.