114. The Empire's Fate
114. The Empire's Fate
==================
Damage Report for <Liam Walker: The Last Hero>
1. Destroyed roads
2. Eastern Fortress half destroyed
3. Ground subsidence in the eastern mountain range
4. Eastern Sea Ecosystem Change
==================
Fuck.
It was the first thought that occurred to the Chancellor upon receiving the report.
It wasn't like Allen causing trouble was anything new, but this time, the scale was way too big.
However, what drove the Chancellor even crazier was that the Emperor and the Guardian Duke were involved in this incident.
"Grrrk..."
They had matured a bit now, but in their youth, the two of them had been quite the troublemakers in their own right.
The Chancellor had felt relieved once they settled down after their sons were born, but in the end, people rarely changed.
"Hoho..."
The dry laughter of the Empire's second-highest civil official echoed within his office.
The Chancellor loved the Empire.
The founder, who overthrew a hopelessly corrupt kingdom to establish the Empire, had focused on creating a system to ensure such mistakes were never repeated.
The system, begun by the founder and completed under the third emperor, ensured that no one in the Empire could evade the law.
Even the Emperor could not avoid the vast majority of its laws.
Thanks to this, the nation could never be ruined by an individual's rampage, and the Chancellor even felt pride in this system that continuously discovered outstanding individuals.
But at this very moment, he couldn't help but resent that system.
The Chancellor was supposed to decide how to punish the Emperor?
What kind of insane country was this?
Of course, this very fairness had allowed the Empire, despite being ruled by the human race, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the nations of the long-lived races for hundreds of years. But the problem was, why, of all the long history, did it have to blow up like this during his own generation?
Faced with this unprecedented situation in the Empire's history, his already sparse hair fell out in clumps.
Fall had long since passed, but the Chancellor let out a sad laugh at these unseasonal leaves falling in winter.
There had been a time when he denied this reality.
- This is the Puppet Duchess's doing, right? Right?
- ...I'm sorry.
When the Emperor himself stated that it had been his own decision, the Chancellor nearly clutched the back of his neck and collapsed.
(The Foreign Minister had already clutched the back of his neck and collapsed at the time.)
Lamenting that he was a cursed generation, the Chancellor diligently sought the counsel of the Ministry of Justice.
It was to figure out what laws to apply to the Emperor and what level of punishment was appropriate.
A middle-aged man with an impressive protruding belly appeared beyond the crystal ball.
He too seemed to know that every word could determine the Emperor’s punishment, because he kept rubbing his dry forehead with a handkerchief in search of sweat.
"Be at ease. His Majesty is not one to take such things to heart."
At the Chancellor's consolation, a murderous glare shot back from beyond the crystal ball.
His eyes protested, “Are you serious?”
However, the Chancellor maintained an indifferent attitude, practically saying, 'Not my problem.'
After agonizing at length, the Justice Minister squeezed out an answer.
"Uh... For this case, perhaps you should request counsel from His Highness the Imperial Prince..."
"That is not possible."
"...May I ask the reason?"
"His Highness is also a party to this incident. Who is consulting whom? Surely you haven't forgotten?"
It was easy to forget, but Leon was among the cast of Liam Walker.
He played Sean, one of the three protagonists.
Ask a prince like that for advice on disciplining the Emperor and Guardian Duke?
If anything, they should have been grateful Leon had not been dragged into it along with them.
Leon himself had noticed the atmosphere and voluntarily kept a low profile.
At the Chancellor's pointed remark, the Minister of Justice immediately bowed his head.
The excuse that he'd been so busy he'd momentarily forgotten crossed his mind, but in such a situation, bowing his head quickly was the best policy.
Especially when the boss was in a shitty mood.
The Minister's response seemed to be the right one, as the Chancellor let it slide without another word.
And the discussion went back to square one.
How to punish these two individuals, the Emperor and the Guardian Duke.
There had been cases in history where an Emperor committed a wrong and was punished.
However, those were for crimes anyone would clearly recognize as wrong—murder, rape, massacre, war crimes—so there was no need to rack their brains; they could simply carry out the sentence immediately.
But this case was somewhat special.
First, the abuse of authority was certain.
But the problem was, there were no victims.
They wanted to claim the bureaucrats forced to work overtime due to this incident were victims, but naturally, that wouldn't be recognized.
Anyway, there were no victims.
So it was difficult to set the severity of the punishment.
'Should I just apply military law and be done with it?'
The thought briefly flared up, but if such a precedent remained, who knew what kind of resentment future descendants might harbor?
And since he himself was a Half-Elf, he was destined to share a pot with descendants at least three generations down the line, so he couldn't just say 'to hell with it' and screw them over.
Clutching his throbbing head, the Chancellor urged the Minister.
And the wicked superior's intention to shove the responsibility onto him was clearly conveyed to the middle-aged man beyond the crystal ball.
'Sure, the Minister's post is a high position, but why am I being treated like this?'
Sighing deeply at his own predicament, he listed the relevant laws.
After that discussion, the penalty the Emperor received was disciplinary confinement.
*
The news that the Emperor had been sentenced to disciplinary confinement—not imprisonment—spread throughout the Empire.
The reason wasn't disclosed to save face for the imperial family, but it was clear that the Emperor had done something wrong at the very least.
The reaction of the subjects to this was...
- Hey, did you see the latest Liam Walker?
Shockingly indifferent.
Well, only in democratic countries where people could directly exercise their voting rights did they pay attention to political issues. In the Empire, there was no reason for citizens to be interested in the personal lives of their superiors.
It was merely a minor happening that they glossed over, thinking, 'Oh, His Majesty the Emperor must have done something wrong.'
What mattered more to them was the sixth Liam Walker film, which had recently been released.
Who cared what the Emperor did when a swordsman had split the very sky?
Of course, the movie's plot wasn't just that.
Krauser, who had sliced the sky, clashed with Agion.
In the clash between the strongest beings in the setting, the sea split apart, and the island formed from a meteor rose and crashed back down.
In that battle, Krauser was at a slight disadvantage.
However, thanks to Liam and his friends joining the fray to tip the scales, they managed to defeat Agion successfully.
At the end, Liam’s spear even reached Agion’s heart.
But Agion was a demon famous for his tenacious vitality.
Leaving behind the words, 'You should have aimed for the head,' he was ejected into the present.
The three main heroes lamented letting Agion escape, but the First Vandel didn't mind much.
According to the First Vandel, Agion had recovered only part of his soul when he escaped, so once he returned he would again be sickly and dependent on his breathing apparatus.
That alone made this time-travel endeavor clearly a success.
Moreover, weakening Agion wasn't the only achievement.
Though only a few hours had passed in the movie, Liam, who had traversed countless eras and trained in each, had become incomparably stronger than when he started.
Vandel gazed at the completed Hero, Liam, with satisfaction and handed over the Hero's Token.
- From this moment on, you are Vandel.
It was a happy ending for everyone, but Liam didn't look happy in the slightest.
As soon as Liam returned to the present, Ras’s will arrived for him.
Tears fell from Liam's eyes onto the will, which stated that all of Ras's inheritance was to be transferred to Liam, along with the words, 'I loved you.'
A few days later, Liam showed off his growth at the academy, overwhelming his peers in sparring.
Liam showed that he had overcome his trauma by saying that, tragic as Ras’s death was, Ras would not have wanted him to remain shut away in his room.
The good news didn't stop there.
Hannah and Sean’s formerly flirtatious relationship developed into a genuine romance.
Finally, a post-credits scene showed a female student slipping a letter into Liam's locker, hinting that spring was coming for Liam too, and the episode concluded peacefully.
.
.
.
But when people were asked what happened in the latter half of Part 6, most gave the same answer.
- Huh? I don't really remember?
The facts that Liam grew and that Sean and Hannah became a couple had long been erased from their minds.
Agion had just shown his full power on screen for the first time, so who cared about the three main heroes!
Plus, there was even fan service featuring all the past Vandels.
The details about the three main heroes had long been deleted from people's minds.
Fans, commonly called old-timers, were roaming the entire Empire with their spines straightened—no, practically stirring the whole place up.
This wasn't a particularly good situation.
It wasn't great that my father and the Emperor, both under disciplinary confinement, were among them either. The bigger problem was that the Liam Series was about to be swallowed by the Vandel Series.
True, I had incorporated the worldview after hearing the Dean's story, but the protagonists of this world were the students.
Even if they were still far lacking in splendor, strength, and individuality compared to the pros, they absolutely had to receive the spotlight in that worldview.
Nikolai agreed with my opinion, and the Dean agreed too.
"Then, it seems the time is coming for me to retire."
"Yes. Unfortunately."
It was unfortunate news for the Dean, who loved movies, but Agion needed to gradually make his exit from the story.
The previous Vandels were easy to remove because time travel meant the protagonists had met them only briefly, but Agion had been resurrected, which made his exit harder.
The narrative for Agion's departure at this point was that he would be defeated by the three main heroes who had grown through time travel. But the problem was, would the fans accept that?
Agion had already once been written out by an imp armed with cheat abilities under the Impist executive.
Multiverse or not, the story had been so utterly forced that the fandom had collapsed in ruins. It was the trauma of the Vandel series.
So we needed to send Agion off with more dignity, while keeping it plausible.
Fortunately, we had already been seeding the plausibility for it throughout the series.
That plausibility was his breathing apparatus.
As the films had shown, Agion never moved acrobatically.
His sword swings were always slow, and he never once ran.
Part of it was that he simply never needed to, of course, but the bigger reason was his breathing.
The first time he moved violently was after recovering most of his soul fragments and fighting the Third. Before then, he had been a Demon King who wheezed into a respirator.
Since we'd given him the fatal weakness of being incapable of intense exertion across the entire series, there was no plausibility problem with Liam's party defeating him.
The problem was whether the audience was emotionally ready to accept the Demon King's exit.
Just in case, we showed that it was the Third Vandel who dealt Agion a mortal wound, to help people accept it, and we even let the two of them clash in a satisfying all-out fight. But in the end, this was the domain of emotion.
Creative works were services aimed at emotion, and no matter how rationally one prepared, reactions often spread in unexpected directions.
Especially since this was a fandom that had already collapsed once, we needed to handle it with extreme care.
According to plan, Agion's exit was supposed to happen in Part 7.
So before we started shooting in earnest, we needed to take the public's temperature.
The Dean's eyes widened as she listened to my analysis.
It was a look that said, roughly, "You were capable of designing something like this?"
Meeting the Dean's gaze, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of person "Allen Price" was in her head.
The Dean watched my reaction for a moment, then softened her words a little.
"I consider him a student who is slightly difficult to predict, but trustworthy and reliable."
Which meant I had an image somewhere along the lines of "a bit lacking, but a good kid."
It felt like the way people around me looked at me kept getting weirder.
I was starting to lose track of whether I should be hurt by this or just accept it as fact.
"Now, now. That's not the important thing."
The conversation had veered sideways for a moment, but what we needed to do right now was determine whether the fans were ready to accept Agion's exit.
There were three big things we needed to find out through this public-opinion survey.
One, were they aware that Agion was sufficiently weakened?
Two, did the sight of a weakened Agion feel like an insult to the people who had loved him all this time?
And the third and last: in the public's perception, was Liam a protagonist worthy of defeating Agion?
The first two were tricky questions to investigate in their own right, but the third was the real problem.
Within the Liam series, Agion's presence had already grown far too massive.
And it wasn't just Agion—the supporting characters around Liam had become far too distinctive as well.
In this situation, if people weren't feeling the protagonist's appeal, then even if Liam somehow managed to defeat Agion, there was a real possibility that the fans wouldn't emotionally accept it.
Worst case, the beginning of Impinist Season 2.
You might call that an exaggeration, but these people already carried scars in their hearts. Once startled by an earth dragon, they would jump even at a crocodile, so the slightest provocation could set them off.
Inflicting another wound on the people who had remembered Vandel and Agion for so long wasn't something a decent human being could do, so we had no choice but to be cautious to an extreme degree.
And after all that discussion, the conclusion was:
"Let's hold a Liam Festival."
More precisely, we would make use of the upcoming academy festival.
It felt a little late to say the scale wasn't club-sized anymore, but anyway, Bon Voyage Studio would apply for a club booth and run a fan signing, a cosplay contest, a merchandise shop, and so on.
In the process, we could naturally survey public opinion through questionnaires, merchandise demand, cosplay voting results, and the like.
The Dean agreed with my idea and began drawing up the festival budget in earnest.
This was two months before the Liam Festival.
*
Two months later.
In the cosplay contest section, I spotted people who had no business being there.
Coo— coo—
He probably thought I wouldn't recognize him behind an oversized respirator, but from his eyes to his hair, he was unmistakably my own blood.
"What are you doing here?"
"I do not know you."
"Your disciplinary confinement isn't over yet."
"That is a matter I know nothing about."
Not wanting to admit that this man had contributed half my genes, I addressed him with the impersonal "you."
For his part, he seemed to have interpreted my intentions however he pleased and was playing dumb.
While I wondered whether the commander of the Emperor’s personal guard should really be standing around at a festival wearing a respirator, another figure appeared behind my genetic donor.
It was a Sean cosplay—a little niche, so it took me a second to recognize it.
The problem was that the person cosplaying Sean was Leon's genetic donor. In other words, the ruler of the Empire.
"..."
Our eyes met.
An awkward current passed between the two of us.
I spoke first.
"I'll keep this a secret from the Chancellor."
"Thank you."
Of course, I had my doubts that my keeping quiet would actually prevent that person from pinpointing the Emperor's location. Still, the situation was different from him finding out because I ratted them out.
The former would be unavoidable, but wouldn't the latter feel like a betrayal?
I sighed deeply and guided the two fathers, who were acting their shoe size rather than their age.
Say what you will, but at the end of the day they were only human. Indulging in a hobby like this once in a while couldn't be all bad.
Disciplinary confinement?
That wasn't my problem.
'Good luck to the Ministry of Justice and the Chancellors.'
I offered up about three seconds of prayers for the officials' departed souls, then guided the fathers around the festival grounds.
As I showed them around, I noticed the cosplay quality was extremely high.
Cosplay quality was normally proportional to the capital invested, and since these were the richest men in the Empire, their costumes were practically authentic.
...Possibly even higher quality than the originals.
Others seemed to notice too, because the three of us drew everyone's attention.
Under the weight of all those stares, I guided the two of them to the merchandise shop.
This shop was a booth we'd set up in collaboration with the alchemy club, the art club, and others.
With merchandise, passion mattered more than technical skill, and the handcrafted goods made by talented, enthusiastic students were excellent.
Honestly, at least where merchandise was concerned, entrusting it to students was far, far better than handing it to trading companies whose only desire was to suck up every last coin while being utterly indifferent to quality.
And the Emperor and my father seemed to agree.
"I'll take all of these."
"I'm sorry? I'm a little frazzled and didn't catch that. Could you repeat it, please?"
"All the figurines on this shelf. Wrap up every last one."
I stopped the Emperor as he suddenly tried to buy everything.
I understood his enthusiasm as a fan, but the merchandise shop was also measuring public sentiment toward the protagonist through demand.
If an ecological disruptor like the Emperor suddenly barged in, the data would be contaminated.
...It absolutely wasn't because I didn't want to see the sight of my fathers buying things like this and displaying them at home.
In the end, after negotiations, we only managed to leave the shop once I promised to have items specially made for them after the demand survey was complete and the statistics were out.
The moment I dragged the two overgrown adolescents out of the merchandise shop, a familiar face appeared in front of me.
It was Leon and Anna, wearing Sean and Hannah's avatars and out on a date.
Leon spoke to Anna with eyes dripping honey.
"Want to hit the merchandise shop next?"
"Why? Do we need merchandise? Darling, you already have the rarest merchandise of all."
"What merchandise?"
"Me!"
"Here I have you, and I still want more—am I being too greedy?"
Leon tugged Anna’s cheeks, and the two laughed together.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Miss Regressor really had ripped out the brakes the moment she opened her heart.
Sean and Hannah had gotten together in the last chapter, and in reality Leon and Anna had also become a couple.
It had been two months since then, so I could accept that their forms of address had changed like that, but...
The fact that the couple were my childhood friend and the regressor completely killed the mood.
The two of them, lost in their own world, belatedly noticed me standing at the entrance with a sour expression.
Their faces instantly flushed, as if they were aware I'd just witnessed something I shouldn't have.
Then they saw one of the two middle-aged men whose scruffs I was holding in my hands, and froze on the spot.
And the Emperor, who was being held by the scruff, also froze on the spot.
I looked at the three of them in turn and sorted out the situation.
The Emperor, who had thrown a tantrum in the merchandise shop in a Sean cosplay and been dragged out.
The Imperial Prince, caught flirting in a Sean avatar by his milk brother and his father.
The regressor, who had been simpering as if shaking off the sorrows of past loops and ran into her friend and her father-in-law.
And me, tied directly or indirectly to every single one of these people.
In the chilling atmosphere, the only person who could truly be called a third party was the Guardian Duke.
Father glanced at Uncle Emperor and murmured indifferently.
"Well, well. Congratulations on meeting the family. I won't forget this—at least until I'm in the grave."
"Shut up, before I imprison you for lèse-majesté."
"Allen. You don't have to go this far, so please just bring home a normal daughter-in-law."
"I said shut up!!!"
Two middle-aged men bickered while I held them by the scruffs of their necks.
Watching the two figures frozen in place as they stared at the scene, I couldn't help but seriously wonder.
The future of the Empire.
Was it really okay for it to go on like this?