Trash Must Be Removed
Trash must be removed.
Three years from now, war will break out in Lugnica.
Conquest through rebellion, famine, plague sweeping the land—more than half the population slaughtered wholesale.
A gift set of every disaster imaginable, all in one package.
Any two of those alone are enough to doom a nation, so apparently no emperor in history has ever had to shoulder all of them at once.
And the first one to manage it just had to be me. Fucking hell……
Unfair? Absolutely. Infuriating? You bet. But what can I do about it?
The water's already been spilled.
Rather than cursing at the mess, the rational move is to wipe it up and draw fresh water.
"Well then, now that we've cleaned up the corpses, let's continue the meeting. You gentlemen are busy men—I'm sure you'd all like to clock out on time."
Despite my breezy tone, the atmosphere in the council chamber remained ice-cold.
Cold wasn't quite the word. It was paralyzed with terror.
The surviving bloodline, the bloodstains soaked into the carpet, the scenes burned into their memories—none of those were small things. But that wasn't why they were scared.
"H-he's executed the Commander-in-Chief…… of all people……?"
"The supreme commander of the entire military……"
"Good heavens…… not only has a hole been torn in national security, but this could very well spark a war."
A few of those whispered worries—meant only for the man sitting beside them—reached my ears anyway.
It was certainly a dangerous choice, no argument there. If I let things fizzle out here, civil war breaks out; if I kill off all the vassals, the nation collapses. Either way, I go down in history as a world-class moron.
Not that I have any intention of letting that happen.
"Anyone want some raspberries? They're organic. Good for the body."
"""……"""
"Nobody? Our maid packed them for me, said I needed my sugar. Fine then—who's reporting the next agenda item?"
"May I have the honor, Your Majesty?"
A man raised his hand among the vassals, who had all clamped their mouths shut and been watching each other for cues.
The Chief Justice. The man who presided over every law in the empire.
He'd been sitting directly across from the Commander-in-Chief, and yet he'd managed to smooth over his expression and emotions remarkably fast.
"Of course you may. Quick recovery is the name of the game in situations like this. Want a raspberry?"
"We assumed Your Majesty must be feeling a great burden following your sudden ascension. In hopes of easing Your Majesty's concerns, we have prepared a piece of legislation."
The documents he handed over reached me through Elis.
Privileges for nobles who committed crimes. Expanded powers for the judiciary. Beyond that, it was a scrap of paper stuffed to the brim with impenetrable jargon—kindling, essentially—until the final paragraph drew a genuine laugh out of me.
A Regency Act. A law so brainless it would let the vassals run all affairs of state by majority vote among themselves, without the Emperor's approval.
The Chief Justice's eyebrows flinched. But he quickly recovered with a snake-oil smile.
"It is merely a temporary measure, until Your Majesty grows accustomed to the duties of Emperor. Our senior officials will handle the trivial matters of state, so Your Majesty need only concern yourself with the bigger picture."
Freeloading, is he.
And who, exactly, decides what counts as 'trivial'?
The moment I stamp my seal on this bill, my hands and feet get tied—it's a scripted move. If I'm unlucky, a blade might find my throat while I sleep.
If the Commander-in-Chief was merely after personal gain, this old man came with the deliberate intention of swallowing the empire whole.
"Denied."
"……Your Majesty, I beg you—look at the forest, not the trees."
The Chief Justice's smile vanished in an instant.
"The Commander-in-Chief has been executed. With who knows what storm of blood about to sweep the empire, merely containing the fallout will tax Your Majesty to the limit. I implore you to heed the sincere concerns of your loyal servants."
Now it was an outright threat.
He'd shaken the military, and now he was turning the judiciary against me too—plain, undisguised hostility, asking whether I really thought I'd come out of this unscathed.
At the same time, it was a declaration of confidence: you can't kill me.
Because the fewer of the three branches remain, the more the Emperor loses.
Every last one of these bastards.
The absolute pinnacle of shit-eating arrogance and complacency.
"I appreciate the concern for my well-being, but your acting is far too clumsy. If you wanted to show sincerity, you should have at least shed a tear or two while making your pitch. Wouldn't you say?"
I rose slowly to my feet, and the vassals who had been nodding along to the Chief Justice flinched as one.
The Chief Justice himself, his confident tone suddenly turned on its head, shot up from his seat.
"Wh-what are you saying……!"
"As the Chief Justice says, the Commander-in-Chief's absence is a very, very serious problem. Which is why any dangerous elements who might cause secondary damage must be removed."
"Th-there exists no law permitting the execution of the head of the judiciary without any justification! This is naked tyranny, and the legal order of the empire—"
"Imperial Constitution, Article 4, Clause 2."
I cut through his retreating words.
"Anyone who shakes the foundations of the imperial throne, or deliberately threatens the security of the empire, may be summarily executed without trial."
"!? Th-there's no such law……!"
"Why wouldn't there be? It's written right there in that uselessly thick constitutional tome."
Like a viper slowly coiling around its prey's throat, I closed the distance.
The Chief Justice, who had at least been capable of a counterattack, now found his bluster evaporating entirely, and he began to convulse.
"Just now, the Chief Justice used the Commander-in-Chief's death as leverage to threaten my safety, and pushed forward a Regency Act designed to strip the Emperor's power."
"W-wait, please, Your Majesty……!"
"This is clear-cut illegality with no room for judicial leniency. Understood?"
"I have wronged you, Your Majes—"
CLANG—!
Once again, Elis's blade—no shadow of it even glimpsed—severed the Chief Justice's neck.
His head, frozen in that terror-stricken expression, rolled across the floor, but this time no scream erupted from anywhere.
If the first execution had been chaos, the second was pure, undiluted fear.
The vassals who had clamped their hands over their mouths couldn't even manage to blink.
And among them, I looked for the Chief Administrator.
"Last but not least—you."
"……!?"
"You've been eating well off the empire since the previous Emperor's reign. And especially after Cain died, the amounts were astronomical. Why? Figured a sucker emperor would take the throne, so your confidence got a boost?"
I flung the bundle of papers from my coat out toward the vassals.
Documents bearing figures, contents, and the Chief Administrator's own seal.
The vassals who had been frowning at them, wondering what they were, leapt back in shock.
"Th-this is……!?"
"A list of fiefs where the slush funds—embezzled from tax revenue—were laundered……?"
"Good heavens…… how much does all of this amount to?"
However thoroughly I'd dodged my fate, the fact remained that I was the second son of the imperial family.
Since I was overflowing with potential to be used as a political tool, I'd long since gathered the weaknesses of the power players ranked after Cain—the three men I'd decided to kill today.
Not that I ever imagined I'd use them like this……
The Chief Administrator, who had been staring at the Chief Justice's corpse with trembling eyes, dropped to his knees on the spot.
"S-s-spare me, Your Majesty……!"
"If you'd stolen a reasonable amount, maybe. But this rivals three years of the imperial budget. You're a great man who set this nation's development back by decades—why on earth would I spare you?"
"If you cannot forgive me, then I beg you—think of the people, Your Majesty……!"
The Chief Administrator raised his head, spittle flying as he pleaded.
"The Commander-in-Chief, and now the Chief Justice…… two pillars of this nation have collapsed in a single morning……! If I die as well, the administration won't just be paralyzed—Lugnica itself will fall! I beg you, mercy!!"
Faced with imminent death, his brain cells seemed to have gone into overdrive.
He had a point, admittedly. No matter how much legitimacy I secured or competence I displayed, in the end I'd simply be a tyrant. The moment today's purge caused real, practical problems, every arrow of blame would point at me.
Letting him live would be the wise choice, sure……
But what can you do.
Scarier than any enemy is an ally you can't trust.
"Chief Justice, Chief Administrator—is not studying the law a trend among you high-and-mighty types?"
"Th-the law……?"
"Imperial Constitution, Article 2, Clause 1. The Emperor, master of the empire, may assume the duties of the Commander-in-Chief, Chief Justice, and Chief Administrator—the supreme heads of the judiciary, administration, and military—whenever any of them is absent, without limitation."
"……!? Th-that idiotic law exists……!?"
"It does, actually."
This is a romance fantasy, after all.
My sister used to say, "Cain is the absolute sovereign who is weak only to the female lead!"
At the time I teased her—then why the hell did you bother separating the three branches?
But if a tool exists, there's no reason not to use it.
"E-even if that law truly exists, it's physically impossible! Do you not realize that no matter how brilliant Your Majesty is, you only have one body!?"
"I know."
"……Pardon?"
"Look. The Emperor has just proven his competence through this very meeting. And he even possesses a personal magic. So what problem could possibly arise here?"
The Chief Administrator's brain froze, and his eyes went wide with an almost audible shwoooong.
His trembling gaze dropped downward, and at the sight of the dark red blade tip jutting out through my stomach, he swallowed hard one more time.
"It's you. The trash who've been devouring this country."
The Chief Administrator, blood spilling from his lips, turned his head toward where the hand gripping the sword's hilt should be.
There stood a man with black hair and black eyes that drank in the light, his sharp, striking features unforgettable.
Dante de Lawrence.
"Th-this can't…… be……!"
With a strangely anticlimactic last breath, the Chief Administrator's body crumpled.
Silence descended on the chamber, if only for a moment.
Then it erupted outward like a massive shockwave.
"His Majesty…… in two places?"
"Magic? Clone magic……?"
"But there's no mana at all……"
"!?!? Don't tell me……!"
"H-h-his personal magic!?"
Thankfully, no further explanation seemed necessary.
Summoning two more clones, I turned toward the throne.
"From this moment, I am the Commander-in-Chief."
"The Chief Justice."
"And the Chief Administrator."
""""All seated. The meeting continues.""""
There was no going back now.
Not that I had any intention of going back.
To avert the apocalypse and preserve my peaceful life as an unremarkable prince, I'd have to tear this godforsaken romance-fantasy empire apart and rebuild it from the ground up.
'The opening move is done—so what comes next?'
What else?
Hair's been cut, so now it's time for the conquest.
I just hope the executives over there are capable of something resembling sane thought.
After that, the meeting concluded smoothly.
Everything exactly as the Emperor willed it.
No vassal existed who could so much as voice an objection or check to anything that was said.
"What are we supposed to do now……"
An outcome completely opposite to what they'd originally planned.
Thanks to that, several of the vassals found themselves forced to hold an unscheduled meeting of their own.
"We thought the era of the nobility had finally arrived with the collapse of imperial authority……"
"If this was how it would turn out, the previous Emperor being alive would have been far better."
"He only ever lounged around, after all."
"The intellect he showed in that meeting, the expertise, even the cunning to have done his research in advance…… why someone like that stayed so quiet until now is a mystery in itself."
"Don't tell me he was the one who killed the previous Emperor……"
At the words that slipped out, a chill ran down every vassal's spine.
In Lugnica, the eldest son inherits the family unless there is an extraordinary reason otherwise.
What if everything up to this point had been a scripted sequence? What if he'd played the incompetent second son precisely so that no one would believe him capable of pulling something like this?
Fear took root.
Neither the previous Emperor nor even the one before him had been this thorough.
"We cannot let it end like this."
The one to cut through the spreading mood was the leader of the noble faction—Duke Argos.
"Compared to Lord Cain, Lord Dante seems intent on taking an active hand in politics. Considering his age, even by the most conservative estimate, the era of the nobility won't arrive for another twenty years."
"Th-then what do you propose we do……? With him having swallowed all three branches, digging any deeper is……"
"An organization does not change simply because its head does."
Argos was certain.
A year, at minimum.
Clones or no clones, he was ultimately one man—and seizing control of even a single organization would take that long.
"B-but what if, hypothetically, the Emperor proves equally skilled at governance? What if he swallows all three branches in less than a year……"
"The administration, perhaps. But do you truly believe the military's vice-commander and the judiciary's aide would follow the Emperor?"
"……"
"And if he kills them, it will take him even longer. Which is why we must make use of the present moment."
Outright assassination was out of the question—too reckless.
There were no more puppets left to prop up, after all.
Covert, yet aggressive.
"Let us rally the nobility."