A Ruler Worth Trusting and Following (2)
"Well, now that we've all been properly introduced, let's get this meeting started."
The Military Command Barracks. Once I'd been escorted inside, the aide I'd taken for a secretary—Diana—came around to pour the tea.
Come to think of it, this one was stacked too. Big chest, wide hips.
...Wait. Could it be?
While I was entertaining those idle thoughts, Ian spoke up in a voice that had settled into calm.
"You did mention there was a great deal to discuss. Might I hear what it is, Your Majesty?"
For the first time, the man earned my approval. Since he clearly hadn't come to make small talk, I cut straight to the point, gesturing at the armor displayed along the back wall of the meeting room.
"We start with that."
"Armor? What about the knights' armor?"
"Collect it batch by batch and strip off every last one of those shoulder poofs."
Ian froze, teacup halfway to his lips.
"Just like that? You want me to remove perfectly good pauldrons?"
"If you honestly think that counts as perfectly good, then I sincerely pity you. All that weight does is eat away at stamina, with zero practicality to show for it."
The armor was of a slim cut, tailored to flatter the lines of the body. The massive shoulder poofs dignified by the name of "pauldrons" weighed north of nine or ten kilos apiece, even measured on the generous side. To anyone with eyes, it was dress-up armor—practicality long since fed to the dogs.
"I've been watching the knights train in the things. The intensity is brutal, admittedly, but they burn out far too fast for superhumans who can wield mana."
...
"With a combined twenty kilos hanging off both shoulders even at the lowest estimate, of course they do. Why on earth would anyone march onto a battlefield wearing a lump of pure debuff?"
Ian blinked a few times, dumbfounded, then broke into a grin.
"To inspire awe and terror in our enemies. The bigger you look, the scarier you are."
"Numbers alone can project plenty of menace. Besides, the name Lugnica is terror enough all by itself. Engrave the Lugnica crest on their chests instead—I promise you it'll land far harder."
"Wahaha! Now that I picture it, that is the creepier option."
"And why isn't a single knight wearing a helm?"
After that came an unbroken string of lunacy I was forced to sit through: helms ruined a knight's handsome face, so wearing one was optional "to preserve dignity"; the military budget was subsidizing the purchase of formal banquet uniforms. And so on, and so on.
Just what was wrong with these deranged romance-fantasy bastards, mistaking armor for a fashion accessory? Did they not value their own lives?
Listening to it made me angry, and talking about it made me angrier—yet to my surprise, Ian raised not a single objection to my order to scrap the lot. No counterarguments, no questions; he simply answered what was asked and listened. There wasn't the faintest whiff of seditious, rebel-minded trouble about him.
"I have a fair idea of what Your Majesty wants."
Only after hearing me out in full did he venture an opinion of his own for the first time.
"But here's the thing... do we really have to change it?"
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"Lugnica is already the strongest, exactly as it stands. Countless wars fought, countless victories proving it. So why insist on changing it?"
Because if we stay like this, we're doomed. That's why.
The Lugnica that had been hailed as the strongest from start to finish in the original story had been left wheezing after a single war. It took going through the reports myself to grasp exactly why.
Left unchanged, ruin was a certainty—and at best, with luck on our side, we'd be spared only half of it, precisely as in the original. But I couldn't exactly tell him any of that, so I served up the simplest answer available: neither tedious nor preachy.
"Because I decided so."
...
"From now on, dying of stupidity in my army is illegal. Simple, right?"
This time, too, Ian simply stared at my face, lips slightly parted, as if he were beholding some rare curiosity.
For a moment he kept his head bowed, shoulders quaking—then he detonated.
"Heh... heh heh... BWAHAHAHA!!!"
Laughter burst out of him loud enough to blow the meeting room off its foundations. Like his breath might give out entirely. Like he needed to wipe away the tears trickling from the corners of his eyes.
He laughed like it was the merriest thing in the world.
"Ah, forgive me, forgive me. It's only that Your Majesty is a far more entertaining man than I expected. My apologies for the rudeness."
"I am fairly entertaining. So? What of it?"
"I'll see every one of Your Majesty's orders carried out exactly as given."
...Huh?
"You will?"
"Well, you are the Supreme Commander, aren't you? Obeying your orders is my job as your Deputy Commander."
That made no sense...
From everything I'd heard, Ian's power struggle with the previous Supreme Commander had been vicious. I'd assumed he'd at least test my mettle once—yet he'd agreed so easily it left me deflated.
"Is the meeting over, then?"
"That's all."
"Then I'll take my leave first. If you ever need anything, call on me—any time."
Ian flashed a thumbs-up with a grin, Diana bowed her head in quiet deference, and the two of them withdrew.
Tick. Tock.
For a while, only the steady ticking of the clock rang through the meeting room. Elise drifted over and, before I even noticed, refilled my long-emptied cup.
"Your assessment, my lord?"
Good question, that.
He'd shown no particular hostility, and the power play I'd been certain would come had never walked through the door. Setting aside his breezy manner and a face that looked like it would kick a puppy, the man seemed a world removed from the word "treason."
I drained the freshly refilled cup to the bottom and rose from my seat.
"He says he'll do it. Let's leave him be for now and see."
"Brother dearest, you're going to be the death of me!"
That evening.
Ordered about by an Emperor who had arrived at his very first meeting armed with one outlandish reform proposal after another, Ian had just finished his first overtime shift in ages and slipped into the bath. How long had it been since exhaustion came from using his head instead of his body? As he sank into the warm water, the day's fatigue washed away in the most pleasant of ways.
Watching him soak, Diana finally detonated everything she'd been bottling up.
"Your opposite number is the Blood Emperor, I said, the Blood Emperor! The madman who beheaded the heads of all Three Branches of Government! And you had the nerve to unleash your mana at him?!"
"Tell me about it~ I honestly wasn't doing it on purpose. That monstrous maid of his had my whole life flashing before my eyes, I'm telling you?"
It was no joke—remembering it still raised gooseflesh. Those eyes. That killing intent. That expression... For all his confidence in his own skill, Ian had been left certain of one thing: fight her a hundred times, and he would lose a hundred times. She hardly seemed the type to follow any man... yet the Emperor had tamed her. It said everything about the caliber of the man who had done it.
"It is not a laughing matter! Honestly..."
Diana fumed and raged for a good while longer before finally, worn out by her own fury, she let out a sigh. Little sister and childhood friend both, she knew better than anyone that he was not a man who truly absorbed lectures like this one.
One more sigh, and she turned to Ian—who was wearing a rather contented expression—and asked:
"So? How was it?"
"How was what?"
"Your first impression. You've been dying to meet His Majesty, haven't you? Do you think he can be trusted?"
"A sovereign who falls nothing short of worth trusting and following. That's my first impression."
Diana's eyes went wide, plainly taken aback.
"That's a remarkably high assessment. Did your tastes really align that well?"
"Of course I liked him~ True to his name as the Sun of the Empire, the man even has a connoisseur's taste. If His Majesty would only permit it, I'd gladly share a drink with him."
"Honestly, men..."
"Hah hah hah! But the thing I rate highest of all is the reform proposals and directives His Majesty brought with him. 'Impressive' is about the only word I have for them."
Helms made optional to preserve a knight's dignity. Military funds bankrolling the purchase of banquet dress. Problems Ian had needed years in the service to even recognize, that man had laid bare within moments of becoming Supreme Commander. Sharp, rational—and, for that very reason, a little chilling. That alone was more than enough to earn such an assessment.
"Loyalty burning bright, I see. Funny how you used to fight the last Supreme Commander tooth and nail."
"That bastard was fucked in the head from the very start. The knights could have been made so much better, but no—it was 'the budget this' and 'the honor that,' all while treating our men like spare parts."
In truth, several of the reforms Dante had put forward were ones Ian himself had once petitioned for. Every single one had been rejected. The reason? None other than: We are already the strongest—why change a thing? And what if the change made us worse? the man had asked. Which was precisely why the Emperor's answer had wrung the laughter out of him.
Because I decided so.
From now on, dying of stupidity in my army is a crime.
Heh... heh heh heh!
It was an answer the Ian of back then could never have produced. A rebuttal so far beyond him that even now he couldn't begin to compose one. Was it the sort of thing any Emperor could say? No. It was words only Dante de Lawrence could speak.
There was not a single reason left in the world not to follow him.
"We'll be drowning in nothing but overtime for a while yet, but I finally feel like the army might start running straight again."
"Well, look at that—a national hero is born."
"Brace yourself too, by the way. His Majesty wants everything wrapped up within a month, so expect plenty of nights you won't be going home."
"That's... not really a problem for me..."
Diana hesitated, as though something were weighing on her mind. He waited her out patiently, and at last she forced the words out with visible difficulty.
"Um... are you going to... tell His Majesty?"
"Of course I am."
...
"Whether he's an Emperor worth following and this are two entirely separate matters. The only reason I ever served under that piece-of-shit Supreme Commander was for the chance to meet a human of House Lawrence."
Ian's expression had cooled to ice as he rose from the water. He walked to the shelf and picked up the badge resting upon it.
It was a relic of the dead. Proof of the Oswald Knights—men who should, by rights, have been called heroes.
"Next week is the new knights' first patrol. That day, I'm going to show Lawrence that we were here. Without fail..."