Prologue
Prologue
"Your Majesty, have you been well? I am deeply honored to present myself, for I have something to report."
Below the throne, a man knelt and bowed his head deeply.
His words continued, but his gaze passed right by me, directed toward the man beside me.
I tried to move my body to see the person at the end of that gaze.
However, unable to move my body properly and merely flinching, a voice came down from above my head, as if sensing my movement.
"Lord Protector."
The owner of the voice was the woman holding me.
"His Majesty seems tired, so may we take our leave?"
Those words were polite, but contained within them was an unseen tension and a suppressed trembling.
It was a very strange thing to say.
She was the Empress Dowager.
As the mother of the Emperor and the one embracing him, she had brought up leaving the room with her child as if she needed permission to do so.
And that, too, while waiting quietly until the report of the man below was finished and the words of the man beside her came to an end.
"Of course, Your Majesty Empress Dowager."
The man called the Lord Protector smiled.
As he did, the large scar running across his face distorted along with it.
"After all, His Majesty's noble health is more important than anything else."
Strength filled my mother's arms.
She was desperately tensing up to hide the trembling that I, held in her arms, could feel.
"May you rest comfortably, Your Majesty Julian."
Having received permission, the Empress Dowager—my mother—showed her respects to the man called the Lord Protector, rose from her seat, and walked along the path guided by the surrounding maids and the guard knight.
The path to the room was exceedingly quiet.
Even after leaving the audience chamber, mother's trembling had not stopped.
Returning to the room, mother dismissed all the maids and laid me down in the cradle.
And for a long while, without saying a word, she looked only at me.
"Ah... my baby."
Mother stroked my cheek.
"I am sorry. This eomi is powerless... I am sorry..."
Tears did not fall.
Yet, the sorrow that seemed on the verge of overflowing was clearly conveyed.
Yes. I had become a newborn baby.
And a zero-year-old emperor at that, whose crown was placed upon his mother's belly even before he was born.
How wonderful it would have been if it were only that.
Unfortunately, of all places, this world I was in happened to be inside a rofan where I had read exactly two chapters before pressing back because it wasn't to my taste.
...Still, if it had ended right there, it might have been bearable.
The truly single, intensely fatal problem was this.
In the original work I remembered, the name of the person who appeared as emperor in Chapter 1 was not my current name, 'Julian'.
His age and traits were different. Above all, that emperor's name was the name of the man called the Lord Protector, 'Maximilian', who had been smiling in front of me just a moment ago.
Then, what about me?
The emperor in the original work is the current Lord Protector, and the current emperor is me. The two of us cannot be emperor at the same time.
There is only one conclusion. Before the original story begins, I disappear.
Whether I die, get deposed, or suffer a fate even more terrible than that.
At this point, isn't this less of a rofan transmigration and more of an advance notice of execution?
At this point, my sole objective was decided.
It is not to become a true emperor, nor to become a hero.
To survive.
By whatever means necessary.
I will survive in this rofan until the very end.