Editing Rakuin no Monshou:Volume8 Chapter1 (section)

=== Part 3 ===

Solon, the imperial capital of the empire of Mephius.

After finishing up a number of scheduled matters during the morning audience, Emperor Guhl Mephius, defended by a forest of spears brandished by the red-clad Imperial Guardsmen, travelled through the streets in a magnificent carriage and arrived at the temple of the Dragon God’s faith.

In a room deep inside the elders were waiting.

It was a plain and empty room except for the long crystal table in its centre. Normally, "crystal" did not refer to the crystal found on Earth, the mother planet, but to a mineral particular to this planet which simply resembled crystal in appearance and in hardness. Whether true or not, it was said however that all of the furniture in the temple was made from actual crystal, from the original planet, which had been loaded onto the migrant spaceship.

The flames, which had been lit in every corner of the chamber, as well as the distorted faces of each of the elders, appeared reflected on the table's surface.

There was no seat of honour. There was no such thing as differences in status between the emperor and the elders who dwelt in the temple. Thus the elders did not rise to greet the emperor when he entered the room, nor did any of them offer drawn-out salutations. And yet, Guhl Mephius' tone was decidedly rude.

"This is the first time that your judgement has erred. Wasn't Taúlia supposed to effortlessly fall into my hands within a few days? I hear that soldiers are now gathering there from all over the west. Forget a few days, this could take six months or even a full year; and cost many Mephian lives."

The elders looked at each other. Although they were all older than Guhl by some ten or twenty years, no one had any words to offer as an answer. They seemed to be avoiding his eyes. Guhl smiled with a feeling of gloomy satisfaction.

"Perhaps I too was a little rash. I trusted too much that your words were infallible. We may now need to take the time to revise the plan."

"Do wait, Your Imperial Majesty," among the elders, there was only one who met his gaze. "Our judgement does not come from certain knowledge of the future. It is merely a matter of possibilities. The innumerable people who live and breathe in this world each have before them a thousand, ten thousand paths that they can take. Our judgement consists of narrowing them down to those that are contained within a single person's field of vision. Just as we have said repeatedly, it is people who set chance in motion and chance which sets people in motion."

Among the elders, he was comparatively young. His face however was all but expressionless. It was not the lack of expression found on a man of religion who had achieved a certain philosophical state of mind, but rather the empty expression of one who had left emotions behind in his mother's womb at birth.

This time, it was the emperor who had nothing to say. After a moment -

"Religion is convenient. There is no one as good as you all to confuse and misdirect people," he said, almost like a soliloquy.

Guhl Mephius was not originally a person who attached much importance to the country's ancient customs.  But he had transformed into a statesman who was attempting to revive the old, ancient beliefs of the Dragon God’s’ faith and who respected old-fashioned traditions.

It was about three years earlier that he had received the impetus to cultivate his relationship with the elders.

At the time, Mephius was right on the middle of the war with Garbera. Moreover, neither of the two could see a way out of it and it showed every sign of dragging on.

Two years before that, Guhl had lost Empress Lana to illness. During the long, drawn-out war, most of the officers and men who had supported him since the old days had lost their lives. Within the country, people had begun whispering that Guhl was losing heart; partly because of that, as well as to lift people's spirits - including his own, in the mausoleum beneath the black tower that rose in the centre of Solon, Guhl had for the first time performed an "oracle.

With a sword so new it appeared to still give off sparks from the flames that it had surely only just been lifted out of, Guhl cut off the head of the most beautiful woman amongst the slaves. As blood, rather than sparks, dripped from it and trickled down onto the stone floor, he proclaimed that -

"Until the head of the Garberan king is presented before me, I will never sheathe my sword."

The "oracle" was a spoken oath exchanged between the emperor, a descendant of the Dragon God, and the divine spirits of his ancestors.

In the same period, the emperor had strengthened the authority of the Imperial House by unilaterally seizing power from the council. From the view of the nobles, he had acted largely on advice from the many elders who had supervised during the "oracle" ceremony.

From that time forward, the relationship between Guhl and the elders grew stronger.  A year ago, around the time when he had exchanged wedding vows with Melissa, the oath itself had been broken by choosing peace with Garbera; but his trust in the elders had only grown greater and eventually reached the point where he had such a large temple built in Solon.

"Emperor Guhl. You believed that our power was essential for accomplishing your long-cherished ambition," the elder directly opposite Guhl spoke dispassionately. "Your longstanding desire is to break out of the relationship between the three countries and to claim supremacy over the centre of the continent. If that comes true, your name will go down in history as that of a strong emperor. For now, the bogged-down war with Garbera has been declared over and the situation is currently falling back into a stalemate. But as you know, each country harbours embers that smoulder strongly. With a single mistake, those embers will engulf Mephius in the raging inferno. On the other hand, by accomplishing a series of small victories one after another, Mephius will then obtain a territory befitting an empire and both your sovereignty as well as the teachings of the Dragon Gods will spread throughout the continent."

The emperor stared fixedly at the elder from under heavy-looking eyelids. They were not the eyes of one gazing at an intimate friend or a deeply trusted vassal; nor were they the eyes of one looking at an enemy. The emperor of Mephius' almost vacant expression  clung to him like a mask.

"Be ‘strong’ Guhl Mephius," the swarthy-skinned elder said in a voice like wind crossing a valley. "For the day of your ideal to come, you cannot forget what you feel. Once you lose sight of that, you will be nothing more than an ordinary old man. So many humans become that way that it is tedious to count them. You need to be "strong". Certainly, this time things did not go as we had judged they would, but there is no need to become flustered and impatient. As long as we are here, the flow and trend of time will always be in your favour. Before long, you will definitely obtain the power to seize the west and to swallow up Garbera and Ende…”




After Guhl had left, among the elders sitting in the rows of crystal seats, one suddenly almost fell from his chair. It was the elder who had admonished him.

With exclamations and a speed unfitting of their age, the other elders rushed to his side displaying a confusion at odds with their usual aloof and detached behaviour. As though finding them troublesome, the elder shook off the hands stretched out towards him.

"This body is nearing its limit," he muttered in a hoarse voice. To look at it, his body was certainly wasted away. But his eyes held a light as bright as fox fire. "It will soon be time to think of the ‘next one’. But it is as I said to Guhl. Time is precious. Barbaroi too will start moving soon. But before that, Ax Baxgan. He has become something of a nuisance."

The elders gathered around him did not speak. Even so, perhaps there was a mutual understanding as the elder's attitude when he rose unsteadily to his feet was unconcerned.

"Normally I would wish to avoid direct measures but there is no help for it. We can't always keep our distance. Send word to Tahī. Tell her that even if she has to use some ether, she is to kill Ax."

"What would you have us do about Guhl?" Asked one who appeared to be older than the elder.

The elder smiled contemptuously. "Even if we let him be, he will move as we predicted. He can't escape anymore. He is trying to be strong-hearted and to put on a show of strength. That passion sticks to him like a mask made of flesh and controls his body," he declared. He then immediately erased his scornful look and his expression became as empty as when he had been facing Guhl.

"Having come to this, the designs we wove for destiny risk being disturbed. I know. This is probably linked to another's actions. For a start, Guhl approaching Ende now with the aim of breaking down the relationship between the three countries differs from the original plan. Still, the plan we wove is not so lightweight as to be thrown off course because of a single ripped seam. It's the 'wind'. If something goes off course, the 'wind' will immediately rise and automatically correct it. Such is what is called the original destiny. No one will be allowed to destroy it. Until those in Barbaroi awaken, we must do our utmost, as humans, to hold fast to this world."




Noticing the chamberlain's footsteps, Simon firmly shut the drawer.

The chamberlain bowed then entered the room and, as usual, piled the books that Simon had requested in one of its corners before leaving.

Simon picked up the book off the top and was flipping through it while standing, when he suddenly noticed that the room had gone dark. He went to the window and opened the curtains. Raindrops fell on the windowpane one by one. Then all at once, drops started pelting down on the window.

"A battle for revenge is it, Guhl?" Simon murmured as he faced towards the garden that was misty with rain, then looked towards the main palace that towered over the hills beyond it.

The house had received no callers since Princess Vileena had visited about half a month earlier.

However news naturally reached it. It was said that Emperor Guhl had sent soldiers to Apta and that they had traded blows once with Taúlia. He had not heard any details about the war but, as Guhl had roused the vassals' spirits by talking about a "war to avenge the crown prince," the results had probably been unsavoury. It seemed that the second and third set of troops to be sent to Apta were in the middle of preparing for departure.

As such, it would not be possible to avoid a large-scale war. And Simon worried about one other piece of information.

''There is no news of the princess having returned to Solon.''

There were no details about what had happened to her after she left for Nedain. Certainly, she had planned to stay there a week, but half a month had already passed since then. He had a bad feeling.

As things were, it felt like the emperor had delayed Princess Vileena's return to her country because, from the start, he had in mind a war with the west. For that reason, he had deliberately failed to hold a funeral for the crown prince. In order to avoid interference from Garbera, the emperor had needed the right timing to announce that the prince had been assassinated by the west.

''Are you even going to use your own son's death?''

When the council had ceased to exist in all but name, Simon had taken on the responsibility of watching over the prince. Since it was already clear that Guhl had no particular affection for Gil, his legitimate child, Simon had resolved to train him into becoming a fine successor.

But that too ended up only halfway done.

When the old friend, with whom he had faced the battlefield standing shoulder-to-shoulder and laughed with as they drank together, had changed he had not known what to do. Nor did he feel that he had much influence with that friend's son, Gil.

''It seems I am a man who cannot guide people, neither as a friend nor as an educator.''

Thinking about it, Guhl Mephius was also a man who had not been blessed when it came to parental care.

His mother had died when Guhl was not yet ten years old. She was devoured by a dragon before his eyes.

It had been the season for dragon hunting at at a time when that had still been a form of entertainment throughout the country and, at the height of the hunt and at a moment when the soldiers had taken their eye off them, mother and child had gone out for a stroll.

From that, a conspiracy theory gradually emerged. It was said that a certain influential noble had had his subordinates skilfully lead the pair to the dragon in order to set up his own daughter as the emperor's second wife.

From Simon's point of view as he looked back on it now, the emperor at the time, in other words Guhl's father, had been lacking in decisiveness. The conspiracy theory had never been denied but neither had that influential noble, whose name had come up, ever been accused - as a result, the country had been shaken.

Because his own life was said to be in danger, for half a year Guhl was barely able to set foot outside the imperial court. Simon, who had served by his side from those days, remembered Guhl's words at that time.

''Because my father is like that, he was not able to protect my mother. That's right, Simon, it's the same as if that man had killed my mother'', he had muttered savagely, his eyes glowering.

While Simon watched, the raindrops had spread across the windowpane and the view outside had become blurry. He returned to the front of the desk and reopened the drawer.

A gleaming black pistol was placed inside it.





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