ch 3 (immortal) a thousand thoughts
the representative has yet to arrive. I will have to leave the brat here. he is not in any real danger in this place. if he was, do you think the third emperor would have any credibility? if the emperor knew the kid's identity, well that would be another matter. though the emperor does know he wields a book. the mana in the books blur the emperor's vision, so he will know the kid has a book, just not which one. there is a civil war going on anyways. nobody has time to look for random strangers even if they have a book of magic. while they are rare, they are not that precious.
(after a while, on a wind wolf. it was given to me by one of the people on the farm. they are relatively tame beasts that have the ability to travel the mountainous region of the empire with relative ease. )
I can't help but think of a thousand things while traveling. well, it is better than sitting on the beast bored. the mountains are covered in a fog that is quite uncommon this season, but then again this is a mountainous area, so it is not that rare. I can't help but worry about the kid. I don't particularly care if he dies, but there are too many that can exploit that little brat and the bloody mages are quite good at killing. the previous bloody mage kept his power in check and still managed to bring about so much destruction.
anyway, the kid is not my primary worry anyway. I have other kids to worry about. there are nine kids on the list that the third Emperor has given to me. these are five of the strongest of the five academies and four young masters of the four noble families. each of the noble families have a history that stretches to at least the first emperor. I have heard things about them, that make me wonder if they are older than the empire itself.
anyway, the five academies are the core of the power of the throne. they can be said to be the roots from which the throne originates. the academies that are under the five academies constantly churn out a supply of soldiers, generals, and powerhouses that give power to the throne. otherwise, the throne would have fallen a very long time ago, or more accurately the empire would have fallen a long time ago. just the fighting in the borders would have drained us completely. Maybe then the empire would have been more united.
anyway, the most important among them are five crowns or the strongest of each academy. due to their importance, they are even called as pseudo princes. these guys are important people that will define the future of the empire. while killing them will be a shame, I can't really focus on that, or I will lose my nerve. I have been given a task and I would like to complete it. unnecessary thoughts only tends to be a waste of time.
it is not like I can refuse it anyway, I have made a deal after all. I can see why the third emperor picked me to be the monster. publically, everyone thinks that I am with the fifth emperor and if my identity were to be revealed after my mission is over, nobody would think about the third emperor and the fifth emperor will be destroyed. he is not exactly a popular figure anyway. he is after all not standing on either side and is an enemy to both sides. it is a surprise that the fifth emperor had anyone supporting him(mainly the merchants for whom this internal conflict was bad.). the third emperor will have a strong trump against the fifth emperor. the empire will be united against the fifth emperor. not even an ex-emperor can handle that kind of pressure.
maybe that is what the third emperor has been planning for a very long time. that is the reason that the third emperor still holds so much power. it has been roughly a thousand years since he became the emperor and a couple of generations have passed since he held any power. he still is capable of interfering in the empire and its power struggles.
no other emperor is that capable, even the fifth emperor doesn't have that much capability and even struggles to hold power. well, he does have a neutral faction and those are the hardest to maintain. there is no real reason for the people to unite with a neutral faction. the nobles have the throne as the reason and the throne has the nobles as the reason to keep some level of internal unity. the fifth emperor has stopping the war as a reason and even then he doesn't really attract a whole lot of people.
war is something that is desired by everybody, especially with today's youth. I blame the storybooks for it. everybody wants to be a hero nowadays.
anyway, I am going to be hunting the very first target on my list. well calling it hunting would be wrong. this is an assassination, not hunting which is phantoms(assassination) expertise. by the way I will be meeting her at the goal of my journey, the wind academy. the wind academy is the place for wind magic and wind abilities. my target is the crown of the wind academy, a very charming person by the name of ted, though most people know of him as the berserker king. I have never met him personally, but he will be an interesting enemy to fight.
the academies have a very interesting past. each of the five academies were made to counter the five great noble families that existed then. the wind academy was meant to counter the wind family. among the nobles, they are the weirdest. those guys use totemic magic after all and not of any ordinary being at that. they use the power of a god after all. no calling it a god is wrong. they feel that it is insulting to call their great wind a god or a totem. each academy was created with the sole purpose of dealing with their possible enemy. the wind academy is the only place that I know of other than the nature alliance, to have any information of killing gods. that is the main reason that I am going after ted first. I want to see what exactly I can do to deal with the mess that I have created. the city of madness is a ticking time bomb and I am worried about what that place could mean to the empire. I don't want to be the cause for the creation of a god, especially with that kind of power. I just wanted to fulfill some old debts, why do I have to fail so spectacularly.
I don't like to complain normally, but suddenly my life has become too stressful. I am also worried about the wolf of neither realms. that wolf is a very hard beast to deal with. the gate that opened in that place also worries me. my master is not the kind of man to suddenly appear and attack without reason. he would only act like this if he were protecting something important and my master doesn't find many things to be important.
anyway, leaving my worries aside, let's talk about the academies.
the academies came to existence due to the nobles. one of the major problems for the nobles is that the nobles don't really have that much of numbers. each noble family has about five hundred to thousand people. very large number of people for a family but they don't amount to much in the empire.
the nobles are an interesting bunch. normally speaking the throne has been no need for the noble families. when the first emperor was setting up the empire, he decided to rely on the strongest family in every region he conquered to manage the territories that he conquered (now the throne has a series of officials to handle this matter.). those were the very first noble families that existed in this empire. not many of them exist in this empire and very few of them have existed in the two empires, still. the black wind empire has four of these families now. well, I am proud to say that there used to be five such families and I was the reason for the destruction of the ernikson family. well, more accurately it is the weapons that I am wielding that caused their destruction.
the ernikson family was experimenting with necromancy and corpse refinement and you can understand why the throne was so uncomfortable with them. when they kidnapped a prince and used his body parts to craft weapons, even the other noble families retreated and stopped trying to protect the erniksons. they were destroyed by the throne and it is the only act of war that the empire had in recent times. it also managed to sour the relationship between the throne and the nobles, even more, leading to this civil war. in a way, the erniksons can be blamed for causing this war. they were an unpleasant bunch, to say the least about them.
look at me, rambling like an idiot, as I was saying the, the nobles are a very small population. the very first academies came to existence due to this. the nobles wanted to set up a place where they could cultivate people who were loyal to the nobles and have disposable troops to deal with the throne's troops. you can see how the loss of even a single person could affect the nobles. they never expected the throne to copy their idea and to that level of effectiveness. for every academy that the nobles had, the throne had ten of those. while the thrones academy was many times inferior to that of the nobles, they developed at a speed that the nobles could never hope to match. the fifth emperor attracted many powerful people with the lucrative idea of disciples. basically, the throne could go through hundreds of thousands of people and find people that had a particularly unique ability. most of the powerful figures in the empire, even a few of the noble families used this ability of the throne to find disciples who could use their legacies. that is the sad fate of most powerhouses, every single ability of theirs will be lost upon their death. otherwise, humans produce a lot of powerhouses, many times greater than that of any race that we compete with at least.
for example, I had a friend known as the flame monk. his ability allowed him fine control his flames to a state where he could, form a thousand handed being from his flames, something he called the thousand handed demon. an ability with a similar level of fine control is needed for anybody to replicate the thousand-handed demons even if they had the experiences of the flame monk to know. the throne will find it the easiest to find such a character.
his disciple is one of the targets of my journey this time. he is the crown of the flame academy, after all. he even inherited the flame monk's name and is known as the flame monk of this generation.
complaining aside, it is better that I have been given a weapon that can boost my power a lot. I am quite interested in these weapons. while I was a prince, I did not have the amount of power necessary to mobilize the throne. something about these weapons made the emperor very uneasy.
anyway, these weapons contain the bloodline of somebody or some beast. I can feel the weapon calling to me. my flesh and bone are still living, something that should not be possible.
touching the weapon, I send my mana into the bow. the instant that I did so, I could feel a suction dragging out whatever amount of mana that I had stored in my.
shit....