Chapter 2: A Story of Using Shrimp as Bait to Catch Sea Bream, but Instead Catching a Shark (part 1)

—Late in the 11th month, 1546th year, Continental Calendar — Royal Capital

Parnam

It had been close to a month since the war with Amidonia had come to a close.

On this day when we began to feel the onset of winter, I was in the room with the

jewel for the Jewel Voice Broadcast, facing a simple receiver with a certain person's

image projected on it.

My partner was a single woman. Her well-balanced figure was wrapped in a pure

white dress, and her light, wavy blond hair was beautiful.

I was acquainted with her younger sister, but she left a very different impression

on me. While there was a resemblance in the contours of their faces, when this

woman blinked, there was something childlike about her large eyes, making her

appear to be the younger of the two. Even though I had been told she was supposed

to be a year older than me. She was a very beautiful person.

I thought that, having been surrounded by Liscia, Aisha, and Juna, all beautiful in

their own different ways, I had developed a discerning taste, but at a single glance, I

had been struck by how beautiful this woman was.

The beauty opened her mouth. "Greetings, Sir Souma. I am Maria Euphoria."

She was Empress of the Gran Chaos Empire.

"Greetings to you, too, Madam Maria," I said. "I am Souma Kazuya."

The heads of the largest nations in the west and the east were meeting for the

first time. Normally it would be a time for handshakes, but that wasn't possible

through the Jewel Voice Broadcast's screen.

"It's a pleasure to meet you like this, Madam Maria," I said formally. "I've always

wanted to be able to speak with you at length."

"I feel the same," she said. "We've heard of your great ability here in the Empire,

too."

"It's not my ability... I'm helped by my capable subordinates."

"That's very humble of you to say, but talented retainers gather under a great

ruler."

We kept up with the polite talk for a while. While discussing nothing of

importance, I tried to get a feel for Maria. But her smiling face was a thing of childish

innocence; so brilliant that I almost felt guilty for trying to read into it. Though, at

the same time, I also thought this:

There was no way a girl who was only pure and innocent could rule a vast

Empire.

"May I ask a question, Sir Souma?" Maria asked.

"What is it?" I asked.

"What are your thoughts about what happened in Amidonia over the past

month?"

Maria's eyes narrowed as she said that. That alone was enough to completely

change the aura around her. She appeared to be smiling, but looked angry in spite of

that.

Not that I could blame her. From the Empire's perspective, what I'd done was

close to a betrayal.

"When Jeanne delivered me her report on the negotiations, I thought we had

found ourselves a reliable ally in the east," Maria said. "Was I mistaken in that?"

"...No. We still view ourselves as sworn friends of the Empire. This may sound

like an excuse, but this result was unexpected for us, too."

"It wasn't arranged by the kingdom, you mean?" she asked.

I nodded and scratched my head. "I won't deny that I was plotting something, but

I never intended for it to go this far. Honestly, it's turned into an ongoing headache

for me."

Maria's anger seemed to subside, for the moment at least. "Can you explain it in

detail for me?

"Of course," I said. "According to our agents in the principality..."

◇ ◇ ◇

One month earlier, when Van was returned to Amidonia...

Julius took back the capital of the principality, Van, and the area around it by

borrowing the influence of the Gran Chaos Empire. He returned to Van to succeed

his father, Gaius VIII, as the Sovereign Prince of Amidonia.

The first thing that Julius's close retainers thought to do after he became the new

sovereign was to remove any traces of Elfrieden's influence.

"There's been an appalling degradation of public morals in Van," one of them said

stiffly.

"Indeed," another agreed. "The austere atmosphere from Lord Gaius's lifetime is

the most appropriate for our principality. We should clamp down on this."

"Why not begin by dismantling the shanty town that's built up around the Jewel

Voice Broadcast plaza?"

Julius listened in silence, his eyes closed, as his retainers pushed him to return

the city to its former state. That man's words flashed through his mind now.

"If the people were choking under the yoke of our oppression, do you think they

would want to make their roofs and walls more colorful?"

Those were the words that Souma Kazuya had said the other day.

"If a ruler is oppressive, the people will try to act in a way that doesn't stand out.

That's because, if they were to catch his eye by doing something showy, there'd be no

telling what kind of disaster might befall them. So the more oppressed the people, the

less you will hear them complain. They don't show their feelings or attitudes, keeping

their true feelings bottled up deep inside their hearts."

Why... Why am I remembering his words now...? The words of his hated enemy had

stabbed into Julius's chest.

"Now, tell me, what color were the colors of Van like when you and your father were

here?" Souma had asked.

Shut up! Julius snapped internally. I don't need you to tell me. Our Princely House

has always thought of the people...

"Have we, really?"

Huh?!

That last voice wasn't Souma. It had been his own voice.

...Is that how it's been? his own voice continued.

It was a simple matter. It wasn't that Souma's words had been echoing in his

mind, it was that Julius had been asking himself about them. About whether his

decisions were right or not.

Julius had been the crown prince until just the other day, and Gaius VIII had been

the one to make all the important decisions on matters of the state. From Julius's

perspective, he had only been following Gaius's orders.

However, now that he sat on the throne as Prince, he would be forced to make

decisions that would decide the fate of the nation by himself. Julius had, for the first

time, been let out from under the yoke of his father, and he was starting to seek

diverse information.

Julius shared Gaius's ideological focus on the military, but he wasn't as impulsive

as his father; he was the clever sort who could think deeply. He would make

decisions after considering the various circumstances he found himself in. On that

point, he was closer to his younger sister Roroa than he was to Gaius.

Roroa, huh... I wonder where she is and what she's doing now... he pondered.

Where was his sister, who had evaporated along with a select group of bureaucrats

before Elfrieden had occupied the city?

When he caught himself thinking that, Julius couldn't help but mock himself a

little. They had never gotten along, and he was wary that she would become his

political opponent. It was a little late to be worrying for her safety now.

"Your Highness!" a retainer cried, interrupting his thoughts.

Brought back to his senses, Julius made a heavy decision. "Very well. We must

remove the kingdom's influence."

"""Yes, sir!"""

Their orders received, the retainers saluted him and then left the governmental

affairs office.

In the end, Julius decided to have the many changes brought about under the

kingdom's rule struck down and destroyed so that the principality could return to its

former state. Wiping out the legacy of the previous administration for the benefit of

the new one... That should have been the right course of action. You might think

there were quieter ways to have done it, but none of those were available to Julius.

Right now, before anything else, I need to regain my authority as the sovereign

prince, he thought.

Transfers of power should be carried out while the former ruler is still alive and

with a suitable guardian in place. When that isn't done, vassals will belittle the new

ruler for his youth. The more strongly authoritarian a country is, the more important

this process of firming up support becomes. However, Gaius had died in the war, and

so Julius had been forced to become prince without being able to first solidify his

position. That was why he first sought to centralize power around himself. For that,

he needed to wipe Elfrieden's value of tolerance for diversity from Van.

"Yes... even if I am called an oppressor for it," Julius whispered, wearing an

expression that showed his tragic determination.

First, Julius issued an order banning anyone from watching the Jewel Voice

Broadcast throughout Amidonia.

With Amidonia's broadcast jewel being kept by the kingdom, the only broadcasts

the people could view would be coming out of the kingdom. Naturally, the stalls that

had been set up in Van for the people who watched the Jewel Voice Broadcast were

forcibly removed. This was easier than expected, because the merchants had

mysteriously vanished when Julius returned to power, so it was just a matter of

dismantling their abandoned stalls.

How must the people of Van have viewed Julius as he tore down the stalls in the

plaza that had already become their marketplace?

Furthermore, as Souma had anticipated, Julius and his people demolished the

bridges that bore his name and the names of his followers. It was inevitable that he

would have to demolish any bridges that were along the route the kingdom had used

to invade, but it was pure folly to destroy the other bridges "because they were built

by the kingdom." Breaks in the transportation network can be a matter of life and

death for people.

Other than that, he didn't distribute food the way the kingdom had, and clamped

down hard on breaches of public morals. In particular, he banned women from

dressing up, banned the art movements that had infested Van... and many more

things. He even went as far as having houses with images of loreleis on them razed.

The people of Van, who were now having the freedoms they had been given

removed, said:

"It was better under King Souma."

"We didn't have to go through this pain and suffering when we were a territory of

the kingdom."

"We were able to feed the children properly."

"Why does Lord Julius care less about his own people than a foreign king did?"

"Do you think His Majesty King Souma will come back to occupy Van again?"

And they turned a resentful eye toward the castle in Van.

Some of the things they were resentful over weren't Julius's fault. For starters,

there was a difference in the size of the Elfrieden Kingdom and the Principality of

Amidonia's territory and economy. If you asked whether the principality would be

capable of providing the same level of aid the kingdom had been, the answer would

be no. However, the common people didn't know that. Ultimately, the more Julius

tried to wipe the kingdom's influence from Van, the more the people's hearts shifted

away from him.