Chapter 14

Adair shook her head since this line of thought seemed so far out there that she was unsure why it had even popped into her head in the first place. Right now she was merely a baby and there was no way she could be married off… suddenly she froze. 'Hang on, while it should be impossible for me to marry a bear even on this planet, can I be sure that babies cannot be married off? What do I even know about this world?'

At that moment it struck Adair that she knew practically nothing about this planet. Was it a warring world or was it peaceful? Was it ok to steal from people? When would she be considered an adult and could be married off and many more. All those things should be basic information one would learn when growing up in society, yet out here in the wilderness she only had some children's books that never bothered to teach her any of that.

Fortunately, she had Mr. Bear… no that should be Hank, who was still willing to talk to her, so Adair continued to ask questions. However, when she asked about the principles of the people of this world, he gave her a very questioning look. At first, Adair assumed that it was because Hank didn't understand the question, but she then realized that it must look completely bizarre for someone her age to ask about people's principles.

Adair quickly began to write an explanation why she had been asking it, but midway noticed that it would just be digging a bigger hole for herself, so she stopped. She then waited to see if the bear would respond somehow, but he still looked too confused about it, so she changed her question: "What is the Otto Empire like?"

This time the bear responded promptly by telling her that the Otto Empire was the newest and also the strongest Empire in the land of Istea. Less than one century ago they had just been a mid-sized Kingdom, but ever since its inception as an Empire, they had claimed more land than any other Empire on the planet. The bear looked very proud over this accomplishment even though he likely had not contributed to it personally.

This topic was clearly something he greatly enjoyed teaching her because even without Adair asking Hank to, he continued writing that the Otto Empire was founded by Emperor Otto I. When he had still been King he personally assassinated the neighboring Poro Republic's rulers before taking over their land. Hank then explained the history of the Poro Republic and from what Adair could tell the Poro Republic appeared to have been far ahead of its time regarding equality and freedom for its people, so it shook up the whole world when Emperor Otto I had done such an act without any prior declaration of war. His subsequent announcement of his Kingdom now being an Empire had led to many enemies right off the bat.

Not only external enemies were a problem for the fresh Empire, many riots started happening all over the former Poro Republic's capital city. Strangely, all it took was for Emperor Otto I to give a public speech in the head square. Naturally, there were many assassins that day trying to end his tyranny, yet all Emperor Otto I had to do was to tell them to stand down, and they all knelt before him.

As a modern woman, Adair immediately believed it to be propaganda that the country taught its citizens so that they would idolize their founder. Just when she was about to think worse things she suddenly had an epiphany. The way Hank treated Emperor Otto I… was it really that different to how some people of the Galactic Empire had treated the First Leader?

Additionally, a scary thought entered Adair's mind. What if what the bear told her was not propaganda? What if things actually happened as he told her? Wouldn't that mean that Emperor Otto I had a similar power to the select few families back in the Galactic Empire? Only instead of controlling an element like water, fire or earth, does he have the ability to command people with words?

If this had indeed been the case, then he would have been a truly frightening man! 'No wonder he was able to take over and create an Empire! For all we know, he could have casually entered their country and just asked the rulers to kill themselves, and that was that!' While Adair was pondering about the scopes of damage someone with such a power could cause, the bear continued to write down the Otto Empire's history.

Apparently, not long after several countries had learned that their assassination attempts failed, they had openly declared war against Emperor Otto I. The first ones to assemble their armies were the surrounding 5 Empires; Vrinins, Bran, Ehais, Addea, and the Almeth Empires. They prepared their weapons and marched towards the former Poro Republic's capital.

When they arrived, though, the scene they saw was not what they had expected to see. They were met by an army consisting of every citizen of the former Republic, holding professional or just makeshift weapons and with a fire in their eyes displaying their resolution to die fighting if necessary. Even young kids were holding toy weapons.

When the soldiers saw this, they did not know how to react, so their siege paused until their commanders decided on a course of action. This pause lasted two days before the armies came to a consensus. They opted to give the resisting people an ultimatum before attacking, even though they had initially planned to free them from their rule. The commanders and soldiers expected at least a few dozen people to leave afterward, but all stayed inside the city. While this shocked the soldiers, their consciences were somewhat cleared.

The warriors started to charge towards the people guarding the city, and when there were only 100 feet separating the attackers and defenders everyone heard a deep voice projecting across all armies. "STOP!" It was a simple command, but everyone who heard the voice immediately halted what they were doing. The only ones unaffected by this turned out to be the generals and high officers who had stayed far in the back. The generals tried to order their troops to continue the attack, but none of their orders were being followed.

Everyone then heard the same voice speak once again, "New soldiers come inside and join our ranks." And with that all of the soldiers who had been about to attack the city formed legions and stood side by side with the citizens. In the following months those Empires that had sent out troops got conquered, making the Otto Empire the strongest Empire on the whole planet.

Adair had expected the rest of the Empires to declare war on the Otto Empire, but no such thing ever happened. According to teacher Hank all other countries just left the new Otto Empire alone as if it had done nothing wrong. She could not blame them for such a course of action. No one wanted to see the Empire that they built fall apart in front of them. Adair knew that from experience.

'They must have thought that it was best to leave the Otto Empire to do its own thing and not mess with it. But after it became the strongest empire, what stopped Emperor Otto I from taking over the rest of the continent?'. When asked about it the bear just shrugged. He had seemingly never thought about it before. On the other hand, Adair concluded that there had to be a restriction to Emperor Otto I's controlling powers and that some deals must have happened behind everyone's backs that the general public had not been aware of.

Since the bear appeared to be done with his story, Adair decided to ask a follow-up question. "Is Emperor Otto 1 still alive? If not, has this skill been passed down to his children?"

The bear then wrote, "No he is no longer alive, his Imperial Majesty has died more than 150 Jahr ago. Alas, there are rumors that your father King Otto III is afraid that one of his children might usurp him if they ever awaken such a power like Emperor Otto I. I believe that this is the reason the Queen sent you away. She did not want you to become a puppet like your step-siblings have. Should he ever find out that your mother hid you from him, neither one of you will be safe."

After the bear wrote this, she started to have flashbacks of what some of the Rulers did to their people during the civilization test. Waterboarding, which had been banned in the Empire for being considered torture, would not even be considered a punishment by comparison. Adair's next thought is that maybe she should go save her mom in the future.

She soon rejected this, though. For all she knew, there was no way to get to the other side of the planet, and even if there was, she was not naïve enough to think she could contend against someone who had such a power, even if her father's might be less potent than her great-grandfathers.. She was not some superwoman able to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted.

Adair was not even sure if she wanted to save her mom. While she hated abuse and oppression as much as the next person, the amount of work she would need to put in in order to save her birth giver was enormous. Adair had worked extremely hard in her past life to do the best she could, but in this life, she would prefer to relax as much as possible because she felt like she had missed her childhood during the last life and did not want to repeat that experience.

Adair noticed one peculiar detail in the bear's story. "If my father rules over the Otto Empire shouldn't he be an Emperor as well? And in that case shouldn't my mother be an Empress?" The bear's reply was short and precise, "Your grandfather, King Otto II, publicly announced that only his father, Emperor Otto I, had been worthy of the title of Emperor, so he had decreed that he and all his descendants should only ever pronounce themselves Kings but nothing greater."

'Talk about filial piety,' Adair thought to herself. ' If only I had any reason to like my own father in this life that much.'

That history lesson from Hank had allowed Adair to learn quite a bit about her father's side of the family. From what Hank had told her it appeared that even the great and mighty Emperor Otto I had been a human, albeit a very powerful one, yet she was still unaware about her mother. First of all she asked the bear what race her mom had been. She had wanted to know that fact ever since she got reincarnated. During her travel through the first wormhole, she had trusted the Reincarnation Machine that she would stay the same, but who could have ever predicted that she seemingly rolled a natural one on a die and ended up with a different race?

Alas, the bear responded by writing that he didn't know. One day the Queen arrived in the capital of the Otto Empire and it did not take long for the King to start fancying her, not just for her beauty, but also because nobody had ever seen a being with wings before. Within a month he married her and made her into another one of his many Queens.

The majority of people believed that the reason why Adair's mother had never been seen before was that she had lived in the countryside far away from the Union of Istea. A minority of people theorized that she must have come from a different planet, one which had humans with wings living on it. In their minds those aliens had sent her down to their planet to spy on King Otto III and find out more about his ability to control people with his voice. Not counting those, the most agreed upon rumor was that the Queen had ingested something that made her mutate and that the young woman had ended up lucky that it turned into something beneficial.