Chapter 127

A conversation was needed.

After the empress's lady-in-waiting tactfully excused herself to bring tea, Lyssel broke the silence first.

"We have no intention of doing anything to His Highness the Crown Prince or to Your Majesty."

It was as direct as it got.

"…Why is that? Then what about the emperor?"

"The emperor will, of course, be punished in accordance with the crimes he's committed."

"I committed crimes too."

"Is that so? Then after investigation, you'll be punished according to the severity of those crimes."

"…What if I scheme for something later? Why would you hand down such soft punishment?"

"Will you do that?"

"I'm speaking hypothetically. I'm an existence that could become trouble down the road, aren't I."

Well, ordinarily, where there was a strong hunger for power, that was possible.

The current emperor was a clear example.

It was because the empress had watched all of it from the side that these two seemed even harder for her to understand right now.

"Do you want to make the Crown Prince emperor?"

"Honestly, I did. But going through all of this, I came to see — that child is bright, but he isn't ruthless. An emperor has to have a hardness of heart, and he doesn't have that kind of character. So I think the path to Yel's happiness is for him not to become emperor. I say this as his mother."

"And it's the Crown Prince's wish as well?"

"It is."

Lyssel didn't want to be emperor, and Yelberk didn't want to be emperor.

But someone had to lead Aleta.

Would they have to drag Cherity in and put him on the throne?

To be fair, the idea of the Crown Prince growing up and taking the throne had been a pipe dream anyway.

The nobles wouldn't have stood for it.

Even so, if Yelberk had been willing, they had been ready to push for it however they could — but the boy himself had said he'd step down from the position.

Iberin stared straight at Lyssel.

"Why are you looking at me like that."

No matter how she turned it over, there was no way around it.

The remaining nobles, too, would unanimously want Lecashe to become emperor.

There was good reason — they had legitimacy.

The god's name had been recovered, and they had the support of the returned god.

For a Holy Empire like Aleta, what better legitimacy could there be?

Iberin shook her head.

"I understand what you wish, Your Majesty."

"I'm not the empress anymore, you know."

"Well, nothing's been formally settled about the emperor yet. More to the point — you really don't mind, however the emperor is dealt with?"

"That man can die for all I care. As long as Yel is safe."

"Noted."

Just as the conversation reached that point, Duke Cherity appeared with good timing.

"Everyone is waiting."

His sparkling, eager gaze was a bit much, and she lobbed an aimless question at the empress.

"Will you come along too, Your Majesty?"

"I'll wait here for everyone's judgment."

A refusal, as expected.

At that moment, Lyssel cut off the duke's gaze at an appropriate angle.

---

In the end, Cherity and the nobles insisted the imperial line had to be uprooted entirely, but Lyssel was so immovable that they reached a moderate compromise.

The compromise being to demote the imperial family's standing all the way down to commoner status.

But while the imperial family was one thing, the nobles who'd taken part in this affair, they insisted, all needed to be executed to make an example.

It was as if they'd rehearsed it together — every one of them was of one mind.

It seemed Cherity wanted to make Lecashe the next emperor.

Lyssel, who had lived all this time without ambition like that, looked like he hated the idea, but there was no other path.

Demedeto had also bestowed power on Iberin and Lyssel.

That alone gave the people of the Aleta Empire more than enough reason to back them.

"This is the will of the god, Your Grace. Accept it."

"……."

Lyssel looked back at Iberin.

Iberin only shrugged.

When they'd arrived in the capital, the rumor that Lecashe had been chosen by the god had been everywhere.

There wasn't a soul who didn't know what the emperor had done wrong, so naturally the people were saying with one voice that Lecashe would become emperor.

Of course he could refuse to the end, but a sovereign as strong and as wise as Lyssel wouldn't be easy to find, Iberin thought, in extremely doting fashion.

In any case, the Aleta nobles' top pick was Lecashe.

This was a man who had summoned the god herself, no less, and inherited the god's power — there was nothing about him that fell short of being emperor.

There would be a little bloodshed along the way, but there was already no other option open to them.

Cherity and the nobles were just gazing at Lyssel with bright, eager eyes.

The look said please, accept the throne.

It was almost as if this were some kind of forced sale of an imperial seat.

That was when Iberin spoke.

"By the way, Lyssel."

"Yes."

He answered so promptly — maybe hoping she'd come to his rescue — that it was cute, and Iberin almost laughed.

"You were planning to act as godfather and godmother and help run the country until Yelberk grew up anyway, weren't you."

But Lyssel's hopes were shattered.

"Yes…? Yes."

He was rolling his eyes uneasily.

"Then you might as well do the work as the emperor."

"Sorry? Do you really think that makes sense?"

"Just until Yelberk is fully grown — work for exactly that long!"

"Simply doing the work and being emperor aren't the same thing."

"But everyone wants you so much, Lyssel."

If he was going to do the work anyway, it occurred to her that taking the title with it wasn't a bad deal.

Of course, if Lyssel refused to the end, even Iberin couldn't force the matter — but it didn't seem like that would happen.

Because there had never once been a time when Lyssel hadn't gone along with what Iberin said.

And there were various worries about what would happen if Lyssel didn't become emperor.

"If we go and put the wrong person in and they wreck everything again, what then. And the monsters that crossed into the west still haven't been fully dealt with, so the truth is — Lyssel really is needed."

The first issue was the western situation.

Even so, Lecashe carried imperial blood, so it wouldn't be a wholesale change of dynasty.

The second — she hadn't not considered putting Cherity on the throne, but there was no guarantee the other nobles wouldn't start thinking if he gets to, why not me?

There were various other reasons besides, but the two biggest were those.

So Iberin thought it wasn't a bad idea to take the longer view.

In any case, with Iberin laying it out like that, just as she'd thought, Lyssel couldn't say anything in reply.

He'd never been the type to refuse anything Iberin proposed.

"Then just for twenty years…."

"Of course."

And so Lyssel ended up receiving the imperial crown.

---

The nobles who had sided with the emperor were executed.

They all begged for their lives, but a person had to pick their side carefully.

If they'd dreamed of the upside, they should have factored in the worst-case scenario too when making their choice.

Whatever the appeal of being founding heroes of a new state was.

Iberin couldn't wrap her head around how nobles' minds worked.

The funny thing, though, was that the moment Lyssel set his mind to actually running the country, members of the noble faction with skins worth peeling started getting picked clean too.

Bribery, embezzlement of public funds, and on top of that, ruination of the people's livelihood.

Since they were only at the toddling first steps of reform, the lighter offenses they'd decided to keep an eye on for a while longer.

Major crimes meant punishment, no exceptions.

The same went for handling the hypnotists.

If they could just be found, they'd all be death-penalty material, but they were buried deep, so finding them wasn't easy.

Caliman's residence was known, so they tracked him down and brought him in.

He tried to flee while being arrested, and in the process, hypnosis became known to the world and put the public on alert.

About just how much power that cult-like group the emperor had been in league with actually had.

When it also came out that Caliman had had a hypnosis doll locked in a basement, the image of hypnotists hit rock bottom.

The captured Caliman was set to rot in the dungeons for the rest of his life.

No telling what he'd do next if they let him out.

Beyond that, the emperor had left behind such a mountain of mess that cleaning up after him alone kept them busy.

Right after being demoted past commoner status, all the way to slave, the emperor was sent off to the mines along with attendants who were also his watchers.

A life of penance through labor awaited him.

To the end he kept screaming for them to just kill him, but it was ignored.

Lyssel had given strict instructions.

He was to be treated exactly like any other slave.

The Sherburn viscount family, like the emperor, were demoted to slave status and shipped off to the mines.

They'd most likely live out their lives in hell, blaming each other and bickering over whose fault it was.

The empress, who had never been involved in any of the emperor's doings, was released with no charges. But she was stripped of her position as empress.

Not punishing her at all wasn't an option either.

It was the same for Yelberk.

And since the empress's maternal house had taken part in this affair and been executed to the last man, the empress had lost everything.

But the empress was composed.

"I did things deserving of punishment, so being punished is only natural. Besides, I'm no longer empress anyway, so it's only fitting. If anything, I should be thanking you for this lenient treatment."

If Lyssel had been a little crueler in temperament, he would have tied even the empress to her house and killed her.

Had he done that, the empress said, she wouldn't have been able to close her eyes peacefully even at the end, worrying for Yelberk — and so, she said, she was grateful.

"Mother is right. As for status, I don't care in the slightest. If, when I grew up, I'd had to repeat the kind of wrongs done to Lecashe, I don't think I could have lived with my sanity intact."

Yelberk too was grateful to be able to stay with his mother.

And so the two of them, mother and son, left the imperial palace.

The empress's family had been ruined down to nothing, so it seemed they wouldn't have a single coin between them — they were invited to stay at Lecashe, but she declined, saying it would feel too shameless.

But Iberin wanted Yelberk to live alongside Ether, Rozel, and Kal.

It was personal greed.

After she asked a few times, the empress — clearly finding it awkward to keep refusing — left every choice to Yelberk.

When the work of persuading Yelberk was handed off to the children, not long after, the four of them came together to find her.

Yelberk looked uncertain, his face saying is this all right, is this the proper thing, but he didn't seem to dislike the children.

"…On condition that no favors are shown to Mother and me, I'd like to live in the village."

"No favors shown?"

"Yes. My mother and I have been punished and made commoners. Receiving help because of my closeness with young master Ether isn't something I want."

Yelberk said it with a steady poise.

"A commoner's life won't be that easy. Even so, you don't need help?"

"No."

"Good, then. I accept that."

"Thank you."

With the handling of the imperial line settled, the coronation followed.

Lyssel seemed to want to skim through it lightly, but the other nobles — Cherity in particular — felt otherwise.

"This is the day House Lecashe becomes the imperial line, and Your Majesty personally proclaims the name of the god. There can absolutely be no skimping!"

It was the kind of thing only someone who was god-crazed rather than Lecashe-loyal could say.

But it was clearly going to be a day of deep significance for the people of the Aleta Empire too, so they couldn't talk him down.

There was one thing, though, on which they were clear.

The priests who had used the temple as a pretext to oppress the people and earn money through crooked means — every last one was reduced to slave status.

The Pope and the high priest were no exception.

And it was made so that anyone with a devout heart could become a priest.