Chapter 37: The Holy Lady’s Tragedy and Mia’s Ambition

“Hmm...”

Tucked away in a corner of the Newmoon District in the imperial capital of Lunatear was a small dilapidated cabin, from which the muted murmurs of an old man could be heard. Time wore equally on all souls, and even Ludwig Hewitt, who in his prime had used his brilliant mind to its full potential in service of the Great Sage of the Empire, Mia Luna Tearmoon, now bore a grandfatherly air.

“I see Lady Miabel is not particularly dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge...” he mused, stroking his gray beard as he regarded the diminutive figure snoozing on the bed. “How soundly she sleeps... Ahhh, but the resemblance...”

He ran his fingers through her silken hair, brushing a few errant strands from her cheek, as kindly wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes.

“Lady Miabel is still young. There is still much room for her to develop and grow. She has, after all, inherited her blood...”

He closed his eyes, but the darkness was soon brightened by a proud vision of Her Highness standing tall in all her radiant glory, her untamable wit and fierce intelligence a beacon of hope for all who beheld her.

“What we need,” he murmured, “is hope for the future. We need someone like Her Highness, who will light our way and guide our path.”

What the empire needed... was a lodestar. As someone through whose veins the blood of the Great Sage of the Empire ran, Miabel was well-positioned to become a rallying figure for the empire’s people. Should she assume that role, she would need knowledge, and though she lacked formal education, Ludwig was committed to providing her with at least the basics. How much of his lessons were sticking, however...

“It looks like we have a long road ahead of us...”

He smiled helplessly and shook his head before sitting down behind his musty old desk, idly glancing at the pieces of parchment stacked atop it.

“Rafina Orca Belluga, huh...”

Though retired from the administrative frontlines due to his advancing age, all the connections he’d made as a hypercompetent minister meant information continued to find its way to him. Figuring it’d be a waste to let the diligent work of his informants go to waste, he’d recently begun taking some time out of each day to contemplate the current state of the world and the historical currents that had led them there.

“One way or another, it all boils down to the Empress Prelate, doesn’t it? Rafina’s influence upon the world simply cannot be understated.”

Rafina’s Holy Aquarian Army had grown exponentially in power and was now a significant player on the world stage. Its forces swept across the lands, searching for signs of rebellion against their cause. By ferreting out insurgents and placing them under intense surveillance, Rafina had achieved a transient and fragile peace. However, these violent and oppressive methods were met with significant backlash, resulting in the formation of a stubborn resistance that dragged the continent back into widespread war and chaos.

“But the Rafina I knew, when she was still our Holy Lady, was neither daft enough to take actions so lacking in forethought nor vicious enough to commit such tyranny.”

During her early days, when she was Mia’s classmate, Rafina was a good-natured child of exceptional intellect and mental poise. At the time, he’d considered her a remarkable leader every bit the equal of her fellow hero-in-the-making, the Libra King, Sion Sol Sunkland.

“What caused her to change so drastically? What was it that turned her into the Rafina we know and fear today?”

The words were rhetorical, for the answer was clear to him already.

“The Holy Eve Festival... and the mass poisoning.”

The Holy Eve Festival was the most important winter event at Saint-Noel. On that day, an incident of indiscriminate terrorism occurred, dealing a fatal blow to Rafina’s reputation as the Holy Lady. To be fair, she was deserving of sympathy. At the time, the sheer burden of her endless responsibilities had stretched her to her limit, and she often succumbed to sickness as a result of her unending exhaustion. A lapse in her scrutiny of the festival’s security measures was, if not defensible, at least understandable. Furthermore, the enemy’s scheme was unprecedented in its scale and ruthlessness.

Gifted though Rafina was, her intelligence failed to transcend to genius; she was smart, but she was no prodigy. Ultimately, she wasn’t able to see the full picture of the enemy’s intentions. She had, in fact, taken precautions against an assassination attempt. Knowing she was up against a secret society like the Chaos Serpents, she’d naturally arranged for enhanced security for important figures in the academy — including herself — to prevent possible attempts on their lives.

Alas, she’d misread her opponent. Never had she thought the enemy would go after not the students of Saint-Noel, but its servants and staff. She failed to consider the possibility that the sumptuous stew served as a reward for their daily diligence could be poisoned. She failed to consider it because even in her wildest imaginations, she didn’t think such cruelty was truly possible — that there could be people who were willing to slaughter countless innocents just to damage her reputation. The enemy set their sights on soft targets, and their approach proved lethally effective.

Normally, nobles wouldn’t care no matter how many servants died. The ethos of nobles, after all, was that nobility was the hallmark of humanity and all others were swine. Rafina, however, was no simple noble; she was the Holy Lady of Belluga. Her station conferred upon her the responsibility to extend her care to all people, be they noble, common, or even destitute. Because of that responsibility, the incident took a heavy toll on her name. Criticism was leveled against her for providing impeccable protection for noble students while cutting corners for the servants. In the end, the crystalline reputation of the Holy Lady, once so pure and perfect in its embodiment of integrity and virtue, was left with an ugly scratch — a scratch that proved too much for the overextended Rafina to bear. Seized by bouts of crippling guilt that would assault her night after restless night, she went into a downward spiral. Slowly, she changed, her suffering twisting her guilt into hate, until she completed her metamorphosis into the iron-fisted ruler she was today.

Determined to flush out the Chaos Serpents hiding among the populace, she implemented draconian measures, leaving no stone unturned and no suspicion unexamined. To her, gray was just as incriminating as black. In order to root them out, all suspect cases were to be nipped in the bud. Her approach was intended to be watertight, allowing not a single collaborator to escape. Once implemented, it should spell the end of the Serpents for good. Or so it seemed...

Ludwig distinctly remembered the time he went to interrogate a Serpent they’d captured in the empire.

“You do realize that what you people did only tightened the noose around your own neck?”

The man met his gaze, his grin almost triumphant.

“The Serpents will never die. Why? Because this is what we were after. The world is in the very state we’ve been working all along to push it toward.”

The man’s words shook Ludwig to his core. If the goal of the Chaos Serpents was the destruction of order itself... The Empress Prelate’s reign of terror was a direct attack on the order established by the Central Orthodox Church. The more she wielded the Church’s authority in oppressive ways, the more she forced the people away from its teachings. The concept of “Rule by God,” which had provided the basis for the stability and value system of all neighboring regions, was presently being dismantled — and by her very hand, no less. In a few years, Belluga would fall, taking with it the basis by which nearby nations determined fairness and justice. All that would remain was chaos.

“The Chaos Serpents... A secret society aiming to destroy all order...”

Ludwig found that he, in spite of himself, had to acknowledge that the man was right. The world was indeed in chaos.

“But if it had been Her Highness...”

He knew it to be wishful thinking, but still, he couldn’t help but wonder.

“Had the Great Sage of the Empire been in a position to apply her resourcefulness, might things have turned out differently? Perhaps not, but if she couldn’t do it, then no one could have. Either way, Her Highness was our only hope.”

If only the student council president presiding over Saint-Noel’s events at the time had been Mia... Maybe, just maybe, she could have seen through the Serpent’s devious scheme and saved the world from disaster...

“If only Her Highness — the Great Sage of the Empire — with all the brilliance of the Moon Goddess, had been there...”

“...Mmph? Mr. Ludwig?”

“Oh, Lady Miabel. I see you’ve woken up,” he said with a tender smile.

“Mmm... Did you say something just now?”

“No, no. It was just the meaningless grumblings of an old man. More importantly, did you sleep well?”

Bel failed to hear most of Ludwig’s musings at the time. Consequently, she couldn’t relay any detailed information, leaving Mia clueless about both the conspiracy of the Holy Eve Festival and what she should do in place of Rafina to stop it. Ludwig’s overzealous expectations, therefore, fell on the shoulders of a princess who had no idea she was even bearing them. And at the moment, she was more concerned with...

“Hmm, campaign promises, campaign promises... Well, let’s figure out the complicated ones some other day. For now, I know that the one thing I absolutely want to do is have everyone try some of my homemade mushroom stew during the Holy Eve Festival!”

...Saying things that should fill any sensible person with foreboding.