Editor 165

For an Imperfect Peace (5)

Behemoth’s snoring was thunderous.

“Grrr— drrrk—.”

Having devoured all fourteen courses of the chef’s special at Esprit Restaurant, currently the capital’s most popular spot, made with Meridies ingredients, Behemoth sprawled out on Cleio’s bed.

Starting with Leognes Blanc de Blanc, continuing through Grand Vintage Tolithum Glycine, Budigala wines, and finishing with brandy, Behemoth gladly completed the marathon of drink pairings.

‘That belly… It’s beyond the point where I can excuse it as a primordial pouch, but I promised to feed him well, so what can I do.’

Cleio was now repaying his debt for the third time since the investigation into Count Kishion’s alleged treason—now called the “Brunnen Outpost Raid Incident.”

The cat, already huge to begin with, had grown even fatter with good feeding, and now, when spread out, was as big as a carpet.

Cleio absentmindedly kneaded the sagging belly and organized his thoughts.

Behemoth, drunk and dead asleep, only twitched his whiskers when touched and didn’t lash out, which was even better.

From the open window wafted the clear early summer air and the scent of the golden sunset.

‘I didn’t even get to see the roses properly this year.’

It was already June. Finals were just around the corner.

Trying to shake off the alcohol, Cleio brought out his writing assignment, but couldn’t focus at all.

He pushed aside the half-heartedly scribbled homework and checked the location of vineyards for sale on the map. The candidates had been narrowed down to three or four, but the Loire Blanc grape vineyard near Lake Nineveh seemed to be the one Behemoth liked best.

For Behemoth and himself, Cleio was in the process of actually carrying out his plan—not just to buy a few barrels of wine, but to buy an entire vineyard.

‘What’s the point of earning money? You have to use it while your body’s healthy and you’re free to move.’

It had been weeks since he and the children returned to school, yet sometimes the peace of daily life still felt novel to him.

The sound of the school clock tower’s bells, the wind shaking the woods, the afternoons spent in the shade of the lab.

He realized he was far more attached to all of this than he’d expected.

‘I’m really glad I was able to come back.’

The day after Arthur was released, the morning papers were plastered with articles about the outpost raid.

When Melchior realized the articles were uncontrollable, he let the information flood and pollute the news.

Fran’s photograph caused a huge sensation. In an era when what was photographed was taken as truth, this was possible.

The Brunnen ambassador insisted that the operation wasn’t their directive and blamed it on a few rogue knights, while the Albion side gained a more advantageous position at this year’s Dernier Continental Trade Conference.

‘With a regent who never gets up empty-handed, what else would you expect.’

He was still a thoroughly calculating operator.

This incident was no different.

Though the intent of the “Covenant” was not realized, Arthur’s military base—the Kishion estate—was completely upended, and Tatherton’s abilities and loyalty were put to the test.

‘And, to think that the Onyx of Immersion was buried in the border area between Kishion and Brunnen. How did they even find out about that?’

According to Trude, who returned to Hebron Castle, the Duke of Tristain had found a pouchful of onyx magic stones.

That amount would prevent the crown prince’s skill side effects for quite some time.

In any case, the Kishion estate’s private soldiers were exonerated thanks to the Brunnen rogue noble knights.

‘It helped that Count Kishion was known as a steadfast patriot.’

Count Shuliman Kishion’s self-defense at the Royal Advisory Council was also steadily accepted.

Disciplinary action ended with a fine.

All the previously unregistered soldiers, weapons, and unaffiliated knights were now properly registered.

Though casualties during the raid were relatively low, the property damage was enormous, so compensation measures were put in place.

The central military’s behavior—no response to requests for magite stone iron weapons or for reinforcement of knights—was criticized even more when Count Kishion’s letters were found in a discard file cabinet.

Less than a week after the articles were published, an ordnance bureau administrator, suspected of embezzling resources destined for the northeast defense forces, committed suicide.

He had connections to Count Ramsdale of the Aslan faction.

It was an obvious, bitter, and sloppy case of scapegoating.

‘Melchior, who allowed Joseph Cruel to run wild, didn’t actually want the Kishion estate to fall immediately if Brunnen really invaded.’

Melchior, as Albion’s king, would have to bring about the coronation eclipse.

The Kishion estate issue was a smokescreen. The real aim seemed to be the forced execution of the “Covenant.”

Cleio ground his teeth just thinking about what happened in that process.

‘The twins got through it thanks to protection from their father and their famous aunt, but Ishiel was really in trouble.’

Her lord was dragged to an interrogation room, her esteemed father detained in the estate, she had no news of her companions, and the castle where she grew up was half destroyed—a disaster almost impossible for a normal person to endure.

Released, Ishiel didn’t show her difficulties, instead first checking on Arthur and her friends’ well-being.

While confined at Melamid’s manor, it seemed she was slighted by her mother’s family for the first time in her life, but she only confided a little to Chel, and otherwise kept it to herself, which was heartbreaking to see.

She was never a girl with a generous smile, but after the incident at the estate, she never smiled at all, which made Cleio feel bad.

‘And now she’s thrown herself into that hellish training again. Even Professor Rosa tried to stop her, it was that bad.’

Arthur and Ishiel acted just like siblings—when swept into something beyond their control, they disciplined themselves to calm their hearts.

Ishiel, always an early riser for training, now devoted herself to study and training without a moment of personal time.

Thankfully, as her housemate, Chel was gently soothing her so she wouldn’t break.

After all these twists and turns, school life had started again.

There were piles of practicals and assignments to make up for absences, but just having days where you had to worry about such things felt like a gift.

The reason students once implicated in first-degree treason could return without friction was Zebedee’s devotion.

It was said Zebedee had been busy running everywhere during that week.

He formally protested to the Internal Security Bureau that had taken his students at night, and even convened the Senate’s Educational Administration Committee in the name of the Royal Mage Inspector.

A man who usually only crossed the bridge for the opening and closing of Parliament, his efforts to save his students were tearfully earnest.

On top of that, having received a secret message from the twins’ aunt, Countess Angellium came to the capital and focused on restoring Count Kishion’s honor.

After behind-the-scenes negotiations, the 977th class members’ absences were glossed over as a result of aristocratic family infighting.

‘But the May Ball was completely out of the question. My heart hurts when I think of how disappointed Liffie and Letitia were.’

May of 1892 swept in like a storm and passed just as quickly.

During the chaos, he let it go to deal with more urgent matters, but the more he thought about it, the more absurd and infuriating Melchior’s threats became!

‘Now that I think back, it’s really outrageous. Spouting nonsense about land confiscation. Why don’t you start land reform with those huge royal estates first.’

There’s an order to everything, even when drinking cold water or getting stabbed with a bamboo spear.

Why should he, the son of a mere lowest-rank noble and city bourgeois nobody, be threatened by a royal and a mining lord?

Cleio, for the first time in a long while, muttered some truly colorful curses to himself.

‘If it were a grudge against god, I’d concede a point, but this is a separate matter!’

Buying and registering land is a matter of human law, not god’s, so it should be judged accordingly.

But exploring god’s intentions is different. God’s will isn’t a neatly organized document like a land registry.

Reading the final manuscript is a solitary, speculative process—chewing over each phrase through thick haze, groping for uncertain truths.

Suddenly feeling empty inside, Cleio quietly nestled behind Behemoth, who had curled up.

When he stretched out his arm, the giant cat filled his embrace.

Burying his nose in the mass of fur, he finally brought to the surface the topic he’d been putting off.

‘I don’t know about the drafts before the eighth, but the problem with the eighth draft is clear. The author never wanted the ether of this world to disappear.’

“Memory” made Regina’s plea resound in his head like a chorus.

‘Please fulfill the author’s will, □□. So that the king chosen by the author, the kingdom chosen by the author, the technology chosen by the author, can have a future.’

Arthur, the Kingdom of Albion, the technology born from ether having a future.

The god of this world, the author, had decided to rewrite to achieve exactly that purpose.

Even at the risk of a rogue like Melchior attempting to escape the frame.

‘If closing the gates of Mnemosyne entirely is the way to cut off ether and break the link to god, then I understand why the manuscript had to be set in Albion.’

Only Albion, in this entire world, still had the gate of Mnemosyne.

Therefore, god had no choice but to make the place where his influence reached the stage for the narrative.

In this world, unlike the previous one, everything that happens is given meaning and reason, so it can’t be a coincidence that Albion became god’s final testing ground.

‘Maybe because of that, Albion’s ether technology is also by far the best. The Carolingians nailed shut the doors of the magic school and church, and burned the goddess statues. The Brunnen people, for their part, are pouring their scientific advances into developing new weapons.’

In the previous manuscript, Brunnen, which industrialized later than Albion, tried to make up for its inferiority with military strength.

The result was the invasion of Albion.

That war, once started, escalated into the War of Princes, and ended with Melchior closing the gate of Mnemosyne.

Cleio had considered the transition from that paradise era to an age of blood and iron as an inevitable flow of history, not a tragedy that must never happen.

He had memories of being born in the twentieth century of the previous world and living into the early twenty-first.

In the previous world, as the irreversible flow of time progressed, epic poetry gave way to history, and myth was replaced by science.

Therefore, he had thought that even humanity’s leaving god’s cradle and losing ether in was just the ending the author intended.

But in god’s eyes, the “eighth ending” that the “last world” received was neither good nor proper.