Chapter 557

Ulrike’s expression suddenly turned serious as he asked, and I wondered how his face had become so stiff.

“How are you going to fix this?”

“I’ll have to start thinking about that now.”

“Lukas is only starting to think of a strategy now?!”

Ulrike exclaimed, his eyes widening. I shook my head and swallowed.

“Luise, I only just found out about this, too—”

“There’s something I just found out, too.”

“What?”

“Lukas turns bright red at times like this.”

Ulrike said with a grin he could no longer suppress. Now that I thought about it, he’d been deliberately making himself look fierce to keep from laughing. I felt my face heat up again and muttered, “That expression makes you sound like someone from the old days.”

“What?!”

Ulrike clutched his own cheek in shock again. Well, it was probably a perfectly fine expression for people living in the late 19th century. Just not for me. While Ulrike wallowed in despair, I patted him on the back. He rested his head against my shoulder.

Narke was the only one who understood what was happening to me and explained it to the others.

“Haha. Lukas is so flustered he can’t think straight.”

“Exactly. So…”

Dozens of thoughts came rushing at me all at once. My vision spun. I frowned and rubbed my lips for no particular reason. When I started biting the inside of my lip, my friends exchanged glances. Ulrike placed a hand on my shoulder, trying to hold back his laughter.

“Don’t be nervous, verbotenen Schwarm¹.”

“Hahahaha! Herzensbrecher was more original, though.”

At Narke’s comment, I narrowed my eyes.

“Don’t.”

“Er— o— be— rer—².”

“Hahahaha!”

“Luise. Can you help me get my brain working again?”

“Of course. Our… what was it? Forbidden crush is asking me for help. How could I say no?!”

“What is wrong with this guy…?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and grumbled. I’d given up. My brain had understood what every word meant from the start, but I’d been trying to avoid confronting those headlines by putting up some kind of mental blindfold. That attempt was over now, too. I had no idea how to keep from dying of embarrassment under this barrage.

When I turned away from my friends, Ulrike hurried after me and grabbed my shoulder.

“Ahh, come on. We need to unpack anyway, so let’s go to the hospital first. We can hold a meeting there or something. Are we even allowed to stay in your hospital room with you?”

“No.”

“We can’t?!”

“It’s not that you’re not allowed to come.”

I picked up the newspapers Narke had taken and waved them.

“My agreement with Prussia is over. There’s no need for me to go into the Imperial Central Hospital. Not after seeing this.”

Everyone seemed to sense the shift in the atmosphere. The smiles faded from Leonard’s and Narke’s faces.

“Lukas. You’ve already worked out your strategy, haven’t you?”

Ulrike drew his lips together and raised one corner of his mouth, deliberately dragging out the last few words. I rubbed my chin and glanced at the mailbox by the roadside.

“Yeah. First, I need to write a letter to the Chief Chamberlain of the Prussian Crown Prince’s Palace.”

“Apparently, he says he can’t meet with me.”

I muttered as I read the letter from the palace staff, which had arrived in the warp mailbox. Then I crumpled it up carelessly and smiled.

“Quite a nerve he has.”

Ulrike, who had gone inside and sat down first, blinked rapidly in bewilderment. I set down the staff I’d been using as a cane for our little act and closed the door. We had planned to go to the mansion, but mindful of the paparazzi or secret police who might be following us, we decided to head to the school instead. We were still students, so there was no problem with entering.

I took a seat, looked around at my friends, and said, “It feels like only yesterday we were sleeping in the dorms here.”

“Tell me about it,” Ulrike replied.

The building was now so empty that it felt like a haunted school. Many students had left to join the Student Military Corps, so they were no longer sitting in their classrooms. With all the recent turmoil over Pleroma, that had become even more common.

“How are you going to get those articles taken down now? We could at least contact the professors. They helped a lot with the coverage of your story this time.”

Ulrike spoke as if to remind me that there was no time to get lost in nostalgia. The sun was already high in the sky, and I could see the shortened shadows through the window. I cast a thorough soundproofing spell around our table before speaking.

“No. I’m not going to get them taken down.”

“You’re just going to leave them alone?”

“As far as I’m concerned.”

I smiled.

“Now, let’s go over how things have unfolded since Easter.”

I’d been so focused on dragging Lukas Askanien’s identity back into the public eye that I’d barely paid attention to what was happening outside. So I’d better catch up now. Here was what I’d gathered from newspaper reports while I was under confinement.

“First of all, as you’d expect, Prussia was losing its grip on the struggle for the initiative. Ever since Bavaria wiped out more than half of Pleroma’s dioceses, attention had shifted toward Bavaria, and across the continent, people had started analyzing the achievements of the Bavarian army under Nikolaus Ernst and the king’s command. That’s what happened, right?”

“That’s right.”

Ulrike was Prussian, and in the past, he would have been disheartened and upset by this. But he didn’t seem particularly bothered now. He nodded calmly.

“Bavaria has received all kinds of offers and signed declarations of support from countries across Europe. As for what kind of offers… Well, as you know, the constituent states of the German Empire aren’t allowed to conduct foreign relations in the first place.”

“Right. That’s why we made economic treaties through pharmaceutical trade and equipment aid.”

Exactly. Only the German imperial government had the authority to conduct foreign relations. The other states did not. However, given their considerable national power, the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Kingdom of Saxony had been granted a limited degree of diplomatic autonomy as exceptions. This was restricted to treaties that were neither military in nature nor particularly large in scope. The Kingdom of Bavaria and I had decided to exploit that loophole. Bavaria had effectively entered into friendship treaties—alliances—with Switzerland, Britain, and the Kingdom of Bohemia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The constituent states of the Italian Peninsula were included, of course. These were all countries Prussia had wanted on its own list.

“Exactly. What matters is that, with Prussia now in a precarious position, Bavaria has forged alliances across the continent. And Bavaria has been relentlessly promoting itself, putting Nikolaus Ernst front and center.”

Before going to Prussia to be arrested, I had recorded a speech in advance as Nikolaus Ernst. Bavaria had released it to the press, and I only learned later that, for a time, newspapers across the Empire had been filled with articles praising Nikolaus Ernst. I flipped through the yellow paper I’d just bought, the one that made me cringe with embarrassment. The second page was packed with stories about Nikolaus Ernst and Bavaria. The public was still caught up in the Easter incident. Since no one had ever driven back Pleroma on such a scale before, the continent was still captivated by what seemed like a fantastical tale. That was welcome news to me, but not to Prussia.

Amazingly, military journals in France and Russia had even speculated that the Bavarian army might have allied with the Catacombs. This was despite the fact that nothing concrete about the Catacombs or their technological capabilities had come to light. Prussia, which could hardly have failed to hear about these speculations, was left stunned and powerless to respond. The rapidly shifting political landscape across the continent was elevating Bavaria while dragging Prussia down, and there was nothing Prussia could do about it. After all, it had yet to accomplish anything worthwhile.

“But fortunately for Prussia, which had been backed into a corner, an opportunity has finally come along for it to score a win.”

My friends fell silent, understanding what I meant. I couldn’t ignore how abruptly the mood had shifted, but I had to say it. If they were going to work with me, they needed to understand my strategy, too.

“Prussia could have killed me to show that it was capable of taking a hard line against Pleroma, too. Or it could reveal my classified contributions and prove that the continent’s belief that Prussia was incompetent at eliminating Pleroma had been mistaken. And as you know, things went the second way. So, do you understand why I’m saying we should leave things alone?”

Ulrike stared wide-eyed without changing his expression for a moment, then clapped his hands. He snapped his fingers to show he understood and nodded with a serious look in his eyes. Leonard had probably known from the start, and Narke had likely read my mind, too. Even so, they were smiling at me with expectant expressions.

“Prussia brought Lukas Askanien into the spotlight to show that they weren’t incompetent. So now it was their turn to promote Lukas Askanien as a counterweight to the continent-wide ‘Nikolaus Ernst idolization trend’ and curb its spread. Which means that changing Lukas Askanien’s career trajectory at this point would be a completely self-defeating strategy.”

“Wow, that’s neat.”

Ulrike narrowed his eyes and snapped his fingers.

“That assumes there’s no one in Prussia besides you who can stand up to Nikolaus Ernst.”

“That’s right.”

I answered without hesitation. If there had been anyone else, Prussia wouldn’t have ended up in this state, and they wouldn’t have needed to cling so desperately to the second strategy I mentioned earlier. Undervaluing myself wasn’t a virtue. It was a flaw, so I simply stated the facts as they were. No one laughed or seemed uncomfortable with my words. Ulrike thought it over for a while, then nodded.

“If Prussia wants to fall behind Bavaria’s meteoric rise and self-destruct, they’re welcome to turn me into a celebrity. But if they don’t want to be left behind, they’ll have to rein in Nikolaus Ernst, who’s charging ahead without any sign of slowing down.”

That is, if they didn’t want to prove their own incompetence.

I laced my fingers together and swallowed the last part. In other words, Prussia was at a dead end. With two versions of me standing in their way, they had no room to retreat. They had no choice but to accept the hand offered by ‘Lukas Askanien the politician.’ After I’d practically spoon-fed them the solution all the way to this point, betraying me now would be out of the question… There was no way people could be so hopeless that they couldn’t swallow even when you shoved a spoon straight into their mouths.

“So there’s no need for us to visit our homeroom professor to get the Prussian yellow papers to change their coverage. It might work, but it’d be too slow and exhausting. We can’t go around visiting every professor with connections to the various media outlets, either… And if the Imperial Family is applying pressure, connections alone won’t be enough.”

“So we just wait for the articles to disappear, since the newspapers can’t keep this up forever, right? But you said earlier, and you’re saying it now, too, that the Imperial Family is applying pressure…”

Ulrike trailed off, lost in thought.

There was something to keep in mind here. The culprit wasn’t spitting out the spoonful I was practically feeding Prussia because they lacked the ability to swallow it. They were doing it on purpose, just to get on my nerves. Their subordinates had probably followed their orders simply because they hadn’t given the matter any thought. Even so, we had to take action.

Not me, though. Nikolaus Ernst.

I rested my interlaced fingers on the table and smiled.

“Let’s approach this from an economic perspective. In a market economy, what’s the most common incentive for getting people to act? What makes an agent unable to resist taking action?”

“Financial gain.”

Leonard answered. I snapped my fingers and asked, “What determines the front page of a newspaper?”

“Are you really going to keep asking questions with such obvious answers? Fine. Newsworthiness.”

I flashed Leonard a playful smile in response to his remark, then returned to a neutral expression and continued.

“Good. Newsworthiness is, in a way, the quality that makes people want to buy a newspaper. In other words, it’s profitability. Now, Leo.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t think I need to be at the Imperial Central Hospital anymore. In fact, I don’t even need to stay in Prussia.”

I pressed my palms lightly against the table and stood up.

“Come on. Let’s head back to Bavaria and make a major announcement.”

Leonard smiled. I tilted my head at him, giving him a pleading look.

Ulrike stayed behind in Prussia. If my plan worked, I’d be seeing him again later today anyway.

Just before leaving for Bavaria, one block before the checkpoint, I cast a soundproofing spell. Then I whispered to Narke, who would be staying in Prussia.

“Narke, I need you to contact the Papal See.”

“Hmm?”

“This might sound like an unreasonable demand, but send them this message by warp mail right now. Just close your eyes and…”

Narke nodded and looked at me. A hint of shock crept into his expression. Watching the corners of his mouth twist, I smiled.

“Tell them to donate 2,000 tons of divine power to Bavaria.”

“2,000 tons. And you’re just asking them to hand it over for free.”

Narke muttered with his eyes closed, letting out a hollow laugh. Bavaria’s treasury currently held around 150 tons of divine power. Last year, before Pleroma started causing serious trouble, the amount had been around 700 tons. Even taking that into account, 2,000 tons was an absurd figure. Wasn’t I asking them to simply hand over three times the amount of divine power a country the size of Bavaria would normally have in peacetime?

Narke looked me straight in the eye and said, “You know that’s not an ordinary number.”

“I know that better than anyone.”

“Can I say this is a demand from Minister without Portfolio Nikolaus Ernst?”

“Of course. I’ll write to you after discussing it with the ministers in Bavaria. Contact the Papal See as soon as the letter arrives.”

Narke smiled at that. Then Narke patted my shoulder and nudged me toward the road leading to the checkpoint.

“Have a good trip.”

And now, four hours later.

I’d set things in motion around noon, and all the preparations were complete before dinner. Having taken on the appearance of Nikolaus Ernst, I stood in the middle of a vast hall draped with the insignia of the Kingdom of Bavaria.

Facing the reporters waiting to hear me speak, their faces brimming with patriotism, and the cameras of various news outlets, I began.

“Good evening, people of Bavaria. This is the third day since we regained our peaceful evenings.”

It had been four days since Bavaria had reclaimed its glory. Only three days had passed since we’d brought down the head of an empire with no legitimate claim to its position. Unlike Prussia, Bavaria was still in a celebratory mood, and that hadn’t changed. Meanwhile, I’d only shown my face on Easter itself and hadn’t appeared in public since. That was because I’d been under house arrest, after all.

As a result, Nikolaus Ernst’s announcement was bound to have a surprisingly large impact, even now.

After opening with those words, I continued with a brief greeting. The faces of the reporters from Bavaria grew brighter by the moment. I had to persuade the audience with nothing but a steady voice, making almost no hand gestures. Even so, the speech was going smoothly.

“…Recently, Bavaria has dismantled eighteen of Pleroma’s dioceses. By our estimates, that accounts for more than half of Pleroma’s dioceses. As the French Empire feared, the terrorist organization has caused growing unrest. But Bavaria has taken the initiative and brought that unrest under control. However, much work remains to be done, and it is too soon to let our guard down. This is a time when the people and the government must stand united. For that reason, the Bavarian government is deeply grateful for the cooperation of the people of Bavaria, who continue to work even now for peace and order across the continent. Your civic spirit is helping make Bavaria a more peaceful place.”

I paused for a moment, letting a brief silence settle over the hall before speaking again.

“As the provisional spokesperson for the Bavarian government, I am here to announce a decision that will contribute to peace on the continent. The Papal States have provided us with 5,000 tons of divine power to ensure the continent’s security and strengthen their friendship with Bavaria. Until now, Bavaria has worked to ensure its own security, and we will continue to do so. However, as one of Germany’s great powers, a member responsible for the continent’s security against a terrorist organization made up of our fellow Germans, and the leader of the operation against Pleroma, we feel the need to consider providing support beyond our own borders. Deeply moved by the Papal States’ commitment to leading the way toward world peace in faithful accordance with religious teachings, we will be allocating part of the 5,000 tons of divine power first and foremost to the emotional and physical healing of Prussian citizens—the people of our Empire who have suffered the most at Pleroma’s hands—and to helping them recover from its lasting effects.”

No one would get angry at this announcement and complain, “If you’re Bavarian, you should be spending that on Bavaria!”

No one. There might have been people who would have, once, but things had changed around Easter.

If Bavaria had made such an announcement back when it was firmly established as the second-greatest power, its people would have protested, asking, “We can barely look after ourselves. Why should we be looking after anyone else?” And they would have been entirely justified.

But Bavaria had now decisively moved beyond the position of second power, even if it had yet to become the first. It stood at one-and-a-half, moving back and forth between first and second place, while the world witnessed Bavaria’s strength and contributions being recognized. And now, with the possibility that Bavaria might be on the verge of pushing Prussia aside and taking the throne itself, the Bavarian people’s outlook had changed.

They understood that becoming a great power meant exerting influence across the world, rather than simply throwing their military weight around within Germany. They had come to understand this instinctively, having witnessed Bavaria bring Prussia to heel without defeating it militarily. Even those who hadn’t grasped it themselves had come across columns explaining the situation in these terms.

The Bavarians were beginning to think of themselves as citizens of the world. This wasn’t an improvement in the level of their awareness, but an expansion of its scope. Their motivation might still have been to become a great power, but their ambitions held greater significance than Prussia’s. Just as the militaristic soil of Prussia had given rise to a German people who yearned for a unified nation, a state interacts with its people regardless of whether they approve or disapprove of its political system. I believed this state could cultivate the right soil for the next generation. I believed it could produce a people different from the Prussians.

I turned back toward the camera and continued speaking.

“Bavaria has established centers throughout the country to protect victims’ families and ensure that those affected receive the support they need to recover. Prussia, however, has no such centers. So, if the Prussian government permits us to uphold the principle of reciprocity among the member states of the Empire, we would be more than happy to put our efforts toward helping our fellow citizens, regardless of nationality. Furthermore, if the head of any region where Bavaria’s assistance is deemed necessary discusses the matter with the relevant authorities and contacts us, we will likewise be willing to provide our technology and divine power to our fellow citizens, whom we regard as our brothers and sisters.”

Naturally, Prussia wouldn’t be the only one to get involved. Requests would come in from all sorts of small German states. Turning down such an opportunity would be a betrayal of their own people, so public opinion alone would be enough to ensure that they reached out.

This was a way to satisfy the Papal See without granting it excessive authority, while also expanding Bavaria’s influence throughout the country. The Papal See would benefit from spreading Catholic influence across the German Empire in opposition to Protestant Prussia, while Bavaria would strengthen its own standing.

From this point on, any state that received aid from Bavaria would find it difficult to make rash decisions that harmed Bavaria or to side against it in the future. In other words, this would sever Prussia’s ties to its allies.

That was why the Papal See had been willing to hand over 5,000 tons of its precious divine power to Bavaria, and why I had chosen the Papal See as our partner before delivering the speech. Would the Papal See turn down a strategy in which everyone stood to gain?

An hour and a half later, at six o’clock.

After wrapping up the speech and finalizing the list of supplies we would provide to the Papal See, I returned to Nikolaus Ernst’s office. Leonard, who had gone to meet His Majesty the King, arrived a little later than I did.

I unfolded the bundle of yellow papers I’d bought earlier and smiled.

“You’ve replaced the entire front page.”

“Hmm.”

Lukas Askanien’s face, which had been splashed across the yellow papers, was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a still from Nikolaus Ernst’s recorded speech. A few papers hadn’t changed, but from page two onward, they were filled with stories about Nikolaus Ernst.

Leonard’s lips curled into a satisfied smile. Then, taking off his jacket, he said, “Your photo came out rather well earlier. Why didn’t you keep a copy?”

I was at a loss for words. All I could do was let out an incredulous laugh and look at him. I wished he’d stopped there, but apparently something else had occurred to Leonard, because he chuckled again. Perhaps he’d been holding it back until then, because now he was laughing out loud.

“Herzensbrecher… Haha!”

“I thought I could at least trust Your Highness.”

“I’m not sure it’s entirely wrong, though.”

Leonard lowered his eyes with a smile that showed no sign of remorse. So a friend was still a friend, huh… He never missed a chance to tease me. I bit my lip and shrugged.

Leonard sat down on the sofa, then leaned against my desk. Looking up at me, he said, “Keep wearing what you have on today. Sky blue suits you.”

He meant Lukas Askanien. I snapped my fingers, dispelling the cognitive distortion spell that had changed my eye color, and said, “What about my eyes?”

“The contrast works.”

“Does it?”

Clunk—

Just as we were making pointless small talk, the warp mailbox installed at one corner of my desk lit up. I flicked my hand and drew a letter out of it with mana. Leonard watched with interest.

A letter in a golden envelope, stamped with red wax. The wax bore a circular inscription.

[House of Hohenzollern]

I held it up for Leonard to see. He gave me the same smile I was wearing. I raised an eyebrow and said, “Works like a charm.”

He was out of his mind.

He was out of his mind in a very restrained, orderly way. I’d been granted access to a place in the Prussian crown prince’s palace I’d never once been allowed to enter before, and the moment I stepped inside, that was my first thought.

The room I was looking at had a white marble floor and glass walls on all four sides, offering an unobstructed view of the garden behind it. Though calling it a garden was generous. It looked more like a forest. Sunlight streamed through the glass walls, rendering the chandelier overhead pointless. Countless pieces of unidentified glass lay shattered across the marble floor. They had probably been glass ornaments, furniture, tables, and things like that.

Grateful that the soles of my boots were much thicker than those of ordinary shoes, I walked toward the two people. The imperial crown prince, dressed in nothing but a shirt, turned to look at me, holding a platinum staff resembling a scepter. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing the scar where I’d bitten him a few days ago. It had barely healed, as if he hadn’t used healing magic. Though it wasn’t polite, I gave him a cursory once-over and thought that, judging by his informal yet practical attire, he’d probably used that staff to smash the glass himself. Most likely, he’d done it to brainwash someone.

“Have a seat.”

Abraham smiled and gestured toward the red sofa. Two red loveseats faced each other across a round glass table.

I sat on the metal chair behind the Crown Prince and looked at the sleeping person. He was tied to a chair just as I had been a few days ago, but he seemed perfectly fine. He was just asleep, sweating profusely. Abraham, who had a gold-trimmed pipe between his lips instead of a cigarillo, finally put on his vest and sat down on the opposite sofa.

“I have seen your idea of hospitality.”

“Do you make a habit of taking your time whenever you fail?”

At that, Abraham raised an eyebrow and smiled. Before he could start spouting sophistry, I continued calmly.

“I have seen it, too. You have been up to something rather interesting.”

Translator Note

1. He’s quoting one of the headlines from the previous chapter, it means ‘forbidden crush’ or ‘forbidden idol’ but I translated it as ‘forbidden crush.’ ↩︎
2. Eroberer means conqueror. ↩︎