‘Phew......’
I'll honestly admit it.
My speech might have been somewhat provocative in a world like <Jjam Academy>, lodged somewhere between the medieval and modern eras.
This was a rigid, primogeniture-based hereditary class society where the bloodline one was born into determined the other ninety-nine percent of one's life.
The looks directed at me for rejecting that and declaring, “The one with the greatest ability should inherit!” could hardly have been kind.
And the stone that sticks out gets hammered down.
Even if I had done it to catch Solarian III's eye, there would surely be the stares of my fellow freshmen, the gossip among the Academy professors, and the like.
I, too, would have to bear certain disadvantages.
Fortunately, the reward for earning the achievement for a perfect score on the written placement test had already raised the affinity of those affiliated with the Academy.
'Where else do you get a plus-minus zero?'
And strictly speaking, the entrance-ceremony speech had been closer to a gain than a loss.
Just as grades are alpha and omega while one is in college, yet become nothing more than numbers the moment one graduates.
To me, the Academy was a launchpad to becoming Chancellor.
Better still, I could build connections with illegitimate children and bastards—the contacts I would need to unsettle the hereditary nobles.
To become Chancellor quickly, I had to catch Solarian III's eye, and to build connections, I had to make my name known within the Academy.
'I think I've managed both pretty well?'
Though, for some unknown reason, the entrance ceremony had ended almost immediately after my speech, and even the practical placement test scheduled for that afternoon had been postponed until tomorrow.
But more things in this world failed to go according to schedule than did.
I was about to head home, enjoying the countless gazes raining down on me.
That is.
“Lloyd Schultz, in His Majesty's name, I place you under arrest.”
Until I was taken away by an Imperial Guard Knight stationed at the Academy's main gate.
Article 21, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea.
All citizens shall enjoy freedom of speech and the press, and freedom of assembly and association.
Article 22, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea.
All citizens shall enjoy freedom of learning and the arts.
Based on these constitutional provisions, there had been absolutely nothing wrong with what I had done.
Primogeniture was wrong, and illegitimate children and bastards should be given opportunities as well.
Of course I could say that.
The Academy entrance ceremony was naturally held at the Academy.
Therefore, my speech was an act protected in the name of academic freedom.
'Mm-hm, there are no flaws in my legal reasoning.'
However, my logic had one fatal blind spot.
“Kneel.”
The geographical fact that this was not the Republic of Korea, but the Solarian Empire within the world of <Jjam Academy>.
The moment my knees touched the ice-cold stone floor, my body instinctively hunched in on itself. The cold kept stabbing at them as though it were going to rain tomorrow.
Through a gap in the sack-like thing over my head, I could see the suits of armor that had abducted me standing in orderly formation.
If they asked, I was confident I could quickly divulge even the location of a secret base that did not exist.
“Let the criminal raise his head.”
An individual in the garb of an ordinary dark priest, hood and all, spoke from among them.
At the same time, one of the knights roughly tore the sack off me.
“......!”
I had no idea why the Academy had a place like this, but it was gloomy enough to pass for an underground dungeon.
Imperial Guard Knights clad in armor polished to such a shine that it could be used as a mirror.
And among them, looking down at me with an unreadable expression.
“I...... I am the Chamberlain to His Majesty, the great Emperor Solarian III.”
Solarian III himself.
If an ordinary citizen of the Empire had heard those words, he would have immediately pressed his forehead to the ground like Tonegawa before a hotplate.
But I was not an ordinary citizen.
“......You're smiling?”
Instead, I could not stop a smile from spreading across my face.
This entire situation was proof that my choice had been right.
The wide-area taunt I had unleashed at the Academy entrance ceremony.
It was clear proof that it had reached Solarian III himself.
***
“You bastard!!!”
A shout like raging waves struck the room.
An oppressive silence followed.
“......?”
It had not been the shout of an Imperial Guard Knight enraged by the sight of someone holding his head high before the Chamberlain—and Emperor.
Nor had it been the Chamberlain-and-Emperor personally rebuking the other's insolence.
Excluding Solarian III, disguised as the Chamberlain, and the Imperial Guard Knights.
There was only one person left in this room.
“You were the traitor who blinded and deafened His Majesty at his very side!”
The Royal Light of Sacred Light Orphanage, the Member of Parliament for Ansan District, and the speaker who had turned the Academy entrance ceremony upside down.
Only my voice echoed through this cavernously spacious room.
Even if Solarian III was wearing a dreary hood that made him look as though he might start casting necromancy at any moment.
'You think I wouldn't recognize you?'
I had played the Chancellor seed hundreds of times, and I had seen portraits of Solarian III enough times to grow sick of them.
Thanks to that, I could tell at a glance that he was Solarian III just from the lower half of his face visible beneath the hood.
'But Solarian III doesn't know that I've noticed.'
That created an information asymmetry.
I knew that Solarian III was pretending to be the Chamberlain.
But unless he used mind-reading, Solarian III had no way of knowing that I had recognized his identity.
That meant the stage had been set for me.
A stage where I could freely fire off the “loyal counsel” I had wanted to give Solarian III, but which would have been somewhat dangerous to say to his face.
“How dare you speak in this place......!”
The Imperial Guard Knight, freed from his stun, hurriedly tried to cover my mouth.
“Stop.”
Solarian III raised a hand and restrained him, apparently not yet intending to stop his Chamberlain cosplay.
Even so, the fact that he had made a verbal slip himself showed just how unexpected my words had been.
'I can understand why he is acting like this.'
At the Academy entrance ceremony, I had goaded the illegitimate children and bastards while criticizing the primogeniture practiced by hereditary nobles.
And that was also a provocation aimed at the Emperor.
The Emperor, like the hereditary nobles, was also a position passed down through primogeniture.
“Who on earth has blinded and deafened Us...... Ahem. What exactly do you mean when you say that I have blinded and deafened His Majesty?”
That did not mean Solarian III could step forward in person and ask about it.
'It would be the same as admitting, “I am an Emperor who was offended by the nonsense spouted by a mere Academy freshman.”'
Nor could he simply let it pass without doing anything.
As was only natural, Solarian III was Solarian II's eldest son.
Criticizing the primogeniture of nobles could therefore be interpreted as criticizing the legitimacy of the Emperor as well.
The moment he let it pass, the legitimacy of imperial authority itself would be damaged.
'Oh? His legitimacy was denied to his face, and he kept his mouth shut? He was a pushover, not an Emperor? People would think that.'
That was why Solarian III had no choice but to have someone else interrogate me.
That is.
If Solarian III had not been a nonstop suspicion machine.
'But he cannot completely trust others, either.'
If he stepped forward himself, he would lose face. If he ordered a subordinate to do it, he would doubt that the interrogation had been carried out properly.
So he had come out himself while disguised as the Chamberlain.
“Do you really ask because you do not know?!”
“Your tongue is certainly sharp, but I advise you to recognize the situation you are in.”
To preserve his dignity and satisfy his curiosity.
Since he was already at the Academy to observe the entrance ceremony, he probably had not needed to think very hard about it.
“My loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor does not vary with circumstance or place.”
“......That is quite a commendable thing to say, but.”
Thanks to that, I had the opportunity to stamp an impression on Solarian III's mind by praising him mindlessly.
'Ah, I was just voicing my convictions before the Chamberlain, okay? I am absolutely not doing this because I know you are the Emperor.'
And Solarian III had probably already caught on, at least implicitly.
For someone striving by any means to strengthen imperial authority, he would understand that denying the primogeniture of the nobles could weaken the foundation of their power.
'He came here to confirm whether I had said it with even that in mind.'
Of course I had. In fact, it would have been a problem if Solarian III did not realize it.
“You are Lloyd Schultz, correct?”
“A traitor has no name for you to call......”
“I have heard enough of your loyalty to His Majesty, so speak properly before I cut out your tongue.”
“Yep.”
If there was one thing I had come to understand keenly after playing the Chancellor seed countless times.
It was that the Solarian Empire's cartel of hereditary nobles, already hardened to its core, would not be shaken by just any method.
Even so, there were times when the noble faction would be thrown into great turmoil even though I had not done anything at all.
'When there was a problem with the line of succession.'
“You gave a very intriguing speech at the Academy entrance ceremony today.”
The most common bad ending one could experience in <Jjam Academy>: the Nobles' War.
The noble who won the Nobles' War would, almost without exception, execute the successor of the defeated noble.
Yet however badly they had been defeated, they would not wipe out the family itself.
That was taboo among the nobles, and an act of dishonor.
Naturally, some nobody who otherwise would not even have dreamed of becoming head of the family inherited it, and before long the family fell into miserable ruin.
Accomplishing the objective without dirtying one's own hands.
It was a strategy for tearing down nobles that was aristocratic in the most aristocratic sense.
By that point, it was already too late for me to do anything as Chancellor, so I had watched from beyond the monitor while eating popcorn and drinking Zero Coke.
Enjoying the sight of the nobles who had made my stomach churn throughout the game destroying themselves of their own accord.
Anyway.
“Depending on how I report this, I could easily charge you with treason.”
I had to weaken the hereditary noble faction.
That was how imperial authority would rise, and how I could avoid the bad ending known as the Nobles' War.
But that did not mean I could really incite nobles to wage war against one another and have their successors executed.
That would be the idiocy of starting a nobles' war in order to avoid a nobles' war.
But disrupting the hereditary nobles' lines of succession did not necessarily require war.
“Do you truly want me to make such a report?”
At Solarian III's words, the quick-witted Imperial Guard Knights closed in around me in a counterpress.
Amid the pressure of the plate-armored masses tightening around me as though they would choke the breath from my lungs.
I gave Solarian III a faint smile.
“How did you know?”
“What?”
“That what the Empire needs now is treason—treason planned with the utmost precision.”
The treason of the Academy's illegitimate children and bastards against the hereditary nobles.
And the Emperor of the Empire secretly supporting them.
That was the very method by which the hereditary nobles' lines of succession could be disrupted and imperial authority strengthened.
The composure Solarian III had only just regained collapsed completely.
***
Solarian III fell into a grave dilemma.
It was not Lloyd Schultz's remarks, the sort of nonsense he kept spouting as though he had extra lives stored somewhere, that he was seriously considering.
'......Should I kill him?'
Should he pull off the neck of the lunatic who dared talk about treason to him, the Emperor, right then and there?
He was truly considering it.