While Lloyd was enjoying some private time in the Academy's underground "interview room."
CRASH!
The gates of the Inglebert estate flew wide open as though they had been struck by an artillery shell.
“Wife! Pack at once! We must leave the capital as soon as possible!”
“......Dear?”
“There is no time to explain, so hurry! Marta, where is Marta?!”
“Marta is obviously at work at the Imperial Patronage Association.”
“Of course, then I can pick Marta up on my way back from the bank. Anyway, hurry!”
“What on earth happened?”
“Lloyd Schultz! This is all because of that bastard Lloyd!”
Wegner was planning the great escape of his lifetime.
It was cold.
It felt as though a longsword might fly into my chest and lodge itself there (not a figure of speech).
“......”
After Solarian III fell silent upon hearing me say that what the Empire needed now was planned treason.
The Imperial Guard Knights had begun some extremely unsettling wrist exercises.
But do not worry.
Barking dogs do not bite.
If Solarian III had truly been offended by my speech, he would have simply gone, “CHOP!” without dragging things out.
He certainly would not have gone to the trouble of arranging a face-to-face meeting like this.
An Emperor disguised as a Chamberlain, and a freshman who had urged planned treason upon that Emperor.
For a moment, an unbelievable confrontation—one too implausible even for gossipmongers to repeat—continued.
“Pfft......!”
He laughed.
“Hahahaha!”
An absolute being who held the power of life and death over everyone in this room.
The great and wise Emperor of the Solarian Empire, a statesman who traded invisible spears and blades with nobles who held tremendous power.
“This is truly absurd.”
As Solarian III pushed back his hood, he gave a truly hearty smile.
A smile brighter than any I had ever seen throughout all my time playing <Jjam Academy>.
“Absurd.”
That was why he spat out something like a laugh—one that felt all the more chilling—as though he were coughing up blood.
***
“I greet His Majesty Solarian III, the great sovereign of the Empire.”
This time, I did not hesitate to bow my head to the floor.
Unlike when Solarian III had pretended to be the Chamberlain, revealing his own face meant that he was serious.
“How strange. A freshman who has only just entered the Academy recognizes my face immediately......”
It sounded like a question, but I could not rashly open my mouth.
Back when I had just become an aide.
It was exactly like when I had naively chimed in on Representative Han Gyeong-su's muttering as he badmouthed a lawmaker from the ruling party, then got chewed out for an entire week.
One must never rashly respond to the mutterings of those above.
Yet at the same time, one had to be ready to answer whenever one was given the floor.
Answer, but remain silent.
Remain silent, but answer at once.
Enduring that contradiction was the true attitude of an aide—the trusted inner circle of Yeouido, the house of power, and the shadows of power.
“Did House Schultz have ties to the Imperial Family?”
Just like now.
“My family is not one that Your Majesty would honor by calling a house. However.”
The moment I had been given the floor, I neatly answered the question and ended on a note that stirred the questioner's curiosity.
It could not have been anything less than a perfect response.
“However?”
At my perfect response, Solarian III's upper body leaned roughly 5.5 degrees closer.
“My parents served as civil servants in the capital, and I was graciously afforded an opportunity to see Your Majesty's portrait.”
Public institutions and military units in Korea display framed pictures of one's immediate superior.
Usually, those pictures have retouching packed in to the absolute limit.
And portraits were no different.
If anything, being a portrait made it easier to add even more retouching.
If the artist who had painted Solarian III's portrait wanted to make it home alive, he would have had no choice but to apply as much bio-retouching as possible.
Recognizing the real person at once from a portrait like that was, in effect, a politically roundabout way of saying, "You are really handsome."
“Hm, that could be.”
Born into the Imperial Family and thoroughly versed in metaphor and comparison, Solarian III immediately caught my lip service and smiled faintly.
This was why home education was important. It was funny for a two-time orphan like me to say so, though.
Anyway.
“It appears your parents did not teach you the weight of the word treason.”
Thanks to that, Solarian III spoke in a voice somewhat gentler than before.
“I will give you an opportunity to retract your careless remarks and beg for my mercy. What do you say?”
His words offered a full stop: he would treat everything that had happened today as WWE, so we should call it here.
I could practically feel the frozen atmosphere rapidly thawing at his single word.
Above all, I could see the Imperial Guard Knights relaxing and beginning to prepare to leave.
'Well, you probably did not want to cut down an Academy freshman at an entrance ceremony either.'
Normally, I should have backed down here. I only had one life, since I was not a mustachioed plumber.
But.
“Your Majesty.”
“Yes.”
“Today, including my entrance-ceremony speech, I have not made a single careless remark of any kind.”
“......What?”
I could not do that.
If I backed down here, there was no telling when I would have another private audience with Solarian III.
If I was extremely lucky, the closest opportunity would be this year's graduation ceremony. Otherwise, it would be four years from now, at my own graduation ceremony.
<Jjam Academy> was a game where one could snowball like mad from the very beginning and still see no path to a clear. Wasting four years at the Academy was simply asking to be euthanized.
That was why I had to bet big here.
Now, when Solarian III had shown me even as much interest as an ant's hind leg.
I had to keep this ember alive somehow.
“You denied the primogeniture of hereditary nobles, and as though falsely accusing my Chamberlain of being a traitor who blinded and deafened me were not enough......”
Otherwise, I would die.
Whether I died to the longsword of an Imperial Guard Knight glaring at me as though I were a lunatic, or to the cancer cells in my pancreas beyond the right-hand wall of my stomach.
If the bottom line was death, whichever way I went.
There was no reason not to roll the dice boldly.
“You dare say that urging me to rebel was not a careless remark?”
Above all, this was Solarian III's test.
He was curious about the rest of my speech—that denying primogeniture could shake the foundation of the hereditary nobles' power.
But his pride as Emperor would not permit him to ask about it first.
So I was to earnestly petition him, with my life on the line, to let me speak the rest myself.
Then he would bestow mercy and at least hear me out.
It was a supremely Emperor-like test, one only a man standing at the summit of power could give.
Otherwise.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Lloyd Schultz......”
Between Solarian III's words, which sounded as though they were steeped in rage.
“I believe I will remember your name for a long time.”
His perfect teeth had to have been glittering like a diamond mine.
***
Solarian III suspected.
Because a maid had put poison in his teacup when he was young, because someone had fired a crossbow at him during a hunting tournament hosted by the Imperial Family, because a retainer he had favored as Crown Prince had fallen victim to an unexpected late-night attack.
Even though he knew that the nobles, the Church, the Mage Tower, and the merchant companies had ordered all those incidents in order to tame him.
They had left no evidence behind.
And even if evidence had remained, rashly pressing the issue would have been no different from turning them all into enemies.
Solarian III could do nothing but suspect.
Suspicion alone did not shake the balance of power. If the balance was not shaken, they would not move either.
If all of them joined hands and raised the banner of rebellion at once, he could not stop them.
Yet someday, he would take action, and he had to.
To make known to the entire world that all power in the Solarian Empire came solely from himself, the Emperor.
To achieve the great undertaking of perfect centralization, something no Emperor in history had ever accomplished.
'Lloyd Schultz......'
That was why Solarian III suspected Lloyd as well.
Perhaps he was someone sent to test him.
Would Solarian III truly break the balance of power?
Or would he honor the beautiful distribution of power, divided among the capital and Imperial demesne, and the provincial territories, as the previous Emperors had?
'For that, he is far too direct.'
But he was far too conspicuous to be a spy sent by the nobles or some other faction.
The public setting of an Academy entrance ceremony, the unspecified audience gathered there.
And above all, he had uttered the word "treason" to his face, as Emperor.
If he stretched things a little, it was at a level where he could immediately demand the identity of the mastermind and mobilize the Imperial Army.
'Interesting.'
That was why Solarian III doubted his own suspicions.
The very suspicion that Lloyd Schultz was a spy sent by another faction to test him.
Then a rather different picture began to emerge.
- You were the traitor who blinded and deafened His Majesty at his very side!
A boldness enough to draw a hollow laugh.
- My loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor does not vary with circumstance or place.
A loyalty that made one's heart swell on its own.
- Yep.
The tact to know the line that had to be observed.
And finally.
- That what the Empire needs now is treason—treason planned with the utmost precision.
Even a means of solving the problem that no one had ever proposed to him before.
At first glance, Lloyd had seemed merely eager to die, but beneath the surface lay a rather meticulous, continuous design.
And he had wagered his own life upon them.
He had no choice but to honestly admit it.
'I am curious......'
Somewhere along the way, he had begun to look forward, even if only a little, to Lloyd's next words.
If the foundation of the hereditary nobles' power could be shaken by denying the primogeniture of their legitimate eldest sons.
How, exactly, would Lloyd deny that primogeniture?
And.
“Lloyd Schultz.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“I do not bestow mercy twice. Therefore, choose your next words carefully.”
“I shall keep that in mind.”
And for what purpose he had approached him through an Academy filled mostly with sons of concubines and bastards.
'The Emperor's dignity is in a sorry state.'
It was rather absurd.
When he had decided, half on a whim, to attend the Academy entrance ceremony, he had never imagined he would face something like this.
As an Emperor, he was grasping at straws.
The very state of having to seriously ask a mere Academy freshman how to reorganize the Empire's power was.
How could it not be absurd?
“I will give you an opportunity to prove your own words.”
Yet at the same time, he could entertain a small but pleasant fantasy.
If this truly was an opportunity bestowed by Heaven.
And if an ingenious stratagem he had never even imagined flowed from Lloyd Schultz's mouth.
'Perhaps it might work......'
It would be a rather sharp surprise, one that could work even against those who dared call themselves the Emperor's political enemies.
“How is it not a careless remark to urge me to commit treason?”
The moment Solarian III finished speaking, only silence screamed.
There was only one person in this place who had been granted leave to speak.
“Your Majesty, forgive me, but I believe it has already grown rather late today.”
“What?”
Either he was mad, or he was enjoying himself.
“Should not Your Majesty's return to the palace after completing a tour of the provincial territories always take place beneath a brilliant sun?”
“Did your parents tell you that I had gone on a tour as well?”
Either way, he was certainly not in his right mind.
That was why he wore a genuine, heartfelt smile.
“Sadly, my parents have already crossed the river and can tell me nothing more. And Your Majesty has most graciously confirmed it yourself just now.”
Having dared to reject the Emperor's offer outright and tell him that, if he truly wished to hear the rest, he should summon Lloyd to the Imperial Palace.
With that elegant yet brazen statement.
“......Ha!”
Having lowered his head as though placing his neck on a guillotine.
Lloyd Schultz was the only one.
Was this the manifestation of confidence in his own stratagem? Or was it martyrdom, using his own life as bait to achieve a greater undertaking?
After the snake named suspicion licked at Solarian III's thoughts and eventually melted them away.
“I shall return to the palace.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The declaration of an absolute being had been handed down.
“But before that.”
Without warning, Solarian III drew an Imperial Guard Knight's sword.
***
“The student Lloyd Schultz, whom Marta interviewed and whom you personally selected as an Imperial Patronage Association scholarship recipient, said such things in his entrance-ceremony speech?”
“That's what I am saying!”
“And His Majesty heard it himself.”
“He kneaded my shoulder like a chicken's neck. So unless we leave the capital before it is too late......!”
“Where are you going to go if you leave the capital?”
“Anywhere is fine, as long as it is far beyond His Majesty's reach. The southern villa my late father-in-law left us! Yes, that would be good.”
“Are you going to farm there?”
“With the retirement funds I have saved up, we may not live as well as we do now, but we should be able to live out the rest of our days without want. And even if we cannot, what could be worse than losing one's head to treason charges?”
“So what you are saying is that, after making a bad impression on His Majesty, you will go to the bank, withdraw all our assets, and then have our entire family pass through the gate guarded by the Capital Guard to flee to the southern villa we already reported as an inheritance when Father died?”
“Uh......”
Wegner's wife and Marta's mother.
Sage Inglebert gently embraced and comforted Wegner.
“I really do love this odd side of you.”