A crowd. People murmuring and buzzing and clamoring, each with a different topic, generating a lively energy.
Though every last one of them was an Imperial, it was a pleasant sight.
There had been times when Deber was like that too.
'So this is the Sun Plaza.'
A plaza held within the Empire's Imperial Palace, and also the space where national ceremonies were conducted.
'Quite a gathering. Then again. Considering how Marquis Gebel wags that tongue, I suppose it's warranted.'
Silvertongue. Owner of the silver tongue.
That was Marquis Gebel's byname. The marquis was the Empire's finest propagandist, possessed of the knack for delighting people through nothing but the movement of his tongue.
'There's still some time left, so shall I start by surveying the terrain and the fixtures.'
If there's an opening, blow it u... is Zion Bliese's method, right.
Still, out of habit he headed for the rear of the stage. He could see the magitech engineers in charge of the stage production and the staff running about busily.
"Hey."
"Who is— hurk! A subject of the Empire greets a member of the Divine Race."
They looked plainly busy, so he deliberately asked about this and that.
"A great many precious persons will be gathering, yet this looks far too defenseless. To this prince's eye, it seems one could interfere with the stage all one liked with a single simple magitech device?"
"There is no cause for concern, Your Highness. We are making our preparations under thorough calculation, and apart from the shortage of time there are no variables."
It was baseless fault-finding, and it was to buy time to sweep his eyes over the surroundings.
Being behind the stage, the magitech devices installed for the inauguration ceremony were in plain view.
'Stringent. Even so, there's an opening.'
A Grand Mage's eyes read the information and stored it in his mind.
Good, he had grasped all of it.
Add in the mana pattern he had obtained thanks to Gebel closing the distance.
It was more than possible.
"Thorough calculation, is it. I shall believe you, then. That nothing will happen."
He smiled inwardly as he turned around.
The thorough calculation of people who can't even work a formula without a calculator.
"I've found the opening, so now I only need to wait for the optimal timing."
Zion smiled, one corner of his mouth curling up. Perhaps it was a habit left in the body, because the line of his mouth twisted.
Arriving at the seats of honor, Zion took a place and sat. It was the best position for working magic.
'Gebel. You said this to him, didn't you.'
A memory surfaced from a time when it suited him better to say he wriggled his legs rather than that he walked.
The puppet king of a nation that could lose its sovereignty at any moment. A key figure in an important post who had come over from a great power.
Even though the practical superiority in station was obvious to anyone, Gebel had been unable to hide his inferiority complex toward the late king.
"O King, this Gebel is an intellectual who earned a doctorate in literature from the Empire's finest university, and a pioneer who achieved a new epoch in propaganda by grafting magitech engineering onto the newly stirring discipline called psychology."
Even though the little Zion had been sitting on the late king's knee, Gebel had not hesitated to spew abuse at the father of a young son.
"And you, by contrast, what can you put forward as your specialty? Bliese, you have nothing whatsoever besides that paltry royal surname, do you? Kul kul kul kul kul."
Astonishingly, the memory of that time had remained a pleasant one to this day.
Because of his own pure curiosity as a child.
"Father. Imperials are all tall, so why is that man small? And his hair color is ugly-yy."
The Litania Empire, which held itself up as a nation of knights, regarded a robust build as superior, and the higher the bloodline, the closer the hair color tended to be to blond.
"Y-y-yiiik......!"
Gebel, who had been blathering about being a doctor of literature and a pioneer of propaganda, had immediately clamped his mouth shut and dashed out with a face burning bright red like charcoal thrown into a fire.
'Gebel. You are excessively revolting. However excellent your skill at packaging things, it can't be that no trace shows.'
Anyway. To summarize, the bastard's propaganda had one fatal weakness.
Namely the fact that it utilized a magitech device.
Just as the torturer at the prison had, earlier on.
'Seizing authority through magical erosion. He'll have taken precautions, of course.'
Gebel was climbing onto the platform.
A height from which he could look down on the entire plaza at a single glance. The instant his eye level became exactly the same as the bastard's.
'Quere Stellam Orbita.'
He intoned it inwardly in a low murmur.
'Gears, cover it over.'
'That I obstruct, and sever even its traces.'
Multiple incantation. It amounted to a mage one hour into his beginnings succeeding at a double layering of magic.
'In my original body a tenfold layering wouldn't have been difficult.'
The Deber royal house's secret art was a superb magic system specialized in multiple incantation.
It was also the reason Deber had chosen isolation in an age when the whole world was being shaken by the wave of revolution magitech engineering had raised.
Because they had no need of magitech engineering.
...As a result they were left behind and ended up as a colony, but still.
'There was a reason they couldn't give it up to the very end, is what I'm saying.'
"I ask that you cry out with me, my fellow subjects!"
Now.
Right now, as the speech reached its climax.
Magic took aim at Gebel.
"Deaden the sound, Silence."
***
'Quite a gathering. Crowd, you who are like a swarm of ants.'
Tell a lie a thousand times and it becomes truth.
Five minutes is enough to make a hero into a criminal, and a single line of prose disguises anyone as one.
It was what Gebel always said, and the conviction he had held his entire life.
Step. Step.
The staircase leading up to the platform felt long indeed.
It had been a truly long journey.
From the lowest of houses, one too shameful even to be called noble, to a post treated at the rank of duke.
From the very bottom to the top.
'The age called for me. Had it not, I could never have climbed. The age has chosen me...!'
Dung-colored hair. A slight build and a gaunt face.
Despite physical conditions that could never succeed in an Empire where outward displays of rank were essential, no one had been able to stop Gebel.
Because a world had arrived in which Gebel's talent shone.
"Subjects of the Empire, this Paul Gebel, doctor of literature from the Empire's finest university, academic pioneer who brought magitech psychology into being, and your old friend, offers his greetings! Well, ahem. You all know it already, I'm sure, but I thought I would introduce myself once."
A touch of wit added to a position of authority brings about an amplification of goodwill. Giggling laughter came from here and there.
"Today, this Paul Gebel intends to advocate and introduce a new identity. The fanatical imperialist!"
He knew perfectly well that he was the incarnation of an inferiority complex.
And so Gebel had made his choice.
To become, in order to go from weak to strong, the sort of person who offers endless respect and loyalty to those above him, mobilizing even self-brainwashing to do it.
To oppress and exploit those below him, soothing the lowliness of his origins and furnishing himself the means to climb higher.
Outstanding eloquence was the talent granted to Gebel and the means by which he would achieve his dream.
"What this Gebel, one Imperial who prides himself on being as educated as any man needs to be, has been thinking of late is this!"
Propaganda. A catchphrase.
The masses are stupid and forget easily.
Therefore the pianist who plays the piano that is the masses must strike only a single key.
Because the skill of hammering one keyword into their heads was precisely the art of propaganda.
'Begin with the keyword and stimulate reason. Goad them with stimulation and breathe madness into reason.'
"Order is light, savagery is darkness! Salvation for savagery is the mission of civilization, and so our Empire."
Pretending to thump his chest, he pressed one of the buttons on his formal attire.
The magitech device for magical agitation activated.
"Our Empire is salvation, and that is the role of religion. Which is to say, our Empire is precisely the object that ought rightly to be worshipped, and we must become fanatical imperialists. So let us cry out thus."
He breathed group consciousness into them. Because only then would the masses be more easily engulfed in madness. The thing that the new discipline of psychology calls collective madness.
"O glorious Empire! Glorious, Litania!"
Following his lead, the masses chanted in unison.
"O glorious Empire! Glorious, Litania!"
Gebel shed tears. In this moment he was the greatest pianist playing the masses.
"Once more! Make the Empire great! Glorious, Litania!"
"Make the Empire great! Glorious, Litania!"
Yes, that was it.
Gebel carried out the ritual he had performed countless times until now, the self-brainwashing.
Today, Paul Gebel becomes Colonial Governor-General and departs to carry out the mission of civilizing Deber......!
"Crowd, one more time!"
He thrust his arm up with all his strength.
Then he went on to shout.
"Everlasting glory to the Empire, Glorious Ritado-do-do-dob......?"
"......?"
"......?"
"......?"
"......?"
Oh no.
Gebel's face went pale.
***
Being a public inaugural address, every sort of magitech-engineered defense had been furnished.
And breaking through ironclad security that blocked not only terrorism and assassination but all magical interference was close to impossible.
"Glorious Ritado-do-do-dob......?"
'Looking it over from the inside and then breaking through feels like solving a problem with the answer sheet in front of me.'
Not that he minded, in fact it was a sweet deal.
Amid dozens of overlapping layers of defense, an exceedingly faint gap.
Structured mana, that is to say magic, had advanced using that thread-thin gap as its route and rendered Marquis Gebel mute.
"Ebeb, ebebeb? Bebeb! Beeeeb!!!"
Marquis Gebel clutched his throat and thrashed about like a madman.
Every Imperial in the plaza watched that unseemly spectacle.
Naturally the inaugural speech was ruined.
"Kekekekeke."
"Ninth Prince, your laughter is a bit loud. I worry someone will hear and pass it on to Governor-General Gebel."
Despite Rigert's advice, he kept on snickering.
"He's about to be fired from the governor-general post, so what does it matter."
The Empire places enormous weight on saving face.
Tens of thousands of Imperials had witnessed him being struck mute, temporarily though it was, and the occasion had been his own inauguration ceremony, no less?
There was no way he could carry out the office of governor-general.
Marquis Gebel, publicly and utterly humiliated, had become a man who could no longer be the face of the Empire.
At least, the Empire that Zion knew was that kind of nation.
"Pardon...? Fired, you say. What do you mean......?"
He grew uneasy all at once.
Why does this bastard have a question mark on the end?
"There's no chance Marquis Gebel gets fired, is there. Think how many connections he's built with that dazzling gift of gab, and I heard the bribes he spread around for this appointment came to a full one hundred million Pen. And the connection he grabbed hold of recently is so thick it may as well be a lifeline of rope."
"......"
Right, he had forgotten for a moment.
The Empire places enormous weight on station and rank.
Because of that, even if a man stops at no means whatsoever to obtain wealth and power, it is tolerated and overlooked to a certain degree.
Which meant that while accepting bribes was officially a crime, it was practiced openly.
There was no chance that Marquis Gebel of all people hadn't greased the wheels.
"Ah. Damn it."
The taste in his mouth was bitter.
Had his judgment been clouded from going through so much, his body switching overnight and all the rest? He had overlooked this.
In that case, was there nothing left but to kill the bastard.
Even in Zion Riobelt's body, the killing itself did seem possible.
'Can I handle the aftermath? ...Nah, of course not.'
"Your Highness. Marquis Gebel is coming. It would be best to manage your expression......"
The commotion had settled to some degree, and Marquis Gebel was coming toward the seats of honor.
Once the bastard, today's guest of honor, arrived, all the nobles would move back to the Imperial Palace's banquet hall.
"Hm...... Ninth Prince."
Marquis Gebel wore a humiliated expression for a moment upon spotting Zion.
But then he raised the corner of his mouth triumphantly.
"To think you attended my inauguration ceremony. Being looked after in this way by a member of the great Divine Race, I am simply moved to tears."
It seemed at a glance to be an expression of gratitude, but it was mockery with two barbs embedded in it. Zion did not answer.
"......"
Gebel felt a swell of satisfaction watching Zion send him a silent gaze.
Once His Majesty conferred the post upon him a short while from now, he would officially hold a position treated as the equal of a prince's.
It could surely be regarded as a position above the likes of a Ninth Prince who was nothing but trash.
'And so, if it is the Paul Gebel of this moment. Even if I dare spit irreverent words at a member of the Divine Race, it will not become a problem......!'
The instant Gebel, thinking thus, smiled wickedly and met Zion's eyes.
Blond hair, blood-red eyes. Yet a different coloring showed through.
Gebel abruptly fell into the illusion that, for some reason, another Zion was reflected in Zion's pupils.
And so he changed his line of provocation.
"Allow me to tell you of something that happened with Deber's last king, Exon XIII. That human being was extremely similar to Your Highness."
In what respect? In the respect of being a viciously worthless human being.
"I recall the funeral. There were more empty chairs than mourners, and this despite his being a king!"
The Ninth Prince offered no rebuttal and no display of emotion.
He was unable to.
This Gebel... had risen this far!
His chest swelling. It was as the elated Gebel was about to continue speaking.
"Hm...?"
'Why is there a liquor bottle in his hand...?'
It was also the very bottle that had been the reason he struck the maid.
A pretty bottle, but large and heavy and angular, the sort that looked like it would hurt to be hit with.
CRASH!
"Gkuuuuuurk......!"
Marquis Gebel's eyes rolled up and he collapsed.
***
He resolved to kill Gebel.
It was an act with an enormous risk attached.
But he had already made up his mind.
'How dare this bastard put that name in his mouth?'
"Your Highness. You mustn't. Uh, uhh? Uh, uhh?"
CRASH!
So he needed a method to minimize the risk...... crash?
"Your Highness. Please, ah, please. My head is going to come off, I— ah! Ahh! Aaaaargh!!!"
"Uh, huh......?"
The sudden noise. Zion, coming to his senses belatedly, lowered his gaze.
Marquis Gebel, struck by the bottle he had swung, lay collapsed in a heap.
This time he turned his head to the right.
A bloodied liquor bottle was held in his hand.
"Aaaaah, the Ninth Prince has finally gone and done it!"
"Madam, you must keep your distance. Over here, quickly! One misstep and we shall be dragged into it...!"
The nobles were beginning to fall into panic. The commoner attendants went a step or two further, showing reactions as though they felt a threat to their very lives.
...A Grand Mage's outstanding intellect discerned the situation quickly but a beat too late.
'The memories are gone, but there were habits engraved into the body. And a habit of venting stress through violence, at that.'
This was bad. He had gone and caused a catastrophe.
'Ah. This makes things complica...... or does it not...?'
The direction of his thoughts abruptly swung around.
Hm. Great discoveries generally begin with a shift in thinking, don't they?
A realization arrived out of the blue.
It was because of the gazes of those around him.
'The fact that Rigert warned me a moment ago not to beat someone even if I was displeased means, put the other way around, that Zion Riobelt was a piece of trash who beat people over the slightest injury to his mood.'
Nobles were backing away, further and further, as though he were the source of a plague. And yet, when his gaze landed on them, they flinched and stopped moving.
As though there had once been someone who was caught backing away and got beaten half to death.
Which is to say, put in a word.
'Every one of them is afraid of me.'
Ah, right. This body. This bastard Zion Riobelt.
He was the worst piece of trash in the Empire, wasn't he.
For a moment he recalled what that Gebel bastard had said.
'He told me to think about a specialty of my own, didn't he.'
He folded the fingers of his right hand one by one.
A fist completed as he clenched it hard.
In addition to magic, Zion Bliese's specialty, his current self possessed one more specialty.
Zion Riobelt's specialty, which he had been overlooking all this time, was precisely......
"Marquis Paul Gebel. You have insulted me!"
The violence of a man who, paradoxically, needed to mind no one at all because there was no such thing as a reputation for him to lose, exploded.
WHUMMMMMP!!!