Chapter 29
I had seized the West.
Of course, I hadn’t completely secured it yet. I had only installed a puppet government that would obey us.
Now I just had to use that to lay railroads across the West, build factories, hospitals, and schools, and put up all kinds of facilities so the people of the West would grow accustomed to the South.
Once they tasted the comfort of modern conveniences, it wouldn’t be easy to go back.
Even if the Empire tried to intervene later, its people would be the first to reject it.
Starting the modernization work in the West wasn’t difficult.
The corrupt nobles who had held all the offices had fled, so the West was suffering from a severe manpower shortage right now.
"Your Grace, we’ve received a request for support from the Western Grand Duke’s residence."
"What is it?"
"They say they don’t have enough people to run the administrative and judicial systems. What should we do?"
There was no reason to even consider that question.
I answered without hesitation.
"Send our best people from the South, no matter what."
The West’s puppet government sent us a request for manpower support, and we answered by sending all kinds of specialists.
Naturally, the specialists we sent brought our companies into the West.
And that was how an industrialization boom began there as well.
Rail lines were laid first, and steel mills and textile factories began springing up one by one.
The efficiency of the mana stone mines also improved.
Mining with explosives was far faster and safer than the traditional method of digging by hand.
The money for it?
It was piled high in the warehouses of the corrupt nobles.
The wealth they had accumulated over the fifty years since Kaiser III was truly staggering.
"No wonder the Empire is falling apart if they just stuff things like this into warehouses."
The Empire really was a remarkable country.
Just look at how the corrupt nobles had fattened their own bellies for fifty years and still hadn’t brought it down.
Anyway, the West, now one month into occupation, was beginning to come alive again.
The peace known as 'Our Time's Peace,' which the crown prince and I had agreed upon, also played a part.
Our Time's Peace.
A name I had heard many times in my previous life.
"The Empire is even more incompetent than I expected."
Still, the Munich Agreement’s 'Our Time's Peace' had its own purpose.
During the time bought by 'Our Time's Peace,' the Royal Air Force swelled to nearly ten times its former size. At the cost of surrendering Sudetenland, Britain was able to reorganize its shattered military and lead World War II to victory.
...Of course, our crown prince didn’t seem to have thought that deeply.
According to the Intelligence Department, the size of the Imperial Army hadn’t changed at all over the past month.
At the price of handing Sarsen over to us and acknowledging our authority in the West to some extent, what the Empire had gained was...
nothing more than an imperfect peace that could shatter at any time.
"I thought they would at least try to intervene. I didn’t expect them to choose to sit back and watch."
Well, that suited me just fine.
Thanks to that, I’d learned one thing.
"The Empire is more afraid of civil war than I expected."
And in a situation like this, the one who could afford to take a bigger bite would win.
Just like Europe in the 1930s.
That memorandum I sent to the crown prince, saying I would 'no longer expand my territory'?
Was there really anyone who believed that?
Not even the nobles who claimed to oppose civil war would believe something like that.
Now that even the center was showing hesitation about intervening, there was no one who could stop me.
Southern public opinion?
There was no one who wouldn’t welcome a grand duke who had successfully gotten his revenge and won the war. The exhilaration of victory would soon translate into overwhelming approval ratings.
The military?
The military had originally begun as my hunting hounds, formed to deal with corrupt businessmen. Anyone who would go against my orders wouldn’t have made it into the military in the first place.
Businessmen?
I was the one driving the massive modernization project in the West, so there was no way any businessman would dare go against me.
It was safe to say every major corporation in the South was tied up in it.
The parliament?
Parliament was never an institution with much power to begin with.
Once the Labor Standards Act appeared and the commoner working class gained more say, it had merely become a façade of a proper-looking institution, one meant to boast, 'We’re going to start something sort of like democracy too.'
Parliament was nothing more than a rubber stamp that raised its hand for motions coming down from the grand ducal residence.
"But... there is one side that worries me."
The Empire’s East.
Unlike the crown prince, whose head was full of flowers and who would bring back something like 'Our Time's Peace,' the Eastern Grand Duke, Edward, was sure to reject the agreement.
He was the type who was fundamentally wired with the mindset of 'I’m different.'
As expected of the man who would one day start a civil war in the Empire, Edward was fundamentally equipped with a sense of superiority.
The problem was that the East was practically the lifeline of our South.
More than two-thirds of the export goods heading to the Empire used the Eastern sea route.
If the Eastern route was blocked, our throat would be choked as well.
I didn’t call the Belfort Archipelago the 'South’s right to survival' for nothing.
If we couldn’t secure the shipping lanes near the Belfort Archipelago, we’d eventually have no choice but to live at the East’s mercy.
"In that case, we’ll have to side with the navy in this year’s second-half budget."
We needed more countermeasures.
Naval guns couldn’t deal proper damage underwater, so we’d have to develop weapons unlike anything we’d shown before.
A ship that could carry those new weapons?
That could be made too.
The shipyard that had built large coal carriers and steamers had now gained battleship construction experience as well.
In the end, the East-related problem came down to 'We can solve it by spending money!'
The variable I couldn’t control at all was somewhere else.
The heroine of 'MonaJot,' Aria.
She was the woman who would destroy the Empire.
She seduced the crown prince and the grand dukes, triggered a civil war in the Empire, and even used the Western Grand Duke as a hunting dog.
The body I had possessed, Kyle Leopold, had been used by Aria and driven out into the South.
Naturally, if the heroine was going this far, there was no way 'MonaJot' was a normal romance fantasy.
For the simple reason that...
"This is a full-blown revenge melodrama."
With my eyes closed, I recalled the plot of 'MonaJot'.
The heroine Aria lost her parents to the Empire.
Her father was assassinated while investigating corruption in the Imperial Army, and her mother, who raised Aria alone, was treated like a toy by corrupt nobles until she died.
For that reason, Aria hated the Empire.
She wanted the very existence of the Empire to disappear from this world.
A beautiful girl who came to the center to destroy the Empire out of hatred for it.
At first, she had no feelings for the male leads. She simply approached them deliberately for her purpose.
But when the male leads she had been using like chess pieces to destroy the Empire began to approach her sincerely, she gradually grew fond of them, and after the Empire’s destruction they eventually ended up together.
By Aria’s hand, the Empire was completely dismantled.
The Empire split into five and plunged into civil war.
Weakened by that civil war, the Empire was carved up like Qing China by the great powers, including the Republic.
And what brought down the Empire, which was already half a corpse, was the monster wave.
All that remained where the Empire had stood was nothing but ashes.
In the end, Aria got what she wanted.
The Empire was destroyed, her revenge was complete, and in the end she lived happily in a peaceful place and built her harem.
It was a happy ending.
"Though not for the innocent people who were sacrificed along the way."
Aria, who had once raged at the death of her innocent parents, ended up killing countless innocent lives.
No matter how much of a backstory she had, it was an act that could never be justified.
Naturally, the comments section was on fire over whether this ending was right or wrong, and I, too, had left a long comment in a fit of rage.
...And then the next day, I got possessed.
"I’ll never let it end that way."
If she wanted revenge, she should have found the culprit and killed him.
The moment she turned that hatred toward innocent imperial citizens, Aria became no different from the perpetrators she despised.
The problem was the future now lying before the South, and before the Empire.
The Empire had lost the power it once possessed. Whether it was the Northern Grand Duke or the Eastern Grand Duke, either one might declare independence and kick the Empire aside at any moment.
On top of that, there were countless hyenas rushing in to tear apart the giant carcass called the Empire.
And finally... the monster wave that would surge up from the North and wipe the Empire out completely.
It felt as if the world were desperately hoping for the Empire’s destruction.
"Still, it’s not as if there’s no hope at all."
This world no longer followed the original 'MonaJot'.
Because I had broken the Western Grand Duke, the man who had damaged the Empire the most, with my own hands.
From here on out, it was safe to say the original knowledge I possessed was almost meaningless.
I didn’t know what results this change would produce.
Still, that didn’t matter.
At the very least, I was certain it would be a far better future than the hopeless Empire of the original story.
"Lucilla."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"It looks like the 'gift' I sent to the Empire should be arriving soon."
The most miserable end I could give Charles Raymonz as a gift.
What would Charles Raymonz think when he was treated like a discarded hunting dog?
And what expression would Aria make when her plan to bring down the Empire began to waver?