Chapter 13
My goal was one thing.
To fine-tune the prompt so that, as far as Historie's long-term memory could reach, I could be born with the most perfect knowledge possible already in my head.
But......
『Let me introduce myself again. I am Historie. A top-tier beauty, serving Master Julius, and from the Heavenly Demon Cult──』
“Stahp. Not Julius—Kim Yul, or at the very least, Ulysses......”
Was my greed just too much?
Even setting a concept was quite difficult.
And.
The data contamination was more serious than I'd expected.
“Which bastard stuffed pirated wuxia texts into an LLM without a shred of copyright awareness......”
Of course, I could roughly infer who the culprit was.
It had to be my advisor.
He was a hardcore martial-arts fossil.
In the field of history, he was quite a respectable figure.
In every other respect, however, he had some human flaws.
No, not some—many.
It's not at all that I'm programmed to belittle my advisor just because I'm a graduate student; I'm simply stating the facts calmly.
Evidence?
[Ruling the World Vols. 1~58 (Complete).txt]
[Tablet_IN_Heavenly_Martial_Academy_1_22.txt]
……
[Ink-Black Lady Vols. 1~44 (Complete).txt]
[Single-Minded Devotion_897_episodes_complete.txt]
The sheer amount of data—seventy-two files' worth—proved it.
I deleted the files without hesitation.
Anyway.
For the time being, while I carefully worked on Historie's prompt, I needed to rigorously check whether any strange data had been mixed in again and made her act weird.
Just now, what was it—Heavenly Demon Cult?
I had no intention of having some absurdly delusional girl in my lab who believed in something like that.
If she believed she was King Arthur, that would be one thing.
『I'm Historie, a detective. And──』
“Stahp.”
A little......
It looked like it would take a little longer.
* * *
## ====== ##
“I lost, huh.”
Caesar smiled bitterly as he received the final ruling.
He had expected things wouldn't go smoothly, but for a tribune of the plebs to step in and block him directly even after he had already been convicted in court.
The pretext was ridiculous.
It was illegal for a Roman citizen to compete on equal footing with a Greek?
As expected...... this country was rotten.
Sulla.
The way that barbaric man had seized power and wielded it however he pleased was gnawing away at the homeland Caesar loved so dearly.
“Still, it hadn't been for nothing.”
Even though he hadn't been able to properly expose the Sullan faction's corruption in the two accusations.
- Caesar is the hope of the popular faction!
- He's a god who'll restore Rome after Sulla dirtied it!
It was enough to rally his supporters.
Of course, for now he would have to leave Rome for a while to fend off the political offensive.
When he returned.
His position would be even more solid.
## ====== ##
“Huh......”
A first-term imperial lawmaker.
Asterik set aside the newspaper he had been reading and fell into thought for a moment.
It had already been a year since he had entered politics, dissatisfied with the Empire's aristocrat-centered system.
But......
The political arena was different from what he had imagined.
Very, very different.
The popular faction, the aristocratic faction.
Though the factions were split to pieces, they were full of hypocrites who put their own interests ahead of the country's future.
Because of that.
Caesar's actions in the novel struck a strange chord with him.
Of course......
Objectively speaking, even if Sulla was dead, singling out and accusing a lawmaker from the Sullan faction who had still retained power until then was a mistake.
Even if their backing was gone, it was like poking the bridge of a tiger's nose while its fangs were still sharp.
But.
The motive behind why he had to act that way was clear.
As the price for upsetting the current entrenched powers.
He bought himself an image as a righteous politician?
In the long run, it was definitely a profitable trade.
Even if he lost in court, he would still have left a stain on his opponent.
When he came back again, his gambit would surely pay off.
One could even call it a politician's instinct.
“Phew.”
He opened the cabinet and stared quietly at the documents he had kept.
Records related to the smuggling incident that had shaken the capital two years ago.
It implicated everyone from Duke Vertus, a senator it would not be an exaggeration to call one of this country's real power brokers, down to various nobles and even high-ranking lawmakers in the popular faction.
Could he make this public?
It was a decision that staked his political life.
No, it might truly be a decision that staked his life.
But.
- It was eating away at the homeland Caesar loved so dearly.
Still.
Asterik loved the Empire, and the people who lived in it.
The dust-covered envelope of documents was bathed in sunlight.
* * *
A week had passed since the attack by the Hero and Esthea.
Historie's assistant...... calling it that feels a little strange.
Anyway, there had been quite a bit of progress with the prompting, too.
In the meantime, I had found all kinds of comics and smut secretly hidden on the server.
Heh-heh.
“Extra, extra! A massive political scandal has broken out!”
“One copy of the Truth Daily, please.”
After buying a copy of Truth Daily from one of today's especially noisy newspaper stands.
A habit I'd recently settled into──
I stuck to my routine of reading the newspaper after a morning power jog.
Honestly, I figured Gilford would probably give me a newspaper if I asked...... but......
If I buy the paper and read it myself, I'm also counted in the daily readership tally.
The number one mattered in this age.
It was a little pathetic, but I couldn't help it.
And on top of that.
Recently, after being put through the wringer by Roseline and Esthea in all sorts of ways, and after hearing about the Hero Seraphine too.
I came to feel acutely how little I knew about this fantasy world.
So I started studying current affairs.
Just like Truth Daily's in-house organization chart, newspapers in this world broadly covered four sections.
One was the political desk.
I had imagined an emperor's dictatorship when I heard "empire," but alongside the five-rank nobility system, there was even a parliament.
It was somewhat similar to the British system, only with the monarchy a lot stronger.
The current number-one party in the legislature, that is, the ruling party, was naturally the imperial faction.
Of course, it had another official name, but it was too complicated, so I decided to call it the imperial faction.
And following that came the aristocratic faction and the popular faction.
There were also various minor parties......
Finally, there was the World Tree Green-Green Party, commonly known as the Sepu Party.
......It was exactly the knife-ear gathering I had imagined.
[Sepu Party lawmaker Mirein (374), another human-hating rant today: ‘You short-lived species!’......]
Roughly......
Well, you can think of this kind of article running every day.
Next was the international desk.
Needless to say,
there were many countries in this world besides the Empire.
In terms of government, some places were constitutional monarchies like the Empire, with imperial rule and parliament coexisting; some were pure republics; and some were ruled by despotic dictators.
On top of that, a little farther away there was even a nation founded around the World Tree by pure-blood elf supremacists, like a pile of clichés.
It was even in a potentially hostile relationship with the Empire, so the Sepu Party......
I have no idea how the knife-ear party is still maintaining even a nominal presence in this country.
I don't know if there are more continents, but at least on this continent I'm standing on, there are a total of eight countries.
I gave up on memorizing the names because it was a headache.
I wasn't going to do politics, and I wasn't going to become a war hero.
Since the Empire was still said to be the largest, barring anything special I'd just live as an imperial subject......
Ah, my genes are twitching all of a sudden. I'm really itching for a revolution.
......Anyway, I planned to live as Extra A in the Empire.
And then there was the Demon Realm desk.
Like Seraphine, there was a section that collected heroes' exploits and information related to the Demon Realm.
Mostly......
There were more death notices than success stories.
Where they had been wiped out, and how.
That sort of thing.
So, I realized afresh that the Demon Realm was far harsher than I had thought.
Enough for me to understand why they kicked me out of Porter Academy.
......If I had been thrown into the Demon Realm without any skills, I'd probably have died in less than five minutes.
Lastly.
The literature section alone took up as much space as the political, international, and Demon Realm sections combined.
That's the section where my novel runs.
Just reflecting this far already made my head throb.
Input is a serious matter.
As for the novel, I'll read it later at home together with Historie.
Rustle, rustle──
I flipped through the newspaper, taking in today's world developments.
And then.
“......What is this?”
[Huge scandal exposed in the Lower House...... Is the political world suffering growing pains?]
[Three days ago, the "Asterik List" proposed by first-term House member Asterik has sent huge shockwaves through the political world. Our paper's investigation found that the list contains shocking allegations naming at least thirty lawmakers and nobles linked to corruption, but the exact facts are still......]
[......The public is rapt with the exposé, and, citing literature, some are even calling it ‘the return of Caesar.’ ......]
[※Editor's note: ‘Caesar’ refers to Julius Caesar, the protagonist of the serialized novel ‘A Fallen Noble Does Politics Well’ currently running in this paper......]
“No, if you start viral marketing a novel in a political article......?”
A boon or a blaze?
If I went by the instincts of a 21st-century Korean.
......Wouldn't it be a blaze?”