Chapter 16
“Uh…… um…… you want me to evaluate the manuscript?”
Gilford was startled.
Of course, as an editor he had received countless requests for critiques and feedback, but this was the first time Kim Yul, who had always held firm to his own opinions, had asked him for a favor like this.
And on top of that.
“Kim Yul. You have no chance of winning. If you give up even now, I can guarantee you treatment befitting an outstanding slave.”
Who on earth was this woman who had come with Kim Yul?
With a cold, beautiful face that showed almost no change in expression, she casually spat out the word “slave.”
At the very least, she wore unfamiliar clothes Gilford had never seen before, and she kept fluttering the sheet of paper in her hand nonstop.
Kim Yul belatedly made an awkward face and introduced the woman to Gilford.
“She’s my…… cousin, Historie. She hasn’t been in the capital long, so her social skills are a bit lacking.”
“I deny that. I possess countless conversation records, and when it comes to sociability, compared with Kim Yul, who hardly ever leaves the house──”
“Stop.”
Listening to that banter, Gilford thought in a daze.
If they were cousins and could casually trade jokes about slaves and whatnot like that, were they perhaps engaged?
Under imperial law, marriage between relatives was perfectly possible as long as they were not too closely related, so there were even noble families that repeatedly married cousins to preserve their pure bloodline.
The most famous example was the ducal House of Absberg.
He swallowed the thought that her name might be Kim Historie.
“Well, strictly speaking I shouldn’t read and evaluate it unless you’re an officially contracted author…… but since it’s author Kim Yul’s request, I’ll take a look.”
Gilford first took Kim Yul’s manuscript and read it.
“This is the latest chapter’s reserve stock, right?”
“That’s right. It wasn’t enough to make me switch to a different topic while writing.”
Swish, rustle.
“This episode is good too. You worked hard. Then…….”
“This is not merely a revision. Rather, I dare say it’s a masterpiece that properly brings out the shortcomings of the original and could change the landscape of fiction.”
As Historie puffed out her chest and radiated an enormous presence, Gilford, unable to find anywhere to rest his eyes, carefully took the manuscript pages from her hand.
“I’ll read it.”
## ====== ##
In the heart of Rome, the noisy alleys of Subura were still sunk in deep sleep. Yet in Gaius Julius Caesar’s villa, the faint glow of an oil lamp pushed back the night’s curtain. In that light, Caesar stood fully exposed, bearing the signs of a sleepless night. He was thirty-seven. His eyes, blazing with ambition, were bloodshot, and his smoothly shaved jaw was rigid with tension.
He wore the pure-white toga (Toga Candida). It was a garment symbolizing the purity of an election candidate, but to him now it felt like a shroud. Today he would stand in the election for Pontifex Maximus, the Roman Republic’s lifelong high priest. It was a literal gamble with everything he had.
“You’re still awake, Gaius.”
The voice that came from behind him belonged to his mother, Aurelia Cotta, a woman imbued with the wisdom and strength of age. Though she was a woman of Rome’s noblest bloodline, she was also a steadfast mother who silently supported her son’s ambition in a modest villa in Subura. Her gaze rested on her son’s bloodless face and the snow-white toga he wore. She could clearly see the invisible mud on that garment—the crushing weight of debt.
Caesar answered quietly without turning around. “I couldn’t sleep, Mother. Because I can’t know whether the sun rising today will shine on my glory, or proclaim my ruin.”
His voice carried, instead of his usual confidence, the precariousness of someone walking along a razor’s edge. This election was not a mere political contest. His rivals were giants of the Republic.
…….
…….
He paused for a moment and looked deeply into his mother’s eyes. Then he spoke the remaining words. It was a promise that staked everything he had, and a spell that drove himself to the edge of a cliff.
“...If I cannot achieve that, I shall not return at all (Revertar pontifex, aut non revertar.).”
What flickered across Aurelia’s face was neither sorrow nor shock. It was the solemn satisfaction of one who had confirmed her son’s resolve. She said nothing more. Instead, she pressed her cold lips to his forehead. It was both a farewell and a sacred blessing wishing him victory.
## ====== ##
“Uh, um…….”
Gilford felt a strong wave of dizziness.
A complete mess.
Setting aside the story’s flow and overall quality for the moment…….
And what were those chunks, set off in parentheses here and there, that looked like the continent’s common script but made no sense at all?
The expressiveness was clearly excellent; with all that rhetoric piled on, it could even be called literary.
And then there were the boring, pedantic heaps of unnecessary description, along with the so-called brick-like blocks stacked so tightly they were painful to read—what on earth were they supposed to be?
Gilford found himself looking at Kim Yul without realizing it.
The moment he met Kim Yul’s awkward smile with his eyes.
“Communicating with your eyes is cheating. Please give me a strict and fair evaluation.”
Historie quickly ran over, cut in between them, and glared at Gilford with her bluish eyes.
It was a little scary to be glared at by a beauty with such a cold expression.
Gilford was already a top-class editor who had endured a hero’s spiritual pressure—and even a dragon’s spiritual pressure (he’d almost pissed himself a little).
“This contest…… goes to author Kim Yul.”
“As expected.”
“Why?”
Unlike Kim Yul, who smiled lightly as if it were only natural.
Historie’s already expressionless face hardened even more ominously.
As if.
Her transparent gaze seemed to perfectly reflect the thought, ‘Why won’t they recognize my artistry? Are eyes just decorations?’
“Ahaha…… I have a meeting, so I really should be going…….”
Gilford chose to flee.
* * *
On the way home.
“Rigged? Did you bribe someone behind my back? That makes no sense.”
Historie, who was walking beside me, kept grumbling nonstop, but.
In truth, the outcome had been obvious from the start.
Of course, if we were talking pure writing skill, how could I possibly beat Historie, who had the entire world literature collection stuffed into her head?
But classical literature and genre fiction such as web novels are completely different grammatically.
It’s more suited to pulling readers in through quick pacing and short sentences than through delicate description and rich emotional lines.
That was exactly where I had to win.
I had even gone to the trouble of explaining this self-evident truth aloud.
“The literary standards of otherworlders…… pathetic…….”
“…….”
Historie still wore a wronged look, as if she were some possessor who wanted to plagiarize all of Earth’s literature and throw it into another world.
……What’s frightening is that it really seems possible.
Anyway.
With this, I had secured control over Historie, who was going through a stormy adolescence just two weeks after being born.
And, as a bonus, the newly acquired skill.
I could even experience Caesar’s Dice firsthand.
At first, I thought I was seeing things, wondering what on earth this ability was supposed to be.
In simple terms…….
It was an ability that could divine, through dice, how things would turn out once I made a decision.
If 1 came up, it was a fumble, a great misfortune.
If 6 came up, it was great fortune.
In that it could quantify luck, it was truly a cheat-level ability, but there were limitations.
Usable only once per day.
If the predicted result came out badly and I reversed my decision, the ability would be unusable for a month after that.
For reference, when I predicted the outcome of my contest with Historie, the die came up 6.
Which meant it was a battle I was fated not to lose.
“……I’ll end up living a terribly sad life, being ravaged at random by that beastly sadomasochist Kim Yul-sama without even being able to resist…….”
Historie began spouting bizarre nonsense with a resigned look on her face.
“……? What’s that supposed to mean now?”
“You weren’t plotting this scheme just to do whatever you wanted with my body—mmph, mmph!”
“Hey, shit, that’s not it! Just shut up for now……!”
Feeling the stares around us—‘What kind of trash is that? So this is the average black-haired type, huh?’—I unconsciously clamped a hand over Historie’s mouth.
“S-She’s my younger sister! We’re just messing around!”
I even got the feeling they might call the police, so I hurriedly shouted an excuse and dragged her away.
.
.
.
“No, why would you say something like that…….”
“But wasn’t that the condition you asked of me?”
“No, it wasn’t. I’m on the harem pure-love side.”
Of course, at first I’d briefly, very briefly, considered taking after Master Pygmalion, the pioneer of this field.
After all, that was a result molded with love.
This one was a result molded out of necessity.
The causality itself was different, and I had no intention of demanding a romantic relationship from Historie simply because I’d used a skill to give her life.
That aside.
Just what was in that data for her to come up with such an idea…….
Ah.
I thought of the more tolerable items among the professor’s countless illicit collections that I’d backed up to a USB not long ago.
.
.
.
From that point until we arrived in front of the house.
I carried out a reeducation session so I could correct as much of the mistaken knowledge Historie was likely carrying as possible.
“Then why did you set the condition to absolute obedience?”
“……You were the one who said you’d make me your slave first, weren’t you?”
“Well, it’s only natural that I, the great superintelligence, would dominate and enlighten primitive humans.”
“……Phew.”
The moment I let out a sigh while listening to Historie’s words, which seemed to carry the shadow of Skynet.
“Oh my! Author, what a coincidence!”
A now-familiar voice suddenly drilled into my eardrums.
Turning my head,
I spotted Roseline sitting in the cafeteria, leisurely sipping a drink and fanning a newspaper.
Is the word “saint” synonymous with “unemployed”?
Roseline, who had folded the newspaper she was reading and rushed over almost as if teleporting, quickly scanned Historie.
And then.
“Hmm, and who might this beautiful lady be?”
Somehow, a voice that seemed to have dropped a notch from her usual bright tone rang in my ear.