Chapter 24
“If I had a dagger in my hand right now, I’m sure I would have stabbed the author.”
……Hearing Gilford’s words, I snapped fully awake.
Hmm, but it does feel a little unfair.
I definitely laid the foreshadowing on thick by describing Caesar as causing chaos everywhere and making enemies.
“It’s a scene where the protagonist sets justice right against corrupt nobles. How can that possibly be described as ‘causing chaos’?”
“……That’s true too.”
Hah.
Those catharsis junkies who don’t care about plausibility.
“Still, I can’t change the ending. People die eventually, after all. ……How about an open ending like, ‘They lived well and prospered’?”
“Author. That would only be a trivial change, like a dagger turning into a rock.”
Damn it.
No tragedy drift, either.
No open ending, either.
Leaving aside the fact that I’m the one forcing this through…….
I needed to persuade Gilford first, since he was already half-mad after witnessing the vision of the newspaper office engulfed in flames.
Wasn’t there some way?
.
.
.
Normally, at times like this,
the old Historie, the embodiment of humanity’s accumulated intellect and a wise, thoughtful adviser, always gave me an answer or words of encouragement.
But.
“Totally impossible, impossible! Even Maji Tenshi Hitori-chan wouldn’t have an answer for that!”
This tin-can bitch.
Other than being alive, pretty, big-chested, sometimes bluntly adorable, and a little too smart, she doesn’t really have much use.
She must have been loafing around her room and watching anime again today.
“Back to normal.”
“Strange. According to my database and audiovisual materials, women who speak this way are depicted as being extremely popular.”
“That works in 2D. Besides, what would being popular with me even accomplish?”
Historie clapped.
“Wow, that was a sharp observation after a really long time, Kim Yul.”
What is it?
Why do I feel a little offended?
Anyway, after a brief exchange of mostly meaningless banter.
we continued our usual serious intellectual debate.
“Actually, I don’t really understand how historical verification is even supposed to work as a system. History is, after all, the record of the victors, so isn’t it bound to differ from what actually happened?”
At Historie’s piercing observation, I fell silent for a moment.
It wasn’t exactly wrong.
There was one obvious example, without even having to look far.
Even though it had been betrayed by the Five Dinosaur Traitors and, after losing the Hwan-Pin War, ended up forgotten by history, the Great Hwan Empire──
“The Five Dinosaur Traitors don’t appear even in Goguryeo’s Subakdo. Get a grip, Kim Yul.”
“Ahem.”
Anyway.
Though I couldn’t verify exactly what the criteria were,
I was able to test how strict and how loose they were through a few experiments.
For example.
It didn’t matter who landed the finishing blow on Caesar, or which part of him they hit.
But.
There were cases where, as if writing alternate history, major changes of an era could occur.
For example, Caesar finally surpassing the sun, gaining the abilities of all living beings, and even evolving into a perfect lifeform beyond that.
Or Brutus, after finally winning the power struggle against the Kyaru ghost, sacrificing himself for Caesar.
Anything that clearly conflicted with records from a later era received a judgment of ‘does not conform to historical accuracy.’
Surprisingly, it didn’t matter how many people were in the group project.
Whether 35 people clicked ‘like,’ following Nicolaus of Damascus’s view,
or 23 people clicked ‘like,’ following the views of Suetonius or Plutarch,
neither of those really triggered an error.
Of course, perhaps to prevent it from turning into full-blown brainrot, once I increased the number of holes beyond 78, a historical-accuracy error did occur.
Anyway, that meant that a minute margin of error was allowed.
“That was a truly useless line of thought. Any other deductions?”
“Well…….”
Honestly,
nothing really comes to mind.
At this rate, I felt like I might really be reduced to a truly innovative group-project submission.
But still.
With Caesar’s death, the great narrative is completed.
And because Caesar died that way, Octavian gets to shine.
Honestly, those uncivilized otherworld bastards who don’t understand such an obvious truth.
“Just toss the manuscript and change your pen name. They won’t recognize you anyway.”
Tempting, though.
“Gilford rejected it. And if we published it that way…… I don’t know about anyone else, but wouldn’t Nureongi or the saint try to kill me?”
Historie nodded quietly.
“Please don’t call Es-chan by the slur ‘Nureongi.’ Apart from that, I agree.”
Hmm.
Some way to get out of this without changing the novel itself…….
“If you’re not going to write, please give up the seat.”
“Sure.”
Since sitting in front of the keyboard wouldn’t make any ideas come to me anyway, I obediently gave the seat up to Historie.
And then I stared blankly at Historie, half-reclined in the recliner, her head buried as if it might be sucked into the laptop screen.
Hmm.
Since it’s quiet, just looking at her feels healing.
But…….
“What is that?”
“Don’t you even know what’s installed on your own laptop? It’s a visual novel. Images and text come together to create a single aesthetic.”
No, seriously, why is something like that installed?
I don’t even remember.
What’s more, the contents were something I knew.
『────Can you keep up?』
Hmm.
It’s a masterpiece.
It might be cringey if you only read the text, but when it’s combined with the images, the cool factor just explodes…….
The text and…….
the images…… when combined……?
* * *
No one in the Empire who enjoyed literature had expected ‘A Fallen Nobleman Is Good at Politics’ to be completed this quickly.
What about novels these days?
Once they became popular.
As long as they didn’t make a fatal mistake, it was customary to keep milking them for hundreds or thousands of chapters until there wasn’t even broth left to extract.
But ‘Molgwijeong’ completely shattered that convention.
“It ends…… next chapter?”
“No, but we’ve only just reached the peak?”
“There must be some mistake, right? Hahaha!”
Even within the newspaper office, arguments flew back and forth, but by then they could no longer go against Kim Yul’s decision, considering how much of the newspaper’s sales he now accounted for.
“Impossible.”
“Ugh……”
Also agreeing was Gilford, whose shoulders had grown broad enough that he could now confidently voice his opinion even in front of the president.
And so.
Caesar’s final story was printed on eco-friendly paper with the help of magitech.
And then, at dawn that day.
Everyone who took up the newspaper couldn’t believe their eyes.
“This is……?”
“Caesar…… died……?”
“No, and he was assassinated, of all things?”
“I thought he was good at politics……!”
“Has the author finally gone senile!”
“Aaaagh! I’ll buy the eyes that didn’t see this!”
The protagonist’s utterly miserable end after showing such a heroic side.
And at that, in front of the statue of Pompey, his lifelong nemesis.
It was a shocking ending, with him betrayed by Brutus, whom he cherished like a son.
“You were definitely a fourth-tier mage, right?”
“Hah…… I was told at the mage tower not to use magic in a place like this, but today it can’t be helped.”
“I’ll prepare the oil.”
People were practically itching to vent this literary catharsis right away, but.
“Wait! Look at the next page!”
That, too, was only momentary.
Soon, people’s footsteps came to a halt.
Because there was neither the usual ‘To be continued’ attached to serialized novels, nor the ‘Thank you for loving the series so far’ attached to completed ones.
With a hopeful feeling, just in case,
they turned the page of the newspaper.
And then.
“Huh…….”
“No way.”
They came face to face with it.
A masterpiece drawn with painstaking care by Historie.
Born from cutting off six fingers, erasing the sparrow perched on his head, and all sorts of other post-processing work──
the 21st-century anime style that doesn’t exist in this other world.
What that art style depicted was.
It was a man so beautified, with not even a trace of hair loss, that it was hard to believe he was middle-aged.
Even as a line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth,
he wore a faint smile.
And below that,
the sentence riddled with plagiarism that Kim Yul had come up with after clutching his head was engraved there, typed out by Historie with painstaking care, one keystroke at a time.
I break the empire.
I create the empire.
The moment they saw Caesar’s face and read those words,
everyone felt as if they’d been struck on the back of the head.
It had seemed like a development no one had ever seen before—the tragic downfall of a protagonist who had been riding high all along... but.
A single illustration.
And two lines of text completely reversed the mood.
That ‘I broke the empire’ meant......
“I came, I saw, I conquered!”
by Caesar, who boldly bid farewell to all the old eras and proclaimed that his own era had arrived.
It meant he had swept away in one go the Senate’s power and influence, the representative force of the old era, and all their stale old ways.
And ‘I create the empire’ meant......
that Caesar, as a dictator for life, had in fact taken a path much like Sulla, whom he had criticized in his youth.
His death was the same as finally kindling the last spark of reform for Rome.
Indeed, more content followed beneath that shocking illustration.
A shocking piece of bad news that reached citizens enjoying a pleasant time at the arena.
At the news that the dictator for life who had built Rome, who was Rome itself, had been murdered in broad daylight, and by senators at that.
Along with condemnation of Brutus and his gang for committing such an atrocity without enough cause, enraged Roman citizens went so far as to burn down every assassin’s residence.
And the state funeral held for him, along with the speech by Antonius, the rising young blood judged capable of succeeding Caesar.
Even if the protagonist Caesar met a miserable end,
upon witnessing the narration that calmly laid out, like an epilogue, how everything changed because of that death,
the readers put down the oil bottles that looked ready to soak the newspaper at any moment, stopped the magic they had been casting toward the newspaper office, and set down the daggers they had prepared to stab it twenty-three times.
For Kim Yul as well.
And it was a fortunate ending for Truth Daily as well.
And.
Though it was by no means what Kim Yul had intended,
Kim Yul’s writing increasingly fluttered like a butterfly, changing not only the demon realm but also beginning to stir storm clouds within the Empire.
“……T-this insane bastard……?”
Not only Duke Bertus, who had been hit by the story’s drift so many times that he was now even taking proper splash damage from Brutus, whose sound was similar to Bertus, but also.
“Quite an interesting story. Doesn’t it almost feel like it’s poking at the reality of the Empire?”
A veritable giant of the Empire.
And…… one who wielded power similar to that of a dictator for life.
The emperor’s ears also began to catch the name Ulysses.
* * *
Of course.
There were also readers who, rather than savoring the lingering aftertaste of the ending, let their current emotions take over and gave immediate feedback.
“Grrr! Get out here right now, Ulyssssses!”
That was Estea, who, despite being a mighty dragon, had been swishing her tail since dawn and wandering around in front of the newspaper office, only to take a direct hit from the drift.