Chapter 25
Before heaven and earth were even separated, before there was light, in the age when even dawn had not yet come, dragons existed.
Creatures of the goddess, created to live through countless ages, to observe innumerable lives, and at times to quietly fulfill their role as arbiters.
That was the great dragon, and the noble dragon who inherited that great bloodline without any embellishment.
"Why! Whyyyyy! Why is it already overrrr!"
She was acting like a mutt again today.
"What's all this noise──"
Since the commotion had broken out in the apartment complex's shared lobby, the residents peeked out to complain about the noise, but
the moment they saw Esthea's horned, tailed form, they immediately closed their doors and fell silent as if nothing had happened.
For if they so much as made a mistake and incurred the displeasure of such a noble and great being, a huge calamity would befall the entire family.
But she paid no heed to such petty human gazes.
Smacking her tail against the floor again and again, and without even trying to make herself taller, she leaped up and hung from Kim Yul's collar.
Esthea threatened Kim Yul with a growl.
"Is it that hard to serialize it to 500 chapters? Where are you even supposed to shove a 150-chapter finished work, huhhh!"
If the 21st-century literary giant born in Incheon, who produced an unparalleled masterpiece with 98 main chapters and 103 chapters including side stories, had heard that, he would have clicked his tongue.
Esthea was unapologetic.
From the start, she was a being with a different sense of time from humans, so in a way, that was only natural.
A human lifetime, if I exaggerated a little, was only a fleeting instant to her.
To take that fleeting instant and turn it into quality historical source material by describing it in as much detail as possible, instead of finishing it in such a sour way!
"If Caesar was going to die, you should at least have written about his son! Caesarion! Or at the very least, Octavian!"
Kim Yul flinched slightly at the mention of Octavian, but Esthea paid that reaction no mind and kept shaking his body.
In the end.
"Grrr!"
"Esthea. Let us speak a little more like adults. Such a manner of communication is not proper."
When Historie gave her a look that clearly begged her to do something, she slipped her hands under Esthea's armpits and lifted her up.
.
.
.
After a while, once Esthea, who had been writhing and throwing a childlike tantrum, finally calmed down.
"So why did it have to end like that?"
If the answer did not satisfy her, she looked ready to turn Kim Yul into grilled Kim Yul on the spot.
"There is a very deep meaning behind it."
Once Kim Yul judged that rational communication with the mutt might finally be possible, his tongue started wriggling cunningly.
Emulating Hermes' persuasive power.
And emulating Cicero's eloquence.
"All humans die."
After getting a laugh out of plagiarizing a famous line once already, he started the piece by openly plagiarizing from the outset.
"Caesar fought throughout his life to overthrow the republic, but he recognized that this objective would never be achieved within his own lifetime. Therefore, by aiming in reverse at the fact that extremist factions were jealous of him──"
Something not really necessary in genre fiction.
While preaching the author's motives for writing and the thematic intent, it eventually came to this.
"Kuhk──"
"I don't want to know thattt!"
She took a tail strike to the side and collapsed.
"Esthea? Then should I write a little more of the afterstory and show it to you?"
Seizing that opening, Historie jumped in, trying to prove her own literary sensibilities.
"But what Hitori writes doesn't quite hit the same as Kim Yul's novel."
"......Pardon?"
She froze in place from the shock of being treated like low-grade source material.
One with her tail.
One with her tongue.
As expected of a great dragon, she subdued the two of them at once in an instant, and then
"Next time! Make it longer! Much longer!"
Esthea boldly declared her "legitimate rights as a reader."
.
.
.
After venting her frustration, and nursing the sad feeling in her heart that the novel she liked had been cut short, she returned to the lair alone.
"How strange......"
She called back the memory from earlier.
A dragon's mind was originally the most perfect of all, and would never be shaken by any magic.
And in truth, she had never before intervened so actively in human affairs.
However.
Strangely enough, whenever she faced Kim Yul and Historie, she felt at ease, as if she were dealing with her own kind.
To the point that if she had let her mind slip even for a moment, she might have been persuaded outright.
There was magic in Kim Yul's words.
A terrifying magic, as though simply hearing them would make a person fall under his persuasion.
Was there something special about him?
Esthea's curiosity began to perk up little by little.
* * *
When Historie first awakened to the emotion called "betrayal" and felt her CPU heating up to the point of overclocking,
"Oh my, a person of such rank in such a shabby place?"
The saintess, who had been reading the Cleopatra side story Kim Yul had written to shut her up—a story far too explicit ever to be serialized in a newspaper—welcomed a guest.
"......I believe you've reversed the beginning and end of that line."
"Ahaha! That was a joke with a twist. Duke Vertus, what brings you to the church? I was under the impression you do not believe in the Church of the Goddess."
Of course, Roselyn knew very well why Duke Vertus had rushed over to see her as if his backside were on fire.
After having previously attended the banquet at Kim Yul's request.
Roselyn had opened every intelligence network she could use and gathered all information related to Duke Vertus.
From the fragments, she drew only one conclusion.
That Duke Vertus was plotting a very sinister conspiracy.
Of course......
Roselyn had no intention of quibbling over that conspiracy.
Worst-case scenario.
If the Empire fell into chaos and Kim Yul came to rely on her?
She could even have him imprisoned in the Holy Kingdom... no, she could have him safely tucked away in a nice place.
However.
Now, in more ways than one.
Kim Yul could not be allowed to come under threat.
For the Church of the Goddess.
And...... for her own sake as well.
"It seems you need to make a confession?"
Without losing her smile, Roselyn led Duke Vertus to the confession booth.
* * *
"Um, Hitori?"
"......Please do not call me that."
Hmm.
She's broken.
After Esthea left, I left Historie, who had fallen into despair and started a binge-eating battle as if she meant to devour and destroy everything in sight, alone for a moment.
Apparently.
If the first reader who acknowledged her literary achievement were to slap her in the face with, "You write worse than that guy!", it would be enough to break her mental state.
It felt somewhat similar to how I gave up on my dream of becoming an alternate-history novelist.
Why, heavens!
Why did you give birth to Kim Yul, Codex, Wonmyeong, Ondaoreunjjok, Budeureopski, and countless other alternate-history authors!
"So that's why you got sent to another world."
At the very least, I'm the top authority on Earth's history here.
Thinking that, I lightly patted the second-place finisher on the shoulder to encourage her.
"Stop eating. It'll still take another month before the royalties come in."
"Kim Yul......"
The runner-up glared at me with an expression twisted by the catharsis of being cornered by reality.
For now.
Historie’s growing pains were something she had to overcome and bear herself, so I left her alone for the moment.
Based on the results of this installment, I needed to prepare a little more for the future.
The results of the first newspaper serialization were quite successful.
Caesar's dice, which can predict fortunes.
And even the A-rank skill Cicero's Eloquence, obtained by barely meeting the condition right before the finale.
......It didn't seem to work that well on the mutt, though.
I decided to chalk that up to the dragon species' special traits.
And there was also the C-rank skill, Vercingetorix's Resolve, gained through the separately published side story "The Chronicle of Gaul."
Since it was a lower-tier version of Hector, I had already set it aside as the sacrifice for the next fusion party.
"It is a pity, though."
"You're getting full, Kim Yul......"
Though I couldn't bring myself to say that to the mutt.
There was another reason I had neatly wrapped up Caesar's story without dragging it out any further.
Back when it was still being serialized.
[Public reception: Very positive] [Daily readership: 4,014]
[Expected skill acquisition: [A-rank] Cic■ro's Elo■]
[Must be maintained for at least 1 month. (Currently 1 day)]
In addition to the usual information I had been seeing──
[If daily readership is raised to 10,000 or more, the reward can be upgraded to an S-rank skill.]
I had glimpsed the possibility of a better reward.
But considering I had barely held the line at 4,000 all the way to the end, 10,000 was still a distant dream for me.
And.
Once a novel enters long-term serialization, it usually draws a graph that slowly slopes downward.
I, too, had once watched the peak at 5,400, then gradually seen people drop off as the numbers fell day by day, soaking my pillowcase with tears every night.
"Ahem."
After soothing the pain for a moment.
In other words.
To obtain the skill in its most ideal form, I had to create a masterpiece that could hit over 10,000 readers from the start.
"First, make crap. Then you'll become famous."
Isn't there such a saying?
......Wasn't it?
Anyway.
Since I had built up recognition with "A Fallen Noble Does Politics Well," my next work absolutely had to be a mega-hit that would send my popularity into orbit.
To do that, a middling subject wouldn't be enough.
There weren't many historical subjects capable of reaching that kind of peak.
Naturally, my conclusion was......
"There's nothing for it but the Three Kingdoms."
"But that's a novel, isn't it?"
In response to Historie's retort, which struck at the heart of the matter, I rewarded her by sticking a candy into the fuel inlet of the tin can.
"Munch."
Indeed.
Compared to Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms.
Luo Guanzhong's Romance of the Three Kingdoms contains fictional embellishment in many places.
Especially the most glorified of them all is Lord Guan himself.
Just how many glorified deeds are there?
Never cut off Hua Xiong's head before the wine got cold.
Never accepted Cao Cao's surrender after being promised three conditions.
Never received the Red Hare.
Never killed Wen Chou.
Never crossed the five passes and killed six generals.
Never let Cao Cao go at Huarong Trail.
Got utterly crushed in a war of words with Lu Su.
Never even held a grudge after death, going, "Damn you, Lü Meng!"
The level of historical distortion was enough that you could practically call it Luo Guanzhong self-insert fiction, so of course if I wrote it as a novel, I'd only get a "not consistent with historical fact" verdict.
If there was one point where the official history was actually better.
It was that Hua Tuo never treated him without even anesthesia, only for him to play gomoku and angrily flip the board over a "double-three."
After all, Hua Tuo had already died before the Battle of Red Cliffs.
Well, it wasn't just Guan Yu.
In particular, the deeds of the figures on Liu Bei's side had quite a bit of fictional exaggeration, but the problem was that if you removed that, the fun disappeared too.
"The Three Kingdoms has way too many characters, doesn't it? That's a concern too."
Of course, after the sugar rush subsided and Historie had calmed down again, her point was valid.
To take the form of a serialized novel, there had to be a clear protagonist—but who would I write about?
The moment that thought occurred to me.
"That's it......!"
I shouted loudly, like Archimedes.
If I changed my perspective a little.
In the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the biggest share belongs to Wei's story, the Book of Wei.
Compared to the 15-volume Book of Shu centered on the big-eared guy, the Book of Wei spans 30 volumes, a full two times as many.
And because Chen Shou was born in Shu Han, yet wrote the Records of the Three Kingdoms later while serving as an official of Western Jin after the Sima clan unified the realm, an undercurrent of pro-Wei bias stands out unconsciously.
So.
My next work would be.
The Romance-side Three Kingdoms: Heroic Chronicle, starring Liu Bei.
And the official-history-side Three Kingdoms: Cao Cao Chronicle, starring Cao Cao.
Instead of a double protagonist, I'd split the novel into two from the outset.