Chapter 94
It was probably the first time the status window had spoken directly to me.
First time? It must be the first time, right?
Something about the message felt incredibly familiar, but at least in my memory, that was the case.
It had happened on a night when Kkangtong wasn't around, and I was a little drunk, so I couldn't discuss it with anyone.
Still, I could roughly understand what it meant.
The destiny you have finally realized.
It would probably be the task of writing novels and making history known.
The newly granted duty was.
……I didn't want to admit it, but it seemed like a hero story.
No.
If it had been a young Kim Yul still burning with vigor, that would be one thing, but for me, who had only just settled down and was enjoying small, bourgeois happiness, not only had a hero's duty suddenly been dumped on me, they were even pressing me on whether I'd comply.
“If it's going to be like this, then just from the moment of possession, huh? Give me the ability, huh?”
I jabbed the air in frustration and let my anger burst out.
I have every right to!
Sweating buckets on a labor site.
How long had it been since I was eating stale bread dipped in bland soup……!
But despite my fierce protest,
God? Goddess? Status window? Whatever the hell it was, after that it went completely silent and pulled a no-show, so.
Like always, I could only feel out the newly granted ability from scratch.
Still, it was pretty intuitive.
Along with the fact that I could now equip one more skill at the same time.
Divine Descent.
The original owner of the skill temporarily taking up residence in my body.
I thought it felt something like Jo■'s Stand or Sha■king's Over Soul.
If there was a restriction,
it was limited to skills I already possessed, and after I used it, that skill would be unusable for a while, in proportion to how long the ability had been active.
And if it was an ability that didn't suit my level, the backlash would hit my body directly.
The moment Beethoven's soul inhabited me, I could read bean sprouts as sheet music, and I could play it almost perfectly.
For a full hour.
- Aaaaaaaaagh!
The moment I released the skill, an awful pain surged through me, as if chopsticks had been shoved between every one of my finger joints and spun around and around.
[B-Rank] [Beethoven's Heartbeat] [Reusable in 47:59:59]
I could roughly confirm that the cooldown cycled at a rate of about one day per thirty minutes.
Still.
In this fantasy world where swordmasters and archmages ran rampant, dragons went meow-meow, and the demonic wasteland licked its lips.
The fact that my means of survival had been strengthened was, in itself, something I was very satisfied with.
“As expected, people are rewarded when they work hard.”
Originally, I had planned to go limp and keep enjoying my 'rested for a month' young-man mode for another month or so, but…….
A little more.
I'll try living a little more earnestly.
* * *
Kim, the aspiring chef who wanted to simmer Earth's history into a stew in Fantasy Land, was repaid by the status window, whatever god it was.
Of course, the fact that there was now room to exert his own power and influence was reward enough in itself.
Not only that, but little by little, little by little.
“No matter how you look at it…….”
“It really does seem like the stories are connected little by little, doesn't it?”
The so-called “Ulysses Universe” began to take shape little by little.
The hints began to bloom in earnest with the most recently serialized “Beethoven.”
Not only did the story of France, the nation that served as the backdrop for “The Saint of Orléans,” keep showing up in connection with Napoleon, a villainous supporting character who, in the end, never even showed his face,
but even from the phrase “Holy Roman Empire,” one could infer that the banner of the Roman Empire introduced in the old novel “The Fallen Noble Who Was Good at Politics” was still being carried on.
Even the author's old work, serialized under his real name before the pen name Ulysses was born and known only to those in the know,
to the point that the myth of “The Olympus Story” was directly quoted in the novel in the form of a metaphor.
Even setting aside separate works like “The Tale of Two Heroes” or “The Hero and the Song of the Sea,” whose naming methods and story progression were completely different,
“I thought there was something oddly different about how each novel depicted society......”
“And that's not all? Looking back, the wars, weapons, and everything else in Joan of Arc's time and Caesar's time were all different!”
“Could it be that he planned all of it in advance......?”
Whenever I wanted to blur out the battle scenes with lines like, “But then Rekon showed up there!”
that was the positive result of the angel of historical accuracy threatening Kim Yul with a knife at his throat.
.
.
.
Because of that.
Kim Yul's readers, Ulysses's readers, hungered for his next work.
They wanted him to brew a new music stew and show an innovation in musical pieces, or to recreate that emotion in another specialist work.
There were also hopes that, since he'd already strayed once, he would return to being a writer specializing in politics and war.
Kim Yul's fingers, moving as smoothly as if he were playing the piano in a lab, this time,
chose the latter.
There were too many things that would be a shame to leave merely as a side story in Beethoven.
“Charge the Roman Republic?”
It was the result of projecting the pent-up irritation of an author who still hadn't fully cooled down, even after gaining the Hero title.
## ====== ##
Ink dripped from the tip of the quill like black tears.
In the room where silence had settled.
Bonaparte Napoleon finished signing.
What he had written was only a single line of a name,
but the weight contained in that short name held all of France, Italy, and half of Europe.
But now it had left his hands.
“Your Majesty…….”
His loyal aide, the diplomat Caulaincourt, called to Napoleon in a choked voice, but he did not raise his head.
Until yesterday, he had been Emperor.
But.
He had once again been reduced to a Corsican bumpkin, a loser, and a criminal who would soon be exiled.
“Where is the Guard?”
“……They are lined up in the courtyard. They are waiting for Your Majesty's final order.”
Napoleon rose from his seat with a bitter smile.
“Let's go. I should say goodbye to my children.”
…….
…….
The moment Napoleon descended the horseshoe-shaped staircase.
The blue-uniformed Guard filled the square.
His sharpest blade.
The Garde Impériale greeted him.
Thud— thud— thud—
A low drumbeat began to sound, soft and subdued like a funeral march.
Napoleon regarded them with calm dignity.
“My Guard! I bid you farewell. Throughout all these years, you have always stood on the path of honor and glory. I have never once been dissatisfied with your devotion.”
Several soldiers' shoulders trembled.
From the eyes of the elite soldiers who could crack jokes without so much as blinking in front of enemy cavalry or under a hail of gunfire,
silent tears flowed.
“We could have…… continued the war. But that would have driven France into the abyss of civil war, and beyond that, it would have been a decision that could have left our homeland, France, savagely torn apart by foreign powers. I did not want to keep the throne at the price of France's misfortune. So I sacrifice you—and my own interests—here. Please forgive me for making you bear this disgrace with me!”
Before long, Guard Commander General Petit had come up beside him.
“When are you going to start acting your size?”
Like Napoleon's joke, General Petit was also biting his lip and simply holding back his tears.
What he handed Napoleon was.
The French tricolor.
The golden eagle perched on it.
Napoleon's empire, everything that had been Napoleon's.
He slowly, very slowly, lowered his head and kissed the flag.
He kissed France.
He kissed glory.
He kissed the dead comrades who were no longer there.
At the same time,
“Long live the Emperor!”
someone's shout rang out loudly.
Following the first cry, launched like a signal flare.
“Long live the Emperor!”
“Don't go, Your Majesty!”
“We'll fight to the death!”
The earth-shaking roar filled the Palace of Fontainebleau, and the bearskin hats they threw up filled the sky.
…….
…….
Inside the rattling carriage,
he closed his eyes.
History will record me as a loser.
But his homeland.
France would ultimately be victorious.
Beyond his sinking consciousness,
he began to slowly retrace the moments he had once let slip away.
From the prelude to ruin that unfolded in the white hell.
To the sun that ruled over Austerlitz.
To the moment he wore the Emperor's crown at Notre-Dame.
To when he became the sword of the Revolution and a hero.
Ah, and before that.
When he was just a rustic born on the island of Corsica.
## ====== ##
After reading the entire manuscript,
Chloe let out an admiring gasp at Kim Yul's viciousness.
“So now you're starting by dumping in a whole misery stew from the very beginning, desuwa......!”
After saying that,
for a moment Chloe was so caught up in the feeling that, if she kept teasing him, Kim Yul's fingers would fly over to toy with her ears—twisting, pinching, and tugging at them—that she involuntarily squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself to squeal.
“……?”
Nothing happened.
Chloe peered at Kim Yul with one eye slit open, but his expression was utterly calm.
“You already hinted at it when talking about Beethoven, didn't you? That Napoleon would ultimately fall.”
“That is true, yes…….”
Chloe felt oddly empty for some reason, as the price of her snark hadn't been paid properly.
But before she could dwell on it,
another question took over her mind.
“Um, but why Napoleon? If you already know the ending—that it's already ruined—it seems like the story wouldn't be very interesting, desuwa.”
In the face of such an entirely reasonable retort,
Kim Yul merely smiled faintly.
“Let's see. It'll definitely be fun, won't it?”
His voice carried a subtle confidence.
Only then did Chloe notice that a picture had been drawn on the very last page of the manuscript paper.
In her eyes,
the Napoleon that Beethoven had once believed was a hero.
But who had cast aside his original worth and raised the banner of tyranny.
The figure of the emperor who had set the world ablaze was engraved there.