The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#397 Tyrant (24) - Trisha's Blood Relation Here are two paintings. One is the original painting, and the other is a painting drawn after looking at that painting. The skill of the painter who copied the painting was so outstanding that, on the surface, there is no difference between the two at all. But the paper on which the painting was drawn is different. No matter what was drawn on it, no matter how splendid the content of the painting may be, the paper itself on which it was drawn is unmistakably different. Then, can the two paintings be called the same painting? The Emperor. Alondre Arcandel Eizern. The young man, born an idiot and whose soul had been broken for nearly twenty years, answered. The two paintings are not the same. They cannot be the same. He himself… could never become the 'Crown Prince' in his little sister's memories. The body is identical. The talent based on that body is the same, too. But the soul is different. Just as a painting that looks like a perfect copy reveals its differences once you scrape beneath the surface, the Emperor's memories of the 'Crown Prince' were missing in places throughout. It wasn't that way simply because he had seen them indirectly through Trisha. Like a sculptor who had reached the level of a master, able to tell—just from a single sweep of a hand over a statue's surface—which quarry in which mine the stone came from, which way its grain ran, and with what chisel and at what angle it had been struck. Because the body, so excellent that it overwhelmed even its own contents, could grasp even the Crown Prince's personality and memories just by skimming through Trisha's memories. And yet, he could not know. There was something that could not be grasped through observation alone. Because that 'something' existed, the Crown Prince would be able to view his own talent and uniqueness objectively. Because that 'something' existed, the Crown Prince would be able to sympathize with the feelings of those not born with talent or background. Because that 'something' existed, the Crown Prince would possess a spirit capable of enjoying waste and romance, not just efficiency. And so, he himself, lacking that something, was only half of one. Right after being copied, they would probably look similar. But the longer time passed, the more the differences would grow. No, perhaps it had already changed enough that those who knew could tell. Not a bad thing, the Emperor— No, the Tyrant thought. Kugugugugu! Mana surged upward. Across the entire Empire. The vast mana flowing through the land of this continent's largest nation seeped into the body of a single human being. He swung his sword. Everything along its path was severed. He poured out magic. Everything within its range was swept away. Ordinary people fled or bowed their heads and called out to the gods. Those who had mastered mana trembled on their legs, unable to move. Even those called demigods could only widen their eyes, unable to find any opening to intervene. "—Ah, seriously. This is so annoying!!" Even after doing all that, he still could not reach the demon before him. Mana surging like waves received and enveloped the Emperor's sword, which looked ready to split the sky. Whenever he used magic that seemed capable of blowing away a mountain, a bottomless-pit-like valley absorbed all of that power. Even as he poured in the mana of the entire Empire, far from filling the opponent's vessel, it only flaunted its overwhelming scale, as if saying it was now just enough to wet its throat. After that, it was repetition. The Emperor unleashed ever higher blows, and the demon drank in that immense output. And at some moment, the cycle stopped. "Kuhk!" Blood gushed from the Emperor's mouth in clumps, and his body collapsed. A demigod was, in the end, nothing more than a demigod. Unless one transcended one's very birth itself and became a world and a god unto oneself, the limit was clear. This was something not even the Emperor, born special as he was, could avoid. To aim beyond this point, one had no choice but to achieve Transcendence, but the Emperor was someone for whom Transcendence had never been possible in the first place. Because his soul was already broken. Because it was nothing more than broken fragments bundled together to look more or less intact. The demon, by contrast, was already a full-fledged transcendent — and not one who had gone berserk, bound by some particular emotion or concept, but one who had risen to such heights through pure attainment alone. And so the Emperor sank to the ground and bowed his head. And so the demon, looking even more intact than at the start, was looking down on him. And so, it was the Emperor's victory. "What a vicious human. Since you couldn't win, you tried to goad me into banishment instead?" The demon stared at the Emperor with a displeased look. The space around her rippled precariously, like paper soaked in water and on the verge of tearing. Until now, the demon had fought, as much as possible, a battle of 'quantity.' Keeping the mana or souls the True Body absorbed directly to a minimum, and even what little it did absorb, scattering it around itself rather than keeping it within. But the Emperor had thoroughly driven the demon into a corner, and to counter that, the demon too had been forced to raise its own rank and quality. Thanks to that, it had beaten the Emperor, but now it could no longer remain in this world. "You won't live long. No matter how special your body is, you pushed yourself way too hard for someone who isn't even a transcendent." "Are you actually worried about me?" "Don't you know the concept of sarcasm?" The demon scoffed, then let out an "Aah—" and looked up at the sky. "What a waste, really." What was it that was such a waste? The Emperor never got the chance to ask. Because the demon had already vanished, as though it had never existed there at all. And after confirming that, the Emperor too lost consciousness. The last thing that appeared in his sight was the image of Trisha, running toward him with a face unusually lacking its composure. *** About three months had passed since the war that staked the Empire's survival had ended. To state the conclusion first, the Empire did not fall. There were several side effects — about half of the 6th Ranks half-retired due to aftereffects, enormous costs were spent rebuilding from war damage, and as the price for forcibly drawing on the power of the ley lines, that year's harvest showed signs of ruin — but even so, the people of the Empire let out a sigh of relief. Because the neighboring country had collapsed far more completely. "His Excellency has passed away…?" "More than 40 percent of the soldiers who went to war — not injured, but dead…?" Upon learning the results of the war, the citizens of the Republic could truly feel what it was like for one's soul to leave one's body. The Republic was a nation that had spread the flames of revolution across the continent like a serial arsonist. And the reason it had remained unscathed despite setting all those fires wasn't that its ideology was so flawless its victims repented on their own — it was simply because the Republic's military power was that overwhelming. Of course, simply recruiting soldiers wasn't particularly impossible for the Republic, which had introduced the concept of a national army. To begin with, Nathan simply hadn't centered the army around special forces like knights or mages — he had built troop operations around well-trained elite soldiers who followed orders well, so relatively few had died when viewed across the nation as a whole. But the officer corps meant to command the soldiers thus gathered. Above all, the fact that the leadership centered on Nathan had simply evaporated was a disaster with no way to even begin to respond to. Countless people threw themselves into agitation and manipulating public opinion, each claiming they would become the Republic's new power holder, and in the process, those who had quietly stuck to their posts and simply worked were swept up and bled for it. Equality and freedom. Those who had championed the values of the republic ironically splintered and fought the moment the dictator disappeared, this time setting their own country ablaze instead of another's. Of course, the Empire, for its part, was in just as much chaos. This was because the bureaucratic system the Emperor had set up relied less on systematic division of labor and more on the Emperor simply resolving things through his own individual skill, so once the Emperor himself had collapsed, the nation itself fell into confusion. The one difference, however, was the existence of a successor. "Until His Majesty wakes, I will temporarily handle his duties in his stead." Trisha Adalhedis Eizern (comparative age: 15) took over the various systems the Emperor had built, and pulled off the remarkable feat of reproducing roughly 80 percent of them herself. Of course, unlike the Emperor, she couldn't juggle training and dabbling in new projects on the side all at once — this was the result of wringing out day and night on 'administration' alone, and even then only by drinking potions like drinking water — but even that alone was a tremendous achievement. Beatrix, tormented by the fear that her daughter might work herself to death at this rate, also flaunted her own competence to the fullest and threw herself into normalizing the Empire, and the others, too, burned the midnight oil day after day. "…So, Your Majesty really needs to be grateful to me. Understand?" At the sight of Trisha, sucking noisily through a straw on the black drink-cum-potion in her cup, complaining without even bothering to hide the slightly sunken look under her eyes, the Emperor gave a wry smile. "Yes, I've already been nursed by my mother for nearly half a day, fed bits and pieces like a baby bird, and heard plenty of lecturing as it is. Go easy on me now." "So you can spend half a day on the Dowager Empress, but you can't spare half a day for me!" "If I treated you the same as my mother, wouldn't that be a problem in its own right?" "That's a reason I have no choice but to accept." To Trisha, who nodded along, the Emperor said— "Trisha." "Yesh?" "It's time for you to go back now." For a moment, Trisha stared intently at the Emperor's face. "Can I ask you something?" "About how someone who just woke up from unconsciousness prepared a return formula?" "That's just Your Majesty being Your Majesty, so I'm not really curious about it. But, by any chance, aren't you going to keel over and die right after sending me back? If so, let me boldly state again that I really don't like bad endings…" "Rest easy. That's not it." "…Really?" "I'll hold on for three years. That's hardly what you'd call a sudden death." The Emperor's voice was remarkably composed. "Let me say in advance, this isn't because of what happened this time. To be precise, around then, even if my body stayed fine, my soul was going to break down again anyway — this incident just brought my body's lifespan roughly in line with that." To begin with, the Emperor's soul had never been in a normal state. It had already been broken long ago; meeting Trisha, a stroke of fortune, had merely bought it a little extra time. Trisha's expression shifted through a range of emotions. But to burst into tears like a child, she was, in many senses, too special a child for that. So, quite deliberately, she pouted her lips as though sulking. "Isn't dropping a terminal diagnosis right there kind of a foul move? If this is a plan to make me too guilt-stricken to go back, let me tell you it's working extremely well." "No, you need to go back now. Only then will I have time to teach and hand things over to 'this side's' Trisha." The Emperor's gaze gleamed as it settled on Trisha — or to be precise, on the 'something' within her. "This world's Trisha hasn't disappeared, nor has she gone anywhere. It's just that right now, because you're occupying that body, she's become a sleeping princess, half-forcibly unable to wake." Quick-witted as she was, Trisha saw through the fact that this wasn't a lie. And, at the same time, that it was also, to some extent, an excuse. It was probably true that this side's Trisha would wake only once she left. But if anyone could, the Emperor might well be able to devise a way to let both Trishas remain here. And yet, the Emperor had not chosen that path. As a courtesy to the little sister who had given him life. As a mark of respect toward his original self, the 'Crown Prince' who was different from him. "If you need to leave your farewells, I'll give you the time." "Um… No. That would just be a burden on 'this side's' Trisha. Mother would be shocked to realize she never noticed her own daughter had been swapped out, so I'll just go quietly." Well, it probably wasn't that this side's Beatrix was heartless or incompetent so much as that they had simply been separated so young and only just reunited, but was a parent's feelings really something that could be resolved with that kind of logical explanation? Not knowing at all was the better medicine. Besides, she didn't even consider the possibility that the Trisha left behind might fail to pull off the deception. If this side's self was still herself, she would handle that much skillfully enough on her own. The Emperor's hand rose and settled atop Trisha's head. "I'll leave your side's me to you. ...He's probably a bit different from me, but he should have the qualities of a tyrant in his own way." "Is that an order from His Majesty the Emperor?" "It's a request from your brother." "Well then, I suppose I have no choice but to listen." Ahem, Trisha smiled. "I'll ask you for one thing too." "What is it?" "If there's any way to survive, please try to live as long as you possibly can. Don't make the Dowager Empress cry." "…Yes, I will." With a soft thump. Trisha's head slumped gently onto the bed. The Tyrant stroked her hair for a long, long while. Touching a woman's hair — her life itself — without permission: that was truly a tyrant's way of doing things.