In addition to all that, I still faced the task of rebuilding an empire in decline thanks to the high-handed tyranny of the aristocratic class. As the emperor, I had my work cut out for me.
“It’s enough to make one’s head spin,” I muttered.
I mean, where were my fantasy isekai clichés? My journey through another world, filled with adventure? My overpowered cheat abilities, and the freedom to do whatever I wanted? My rise up the rungs of society, thanks to the benefit of my knowledge of modern technology?
Reality couldn’t be any more different. As the emperor, I did not have the freedom to go on adventures, and the slightest overreach on my part could very well get me assassinated. And rising up the rungs of society? Yeah, right. If anything, I’d be on the side doing the oppressing. After all, if I wanted to survive, I needed to kick down the ambitious climbers coming up behind me.
I knew enough to understand that those who fell from the seat of power always met with wretched fates. There were too many examples to list of Chinese emperors who had abdicated, only to be assassinated by their successor anyway. That said, I had no right to complain, since I’d killed the previous individuals in power with my own two hands.
“Is something the matter, Your Majesty?” Timona le Nain, my personal attendant, was leading my horse by the reins on foot.
“No, nothing.”
I recalled the memory of the Chancellor and Minister of Ceremony’s severed heads, put on display before the citizenry. It had happened on my orders, a fitting punishment for the criminals who had masterminded the assassinations of the emperor and crown prince. But at the end of the day, the true reason they’d met such grisly ends was simply because I’d beaten them at their own game.
If we lost to the Raul army at Chelán Hill, our destination, I might well end up the same way. As the saying went, whatever happened to someone else today could happen to you tomorrow. To avoid that, I needed to stay on my toes and make the best possible choice at every turn.
I also had to keep in mind that I’d spent my entire life so far acting like a fool in order to survive. But now that that was no longer necessary, I could not let the people decide that I was an actual fool, for reasons too obvious to need explanation. Worst case, I could vanish into history as rust on a guillotine, just like the aristocracy during the French Revolution. If I wanted to rid myself of my reputation as a fool, I needed to play a new role: that of an exceptional emperor. That was one reason I had departed the imperial capital at the head of an army.
Suddenly, our marching column came to a halt. I realized that we’d come far enough that the cheers from the imperial capital were no longer audible. From atop my mount, however, I couldn’t see any immediate problems.
“Why have we stopped?” I asked.
“The soldiers are taking a water break,” Timona explained. “Doing so while marching might cause the column to fall into disarray.”
“That was quick,” I noted.
I was no expert, but apparently, the basics of marching were to ensure everyone carried out the same actions at the same time. Case in point, our soldiers were walking in time with the signals being given by the column’s pipers. It was a far cry from the perfect coordination of the military marches I’d seen in parades on modern-day Earth, but function was likely more of a concern here than form.
“It is summer,” Timona said, by way of explanation.
My coronation had happened at the end of the fifth month of the calendar year, and we were now nearing the end of the seventh, having spent the time in between on military drills, planning, and other preparations. So while summer in this part of the world wasn’t as hot as it was in Japan, many among our traveling column were knights or soldiers in service to a lord, and thus were clad in metal armor. Frequent breaks were a small price to pay if they curtailed the risk of heatstroke.
For reference, the majority of infantry were equipped relatively lightly, and hardly any of it was uniform. Some wore leather armor, while others wore none at all. Evidently, unlike with the weapons we’d provisioned them, armor was one’s individual responsibility.
According to the generals, providing armor to our soldiers would simply result in a decent number of them selling it off before we even made it to the battlefield. After all, you couldn’t stab the other guy without a sword, but you could without armor. From a commander’s perspective, since having one’s soldiers sell off official provisions wasn’t the best look, it was common military practice for a footman to provide for themselves defensively.
Incidentally, I was wearing armor too, albeit only on the upper half of my body, not including the sleeves. Basically, picture a breastplate. What was more, it was a custom article, made to be relatively light and thin while maintaining enough durability to serve its purpose. It kind of felt like I was wearing a bulletproof vest. Fitting, for a VIP like the emperor.
Apparently, the recent trend was to wear armor that only covered a portion of the body, rather than a full set. Since firearms existed in this world—albeit still only at the level of matchlock rifles—heavy armor would only impair one’s mobility and, with only a handful of exceptions, paradoxically make you a softer target. After all, when bullets hit metal armor, more often than not it was the former that came out on top.
Thus, generally speaking, armor was kept to the bare minimum necessary to protect oneself from melee weaponry and designed to focus on ease of movement. That said, you were still strapping hunks of metal to yourself, under which you were wearing clothes, so the heat was still a major concern. Just not for me; I was secretly using heat manipulation magic to keep myself pleasantly cool.
Speaking of my magic, my ability to detect the presence of others had taken a huge hit to its efficacy. After much trial and error throughout my childhood, one of the magical tricks I had learned was to detect living things via the use of heat absorption. While ordinarily it was a convenient spell that allowed me to sense people through walls and such, since the detection worked by comparing the difference between a heat signature and the temperature of the air, its accuracy dropped as the conditions became hotter. In short, summer was my natural enemy.
Another contributing factor was the number of people around me. Amid a literal army like this, there was simply too much information for me to process in a timely manner.
In light of this, I was maintaining a Custor—a magical barrier—around me at all times, so that I wouldn’t get caught off guard by a surprise attack. I wasn’t sure whether it would stop a bullet completely dead, but it would at the very least kill a majority of its momentum.
The sudum guns in common use throughout the Empire didn’t have rifled barrels. If you weren’t familiar with the term, rifling referred to the grooves etched into the interior of a firearm’s barrel, which imparted spin onto bullets and helped them fly straight. Rifling ensured that, up to a certain distance, you could comfortably rely on your weapon delivering your bullets where you pointed them.