Chapter 247: Where the Light Points (2)
Tick─ Tick─
Tatyana looked down at her wristwatch inside the Eastern Pavilion’s tent.
Tick─ Tick─
Ever since the rumor spread that Maximilian hated wristwatches, they had been issued to nearly every soldier, key official, and party cadre in the East.
If the Empire hates a thing, that thing becomes Robrus’s favorite.
Tick─ Tick─
At the moment, however, she was paying less attention to the passing time than to the setting sun.
Tick─ Tick─
The time was 4 p.m. The sun was slowly sliding down from the sky’s zenith. Toward the one angle in the entire day that lays the deepest fire upon steel.
Pfrrrt.
Blowing a breath through her lips, she lowered her wrist as if she had made up her mind.
“Let’s take it down.”
Our art is a statue.
To reflect light, it needs the blaze of the sun.
“The Robrus anthem first.”
“Yes, ma’am. Ready──!”
At the Adversary’s signal, the anthem began to play.
The first note rose from beneath the ground.
The dispatched orchestra formed up before the Eastern Pavilion, and the low bass of a male chorus spread across the square’s pavement like a tremor.
The Eastern Alliance’s anthem was not a lively thing. Nor was it ornate.
Sacred labor. Land like a mother. A march that was half hymn, singing that the people were her children.
That unfamiliar sound drew people in.
“What, they’re finally openin’ up?”
“The East’s goin’ first? Not the Empire?”
At first, it was mere onlookers’ curiosity. Mixed among them were faces that had come to mock.
But in just five minutes—
in the time it took the anthem to cross from the first verse to the second and the chorus to thicken—
the noise of the square gradually died down. There was a weight to that song that silenced even those who had come to sneer.
“…….”
Before the tent’s pull-rope, Tatyana quietly closed her eyes.
Her heart was pounding.
Nerves?
No.
This was the tremor of a creator finally presenting to the world a child forged through months of fire.
She checked the angle of the sinking sun one last time.
Now, while the steel blazed hot.
“Unveil!”
At the anthem’s climax. At the peak, as the chorus soared to its highest note, the red tent came down. Beyond the crimson curtain pouring down like a waterfall, ‘it’ was revealed.
Two figures.
On the left, a worker raising a smith’s great hammer. On the right, a miner woman gripping a pickaxe.
A man and a woman forged of steel, charging forward side by side, crossing hammer and pickaxe as one above their heads.
Together, the two steel giants lifted their tools toward the sky.
The idea that the power of the earth is raised only by the labor of the people, the very ideology of the East, given form in steel.
Sunlight settled upon the statue. At once the two at the vanguard blazed searing red. Like molten iron just drawn from the furnace. As if the sweat of thousands of the people had gathered into one mass and caught fire.
“…….”
The Adversaries’ gazes were transfixed. The Robrus officials were no different. Without realizing it, they laid their hands over their hearts.
The choral anthem went on, and the sound grew louder.
The Robrus people in the square, the dispatched laborers, the agents, one by one, had begun to sing along.
In the middle of a foreign capital thousands of kilometers from their homeland, looking up at their homeland’s steel burning red.
The word majestic was not enough.
“If I have any pride! And if I have any hope!”
Tatyana Volkov cried out at the top of her lungs before the Robrus statue.
Her shout rode up over the wave of the chorus.
“It is the union of the East itself!”
Waaaaah─!
The Easterners’ cheers erupted. Even the citizens of other nations applauded as if entranced.
Clap-clap-clap-clap-clap.
The Adversaries’ gazes converged on Tatyana.
Only moments ago she had been a fussy director fretting over the angle of the sun. But there was a reason the Premier acknowledged her.
“We’ve won.”
They were certain.
Today, the master of this square was Robrus.
The proof was the roar and the cheering that filled this very place.
Waaaaaah───!
In the midst of the resounding Robrus language, Tatyana glanced somewhere.
Across the square.
The Empire’s black tent, still silent.
The sun would begin to set slowly now.
What was on the mind of that knight they called a monster?
* * *
The Robrus statue had been unveiled. A great many people watched it. Admiring looks and praise poured over it, and reporters shoved their camera lenses forward.
“……Indeed.”
Maximilian, too, nodded slowly.
It was his first time seeing it in the flesh in this life.
Even in the history before his Regression, it was hailed as the pinnacle of Robrus art, a masterpiece printed in every one of their textbooks.
The man and woman of red-burning steel were majestic, without question.
Which made them all the better a supporting act.
“Let us make our preparations as well.”
He told everyone in the Imperial Pavilion.
Now that all the actors had taken the stage, it was time for the lead to step forward.
…….
“Whoa!”
Reutern let out a cry of admiration before he could stop himself.
A skewer in one hand, a drink in the other.
“Look at that! It’s like it’s on fire! Whoa!”
“……Do not applaud them, Lord. The Empire’s people are watching.”
Bern hurriedly stopped him. Reutern, belatedly pretending to come to his senses, growled.
“Oh, right. So those big dumb bastards…… were hiding a treasure like that, huh. But I believe in Max!”
“……Is that so?”
“I’m telling you! Wanna bet?!”
Reutern was not the only one watching. Every one of the Empire’s dignitaries was. Ezell and Sonnet Kandel watched the statue too, and gave credit where credit was due.
“It is as though the East’s entire ideology has been gathered into one form.”
“……It’s well made, I’ll give them that.”
Sonnet with indifferent eyes, Ezell with pursed lips, both thinking their opponent was no pushover.
“…….”
Chiron and the Sentinel knights were briefly at a loss for words. It was exactly the kind of symbol soldiers and knights would love most.
“Cliff. Go buy me a can of beer.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tense, they found themselves reaching for drink or food.
And somewhere here in Prozen, somewhere unknown to the crowds, the reporters, even the agents,
‘That person’, the most exalted in all the Empire, was watching as well.
In silence, he watched the statue that blazed like the sun.
…….
The sun had set.
As darkness soaked into Prozen, lamps lit up one by one around the square and the pond, and thanks to them the festival city lost none of its vitality.
The only thing out of place was the Imperial Pavilion, still unopened.
“Haaaaaugh…… still nothing?”
Halbert Goering, fresh from a nap at his hotel, yawned long and wide, gazing toward the Imperial Pavilion with bored eyes.
“……Is the Prozen edition any different?”
Ezell sat on a bench, flipping through a copy of 「Outcast」 translated into the Prozen language.
“I can’t tell what that Maximilian bastard is thinking. Can you?”
“No. Neither can I, Brother.”
Jun Kandel and Sonnet Kandel were having a late meal at a nearby restaurant.
Outside, reporters from every nation clustered in little groups, the anticipation long since drained from their faces.
“……Hey. What do you think?”
“The Empire’s lot look scared to me, sir. Right about now they’re probably in that tent going, ‘what do we do, what do we do’.”
“Kahaha. Then tomorrow’s front page is ‘The Silent Empire’.”
The truth was, well.
As far as they could see, it was as good as decided.
“Honestly, their best move might be lying that they got hit by a terrorist attack.”
“Then the front page would be ‘The Empire Under Attack’.”
They all killed time dreaming up tomorrow’s headlines.
The citizens cursed the Empire’s dragging pace, griping about how long they were supposed to wait for some building that probably wasn’t much anyway.
“Argh…… Seriously, what is taking them so long?”
“Forget it, let’s go. They can’t unveil it because there’s nothing to show.”
“Is hot air all those Empire pig bastards are good for?”
One by one, they were turning their steps away from the square.
At that very moment.
──.
From somewhere, a clear melody bloomed.
The first few bars were Prozen’s national anthem. A courteous tribute performed for the host nation.
“Huh?”
“Hm?”
While people flinched to a halt, the melody quietly subsided.
And after a half-beat of silence—
An entirely different anthem unfolded.
“……?”
A sound familiar to Imperials down to their bones, yet strange for an instant the moment it touched the ear. The Empire’s anthem, rearranged for orchestra.
──It’s the Imperial Pavilion!
Someone shouted.
Was it a reporter, or some quick-witted young man?
Either way, at that cry, people came flocking.
“The Imperial Pavilion, they say the Imperial Pavilion is opening!”
They set down their forks in restaurants and burst out of taverns still clutching their beer mugs.
“So they’re finally crawling out…….”
A noble who had grown tired of waiting and returned to his hotel threw open his window.
“Hey, hey. Let’s go!”
“Go, go!”
“Fuck, they could’ve hurried it up, typical Empire bastards……”
A reporter pulling his folded notepad back out. A father with his child on his shoulders. A merchant from the market square. Even a constable on patrol.
Nearly everyone who had scattered during the day was drawn back into the square.
Some out of pure curiosity. Some ready to jeer. Some simply to critique.
Whatever the reason, their footsteps all pointed the same way.
“……What?”
And yet— the performers were nowhere to be seen.
The orchestra, the conductor, all seemed to have vanished, yet the music played on.
The sound did not come from any single point. The music spread through the whole space of the square itself.
──.
Begun as a solo on a single cello, the anthem thickened by one layer with every passing measure.
Violins and violas were laid on; the strings seeped in.
It was the very melody even a three-year-old Imperial could hum, yet under the baton of the master ‘Richard’, the orchestra moved as though it were an entirely different song.
The crowd held its breath for a moment. They fixed their eyes on the distance and strained their ears toward the sound.
Soon, the music slowly began to fade.
Whoosh──
The tent was drawn away like darkness pouring down.
The structure revealed was……
not tall.
“Huh?”
“The hell is that.”
“Hah?”
It was a hall of black stone.
Smooth slabs of rock. Something like a carving of an eagle seemed to sit at its top, though at night it was hard to make out.
Neat enough in its way, and tall enough in its way, but nowhere near even the foot of Prozen Tower.
“……That’s it?”
“No, seriously?”
“They dragged it out this long for that?”
“Pwah! Weren’t they saying it’d be taller than Prozen Tower?!”
“Months of keeping it under wraps, and it’s one stone warehouse?”
“Empire bastards, all talk as always…….”
Laughter spread here and there. The reporters quietly lowered the cameras they had raised, and over at the Eastern Pavilion the Adversaries snickered, shoulders shaking.
At the center of that wave of mockery, only Tatyana was not laughing.
Boooooo──
In the instant the sneers and jeers were piling layer upon layer.
────!
The music suddenly resumed like an explosion.
The spectators’ hearts lurched.
In time with the soaring melody, light burst forth from the base of the Imperial Pavilion.
Flaaash──!
From the crown of the hall, just behind the eagle, a pillar of pure white light shot straight up.
It rose, and rose, and rose again, until it touched the sky.
People’s heads tipped back until they could tip no further.
───!
Following the first, a second light rose.
───!
Then, compounding, four, eight, sixteen…….
The pillars of light stood up one row at a time. The hundred-odd Mana Stone Searchlights planted along the hall’s perimeter ignited in sequence, riding the anthem’s melody.
As if the music were summoning the light, or the light were answering the music.
Whooooooo──.
The Imperial Pavilion’s pillars reached the clouds. The clouds blazed silver-white and became a ceiling joining pillar to pillar.
Walls without walls.
A roof without a roof.
The Empire’s exhibition hall, rising into the night sky.
The colonnade of light rippled with the currents of the wind, and its shimmer spread to the edges of the sky like an aurora.
The square’s lamps, the lights of the pond, every light in the city lost its glow before the Imperial Pavilion.
Even in villages dozens of kilometers away, people far from the city, people living hand to mouth with no interest in any expo, opened their windows.
They gazed at the pillars of light rising above the horizon.
Beside them, Prozen Tower had quietly faded into a black silhouette.
In its place, the Empire’s anthem swelled without end.
It devoured the space.
……In a square this vast, the sound of people vanished.
The watching tourists and the citizens of every nation simply stood dazed.
Faces that had forgotten even the thought of applauding. Mouths that had been jeering moments ago hung half open, refusing to close.
Someone took off his hat as if in salute, and the father and child wore much the same expression.
People cast into a fantasy.
Eyes in which the boundary between dream and reality had melted away.
But to the people of the Empire, this scene arrived as something different in its very nature.
“Ah…….”
“…….”
Their homeland, found in the sky of a distant foreign land. The Imperial anthem resounding through the space.
They felt a strange emotion. It was a thrill, an exaltation, a resonance.
And yet, rather than cheer or shout, they grew quieter still, and sank deeper.
“Haah…….”
And they wept.
Nobles, attendants, laborers, cooks — their eyes reddened before they knew it, and tears wet every cheek.
“…….”
From Reutern’s wide-open eyes, a teardrop stretched long. Goering, having straightened his posture at some point, sniffled, and the Empire’s soldiers closed their eyes with their caps pressed to their chests.
The Sentinel knights were little different.
Even composure honed by training could do nothing, it seemed, against emotion boiling up from the very depths.
“……Where the light points, there is the Empire.”
Chiron and the knights held back their tears, but the act of holding back was itself already a surrender.
The stranger thing came next.
The Imperials scattered across Prozen’s square. Strangers who did not even know each other’s names. As if by some agreement, the Aran turned their heads toward one another. When their eyes quietly met, they smiled as though about to cry.
Words were not needed.
In this moment, the mere fact of being ‘Aran’, standing beneath the Empire’s light, was enough for them to understand one another completely.
The rank between Noble and Commoner, the distance of hometowns and dialects, the years between the middle-aged and the young, the old friction between the Regular Army and the Imperial Guard — all of it melted away in that pale, brilliant radiance.
What remained was a single bloodline, Aran.
The pride of the Aran. The boast of the Aran. The dignity of the Aran. The glory of the Aran.
The sensation of the narrow vessel called ‘I’ crumbling away, flowing into the vastness called ‘we’.
An ecstasy no individual could ever reach alone, the certainty of belonging to that greatest of all things, the Empire.
This beautiful temple in the sky was the proof.
A light the inferior could never raise. A height only great blood could reach.
The reason the Aran were masters of the continent…… or so they thought.
The Imperials in the square believed it.
And all of that scenery, the temple of light, the foreigners with their heads bowed as if kneeling, the Aran faces weeping as they smiled, blended together as one.
“…….”
And settled onto Sebestian’s retinas as well.
On that night when every eye in the square grew wet.
Only a single ray of cold moonlight gleamed in his eyes.
~~~
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