Risou no Himo Seikatsu - Volume 15 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue — The Spark of War

The second prince of Uppasala—though also its crown prince—Yngvi Uppasala had been teleported back to his homeland by his brother-in-law Zenjirou. He had a slight build for a Svean man, and he was practically skipping through the palace. He was even humming as he moved. That’s how beneficial he’d found his time in Capua.

He had heard of its stature and power from his older brother Eric and his younger (though officially older) sister Freya, but personally experiencing it had really brought it home. Capua was without a doubt a powerful country. It was also home to different vegetation, livestock, and even clothing than the Northern Continent. Despite all that, their basic values and ways of thinking seemed compatible. Perfect for a trade partner.

The difference in flora and fauna meant that what was commonplace in one country was a potentially valuable rarity in the other. The commonalities in thinking and values meant that coming to agreements was easier.

The world was a big place. There were groups that took what they felt they were owed by force, and there were others that kept their agreements and considered doing so a virtue. There were even tribes that didn’t have a concept of individual ownership. In comparison, Capua’s values were close enough to Uppasala’s that they could consider them to not be a problem.

There was a tacit agreement that Yngvi’s second wife would come from that country. The candidate was a fairly intelligent woman who had plenty of training for her station, and above all, Yngvi held her guardian in high esteem. He was an intelligent, balanced figure that ruled a huge territory. He used both his position as a high-ranking noble and his own lands well and distinctly, so he held a strong position in the palace as well. He was an impressive man, that much was certain.

Yngvi was sure the count would be a reasonable father-in-law. Naturally, “reasonable” was from the perspective of royalty and nobility. He had a route to his second wife from a different, but powerful, country. On top of that, her guardian was highly placed within that country. It was perfect. It was the start of a path to lead Uppasala to even greater heights than he had initially hoped for.

He traveled, light of foot and heart alike, to report to his father. However, the atmosphere within the palace soon changed his gait. “Atmosphere” didn’t refer to the literal meaning of the word, of course. It was the distinct change in how people seemed as he passed them that created the vibe in question.

Those who worked so close to the king’s personal office were particularly exceptional, so there was no change visible at a glance. Yngvi had been around them since he was young, though, so he could feel the weight of the tiny changes combined. The silent bows of attendants as he passed them were slightly longer than usual. The hardworking, trusted maids’ eyes widened slightly when they saw him. Older warriors famed for calm watched him head towards his father with curiosity in their eyes.

While everything seemed normal at a glance, that was a result of the people in question putting in an effort to act as they normally did. There was a difference between actually acting normal and purposefully putting on an act, and Yngvi could sense that difference. Therefore, as he knocked on his father’s door, his bouncy steps had vanished, and he was tense as he prepared himself for whatever was awaiting him.

“I have returned, father,” he said once he was bade enter. “Everything has gone well for me, so I would like to hear how things are here first.”

His words and actions were as polished as would be expected from a prince, but his voice was hurried. The king let out a sigh that was purposefully loud enough that his son could hear it, but made no other comment on how his son had greeted him. Indeed, Yngvi’s opinion was correct. The information that most needed to be shared was from the Northern Continent. That was particularly true if—as Yngvi said—everything had gone well on the Southern Continent.

“Very well. Sit.”

“Of course, father.”

As he sat opposite his king and father, Yngvi surveyed his expression and let some tension fall from his shoulders. While Gustav had a good enough poker face for a sitting king, the combination of Yngvi’s insight and familiarity with his father was better. Therefore, he already knew—there had been some kind of big event on the Northern Continent, and it was known across the entire continent in question. But, for better or worse, it would not affect Uppasala in the short term. Or at least that was how Gustav saw things.

With that certainty, Yngvi let his shoulders relax and his expression smoothed into a relaxed look. That relaxation was quickly blown away, though.

“So, as you wish, I shall inform you of what has happened here. Priest Yan has been spotted.”

“What?” Even Yngvi stumbled mentally at that. “Um, father? Just to make sure, there are many people called Yan in the commonwealth and bordering nations, so is the Priest Yan you are talking about that Priest Yan?”

If you looked at either denomination of the faith, there would be several priests called “Yan.” That was just how common the name was. Generally, though, if someone said Priest Yan, they were talking about the dean of dracology from Bohevia. A priest who had been captured as a heretic and burned at the stake.

“That Priest Yan, without a doubt,” his father agreed.

“I’ve heard rumors that he had been put to death, though.”

Yngvi had heard of his capture just before going to the Southern Continent, so he wasn’t entirely caught up on the recent happenings in the North. However, every time Zenjirou had sent diplomats or guards between the two countries when the climate became too much for them, there was a slight amount of information exchange. Of course, it went without saying that Zenjirou was the one traveling between the two continents the most frequently.

Now that this latest information was incompatible with what he had heard, the silver-haired, blue-eyed prince pressed his father for an answer.

“He was. That much is without question. The church announced that. And yet, Priest Yan was seen in the university of Bohevia. The church has proclaimed him a fraud. Well, that much is only natural. Despite that, the university has publicly confirmed he is the same man, and the country as a whole is maintaining their silence.”

Yngvi couldn’t take in the deluge of information and pressed on his temples with his right hand’s thumb and middle finger before holding out his left hand to stop his father.

“Hold on a moment, father. The church announced that he was a fraud, and the university announced the opposite. In that order? There wasn’t a breakdown of communication and the university made their announcement without knowing the church’s position?” he asked, face twisted.

It was a natural question to ask. There was a huge difference between announcing the priest was the real Yan before the church said otherwise and doing so afterwards. While the former meant there was a chance they simply didn’t know the church’s position first, the latter was practically open revolt against the church.

And yet, the king shook his head. “There is no doubt. To be specific, the church announced his execution, then approximately two months later, someone calling themselves Priest Yan appeared at the university. Once those rumors became public, the church immediately declared them a fraud. Once the university received the official statement, they put out a contradictory one.”

“Wow...”

His voice cracked as he spoke, but there was a hint of a smile on his face.

It was practically explosive information, but considering it carefully, it was also information that could lead to chaos within the church’s sphere of influence on the Northern Continent. While Uppasala was on the same continent, it kept its distance from the church, so even if it wasn’t exactly good news for them, it was certainly easy to consider an internal scuffle in the church no real concern for them either.

When he realized that, Yngvi regained some of his calm.

“It’s become a pretty big thing. The university’s essentially breaking ties completely. Wait. You said that Bohevia itself was keeping their silence, right? Isn’t that a tacit agreement that the priest is the real Priest Yan?”

With the state university coming out against an official pronouncement from the church, the country maintaining its silence rather than censuring the university was indeed tacit approval.

The king nodded at his question. “Essentially, yes. The clergy of Bohevia have long been rather accepting of the man’s ideas and were rather divorced from the core of the church. Bohevia itself holds the man in high esteem as well. While the country as a whole isn’t defying the church, the general sentiment rests with him.”

More accurately, there were many within the leadership of the country that accepted Yan’s teachings that were critical of the church. They may have even been in the majority.

“I see. So if the university still maintains the man is telling the truth, and the country isn’t contradicting them, there is a decent chance that it really is him.”

Yngvi’s statement was straight to the point. Yan had been the dean of a university department until very recently, so many there would know him personally and be friendly with him on an individual basis. The university was a state-sponsored endeavor, so there would be leaders of the country who knew him as well. Agreeing that it was him meant that there was a high possibility that it actually was.

“Indeed. If he was a fraud, their leaders would decry him as such,” the king agreed.

Yngvi nodded and considered it further. “Hm...so if this Priest Yan is the real one, that means that the one who was executed was a fake. Did the church not realize? No...that doesn’t make sense,” Yngvi said, refuting his own hypothesis.

However antagonistic the relationship between them, Yan was an official priest, so it was hard to imagine that not one of the people in the church knew his appearance.

“That would mean that the church knew the man they captured wasn’t him. That makes their actions seem utterly clumsy, though. Wait, maybe not? The priest they captured was Priest Yan. Despite that, the Priest Yan at the university is also the real one. That itself is possible, and it would mean that the falsehood was his execution. After his capture, he must have escaped somehow, or negotiated for his survival. They’d allow that maybe if he agreed to not take center stage and instead live out the rest of his life as another person. Then the priest could have broken that agreement. That at least all holds together.”

The rapid burst of hypotheticals was perhaps the greatest proof of Yngvi’s intellect. However, his intelligence could only lead him to conclusions that matched his knowledge. In this case, where the unnatural phenomenon of resurrection was part of it, his thinking was essentially all wasted effort.

Therefore, the king couldn’t resist an unconscious smile as he gave his son the next piece of information. “Incidentally, the self-proclaimed Priest Yan had issued a complaint to the church for executing him without just cause.”

There was a long pause where Yngvi was dumbstruck. The longest silence of the meeting so far.

“What?”

It was no surprise—what his father had said was just that absurd. Despite his flustered question, Yngvi still hadn’t truly understood what his father had said.

“Um, so he’s protesting how, despite escaping in the nick of time, the church paraded a fake corpse around?”

Yngvi was practically praying for that to be the case. That at least made sense to him. And yet, his wishes were betrayed.

“No. He admits that he was executed. His claims are that the church executed him without cause and were so self-righteous as they took someone’s life. He claims that they are perverting the faith’s teachings and demands they rectify it.”

“That’s the first time...I’ve heard someone claim they were executed,” Yngvi managed, pressing a hand to his head to attempt to stave off a headache.

His father nodded briefly. “Indeed. Normally an executed man remains silent for eternity.”

“Dead men tell no tales” was a general rule that no one expected to be overturned, even in a world of magic. Despite his utter shock, Yngvi churned over the information in his head rapidly and understood how the priest was acting.

“A dead man—someone who was supposed to have been executed—admitting that, and yet living and protesting their execution sounds, frankly, ridiculous at first. So much so that my mind was completely blank for a moment. Thinking it over, though, it’s a fine move. The church publicly announced his execution, so he has to admit he was killed. The church, naturally, decries him as a fraud. Despite that, those that know him personally also know he is the real Priest Yan. Because of that, he’s seen as having been resurrected after his execution. It’s almost the worst possible outcome for the church.” Yngvi stifled his laughter.

His father nodded at his words. “Additionally, it is the Church of the Claw, so if his return from death becomes known, Priest Yan would be treated as a modern champion. The church, even the very highest priests, cannot pay him no heed in that position.”

The church was split into two main denominations. Generally, they were called the claw and the fang. The rulers and guardians of the world, the true dragons, had left, each bestowing a fang and claw to the people they left behind.

The fang became a humanoid with limited knowledge—an apostle. The claw became a weapon, and those chosen by it were champions. Those of the fang revered the apostle above all, while those of the claw saw their champions as standing above all.

“They put their fairy-tale champion in their scripture, and it’s treated as historical fact. It is also impossible to deny the resurrection of a dead man. If anything, it’s a sign he was recognized by the dragons.”

Yngvi’s voice was still thick with suppressed laughter. Countries and religious institutions often claimed as fact things which were utterly impossible with proper thought. Things like a king reigning for two hundred years, a general attaining victory on two ends of the continent simultaneously, or a princess who attracted suitors in droves despite always being hidden behind a veil.

The Epic of the Champion was considered scripture within the church, and it included obvious absurdities. And yet, the church treated it as fact. A person being resurrected was one of the miracles included. Often, it was a champion who had willingly met their fate and met one of the true dragons hiding in the afterlife, who had spoken to them, telling them they still had a duty to fulfill before sending them back to the land of the living. In fact, there were no records of someone other than a champion being resurrected.

In other words, if they acknowledged Priest Yan as having been resurrected, it would be possibly granting him the same fame as their historic champions. “Champion” was a term that was supposed to denote those recognized by the five weapons the dragons left behind, but it was said that several—or possibly all—of the weapons had gone missing. It would therefore be entirely possible for there to be a champion outside of the church’s hands. In Yan’s case, he was a recognized member of the church before his execution, so it would be somewhat different.

“The church is certainly in an extremely difficult position. They claimed they executed him, so they cannot now revoke that and say he actually escaped. Thus, all they can do is call him a fraud,” Gustav said smoothly, summing up the information he’d shared so far.

Yngvi then picked up the thread. “But Priest Yan is too well-known for them to force that to be accepted. He was a priest who always worked from the bottom up, so there are a large number of people on the streets—and not just in Bohevia—that know his face. He also has his position as dean of dracology, so within the country and university particularly, many people know him, and it will come out. Priest Yan is no impostor; he is the real man.”

“Inevitably, the falsehood behind the Church of the Claw’s announcement of his execution will also become clear. That alone would be enough of a blow to the church, and yet the priest went further. Of all things, he ‘admitted’ to being executed and claimed it as unjust.”

Yngvi raised his hands in submission. “I can only congratulate him. The majority of the church’s believers are illiterate commoners. They will believe their eyes first and foremost, followed by what those they trust claim. The people of Bohevia will see him with their own eyes and trust in his existence. At the same time, they will have believed the Church of the Claw when they announced his execution. Therefore, they will reasonably believe both things simultaneously, and we arrive at the situation where he has been executed, but then resurrected.”

“Many of them take the scriptures as fact and would be willing to accept that happening.”

As was implicit in their conversation, those with a higher level of education than commoners would consider it an open secret that such records were either false or exaggerated. The resurrection of the champions was taken to be the greatest among them. Those with a little insight would understand that the records were almost all questionable at best. There were champions who changed enough through the event that things seemed off—those who studied the theology of it suggested that it might be conflating the histories of two separate champions.

Some reappeared after years, with their cause of death being unclear—again, the theologians suggested it was a temporary withdrawal from being in the public eye, not dying at all. Others fulfilled their final duty and then vanished—theologians suggested that their final duty was carried out by someone else and that the champion had never been resurrected.

Those individuals would be unable to accept that Yan really had been executed, and really had returned from the dead.

“That reminds me, what of the other man who shares his name? The one-eyed mercenary?” Yngvi asked, remembering another individual who would be important in this sequence of events.

“He has been sighted, claiming to be Priest Yan’s bodyguard. It is another reason the priest is being accepted as real.”

“If I recall, the mercenary vanished entirely when Priest Yan was captured, did he not? The most logical sequence of events would be him rescuing the priest in the nick of time and fooling the church with a fake corpse.”

It was not uncommon for death-row inmates to die before their actual execution. It was not a good look for the captors, so they often claimed that such inmates had been executed. The problem with that explanation was the difficulty of freeing the priest and substituting a body. However, there were those who believed the priest even within the church. If they had a conspirator, it was not impossible.

Thus, Yngvi’s explanation was the most likely and realistic so far. It sounded far more likely than the priest actually being killed, then someone spiriting his bones away to the Southern Continent to have him revived through time reversal. In fact, Yngvi’s hypothesis was much the same as Gustav’s.

“It is likely along those lines, yes. The truth is less important, though—more so is how both parties move following this situation.” After telling his successor that, Gustav let out an irritated sigh. However it had happened, Yan was alive while the church was claiming they had killed him. The details of how it had come about were of little importance.

Yngvi spoke as he considered it. “From the rumors of Priest Yan’s disposition and the way he so boldly defies the church, I doubt he will simply fall silent. Meanwhile, the Church of the Claw will never withdraw their claim that they executed him. If Bohevia remains on his side, it could well end in armed conflict, no?”

Gustav evaluated Yngvi’s statement before answering. “It will definitely go as far as a skirmish at least. They have already taken a stinging defeat recently, though, so it is perhaps equally likely it ends there or grows into an inferno.”

The Knight Order of the Northern Dragon Claw—or “the knights,” in common usage—were the Church of the Claw’s strongest fighting force, and they had recently taken a painful defeat in Tannenwald. Therefore, if the church could maintain their calm as they made their decision, they wouldn’t send their armies into Bohevia and make enemies of them in an attempt to eliminate Yan.

However, politicians and leaders did not necessarily make all of their decisions through logic and reason. Particularly in a case like this, where someone who they claimed to have executed as a heretic was alive and censuring them for it, their honor was in tatters. There was a chance that they could call for the man’s death, no matter what it took. If the Church of the Claw decided to protect their reputation and influence, it could even be the correct course of action. The problem was whether they had the strength to do it.

While he was somewhat on board with his father’s theories, Yngvi disagreed with the final part.

“They could definitely follow through if they kept calm. After all, the church has a lot of influence. If in public they just decry him as a fraud, but also act behind the scenes to put pressure on Bohevia and its surrounding countries and make backroom deals, they could eliminate Priest Yan with a minimum of harm. It would definitely take years to do, though. Even so, I do not see it as an equal chance of either decision. More of a case of seventy percent to thirty, or eighty to twenty. With total war being the eighty, of course.”

“Hm. Why?”

The silver-haired prince shrugged at the question. “Isn’t it obvious? That’s how unlikely it seems that the leaders can tolerate the wound to their pride and honor. They might espouse calm rationality when it doesn’t involve them, but they prioritize their emotions when it does,” he said, keeping his tone even with some effort.

When Yngvi had become crown prince, there were documents he was now allowed to look at, and he had done so. As a result, he’d come to the conclusion that those high in the church were unable to accept their own shortcomings. Therefore even with the risks it involved, they would likely pursue Yan, as far as Yngvi was concerned.

Admitting that Yan was alive would mean also admitting their claim of his execution was false. Announcing the execution of a heretic would have been done in the name of the high priest and other high level members of the church. In other words, there would be no room for interpretation that it was they who were at fault. Additionally, they had declared him a heretic, so they would be entirely unwilling to negotiate in secret with him.

Once his son explained all of that, Gustav had to admit that his son’s view was more convincing than his own. “I see. That certainly seems to hold water. Sly old foxes they may be, but they are still easily pulled by their emotions, you say?”

His long reign had seen him clash with the church through words if not swords, so he could see the truth in his son’s statement. The reason he saw the quiet and loud options as equally possible despite that experience was because he had personally seen how formidable they were as politicians. You could consider it as overestimating them because of the long background he had with them. Of course, there was also the chance that Yngvi was mistaken, being young and knowing no fear.

Gustav put a hand to his chin and thought things over before speaking slowly. “Lighting a massive fire would mean we would need to beware of being burned, but preparing for a natural blaze is another matter.”

“In that case, father, let us send a mercenary to Priest Yan! We introduced Zenjirou to János, didn’t we? Their contract is settled now, so we can introduce him directly to the priest, can we not? If we add some of our own men, we can get much more precise information.”

Gustav let out another exaggerated sigh as his son leaned forward eagerly. “Fool. We cannot so blatantly back one side.”

Gustav found his head pounding as Yngvi aimed for a decrease in the church’s influence with an astounding degree of brazenness. He knew his son had keen insight and a capable mind, but the lack of fear Yngvi had made him worry about entrusting the country to him.

“Perhaps it would be good for you to feel some pain before it would be fatal,” he mused.

“Don’t you think that’s rather rude, father?” Yngvi protested with a dejected expression.

Gustav, however, did not withdraw his statement.

To be continued in The Ideal Sponger Life, Volume 16.