Ma Ju Ro sat back down, in complete silence. There was no applause, no exclamations — all were stunned by the emperor’s words and decisiveness.
Veronimus recovered first, coughed and unsteadily rattled off his planned welcome speech. Lentz said something, but Luca didn’t listen. His thoughts were elsewhere.
The award ceremony for Nestor Yadugara passed as a routine affair, and then the emperor quickly left the event without saying farewell.
Nobody noticed an unknown guild member, a hunched and grey-haired old man, follow the emperor out. A few minutes later, he was standing in the imperial chambers, escorted there by a guard, not knowing what to expect from the meeting, mentally replaying the moments of his short and not entirely joyous life, full of beatings and daydreams. He never did have the time to know the joys of sharing a bed with a woman.
The emperor gestured for him to sit, but the old man continued to stand. And he stood the entire time while Ma Ju Ro stared at him in silence.
The emperor sought a way to help Penant and was trying to figure out how to implement his plan. He didn’t have enough knowledge, nor enough information about the transfusion procedure.
Then it hit him. The logs!
At Luca’s command, his metamorphosis highlighted the notes from the reverse transfusion procedure recorded a couple of weeks ago. The result was a kind of recipe for the synthesis of various substances and catalysts that, when used in the correct order, would finally provide the required reaction, switching around the recipient and the donor in the transfusion procedure.
At the carrier’s command, metamorphosis produced a range of programmable agents. Each of them was no larger than a molecule, and all were set to activate under certain circumstances.
When the agents were concentrated in his right hand, Ma Ju Ro took hold of the old man’s shoulder and injected them. Penant noticed nothing.
“Do you wish to return your youth and take vengeance against your former master?” Luca asked.
“More than anything in the world, your majesty!” The old man lifted his head and a furious fire burned in his eyes. “Will you punish him?”
“You will punish him yourself for his treachery.”
“But how?” Penant whispered. “I am old and weak...”
“It’s simple enough. And you’ll punish him the same way he did you. Thanks to some recent research by the imperial medics, we were able to isolate a certain active substance from that unfortunate boy’s blood. You recall Luca?”
“Dezisimu? Yes, sire!” The old man’s face cleared up. He recalled and understood. “You mean the thing that prevented my tutor from transfusing all the boy’s strength?”
“Exactly. Find some way to get Yadugara to tap into you again. Tell him that you see no point in living on, that you’ve decided to give your final years to your master, the only person close to you. As soon as he begins the transfusion, the procedure will reverse, and he will be the one giving up his years. The important thing is to make sure that nobody else is there.”
“Reyna kept an eye on it all last time.”
“She might interrupt the procedure...”
“That’s my concern now,” Penant interrupted him with confidence in his voice. “Forgive me, your majesty. I’ll say that I don’t want to die in front of Reyna. I’ll make it a condition...”
The emperor touched his cheek and quietly asked:
“You won’t lose courage?”
“No,” Penant said decisively. “I’d rather die with a hope of justice than eke out the last of my days in this decaying, dying body.”
The old man reached into his mouth and pulled out a tooth. He put it in his pocket, looked at Ma Ju Ro, and a smile gleamed in his eyes.
“If...” Luca hesitated. “When you do this, once it’s done, go to Lentz, or better, to the chief of the new clinic, Koerlig. He’ll have a job for you.”
“I will,” Penant declared. “But... why? Why have you decided to help me? And why... You could have just given the order, and...”
“Yes. You’re right. I could have given an order and his body would be headless right now. I could have sent an assassin to do it quietly. I could have had him locked up for his illegal transfusions. I could have even ordered him to be dragged in here, and let Lentz perform the reverse procedure. But, if you understand my meaning here, Penant; in my view, justice shouldn’t look like that.”
“I understand,” the old man whispered.
Chapter 38. Threat From Within
THE WEEKS FLEW BY one after the other, then one morning (just as hectic as any other) Emperor Ma Ju Ro the Fourth suddenly realized that precisely three months had passed since the day he first woke up in his new body on that stretcher.
In that time, Luca had finally reached influence level two through certain decisions and deeds, and he’d saved up thirty two Tsoui points, but he didn’t dare spend them after wasting another ten on spinning the Wheel with no result. He’d gotten an empty white sector.
Influence level: +1.
Influence level two reached!
Luca’Onegut, you are living a life worthy of Tsoui! Your deeds have a positive influence on universal harmony and the balance of life!
Your reward:
+0.2% chance of landing on a blue sector.
+0.1% chance of landing on a gold sector.
-0.1% chance of landing on a red sector.
-0.2% chance of landing on a white sector.
Luca was far happier about gaining a level in his sole talent, which he had to use constantly to protect himself from assassination attempts, reveal lies in complex negotiations, help to heal wounds and much more.
Metamorphosis: +1.
Ability level four reached!
You can control your body at an improved level: unlocked a basic combat form that allows you to perform a short-term transformation of your own body parts, altering their materials, shape and properties.
In combat mode, your metabolism speed is boosted by one thousand two hundred percent, which causes a time slow effect for the carrier. Combat mode duration: 3 seconds.
Now, if he wanted to, he could even fight in the Arena against the Empire’s strongest gladiators, and he’d probably win. Field experiments with the basic combat form showed that neither a finely sharpened sword, nor a heavy axe, nor the head of an arrow shot from a compound bow from fifteen feet could harm him. The mode didn’t last long and it burned through Wheel energy at an outrageous pace, but even without it, he had enough internal improvements to easily withstand even the fiercest attacks. However, to look at him, it seemed as though the emperor was injured; his skin and first layer of fat would break, and he would bleed. If Luca tempered the enthusiasm of his metamorphosis and its instant and rapid regeneration, then the wounds kept bleeding and looked terrible.
Everything that Luca could only have dreamed of as a cripple boy from a the slums of the Capital was becoming a reality. Now he could walk, and he had a body as good as anyone else’s. His family wanted for nothing, and his mother was completely well again. She gained strength and had gotten back almost all her former beauty, that for which Luca’s father, the gladiator Severus, had fallen in love with her.
Kora was making herself at home in the palace, laughing at the whispers behind her back. Each wandering rumor was finer than the last, but they all led to bewilderment — what did the emperor see in the girl? Even if you ignored her common background, the ladies of the palace couldn’t understand the grip Kora had on his majesty, and they invented the most whimsical explanations for this change in their ruler’s tastes. It only took a month for the new fashion trends at court to take hold throughout the capital: careless makeup, or even none at all, and thinness, which was especially difficult for those ladies that had spent the last few years carefully nurturing their curves.
Luca’s sister actively helped Keirinia to support the needy. Ma Ju Ro had made charity fashionable — the nobility and rich families of the capital were making large donations
at charitable balls organized by Lee Vensiro. Clothing, food baskets and medicine went to specific families in need — which was what the girls were doing.
The first free clinic was opened in the huge mansion of former advisor Naut. It opened slowly due to hidden resistance from the healers’ guild and the rumors they spread about ‘barely trained quacks,’ but it was open. The numbers of people seeking treatment exceeded the capabilities of the doctors working there, as the healers had begun to call the clinic’s physicians in protest. This meant that after only three days, Hector gave the emperor a report on the attempts of particularly zealous patients to buy themselves a place. In spite of the decent salary generously set by Lentz, there were doctors who couldn’t resist simple ‘gifts,’ which meant that the clinic’s manager Koerlig had to stand before the emperor and blush. The bribe-takers were fired, and no more cases occurred — the people there appreciated their position and the chance they’d been given.
Lentz managed to study the mushrooms that Ma Ju Ro spoke of, and he was able to determine how they suppress the life forces of even the smallest organisms that caused infectious disease. At the ruler’s suggestion, Lentz called the newly discovered compound an ‘antibiotic,’ but couldn’t resist adding his own name to it as well. The discovery was announced at a specially organized assembly of the guild, but the ‘Lentz antibiotic’ was offered to private healers only as a finished product, in special ampules for injection, which provided another source of income for the treasury.
Luca’s mother ended up getting a job at the imperial clinic, and without any help from her son. Her education, knowledge of the common people and her skill of talking to them allowed her to work at the reception desk. Naturally, she became a person of high regard among her former neighbors in the slums. “Our Prisca!” they said with pride.
Reyk Lee Vensiro undertook his responsibilities with gusto. In a very short time, all the creative types that had hitherto been hiding underground went out into the city streets and filled the taverns, delighting the public and intertwining into their performances — directly or otherwise — the magnanimous Ma Ju Ro. Or Ma Ju Ro the Magnanimous, in contrast to Ma Ju Ro the Sour. The Imperial Theater changed its repertoire entirely, casting off Rizmayer’s boring and protracted plays and replacing them with lively comedies and melodramas that the common folk could understand.
Of course, not everyone was happy about these innovations. Throughout these months, there were several attempts to poison the emperor, and attempts to bribe his guards. One bribe was even successful, and the assassin who stole into the imperial chambers would certainly have been successful if Ma Ju Ro had been an ordinary man. They also tried to give the emperor ‘poisoned apples,’ as General Hustig put it — beautiful girls willing to do anything, all with a special surprise... Luca himself had lost count of the times he was a hair’s breadth from death.
But thanks to his metamorphosis, he not only successfully avoided it, he also found the conspirators by using a special substance that they called truth serum. Although most of the assassination attempts came from the South, displeased aristocrats at court caused their fair share.
The guilty parties with their noble, but now besmirched names were sent to the chopping block, and their property and capital added to the treasury. Ma Ju Ro hesitated in this at first, but the cruelty of the punishment worked — the assassination attempts stopped, and some families began to understand the new rules of the game and threw their full support behind the emperor. Those still dissatisfied sold their property and went to join Rezsinius.
As for Herdinia, in spite of the fact that Luca had long since healed her of the sexual magnetism virus and there were no more pheromones to attract her, she didn’t lose her ardor for the emperor. It remained a mystery whether it was a side effect of the virus or whether Cross’s wife truly had fallen in love with him in the end. There was no chance to test it on the other victims, those three girls that Lee Vensiro had brought to him. They’d been sent home by the emperor’s order.
Herdinia embraced the idea of returning the Empire to its former glory with a passion, instantly put a stop to that which prevented this goal. Somehow realizing that the emperor, in spite of the enthusiasm and zeal with which he had returned to ruling the country, was having a hard time dealing with various issues, she readily responded to his silent request for help. No, she didn’t continue to make decisions as before, without his involvement. On the contrary, now Ma Ju Ro took the decisions personally, but the first advisor finally performed the role the position demanded — to advise, highlighting all the pitfalls and making consequences clear.
Herdinia took on the forgiven, but disgraced Naut and took responsibility for directing all their financial streams and planning. The old budgets were mercilessly cut, and new ones were built with a few to spending as effectively as possible, with a focus on helping the country and its people, not just their representatives.
One of the industries financed by the imperial treasury was science. The Empire hadn’t explored many sciences so far, and all of them were chosen on the principle of short-term advantage. New alloys for armor and weapons and rumors of the upcoming rearmament of the army enlivened the market. Each field created new jobs, and that meant that dissatisfaction in the society was steadily dropping.
The treasury financed the construction of tens of thousands of fishing boats, and the city was flooded with seafood. The townspeople could now complain of a lack of choice, but no longer of hunger. In addition, the emperor took a range of measures to restore the agricultural sector, giving tax breaks to land owners that hired farmers to work their lands.
The most serious problems had been solved, but the threat from the South hadn’t passed. On the contrary, it was only stronger. And it struck from an unexpected direction.
* * *
“Rezsinius’s troops will be at the city walls in two, best case three months,” Hustig said. “We have to bring the battle to them first. Otherwise the city will be under siege.”
“And bare our flank?” Hector frowned. “I don’t have enough people for a full defense of Rezsinius lands from the sea. He’ll take the city bare-handed!”
“We can’t split our forces,” the emperor interjected into his advisors’ squabble.
He’d said that several times already. They’d been arguing for a solid hour, and Ma Ju Ro was starting to get sick of it. The government clearly didn’t have enough military power, and if Rezsinius were braver, he would have captured the capital long ago.
Thirty thousand new recruits to strengthen the regular army brought the Empire’s strength to roughly equal with that of Rezsinius, but only on paper. In reality, the rebel had tried and tested troops; the cavalry and knights of the southern barons, island mercenaries who had held saber and sword since childhood, and most importantly, legions of veterans that had fought through the capture of the North and the cleansing of the Wastelands. Fifty thousand fire-forged warriors, most of which would still stand beneath Ma Ju Ro’s banners had his body’s former owner not cut the military budget. The veterans had been sent into retirement, and without any severance pay. It was no wonder the offended legions headed to the South as soon as rumor spread that Rezsinius was recruiting.
“Are you still arguing?”
The men turned around at Herdinia’s voice, who had gotten bored and gone out for fresh air.
“Does the respected Herdinia have any ideas?” the general asked defensively.
“I am certain she does.” Even sitting at the table, Lee Vensiro managed to give a short bow. He had infinite respect for Herdinia and put her in second place in his own hierarchy, immediately after the emperor. “My lady First Advisor sees the bigger picture, unlike us foolish brutes.”
Hector looked at him and frowned. He couldn’t bear the obsequious and flamboyant Reyk.
“I have no ready solution for you. I just have common sense. We can’t split up the troops we have, everyone knows this, and his majesty has been telling you th
e same. We all know that there will be only one battle, and if it were up to me, I would meet the enemy at the city walls.”
“That would be a curious sight,” Fourth Advisor Cross said, yawning. “I’ve sat here long enough. If your majesty allows it, I have some important matters to attend to.”
Ma Ju Ro nodded, not looking at Herdinia’s husband. Anthony was still entirely useless. He just rattled off venomous comments and foretold the coming change in power, but veiled his words so that none present but the emperor and his wife knew what he was talking about.
Anthony loudly pushed his chair back, stood up and left.
“Strike me down, but I don’t even know what he does for this country!” the general murmured. “Your majesty?”
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